September 22, 2025 • 37 mins
Welcome to another episode of GSR Place! This time, host B.D. Dalton is joined by Walter Crosby—Michigan Wolverine, B2B sales expert, and the voice behind the "Sales and Cigars" podcast with over 225 episodes under his belt. Walter’s journey from fending for himself in the wild world of sales in New York City to coaching teams to boost their numbers by up to 43% is nothing short of inspiring. Together, B.D. and Walter dive into the realities of building and coaching successful sales teams, the must-have traits for high performers, and the common mistakes business owners make when hiring and managing salespeople. Get ready for actionable advice on hiring, training, and retaining the best sales talent, plus Walter’s take on the most expensive mistakes you can make in sales—and how to avoid them. If you’re looking to grow your business or just sharpen your sales edge, this conversation is packed with straight talk, useful takeaways, and a touch of Big Ten rivalry. Tune in and let’s get growing!
https://helixsalesdevelopment.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/walterlcrosby/
https://helixsalesdevelopment.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/walterlcrosby/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Grow, Sell and Retire is the podcast for the lazy overachiever.
Bad Dalton, author of the assistant Purchase, True Gravity and Grow,
Sell and Retire, is here to give his twenty five
years of secrets, tips and assistants to take your business
to the next level. This podcast is for anyone who
wants to sell more, work less and make better business.
(00:24):
Now here's your host BD with today's GSR podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Hey everybody, Bad Dalton here, Grow Sell and Retire podcast.
And I'm here with somebody and he's a Michigan Wolverine
and I'm an Indiana Hoosier. So we've got a little
bit of a thing a problem there, but we're gonna
live with it. At least we're not the bad schools.
And went from Wolverine to B to B Sales Warriors,
so business to business Sales Warrior got promoted through lots
(00:50):
and lots of different jobs without any real sales training
because back in the day we didn't have a lot
of sales training and sometimes we just have to fend
our way through. He's also runs the Sales and Cigars
podcast two hundred and twenty five plus episodes and works
and helps people sell better and sell more kind of
(01:11):
looking anywhere from thirty seven to forty three percent, huge
increase in their sales if they work well. So I
called him Wayne on his own podcast, and that was
crappy at me. But Walter, welcome to the Gross Selling
Retired podcast. And I am virtually read in the face
this audio, read in the face, embarrassed that I called
you wayning on your own podcast. But welcome to Jelle.
(01:33):
Let's talk a little bit about sales. Tell me about you.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
Well, I'm I'm just a dumb sales guy who fell
backwards into sales and I love I love helping salespeople.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
I love getting paid right.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
But the thing that drives me is that sales guy
who calls me on a Friday afternoon and says, you
know that thing we talked about on Monday, I tried
it and it worked and like that, like that makes
it doesn't matter how bad my week was. That you know,
takes me into the weekend on a high note because
(02:12):
we got them to think different, we got them to
try something, and once they get there, it's, you know,
it's magical.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
After that, what what do you think your number one
sales trade that you had when you started and your
number one sales trade, Like if you were selling today,
if you what would be the difference in starting off
sales and current sales? What's your number one trait in
each of those spaces.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
Well, I think at the beginning, I had no clue
what I didn't know, and I had no fear. Yes,
and I put myself in a position where I had
no choice but to be successful. I left the fine
(03:02):
institution University of Michigan, and two weeks later it was
in this little town called New York City, and you know,
not really knowing anybody, not really having a plan. It
was completely like everything else I've done in my life,
just go live on the edge and and give.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
It a whirl. And it worked.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
But it was that that that fear somebody tells me
I can't do something, I guarantee you I'll.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
Get it done.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
And that's what happened.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
So and it wasn't the first of them. Essentially.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
Yeah, I ended up at the University of Michigan because
my guidance counselor you know, said you can't, You're not
going to get in. Don't apply, Like, okay, you should
have been wrong about everything else. So I applied to one school,
I'll show you, uh huh yeah. And that's not always
uh uh, it doesn't. It doesn't always work out. But
(04:00):
but when somebody really tells me no, that's where I
get serious about about making it happen.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
So, so then what happened in New York? He got
to New York, He had no clue. You're two weeks
out of University of Michigan. Michigan is definitely not New
York in any way, shape or form. What what did
you do?
Speaker 3 (04:23):
I connected with a friend's father who was kind enough
to take me to lunch at a nice club. And
you know, he's he's sitting there like, you know, what,
what are you gonna do? I got no idea. I
thought you were going to help me. And he's like,
why don't you go into sales? And I'm like, great sales.
I've I've sold newspapers, I've sold you know, cutting lawns,
(04:45):
I've done all this stuff. I've been in retail. He goes,
all right, I know a couple of people. Let me
let me set up an interview. So he set up
an interview with with a but the company that's changed
hands or changed names, but at that time it was
Jones lang wutin Right commercial real estate in the city
(05:08):
of New York, and I got an appointment with the
managing director for New York and he sat me brought
they brought me into his office and sat me down
on the couch and I sit there and listened to
him for twenty minutes talk to his girlfriend, and I
got you know, I was just annoyed, no plan, I
(05:28):
wasn't strategic. Got up and knocked on his desk and said,
you know, you know, mister Michael's obviously caught your at
a bad time. I'll see you later. And he's like, honey,
I got to go.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
I got an.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
Asshole in my office. And he hung up the phone.
He's like, who do you think you are? The guy
that had a meeting twenty minutes ago with you? Like
what you know? Why am I waiting? And he's like
sit down. And I had to give him my resume
and it was very contentious. He was making fun of Michigan.
He was making fun I wasn't a was all of
this stuff. And I got the job and his you know,
(06:08):
when when I showed up the first day, I went
to see him and I'm like, why did you give
me this job because we didn't start off on a
good foot. And he's like, no, that's why I hired
you because you weren't going to take any crap from me.
And I wasn't going to hire you because I thought
you were a snot nose punk from the Midwest and
(06:30):
I was just doing a courtesy of my friend. But
if you're not going, if you're going to stand up
to me, then you probably got a shot of standing
up with CFOs and CEOs of other companies. So get
the work. That was my sales training. Get the work.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
So if we if we're doing that, and I mean
the hardest part is once we get past the owner
and we get into the other people selling stuff. If
somebody came to you and there you've got a somebody
that's coachable, young and never really sold but has some energy,
and somebody it's ten years experience in the in the
(07:05):
industry and wants more money. Which one are you banking on?
Typically if they're if they're both about the same personality, Yeah,
I don't care about personality. I think that's overrated in sales.
I want desire and commitment, Yeah, I want I want responsibility.
(07:26):
M everybody's got head trash. Everybody's got what we call
sales DNA. Right, there's always, there's always trouble. The longest
distance on a golf course is the eight inches between
our ears. It's the same in sales, right, So we
got to get out of our own way. And then skills,
the consultative, selling, the reaching, decision makers, all of those skills.
(07:47):
We can teach people that, but I can't teach them
desire and commitment. I can't teach them responsibility.
Speaker 3 (07:53):
So if I got a young person that shows up,
you know that that presents themselves professionally, that shows up
in a in the right the right look and feel,
with energy and like and asks for the job right
that they really want the job, I'll take that over
somebody with you know, ten years experience, because that person
(08:14):
has issues and we have we have to do a
really good job of interviewing that person to uncover what
those issues are to see if they're surmountable.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
So that's a great one because I get lots of people,
and almost everybody is and my thing is sell more
stuff to more people at a better price. You know,
that's kind of the whole the business ethos. So how
do you what questions do you ask that ten year veteran.
So when you're interviewing for a team or you're helping
(08:45):
a team, what are some of the killer questions that
kind of uncover that that baggage, skeletons, everything else that's
happening there.
Speaker 3 (08:54):
Well, there's a bunch of things that we we do
in advance to make sure that we got a good
A good can it? But if we got them in
an interview, there's some structured questions that I'm going to
go through. I'm going to look at their resume and say,
you know, we're going to spend about twenty minutes going
through your resume, and I got questions and concerns about
a few things here right so, and then we would
(09:17):
we would find a position that they had and say,
you know this role here with X y Z company.
Take a minute and think about a job that you
sold based on value. And then I wait and I like, go, okay,
I got one, all right, perfect. Now here's what I
want you to do. Describe to me from start to finish,
(09:42):
hit the major milestones of how you did that. And
what they usually do is start you know with you
know that they that they differentiated themselves, and I'm like,
what does that mean? What do you mean you differentiated yourself?
How did you do that? And I asked you to
start at the begin So I'm going to challenge them
(10:02):
politely and professionally, but I'm going to challenge them because
every resume has a bunch of bullshit in it, especially
a sales resume, So we want to uncover that, right.
I want to keep them on their their heels, So
I'm going to ask them questions about how they selled value,
how they differentiated themselves. Tell me about a situation where
(10:22):
you lost a really deal that you should have won,
and then tell me why, and you get answers like, well,
you know, a competitor won the deal because they were
a better priced or they had a better option. Right,
So they they're looking outside of themselves rights as a
(10:47):
reason the dog ate my homework kind of thing. But
if they if they reflect, it's like, you know what,
I lost that deal because I didn't understand something right,
And then they describe what they didn't understand. I'll take
that all day long, because what that means is that
they're thinking about what they did, they're taking responsibility for it,
(11:09):
and they're trying to get better. That's a way to
find out if somebody is coachable. Those those two questions
around a resume are are are kind of key, and
you could ask somebody what have you done in the
last six months to get better.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
At your role?
Speaker 3 (11:27):
M And it's easy, right, I mean, you've got all
of these tools out there that people could be trying
to trying to learn. Read a freaking book would be
you know, something super simple.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
Right.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
But if they say, yeah, right, there's there's tons of
things that they could list. But if they say, you know, uh,
you know, I listened to you know, be these uh podcasts,
I'd be like, all right, great, which episode did caught
your eye? Which one did you learn something from?
Speaker 2 (11:58):
Right?
Speaker 3 (11:59):
And I'm gonna I'm going to try to pull out
of them, like are they making this stuff up?
Speaker 2 (12:04):
Right?
Speaker 3 (12:05):
If you read a book, tell me, but okay, you know,
tell me what you got out of that book and
how do you use it?
Speaker 2 (12:12):
That's really important.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
It's great to read a book, but then how did
you take something from that book and apply it to
your job?
Speaker 2 (12:18):
That's big because I think a lot of people right now,
everybody wants is looking to increase sales, looking to it
as always so, and they always want to bring on
that that heavyheader from from the across the street or
from X y Z company across the street. So having
these questions is it's killer. So I kind of say
that I wrote this one down but so complete the sentence.
(12:41):
The biggest mistakes business owners are making in today's mark
is believing.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
That salespeople know what they're doing.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
That's amazing, that's cool, saying how how do we gauge that?
How do we how do we put it so that
it's so easy for the salespeople to go out and
deliver or whatever we're doing. How do we make it easier,
better than repeatable.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
I think there's some foundational things that need to be
in place right Your company, your sales organization has to
have a sales process and methodology that they follow through.
It should be stuck in a CRM and it should
people should be held accountable to using it, and people
should be there should be pipeline reviews to make sure
that we got deals working right. That's the foundation that
(13:28):
needs to be there. But here's the thing that I
think most businesses, especially when you got an entrepreneur that's
running it and maybe they sat in the sales seat
for the first few years and they had great success
and they can't figure out why their salespeople can't go
do the same thing that they did. So it really
(13:50):
comes down to you want a salesperson that has the
basic skills to go talk to the person that you
need them to go talk to your your ideal customer.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
Have to give them.
Speaker 3 (14:01):
The entrepreneur has to give that salesperson the questions that
they need to ask that buyer that what matters right
to help them uncovered, they have to give them. The
messaging is at a very high level. It's the messaging
the company sales story, and it's not a pitch.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
Right.
Speaker 3 (14:21):
We should be talking about our products. We should be
talking about our buyer and getting to understand what their
problems are, and we should be qualifying them to determine
if they have a problem that we can solve, and
is that problem big enough that they want to solve it,
and is it costing them money? Right, That's how we
qualify somebody, and it also helps if you're talking to
(14:41):
somebody that can say yes, right, like, we need to
know where that where that decision maker lies in the organization.
The bigger the company, the more of those people are,
the bigger the group that has to be sold to.
That's why I love those the companies that are in
that ten to time twenty million. Right, there's not a
(15:02):
committee that you got to go deal with. There's no RFP. Right,
you can go talk to the to the decision makers
and help them see that you have something that might
help them get better at whatever they're struggling with.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
And it's still it's still their big checkbook. I mean
it's still they're still owners in the company. There's still this.
Once you move to shareholders and other owners and people
that aren't actually interacting with the sales delivery process, you
lose a lot of DNA there.
Speaker 3 (15:32):
I think it's yeah, it's almost sterile. And it becomes
you know, they're gonna they're gonna stick with the status quo.
They're gonna they're gonna worry more about did I make
a good decision. If I switched this, I got to
admit that I might have been wrong or partially wrong. Right,
And and an entrepreneur just wants to get it right.
(15:54):
That business owner really just wants to get their business
ready to sell, or they want their business to grow,
and you know, go back to the salespeople. We got
to give them those those tools that they need. They
have skills, they have mindset, but they don't have the words,
and we got to give it to them. We got
to give it to them fast, right, and we got
(16:15):
to make it simple, right. And it's not a script, right,
because if you give a salesperson a script, they then
you got to give the buyer a script. And they
don't want to read a script, right. It's not a play.
They're going to do their things. So we have to
anticipate these problems. And an entrepreneur business owner thinks that
the salesperson will figure it out, and they won't. I mean,
(16:38):
if they do, it'll take forever.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
Yeah, pardon said. And we believe that. You think though,
it's got to be easy because I've been able to
get it to this spot, and that means everybody should
be able to sell the same way and understand the
client and do all that type of stuff. So what's
the most expensive yes that a business owner can say
to a prospect? Most expensive yes, giving them that's a
(17:02):
that's a really good question, and I think it's it's
saying yes to.
Speaker 3 (17:10):
The salesperson that you know for their own business there
to hire their to hire their team, saying yes to
the wrong person because it because it sets you back
in time, It sets you back in resources that you're
going to put into this person. And and the real,
the real cost is that once you realize it, they
(17:32):
still don't do anything about it. They they're they're afraid
to have an empty spot. They're afraid to get rid
of the person, and you know it, That to me
is putting the wrong people in the seat. Hire people
talk about hiring slow, hire smart, hire the right person,
and it doesn't have anything to do with industry experience.
(17:54):
It's it's it's getting the right person for your role
that understands your buyer. And that is easier to do
than people think.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
So, now we've got new person out selling and they
haven't sold as much and they're not us, and they
haven't they don't know all the responses to everything else.
So what's the most expensive yes that they can give away?
That screws your business? Selling something you can't do right?
Speaker 3 (18:20):
Given promising right, because you're going to piss off your
operations people. You're manufacturing people right if that salesperson goes
out and say oh, yeah, yeah, we can do that, right,
because they're trying to please a buyer and they add
something in that they can't do and then everybody looks
bad because you can't deliver it, and then certain companies
will try to figure it out, well, this is how
(18:42):
we're going to reach into that market. No, stick to
what you're really good at. Get good at something before
you offer it, or if you're going to go someplace
that you're not really good at it, then you need
to bring that to the buyer and say, look, we'll
partner with you on this and we'll work through it
with you and we'll do a pilot program. But this
(19:04):
isn't our expertise. So if you want to partner with
us to work through it, but that's not a great scenario.
But that expensive yes is saying yes to something that
isn't what your your core offering is always gets you
in trouble.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
So when you're when you're teaching people and you're working
with with sales teams and getting people in moving in
the right direction, do you help them like with a
we do do list and we don't do list? So
do you have a like a no go x's and
check tech marks when you're teaching people about their sales
(19:40):
process and also the sales stuff that they're actually getting
out there, because sometimes it always comes back down to
the owner not delivering the right Here's here's exactly what
Dave Smith, our ideal client wants, and here's the things
that we cannot sell him.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
Well, it's it starts, I think, is when you hire
the person, you want to understand that they have a
basic understanding of who your buyer is and they've had
some experience, not necessarily in your industry, but tangentially.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
Right.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
Yes, if you're calling on a CFO, who else calls
on CFOs?
Speaker 2 (20:16):
So that's one.
Speaker 3 (20:17):
Right, you can pull somebody from an adjacent market at
our niche. But what you got to do that first
thirty to ninety days, right, is onboard that new salesperson
with the right information and think of it as building
the house. You start with the foundation. Here's Dave Smith,
(20:39):
who that's who we work with. Here's what they like,
Here's what they don't like. Here's their typical problems. They
have these problems. We can't help them with those, right,
and they're going to bring that up and you've got
to help them. See, we're experts in these three things, right,
and you got to get them to understand that. And
then you want them to be clear about what it
(21:00):
is that you're offering does not in the context of
features and benefits, but in the context of solution problems
that we can reduce, right, because that buyer cares about
three things, saving time, making or saving money and mitigating
risk yep. Right in what they have. They probably have
(21:26):
a solution that's working right now, and the person that
you're talking to as a salesperson probably made the decision
to put that solution in place five years ago, three
years ago, ten years ago, six months ago. And if
it's not working the way they want it to, they
got to be able to say, I screwed up, I
made a mistake, I need to go here. Are they
(21:47):
going to be willing to carry that water up the
hill to whoever's making the you know, because ultimately they
got to answer to somebody, that buyer unless we're talking
to the CEO, and that CEO still has to admit
they were wrong. They got to admit it to themselves
or maybe to a board. So if we're not giving
(22:08):
them the tools that they need, early on in this process,
and they need to be product experts. Yes, but the
first thing that they need to understand to go out
there and start talking to people is what those problems
are and how we talk about them, what questions we ask.
And that happens in that onboarding process, which most places
like they want to teach you about the product. They
(22:29):
want to teach you about how it's made. They want
to teach you about quality. All important, but not at
the beginning. You want them to sell. You got to
make it super simple. I sold a very technical product
to really smart people and I'm like, how.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
Does this work?
Speaker 3 (22:48):
And they're like, well, we got this thing and goes
off and this thing happens. I'm like, okay, so we
got inputs and outputs. Yeah, so if this input comes in,
the output is these flashy things and it makes noise. Yeah, okay,
now I understand how this thing works. It's just a
control panel. Now what do they care about? And once
I got that down took a couple of weeks, but
(23:10):
I had to go do it. Most candidates won't. Yeah,
we need to give it to them. We need to
make it easy so they can go faster and get
them get them traction quickly, because it's we lose we
lose that that new hire if we're not giving them
the things they need to be successful, and they don't
know to ask for it, They're they're afraid to look dumb.
(23:35):
All of those things are happening, and it's really the
business owner's responsibility.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
And you built a bunch of tools. The bunch of
things that you have on the website, and what with's
the website again.
Speaker 3 (23:46):
The Helix Sales Development dot com.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
Helix Sales Development dot com and you have a quite
a few tools. What's your favorite tool on there? What's
your go to starting tool? If you're you're working with
somebody and you're working with a team that that some
you could go to on there and look at and say, hey,
I need to need to really look at my sales process.
Speaker 3 (24:06):
Well, I want to look at the team, and I
want to look at what they think they know. So
we look at twenty one critical core competencies and I
can get that figured out and with a tool that
takes about forty five minutes for that individual to answer
some questions. So I get an MRI. Do they have
(24:30):
the will to sell? Do they have that desire and commitment, responsibility.
What motivates them? Right, Because motivation is important. But I
might be motivated by money, and Bob over here, the
other sales guy might be motivated by intrinsically and wants
to really be part of something, wants to learn, wants
to get better. So the context in which we talk
to these new people matters. So I want to understand
(24:53):
that piece, and then I want to understand what's going
on in their head.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
What's the head trash? Right?
Speaker 3 (24:58):
Do they need everybody to love them to be able
to make friends. They got to have a great relationship
to be able to sell. That's going to get in
the way of asking tough questions. Can they talk about money?
Can they talk about big dollars? Because if your product
costs one hundred thousand dollars and they think five thousands
a lot of money, they're going to struggle to get
somebody to realize that, you know, the one hundred thousand
(25:19):
dollars solution is going to save them a million dollars
over the course of nine months, So they're going to
have trouble with that.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
In general, the.
Speaker 3 (25:25):
Skills, the skills of reaching decision makers and prospecting and
being consultative. Those are things that are easier to change.
We can do that with coaching and training, and it's
a it really really, that's the tool that gives us
(25:46):
the start. Do we have the right people in the
right seats?
Speaker 2 (25:50):
Are they are? They?
Speaker 3 (25:51):
Are we able to get them to grow? Because you
already got them on the team. We got to give
them a shot to elevate. But if they push back
and they don't want to do it, next right, because
we need we need this to happen. So we can
look at this and like, look, you got seven salespeople.
Two of them are responsible for seventy five percent of
(26:13):
your revenue. Two at the bottom. Why are they here?
Would you hire them?
Speaker 2 (26:19):
Again?
Speaker 3 (26:20):
Well, knowing what you know now, well probably not. Why
are they here? Well, we have a territory that's empty.
Would it be better to have an empty territory that
motivates you to go find the right person than to
have this person out there representing your brand?
Speaker 2 (26:35):
Right? So, those those.
Speaker 3 (26:37):
Things are to me the best tool to to to
get things started, to know where to go and create
the right priorities.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
You've had lots of successes. What what do you think
is your your biggest missed opportunity in business that you've
somebody asked you to do, or somebody you saw something
that you didn't act on it. And what question would
you have asked either the person as you were buying
or yourself that you wish you would have gone back
and done.
Speaker 3 (27:07):
For me, it would have been making the investment in
some training for myself earlier in my career.
Speaker 2 (27:17):
Right.
Speaker 3 (27:18):
Yes, we talked about this in your podcast, that we
don't get a lot of training as a new salesperson,
at least when we were going. So I think there's
a responsibility as an individual if we want to be
a sales professional, we need to get better and we
need to make some investments in ourselves. Listening to a podcast,
(27:42):
you know, listening to reading a book and applying it,
but actually going out and getting some training is something
that we should be looking to do ourselves. So if
I probably waited fifteen years to make that investment in
my self and I would have made a lot more money,
(28:05):
I didn't want to calculate what I would have made.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
Isn't that crazy?
Speaker 3 (28:08):
Faster?
Speaker 2 (28:08):
Yeah? So you talk about golf Tiger Woods and his
prime had seven coaches, you know from from putting to swing,
but then pr too, speaking to finance to he had
he probably should have had marriage counseling one. But in general,
so it's like even professionals all have coaches. Every every
football team, everybody else has a defensive coach, as offensive coach,
(28:31):
a quarterback coach, a kicker coach. It's like they're the
great ones.
Speaker 3 (28:36):
Like Michael Jordan, he had he paid his own money
for a coach that made him do things that were
were so fundamental, right, I mean, he was motivated more
so than anybody else on the court, but he had
nutritional coaches, but he had he had people that would
just help him drive his his skill set so that
(28:58):
he would get better.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
And it was relentless.
Speaker 3 (29:01):
And if if, if you're not doing that for yourself,
I think from a personal view, that's what would be
my answer doing that sooner And I think from a
from a business point of view, is not training people first.
Training is a waste of time. If you're not training
without the foundation and the fundamentals. If you go ahead
(29:22):
and just train a bunch of people and you're not
going to coach them on it, and you're not going
to make them follow a process that's tied to the training.
You've just pissed away a ton of money and resources,
and you know it's like, oh, here's the next thing.
And I see, you know, I get people call me
all the times say hey, can you help me with
you know, help my team's win rates? Yeah, sure, happy
(29:43):
to Like why do you think it's win rates? Well,
you know, I win rates dropped from forty two percent
to thirty three percent. Like okay, and you think that's
because well they're they're not closing rate, so you know,
five questions later, like, that's not the problem. The problem
is their sales manager came in and said, you know,
we need to have five times value in your pipeline
(30:04):
than what your goal is. So the salespeople just start
stuffing the pipeline with a bunch of crap. Right, Their
win rates dropped because the sales manager changed the game. Yes,
that's your problem, and they're like, well, how is that
tie in?
Speaker 2 (30:18):
Right?
Speaker 3 (30:18):
So not what we've identified the problem twenty minutes.
Speaker 2 (30:24):
That's definitely the truth, and people don't And that the
hardest part is when you have an owner that is
eat and breathed his business the whole time, or builds
it himself knows everything about it, but is not always
the best salesperson and figures everybody just knows it through osmosis.
And that's that's the worst business. And we talked about
selling businesses. That's the hardest part is if if the
(30:48):
owner is the business, it's not really a business. It's
just it's not you got a job.
Speaker 3 (30:54):
Yeah, it's a it's a it's a it's a job
that you get to sign your own check. But it's
probably not as many zeros as you'd like it to be.
Speaker 2 (31:02):
M hmm. That that is good. So you have you
have your podcast Sales and Cigars. What's what's the number
one thing that you think you took away from them
the last in the last ten episodes obviously prior to me,
but the ten episodes before that, what were what was
your favorite takeaway?
Speaker 3 (31:24):
I like, I like people that push push on ideas
that I have and and sometimes you know, they they're
they're they're skeptical because that's one of the things I
teach teach salespeople. So if you ask, you make a statement,
somebody pushes back on it, two things could happen, one
(31:45):
or the other. Either you you're like, that's a really
good point. I need to I need to think about
that and maybe implement some of that, right, so you
think different about your situation. And the other one is
like I thought about it, and I'm going to dismiss
that because it doesn't apply here and here and here. Right,
(32:06):
you've put the thought in it, you've analyzed that, you've
done the work. So recently, there was a there was
a gentleman who who thought about marketing in a way
that we just need to sell these courses and these
these little packages, and you sell the ninety seven dollars
(32:29):
course and then you sell them up to a five
hundred dollars course and then you sell them.
Speaker 2 (32:33):
Right.
Speaker 3 (32:33):
And maybe I'm not saying it doesn't work, Yeah, but
I don't think it's the solution for every business. There's
usually core problems with a sales organization. So I listened
to his ideas and I dismissed them, you know, later on,
(32:55):
not in the episode. I didn't make them look like
a goofball. But you know, that idea may work for
certain people if they're trying to build something that goes
in that direction. But I think if it's always about
the fundamentals, are we doing the right basic the right
blocking and tackling.
Speaker 2 (33:12):
Are we doing the right footwork? Are we are?
Speaker 3 (33:16):
We have we mastered the basics, because if you haven't
mastered the basics, you're going to you're going to screw
up along the way. It doesn't matter if it's manufacturing
or sales. You've got to have the basics in place.
And for for sales people, for for a sales organization,
it's a process or a process in Britain, and and
(33:38):
then being able to implement it and create accountability around
it and get everybody singing from the same hymnal that works.
Speaker 2 (33:47):
Okay, So coming to the end of the show, So
where do you want people to find you? Where? Where
do we find you to get more information, to contact you,
to follow the podcast? All that funds stuff. So I'll
put it in the show notes. But where do we
find you? The podcast?
Speaker 3 (34:04):
You can get wherever you get podcasts right at sales
and cigars. For me, if you want to understand how
I think, because I'm not for everybody right, I'm really transparent.
I'm a misplaced New Yorker. I'm very I'm very upfront.
I don't do a lot of sugarcoating you're an Indiana guy.
(34:26):
I'm more like Bobby Knight than I am one of
the current coaches that's running around, right. And I don't
throw chairs or you know, but and I and I
and I try not to yell, but I have the
same level of passion, right, And so you can hear
what how I think and what.
Speaker 2 (34:45):
I do if you follow me on LinkedIn.
Speaker 3 (34:49):
I'm constantly putting out stuff to make people think, to
give them an idea of and I stay pretty focused otherwise.
The website, like Sales Development dot Com, I'm doing something
there that's going to launch here in the next month
and a half where I'm going to be putting a
(35:11):
lot more transparency on my website, okay, including pricing and
scope of work I want. It's really complicated to buy
what we buy, what we do if we're if we
flip over and we're looking at Dave Smith. Dave Smith's
got a lot of stuff to figure out. So I'm
going to give people without having to pick up the phone.
I'm going to give them an idea of how it works,
(35:31):
why we do it, and roughly what it costs to
make the make less friction for them to understand what
it looks like to work with us.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
Yeah, that makes it. It's definitely nobody knows how to
buy consultancy because they don't know what it's solving. Usually
they know it's gonna get them more sales, but they
don't know what they have to rip apart to put
back together to do all that type of stuff. So
it's is very, very difficult because it's not a washing
machine or an air conditioner or anything else does have
erect direct outcomes. So the rewind moment, this is the okay,
(36:05):
and I'm not going to call you a way and Walters.
Walter's come to the end of the episode and we're
going to rewind because Walter's been amazing. But this is
the thing that says that was a fabulous idea. I
want to listen to the whole half an hour. So
what's the rewind moment for you? The one thing that
you want people to take away and put in their
(36:26):
back pocket and use today.
Speaker 3 (36:29):
I think it goes back to the idea of hiring
the right salespeople and having some structure to your interview process. Right,
if you're hiring salespeople the same way you hire everybody
else in your organization, that's the first thing you need
to change. Because we're different. We can control an interview,
we can take place as we want, and often that
(36:49):
that sale that they make in the interview is the
last good sale they make for your company. So you've
got to get that right. You need to write people
in the right seats.
Speaker 2 (36:59):
That's amazing, So write people in the right seats. So
Waltered Sales and Cigars. It's been fabulous having you on
the show. Thank you for sharing all sorts of sales
ideas and some fun So thank you very much for
coming on the gros Selling Entire podcast.
Speaker 3 (37:15):
I appreciate the opportunity to share, share some thinking it
was fun.
Speaker 2 (37:21):
See you soon.
Speaker 1 (37:24):
Thanks for joining us on Grow Sell and Retire. For
more information tools or to book one of our team members,
to work with your team business, or to speak at
your event or conference, visit rockfind dot co dot uk.
If you like the podcast, you'll love one of BD's
three books, The Assistant Purchase, True Gravity, and The Book.
The podcast is based on, Grow, Sell and Retire. If
(37:47):
you want to work for the rest of your life,
that is your business. If you don't, that is ours.
Grow, Sell and Retire is the podcast for the lazy overachiever.
Bad Dalton, author of the assistant Purchase, True Gravity and Grow,
Sell and Retire, is here to give his twenty five
years of secrets, tips and assistants to take your business
to the next level. This podcast is for anyone who
wants to sell more, work less and make better business.
(00:24):
Now here's your host BD with today's GSR podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Hey everybody, Bad Dalton here, Grow Sell and Retire podcast.
And I'm here with somebody and he's a Michigan Wolverine
and I'm an Indiana Hoosier. So we've got a little
bit of a thing a problem there, but we're gonna
live with it. At least we're not the bad schools.
And went from Wolverine to B to B Sales Warriors,
so business to business Sales Warrior got promoted through lots
(00:50):
and lots of different jobs without any real sales training
because back in the day we didn't have a lot
of sales training and sometimes we just have to fend
our way through. He's also runs the Sales and Cigars
podcast two hundred and twenty five plus episodes and works
and helps people sell better and sell more kind of
(01:11):
looking anywhere from thirty seven to forty three percent, huge
increase in their sales if they work well. So I
called him Wayne on his own podcast, and that was
crappy at me. But Walter, welcome to the Gross Selling
Retired podcast. And I am virtually read in the face
this audio, read in the face, embarrassed that I called
you wayning on your own podcast. But welcome to Jelle.
(01:33):
Let's talk a little bit about sales. Tell me about you.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
Well, I'm I'm just a dumb sales guy who fell
backwards into sales and I love I love helping salespeople.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
I love getting paid right.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
But the thing that drives me is that sales guy
who calls me on a Friday afternoon and says, you
know that thing we talked about on Monday, I tried
it and it worked and like that, like that makes
it doesn't matter how bad my week was. That you know,
takes me into the weekend on a high note because
(02:12):
we got them to think different, we got them to
try something, and once they get there, it's, you know,
it's magical.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
After that, what what do you think your number one
sales trade that you had when you started and your
number one sales trade, Like if you were selling today,
if you what would be the difference in starting off
sales and current sales? What's your number one trait in
each of those spaces.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
Well, I think at the beginning, I had no clue
what I didn't know, and I had no fear. Yes,
and I put myself in a position where I had
no choice but to be successful. I left the fine
(03:02):
institution University of Michigan, and two weeks later it was
in this little town called New York City, and you know,
not really knowing anybody, not really having a plan. It
was completely like everything else I've done in my life,
just go live on the edge and and give.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
It a whirl. And it worked.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
But it was that that that fear somebody tells me
I can't do something, I guarantee you I'll.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
Get it done.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
And that's what happened.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
So and it wasn't the first of them. Essentially.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
Yeah, I ended up at the University of Michigan because
my guidance counselor you know, said you can't, You're not
going to get in. Don't apply, Like, okay, you should
have been wrong about everything else. So I applied to one school,
I'll show you, uh huh yeah. And that's not always
uh uh, it doesn't. It doesn't always work out. But
(04:00):
but when somebody really tells me no, that's where I
get serious about about making it happen.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
So, so then what happened in New York? He got
to New York, He had no clue. You're two weeks
out of University of Michigan. Michigan is definitely not New
York in any way, shape or form. What what did
you do?
Speaker 3 (04:23):
I connected with a friend's father who was kind enough
to take me to lunch at a nice club. And
you know, he's he's sitting there like, you know, what,
what are you gonna do? I got no idea. I
thought you were going to help me. And he's like,
why don't you go into sales? And I'm like, great sales.
I've I've sold newspapers, I've sold you know, cutting lawns,
(04:45):
I've done all this stuff. I've been in retail. He goes,
all right, I know a couple of people. Let me
let me set up an interview. So he set up
an interview with with a but the company that's changed
hands or changed names, but at that time it was
Jones lang wutin Right commercial real estate in the city
(05:08):
of New York, and I got an appointment with the
managing director for New York and he sat me brought
they brought me into his office and sat me down
on the couch and I sit there and listened to
him for twenty minutes talk to his girlfriend, and I
got you know, I was just annoyed, no plan, I
(05:28):
wasn't strategic. Got up and knocked on his desk and said,
you know, you know, mister Michael's obviously caught your at
a bad time. I'll see you later. And he's like, honey,
I got to go.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
I got an.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
Asshole in my office. And he hung up the phone.
He's like, who do you think you are? The guy
that had a meeting twenty minutes ago with you? Like
what you know? Why am I waiting? And he's like
sit down. And I had to give him my resume
and it was very contentious. He was making fun of Michigan.
He was making fun I wasn't a was all of
this stuff. And I got the job and his you know,
(06:08):
when when I showed up the first day, I went
to see him and I'm like, why did you give
me this job because we didn't start off on a
good foot. And he's like, no, that's why I hired
you because you weren't going to take any crap from me.
And I wasn't going to hire you because I thought
you were a snot nose punk from the Midwest and
(06:30):
I was just doing a courtesy of my friend. But
if you're not going, if you're going to stand up
to me, then you probably got a shot of standing
up with CFOs and CEOs of other companies. So get
the work. That was my sales training. Get the work.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
So if we if we're doing that, and I mean
the hardest part is once we get past the owner
and we get into the other people selling stuff. If
somebody came to you and there you've got a somebody
that's coachable, young and never really sold but has some energy,
and somebody it's ten years experience in the in the
(07:05):
industry and wants more money. Which one are you banking on?
Typically if they're if they're both about the same personality, Yeah,
I don't care about personality. I think that's overrated in sales.
I want desire and commitment, Yeah, I want I want responsibility.
(07:26):
M everybody's got head trash. Everybody's got what we call
sales DNA. Right, there's always, there's always trouble. The longest
distance on a golf course is the eight inches between
our ears. It's the same in sales, right, So we
got to get out of our own way. And then skills,
the consultative, selling, the reaching, decision makers, all of those skills.
(07:47):
We can teach people that, but I can't teach them
desire and commitment. I can't teach them responsibility.
Speaker 3 (07:53):
So if I got a young person that shows up,
you know that that presents themselves professionally, that shows up
in a in the right the right look and feel,
with energy and like and asks for the job right
that they really want the job, I'll take that over
somebody with you know, ten years experience, because that person
(08:14):
has issues and we have we have to do a
really good job of interviewing that person to uncover what
those issues are to see if they're surmountable.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
So that's a great one because I get lots of people,
and almost everybody is and my thing is sell more
stuff to more people at a better price. You know,
that's kind of the whole the business ethos. So how
do you what questions do you ask that ten year veteran.
So when you're interviewing for a team or you're helping
(08:45):
a team, what are some of the killer questions that
kind of uncover that that baggage, skeletons, everything else that's
happening there.
Speaker 3 (08:54):
Well, there's a bunch of things that we we do
in advance to make sure that we got a good
A good can it? But if we got them in
an interview, there's some structured questions that I'm going to
go through. I'm going to look at their resume and say,
you know, we're going to spend about twenty minutes going
through your resume, and I got questions and concerns about
a few things here right so, and then we would
(09:17):
we would find a position that they had and say,
you know this role here with X y Z company.
Take a minute and think about a job that you
sold based on value. And then I wait and I like, go, okay,
I got one, all right, perfect. Now here's what I
want you to do. Describe to me from start to finish,
(09:42):
hit the major milestones of how you did that. And
what they usually do is start you know with you
know that they that they differentiated themselves, and I'm like,
what does that mean? What do you mean you differentiated yourself?
How did you do that? And I asked you to
start at the begin So I'm going to challenge them
(10:02):
politely and professionally, but I'm going to challenge them because
every resume has a bunch of bullshit in it, especially
a sales resume, So we want to uncover that, right.
I want to keep them on their their heels, So
I'm going to ask them questions about how they selled value,
how they differentiated themselves. Tell me about a situation where
(10:22):
you lost a really deal that you should have won,
and then tell me why, and you get answers like, well,
you know, a competitor won the deal because they were
a better priced or they had a better option. Right,
So they they're looking outside of themselves rights as a
(10:47):
reason the dog ate my homework kind of thing. But
if they if they reflect, it's like, you know what,
I lost that deal because I didn't understand something right,
And then they describe what they didn't understand. I'll take
that all day long, because what that means is that
they're thinking about what they did, they're taking responsibility for it,
(11:09):
and they're trying to get better. That's a way to
find out if somebody is coachable. Those those two questions
around a resume are are are kind of key, and
you could ask somebody what have you done in the
last six months to get better.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
At your role?
Speaker 3 (11:27):
M And it's easy, right, I mean, you've got all
of these tools out there that people could be trying
to trying to learn. Read a freaking book would be
you know, something super simple.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
Right.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
But if they say, yeah, right, there's there's tons of
things that they could list. But if they say, you know, uh,
you know, I listened to you know, be these uh podcasts,
I'd be like, all right, great, which episode did caught
your eye? Which one did you learn something from?
Speaker 2 (11:58):
Right?
Speaker 3 (11:59):
And I'm gonna I'm going to try to pull out
of them, like are they making this stuff up?
Speaker 2 (12:04):
Right?
Speaker 3 (12:05):
If you read a book, tell me, but okay, you know,
tell me what you got out of that book and
how do you use it?
Speaker 2 (12:12):
That's really important.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
It's great to read a book, but then how did
you take something from that book and apply it to
your job?
Speaker 2 (12:18):
That's big because I think a lot of people right now,
everybody wants is looking to increase sales, looking to it
as always so, and they always want to bring on
that that heavyheader from from the across the street or
from X y Z company across the street. So having
these questions is it's killer. So I kind of say
that I wrote this one down but so complete the sentence.
(12:41):
The biggest mistakes business owners are making in today's mark
is believing.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
That salespeople know what they're doing.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
That's amazing, that's cool, saying how how do we gauge that?
How do we how do we put it so that
it's so easy for the salespeople to go out and
deliver or whatever we're doing. How do we make it easier,
better than repeatable.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
I think there's some foundational things that need to be
in place right Your company, your sales organization has to
have a sales process and methodology that they follow through.
It should be stuck in a CRM and it should
people should be held accountable to using it, and people
should be there should be pipeline reviews to make sure
that we got deals working right. That's the foundation that
(13:28):
needs to be there. But here's the thing that I
think most businesses, especially when you got an entrepreneur that's
running it and maybe they sat in the sales seat
for the first few years and they had great success
and they can't figure out why their salespeople can't go
do the same thing that they did. So it really
(13:50):
comes down to you want a salesperson that has the
basic skills to go talk to the person that you
need them to go talk to your your ideal customer.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
Have to give them.
Speaker 3 (14:01):
The entrepreneur has to give that salesperson the questions that
they need to ask that buyer that what matters right
to help them uncovered, they have to give them. The
messaging is at a very high level. It's the messaging
the company sales story, and it's not a pitch.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
Right.
Speaker 3 (14:21):
We should be talking about our products. We should be
talking about our buyer and getting to understand what their
problems are, and we should be qualifying them to determine
if they have a problem that we can solve, and
is that problem big enough that they want to solve it,
and is it costing them money? Right, That's how we
qualify somebody, and it also helps if you're talking to
(14:41):
somebody that can say yes, right, like, we need to
know where that where that decision maker lies in the organization.
The bigger the company, the more of those people are,
the bigger the group that has to be sold to.
That's why I love those the companies that are in
that ten to time twenty million. Right, there's not a
(15:02):
committee that you got to go deal with. There's no RFP. Right,
you can go talk to the to the decision makers
and help them see that you have something that might
help them get better at whatever they're struggling with.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
And it's still it's still their big checkbook. I mean
it's still they're still owners in the company. There's still this.
Once you move to shareholders and other owners and people
that aren't actually interacting with the sales delivery process, you
lose a lot of DNA there.
Speaker 3 (15:32):
I think it's yeah, it's almost sterile. And it becomes
you know, they're gonna they're gonna stick with the status quo.
They're gonna they're gonna worry more about did I make
a good decision. If I switched this, I got to
admit that I might have been wrong or partially wrong. Right,
And and an entrepreneur just wants to get it right.
(15:54):
That business owner really just wants to get their business
ready to sell, or they want their business to grow,
and you know, go back to the salespeople. We got
to give them those those tools that they need. They
have skills, they have mindset, but they don't have the words,
and we got to give it to them. We got
to give it to them fast, right, and we got
(16:15):
to make it simple, right. And it's not a script, right,
because if you give a salesperson a script, they then
you got to give the buyer a script. And they
don't want to read a script, right. It's not a play.
They're going to do their things. So we have to
anticipate these problems. And an entrepreneur business owner thinks that
the salesperson will figure it out, and they won't. I mean,
(16:38):
if they do, it'll take forever.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
Yeah, pardon said. And we believe that. You think though,
it's got to be easy because I've been able to
get it to this spot, and that means everybody should
be able to sell the same way and understand the
client and do all that type of stuff. So what's
the most expensive yes that a business owner can say
to a prospect? Most expensive yes, giving them that's a
(17:02):
that's a really good question, and I think it's it's
saying yes to.
Speaker 3 (17:10):
The salesperson that you know for their own business there
to hire their to hire their team, saying yes to
the wrong person because it because it sets you back
in time, It sets you back in resources that you're
going to put into this person. And and the real,
the real cost is that once you realize it, they
(17:32):
still don't do anything about it. They they're they're afraid
to have an empty spot. They're afraid to get rid
of the person, and you know it, That to me
is putting the wrong people in the seat. Hire people
talk about hiring slow, hire smart, hire the right person,
and it doesn't have anything to do with industry experience.
(17:54):
It's it's it's getting the right person for your role
that understands your buyer. And that is easier to do
than people think.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
So, now we've got new person out selling and they
haven't sold as much and they're not us, and they
haven't they don't know all the responses to everything else.
So what's the most expensive yes that they can give away?
That screws your business? Selling something you can't do right?
Speaker 3 (18:20):
Given promising right, because you're going to piss off your
operations people. You're manufacturing people right if that salesperson goes
out and say oh, yeah, yeah, we can do that, right,
because they're trying to please a buyer and they add
something in that they can't do and then everybody looks
bad because you can't deliver it, and then certain companies
will try to figure it out, well, this is how
(18:42):
we're going to reach into that market. No, stick to
what you're really good at. Get good at something before
you offer it, or if you're going to go someplace
that you're not really good at it, then you need
to bring that to the buyer and say, look, we'll
partner with you on this and we'll work through it
with you and we'll do a pilot program. But this
(19:04):
isn't our expertise. So if you want to partner with
us to work through it, but that's not a great scenario.
But that expensive yes is saying yes to something that
isn't what your your core offering is always gets you
in trouble.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
So when you're when you're teaching people and you're working
with with sales teams and getting people in moving in
the right direction, do you help them like with a
we do do list and we don't do list? So
do you have a like a no go x's and
check tech marks when you're teaching people about their sales
(19:40):
process and also the sales stuff that they're actually getting
out there, because sometimes it always comes back down to
the owner not delivering the right Here's here's exactly what
Dave Smith, our ideal client wants, and here's the things
that we cannot sell him.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
Well, it's it starts, I think, is when you hire
the person, you want to understand that they have a
basic understanding of who your buyer is and they've had
some experience, not necessarily in your industry, but tangentially.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
Right.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
Yes, if you're calling on a CFO, who else calls
on CFOs?
Speaker 2 (20:16):
So that's one.
Speaker 3 (20:17):
Right, you can pull somebody from an adjacent market at
our niche. But what you got to do that first
thirty to ninety days, right, is onboard that new salesperson
with the right information and think of it as building
the house. You start with the foundation. Here's Dave Smith,
(20:39):
who that's who we work with. Here's what they like,
Here's what they don't like. Here's their typical problems. They
have these problems. We can't help them with those, right,
and they're going to bring that up and you've got
to help them. See, we're experts in these three things, right,
and you got to get them to understand that. And
then you want them to be clear about what it
(21:00):
is that you're offering does not in the context of
features and benefits, but in the context of solution problems
that we can reduce, right, because that buyer cares about
three things, saving time, making or saving money and mitigating
risk yep. Right in what they have. They probably have
(21:26):
a solution that's working right now, and the person that
you're talking to as a salesperson probably made the decision
to put that solution in place five years ago, three
years ago, ten years ago, six months ago. And if
it's not working the way they want it to, they
got to be able to say, I screwed up, I
made a mistake, I need to go here. Are they
(21:47):
going to be willing to carry that water up the
hill to whoever's making the you know, because ultimately they
got to answer to somebody, that buyer unless we're talking
to the CEO, and that CEO still has to admit
they were wrong. They got to admit it to themselves
or maybe to a board. So if we're not giving
(22:08):
them the tools that they need, early on in this process,
and they need to be product experts. Yes, but the
first thing that they need to understand to go out
there and start talking to people is what those problems
are and how we talk about them, what questions we ask.
And that happens in that onboarding process, which most places
like they want to teach you about the product. They
(22:29):
want to teach you about how it's made. They want
to teach you about quality. All important, but not at
the beginning. You want them to sell. You got to
make it super simple. I sold a very technical product
to really smart people and I'm like, how.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
Does this work?
Speaker 3 (22:48):
And they're like, well, we got this thing and goes
off and this thing happens. I'm like, okay, so we
got inputs and outputs. Yeah, so if this input comes in,
the output is these flashy things and it makes noise. Yeah, okay,
now I understand how this thing works. It's just a
control panel. Now what do they care about? And once
I got that down took a couple of weeks, but
(23:10):
I had to go do it. Most candidates won't. Yeah,
we need to give it to them. We need to
make it easy so they can go faster and get
them get them traction quickly, because it's we lose we
lose that that new hire if we're not giving them
the things they need to be successful, and they don't
know to ask for it, They're they're afraid to look dumb.
(23:35):
All of those things are happening, and it's really the
business owner's responsibility.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
And you built a bunch of tools. The bunch of
things that you have on the website, and what with's
the website again.
Speaker 3 (23:46):
The Helix Sales Development dot com.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
Helix Sales Development dot com and you have a quite
a few tools. What's your favorite tool on there? What's
your go to starting tool? If you're you're working with
somebody and you're working with a team that that some
you could go to on there and look at and say, hey,
I need to need to really look at my sales process.
Speaker 3 (24:06):
Well, I want to look at the team, and I
want to look at what they think they know. So
we look at twenty one critical core competencies and I
can get that figured out and with a tool that
takes about forty five minutes for that individual to answer
some questions. So I get an MRI. Do they have
(24:30):
the will to sell? Do they have that desire and commitment, responsibility.
What motivates them? Right, Because motivation is important. But I
might be motivated by money, and Bob over here, the
other sales guy might be motivated by intrinsically and wants
to really be part of something, wants to learn, wants
to get better. So the context in which we talk
to these new people matters. So I want to understand
(24:53):
that piece, and then I want to understand what's going
on in their head.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
What's the head trash? Right?
Speaker 3 (24:58):
Do they need everybody to love them to be able
to make friends. They got to have a great relationship
to be able to sell. That's going to get in
the way of asking tough questions. Can they talk about money?
Can they talk about big dollars? Because if your product
costs one hundred thousand dollars and they think five thousands
a lot of money, they're going to struggle to get
somebody to realize that, you know, the one hundred thousand
(25:19):
dollars solution is going to save them a million dollars
over the course of nine months, So they're going to
have trouble with that.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
In general, the.
Speaker 3 (25:25):
Skills, the skills of reaching decision makers and prospecting and
being consultative. Those are things that are easier to change.
We can do that with coaching and training, and it's
a it really really, that's the tool that gives us
(25:46):
the start. Do we have the right people in the
right seats?
Speaker 2 (25:50):
Are they are? They?
Speaker 3 (25:51):
Are we able to get them to grow? Because you
already got them on the team. We got to give
them a shot to elevate. But if they push back
and they don't want to do it, next right, because
we need we need this to happen. So we can
look at this and like, look, you got seven salespeople.
Two of them are responsible for seventy five percent of
(26:13):
your revenue. Two at the bottom. Why are they here?
Would you hire them?
Speaker 2 (26:19):
Again?
Speaker 3 (26:20):
Well, knowing what you know now, well probably not. Why
are they here? Well, we have a territory that's empty.
Would it be better to have an empty territory that
motivates you to go find the right person than to
have this person out there representing your brand?
Speaker 2 (26:35):
Right? So, those those.
Speaker 3 (26:37):
Things are to me the best tool to to to
get things started, to know where to go and create
the right priorities.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
You've had lots of successes. What what do you think
is your your biggest missed opportunity in business that you've
somebody asked you to do, or somebody you saw something
that you didn't act on it. And what question would
you have asked either the person as you were buying
or yourself that you wish you would have gone back
and done.
Speaker 3 (27:07):
For me, it would have been making the investment in
some training for myself earlier in my career.
Speaker 2 (27:17):
Right.
Speaker 3 (27:18):
Yes, we talked about this in your podcast, that we
don't get a lot of training as a new salesperson,
at least when we were going. So I think there's
a responsibility as an individual if we want to be
a sales professional, we need to get better and we
need to make some investments in ourselves. Listening to a podcast,
(27:42):
you know, listening to reading a book and applying it,
but actually going out and getting some training is something
that we should be looking to do ourselves. So if
I probably waited fifteen years to make that investment in
my self and I would have made a lot more money,
(28:05):
I didn't want to calculate what I would have made.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
Isn't that crazy?
Speaker 3 (28:08):
Faster?
Speaker 2 (28:08):
Yeah? So you talk about golf Tiger Woods and his
prime had seven coaches, you know from from putting to swing,
but then pr too, speaking to finance to he had
he probably should have had marriage counseling one. But in general,
so it's like even professionals all have coaches. Every every
football team, everybody else has a defensive coach, as offensive coach,
(28:31):
a quarterback coach, a kicker coach. It's like they're the
great ones.
Speaker 3 (28:36):
Like Michael Jordan, he had he paid his own money
for a coach that made him do things that were
were so fundamental, right, I mean, he was motivated more
so than anybody else on the court, but he had
nutritional coaches, but he had he had people that would
just help him drive his his skill set so that
(28:58):
he would get better.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
And it was relentless.
Speaker 3 (29:01):
And if if, if you're not doing that for yourself,
I think from a personal view, that's what would be
my answer doing that sooner And I think from a
from a business point of view, is not training people first.
Training is a waste of time. If you're not training
without the foundation and the fundamentals. If you go ahead
(29:22):
and just train a bunch of people and you're not
going to coach them on it, and you're not going
to make them follow a process that's tied to the training.
You've just pissed away a ton of money and resources,
and you know it's like, oh, here's the next thing.
And I see, you know, I get people call me
all the times say hey, can you help me with
you know, help my team's win rates? Yeah, sure, happy
(29:43):
to Like why do you think it's win rates? Well,
you know, I win rates dropped from forty two percent
to thirty three percent. Like okay, and you think that's
because well they're they're not closing rate, so you know,
five questions later, like, that's not the problem. The problem
is their sales manager came in and said, you know,
we need to have five times value in your pipeline
(30:04):
than what your goal is. So the salespeople just start
stuffing the pipeline with a bunch of crap. Right, Their
win rates dropped because the sales manager changed the game. Yes,
that's your problem, and they're like, well, how is that
tie in?
Speaker 2 (30:18):
Right?
Speaker 3 (30:18):
So not what we've identified the problem twenty minutes.
Speaker 2 (30:24):
That's definitely the truth, and people don't And that the
hardest part is when you have an owner that is
eat and breathed his business the whole time, or builds
it himself knows everything about it, but is not always
the best salesperson and figures everybody just knows it through osmosis.
And that's that's the worst business. And we talked about
selling businesses. That's the hardest part is if if the
(30:48):
owner is the business, it's not really a business. It's
just it's not you got a job.
Speaker 3 (30:54):
Yeah, it's a it's a it's a it's a job
that you get to sign your own check. But it's
probably not as many zeros as you'd like it to be.
Speaker 2 (31:02):
M hmm. That that is good. So you have you
have your podcast Sales and Cigars. What's what's the number
one thing that you think you took away from them
the last in the last ten episodes obviously prior to me,
but the ten episodes before that, what were what was
your favorite takeaway?
Speaker 3 (31:24):
I like, I like people that push push on ideas
that I have and and sometimes you know, they they're
they're they're skeptical because that's one of the things I
teach teach salespeople. So if you ask, you make a statement,
somebody pushes back on it, two things could happen, one
(31:45):
or the other. Either you you're like, that's a really
good point. I need to I need to think about
that and maybe implement some of that, right, so you
think different about your situation. And the other one is
like I thought about it, and I'm going to dismiss
that because it doesn't apply here and here and here. Right,
(32:06):
you've put the thought in it, you've analyzed that, you've
done the work. So recently, there was a there was
a gentleman who who thought about marketing in a way
that we just need to sell these courses and these
these little packages, and you sell the ninety seven dollars
(32:29):
course and then you sell them up to a five
hundred dollars course and then you sell them.
Speaker 2 (32:33):
Right.
Speaker 3 (32:33):
And maybe I'm not saying it doesn't work, Yeah, but
I don't think it's the solution for every business. There's
usually core problems with a sales organization. So I listened
to his ideas and I dismissed them, you know, later on,
(32:55):
not in the episode. I didn't make them look like
a goofball. But you know, that idea may work for
certain people if they're trying to build something that goes
in that direction. But I think if it's always about
the fundamentals, are we doing the right basic the right
blocking and tackling.
Speaker 2 (33:12):
Are we doing the right footwork? Are we are?
Speaker 3 (33:16):
We have we mastered the basics, because if you haven't
mastered the basics, you're going to you're going to screw
up along the way. It doesn't matter if it's manufacturing
or sales. You've got to have the basics in place.
And for for sales people, for for a sales organization,
it's a process or a process in Britain, and and
(33:38):
then being able to implement it and create accountability around
it and get everybody singing from the same hymnal that works.
Speaker 2 (33:47):
Okay, So coming to the end of the show, So
where do you want people to find you? Where? Where
do we find you to get more information, to contact you,
to follow the podcast? All that funds stuff. So I'll
put it in the show notes. But where do we
find you? The podcast?
Speaker 3 (34:04):
You can get wherever you get podcasts right at sales
and cigars. For me, if you want to understand how
I think, because I'm not for everybody right, I'm really transparent.
I'm a misplaced New Yorker. I'm very I'm very upfront.
I don't do a lot of sugarcoating you're an Indiana guy.
(34:26):
I'm more like Bobby Knight than I am one of
the current coaches that's running around, right. And I don't
throw chairs or you know, but and I and I
and I try not to yell, but I have the
same level of passion, right, And so you can hear
what how I think and what.
Speaker 2 (34:45):
I do if you follow me on LinkedIn.
Speaker 3 (34:49):
I'm constantly putting out stuff to make people think, to
give them an idea of and I stay pretty focused otherwise.
The website, like Sales Development dot Com, I'm doing something
there that's going to launch here in the next month
and a half where I'm going to be putting a
(35:11):
lot more transparency on my website, okay, including pricing and
scope of work I want. It's really complicated to buy
what we buy, what we do if we're if we
flip over and we're looking at Dave Smith. Dave Smith's
got a lot of stuff to figure out. So I'm
going to give people without having to pick up the phone.
I'm going to give them an idea of how it works,
(35:31):
why we do it, and roughly what it costs to
make the make less friction for them to understand what
it looks like to work with us.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
Yeah, that makes it. It's definitely nobody knows how to
buy consultancy because they don't know what it's solving. Usually
they know it's gonna get them more sales, but they
don't know what they have to rip apart to put
back together to do all that type of stuff. So
it's is very, very difficult because it's not a washing
machine or an air conditioner or anything else does have
erect direct outcomes. So the rewind moment, this is the okay,
(36:05):
and I'm not going to call you a way and Walters.
Walter's come to the end of the episode and we're
going to rewind because Walter's been amazing. But this is
the thing that says that was a fabulous idea. I
want to listen to the whole half an hour. So
what's the rewind moment for you? The one thing that
you want people to take away and put in their
(36:26):
back pocket and use today.
Speaker 3 (36:29):
I think it goes back to the idea of hiring
the right salespeople and having some structure to your interview process. Right,
if you're hiring salespeople the same way you hire everybody
else in your organization, that's the first thing you need
to change. Because we're different. We can control an interview,
we can take place as we want, and often that
(36:49):
that sale that they make in the interview is the
last good sale they make for your company. So you've
got to get that right. You need to write people
in the right seats.
Speaker 2 (36:59):
That's amazing, So write people in the right seats. So
Waltered Sales and Cigars. It's been fabulous having you on
the show. Thank you for sharing all sorts of sales
ideas and some fun So thank you very much for
coming on the gros Selling Entire podcast.
Speaker 3 (37:15):
I appreciate the opportunity to share, share some thinking it
was fun.
Speaker 2 (37:21):
See you soon.
Speaker 1 (37:24):
Thanks for joining us on Grow Sell and Retire. For
more information tools or to book one of our team members,
to work with your team business, or to speak at
your event or conference, visit rockfind dot co dot uk.
If you like the podcast, you'll love one of BD's
three books, The Assistant Purchase, True Gravity, and The Book.
The podcast is based on, Grow, Sell and Retire. If
(37:47):
you want to work for the rest of your life,
that is your business. If you don't, that is ours.
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