Success Stories Ep 93 - “The Sales Whisperer”

It's easy to say that sales are the lifeblood of any company. Without a steady stream of sales and new customers, most businesses will wither and die. 

On today's Success Stories podcast, we'll head deep into the often turbulent sales waters with one of the best - John Morris, Vice President of Branded Demand Marketing for Total Technology Solutions Group.

John has staked an industry reputation that's hard to beat, and has over 25 years of leading and winning in the sales game. So buckle up for a great show that's going to leave you inspired, hungry, and packed with sales knowledge you didn't have a few minutes ago.

Transcript

Marshall Atkinson 
It's easy to say that sales are the lifeblood of any company. Without a steady stream of sales and new customers, most businesses will wither and die. On today's Success Stories podcast, we'll dive deep into the often turbulent sales waters with one of the best: John Morris, Vice President of Branded Demand Marketing for Total Technology Solutions Group. John has staked an industry reputation that's hard to beat, with over 25 years of leading and winning in the sales game. So buckle up for a great show that's going to leave you inspired, hungry, and packed with sales knowledge you didn't have a few minutes ago. John, welcome to the Success Stories podcast.

John Morris 
Oh my gosh, Marshall, that Ed show was absolutely fine. Oh, my gosh, you make me sound way better than I actually am. Thank you for that.

Marshall Atkinson 
No problem. Chat GPT at its best. 

John Morris 
Amen. Amen. And I love that tool. I gotta tell you, God, I love that tool. Man, if you want a quick understanding of how to interact with a new industry or a new client, and hit the keywords and the buzzwords, man, that is such a beautiful tool.

Marshall Atkinson 
I love it. Because you get the results, you tweak it a little bit, you get the result, and you're done. And you can go on to another thing, right? That's right. All right. So I have some questions here for you. I know you've got the answers. I always like to start with the origin story. You've been doing sales for a long time, so I want you to hit rewind and take us back to how you got started and knew you wanted to make a career out of sales. How did you get started, and how did that evolve over time with you learning and doing everything you needed to do? Because I know that a lot of people are really bad at sales at the beginning and then have to learn how to do it. So I want to know, how did that happen for you?

John Morris 
So I'm going to give you two origin stories. Number one, I had an entrepreneurial spirit during my high school and college years. I started a company that painted the exteriors of houses, going door to door in lucrative suburbs of the Chicagoland area, knocking on the doors of dentists, doctors, lawyers, and so on to offer painting services for their cedar siding. I ended up getting pretty good at it. You have to overcome objections and get both the husband and the wife there at the same time. It was pretty intimidating being 18, 19, or 20 years old, sitting in the kitchen of someone quite successful. That was where I started to cut my teeth and realized, oh my gosh, I can get a doctor to give me a check for $2,000 as a deposit, and I'm not going to start painting their house for two months.

Marshall Atkinson 
that's kind of doing the painting too or do you get like, oh, yeah

John Morris 
I eventually got up to the point where I had three crews going by the League huge lesson. never hire your friends, your college friends, because you were out drinking with them the night before, so they have an excuse to be late. So that was that was a bit of an issue. But really where sales started for me was I I landed a job a straight commission sales position in inside sales for a small business consulting firm when I was 22 years old, they handed me a stack of leads now back in 1999, March of 1999. The leads were on three carbon paper, right? So there was a white, a yellow and a pink. And if you got the white copy, that probably meant somebody in 12 desks overhead, the yellow copy and somebody 20 desks overhead the pink copy. So you're probably calling the same exact clients on a regular basis.

Marshall Atkinson 
I'm handling a Glengarry Glen Ross following this very much.

John Morris 
It was very much that yes, we were Wolf of Wall Street and boy the room before those movies came out.

Marshall Atkinson 
I want the good leads. I want to get leads. Yeah, right. Yeah. No

John Morris 
Coffee's for closers, man, so I didn't drink pop for about a month. On the first day, I sat down at 7 a.m., and they gave me a brief rundown: 'This is who we are, this is what we do, and this is what you're selling.' They handed me a stack of leads. Of course, the leads were five months old, with notes like 'voicemail, voicemail, voicemail,' 'hung up,' 'not interested.' It was clear: you sink or swim. It's straight commission. If you don't sell, you don't eat. So, I made about 250 to 270 phone calls from 7 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. I started off on the East Coast and eventually ended up calling in South San Francisco. I finally got a hold of an architecture firm in South San Francisco. If you're still out there, thank you for my entry into sales. I gave this gentleman a whole breakdown of who we are and what we do, fumbling all over myself. He said, 'You know, you sound like a really nice kid. I'm going to give you a shot.' I almost dropped the phone. I was exhausted after 270 calls, with people calling me every name possible and hanging up on me. But here I was, closing my first deal on my first day. I went home and called my mom and dad, excitedly telling them, 'I closed a sale!' They were surprised: 'You got a job?' I said, 'Yeah, and I closed a sale!' Then I added, 'By the way, I only have one tie, and they wear suits and ties here. I need money for more suits and ties.' My mom sent me some money, and I went to TJ Maxx to get some dress shirts. I called my older brother, and he gave me some of his old ties so I didn’t have to wear the same shirt and tie the next day. And that’s how I got started. I was on my way.

Marshall Atkinson 
So that's important to you. You know, I read a lot of books, John, and I love what you said about calling during the right hours. There’s a great book by a great author, Jeb Blount—I’m sure you’ve probably read some of his work. He talks about the golden hour of sales, right? You do all your extra stuff in the morning before the office opens, during lunch, or after work. That’s when you handle your presentations and updates. But when people are available for sales, that’s when you’re calling. I love that you were just making calls all day and building what I call the sales callus. It doesn’t really matter if they say no, because you’re just going to make the next call, and you’re not all butthurt by it, right?

John Morris 
Exactly. There was no sympathy in that room either, right? So I'm surrounded by folks. First off, when I drove into the parking lot on day one, it looked like a Mercedes and BMW dealership. I'm like, where am I? This is unbelievable. All these folks are just making sale after sale, making money hand over fist. They're doing great work. And they're calloused as calluses get. They've come from the Booz Allen mold, and some of them had been trained through some of the elite print companies like RR Donnelley. They've got a great sales process, just really amazing salespeople. And they're looking at me like, "Kid, this is how it goes, baby. If you want to learn how to do this, it comes from repetition. And the only way to learn how to get a yes is to get as many noes as you possibly can. And every client that says no to you, you should learn something from that so that you can apply it to the next call." So, I'm hanging up, I'm getting discouraged, and I've got these folks behind me saying, "Call another one. Just keep calling." And I gotta tell you, literally, with that type of style, you were thrown into the pit, and management really didn't pay much attention to you. It's just kind of a mentor system. And sometimes you would fumble, and they'd say, "Give me the phone," and they would take the phone and they would do it for you. And they'd be like, "That's how you do it, kid, right?" And then next thing I know, within two years, I was the one saying, "That's how you do it, kid, right?" And I'm 25, but I might be saying that to a 38-year-old. But you learn pretty quickly. You learn through failure. And that's what we did.

 Marshall Atkinson 
That's great. I love that. And so all right. So you had a second story. What's the second story?

John Morris 
Well, the first story was the painting. That was the second story.

Marshall Atkinson 
Oh, okay, sorry. Yeah, that's great.

John Morris 
And for the third one, if you want. I'm just kidding. Let's do a third one. What's the third? You know, if you really want to know where I got the hankering from, it was when I was about 25 years old, working for the same company. One of the managers there was a retired Navy Seal, or probably was still active at the time, was a Navy Seal and had developed unbelievable business skills. I was working in a department with him, selling valuations over the phone, business valuations over the phone for $27,000 to $40,000, right, to go out and evaluate a small to midsize business. I called up this client, and when I got on the phone, apparently whoever had called from our company before had annoyed them or set them off or whatever it might have been. This client laid into me. I mean, just absolutely laAndid into me. I sat back, and about two weeks earlier, I had heard Shane take a really intense call from somebody, and he just took it. And then when the person finally took a breath, he said, "Do you feel better? Are you done yet?" And that registered with me. So this client is going, I mean, just after me. And finally, when they took a breath, I said, "Are you done yet? Do you feel better?" And they kind of, like, said, "Hey, I kind of do." I said, "Okay, so clearly, you're not in this frame of mind where you want to abuse me over the phone because I called you. There's something deeper that is wearing you out, there's some thorn in your side. So let's talk about what's got you super annoyed about your business that I'm bearing the brunt of." The guy laughed, and he told me, to make a long story short, I ended up selling an evaluation to him. We ended up selling his business for $8 million more than the previous valuation because what he didn't know was he got an evaluation instead of a valuation. So we ended up educating him on the difference between an evaluation and valuation. Whereas an evaluation incorporates five years of hard market research and all the intangible value in your total brand and all those different things, whereas a valuation is hard assets. Right? He was in heaven a year later when it actually got executed. And the message there is, you never know the situation that somebody is in when you're calling them. Just because they have some sort of reaction, it's likely not a reaction to you at the surface. It's probably a reaction to some deeper pain or stress or need or want that is not being solved in their life or in their business. And you just caught them at that moment. So you can walk away, you can give up, or you could be a real human that gives a damn and actually really cares about another human and ask enough questions to figure out what's going on so you can solve a problem.

Marshall Atkinson 
That's great. One of my favorite books that I've read about sales is "Never Split the Difference" by Chris Voss. I know you've probably read that, right? I am not. But oh, okay. Well, I recommend it. It's at the top, right? He was the FBI's lead hostage negotiator, and he uses techniques in the book that he dealt with whatever the issue was with the FBI in a sales situation. One of the things that I'm recalling while listening to your story is a technique called mirroring, right? You mirror whoever you're talking to, you mirror what they're saying, their body language, their posture, or whatever, and you repeat things back to them. So what I'm hearing is that you've got a problem with this, right? You probably didn't even know you were doing that, but it's something you've probably done a million times. And I love the idea that, you know, "Are you done?" That's just a great line, right?

John Morris 
And what Shane was trying to get across to me is, what do you have to lose at that point, right? It's like, if they're going off on you, and they're that intense and passionate about whatever's happening in their business, what do you have to lose? You have nothing at that moment. So he also said, "Look, you can't sell somebody who's in a negative state; you have to get them to neutral first."

Marshall Atkinson 
Right?

John Morris 
You get them or neutral? 

Marshall Atkinson 
You can't get them to positive on the headline to laugh, right? Yeah, another bit now was to laugh. 

John Morris 
Yeah, like, do you feel better? Did you get it all out that punching bag right now? Are you okay? And it worked in

Marshall Atkinson 
I think another kind of lesson here is that I think a lot of times when we try to approach new sales with people that we don't know, we give them all of the power; they have all the power and all the leverage in that situation. And think that by trying to actively listen, to make them laugh, to try to do something with whatever they're saying to you, you actually listen to and mirror what they're saying, right? You take a lot of that leverage off the table, and you get it back into your court a little bit because you're proving to them that you're on their team. And a lot of times, what we're looking for is alignment with the customer, or because if we're not in alignment and it doesn't matter what the price is, they'll never buy. There has to be trust; there has to be some sort of something in there. And I know you've heard it a million times. People buy you; they're not buying the product. They're buying you.

John Morris 
Right, yeah.  And we see that in Brandy too, right? I mean, ultimately, people don't necessarily buy a brand. They're going to buy the representatives of the brand that draw them into the brand, right? They're not going to buy a logo. I'm now proud to represent TTS GE; nobody's buying from us because we have a beautiful logo. And because of what we do, they're going to be intrigued to pay attention to us because of the way that we behave, the way that we speak, and the messaging that we have out there, but ultimately, it's going to be on the frontlines of communication. Where does your salesperson tell me to sell? And just kind of try and push it on me and make it all about price. Oh, don't worry, I can do this. I could do this, or do they, like you said, actively listen? Do they ask questions with real depth? Do they hear to understand the want behind the one? Do they care enough to be patient and listen to me and kind of work through the challenges that I've had with the previous company so that you can determine for me, are you similar to them? Or do you really have a differentiator? And that's really what stands out, and it takes people to do that. You know, you can't do that in a pamphlet.

Marshall Atkinson 
Yeah, I think that's all great. Right. So one thing I noticed, because I talked to a lot of people, frankly, is that, right now, people are saying that the markets are dead, there's no sales, I'm struggling, they're always buying. And I know that's completely false. If hogwash, because I know people who were absolutely killing it. And what I say to these people is that people are buying; they're just not buying from you.

John Morris 
Yes. Everyone's great at sales. But it's easy. Yeah, yeah,

Marshall Atkinson 
It's so, and I think a lot of times people struggle just because they're waiting for the phone to ring, right? Instead of, like, actually hunting for their next customer, And actually, here's the thing: they don't even know who their best customer is; they never wrote a business plan; they don't have a marketing plan. They're basically winging it. And they don't use any sort of data point. They don't really research anything. And they're trying to offer all things to all people instead of really profiling who they should be talking to, doing the research, and then figuring out who is the best alignment for what I'm trying to offer, whatever that is, right? So I want you to kind of walk us through how you plan your sales with lead generation and how you develop a sales process for whatever product you're trying to sell. You know, we really need to know who we're aiming our efforts toward. Because if we don't do that, what happens is that we try to sell to everybody. Why waste your time with people who will never buy from you? Because they absolutely don't need what you're selling. We want to focus on our best possible customer. So walk us through how you did it, because you've done this your whole life. How do you do your lead generation and focus on exactly who that best customer is?

John Morris 
Well, the first thing is, you have to have a really good understanding of what the actual problems are that you solve. And what are the core values they have? But you have to know what the problems are that you solve at the business level. Far too often, salespeople don't get beyond the surface. So they go like we're super efficient. Okay, great. How do you correlate that to time saved and money saved? How does that impact somebody's ability to invest that time and energy back into the organization? How will they scale and grow because of it? A lot of salespeople are selling based on features and benefits, and they're not really getting to the root of what needs to happen for the client; features and benefits don't solve a problem for somebody. Right? They're part of the equation; there's no doubt about that. So the first thing that I do is, and I'll just walk you through kind of how I do it because I'm really big on this social selling thing. I spend a ton of time on LinkedIn, and I know who my five to 10 titles are. Those are the buyers, and I know who the influencers are to those buyers. I spend much of my time creating content, reaching out to clients, and supporting the content of those people with those titles. And what I'm trying to do is magnetize them to pay attention to let them know that I'm paying attention to you. When they do that, when I start giving and giving and I'm attached to their content, they start to recognize that I'm paying attention, and they then dig into my content. And then, if my content speaks to the deeper challenges, wants, and needs that they are facing on a daily basis, then all of a sudden it starts to become intriguing. So if you tie that to the natural CRM system that you have—HubSpot or Zoom Info, or whatever it might be—there's beautiful things you can do there where you can use the titles and the geofencing, and the locations and this specific industry, and you can really hone into your ICP, which is a beautiful thing. But at the end of the day, those are names and phone numbers. And what I want to do is get those names and phone numbers to know me before they know me. So I'm going to get those names and phone numbers, but then I'm going to pay attention to them on LinkedIn and through content creation. So I started to get them watching. So when I call, they don't say, Who is this? They say, John? Oh my gosh, I feel like I know you or I saw you. We're looking at my profile, or, hey, thanks so much for commenting on my last five posts. Right now, I don't have to break the ice for a half hour and overcome all the traditional hedges, objections, potholes, and all the other things that a buyer will tend to do because they don't trust you yet. So in this new world that we're in of sales, the folks that are not doing that part that are not creating a personal brand, having thought leadership through podcasts like this content creation, are putting themselves out there as somebody who is an industry leader, somebody who is knowledgeable beyond a sales pitch. If they're not doing that, they're missing a big opportunity. Moreover, to your point, it's a bad economy says who says who the bad economy is. I always love this analogy, right? If two football teams play a game in the snow, it's a blizzard; somebody wins and somebody loses. When they go to the press conference, at the end of the game, the team that lost can't say we lost because it snowed. Yes, because the team that won played in the same snow had tough conditions. But the team that won prevailed; they did something above and beyond; they did something different. So when I look at it from this standpoint, it's really, really easy to just take the CRM, take the lead, and reach out for work referrals. And if the economy is good, you're naturally going to grow. If you really want to see how good somebody is, You tasked them with an economy like this; that isn't great. But it's not terrible, either. But they're still scaling and growing their book of business because they are creating unbelievable amounts of energy and activity towards their personal brand, which leads to attention to their total brand, which makes the sales call that much easier. That's magic. It's not this is not some sort of magic, but it's really not magic. It's a science, and it's an art form. And if you do it right, it doesn't matter what the economy is.

Marshall Atkinson 
Yeah. And for everyone listening, your customer or potential customer absolutely doesn't care about you at all. All they care about is themselves sick, and they care about me selfishly. So how are you saving them time, saving them money, and giving them something that's a better experience because that's what they're going to be buying from you, and right now, as you know, I travel, I do things, and I go places, right? And here's what I see: The airplane is full, the restaurants are full, and the grocery stores are full. You know, people are buying left and right. As I drive down the highway, I see new cars and stickers left and right. I see people spending their money. Are they grumbling about how much everything costs? Yes. But they're spending their money, right? And so what I'll tell you is that everybody has the opportunity to sell their rights to solve somebody's problem. So that restaurant is the oneis the one that you want to get as a client for their apparel order, right? The odd Wait, how many dollars is the economy's bad or whatever? Okay, that's not necessarily true. Maybe the thing that you go for is a What's the slowest night of the week for you? Was Tuesday's all like, well, can we do that like a T-shirt program or something for your nachos or your margarita? If you do, we can do that for your waitstaff. We can do that for your customers. We could do something where that lime green t-shirt gets you while blah, blah, blah. And then all of a sudden, Tuesday's your best day of the week because you've invented something. Once you hear so far, be sure to subscribe so you can get the latest from Success Stories. And now here's Zack shortly with the SMS spotlight.

John Morris 
People are buying products, right? That's your point. They're buying that I have this problem. How do I use the product to help solve it? Yeah, right, it's to think beyond the product.

Marshall Atkinson 
So what we need to be doing is we can't sell ink on cotton, we can't sell embroidery thread on cotton, or, you know, whatever, right? What we're selling is some sort of solution to your customers  problems. And here's my question. Do you know what that problem is? And the only way you're going to find that out is by actually talking with people. And here's the challenge, John: more and more companies are hiring younger and younger people. And these younger folks don't like to talk to anybody. They like to text people; they like to swipe right. They're not good in that conversation. And so what we need more than anything is that if we're going to hire sales staff, we need some extroverts. We need people who are okay with taking risks and challenges and doing things, and in having permission to fail, in giving them themselves that permission where it's okay, if we get to know, because that's just one piece of information that can lead to a yes, somewhere else. What do you think about that?

John Morris 
I agree with you wholeheartedly. I will tell you, I will say a little bit differently. This generation seems to want to redefine things that have worked for years and years and years; they just want to call them something different. And they want to find a way to make it easier and simpler. This is one of the interesting generations, and it's a really wide generation. And when I say why, I mean why they look at everything and think to themselves. Okay, great. You did it that way. Why does it have to be done like that? And folks like us that have been successful for an extended period of time doing it that way? Cool. Because it works. And it still works, right? That's why, but here's the thing that is happening right now: we are seeing that people now don't want to get into sales and want to be influencers. So what I think has to happen is that there needs to be a halfway point. And the meet halfway point is that sales teams have to recognize that we need to minimize the amount of KPIs that have to do with the traditional things that we lived on—make the phone calls, pull the door handles, do the emails—right? We need to add another couple of KPIs into that and kind of minimize the amount of phone calls and create a better mix. And because they want to be influencers, what we really need to do is teach them how to use social media as a tool to sell and not as a participation sport, like sitting on the sidelines or scrolling to be entertained. I don't look at LinkedIn, Instagram, or any of these as social media; I look at them as virtual networking; I look at them as a captive set of leads that are more openly willing to communicate with you if you entertain them and educate them. So I think what more and more sales departments need to do is add in a part where it's almost like marketing is infused a little bit into sales, where so many companies are saying we don't want people to push out a personal brand for two reasons. We think they'll get recruited away if they're really good. And secondly, we can manage those guidelines, which makes it very hard to manage the guidelines. So you're telling me that you've listened to every single sales call and that you've been on every single sales appointment? You think every salesperson over the last 100+ years has been on brand in their selling, in their presentations, and in their pitch? I can tell you that is not true. Hyperbole has been huge in sales.

Marshall Atkinson 
So what sales people make up stuff?

John Morris 
Oh my gosh, can you believe it? That's what managers need to do. And I think it starts with managers; they're going to lead from the front; they need to build a personal brand; they need to start creating content; they need to start a podcast; they need to get on a podcast; they need to start talking about the total brand experience, not just the products and services; they need to start engaging with buyers online by supporting their content. Instead of just hitting the like button, write a three-sentence comment on five of their previous posts, get really engaged with their company page, and really get involved in their brand. If you expect them to pay attention to yours, That becomes an unbelievable sales tool that allows you now, instead of making 80 phone calls in a day, to make 15 And they're powerful. Plus, you could be working in the DMS, and you said the salespeople don't like to call; they like to text great through social media. You can DM; it's like texting. I can have a whole conversation with a client through a DM, or I can make a video like this and then text it to them and send it to me and have a conversation that way. That's great. I'm starting to think about myself, and I resisted it three years ago. I'm like, Oh, my God, I don't know why this generation exists. I don't know. And now I said, Okay, well, look, I can't beat him. I'm not joining them. So how do I get him to see it a little bit my way, use a little bit of their way, and then create this explosion of branding, marketing, and sales that is smashed into one thing? And that is what we're going to do here at TTS G and GSD. And 2020. Design three brands, a great sales team, or we're going to teach them out of social selling, and we're going to get the message out there. And it's going to make for a great experience with clients. Because, you know, what clients don't like to do now? Answer the phone; they don't like to talk on the phone, either. It's not just that the younger generation doesn't want to make the calls. We don't want to take them. So we got to find a way to get to people where they're at.

Marshall Atkinson 
I hear you, I took my phone number off my website.

John Morris 
Exactly. I literally get a chemical reaction. When somebody calls me and I don't have them programmed into my phone, you know, Marshall Atkinson pops up. If it's just a phone number, I'm like, IRS bill. Well, I think Ron,

Marshall Atkinson 
I'll tell you why I took my phone number off my website, because it seems counterintuitive. So I did it because I realized I was spending a lot of time with people who would never buy from me because he would call the ALMA business coach, and the other would call and kind of pretend they wanted the help, for free information. And they would never, they would never buy right. So I have ebooks, I've got coaching, and I've got all types of things that I do. And so what I did was replace that with a questionnaire, right? So if you want to book a call with me, there's a 10-question thing. So there's five, or, you know, questions, and then there's five that, or, like, rate your level of whatever, right? And if they wouldn't spend three minutes filling that out, I knew that they would never buy, right, because one of the things I'm trying to protect is what I call my value per hour, right? So I want to make a certain amount of money per hour for every hour that I work. And so if I'm spending more time with, you know, what I call discovery calls that never go anywhere, So my cost per acquisition for my customer and what I'm trying to do is far less than it needs to be. And so by me doing that, that's really helped, kind of what I'm doing and who they agree with. So for somebody listening out there, what does that mean? That means for you, you want to be in alignment with what you're trying to achieve for your revenue and your gross and net profit goals by looking at how much time you're spending on stuff. Everything you do during the day has a value, and your time is a commodity that you can't get back. You can always make another dollar, but you can't make another minute. So how are you spending your time in a sales situation? I think we need to constantly be innovating—how we're looking at that stuff, how we're going after customers, how we're doing some things—because we can spend a lot of time and don't get the results that we want. So I think good sales managers are good salespeople. You know, how can we work half as hard and make twice as much? This should be in the forefront of your brain all the time. But exactly. That's this generation. They're stuck in 1997. John, and I don't know why. Right? They don't think about stuff. 

John Morris 
So if you look at all the absolutely brilliant, amazing sales books, right? And if you look at all the big names in sales you met, you mentioned Jeb Blonde; he's probably new on the scene. He's doing great. But if you look at all these amazing, amazing books, Zig Ziglar is one of them, and you're right, they're all old. They're all written for this style of pulling a door handle. How do you get in front of somebody? And how do you transfer that energy and use the Crepe body language? And how do you influence people, make friends, and all this stuff? Right. And there aren't a ton of great books that are written about what is happening now. 

Marshall Atkinson 
And when's your book coming out? soon?

John Morris 
Yeah, we might have to write one. We might, we might, where it might be in the works. Yeah. Oh, you might have to do that. But, you know, I really think that this model was changed. I do see a lot of creators on Instagram that are coaches, like yourself, that are creating unbelievable one-minute, 32-second content pieces where they're documenting themselves actually doing coaching, right? They're standing up in front of 30 people; they're making a great point. It's very choppy. It comes in and shows them in all different parts. There's little music behind it; boom, they blast that out in the comments. There's a call to action. And there are people who are literally building two $3 million businesses. 10 million are businesses that don't have a sales team. They're using content creation to call to action in links, and like you said, a survey is a questionnaire, and that's the funnel. Now, when we were coming up in sales, we had to do situational problems impacting the knee payoffs we were selling. Why? We didn't have a CRM that told us all that information. So when you called somebody up, you spent the first 45 minutes understanding what kind of business they were in, how many partners they had, and what their title was. How long have they been in business? You had to get all that information out. By the time you got that out, you started running out of time, and you had to get to the next thing, which was the problem. Now, with technology, social media, and all these different things on your website—those calls to action, those links—you can get all of that information and get a client influenced and bought in before you even have a conversation with them. Yeah, that's my profile. There you go. They can pay attention to you. And that's why I don't understand, like, I see this younger generation and like, oh, I don't do LinkedIn. Okay, so you spend all your time on Snapchat. How much money is Snapchat making you lately? I don't think you're going to close deals on Snapchat; you might make some friends, but you're not closing deals. The whole LinkedIn thing shows you exactly the person that you're going to reach out to, where they went to college, what their interests are, what books they read, what associations their memories of it essentially are, is a handbook on that client's personality, how they tick while they think how they tick, why would you not spend five minutes to look at that and send them a note with some sort of commonality or likability that that influences them to pay attention to you keep putting content out and then make the phone call? Now they pick up, they actually talk, they're engaged, and they feel like they know you. So the trust is already built. Yep.

Marshall Atkinson 
All right. Hey, speaking of trust, as I said many times before on this podcast, this is a relationship business. And it's all about trust. Right? So the best salespeople have a book of business because they understand that, so how do you build trust? How do you build relationships with your customers? What do you do, John?

John Morris 
I think the most important thing is to do what you say you're going to do and to deliver. And it's interesting because, in many cases, sales are handing it off to somebody else, obviously. So I think building trust is not just a person thing, but I think it's a total brand experience thing. I think it's very important that the sales team is very consistent with what operations can actually provide. And I think it's very important that operations live up to what sales can speak of and is talking about and deliver on those key areas, those prioritized areas for a client. I think the best way to create trust is to truly understand your client, what makes them tick, make them the hero, and how do you make the client the hero? How do you make them the hero at their company because they decided to use you? Because they decided to use your service and your product, so that their boss goes, Oh my gosh, who decided to use this Morris guy by doing holy cow? That was a great decision. I want my clients to be complimented for making the decision to do business with me. And so that is, that's an intense process of really staying in touch with them, really connecting with them, and supporting them. In their total purpose, or total quest, I always tell our sales team, do not ever end a phone call. If you're in sales, you should never end a phone call. The client ends the phone call. Hey, man, I gotta run. I gotta meet and go to right. They end the phone call. You should never end the phone call. You should talk to your client as long as you possibly can about life, about their perspective, about their ambitions, about their goals, about where they want to be in their business, in their life, and in the grand scheme of things. And you should understand that. And I'll tell you another thing: be a giver. Most of us are not going to have a client who is going to buy something from us every single day. But you could be a multiplier, trying to connect them with other people that could impact their business and have a benefit for them. And by the way, you make no money out of that. But I'll tell you what you do. You retain that client, and that client becomes a fan of yours and tells everybody about how amazing you are. So when you're not doing transactions with them, they're leading you to new transactions. And I think that's the key. It's about being relentless, relentlessly giving,

Marshall Atkinson 
So the word for that is remarkable. Remarkable means that other people talk about you when you're not in the room. There you go. Right. So what are we doing today that's going to get other people to talk about us in a positive way? Not like that son of a bitch, right? We don't want to say that we want people to say really good stuff about us, recommend this, and be our evangelists for what we're trying to do without you ever seeing anything.

John Morris 
Yeah, I love that at the end of the day, I'm so excited to be here at TTS G because I have a team that I get a chance to work with, and you're starting something fresh and new, which is always awesome. You get to show them all your tricks that you've had for an extended period of time that they've never seen before. So it's new and interesting to them. That's always fun. But one of the things that I think is going to be really, really important for us is that you are always busy. And in sales, the sales game tends to be looked at only as the transactional process of the game, which is very important. Don't get me wrong. And you have to know how to execute that and ask the right questions, and you need to know how to negotiate, and those things are very important. But is it all the space in between that makes the difference? How many thank-you cards do you send? How many emails do you send to a client just saying happy birthday? Hey, I really appreciate it. Thank you so much for doing business with us. How many times do you reach out to a client? Hey, I saw your last post awesome; I couldn't agree more. How often do you do those things? And instead of calling up and asking for referrals, I know it's really important that most sales managers talk about, you know, making sure you ask for those referrals. How will you send some referrals? How will you send referrals, and then you don't have to ask? The beauty of reciprocity is just at work; give them three referrals, and they'll give you a nine, which all of a sudden means that you're going to retain a client for an extended period of time. The hardest thing for a salesperson to do is to lose a client and have attrition every year. Because it's really tough to scale when you lose 10–15 percent of your business. Because now you have to do 10 to 15% just to stay the same. And in this so-called more difficult economy, with how pricing has changed, it becomes even more difficult, right? So holding onto a client and building a deep partnership are extremely important. And you do that on all the spaces in between. I call them non-transactional touches; this is all the fields. Give them all the fields. And the key is, it's not how well you can sell; how well can you influence them to buy? That's the key. Oh,

Marshall Atkinson 
I love that. That's great. All right, last question once you're going to wrap it up with this. So there are so many tools out there that we can use to make sales easier, from CRM tools to our AI (artificial intelligence), right? So, John, what are you using right now every day? And why do you think these particular tools work the best for what you're doing?

John Morris 
I'm going to give you three things that have been life-changing for me. Number one, we talked about this chat, and GTP is absolutely brilliant. You just need to train it. You need to know how to ask the right questions. And you need to not take the answers and just go okay; that's the answer. When it gives you an answer, you need to ask it five more questions. kind of like when a client gives you an answer and gives you five more questions, you've got to really cause it to think; you've got to make it think. It's been so powerful in destroying the writer's block and is giving me a fresh idea in teaching me how I should approach a certain industry. As a decision maker in a different industry, it's been so powerful in understanding how to do bullet points that get to the hot buttons of a particular client and how to create fresh content. It's tough to come up with content every single day. And sometimes that little bit of help is awesome. 

Marshall Atkinson 
And I'll tell you, one of the ways I use it is that I use it a lot to write outlines or ideas, or I've written like whole articles before, and I'll put it in there. And I'll say, What did I forget? Yes, there's my article about this. What's it What are three things that I didn't think about with this? And then I'll go boom, and you go, Oh, yeah, why did I think of that? Right? And so, Chad GPT is great. To a certain extent, it doesn't have your experience. It doesn't have your knowledge. It doesn't have that funny a story. Only you have those. But you know, it's a really good way to generate stuff. In a gig going. It's a jumpstarter more than anything. 

John Morris 
It helps me to organize thoughts, and then I get to put my feelings on it—my creativity, my personality, and all those things—but it's wonderful. The second thing is that I read this book called Atomic Habits, and it's absolutely clear. It is an absolutely brilliant habit, and stacking is absolutely amazing. One of the most important things that you could possibly do in sales is when you're winning. You keep going when you are winning, that is, when you keep calling. That's when you keep emailing right after you make a sale. That's what you got to do next. You got to take some sort of action to create more attention and more energy towards you. So I started stacking. So, like now or something that is already an established habit, I am dropping one or two things on top of that habit to trigger that habit, so that I'm executing. So, for instance, every morning when I come in, I journal. So the first thing I do is sit down or write down; I just kind of put it on a page. What am I thinking? How do I feel? Where am I powerful? Am I strong? Do I love myself? I get all that stuff out there; I put it all on a page, and it just kind of makes me feel good. And then, from there, I immediately go into chat GTP. And I take a few of those ideas, and I go give me some content ideas, right? And that helps me go, and then, by the way, that might lead me to see something on LinkedIn or some sort of social platform that then becomes a great topic for me to talk to the sales team about or to talk to the marketing team about, or just to get out there in the wave of video, or maybe becomes a great topic to talk about on a podcast, who knows? But I really am trying to spike my brain in that regard. And I gotta tell you, atomic habits have been awesome in helping me to keep the discipline and commit to those things so that they come to fruition. The third thing is LinkedIn. I'm sorry, but I am. LinkedIn is such an underutilized tool. By so many people, especially in sales, I just cannot understand how a CEO, his sales leader, his marketing leader, and especially our sales team are not active on LinkedIn on a daily basis, hour by hour, and it should be part of the KPIs you should be creating and DMing. And you should be connecting and engaging as much as possible.

Marshall Atkinson 
I'll tell you a thing that I do, John. And so I have a virtual assistant. I highly recommend virtual assistants, by the way. And actually, I just hired my second one. But my VA, the thing that we do is post three pieces of content every day. And it goes to LinkedIn. Right? I'm not actually using a system where we're hunting content. So I subscribed to a lot of stuff. And my VA picks up some things, and she shoves them out there for me. Right? And that's just so I don't spend time on it. I've trained her on what I like and what she should look for. But I'm looking to see the reactions. So somebody likes it, somebody comments on it, or somebody shares it, right? And if I don't know you, right, that's my DM opportunity to say, Hey, John, thank you so much for liking my thing. I really like it. What did you like best about that article or whatever? It's a non-selling thing. I'm just asking them something or Hey, thanks for sharing. I really appreciate it. How can I help you or whatever? It also asked for them to connect, right? Yeah. And this is how I've grown my LinkedIn; this is how I get a lot of stuff out of it. And I can't even tell you how many clients and opportunities came out of that. It doesn't because I use my VA to put the stuff in there. It doesn't cost me any time. And I'll just blow through LinkedIn, like once a day, just to see who's yours anyway and comment while you listen to what's going on. I usually do that in the mornings while I'm drinking coffee, right? And it's just an easy way of doing that. And it is so paid off because social media is the key word there is social, right? It's not hard-selling media. It's social. So I treat it like a cocktail party, right? I want to know more about you. So I'm asking questions about you. I'm not saying anything about me. But when that happens, that's my opportunity to do something like virtual networking. 

John Morris 
You nailed it. It's literally a cocktail party that's going on 24 hours a day. And, by the way, it never runs out of guests. There's always a guest. So there's plenty to talk about. 

Marshall Atkinson 
So are you using HubSpot, Zoho, or any of those platforms? What do you like just for your CRM?

John Morris 
So we're using HubSpot. We're using Zoom in the fall. And we're going to be partnering with this amazing organization that is going to supercharge our HubSpot. So we're using all of the bells and whistles, putting together amazing email cadences, and making sure that we drive the SEO to the proper titles and decision-makers, and so on, to make sure that we're speaking to them in a way that is representative of the brand and is hitting him in the heart, and his hitting is making them think and making them laugh. And doing all that, as it relates to utilizing LinkedIn, I liked the way you're doing it. I'm a little bit different if you're taking thought leadership, very knowledgeable stuff, and you're sending it out three times a day to make sure that you are continuously showing brilliant things that are happening in the industry that are top of mind that's mirroring your state top of mind. And my thing is, I want to get like in their face visual. And I really try to communicate with my followers and my connections, like they're in my family room. Yeah, good. And so that's been my style. And I've gotten better results from that than from that in your style. And that's the beauty of LinkedIn: do both styles work?

Marshall Atkinson 
And wrong answer. There's no wrong answer. You don't have to, but here's the thing: you have to use it if you just create a profile, and then that's it. Like, so what?

John Morris 
Yeah, don't blame the economy; then, if you're not making it, you got to do it.

Marshall Atkinson 
Alright, buddy, wait. Thanks so much, John, for sharing your story of success today. What's the best way to contact you? If someone wants to learn more about what you do, Or maybe you can help them.

John Morris 
Yeah, please email me at J. Morris@ttsg.com. I'm happy to have a chat with you. The best way to get a hold of me is to send me a DM on LinkedIn. Please follow me on LinkedIn. I'll follow you back. I will support your content. I will comment on your content, and perhaps we can collaborate and benefit each other's businesses, but I'm always open to a DM. Do me one favor, though. Don't pitch me for the first time. You'll turn me off right away, and I promise I'll never do that to you on LinkedIn. DMS are the get-to-know-each-other stage. So let's figure out if we'd like to dance together before we go. You know, go decide to get married.

Marshall Atkinson 
Yeah, and by the way, for those listening, John and I were on a mutual industry call, and then Ron was there for the call. What did Marshall do? He sent John a LinkedIn message. So here we are. Right. Here we are. That's what happened.

John Morris 
True story. And Marshall. I know that your sponsors, S&S Activewear, and I just sent a shout-out to the best in the business who love their stuff. And you have a great sponsor.

Marshall Atkinson 
Thanks. Appreciate that. I know. They're just over there laughing their butt off. So thanks.

Marshall Atkinson 
Cheers. All right. Thanks, John. See you. Have a great day. Well, that's our show today. Thanks for listening. And don't forget to subscribe so you can stay up-to-date on the latest Success Stories episodes. Have any suggestions for future guests or topics? send them my way and Marshall and Marshall atkinson.com. And we'll see you next time.