Matt Nettleton & Walker McKay - Accountability

Walker McKay is the founder and principal of McKay Consulting Group, founder of No BS Sales and the No BS Podcast, and the author of Some Will, Some Won't, So What! Who's Next?

Matt Nettleton is President of Sandler DTB, and founder and host of Default Profitable Podcast.

Drawing from over 20 years as friends and colleagues, the three of us joined together to talk accountability. What does it look like? What is a good accountability partnership? How often should we connect? And more.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
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(00:20):
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Speaker 2 (00:29):
Churchill said, those who failed to learn from history are
condemned to repeat it. Kevin Helen N believes that certainly
applies to business. Welcome to Winning Business Radio here at
W four cy Radio. That's W four cy dot com
and now your host, Kevin Helen M.

Speaker 3 (00:53):
Thanks for joining in again today. I am Kevin Hallanan
and welcome back to Winning Business TV and radio on
W four cyd dot com. We're streaming live on talkfour
tv dot com, and of course we're available on Facebook.
We're streaming live that's at Winning Business Radio, and we
are available in podcasts after the live show in pretty
much whatever platform is your favorite for podcasts. That's YouTube

(01:17):
by Heart, Radio, Spotify, Apple, and the list goes on
the mission of winning business radio and TV. As regular
viewers and listeners know, is to offer insights and advice
to help people avoid the mistakes of others. That's to
learn best practices, the how tos, the what tos, the
what not tos, and I believe to be challenged and
hopefully to be inspired by the successes of others. Those

(01:39):
are consultants, coaches, advisors, authors, founders and owners, entrepreneurs, people
with expertise. But you know, virtually every person, every successful
person that I've ever had a chance to talk to,
has had some form of failure in their lives and careers.
So while we all have to get our knees skinned
once in a while, I'm driven to keep those scrapes
from needing major surgery. Let's endeavor to learn from history

(02:01):
so we don't repeat it. I've spent the better part
of my career equipping businesses to grow from solopreneurs to
small and medium sized companies all the way up to
the fortune fifty. I've seen some of those companies win,
and to varying degrees, I've seen some fail. I've had
the opportunity to rub elbows with some of the highest
performing people around and with some who probably should have
found other professions. In my own businesses, I've had lots

(02:24):
of success, but of course some failures too, and I
like to think I've learned a lot from those experiences.
So you're going to hear from me my opinions and insights,
but I'd rather you hear from others. Those are experts again,
the consultants, coaches, business owners, advisors, authors, and today we
have a treat at least in my opinion. Guys will
let them decide afterwards if it was a treat or not.

(02:44):
I have two guests, both longtime friends and colleagues, Walker
McKay and Matt and Netleton. We the three of us
met over twenty years ago while attending Sandler Conferences in Baltimore, Maryland.
We attended those conferences about three times a year, often
sitting on the same professional development workshops that were designed
to equip us to better help our respective clients and

(03:05):
of course to help them grow their businesses help us
grow our businesses. We also began meeting together at the
past of our bosses at the time with a smaller
group of professionals within the Sandler Universe in a form
of mastermind sessions. They actually called those good to Great sessions,
and it was through those good to great sessions that
the three of us realized the need for mutual accountability,

(03:26):
and so we began meeting every Friday for a number
of years. We'll get into that in a bit, but
for now, here's more about Walker McKay and mattin Nettleton.
After graduating from Washington and Lee University, Walker McKay began
his professional journey in banking. He then transitioned to the
commercial real estate industry, where he spent the next thirteen
plus years honing his skills, business skills, and eventually owning

(03:48):
his own agency. In two thousand and three, he realized
you could make a career of helping other professionals develop
their selling and business skills, and subsequently joined the Sandler
Training Organization in Columbia, South Carolina, where he spent the
next eleven and a half years, stepping away in twenty
fourteen to start the McKay Consulting Group. Walker believes in

(04:08):
the power of intentional transformation. After thirty five years of calling,
networking and continually being referred to hundreds of clients in
over twenty plus years, assisting companies in almost every industry
to build world class sales teams. Walker has designed a
sales system that will consistently close business without the client
feeling like they're selling or the prospect feel like they've

(04:30):
been sold. The system has been customized and personalized for
thousands of clients and hundreds of industries. He's a lifelong salesperson,
coach and creator of the no BS Sales School, where
he teaches and shares has proven secrets to success for
hitting targets, scoring revenue, and gaining the respect one deserves.
Walker is the host of no BS Sales School podcast

(04:50):
Again We're available wherever you can find your podcasts. There,
He's there, and he recently published a book about sales.
It's called Some Will Won't So What Who's Next? And
it's available now in Amazon. We'll talk about that soon.
Walker lives in Columbia, South Carolina with his wife of
twenty five years. Her name is Sally, and they have
two boys who love to fish and hunt. Matt Nettleton's

(05:13):
journey has been shaped by two key key experiences. His
football injuries and discovering his love for sales. The disciplines
he honed on the football field help him thrive in
is first and often regarded as one of the toughest
sales roles, door to door vacuum cleaner sales. His natural
talent led him to high ran ranking sales positions, including
a role at Coca Cola, one of the large world's

(05:35):
largest consumer brands, and later he took on the intense
competition of residential real estate sales. In nineteen ninety nine,
Matt joined Sandler Training as a client, where he found
its structured approach aligned perfectly with his practical mindset, allowing
him to guide others to sales success without relying on
empty motivational slogans. Matt is all about pragmatism. Although his

(05:57):
motto maybe show me the money, he emphasizes the importance
of goals for growth. He says, to do the hard
work of selling, my clients need to believe they can
achieve their goals. He doesn't work with those satisfied with
mediocrity or have a wage slave mentality. I love that,
but rather by following the Sander method, Matt helps clients
enjoy the sales process and achieve results. Faster. As the

(06:20):
president of Sandler DTB, Matt applies the Sandler sales methodology
to help clients significantly improve their revenue performance. Over his
twenty plus year career, He's helped clients generate more than
three point two billion in new revenue across industries like software, SaaS, staffing, agriculture,
trades and entertainment. A Certified instructor with Sandler Training and

(06:42):
certified with Extended disc and Caliber, Matt specializes in sales
organization assessment, sales process development, and leadership leadership program excuse Me.
Matt also hosts the Default Profitable podcast, interviewing successful small
business owners and sharing insights on entrepreneurship. Matt's mission is
to empower and inspire entrepreneurs to grow their businesses, their people,

(07:04):
and themselves. Matt's married to his wife, Jessica, and they
have three children and a poodle in Fishers, Indiana. Guys,
welcome to winning business. That's all we have time for.
Just kidding long.

Speaker 4 (07:15):
Haimes hot, Dang, that was a lot that.

Speaker 3 (07:18):
Was, but it's worth it. People need to understand kind
of where you're coming from. So appreciate you guys being here.
I know how busy you are. I want to start here.
Though all of us grew up in sales, the three
of us did, although in different industries. Take a minute
each of you, Matt, why don't you go first, talk
about how each of you got into sales as a career.

Speaker 5 (07:38):
So I grew up in Pransport, Pennsylvania. My dad ran warehouses,
and so I got my first jobs were moving heavy
things in warehouses. And because you know, big dumb guy,
I can move heavy stuff, I'm good to go. Unfortunately,
when I was playing college football, ruptured all ligments and

(08:01):
tendons in both my thumbs nice and so I had
to take a I had to have my thumbs fixed,
and I was not allowed to lift anything over twenty
five pounds for twelve weeks. When I said to the doctor,
who's going to give me spending money for college? He said, listen,
I'm fixing your thumbs. I don't know what you're asking

(08:21):
me for. I'm like, well, I lift heavy stuff. That's
how I make money. My parents aren't giving me any money,
he said, I don't know. Look in the newspaper, and
I answered a job that said good money, limited effort,
and ended up selling vacuum cleaners. Door to door, limited effort,
limited effort, which was great because I would worked eight
hours a week perfect.

Speaker 4 (08:46):
I got in sales for all the wrong reasons I was.
I was in college, I had lots of friends. I
could drink beer with anybody. People were like, oh, you
can talk to anybody, You've got lots of friends. You
should go into sales. You're you're great. It can be
natural of things, a natural which are as we all
can laugh now, three of the absolute worst reasons to

(09:09):
go into sales. And my success absolutely reflected that.

Speaker 5 (09:15):
So I was.

Speaker 4 (09:15):
I started in the banking business, a job that I
was really not qualified for. I was a snot those
kids from college, and all of a sudden, I was
managing a branch somewhere with all these people who are
older than me. And anyway it was I don't don't
remember if I quit or got fired, but didn't last long.
I went to the moved the commercial real estate business

(09:35):
very quickly to go and make my fortune. And I
remember the training that I got there was there's the desk,
there's the street, those are buildings, go sell some. That
was my That was my first year training, and the
advanced training was you need to be the smartest guy
in the room and the biggest asshole in the room.

(09:58):
I was pretty good at being number too, not so
good at being number one, and that really was a
great advice. It didn't turn out any great advice for me,
so I struggled along with that until I got some help.

Speaker 3 (10:11):
So the joke is, have you told your parents you're
in sales yet? Right?

Speaker 4 (10:16):
No?

Speaker 3 (10:16):
No, I'm waiting for Thanksgiving at the end of the meal.
So my story is, you guys have heard it. But
I was in school for electrical engineering and my dad
tapped me on the shoulder said hey, I need a
sales guy. And my dad and I hadn't been close
at the time, and I thought it was a great
opportunity to spend more time with him, and it turned
out that that turned out to be true. But he said,

(10:39):
you know you're going to be a sales guy. Well,
I didn't know anything about selling. I had done some things.
I'd sold seeds door to door as a boy scout
to make some money, and you know, at fundraising in
school and things like that. I was pretty good at that,
but I knew nothing about really selling. And living in
Massachusetts turned out my territory was Maine, Vermont, and northern

(10:59):
New he I'm sure, all right, Walker, you know Maine
because you hunt there. But there aren't a lot of
people in those I mean there are, but to you
and I, to the rest of us that come from
metro areas, there aren't a lot of people. So I
would drive from one stop to the next. I'll get there,
but I would drive from one stop to the next
hour hour and a half between stops, and they were
all cold calls. Now these were people that knew us,

(11:21):
but we were trying to sell them to kind of
come back in the industry. In that territory. There hadn't
been somebody up there for a long time. We were selling
foam products, anything soft that you could sit on or
package things in. Fascinating business. But you know, his training
was very similar. There's the phone, there's the car. He
gave me his old car. Here's a card. But don't

(11:44):
spend more than next dollars. You know, fill your tank
whenever you need it. And I was just driving around
and I was hitting these really small shops and not
being very successful because my training was you know the same. Yeah,
all right, take a second before we get into the
meat here and talk about out how each of you
got into sales training.

Speaker 5 (12:03):
Walker.

Speaker 4 (12:05):
So, I have a friend of mine. I was fishing
with him one day and he said, I'm going he said,
I hired a sales coach. I said, really, I said,
why hell do you need a sales coach? You're great
at sales, you know a ton of people, You've got
lots of friends, you convinced people of stuff. Why don't
we need sales training? He said, well, I really, I
think I could do better. I was like, that's crazy,
and I was sure that he'd gotten ripped off. And

(12:28):
so I called a sales coach and said, I want
to come talk to you. I said, my friend gave
you money, and I think you ripped him off, and
I want to come up a conversation. So my arrogant
self went over to go sit down with him, and
thirty minutes later, well he asked me. He said, you're
in commercial real essays. He is that you must have
make it at least a million dollars a year, and

(12:48):
I'm like, no, no, no, and he said half a million.
I'm like no, he said two fifty. And I said, well,
I hope to this year and he said, why not
a million? And I began to spew out these reasons.
You know, Columbia, South Carolina had economy, this and the other.
I look up and he's given me the stop side.
I said what And he said, suppose I told you
I thought all those were excuses. And I was like,

(13:13):
oh shit, And he was right, and probably fifteen minutes
later was crying as obviously what a loser I was.
And I wrote him a check to hire me in
the check or for me to hire him, and the
check bounced, but he kept me anyway, So it was
a It was quite a day, best day, best decision
I made, really good, except for marrying my wife.

Speaker 3 (13:32):
Of course, well that's a given because she's listening.

Speaker 4 (13:35):
And I know that that's true. Honey, yours first.

Speaker 5 (13:39):
Matt Well, I did not marry Walker's wife, so I
don't have that decision. Before that, I was selling residential
real estate. I had been in the business for a
couple of years. I was top two percent in the
world for century twenty one and we had a kid,
my wife and I had a kid, and I realized

(14:02):
that the hours that I was working to be successful
would result in my kid. Knowing that he had a father,
unaware of what his father looked like or what his
name was. You know, I was working a lot, a
lot of hours early late evenings, weekends, and so I
showed up to a I responded to an ad that

(14:25):
was still one of my favorite ads of all time.
It was our standards are high, it may be time
to up yours, I love, and I called in. I
had a conversation. The guy said, well, what do you
actually want to accomplish? I said, well, I'd like to
make the same money and work half as much. And

(14:48):
he said, well, I'm not sure we can do that.
I said, well, I'm willing to give it a try.
Nobody else has the plan. And so a year later,
as I sat back and reviewed my decision, I was
actual fully disappointed to realize that I had worked half
as much, didn't work any nicer weekends, which in residential
real estate is fairly rare. But I had made one

(15:09):
thousand dollars more. So I had screwed up and not
hitting my goal, I had achieved more, out.

Speaker 3 (15:16):
Paced dang it, out paste, dang it amazing. How about you?
All right, we're going to take our first break. It'll
be about sixty seconds. We'll come back. I'll tell my story.
We'll be back in just a minute with Matt Nettleton
and Walker McKay.

Speaker 2 (15:33):
You're listening to Winning Business Radio with Kevin helenet on
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Don't go away. More helpful information is coming right up
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Speaker 2 (16:23):
And now back to Winning Business Radio with Kevin Helene,
presenting exciting topics and expert guests with one goal in
mind to help you succeed in business. Here once again
is Kevin Helene.

Speaker 3 (16:42):
All right back with Matt Nettleton and Walker McKay. My
story was I had been a recruiter working for a
company that grew like a weed, went from the suburbs
into downtown Boston and took up two floors of this building.
There were thirty recruiters. Turned out, I was the number
one recruiter. I was crushing it. I was doing training, non,

(17:05):
I mean, it wasn't good training. It was training. It
was good enough, but all I knew at the time,
and I decided I wanted a management role. But there
was no room in that company. They liked me, I
liked them them. They didn't want me to leave. I
didn't really want to leave, but I wanted a management role.
So took another position in a boutique firm in the

(17:27):
suburbs of Boston. My timing was terrible, though. It was
about ten days before nine to eleven. So nine to eleven,
you guys, remember, it was terrible. Nobody could sell anything,
at least I couldn't. Nobody was traveling, nobody was using
agencies to hire, and so that year one to two
was the worst selling year of my career. I went

(17:48):
from the top thinking, you know, making money, killing it,
big guy, big man on campus too. I couldn't sell
my way out of a wet paper bag. And I
had a crisis of confidence. And I had been asking
around and you know is it time for me to
get professionally trained. And I'd met this woman who owned
another recruiting agency, who actually had made me an offer,
and I turned her down to take the one I took.

(18:10):
In hindsight, I wish I had worked for her. I
went back to her and said, how did you, you know,
get as successful? You did some sales training, didn't you?
And she referred me to to Sandler and the conversation
of me being trained, the guy that hired me took.
He sized me up pretty quickly. He saw a guy
that had four kids in private school and needed to
make money, so the conversation quickly went to, well, why

(18:33):
don't you work for us? And you know that's the
story never looked back. Be'st one of the best decisions professionally, absolutely,
so you.

Speaker 4 (18:41):
Get training and they hired you instead.

Speaker 3 (18:43):
They did. They did that only because they saw a
guy that was needy and had to succeed. Wasn't that bright? Exactly? Exactly?
Fifth suit Johnny Bravo, All right, knowing what we all
know now today about being real really professionally trended sellers,
and in terms of how those professionally trends sellers sellers,

(19:04):
you should behave and what should they should expect from
the perspective clients. What's the biggest change that each of
you made when you started to internalize what we now teach.

Speaker 5 (19:18):
God Matt, So, the biggest change that I made. So
my first professional sales role, I was with Coca Cola USA,
which is coking the cup, not coking the can. Those
are two different, okays, okay, And we had ninety five
percent market share of non pepsi owned restaurant business.

Speaker 3 (19:38):
Okay, just don't screw it up, right, So.

Speaker 5 (19:41):
Yeah, you're doing pretty well. If you got a ninety
five percent share, there's a pretty buch doubt you're not.
You're not getting that last five percent. There's like a reason.
So I'd go into restaurants. I'll be talking to somebody
that hey, you're using pepsi. They're like, yeah, well, I
had a cousin that got through an astery divorce with
this guy that lives in Cocomo and he's related to
the bottler. And I'd never use you guys because of that.

(20:03):
There's nothing I can do with that. So I had
a mindset when I got out of working for Coke
that the market was fairly finite and that it was
hard to take business from other people. And the single
biggest mindset shift that I've had since I became a

(20:23):
Sandler trainer was the realization that there are more businesses
within one mile of the front door of my office
than I could serve in a lifetime. And in fact,
in Indianapolis, you know, in the three one seven area code,
there are twenty four thousand employee id numbers who have
reported revenue of two to fifty million dollars, which is

(20:45):
my primary more. I'm pretty sure I can't service twenty
four thousand businesses. Wow, So Walker.

Speaker 4 (20:55):
Mine, I kind of referenced it when I described how
I found sales training. My biggest revelation was the excuses
that I was making. You know, I've been saying it
for so long. The people around me been saying things
for so long, like, you know, the economy sucks, or
those clients an asshole, or this is a problem, or
you know, nobody's buying this, or we might as well

(21:16):
not even try. And and once I began to recognize
and it's very obvious when I say them now, but
at the time is what everybody around me was saying too,
and nobody actually had the courage to call me out
on it. So when all of a sudden, when all
of a sudden my coach said that you're making excuses,

(21:37):
all of a sudden, I became hyper aware, and so
I've started to replaced my language of they won't, it'll never,
it's impossible to with I haven't figured out how to yet,
figured out a million dollars's physiness, but I hadn't figured
out how to get that guy to call me back.
I hadn't figured out how to make this work. And
I've found this wild be the most empowering words I've

(21:58):
ever had and has helped me a lot of the
issues that I bring.

Speaker 3 (22:02):
To the damn Yeah, mind's similar. I'm sorry, go ahead finish.

Speaker 4 (22:09):
So I believe that when you say something like I
can't it'll never, they'll never, your brain goes, yeah, that's it.
But when you say I hadn't figured out how to yet,
your brain goes, yeah, we haven't figured that out yet.
It kind of begins to work in the back. Maybe
how about you?

Speaker 3 (22:22):
Yeah, mind similar. It's abundance versus scarcity mat as you
just referred to the number of organizations that are targets
are infinite. Right, and we couldn't possibly service them if
we close them, so, you know, versus there's nobody. You know,
they don't hire us, they don't use sales training. They're
too big, they're too small. They probably have somebody on board.
It's all the pre qualifying we do. But the other

(22:43):
part of it was from a practical perspective is knowing
why you win and knowing why you lose and learning
to change behavior. Right, keep doing the stuff you win at,
stop doing the stuff you lose at. That was big
for me. All right, let's see, So, Matt, you you

(23:04):
floated the idea to Walker and me recently that we
should have a conversation about accountability and recording, and I said,
let's go one more, let's do a live show. It'll
be recorded anyway. What was behind that idea?

Speaker 5 (23:18):
So I think the the idea of the live show,
or the idea of the conversation around accountability came from
your interview of Walker, and I think the you know,
if we go back to twenty twenty three when we
met was in June. We were in a business with
an exceptionally high failure rate.

Speaker 4 (23:39):
Yeah, yeah, two thousand and three, Yeah, two thousand and three,
although it's still a high failed business.

Speaker 5 (23:47):
But yes, still high failure business. Yeah. And you know,
I when we were coming to the conference, I had
been given some advice about, you know, put together a
list all all the things you want to do and
all the things you're going to change. You're gonna have
three lists. And then one person just kind of casually

(24:07):
threw it and oh, yeah, by the way, find somebody
else trying to accomplish what you're trying to accomplish, and
stay in touch with them because they'll help you. And
as it turns out, the first half of that advice
was complete bold, but the second half of that advice
was incredibly valuable. And you know that led to our
Friday phone calls for probably two years.

Speaker 3 (24:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (24:30):
I don't know that we missed very many of them. No,
I don't know that we missed any of them. But
those Friday phone calls were a great kind of a
clarifier of what it was that I needed to do
in order to succeed and remain in the business that
I had chosen to be in excellent.

Speaker 3 (24:51):
I mean, we're going to get in the weeds of
it in just a minute here, but I remember one
of us said Matt, I might have been you. I
don't know, but somebody said, I'm not sure this is working.
I feel like I'm taking more out of these calls
that I'm giving. And it turned out we all felt
that way, Yes, right, that that was huge.

Speaker 4 (25:06):
Yeah, we all felt like the other two were doing
more lifting than we were. Yeah, which was cool, and
at some times it was you know, at each point
one of us was anyway, it's all cool.

Speaker 3 (25:16):
Yeah, yeah, we all Yeah, one would be doing really
well and the two would be doing well, one would
be struggling with something, and you know, it would just
keep going around like that. And I believe that was
a turning point for the three of us. So just
for context, that good to great group. You know, we
were we were encouraged to get together, but we met
each other and we started hanging out and we'd go
out to dinner together and with in groups, but you know,

(25:37):
we'd share our successes and failures, and then we started
to formalize it. And I want people to hear about what,
you know, what those calls sounded like. Uh, I know,
we call them our accountability calls. And Matt, what would
we what would we actually do on those calls.

Speaker 5 (25:53):
I'm not sure who came up with a format, although
I think it might have been me. It might have
been Walker, it might have been It didn't really matter
in the end. But what we agreed was that we
would each we would have a thirty minute call that
would be at the same time every week, and it
was a no negotiation, you do not miss, and that
we would each take ten minutes five minutes to talk

(26:15):
about something that we had done that was we thought
went well, and five minutes to talk about something we
thought we screwed up, and we would just go around
the horn, and while you were talking, the other two
people had the opportunity to jump in and give you
feedback and opinions on what it was you were talking about,
whether or not you wanted them.

Speaker 3 (26:36):
Whether or not you wanted them. That's good, wanted a lot.

Speaker 5 (26:41):
I just didn't want the opinions. It was already I
had already figured out that I stucked. I didn't need
to confirm.

Speaker 3 (26:46):
You're right, you do stink.

Speaker 4 (26:48):
I remembered it being some format of share a lesson
we've learned, share a victory that we had, and what's
something you're working on you wanted by someone.

Speaker 3 (26:57):
Right, So that's what happens that And that's the catchphrase
that came out of that. Right, we all have these
catchphrases in one liners. Uh but yeah, that's I think
we're saying the same thing. All right, let's let's define accountability.
How would each of you define accountability?

Speaker 4 (27:15):
Walker, It's basically saying out loud what you're gonna do,
and then have the and I think the only person
who can holds you accountable is yourself. But we in
our group of well, quit of that. The only person
who holds is self capable is yourself. Right. But you
say out loud something that you're gonna do, and the

(27:36):
other people in the group offered support. Be that be
that negative support, which time as y'all say, screw you
out of the group, you big user, or you know,
or say way to go. You did what you said
you're gonna do.

Speaker 3 (27:53):
Love, love you like a brother what you did to me? Right, Yeah,
it's being accountable. It's being being responsible for our actions. Right,
we say it, we're going to do it. And we
had a good partnership because you know, we have different personalities.
We're similar in some ways, but we're very different in
other ways. You know, I'm not tall and you guys

(28:16):
are smart. But it was a good chemistry and it worked.
You know, we were honest, we were trustworthy, we cared
about each other. I think that's a big ingredient. So
who do we think needs accountability? I mean, lots of
people watching this, lots of people listening, and even more

(28:39):
will watch and listen later, right, So who needs.

Speaker 4 (28:43):
Anybody that wants to grow in something? I mean, whether
you're an athlete or whether you're just want to get stronger,
or your business and your ambitious and you just need
the outside feedback and the you know, being a you know,
the big part of the accountability to me was the
accountability to the group, right, And that was the that
was the part that was the big stake for me.

Speaker 3 (29:05):
We didn't want to just yeah.

Speaker 4 (29:10):
I think one of the things we did very well
too was have three people.

Speaker 3 (29:14):
Yeah, Matt, you had a good phrase for that.

Speaker 4 (29:16):
What was it, Matt?

Speaker 5 (29:19):
What was it the phrase? I don't remember the phrase,
but I know that the I know the thing with
the three people that really made it work was it's
an It's it's easy to fool one person at a time.
It was very difficult to full two people. Yeah, And
to the question of who needs accountability, I I have

(29:41):
yet to find any situation where and what it was told.
I was told I needed to find a swim buddy.
I needed to find somebody that was going through what
I was going through and was and would drag me
along with them. And and as I talk to people,
it was made clear to me that three is better

(30:04):
than two and four is too many. So you can
have a one to one accountability relationship, you can have
a three person accountability relationship, but in the words of
the guy that explained this to me, you cannot have
a four person accountability group. It's nice and you can
have a nice conversation, but you are not going to

(30:26):
generate meaningful accountability having four people involved in.

Speaker 3 (30:29):
A conversation that is interesting.

Speaker 5 (30:33):
So I would say anybody that is trying to accomplish
something can use an accountability group not to learn things,
but to make sure that they're applying what they've learned. Right, So,
if you're in you know, I think we're all familiar
with vistage and Vista style groups. Or you have a
group of people that get together and learn something, well,

(30:54):
when those guys leave, those groups. One of the things
I know is the most effective groups that I've worked with,
they'll have two or three owners that get together afterwards
in some small subgroups and talk about how they're improving
and what they're doing differently. And it's just you know,
my son when he was doing high school sports and

(31:14):
college sports, he had two guys that they agreed they
were going to work out. It's easy for one guy
to convince the other guy they don't want to work out.
It's hard for all three people to take a day off. Well.

Speaker 4 (31:27):
Also, if you only have two and pretend you're running right,
you're supposed to meet somebody in the morning, and one
person doesn't show up, you really are screwing. Then the
other person is let down. But if you have three
and one doesn't show up, another two can continue to perform.

Speaker 5 (31:40):
And leave you behind and replace you.

Speaker 3 (31:42):
Yes necessary, Hey, we're going to take our second break.
We'll be back everybody with Matt Nettleton and Walker McKay.
In sixty seconds.

Speaker 2 (31:56):
You're listening to Winning Business Radio with Kevin helenet W
four CY Radio. That's W four cy dot com. Don't
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(32:16):
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Here once again is Kevin Helena.

Speaker 3 (33:05):
All right, we're back with Walker and Matt. Matt, you
mentioned something I thought was great. I wrote it down.
We need a partner, not a policeman. What do you
mean by that?

Speaker 5 (33:14):
Yeah, So accountability is not something that you do to somebody,
it's something you do with somebody. I think, right, we
never we never had like punishments. Nobody got no gies
for not making their cold calls or I mean, it
was hey, listen, this is what I'm going to do,
and then next week it was hey, last week you

(33:36):
said you were going to do this, did you do it?
And if you didn't do it, you were embarrassed and
nobody was going to let it slide. But there were
no physical like trials.

Speaker 3 (33:47):
Or no no fines. Yeah yeah, no public flocks.

Speaker 4 (33:51):
Because that was imposed upon yourself. Yes, that was what
happened to you because of not doing the work. That
was going to happen to yourself. Right.

Speaker 5 (34:00):
Well, the problem with no accountability is it's easy to
rationalize all the reasons you didn't do the work, right
when you call it your accountability group, and the first
person that talk says, well, here's what I did.

Speaker 3 (34:15):
Yeah, and you're like.

Speaker 5 (34:16):
Well, Dan, that's what he said he was going to do.
And now when I go, I got to say I
didn't do what I said I was going to do.
Maybe they'll forget me this week.

Speaker 3 (34:26):
Maybe they'll run out of time.

Speaker 5 (34:30):
Right, But that didn't always happen. I don't remember it
ever happening.

Speaker 4 (34:37):
Always got five more minutes for the last guy.

Speaker 5 (34:40):
So that's the that's the thing you know if you're
I think with accountability, you can't be looking for external motivation,
external punishment. With accountability, you have to have internal intrinsic
motivation and you're just confirming what's going going on, and

(35:00):
you got to find people that also have internal intrinsic motivation.
You know, we've been around a long time. We've seen
a lot of these accountability groups fail miserably.

Speaker 3 (35:10):
Yeah, yeah, all right, what about frequency? How often should
people talk? We chose weekly worked really well for us,
I think Walker, I.

Speaker 4 (35:21):
Don't know that it matters. It probably depends upon what
your goals are. I think weekly for salespeople is probably
a good thing. Sometimes for business owners it could if
you're having that kind of same thing, maybe it's once
a month or once a quarter. I think it depends
upon We were talking about behavior, right, how many dials
and how many meetings and sales calls and that kind
of stuff.

Speaker 3 (35:39):
When we were looking to close business like weekly, monthly
Yeah at the mental right, Yeah, But.

Speaker 4 (35:44):
If you're running a business and you've got you know,
longer term goals, then maybe quarterly is enough, or twice
a year. I think it's it depends upon what you're
trying to do longer term goals, you can have more
time in between the meeting thoughts Matt or Matt Kevin thoughts.

Speaker 3 (36:00):
I was just going to say, what about content should be?
I mean, methodology, is it phone, is it zoom? Is
it in person? That probably depends back.

Speaker 5 (36:08):
Up to frequency. Yeah, because I really think that for
most people, having a weekly conversation of fifteen minutes is
you know, fifteen to thirty minutes max. Is something that
they have to be willing to commit to. And the

(36:30):
reason is we all over overthink what we can accomplish
in twelve months, underthink what we can accomplish in one week. Yeah,
And so you know a lot of the people that
lose sight of their goals because it listen, everybody knows
it's a ritual. You set goals the last week of December,
you fail on your goals, the second week of February,

(36:52):
you ignore your goals by the first week of March.

Speaker 3 (36:54):
I mean, it's just that's them as well.

Speaker 5 (36:56):
Be written in stone. But if you could say, hey, listen,
I know I have my annual goal, but here's what
I think I can accomplish by the end of the
first quarter. And here's what I'm going to do this week,
and when we talk next week, here's what I'll commit
to having done. Right. It doesn't matter if you run

(37:16):
in a warehouse, or you're an accountant, or you're a
salesperson or you're just working out. Like the frequency that
you talk confirms the amount of time that you can
go off track.

Speaker 3 (37:32):
That's good. That's really good.

Speaker 4 (37:34):
Yeah, that's what you said.

Speaker 3 (37:36):
That's why you're on this call, Matt. I appreciate that's
right there. That appreciate you guys in.

Speaker 5 (37:41):
Witing me out of our accountability group.

Speaker 4 (37:47):
Funny, I feel like Matt. I'm learning so much from
Matt today. I'm the one that's sucking asks. All right.

Speaker 3 (37:55):
So does it matter if it's a phone call, a
coffee uh, you know, zoom call?

Speaker 4 (38:01):
I don't think so. I think face to face is good,
which is why I like zoom. If I have a
preference with zoom or face to face zoom for a
time save, I like that better. But I don't know
that it matters in something.

Speaker 3 (38:14):
Whatever works, all right, Matt, you just talked about goals Walker.
How important are goals?

Speaker 4 (38:22):
I guess it depends on how important, how much you
value your time and what's your where you're trying to go?
I think that.

Speaker 5 (38:31):
You know.

Speaker 4 (38:33):
Well, the thing about goals, right is what do you
want to accomplish? And and the important thing I think
we'd all agree is that they've got to be written
down meaningful. I mean, there's the old smart goals thing.
I keep trying to come up with something better than
smart goals, but.

Speaker 5 (38:48):
I hate smart goals.

Speaker 4 (38:50):
Smart goals, I can hate them.

Speaker 5 (38:52):
So how about you do what you got? So it
has to be something that's directly in your control, directly,
it's got to be uniquely described by you. You got
to be able to measure it, you got to be

(39:13):
able to manage it. It has to be attached to
a burning desire.

Speaker 4 (39:19):
This is so good and I love it because even
spelled dumb wrong, that's awesome. Smart enough to spell dumb
wrong and that's freaking I love.

Speaker 3 (39:35):
That all right? So why don't I just tell Matt
what his goals are? Walker? Why don't I just tell
you what your goals are?

Speaker 4 (39:43):
Well? Why don't, Kevin, I've spent way too much time talking.
Why don't you tell me why that doesn't work when
you give somebody their goals?

Speaker 3 (39:48):
Because I'm not excited about what somebody gave me. I'm
excited about or potentially excited about what I want to accomplish.

Speaker 4 (39:56):
Right.

Speaker 3 (39:56):
We always talk about personal goals as well as professional goals,
and I've told people for twenty something years, yeah, you
got have professional goals, but really they're in supporting your
personal goals. Right, So what do you want to accomplish personally?
That's way more important because it's personal and everybody's different.
There are some categories that are similar, Right, who do
I want to spend time with? What do you want

(40:17):
to do financially? Is it physical? You want to make
a difference in the community, family? Right, depending on where
you are. You know, I want to spend time with family.
To Matt's point earlier, you know, I don't want to
spend all my time working. I want them to know me. Right,
I have grandkids now I want to spend time with them.
I don't want to be working all the time. And

(40:38):
as much as I work a lot, I do have limits.
So if working thirty five hours and making the same
is a goal, why not pick that goal?

Speaker 5 (40:47):
You know?

Speaker 3 (40:47):
If maxing out a four to one K plan is
important to somebody, why not that goal? If taking a
trip to Europe in twelve months is important, why not
pick that goal? Because then, if it's important enough, aren't
people encouraged to do what they got to do professionally
to make the money they need personally? And this applies
this meth you know, what we're talking about here applies

(41:08):
more to salespeople because those of us in our profession
we sell more, we make more. So it probably doesn't
apply to a you know, a salaried worker, you know
they can double their effectiveness and get a raise at
the end of the year.

Speaker 5 (41:21):
But it does and it really doesn't matter what you do.
You in the end, you're either controlled by choices or
conditions you get to pick.

Speaker 3 (41:33):
Well, that's good.

Speaker 5 (41:34):
Essentially you get to choose whether or not you want
to live by choice, and the goals that you set
are the choices that you make. You know. Last what,
June twenty third of twenty twenty three, my wife asked
me how much I weighed, which is not something she.

Speaker 3 (41:53):
Asked you if you had reached your goal weight. Yet
She's like, how much do you weigh?

Speaker 5 (41:59):
And I'm like, well, that's odd because I've never said
that to you in our thirty years together. Yes, So
I told her the number. It was two sixty five
and I had never weighed that much, and she said, jeez,
that's that's a lot. What do you think about losing
some weight? And I was just about to say something,
and she said, here's the thing I've been looking at

(42:19):
on a diet starting July first, we're going to do
this diet for ninety days. It's completely unsustainable over the
long term, but when we're at the end of that
ninety days, we can figure out what we want to
do for our diet going forward. And so we got
to the end of that ninety days. I weighed to fourteen,
which was five pounds less than I had weighed in college.

Speaker 3 (42:39):
That's upstanding, so unbelievable.

Speaker 5 (42:43):
But it wasn't a big complex, you know. Kind of
it was, Hey, I'm going to do this, and it's
going to change the diet that I prepare for dinner.
And I know you don't cook, so listen, Fatty, you're
going to lose a couple pounds. But on the other hand,
now there were a lot of good add on effects
for me. My heart rates down, my heart rate variabilities up.

(43:06):
I mean, it's all kinds of good things happened out
of it, but it really was a two person kind
of Hey, we agreed on this, our kids held us
accountable to what we said we were going to eat,
and we were able to measure and manage the entire
process for ninety days. But then we had to make

(43:28):
a decision about whether or not we wanted to do
that on an ongoing basis, which we unfortunately have unfortunately have.

Speaker 4 (43:39):
You know what's funny is and you said it, I'll
make it clear. Your goals have to they have to
matter to you, right, and so people they'll make one
hundred thousand dollars or five hundred thousand dollars, but the reason,
But then it's why do you have why do you
want to do that? Why do you really care? And
then know really why?

Speaker 3 (43:58):
And what happens if you don't what happens if you don't?

Speaker 4 (44:02):
And and so if you're if you're not excited about
your goals. So if the company says you need to
sell your goals need to a million dollars this year,
and you go and then they drop balloons and the
music goes, yeah, million dollars, right, and you go, what
the hell does that mean to me? And so it's
much if somebody were to say to you, I mean, oftentimes,

(44:23):
if you had a goal and you didn't know the
company's goal, you're and you knew what why it had
to matter and why you cared. Your goal is probably
hiring the company's goal in pay, and you'll I mean,
I know, I will book aus I work myself now,
but I will fight to the death to make stuff
happen for me. But but maybe not so much if
it's just if I don't give a shit as the company, right,

(44:45):
I mean, which is which is honestly right? Sales is
all about your prospect. Goals are all about the person
to whom it impacts. It's got to be there's got
to be a personal, compelling reason, a gap between where
they are and where they want to be that has
to be closed. Those are the best kind of goals.

Speaker 3 (45:05):
I would add that the only time I think it
could that a goal could be not about the individuals
is if it's for someone they care about. Oh right, right, right,
So maybe I don't need the additional money, but my
wife does, my kid does for school or something. Right.

Speaker 4 (45:22):
Just know, we all to do that shit for ourselves too.

Speaker 5 (45:24):
Yeah, Well, I don't know if you guys, remember, we
used to have an assessment that measured goal orientation on
a scale of zero to nine. Yep, And we were
all like, oh, nine means you have a super high
goal orientation. Well, you can have a super high individual
goal orientation. But I had one of my most successful
sales reps had a sales a goal orientation of zero.

(45:45):
I'm like, dude, I don't get it, Like, why would
you do any of this? This all sucks? What are
you trying to accomplish? And all he could talk about
was the importance of his team winning well. And so
there are people that have a high goal orientation for
the team. But what I think goal orientation really is

(46:07):
all about is we have a spark of something that
we see ourselves as that we're willing to chase.

Speaker 3 (46:16):
That's good.

Speaker 5 (46:16):
And if you don't have it, because you don't have goals,
well then you're never going to wait that spark. But
if you do have it, the clearer your goal and
the more people hold you accountable to painting that picture,
you know, the more likely you are to actually accomplish
that goal, which is where the accountability really kicks in.

Speaker 3 (46:37):
That's good.

Speaker 4 (46:38):
I have a slightly different spin on that. I believe
the person that makes the goal that says that by
the end of this I want this to happen. I
believe the person once you reach that goal, you're a
different person than the person that made it, that this
is the fire you go through to get.

Speaker 5 (46:54):
There, well as the carving of the statue.

Speaker 3 (46:57):
Yeah right, yeah, we talk about the byproducts of the
goal right now, you know how to lose weight and
stay healthy, mat So the goal was get to a
certain way. But the byproduct, right you know how to
stay there? You know how to you know what behavis
you had to change. Hey, we're almost out of time.
I have one more question, actually two more questions. First

(47:17):
is what book are you reading? And based upon how
far are you in too that book right now? What's
your key takeaway?

Speaker 5 (47:24):
Good, Matt, Not why I'm not reading Walker's book yet,
although he is the number one seller on Amazon and
New Business.

Speaker 3 (47:34):
Yes, yes, why it was the seller right here, some
will somewhat my copy.

Speaker 5 (47:39):
Yet the book that I'm actually reading right now, that's
that's been pretty interesting to me is The Psychology of Money.

Speaker 3 (47:46):
Oh that's good, yes, as Yeah.

Speaker 5 (47:50):
Great book, great book and It's interesting because a lot
of the book is about the psychology of planning with
failure in mind. So that's good, yeah, Walker, other than
your own book, Walker, right, I am not I have been.

Speaker 3 (48:07):
Are you going to read it?

Speaker 4 (48:07):
By the way, my book, I've read it six hundred
and twenty seven times for every edit and so actually
I found myself flipping through it today and I realized,
I don't want to see anything that's wrong with it.
So I actually am reading rereading a book, which I
hadn't been in that practice. Once I read a book,
I'd put it down forever. And this is not a

(48:28):
business book. It's it's the Confederacy of Dunces. I don't
know if you guys have read the o'tool.

Speaker 5 (48:35):
I think is his name.

Speaker 4 (48:36):
It is about loud funny. I take it with me
in the deer stand and it just I've thoroughly enjoyed it.
I've been away from the business books for a couple
of months, but that was That's what I've reading right now.

Speaker 5 (48:46):
How about you, Kevin love that book.

Speaker 3 (48:48):
Yeah, I've got three books going right now, The Unbreakable Investor,
Charles Payne, Atomic Habits, and The Compound Effect. Both I
mean all three good one. You know, one is about money,
obviously atomic cab. It's about small changes, compound effect. Really too,
it's just as easy to set a bad habit as
a good habit, so why not pick the good habit?
And he gives you tools for doing that. That's James Clear,

(49:11):
powerful story too, of his life.

Speaker 4 (49:13):
I thought I would give a shout out to a
podcast that I have loved is the Founder's Podcast.

Speaker 3 (49:19):
Oh yes, that's good.

Speaker 4 (49:21):
I'm a subscriber to that with this guy has read
he reads biographies of people, the founders of companies, and
then he does somewhere between probably an hour an hour
and twenty minutes on the things that founders of other
companies need to know from that book. And it is
super interesting. He's very excited about it. He's an expert

(49:44):
in so many things, and he's he can recall he'll
start talking about Warren Buffett will So this reminds me
of Steve Jobs over here and Jay z over there.
And it's really the Founder's Podcast. I'm a big fan.

Speaker 3 (49:57):
Awesome, all right, last question, each of you answer this,
who in the listening and viewing audiences should reach out
to you? Why and why and then how do they
get in touch with them? And want's got the contact
information and scroll, so maybe we can skip that part.

Speaker 5 (50:15):
Walker, go ahead.

Speaker 4 (50:17):
So I work with companies, typically in the Southeast, that
have sales teams spread out over you know, three or
four different markets. Typically we sell some expensive and complicated
and the owner is kind of ambitious, a little bit
of a maverick, and says, we need to we want
an unfair advantage in the marketplace, and so we work

(50:41):
with them to give them an unfair advantage based upon
the sales process they follow.

Speaker 3 (50:46):
Excellent, And there's Walker's info right there. It's Walker at
walkermackay dot com. Is the easiest go ahead, Matt.

Speaker 5 (50:53):
I work with primarily two to fifty million dollar businesses,
typically in the Midwest. They are a premium solution compared
to their competitors, and they have a burning desire to
continue to gain share in their market. It's important to
them and they can't figure out why they're not doing
it more quickly.

Speaker 3 (51:13):
That's good and it's Matt dot Nettleton at Sandler dot com. Guys,
thank you so much. Oh by the book. Some will
some won't sow what Who's next? Amazon dot com Walker,
leave me a review. Review it, everybody, come on review
it all right, guys, Thank you You've been great. This
was fun for me and I hope it was fun
for you too.

Speaker 4 (51:34):
Super fun. Thanks Kevin, Thanks Matt, Greg with you doing Walker.

Speaker 3 (51:38):
And thanks everybody for watching and listening. This is a
show about business and often business challenges. If you get
concerns about the sales effectiveness of your company, whether your
sales team is one or many, give me a call.
You can reach out to me at LinkedIn. I'm on LinkedIn.
You can message me or Kevin at Winning Business Radio
dot com. Our company is Winning Incorporated, part of Sandler Training.

(52:01):
We develop sales teams into high achievers and sales leaders
into true coaches and mentors. We're not right for everybody,
but hey, maybe we should talk. Thank you again to
Engineering our producer Wan for another job well done. Thank
you one. Be sure to join next week Monday, November eighteenth,
when my guest will be Catherine Tag of Influence Digital Media.
See you then.

Speaker 2 (52:23):
You've been listening to Winning Business Radio with your host
Kevin Helenan. If you missed any part of this episode,
the podcast is available on Talk for podcasting and iHeartRadio.
For more information and questions, go to Winning Business Radio
dot com or check us out on social media. Tune
in again next week and every Monday at four pm
Eastern Time to listen live to Winning Business Radio on

(52:46):
W four CY Radio w fourcy dot com. Until then,
let's succeed where others have failed and win in business
with Kevin Helenan and Winning Business Radio