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[EDITOR’S NOTE: This is a replay of the SALES GAME CHANGERS LIVE Webinar hosted by Fred Diamond, Host of the Sales Game Changers Podcast, on July 8, 2020. It featured sales leaders Vince Burruano of JK Moving and Boomer Muth of West Creek Financial.]

Register for Friday’s CREATIVITY IN SALES: The Most Critical Sales Strategies for Succeeding in Post-Disruption Times with Ed Robinson here.

Find Vince on LinkedIn here. Find Boomer on LinkedIn here.

EPISODE 251: Sales Leaders Vince Burruano and Boomer Muth Explain Why Empathetic Selling is More Critical Than Ever Right Now

VINCE’S TIP TO EMERGING SALES LEADERS: “Crisis does not build character; it reveals it and this pandemic has made us a better team, I saw some people who are not necessarily in official leader capacity step up, grab some people who were newer, put them under their wing, talk to them every day, help them through deals. These are the people you want to go to battle with, these are the types of people that you want in you organization because you know if they can be there in the difficult times, they’ll make even more hay during the good times. That was a great surprise.”

BOOMER’S TIP TO EMERGING SALES LEADERS: “Are you going to be 1% better tomorrow than you were today? If you’re not, change that. The best advice I’ve ever had in life is don’t give up and always improve and realize that we’re actually experiencing something that we’re going to look back on as a game changing experience in our lives both personally and professionally. If you’re not looking at it that way, do something different so you can look at it that way.”

Fred Diamond: Boomer Muth, it’s great to have you on today’s Sales Game Changers Live webcast, you’re the president and co-founder of West Creek Financial, it is a fintech company, you work in the consumer retail space helping consumers purchase their products from large retailers. Most people say here that [their biggest challenge] is mindset, it’s staying motivated, some people say there’s also the distractions. Luckily, not a whole lot of people are challenged with t he working from home issues. We’re excited to have you, you were a very popular guest on the Sales Game Changers podcast when your show went live. Boomer, let’s get to it. How are you doing right now, how are things going for your business?

Boomer Muth: I would describe business as stressful but also thankful. Our retail volumes are down a lot so our sales volumes are down significantly, that’s not wildly exciting but as you mentioned, we’re a consumer finance company and thankfully due to government stimulus and unemployment we haven’t seen delinquencies rise for our consumers. When you’re in a financial industry it’s not just about as much as you can sell, you also have to credit risk underwrite as well. The credit risk underwriting is what can really do you in, I’m a big poker fan so I say you want to make sure you have a chip and a chair. We certainly have a chip and a chair so we can deal with the volumes being down, we couldn’t deal with delinquencies being up. That’s where we’re at right now.

Fred Diamond: Are you seeing people going back in the stores? Again, you guys are on the front edge of that, cities, states, localities, everyone’s moved into phase one at some level, stores have begun to open up for the last month. Have you seen consumers increasing, going into retail establishments?

Boomer Muth: Certainly, and I think all of us can look at this, it’s public data. There’s mobility data if you guys haven’t looked at Worldometers and there’s mobility data by actual regions as well. It depends geographically, we’re a national company so we do have a presence in 10,000 retailers across the country and I think where retail volumes are up are probably where you might expect it. Retail volumes never really dropped for Wyoming and Montana where people can social distance but retail volumes are still very down for New York Metropolitan. It varies throughout the country and it’s been an interesting trend to watch.

Fred Diamond: We’ll ask in a few minutes here about your conversations with your customers. We’ve had some people on the Sales Game Changers Live with their businesses flourishing because they sell to federal government or they sell to hospitals, but then we have people who sell to the entertainment space and obviously all the arenas are closed. It’s been an interesting mix, I’m curious how your conversations with your customers have evolved.

Vince Burruano, it’s great to have you on the Sales Game Changers Live. JK Moving, I haven’t left my house too much during the day so I haven’t seen your big beautiful trucks that people who live in the D.C. Metro region see wherever you go. You’re the VP of Sales for Commercial Sales, you help businesses move, obviously a lot of people have been home over the last couple of months so how are you doing? How have you seen your business evolve over the last couple months and where you’re going?

Vince Burruano: Fred, thank you for having me on today. It has been a challenge, I’m very fortunate to be part of a great team both from sales or admin and our operation staff and we made the decision in the very beginning when this was all going on that business was going to change and we had to create our own economy. We had to go and look for other opportunities that weren’t so apparent and it gives me a lot of pride to say that our revenues year over year are actually up over last year, that we really as a team figured it out, did some things that we normally don’t do. We realized that we had people resources, we had vehicle resources and just went out there and tried to find ways to help people. You’ve got to get out and talk to your clients. Alex Goldfayn just had a post too about the absenteeism of salespeople, that they’re not using the phone and they’re definitely not using enough email to stay in contact but there’s tons of opportunity out there if you can find it and if you ask the question. People need help, you just got to be a little bit more proactive.

Fred Diamond: You mentioned Alex Goldfayn, he’s actually going to be a guest on the Creativity in Sales program in August. He of course wrote Revenue Growth Habit, he’s written two books since then, I have a big stack of books here behind me. Just curiously, Vince, people haven’t been in the office too much in the last couple of months for reasons that we’re all familiar with. You just said you want your people to meet with people, how have you responded to that and have you been encouraging them to do?

Vince Burruano: A lot of what we’ve been doing is initiating conversations via email because everybody seems to be tied to their laptop. From there, we’re getting phone conversations but we’re actually able to meet with people virtually. Just as we’re doing today, we’ve had situations where we’ve done a virtual survey of someone’s office base to help them plan a move. Instead of it being very typical, they’re actually looking for more services including packing and prepping their IT equipment that normally they would do on their own, but since there’s nobody in the office they need some more assistance with. Just being there to say, “How can we help you and what can we do to make your life easier?” has made a huge difference.

Fred Diamond: Boomer, you’re the co-founder and president of your company, you were also a guest on the Sales Game Changers podcast so I think you’re a sales guy at heart. Our interview with you was one of my favorites and it was a lot of fun, we talked about some really interesting and exciting things. People who are watching the Sales Game Changers webcast live want to know what they should be doing today. Everyone’s world as a sales professional has been turned upside down, you did have the luxury of getting better but now it’s like you’ve got to be better today because the whole world is going through a similar challenge. What are your priorities right now as a sales leader this week? Again, it’s the week of July 8th, 2020. What are you focused on right now as a sales leader? We actually did your interview at your office, it was nice, thriving, lot of juice, lot of excitement in the building. What are you doing right now as the sales leader and with your people?

Boomer Muth: As you mentioned, this virtual environment does make things a little more difficult. I know one of your guests – and I think I mentioned it in our podcast – had said, “When you’re looking to recruit people you’re looking for people that are already motivated because you can’t motivate people but you can inspire them.” What I think we found in this virtual environment is that people still have that same level of motivation that they had, maybe even more so motivated because I think discomfort and stress can be a big motivator. What’s a lot more difficult in this environment is inspiration, when you’re face to face with somebody that the energy is infectious whereas in this virtual environment, one thing we did quickly is we made it mandatory for everyone on every virtual call to have their video on. There would be this people that would come in and if you can’t read their face, you don’t know how they’re feeling. That’s one thing from a leadership perspective we’ve done with our team.

I think what we’re doing as a company and what I think a lot of us need to do is think about innovating. I know people are saying that a lot about innovation and I think what this means to somebody like us at this time is you can’t sell the way you’ve been selling because your solutions to people’s problems have to change because their problems have changed. It becomes even more important to think ground-up of, “Their problems have changed, maybe my product is still a solution but the way that I present it as a solution has to change because what their problem is, is different.” I think that really gets to something Vince talked about on his podcast which I really appreciated, which is this discovery process of your client. Vince talked about how important it is, nobody wants to be sold but everybody wants to buy and really discovering their problems allows you to create this innovation around how you present your solution.

Fred Diamond: Vince, same question for you. Boomer makes a really interesting point, sometimes you had months to work with a customer, today customers have challenges they’ve never had before. To go through a lot of the asking questions, discovery part, one thing that we’ve been hearing from a lot of the past guests in our Friday Creativity in Sales thought leaders is you need to know where they are because for the first time in our sales history we know the challenges that everybody is facing. If your customer is a sports team, you know they’re not selling tickets so you don’t need to ask them, “What are your challenges right now?” “I don’t know, the fact that there’s no sports so nobody’s coming to our arena?” You’ve got to go to them with some ideas that you’re seeing with other people. What are you focused on right now, Vince, what are your priorities? I know you’re a student of sales, you and I have spoken many times about some of the great authors and you’re a great reader of books, you just mentioned the great Alex Goldfayn. What are your priorities right now today?

Vince Burruano: That’s a great question. My priorities today are very similar as they are all the time, it’s around acquiring talent and developing talent and those two things remain focal points for me right now. I’m in the process of onboarding a couple of new hires and we’re actively recruiting some additional sales professionals because we remain optimistic that while things have changed, things can still improve. We might be in a “new normal”, we may never go back to the old normal but that doesn’t mean that business won’t carry forward. I think to some of the points that you all had brought up earlier, conversations with customers have changed and I think questions are great and qualifying is very important. I think preparation doesn’t get talked about enough, to your point about going in and saying, “Okay, you run a sports arena, you’re not selling tickets”, that’s an obvious and you should be educated about that. Helping the client understand what’s the implication off of that, what else can you do? There’s a local movie theater near us that can’t sell movie tickets so they’re selling popcorn and they run it out to your car so people in the neighborhood are buying popcorn just to help support the fact that he’s trying to keep some kids employed. I still think that the preparation and qualifying are important but also, trying to help people find that undiscovered country. What maybe can you help them with that they haven’t thought about which is going to create value and it’s going to differentiate you from anybody else?

Fred Diamond: That’s what a true professional does. He or she puts themselves into the future of how they can help their customers solve some problems. We actually have gotten our first question here so Boomer, why don’t you go first on this? “Can I still be empathetic while pursuing new business?” Thank you very much, that question comes from Susan in New Jersey so thank you, Susan. Let’s talk about empathy, empathy has come up a lot over the Sales Game Changers Live and we even got a question about a month ago where someone said, “I’m tired of being empathetic.” Boomer, what’s your opinion on that? Talk a little bit about as we call the ‘e word’, empathy, it’s a core of being a sales professional but I’m not sure if everybody really understands what that means today.

Boomer Muth: I love this, I’m pretty passionate about empathy, Fred, so this is a great question. The idea that empathy is mutually exclusive from moving your business forward, I strongly believe that’s a flawed way of thinking. Empathy is a necessity to move your business forward and not just from a sales perspective but empathy in every interaction you have. I’d like to talk about why it is because I actually think there’s scientific reasons behind it but I’ll stay focused on the sale side of it. We as human beings have a need to be understood and a problem we often make is people hear empathy and they say, “No, I’m a sympathetic person.” Sympathy is a different thing from empathy, empathy is a desire to understand the lens at which someone else looks at their world and a lens at which they’re experiencing things. Something actually happens when you show someone else that you understand them, it actually creates a release of oxytocin in their brain and that release of oxytocin is also known as the love chemical, so it creates a bond to you.

One tool that I like to use that’s really powerful and I’m sure many of our listeners are familiar with this, is labeling the other person’s emotions and using a, “It seems like” or, “It feels like” or, “It sounds like” and even if you mislabel it, it’s still a powerful tool. An example I would say, let’s say we sell into retailers, let’s say you go to a retail shop and through conversation or through discovery you find out that the person you’re trying to sell to was a college athlete. You now understand that that college athlete is probably very disciplined and probably has a lot of structure so you could say something like, “It feels like you’re really structured in the way that you manage your business.” In that process you’re probably making the right guess but also in that process you’re showing that person that you understand them and you understand how they think and who they are and they feel a bond to you. Let’s say you’re wrong, what they’re going to say is, “No, actually I’m pretty bad at that” but now you understand something and now you know they’re not organized so maybe your tool can be a tool to help that, and that goes back to that discovery that Vince was talking about.

The real power in sales is trying to understand another person’s point of view in their lens and I actually think it’s a beautiful thing that’s happening in society right now. We see it in the Black Lives movement where people that are of privilege are actually understanding and trying to understand the experiences that people of color are having in our country. I think the outcome of that allows us to become closer to each other and it creates a release of oxytocin for all of us so that there actually is more love. I guess I made that a bigger answer than you had asked but obviously it’s something I’m passionate about.

Fred Diamond: It’s actually a great answer on two sides, one is sales professionals need to understand how to be empathetic. On the Sales Game Changers podcast the concept of being an empathetic seller came up all the time, this was before the pandemic and then once the pandemic kicks in, everyone needs to be. Vince, you’re dealing with people that your sales team is selling to that are in the middle of big challenges. People are talking about how they may never go back into an office again, some people are not going to go back until September, some are not going to go back until January, there’s a lot of discussions about the office of the future, we had moved to this open type of environment and now people are saying, “Maybe we should move back to offices” or whatever it might be. How are you working with your sales professionals to be empathetic and understand your customer is changing every minute?

Vince Burruano: That’s a great question and I agree with Boomer, I think people misunderstand empathy and I think more than anything there’s a feeling at times that when you’re in business there’s no room for feelings. I think what people miss is that it’s people interacting with people and it’s emotional intelligence that you have to have in working with people and particularly now understanding the stress that they’re under in having to make decisions and not having all the information to feel comfortable, that they’re really looking for partners that can help anchor them and make them feel more comfortable about where they are and where they’re going. We spend a lot of time from a sales perspective doing that but I don’t want to lose track of the internal focus because as sales leaders it’s important to understand that people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. It’s by that that you’re able to be a much more effective leader, by working with your staff and then that transfers out to your customers and partners that there’s a trust built all the way through and a willingness to help, understand and be heard.

Fred Diamond: We have another question that comes here from the audience. The question is, “Vince just mentioned stress, how is he helping his people with the stress that this new world has encumbered upon us?” Vince and then Boomer as well – Boomer, you have a large sales organization, Vince, you have a large sales organization as well. We’re all going through not just the pandemic and the shift but if you’re a mother or father with an 8 year old you’re a home school teacher for the first time, probably. It’s the middle of the summer, camps are cancelled so you’re also a camp counselor, you haven’t been able to see your parents over the summer, you’re afraid to eat food from restaurants, whatever it might be, everybody is dealing with stress let alone the stress that comes with being a high performing sales professional. Vince, we’ll go with you first and then Boomer, your thoughts. How are you helping your people deal with this new world of stress?

Vince Burruano: It’s an interesting question. I think the first thing is you’ve got to be present for that, you’ve got to be available. I’ve got a fairly large team – Boomer’s team is much larger, but I have to be available early in the morning, I take calls late at night and on the weekends and often times it’s conversations about business. It’s also just conversations about life and I think that going back to that whole empathy discussion before, people just need some sounding boards and if they trust you, they want to bounce ideas and thoughts and feelings and know that it’s okay. I think we’re all in a place where we’ve not experienced this before so we have no idea what to expect and everybody needs a little bit of a hug and reassurance of where they are and that there’s a group of people to support them and if you need help with your kids or family issues, just ask. You’re going to find that more people particularly during times of crisis want to help other people. I think, Boomer, you were hinting to this. People want the opportunity to come together more than they want to be divided but you’ve got to start and sometimes just ask for help or say, “I think I might need some help, do you have some ideas?”

Fred Diamond: Boomer, how about you? How have you been coaching your team along? Again, I mentioned before, we did your interview at your location, a lot of buzz, it’s a beautiful office, a lot of energy, a lot of people on the phones helping their customers. How have you been helping them move along with the stress?

Boomer Muth: It’s crazy, it keeps coming back to empathy. First, I think you have to understand that the stress that each individual in your team is experiencing is not the same as their peer’s stress. On those one-on-ones you have to do that discovery, you have to ask those questions, you have to show them that you understand that stress because part of that stress is this feeling of, “No one else understands.” Once you get to that place I think then you can start offering solutions to your team and one thing that’s consistent that I find here is that a lot of the stress is related to the discomfort of the unknown. One thing I’ve always told my team is that we actually want a culture of discomfort because that’s where growth is, no one has ever grown being comfortable.

So, reminding them of, “You’ve had experiences of discomfort and stress in your past, how is that reflected in your present?” I think very often they come to the conclusion that, “Yeah, I remember that, I’m much better because of that.” Getting around ourselves as a team of saying, “This discomfort is a gift” allows us to then take a positive perspective around, “What are we going to turn this into? What are we going to make of this discomfort, how can we be our best self?” And just creating that energy and that comradery behind that even though each of us individually have different stresses whether it’s, “I have to take care of my kids and work” or, “I can’t get my client to answer the phone.” Coming together for that purpose is often what helps us at least feel understood in that comradery.

Fred Diamond: We have another question here from the audience. This is a follow on to what you both were saying, but what do you expect right now from your sales professionals? Thank you very much for that question – actually, it’s another guy named Vince. The question is, “What do you expect from your salespeople?” You were talking about one-on-ones and things like that but here it is again, it’s July, we’re all hoping that we’re going to come out of this at some level. One of our guests a couple weeks ago said that it’s going to be the sales organization that’s going to bring our companies out of the [Inaudible 26:21]. We don’t need to talk about how long it’s going to take and things like that but what do you expect today, July 8th? Do you expect them to make new prospecting calls? Do you expect them to try to get physical meetings? Vince, why don’t you go first? You manage an enterprise sales organization, you sell B to B to companies. Then Boomer, the question for you, what do you expect from your salespeople right now?

Vince Burruano: Another great question from the audience, I expect them to focus on the fundamentals. I used to coach youth sports and it was one of the things we always focused on is you’ve got to do the right things correctly and then you worry about the level of activity around that. With all that’s going on if we compartmentalize that a little bit that when they are focused on work, focused on doing the right things and doing enough of them, I think that they can find their way. I think right now the biggest danger is sitting back and waiting for it to just happen and I don’t think that was ever the case, I think the difference between successful salespeople and unsuccessful is that successful salespeople go out and do all the little things that nobody else wants to do and that’s why they become so much more successful or such a high performer whether it’s making contact with your clients, sending an email, a thank you card, whatever it is in little things.

Maybe stopping by if you know they’re going to be in the office even for a few minutes just to say hello from a social distance point of view to say, “I care enough to make time.” I think it’s those little things that people remember and it’s important because your real calling card is how you make people feel. With every interaction you’re going to make somebody feel a certain way. Boomer, I think you were talking about this quite a bit, how are you going to leave that person feeling about you? If they feel that you can be trusted and you’ve got their back, from a business point of view they’re always going to want to work with you and from a personal point of view they’re going to always want you to be part of your life no matter what it is that you go on to do. I think that’s really important.

Fred Diamond: Boomer, how about you? What are your expectations today? You’re not just a sales leader, you’re also the owner of the company, you’re the president, you’re the co-founder of West Creek Financial. You have a large sales organization, what do you expect them to be doing right now? By the way, are your people back in the office or is everybody still working from home?

Boomer Muth: We’re making the offices optional so people can choose to come into the office if they can but we have a remote sales force outside throughout the country so many of them are out in the field. I think expectations for the sales team right now is for them to build those relationships because right now the retailers have a lot of stress and retailers, our solutions are not going to solve the majority of their problems. So, us trying to shove our solution down their throat is not going to solve their current problem but coming out of this, our solution is going to be a huge part of their problem solving. If they’re just focused on a yes and just focused on the close and trying to get a one-call close or a one-visit close, they’re setting themselves up for failure. But, if what they’re doing is really building strong relationships with those retailers and building those good relationships right now then coming out of this when they’re ready to buy, we’ll see a slew of new retailers signing up with us. Those sales reps that don’t have a slew of new retailers, that means they weren’t doing the right things right now over these next few months and they probably won’t have a place at West Creek. While we have a very empathetic sales organization, we also have an extremely high bar and world-class means, to Vince’s point, you do the things that you have to do and you have to do the things that others aren’t doing right now. That is really creating strong relationships because the sale is not a one-call close.

Fred Diamond: Let’s talk about that for a little bit, let’s talk about the customer conversations now. Again, Boomer, you sell to retailers, they’re a big part of what you do and Vince, you sell to office managers, CFOs, business people who are making decisions about moving or expanding or things along those lines. Let’s talk about those physical conversations that are happening right now. Vince mentioned email but let’s talk about when you engage, get them on the Zoom, get them on the phone. Right now, July 8th, we did this interview where a lot of places are entering phase 1, phase 2, Virginia where all three of us are based is now in phase 3 so offices are beginning to open if they choose. Vince, how about you first and then Boomer, tell us about the conversations that you’re having with your customers – if you’re having them – or your salespeople are telling you. What should they be talking about, what’s the tenor? Should they spend an hour just getting to know each other like you mentioned? What do you suggest these conversations should look like right now?

Vince Burruano: I think that the conversation today is very similar to any other time, it’s really understanding your client’s needs. The one thing that I think we’re seeing is that there’s so much uncertainty, they have some general ideas about what they should be doing but between the return-to-office, the challenges with people being remote, they don’t have a playbook to fall back on. They have common sense but there’s nothing for certain and they’re looking for you as a sounding board to share best practices, what other organizations are doing or thinking, what is working if you’ve done a project that’s similar in the recent past. Can you share that, can you share maybe some of the pitfalls and say, “Nobody ever thought about this”?

One of the things that we’re finding today is that most of the time we were doing a lot of moving on nights and weekends when people aren’t in buildings. Now we’re doing all these moves during the day because there’s nobody in the space so the buildings are fine with us doing that and it just changes a lot of things. They’re small things but again going back to you’ve got to not simply hear, you have to listen and you have to get to, “What’s the foundation of their question or concern beyond just what they’re saying? What are they feeling about it and who else in the organization might have concerns and bring that all to the surface?” so you can really deal with it in a positive and constructive way.

Fred Diamond: Boomer, again you’re dealing with a customer base that’s had a lot of challenges because people haven’t been able to go into stores so how have those conversations been going?

Boomer Muth: I think I alluded to it a little bit earlier, we are not top of mind for them right now. What is top of mind for them we need to quickly discover and even though it’s not our product, can we provide a solution for them? Can we refer them to someone, can we share an article with them that helps them frame up their mind so that they can solve their particular problem? Can we help them with creative solutions of marketing so they can drive consumers into their door unrelated to financing? Those are the types of things that we’re really encouraging our team to do. Do you have a product that you can offer for free? Can you get your partner addicted to that product right now over the next three months while they’re not comfortable writing a check so that three months from now they’re ready to write a check? Those are the types of things that I think we need to think about as salespeople right now.

Fred Diamond: We have another question here that came in from the audience. “What’s the most positive thing that’s come out of this for you?” This is from Roger, thank you so much, I’m not sure where he’s from but thanks, Roger. The question is positive, we all know challenges that we’ve had to face but we’re an aspirational group. A lot of companies that we deal with at the Institute for Excellence in Sales were having their best year ever back in March and a lot of people are still holding onto that but things have definitely changed as we talked about. What’s positive? Give us a positive thing as a sales leader, either a surprise or a new policy you’ve put into play that you’re most proud of. Boomer, why don’t you go first?

Boomer Muth: I think the biggest surprise for me that’s made me so appreciative is the resilience of the team that we have and the fact that this challenge has really brought out the best in them. I think for those out there that have their own sales organizations, I think the great thing about a stressful and uncomfortable time is you get to really see what people are made of so hopefully in the back of your head you’re starting to make those ruthless decisions of, “Who’s actually a wartime team member and who’s not?” Because right now we have that gift of finding out who has that strength to really build that world class team. I really look at that stress as positive to figure out who our great people are, that’s pretty much the biggest positive that I’ve seen.

Fred Diamond: Vince, how about you?

Vince Burruano: I agree, Boomer, I think you’re right on target with that. I have a favorite quote, “Crisis does not build character, it reveals it” and I think that this pandemic has really shown, and I’m so fortunate to work with the people I do, that they were there, they were pulling together. I actually think it made us a better team, I saw some people who are not necessarily in official leader capacity step up, grab some people who were newer, put them under their wing, talk to them every day, help them through deals. We had some great efforts and contribution and these are the people you want to go to battle with, these are the types of people that you want in you organization because you know if they can be there in the difficult times, they’ll make even more hay during the good times. That was a great surprise.

Fred Diamond: I want to thank Boomer Muth, I want to thank Vince Burruano for the great ideas, give us one final thought. When we do programs at the Institute for Excellence in Sales we like to give an idea, an action item that people can do today. Again, it’s July 8th, send us off here with something that our listeners around the globe can do today to take their sales career to the next level. Boomer, why don’t you go first and then Vince, you’ll shut us down.

Boomer Muth: Fred, first of all thanks for having me on again, I love your commitment to improving the skills for sales associates, I think what you do every day is phenomenal, the fact that you do this multiple days a week is really giving to the community of salespeople, so thank you for that. If there’s one thing that I will tell people to take from now is do not forget that what’s happening right now is a gift. I know it sounds strange because I know we have this pandemic that’s killing people but for those that are living through this, we are going to be stronger as people and as a society but that’s your choice.

Be grateful for the fact that you’re alive, be grateful and figure out what the hell you’re going to do with it. Are you going to be 1% better tomorrow than you were today? If you’re not, change that. I know it sounds a little generic, Fred, but I think the best advice I’ve ever had in life is don’t give up and always improve and realize that we’re actually experiencing something that we’re going to look back on as a game changing experience in our lives both personally and professionally. If you’re not looking at it that way, do something different so you can look at it that way.

Fred Diamond: Great opportunity to make a difference not just in your life, in your family’s life but in the world. Vince Burruano, give us something people can do today on today’s Sales Game Changers Live.

Vince Burruano: Fred, thank you for having me on, it’s been great and Boomer, it was nice meeting you, we’ve talked quite a bit over the last few days. Mine is on a personal level, I think everybody needs to make the decision to be successful and decide what it is that they’d love to pursue. Then pursue that with all the passion in the world because ultimately you make the decision to define what is success, and what is success for you. It’s not all about money, it’s not all about fame, there’s a lot of things that are there and if anything, this has refocused us in some of the other important parts of our life, our family, our friends, our commitment to others, serving others. Take a look at what means the most to you and then go after it. I can assure you, you’ll be very successful if you follow your passion.

Fred Diamond: Thank you, Vince, thank you, Boomer. Everybody else, thank you so much for joining us today and for listening to today’s podcast.

Transcribed by Mariana Badillo

The post EPISODE 251: Sales Leaders Vince Burruano and Boomer Muth Explain Why Empathetic Selling is More Critical Than Ever Right Now first appeared on Sales Game Changers Podcast.

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KEY MOMENTS
Key lessons from your first few sales jobs: 04:01
Name an impactful sales mentor: 13:19
Two biggest challenges you face today as a sales leader: 19:50
Most important tip: 29:28
How do you sharpen your saw and stay fresh: 33:44
Inspiring thought: 34:47

EPISODE 135: Here’s How Opening for Lynyrd Skynyrd and Hootie and the Blowfish Set Up Boomer Muth and West Creek Financial for High-Growth Sales Success

BOOMER’S FINAL TIP TO EMERGING SALES LEADERS: “Find your passion. If you feel stressed, it’s probably not your passion so find your passion. Find what you really care about, create a vision, commit to that vision, and share it with everybody in your life.”

Boomer Muth is the co-founder and Chief Revenue Officer at West Creek Financial in Glen Allen near Richmond.

Prior to taking over the reins here, he founded a home healthcare business

He also was an analyst at Capital One in the beginning of his career.

Past guest Will Fuentes introduced us to Boomer.

Find Boomer on LinkedIn!

Fred Diamond:  Why don’t you tell us a little more about you that we need to know?

Boomer Muth: I’m a big math geek, back in high school I used to do math competitions so you can imagine I was extremely popular. Actually, I offset a little bit by being a musician. I love music, I sing and play bass and guitar. I went to school in mechanical engineering which was enough for me to know I didn’t want to be a mechanical engineer so I started my career at Capital One, decided to start a company while I was at Capital One and now founded West Creek. It’s been my favorite job I’ve ever done in my life.

Fred Diamond: Tell us a little bit about West Creek, tell us what you sell and tell us what excites you about that.

Boomer Muth: We’re a point of sale finance firm, we partner with over 6,500 retailers across the country. When a customer walks into a retailer, mainly furniture, mattress, appliance or tire retailer and they’re looking for financing but can’t get approved for traditional financing, they’ll run an application through our portal and we utilize machine learning, all the geeky statistics to ensure that we are approving the right customers. We do it through a machine learning algorithm and prove all customers automatically within 10 seconds.

Fred Diamond: Who exactly do you sell to? Do you sell to the stores, do you sell to distributors, who are your customers?

Boomer Muth: We’re a B to B to C, so we’re selling into these retailers. We have a sales team of about 60 both inside and outside and they’re mainly trying to present the value of our product to retailers to help empower them to make more sales. We’re selling to people so that they can sell more which is really enjoyable.

Fred Diamond: I’ve got to ask you one quick question. You mentioned in the beginning you were a math geek, how does that apply to your day to day? Do you think in analytical terms, again we mentioned one of your first jobs at Capital One was as an analyst. How does that translate into being a sales leader?

Boomer Muth: I think one thing that’s powerful as a sales leader with analytics is the problem solving aspect of it. Whenever I’m preparing for a sales call with a big retailer I will research who they are, try to understand what they care about and then piece together how our product fits in with them. Instead of just assuming that I can throw everything about our product at them and it’s going to fit in, it’s almost like a puzzle piece and that’s the part I used to enjoy about math competitions was you get a problem presented and you have to think quickly on how to solve the problem.

Fred Diamond: I’ve got a question for you, translating that to your team. One of the things of course that comes up frequently with young sales professionals is, we’re talked about this on the podcast many times, the whole concept of “showing up and throwing up” and saying every feature, and of course you have a lot of features with your solution. How do you coach your people to not get into that rut and to also try to be more focused on the needs of the customer?

Boomer Muth: You mentioned Will Fuentes earlier, he’s been a great coach to our team. I think one thing he and a lot of other great sales leaders I read on is about the questions. Ask a question and then pause, that’s been really powerful with the team. I’ll probably hit on it a little bit later, I would say that my team coaches me on a regular basis. Me having a background that was more analytical and engineering, traditional sales experience is something that my team helps teach me on a regular basis. I think asking questions and prying even more on those questions is a powerful way to understand what your customer cares about.

Fred Diamond: Talk about the beginning of your sales career and how you made the shift into generating revenue and being the sales leader.

Boomer Muth: How about I just tell you first how I got into sales in my whole life? I started a band in high school, the band’s name was Copper Sails.

Fred Diamond: Sails, S-A-I-L-S?

Boomer Muth: S-A-I-L-S. It would be more apropos if it were S-A-L-E-S. That’s the perfect example of sales, because I tell everybody sales is passion, I’ll take a passionate sales leader over a trained one any day. You can’t be more passionate than about songs you write, I believed that I was going to be a rock star. If you don’t actually believe you’re going to be, you have no chance at it so you have to convince your friends to come see your shows, you have to convince them that your music is any good every time you step on stage, you’re trying to sell them on, “This is really awesome, you should listen to it.”

The big lesson I learned was about persistence and not everybody’s going to like what you do. There’s local band reviews where they critiqued us, I remember walking down the hall in school, we put up banners advertising our shows and I walked by one and someone had crossed out “sails” and it said “Copper sucks”. That persistence and that realization of, “I still believe in this no matter what people are going to say” and people are going to say no to you. I would say being in a band and trying to convince others that the product you have was valuable was the best lesson I’d ever learned in sales.

Fred Diamond: That is great. You may think you just did your best performance ever and you just killed it on the song and look out in the audience and people are looking at their phones, or something on those lines today.

Boomer Muth: Today that’s probably it, back in my day they didn’t have the phones.

Fred Diamond: Curiously, who were some of your musical influences? Who were some of the bands that you really enjoyed listening to growing up?

Boomer Muth: I think The Beatles are absolutely the most inspiring band I’ve had and they’re unique in the sense that not only were they the most popular band at their time, but they were also the most innovative. I always look at them because that’s such a unique combination of innovation and popularity that I think is hard to find nowadays, kind of what we aspire to be as a company. We want to be the most popular amongst our customers but also innovative at every step of the way.

Fred Diamond: Tell us what you’re an expert in, tell us about your specific area of brilliance.

Boomer Muth: I would say probably I’m an expert in nothing, but I’ll tell you what I’m obsessed about. I’m obsessed about leadership, most everything that I spend time on is about being the best leader I can be. I actually have a daily checklist that has come from leadership coaches, people that I like to read about, that I try to check off every day. I feel like if you don’t measure something, it doesn’t get done, “Inspect what you expect.” That’s a standard I try to hold our sales team to and everybody in the organization, so I try to hold myself to that as well.

Fred Diamond: Can you share some of the things that are on that list?

Boomer Muth: Five hand written notes a week. We drive a really high, intense high performance culture, that means we demand a lot from our employees. If you’re going to demand a lot from your employees, it’s important to show appreciation. There’s a stat that John Ezzo shared when he was talking to me once was 60% of the workforce hasn’t been told, “Good job” in the last year. What I tell everybody that joins our company is we have a culture of discomfort. What that means is we’re going to make sure you’re uncomfortable and that’s our gift to our employees because without discomfort there’s no growth, comfort really is the enemy of greatness but if you’re going to have a culture of discomfort, high performance, you have to show that appreciation.

Fred Diamond: What does that look like, a culture of discomfort?

Boomer Muth: I think there’s a few things about it. I was listening actually to a podcast, a wonderful one of yours, Chris Baron and she was talking about leadership and she said, “I can’t motivate, but I can inspire.” It resonated so well, when I think about our sales team I can’t motivate them to get out of bed every morning but if they are and they’re committed to greatness, I can inspire them. She worded it so perfectly in your podcast and I got a lot of value out of that, so I think our culture is if you’re not motivated, this isn’t a place for you. We don’t keep unmotivated individuals around, a lot of people think that a culture of terminating employees that aren’t cutting it actually demotivates, we found it really motivates.

High performers want to be around high performers and learn from high performers. That’s part of the culture of discomfort, and it’s not discomfort in the sense that you’re worried about your job, its discomfort in the sense of I’m always going to try to inspire everybody on the team to be greater and they do the same with me. Everybody on the team is constantly reminding me, “Boomer, this is a thing that you could have done better” and I appreciate that. That’s really important because I can’t grow without that.

Fred Diamond: Give me an idea of what the inspiration looks like, do you have meetings every morning, huddles type of thing? Do you run around with a bell? What does it physically look like on the floor here at West Creek?

Boomer Muth: That feeds into one of the biggest challenges. On the floor I ensure that I walk every day and say good morning to everybody, and I talk to them about what’s going on. We have an inside sales team as well, I need to visit them even more often, but walking down the hall, finding out what they’re doing, finding out what matters to them, celebrating the wins. We have a score board that sits in our inside sales team, we have a bell that gets rung every time they close a deal, it’s a culture where they’re both motivating and competing against each other.

I would say our biggest challenge is we also have a distributed sales force throughout the country and I think we have regional sales managers that do a great job at inspiring their teams and staying connected with them. I know that they have little chat functionality that they talk to each other on a regular basis, pump each other up, celebrate wins. Distributed sales force, I wish it was easier to see their faces every day. I think that’s probably the one challenge that I want to ensure that we continue to improve as a team.

Fred Diamond: Do you use things like Zoom or Skype to keep in touch that way?

Boomer Muth: Yes, Microsoft Teams.

Fred Diamond: Tell us about an impactful sales career mentor and how they impacted your career.

Boomer Muth: I think on the sales mentorship front I would probably cite a few of the sales leaders on my team as being some of my strongest mentors. We have a person named Randy Stacy on our team, he actually sends videos out to the team celebrating on a regular basis and he shares it with the entire 60 person sales team. He pumps them up, tells them what they’re capable of, shares a recent success that may be a skill that they may be able to use.

I’ve got another two great sales leaders, Josh Borgstrom and Craig Leffew, they bring me on big deals, they help me understand that there’s a long sale cycle when you’re dealing with a big company. It’s a different type of sale than when you’re cold calling a company that might just be a mom and pop. Getting that perspective from the people on my team, sales doesn’t look the same everywhere, you have to understand it differently and really listen to what your customer needs.

One you mentioned, Will Fuentes, one of the things that he’s given me as a mentor that was super powerful and I think of it as a cheat code for sales is whenever you’re selling against a competitor and you also want to get more information, the question is what do you like about your competitor? It sounds like a really simple question, but it’s amazing how powerful it is. A lot of people say, “What don’t you like?” One, that goes straight into negativity and it also puts the customer on guard. This question that will gain me of what do you like about your competitor is amazing because you’ll ask it and then all of a sudden you’ll find they’ll just start telling you the things they don’t like even though you were really positive and said, “What do you like?”

In the instances where they don’t tell you what they don’t like, they actually tell you what they do like, you know what they care about because every product has different benefits, what benefit do they care about? That question has been powerful. I know you were back on the mentors, I would say also my co-founder Rob, he’s our CEO. He’s been a real mentor in the sense of just how hard he drives. We have a culture of just driving very hard, failing fast and I think that “fail fast” doesn’t mean you fail dumb, it means you fail smart. Why would we wait? It’s just like sales.

When you wake up in the morning, why are you going to wait to do that thing tomorrow? There’s nothing you need to wait on and the same things that make you successful in sales make you successful as a company. He’s been a great mentor in saying, “Can you do this even better?” One of my biggest fears, I’ve read a lot of when I started the company and I’ll tell you the story on the company because I think it helps provide some insight.

When we started West Creek I knew I wanted to go all in. What really inspired that and has been really valuable in my life is I read a lot on what people say on their death beds. Consistently you hear no one talks about regretting any of their failures, they regret what they didn’t try. They regret not giving it a shot, it’s things like, “I wish I had taken action and dove in head first”, “I wish I had taken more chances”, “I wish I had kept going”, those are things you hear from people on their death bed.

My biggest fear in life is dying and saying, “Did I do every possible thing I could have done?” and I think when you wake up in the morning and say that, especially as a sales person, there’s always that one more call you can do. There’s always that one more angle that you can look at the sale in, so that’s my big fear is did I really go all in? Going back to the mentor of Rob, I think he pushes me in that area.

Fred Diamond: That plays into the culture of discomfort as well, are you doing enough? What else could you be doing? Boomer, tell us about the two biggest challenges. You said you manage a team of 60 sales reps, a bunch of them are distributed, a bunch of them are inside here. By the way, we’re doing today’s podcast interview just outside of Richmond, Virginia. Is this a Richmond address?

Boomer Muth: It’s a Glen Allen address but it’s very close to Richmond.

Fred Diamond: Not too far from Richmond, state capital, for the Sales Game Changers listening around the globe. Richmond’s about a hundred miles from DC where we do a lot of the interviews, we’re in the office of West Creek. It’s a beautiful office in a beautiful building with a lot of buzz. By the way, we’re actually right next door to a concert venue, do you get big names coming to that concert hall as well? It’s an outdoor arena, actually.

Boomer Muth: We do, it’s usually on the back end of their careers, somebody like Hootie and the Blowfish or Lynyrd Skynyrd but still bands that are great to go see.

Fred Diamond: I think you mentioned during the pre-interview that you opened for Lynyrd Skynyrd?

Boomer Muth: We did, actually.

Fred Diamond: What was that like, were they friendly?

Boomer Muth: Very friendly. I think it’s almost like you finding entrepreneurs. I’ve joined a network called YPO that’s been extremely valuable, and I went into it thinking, “These are really successful people.” I had assumptions about them that they’d be pretentious or not down to earth, and this is this realization that I’ve got in life of, “You aren’t successful if you don’t have a high EQ.” It’s very hard to be successful unless you understand people and you’re down to earth and I think the same thing in bands. When we met successful bands, you have this assumption that they’re not going to treat you well, they wouldn’t have gotten far if they didn’t treat the people in their lives well.

Fred Diamond: Especially the ones that have been around for 40 years, the Lynyrd Skynyrds of the world. There’s such appreciation to go to a place like this and have 5, 7 thousand people cheering on songs that were written 45 years ago, that’s got to be an amazing feeling, you have to appreciate that. If you’re not appreciating that, you’re definitely in the wrong business. I could talk to you for hours about opening for bands and your music career and stuff like that, we’ve actually done a couple recent Sales Game Changers podcasts where we’ve been talking to sports professionals or who have had a great career in collegiate sports, maybe we’ll try to figure out a way to talk about the convergence between sales excellence and music excellence as well. Why don’t you tell us about the two biggest challenges you face today as a sales leader?

Boomer Muth: I think you hit on one of them when you were talking about sports. I’m sure a lot of listeners have heard of Jack Daly, I love one of his quotes because he said, “Most sports teams are run better than businesses.” It’s so true and I think it feeds into my biggest challenge, if you have great passionate salespeople as we do, I would put our sales team up against anybody in any industry especially when it comes to their passion. I would actually say their weaknesses are my weakness and my weakness is the fact that I haven’t created a world-class playbook for them.

A great salesperson, you create your lanes and you let them go but I think that what I need to do as a leader is get better around the systems and processes that ensure that they can be successful every day. I think right now we ask our salespeople to do a lot of prospecting. Why are they prospecting? What they’re really good at is getting in front of as many people as they can every day to help them realize the value that our product can have. I need to ensure that we have all the tools they need so that they can be in front of as many people as possible on a daily basis. That’s my responsibility as a leader.

Fred Diamond: Excellent. Why don’t you take us back to the #1 specific sale success or win from your career you’re most proud of?

Boomer Muth: I think now might be a good time to tell the story about West Creek. I started my career at Capital One and I realized quickly into that that Capital One was making more money on me than they were paying me which is the way any good business works. I realized I want to be on the other side of this but I was too afraid to leave the comforts of my corporate job and so I tried to do both at once. I started a home healthcare business and the best lesson I learned was if you try to do two things at once, the best you’re going to do is mediocre.

When I sold that company in 2012, I said next time I do this I’m going all in. Lo and behold, luckily two years later I actually got kicked out of Capital One, it was the kick in the butt I needed to say, “This isn’t the place you need.” It was almost the universe telling me, “This isn’t where you want to be anyways.” I had a meeting with our co-founder Rob two weeks later, he told me about the business idea really using machine learning and using intelligent analytics in a way that no one else was in this industry. Did research, realized it’s an $11 billion dollar industry and there’s not super compelling players in this space so I came back to Rob.

I’m probably shortening the story a little bit, and Rob and our third partner as well, Scott, said they were each going to give this business a shot. They said they were each going to put $250 grand into the business and they’ve done really well in their careers, I hadn’t done as well as them. The original plan was they were just going to hire me and I was going to start the business for them because I had the entrepreneurial experience and I was also an analyst at Capital One. They said, “We’ll give you some stock options and we’ll give you a salary, you won’t have to take much for the pay con.”

It took a little more time than one conversation, but through a little bit of time I realized all in really means all in. I said, “Rob and Scott, if I liquidate everything I have about $251 K so I want to be an equal partner.” I really took my whole life’s savings and just went all in. After I did that they said, “It’s weird for partners to make a lot of money, so we’re going to take your salary down. I took about $120 K a year pay cut and I took my life savings and put it all in. Let me tell you, something beautiful happens when failure is not an option, you really realized what you’re capable of. I had never sold before, so I had to sell into our first 40 doors. I was not trained at all other than my experience in trying to sell a band and selling a company, but doing the door to door was something I hadn’t done before. It was out of necessity and out of passion, truly the only reason I was able to sell, was being passionate about the product.

Fred Diamond: I love that statement, “All in means all in.” For the Sales Game Changers listening around the globe to the podcast, I’m thinking about a lot of the people that we’ve interviewed and by this point we’ve interviewed about 150 sales leaders. All of them have been all in, they’ve committed, they’ve really put themselves deep into the company if it’s their own business or representing a brand or something on those lines. To get to those levels, you have to be. Interestingly, you said, “All in means all in”. You went all in, you started knocking on doors, you still talked a couple of times about regretting you’re on death’s bed things you didn’t do. It’s like all in can even push a little bit further.

Boomer Muth: I don’t think I was really all in, can we actually be all in in this society? Because probably even in the back of my mind I was like, “I’m not going to starve.” What if I could have starved, would I have been capable of more? One thing that I really learned there was not only was I forced to learn how to sell but I didn’t want to hire anybody else because my money was in. I was our first dealer’s support rep, I was the first customer support rep and we knew we were going to win in this space by having the best technology and he best approval rates for our retailers so that they could sell more.

What I learned was how important service was because I would see applications come through our portal and I’d immediately call the dealer and I’d say, “How can I help you make the sale?” and the dealer’s reaction was, “Holy crap, I can’t even get your competition on the phone a whole ten minutes and then I get someone that can help me.” It was that realization, because that was sales. All of a sudden they started telling other retailers about us, so we grew to word of mouth. We did our first $2 million dollars in business from just a few mom and pops that I booked and growing word of mouth, and it was because of that necessity that helped me learn how important service was because service really is sales.

Fred Diamond: Again, you’re the chief revenue officer and of course you’re the co-founder and the president of the company but as a chief revenue officer, you’re responsible for all sales. You mentioned 60 people and you have 6,500 somewhat dealers in your network. Did you ever think to yourself, “I’m knocking on these doors, it’s too hard. There is a safety net, I’ve got my bass in the trunk, maybe I’m going to go back to Virginia Beach and give it one more shot” or something like that? Did you ever say to yourself, “This sales thing, it’s just too hard, it just ain’t for me”?

Boomer Muth: I think that answer is kind of complicated in that I think every day but also never. Let me explain that, there’s the moments in the day where I say, “This is hard” and it creeps in of like, “What if I just gave up?” Giving up is comfortable, that’s why we do it. Giving up is absolution, it’s a finalization so part of what I think what drives me every day is a phrase, “Never, never give up.” Winston Churchill said, it, Rob, my partner shared me a card that said that and that’s the reminder of never give up. I don’t ever end the day with that, “Maybe this would be easier to give up” but to say that it never creeps in your mind would be silly. Another version of giving up is, “Maybe our company is big enough.”

I’m not, I don’t believe that, in four years we’re going to be a billion dollar company. I tell everybody in our sales force that. Now we’re a hundred million dollar plus company, in four years we’re going to be a billion and nothing happens without a vision. If I don’t say it and I don’t tell as many people as possible, the reason I’m telling the podcast is because I’m telling the world that.

Fred Diamond: The YPO terminology, BHAG, it’s a big, hairy, audacious goal. Today’s Sales Game Changers podcast, we’re talking to Boomer Muth. He’s the co-founder and chief revenue officer at West Creek based over here in Richmond, it’s a company that provides point of sale financing for retailers, typically mattresses, tires, products like that.  Boomer, what’s the most important thing you want to get across to junior selling professionals to help them improve their career?

Boomer Muth: I think it’s what I hit on which is the “never ever give up”, but I think if I summarize it it’s about passion and persistence. Simon Sinek has a quote, “Working really hard for something you don’t care about is called stress. Working really hard for something you love is passion.” If you don’t have your passion now, you have to find it but once you find it, it has to be all about persistence. Make sure you’re motivated in what you do, and that usually comes with passion, then make sure you’re inspired. Keep learning, keep discovering. As soon as you think you know it all, you’ve actually lost. That’s why humbleness breeds success.

Fred Diamond: The very first person I worked for, she had a placard on top of her desk which said persistence is her key to success. I’ve always been aware of that great one. You mentioned a couple things, you have your leadership check list, but what are some of the things you do to sharpen your saw and stay fresh?

Boomer Muth: I just mentioned, I’m glad I was introduced to this podcast. It’s phenomenal to hear best practices of now over 130 different sales leaders, really got a lot out of it, just the one last podcast you had, Chris Baron. I mentioned Jack Daly, I have two coaches, Will Fuentes being one of the coaches. I believe very much in coaches, great sports athletes aren’t successful without coaches. I think that’s a key as well, Will Fuentes talks about the 40-20 rule and I think he mentioned that a lot on your podcast. Spend 40 hours a week doing your job, spend 20 hours a week focused on improving. I think that’s powerful as well.

Fred Diamond: You said you want to grow your company to 4 billion, what’s a major initiative you’re working on today to ensure your continued success?

Boomer Muth: It’s around building in scalability. I told you what I owe this phenomenal sales team that we have right now that’s really committed to excellence is a way to be even more excellent. That comes on me, am I building the systems and processes that enable them to be great? Some of the salespeople work around it, they actually build their own little sales process and they say, “Here’s what I’m going to do every day.”

They’re not dictated to, I would say everybody who is listening, and you probably know this already, but make sure you know what you’re doing every day and make sure you plan your day. Make sure you set a vision with goals, because that’s the only way you achieve them and tell everybody what your goal is. That’s your committing, then you’re committing to it and then you feel like you’re letting down everyone that you ever told you were going to do something.

If you’re a great salesperson you’re a winner, you’re competitive and I want to ensure that the team has all the tools that they need. You as a listener, if you don’t have the tools that you need you have to create them yourself.

Fred Diamond: That’s a great answer. One thing we tell a lot of the sales professionals that we’re working with that are starting out their career, first couple years, I’m sure West Creek provides a lot of tools like you mentioned, there’s a lot of great inspirational things all around your building. You talked about some of the things that you do, but you’re the VP of your career. You’re the CEO of your career.

If you’re listening to this podcast, good for you because you’re doing something that a lot of people aren’t doing, you’re taking some time to learn from a great sales and business leader like Boomer. He’s given some great insights, some great information but it’s your career, you’re going to do as best as you can. This is a very nice work environment, you have free parking outside, it’s a beautiful building, beautiful facility but it’s up to you to ensure the success of your career. Boomer, we talked about this a couple times throughout the podcast. Tell us briefly to wrap on this, what is it about sales that has kept you going? What is it about the profession and the process that you really have gravitated towards?

Boomer Muth: One, it’s uncomfortable and my promise to myself is to seek discomfort. It’s always uncomfortable, people are telling you no, they’re rejecting you and that’s why I know it’s the right place to be, because it’s not easy. Also, I love it because it’s the most powerful way to add value to someone’s life. If you really think of yourself as more of an advocate and almost evangelical about your product, you’re actually making people’s lives better. You have the job of influencing and inspiring that person to make a choice that makes their lives better.

Fred Diamond: Boomer, why don’t you give us one final thought to inspire our listeners today?

Boomer Muth: Things I’ve said already, but find your passion. If you feel stressed, it’s probably not your passion so find your passion, find what you really care about, create a vision, commit to that vision, share it with everybody in your life. That’s the only reason this has been able to happen for me and seek that discomfort because without that discomfort you’re probably not close to failure not being an option. Put yourself in a place where failure’s not an option, you’re going to be amazed at what you can accomplish and then don’t ever give up. If you give up, that’s the regret you’re going to have. A lot of people say taking a jump is a risk, I actually believe is the opposite. The risk is that this wonderful life is over and you didn’t take a risk.

Fred Diamond: All in means all in.

Transcribed by Mariana Badillo
Produced by Rosario Suarez

The post EPISODE 135: Here’s How Opening for Lynyrd Skynyrd and Hootie and the Blowfish Set Up Boomer Muth and West Creek Financial for High-Growth Sales Success first appeared on Sales Game Changers Podcast.