Marcus Chan: The Sales Blueprint That Creates Top 1% Performers

Chris sits down with sales leader, entrepreneur, speaker, and Wall Street Journal bestselling author Marcus Chan to discuss sales, leadership, entrepreneurship, personal growth, artificial intelligence, coaching, and the lessons behind his bestselling book Six Figure Sales Secrets: The Ultimate Guide to Overfilling Your Pipeline, Closing More Deals, and Earning the Top 1% Income in Sales.

Marcus shares his journey from growing up in a small Oregon town as the son of immigrant parents to becoming one of the top sales performers and sales leaders in corporate America. After nearly getting fired early in his sales career despite working harder than everyone around him, Marcus discovered that success is not simply about effort. It is about systems, preparation, discipline, and developing repeatable processes that consistently produce results.

Throughout the episode, Marcus discusses:

• Why hard work alone is not enough to succeed

• The systems and habits that separate top performers from everyone else

• Building a predictable sales process and pipeline

• Leadership lessons from coaching and developing high performing teams

• How artificial intelligence is changing sales and business

• Why preparation is one of the most important keys to long term success

One of the most impactful moments of the conversation comes when Marcus shares a lesson that has become a cornerstone of both his career and coaching philosophy:

"The separation is in the preparation."

Marcus explains that while no salesperson executes perfectly every time, everyone has complete control over how well they prepare. The professionals who consistently perform at the highest level are often the ones who spend the most time planning, preparing, and following proven systems.

Books discussed during the episode include:

• Six Figure Sales Secrets by Marcus Chan

• The Code of the Extraordinary Mind by Vishen Lakhiani

If you are interested in sales, leadership, recruiting, entrepreneurship, business development, artificial intelligence, personal growth, or learning how top performers consistently achieve success, this episode is packed with practical lessons and actionable insights.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:14

Are you born and raised there, or where w how long have you been there? Close. So uh I moved up here almost 20 years ago. I'm from a small town, Eugene, Oregon, which is two hours south, Homo University of Oregon, for people that know the area, right? But I was born and raised in a small town next to that called Springfield, Oregon, which is uh not a great town.

SPEAKER_01 0:34

Okay. Okay, very cool. No, I'm from the obviously, man, I'm a big college football fan, so I definitely know and have seen Eugene, Oregon.

SPEAKER_00 0:41

That's right.

SPEAKER_01 0:42

On TV at least. Never been, but I'm sure it looks beautiful. And uh no, that's cool. But Marcus, man, I'm super excited to have you on the Books for Guys podcast. And I man, I can't thank you enough as I'll be honest, I'm not sure how I came across your profile. I mean, I live on LinkedIn eight to ten hours a day and and talking with authors, and and as I was mentioning, I'm on the sales side with my company. I think your profile popped up, and then I went down a rabbit hole and I was like, okay, so Marcus is like sales guru, you know, high, high achieving individual, has a book out about it, has his own company now. And I was like, man, I gotta reach out and see if I can make a connection and have a conversation with you. So I I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00 1:23

100%. And I'm definitely no guru, just a guy who's uh carried the bag, made a lot of mistakes, and just trying to help people make less of the mistakes that I already paid the tax on.

SPEAKER_01 1:33

Yeah. Well, that's the whole, honestly, that's the whole mission uh behind Books for Guys, is is letting people know that that books uh can be a cheat code to help you become a little bit more successful, a little bit easier, and and maybe uh avoid some of those potholes that that those of us have stumbled into before. But Marcus, man, you I'd like for you just to have the mic for a second and talk a little bit about your career, your progression, what led you to number one, writing your book. And I want to make sure I let everyone know what it is because it's a bestseller. Six figure sales secrets. And that was uh I think I believe a Wall Street Journal, USA Today, a bestselling book. And it is uh the ultimate guide to overfilling your pipeline, closing more, and earning in the top 1% of salespeople. I know as a salesperson, that's what I want to do, and I know a lot of others do too. But no, Marcus, how did you, man, how'd you get into sales? And then once you got into sales, how did you get so good at it?

SPEAKER_00 2:33

Yeah, so I wish I could say I was born with a silver tongue, had was a born salesperson, was super gifted and talented. I was not. I uh as I mentioned, I grew up in a very small town, Eugene, Oregon. My parents, they were immigrants from China and Taiwan that came to America with absolutely nothing. So we grew up really poor. And my parents, they started a Chinese restaurant. So I worked in that restaurant as like a little kid from year uh age of five and up. And so I never thought about sales as a career. I really had no idea about sales. I thought it was for the sleazy, fast-talking, you know, snake oil type salespeople, if you will. And if you were to tell me when I was, you know, in high school or middle school that I grew up and I'd go into sales, I'll be like, what are you talking about? That sounds like a stupid idea. I would never do that, right? Uh especially since my parents, they wanted me to go into something more prestigious. They wanted me to be a doctor, a lawyer, an accountant, a more traditional type of role. So, anyways, uh, I went to school, uh, University of Oregon, and uh I graduated with a double major in marketing in Chinese. And frankly, I had no idea what I was going to do. And um, when I graduated, I had a few different job offers on the table. It was anything from a 29,500 base salary B2B sales role to like a 60K role as an analyst in some banks and whatnot. And I actually turned down all those other roles and went for that 29,500 base salary B2B sales role. Now, the thing was is I actually didn't see it as a sales role. And it's probably because I they did such a good job recruiting me, and as a guy I knew. And essentially he said, Hey, this is a startup division of a Fortune 500 company. We have no customers. Your job is to go out and help us build this division up. So I saw the vision, right? I'm like, wow, that sounds like an awesome opportunity. Well, what day one, I realized pretty quickly, what is what does building it up mean? It means cold calling, getting rejected, and trying to figure out how to get someone who does not know anything about you to sign on a dotted line to do business with you. And that was a really big surprise to me because I had really no idea what sales actually entailed. Now I thought it actually would be really good, by the way, because uh since I grew up working really hard at my parents' restaurant, different jobs as a you know, growing up, I'm like, I've always worked hard, I've always been pretty good at whatever I did. I heard it takes hard work. I'm like, great. So uh I dove in head first. Uh remember this was uh June 2007, dove in head first. This is right before the recession started to really take hold. Dove in and I was absolutely horrible. I mean, just like couldn't book a meeting to save my life. I mean, and I was grinding. I did way more activity than everyone else. I just did two, three, four X activity, everyone. I made the most calls, I made the most cold calls. I walked in the most businesses by foot. I, you know, like I literally sent the most cold emails. So if you looked at the CRM dashboards at the time, it was very good at the time. My numbers were insane from an activity perspective, but booked meetings, closed deals, revenue, zero. Almost got fired, actually. So now eventually figured it out, started having success. Took about three months to kind of figure it out. By third month, I was number one, stayed number one for nine months in a row, earned a couple promotions, ended up staying in my corporate career for 13 years, worked for two Fortune 500 companies, first eight years promoted 12 times in my in my first eight years, hit number one in every single role. This is with thousands of people, right? And uh got to a point where I was running a sales org of over 110 employees. We did 190 million plus a year every single year. I ran a full P. Um was a ton of fun and had a lot of fun doing that. Before I decided to take a side hustle, I had to go all in and make it a full-time hustle in uh September 19, 2019. And that was like a very scary move as well. So then I did that, and now I've been running my business now for almost seven years. Decide to write a book part way through that journey, and part of it was because I wanted to write a manual for that kid back in 2007 who did not know how to be good at the job, who thought just you just had to work hard. I wanted the exact blueprints that if I wish I had back then, because I remember reading tons of books back then and you know, they were just so old school, it didn't really make sense. So, you know, work hard, it's a numbers game. I needed tactical skills and strategies that were timeless. So I went and wrote that book in 2022. And uh it took me about three months to write the book because I just basically just took everything that was already in my head and put it into a manual, if you will, and then we rolled it out and became a Wall Street Journal bestseller in the first week. And we, you know, we've sold like I think 100,000 plus copies, you know, since then. But it's been uh it's been a really cool, really, really cool, uh, really, really cool process to do because you know, we have programs, we don't have any more, but at the time we used to have a coaching program that we sold to individual account executives that they would pay between $8,000 to $25,000 a year to go into our coaching programs for individuals. And some people couldn't afford that, so they could get the book, which is basically a really great way to do it for like dirt sheep. So that was a really cool way to kind of give back to the community by being able to write something that could we could basically offer at scale to help people.

SPEAKER_01 7:47

Yeah. Man, I love that. Marcus, I'm gonna dive in a little bit more on that, but I I love your story because I'm sitting here thinking of of just guys that I'm around, guys and and girls who are are high achieving sales individuals. And there's a word I always think about, and it sounds like you had it too, but it that that word is grit. And there's that, there's something to that of when you're young, you don't have a lot, but you you learn how to work and you figure out real quick, you know, you've got a why. And and I know a lot of times, like when I'm a part of hiring decisions, I always look for like what's that grit moment? Like, did this guy or girl have have to work two jobs in college, or were they a part of the fraternity and you know, enjoying life? You know, and I did do they have a kid, you know, unexpectedly early, so they got to provide, you know, just little things that you would you know they're motivated by. But in everyone I talk to that's a high-level salesperson, there's that story that's underlying, though, that's kind of that foundational piece that they that gives them that drive to be successful. And I just think it's really cool that you shared, you know, your parents coming over, and then you kind of the the hard work ethic, that's that's hard to teach. Yeah. So if you've got that, then you get a blueprint, you know, of something like that you've written. Man, it it's on. There, the amount of success you can have, uh, I can I can only imagine because I didn't even have a book like yours to read. But I feel like if I did, man, maybe, maybe my first few.

SPEAKER_00 9:16

Well, I think what's really interesting, I think it's such a great point, right? I think there's two points. I think number one, being really clear in exactly what drives you and knowing your why and your purpose is so critical for anybody, right? Um, I think it's really key, and you're 100% right. Those who are highly successful in any field, they are crystal clear in exactly what drives them beyond the extrinsic. Usually I find something that's intrinsic that drives them. So for me, what really drove me, and I kind of should have a high level, but my number one fear was being homeless and poor and broke because I tasted how horrible it was, and I wasn't willing to allow myself to be that, right? So that was that's what really, really drove me. Now, I think the other piece is well, I think I think about the blueprint. Because I and I ran large sales orgs, and it was interesting was I would bring people in who hopefully identified that I had they had that drive already. Because either you got it or you don't. And they already have a drive. And it was amazing. Well, actually, it was really amazing was so many who were maybe already really successful in the past rule, they didn't know what they did was were doing that made them successful. They didn't feel like it was a repeatable process that could scale across the board. In fact, sometimes they would think maybe I got lucky, or maybe I got a lucky territory or whatever, because they weren't sure how to repeat success. It's kind of like hitting presence club. I'm a firm believer anybody can hit presence club one time. But when you hit it year after year after year across different companies, different organizations, you have a process and skill that's repeatable, right? So, and a lot of times, it when you talk to the most elite people, they have no idea what made them great. You talk to LeBron James, he'd be like, I don't know, I work, I work my tail off. Yeah, I'm super tall and I work my tail off, but I got some talent. Like, but there are things when you take a step back in which success leaves clues. And I found, and this is like when I was an individual contributor, I didn't realize these things. I just kind of started figuring out, started to do my clues kind of working out. But when I started to hire people and develop and train them, and I realized they couldn't do what I was doing. They could just, they couldn't mimic me, they couldn't just copy me because I couldn't, I could not articulate exactly what I was doing. But that forced me, though, at that point, if I wanted to perform as a sales leader, I need to understand how to break it down into a blueprint, into frameworks, into a system that they could repeat. And I found that when you take someone who is a top performer and they already have the grit, et cetera, and you give them a blueprint, their results go the next level, right? And if they are not even that good, they become better. The C player becomes a B player, B player becomes an A player, A becomes an A plus player. And that's how leaders need to think as well. I'll give you an example. So I remember I had one guy on my team, his name was Your Bull, Dutch name. He was the dude's already a stud. He's already super talented, very skilled already, right? Like he came from the B2C world where uh he would go and he would be selling pest control services door to door, absolutely right, 100% commission, super hard. Anyways, I brought him in first first real B2B role, right? So he's very unrefined. And he would, if without, I think without, even if I didn't, it wasn't if even if it didn't work for me, he'd probably be a top, top, top 10%, top 15%, right? But once I gave him a blueprint in the system, not only was he able to repeat success year after year, he's like the top 1% year after year after year, right? But not only that, he did it in less time, right? And that is like the power of a system, right? And then I'd other reps, and maybe I brought them in. I thought they were gonna be an A player, and maybe they turn out to be a C player. That happens for sure, right? But you know what? I get them to a B player. So now maybe, maybe they won't do 1.5, 2 million a year in sales, but maybe they're that consistent 900K year like salesperson. Like they're gonna hit their number, they're gonna deliver, they never miss their number, but you can bank on them. And there's a power consistency because you know they're gonna help you carry a number as a leader. And that's why I think it's so critical that as a leader, you have to be able to give your team, your reps, a blueprint. If you're an individual, you need a blueprint. So wherever you go at your current anywhere else, you know you can repeat success.

SPEAKER_01 13:17

Yeah. Staying on the blueprint part of this, Marcus, what are a couple things that you wholeheartedly believe in as far as the system and process that that you've written out in your book? What are a couple of things that that you see are the the foundational keys to the system that helps reps either take that level up or at least maintain where they're at as a strong always hit your numbers type of player?

SPEAKER_00 13:45

So I think there's a couple there's many key systems, right? So I think the mistake a lot of people make is they think about like sales. I see me good at selling, okay. And yes, for sure, you want to learn certain systems for selling. So, for example, for discovery, I teach what's called the powerful framework, which is a discovery methodology of how you run your whole sales deal cycle. And powerful stands for, you know, pain, opportunity costs, wants, needs, desires, executive level influence and process, resources, fear, failure, unequivocal trust, and little things, which are specifications required to actually solve, solve the problem they have, right? And if we can cover all those things, cool, you're gonna be you're gonna be increase your win rate across the board, whatever. So there's systems like that. That's like having a selling system is key, right? But then there's all these micro systems that most people never really have thought through or have been taught or trained. So for example, what is your prep system? How do you prepare for a sales call? What type of research do you do for every single call? Is it repeatable every single time? Okay, that's an example of a system. Here's another system. Let's say you're required to generate your own pipeline. So whether you are a full-cycle AE or you're responsible for driving some of your own pipeline, what's your prospecting system? What's the exact system for you you have for preparing your list, prepping it, doing the research, making the calls? Okay, when are you gonna do that? How will you prepare for that block of time? When do you run it? What's your system for running the call? What kind of questions do you ask? What's your framing? What's your objection handling system? So those are subsystems, right? To what do you do after a call is done? Right. So these are all these micro systems that we don't think about, right? But then on top of that, what does good look like for the perfect routine? And what I mean by that specifically is if you were to follow around a elite top 1% sales professional from the time they wake up to the time they go to bed, what would you see consistently in their routine and their calendar? And most people don't have a way of running specific things. So for example, I would bring a new rep in and I would give them what I call the road to presence club, in which I showed them exactly when they make calls, when they run deals, when they do follow-up, when they have the internal meetings, when they one-on-one with me or anybody else, I showed them ex the exact path to presence club that if they ran this path at least 80, 90%, their likelihood of going to presence club was incredibly high. This is how we broke records every single year. So we we broke it down so systematically based off math and what's realistic on how they could actually get to their number. And when you think about this, most people don't do any of these things. They say, You're new, Chris. Good luck. Here's your book, here's your list, here's your tech stack. Good luck, find a way. Maybe you have some call blocks in there, maybe mixed in, but there's no repeatable system. But here's the thing this applies at every single level. So you have your rep road presence club, then you have your salesman, your sales director, road presence club, but then you have a VP and CR, Path Presence Club. And each of them are is a different routine. Because at the end of the day, I will tell you how much money you're gonna make if you just show me your calendar and exactly what you're doing. Because what, where you spend your time drives the results you're gonna get. So these are some examples of systems that many people are actually missing and they don't realize it, right? Like how how many times does some as a sales leader, you hire someone new, you hire a couple new reps, it's like, hey, you're onboarding a bunch of product knowledge with enablement, read some slide decks, good luck. Suddenly, that rep is six months in, they're nowhere near their number, they miss their ramp quota. You're wondering if I even hired the right person. But the issue was is you did not give them a system to run.

SPEAKER_01 17:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:40

So there's these micro systems, and that's why I believe sales is a death by a thousand paper cuts. And we often don't realize until it's far too late. But then we often blame the wrong thing, which is it's the rep's fault. That's why. And most of the time it's not the rep's fault.

SPEAKER_01 17:55

No, Marcus, I love this because you've got me thinking of just leaders I've been around, mentors, and and the way they certain ones have instilled process into myself. Hey, what's your calendar look like? Where are we blocking it off? What are we doing after this? And my best years have been when working with someone like that. And and I appreciate the accountability. It's like, hey, let's go through this because I know they want me to succeed. And uh, and then I'm thinking of like again, thinking of the best reps I've been around. They are so, they're just a dog when it comes to process and and uh discipline in their day and what they are going to accomplish every single day when they're gonna do it. And you're right, the results just follow. And and everyone, I think, in a way knows that's how they're gonna be successful. But they have some sometimes it's a struggle to keep that discipline and maintain that over a long period of time, even if they've seen it work. Like you said, one time, they kind of get comfortable, and we all do, you know, success it can it's that's like the worst thing for you sometimes because it'll keep you from having that drive and that discipline. So that's a you know, it's a whole separate mountain you've got to over overcome mentally and educational.

SPEAKER_00 19:10

So that's why you actually have to have systems for accountability. That's not just your your sales manager, you need it for your internal as well, right? And let me give you a really simple example, okay? Because we all fall for, and this applies like everything in life, all right. So I personally I'm I'm also a firm believer you should have like workout routines and fitness and health as well, because when you take care of yourself, you're gonna show up better anyways in other parts of your life. So I remember it's probably like you know, uh about a year ago, and I've always been pretty consistent with eating pretty clean and also like, you know, working out and whatnot. But about a year ago, I looked in the mirror, I'm like, ooh, I'm getting a little older. I don't like the way I look a little extra like a little fluff, look a little fluffy there, you know? So the reality is what I do. I'm like, okay, I need like what I know, like what gets measured gets improved. I'm like, let me go back to what I used to do. Very simple. Let me go back to tracking my food every single day, measuring food, pre-prep, prepping my food, measuring all that, measuring my workouts, tracking it, and taking pictures every single week and making sure I look at it and hold myself accountable. It's literally in a folder called No Excuses. It's me, just me shirtless, Chris, in this folder, right? And lo and behold, what happened? You know, fast, I just I just took my stat, just measured my stats. I was 7.5, 7.5 to one muscle to fat ratio. I'm doing 7.2% body fat now. Like I have more muscle now than I did five years ago. And all I did was increase that accountability on creating a system for myself, and I stuck to the system. And some people say, Well, Marcus, oh, it's like, you know, like you can't be as creative or whatnot. I would argue the more disciplined you are, the more freedom and creativity you have. Because then you can truly think through, for example, when you're as a rep or a leader, if your routine is really dialed and scheduled out and mapped out, then you have time to really think and you can build large swathes of time. So, for example, like you know, some people are like, but if it's all blocked out, you can't really think, totally get that. This is why I have like a think day once a month, where it's one day, it's blocked out, and I don't have anything planned. But it's set time to think about the biggest problems in my business, in my life, so I can really digest through. And that has created some of the biggest unlocks for myself. So that's where it's like have that freedom to do it. And I'll tell you, even if you have a routine in place, you you map out the perfect routine, let's say even if you only do it half the time, you are still light years ahead of everyone else who has no plan, flying by the sea of their plant pants. They're making decisions in the moment based off the white white space on the calendar.

SPEAKER_01 21:52

Yep. No, you're right, Marcus. You're right. This leads me to another question because I'm thinking of this in like today's where we're at today, in this day. Time and selling. And I know your book came out a few years ago, and I'm interested to know has your approach or the way your coaching leaders changed at all with this with AI? You know, the magic word, everyone, sales teams are trying to figure out how to implement it. How can we make this easier so I can do more of this over here? How are you specifically implementing that into number one, your life, but number two, into your business and how you're helping or other organizations and leaders utilize it the right way as well?

SPEAKER_00 22:35

100%. So I think the the key is this is I use AI like it's it's a supercharger to my heat, my my main, my main vehicle. So meaning, like if my car is already in bad shape, putting a superfuel inside won't do any any good. Okay. Um but if my if it's real if it's in real, if my car can run really well and put jet fuel inside, it's gonna go crazy fast, right? So I think the mistake a lot of people make is they're trying to put lipstick on a pick, if you will. They are trying to throw AI at whatever and stuff's broken, right? Because, and that's how you I want to think about AI. So, for example, so we have about a dozen different agents we built up for our own business, okay? And they they work at different that's only for the sales cycle, by the way. That's not including any other parts of my business. Those specific agents are designed to work through the sales process. So let me give you a really simple example. So you if you as long as you run a world-class sales process, like you can use agents to help your team become even better. Okay. So for example, like we have one agent that helps us put together a deal room, like a like a like a digital sales room after a sales call. Okay. Now, here's the thing. Inside a digital sales room, we also write a business case. It's inside there that another agent writes. But here's the thing if we don't have a really good discovery process where we're uncovering the key metrics and whatnot, that deal room is gonna be garbage. It's not gonna be, it's not gonna help sell the deal. All right. Or for instance, we have another agent where we have let's say we have a great first intro call or discovery call, it writes up a killer recap that focuses on business impact, quantifiable business impact, and metrics to drive towards moving them forward. Now, if we don't have a good first call, again, that doesn't matter. Right? So what happens is like these agents only work really well as part of it, right? I'll give you another example. I just built out this one this week in which I have an agent that goes and basically uh grabs within a we use Apollo as our tech stack and sales navigator. It goes and builds a hyper-targeted list within Apollo and sales navigator of our our actual ICP. It takes that list, it does research with trigger events, it spits it into a Google Sheet. We then double check it to make sure it's because there's errors still double check this, make sure it's dialed. We say it's good. We we flag one one check box and boom, next step is it takes it and enriches all the data now and throws it into a poll, into a sequence that it runs and that we can run now run manually. Okay. Now that doesn't work if I don't know what my ICP is, the pains of my ICP, the right trigger events and whatnot. It can take generic stuff and kind of do it, but because I have a lot of context, I can make it super good and I can build that agentile level, but it still requires just make sure it's done properly. So if a sales leader is out there listening to this, the mistake I see some of them make is like, we just bought this AI agents and do this, or we bought this thing that's gonna do this. But it's not built well within the context of your business and the systems are broken, right? Like, because there's there's still certain things that are that need to be done properly. So, for example, you can have a tool like Gong, something coach you on, hey, here's areas you kind of mission a call, right? That's good to a certain extent. But how is a leader using that feedback? How's a leader writing their 101s? So if the leader themselves lacks the 101 coaching system to improve their reps, drive them to become better, and they're just saying, hell, here's a gong said just do this, that's not gonna work. It's like it's not gonna change behaviors. So, but the really smart leader gets a gong recording, reviews it, sees it, might realize, oh, it's missing a couple of things, and then coaches a rep and role plays with a rep to get to that next level. So the key is using AI as a tool to take your results to the next level. So that's where it's like top reps who are already using it will become better. Top leaders who are already using it become better. But if you use it trying to replace people without the proper context, you're just gonna blow away basically a bunch of cash and results aren't gonna change. In fact, we're actually seeing that right now. We're seeing a lot of people, they're cutting headcount, they're deploying AI, but has anything changed? Have results really changed? Maybe they maybe increased margins slightly, but did performance actually change? Did revenue actually go up? Did rep productivity actually go up? In majority cases, it's no.

SPEAKER_01 27:18

Funny, we haven't seen a lot of the results broadcasted from studying the workforce. So it's interesting you say that. Uh, but yeah, I'm thinking of exactly the use of AI. I think if you don't have your foundation set up, it could actually create more work for you than less. But I was talking to another high-level rep recently, and he was talking about he's got a good foundation. He was talking about the benefits of it because it's freed up some of his time to go get his steps in. So he's focused on fitness and he's like, hey man, I was able to do this. I cut 30 minutes out of my day, and now I go get my steps in, which we talk about your personal health, is is just as important. And he's like, dude, this is great. I've been able to free up just enough time.

SPEAKER_00 27:57

He because he he probably has a good process overall so he understands. So he knows even the output is like good because he can coach it and guide her, right? That that's the key. I think it's like we have to have critical thinking skills to be able to challenge even the results of it to make sure it fully maximizes it, right? Like that is the key. And I think so many just kind of take it, oh, this is pretty good research. It's like, actually, take it, take, slow down, think about this. Like, I mean, I have done so much training to even my agents, like it's so I could have so much data to give it, it still misses stuff. It still misses stuff. And most people are already feeding the level of data. Like, for example, even some of the pro the prompts we'll build in Claude, our prompts are like 50,000 characters, and and and we have so much data, we're feeding it. And the outputs, I'll say most of the time is probably still even that level of training is 80 to 85 percent of a top 1% person.

SPEAKER_01 28:47

That's incredible. Wow. Marcus, I got just a couple more questions for you. And I'm I'm loving this because I'm I'm I'm absorbing a lot and learning, and and I know a lot of people, again, like I said, who will listen to this, I can't wait to get text messages like, bro, this is good. Awesome. But one question for you, and it goes back to your book. And I'm always curious, yeah, if there's not but one thing a sales rep takes from reading your book, what do you hope that one nugget of information is that they take and they implement into what they're doing on a daily basis?

SPEAKER_00 29:18

Okay. So if it can just take away one thing, the separation is in the preparation. Love that. The separation and the preparation. Because in the and it's like because you'll learn a lot of key frameworks and it takes no one's perfect. You can't you can't run a perfect. I still botch sales calls. I just watched one like just this past week. I'm like, I miss this part of the process. I probably I should have done this, you know, because you're in the moment, it's just or we're human, right? That's what happens, right? However, what you can always control is your level of preparation. And that applies to like everything, right? So, like, for example, you know, even if you're it's not even a prospecting block. Did you prepare your list? Is it properly segmented? Does it have proper trigger events? Do you have all the right information in there? Any notes that you might need to make your call block, you know, really effective? Okay. All right. Uh if you can have a sales call coming up, a discovery call or demo call, did you do the proper preparation for that? How, what's the call strategy? What's the flow gonna look like? Taking time to prepare for that. Okay, let's just say, for example, you want to prepare your week looking in advance and planning your week in advance of what it should look like. 100% controllable, right? So, like I think if you do these simple things, even just that by itself, if you just did that, you will reduce your stress and you will be get better results by just simply preparing, which requires zero skill. It's purely will. And I think my thing is either will or skill, right? That's uh that's a will. That's just making sure I do that. If you do just that, you'll get better results. And obviously, with time, if you execute some of these things inside the book that you're gonna learn, your skill will go up. But you start with the easy stuff. A little bit preparation goes a long way.

SPEAKER_01 30:56

Yeah. I love that because as someone who you admitted experienced this week, when you are when you are a good prepper, when you when you prepare the right way, if you get off even just a little bit, it really pisses you off because you're like, I know better than that, and it's totally thrown me for a loop for this hour, and you got to get back on track. But in a way, that's a good thing too. You know how important it is to stay prepared and and stay on that line. So I really love that message from you. Marcus, my last last question for you, and this is just purely a books for guys question, as I'm always curious to know what people's interests are, what they've been reading. And so, what is a book or two that has meant a lot to you, personally or professionally? And what's a book that you love to recommend to others?

SPEAKER_00 31:40

Okay. So I read a lot of different books across the bo across the board, and I'll say, let's see, as many I could say.

SPEAKER_01 31:47

And is there a book, maybe maybe an easier question? Is there a book that you've reread more than once because it sat with you a certain way? And you, you know, like I've got one I read every January because it kind of resets my mind for the year. Is there one that you've read more than once because it it just it hit a nerve?

SPEAKER_00 32:06

Well, I read a lot, I we read a lot of books. You can't tell, I like I'm a I'm a big book guy. It's a tough question because it could change based off when I ask you. Wow, so I would say, and it's not even a sales book. It's it's a book by Vishnu Lakiani. It's called The Code of the Extraordinary Mind. The Code of the Extraordinary Mind. And that's just a really interesting book that helped me just rethink about life and how I run life and what he calls all the rules, which are bullshit rules that we don't realize that we're living within. And that was a really, really big eye-opener, and I like to reread that book as as well, because it's it's about breaking your beliefs that you have in certain things and reshaping them based off new data, based on new experiences, to live basically the best version of your life. So that's definitely a key book. Okay. Um so I would recommend probably that book out of all the books I've read.

SPEAKER_01 33:00

Yeah. No, good one, man. It's probably one that I'd be interested in reading because I love things that make me think, things that challenge the way I think, things that may totally flip upside down my world in a good way. And I I encourage a lot of people to read books like that. So great recommendation. But Marcus, man, this has been, man, such an impactful conversation. Again, as someone who's in sales and and looks to take in as much information as I can to improve my craft. I know a lot of other people that listen to this, like I said, are in the same space, and I think there's going to be a big benefit. And I can't wait to hear the feedback I get from people who listen or watch this. And so, Marcus, man, we're proud to spotlight your book. Um, congrats on all the success you've had. And I can't wait to see all the success you continue to have through your through your business and your venture, and and who knows, man, maybe future books that come from it. But we're excited to to be able to spotlight you and thank you again, man, for taking the time to do this because it means a lot.

SPEAKER_00 33:58

Thanks for having me on Chris. It's an absolute pleasure.

SPEAKER_01 34:01

Thanks, Marcus.