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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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Hey, everybody.
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We re thrilled to death continuing our series of the best sales advice I ever got.
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As you all know, a lot of you have been listening for a long time, and you hear Bill and I all the time.
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You re like, can we hear somebody else, someone that knows a little bit more than you two guys?
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And so what we did, as everybody who s been listening to the series knows, we went out and handpicked some of our peers and colleagues and people that we admire, that we follow, that we listen to and learn from.
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And today, easily, one of my faves, people in our industry, hands down,
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We re with John Barrows.
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And John has been a sales professional, I believe, his whole career.
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And as a sales coach, as I watch him, my favorite thing about John, so you know why he s on the top of my list, is John is a guy that does everything he teaches.
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Everything he teaches, he does.
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And he shows people that he does it.
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He goes on, he ll record him doing his own salesforce.com work and sending his own emails out.
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And for me, as a sales coach, that s what you do.
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Because if you don t do your own stuff,
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No bueno.
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So John, thanks a bunch for being with us, man.
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Thanks, Brian.
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I appreciate it.
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Yeah, and I always said, you know, sales trainers specifically are usually failed sales professionals or professional presenters.
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I never wanted to be one.
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You know, to me, my passion s sales, and I happen to be all right sharing that information, but I ll never get out of day-to-day selling, man.
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It s too good.
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Yeah.
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And I believe a proud New England sports fan.
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Am I getting that right?
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I mean.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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Very proud.
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rough patch now.
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We gotta figure out what s happening after Brady.
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Maybe Mac Jones is the answer, but I don t think he is this year.
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He sure is a hell better than Cam Newton, I ll tell you that.
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I love Cam, though.
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Don t get me wrong, Cam was awesome attitude-wise, but he was just well past his prime and not really good in the Belichick offense.
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Well, I feel like Cam got a little bit more interested in the other stuff besides football.
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And we don t have to get into that.
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But yeah, I feel like I still like him as a human.
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He seemed like a good guy.
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But yeah, he just got a little deviated from the mission, I think, a little bit.
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I know.
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We re recording this so that this will have happened.
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That won t go on.
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No, it can go on.
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What I was going to say is I think John s doing a personal branding seminar today.
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one of the best people in the country that I know of personal branding.
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Cam s a pretty good personal brander, isn t he?
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I would say.
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He s a great salesman, yeah.
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Cam knows how to work that.
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So let s dig in, man.
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So you ve been selling for a long time.
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You ve been coaching people to sell for a long time.
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Talk to us about, just take us back.
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This is kind of a nostalgic deal.
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You go back and think of any bits, the best sales advice you ever got from a leader, a manager, an experienced anything.
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And let s just riff on that for a little bit.
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Yeah, I mean, so I got the one that I probably got early on, which level-setted me, but then there s one that I have now that I would tell my 22-year-old self if I could go back, but I ll start with the one that... And it was really, it was pretty simple.
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It was don t let the highs get too high and don t let the lows get too low.
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I mean, it really was.
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You know, because sales is, it s a lot of misses to get that win, but then you get that huge win and you feel like you re on top of the world, and then you get crushed afterwards, and the emotional, I mean, especially now with what s happened with
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you know, just mental health and all those other things.
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I think that had a big part to play in the mental health or the lack of mental health in sales reps back in the day.
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I m very encouraged to see that mental health is being talked about out loud right now because this is a stressful, this is a very stressful, it s not cut out for anybody.
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I mean, I kind of joke like we all go to school, you know, to get our degree in whatever we think we want to be when we grow up, right?
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And then when we get out into the real world, you know, we re like, either A, I don t want to do this, or B, I can t make enough money doing this.
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So hey, you know, I m pretty good with people, low barrier entry, I can get into sales, let me try that out, right?
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And we get into sales, and our training is either, hey, here s a script, which is gross, or hey, go follow that guy, he s pretty good.
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And we stumble and bumble our way through it, but it s like,
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You know, you don t get educated in this profession.
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You get educated on the job and you get those punches in the face every day and you gotta keep coming back asking for more.
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And so I think just the mentality of sales
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is one, and then I ll talk one more, but it s that sales isn t just a job.
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It s a mentality, right?
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Everybody sells.
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You sell yourself, you sell your ideas, you sell for whatever it is.
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You might not determine your career is sales, but when you truly believe in what you do, man, sales is everything, right?
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And that s the last one, and then we can riff on either one of them is, somebody told me early in my career that sales is the transfer of enthusiasm.
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And I believe that strongly.
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Look, if you re out there just selling just because you re trying to get a commission check and you don t think your product is good or doesn t really matter, who cares?
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Glenn Gary, Glenn Ross, Wolf of Wall Street, boiler room assholes.
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I want nothing to do with you because you re the ones giving us a bad name.
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But if you believe in what you sell, whoo, man.
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I m not saying sales is easy, but man, it s way easier.
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So those are a couple of pieces of advice I got earlier that stuck with me all the way through.
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I love it.
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I love it.
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Yeah, John, I wonder.
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Can you guys hear me OK?
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I m clear.
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I wonder mental health.
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You mentioned that and how important that was for you early.
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And it s it s a factor today.
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I m really glad to hear you talk about that.
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It s not just because sales is a tough profession, but what we ve been through over the last couple of years.
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home, isolated, everything.
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It s crazy.
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So what advice would you have for today s salesperson who maybe won t admit that they ve got some movies playing in their mind, but they do?
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How would you, and this is probably part of your advice to your 22-year-old self, but how would you coach them today to navigate in this crazy, chaotic world?
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It s hard, man.
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First of all, don t be quiet.
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You know, if you got problems, talk about them.
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You know, there s this one group called Uncrushed.org, and that s a good friend of mine, Tim, who s over at Salesforce.
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He started this, and actually one of my team members, James Buckley, is part of it as well.
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And it s all about talking about mental health and sales and all the challenges that we face, right?
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Because, you know, everybody looks at, oh, the baller VP of sales and this or whatever, but
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That s just, it s the Instagram world.
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You know what I mean?
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Like, we re all seeing the outcome.
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We re not seeing the journey that it takes to get there.
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And most of those executives and VPs that I ve hung out with, you know what I mean?
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They re using a few substances, if you will.
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You know what I mean?
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They re, they re, they re, you know, they re, they re
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personal lives are in shambles, and they don t pay attention to their kids.
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So, first of all, talk about it, and don t be shy.
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And if you bring it up to your organization and they poo-poo it, or they re like, yeah, you re fine, go find another place to work.
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But if I were to go back and tell my 22-year-old self, and I think this is very, very relevant to today, I talk a lot about science and art and sales, and how sales is both a science and an art, obviously, but I think it should be much more of a science.
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And the reason I say that is because the science lays the foundation for the art form to be that much more effective, the structure, the process we put in place here.
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So the advice that I would give myself back when I was 22 would be split test.
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A, B, split test everything you do.
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And I mean that.
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We re doing the activities anyways.
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We might as well learn from those activities.
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And when I say split test, say you re calling in to CIOs in retail.
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Come up with two different approaches to CIOs in retail.
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And in the morning, make 20 phone calls with this approach.
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In the afternoon, make 20 phone calls with this approach, right?
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If you have one email that can go out to a group of 50 people because they all fit a similar profile, send all 50 out, but break it up into 25-25 and tweak the subject line to see which one gets a higher open rate.
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Objection handling.
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I always say there s no rocket science to objection handling.
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It s just science.
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You write down an objection that you re getting smoked on right now, right?
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Go Google, literally, best objection handling techniques, whatever.
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Find a couple that you think fit with your style.
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The next 10 times that objection comes up, deal with it this way.
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The next 10 times, deal with it that way.
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And what this is gonna do is this is gonna help you get through this and become a lot better on the other end.
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Because agility is the number one competitive advantage any company or person has in this moment.
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This isn t the last pandemic we re gonna face.
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This isn t the last majorly disruptive thing that s gonna affect the economy.
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I ve been through three.
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absolute crashes in my life, right?
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And we ll see, I ll probably see 10 more, right?
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And it used to be we were, you know, we were in a bullpen, right?
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So what sales is, again, I think one of the hardest jobs in the world.
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And what made it tolerable usually was that we were in the office with a whole bunch of other sales reps getting our asses kicked together.
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So when I got off a bad call or when I got, you know, hung up on whatever, I could turn to my colleague and be like, Joe, Joe, did you hear that?
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Like that was a train wreck, man.
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You want to grab a drink, like whatever.
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And it was fun, right?
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But now we re all sitting at home by ourselves.
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And so when you have a bad day and we have a bad call, who are you going to commiserate with?
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Your cat?
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Right?
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So, so, but if you become a scientist, now all of a sudden you can get through this because let me, let me paint this picture.
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So you got to make 50 dials in a day, right?
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If you make 50,000 a day, you get no meetings.
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That s a tough day.
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That s a brutal day.
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Okay.
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But say you make 50 dials and you do $25.
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with this approach and $25 with this approach, and you still get no meetings, to me, that s actually not a bad day.
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Because you just figured out two approaches that don t work.
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Tomorrow you come in and try a couple new ones.
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So if you treat this as like a science game here, where you re constantly taking pieces of the process, like, let me try and add this new question into my discovery.
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Let me handle an objection a different way.
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Let me hard close somebody and see how that works, right?
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If you can genuinely say at the end of the day, I learned something and I m better today than I was yesterday,
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You ll get through this, and you ll actually get through this far stronger than most.
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Yes, and you ll be a better performer for it.
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That s fantastic, man.
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Yeah.
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I love that.
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Let me ask you about this.
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And by the way, I will endorse, as a practitioner of multiple therapists, we ve got to get help.
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And I think we, and I m a Gen Xer, I do the generational stereotype a little bit.
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I think we re part of the cause, because now a lot of the Gen Xers are the CROs, VPs.
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Suck it up.
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Right?
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Well, we got told suck it up.
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Totally.
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And then our only answer to everything was work harder.
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That was to make more calls, do more stuff.
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Make more calls.
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Bill s so good.
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Bill s been talking about how we default to action.
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He s been doing a lot of work on that, which I just love, versus default to thinking, right?
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Well, you know why?
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Because it s easier.
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Right.
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And you hit it spot on, like Gen Xers.
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We re the managers now.
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We re the executives now.
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And we grew up in a numbers world.
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We grew up with $50 a day, $100, hit the century mark, go, go, go, go, go, right?
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Now, everybody understands, and I think there s a general understanding that quality is better now over quantity, right?
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You hear account-based marketing, personalization at scale, all these different things.
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But that s hard to coach, too.
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It s hard for me to coach.
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It s hard for me as a manager to carve out time of my day with all the other things to actually coach you on real quality, right?
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So what s the easier thing to manage you on?
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Numbers.
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You didn t make your 50 dials.
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All right, this is where you are, and I m going to yell at you, carrot, stick, stick mostly, right?
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Because you didn t hit the numbers.
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And then we can t figure out why people are burned out after what, a year, a year and a half?
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Yeah, sell all their shit and move
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Yeah, and also you get no autonomy either.
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Everybody gives SDR shit for wanting to get out of the role in six months.
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Well, if all they re doing is cranking out template cadences and making generic cold calls, how long would you want to be in that role?
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You know what I mean?
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Hopefully, some of the silver lining that s coming out of COVID is a realization that quality matters, take more time, don t push so hard, and really think through your approach as opposed to just playing the numbers game anymore.
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And don t get me wrong, the numbers game is still important.
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When I hire a rep, or at least when I used to hire sales reps, there was two levers I could figure out.
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One was quality, and one was quantity.
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And the easier one, again, for me to figure out was quantity.
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So your first month or two, you were going to make $50 a day.
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You were going to make your ears bleed.
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I didn t almost care what your results were, because I wanted to see if you could put in the effort.
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Because that s what I can t coach on.
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I can t coach on effort.
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I can t coach on passion.
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I can t coach on work ethic and those type of things.
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So I got to check that box off in the first month or two and then once you check that box as far as what I m Asking you from an activity level and the numbers still aren t there.
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The conversion ratios aren t still there now I m gonna divert to okay now, let s take a step back and instead of making 50 dials Let s do 20 dials and make sure that those 20 dials are purposeful and so on and I can coach you on that That s the way it should be played.
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But unfortunately, we re still in this high, you know growth and I play mostly in the SAS world, too I blame most of the VCS on this because of the downward pressure they re putting on organizations
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Yes, yes, everybody fundamentally understands.
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Oh, yeah, quality matters.
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But I got a VC who just gave me 50 mil right now.
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And if I don t hit these metrics, so a reps make 1000 dials this month, or, you know, this week, and by the way, give a 50% discount to anybody you ve talked to just so we can show some numbers.
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It s like,
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It shreds our profession as far as the credibility that we have.
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And the VCs are run by Gen Xers mostly.
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So it s all full circle.
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Absolutely.
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Go ahead, Bill.
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Yeah, I was going to say that we quoted a Wall Street Journal article the other day that said there are, I don t know, 800 or 900,000 sales jobs open that Gen Xers don t want because they don t want to get into sales.
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And I think, you know, we have a certain, I think the profession is a noble one.
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I mean, I know you do too.
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It is.
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However, however, what you re talking about here is the reason 900,000 sales jobs are open because people like I don t want any part of that.
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I mean, I hear my buddy say I had to make 50 dials and I got to find another job.
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Well, why would I want to go into that?
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So I think it it does eventually turn.
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And that s why probably every organization, you know, is looking for good people.
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Absolutely.
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It went from a buyer, it went from a buyer s market to a seller s market overnight.
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At first when COVID hit, it became a buyer s market because everybody got laid off and whatever.
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And so the companies had the pick of the litter, right?
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But very quickly it turned into a seller s market because now there s no more ties to the business anymore for me as a rep.
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Because now what, what used to tie me to the organization was back to what I was saying earlier about the bullpens and my crew and my team.
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And it was fun.
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And I might deal with the fact that the company kind of sucks and my manager s not the best, but I got a squad here, right?
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Now, I m sitting behind my... And so, this to me, whether I do it for you or that person, if they re gonna pay me more, I m going over there.
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If they have mental health things that they re bringing to their organization, I m going over there, because now I can be an assassin.
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You know what I mean?
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Now I m just like, I m gonna go high as bitter here.
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And so now companies are begging for
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Even mediocre talent at this point, and sales I think is again perception reality in a lot of ways.
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The perception of sales is so negative because of two factors.
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One of the movies, Gary Glenn Ross and that type of stuff.
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Two, I m going to go back to the education part.
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When you get into sales, you are not educated from this profession standpoint.
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And then you get given a quota and a commission plan and all that other stuff.
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And you get told, if you don t hit your quota, you re going to get fired.
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If you don t hit your numbers, you re not going to eat this week because you re mostly commissioned, right?
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So now you take a seemingly normal kid who is not, you know, a liar, cheater, stealer, any of that stuff, pretty ethical kid.
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You put them in that situation.
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And you say, go, that kid s going to do some pretty abnormal things.
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They re going to not tell the whole truth.
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They re going to cut some corners.
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They re going to say shit just to get that meeting or whatever it is, which all perpetuates the mentality of sales, of what sales is.
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And I grieve wholeheartedly with you, Bill.
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I genuinely think that sales is the greatest profession in the world when done right.
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I think it s the worst when done wrong.
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And so that s why I think we need to introduce kids to sales.
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Like, I don t know if you guys know, but I wrote a book with my daughter called, I want to be in sales when I grow up.
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And the whole point of that book, I mean, the whole point of the book is, is to get more kids into sales.
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Cause no kid says this, no kid ever says, they don t even understand what it is.
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And I think with where we re going from an economy standpoint and artificial intelligence and the environment and all those scary shit that s out there from a macroeconomic standpoint, I think sales is probably the best profession you could possibly get into because it s the most flexible, it s the most financially independent, and it s the most ethical if done right.
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Because when I tell people, look, I don t sell you shit.
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I m not trying to convince you of anything here.
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I help you solve your problems or achieve your goals.
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That s it.
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And if your problems aren t big enough and your goals aren t big enough, why are we having this conversation?
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I m trying to convince you of that.
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Now, don t get me wrong, if I ask you a few questions and I don t think you re looking at it the right way, then I m going to try to push a little bit, but I m not going to sell you on anything.
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SPEAKER_02
But that s the perception, is a used car salesman walks on the lot, all of a sudden I get attacked and I get all these sneaky tactics and holy shit, I just bought a car, I had no idea I needed.
1
SPEAKER_01
You know what I mean?
1
SPEAKER_01
Like that s the perception.
1
SPEAKER_01
And you paid 900% interest.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I m gonna buy that book for my daughter John because she s 27 and she s in the in the workshop company called attentive and she s in the SAS world and and she has this thing and this is after growing up with me obviously she didn t listen much to me but she doesn t she wants no part of it and the salespeople are making two or three times what she is and she knows more than they do.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yet, there s that mental block, and so I m definitely going to buy that.
1
SPEAKER_00
Thank you for bringing that up.
1
SPEAKER_02
on that, and I read it in the book, like, you know, because my daughter asked, well, daddy, what is sales?
1
SPEAKER_02
And I said, actually, sales is kind of everything.
1
SPEAKER_00
You don t know?
1
SPEAKER_00
You wrote a book on it, for God s sake.
1
SPEAKER_02
But this was before the book.
1
SPEAKER_02
But she goes, I m like, sales is everything.
1
SPEAKER_02
And in the book, we use this example, but you can use it anyway.
1
SPEAKER_02
Literally everything you look at around you is sold to you.
1
SPEAKER_02
So somebody had to make the materials and then take those materials and sell them to somebody else to use those materials to create whatever that product was.
1
SPEAKER_02
Then that product had to be sold to the store
1
SPEAKER_02
so that that store could have it on its shelf, and then that store had to sell it to us so I could have it in my house, right?
1
SPEAKER_02
So literally, there is not one thing that you are looking at in your house and I am looking at in my house that wasn t sold in some way, shape, or form.
1
SPEAKER_02
Yes, it s true.
1
SPEAKER_01
It s a different perspective than convincing me of shit.
1
SPEAKER_01
I did a gig years ago with a sugar company.
1
SPEAKER_01
I did two years with a sugar company, Oxygen.
1
SPEAKER_01
There s a company here, we re in Indianapolis, Indiana Oxygen.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s oxygen in the air.
2
SPEAKER_00
You re like, huh?
2
SPEAKER_00
Everything gets sold.
2
SPEAKER_00
Hey, I want to ask one.
2
SPEAKER_00
I want to go back to this.
2
SPEAKER_00
Because this, I just had a conversation with a new AE we have.
2
SPEAKER_00
We talked about the transfer of enthusiasm.
2
SPEAKER_00
And the way you said it to me is the way it should be said and understood.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I think some people really confuse this.
2
SPEAKER_00
The way I was taught enthusiasm was walk into a room, hey, Bill, put on my radio voice, like, how you doing, man?
2
SPEAKER_00
I m finer than a frog s hair cut three ways, all that.
2
SPEAKER_00
If I d have been a better twins, yuck.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s awful, awful, awful, so uncomfortable.
2
SPEAKER_00
The enthusiasm that you talked about, so Bill and I talk about, we call it intention or intent, and the intention is the energy that s in here, in that belief in what you do.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I just want you to go back, if you would, and talk about how you teach that to somebody, that it s not this woo-woo, fire Tony Robbins, God bless him, it s not that.
2
SPEAKER_00
It comes from within, and it s belief.
2
SPEAKER_00
in what you do.
2
SPEAKER_00
And man, if you re my friend, John, I consider you a friend, and something s going on with you that I think is bad, or you re making a mistake, I ve got a duty to try to help you, because I care about you.
2
SPEAKER_00
If I don t think you re making a mistake, I m going to let you roll, or whatever.
2
SPEAKER_00
I ll think, hey, that s great.
2
SPEAKER_00
Keep going, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
I m going to do what s right.
2
SPEAKER_00
So can you talk about that a little bit?
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I mean, I think so many reps just look for a job, you know what I mean?
2
SPEAKER_01
And okay, what s my commission plan and all this other stuff?
2
SPEAKER_01
And okay, I don t really understand that software, but it s something I can make money doing, so let me go try it out, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
And then they go through the motions.
2
SPEAKER_01
And in that case, they have to do the bravado comp, you know, the, hey, you know, because they re getting themselves hyped up because they know they have to compensate for the fact that they don t really believe in what they re doing.
2
SPEAKER_01
Exactly, exactly.
2
SPEAKER_01
And there s a look there s a fine line between ego and confidence huge difference a fine line and and so The way that you genuinely first of all, I recommend everybody right now go again I think this is a little bit of a reckoning here over this past year and a half of people resetting and really looking internally at what their values are and
2
SPEAKER_01
Like, I read Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon a while back, and part of that was, you know, understand what your core values were.
2
SPEAKER_01
So I wrote out, I have 12 personal guidelines to success, and that, when I wrote those down and really thought those through, it allowed me to take those and marry them up to companies, people, situations, and say, do you share my core values?
2
SPEAKER_01
Because if you and I share core values, we can argue until the cows come home, but we re still gonna end in a good place, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
If we don t have shared values, then we re gonna be completely, we re just gonna yell at each other.
2
SPEAKER_01
And that s what, unfortunately, if we macro this out, that s what s happening in politics right now.
2
SPEAKER_01
There s no more core values of what it means to be an American anymore.
2
SPEAKER_01
You know what I mean?
2
SPEAKER_01
Like, literally, it s completely opposite, and that s why we re just yelling at each other.
2
SPEAKER_01
It used to be we all believed in this core thing, and now we don t, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
So first and foremost, it s understanding looking internally to your core values, then marrying that up to a company that shares those values, and then a product that you can see yourself actually selling.
2
SPEAKER_01
And does it make a difference?
2
SPEAKER_01
You know what I mean?
2
SPEAKER_01
And so for those reps who are out there listening and are at their company right now,
2
SPEAKER_01
and might be like, yeah, I don t know if I even really believe in this.
2
SPEAKER_01
Well, go talk to some customers.
2
SPEAKER_01
Go grab your customer support.
2
SPEAKER_01
Go grab your customer success team and say, hey, can I just talk to a few customers that have been with us for a while?
2
SPEAKER_01
Can I just ask them like an informational interview basically of why they use us?
2
SPEAKER_01
What value do they get out of?
2
SPEAKER_01
What difference do we make to their business?
2
SPEAKER_01
Read some case studies if you can t do that.
2
SPEAKER_01
Go through case studies.
2
SPEAKER_01
Look at the real difference that your solution makes for the right client, not all clients, to the right client.
2
SPEAKER_01
And then go, and here s a tip for some of the youngsters out there listening, you know, we don t leverage our internal resources nearly as much as we should, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
I always used to joke around where, you know, my reps would come into my office and say, hey, John, I m having a really hard time getting through gatekeepers.
2
SPEAKER_01
Could you give me some tips and ideas on that?
2
SPEAKER_01
I d be like, well, I can, but hold on a second.
2
SPEAKER_01
Hey, Shelly.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, John, are you a gatekeeper, Shelly?
2
SPEAKER_01
Yes, John.
2
SPEAKER_01
Shelly, do you let some people through and not others?
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, John.
2
SPEAKER_01
Could you talk to one of my reps here about what gets through?
2
SPEAKER_01
Same thing with your passion.
2
SPEAKER_01
Look, if there s a CEO out there that turns this down, then go find another job.
2
SPEAKER_01
If you reach out to your CEO or the founder of your organization, and by the way, I don t care how big you are.
2
SPEAKER_01
I don t care how huge.
2
SPEAKER_01
Call up Mark Benioff if you work at Salesforce and ask, hey, Mark,
2
SPEAKER_01
You know, obviously don t be ignorant.
2
SPEAKER_01
Do your homework beforehand.
2
SPEAKER_01
So you have contextual questions and don t say just, Hey, why d you start the business?
2
SPEAKER_01
And what s that?
2
SPEAKER_01
You know, why, why do you love what you do?
2
SPEAKER_01
Right?
2
SPEAKER_01
Don t be generic like that, but be like, Hey, Mark, you know, I would love to just sit down with you for 30 minutes to get an understanding.
2
SPEAKER_01
You know, I ve, I ve read through why you came up with this business, but why are you still so passionate about this?
2
SPEAKER_01
And, and, and where did this come from?
2
SPEAKER_01
You know what I mean?
2
SPEAKER_01
And so first of all, they re going to transfer their enthusiasm over to you about why they started it, what the process was and what they re doing these days and what their vision is, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
That s another part of it.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s not just where you came from, it s where you re going.
2
SPEAKER_01
And then, and then you, so you marry that to case studies, existing accounts, and then you can start to get a feel for, shit, man, this,
2
SPEAKER_01
This company actually, we actually make a difference.
2
SPEAKER_01
And that s what the realization was for me.
2
SPEAKER_01
So my job, I went from, first job was DeWalt Power Tools, giving away construction, which was badass.
2
SPEAKER_01
Then Xerox copiers, and then I started a company called Thrive Networks, and then we sold to Staples.
2
SPEAKER_01
And then I got fired from Staples, because I m just not a corporate guy.
2
SPEAKER_01
And when I got fired, like I wasn t a plan B guy either.
2
SPEAKER_01
I wasn t, like I had no plan B. I was all in, even though I knew it was wrong, I knew I was all in on it, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
And I had never been fired before in my life, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
So all of a sudden I get fired and I m like,
2
SPEAKER_01
Uh, holy shit, what do I do?
2
SPEAKER_01
And I had this crisis, I had like a crisis of conscience.
2
SPEAKER_01
I was like, am I an IT, because Thrive Networks was an IT sales organization, or an IT services organization.
2
SPEAKER_01
And I m like, am I an IT sales guy?
2
SPEAKER_01
Is that what I am?
2
SPEAKER_01
I m like, I ve been selling computers for like seven years, like services network and stuff like that.
2
SPEAKER_01
I m like, but I don t really give a shit about computers.
2
SPEAKER_01
So, like, I really don t, I don t want to be an IT sales, I don t think I want to be an IT sales guy, but I, but I think that s maybe what I am, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
And my wife was the one who helped me out with this.
2
SPEAKER_01
She s like, well, let s take a step back and let s look at your career and say, why were you one of the top reps at every single one of your jobs, you know, positions?
2
SPEAKER_01
And let s look at DeWalt.
2
SPEAKER_01
Well, why was, why were you the top rep in DeWalt in the region?
2
SPEAKER_01
I don t know, DeWalt Power Tools are pretty badass, you know what I mean?
2
SPEAKER_01
They re pretty cool, so it wasn t really hard for me to talk about DeWalt Power Tools, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
Xerox, why were you the top rep at Xerox in the region?
2
SPEAKER_01
I was like, well, I don t know.
2
SPEAKER_01
I mean, I didn t care about copiers, but I genuinely believed at the time that Xerox was the best copier in the market, so it wasn t hard for me to represent that.
2
SPEAKER_01
Thrive, my company, when we started, I was the fourth person.
2
SPEAKER_01
I didn t give a shit about the technology, but I genuinely believed that our employees and our engineers were gonna deliver a far better service than anybody else could.
2
SPEAKER_01
So then it dawned on me that it didn t matter what I sold, it mattered that I believed in what I sold.
2
SPEAKER_01
And it opened up my entire view of things to do, and then that got me into training and going, you know, and now we re here.
2
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, I think that belies the idea that it s really up to the individual performer to sell themselves.
2
SPEAKER_02
Dan Sullivan, who I know, Brian, and you both know, he says, the first sale is to yourself.
2
SPEAKER_01
100%, positive.
2
SPEAKER_01
That s why I love attraction and positive.
2
SPEAKER_01
Like, I catch myself doing that.
2
SPEAKER_01
Like, I ll call myself an idiot every once in a while, and I consciously gotta be stopped doing that, man, because that internal voice,
2
SPEAKER_01
that bill.
2
SPEAKER_01
It means something.
2
SPEAKER_02
Hey, one more question before we close up today.
2
SPEAKER_02
Thank you for your time.
2
SPEAKER_02
And by the way, if you re listening to this and want to go find out more about John, go to jbarrows.com, correct?
2
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_02
Okay.
2
SPEAKER_02
You re doing some work around personal branding.
2
SPEAKER_02
In fact, I m signed up for a webinar that your outfit is doing here today.
2
SPEAKER_02
Tell us about, what s your two-minute version of why personal branding for a sales professional, probably in the B2B space, is so important at a time when I ve been talking, Brian and I have been talking about it for the last four or five years, and it feels like we just can t get any traction on it.
2
SPEAKER_02
And I don t know what it is, maybe we re not talking about it the right way, but I know you believe in it, so give us some thought.
2
SPEAKER_01
Um, first of all, you can t control, you know, focus on what you can control, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
You can t control what your company is, you know, the brand of your company, you know what I mean?
2
SPEAKER_01
But you can control yours and the perception that people have of you.
2
SPEAKER_01
The reason that most people don t do it though, um, is because, uh, what we talked about before is there s no, there s no short term.
2
SPEAKER_01
success metric on personal branding.
2
SPEAKER_01
I m being yelled at to hit my 50 dials every single day here.
2
SPEAKER_01
I understand what personal, it sounds great, John.
2
SPEAKER_01
Personal branding sounds fantastic, but if I don t make my 50 dials today, I m gonna get punched in the mouth and I ll probably get fired next week, so my personal brand won t matter shit, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
So that s why most reps don t do it.
2
SPEAKER_01
Because there s no short-term gain from it.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s a long-term play.
2
SPEAKER_01
And so personal brand, though, allows you to really put yourself, you know, people talk about thought leadership and all that other stuff.
2
SPEAKER_01
I kind of roll my eyes a little bit at that.
2
SPEAKER_01
Like, you re not a thought leader.
2
SPEAKER_01
I got myself in trouble a while back, you know, when Challenger Sail first came out, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
And I remember standing up in front of a group of, like, I don t know, 2,000, 3,000 reps in a conference.
2
SPEAKER_01
And I was like, could you all do me a favor and stop teaching 22-year-old kids how to be a Challenger, please?
2
SPEAKER_01
It s like Gary Vee says, you can t be a 22-year-old life coach.
2
SPEAKER_01
You know what I mean?
2
SPEAKER_01
Like you haven t even lived yet.
2
SPEAKER_01
I mean, maybe to a 10-year-old kid, fine, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
But it s the same thing.
2
SPEAKER_01
And so don t try to be a thought leader or pretend like you
3
SPEAKER_01
And here s my hack for this.
3
SPEAKER_01
Well, let me go back to your question about why.
3
SPEAKER_01
The reason is important.
3
SPEAKER_01
There s a billion stats out there that talk about why sales reps who have personal brands far outsell, are far more successful than ones that don t.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I ll give you a tactical one.
3
SPEAKER_01
Say you re going up for a promotion, even in your existing organization.
3
SPEAKER_01
And you and the person you re going up against have the exact same statistics.
3
SPEAKER_01
You ve hit the exact same numbers, President s Club, all that other stuff.
3
SPEAKER_01
But this person has a really good following on LinkedIn, pretty high engagement, some Twitter followers or whatever it is, and has influence, if you will.
3
SPEAKER_01
And this person doesn t.
3
SPEAKER_01
Who do you think is going to get the nod for the job?
3
SPEAKER_01
Obviously that person, right?
3
SPEAKER_00
Every time.
3
SPEAKER_01
And so personal brand matters.
3
SPEAKER_01
And here s my hack for everybody on personal brand.
3
SPEAKER_01
And it s not a hack, it s a real thing.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s because, look, going back to Gen Xers, when social selling first came out, I was like, oh, great.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yet another thing I got to do to be successful in sales.
3
SPEAKER_01
Fantastic.
3
SPEAKER_01
Add it to the fucking list here.
3
SPEAKER_00
You know what I mean?
3
SPEAKER_01
The whole idea of tweeting and posting and that type of thing, it really bothered me.
3
SPEAKER_01
I was like, this is dumb.
3
SPEAKER_01
But where it switched for me was this.
3
SPEAKER_01
You don t have to be the content creator.
3
SPEAKER_01
You have to be the content curator.
3
SPEAKER_01
And so when I started looking at it as educating myself first, okay?
3
SPEAKER_01
First and foremost, I want to learn.
3
SPEAKER_01
I should be learning about my industry.
3
SPEAKER_01
I should be learning about my personas.
3
SPEAKER_01
I should be learning about the trends that are happening, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
So what I would do is I would start consuming content from real thought leaders, like people who are way smarter than me, and I would read their content to learn.
3
SPEAKER_01
And then, if I learned something, and only if I learned something, I would then share it with my context.
3
SPEAKER_01
Hey, really interesting article here by a CIO in retail.
3
SPEAKER_01
They talk about some of the trends and blah, blah, blah.
3
SPEAKER_01
I m kind of curious.
3
SPEAKER_01
Any other CIOs out there seeing the same stuff?
3
SPEAKER_01
Post.
3
SPEAKER_01
Now, check it out.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I ll use this example.
3
SPEAKER_01
I wrote a blog once a week.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s a pain in the ass.
3
SPEAKER_01
I ve been doing it for five years.
3
SPEAKER_00
I m running out of shit to say, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
So I sit down, I kind of figure out something to say.
3
SPEAKER_01
It takes me about an hour to figure something out.
3
SPEAKER_01
I then fire it off to my team.
3
SPEAKER_01
They SEO it, they, you know, blah, blah, blah.
3
SPEAKER_01
They put it on HubSpot.
3
SPEAKER_01
So we re like two to three hours into one blog post, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
Now Bill, say you and I are connected, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
And you read my blog and you like it, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
So you take it and you share it out there.
3
SPEAKER_01
And you re like, hey, really interesting blog here by John, blah, blah, blah.
3
SPEAKER_01
And now Brian reads, Brian and you are connected, but Brian doesn t have anything to do, like we re not connected, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
So now Brian reads my blog because you shared it, and Brian gets value out of it.
3
SPEAKER_01
Who does Brian thank?
3
SPEAKER_01
Bill.
3
SPEAKER_01
Zach.
3
SPEAKER_01
For sure.
3
SPEAKER_01
Now, I might get another follower.
3
SPEAKER_01
Brian might look at mine and be like, oh, I like John s vibe here.
3
SPEAKER_01
Let me follow him.
3
SPEAKER_01
But he s not saying, thanks, John, for writing that article.
3
SPEAKER_01
He s saying, thanks, Bill, for sharing that article.
3
SPEAKER_01
So you get all the credit.
3
SPEAKER_01
I did all the work.
3
SPEAKER_01
And if you look at it as your primary goal, and this is how I connect with Gen Xers and above, because a lot of them roll their eyes at personal branding.
3
SPEAKER_01
I go, think about it this way.
3
SPEAKER_01
Think about it being your morning paper, your morning routine, okay?
3
SPEAKER_01
Set up tools like Feedly or whatever it is that feed you information about your industry, the trends.
3
SPEAKER_01
They re already, they should, if they re good sales professionals, they should be doing that stuff anyways, okay?
3
SPEAKER_01
So now, when you consume that content, primary goal learning, so you ve already won.
3
SPEAKER_01
If you ve learned something, you ve already won.
3
SPEAKER_01
Then when you share it, who gives a shit how many people connect or, you know, like it, comment it, share it, because your primary goal s already been met.
3
SPEAKER_01
And that s the way you can do it in a very authentic way, as opposed to just posting just a post.
3
SPEAKER_01
Because most people are like, what do I post?
3
SPEAKER_01
I m like, don t post your own shit.
3
SPEAKER_01
You know what I mean?
3
SPEAKER_01
And please don t post your company stuff and say, just become a spam engine for marketing.
3
SPEAKER_01
This is stuff you re interested in.
3
SPEAKER_01
People care far more about the journey than they do the results.
3
SPEAKER_01
So bring them on your journey.
3
SPEAKER_00
Love that.
3
SPEAKER_00
Great, great answer.
3
SPEAKER_00
Really good, really good.
3
SPEAKER_00
Hey man, how can people get a hold of you?
3
SPEAKER_00
Anything you want to talk about going on in John Barrow s world?
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, thanks.
3
SPEAKER_01
So that book is fun.
3
SPEAKER_01
You know, you go to Iwanttobeinsaleswhenigrowup.com, that one, or jbsales slash book.
3
SPEAKER_01
All profits go to charity on that one, by the way, so I don t make a dime on that.
3
SPEAKER_01
But really, right now, we re doing a big push.
3
SPEAKER_01
We got a membership.
3
SPEAKER_01
So if you go to our website, jbarrows.com, so J-B-A-R-R-O-W-S.com, and click on individuals,
3
SPEAKER_01
We have a whole membership for individuals where we re doing AMAs.
3
SPEAKER_01
We got a ton of content on the platform.
3
SPEAKER_01
And we re just going to be flooding it with value.
3
SPEAKER_01
I mean, you hear Netflix for sales and Masterclass for sales.
3
SPEAKER_01
We re going in the same rank.
3
SPEAKER_01
We kind of started before everybody else started calling it that, but I won t say anything.
3
SPEAKER_01
But yeah, so if you go there, I mean, it s like $365 for the year.
3
SPEAKER_01
And you ll get the exact same training that I give to Salesforce, LinkedIn, Box, Dropbox, Google, Amazon, all those huge companies that pay the money.
3
SPEAKER_01
you can get the exact same training as they get in that format for a buck a day, basically.
3
SPEAKER_01
Love it.
3
SPEAKER_01
So if you go check that out.
3
SPEAKER_01
And also, just hit me up on Instagram.
3
SPEAKER_01
I give away a ton of free consulting.
3
SPEAKER_01
If anybody has any questions, my handle is John, J-O-H-N, M as in Michael Barrows, B-A-R-R-O-W-S.
3
SPEAKER_01
That s my handle on Instagram, and I will literally answer any question that you got on there, free of charge.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, that s awesome.
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SPEAKER_00
John, thanks, man.
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SPEAKER_00
As always, and ASP listeners, if you don t follow John, shame on you.
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SPEAKER_00
He s the man, OK?
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SPEAKER_00
Seize the world like we do.
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SPEAKER_00
Cool, dude.