Unlearning the Old Sales Playbook: Mindset, Fear & Ethics with John Lester

Episode Transcript
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Laura McGregor (00:00):
Hey, friends. Laura here, CEO and cofounder of
CommissionCrowd. Today's guestbrings a perspective that
challenges the way most peoplethink about sales, not just
because because of his success,but because of how deeply he
understands what's happeningbeneath the surface of it. John
Lester is a forty year salesveteran, the founder of Onboard
Xi, and the author of Winningthe Inner Game of Sales. He's

(00:24):
trained and mentored countlessreps as part of his sales
mastermind, and now he'sbuilding a commission only sales
team on CommissionCrowd helpingagents create sustainable income
streams.
One thing I wanted to say beforewe dive in. There's a big
mindset mindset shift thathappens when you move from
employed sales to commission. Ina salaried role, you're often

(00:45):
trained to follow scripts andhit KPIs that rely on systems
built for you.
structure can work, but it oftenlimits creativity and
consultative selling. Incommission only, you are the
system. You're not justexecuting a process. You're
designing one that aligns withhow you build trust, solve
problems, and close deals withintegrity. You're not just a

(01:07):
sales rep.
You're a business businessowner. You have to regulate your
mindset, build trust fast,manage rejection, and create
your own momentum every singleday. And if you do that right,
you can create income that's notjust high, but also residual.
Residual. This topic isespecially close to my heart,
not just because I run aplatform that supports
commission only partnerships,but because I'm also a certified

(01:29):
clinical hypnotherapist.
I've spent years helpingprofessionals work through
subconscious blocks, impostorsyndrome, and limiting beliefs
that quietly sabotage even themost talented people. I've seen
firsthand what shifts whensomeone starts leading with
belief instead of fear. When youchange your story, the story
that you tell yourself, youbegin to rewire your beliefs,

(01:51):
and that's when realtransformation happens. You
build the mental muscles thatallow you to stay consistent,
confident, and resilient. Changeyour thoughts, and you change
your outcomes.
And as every entrepreneur knows,mastering your inner game isn't
optional. It's the foundationfor true and lasting success.
And that's what we're exploringtoday. We're talking sales

(02:12):
psychology, ownership, freedom,and two real commission only
sales opportunities that couldunlock the next level of
freedom, income, and alignmentif you're ready to step into a
new opportunity. So let's getinto it.
Welcome, John. It's so great tohave you here.

John Lester (02:28):
Thank you, Laura. Great to be here. And no, folks,
I am not hypnotized. I don'tthink. I don't think.
I don't think.

You wouldn't know.

I know. I know. There's a lot of things I don't
know I'm told. What do I know?

I often tell a joke that my husband, and I
convinced him to be with me,like, I hypnotized him.

Hey, if it works, it works.

Yeah. Anyway, thanks so much. I have a lot of
questions, so we'll just divein.

Let's dive in.

Yeah. So your mindset is costing you sales.
Can you break that down, whatyou mean when you say the
biggest obstacle to successlives between our ears?

Yeah. And and we could go so many different
directions, but we all havepreconceived notions. There's,
you know, there's enough workthat's been done, in the
scientific community that talksto the fact that 60 or so
percent of our beliefs areformed before we're five or six
years old. There's enoughresearch study that says that

(03:29):
certain parts of our physiologyare shaped in the womb. There's
been extensive research on PTSDbeing transmitted from a parent
to a child and there was morerecent research where PTSD went
two generations.
So there's an awful lot that we,unless we think about it, we
don't understand is shaping ourbehavior. That's all mindset.

(03:49):
That's also referred to asmental models. So things like,
and some of it still happens insome places, some of it doesn't,
but your mother and your fatherdecide to go car shopping and
you're five years old and you'rein tow, you know, holding your
teddy bear in your father's handand they walk into the
dealership and the first thingthat happens is the car

(04:09):
salesperson comes over, talks abunch of nonsense to your
parents, and they say, no, we'rejust looking. He walks away or
she walks away and your parentslook at each other and go, I
can't stand these salespeople.
Well, it seems like an innocentcomment, but to a five or six
year old subconscious who's notfiltering that starts that whole
process of, well, there'ssomething wrong with

(04:29):
salespeople. All right. Now, isthere something wrong with that
particular car salesperson?Yeah. But does that mean all
salespeople are bad?
No, but the five year oldsubconscious doesn't think about
that. So you'll get into allsorts of things like, like
buyers only want the lowestprice buyers. Don't care about
the person. I shouldn't careabout the person. I should only
care about the deal.
It's okay to cheat and swindlepeople as long as they make my

(04:50):
number. And the list goes on andit goes on and it goes on. Am I
saying they're all bad andthey're all wrong? No. All I'm
saying is you should at least beaware of some of the things that
are affecting you.
Why do people choke on coldcalling? Well, in a lot of
cases, it's because they don'tbelieve that they have any right
to be in the same room or in thesame call with the person. They
don't believe they know enough.They don't believe they don't,

(05:11):
they don't bring enough to thetable. And so there's, it's all
mental.
It's all mental.

Absolutely.

And the other side has no idea who you are or what
you are. That's the other thingthat people don't understand.
It's it's our self perception isonly on the inside of our eyes.
Nobody sees it from the outside.I could tell you all sorts of
stories of my screw ups, butnobody knew that I was screwing
up, so I got the deal.

Exactly. It's such an important distinction.
What often sounds like logic,I'm just not a closer or people
won't respond, is actually justa belief system that's shaped by
past experience, not presenttruth.

Yeah. I think I'm not suggesting that that people
try to go back and understandwhy they think the way they
think. All I'm suggesting isunderstand that you didn't
necessarily make a consciousdecision to have that mental
model or to have that attitude.And so if you didn't make that
conscious decision, why don'tyou just reject it? Put a new
one in there.

Exactly. You know, I start every session with
my clients saying, I'm going togive you two gifts. There are
two gifts that you can useanytime. It's accept or reject.
You know?
Like, it's just an every singleday. And especially our self
talk, we can really use thosetools immediately. Yes.

Yes.

Yeah. Sales success really begins when
people realize those thoughtsaren't strategy. They're just
stories, and stories can berewritten. Definitely. Alright.
So control versus excuses. Whydo so many sales professionals
feel powerless when yourmastermind grads are saying, I
actually have more control thanI thought?

Because of these mental models. So if somebody
walks in if a salesperson walksinto a situation and doesn't
believe that they have a rightto be there, And this is more on
the commercial side, but this isvery, very true in large scale
selling where you're talking toa c level individual of a 60,000
person company. You'reintimidated. If you sell in New
York and where if you sold inNew York in the old days while

(07:03):
we still had offices, and youwalk into these super, super
opulent imposing offices withbig desks and 15 secondretaries
and all these other things like,oh, who am I? How can I speak to
this person?
And you don't realize thatyou're there for one reason and
one reason only. The guy'strying to solve a problem. He
might might believe that youhave a solution.

But very likely if he came in and and talked.

Not necessarily. Actually less often than than
you would think because theother part of the salesperson is
they don't understand thedynamic of the sales call. And
they and this is one of thethings that drives me crazy with
a lot of salespeople is theybelieve and still today, in
fact, I just I just posted onLinkedIn about a really negative
experience I had and detailedthe whole thing. It's it's on

(07:46):
LinkedIn. And and they don'tunderstand what's going on in in
in the mind of the buyer.
Right? What are they trying toaccomplish? They don't
understand that people don't buyproducts. You deliver products,
but people buy solutions. And ifyou can't have a solution
discussion, if you can't have aproblem discussion with them,
then all you're going to do iswind up having, having a feature

(08:06):
benefit checklist discussion anda price discussion.
And very few people that I knowsell the best products in the
world. There's just not enoughproducts for everybody to sell
the best. Yeah. So you've got tosell what works the best for the
specific challenge that that theclient is having. If you do
that, it becomes a conversation.

I always say that to founders too. I always
say, you know, because mostfounders, they they they come to
commission crowd and they say, Ineed the sales team because I
can't sell. I'm not asalesperson. Well, sales is just
conversation. You know, we'rehaving a conversation.

But they they they are incapable of making that
connection without some work.And that's, that's who I also
work with a lot is, is foundersand owners of small businesses
is because that's theirattitude. So what's the first
thing they do? They go, oh, Ineed revenue. Let me go hire a
salesperson.
Well, don't understand and yeah,people can tell me I'm crazy and

(09:00):
boohoo hoo me and do whateverthey want. But what they don't
understand is that one of thethings that good salespeople are
very good at is manipulation.Now you can call manipulation
bad, you can call it good. If Igo to my chiropractor and he
says, oh, I've got to manipulateyour spine to take you out of
pain. What am I going do?
Look at him and go, oh no,manipulation's bad. Again,
that's mindset. And so what doesthe founder do? They go out and
they hire a salesperson. Andwhat they don't understand is

(09:22):
that the salesperson's job is tomanipulate.
So the salesperson's job isgoing to tell them that their
pipeline is, is 10 X.Everything's going to close.
They should increase their rate.And a year later, he's sitting
there with not one thing closed.And yes, I've had these
situations where I've had totell founders delusional.

That's tough talk. Right? It's just

it's just but it's just reality.

But, you know, one of the most interesting
things with commission, theysold 200 of our memberships
before we even had a launchproduct. And I don't I'm at that
point in my career, I didn'tthink of myself as a salesperson
at all, but I I just reallybelieved in what we were doing.
And I had the vision, and and Iand I always say it was the very

(10:05):
best thing I ever did. And it'swhy, to this day, I still have
sales calls because I not onlywas I able to talk to people and
understand them and get to knowthem, but also help shape the
product and help shape the thekey heuristics of the sales
process that were just ingrainedwithin me through that doing
that lessons, doing that

Yeah. There are so many so many people that I have
asked, and I'm talking about I'mnot talking about newbies. I'm
talking about people who arecoming out of corporate that
have spent twenty five, thirty,thirty five years in corporate
that are now trying to becomeentrepreneurs, not necessarily
through a choice of their own.But I mean, the market upheaval
has been, I think, white collarjobs since COVID. We've already

(10:49):
surpassed something like 450,000layoffs, which is a number we've
never seen before.
And I'll say to them, and theseare highly educated, highly
skilled people, and I'll askthem a few questions. What's
your value proposition? Whatthree problems do you solve? Who
are you? They can't answer them.
They cannot answer them. But yetif, if you're able to walk into
a prospect and say, Hey, I'mhere because I solved these

(11:11):
three problems. You start theconversation in a completely
different place. All right. Ican solve for you or I can't
solve for you.
Do you have that problem or youdon't have that problem? There's
no animosity. There's no hardclothes. There's no it's it's
just here's a conversation.

Yeah. No. I agree. I think that's really
interesting. You know?
We just get out of your own way,you know, like, figure that out.

No. I I was working with a client last year, small
business, very, very intelligentgentleman, very intelligent in
the tech space. Took months toget around to what three
problems do I solve? Who's mytarget audience? Took months,
not because he was dumb at all.
It's just he, his, his brainwouldn't let him answer the
question. And after about sixmonths or so, I remember we got

(11:54):
on a call because we speak toeach other, speak with each
other every week. And he's theCEO of his company. Granted,
it's only like five people, buthe's the CEO. He's the founder.
And he said, you know, it itdawned on me. He said, I really
don't know how to speak to aCEO. So you're going into
business Yeah. Calling on majororganizations, and you don't

(12:14):
understand the value propositionthat the CEO needs to hear.
Nobody taught him.
We straightened it out. The poorguy didn't know.

Yeah. Well and, you know, this is why I think
chat DVT is so good forbusinesses in so many ways
because it really can help youkind of it's like a a great
resource for finding thesethings, you know, like exploring
what it means and being able todifferent differentiate between
sort of features and benefits.

Yeah. But I I just I disagree. I completely
disagree. Because it's it's notthe knowledge. It's the
understanding of the difference.
It's the understanding of thesignificance. It's the
understanding that you have tofigure out how to speak with the
prospect as another human being,as somebody who has challenges,
who has problems, who doesn'tknow if you are the savior or an

(13:01):
axe murderer, and they don't.They're making that decision in
the first ninety to one hundredand twenty seconds of coming in
contact with you. They don'tunderstand that dynamic. And
Chatche doesn't understand thatdynamic.

That just gives you a jumping off price though.
Right? Yeah. If you're so stuckin the features and benefits and
you don't know because you'rebuilding it. Right?
So you're you're like, okay. Andthen we're gonna add a calendar
and have this and have thatfeature. Great. Feature. Great.
Feature. Great. Then that's kindof where your head's at when
you're building something.

Laurie, I eighteen years teaching beginners how to
ride a motorcycle.

Oh yeah.

And got them licensed. And the biggest
problems I came across werefemales. And I could spend three
days teaching all of themechanics. And I was actually
pretty good, if I might say somyself, and teaching them one on
one and in a group themechanics. And I had so many
females that failed and when wesat down to talk about what was
going on, it was because theywere there for the wrong reason.

(13:59):
They got the mechanics, but theydidn't believe that they had any
right to be behind thehandlebars.

Wow.

No, it was devastating and shocking because
their boyfriend or their husbandput them down. So I could have
taught them for a year themechanics, but until I was able
to shift their mindset and whenI did, all of the training came
through. So chat GBT will giveyou the mechanics, but it's not
going to give you the mindset.

No, I don't mean it will. I just mean it will
help you come up with the threethings or whatever that you
need. We actually we did somecoaching last time we talked and
after I got off the call,thought, oh, that's so
interesting. You know? And I useCheckDPA as my little tool to
think and explore and figureout.
And I thought that that was areally useful exercise from my

(14:43):
perspective anyway.

Yeah. No. It's it doesn't it does an awful lot of
good. I I use it all the timenow. I'm

just Yeah.

Absolutely enamored by the kinds of things it can
give you, but you have tounderstand its limitations. It's
not emotional.

Yeah. Absolutely. Alright. So
perfectionism is justprocrastination in disguise. How
do you help reps push throughthe fear of failure and finally
start?

What are the question I ask them is is what
are you failing? And and what Iwhat I would be more than
willing to wager with you isthat the vast majority of them
are saying they're not closing.Well, so are you going into the
sales call with the objective ofclosing? Because we have been
trained and it's still in, inthe lexicon today, it's still in
the books, it's still in thetraining courses today, that the
objective of the sales call isto close. Now and and I who was

(15:29):
it?
I can't remember if it it mighthave been it might have been
Bulls. I can't remember whereSpencer, came up with with a
concept of of the raving fan. Idon't know if you've ever run
across that. The raving fan tome is one of the most powerful
concepts I've come across inthirty years. And the raving fan
concept is that you don't youdon't close a deal and say that

(15:53):
my job is done.
You have taken one of the firststeps to create a raving fan out
of the customer. Because oncethe customer becomes a raving
fan, margins go up, lifetimesales go up, hassles go down,
cost of maintenance goes down.And you know what's so cool
about raving fans? They willbring you more customers without

(16:13):
you asking. Alright?
So people walk in and they go,oh, I've got to close. I'm
failing because I can't close.Wait a minute. Have you even,
have you even gotten so far tounderstand what the prospect's
needs are? Have you understoodwhat's going on in the
prospect's mind?
Okay. So we, we had a situation.I was called by, Edmund called

(16:33):
me. Was in car and I was sellinginteractive voice response at
the time, doing very well withit. Financial company that was
my customer.
The admin called me up and shesaid, Mr. Salazar, remember the
gentleman's name, wants to seeyou. I said, fine. When? She
goes, now.
I go, I'm two States away. Shegoes, he doesn't care. He wants
to see you now. I said, fine.I'll be there in an hour and a
half.

Wow. I

stopped. No. I I did. I did. I take care of my
customers.
I have never taken a vacationwithout being connected to a
customer. That's just the way Itreat them. So I got I got down
there and went into theconference room and the minions
were all surrounded at thetable. And he starts screaming
at me about customer complaintsand my system is horrible and it
doesn't work. Okay.

(17:13):
That's fine. That's all right. Iunderstand. You have no idea
what you're doing from a systemsperspective because he
shouldn't, but he's making thisaccusation. So now you have to
start.
How do, how do I tackle thisone? I said, okay, could you
tell me what the complaints are?So he rattled off a couple. I
said, could you tell me how manycomplaints you have? He gave me
a single or double digit number.
I said, is that a day, a week, amonth? He explained. I said, In

(17:35):
that same time period, how manycalls have you taken
successfully? I said, becauseall I'm trying to figure out is
do we have a 10% problem, a 1%problem, or a point 0001%
problem? Turned out we had apoint 0001% problem.
I said, can I ask you aquestion? I said, do you ever
survey your customers to findout how they're doing? Because
in fact, what had happened isthey had released an update to

(17:58):
the software, which didn't takeproperly. That's where they were
getting complaints. I said, doyou ever survey your customers?
Do you ever get a sense of howthey feel about the services
that you provide? He says, ohyes, once a year. So let me see
if I understand this correctly.Because I just want to make sure
I know what you're talkingabout. I said, so on that
Tuesday morning, when one ofyour top customers, the alarm

(18:20):
goes off, throws the coversback, swings his feet out of
bed, drops his feet to thefloor, and feels and hears at
the same time the sound of thewarm squish because the dog just
dumped right next to the bed.
So he gets up in a wonderfulmood now goes and takes a
shower, gets dressed, grabs hiscup of coffee, gets in his car,
starts to drink his coffee, buthas to stop short. Coffee spills

(18:42):
all over his shirt. Gets in theoffice, his admin isn't there,
the phones are ringing and herealizes he left his briefcase
at home. You now call him andsay, Hey, How do you feel about
our system?

Not good. No. It's so true. People don't
understand what's going on inour day to day lives that are
affecting how we feel.

Yeah. The the side note to that is I then I then
turned around and sold him abrand new custom built survey
system.

Be selling. Right?

Always be looking for opportunities. Always
looking for opportunities. So ityou know, why is the individual
calling you? I mean, as I said,I my customers had 24 by seven
access to me. They had everysingle phone number I had.
They had every way to get intouch with me. The the only
thing they didn't have was mywife's phone number. They had my
home phone number. Had my officephone number. They had myself.
Seriously, that is how I treatmy customers because I reject

(19:30):
more customers than I take. And07:30, one Sunday morning, I was
out 07:45 because we started ourmotorcycle class at 07:30. Phone
goes off, I hear it, I don'tthink I want to take it because
I'm in the middle of class, andI look at it and I see who it is
and I look at the otherinstructor and says, hey, do me
a favor, I've got to take this,put everybody on break for five

(19:51):
minutes. I spoke to them andturns out one of our, one of the
call centers had actually gonedown with our systems. Now you
say, okay, why is that, why isit so important that that guy
bothers you at such and suchtime in the morning and why is
it important that you take thecall?
Well, it turns out, management'sbonuses in part were based on

(20:11):
our uptime because we werehandling calls at 82¢ a call and
if they went to the call center,it was costing the it was
costing them from the callcenter $3.28 a call.

That

year we handled through that system 21,000,000
calls. So yes, if that callcenter has to take calls because
my systems went down, Iunderstand why they're upset.
It's not arbitrary. No. It's notarbitrary.
So I do my best to help them.Yeah. Which is why they then
gave me another million dollarsworth of business.

Absolutely. I get the same thing. All my
clients have my WhatsApp number.I'm always trying to connect on
some personal way, and they'realways surprised. Did I always
think that it's funny in today'sworld?
I think we're getting furtherand further away in a lot of
ways from that personalizedservice. So next question is

(21:06):
stop waiting for permission towin. What does it actually look
like in practice for salesprofessionals?

Again, I go back to kind of reframing the question I
I said before about closing.Define winning. What are you
winning? So if if if you make aninitial call up, so if you cold
call into somebody, what is theobjective of that call? Is the
objective of that call tocollect information to set up
the next call?
Is the objective of that call toclose? Well, first of all, if
you walked in with the objectiveto close and you don't have a

(21:34):
track record of being a one callcloser, and there are people
that are one call closers forcertain products, but if your
objective in your mind is toclose when you have no track
record of closing, Did you fail?No, you set your expectations
wrong. And then you also have tounderstand that it's not just
what you have as objectives.It's not just what you are
trying to accomplish.
There's another human being onthe other end of that line that

(21:56):
might have stepped in poo thatmorning.

Yeah.

Okay. And you know, people have to start to really
become aware of this, that mighthave gotten a call from the
hospital that their mother died.I mean, these are things that
I'm not saying we dwell on, butyou have to be conscious of
that. You have to be aware thatthese things do happen. You've
got to be able to give the otherside a moment to breathe.

Yeah.

And then figure out what you're trying to
accomplish.

And sometimes that that's where you find all
the nuggets and the gems of howthe call is gonna go in the
report. Do know you know wherethat energy is kind of meeting
you in that moment?

Yeah. And and Yeah. I have had much better than
average success in and I don'tuse the term rapport because I
think that that's a very badterm to use. It's a very bad
concept.

Tell me what you collect.

It's just understanding what what somebody
is trying to figure out in thefirst ninety to a hundred and
twenty seconds is is is thereptilian brain firing off and
going, you know, is it going toeat me? Is it going to kill me?
Do I have to run? Can I stay?That's what they're trying to
figure out.
Okay. So understand that aboutthem. Make it easy for them to
say, yeah, I think I can I cantrust this person? I would

(23:00):
contend that the vast majorityof deals, and I'm not talking
about highly complex deals, butthe vast majority of deals, you
have won them in the first orlost them. Actually, you've won
them in the first ninety to ahundred twenty seconds.
And then you spend the nextforty four minutes losing them.

I've heard that one.

Yeah. But, but it's true. Unfortunately, it's true.
All right. So understand thatthere is another person there.
Understand the dynamic of thatperson and work with that. The
notion of rapport that I haveproblems with is, and I hope,
hopefully nobody does it now,but since there isn't that much
new writing on sales techniquesthat I've seen, you know, walk

(23:36):
in the person's office, not thatwe walk in people's office
anymore, walk in the person'soffice, look on their desk, oh,
they have a picture of theirchild who plays for I don't
know, University of Iowa. Oh,your son goes to University of
Iowa. Yeah. I went to Universityof Iowa.
Who cares where you went? Whocares if you like to fish? Who
cares if you're a Yankee fan?Nobody cares. They're trying to
figure out why is this persontaking my time because you

(23:58):
haven't yet confirmed to themthat you understand their
problem and you can help themsolve their problem.
So in sales there are two salesand I haven't heard too many
people talk about this. There isan initial sale and there is the
subsequent sale. In virtuallyall cases, there is a subsequent
sale. Yes, folks. Even if you'retalking about a hamburger, even
if you're talking about a pairof shoes, there is in almost all

(24:20):
cases, subsequent sale or thepotential for a subsequent sale.
What makes the first sale is notwhat makes the subsequent sale.
The subsequent sale is based onthe feelings from the first
sale, continuing a thecontinuation of the
implementation and valuerealization, which then helps to
define the raving fan. Andthat's where this where a

(24:40):
modified notion of rapport comesin. Because yes, at that point,
people would rather deal withpeople they know than people
they don't know. But in thefirst meeting, they don't know
you.
They don't give a damn aboutwhere you go on vacation in the
summer or what school you wentto. They don't care. They'd
rather you get out of theiroffice or go off the phone or go
off a Zoom.

Yeah. I don't agree with you, but It's okay. I
don't because of my experience.

But I but I'm the guest.

I mean, they may not they may not. I know you are
the guest, and I think and Ijust haven't maybe I've just had
different experiences, or maybeI'm fooling myself that No.

I don't think I don't think either one.

I think we met, and we really liked each other.
I thought that that was quiteimmediate, and I thought that
you cared about me. I'm verysad.

Of course. It's contrived.

Oh, that's that manipulation.

Yes. But that's that's what it is. As as human
beings and and it's reallyfascinating, because programmers
understood this years ago. Ashuman beings, we take we tend to
take the continuum of things andgroup them into one, and make
decisions about the start pointbased upon the endpoint. I have
never spoken to anybody else whowill actually dissect a sales

(25:49):
call starting with the firstninety seconds.
And I do. Because the firstninety seconds is not the first
five minutes, it's not the firstfifteen minutes, it's not the
first interaction. So thedifference potentially, and
again, I'm not saying that thatI'm a 100% correct, and I'm not
saying that that, you know, whatI'm what I'm saying is is a 100%
true, but when you go back andand look at some of the
situations, think through andtry to think about that first

(26:11):
ninety seconds and how that wentand what happened next, the
better people that I've foundare able to, to make that one
continuous smooth stream goingthrough the micro and there
really are their microtransitions.

Yeah. What would you say is the best way to to
create the the first ninetyseconds?

First of all, so what you gotta understand. And
and again, we are we are dealingwith people to people sales
here, folks that that arelistening. We're not dealing,
not dealing with product ledgrowth kinds of concepts right
now. We are dealing with peopleto people because it is, it is
very different. The first thingis you have to understand that
people trust people that theycan relate to and visual cues

(26:49):
happen before verbal cuesbecause our technology and our
society puts a high premium onvisual, which is why we used to
meet in person.
Now there's no reason to meetwith zoom. There really isn't.
You can get, you can convey asmuch information on a telephone
call, but we prefer it. Weprefer to see each other. So
understand, look, you have everyright to wear pink hair and

(27:10):
spikes and nose rings and everyyou have every right to do that,
but understand that the prospectthat you're speaking to might
not appreciate that and mightview that as negative
negatively.
You can say that they're wrong.You can say that that's not a
moral proper way to handlethings, but the reality is they
might. So give yourself the edgeto start with having the proper

(27:31):
visual cues. Look the part. Allright.
When you meet somebody, don'tjump into what you do. I mean,
always will say to somebody, youknow, do we have permission to
continue this conversation? Tellme what time constraints you
have. Most people just blurt outand, Hey, I want this, say I
want it. And it's not about whatyou want.
Respect the other person. Ifthey came to you, why did they
come to you? What problem arethey trying to solve? If you

(27:53):
came to them, you better givethem value right away, right
away. Who cares that yourcompany was rated number one by
Inc Magazine for thirteen yearsin a row?
Nobody cares. What are you goingto do to help solve their
problem? People are more thanwilling to get into
conversations once theyunderstand that you're there to
help them and not hurt them.

I like that. It's a good sound bite.

Yeah.

Well, you know, you you said it best. Two people
in a room, one walks out sold.You know, what does that mean to
you, and what do most reps missabout it?

There's couple of things. It's it's it's a it's a
really great concept and it wasgiven to me many years ago by a
fantastic salesperson, one ofthe best I've I've ever known.
There is always a perspectivethat is either accepted or is
the dominant perspective. So andand again, we're not talking big
stuff now. Friday night comes.
What's the what's the firstthing that happens with married
couples on Friday night comearound 06:00? What do you want

(28:45):
to do about dinner? I don'tknow. I don't care. I'm tired.
Well, yeah, I don't care either.There's nothing going on. I
don't know. I want Chinese.Okay.
I'll take Chinese. Got sold.It's as simple as that. All
right. And there's nothing wrongwith that.
There's, there's nothing wrongwith that concept, but
understand that nobody likes tobe sold, but everybody likes to

(29:06):
buy. So if you if you appreciatethe notion of two people a room,
one gets sold, and by the way,let's go back down to
microsales, micro events in inin the entire sequence.
Understand that they arecomfortable buying if you give
them something that they want tobuy. You get to control the
entire conversation if you knowwhat you're doing. But if you

(29:27):
make it about you and about whatyou want, you're never going to
get there.
And that to me is the biggestmistake most people make is they
start off with the traditional,hi, my name's so and so, I'm
from such and such, we arewonderful, our product does x,
what's wrong with you, you don'tyou're not interested. It still
goes on today.

I know.

I still because I just had just got off a call
yesterday with unbelievable. Iwrote about it's just
unbelievable.

Is that what you put on LinkedIn? Is that the
yeah. Yeah. I had one a fewweeks ago as well, and I
actually thought this was like,I I felt really offended
actually because this wasn't acheap product that I thought,
how dare you send this littleperson to me who

Well, I'll with you. I actually had an
interesting conversation, Idon't know, two weeks ago with,
with one of the candidates oncommission crowd. Yeah. And I
didn't respond instantly or, orno, get a little trouble
connecting. And he startshitting me.
Hey, can we talk now? Hey, I'mavailable. I'm like, okay, cool.

(30:29):
Guy's pushing. I like it.
He's pushing nicely. He's notbeing obnoxious or anything. I
said, fine, let's jump on acall. I mean, you know, I'm
happy to jump on a call. So weget on a call and it must have
been about a ninety five fivehim talking versus me talking.
And he's telling me all thethings he does and he's telling
me about how he buildsrelationships and it's all about

(30:51):
these different industries andhe's really good at this and
blah blah blah. Never asking forconfirmation, Never even read
where it said, I am looking forone cold close hunters. And
cause it's, it's, it's veryclear in the description. Never
focusing on which of the twojobs he's talking about. And at
the end they said, you know,dude, I mean, I, I really like
where you're coming from.

(31:11):
You got some great skills. Isaid, I don't think it's fair to
you to continue thisconversation because you're not
going to be happy here. If whatyou tell me is true, you need to
go do that. Cause by the way,what you are telling me you do
is valued in the market in theright scenario. It's not valued
for me.
Oh yeah, but you know, if I canget to then he tries the trial
close. Well, but if if I can ifI can get you business and it

(31:33):
doesn't cost you anything, I'dlike to tell you what, I don't
think it's right. I think youwould be doing a disservice to
yourself and to your family. Isaid, however, it's Friday. If
you think about it over theweekend and you really want to
go for this and you you reallycan convince me that you know
how to do a one call close, thencall me Monday and we'll talk
somewhere.
Never called.

Well, you do have a wonderful way of doing
pattern interruption. I'venoticed that you have this just
really great skill atinterrupting patterns, and it
really kind of could throw like,I remember when we were having
our first chat, it really threwme the first couple times it
happened because I went and itwas so exhilarating too because

(32:12):
it was like, oh my god. I was sobored. I didn't even realize
until I had had thatconversation with you that I had
probably been just boring peoplefor probably a week before that.
Because we do.
We get into ruts, don't we? Weget into our little la la la la,
and everything's so busy and dada da da da. But you have this
really great way of, like,interrupting patterns, and I

(32:32):
think that we have to learn todo that for ourselves as well.
And that what you did for him, Iwonder how it settled. It's
either gonna be an ego reaction.
It's either gonna be like, hedoesn't understand me, or it'll
be something like, wow. Youknow? Like, let me thanks for
that really solid, honestadvice.

Yeah. But there's and and I don't know if if I
think we mentioned it if you'veif you're familiar with the
challenger sale.

Yeah.

Absolutely fascinating research. And I say
that because it's not opinion,it's research. And it was done a
number of years ago, and I'm notgonna get into the whole thing,
but but basically they classifydifferent types of salespeople.
And the one they're focused onis what they call the
challenger. And the challengeris able to go into a sales
situation, basically stop theprospect and reestablish a

(33:16):
reference point and a referenceconcept and tell them, hey,
that's not the way things reallyare.
This is the way things reallyare. And I look at that and
first of all, it's it's it's awonderful skill if you can do
it. But the second thing is wespend so much of our lives
allowing somebody else tobelieve their own bullshit when
we can help them realize thatit's not. I love it when
somebody tells me I'm full ofit. I don't want to waste my

(33:38):
time being full of it.

Yeah. No,

I agree. So, yeah, I I think we almost have an
obligation to salespeople to, tohelp people understand the
truth. And that's what annoys meabout salespeople to just go
through the, you know, hey. It'sit's me from so and so. We're
great.
We're wonderful. We've been inbusiness forty years. Who cares?
Who cares?

Yeah. And I think that sometimes we come
from that perspective when wewhen we're just stuck or we're
we're trying to hit numbers orwe're focused when we're not
focused on the human connection,the relationship, the people,
the problems, you know, likethat kind of stuff. Do you know?

Yeah.

Yeah. That's interesting.

I made I made the bulk of my money in large
corporate sales because Irefused to be driven by my
company's end of year stuff. Andthey, in the beginning really
were annoyed with me, but then Iturned around and closed and
made president's clubs sevenyears in a row. Nobody had ever
done it before because they tookthe buying cycle of the customer

(34:33):
into into account, not my buyingside. My boss didn't make his
number, but that's because hekept driving it the wrong way.
But I made my number and mycustomers were happy.
I mean, seriously happy. I keptmy customers very happy.

That's good. Well, you you mentioned you
touched on this earlier, and Imean, seven years, let's take a
minute to acknowledge thatbecause I think that that's
really impressive to them to tofind different ways of doing
that buying up against all thepressure of management, of all
the things, you know, andinstead lean into what the buyer
cares, like when the buyer hasmoney, when the buyer's cycle is

(35:09):
like, all of those things arereally important. You mentioned
earlier when you were talkingabout, like, at that very young
age when, you know, the littleboy overhears

Mhmm.

Why hate salespeople. But Mhmm. So most
people secretly hate selling.Where do you think that stigma
comes from, and how do you helpreps unlearn it? I'm just just
thinking of the correlationbetween

those In two our society, we're taught that
selling is pressuring. We'retaught that selling is a win
lose game. Some people talkabout it win win, but come the
end of the quarter, you've gotto go out and make that client
buy. Wait a minute. What are youtalking about and make that
client buy?
But that's, but that's how it'spresented to people. If you
don't make your number or you'regoing to be in a lot of trouble

(35:52):
because I'm going to be on yourcase. And these are real words.
I'm going be on your case allthe time. Look at the, you look
at movies, you look at, at, youknow, you read publications,
selling has always beenpresented as I am going to do to
you kind of proposition.
Read, read the sales books, 15ways to manipulate your
prospect, a 100 words that sell,how to hypnotize your client,

(36:13):
heck, get them to say yes, sixtimes in a row on simple things
and the seventh time they'llthey'll sign for you. What are
you nuts? Tell them you went tothe same university and and you
like the color blue and you'llhave built rapport and they'll
buy from you. That this is whatwe're fed and it's nonsense.
It's nonsense.
But we are still, we're comingout of it finally, recipients of

(36:35):
living in a commanded controlenvironment because in the
forties, we all know whathappened in the forties, we had
a war to win and one of thereasons we won the war one,
because I give a tremendousamount of credit to the armed
services. One of the reasons wewon was because we could produce
what we needed for the war andwe could transport it and get it
where we needed it. And Pattonwas very famous for this. So now
you have this whole command andcontrol. You will do this, we'll

(36:57):
divide you into specialties,etcetera.
Education wind up being the sameway. Medicine wind up being the
same way. We're being toldwhat's good for us. We're being
told it becomes adversarialafter a while. Sales is no
different.
And until people started torealize that sales shouldn't be
that, but we're still sellingbooks to talk about it, we're
still teaching courses that talkabout this, you still if you go

(37:19):
to YouTube or if you go toLinkedIn, they're still selling,
talking about the same stuff.There's only a few people that I
am aware of that that areactually saying, no. That's not
the way it should be. So when Idecided to change that way, what
I found out was I made a heck ofa lot more money, I had more
time, and had had more fun.Something's wrong with the old
ways.

Yeah. Those, you know, those early encounters
that so many of us have had withthe transactional, the pressure
heavy sales tactics. You know, Ithink reps who can reconnect
with the idea that sales is justa service in motion. We just
start to relax and when theyrelax, so do the prospects.

Well, one of, one of the problems and reps should
be aware of this. One of theproblems I find is that it is
the responsibility of thebusiness, as far as I'm
concerned, to convey to the repthe true value proposition of
the business. It's incumbentupon them to convey to the rep
the founder's story. Why wasthis started? What was the

(38:18):
circumstances?
These are things that peoplewant to know about. This is what
people relate to.

I love this story.

And so many companies, large and small bring
reps in, say this is theproduct. Don't give them any of
the stories, any of theinformation that they can use to
build the rapport. And I'll usethe word there to build a
rapport with the prospect andexpect them to do it. Now, the
interesting thing is a couple ofyears ago, according to HubSpot,
the average tenure of asalesperson in The United States

(38:45):
was fourteen months. Theturnover of the average
salesperson was four pointsomething times faster than the
general population.
Wow. And yet it took thesalesperson nine to twelve
months to come up to speed. Wellof course that's going to
happen. So what happens if youonboard them properly? What
happens if you provide them withthe proper information?
And here's the worst part, thesales reps, a lot of them don't

(39:08):
know to ask because they don'tunderstand how to sell value
proposition. They don'tunderstand how to sell what
problems do I solve. They don'tunderstand how to sell problem
resolution. They think thatdiscovery is walking in and
asking the same 10 questionsevery time and never drawing
those questions to the problemthat the prospect's having.

Yeah. It's such an interest it's so interesting.
Even this morning, we just hireda new marketing assistant, and I
was putting together a documentfor him. I'm gonna put in my
founder story in there toobecause, I mean, he's a
marketer. He's a storyteller.
Right? Of course, he would wannaknow. I mean, I thought. I mean,
so yeah.

I had a marketeer on the phone the other day. I
don't know where I was. I was insome session. And they're
talking about trying to conveywhat they do. And they were
selling, they were sellingthrough distributions.
They were trying to createmessaging. This was on a fellow
who claims to do messaging.Okay. Okay. And so they're
trying to figure out how tocraft the messaging.

(40:07):
And I said, okay, do me a favor,you know, cause I'm on this
call, there's only a few of us.What do you got? What are you
doing? And they start to tell meabout the product and the and
the benefits. I said, you'renever going sell anything.
You're go to business in sixmonths that way. Why? Because
what's important? And they goback to the product. I said,
well, what's the benefit of thisthing?
They said, oh, well, from fromthe perspective of the end user,

(40:27):
they're double, they're goingfrom them to the distribution to
the end user. From the enduser's perspective, does x y and
z. I said, are you selling to?They said, oh, the distribution.
I said, what's the benefit tothe distribution partner?
Let them figure out what thebenefit to the customer is.
That's their job. Why shouldthey choose you over anybody
else? The marketing people couldnot understand this. Not.

(40:49):
I'm watching hair go on fire.

Good thing. It was

pretty, yeah, good thing I was. So that's, that's
just kind of a snapshot of, of,of what I'm trying to, what I'm
trying to change in sales.

Yeah. No. It's important. Yeah. Solo
solopreneurs, they struggle withsales.
We've already said it. It'srarely tactical. So what's
really getting in their way?

Of the belief that it is tactical. Right.

That fear of rejection or

It's just that they've been trained to think
like that. Look. And I lovestories. The mother and daughter
are getting ready for thanks toto make thanksgiving to make
Christmas dinner. The oven's allheated.
They they get the ham, and toput it on the rack in the oven,
the mother goes, oh, we gottacut the end off. Takes the end,
cuts the end off, puts it in theoven. Go turns around and goes,
mom, how come we cut the end offham before you stick in the

(41:36):
oven? Mother goes, I don't know.We've just always done it.
Well, where'd you learn how todo it? From my mother. Let's go
call grandma. Say, call grandma.Silence on the phone.
Grandma goes, I don't know.We've always

done My mom did it.

My mom did it. So they called great grandma, who's
still alive, thankfully. Greatgrandma, how come you did it?
They explained the wholesituation. She goes, you
nitwits.
The reason we did it was becausethe ham was bigger than the
oven. Absolutely. So, you know,people I think there there are
some excellent salespeople thatthat this does not apply to
because they have this allfigured out. But unfortunately,

(42:09):
the rest of them fall into twocategories. One, people that
should just get out of salesbecause they have no business
being in it, and that's fact.
I'm not making fun of anybody orsaying anything negative. They
just they don't belong there.And then the ones that do wanna
be in it, they they just need torethink what sales really is.
And they need to rethink theirrole and understand that a lot
of the stuff that they've beendoing, a lot of the training
that they've had and the tacticsthat they use, they're they're

(42:30):
inappropriate or they're beingused in the wrong way and in the
wrong place.

Absolutely.

And you got to start changing that because
otherwise not going to getanywhere.

I was just looking at that too.

So I am, I'm looking forward just in case you
know anybody else, I'm lookingfor sales guys that look, you
can be one of the ones that,that needs the help. That's
fine. I'll give you the help. Ijust really am looking for
people who are honest, whounderstand what it means to care
about their prospects and abouttheir coworkers. I want them to
be hungry.

(43:01):
They have to be ethical. I'llhelp them with, I'll help them
with the concepts. That's not aproblem. I'm just looking for
people to build a businessaround where people wake up in
the morning and they want to goto work. I've been there.
There is no stronger feelingthan waking up at 04:30 in the
morning because you want to beat your desk banging the phones
at 06:30. There is no feeling.It's better.

That's the entrepreneurial spirit, you
know, and that's sometimes whycommission only is so
interesting.

Yeah.

Well, I really I'm I'm gonna link below. You've
got two amazing salesopportunities, and this is
really just so great to talk toyou and hear your perspective on
things. Really appreciate it.And pleasure. Yeah.
And you can also grab thewinning inner game of sales on
Amazon. Check it out. I read it.I really appreciated it.

Thank you.

Full of amazing stats. Some really good stuff
for that inner game as well. Sothank you so much, John.

And Thank you, Laura.

Well, I'll talk to you again soon.

And if you find out that that the rapport building
works, let me know.

My version. Bye. But it's but it's not, oh, my
favorite color is red. It'syours. You know?
Take

care. Thank you so much.

You.

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