Danilo 0:00

do you have to be a bad person to be good at sales?

Landon 0:05

I, I think we've probably all had those horrible experiences with bad, shady, disreputable salespeople. And sometimes they're small experiences, sometimes they're big experiences. But I think in my time doing sales. I've seen some really great ways to do sales, some really horrible ways to do sales, but what I've come away with is I don't think you have to be a bad person to be good at sales. And I would say exactly the opposite. You can actually excel at sales by being the sort of person that you want to be and treating people like you would want to be treated.

Danilo 0:38

What's a bad salesperson?

Landon 0:41

I think if I were to boil it down to. One singular thing, it would be about telling the truth. And you could frame that another way, which is trust. Do you trust that the person you're talking to is being honest with you? Um, I think we've all had experiences where a salesperson told us something that didn't end up being the case. Um, and sometimes it's a mistake, right? It's an honest accident. But the biggest problem, the biggest issue, the biggest, um. Crater you can come upon as a, as a individual, is lying in the sales process. And what's so frustrating about lying in the sales process is the idea behind it is the kind of quid pro quo of, if I just say the thing that I need to say here to close the deal, I get what I want. But inevitably, it never works out that way because it ends up burning you on the backend and totally screwing you over later on. That never ends up working.

Danilo 1:37

When we think about the kind of canonical bad sales person, we're thinking about the music man. Or we're thinking about the Simpsons adaptation of the music Man, where dude sells a monorail to Springfield and it falls apart. What you're saying is that people get trapped in bad sales incentives.

Landon 2:02

Yeah, and I think both from the consumer standpoint or the purchaser standpoint, as well as the sales standpoint, you come at with this it, with this idea that I just wanna make the sale. And if that's your sole and end goal for this. You are going to have a bad time. The people purchasing from you are going to have a bad time. It is going to incentivize exactly those sorts of bad activities that we don't wanna see. Um, think the like quintessential example of this on top of the ones you used are your classic used car salesman who will tell you whatever you need to get you into that car. Um, and it doesn't matter how close to or far away from reality that is their goal is to move a car and they don't care about anything else. Um, but. To I, I think that where your question is moving to, there may be some reasons to not follow the basis level of, uh, kind of sales instincts and actually get some benefit from doing things beyond just the quick win to closing a sale.

Danilo 3:06

So you have to decide what you want and if what you want is to win at any cost. That's, that's maybe where the popular perception of sales being bad and salespeople requiring that you be bad, right? That that's where we get this gut instinct that like, oh, this isn't for me. This isn't a thing that I want to do. I don't want be in sales. I don't want to sell things. I don't want to persuade people to do something they don't want to do. I think that done right. Sales is about giving people the thing they do want to do and giving them the path forward to being whatever successful thing. All right? You want a car, you wanna spend this much money.

Landon 3:55

I would say that it is actually immoral to try and convince someone to do something they don't wanna do in a sales context or in a marketing context. Our goal shouldn't be to create that need where it didn't exist before. Um, I get that there may be certain industries or certain places that feel like they have to do that, but I, I think the beauty about what Post Hog does, um, but I, I would say in any good sales scenario, you should be able to say. I'm trying to give you the thing that you actually do want and that you do need, and my job is to make that process as easy and painless and frictionless as possible. That in my mind, is like the ideal sales scenario.

Danilo 4:37

So what that says to me is that to do sales, you don't have to be a bad person, and these don't have to be bad outcomes, but to do sales, you have to be. Able to do some investigation.

Landon 4:55

I would say you need to do investigations on two sides. Um, the first side is you need to be able to really understand, investigate, and care about the product that you're selling. Um, I, I think one of the kind of quintessential examples of a bad salesman is someone who's willing to sell anything regardless of whether they believe in it or not. Um, and I think a good salesman would be honest with you and say, you know what? I couldn't sell something I'm not actually interested in or excited about. Like, that's just not, not me. But on the flip side, to your point, helping someone discover what they actually need and what's going to make their lives better and what's going to help them. There's something really rewarding, really enjoyable, uh, really great about that experience, and I think that should be what a good sales process looks like. More about investigating, finding out, discovering how you can help someone as opposed to trying to come out of it with a dollar sign or a certain kind of quota.

Danilo 5:49

So to be good at sales doesn't require evil. It doesn't require deception. It requires understanding and communication. I know. And empathy. Yeah, I know what you're going through and I know that there's a better way for you to live, and if you will, just give me a few minutes of your time to explain to you some dimensions of the problem that maybe you didn't understand for yourself and some dimensions of the solution that maybe you didn't know about, and you kind of connect those two dots for the person that you're talking to. Now we don't need to push anything. Now it's just a matter of does it make sense?

Landon 6:32

Exactly, and I think the example that you just used is so. Applicable because I think a lot of people go, well, I don't do sales, or I've never done sales, or I don't wanna do sales. But what you just described is I think a universal human experience of I have learned something. I've gotten excited about that thing and I wanna tell someone else about it because this thing made my life so much better. I wanna see how it can make someone else's life better. Right? Uh, how many times have you done this yourself? Or maybe a friend did it with you, you found a new workout or a new diet, or a new TV series, or a fantastic book, and what have you done? You've gone to that person and said, here are all the highlights. Here are all the top things that I think you're gonna make your life better if you. Try this new diet or read this new book, or watch this new show. You are selling that thing, whether you realize it or not. We've all done that. We've all experienced it, and we've probably had those experiences with friends where they come on a little too strong and they kind of ruin the thing because they were a little bit too heavy handed

Danilo 7:30

They've over hyped it. Yeah.

Landon 7:32

Yeah. And on the flip side, we probably had those experiences where we're like, you know what? I have this friend that keeps giving me fantastic recommendations. I'm gonna listen to them when they come to me with that next album

Danilo 7:43

haven't steered me wrong.

Landon 7:45

Exactly, and I think leveraging that experience is the way to think about doing sales because you're doing the same thing, whether it's you're selling software or a car or a monorail that actually does work like any of those things, that's ultimately what sales is.

Danilo 8:02

I was selling Xboxes when the Xbox was brand new, and a thing that started to happen by accident is that someone would ask me like, what's the story here? And Halo was the launch title. For the Xbox, right? That was the big deal 24 years ago when this thing dropped, and I was obsessed with Halo and I just thought it was the coolest thing ever. I was a 16-year-old and that's who they were selling that thing to. So I would just tell people, look, this is the coolest game that you've ever seen is beautiful. You've never experienced this kind of music before in a video game. You're gonna be driving vehicles around, that's gonna be cool. And there would just be this crowd that started to gather and it, it was like selling mops at the state fair or something like this. 'cause I could just hand out Xbox like, all right, how many you want, how many you want, which games you looking for, right? And so by the end of that, I was sending like five families home with an Xbox. And all I had to do was be incredibly excited about this thing. Now not everything has that simple a sales process, but I really think that the excitement. Because you genuinely believe in something for me is a non-negotiable.

Landon 9:15

I agree completely. And I think your excitement about the Xbox probably came from your experience sitting on the couch with your friends playing four screen multiplayer halo and going, this is a ton of fun. This is something

Danilo 9:29

never happened.

Landon 9:29

I've done. Yeah.

Danilo 9:30

Yeah.

Landon 9:31

Yep. And so while not, again, not everything has that sort of magical experience, you can't always point to that. I think you've hit on. An underlying issue, which is you have to have some experience with the thing you're selling and you have to really be into it and be behind it. And that can be tough with B2B SaaS software. Right. And I

Danilo 9:50

Not every, not everything's a good product.

Landon 9:52

yeah. Not everything's a good product. Not everything's an interesting product. Like

Danilo 9:56

I.

Landon 9:57

I can see how someone could get really excited about Product X. But a lot of times you go, really, that's the thing you're into? And I think it requires a specific type of person to see the vision of not, okay, here's this new database format. And so we're super excited about the new syntax and the new ways that we can call, but really the excitement of what are the cool things you can build? And I think, again, this is what postdoc has done so well, is it's done a great job of showing you here's the cool insights you can get so you can build the cool thing as opposed to just going on, well, did you know you can get 25 widgets on your page instead of 20? Like, no one cares about that stuff anymore.

Danilo 10:40

Making the product fun and interesting and compelling really is the game. And, and so there is kind of two sides to the coin here where, alright, you have to be. Honest, and you have to be high integrity and your sales process has to be about discovery and, and education instead of like hard balling people like all that can be true, but also you have to be selling something that is actually a compelling solution to somebody's problem.

Landon 11:14

Yeah, I think, uh, the kind of nightmare scenario. Is the scenario that you described where, uh, you have someone who is really excited, really passionate, really engaged in selling. Snake oil or the latest, the latest crypto rug or whatever the thing is, and we've probably also had those experiences as well, right? Where you have a bad salesperson who is bad because, not because they're a liar or because they're trying to kind of stop you from seeing the truth, but because they truly believe in something that's just bad.

Danilo 11:49

They, they are themselves gullible and they have fallen down a a rabbit hole and they don't even know.

Landon 11:56

Yeah. And uh, I would say I hope for every salesperson the same hope that I have for all of my children. If I can raise my children with a functioning bullshit detector, it will have been a success. And I think every salesperson needs that same sort of experience of you have to have a functioning bullshit detector to be able to sell.

Danilo 12:17

That's it. That's the episode, right?

Landon 12:20

That's the episode.

Danilo 12:21

Yeah.