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[EDITOR’S NOTE: This is a replay of the Sales Game Changers Panel Webinar hosted by Fred Diamond, Host of the Sales Game Changers Podcast, on May 13, 2020. It featured sales leaders Dan Cole (The Spy Museum) and Steve Richard (ExecVision).]

EPISODE 234: How Sales Leaders are Leading Teams and Customers Moving Forward with The Spy Museum’s Dan Cole and ExecVision’s Steve Richard

Watch the webinar here. Listen to Dan Cole’s Podcast . Listen to Steve Richard’s Podcast.

DAN’S TIP TO EMERGING SALES LEADERS: “If you feel your empathy to your customers is getting stale I would say take a day or a week off because nothing’s changed in sales. Empathy should always be a part of what we do whether we’re in a pandemic or not. It is what is going to allow us to move our business forward.”

Fred Diamond: Dan Cole, it’s great to have you today on the webcast. You’re with the Spy Museum, you’ve been on the Sales Game Changers podcast. First of all, why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself? As we look at the results of this poll, 30% of the people are concerned about their job and the future of their company and 40% are challenged with connecting with customers. Dan, why don’t you give us a little bit of a welcome and give us some thoughts on what the results of the poll say?

Dan Cole: Fred, thanks for having me and it’s great to connect with you again and Steve as well. I appreciate being here today and welcome to all of our guests as well. I’ll just keep it in a brief nutshell, I’ve been selling all my professional career, started selling copiers in the late 80s and then for the majority of my career went into the events business. Trade shows, worked here locally at a company called National Trade Productions and then for the Consumer Electronics Show at the Consumer Technology Association, spent a great deal of time there. Went to the other side of the business to Hargrove on the supplier side and I see friends from Hargrove around this call today.

Now I’m at the International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C. at our brand new gorgeous location that we hope to open soon. It’s interesting, the poll, I think one of the things that we’ll get into today and I think Steve would agree, the 30% that are concerned about their jobs and their companies, I know empathy is a word that does come up often and we’ve got to remember that our clients are dealing with the same concerns. They have the same concerns about them personally so I’m sure that our clients are dealing in the same type of world as well.

Fred Diamond: Steve Richard, it’s great to have you on today’s webcast. We’ve had you on the Sales Game Changers podcast before, we’ve also had you speak at the Institute for Excellence in Sales. I like to say that you’re a savant when it comes to prospecting and understanding customers and their conversations. You’ll talk about your company here in a second, ExecVision, but you’ve listened to over a million sales conversations and sales calls, I’m curious what you’re seeing today. Give us a little bit of introduction about yourself and give us your impressions of the results of the poll as well.

Steve Richard: I’m very passionate about studying and understanding buying and selling. As someone who accidentally got into sales, sales found me, I didn’t find sales. I was supposed to be in finance, couldn’t get a job and didn’t want to work for our family septic tank business so that’s how I got here, Fred. Along the way I feel in love with it and I think that what’s going on right now is that some of the rules of selling and buying are being re-written a little bit. I’m observing because I’m a founder of two companies, one called Vorsight, the other called ExecVision. ExecVision is a technology company and what we do is help people with their call recordings to use call analytics, speech analytics and then use that to help train and coach people to actually get better to improve behaviors.

That’s what Fred is referencing with these million calls. What I can tell you is right now a lot of these roles are getting re-written, people are struggling. Believe it or not, they’ll talk. The ability to get a customer or prospect to talk is quite possible, of course you have to have their mobile numbers these days or other methods of communicating, certainly social media but what we’re finding is that sales cycles are dragging on, people are generally speaking dragging their feet unless it’s something that they absolutely need to have to keep the lights on. It’s hard to keep them engaged in the process and you can understand why, because there’s a lot of concerns just like what we saw in that poll, people potentially losing their jobs are not going to buy anything, it wouldn’t make any sense.

Fred Diamond: Dan, what are your priorities right now?

Dan Cole: We’ve got a lot going on. Certainly, as Steve said, it’s a weird, bizarre, somewhat unsettling or very much so an unsettling time for our entire staff at the museum. From a priority standpoint as it relates to the sales team, there’s some main ones that I would call them engagement, encouragement and excellence. Not only with our clients but with our staff as well, staying connected to each other, motivating one another, staying connected with our clients, engaging with them, again that empathy knowing that they are most likely going through the same challenges as we are and also.
Staying connected with our partners, our service providers whether they be a caterer or AV company or a florist or a general contractor, staying engaged. That’s the engagement part, the other three are sustaining revenue, trying to build upon revenue, building pipelines and looking to 2021. Q3 and Q4 are obviously a challenge, can’t take our eyes off of ’21 so prospecting in that direction as well are our priorities.

Fred Diamond: Steve, how about you? What are the big priorities for you in what you’re doing?

Steve Richard: Making sure we keep going. What we’re seeing is actually pretty interesting. One of my companies is called Vorsight with about 35 employees, 25 folks on the phone doing something called outsourced appointment setting. What that means, it’s companies’ contract with us, with Vorsight to get appointments on their behalf and I have an opportunity to swap notes with memoryBlue as a customer of ours and they’re another appointment setting firm as well as market sourced in Atlanta and many others. The funny thing with that business is we’re actually seeing that the clients are sticking around for the most part and actually, new clients are signing up so there are portions of the economy that are hot and it’s really unfair.

Dan, you found yourself at the coolest job ever at the wrong time which is just so sad and unfortunate because I can’t wait to get to that rooftop, I’m going to take you up on that. Likewise, there are some clients that are in things like cloud computing where they compete against AWS and they couldn’t be any hotter right now and their demand is off the charts and they want to keep going. What we’re seeing is if you do have reps that continue with the engagement – I think that was a key word, Dan – keep engaging prospects and customers without the hard sells stench, to quote my friend John Barrows. If you can do that, then you’re going to be in a much better place coming out of this than if you don’t. Sadly, one of our customers for our ExecVision technology is Madison Square Garden, can you imagine that? And they were absolutely doing fantastic before all of this hit with the Knicks and Rangers having some trouble but the Rangers being a little bit better than the Knicks, but then this all hit and they had to completely retrench. They’re not allowed to call any customers right now with the exceptions of providing refunds and those kinds of things. There are certain things like that but ultimately if we don’t keep going the global economy stops. I think the reality is sales is the engine of the global economy, salespeople and we all have heard this at your events before, Fred, nothing happens in the economy until something gets sold. If we don’t keep engaging and keep our activity levels up, we’ll have problems.

Fred Diamond: Last Friday on our Creativity in Sales webcast we had Lee Salz who wrote a book called Sales Differentiation and he told a great story that sales is going to lead companies out of this. You’re absolutely right if things don’t get sold. Again, on today’s webcast we’re talking to Steve Richard with ExecVision and Vorsight and Dan Cole with the Spy Museum. Steve, what’s a positive thing that’s come out of this? We’re going to get into some of the details here but tell us a positive thing or a compelling surprise that has come out of this situation and Dan, I want to hear your answer on that as well but let’s take Steve first.

Steve Richard: Real easy answer, there are dozens and dozens of people that I haven’t talked to in years that I’m reestablishing relationships and connections with that are very meaningful and will serve all of us in the future. Then opportunity to meet people like Dan that I never would have crossed paths with at all so that’s really positive and certainly spending a lot more time with the family and people not having to commute as much so there’s an opportunity for learning that in many cases didn’t exist.

Fred Diamond: How about for you, Dan? What’s been something positive that’s come out of this that maybe will have some legs for the future?

Dan Cole: I think there’s a tremendous amount of good will between ourselves and our partners but I’ll tell you what, our clients as well. People are rooting for us as we’re rooting for them so the good will that exists, I want to say it’s somewhat surprising not in a negative way. We’re all rooting for each other, I think Steve touched on that, that from a sales perspective we have the privilege of being on the front line, we have the privilege of carrying the torch and I think clients and prospects alike appreciate that and appreciate that sincerity. For me personally, I think Steve nailed it as well. I got to meet Steve through this and meeting others at the Institute as well. Fred, you’ve been a really good friend and especially at times like these, meeting new peoples and maintaining relationships with those that you’ve been with for a long time makes us even more important. I think the most pleasant surprise is the amount of support that clients give to vendors and vendors give to clients. This is where the word ‘partnership’ really gets tested, we throw around that word a lot but I think now in a time like this, this is where one can really determine whether they have a true partnership with a client, a partner or with one another.

Fred Diamond: Dan, I’m curious, again when we first met you, you were at Hargrove, now you’re with the Spy Museum, you’ve been with event companies, you’ve been with conference companies, you’ve been in the technology space, you’ve led and managed if not thousands, at least hundreds of people. How have you seen yourself change as a sales leader in the last 6-7 weeks since we’ve been in this temporary new world?

Dan Cole: I think that’s a great question, the distance that we all experience. I come from an office so a lot of people work virtually in other industries but we all work with one another and that is an advantage that we see each other every day, we can read each other’s body language, we can have meetings with one another, we can sit down with one another with clients. This has changed completely and I don’t know if it’s changed me but what provides a greater emphasis and a greater focus with me is remembering to remember that everyone is dealing with this in their own separate way.

My conversations and my availability is custom tailored to each person on my team. First of all, they’re a bed rock for me as I want to be with them. There are some on the team that don’t need a phone call every five minutes – not that everybody does at all – there are others that appreciate a phone call once or twice a day just because this is something different. I think what it’s caused me to do is to create place and greater emphasis on remembering that people deal with adversity in different ways. If that’s a change from what I’m used to face to face, I think that change is a change for the positive.

Fred Diamond: Steve, before I ask you that question I’m curious how you’ve changed as well as a sales leader. You’re also a business owner as well, you’re one of the principle owners of two companies right now. Once again, if anybody has any questions for Steve or Dan, submit them via the question panel. How have you changed? Again, you’ve been home, I don’t want to disclose how many kids you have with you at home but I know –

Steve Richard: I’ll disclose it, it’s four, ages 4, 6, 8 and 10 and even though I’ve got the door locked they might find a way to bust in here any minute.

Fred Diamond: Thank you so much, it’ll be cute if one of your kids comes up to you with something and they sit on your lap. Has that happened, just curiously or have you been able to lock yourself away?

Steve Richard: Yeah, they’ve figured out how to take a paperclip and pop the door open.

Fred Diamond: [Laughs] How have you changed in the last 4-5 weeks as a sales professional, as a sales leader?

Steve Richard: A couple things. I think the first thing is I come from an inside sales background, a lot of people think of inside sales as just the folks that get the appointments which is called sales development commonly now. It’s also people have been closing deals and I’ve been involved with the association, Fred, you know too, the AISP for many years. This isn’t that different in many ways than what most people who carry big quotas and sell with an inside sales model have dealt with and really, if you think about it, pretty much every field person is now an inside sales person so oddly what I found is that in many cases I’m giving people advice and tips and insights on, “Here are the things you can and should be doing when you’re essentially an inside salesperson.”

I think the other part of it is I have been going back to the fundamentals and the basics and sometimes you get on a role and you’re doing your thing and you’re getting your deals, sales are coming in and you’re serving your customers and they’re renewing and everything is fine but then the bad habits creep in and you don’t sharpen the saw. What I’m seeing is the best sales teams right now are using this as an opportunity to go and sharpen that saw. We’ve seen the metrics in our system in ExecVision, we can track call coaching. Now it’s anonymous so we don’t know what company it is but we can see how much call coaching is happening, comments, score cards, all that. It’s up double since before the pandemic so there is absolute evidence and proof in saying that companies are really working on their craft that they weren’t before as much.

Fred Diamond: Dan, I’m going to ask you in a second, Steve mentioned habits, some of them are beginning to grade a little bit. I’m going to ask you a question about what habits could sales professionals be working on but as I would presume, we just got three people who quickly jumped in and said, “Steve, what are those tips that you’re now giving the outside people who are now inside?” Dan, think about that for a second but Steve, let’s address that for a second or two. You’ve always been a guru on inside sales but now everybody is in inside sales so what are some of those tips that you’re telling people right now that they should be doing?

Steve Richard: Spend some money on technology, for example and actually I have to do this at my house because I’ve got four kids with three devices each, wireless speakers, now all of a sudden my network’s taxed, I’ve got to upgrade my router. $250 bucks on Amazon, you get a Black Hawk, it’s cheap. Get yourself a Yeti Speaker, it’s $130 dollars on Amazon, you can get the low end ones for $70, it looks like a legitimate podcast looking thing, get one of those, it’s a no-brainer. Get a better camera, it’s a no-brainer. Set expectations that the camera is going to be on all the time, it seems simple, most people don’t do it. Record your calls, Zoom you can record, other technologies you can record in a compliant way so the people know they’re being recorded and it’s state laws and everything. Record your calls, absolutely 100%. The thing that’s actually nice about Zoom is you can get a lot more decision makers involved, easier, faster with less friction than you could before. Sometimes you can’t get them in the same room but it’s pretty easy to get them in the same virtual room.

Fred Diamond: We’re going to address that in a few moments now, everybody being at home. Dan, you’ve also done a lot of sales training in your career as well. By the way, we didn’t say this but you’re also known as The Sales Rhino, someone just chimed in here. Dan’s known as the Sales Rhino.

Steve Richard: Why?

Fred Diamond: [Laughs]

Steve Richard: Hang on, I’m sorry, Fred. Why?

Fred Diamond: Dan, you can tell us why and then you can answer the question about habits that sales professionals should be focusing on right now.

Dan Cole: First habit is charging down opportunities, there’s your Rhino answer, Steve. I’ve taken this opportunity to encourage but I’d also say working on myself, I’m developing systems and routines because I’m stuck here at home so I might as well develop a higher degree of discipline throughout my day. I told some people I have not worked from home in the past this day to day and I always wondered what would stop me from going outside and looking at the beautiful weather and not slacking off, but being distracted, it’s just the opposite. I have to force myself, I’ve told members of my team that are on the call, they experience the same, we encourage each other to go out, take walks, take breaks, what have you because if not, you are staring at a screen all day long. Developing disciplines and routines and systems, there’s a book called Atomic Habits by James Clear that many I’m sure in this audience have heard.

He said it’s all about your systems, it’s not necessarily about habits. Steve, you brought up sharpen the saw, Stephen Covey has been a mentor of mine for my entire professional life so professional development, we don’t shy away with that on our sales team. We encourage everybody on a daily basis to participate in some form of professional development whether it be reading a book, leading a role play or watching a video. Every Friday we have something called ‘book club’ where someone shares either a chapter from a book or an article and we all discuss it so sharpening the saw, I think, is absolutely the most important habit which includes everything I just explained.

Fred Diamond: One question that came in here that said, “Is it better to use a video conference or the phone for client calls?” Knowing that people are home. We’re all dressed up, we’re wearing nice shirts and all that but we’ve seen the memes and pictures of people who haven’t showered yet or shaved or whatever, people who are accidentally hitting the potato button on their Zoom, if you will. Talk to us a little bit about that, Steve and Dan, mention your thoughts about that as well. People are home, we know they’re home, what are some best practices to be contacting them?

Steve Richard: I’m going to give you three, the first is going to be for a scheduled call. When you’re doing scheduled calls like on Zoom and Microsoft Teams, GoToMeeting, etcetera you absolutely want to have the video on and it’s not my opinion. I’ve looked at various sets and research that companies have done, on average your win rate will increase by about 2% so if you’re winning 16% of your deals, you’ll win 18% and by the way, if you turn your camera on and the other person does not turn their camera on, it doesn’t make a difference because it humanizes you.

You have to see the person. I think that we’re never going to go back to work where people weren’t doing this now, this was the nudge we all needed because before everyone got on these and no one ever put the camera on, now everybody puts their camera on. The second is if you’re doing an unscheduled call. If it’s an unscheduled call, obviously you can’t really use video as part of it but instead, this is kind of an odd website, it’s completely free, it’s called truepeoplesearch.com and it’s essentially a database of mobile phone numbers of folks. If you don’t have the prospect contact information, there are other paid resources too like Zoom Info and Sales Intel and Seamless that provide that. Obviously in that case it’s going to be a phone call. Then the third thing is the value of social media and social selling is way higher, to borrow a line from Jill Rowley, the old Queen of Social Selling, the old eloquent sales professional who now is a talking head, she says, “Not always be closing but always be connecting.”

Connect with someone on LinkedIn, don’t ask them for anything and then reference something like a common connection. So, if I connect with Dan and I reference Fred, my probability of him connecting is much higher. Once he connects if you click on the contact info in LinkedIn, they usually have persona email and personal cellphone number sitting right there. Let’s be connecting, let’s be informed as sales professionals now more than ever.

Fred Diamond: Dan, I’ve just been informed that you’ve been the Rhino since 1988, FYI, one of your fans just let us know that. How about you, Dan? Again, talking to people, we know that they’re home, we know they might be in their garage, they might be in the makeshift in. A lot of people that you talk to probably don’t necessarily work from home so how are you engaging your people to interact with them?

Dan Cole: I’m going to give the credit to the sales team that I know is on this call right now. This is a really challenging time for them because our bread and butter in terms of how we articulate benefits of our events space that Steve was alluding to earlier, the events we have, my team sells a space at the top of the Spy Museum on the roof and these are gorgeous panoramic views of D.C. It’s an emotional sell as it were so taking people around on “site visits” is a natural part and a very important part of our sales process, we can’t do that right now, we can’t be in the office and certainly our clients and prospects can’t be participating in site tours. With the help of our AB team we do have the opportunity to view space virtually, that is available on the website and the team is also proactively sending out those links.

We just did so a few minutes ago with an association that’s taking a look at our space so that’s how we’re dealing with that particular tool. I would also echo on a general standpoint what Steve said, this is a great opportunity for humanizing the experience, it does not mean that the other person has to turn their camera on, as Steve said but we hear this cliché about relationship building. This is the ultimate way to do it, it shows that we’re willing to take an extra step, put the camera on us, the onus on us and be able to at least do the best we can through body language and sincerity, develop that relationship or sustain that relationship. Again, don’t have to pressure the other people to put their camera on but it is an opportunity for us to continue to build and develop relationships. I hate this term, “The new normal”, I don’t want to be normal but young people coming up in this profession like Steve said, they’re not going to know any difference. They’ll be face-to-face selling but I think this virtual element is here to stay so this is something that we all need to become accustomed to whether we are in the field or we are leading the sales team or both.

Fred Diamond: Let’s talk about relationships for a second here, we have a question that came in through the panel. Steve, you’re one of the most well-known people I know in the inside sales world, whenever you host something you get hundreds if not thousands of interactions. Dan, you know everybody as well, you’ve been selling to people, you actually introduced us to 10 people that we’ve had on the Sales Game Changers podcast. Let’s talk about relationship building now, we can’t just go meet somebody for lunch. People are doing virtual lunches but let’s talk about building relationships right now. I think, Steve, you mentioned before that this has been a great opportunity to connect with people that you haven’t connected in a while. Give us some of your ideas on how people can be building relationships. Besides the people in your house, your spouse and your children, you’re really not seeing too many other people because we’re being very conscious of physical and social distancing. Dan, why don’t you go first? What are your recommendations on building relationships now and in the foreseeable future? They’re talking about some offices not opening up until September and then Steve, you deal with people around the world, I’m interested in your thoughts.

Dan Cole: Do you want me to go first, Fred?

Fred Diamond: I do, yes.

Dan Cole: I think now more than ever this is a time to take people by surprise and I’ll tell you what I mean by that. I think that often times when we’re trying to contact people, the first inclination we as human beings have – and it doesn’t have to be from a snarky standpoint as, “What do you want, why are you calling, what happened?” we’re used to that from normal time. I think now more than ever especially going back to this format, one of the things that I try to do and I know that our sales team does because they have unbelievable relationships is really put the other person first in terms of what we can do for them. It doesn’t have to do anything with the Spy Museum. In fact, I think that’s the most sincere way of doing things, pay it forward to me is a way of life and what you put out in the universe, it gives back to you.

I think that absolutely applies to relationships with clients and prospects alike. No one cares how much you know until they know how much you care, that comes from listening, that comes from a genuine, sincere interest and I think the way you do that is you don’t necessarily have to concentrate on your product or service immediately because most people do. I want to be one of the ones that say they were getting in contact with me and I know Julie and Stephanie as an example are in touch with clients and just letting them know through emails, “Here’s some of the online programs that are absolutely free for you and your clients to listen to, have a listen.” Not one word about selling space whatsoever and that’s where I think relationships come from, that sincerity and that genuine interest in others.

Fred Diamond: Steve, what about you? You’re a big relationship guy. By the way, if you’re watching today’s webcast there’s tens of millions of people also accessing some of the online mechanism so if you see a little bit of a jitter, just bear with us, the audio seems to be pretty sound. Steve, relationships, what are some of your thoughts on continuing to build relationships right now in this virtual world?

Steve Richard: Write down all of the topics, and a great way to do this is talk to people where you already have a strong relationship so they’ll talk to you. What are the topics that they’re thinking about now? If they’re tangential to what you do, great and if they’re not, that’s okay too. I’ll give you an example for us. I spent a lot of time with people on call recording laws and what you can do, how do you record all your calls if they’re unscheduled outbound cold calls and do it in a compliant way. Most people don’t know what’s possible with technology so there’s an education and by the way, that’s not our technology so it’s not what I’m selling.

Another example is using call dispositions. Again, not our technology but the sort of thing where if I can bring to bear the call dispositions of 10 other companies just like them and that’s something that they care about right now because they’re trying to get more data on what their teams are doing working from home, that’s going to help them a ton or our sales process. They say, “I’m looking at refining my sales process while I have an opportunity, what do you know about sales process?” Quite a bit, let’s take a look at ours and some other ones and do those kinds of things. You’ve got to bring that knowledge to bear so that people look at you as someone who cares about them and who’s going to bring value.

I had a question come in from one of our customers, companies called Superior Glove, they sell gloves, literally gloves to safety managers so not so much to consumers but they sell them more like in an industrial setting. He came back to me and asked me a question about sales compensation and then I’m connecting dots because one of our investors sent to our CEO this article about how people are revising their forecast and their sales compensation so I sent him that link. That’s going to create a bigger, stronger bond with Joe and by the way, I also bought his book and I’m going to write a review on Amazon. Those kinds of things, all these things really make a difference.

Fred Diamond: Steve, I want to follow up with you. We’ve got a couple questions coming in here from the audience. Again, if you have a question for Steve Richard or Dan Cole submit them via the question panel, they’re great, we appreciate them. Steve, you’re an expert on sales process. Flow, email, text, call, those types of processes. A question comes in here and let’s get specific if we could. Of course it differs based on industry, company and who you’re talking to. Dan, I’m interested in your thoughts after Steve gives his insights, “What’s the best way to touch base with current customers or prospects today? Should I be emailing, should I be texting, should I be calling? It seems like everyone has put everything ‘on hold.'” Again, if this pandemic had never happened we would have a flow that you guys have developed and refined millions of times with your processes. Again, it’s May 13th, by the way we’re not using the P word or both C words anymore but what are your thoughts on that? What is the best flow for customers and prospects?

Steve Richard: If you know your customer’s optimal communication channels, obviously go for that, that’s the first thing. If you know them and you have a relationship with them, for me and a lot of our customers it’s text, it ends up performing the best and then the message, you want to say something about them or their business to start. An easy way to do this is if they’re active on LinkedIn or other social media, Twitter or whatever, what’s the thing they posted or commented on recently? That’s essentially what’s in their brain. It’s simple, everyone can do it, shame on us if we don’t. If you don’t know what their communication pattern is, if they’re an existing customer obviously ask them but you’re going to have to run a test we’ll refer to as a cadence or a sequence.

A cadence or a sequence is touch one is going to be a voicemail, touch two is going to be a social media connect and this might be cold, it might not be an existing customer, it’s a prospect. Touch three is going to be an email and there are certain rules that we know based on the research that we’ve done, based on the research I’ve seen other people do. One is if it’s cold, it’s a 30 day period, you don’t want to go more than 30 days so you burst your activity. This comes from a company called TOPO that was acquired by Gartner, SiriusDecisions, a similar company acquired by Gartner – Gartner buys everybody. That shows the burst of activities, within that burst of activities you want to have two voicemails and at least two social media touches and then it is fine to have calls where you don’t leave a voicemail and depending on how heavily solicited the prospect is, you can go up to like 10 emails in that 30 day period.

That’s an optimal on average but it’s going to differ from company to company and based on who you’re selling to. If you’re selling to someone much more junior they’re going to be like, “It’s overwhelming” because they don’t get solicited that much but if you’re selling to someone who’s more senior you’ve got to do that to rise above the vendor static and noise that’s in the marketplace.

Fred Diamond: Dan, slightly different question for you. Again, you’ve managed a lot of outside sales professionals over your career. Again, Steve, a lot of his experience has been inside sales teams and appointment scheduling, things along those lines and business development. Dan, what skills should historically outside sales professionals learn today? It’s interesting, everybody came inside about almost two months ago, I’ve been working from home for almost 20 somewhat years so it’s almost second nature even though I’ve learned some things like the chair that I’m using, I need to replace this chair [Laughs] it’s a dining room chair. But even now, you would think that people have probably gotten it down but it’s hard and a lot of people we’ve heard and talking to the sales leaders we’ve spoken to, a lot of the traditional outside sales professionals are struggling with being inside and the new world and not being able to go and travel and do all those things. What are some things you recommend that historically outside sales professionals learn now to be valid moving forward?

Dan Cole: I’m going to go back to the fundamentals and I think the most valuable talent or attribute that a salesperson can have outside or inside is the ability to listen empathically. I have found there’s nothing more important than that. We can present features and benefits all day long but if they have nothing to do with our client or prospect it doesn’t matter, so asking the right questions and understanding what challenges and pain points are that exist for clients gives us the opportunity to sit back and listen, no more important skill. That doesn’t change whether I’m working inside now because of this pandemic or whether I’m working on the outside. I do think, to Steve’s point, we do need to develop for a field the comfort level of who we’re talking to in terms of how they like to be communicated with going back all the way to selling copiers and I know Steve [Inaudible 39:10] on this call who was my manager would agree. This is a people business, at the end of the day we are communicating with fellow human beings and listening to me is the most important skill one could develop. If there’s something that I could spend my entire life in terms of learning and re-learning it’s the ability to listen empathically.

Fred Diamond: A question comes in from the audience, “My empathy is getting stale. What should I be doing now to have fresh outreach to my prospects?” That’s a great question. We’ve been doing this webcast for almost seven weeks now and we’ve seen the evolution of the answers. The first two or three weeks it was obvious, get used to being home, start being empathetic. “How are you?” Simple types of, “How are things going, are you okay? Are you home now?” type of things. Here we are, we’re two months in. During the initial poll that we did, 30% of the people listening today said they have concerns about their jobs in the future.

It’s almost like, “Can we start selling again?” We’ve all spent the last two months getting used to being at home understanding what’s going on in this world that no one foresaw, without getting into politics. What can we be doing now as our empathy gets stale? Dan, you just mentioned empathy and Steve, you’re the conversation king. Dan, why don’t you crack at that one first and then Steve, I’m interested in your thoughts on what should we be talking about now. It’s two months in and we have quotas, we want to sell. I know there’s a lot of quota and compensation relief, it’s a whole different topic that we’re not going to address today but Dan, what are your thoughts on how can you be fresh? What should you be doing to be fresh?

Dan Cole: If your empathy is getting stale I would say take a day off or take a week off because nothing’s changed. My question is why is empathy even more enforced now? Empathy should always be a part of what we do whether we’re in a pandemic or not and get used to it especially now. It goes back to what I originally said before, this comes to authenticity and sincerity and if you can’t exude empathy despite what you’re going through, because we’re all going through it, we’re all nervous, we’re all anxious about this. Find a way to get it, take a day off or do some real serious thinking because that is what is going to allow us to move our business forward, it goes right back to listening.

Everyone to a degree, although everybody handles this differently, is terrified somewhat so to have a degree of empathy is absolutely necessary. You’ve got to pull yourself up by the bootstraps and develop that empathy or recharge yourself so it comes back to you because that isn’t going anywhere, the need for that. When we come out of this pandemic and especially now, you’ve got to be sincere and I think Steve gave great examples of that. You have to be sincere or you might as well not try to be empathetic. We’ve had deep discussions on our team on what our clients are going through, what we’re going through and now’s not the time to drone on obnoxiously, but empathy creates that environment and the basis for continued business. That’s my take.

Fred Diamond: Steve, again I keep referring to you as one of the conversation kings, you’ve listened to more sales conversations than anybody I know and most people I know combined. Talk about that for a second, the shift in conversation right now.

Steve Richard: It was all about acknowledging it before, we’re actually seeing that there’s a negative relationship now if you bring it up, too much are in the wrong context or certainly lead with the two C words, like you said before. Instead, what we’re seeing working is just level with people. None of us are so foolish to think and you can literally say this on a call, if I’m cold calling Dan, “Dan, I’m not so foolish to think that you’re in a position to buy anything at the Spy Museum, I can only imagine what’s happened there because I know you have that event space and I know that everything’s closed, I totally get that. At the same time, I have a job to do and I can bring value to you. Let’s schedule some time so we can talk.”

That leveling with them is very powerful and putting you on that human level, and I’m going to give a nod to Linda Richardson and something I heard from a guy named Kevin Vanes who’s a VP of Sales at Terminus the other day. He talked about the six critical skills, Linda Richardson has the six critical skills. Presence, relating, questioning, listening, positioning and checking. If you’re having an empathy crisis, in addition to taking a day off, read a book and I would read a sales book. Go recharge, go back to the sales mothership. A lot of people have studied this profession, my mentor, Tom Snyder spent years studying the profession of buying and selling and he imparted that passion for it back to me so recharge your battery, it’s like you’re an electric car. Then go back out at it and then honestly, if you can’t be empathetic and you’ve lost that authenticity, you just don’t care about these people – and I mean this with all due respect – maybe get out of sales, maybe do something else for a while and then you can come back to it later on.

Fred Diamond: That’s a great point and actually a great book is Alan Stein Jr.’s Raise Your Game. One of the things that we’ve learned over the 8 weeks we’ve been doing this webcast is you’re a sales professional and if you’re watching today’s webcast, we have a lot of people here from all over the globe. There’s some names I recognize, people in the IES community and there’s a ton of names that I’ve never seen before so thank you so much for participating on today’s webcast. Again, we’re going to be turning this into a Sales Game Changers podcast, keep your eyes open for that. Also, I just want to acknowledge our sponsors of the IES, we have Cvent, Asher Strategies, DLT, ImmixGroup, Red Hat and SAPNS2, they’re our platinum sponsors. You are a sales professional, this is a very difficult time to be in sales but you’re a sales professional. How are you being professional? We have time for two more questions. Do you guys have a couple more minutes? We have a couple more questions that came in, then we’ll wrap up here. How are you taking care of yourself? Again, we have a lot of sales leaders on today’s call. Steve, you look great, you got the beard going here, I told you in the beginning of the call it looks like you’ve lost a little bit of weight but what are you guys physically doing as sales leaders in the midst of this to be sane, to be healthy, to be fresh? Steve, go first.

Steve Richard: In the morning, frozen blueberries in a smoothie with some spinach, protein, ripe banana, unsweetened almond milk with a peanut butter bagel, and I run every day. That’s pretty much it, I do some planks because my back hurts me but if you do that every day, for me at least it works.

Fred Diamond: Eat healthy and get out there and be active. Dan Cole, how about you?

Dan Cole: I’d like to meet you at a centralized location because I’d like to pick that up every day from you, if you don’t mind. My daughter who’s to the right of me has been encouraging me to eat more avocados and that’s something I’ll do as well.

Steve Richard: Dan, I eat one a day, I eat an avocado a day.

Dan Cole: Costco, if you wear a mask and go in there, they’ve got the best deals on them. This is not an Apple watch, it’s my Fitbit, I am obsessed with walking and anybody who would like to join a challenge with me, I’m also a competitor as I’m sure the other two gentlemen on this podcast that you’re looking at are as well. I do a ton of walking every day and on the weekends try to do 10-11 miles, just sharpening the saw with the headphones and listening to podcasts and webcasts and what have you. To answer your question, Fred, lots and lots of walking.

Fred Diamond: What are going to be the challenges over the next week that the sales professionals need to overcome?

Dan Cole: Okay, thank you, Fred [laughs] sorry, Steve. Mine’s a review of what I said before and I think Steve covered this. I think it’s a challenge to assume that clients won’t buy. In other words, and Steve touched on it to, to over-empathize. It’s important to empathize but the authenticity that Steve talked about was basically what I wanted to say, to stay authentic, to understand that we have a job to do, to encourage our sales teams in a very difficult time, to remember that we are of value to each other and to our clients. Then what I want to remember to do and hopefully I’m being effective in doing so is to make sure that I am communicating with each member on my team in the way they want to be communicated with, the way they want to be led, everybody approaches this crisis in a different way, truly, including all of us. Those are my challenges and ones that I hope to overcome.

Fred Diamond: Dan, you just made a great point that comes up not infrequently at the IES. Don’t make the decisions for your customers, don’t presume that they’re having a challenging time, they’re not going to buy, they’re not looking for solutions. Sales professionals out there, do not put your head in the mind of the salesperson and make those assumptions. Steve, why don’t you bring us on home?

Steve Richard: Get out of autopilot if you haven’t already. Take a look around, use your business acumen, look around the economy, there are lots of companies right now that are absolutely thriving and you can sell to them in many cases or be prepared to sell to them when you come out of this. Go subscribe to an email newsletter called The Hustle, every morning they deliver long form journalism and they’re explaining situations of micro industries that are flourishing you’ve never thought of before. Building pipeline and doing the right activity day in and day out when you know it’s not going to close, I think that’s going to be the biggest challenge. It’s like, “How do I keep getting myself to my activity levels when I know for a fact that these deals are not going to close in the ways they were before?”

That can be a mind game, get yourself over that mind game. Then finally, manage up and managing up is not making excuses. If you’re going to manage up, you better not show up saying, “There’s no way I can hit this number, boss” and then they look at your activities and go, “You’re right, there’s not, you didn’t try.” This is not a time not to try and I am absolutely flabbergasted right now how frequently I’m talking to sales leaders and business owners and they’re saying that even in the midst of 15% unemployment we’ve got salespeople who are not essentially trying. Now, I empathize with depression and those kinds of things, I get it, at the same time this is not the time not to try and I know the unemployment is very rich right now and a lot of people are making more on unemployment than they were making before, it’s not going to last forever and that’s not a way to build your career. Find a way if you care about your profession and what you’re doing to get the activities done you need to get done. Dan?

Dan Cole: I want to pay you back on something you said, Steve. Now is not the time, I go to YouTube and John Maxwell talks about the concept of failing forward. We’re not failing but we are redefining challenges that we face. Thinking that we’re failing, we have to ask ourselves, “Is it true?” What you just said, so much speaks to me. Now is not the time, it’s an opportunity as difficult as this is.

Fred Diamond: Gentlemen, once again thank you so much, thanks everybody. If you haven’t taken a picture of the screenshot we have three seconds. Three [laughs], two, one. Thank you so much, thank you to all our guests, again Steve Richard, Dan Cole. Again, this will be repurposed as a Sales Game Changers podcast. Thank you to our transcriber Mariana who is finishing up as we speak. Gentlemen, thank you so much, stay safe.

Dan Cole: Thank you all.

Transcribed by Mariana Badillo

The post EPISODE 234: How Sales Leaders are Leading Teams and Customers Moving Forward with The Spy Museum’s Dan Cole and ExecVision’s Steve Richard first appeared on Sales Game Changers Podcast.

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KEY MOMENTS
Key lessons from your first few sales jobs: 06:58
Name an impactful sales mentor: 14:53
Two biggest challenges you face today as a sales leader: 17:35
Most important tip: 26:59
How do you sharpen your saw and stay fresh: 31:48
Inspiring thought: 36:47

EPISODE 115: Trade Show Analytics Expert Eric Misic Reflects on How Selling Shipping Services Door-to-Door Led to His Sales Success

ERIC’S FINAL TIP TO EMERGING SALES LEADERS: “You’re going to have times where you’re really in a funk. Take a step back, think about some of the good wins that you’ve had for those days. Take a step back and say, “I’ve done this before, I’ve been in this situation before” from a mentality standpoint and say, “I’m going to really sell my way out of it.” That will work.

Eric Misic is the VP of Business Development at Bear Analytics.

Prior to starting Bear Analytics he held business development leadership role at the Biotechnology Innovation Organization and the Convention Management Group.

Find Eric on LinkedIn!

Fred Diamond: I’m excited to have you here today. We’ve had some people in the past who are also in the event management space, we had Dan Cole who was at Hargrove, we also had Ryan Brown over at NTP Events and we also talked to Denise Medved over at CES the trade show. We’ve gotten a little bit of a taste to that, I’m looking to get your insights into sales in that space and talk a little bit about some of the challenges that might be facing sales leaders in that space, and how they can continue to grow. Tell us a little bit about what you sell today and tell us what excites you about that.

Eric Misic: Sure. As you mentioned, I started Bear Analytics 5 years ago now, our goal is to sell solutions and services. It’s a bit of a technology meet services business around analytics, specifically the bulk of our business revolves around audience acquisition for trade shows. Clients wanting to understand who their current audience is, how to grow that audience using the power of data to do that, so our solutions revolve around starting to get the data in a place that it can actually be used. Once we do that then we run our analytics engines and then finally get the clients in a position that they can start using that information.

Fred Diamond: Is that a big challenge facing the event industry, that audiences are getting more and more difficult to get to come to trade shows?

Eric Misic: Yes. One of the reasons that we started Bear Analytics because coming out of the recession we saw at our association, the Biotechnology Innovation Organization, that exhibit space and sponsorship and advertising type sales definitely swung up fairly quickly after the recession. There was departmental budgets whereas the attendance in terms of that growth didn’t mirror the growth on the exhibit floor. That definitely still remains a challenge for clients as we see there’s some indexes out there in the trade show marketplace that show exhibit floor sales outpacing attendance acquisition pretty much 2 to 1 so it’s a little bit more of a moving target, I’d say.

Fred Diamond: Before we start talking a little bit more about your sales career, tell us more about this particular challenge. Are people not going to shows because of the travel budget or what are some of the top industry trends that you see?

Eric Misic: I think there’s other places that they’re finding knowledge, I think there’s other places they’re finding connections. A new person could come in that’s running a department say, “Let’s nix these street events, these street trade shows, I don’t think we need to go there anymore” or a person saying, “The show is in Nashville this year, I only like going to Orlando” or the challenge is that there’s another competing show that they’re budding up against and they’re having to make a decision. Those are some of the issues that we see. A lot of what we try to figure out is who are our best customers on the attending side from an organizational individual standpoint to then drive that to figure out, “How do we attain more of those types of companies, those types of individuals that we want to grow the event?”

Fred Diamond: I look forward to talking to you more about that as we go, but why don’t you tell us a little more about your specific sales career? Tell us how you first got into sales.

Eric Misic: When I first moved down to Virginia where I’m at now, which was in 2003, I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do moving from New York. The goal was, “Could I be a real estate agent? Maybe I can be in sales.” I went to a bunch of career fairs trying to figure out where I wanted to land, I even looked into some banking jobs. Then I felt like I was a pretty extroverted person so I said sales makes sense.

I started doing sales for a company that was a re seller of at the time Airborne Express overnight shipping which then got acquired by DHL at some point. I would go door to door, it was door to door canvasing sales, collecting office manager’s business cards, trying to get them to convert from a well-known entity like a Fed Ex or UPS over to Airborne Express because we were able to show them that we were able to save money. That was definitely boots on the ground sales.

Fred Diamond: We sometimes come across some people we’ve interviewed for the Sales Game Changers podcast that have started their career with things like that, door to door. What are some of the things you learned knocking on doors trying to get people to switch from a well-known entity like a Fed Ex to an Airborne?

Eric Misic: You have a limited time. You’re meeting somebody unexpected, you’re going through their door ringing their bell, whatever it is, and you have a limited window of opportunity to get them to either 1, sit down and listen or 2, take your information and say, “Let’s follow up, let’s schedule a time to talk.” It’s a commodity that they feel like, “Fed Ex guy’s here every day, our UPS guy comes, we’re friends, we given them presents whenever there’s a holiday” whatever the case is, so it’s a real challenge to get them to take a meeting.

What I realized is that if you can get them to understand we can handle all those things whether it’s getting there on time, we have drop boxes around the corner, get that barrier to the sale down a little bit then people are willing to have a conversation but if they think you’re coming in and you’re going to take something away from them, you’re probably not going to have a second conversation. It’s got to be an equal playing field.

Fred Diamond: This is 2003 when you first got started and again, you’re selling that working door to door trying to convert people from Fed Ex and UPS to Airborne. What was your success rate, do you think? 1 out of 100? 1 out of 50?

Eric Misic: I’d say probably 1 out of 100. It was a lot of pounding the pavement, a ton of it. Then once you got a client, the other challenge for me was it was now in the hands of the logistics folks to make sure that yield continued. People can switch back to Fed Ex, back to UPS, there was no long term contract to that. The challenge there was making sure the client was satisfied so continuing to follow up, continue that relationship which really puts me in a place now where I’m at with Bear Analytics and previous companies to put yourself in the client’s shoes, to be a little more empathetic to their needs. Making sure that it’s not just, “Let’s sign a contract” where they said, “We’re going to move on with your product or service” and then just move on to the next sale. Really maintaining that relationship.

Fred Diamond: I want to talk about that for one second for the Sales Game Changers listening across the globe right now. Obviously, if you’re knocking door to door the person doesn’t want to see you. We’ve heard of some previous interviews that we’ve done where people have said that there are literally signs on the door saying, “Go away” and we’ve talked about some people who’ve had to handle that. How have you handled the rejection? Obviously for selling door to door you’re going to get a lot of doors slammed in your face. How did you personally, handle the constant rejection that you must have faced?

Eric Misic: I had folks put their hands on me at certain points, going into properties that there was no solicitation at. In sales, you’ve got to have thick skin and you got to let things run off. That was I learned. There were certain days where it’s raining outside, it’s cloudy or it’s hot, it’s 105, that it’s not fun. You wipe your sweat from your brow and you try to continue but I think it just happened, that thick skin, that resiliency, being able to say, “OK, I’m just going to move on to the next one.” What’s interesting though, is that you can win people over that initially will say no or say, “Don’t come back.”

There are circumstances that can change in a week, so if you just keep on it and come back around there could be a new person in their place, they’re no longer here or you’re coming back and their situation has changed. The Fed Ex guy didn’t deliver, we were dealing with a lot of title companies, didn’t get the titles and the closing on time, whatever the case is. It can be a game changer for them as a company to say, “I think I need to take a second look at another service provider.” You never know with people, circumstances change.

Fred Diamond: Very good. Right now you’re the VP of Business Development for a company called Bear Analytics and you help companies understand better strategies to get audiences to come to trade shows and events. Tell us what you’re an expert in, tell us a little more about your specific area of brilliance.

Eric Misic: I think on the sale side for me is being able to really read people, walking into a room getting a sense by their body language and their expressions. Whether they’re 1, getting what our pitch is, what the solution is that we’re providing. 2, understanding how interested they are in it based on their body language and whether or not we are saying something that is either making them excited or making them irritated is something that I’m good at. Not just from a sales standpoint but then also even dealing with situations where perhaps it’s outside of sales too. I’ve developed that ability to walk into a room and get a sense of whether there’s friction there or it’s a positive feeling which has its pros and cons.

I think that puts me in a good position for sales and when I’m selling perhaps with another part of my team is to get a sense of, “Let’s slow back a little bit here. Is the client or the prospect truly getting what we’re saying?” Give them time to speak up, give them time to ask a question because a lot of times I think in sales we have a tendency to just want to shoot everything out, tell them everything about the product, how great it is in demo and don’t take a breath, not let the client consume, bring that in to understand what’s going on and what the story is being told here.

Fred Diamond: Before we talk about some of your career mentors that you’ve had that have helped you along the way, again, your company’s called Bear Analytics. Obviously you sell analytical solutions and services for your customers. Is it a technical sale or is it more of a business sale? You just talked about the urge to fight showing up and just throwing out specs and features and those types of things. Tell us more about what your sales process looks like from a business perspective.

Eric Misic: Our mantra at Bear is more about strategy, not equal with technology and that strategy comes before technology in our opinion. What is the client trying to accomplish, what are the goals, what are the challenges they have? Then we’ll figure out the technical solution to get them to basically meet those challenges. When we go into a client’s office or a prospect’s office, we really sit down and understand more about what their challenges are, what they’re going through. Some of them are open, some of them don’t share that right away and then we talk through what our approach has been and then what the successes have been, and typically share a case study so they can feel that barrier comes down.

They feel like, “There’s someone else that’s in my shoes” and that’s typically when some of the honest truths come out from the prospects saying, “I felt that way, I heard Larry had that same experience. I’ve had the same problem. Other shows had the same issues?” They’re almost surprised to hear that other events have similar issues whether it’s with not completely understanding certain metrics or perhaps not having the handle on their data they like. Then once they feel as though there are other folks that are living in their shoes, they have more of a sense that seems like the wall comes down and they have more of a sense to feel like, “These guys get the problem, they really understand the issue.”Fred Diamond: Very good. Most of the Sales Game Changers that we’ve interviewed – not most, all of them – have had great experiences with mentors who helped them get to the level where they are, the VP of sales or the VP of Business Development, or Chief Sales Officer, Chief Revenue Officer. Tell us about one or two of the impactful sales career mentors you’ve had and how they’ve impacted your career.

Eric Misic: When I was at the Biotechnology Innovation Organization, Dan Cole who I know you’ve had on the podcast came in I think just as I was meeting the manager of sales or senior manager of sales, so I had some folks under me that I was managing. He came in for some sales coaching. Initially when you have someone come in that’s going to be a coach, you’re like, “Who’s this guy, where did he come from? Am I doing something wrong?” Over time, meeting with Dan, getting a sense of his style, it really helped me from a sales perspective. Not just to manage people better but then also to understand the empathetic approach, help the client understand you have a solution that’s going to heal their pain. I don’t know if this is the right way of looking at it or not but this is how Dan talks about it, is put people in pain first. Really help them understand what challenges they have whether they’re willing to admit it or not. You can see on their face that, “Yes, I’m in pain. Help me out.”

Then you know you have the solution that can help them and get them there. Once you’re able to talk that through and be methodical about it, the next key is continuing to build that pipeline which is something that Dan really drove home to us. You can have 2, 3 big deals and if these close I’m going to be good but if you don’t have 40 others in the pipeline those 2, 3 don’t fall through and then we’re going to really be in trouble because we don’t have anything else out there on the shelf, so to speak. Continue to build that pipeline even if you and for your team internally is saying, “We can’t handle any more work.” Typically the sales process is pretty long, at least in certain businesses.

Fred Diamond: That’s great advice. One thing that we’ve discovered – it’s pretty obvious – the most important thing to continual sale success is a healthy pipeline, end of the day.

Eric Misic: No doubt about it. Continuing to drive things in the pipe because not everything is going to come out to be a sale. Even if the team internally is saying, “We can’t handle any more work”, the process takes 1, 2, 3 months, 4 months and by that time you could get caught up and then feel like we can slot a few more clients in. That was the key for Dan, the empathetic approach and then also making sure the pipeline was healthy.

Fred Diamond: Very good. As a sales leader what are the two biggest challenges that you face?

Eric Misic: The two biggest are apathy, there’s a challenge there with a lot of folks feeling as though, “I’m pretty good where I’m at. I feel like in our business I know everything I need to know, we’ve been pretty stable in terms of attendance, we grow and we go to certain locations, we’re good. We think we’re OK, we’ve got a handle on the data, IT team is handling that, I don’t need to worry about it as the marketing team or the VP of events.” That’s one, is apathy. People feeling, “Do nothing is better than taking a risk.”

The other thing is that people don’t have a lot of time to sit down, to understand, to take a meeting, to understand what your solution or service is and how it’s different from what they’re doing currently and what other vendors they’ve come across. I don’t think people are being rude, they just don’t have time. There’s a lot of emails coming in, there’s social media, there’s phone calls so it’s a matter of trying to get people to schedule time with you in an easy way. I found some tools that are easy from a calendar stand point as opposed to trying to go back and forth. Do you have an opening on July 16th, or can we meet the week of July 9th? Say, “Here’s my calendar, you pick a time that’s good for you” has been a game changer for us just getting on people’s calendars.

Fred Diamond: What are the apps that you use?

Eric Misic: We went through a few, but the one that we stuck on is called Calendly. It’s amazing where if you just allow people, it’s ease of use, send them the link, say, “Here’s my calendar, take a look, you schedule a time that’s good for you.” I don’t know if it’s because it’s easy or if they think, “This guy is so booked, I have to look at his calendar.” I’m not sure what it is because I haven’t dared to ask but whatever it is, I get calendar invites coming in, I can send it a week ago, an email. People will pick a time a week later so it’s pretty cool and it’s been helpful for us from a sale standpoint.

Fred Diamond: It’s a good tip. We know you’ve worked at some great companies, talked about one of your mentors. Take us back to the #1 specific sale success or win from your career that you’re most proud of. Take us back to that moment.

Eric Misic: We started Bear Analytics in the summer of 2013 and we were doing some pro bono work trying to get logos on the website, trying to get some clients that we would do free work for. Finally, we got our first contract back in the fall of 2013 and I think that was the biggest – if not one of the biggest, probably I think the biggest for me – because you start a company, you take that leap of faith and you wonder if people are going to be willing to pay for this.

We finally had a contract. Looking back at it now, we didn’t have any paying clients, we didn’t have any real cred out there with other associations. Someone took a leap of faith, a gentleman by the name of Jeremy Figoten who’s continued to be a front to this day with the National Apartment Association, since moved on but he took a leap of faith. We continued to work with him for 3 and a half years after that. The projects grew, the faith in us grew from his team and some of the C level folks internally at his organization as well. That solidified that we did the right thing when we got that first contract.

Fred Diamond: Very good. Was there ever a moment where you thought to yourself, “It’s too hard, it’s just not for me”? 

Eric Misic: Sure. I think early on at that world-wide express job selling the overnight shipping with Airborne, I had a situation where I sold a new client and I can’t remember the client specifically but I feel like it was not just a bunch of envelopes but it was a fair amount of boxes, which is good if they’re doing overnight. We had a system that we could log in and make sure the boxes got picked up and they were on their way to, at that time it was a sorting facility in Chantilly, Virginia, I lived in Fair Fax. I went online after work and made sure the client’s boxes got picked up and they didn’t, they were still at the door. I knew the client made labels but they were never tracked by the Airborne express pickup van so I drove down to the client’s door, picked up the packages myself, had to drive them down to the sorting facility. At that point I’m like, “I can make the deal and sell the client, but now I’m relying on someone else to actually fulfill the rest of the agreement.”

That was a challenge for me. Sales, all day long, no problem but I want to make sure that someone’s backing me up and I was like, “I don’t know if I can do this anymore in this environment.” Then I’ve had other situations through the years, even some with Bear Analytics. Founding a company is not for everybody. I think when we started talking about data for events and really for associations back in 2013, there wasn’t a lot of talk about that. Folks were doing surveys, maybe a little data here and there. Now it’s on the tip of everybody’s tongue but we had some figurative doors close in our face, folks saying, “I thought you guys were supposed to be the money ball of whatever and you’re supposed to predict the future.”

That’s not what we do. Missed expectations sometimes can lead you to feeling as though I’m either not a good salesperson or did I make the right decision, question yourself as a salesperson but really it’s just a matter of having that thick skin, letting it roll off and coming into work the next day and saying, “I’m going to close another deal, I’m going to get someone else on the phone that doesn’t know about us and they’re going to be interested in what we do.” Frankly, every time we have someone that says, “It’s not in the budget” or, “I’m using somebody else” or, “We’re going to do this internally” I can count on my hand the times that customers or prospects haven’t come back in a year or two and said, “Can you tell me more about what you’re doing? Remind me about what you’re doing” and then they become a client. It’s just a numbers game and also stay front and center in front of folks, even if they’re not interested in time. As long as they see the other folks are using you or that you have some stories to tell, eventually they’ll come back.

Fred Diamond: Eric, what’s the most important thing you want to get across to junior selling professionals to help them improve their career?

Eric Misic: You’ve got to stay organized, you’ve got to know where you’re at with your pipeline, know your numbers. Know the things that you want to report on and where you’re ahead or behind and keep on that because the last thing you want to do is for someone that is overseeing sales or that you’re reporting to come to you and say, “Where are we with this client?” or, “How are we comparing to last year’s quarter?” and not have that number.

The key is to really know your numbers, where you’re at with certain prospects and that the best salespeople really have a good sense of the timeline, when the best time is to get someone’s attention. Then also I think they have an innate sense knowing whether a deal is going up, down or sideways. Sometimes to their detriment because they start to make things up, I know I do where I’m like, “I don’t think this is going to work out” or, “This client’s not going to close because I haven’t heard from them in two weeks”, it’s just a timing thing. Keep your head above water staying on top of where you are with all of your folks in the pipeline whether they’re very early on or very close to closing them down.

Fred Diamond: What are some of the things that you do to sharpen your saw and stay fresh?

Eric Misic: For me it’s about networking with other folks, getting a sense of some of the challenges that they’re having whether in sales or just in the marketplace that we provide solutions to. There’s always new vendors popping up, there’s always new solutions popping up, there’s new buzz words popping up that folks are talking about, about what they need and getting a sense of what the pulse is. The marketplace, what they’re talking about, what their challenges might be, what are they hearing that perhaps we want to be able to say that we either do or don’t do.

Sometimes it’s something that we want to get away from, but getting the sense of that. Outside of that, there’s some books out there that have been good to me over time on the sales front. I went to a gentleman’s, his name is escaping me, but to an event where he was talking through The Little Book of Sales. I can’t remember his name.

Fred Diamond: Jeffrey Gitomer.

Eric Misic: Jeffery Gitomer, and he’s a super dynamic sales guy. I wouldn’t say definitely his sales approach is not something that I’m saying, “I’ve got to be Jeffery Gitomer” but just getting a sense of how other people think and how they influence others to make decisions has always been something that I try to at least get a sense of, their style if there’s any little tidbits that perhaps I could bring on.

Fred Diamond: Very good. What’s a major initiative you’re working on today to ensure your continued success?

Eric Misic: For us at Bear, recently we went through a transition from one customer relationship management database to another, one CRM to another and with that came some very specific ways we wanted to start reporting our conversions and our activity level. Also making sure that the team had some transparency on the pipeline so our team internally had a good sense of where we were, we wanted to make sure that we were staying ahead of last year’s revenue and close rates.

That’s been a real game changer for us. For me personally to stay organized, I think I knew where things were in the pipeline but for the team to see it, to have that transparency has been a real mindset change for them. I think everybody’s pushing towards the goal, we want to hit the certain quarter number or we want to get the sale through, or working with this client, I have a contact there. Everybody has a hand in the sales, probably not necessarily doing the pitches or doing the proposal building but wanting to make sure that ultimately the company is successful.

Fred Diamond: People don’t return your phone calls, you mentioned before that one of the two biggest challenges is that time is short so they don’t return your calls, they don’t return your emails. Why have you continued? What is it about sales as a career that has kept you going? 

Eric Misic: I think it’s the thrill of sales, having that sense of, “I need to make sales in order to prove my worth, prove the value to the organization” whether it was when I was working for Bio or CMG or now, having my own company. It gets me up every day because there’s a thrill of it, there’s a thrill of chasing after folks sometimes to feeling as though I’m beating my head against a wall a little bit, but once you get them to say, “Let’s have a conversation” and get them to say, “OK, I’m interested in proposal. Let’s have a walk through, I want to get my CEO involved here about this because this is really something that we need, something that’s been an itch that we need to scratch or a burning issue internally for a while” is pretty exciting. Once you get people through that conversion you feel as though, “If I didn’t make that call, if I didn’t send that email they wouldn’t be a client.” Then seeing them return, because the rest of the team and the company in total was able to actually make good on that promise of, “Here’s the solution that we’re going to bring and we’re going to help you out” is also really exciting too.

Fred Diamond: Before we ask you for your final thought, you’re an interesting interview that we’ve done in a sense that most people that we interview for the Sales Game Changers podcast are sales VPs or CROs or CSOs at companies and they manage in some cases dozens – if not hundreds – of people. They’ve gone from sales leader job to sales leader job, if you will. You have gone from a sales leader job into owning a business, but you’re a sales guy at heart as we figured out here from today’s podcast. Tell us a little bit for the Sales Game Changers listening across the globe today who may want to own their own business or start their own business how valuable it was having a sales mentality, because the reality of it is you can create a business that might be brilliant but if you don’t sell, there’s no business. Tell us a little bit, Eric Misic, about some of your thoughts on that, how valuable it was for you to be a sales guy like we figured out on today’s podcast, to owning your business and having that sales DNA, if you will.

Eric Misic: I spoke with a lot of friends of mine now after having a company for 4 years, almost 5, that will say, “I’d love to jump out on my own but my problem is I’m not good at BD, I don’t want to do the BD.” I think coming into Bear, Joe Colangelo who’s our other co-founder here is that he was managing the technical side of things. “Here’s the analytical side, here’s the process and here’s what we’re going to build from a analysis standpoint.”

My role was to get people eyeballs on what we’re doing and so from a sales standpoint it’s really making those connections, doing a lot of networking, getting people to understand here’s what we’re doing now, here’s the solutions that we’re offering, bringing people out to lunch, having coffee. You never know where a sale or a lead can come from as long as you’re saying front and center, like I said. Early on with Bear, Joe and I were doing a lot of lunches on our own personal time, we were doing a lot of coffees, going to people’s offices, doing a lot of meetings that perhaps never really turned into anything, some junior level people we were just trying to get meetings with doing things that were unrelatable to the solution that we offer now just to get into doors.

When we started Bear I think what was unique was we had someone that was focused truly on the product and I was focused truly on the sales side of things. I think it takes a unique personality to go out there and try to make a market for your product and then also for your business, in this case.

Fred Diamond: Eric, give us one final thought for the Sales Game Changers listening today around the globe to get them inspired.

Eric Misic: Just keep it up. You’re going to have bad days on the sale side, you’re going to have times where you’re really in a funk. You’ve got to be able to express that to others but not in a way like, “I’m never going to get out of it, I hate this sales thing” but in a way like, “I need a pick-me-up, I’m having a bad week. Can you help me out? Tell me about some of my wins because I forgot about them.” I think the short term mental state of a salesperson usually is that once a sale is there they forgot about it and they’re onto the next one, they don’t take a long time to relish in those wins.

Take a step back, think about some of the good wins that you’ve had for those days that you need a pick-me-up but don’t let yourself get so down that you’re like, “I can’t reach out to folks. Nobody’s interested in my product, no one’s interested in taking my phone call” because assuming that you’re working for an established company or have your own company, you’ve had some wins at some point or you wouldn’t be around anymore, you wouldn’t be relevant. Taking a step back and saying, “I’ve done this before, I’ve been in this situation before” from a mentality standpoint and saying, “I’m going to really sell my way out of it” for a lack of a better term.

Transcribed by Mariana Badillo
Produced by Rosario Suarez

The post EPISODE 115: Trade Show Analytics Expert Eric Misic Reflects on How Selling Shipping Services Door-to-Door Led to His Sales Success first appeared on Sales Game Changers Podcast.

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EPISODE 063: Sales Executive Jason Stookey Helps Tech Companies Partner with Law Firms, Legally Speaking

Jason Stookey is the vice president of partner development for the International Legal Technology Association, also known as ILTA.

He’s a sales and business development professional with more than 18 years of experience in the tradeshow and event industry with a proven track record as an achiever in developing strategic and profitablerelationships.

22,000 members strong serving CIO, IT leaders typically in law firms, corporate council and the like.

He also ran sales and business development for the National Association of Broadcasters, the NAB.

Find Jason on LinkedIN!

Jason Stookey: I’ve been in sales and business development for 21 years. Got started in a small trade show organization that specialized in doing events in Russia and the former Soviet Union. This was right after the fall of the Soviet Union and we specialized in actually going outside of the Mosque of Saint Petersburg corridor and believe it or not, my first business trip was to Siberia. I went to a city called Novosibirsk for 5 weeks so it was definitely an eye opening experience and it definitely toughened me up pretty quickly.

I work with the International Legal Technology Association, a non-profit organization that specializes in sharing best practices, education and various pieces of information to CIO’s, IT directors of the legal community. Our members consist of CIO’s, IT directors and anybody who’s involved in technology for the legal industry. The legal industry as a whole is very conservative and with technology expanding and innovation happening at such a rapid pace, you could say that the legal industry is being moved forward kicking and screaming but there’s really some exciting technologies that are going to disrupt that industry. Such things as artificial intelligence, block chain are coming in and it’s a great time to be involved with it as there’s a plethora of new companies that we need to introduce into this community. From a sales perspective, there’s a lot of blue ocean opportunities so it’s really exciting right now.

Fred Diamond: Jason, I have a quick question for you. You’re right now selling for a not for profit, for a trade association. How does that differ from a for profit organization?

Jason Stookey: Almost no different than selling in a for profit environment. We have goals, objectives, revenue, metrics that we have to achieve. The one nuance that comes up in a non-profit environment is you do have to take into consideration the needs of the membership at the end of the day where we don’t have shareholders or investors or private equity to be accountable to, we have to be accountable to the membership and so we need to always be conscientious that what we are doing is serving the overall mission of the organization.

What I do specifically and what I’ve been involved with specifically in the non-profit sector really does focus at the end of the day on advertising opportunities, whether that’s in events, print publications, digital advertising or somewhere in between. But again, it’s virtually the same as working in a for-profit environment.

Fred Diamond: So you have a number, you have a quota, pretty much?

Jason Stookey: Absolutely. You would walk into the sales organization from the outside and recognize it immediately as being the same. Now that said, a number of non-profits do struggle with creating successful sales environments but I’ve been fortunate through my career to be involved in associations that have highly successful, well-oiled run sales organizations. It’s from my perspective, very different and I’ve worked in the for-profit advertising sector as well and as I said, it’s virtually the same.

Fred Diamond: Very good. Give us a little bit of a peek into your career. How did you first get into sales as a career?

Jason Stookey: Like everybody. I knew from 5 years old this is exactly what I wanted to do – I’m kidding.

Fred Diamond: [Laughs]

Jason Stookey: I was in college and I was studying for a final in philosophy of law because I thought I wanted to be a lawyer and at 3 O’clock in the morning, studying with my best friend I looked over and said, “I don’t want to do this anymore.” I was in a fraternity and a few days later an alumni from my fraternity came to speak at the business school and this was 1994, 95. I was young and impressionable and he came in with a sharp looking suit and he had pager and he drove a BMW and I said, “What do you do?”

And he said, “I sell trade show space.” And I said, “I don’t know what that is, but can you get me a job?” He said, “Can you send me a resume?” And I said, “What’s a resume?” [Laughs]. A little tongue and cheek there, but sent him my resume and sure enough he introduced me to my first job and that was the one that I referenced earlier about doing events in the former Soviet Union. I was kind of a Jack of all trades position but it morphed over time into being responsible for selling exhibition space and sponsorships for that event.

Not a well-planned out strategy to get into sales but once I got into it, I started to find out I enjoyed it and then I got successful and it just kind of blossomed from there.

Fred Diamond: What are some of the things that you learned from those first jobs? You mentioned that you spent your very first job in Siberia, ladies and gentlemen, for five weeks. Tell us some of the things that you learned that have stuck with you.

Jason Stookey: Primarily those early days I had to be self-taught in terms of sales technique and training, and so I would go to various events or lunch and learns and I was always going seeking a silver bullet – the thing that would make me successful 100% of the time on every sales engagement. That obviously doesn’t exist but through that I learned new techniques and started to learn on my own probing questions, startling statements, learning to create unique selling propositions and formulated probably at the time a little bit of an unorthodox style but I just kept refining it on my own.

Then realized that I was much better in person and face to face than I was over the phone and so if I had an opportunity to set an appointment and get a meeting back in those days, it was primarily going to other trade shows and events, I found that I would be much more successful in that capacity.

Fred Diamond: Tell us about you specifically. What are you specifically an expert in? Tell us a little more about your specific area of brilliance.

Jason Stookey: I’ve been fortunate to be associated in the technology space for the better part of 17, 18 years and that started when I joined the Consumer Electronics Association, now the Consumer Technology Association. They’re the producers of the Consumer Electronic Show. I got to know technology on a first hand level and understand the sales channels and the needs and objectives of that community and was able to parley that to my time at the National Association of Broadcasters where it’s a lot of the similar brands but serving different markets. You understood the rhythm, the cadence and the needs of that community in terms of marketing and how they’re trying to build market share, grow their revenue, what their distribution channels are, what their challenges are and through that became very good at consultative selling.

Being able to take people down a natural path to create a solution that met their needs. I don’t consider myself a stereotypical sales person in the sense that I don’t have to talk a lot, I don’t have to be loud and boisterous but I listen really well and I focus on key words, being able to relay that back to the customer and help go through the process of thinking with them through their challenge we can come to a solution at the end of the day that meets their needs. Just to summarize, I’m pretty comfortable selling into the technology space for Consumer Electronics but audio video equipment in general and then being very good at being able to take them through a journey.

Fred Diamond: You mentioned that a lot of your career was in technology and one of your areas of brilliance is understanding technology companies and how they’re trying to provide solutions for customers. Now you’re at the ILTA, the International Legal Technology Association. Are the major vendors that you work with usual suspects, the Microsofts, the Ciscos, the Oracles of the world?

Jason Stookey: Yeah, there’s definite opportunities for us to penetrate those companies. Yes, Microsoft is an obvious player that we work with. Some other ones that may ring a bell, LexisNexis, Thomson Reuters, those are HP, Canon, Konica Minolta. Again, I have a comfort level working with those companies because I understand the decision making process, how the budgeting process goes so it’s comfortable for me. Being able to work in those bigger, more complicated, corporate environments, I’m very comfortable with.

Fred Diamond: Take us back through your career, we always ask the question about mentoring. Tell us about an impactful sales career mentor and how they impacted your career.

Jason Stookey: Dan Cole was my vice president of sales at the Consumer Electronic Show in the early 2000, I think starting in 2001 and I knew of Dan through the trade show industry because he had a positive reputation and I actually had seen him speak at an industry event on sales training. When he came in, I was excited because I thought it was really going to bolster my skills and I would learn a lot from it. That couldn’t have been the furthest thing from the truth at the very beginning.

Dan came in with a different style, put in some best practices, created what I would loosely call a level of regimentation that needed to happen and I felt that it did nothing but inhibit me. He was coming in trying to build a team and he had one person in particular that had bought into his system. Everybody else was fighting it and I finally went into his office and said, “I give up. I don’t know what you’re trying to do, just tell me what you want me to do.” And we ended up having a very cathartic, two hour conversation and we spoke freely and from there it just started to build a level of trust and support.

That was when I learned it’s as much about the sales technique as it is to building a successful sales team where everybody’s bought into the same vision and program and rowing in the same direction. I would say that that was a pivotal point in my career. I always talk to Dan about it to this day, we talk on a frequent basis and he still makes fun of me coming in as a snot-nosed kid and saying, “Just tell me what you want me to do” because I was at a point of frustration. Dan’s definitely one of the most impactful people on my career.

Fred Diamond: That’s great. Dan’s the VP of sales at Hargrove Inc.. We did have him on a previous podcast, he gave a lot of great sights and he’s also introduced some people to the Sales Game Changer community that we will have on future podcasts as well. Jason, what are the two biggest challenges you face today as a sales leader?

Jason Stookey: I would bucket them into sales motivation and then lead generation. Lead generation in the sense of going out and engaging people who may not be familiar with you or have not thought about why they should work with you and in today’s world where you are getting bombarded with email, social media, you never answer your phone, getting people’s attention is the most challenging thing. Getting sales people to understand how to cut through that clutter and deliver value in the statement that they are trying to convey right off the bat is a challenge.

It needs to be done on a repetitive basis and you’ve got to continuously be engaging that and trying to find new business and coming up with new things that will get people’s attention. Definitely try to lead with value, lead with a piece of education, lead with something that that person would think, “Wow, I would benefit from talking to that person.” I’ve seen it a million times and I still see it today where people just, I like to say, vomit information in their very first engagement and it goes absolutely nowhere. I can see that in a face to face conversation or in emails that people write. You’ve got to get a quick nugget and build that trust and kind of go from there.

Then from a sales motivation stand point, the challenge always is to find what is that button to push with that individual. It cannot be a one size fits all type of approach. Some people want to be challenged through financial rewards and we’re in sales, we all want financial rewards. Some people want recognition, some people want just to be left alone and be the silent hero. It’s constantly trying to figure those people out, understand what motivates them, get in their heads, be empathetic and push them along to success. And being patient [laughs] from my perspective, just because there’s a way that I would do it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s their style. Those are just a few things in a quick 30 thousand foot overview.

Fred Diamond: You had mentioned when you had that conversation with Dan back when you asked them what should I do and you mentioned that the realization you had was that you’re building a team and if you think about the team, various people come to the game with different skills and different approaches. At the end of the day you want someone who’s bought into your vision. One of the challenges that we hear from the Sales Game Changers that we interview is alignment from the C suite to the sales management down to the field level sales people or the people on the phone, if you will. That definitely fits in with how do you ensure that everyone’s basically on the same bus, so to speak, and helping your organization achieve its goals.

Jason Stookey: You set on something that’s very important there, the alignment within the organization. If you do not have that, especially in a sales leadership position where you’re not aligned with senior management and all the way through to C suite it can be a challenge and you’ve got to be conscientious of those people’s background. If they’re not necessarily coming from a sales perspective, you have to make sure that you are spoon-feeding the information in a way that they understand it because there’s a lot of predisposed biases about what sales does and they’re not necessarily true.

I’ve had more than my fair share of conversations with people that ask, do they fully understand what sales is? Do they fully understand what we do? That’s important so from a managing up perspective as being a sales leader, you need to make sure you’re effectively managing up and communicating up the chain of command as well because otherwise, you’re going to get a little kink in your hose and it’s going to be challenging to work forward. I say that from experience.

Fred Diamond: Just curiously, because a lot of the people listening to today’s Sales Game Changers podcast don’t really know the organizational structure of a trade association not for profit. Could you tell us for a few moments what does your reporting structure look like?

Jason Stookey: Again, generally it’s fairly similar to a for-profit environment. In my current position I report directly into the CEO. Previous at National Association of Broadcasters NAB, I was a vice president sales and business development, reported into an executive vice president which in essence was the business unit leader and he had a sales leader, a marketing leader and an operations leader. Again, fairly similar to the for-profit environment.

Fred Diamond: Jason, take us back to the #1 sale success or win from your career you’re most proud of. Take us back to that moment.

Jason Stookey: It would have been when I was selling directly at the Consumer Electronics Association and I worked on Dan Cole’s team. Dan had implemented an annual sales contest called, “Winning the Annual Crown” and for three years in a row I came in second place to my good friend Kirk Smallwood. The only thing that we won out of this was a little glass trophy but I wanted that thing so bad, I buckled down on the fourth year and just did not stop and was relentless the entire year.

At the end of December when I knew that I was not going to be caught, I clenched the annual crown. I went into Dan’s office and I said, “I got it.” And it was just off of a relatively small sale, I can’t even remember the company, quite frankly, but I remember the moment and then we would have a ceremony after the Consumer Electronic Show. When the show ended we would have sales team dinner when Dan would present that trophy and that was fantastic. I still share that trophy everywhere I go, it’s in my office right now and to this day I have one. It was for me, winning my own Super bowl and I beat Kirk Smallwood.

Fred Diamond: Curiously, what did that signify to you? You talked about one of the two biggest challenges being sales motivation.

Jason Stookey: It was a motivator. Not to sound arrogant, but I knew that the commission was all going to be there and even when I was coming in second, it didn’t mean that my commission was any less, I was doing really well but this was the icing on the cake. This was the thing that I wanted that validated me as being, in my mind, successful. I earned it and I earned it the right way, I just persevered through every single sales opportunity and didn’t turn anything over to an assistant.

I drove everything home because I wanted that. That moment has lived with me and I try to convey that to my sales teams in some way, shape or form as I move forward. It’s not just about the money, it’s about the personal gratification of reaching that mountain top.

Fred Diamond: Did you ever question being in sales after you made that decision to move in? Was there ever a moment where you thought to yourself, “It’s too hard, it’s just not for me.”?

Jason Stookey: Candidly, no. Once I saw the light, it matched up very well with who I am. I was athletic in high school, played basketball, soccer, baseball and quickly learned that sales is very competitive and I liked the scoreboard aspect of it. Are there days where you’re in a drought and you’re just like, “This is ridiculous.”? Yes, but I can’t really remember going back and saying, “I don’t think sales is a career for me.” No, not really. Once I got in, I got hooked on the drug pretty deep.

Fred Diamond: Jason, what’s the most important thing you want to get across to the selling professionals listening to today’s podcast to help them improve their career?

Jason Stookey: For people getting into the sales profession, I’d go back first to what I shared earlier in that there is no silver bullet for sales. This is all going to sound very rudimentary but it’s true, there are no shortcuts in sales. You need to put in the time, the energy, you need to do the due diligence, you need to be methodical in your approach, you need to keep your pipeline organized at all time, you need to understand where there are potential peaks and valleys in your pipeline because you may have moments of glory but you will probably then fall off right into a valley or drought if you’re not bringing in leads behind it.

That’s something that I see all the time, people get intoxicated with their hot streak and then they go cold, and it’s because they didn’t do the due diligence of bringing in new leads into your pipeline. Again, you have to have the mental fortitude to be able to accept the fact that you’re going to here no more than yes and you can’t take that personally. There’s a number of things, especially for young people today, they need to take a good, hard look at themselves and say, “Do they have what it takes to be in sales?”. I could talk for hours about this, especially with junior sales folks because I’ve tended to have a number of entry level sales positions and have seen a wide spectrum of successful ones and unsuccessful ones. I could speak ad nauseam about that. [Laughs]

Fred Diamond: What are some of the things that you do specifically yourself to sharpen your saw and stay fresh?

Jason Stookey: I read constantly, especially in the sectors that I’m involved with. Make sure that I’m looking at trends and making sure that I’m aware of the new players into the market. Try to network with other sales professionals when I can, it’s easier said than done but I do get a lot of inspiration and oxygen when I have that ability to chat with people about their problems and just commiserate sometimes. In terms of actual skill sets, I need to do a better job at that, I could always be learning more but my typical style is to read. I was just reading about commission plans yesterday, different ideas, for example. My go-to is reading.

Fred Diamond: What’s a major initiative you’re working on today to ensure your continued success?

Jason Stookey: At ILTA, I’m part of a regime change. We’re the new CEO, new VP of marketing, myself. I work with the vendor community as mentioned earlier on companies like Microsoft, LexisNexis, etcetera. There’s a bit of a chasm between the business vendor community and the rest of the organization so as a way to make sure that we’re serving the needs of this community better, I created what I’m calling the partner advisory council. It’s a group of 10 individuals from various levels of customers and we’ve created basically an n user group for them to share feedback on how we can better service their needs, create new opportunities, really get them to be part of the process. Their engagement deepens their commitment to our organization and it helps with the sales process when you have your customers selling for you. Giving them that sense of ownership helps and we’re starting to see some fruits blossom from that.

Fred Diamond:  Jason, as we’ve spoken, sales is hard. People don’t return your calls or your emails. Why have you continued? What is it about a sales career that keeps you going?

Jason Stookey: I’ve stayed in sales because I enjoy the endorphin rush of getting that close and seeing that contract come through or that PO come through is a natural high for me. I am addicted to it, I can’t stay away from it. Even in a leadership position where I’m managing, I have to be involved at some level of doing the fundamentals with sales because there is no greater high for me than getting that. That is what motivates me at the end of the day, I love it. I absolutely love it. [Laughs]

Fred Diamond: Why don’t you give us one final thought to share with the listeners on today’s Sales Game Changers podcast to inspire them?

Jason Stookey: I would say sales is the one career where you can really determine your lifestyle based on how much energy and effort you put into your work. I remember my grandfather who just passed away recently telling me at a very early age, two paths he suggested for me. One, he said, “If you want to be a doctor, be a radiologist, they don’t really have to talk to people very much and they don’t have to deal with all the blood and guts, but if you want to talk to people go into sales because you have an opportunity to influence people in a positive way, share value and reap some financial success out of it.” and I followed that path because I didn’t really want to be a radiologist [laughs] or a lawyer, for that matter.

You can control your own destiny in sales and if you are a sales performer, you will always have an opportunity out there for you regardless of the economy or the market or what have you. If you find that in yourself and you stay in it, you will have a good life.

Transcribed by Mariana Badillo
Produced by Rosario Suarez

The post EPISODE 063: Sales Executive Jason Stookey Helps Tech Companies Partner with Law Firms, Legally Speaking first appeared on Sales Game Changers Podcast.

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EPISODE 040: Like the Rhinoceros He Admires, Hargrove Sales Leader Dan Cole Charges Down Opportunities with Great Success

With over 28 years of sales leadership experience at companies such as Lanier Worldwide, National Trade Productions, Advanstar, Yellowbrix and the Consumer Electronic Show, Dan Cole is a true sales visionary and leader.

Presently, he is the Senior Vice President, Trade Shows and Events at Hargrove, one of the leading event and management companies in the world. Dan’s passion is to develop an urgently enthusiastic sales environment by focusing on the following: training, revenue generation, activity and analysis, customer focus and recruiting.

His specialties include sales leadership, motivational speaking, sales training, sales and motivational writing.  

Find Dan on LinkedIN!

Fred Diamond: Tell us specifically what you sell today and tell us what excites you about that.

Dan Cole: The two divisions that I oversee from a sales perspective are Trade Shows Division. If you attend a Trade show or you exhibit at a trade show, the general service contractor is the company that works collaboratively with the show owner, typically an association but there are many, many show organizers that are public and we work with them from a look and feel standpoint, from a strategy standpoint in terms of creating the experience, both for attendees and exhibitors, that’s actually an important point. It is not a transactional relationship. It is a collaborative strategic effort.

We can look at a trade show floor, talk about what experience the show owner or the show producer wants to accomplish or what they’re looking for and then we design and build around that and the same goes for our exhibits division as well. It’s not just constructing a booth, and I use that word purposely, that’s going to sit on a concrete floor in a convention center. It is creating an experience, creating an experience that manifests itself into an exhibit space.

The third division here which I do not oversee but work very, very closely with my counterpart is our Events Division and they’ll handle anything from a Presidential Inaugural to NATO Summit to an Activation in Super Bowl, at the Super Bowl and the reason I bring that up is there is a tremendous amount of collaboration between our two divisions because, for instance, if a trade show incorporates a high level keynote or a keynote of any nature and it necessitates staging or a specific look and feel, the events division will come right in, work collaboratively with one another.

We’ll work collaboratively with one another to create that experience. By the same token, we handled the Democratic National Convention which where Secretary Clinton was nominated for President. My particular division handled the media services area so each media company, each network had its own specific area, both within the venue but even outside the venue as well. And so, my team serviced those particular organizations and others that required services of the general contractor. We worked collaboratively with one another.

Fred Diamond: How did you first get into sales as a career?

Dan Cole: My uncle, Dennis Berman, who continues to be to this day a mentor of mine and inspiration, owned a copier company out of St. Louis, Missouri and expanded all over the country. He retired several years ago as a very, very successful entrepreneur and he was the consummate sales person. And so, that was an inspiration.

I remember coming right out of James Madison University, I was a waiter at Ruby Tuesdays at Fair Oaks Mall and back then there was only a few of these outlets around the country and I saw two young guys come in who were studs, if you will and I overheard them talking about their jobs and how they’re selling what have you and I’m a sales guy, I guess, from the day I was born or I’ve been a sales guy and I inquired as to what they did and they told me about the company that they worked for, Harris 3M, which later became Lanier Worldwide and they gave me the name of Barry Ward who I called that day, came in for an interview and that was the jump into the pool of sales from which I’ve never looked back.

Fred Diamond: What are some of the key lessons? Take us back to some of your first sales jobs. What are some of the key lessons you learned from your first few sales jobs that have stayed with you today?

Dan Cole: Well, that’s a great question for me, Fred, and I don’t mean this to sound funny but I am as gullible and as blissfully ignorant as it comes so my lesson that I continue to keep in mind today and also impart to sales people is just to follow directions. When you’re starting off in your career, even in the midst of your career, don’t assume you have the answers. They told me, Steve Galdo, my Manager told me when I took a right out in the field during the interview process, “You know what you do every day, Dan? You make 20 cold calls and 2 presentations, 2 demonstrations in your territory.”

Mine was Old Town, Alexandria which I was to find out later. “If you do that, you’re going to make X amount of income.” Well, coming out of college, the number I heard was extraordinary and this is in the late 80s and I said, “Well, if I get this job and you’re telling me that’s what I need to do, that’s what I’m going to do.” I was fortunate enough to get the job. I would provide a demonstration for the custodian if I had to or a secretary. Not that they’re not important people, they were not the decision makers.

But, I was able to hone my skills, practice, gain referrals, I listened to what they said and I listened to what my Manager said. I listened to what Barry said and by the end of the year I had won the President’s trip to London. I made more money than I expected to and my career in sales had officially begun and took off from there.

Fred Diamond: Tell us a little more specifically about you and your true area of expertise. What are you specifically brilliant and knowledgeable on?  

Dan Cole: Well, I’ll say with all humility, I wouldn’t use the word brilliant, but I can tell you what seems to have been effective for me. I understand and can articulate the fundamentals of sales and I certainly, within my company, hear our sales training focuses upon fundamentals and whether it’s from a qualifying standpoint and research standpoint, asking the right questions or probing, presenting features, advantages and benefits most importantly, benefits, trial closing, closing what have you, I wouldn’t call myself an expert but I’m very familiar with that. But, what I’ve been able to combine, at least the feedback that I receive is from a motivational standpoint to be able to connect those fundamentals with a degree of motivation is what’s been most inspirational to me, what’s been most meaningful to me.

I’ll say to folks on my staff, “Don’t look at me but just listen to what some of the lessons that I might have learned and then go for it yourself. Don’t make this transactional. Have fun at what you’re doing. Live outside your cube or live outside your office for the greater good. Remember what you’re selling for and it should appeal to people that we are in a service profession.

At the end of the day, whether we intended to or not and hopefully we did, we help people. We help people solve part or all of problems. We uncover challenges. We ethically help them solve problems. When you asked me about my area of expertise, I’d say what appeals to me most is connecting to the fundamentals and inspiring others, taking ordinary people, getting extraordinary results, inspiring others to gain results based on the fact of communicating value that we are providing a service that we are in the profession of sales for the greater good, not only for our income but to ultimately help people and that never backfires, frankly.

Fred Diamond: Now, before we did this interview, we were in your office just kind of chatting about your career and preparing for the interview. I noticed a whole bunch of rhino, pictures of rhinoceroses, pictured also some stuffed rhinoceroses and also on your LinkedIn profile there’s this big beautiful picture of a rhino right above your profile. What is that all about? What is the sales rhino and give us a little insight into that?

Dan Cole: It’s one of my favorite parts on my background and I can’t take credit for it but I collect rhinos and I’ll tell you why. In the late ‘80s as I was at Lanier I read a book by Scott Alexander which I would suggest to anybody listening and many of my friends that might be listening now will know exactly what I’m talking about and have read the book, including my good friend, Steve Goldstein, who turned me onto it in the late ‘80s.

It’s a book called Rhinoceros Success. It is a very easy and enjoyable read. Scott put together a very simple novel. He’s got another two books and it’s just about the philosophy of approaching life and I’ll be at sales as well as a rhinoceros. There are two kinds of animals, if you will, or two kinds of sales people in the world. There are two types of folks in the world. You’re driving down a country road and on either side on a summer day you see cows standing on either side and what are the cows doing, they’re just chewing their cud and they’re doing nothing. A rhinoceros on the other hand is in that jungle. When you’re reading the book there’s steam coming out of his or her nostrils. Their ears are perked. Their eyes are alert and they are just waiting for that prey to come about and all of a sudden there it goes and the rhinoceros takes off.

The rhinoceros takes off on that prey which is called opportunity. Charging down opportunities is a core philosophy that I try to remember myself and I try to impart upon sales people, upon my children, upon friends, what have you and that’s turned into a word or a theme or phenomenon that’s become associated with me. I collect rhinoceroses anywhere I go. There’s the Dan Cole rule that if anybody sees anything having to do with a rhino, as long as it’s under $50, to buy it no matter what. I don’t care if it’s a dish towel and I reimburse them. But, that theme has stayed with me. There was a rhino award that was created at Lanier. There were various logos that were created with various sales teams so it’s a very important philosophy that manifests itself in my collection.

Fred Diamond: When I’ve spoken to a lot of the sales game changers as part of this podcast, especially ones who’ve had such a great career, there’s always a mentor. There’s always been someone who they reflect back on, who has been hugely impactful to their career. Dan Cole is the Senior VP of Sales at Hargrove, Trade Shows and Exhibits. Dan Cole, who was an impactful sales career mentor and how did they impact your career?

Dan Cole: Well, there’s two. I mentioned Dennis Berman, my uncle, earlier. And then, there’s Barry Ward, who will be embarrassed as I say this but I’ve told him that even after some 30 years, there’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think about him and what he taught me and how I carry his philosophy on in my career. I’m either quoting him or referring back to what I learned. Barry would consider himself a very normal person and he hired me at Lanier Worldwide, then Harris 3M in 1988 and inspired me so much. I believe his motivation, his knowledge, his encouragement has informed my entire career and I remember this is from a sales perspective. I’ve had many, many mentors but from a sales career perspective I’m always, I can quote him verbatim and he knows this and so can many of us who worked for Barry in the past.

We always talk about him when we reminisce with one another. A tremendous influence on my life in sales and under his tutelage I learned the basics. I was encouraged to never give up and I didn’t, there was a low point in my career he called me in. He said, “Let me show you a chart of your sales progress, Dan. You started off on fire,” and it’s an Excel spreadsheet chart at that time. “And you plummeted here. Here’s what was happening in your life. We got to get you out of this and I can’t do it. You got to do it.” Well, that was enough for me and I went right back up and I stayed in sales at Lanier. Selling copiers is not an easy profession and it can take years off of your life. I did it for almost 5 years which was a long amount of time for those in sales at that time for selling copiers, not just at Lanier, what have you, and he’s one of the main reasons that I stayed at that company, including in a leadership role.

Fred Diamond: And, you just mentioned a second or two ago, you said that there are challenges that you face along the way as a sales leader. Dan, what are the two biggest challenges you face today as a sales leader?

Dan Cole: Well, I think there’s a common theme with all of us. We have a whole new set, a whole new generation, one of my children included, that is a new era in terms of the millennials and those before and those after. Recruiting is always going to be a challenge for anybody and it continues to be a good challenge for me. We’re a very successful company so we’re looking to continuously attract the best and brightest. I am willing to give, in many occasions, when I have an opportunity those that are just coming out of school or with a couple of years’ experience, if they’ve got the heart and the attitude.

We call it the ‘will and skill’. If they’ve got the will, I’ll teach them the skill. Recruiting is a challenge but one that I’m happy to face head on. And then, the other challenge which I think is a good one is just reinventing our approach, our philosophy, our value proposition in whatever that we are selling. In this case, at Hargrove, we can take a very, what can be considered a very mundane product but because of the good fortune of the company that I work for, our middle name is experience.

And so, reinventing that experience, reinventing the way we communicate the opportunity to create an experience to transition marketing messages and goals and objectives to an actual experience that at first somebody on the outside could say, “That’s carpeting on a cold start convention center floor” and to create that into an experience using the same people that might have designed the inauguration or a NATO summit or, as I mentioned, some of the other or an activation for Bud Light at the Super Bowl. To reinvent our message and to continuously keeping it fresh is again a positive challenge and it’s a reminder to me that we’ve got to do so every day.

Fred Diamond: Dan, I have a follow up to that point there. You talked about the transformation and that’s something that continues to come up on the Sales Game Changers Podcast. You’ve been doing this for a while. Dan, how has your customer changed in the last couple of years? You talked about how the sales professional needs to be reinventing their approach. Why don’t you give us like a little bit of insights into how your customer has changed over the last, I don’t know, two, three, five years and how have you had to respond to that?

Dan Cole: Well, that’s a good question as it relates to Hargrove and I think even going back to part of my career or my entire career at the Consumer Electronics Show. Buyers these days, in this part of the industry, not that they haven’t been in the past but to their credit are even more savvy, knowledgeable than they have been in the past. Not that they weren’t but they have many more tools, most importantly is the internet. Where has it changed? There has been more of a propensity and with a degree of success in the past to make the sales process a bit more transactional that it should be.

Relationships drive everything. I am sure this is a common theme but the nature of the relationship in terms of trust, in terms of integrity, ethics, loyalty, that’s where I’ve seen the biggest emphasis. I wouldn’t say necessarily the shift is part of it but those who can capture that philosophy and can institute and maintain a sincere relationship, that’s where it’s at in our industry in particular and at CES that is something, I mentioned starting in 1995, the association which is now called the Consumer Technology Association, that has always been a core part of the philosophy, to be able to manifest that philosophy in the sales process for CES was another shift and that started back a while back.

That was something that clients and I think to this day point out that the process in terms of the relationship is not transactional. It is personal where it doesn’t need to be. CES has got a tremendous amount of tailwind but to CES’ credit, the quality of people that work there and I was happy to be a part of it, make it a meaningful experience in terms of that relationship and I find the exact same at Hargrove and that’s why it really is a privilege to be associated with this company in terms of Hargrove.

Fred Diamond: Take us back to the number one specific sales success or win from your career that you’re most proud of. Dan, take us back to that singular moment.

Dan Cole: Well, without mentioning names, I can tell you this goes way back and this was part of my entry into the or entry in terms of the trade show industry. There was a particular account that we were trying to pursue for a specific tradeshow. We had attempted to do so for many, many years. I came onboard and I’ve got to give my predecessor all the credit in the world on this. He had done all the legwork for three or four years and what I did, if there was anything that I did, I leveraged Mike’s experience with this company. I added my own degree of intensity, philosophy, sales skills to it and for the first time this company participated in that trade show and I would just emphasize that it’s not what I did but it was a huge win for me and goes much in part to Mike.

I can point and you can tell me if I’m off base here. I think what I’m most proud of in my career, in terms of a philosophy in a program that we instituted really came at CES and we called it the SURE program and I believe it’s still in place today and SURE is an acronym that stands for Sense of Urgency Responsiveness and Empathy. And, I thought to myself, “What do customers, this was several years ago, what do they appreciate most in terms of, whether it’s prospects or current customers? What do they appreciate most in terms of relationship?” and what immediately came to mind is working with a sense of urgency, working fast on their behalf and appreciating their world. To respond, not react, but to respond to their challenges, needs, problems.

Again, remember from a prospecting but especially client standpoint, and probably most importantly, the E is Empathy.To apply a sense of empathy, to understand their world, it’s not about us. When we call them, we might be having a great day but they might be having a terrible day. Their challenge might be small to us but it’s huge to them so to be empathetic. And, you combine all those letters and it becomes SURE and you put in an exclamation point at the end and the philosophy is “Sure, I can take care of that. Sure, I can serve you. Sure, I can get you those answers. Sure, I can make that comparison for you.”

And, what was great about that is we incorporated that just in my department’s mission statement. When we gave a sales presentation, we shared that mission statement. We shared this acronym and it was a philosophy that pervaded the entire organization at Gary Shapiro’s credit. He was the President, remains the President of CTA. This is something that he philosophized to the organization internally so if I’m working with the Operations Department, this was a, the law of reciprocity, Laurie would respond to me, I would respond to Laurie.

It became a mantra, internally an organization and a mantra externally and that is something that I remain very proud of and that is definitely part of the sales process. We can cold call close and we can pound our fist on the table and close as hard as we can. But again, I think the SURE philosophy informs our sense of service and proves to prospects and clients alike what our intentions are and that I’ve carried forward wherever I’ve been, whether it’s CES or at Hargrove.

Fred Diamond: That’s very powerful. The E there was empathy, correct?

Dan Cole: Empathy, yes.

Fred Diamond: I have been a customer of the trade show industry many times and at one point of my career I was a Marketing Vice President for companies like Compact Computer and Director of Marketing for companies like Compuware and trade shows were huge and there were so many elements to them and there were so many pieces and you had to make sure that the booth was good. You had to make sure meetings were scheduled. You had to make sure that the sales team was trained. You had to make sure that you were bringing the right number leads, etc. Sales game changers out there listening in, understand what’s important to your customer.

Dan Cole: Well, I’ll tell you. When that thought enters in my mind and I always try to share this with folks on my sales team and those that participate in my sales training. I always try to remember and I encourage others to develop a purpose and this I learned with Barry at Lanier and that is my purpose is that it’s either something or someone that if I had to face them or this situation in defeat would be more painful and punishing than what I do every day. In other words, I can’t let myself fail and I could tell you what my purpose is, for many it’s the same, that’s my family.

I’ve got four kids to send through college and even before that I have a beautiful wife that I wanted to start a life with and before that I’m just a competitor. My purpose is ever-evolving so I’m a human being as is everybody listening to this podcast and sales is the only profession where you can go or one can go from the depths of depression to the heights of bliss in an hour or a day. And so, if I remember that I’ll snap back. I’ll take a mental break. But sales is a, there are countless opportunities in this profession and for that I’m very, very grateful. Sure, does it ever come into mind? Absolutely. I talk myself out of it because it’s the right profession for me.

Fred Diamond: Dan, what’s the most important thing you want to get across to selling professionals to help them improves their careers?

Dan Cole: Why I would speak to those that are starting off in their career first and that is when you’re coming into a sales position, your attitude is everything. There are many, many other components, of course, your aptitude to learn both your product and your industry. But, as a sales leader, I am more attracted to the attitude more than anything else. If you’ve got the right attitude, everything’s going to follow. And, Barry told me at Lanier, he pointed to my heart and he said, excuse me, pointed to my head and he said, “That’s mine. I’ll train you.”

And then, he pointed to his heart and he goes, “This one I can’t control, Dan, and that it has to do with your attitude.” And so, that’s always carried me and that’s what I’ve imparted to sales people, particularly starting off in their career. I’d also encourage anyone to develop the habit of listening and not hearing and that’s where that empathy comes on to. Stephen Covey calls it empathic listening and no one cares how much you know until they know how much you care. This profession and what we do in terms of serving people and solving problems is about their world, not our world. We can be as enthusiastic as we want about our product and service and that’s terrific and we have a great attitude but we can’t assume that that is going to conflate with the customer’s goals and objectives.

If we make it about them, that’s where enthusiasm and attitude and knowledge and skills come into play. The habit of listening. And finally, I think we forget to have fun. This can be a nerve wracking business. I get it. It continues to be, to me to stay but that’s part of the territory or part of the process when you, or it comes with the territory I should say. But, there is no rule that says one can’t have fun. Remember that they are furthering their career and engaged in a noble profession for which is that’s very meaningful.

Fred Diamond: What are some of the things that you do to? You’re are the top of your game. What are some of the things that you do to stay fresh and sharpen your saw?

Dan Cole: Well, it’s to remember that I’m not at the top of my game and to get there and hopefully stay there even temporarily as I engage in a lot of reading. I have since I began my sales career, Stephen Covey’s been a huge influence on my life, as Og Mandino and Bob Burg. I listen to podcasts. I’ve got a pretty long commute so I take the time to do that and I do sales training as well with the very little spare time that I have. And, that always, even though I impart the fundamentals, that is always, always, always an informer of my ability to sharpen the saw which intentionally you use that phrase because, again, that’s from Stephen Covey who’s a huge influence to me. Staying fresh and never making the assumption that I’m at the top of my game. It’s great to hear it and I appreciate that but it’s to never assume that I can’t learn more or I can’t be better.

Fred Diamond: That’s a great point and lot of the sales game changers that we’ve interviewed, they are constantly thriving, trying to look for new ways to grow themselves, grow their teams and help their companies be successful. Dan Cole, what’s a major initiative you’re working on today to ensure your continued success?

Dan Cole: Well, I think like a lot of companies, regardless of the industry, we are pursuing and we are, you know I employed something I call the Crow’s Nest and those of you familiar with Pirate Ships, there’s a platform at the top where one of the pirates or the navigator stands with a telescope and he or she is looking ahead to see, getting ready to call land hoe what’s ahead of us, whether it’s an enemy or land or what have you.

I like to also remind people that it’s extraordinarily important and sort of commonsensical to take that telescope and look back. Where have we been successful? Where have we been most effective? That informs our strategy in moving forward with various verticals and opening up new markets. What are we good at? Where do we maybe have some challenges where we can improve upon? What third parties can we work with? To work with areas of expertise and areas of success, again, a bit commonsensical but to spread our powder effectively, that’s where we’re spending the most time and whether it’s a third-party solution provider to the industry, whether it’s folks that are loosely affiliated, gaining those referrals, what have you, that’s a major part of our strategy as it exists right now.

Fred Diamond: You’ve given us some great insights. You also acknowledged along the way, Dan, that there are some challenges that sales professionals face along the way. Sales is hard. People don’t return your calls or your e-mails. Why have you continued? What is it about sales as a career that keeps you going?

Dan Cole: Well, I like to win and I like to win not only in gaining the sale but progressing the needle forward. I tell people that we get so caught up on our quota for the month or for the year, we drive ourselves crazy that the end result is the sale. Of course, it is. But, I also like to say that the very most important step in any step of the sales process is to get to the next step and if we break it down to that, that speaks to the challenge that we face on a daily basis.

We get paid to hear the word ‘No’ 95% of our day. The challenge to getting that 5% of ‘Yes’ is so fulfilling especially when we employ integrity and ethics, there’s no comparison to that to me. To keep me going and to help motivate others, it’s that challenge of remembering to remember that all we got to do is move this forward. Sure, sense of urgency is absolutely important. The pipeline is essential getting to the sale, absolutely. But, if we will break it down to, “I just need to make progress and if I don’t make progress on this call, I’ll do it the next one.”

This is all about mining for gold. Somewhere right now someone is waiting to buy your product or your solution or your service. Your job is to go out and find them. You got many more tools than I had or you had back in the day. We didn’t have computers. We had index cards for our territories. We never had phones, not the way they are today. And so, your job is to go out, seek those opportunities and pull your attitude and go make those sales but just get to the next step.

Fred Diamond: Dan Cole, Senior VP of Sales, Trade Shows and Events at Hargrove. You’ve given us some great insights along the way. Let’s wrap it up. Give us one final thought that you’d like to share to inspire the sales game changers listening to today’s podcast.

Dan Cole: You got into sales for a reason. Remember that reason and that can go back to your purpose that I talked about before. There is nothing to feel guilty about in terms of making a lot of money. It’s how you make that money. It’s what about this profession that attracted to you. I hear all the time, “working with people”, “I’m good with people”, “I like people”. What does that actually mean? What is the goal? Is it just to feel good or to feel good because you are helping them? Are you a competitor? More power to you.

Do you like to compete? Is that the reason or one of the reasons you got in sales? Make that part of what informs your confidence on a daily basis. Remember that you’re going to have down days or down hours. It’s natural. But, for those of us who’ve been fortunate enough to enjoy a long career in sales and me, so far, I can’t believe that it’s been 30 years. I can look back like it was yesterday.

But, I remember why I got into this profession and it’s evolved. Of course, it was to make money at first. I was just coming out of school. Now, it’s going back to that purpose of supporting my family of trying to inspire others of succeeding in general and I’m proud to say that I haven’t switched careers. It could always happen. I don’t intend to. But, no matter where I’ve worked it’s been a privilege and I always remember why I got into this profession.

Transcribed by Mariana Badillo
Produced by Rosario Suarez

The post EPISODE 040: Like the Rhinoceros He Admires, Hargrove Sales Leader Dan Cole Charges Down Opportunities with Great Success first appeared on Sales Game Changers Podcast.