Jimmy Curtin - A Strategic Approach to Growth, Part 4 (#44)

This week’s Maximize Business Value Podcast episode is the fourth in a series about growth strategies and features host Tom Bronson and guest Jimmy Curtin, “The Sales Coach” and CEO of Next Level Sales Performance. Tom and Jimmy are both passionate about helping small and mid-sized businesses develop a solid growth strategy because a growing business is always worth more than a flat or declining business. The two discuss the difference between sales training and sales coaching; the former being an event and the latter a lifestyle. You also learn about Jimmy’s success with fear prospects and his three p’s of sales coaching: people, process and planning. Want to build long-term success in your business? Listen now to learn how!

Jimmy K. Curtin is the founder and CEO of Next Level Sales Performance, LLC. He has more than 40 years of highly successful hands on C-Level experience building "World Class" sales teams in the technology and services business. He has successfully recruited, hired, trained and coached hundreds of sales people and sales managers over the past 40 years. It was from this successful experience that Jimmy developed the tools, knowledge and certifications that lead to the founding of Next Level Sales Performance. Check out his professional Youtube Channel that can be an asset to your salespeople and your business. 

Tom Bronson is the founder and President of Mastery Partners, a company that helps business owners maximize business value, design exit strategy, and transition their business on their terms. Mastery utilizes proven techniques and strategies that dramatically improve business value that was developed during Tom’s career 100 business transactions as either a business buyer or seller. As a business owner himself, he has been in your situation a hundred times, and he knows what it takes to craft the right strategy. Bronson is passionate about helping business owners and has the experience to do it. Want to chat more or think Tom can help you?  Reach out at tom@masterypartners.com or check out his book, Maximize Business Value, Begin with The Exit in Mind (2020).

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Tom Bronson is a serial entrepreneur and business owner. He is currently the founder and President of Mastery Partners, Mastery Mergers & Acquisitions, and the Business Transition Summit. All three companies empower business owners to maximize business value and serve business owners in different capacities to help them achieve their dream exit. As a business owner, Tom has been in your situation a hundred times and knows what it takes to craft the right strategy. Bronson is passionate about helping business owners and has the experience to do it. Tom has two books to help business owners on their journey to a dream exit: "Maximize Business Value Playbook," (2023), and "Maximize Business Value, Begin with the EXIT in Mind," (2020). Both are available on Amazon.
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Transcript

Announcer (3s):
Welcome to the Maximize business value podcast. This podcast is brought to you by mastery partners, where our mission is to equip business owners, to maximize business value so they can transition their business on their terms. Our mission was born from the lessons we've learned from over 100 business transactions, which fuels our desire to share our experiences and wisdom so you can succeed. Now, here's your host CEO of mastery partners, Tom Bronson.

Tom Bronson (36s):
Hi, this is Tom Bronson and welcome to maximize business value. A podcast for business owners who are passionate about building long-term sustainable value in their businesses. In this episode, we're going to continue this mini series on growth strategies. This is the fourth episode in this series, and I'd like to welcome our guests at Jimmy Curtin, who is the sales coach and CEO of next level sales performance. Jimmy and I run in many of the same circles. We have over a hundred mutual LinkedIn contacts, and he has his own podcast, that networking partner, spotlight show.

Tom Bronson (1m 17s):
And he's also a licensed communication IQ consultant for life languages. If you're a regular listener to this podcast, you might recall that we had Gerald Parsons and rich Russo with life languages on last year. Now, Jimmy and I are both passionate about helping small and mid-sized businesses develop a solid growth strategy because as you know, a growing business is always worth more than a flat or declining business. And that's what we're all about on the maximize business value podcast strategies that you can use and implement to grow your business. So welcome to maximize business value.

Tom Bronson (1m 59s):
Jimmy,

Jimmy Curtin (1m 60s):
Thank you, Tom. I appreciate the opportunity to be on here and, and to learn more and also the opportunity to maybe talk a little bit about how we help people.

Tom Bronson (2m 9s):
I, I can't wait. This is going to be a lot of fun now based on our conversation the other day. So tell us about next level sales performance.

Jimmy Curtin (2m 18s):
Thanks. Well, we, we S we formed our company a little over four years ago. In fact, we were in our fifth year and we basically help companies that have reached that point in their revenue where they're kind of flat and they don't really know what they need to do next in order to increase revenue and grow their company. So we have a lot of strategies to do that, and, and we go out and try to help small to medium sized businesses. We do have the few larger clients, but it's really the small to medium businesses that we seem to be able to help most.

Tom Bronson (2m 51s):
Yeah, they, the small to mid sized businesses, the ones that they probably need the most help, they just don't have the resources available that that large and middle market companies have. So I think that's a great spot to be in. What is your background and why did you start next level?

Jimmy Curtin (3m 8s):
Well, my background really has been technology solutions over the past 40 years. So I, I was actually a vice president of sales when I was 25 years old. And that sort of sent me down this trail of, of helping others. And, and so technology in the way of, I had a software company that I started and kept for about seven years, we positioned it and sold it. I was in the telecommunications industry for many, many years, spent six or seven years working with a guy by the name of Dave Casey, also in the telecommunications industry, helped Dave grow his company. So really it's just been a background of building world-class sales organizations and managing those organizations.

Jimmy Curtin (3m 54s):
And so at some point you, you decide that you want to continue to do that. And because telecommunications has changed so much, and most of it had moved to the, to the cloud, it really, to me became more of a commodity and I don't like commodities, so I like challenge. And so that kind of gave me the idea of doing what I've always done for companies as a VP of sales for other companies as a, as a sales consultant.

Tom Bronson (4m 23s):
So, I, as you know, Dave Casey is a good friend of mine. He'll appreciate that. Shout out here, the, on the podcast. So that's a wide range of different places that you've been in. What, what was kind of the thing that made you get out and start next level that,

Jimmy Curtin (4m 41s):
Well, we had a Dave Dave had the soul, the company, and we'd both spent about a year and a half, maybe two years there, continuing on managing the company after it was settled. And one day Dave announced he was going to retire. And that was kind of what I needed to say. You know what I think I'm done with this too, you know, sometimes you just need to push and I've actually been working on putting together a next level of sales performance for about six or eight months before that. And so I kind of had everything arranged in a lined up and it was just a, I just needed that little kick in the butt sometimes to, you know, to get out and, and start doing it.

Tom Bronson (5m 20s):
Yeah, that's a, that's a common story, right? Somebody needs the encouragement to get going. I call it a two by four on the side of the head. So every now and then we need one of those. So you're your moniker on LinkedIn, of course. And the places that I've seen you very prolific on social media, your moniker is the sales coach. So let's talk about the difference between sales, coaching, and sales training.

Jimmy Curtin (5m 49s):
Well, I'd love to do that. There is a, there is a big difference. A lot of people don't understand that it's, I've kinda re related to actual coaching a sport. So, you know, when you, when you're playing a sport, whether it's football, basketball, whatever, tennis, whatever it is, you know, you have a coach and that coach will sometimes show you a technique to use. For instance, in football, they want to show you how to, how to, how to make a certain block. And then what he does, what the coach does not do at that point is just walk away. And what he does is every day, he reinforces the use of how to do that block, right? And so it's true. The same, same thing is true.

Jimmy Curtin (6m 29s):
When you're talking about sales, what really is, is, is the differences. If sales training, you know, you can, you can, if you came to me and said, Hey, I'd like for you to, to do some training on prospecting. And if I were to get together with your sales team and I go through the PowerPoints and I tell them about prospecting, here's the best way and so forth. And then I just walk away. What'll happen is they'll leave that, they'll leave that meeting with maybe a couple of new ideas or more than likely. They probably just remembered something that they already knew. And they'll go back out into the field and they'll apply that for 30 days, 45 days.

Jimmy Curtin (7m 9s):
And then they'll slide back into their old habits. So with sales coaching, really what we do then is we reinforce those new habits until they become the actual new habits and you're doing the right things.

Tom Bronson (7m 23s):
I like that. And I like the difference between coaching, you know, it's interesting that even in, of course, we all know that in, you know, football, there's a coach and, and baseball there's manager, but even individual sports. And I think upselling as kind of an individual sport, it's not really a team sport, right? But even those individual sports like golf, even the best golfers in the world get coaches, that'll help them and, and reinforce that. And so I like that training is, so you think of training as kind of being an event and coaching is a lifestyle. That's exactly true. Got it.

Tom Bronson (8m 3s):
Got it. And I think that's really important too many times business owners think of braining as an event. It really does need to be coaching. It's almost the way you think about culture. Culture in a business is not an event driven thing. It is, it is a lifestyle. And so, so I think that it's important to reinforce those lessons that you learned. So Jimmy, why do you think that many times small to mid-sized businesses reach that critical point where we're selling sales revenues either level out they become flat or they even decline? Why do you think that happens?

Jimmy Curtin (8m 42s):
I think, I think the best way for me to explain that is so, so let's just say I'm an engineer and I, I invent this new, great gadget, right? And now I want to take it out to market. So maybe I, maybe I hire a, and I take it out to market. And for the first year or two or three, maybe it does really well because there's no competition until somebody does create a new, a new one. So now here we go, we've got two products competing. And so the, what happens is this, the company really reaches that point where it levels out and now they really don't know what else to do. Sometimes they throw money at it. Sometimes they throw more people at it, which is really the same as throwing money at it, but they really don't have the focus to understand, you know, what do I need to do?

Jimmy Curtin (9m 29s):
So what, what I think the, the, the critical point is is that they lose focus. They lose, they, they, they, they don't have a long-term plan. They don't understand how to really invest in people, maybe invest in coaching, but that's really, I think the problem is they just lose focus because they're so caught up in inventing this, you know, that they don't understand that it's really about marketing. It's about sales. It's about how do I move that company?

Tom Bronson (10m 1s):
And that is so important as we started out here. And as I say, frequently, a growing business is always worth more than a flat or declining business. And so as, as business owners think about building that long-term value in the business. I use an example, let's say you've got two businesses are both $5 million in revenue in both of them driving at about the same amount to the bottom line, let's call it a 20% EBIT da. And, but one of them has been flat for five years. And the other one has had, you know, 30% compound annual growth rate for the last five years. So they grew from, you know, basically a very small business to that, that growing business.

Tom Bronson (10m 44s):
Even though these two businesses look identical today, that growing business is going to get many times, two or three times what this flat business is going to do. So growth strategies are super, super important to the value of a business. And so, so if, if you're a business owner and you're listening to this podcast and you fall into that category, you really need to think about what are some ways that we can turn this around. And even though we're making good money today, we're very profitable. How can we drive additional growth into the business? So that's, that's why we bring on folks like Jimmy to talk about that.

Tom Bronson (11m 25s):
So give me, I understand you talk a lot about the three P's of business. What can you tell us about that?

Jimmy Curtin (11m 30s):
Yeah, so, so for, I guess really my entire career I've, I've kind of used that as, as the guiding thing for me, it, the three-p's stand for people process and planning. So anytime you're looking at a company you're particularly the sales organization, and, and by the way, an assessment of your sales organizations, is the smartest thing you can do as a business, you need to understand before I'm going to spend three or $4,000 per sales person or whatever the cost is to train them, how do I know what they need to be trained on? You know, you've got some salespeople that are great at prospecting, but not great at closing. So you need to be able to understand that.

Jimmy Curtin (12m 11s):
So in assessments, a big part of that. So the first thing you look at is people know, do I have the right people in the right place? I've always believed that if you're a salesperson, you're probably a sales person, because you want to be successful. You're not just there drawing a paycheck. Now, some salespeople are, they're just drawing a paycheck because they don't understand really well what their job is. They, they they're, they're, you know, they're, they're afraid to do their job. And so sometimes they may look like they're lazy, but they really, they're not. They just don't have the right focus, the right guidance. So is what we look at first and we want to make sure we've got the right people in the right place processes.

Jimmy Curtin (12m 54s):
The next thing we look at, what is your sales process? It's remarkable to me. When you ask a business owner, tell me about your sales process. They start stuttering because most of them don't really have a defined, developed sales process and it has to be repeatable, right? That's the whole idea of a process. And so that's the second P of the three PS is the process. So we always take a strong, hard look at what's the sales process. And if you don't have one, we'll help put one together for you. Something that's repeatable that good sales people can do. And then the final P is planning.

Jimmy Curtin (13m 34s):
It's remarkable to me, how many companies don't really have a long-term strategic sales plan. Now planning doesn't mean that my plan is that every day I'm going to come in, I'm going to get on the telephone. I'm going to make a hundred phone calls. I'm going to try to sit two appointments, eight appointments a week, whatever it is, and then close one and so on and so forth. Now planning goes a lot deeper than that. What is my long-term strategic sales plan and growth plan, as you speak, speak of a lot, you know, what do I need to do to really, really grow?

Tom Bronson (14m 10s):
I love those. The three PS, you gotta have the right people on the bus, you know, and, and that actually speaks to how do we hire people? How do we all we bring in the right people into the organization. And I'm a big fan of assessments, as you mentioned, of course, the planning you're on the back end of that. So important to have a good sales and a growth, strategic plan in place. But the processes, man, that is, that is like the golden ticket, as far as I'm concerned. So many businesses, not only in sales processes, but when I ask business owners where we engage with our clients, one of the first things we talk about or describe your processes to me, are they documented are these things that people are relentlessly doing day in and day out so that we can duplicate the effort and do it.

Tom Bronson (15m 2s):
And I argue that many times, Jimmy and I, I would love to hear your position on this, that that many times I'll talk to a business owner, I'll say, Hey, what are you doing in terms of sales, hiring? You know, how, how, how quickly can you get somebody up to speed? Oh, man, it takes six months to 12 months to get somebody up to speed in our industry. And to me that just tells me that you don't have a great sales process, because if you have a great process, that's already defined that someone can step into and learn quickly and, and move forward that you can cut the training time on a sales person in half, or even a more, if you've got a great process defined.

Tom Bronson (15m 45s):
So, so sales process is huge to me. And so many people neglect that because they just think, well, I'm hiring the right salespeople. They know what to do. I mean, where, where do you land on that in terms of process, can, can that actually reduce the amount of time it takes to make somebody more productive in a business?

Jimmy Curtin (16m 8s):
There there's no doubt that it does. It gives them the, the guidance and the plan of how to, how do I actually go to market? How do I actually close this business? One of the things that, that I used to do with salespeople when I, when I ran sales teams was it's great when we get a new order, right. But it's really great when we sit down and we actually go over all the points of how we made that, that sale, how do we get that sale? Did we cover our documented sales process and where it really makes a difference is, is when you lose a deal and everybody's going to lose deals. I mean, I'd love to say we get a hundred percent, but we don't. So when you lose a deal, if you'll take that opportunity and you'll sit down with your sales process with your salesperson and you'll go over each step of that sales process, I promise you, you will find one or two places where you drop the ball.

Jimmy Curtin (17m 3s):
You didn't do the process. And that's probably why he lost the deal.

Tom Bronson (17m 9s):
Yeah, I couldn't agree more completely. So, so if you get nothing else out of this podcast, you need to define that sales process. And, and it's very likely that you may need some help to do that. So we're talking with Jimmy Kurt, Let's take a quick break. We'll be back in 30 seconds.

Annoucer (17m 29s):
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Announcer (18m 6s):
Whether that transition is in two or 15 years, what you do now has long-term effects on the future value of your business. We have the know how you to get the results you want in your business to maximize the business value. To learn more and secure your spot in the program, visit mbvmasteryclass.com. That's mbvmasteryclass, masterY with a Y, mbvmasteryclass.com.

Tom Bronson (18m 35s):
We're back with Jimmy Curtin, the sales coach, and we're talking about growth strategy. So tell us a little bit about purpose driven prospecting. That's a term I've heard you mentioned before,

Jimmy Curtin (18m 49s):
Right? That's that's a method, a methodology really that we came up with a couple of years ago. You know, a lot of salespeople are told, just get into the office, get on the phone or stay at home if you're working from home and, but get on the phone, make a hundred calls a day. You might find one or two prospects. And so you might consider that a sales process. It's really not, but we have a methodology coat called a purpose driven prospecting. And what it includes is a way to utilize LinkedIn, your email, the telephone voicemail, but it all is built around scripts.

Jimmy Curtin (19m 29s):
Now that is a main, we're going to take a script and we're going to just read from it verbatim. Right? But what it does mean is that we have a method to actually know what questions we're going to ask, what statements we're going to make. And so we have that all down in a form so that, you know, you're able to take 40, let's say 40 prospects from LinkedIn, right. And LinkedIn will allow you 40 InMails in a month. So that's kind of what we based it off of. So you pick your top 40, you're going to send that top 40 and in an InMail because you're trying to make that first. You're not really trying to sell anything. Right. You're trying to what you're trying to sell as an appointment.

Jimmy Curtin (20m 11s):
I've got to get an appointment before I can sell anything. So that's really what we're driving toward. So you're sending that in that InMail and it's built around a script. It could be an email. If you don't have sales navigator, then, then you could just use an email. But once again, there's scripts for that email. And then you're going to make a phone call. And that phone call is scripted. Now you're not going to read it off, right? You're going to have it in your head, but you're going to make sure you're covering the right things more than likely when you make that phone call, what's going to happen. You're going to get voicemail. I don't know what the percentage is, but I bet it's at least 80% or higher, but what do you say on that voicemail? You want to make sure that what you say on the voicemail is the same thing you said on the email or the InMail, right?

Jimmy Curtin (20m 54s):
You want to cover the same points. And so you're going to leave a voicemail that is scripted also. And so then you're going to repeat the same thing, but when you repeat it with it, with that same prospect next week, or in three days, whatever your timing is on it, you're going to change it a little bit. And once again, you've got an entire set of scripts for those items. And so you're going to do this until the point of where you actually either get them to call you back, or you have the conversation because you catch them live or they send you back an email, you know, answering. It comes to a point where really over a period of about three weeks, you've covered those 40 prospects that you started with.

Jimmy Curtin (21m 37s):
And what it forces you to do is focus. And that's the bit, that's a big word. When you're trying to sell it forces you to focus on fewer prospects, but you're able to give them more touch points. And it is about touch points. I know Microsoft did a survey a couple of three years ago. And in that survey, they, they, they talked about how many times do you have to touch a prospect before you actually get an appointment or before you actually make a sale? And it's remarkable. Those numbers are just crazy. Believe it or not, 80% of all, salespeople will not make the second call.

Jimmy Curtin (22m 19s):
They'll make that first attempt. And then they're done. They move on to the next prospect, never coming back to that one. And that to me says, Hey, I've got, I said, 80%, actually it's 60%. 60% of them never actually follow up. And then when you get to the second call, it then becomes 80% of people who don't make the sale. After the second call, won't try again. And the Microsoft study actually showed. It takes between eight and 12 attempts to get that prospect on the phone or to get them to respond. So by the time you get to that eighth, eighth attempt, most salespeople have already dropped out of it.

Jimmy Curtin (23m 0s):
So persistence is really important when it comes to prospecting, but that's a study that Microsoft probably spent millions of dollars on. And so you should take advantage of that, understand that, Hey, you gotta gotta put in the time and you need a method to do it. If you just keep calling, the worst thing you can do is make a phone call. And, and then when the prospect you get their voicemail hanging up and you'd be, you'd be surprised how many salespeople say, Oh, I just hang up. I don't want to leave a voicemail. No, that voicemail is an opportunity to, to give it information, to make that touch point to that prospect.

Tom Bronson (23m 39s):
Yeah, I get that all the time. I have people call you, I publish my cell phone number and I get calls all the time that there's no right. I'll, I'll let it go. Like, you know, my phone rang a minute ago and you would never know that cause it's on silent, but, but I guarantee you there's no message there. And if that was somebody trying to touch me to sell me something, come on.

Jimmy Curtin (24m 0s):
That's exactly what I mean. If you know, it takes eight to 12 touch points, I'm going to utilize that the best I can. I'm going to leave the proper information because I've got it scripted, right. As we're talking about with, with purpose-driven prospecting. And so that's one of the biggest things that we teach companies is how do I utilize this method of prospecting? And it's remarkable how their numbers go up when it comes to success.

Tom Bronson (24m 24s):
I love that. I love that. And that, that lines right up, you know, now, now you've told me about this Microsoft study, you know, even back when I was in college and I studied marketing and I have a degree in marketing, that's more than 30 years old, so it's useless in today's world. But it, it, they said, you know, you had to a, a prospect had to hear the message seven times before they actually heard it right before the message would sink in. Right? And so eight to 12 lines right up with that, we got to hear the message over and over before you start, it starts to sink in and, and too many people give up, right. They could be on the cusp of greatness, right.

Tom Bronson (25m 5s):
But they give up before they get there. So eight to 12, you figure out a strategy and do that, or, or get ahold of Jimmy and he'll teach you a strategy to do that. So Jimmy, how do you know when a sales person is doing a great job?

Jimmy Curtin (25m 20s):
That's really a great question. So, so, you know, the first answer is always, well, you look at the results, right? You look at their numbers. Are they hitting that number every month? And if they are hitting the number every month, that's great. But it's really about, it's really about how do I take the B players and make them into a players or the C player. And do I get rid of them or do I move them into being a B player and so forth? And so it's more than just the results. It's really about looking at the everyday process. And, and I've, I've the worst thing a sales manager can do is wait until the end of a quarter to do an assessment of a sales person and say, Hey, you didn't hit your number.

Jimmy Curtin (26m 3s):
Sorry. We're gonna have to let you go. And we'll bring in the next person. What you really want to do is you want to monitor and look at and manage, and it's not micromanagement, but you want to manage a salesperson weekly it's accountability. The first mentor I ever had was, was back when I was in my early twenties. And I remember to this day exactly what he told me. He said it was, it's all about short term goals and short term accountability. And by that, it means that you don't want to have an annual goal and you don't look at it. But once here, right? My goal is a million dollars and there's my goal. And, and, and nobody holds me accountable to it until I get close to the end of the year.

Jimmy Curtin (26m 46s):
And then it's like, Oh, you're not going to hit your goal. What you want to do is you want to take any goal you have and break it down into weekly numbers. And you want to be able to monitor that and, and hold people accountable to that weekly number. If we know, for instance, that it takes, it takes 10 proposals to get one sale. Well, how many calls does it take to get that appointment for that one proposal? And so you just break that down and work backwards. So anytime that I've had a sales person that was not hitting the numbers, I would always look at their weekly activities and work it backwards. And you can always then identify what do they need? They're not there to, to be criticized and, and hurt their feelings because they didn't hit their numbers.

Jimmy Curtin (27m 30s):
They're there because they want to hit their numbers. They've want to make a living. They want to do beyond that. And so how do we really make sure they're doing that? You look at their weekly numbers, you hold them accountable, and then you can say, Hey, maybe this is the problem. Maybe you're just not making quite enough cold calls, or maybe from those cold calls, you're not getting enough appointments. Let's look at that piece of your process and see if we can help improve that. So you work it back that way. And so you, you, what happens is you take B players, they become a players or C players. They become B players. The other benefit to the company is you're not hiring and firing all the time.

Tom Bronson (28m 8s):
And that is so expensive.

Jimmy Curtin (28m 10s):
Oh, it is. And the expense is not just obviously the three months or six months that you've wasted on somebody, but it's the benefits. It's the recruiting costs. The time, particularly, that's really the cost. How much time is wasted or lost by sales management, by middle management, you know, by the individual.

Tom Bronson (28m 31s):
I love that and take short term goals and then short term accountability. You know, it's, it's kind of the same thing that we do in our exit planning process, a practice, we help business owners design and execute the ultimate exit plan, but that's a long-term goal, right? We, it might be four years or five years or whatever it is out in the future. We have very short term accountability, things that you have to do in order to reach that goal. Same thing with, with sales, if you set a target for the year, how do you break it down? And what should we be doing every week? And how do we measure their results every week, short term goals, short term accountability.

Tom Bronson (29m 13s):
And that builds long-term success. That's exactly right. I love that will give us a magic bullet. Jimmy, what is your best advice for closing more business? You know,

Jimmy Curtin (29m 24s):
For me personally, I would tell someone that it's a, it's learned to focus on fear prospects. You know, we all, we all worry about and we worry about it because our sales management is always on us about our sales pipeline. Well, you don't have enough in the pipeline, your pipeline, you know, you, you gotta get a hundred accounts in there in order to have an opportunity. Well, maybe that's not true. Maybe the real point is to have the right prospects in my sales pipeline. So if I can focus on fewer prospects, give them the touch points that I know that they need. I'll probably end up closing more business. In fact, I know you will. It's an, it, there's an interesting number that I'll share with you.

Jimmy Curtin (30m 6s):
So we've all heard the 80 20 rule, right? I mean, that's been, that's been around forever, maybe as long as I've been around and that's a long time, but the new, the new numbers are, will blow your mind. The new numbers are really 6% of the salespeople in this country produce 94% of the sales revenue. So you got to ask yourself, why is that? Well, there's 10 basic reasons. And I won't, I won't go through all 10. I don't even have them handy right at this moment. But the number one reason, the one that always sticks right here in my head is they focus on fewer prospects. So they don't spend all their time trying to build a giant sales pipeline.

Jimmy Curtin (30m 49s):
They take the ones that they know are qualified and they spend their time focusing on them, doing the touch points that they know need to be done. And that's why they close more business.

Tom Bronson (31m 1s):
I love it. So go out and get fewer prospects and focus on those prospects. And you can close more, you know, if you have, instead of trying to focus on having a hundred prospects in the pipeline, if you had 20 of the right prospects in the pipeline, you know, there's the difference. Yeah. I mean, honestly, cause I have, I've managed salespeople my whole career and, and you can see when you got a bunch of stuff in there, that's just beefing up numbers, right? We're never gonna sell this deal. Right? What are we doing? You know, focusing on that, I love that focus, get the viewer number and focus with your process on those.

Tom Bronson (31m 45s):
And I'll bet that that will close more deals. So before we go, though, tell us what differentiates your business from other sales consulting companies.

Jimmy Curtin (31m 56s):
There are a lot of good sales consulting companies around. Most of them have, you know, methodologies that they use. A lot of them are sales training companies. I'll tell you right up front, I'm not a sales training company. Can I do sales training, absolutely whatever subject you want. I can do it, but I won't do it. In fact, I turned down business occasionally because unless you're going to willing to pay for and combine sales coaching with that, I have no interest in doing it. Cause all I'm going to be doing is just taking your money. And because I know what the results are going to be. So the, the real difference between my company is, is that we like to do everything with an assessment to start with I'll come in.

Jimmy Curtin (32m 39s):
I don't care if you have salespeople. I've ha I have some clients that have no salespeople, but the w you know, where the entrepreneur actually does the selling, but that's okay. They still need help. They still need coaching. So I'll come in and do an assessment of the sales organization so that I can, then I can really understand what their needs are. Is it a process problem? Is it a people problem? You know, what do the people need? Do they need help with, with prospecting? Do they need to, you know, help with closing, whatever it is. So that, that makes me a little bit different in that not everybody approaches it that quite, quite that way. And then the other part is, is that I do fractional sales management of that team, if that's what you want me to do.

Jimmy Curtin (33m 21s):
And in fact, right now, I'm, I'm literally the vice president of sales for four companies. You know, all four of these companies. I won't mention them here, but because I work under NDA, but I do the, I do this I'm if you go to their website, you're going to find Jimmy Curtin listed as their VP of sales, because I do that on a fractional basis, I'm helping to drive their business. So that's the other part of it, but really the assessment, the accountability and the coaching piece is what makes me different.

Tom Bronson (33m 50s):
Awesome. So I'm just making a few notes here. So, so one last business question, Jimmy, this podcast is all about maximizing business value. And in your mind, what's the one most important thing you would recommend business owner do to build long-term value in their business,

Jimmy Curtin (34m 9s):
Invest in coaching. And here's the reason why according to HubSpot. So this is not just coming from Jimmy Curtin, according to HubSpot, if you invest in coaching, you'll see a 16.7% return on investment for that time. So can you imagine you can increase your revenue by 16.7% by investing in coaching? I mean, that's the one thing I would say to do.

Tom Bronson (34m 34s):
Yeah. And I think that applies across all the different disciplines in a business, not only sales, but perhaps marketing, finance, you know, entrepreneurship, all of that. I, I agree. In fact, most, even though we're not what you would call a business coach, it's really kind of interesting that many of my clients refer to me as their coach, right. Holding them accountable. It's the same thing that you discuss when you're talking about coaching and what that means. So now if for our long time listeners, I always know that after I asked the last business question, I always have a bonus question and they're always waiting. You know, everybody stays on until we get the answer to this question.

Tom Bronson (35m 18s):
And, and everyone wants to know Jimmy, what personality trait has gotten you into the most trouble through the years? You know,

Jimmy Curtin (35m 25s):
I would, I thought about that and I, I would, I would have to say probably persistence. Now persistence can be good, or it can be interpreted sometimes is not so good. I, I think I had mentioned earlier that earlier my career, I was a, I was one of the founding members of a software company. And, and, and I served as the senior VP of sales and built the company around the software that we had. And, and I had a, I had a customer that signed a deal with us. I think the deal was about $19 million. If I remember right. It was a huge deal for us at the time. And he called the chairman of our, of our board after I had signed the deal with him.

Jimmy Curtin (36m 9s):
And he, and he was a client, he called and he said, he said, you know, one of the reasons that I signed this and bought this software is that I don't ever want to hear from Jimmy Curtin. Again, he, he said he is the most persistent sob I have ever met in my life. What our chairman Brit asked the client. Well, did, did you buy it? Not want any? He said, Oh no, it's the greatest thing that we're probably ever going to do. He said, but I just don't want him calling me anymore. So that can work both ways, right? I mean, but, but I would say persistence is persistence is important, but just know when to let off the throttle,

Tom Bronson (36m 57s):
That is a great personality trait that every sales person probably needs is persistence. I'll tell you when, when, whenever I, when I was sitting in the CEO seat at any company that I've owned and I've owned a hundred of them, the, I couldn't wait for those phone calls that that would tell me, and your salesperson just keeps calling over and over and over again. And I wish you'd tell him to stop. And you know what I would do, I would walk out, find that salesperson, buy him lunch that day. And I would tell him, double your sales efforts to that same

Jimmy Curtin (37m 29s):
Almost got them there. Almost

Tom Bronson (37m 32s):
Got it. Hey, before we go, there's a rumor going around that you and Debbie Mrazek, who was our guest on last week show grew up in the same town. Is that

Jimmy Curtin (37m 42s):
True? That is true. It's, it's funny. We're, we're both rider Raiders. We both went to the same high school and, and I didn't even know Debbie was in the business until about five years ago. And I was looking through LinkedIn on something and I saw it and I thought, wait a minute. I know her, but that's very true. We both grew up in, in Wichita falls, which is, I think I tell people Wichita falls is kind of that starting point, but it's that point between West Texas and, and, and the rest of Texas. So yes, that is true.

Tom Bronson (38m 13s):
That is, that is hilarious. I will tell you, cause I, cause I asked Debbie the same question. We didn't put it on the podcast, but she said, Oh yeah, Jimmy was one of the cool kids. You know, I didn't hang out with that crowd. He was in the cool crowd and there you go, there, you have it. So how can our viewers and listeners get in touch with you, Jimmy?

Jimmy Curtin (38m 35s):
Well, thanks. I, first of all, we have our website. It says www.nextlevelsalesperformance.com. And my phone number is +1 800-310-0134. Or you can call me on my cell phone at anytime at (214) 564-0410. And as you had mentioned earlier, we do a podcast. I do the two minute sales drill podcast. And then I do a, a, a show similar to this, although not as well done as yours, I would say it's called network partner, spotlight show. And you'll see that on LinkedIn. You'll see it on our YouTube channel also.

Tom Bronson (39m 14s):
Excellent. Two minute sales drill. I love that. I've seen that one as well. Great, very impactful short program. You should go look at that as well. So thank you for being our guest today.

Jimmy Curtin (39m 28s):
Thank you for the opportunity.

Tom Bronson (39m 29s):
It has been a ton of fun. So you can find Jimmy Curtin nextlevelsalesperformance.com where you can find him on LinkedIn. And of course, if you reach out to me, I will be happy to make a warm introduction to my good friend, Jimmy Curtin. This is the maximize business value podcast, where we give practical advice to business owners on how to build long-term sustainable value in your business. Be sure to tune in each week and follow us, or like us wherever you found this podcast that helps us to go out and find other folks that might need our help. Be sure to comment. We love your comments. We always respond to them.

Tom Bronson (40m 9s):
So until next time I'm Tom Bronson reminding you to develop a great growth strategy, do more for your business value realized, but do that while you maximize business value. Thank you for tuning into the maximize business value podcast with Tom Bronson. This podcast is brought to you by mastery partners, where our mission is to equip business owners to maximize business value so they can transition on their terms. Learn more on how to build long term, sustainable business value and get free value building tools by visiting our website, www.masterypartners.com that's master with a Y masterypartners.com.

Tom Bronson (41m 12s):
That was perfect. I wouldn't make any changes on that.