Sales Changed — Leaders Didn’t (And That’s the Problem)

Sales has changed more in the last 5 years than in the previous 40.

Tools changed.
Buyers changed.
Markets changed.

But most leaders… didn’t. That’s why teams struggle.

This episode breaks down what actually evolved in sales, how buyer psychology shifted, and why old management styles don’t work anymore.

From hiring and firing, to activity levels, to accountability and ownership — this is the real job of a modern sales leader.

It also goes deep into the part most people ignore: Understanding how buyers think, how to “feel” the deal, and how to adapt in real time is what separates average sellers from elite ones.

You’ll also learn how to build systems that scale, how to manage ego and ambition inside teams, and how to promote and retain top talent without breaking culture.

No fluff. Just what actually works.

In this episode, you’ll learn

• How sales has evolved over the last decades
• How buyer psychology has changed (and how to adapt)
• The real role of a modern sales leader
• How to hire, fire, and manage ambition in teams
• Why accountability and ownership drive performance
• How to “feel” the deal and read situations better
• How to build systems that actually scale
• How to promote and retain top talent

Thanks to the partners supporting Confessions of a Seller.

🔗 Jason AI SDR by Reply
They’ve built one of the strongest multichannel outbound platforms in the market — taking teams from research to meeting booked in one system, enabling modern Allbound execution.

Exclusive Promotion for you. Apply the following codes at checkout, and you'll get an exclusive discount:

Code "COS10" → 10% off monthly plans
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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Wild stories from someone who is in the industry since more than 20 years. No introduction needed.

SPEAKER_03 0:06

And yeah, I think Ellen. Let's do it, man. This will be crazy. This will be wild. Before we jump there, thank you, Jason, AI by reply.io, our main spawner partner, as well, all over across these confessions of a seller journey. If you want to learn more about their whole crazy all-in-one solution, everything in the description. But we don't have time today because we have a wild guest, special guest. Go ahead, please.

SPEAKER_00 0:31

Listen, before we start, before we start, do you mind? I did bring you some things.

SPEAKER_03 0:35

We have some surprises that.

SPEAKER_00 0:37

That's how we are going to start. This is socks, okay? This is my company socks, PvK socks. If you are in the renewables industry, the renewables tech industry, or even not, give it to me. These are what everyone is wearing. Events, people come over, they buy our stuff just to get the socks. If I see these on eBay, I'll be upset. No, okay. You'll see our feet on eBay. Maybe I'm wearing I'm wearing some of myself.

SPEAKER_03 1:00

I'm telling you, we have the camera there. The other day we have another invite, and they they gave us um a hoodie and we put it on the on the moment. So I don't think that we will put our feet uh outside right now. It will take a while until I put it. Thank you very much, man.

SPEAKER_01 1:13

It fits our uh um follower. There we go. There we go.

SPEAKER_03 1:17

Thank you, thank you very much. Uh PV case, by the way. Uh good. All good. And let's kick this off. We have a wild uh story, wild stories here. But I want you to to make it happen.

SPEAKER_01 1:27

You you said you in the in you you saw a viral video in the in the cap when you came here. Yeah, I mean about it.

SPEAKER_00 1:33

I was doing some mental maths, and you know, I think it's one of those stories where people make very bold statements.

SPEAKER_01 1:39

And it's what was it exactly about?

SPEAKER_00 1:41

There was the guy from 11 Labs, great company. You know, I'm not saying anything about the company. I'm just saying there was a viral clip that's gone, it's gone out there where one of the VPs over there makes some very bold statements. It's been picked up all over, it's everywhere. Instagram, you name it, it's gone out there. It's gone viral. Yeah. Says this. Something along these lines is like we have a 20x base sorry, we have a 20x base salary to target expectation. Right? So if you if you get a hundred K base salary, you've got to do two million in quotes. That's 20 times.

SPEAKER_02 2:16

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 2:17

Now, I was like, huh. That sounds aggressive. But I thought, let me just do the maths quickly. And thought about it and thought that there's something, there's something going on a little bit funky there. So quick test, guys. When you think about OTE, OTE means on target. On target earnings, how much you earn if you achieve your if you achieve your target, right? Yeah. And you think about that versus typical quota in the in the SAS SAS world, what what is it typically?

SPEAKER_03 2:42

Yeah, the SAS, it's between five and something else, right? Five to eight.

SPEAKER_00 2:46

That depends on your product, depends on your SB, depends if your enterprise, but somewhere between five to eight times, right? Your OTE. So what this guy is basically saying is we do 20x base salary. So let's just run some basic maths here of why I think that it's it's one of those like slight mathematical slight advances. And then the weird thing is VCs, um, C-level people, PE firms sharing this, talking about it. And I'm like, guys, know your numbers. It actually worries me. So let's just run the math quickly. So you've got 100k base salary, you've got 2 million in quota. Let's say you hit your 2 million in quota. Nice job, by the way. Yeah, 100%. Okay, you hit 100%. Correct. Let's make a guess. A guess on what the commission rate would be on 2 million. It's gonna be no less than 10%. Should be 10%. It's gonna be minimum. At least 10%. At least 10%.

SPEAKER_03 3:35

At least. So what's that?

SPEAKER_00 3:36

Let's let's keep up like 10% or 2 million. What's that? 100k. 200k. What's the base salary? Let's say 100. So it's 100, exactly what he said. So it's 100K. Now you get 200K in commission. Add the two together. 300k. 300K. What was the multiples, which usually is a SaaS industry standard? We were saying 200. Five to eight. Yeah. Okay. 2 million divided by your 300k OTE, quick maths. You are the expert here. 6.7. Okay. So basically, they're average. They're doing the average. But you come on a podcast, you you you slam your hand on the table and you make a wild statement, but you just say 20x base.

SPEAKER_03 4:12

And then change just the frame of change.

SPEAKER_00 4:15

But ultimately you're saying we follow the industry standard. And everyone goes, wow, that's amazing. I'm like, okay. Maybe they they they said a couple of other things that if they don't hit it, they fire people straight away.

SPEAKER_03 4:26

And maybe that's the smaller team, smaller team to hit bigger numbers. But it's the same numbers, basically. It's the same numbers. So I have one question that this scares me a little bit because I mean, you are an expert, then we will introduce you a little bit about and your background because I want your story, but for the audience to know. But if this goes viral, and then we have in this crazy industry, we have BCs, we have angel investors, we have all these people that look like the smartest people in the world. In fact, we have a book there that is from Ben Horowitz, that is from Horowitz and Anderson and Horowitz and hard things about hard things and so on. And no one understands this number.

SPEAKER_00 5:01

It was a basic thing. And when you watch the viral clip, I you know, I got a bit obsessed by it. I started scrolling through and seeing who's comments in the comments. It's like you've got you got people that are up there like going, This is this is the aggression we need. This is the stuff we did on garage. So these people. This is what and I'm like, hey, I'm not taking anything away. But you're using industry standard and and people are going crazy on it because you used a mathematical sleight of hand. Yeah. I was like, I was I was blown away. Anyway, look, nothing against the guys. Great company. The company's great stuff. I just found that the fact that you could say a bold statement like that by just twisting it a little bit and it picks up and goes viral. By people that should know better are then saying that's the new standard. And I'm like, but oh, the new standard? We've been doing that for what, 10 years? I don't know.

SPEAKER_03 5:43

Man, we should. I mean, at some point, it it depends on how you see it. The perspective is like, hey, you are a marketing framework copywriting content expert, or you're lying to people because you're saying exactly what everyone is doing right now over the past 30 years.

SPEAKER_00 5:56

I'd be careful to say, because it's not lying. It's not lying. Exactly. It's just the way that you frame things. 20x pay salary when you do those maths, maybe they're slightly out a couple of percent either way, works out as being a uh within a five to eight industry standards. So same, same. Yeah. So don't believe everything you hear from guys with loud voices on podcasts.

SPEAKER_03 6:14

So would it be fair to assume that messaging and the way we say things and how we say this everything at some point to convince a sell uh a prospect, a client? How do you how do you see the sales?

SPEAKER_00 6:24

Well, I don't know if you want to go through a specific. Convincing people is the old school way of doing things. We don't convince people we do not convince people. Exactly. You convince people, it's gonna end up probably a problem down the road. This is all it's all about. You know, 15 years ago, you asked me what sales was, I would have said something very different from today. Yeah. You know, 15, 20 years ago, I'd have been saying it's convincing someone, it's it's help it's is making someone make a decision in my favour now. That's like the you know, the Glen Gary, Glenn Ross, the Wolf of Wall Street, that kind of thing. You can't do that.

SPEAKER_01 6:58

So what what do you think changed the most over the last 15 to like yeah, 20 to 15 years, in your opinion?

SPEAKER_00 7:06

So much has happened. So much has happened, but also I want to be very, very, very clear. Some things have stayed exactly the same. And I'll die on that hill. I'll die on that. Go ahead. Things that have changed. Things that have changed largely. When I started, I was a dude. It was just me. You had a I'm I'm you know, I'm showing my age a little bit here. You had a Yellow Pages phone book. I don't know if you guys even know what that is. Yeah, we know.

SPEAKER_01 7:28

Printed out phone directory. Yeah, my father told me about those.

SPEAKER_00 7:32

You are the younger. That was me. That was me. Um that was a good one, man. And a desk phone. Uh and we we had like my black buddies. Never and you have to uh like me. No, I didn't have to do this. I didn't have to do this. Your father told you about it. We were like, yeah, call a collecting, like connect me with. Yeah. But here's the thing. Back then you did the whole thing. I was SDR, I was BDR, I was uh salesperson, I was customer success, I was account manager, I was marketing person, you wear all the hats. I tell you what, you learn so much. Today, you got what five different people for those jobs? Yeah, five different things. And there's reasons for that, but you know, I don't, and I don't want to go into all those details, other things we can talk about, but that's changed. Fundamentals have changed in that way. Two, the way people communicate, the way people ultimately um uh buy and sell as it relates to technology and things like that have changed. So attention, uh attention span has changed. Correct.

SPEAKER_01 8:28

The buying part is changing. And it's increasing, yeah. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 8:31

So attention now, before I used to have, I remember my rates from when I was a rep. I remember my rates exactly. If I made 10 phone calls, I would have um if I sorry, if if I made a hundred calls, dials, I had a 10% conversion rate to actually speak into someone. So if I made a hundred dials, I was gonna speak to 10 people. Out of that 10 people, I'd usually have a conversion rate of 20 to 30%. A hundred dials, I can make two, three meetings. I did that every single day, right? And what we used to call it was 10 by 10. 10 held calls by 10 o'clock every morning. You literally hit your pipeline and killed it. Connection rates now, yeah, look at them, trying to get hold of people. So while I say we did it all, and back in my day I picked up the phone, I also had like a connection rate of 10%. I had a meeting conversion rate of 20 to 30 percent.

SPEAKER_04 9:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:15

Now, that was quite good. Other people may have had a 10-15, whatever, but it was still within a reasonable. Now it's all about multi-threads, it's all about hyper-personalization, about getting attention. Now people don't have attention like they used to. We're fighting for attention. We're fighting, and now now people have got more, far more, far more intelligence on you and your product. Yeah. Fundamentals have still say the same. And I I I will die on this hill. And there's two of you, there's one of me, you guys can tell me, you guys have been around doing sales for a while. But the fundamental sales process, well, I'm not talking B2C, I'm talking B2B. Yeah, B2B. And I'm not talking B2B like high transactional, I'm talking a solution, a problem, problem-driven, solution-driven approach, right? It still looks like this. You've got a problem. What's the negative consequence of staying with that problem? Right? Because of an action. It doesn't matter what we're selling it.

SPEAKER_04 10:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:09

Okay. Here's where you would like to be, and here's the the positive business outcome of making that. And the difference between the two, think about that. That's where you start getting that value. So, what are the required capabilities that you need to go from A to B? How are you going to measure that metrics? I've got metrics tattooed on me somewhere. Metrics. How do we do it? How do we do it better? And how do I provide proof points from outside of me just telling you that that's what we do? Fundamentally, whether you're selling a CRM system, whether you're selling um FinTech solution, whatever it is. All these, the fundamental process stays the same. Where are you now? What are the what are the negative consequences of that? You're closing that gap.

SPEAKER_03 11:07

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 11:08

Exactly. Now that so that 20 years, 30 years. What's the same?

SPEAKER_03 11:13

40 years, I guess.

SPEAKER_00 11:14

I can't speak to the future. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 11:16

Where we've probably got AI talking to AI, but you're solving problems at some point. Exactly. That part, the way how you do it may vary, but the fundamentals are the same. You have a question, and I have two questions, two ideas that I would like to go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 11:29

The buyer side, also the way how people buy nowadays, is m much more like educated already, I would say. They got bombarded with targeted ads, how you can get a good company everywhere.

SPEAKER_00 11:49

There's still a little piece of this that people forget. I always used to have this argument. I was I remember having this argument 10 years ago. Every part of my journey over the last 20 years, buyers have always been getting more educated. There's never been a point where I'm five years in, oh, there's less educated. I've been having more and more and more educated buyers for my entire career. Now, you've seen this kind of uptick with the ability of AI to capture, but there is one small thing. I agree. I 100% agree. There is one, one, one small little thing that you've got to think about that. If they're looking and they know they've got a problem. Yeah. Not everyone knows they've got a problem or knows the impact of that problem. If I know I've got a problem and I know it's a problem that I want to solve, I can go get whatever information I got.

SPEAKER_01 12:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:33

But a good salesperson is going to be able to get in and help you identify an unknown-to-known problem. If you already got a problem, it's going to come in as an inbound. I love it. Now I've got to fight that inbound. I get that. I understand that. When I'm going out, I've got to be able to go and speak to companies and possibly, I'll be careful in saying disrupt their thinking, but at least illuminate and help them understand that perhaps that problem, maybe it isn't a problem. But perhaps that problem is causing them more of an hour of an impact than they actually know. And it's on me to educate them and help them realize that.

SPEAKER_03 13:09

There is something that you're mentioning, Chris, that it's okay, how can we change the way they see, feel, and measure something in order to help them go from point A to point B? And this is what we call the buyer's pyramid. That basically the buyer's pyramid says different, well, we it depends on the average in each industry and so on, but it says like just two to three percent of the whole total addressable market that you have right now, then that you tackle, is ready to buy, actively searching. This is so funny. Exactly. But then the rest, you need to do that exactly what you're saying, right?

SPEAKER_01 13:38

Yeah. Because no one, no, no company out there is 100% happy with this.

SPEAKER_00 13:42

And at some point they don't even know that we're not going to be able to do that. All of my customers are 100% happy with it. I just want to put that out there, Rex. Because they all get socks. Okay. That's right. That's right.

SPEAKER_01 13:52

That makes a difference.

SPEAKER_03 13:53

That's the difference, man. But this is something that we were uh talking behind the scenes and in other episodes as well with other invites. And I want to ask you this question. You mentioned two things. Two things. One, that it's hey, the fundamentals 30 years ago, and for the next 30 years, maybe they change the way we do things, but how we convince people not convinced, let me change the word, influence a decision, how we walk them through a process, those soft skills, the way we speak, they will remain there, the psychological tricks and so on. But right now, there are so much fighting for the attention, and this attention spam is going lower every single year. So my question is and I have this dilemma internally. Is easier than ever to become a seller right now, or harder than ever with all easier than ever to become a seller, it's harder than harder than ever to be a good seller.

SPEAKER_00 14:42

Okay, can you elaborate on that? Anyone at this point can get in at some level into sales with the technology that we've got, run cadences, follow scripts, and do those kind of things. I mean, we're we're seeing more and more automation in that era. We're seeing these things happen.

SPEAKER_03 14:56

That didn't happen 20 years ago.

SPEAKER_00 14:58

Back in my day, I'm like, alarm people. You know, uh, you know, it was it it was it was in that way. So getting into it. Also, there are a lot more jobs on the market, a lot more people that want these types of, you know, think or think that they want these. So we talk about hiring in a minute, think they want these types of roles. Four more, but now you've got to cut through the bullshit. Yeah. Now you've got to, you've literally got to cut through the noise. And that's fucking hard. Like that is hard. Hard. I I get my LinkedIn. You know, people are like, LinkedIn in messages, that's the way to do it. You know, that's the and and it is a way to do it. But now I'm now I'm seeing I get loads of those. You know, it used to be I get an email, oh, I've got an email, I'll answer it. Now you're just like, forget about it. I got a phone call, oh, I'll answer it. I actually do answer cold calls because I want to listen to what's going on. Exactly. I do. And if you're in sales, that's what I'm saying. But most people don't answer cold calls, right? So now you've now you've got to cut through. But just getting to the table is difficult.

unknown 15:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:54

Now you're in front of someone. Now, I I think you guys are old enough as well as me that you at least remember back in my day, you you there was no such thing as Zoom. Even Skype calls, we would drive myself and my what we would call then, what you call now a pre-sales engineer. Okay. Right? We would drive, we would tour, we'd get in the car, we'd drive, and we would go in person, we'd sit. Yeah. Where are things going? Yeah in real life is is is coming full back is coming full circle in my opinion.

SPEAKER_03 16:22

So basically, in a nutshell, to conclude, you I I think that this will uh answer my problem and my mental health dilemma here. Yeah. It's easier than ever to be an average slash poor seller. Yeah. It's harder than ever to become a top elite seller.

SPEAKER_01 16:37

As a as a leader, how do you make an average person uh uh a good or even a great top performer, right? Because not everyone is born to be a uh perfect, uh great salesperson, right? They're good, there are like a lot of talents out there, but they need uh certain tweaks, certain tips and tricks, certain uh coaching. How do you do that, right? Um I I had a I had a pleasure uh for the audience out there. I had a pleasure to work with Chris. Explain a little bit about it.

SPEAKER_00 17:06

You you took my when you were asking me that, I was like, Kevin, I got no idea, but you came and worked for me. Now you're interviewing me on a podcast. So I don't know what I did, but you do that. Yeah. Whatever the secret source is.

SPEAKER_03 17:17

So I mean, if there is one golden formula, and then I want your experience about how I was working with Chris as well. But there's no golden formula. Cut it out, cut it out. But there's no golden formula, and this is as a consultant that I am and helping teams and training teams as well. What I see is that sellers, and that's why my dilemma is they are trying to find that shortcut. Like, what is the perfect sequence that I can use to book 100 meetings next week? That won't happen. That won't happen, neither in your industry, not working, not even working at Salesforce or Amazon Web Services. That won't happen. It may work for a blip.

SPEAKER_00 17:50

And then it's it's gonna be noise, it's gonna be noise again. It's gonna be noise again. Exactly, exactly. In real life, again, is it is another is another twist, you know, where I think that the industry is slowly waking up to. But I'm like, get out there, just get back out there. Yeah, our travel, our traveling expenses are gonna back up again. But think about how much we spend, how much noise you make, how much spam that ends up coming out. Because now everyone, you remember when like cadences first come out? You mean I don't have to write an email. I could write like eight emails and then trigger when they go out. This is gonna be like shooting fish in a barrel. Yeah. I'm vegetarian, so I don't shoot fish. But you get my point, right? Exactly. But everyone's done it. It's we just spammed everyone. Everyone is getting spammed. Everyone is willing to spam that up. So, you know, honestly, go knock the doors again.

SPEAKER_03 18:38

Like, let's get in front of people. So, how are you how you're doing because I guess that your question was that like how are you making sure, or what's your process, your strategy within your team to at least try to influence them to become better sellers?

SPEAKER_00 18:50

Set targets on getting back out there again. I literally set targets on getting back out in front of it. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 18:54

Like having like how to implement meetings on a monthly basis. Your product is perfect for that, I guess. I need you out there.

SPEAKER_00 19:00

I need you out there. Go. Well, I mean, we're software, software as well. So it's uh mix a high. No, no, we're only software. Only software. Yeah, so I'm saying software as well as everyone else. But I mean, you've just got to get out there, you know.

SPEAKER_03 19:11

And how is the reception from the other side? Because the buyer is amazing. Yeah, it's amazing, right? It's amazing.

SPEAKER_00 19:16

As long as you're bringing As long as you're bringing value. What does value mean? For fuck's sake. Honestly. Honestly. I remember having You're suffering. Oh, God. I remember having I remember being told, and I won't know names or anything, but Chris, you need to bring more value. What does that mean? That sounds familiar, yeah. What value? Tell them we're number one. Oh. Oh shit, I didn't think. Hey, hey, Mr. Miss Prospect. We're number one in the market. Oh, look at us, we're number one. They are going to buy you then immediately. That's it. That's my top seller. Just tell everyone you're number one. Um and then when you're in there, okay, sell more than than what you were trying to sell originally. I've been told that as well. Genuinely, I was once told a number of years ago. And we sold on a seat basis then. Software's like on a seat basis, like you would buy seats of software. Correct, use our seats. Instead of selling one seat, and I was like, Yeah, one, another jerk.

SPEAKER_02 20:14

Yeah. Sell two. It wasn't a joke. It was deadly serious.

SPEAKER_00 20:20

And I literally was like, wait for it. There's gonna be some magic. So instead of selling one, punch them in the face. Well, I'd be careful, but you know, and I'm like, that was the so just sell, just bring more value and sell more. I'm gonna be a millionaire. Man, I am elite. That's that's the best trainer.

SPEAKER_03 20:39

The best trainer ever that you had, right? Oh, but but we are that's some man, that's crazy. And I'm happy that you're sharing that. Yeah, not happy for the sellers, but happy because I will have a job for a long time unless AI replace me. But this is happening, man. Sellers and companies I are hiring coaches, trainers, outsiders, whatever. I'm one of them at some point that is a bastard, bastard profession. Because another seller out there that go to train us. And the first, sorry, the first thing that I hear is no, my manager is telling me you have to do more.

SPEAKER_04 21:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 21:12

What is that? Yeah, what is it? How can I train you? Like do more, sell more, you're better, you can do it. I mean, I'm not in the gym. Help me with the strategies with skills.

SPEAKER_00 21:21

I do tell people to do more, but it's about doing the right things more. Not not break it down if it's not. It's not activity for the sake of activity.

SPEAKER_01 21:30

That's what I prioritize. That's what I remark. Exactly. Because you can to a point where then they say, okay, I do more, I just fake it more, you know, because you know they they just trick the the system. You just trick the system. But it's so funny.

SPEAKER_00 21:42

It's like, I need you to do like, uh have these conversations so many times. We're trying to achieve this here. This isn't working. So let's look back at what we're doing to try and achieve that. I look at these. Okay, so these numbers are down, these numbers are down, this number of like calls are down, customer visits. Down, this is down. Now, I'm not saying that doing all this stuff is the only way to get here. If you can get here a different way, teach me. I will give you the full credit and you teach everyone how we do it. Until we know that, we can't do nothing and hope this happens. So if this isn't happening, I have to take a step back and go, okay, so what are we doing to try and make that happen? And how many customers did you visit? How many, how many uh meetings have you had? And what were your conversions of your meetings? Yes. That's reverse engineering the whole process. But then you get to the end saying, we've worked out the averages. And on average, if you do, like I was saying, my 10 by 10, if you do that, you should, in theory, based on all of the averages, achieve this number. Now, you may be able to do it in half that because you're fucking the the you're the ethical Wolf of Wall Street. Exactly. You're an amazing salesperson, but you're ethical, right? Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 22:52

But do you think this is something which a leader should deliver to their salesperson? Like we do digest.

SPEAKER_00 23:00

Before you start on this, this isn't what we should deliver at the beginning. It starts with hiring. It starts with hiring. Let's go to that topic before. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 23:08

Because it's a hot topic. Why hiring? I have made some. You think that hiring is broken right now? No. Or how the companies are doing hiring? Because there is a like uh mainly for sales. And let me frame the question so you can elaborate. There are so much, there's so much hype within breaking into sales or scaling the ladder, so to speak. So, and so much offer and a lot of demand from people jumping into. So let's hire whoever it is, and then you have a lot of problems. You get so much burn. Exactly. So, what why hiring is the root of all the potential benefits or problems that you might have internally later on? If that's the question.

SPEAKER_00 23:46

It's I mean, it's the the we could talk about this for hours. Like bring the beer in because we can talk about this for hours.

SPEAKER_03 23:51

You have it there. No, it's just water.

SPEAKER_00 23:53

It's just cooking, whiskey, beer, whatever. But I mean, look, there's there's so much to talk about on this. I think one of the things I'll start with is right or wrong, how I think about hiring. I've hired some terrible people previously.

SPEAKER_03 24:08

Like Kevin.

SPEAKER_00 24:09

Kevin. Terrible. No.

SPEAKER_03 24:12

Explain that. Like how do you guys know each other? How do you guys know each other because you weren't saving his job?

SPEAKER_00 24:20

So, but going back to going back to hiring, we can get to that in a minute. But going back to hiring, I'm always looking for three things. Always looking for three. And by the way, I I've stolen two of these in my previous companies. It works so well. Three things that I'm always looking for, the fundamental things, okay?

SPEAKER_02 24:36

Brains, passion, coachability, brains.

SPEAKER_00 24:42

Do you have the intellectual horsepower to understand what the fuck we do? Do you understand and can you learn what industry, what our what customers in our industry are facing every day? Can you learn that and can you become an asset to them? But smart people aren't always passionate. I could be the smartest person in the world about signs. I I might not want to wake up every morning selling them.

SPEAKER_04 25:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:08

Two, am I passionate? But I don't just mean, yeah, I'm passionate about being a sales. I mean, like, are you passionate about what you do every single day? A reason that I moved into the renewables space, I want to wake up with purpose. So are you passionate? Do you want to wake up every morning doing this job? Yes or no? And of course they're gonna say yes, but this is where you need to dig in. Why? Why do you want to be in what the hardest job? I'll be careful in saying the hardest job. We're not we're not brain surgeons. Why do you want to be in such a relentlessly difficult job every single day? I want to earn money. Bullshit. I know you want to earn money. We all want to earn money. Why? Why do you want to do that? What is a good answer for each other? Yeah. A good answer could be um, I got two kids at home. Yeah. So I grew I grew up, I don't. I've got opening their hardware. And showing you that I got two kids at home. I didn't grow up money. I need to get these kids into the right school. I'm not gonna do that without getting out there fucking doing it. But if they don't have that degree on if they have a good scenario for the city, it could be anything. I mean, whatever it shows you can up. Exactly. More than I just heard you pay money. Okay, you can earn a lot of money in sales. You you will learn a lot. You will also in sales have some of the worst times of your life. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. I mean, they can I I don't know if I can say this, but there's an old phrase. I'll be careful what I say. There's an old phrase, I don't use it. And they and they called it about sales, cocaine and razor blades. We're gonna go back to the body. One minute you're partying and then you're all happy. Are we going to get banned here? You're gonna get banned. You're right, you're right. But literally, it was it was a joke. Sales is like cocaine and razor blades. One minute you're like, uh, next minute, ah, you know, and and I mean, look, it's a dumb. The famous cost of a month. It's the roller coaster sales. So you've got to need more than I want to earn money. Because guess what? There will be months when you're not hitting your number and you're about to get fired and you're not earning money. Tell me again why you want to be here. I want to earn money. You ain't earning any money. Tell me again why you're showing up the next day. Exactly. Has to be a reason. Okay, so one is brains. Smart. Two is passionate. And then coachability. Is there any specific order or you go for it? You need all three of them. So what what I do, I now don't hire SDRs directly, but I've been in the world where I did hire SDRs directly. So I would do things very simply. Number one, if someone's coming as an SDR, they've been in SDR. Not if they've not been an SDR. Or I do this, but I'm more gentle on it. If someone's been an SDR, say, okay, so what do you sell today? I sell this. Who do you typically sell to? Blah, blah, blah. Okay, what are the kind of problems they face? Good. Okay. Now I might not know their industry whatsoever. I'm going to say, okay, so I'm the CEO of blah, blah, blah, uh, right on the spot, and I give you five seconds to prepare. Let's go, and you're going to cold call me in three, two, one. Hey, through to Chris, how can I help? And I would see how they do it. Now, how well they do on that cold call will show me the first step of this. They've done this before, they know what they're doing. We're in an interview scenario. It's going to be possibly a little bit more difficult than it would be when you're, but we'll see. Then what I'm going to do is I'm going to say, okay, good. Here's a couple of pointers. Maybe you'd done that. Maybe you could have paused there. Maybe you could have just held back a little bit longer. No. Then I'll say, right, five seconds, we're going to go again. I push them down that same path and I listened. Did they take what I just said and tried to apply it? Or did that just go completely in one ear, out the other ear, and then they just did the same thing? Yeah. Poachability. I actually remember that. I love it.

SPEAKER_01 28:29

When I applied for the role.

SPEAKER_03 28:30

Well take that one.

SPEAKER_01 28:31

When I applied for the roles in Chris's team, not as an SER, as an account executive. I remember two things. It's still, I think it's now around seven, eight years ago. One part was that um I had to pitch. I had to pitch to Chris. I had to pitch Chris. So that's exactly what he said. I had to do that. You have that on tape. Nah, no, no, no. It's easier, but like, and the second part was like after the interview, I followed up. And he said, if you would not have followed up, maybe you're I would not have hired you.

SPEAKER_00 29:04

I had two learnings, three learnings. I had two big learnings that have stuck with me since when I was early 20s, who knew fuck all about sales. Set the scene. I had five interviews to get into the company. Uh I'll talk about big shout out to John Perrin, first person who hired me. Phenomenal sales guy, phenomenal sales trainer. Uh big, big, big mentor in my life when I first started out in sales. He gave me my first shot. He put me through the absolute fucking ringer. Five interviews. Five interviews.

SPEAKER_03 29:35

Going through hell.

SPEAKER_00 29:35

And he he he he I basically had to keep calling back and calling him in order to try and get through. And he basically said, I'm glad you called because I wasn't, you know, there's no way I'd give you a job if you can't help me. I'd never done sales before. So I was just going on, how do you get a job? This guy isn't responding. Call him. I'd better call him. You know, and so I was just doing, but he wanted to see. He forced you on the other side. And he was like, had you not done that, you would never have got the job. You never got the job. Number two. So I so this was this this was the learning that I had. So we had a room about this big.

SPEAKER_03 30:08

You were working already with him.

SPEAKER_00 30:10

This is when I got the job. Okay. There's a room about this big. There's six guys in it. All young, all hungry as hell, all had a reason, all wanted to earn money. I had mine, they had theirs. We all wanted to get there. I'm going back 20 odd years. Software sales, of course, was around. Of course, it was around. It's a very different world back then. We were like a boiler room in a very professional way, but lots and lots of cold calls, lots of activity, lots of, right, I've got to jump in the car. Fax machine. When that fax machine turned on, we would all run over to see who the order was coming from, right? But here was the learning. Here was the learning. JP sat, I remember it perfectly. He actually sat here, right here, in the office.

SPEAKER_04 30:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:50

And I'm he's the sales, he was a co-founder, sales director, went on to be a sales trainer, and then God knows what he's doing. Now he's probably retired on a boat somewhere, but whatever. He sat right here. I'm a new guy. I don't know what I'm doing. I had to sit there and make calls every day.

SPEAKER_03 31:04

Next to him.

SPEAKER_00 31:05

So I've got some great stories on here. I would literally be like, Cole calling, you know, hello, it's Chris here. Shaking for the audience. Hello, shake. If you can't, yeah, if you can't, you can't see. Shaking. But even when I started getting good at it, every now and then when he was listening and he was in the office, if he if I was like doing some um prospecting and I was on a call for like 10 minutes, he saw it was going out, he would lean over and just hit the button on my phone and cancel it. Literally would just hang up my phone. What are you doing? Just go and fucking know where next. And I'm don't, this isn't like a aggressive Wolf of Wall Street way. It was like you could hear, he would hit the phone, it would go on speaker. He would listen and he'd be like, you're just having a chat with someone about the fundamental about like life like life. You're just chatting with people. But you're but you're not at a point where you're just building good rapport to move somewhere. You're just chatting. So he would just hang up. So I learned quite quickly. I remember another one. I was trying to close this deal. Are we allowed to talk about competitors and companies in this company? Whatever you want.

SPEAKER_01 32:04

Yeah, you can mention it, don't mention their names maybe, but uh the rest No, but company names or not.

SPEAKER_00 32:09

Okay, yeah, you can save. Company names. So we were I was working at a uh a company. Um I was competing at that I was working for a company and I was competing against Autodesk in a uh in an engineering firm. And I built like rock solid relationship with the decision maker. Like he and I were talking like holidays, like we had similar interests, we both like going to the gym, we both like um, you know, mountain biking, all this kind of cool stuff. And um was having a conversation, and we got to the point where I had put in a quotation, we're writer quotation stage, everything was good, and ultimately we get to a point where I lose the deal. Okay, so I lose against autodesk. Painful, right? And this was like a reasonable amount of money, especially back then, a reasonable amount of commission. So here was one of the learnings. JP, this was one of the last like bigger deals that I'd lost. So JP, I'm in the office, he takes me outside. He says, Okay, man, let's go. What happened? Tell me why you lost this deal. I said, Okay, well, you know, I had the relationship, I had this, blah, blah. I went through the whole deal. At the end, they already had some autodesk products, they were looking to upgrade, and then when they came in with a final offer, ultimately they came in like 30% the price of what I was coming in at. And you know, so they were much cheaper, and because they were much cheaper, they ended up going with them all the explanation. How do I and so and I stopped about 10 minutes, right? He's just he's just straight faced. He's like, okay, okay, okay, like I understand, stop. He said, So why'd you lose the deal? I said, you know, you know the fact you know you know you know about the the price, they were like much cheaper than than me, and ultimately because of that, I lost the deal. Yeah, yeah, I heard you, I heard you. Why'd you lose the deal? I'm like, dude, I lost the deal because it got undercut. Blah blah blah. And I started getting a bit pissed off to the point he goes, I'm gonna tell this to you.

SPEAKER_02 34:05

And this is you're gonna have to learn to accept this. You lost the fucking deal because you got outsold. End of story.

SPEAKER_00 34:14

The other sales rep beat you in this deal. And I was like, no, no, it's because they were cheaper. It took me about a week, yeah, it took and I had to calm down and process it. That changed my mindset from then going forward to this day of I'm competing with my products against someone else with their products. If I really, really, really am in a losing position, then okay, maybe I should go join them. Maybe our product sucks. But we had one of the most widely used products in the world. So what is your non-negotiable right now after that lesson learned? Like ex accountability. Exactly. Accountability on why did you lose? Yeah. We lost because the other person did a better job than me. And that pill to swallow became so hard. I can swallow that pill now quite easily because I recognize I lost the deal. They didn't I lost the deal.

SPEAKER_03 35:17

Yeah, because we don't why don't we have that into our mindset wired already? Because everyone is like, they did this. It's not me. It's they did this happen.

SPEAKER_01 35:27

It's ego. It's all about ego. And we don't like to accept that.

SPEAKER_03 35:31

But we need people like JP, man, because I have two questions before jumping into accountability, because we're talking about hiring. So, man, this is so interesting. Hiring, why all these companies? And I've been in that position and I'm guilty of committing that mistake. Sometimes we are not harsh or hard enough. In the good sense, in order to get the high-quality people, you bet you want the A players, the best.

SPEAKER_00 35:55

But we are all, all, all, all of us, every hiring manager out there, every hiring manager out there, at least that I know, maybe there's a few, you have a gap. You've got to fill, get a headcount in. And maybe you've got limited applicants, maybe you've got like, for example, um, Kevin, you know, like if you're in Barcelona, let's say you want an SDR, but you want a German-speaking SDR who's really. You're limited to like eight people, right? And half of them are like living here doing this. So I'm not saying that there aren't eight phenomenal guys or you know, or gals. I'm just saying that you you might be limited. And so you sometimes end up the balance of MTC is costing me this. More than abortified. And I don't want to say like good enough, but they did a good job.

SPEAKER_03 36:37

You start convinced that. No, I think they could do it, I could coach them. But the thing is that you can go, but that that shouldn't be a condition, and I love that. That shouldn't be a condition to how I go through the interview process. Maybe I can make them feel the pain throughout those eight interviewers, or those eight candidates, better said, and then you make the decision. But the thing is, what I'm my experience is maybe we are too soft. And the three things we can do. We definitely are. And the thing is, the thing that you just mentioned, and that you just went through, like coachability, the brain power, let's say, and the passion, passionate policy. Those three things that we say, no worries, we can make them in, and then internally we will take the time. No, you won't. You have to do it right away.

SPEAKER_00 37:18

Let me let me give you the other side of the coin. There's a lot of companies hiring for these people. They don't people that are being interviewed now also don't want to go through five, six, seven, eight steps again and again and again. Again and again and again. So we, you know, we've got to get very good at finding out. So that's why every single one of those interviews, you've got to be spot on.

SPEAKER_01 37:39

Yeah, I think. Quick question here, Chris. Do you think who is more selective? Corporates or startup scale-ups? You worked for both. Who is more selective? Because of course the the startup scale-ups have to fight hard to good balance. Because that's a factor of their I guess that it's young people want to work for the big names first, right? They want to say, oh, I want to work for Microsoft, Amazon, all those big names. But the good people want to go there as well, right? What is your your opinion about that?

SPEAKER_00 38:09

I mean, they also hire a lot more people. So there's a there's a that you've got a you've got a there's more margin of error, I would say. If you've got 50 people on your on your high velocity team, your SDR team, or whatever. And by the way, let I'm not answering your question direct now, but let's go back. Hiring an SDR when it's someone who is in that is their first job, is the hardest job to hire for. Absolutely. It is the hardest job. I have these debates all the time. It's why don't we hire experienced SDR? And I go, I don't know, maybe an SDR probably usually has like two years, possibly three years max spin in SDR. If you've hired them and they're really good, and maybe you'd manage to get them in, they've done 12 months. You've got 12 months before they are gonna go somewhere else or expect you to move. So that's good if we know it. Now, if you want to bring someone in who maybe you've got longer runway on, now you're hiring someone with no experience. And now you've got someone coming out of college or it's the first job coming out of university or a different industry, they're like, I want to be this SDR. Okay, let's, you know, we're painting the picture. You know what this is, right? You know the expectations that SDR is ultimately someone who does high, high, high activity. I'm expecting a lot of activity, good activity, right activity, in order to be able to drive the outcomes that we need. If you don't, if you can hit the numbers of no activity and teach me.

SPEAKER_04 39:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:24

But we need somebody who's going to be relentlessly going out there and being having the door literally slammed in their face every single day. So you've got people that think SDR, tech sales, I want to go in and do that for reality on day three, and they're like, good salary. Okay. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 39:41

So no, no, go ahead. Yeah, like another topic one I want to discuss because I think there is a huge discussion about the full sales cycle AE. Right. Um, what is your your take on that? Because you know, like many companies say, yeah, STRs is not that effective anymore. Yep. Um, should we go full uh uh sales cycle AEs? Does it make sense? What is your your your opinion about that topic?

SPEAKER_00 40:06

I think there's definitely a place for this. There's definitely a place for this. And you know, some of the I do want to answer your question, but you know, there's some things that sort of mind-boggle me a little bit. And I'll be very respectful of everyone. I'm just talking about experience. It always kind of blew my mind that we would give inbound leads that we spend all this money on to our most junior people. And typically you start off with people that walk in the company, giving them the inbound leads first. Not me, I try to do this, right? But then if they're really good, you say, okay, now you should go outbound. Now you've learned. And then if you're really good at that, I'm gonna give you the full sales cycle. Why are we spending you know what marketing spend is huge? Huge. Why do we give our best leads to Bob or Susan who walked in a week ago and they're like, hey, you know, so that there's a lot of conversation around, I've had this debate four hours on does that does it make more sense that we have people very structured, very focused, experts in what they're doing? And by the way, being an SDR, being an SDR doing outbound, one of the hardest jobs, yeah, also sets you up with some of the most foundational skills to take you on to be an AE.

SPEAKER_04 41:13

Correct.

SPEAKER_00 41:14

An AE that's never done an SDR role. You're gonna be on the back foot. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 41:20

You're gonna be on the back foot foot.

SPEAKER_00 41:21

You're gonna because you you have to have gone through. It's like earning your stripes. And I'm sounding like really old school here, but you need to have made all those, you need to have had those conversations, you need to have been hung up on, you need to have been told you're an idiot, you need to have like forgotten your words and gone, hey. Oh, and then and then you're like, what am I doing? You need to have done.

SPEAKER_03 41:42

You need to know that stuff.

SPEAKER_00 41:43

So I have a huge amount, it is the training ground and one of the hardest roles. So I have a huge amount of respect.

SPEAKER_04 41:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 41:49

Could you go back and then this is always the balance. Okay, how easy is it in order for to get in contact with those people that you want to talk to? And then therefore, you probably have a higher conversion rate of a seasoned AE having that first conversation. But you might spend a lot of time churning the wheel and have paying a very expensive SDR, ultimately, that an AE doing SDR work, churning, churning, churning through stuff, and they're not actually being productive. So you've got to take a real good look. And I could argue, if you say, Chris, you've got to debate this and you're on that side, I'll go fight that fight. You say, Chris, debate this on the other side, I'll go fight that fight. It's gonna come down to the case-by-case situation.

SPEAKER_01 42:27

You think it's it's as well like product-related, what people are selling? If it's like a simple product, easy, quite straightforward, where everyone could book book certain meetings and um it's a like a short sales cycle, then it would make sense. Or if it's more complex, enterprise.

SPEAKER_00 42:44

Just, I mean, nowadays, you those just stick to PLG if you're gonna be doing that. Just let it run, just market the crap out of it, good product market fit, freemium model, gated, gated functionality, start leveraging it up, blast it out there. You don't even need the sales guys. I mean, so yeah, it it would be product, it would be product related. But that's that's a that's a bigger, yeah, that's a complex conversation on its own. But there's probably other topics that we that we want to jump into, right? On other things.

SPEAKER_03 43:08

No, I think that uh this is super relevant.

SPEAKER_00 43:10

Um so the learnings, you were that you were talking about learning. Exactly. One of them was I got that cold the loss, yeah, and then I got that cold slap in the face of the reality of you lost that deal. Accountability, you got outsold. It took me about a week until I got that. It's a swallow. But I got I got that in my first few months of working in my first software sales role, and that stuck with me and changed the mindset. And even people that, you know, I've worked with for a long time, you can see like the excuses come in. Oh, it's bad weather, people aren't buying. Bad weather. You know, it's like, so there are gonna be contexts, there are reasons. Of course, you're gonna have horrible headwinds, you're gonna have market conditions. You know, in 20 years, unfortunately, I've been through the crazy. Credit crunch, the the the global global financial crisis, all this kind of stuff. You think selling them was easy? Yeah. It's absolutely so, so, so solid on your business case, on your commercials, on your return on investment, on making sure you're speaking to the right people. You had to follow that sales process and like have your medic down, big, big medic. I work for the company that invented medic, right? So I literally probably have to do that as well. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 44:27

So but but Chris, that comes down again. And every time that I see a seller that goes through the ladder, learns all the skills, develop all the different mindsets that you have to go through a successful guy like you. There is someone behind that that shaped you at some point, besides all your own success and your accountability. And you had this JP, this guy, and some others for sure. There's there's been a few, but could be a manager or someone that is training you or someone upper in the chain of command that could make or break your sales career.

SPEAKER_00 44:58

There could be, but I think this might be a funny time to tell you, move on and just tell you a funny story. You know, I haven't always been 100% successful. I've been in sales this whole time. Like I've I've not got jobs that I've applied for. Funny, funny story. If you want to go on to that one, a funny story about me not getting a job. So I was I was over in Australia.

SPEAKER_03 45:16

Tell us, tell us this is a question. Yeah. Tell us a fun story, either for a failure or for a success, about your sales journey.

SPEAKER_00 45:24

I'll tell you what, well, I'll tell you a funny story. I'm unsure if this is a failure or if it's a funny story. You two can be the judges. We will. All right, so here we go. Set the scene. Um, how old are you now, Kevin? Uh 35. I was literally 35. I'm 35. Been in sales then for about maybe like 10 years or so. Same like me. I know my shit. I'm doing pretty good. I'm I'm out there, I'm doing a nice job. I was in a position where um I was a channel territory manager, so you know I was I was I was progressing. I was scaling up. In Australia. In Australia, right? And then this job came up. This company that was big in San Francisco opened their opening, they opened their offices in Sydney. I'm not going to talk about the company, but it was one of these companies that did storage solutions. One of the first companies that did online storage solutions, if you will. We're not talking about storing your clothes, but you know, for file sharing and and uh fuck it, we can talk about Dropbox. I was supposed to say Dropbox because Dropbox were dropping in to Australia. This is mine. I have been working in Australia now for maybe four or five years. I've been in sales for 10 years. At that point, I'm feeling I'm pretty confident I know what I'm doing. I know the local market, I know the local, the, the, the local industries, I know people, I know the culture, I know the physical locations, I know the hubs, I know sales. As a part of my job, I do sales coaching, I do sales training. I'd also so started a little sales consultancy on the side where I was actually doing teaching people like how to cold call, how to do this kind of stuff, right? So I thought this is great. So I but then their their landing team come in. There's a landing team. They've got like four or five people, they're all like 19, like first jobs straight out of like MIT or whatever it might be. I'm making that bit up. I don't know where they came from, right? Anyway, they're advertising for a account. Account executives. So account, yeah. Account executives. So I put my CV in, get an interview. I go in, walk me in through the room, and they say, okay, the the hiring, the hiring manager will be with you soon. Um we're running a bit behind. So they led me into a room that was like basically a cupboard, and it had a whiteboard on the side, had some pens on the side, and I was just sat there and they said he'll be about like five minutes. And I thought, you know what? This is this is perfect. This is for me. This is perfect. So I thought, I I I jumped up, pen out, immediately. I started writing down exactly sales process, sales qualification process, uh, sales qualification. So running through like medic, running through how you think about what I just spoke to you, what I spoke to you about uh before, like a copy of Commander the Message, if you will, big believer in Commander the Message. I started writing down all of these things, personas, because I knew, you know, I'd done a bit, I'd done my research. Yeah. Had this beautiful whiteboard. So the guys come in, they're like, oh, what's that? I said, well, look, instead of me, instead of you interviewing me and, you know, me just trying to fumble through, I thought I would just demonstrate and give you an example. You're looking for salespeople. I think he's really smart to tell you. Let me say, let me talk you through. I've got the I've got a photo, I shared it on LinkedIn. I shared a photo, I took a I because I thought 10 years I thought I'm not gonna tell this story. The other day I thought, screw it, I'm telling this story. I put the story on LinkedIn and I shared the picture. I took a picture of the whiteboard. Go look at it afterwards. I sent it to you. So I've got the whiteboard on the wall. Right. They come in and they're like, what's this? I said, Well, I thought I would give you a demonstration. Instead of you trying to, you know, navigate, I can just give you this is what I would do. Here's how I would come into the role, this is the sales methodology I would bring in. If you've got your own, I'll learn that. I just want to give you my understanding and what I would do. About five minutes in, they go, hold on a minute, walk out, go bring other people in. So now I've got an audience, right? Sat there, one of the guys, so geezer pulls out a pen. He's like, right, writing it down. So instead of an interview as like a coach, I'm doing this, I'm doing this coaching thing, right? Training. And they were like, that's brilliant, Chris. Absolutely fantastic. Love it, love it, love it. Good, good. Anyway, so that finishes, shake hands, all that good stuff. All right, hmm. So, you know, I'm chasing up and following up and doing my thing. I'm trying to add value each time. Not just where are we, but hey, saw this, thought of you, you know, sort of blah, blah, blah, all the good stuff. Invite me back in, invite me back in. I get about five interviews, like must have been four interviews at this point. And they'd asked me through the what do you want to do? And I said, you know, I'll start what I would like to do, start as an account executive. I recognize you've just landed. I'll start as an account executive. If I do a good job, and if I prove to you that I can do this job, I would love to move more into a team lead role, kind of more where I am now. I'm a territory manager at the moment. I'm happy to go be an account executive, run around like a crazy man. I will literally be a beast. I will run around and I will bring the I will bring the orders in. I prove myself, I get team lead over whatever. One day, one day, I would love to have a career path where I could be country manager for a company like this. Okay, Chris. I'd get uh I'd get an email the next day, Chris, you got you got five minutes. And I'm like, this is it, boys! We're going to get it. I got it, I got it. This is it, I got it. Age doesn't have anything to do with it, but the experience might be. So I have a very inexperienced guy on the core, he must be 20s. I I did look at his LinkedIn, I think he'd maybe been in the company for six months, and that was like his first job out of college. This was the advice that he gave me. Literally, I can remember it. Chris, we're really impressed by you and your sales skills. We're really impressed by the coaching and everything that you did.

SPEAKER_03 50:44

Oh, when you start like that, I'm feeling the pain already.

SPEAKER_00 50:47

The service starts. Yeah, and I'm like, we need to talk. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. And then he's like, the thing is, we've already got a sales manager, and we've already got a country manager. And you're very ambitious about wanting to move into those roles, and we want someone who just wants to be an AE for the next three, four years and run a Chris.

SPEAKER_02 51:11

My advice. You should have been less ambitious.

SPEAKER_00 51:18

What? Is this I had to go like you're hiring a fucking salesperson and you want them to be less ambitious. You know what? Bring me the most ambitious killers out there. And I will hire them. And I will do my best to hold them at bay as I can until they either leave me and go get a role somewhere else because that's what they deserve, or I can put them in that position. But how a company like DrawBox became Dropbox with this kind of function. I dude, I was honestly, I still find it funny now. I put the story on make a favorite. They made you a favor. I was like, wow, that is brilliant. I would have been okay if they said, Chris, you I I didn't like your shirt, stupid shirt. Chris, I had to do it. Whatever the other thing. Whatever it whatever it was. Don't tell a sales guy that I was too ambitious. Oh, what do you want? You're literally telling me you want less ambitious people to come and work. What do you think they're gonna wake up and bust their ass and go out there and run around to prove a name and bring all on the road and bring in all those orders for you if you hire an averagely ambitious person? Hi, I'm Chris. I'm averagely ambitious.

SPEAKER_03 52:21

Imagine a conversation with your manager saying, hey, we're not hitting it. No, but I don't want to be I don't want to be an ambitious for him in the middle.

SPEAKER_00 52:28

We're doing our reviews. Chris, where do you see yourself in five years? I see myself being demoted because I don't want to be so ambitious. Maybe your company's selling. Maybe I could be like you know I could be lower in the company. It was brilliant. It was anyway. I I I still remember that. It was beautiful. Man, that's crazy.

SPEAKER_03 52:43

That's crazy. I don't know what it I don't I have no more questions. That was a good one. I have no idea what we have to talk about right now.

SPEAKER_01 52:49

No, no. I think it's it's it's just crazy. That was that was a that was a good thing. But I think many companies still are like this out there, right? They want to fashion other they're maybe their hiring process is not correct, right?

SPEAKER_00 53:00

Well, look, I I do understand. If I'm hiring an AE and I'm bringing in someone who's very experienced and they're immediately saying, I want to be this, I was hyper clear. If I deliver over this period of time in the future, 12 months, 24 months, perhaps we build the team, you hire more people, I prove myself that I could go be. And I'd have been okay if they were like, You're shit at sales training. I'd have been like, oh, okay, maybe I am. But it was that that was the the advice afterwards. So I do but I do understand if if if you or me, if we were hiring someone tomorrow for an AE role and they say, I want to be an AE for three months, then I want to be the team lead, you'd be like, no, I need an AE for two years. Yeah, yeah. I get that. It makes sense. But anyway.

SPEAKER_03 53:44

It's curious, man. Sometimes these misalignments or misunderstandings about how the company it's crazy. It's crazy.

SPEAKER_01 53:51

Well, some yeah, I think some companies just want to grow and uh grow and grow. I want more stories. Yeah. You have more stories?

SPEAKER_00 53:58

I got I got maybe maybe a couple more. I think one of the one things that you want. I think the best uh let's go to a f I mean there was the moving from a I see individual contributor into sales manager.

SPEAKER_03 54:09

Okay, wait, wait there. So hold the story for a second. I have one straightforward analysis and something that I want to discuss over the table and put it over the table. Why, if so, and hopefully this will change, and this is changing at some point I'm seeing it. Why companies used to or are more comfortable by h by promoting directly the top performer into a sales manager role or into a team lead role when we know by fact that the skills that you have or that you need for a sales direct role and from a sales manager role is completely different. Why does that happen if it's not a completely success criteria that we should focus on? Retention.

SPEAKER_00 54:52

People are forced into it sometimes.

SPEAKER_03 54:53

Sometimes you're forced into it. I have two choices. I have uh But I can say no one and say I want to I want to stay as an IC if okay, so you could.

SPEAKER_00 55:02

You could. And you know, at large multinationals I've worked for, some of the individual contributors that were in their 50s, that were out there doing the multi-million dollar deals. They're making a lot of money. And they were killing, they were making more money than anyone. And they're the manager and the other manager. They're making more than imagined and and and so they should be because they're out there doing jobs. So when that works, that works really well. When you have a position where it's like, I'm gonna if I don't put this like my top salesperson, if I don't retain them by promoting them and I don't have a, I can't just pay them for whatever happens. They will go into an outcomes. They're gonna go somewhere else automatically. Companies sometimes get forced into a promotion to put them into someone into a team lead role because it's it's better that you think I will then coach them on how to be a rep than than lose them externally.

SPEAKER_03 55:50

What's the the retention, it's a it's a valid, legit uh analysis. But why but that doesn't mean that they will be good at role.

SPEAKER_00 55:59

And so I I've got a actually I've I've got a quick story on this one. And uh talk about personal friend as well, I've known for a long, long time. So uh one of the one of the best sales guys, again, I've ever met, that guy. You come against him. In fact, I did come against him. Me and my team, when he was working at a different company, we came up against him and I was doing the review with my my with my rep. Yeah, and I said, Okay, so you're up against this company. He said, Yeah. And I'm like, shit, I know one of the guys that works there. I was like, you don't happen to know, do you know which rep you're up against? And they're like, it's like uh Steve Mahoney. I see. I was like, head drop.

SPEAKER_01 56:33

I have I I I have exactly the same idea.

SPEAKER_00 56:35

I said I basically said, if you don't do these things, he's gonna, he's gonna, he's gonna destroy us. Yeah. That guy, Steve, went and found the owner of the company likes rugby. He's an he's an ex uh semi-professional rugby player himself, managed to somehow insert himself at the same game in the same area, accidentally bump into the CEO, get talking about rugby. Oh, and by the way, just so happens to be competing with us in that deal, came in. And my rep was going, no, no, we got it, we got it. Our products are we got it, we got it, and I'm going, you're gonna know about you are gonna get fucked. And I'm gonna get I don't like getting fucked. We're about to get fucked. Mahoney's coming for us, right? Get me in this deal. We need to I'm like, I'm like, emergency. Mayday, mayday, ringing the bells. Get me in, get me in. Anyway, anyway, I'm like, where are we on that deal? He's like, Yeah, we lost it. I was like, I fucking told you. Mahoney was party, you know? So anyway, I finally got to hire Steve. I'm like, I gotta get, I've been trying to get him forever because he's a bit younger than me. Um, and so I've been a I've I've been staying ahead of him, let's say, on the career path, but he's an absolute killer. He's got a twin brother called Dan, also a killer. These guys are um insane. So I finally got the opportunity to hire Steve to come in and run the enterprise team for me, uh previous company. And I remember having this conversation about going from an IC to a manager. So I'm like, Steve, you're doing a great job running the enterprise team. Uh sorry, being the enterprise guy, great job. We gotta we've got to be scaling up. And you said when you came in you also wanted to go build this team, and so we got that agreement. Let's start hiring people. So putting a team underneath him. And I remember having a coaching session with him, and it sounds obvious, but it's a difficult pill to swallow. That guy is an animal, he is a he is an absolute beast. He's a beast, right? But he lives or lived uh on getting out there, closing the deals, and having people go, Oh, he's a lot of things. He loved it, he loved it. And by the way, more power to him. So I had to have a conversation and I said, Steve, we got talk. So we got into talking about it, and I said, Look, your job is no longer to be the best sales guy in the room. It doesn't hurt that you are right now. Your job is not to be the best sales guy in the room, your job is to go make a whole bunch of mini Steves and then they become the best sales guy in the room. That is now your job is to build and grow that team to be as good, if not better, than you are. Your job is to enable them to coach you. Your job is to watch them and when they're dropping the fucking ball, not run in and grab the ball unless you absolutely have to because we're about to use the big thing.

SPEAKER_01 59:13

All about ego again. Well, I mean, he liked it and so. But you need to put your ego aside and let another one be increased. Exactly, exactly. It's really difficult.

SPEAKER_00 59:23

I had to go through the same thing. What was the conversation with you? I mean, what happened? No, and he was like, yeah, and we had no, he said that's gonna be a tough. I like, I like the recognition, I like being the guy that brings in the big deals. And I'm like, I know. And here's the thing when you're a manager, an athlete too. He is. When your team wins, when you're a manager, yeah, you praise that team. They win. When your team fails, you lose. You are the one that has to take the hit. That's it. You're you're in it, you're you're you're in a the team wins, it was all there, it was all there, you lose. Oh, oh, guys, by the way, everyone fucked up. Yeah, that's on you, right? And especially when, and so that conversation more money, more responsibility.

SPEAKER_03 59:59

It's it's how it is.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:01

That was a mindset shift. So that kind of coaching uh and going through so that that's one of the things you've got to learn. Go from an IC to a manager, and then fortunately, Steve and I had a very good relationship. I had been through the same thing. He's open, I'm open. We could have the same, and he's doing a fantastic job. So that's great. I don't we don't work together anymore. I've moved on. He's he's now taken my old job at the last company. I've moved on to a different company. So little funny story about that. So you answered this.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:27

Now let's jump into the story that you had.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:29

That's a funny story. All right. So this is one of my you said you said ask me for a war story.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:33

This is we we usually don't prepare our our our guests. We don't. So it's really all that. We needn't. No, no.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:40

So it's Well, the the thing is, Kevin knows I've got so many stories. Exactly. Just pick something. Just pick something, dude. Or we'll be here for five hours. Exactly. I mean, when you've been doing it for 20 years, I've been traveling all over the world, I've been in nearly every single role. You can't not have some funny stories.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:57

Shouldn't we make a one-minute break so you at least tell the audience who you are, where did you leave, where do you come from? At least something. I know that we don't like that because it's boring for the other side. It's boring. But we need to show you, man. So in in 60 seconds, your elevator pitch of who you are and where are you coming from.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:14

Started with yellow pages and a phone book. Now companies trust me to go build their go-to market motions. That's it. Right. Um, but in the meantime, I've worked at multinationals, I've worked at startup companies, I've been through startup rounds, mergers, acquisitions. Um, I've worked at the big corporations, I've worked at corporations for a startup within that to go grow. Most of what I've done has typically been get in and grow. Get in and grow. Excuse me. Get Chris in to get in and grow it.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:42

And you need these in different countries as well, right? Yeah. You'll leave the different countries. And you are from specifically to share the audience?

SPEAKER_00 1:01:48

I'm from the UK. Okay. I'm from a little place called Portsmouth on the south coast. Um, I'm I live in Barcelona. You can tell my very, very strong British accent. I'm not Catalan, yeah. The accent's terrible. Um, so yeah, that that's me in a nutshell, but you can find me on LinkedIn. That's me. But lots lots of experience in hardcore, hardcore sales, sales management, territory management, um, sales enablement, uh, you name it, all that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:16

And in creating a good environment with the sales team. No, we can we can feel it here. I think that was when when I had a pleasure to work with Chris, we had always fun working, right? We love to go to the and learning, yeah. Like I think everyone was always looking for looking forward to our Friday uh closing uh Roundup stories. Chris starts, uh he's a uh pretty good rapper as well. So if he was rapping, uh then I might be a sales rapper. I could rap about sales, that'd be good. But it's very niche. Exactly, super niche. So yeah, that was some good uh two years we had I think together. But yeah, let's get to the story.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:51

Sorry, before I No, no, it's fine. And I I say that that's also one of the things that I kind of pride myself on. And and I've had I've had managers that I've had CEOs or people that I report to that don't like it. They think I've I've literally been told you are not hard enough on your team. And I'm like, I'm of the generation of being hard might be what you think that you should do. Being a hard ass doesn't work nowadays. There's a there's a pl there's a time and a place for it. But being supportive, being empathetic, being able to remove blockers to get their job done doesn't mean you can't set clear expectations, hold people accountable. But just being a like higher or fire mentality, that kind of stuff, it's not gonna get you anywhere. You get a bad rip, people don't want to work for you.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:34

One of the nice things 20 uh people They say, hey, who's this? Who's this? F off, who's no, I'm going away.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:41

Yeah, exactly. So one of the things, one of the things that I pride myself on, I'm I'm not there are a lot of things I'm not very good at. One of the things I pride myself on is being able to, and others tell me, including you know, Kevin saying it, is actually trying to build an as best as I can, an engaged culture where people are like motivated and happy as they can possibly be to go and get told no 50 times a day. But like trying to drive that motivation and passion. So that's if you want someone that does that, I'm your kind of guy. If you want someone that's gonna be like a hardcore sales VP revenue operations type guy, they're not a good thing. Like I'm data driven, but like, hey, let's get in front of the people and we we've got technology to do that. So story. I'm in Australia. I'm with one of my rep, phenomenal sales rep, guy called Richard, Richard Elvin, that guy was also a beast. I've been very lucky building up. You know, in 20 years, you like every couple of years, there's someone that just like is the unicorn, you know. You just mean and I try and I try and stay in touch, try and hire those people everywhere everywhere I can, right? So Kev's one of them, obviously, we can see. So had to say that. He paid me. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:43

No money was saying no to your offers, right? Just take the socks back. That's it. And he's saying no to your offers, right? Yeah, exactly. He's playing hardball. He's playing hardball.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:52

So we're in a we're in Australia, and I'm like, all right, let's run around. We fly over to Perth. Um, I go over to Perth to go meet my sales rep over there. And he's booked a bunch of meetings. So we go into this factory, very Australian. We're talking like, we're talking factory in Australia, in the suburbs, kind of like tough guys, you know, tough Australian guys. No, no shit. That is your thing. Straight, I won't say, I won't, you know, I've sworn a little bit on on this, on this, but the profanity is insane. Like every other word is is something, right? I'm talking tough guys, right? So we go in this factory. They'll look at you and you're done. I'm like, I'm quite a big guy stuff, but like Richard also is even bigger than me. We walk in, we're both like, all right, you know, factories, oil, you know, you name everything's going and what you were selling at the time? Software, design software. Okay. So we go in to meet the CEO because the CEO has got our um CEO's interested in our software. So we go in, all right, boys, sit down. You know, we're like, all right, here we go. So we go in. And he's like, Yeah, me and the boys have been working on your software now for about the past. Couple of years. It's a terrible accent. I don't know if I'm allowed to do accents, but anyway. So he pulls up. We know he doesn't have our software. He's got cracked software. And he's openly telling me, right, we're using your software, right? Can you take, can you train us on this? So I'm thinking, right, okay, okay, okay, okay. Be careful here. Be careful. So we recog so I'm we're coming from the pace of, so you recognize a value in our software, you recognize in in our minds. We're like, you can see me and me and Richard like thinking, how do we you recognize the value in our software, you recognize the value so much that you're using it, you recognize the value so much that you're willing to talk to us about it. You ain't paying for it because you're basically using illegal, you're using cracked software. So we're like, okay, so but just to let you know, Mr Tough Guy, um you're not actually one of our customers.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:51

Yes, we are.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:52

I've got your fucking software. You've you've not got it the right way. I think you've you've you've got your your cracked software. And he's like, Barry, or whatever. Anyway, it turns out cracked software everywhere. So I'm like, right, right. Barry was in trouble. Uh no, he wasn't. That's the point.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:10

He's like, hey, Barry, you didn't.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:12

Okay, good. Good job, mate. Anyway, so like all right, so me and Rich are like, all right, what do we do in the situation? Because obviously we want to legitimize it. We want them to be happy customers talking about us to their, you know, to their network, referring us in, using our software because they could have cracked any software. They cracked us. So thumbs up, there's a reason for it. It's the best. So we're basically, and so we got to bring up, we say, look, we need, you know, and ultimately, bring the story down. We've got to bring up the point of we need to legitimize, we need to come into compliance on your software. And he's like, No, mate, no, I don't. And I'm like, well, we we we need to. He's like, what are you gonna do? What do you? I don't know if I can keep doing the accent. What are you gonna do? You know, and we're like, well, you know, we don't want to go here. We're going like value, we're doing all this stuff. And he's like, Well, what are you? And I said, Look, you know, we're we're obligated to report this kind of stuff to our legal team, don't shoot us, blah, blah, blah. Oh, mate, oh, mate, that's gonna get you fucking thrown out of here if you start getting legal involved. If you get legal involved, I'll shut down this place, I'll move to the next place along, and I'll barricade the fucking doors. Get out! Crazy. Chucked us out, threw us out of the office. That's fucking we both walked out like shell shot, like, what just happened? And he looked at me and he's like, You're the sales manager. What should we do different? And I was like, I have never been in this situation. I've got no idea. But that's one in a one in a million, right? That's happened once in 20. So we got so that was the first thing. We got physics, not physically, but close. Almost we got intimidated to leave uh this.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:48

Because what's the curse of action there? So if you go back to the company and say, hey, someone is using you. What can you do?

SPEAKER_00 1:08:53

Yeah, I mean they get legal letters and they start, you know, they get more and more, and then maybe they get you know a little bit of heat under them, and then all that kind of stuff. And they what did you do? You advised legal, or not? We we advised legal, and I I never went back there again. Absolutely. Absolutely. And that's when I moved to Barcelona.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:11

That's when I moved to Barcelona.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:13

That's how I met your mother.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:15

Exactly. I moved to Barcelona and met your mother. That's crazy. It's crazy. I mean, there is that's what I love about saying like there is never said something that you will say, this is the playbook. There's no there like a playbook.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:31

We were like thinking, right, playbook of angry CEO. Yeah, understands he's got non-compliant software, doesn't give a crap, threatening to throw you out. But it's always one thing you didn't do, Chris. You didn't sell value. I uh I could have sold two, not one. We're number one to see you're the best. We're number one.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:49

We're number one. Imagine the guy, like what number one? What? I don't fucking care about what you're saying. We're number one at running out of here, that's for sure. Crazy, man. That's crazy. So should we jump into the yeah, let's jump to the game. So you you want me to explain it? Do you want to explain it? Yeah, I can explain it. I can explain it so we have a card.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:07

We have here in the middle of the table, we have uh our confession of uh seller cards. And on each card we have um a category, uh uh a question for you, um, where you have to answer with yes or no, and be precise and why. Okay, yes, yes or no, and why. And it's just rapid fire, right? Yeah, less than 60 seconds. Yeah, okay, okay, okay. So um sales category, firing fast improves company culture.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:38

Oh, I we get him.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:44

Yeah. He's not talking since firing fast improves company culture.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:49

Oh, I can fight both of these.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:51

Go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:51

Yes, yes, it does. Why? Why? If you don't take action fast, your other performers will look at that person and saying, how come that person's being able to get away with nothing while like not nothing, but not doing the job when I'm busting my ass, and it can actually bring down your other top performers. But you've got to be careful, you've got to be careful. You've got you've got to be firing fast for the right reason. If you didn't set that person up for success, and then you fire them, you're the asshole. Exactly. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:20

So, but if those conditions are like what you were saying, maybe that could turn into a rotten apple and rotten the rest of the team, right? Exactly. Great point. Good one. That's the quietest I've been in days. My eyes were going, yeah, man. But next one. Sales is water. I thought he was passed out. Yeah. Most revenue problems are leadership problems.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:44

True. Why? It's the sales problems, basically. Oh, not sales leadership.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:50

But you mean all you mean leadership. Not the SDR problem. I mean, let me go back. Most revenue problems are leadership problems. Yeah, no, I agree with that. Why?

SPEAKER_00 1:11:59

It's literally the job of leadership to make sure, depending on what part of that, that you've got product market fit, that you've got the right go-to-market strategy, that you're hiring the right people.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:09

This is what you this goes along to what you were saying. Like if you're a manager at some point, otherwise it goes well, it's on them. If everything goes wrong, it's on you.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:16

But otherwise, what are those what are you doing? Exactly. Because they're out there doing it. If you're if you've got the wrong people, the wrong product market fit, or the wrong go-to-market motion, that's what the leadership is there to do, right? So this is why the tenure of a VP of sales or a CRO is what? 17 months now? It's crazy. 17 months.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:37

Or less. Or eight is yeah, 17 months. I know.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:39

I'm I've lost. And you have including the ramp-up process. I'm three and a half years in my current company, so I'm doing something I'm doing.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:46

Congrats on that. Let's see. Um, next one. Role and structure. Hiring junior reps or senior experts.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:55

But you're not telling me for which role? You can assume. If you want to give a longer answer. Go ahead. Entry-level roles, junior people.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:05

100%. Enterprise reps, etc. Bring me in the tenured people. But I need to find those tenured people that still have the spark and the passion. Bringing in someone after 15 years to get them to go and do the daily grind, they are the unit. That's where the people that I just called out, those kind of people, you know, Richard Elving, Steve Mahoney, Dan Mahoney, those people have been around for a long time, other people like I mentioned, they still go even after over a decade, 15 years. But a lot of people get worn out. A lot of people get tired. And from the junior side, um because you can train them, mold them. Yeah, okay. Perfect.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:42

Cool. So basically it goes along again. Yeah. You you are uh coherent with what you were saying about passionate, brain, and then possibility if it's junior and the other one as well. Last question. Last one skills. Top reps are born or built.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:58

Well can you elaborate? Yeah. If they meet what I told you earlier.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:04

The three the three powers. That's literally it. Literally it. There are some people that are amazing at sales. I get that. Comes naturally to them. There are. But if they're smart, they got brains. If they're passionate and they're coachable, let's go. You'll get there. Yep. That's awesome. Crazy. I think we had uh guys, I'm absolutely sorry. I don't think anyone's probably shouted in here yet. That was my I was trying to give the full story for you.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:28

Hello, our editor here, Alberto helping lowering down and lowering down. You'll be like, Yeah, whispering it.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:36

I think yeah, a lot of things. I don't know how I should summarize that.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:40

No, we can summarize. I mean, stories, oil things, sales topics, yeah, coaching, hiring, what do you need to succeed? Um skills.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:50

We c we covered quite a lot.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:51

And uh it's I'm exhausted. You guys asked some difficult questions. We are just starting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We feel like we could go a little bit more chapter number one. Yeah. No, but it's amazing.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:02

So uh definitely. I think before we closing up, um we definitely have to again thanks our main sponsor, Jason AI, by uh reply.io, who um yeah is always always with us, helping us, booking meetings on our behalf while we are here talking with Chris.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:19

Jason is doing the hard job, uh scraping, building lists, selling on our behalf, uh chit-chatting. That's what you need. That's what you need.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:27

That's that's how we enhance the yeah, and uh you know, like if you if you need more information, check down the in the comment section. You have everything, uh, everything there. As well, if you have questions to Chris, to Alan, or myself, reach out. Reach out. Um, you can find Chris on LinkedIn and uh all you know. Subscribe if you didn't do it so far.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:47

Shame on you. And before we go away, I want to ask one final question that we were talking about. Chris, what would be that best advice or what to do or what not to do? Open heart here to seller in uh whatever the seller and whatever the stage of that seller and seniority, something that you would say, guys, if you want to succeed in this amazing, professional, lovely career, what would you say?

SPEAKER_00 1:16:11

I think you have to stick to the reasons you want to be doing it. This isn't for everyone. Just if you've been in it for 10 years and it's time to leave, it's time to leave. You need to still have that purpose and that why, you still need to have that drive. You've got to wake up in the mornings, you've got to be ready to go. And if you're really not, if you're really not, this is one of the things at the end of the values that I bring to my team. If you are waking up over a period of time and you're not having fun anymore, that's the time we need to have a conversation. And that's okay, by the way. Try and have fun, but if we reach a point where we're not having fun anymore, it can be very it can it can be very difficult up here in sales. If we reach that point, let's figure it out.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:45

You need to have that every morning.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:48

If you don't have it for a long period of time, because we all have bad mornings, but it's time to start thinking about how we can navigate, how we can move you into something else.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:56

Absolutely. Great advice. So again, thank you very much. Thanks, everyone. A lot of amazing episodes coming in. Thank you, Chris. Thank you all for joining. Subscribe, hit that bell. Uh thank you, reply. Thank you, Jason. Thank you all. Thank you. See you next one. Thank you. Bye.