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This is the Advanced Selling Podcast, giving you the best sales advice from the top performers in the industry.
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Handpicked by Brian and Bill.
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Continuing our episode, Advanced Selling Podcast listeners, you know this is one of our favorite episode series we ve done.
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One of my faves since we ve started the thing.
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It s the best sales advice I ever got.
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Today, we ve invited personally the people that Bill and I watch, follow, admire, enjoy, learn from, make us think, all those things.
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A lot of you listeners, I can guarantee you know this guy, Jim Keenan, which I just everyone knows.
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Oh my god, you didn t just do that.
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I did on purpose.
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I did on purpose because I want to say, dude, I love
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the fact that you ve got a last name that s your brand.
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It s Kenan.
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Period.
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Case closed.
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Done.
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Right?
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OK.
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I ll do that just for you.
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That s it.
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OK.
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Let it roll.
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You know, I could read all the stuff.
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Gap selling, bestselling book, 20 years, this, Forbes, not taught book.
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What I like about Kenan the most is he really doesn t care about any of that stuff.
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He s a sales guy through and through.
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And that s what I admire most about you, man.
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You re just the real deal, and you re a sales guy.
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You get after it.
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And that s one of the things that we love about what we do.
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I always say, everyone I coach, I said, if you follow me around with a GoPro camera, you will see me doing everything that I teach you.
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You will not see me blowing smoke or anything like that.
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So thanks for doing this, man.
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I really appreciate it, all right?
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Of course, baby, I got it.
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Of course.
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Yeah, so let s do this.
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So we just want to just go back.
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You ve been selling over 20 years.
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You re still selling, which I love.
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Take us through.
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Go back, tell us a story, the best sales advice you ever got.
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And we ll chit-chat about that a little bit.
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So yeah, so I ve been giving that a lot of thought.
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You re not going to like my answer.
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And something tells me I m probably not alone.
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And if I am, then I think that s a great thing.
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That s a great thing.
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And I want to predicate this with, you know, I have, so I have a handful of leaders or past managers or whatever you want to call them that I have that I liked that were influential in my own personal development, my own personal growth.
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Um, um,
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But nobody ever gave me any really good sales advice.
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There was nothing anybody ever told me that I m still at least, okay, that at least stuck out.
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Out of fairness, right?
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Like someone could have said something like, well, that was pretty good.
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And then I forgot it, right?
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But therefore it could have been that profound.
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It could have been something like, oh my God, this was life-changing and this makes sense to me.
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And, you know,
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Oh, my God, thanks, Joe.
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Right?
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No, no, there wasn t.
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And, you know, I m going to chalk that up to and the reason I think a lot of people like probably have experienced this is that I just don t think most
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leaders and most salespeople really understand selling.
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So they give them advice in the time that has some good tactical benefit that could help them in that moment.
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But the truth of the matter is, I don t believe many salespeople, sales executives really understand sales in a way that advice they could give them is like, Oh my God, earth shattering.
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I m taking this with the rest of my life.
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This was what I needed to know.
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That s a good point.
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That s a great point.
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That s a fantastic point.
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And I m with you on that.
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Sales leaders do not.
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Here s what I see sales leaders do.
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I want your take on this, Kenan.
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I see them just repeat what s been told to them in the past with no thought, no critical thought.
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Oh, my God.
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Amen.
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Bam.
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Bam.
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We get on the podcast right there.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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Look, look, I don t fault them because the culture I grew up in that s changed tremendously.
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I mean, I m old as shit, but, you know, I ve seen a lot change.
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Like I started selling in 1996 or 95.
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And by that time I was 27, too.
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It wasn t like I was, you know, I partied my ass off for a long time.
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So, um, a lot has changed, right?
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But I ll tell you, there s two things I remember the most.
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This is what I ll tell you.
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Two things I remember the most.
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Okay.
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The first one is in my very first sales job, they hired me.
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because a friend said, I was in South Beach, Miami modeling back when I was really good looking and you know, blah, blah, blah.
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And a friend called me up and he s like, look, I got a job for you, you need to come home, it s time to get serious.
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And I remember sitting there, you know, on the beach, and I was having a good time, trust you me, right?
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And I remember thinking, okay, where can I take this?
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And I remember thinking,
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Even if I become, quote, unquote, an A-list supermodel.
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At the time, that was Tyson Beckford.
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I m a dude.
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Dudes did not make the kind of money and all that stuff that women did.
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I processed and said, maybe I could make $300,000 or $400,000 a year, but that only lasts a few years.
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And I could make that in business in three or four years and make it 10x that or 5x that growing.
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So I said, all right, you got me.
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I ll come home.
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So I came home, and I came to work for the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce.
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And they hired me.
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But because I d never sold a thing in my life and had been nothing but a bartender and a model for the last 10 years, they hired another dude next to me who had experience and had been selling before.
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Man, in my first year, I kicked everybody s ass.
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Everybody s ass.
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Literally, I broke every sales record, single month, most in a year.
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I killed everybody.
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Even though people had been there for a while, I ve been crushing it.
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And this is where I m going with this story.
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I remember my boss, Rich.
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which was a great guy, great guy.
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And he said, where did you learn to consultative sell?
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And I was like, what are you talking about?
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I don t know what you mean.
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And he goes, you re a consultative seller.
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And I was like, I don t know what that means.
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I m just trying to understand what these people need.
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I m just trying to understand what s going on in their business so I can help them.
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I don t know what that means.
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So that was the thing I remembered the most, that somehow my mental brain was like, don t do this, don t do this, don t do this.
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It was, hey, you re trying to help someone.
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So that was the first thing I remember.
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It was a reinforcement.
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The second was he gave me a book called Telling is Not Selling.
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I don t even know who wrote it.
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I didn t know it was still around.
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It was just your typical starter guy sales book.
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And what I took from that was, don t just tell.
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That s basically what I took from it.
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I took the title.
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I read the whole book.
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It was pretty good.
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But the general point was, stop talking at people.
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So when I combined those, I was already a consultative selling.
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When I combined that, that s all I remember from my personal life messages from sales early on.
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I love that.
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You re a skier.
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Yeah, big time.
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You re a ski instructor.
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And I know your daughters are big time skiers, right?
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Yeah.
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Because this is an interesting contrast here.
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So you think, I can t really remember anyone that gave me sales advice.
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Do you remember a ski coach that gave you advice that sticks?
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You re funny.
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You know why you re funny?
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Because you re making me think there s a theme here in Kenan, right?
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I m self-taught.
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Yeah.
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So my family didn t ski.
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My dad went on one ski trip with his buddies, when my parents were divorced, and dragged my brother and sister and I along.
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And this was in the 70s.
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And he put us on these skis he had gotten in Goodwill.
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So this is the 70s, right?
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So the skis that he got us at Goodwill had the binding on the front that was like a lever.
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You pushed down.
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It would come out.
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And he put us at the bottom of the hill and he said, just stay here and walk up, ski down, walk up, ski down.
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So I did.
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And he took off with his friends, right?
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So I remember my sister and brother were pissed and hated it, but I just, he taught us how to sidestep.
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So I sidestep up until I got tired and went straight down and sidestep and went straight down.
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And I loved it.
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I was like, Oh my God, it s the greatest thing in the world.
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He never took us skiing again.
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By the time I got into high school, I just made a little money, bought some skis and went up and self-taught myself.
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And literally self-taught, self-taught, self-taught.
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Moved to Vail, followed the best guys and girls around on the hill, self-taught, self-taught, self-taught.
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I was self-taught until I was 30.
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uh six no 35 34 33 somewhere in there yeah and um i applied to be a ski instructor and uh just like just like ski i mean selling they were like you ve never had a lesson you ve never taught like nope and they said well again someone who knew me a current ski instructor was highly regarded said you should this guy s pretty good so i went up with the head of ski school and i ski and she goes wow
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You re self-taught.
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I m like, yes, you re pretty good.
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I like seeing you change, but you re in.
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So the first quote unquote lesson I ever got was when I started qualifying for my certification.
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And then there were so many things I learned out of that.
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I wouldn t even know where to start with you because their certification to be a PSIA ski instructor is off the charts.
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Level one s easy, but I m a level two.
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Half my class failed in their first attempt.
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I passed.
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But yeah, I learned all kinds of things to fill in the gaps in my pathetic skiing.
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You know, that s it.
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Oh, this is why I struggle at this.
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Ah, that makes sense now.
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No matter how good I was with, you know, there were problems, I m like, oh, that makes sense.
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So yeah.
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So no, even in that case, it s not one thing, because I was self-taught for so many years.
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Yeah, it s awesome.
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And that goes to your book.
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I mean, that goes right back to gap selling.
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That s how you teach people to sell.
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Same deal.
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So everyone has these basics, but there s a little space there, right?
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I like what you said, Keenan, about sometimes we just make it way too complex.
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We just make it way too complicated with all of these systems.
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and procedures and methodologies, and really a lot of it gets back to what you said.
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Just go find out what they want to accomplish, what s on their mind, what are their circumstances.
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Don t make it so damn difficult.
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You know, you know, you know, this is an interesting theme and I like how you guys did this podcast because I do a lot of these and I feel like I m saying the same thing over and over.
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I feel like Warren s Yvonne, whoever doesn t play werewolf in London.
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He s like, one more time.
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That s what I feel like.
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I literally start to feel like a fraud because people ask me the same questions and to the, to the interview is it s new, but to me it s like, it s a thousands time.
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I don t feel like I m adding any value, but you guys took an interesting approach.
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I m going to throw this out at you cause you got me thinking.
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Yeah.
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If you look at how I sold when I first started selling, and how I continued to sell, and you look how I skied and then turned into a ski instructor, this is my advice to people.
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Think.
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Just fucking think.
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Look at life, look at learning to sell, look at learning to ski as a giant problem.
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And that says, here is where I m at today.
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Here s where I want to be tomorrow.
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So today I m barely getting down to blue without wiping out.
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I m watching these guys over here, ripping the moguls and getting all the girls.
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What do I got to do to get over here?
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I can t do it all, I can t do it in one step, so what do I gotta do?
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I start watching them.
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What are they doing?
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How are they skiing?
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How are their skis moving, right?
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Same thing with selling, right?
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I wanna get this person to buy this.
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People aren t buying it.
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What do I gotta do?
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What s important to them?
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Why would somebody buy something?
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Why would I buy this?
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Why is what I m selling valuable to them?
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What can it do for them?
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What can t do for them?
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How can I screw up their life?
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How can I not screw up their life?
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Blah, blah, blah.
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Just think, people.
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And this is going to piss a lot of people off, because I make a lot of people angry.
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But if there s one thing the majority of us don t do is we don t think, we go.
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Totally.
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We just don t think.
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Totally agree.
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Totally agree.
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We just don t think.
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Go, go.
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We don t.
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It also.
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People, even if they do, and I m with you, it s rare that I see people critically think about anything.
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And I say critically on purpose, like how can I make this better and better and better?
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And then they still, even then they do that, and then they get that little better piece, and then they stop.
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It never ends.
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Yeah, but I think that s a lot of the culture of sales leadership, too, is we have this bias for action.
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We always talk about action.
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Let s just go do.
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Let s go do.
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Come on.
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Come on.
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Come on.
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Let s go make a call.
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And I think sometimes what we need to do is, well, wait a minute.
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Before we make the call on the big client or the big prospect, why don t we think through a little bit, how are we going to approach this?
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What s our positioning here?
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And that s what you re talking about, Keenan.
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Just think before you do.
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I think we re in a culture where we just go do.
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Let s go do.
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Just go do it.
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And your post, I don t know when it was.
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I just saw it on LinkedIn over the weekend.
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You were talking about, I think, five things.
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If you want to help your sales funnel, you said none of them are behavioral.
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Just put it up.
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None of them are behavioral.
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You just did a piece on LinkedIn about thinking before action.
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We are hyper caught up in this, right?
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Calls, behavior, action, math, da, da, da.
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And there s no critical thinking to that.
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Everyone s reading the book by the salesforce.com.
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So what s it called?
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Betty Off.
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No, no.
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The sales.
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What is it called?
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Oh, my god.
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Anyway.
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Challenger Sale?
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No, no.
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It s the book that he wrote about how to get from zero to 100 million in ARR.
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Predictable Revenue.
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Predictable Revenue.
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Everyone s predictable.
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It s a math problem.
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I don t know.
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I don t know.
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Right.
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Yes.
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Right?
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And that s great.
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And it s fine.
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And it s old.
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Challenger Sale s 10 years old.
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And we re like, oh, we got to do Challenger Sale.
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It s 10 years old.
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We ve got to innovate.
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We ve got to think.
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So I love this.
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It s funny you brought up Aaron Ross.
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I have no idea why I was thinking about him this morning, but he popped into my head.
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And whether it s old or not, whether it s new or not, it still requires critical thinking.
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And one of the things I loved about Aaron Ross s revenue is his thought process on getting past that first tranche of buyers.
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Like, I think that s why that book was so popular to so many people, because when we start businesses, when we start, you know, SaaS businesses or whatever, that first, if you get any traction, all that first traction comes from people who know you, people who have referred to you, people in your network, people that follow you on LinkedIn, right?
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And that s easy, or easier, right?
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But we ve never thought about how do I get to the people who don t know someone?
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That it doesn t know someone that doesn t know someone that knows me, right?
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And I was like, okay, that s a man who s thinking he s thinking about this concept and he s thought about the The process or the flow from that first client to what I call critical momentum, right?
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And I think that s one of the things that blew me away is with gap selling is there are so many people that have read it that I don t know Them or someone that knows them or someone that knows them or someone that knows them.
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I was at my kids.
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Uh,
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soccer tournament this weekend, a soccer game down in Denver.
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And I was in California with a client for the week, so I showed up on Saturday morning, flew in on Saturday morning, so I couldn t drive my kid down from bail.
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And so a guy named Ted Johnson drove her down, but I couldn t remember his name.
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And this guy walked up and goes, hey, Kenan.
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And I was like, oh, hey, Ted, thanks for freaking driving my daughter out of here.
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Preacher goes, no, no, no, I didn t drive your daughter down.
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I read your book.
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I m like, oh.
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He goes, can I talk to you?
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Can I just talk to you for a minute?
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I don t need to creep.
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And I m like, oh yeah, sure, great.
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Took a picture and all that shit.
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But my point is, I don t know that person who didn t know that person who didn t know that person, right?
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I went off track, sorry.
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No, that s what happens when you build a brand.
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Even with this, you know.
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But my point is, my point is what s-his-name-was-thinking.
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SPEAKER_01
Sorry, that was bringing me back to the point.
1
SPEAKER_01
What s-his-name-was-thinking, critically thinking, and he broke down the process where other people weren t breaking down the process.
1
SPEAKER_01
Why?
1
SPEAKER_01
Because they weren t critically thinking.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_00
Love it, love it.
1
SPEAKER_00
That was awesome, dude.
1
SPEAKER_00
I appreciate you, man.
1
SPEAKER_00
That s good.
1
SPEAKER_00
Fantastic.