Andy Paul - Global Sales Expert, Author & Podcast Host | Sell Without Selling Out

Welcome to success story, the most useful podcast in the world. I'm your host Scott D. Clary The success story podcast is part of the HubSpot podcast network and the blue wire podcast network The HubSpot podcast network has incredible podcasts like my first million my first million is hosted by Sam par and Shawn perry They feature famous guests They discuss how companies made their first million and then some they brainstorm new business ideas based on the hottest trends and opportunities in the marketplace Here are some of the topics I talked about if you like any of these you will love the show Three profitable business ideas that you should start in 2022 Drunk business ideas that can make you millions asking the founder of Grammarly how he built a 13 billion dollar company or SAS companies that anybody can start if these topics are up your alley go check out my first million listen to it wherever you listen to your podcast Today my guest is Andy Paul he is a sales professional with more than 30 years experience as a VP sales sales executive in multiple companies Ranging from Fortune 1000 to technology startups as a founder and principal of the sales action group He's consulted with numerous CEOs to help them optimize and modernize their sales process He is also the host of accelerate your sales It is the number one sales podcast with over two million downloads today He's the author of zero time selling and amp up your sales. They're both Amazon best sellers He's the author of the upcoming novel sell without selling out He is a top sales influencer has 200,000 followers Number one sales podcast number eight on LinkedIn's list of top 50 global sales experts to follow Needless to say he has some opinions about sales. So what do we speak about? So we spoke about some of the concepts in his upcoming novel Upcoming book sell without selling out we spoke about how sales hasn't really progressed that much in the past 30 years from the days of ABC Always be closing what has gone wrong? Why are sales reps not more potentially ethical or not as productive as they should be in a modern sales Environment we spoke about what selling out means Listening to the old sales dogma and why it won't move the needle on sales It won't help you if your sales manager a traditional sales rep or an entrepreneur We spoke about the issue with persuasion. It's a blunt instrument It's a last resort instrument that sellers use when they don't know how to influence Properly and then we spoke about what sellers should be doing in a modern sales environment So how to sell in and not sell out how to focus on connection curiosity understanding and generosity How to be a top performer how to focus on being productive in a sales environment how to make sure that you're still Meeting and exceeding all your numbers all your revenue without Creating a really poor buyers experience. So this is a master class on the future at future sales It should be what sales is but at the future of sales where sales should go and what a sales organization sales process and sales experience Should feel like so this again. This is Andy Paul. He is the author of selling without selling out Yeah, my first sales job was selling women's shoes at JC pennies as a high schooler So that was that was a stark introduction to sales and I mean as in Madison, Wisconsin and I was a holiday filling and so I will my first day on the job Uh in late November Is the first major snowstorm of the season moved in moved in and and this was the sign for every woman within 30 miles to come to JC penny and buy their winter boots So literally the first day I was I forget how many people dozens and dozens of customers that I was serving And I knew how to do the foot measuring device and and so on but Yeah, as a 16-year-old boy was thrown in the deep end of Touching women's legs and feet to help them into the boots. It was an interesting day That was the first that was your first sales gig that was your first that was your first job without your first job First sales gig. No, I was a Lifeguard and swimming coach and so on during the summer. All right, so What what made you eventually Go down this career path of sales? Just fell into it like many people Yeah, I said graduate from college. I did but literally had no No job plans at all when I graduate from graduate from college Yeah, I spent the summer working at the university went to school and So I got to point where they offered me a full-time job. I thought no, I don't want to work here So I Went over the career placement center and there were Jobs from all these big at the time big tech companies IBM Xerox burrows, which is the second largest scooter company Hp and so on and That's what the heck you know, of course they didn't call them sales jobs That was things interesting. They were all marketing management training programs So they're very very carefully didn't mention anything about sales And it wasn't like really sort of got into the interview process that I thought oh yeah, this is really a sales job Oh, well, let's try it Nothing else going on at the time Um, what was when you walked into these marketing management training programs What was sales? What was sales then because I'm gonna Showcase that dichotomy and the absolute difference in what sales is now Well So for us and In the company I worked for at the beginning. It was about cold calling and so We had to serve in a apprenticeship where we sold At the time the company was worth burrows those big mainframe computer manufacturer and And so on as everybody had to start off by selling that these legacy products There were these desktop adding machines about the size of small microwave ovens And they were hugely overpriced for the time because they were selling for Let's say roughly 300 bought dollars a unit and you could go to your local office supply store and buy a handheld calculator for You know 50 bucks of 60 bucks at the time So we had to go on sell a certain amount of that product like $5,000 worth Before we could get Approved to go get trained to sell computer systems So we got a little bit of say two weeks the sales training in the thrones streets and just prospected So I as in the Bay Area as based in Oakland. I drive to the East Bay Area. I drive to Fremont Union City Hayward somewhere. I'd park in a business park. I'd get out block the car and with the Desktop adding machine under one arm and my flip chart portfolio under the other I'd go cold call 20 30 40 50 cold calls a day and How were you trained originally on how to close a deal when you did this cold calling well Yeah, it's Something I do with my new book is I know I've been on the job about about A week or two we got sent to the Of our national training centers in this case is in Pasadena, California and two weeks of sales training and A lot of it consisted of watching the series of videos put on by this I call him a slick air con man sales trainer Kind of lead a boy, but maybe some people still hear of It just sort made my screen skin crawl watching him and then we yeah endless sort of role plays and some product product knowledge training But a lot of role playing a lot of watching lead a boy Sort of blusters way through objections and and so on and Yeah, I did not identify with that at all And it made me think I'm not sure this is for me because you know everybody was trying so hard to be salesy, right? I mean, this is everybody in the was like, you know, we had to put on a hat and a costume and be like a used car salesperson and That just wasn't me And apparently the instructors of the class thought so as well because they told my manager after the fact that they thought I should be fired Because I wasn't salesy enough. I was too analytical But it just sort of gave me the determination say well, there's got to be a way to do this. You know to make sales work for me and Is really almost from the beginning that I sort of determined that yeah, I'd find a path that that worked for me That would enable me to succeed in this profession Even it was just something I alone did Why would you want to Because I feel like Your current Version of sales and what you do speak about in your book and we'll get into that later But that version of sales is more a modern way of looking at sales is a much more modern lens of what sales is What what's curious to me is why you went against the grain when sales I don't want to put a timestamp on it and god forbid I don't want to date you at all But like x years ago was a very much of a cold calling ABC Use car salesman all the negative stereotypes that you associate with sales a lot of that came from a certain culture That's evolved and progressed and become a lot better um Well, how did you Has it hasn't become has to be thought that's another question Yeah, I would argue it hasn't and so I would make the case really make the case in my book is that That Yeah, I think that that actually it's become worse. I think we went I think that That You know, they sort of over reliance on On process and technology And an effort by many in sales don't want to sort of take the human out of the equation Has has serve amplified these bad behaviors You know the the pitch first to listen to To respond rather than listen to understand, you know, just the lack of any sort of making connection with another human being Understand that your job is to be there to help Understand make the buyer understand what's most important to them as opposed to just pitching and flogging your product To me the underlying behaviors are the same and I think we've amplified the impact of it with technology And I think that that on top of that is you know, we look at what's considered sort of modern sales processes. It's We as long as we still have these these linear stage-based processes That we have and that are embedded in CRM systems and you know people's processes They haven't changed for decades. They're the same fundamental sales process Initial initial call initial qualification demo Presentation proposal whatever the order is If you google it Yeah, the modern sales process same one I was taught decades ago Now we've got ways to facilitate it Excuse me that That didn't exist before but You know one things I find fascinating that in this is Not something that a lot of research has been done in but I think needs to be looked at as I firmly believe that those are based unit Based level productivity of an individual seller today Despite the technology is no greater than it was You know 20 30 40 years ago and by productivity what I mean is I Define a specific way, which is the amount of revenue generated per hour of actual sales time And there's no data that exists to tell us that it's gotten better And so if we look If we look at the proxies like You know knowledge worker productivity increases and so on is what we see and Paul Krugman has written about this several times in New York times. This is Yeah, we saw improvements are through the advent of email and high speed internet but in the last 20 years The level of productivity increase among knowledge workers Space have been kind of flat So we have to assume the same is true with sales But we are talking about so that that's an interesting very interesting point but productivity versus ethical or customer focused Sales those are two very different conversations. Oh sure So with the increase in technology you could argue that you could be ruthless and you could be persuasive And you could be guiding somebody down the sales cycle, but just doing it more efficiently alternatively the other conversation could be Well, okay productivity is one thing, but how do we sell better? How do we be more ethical sales people because your argument stands that We haven't become that much better in the past 20 to 30 years and that's interesting to me because I do you cannot be denied that the sales cycle You know you do your you know you top of funnel you do your discovery and then you sort of get them through all the way through to Negotiate you know proposal negotiation close all the different steps in sales cycle Yes, that it's an easy way to teach over sales What I want your opinion on is Whether or not you feel as though there's more of There's more of a an intent focus or almost like an empathetic approach to Which customers should continue on to the next path in the sales cycle whereas if there is no empathetic You know cognizance of of is this customer right then it's just ruthless. Move you on to the next sales You know next next step in the sales cycle than close you So this do you think the sales process is the issue or do you think it's the fact that the people that are guiding customers through the sales process Um are not being empathetic to the actual needs of the customer. Does that make sense? Yeah, I mean I think so I think Ha There are lots of lots of points in there so so one is is yeah, I don't think that sellers today are You know any better or worse in terms of their interactions with buyers Then they were before and I think that's problematic right I think we're agreed. Yeah, yeah and and Surveys such that people have done which again I don't believe we're hugely scientific but from Gartner and Forester and others saying Wow, you know buyers don't want to deal with sellers anymore Uh, they still build Yeah, I don't think they ever did quite frankly what they do is they want to deal with the seller who can help them achieve what they're trying to get done right to help them Yeah, define the problem and and define what's the best outcome for them and help them get that They sell a buyer wants to talk to a seller who do that Well with this data is coming back and saying about sub buyers not going to talk to the sellers Reflex effect that they're not getting any value from those interactions So to me that argues effect that we're we're not getting better Uh, we're not necessarily worse, but we're not not getting any better in that dimension and now Technology enables buyers to do more of it on their own Thus they're saying in the absence of value from a seller. I'm going to proceed myself and So I think that That is really so the crux of the matters. We're not creating these buying experiences for the buyer that Take someone to invest their time and attention on us the sellers Okay, so then oh, I was gonna say to follow up on that So then is the buying experience is the issue with the actual sales cycle or is there another component to the buying experience that we could do better Yeah, I think it's it's to your point about you know, we don't focus on Making the connection at the human level that we need to do. We don't focus on being intentional about how we build trust because we're so animated and driven by our process, right then meeting our our metrics our activity metrics and so on That We put sellers in a nearly impossible position. I mean think about it. It's not uncommon to say in the sass world for uh And a e'd have requirement to have a what 5x pipeline coverage in their pipeline for their number Well, what most Sellers and sales leaders don't understand is if that's the case then your win rate mean the percentage of the opportunities you close out of your most qualified opportunities Is going to be the reciprocal of your pipeline coverage ratio So if you say we need 5x coverage You're doing sellers to just superficially deal with all their customers Right and there as a result what we see is like close 20% their win rates 20% or you know 20 to 25% some very very very typical in the sass world And it's like that's a problem. I mean if you're in sales which is a performance-based Profession And if we sort of accept the adage that practice makes perfect If you're only winning one of every five of your opportunities, what are you practicing the most? Practicing I guess you're practicing losing you're practicing building a pipeline just so that So that you can close that 20% yeah to lips basically right you're okay with that Why don't but everybody seems to be okay with that it's like why I'm not saying you should be okay with that But yeah, that's what people are I'm gonna say well, what are you gonna do to you know? Here's your win rate. What are you gonna do to grow sales this year We're gonna put more stuff in the top of the pipeline because our process we know it works and it's gonna produce a 20% win rate so What's the value to you of increasing your win rate one percent 2% what's it mean to you I'm gonna think about it and it's just insanity So we want to give people the ability to feel confident about what they're doing you confidence comes from success give people the ability to succeed Let them succeed some more So instead of engineering our processes to generate 20% win rates Engineering your process to generate a 50% win rate What will that look like? Like I tell you your sellers will be more more motivated. They're not gonna be experiencing as much burnout I mean, it's We have the ability to do this as part I want to talk about this and my new book is like We need to rethink because they're fundamentally doing things the same way we were doing it for decades and They're not working about I just want to take a second and thank the sponsor of today's episode HubSpot now as a leader you're always on the lookout for more ways to arm yourself with knowledge the books The seminars and most importantly the podcasts that help you make the best possible decision for you Your company your customers because when you know more you can apply more and you can grow With HubSpot CRM platform you can store track manage and report on all the tasks and activities that make up your relationships With customers with a bird's eye view over all your customer interactions HubSpot empowers your decision making like never before so you can give your business and your customers All the good you've got learn how to make your business grow better at HubSpot.com Okay, so that's a great point So you you're speaking to a CRO a CRO understands the value of increasing that 20% Close rate to 50% of like you have that conversation it the numbers make sense So how do you actually accomplish that what's what's the actual strategy? Well, we have to start with sort of rethinking how we enable sellers Okay, so you know sort of the common way to That let's say a enablement Person or you know sales later say look We've got some shortfalls and in our performance and our execution How are we gonna make decisions about what we train people and how we upskill our people? We educate our people Excuse me and Generally, well, they didn't well though look at the numbers. See how they'll See what we're doing. Yeah could be win rates could be you know no decision rates. It could be Whatever, yeah, we could analyze some lost deals But the thing that doesn't ever happen is is no one ever goes back and talks to the customer and said What's been the experience your experience with our sellers? Where did we help or where did we hurt in terms of helping you understand what your problem is? And helping you define a path forward to achieve your most important outcome desired outcome Don't sort starts let's start with that perspective what the buyers need from us and for for us to help them better This is all about listening to your this is all It seems like it seems like such common sense, right? It's all about just listening to the people that you're selling to Yeah, the end of the day. That's like that's a core of it though. Sure, but take it to a further degrees is As I'm a conversation couple weeks ago with the Senior sales leader those putting together a job description for position. They were trying to hire for and As sort of the usual longer list of things you know look for a hunter or look for you know aggressive The and then sort of the general sales description, but I say okay. Well these things that you're saying are a requirement Have you asked one of your customers what they need your salespeople to be? How it what do they need from your sellers in order to help them move through their process and make their decision to buy from you What do they need Never yet talk to a sales leader said yeah, we've consulted with our bar empires about that They want an aggressive hunter style sales. Yeah, let's get a hunt white space and ask a buyer you want our guys a hunter right? Oh, yeah Yeah, yeah, we want your guys to be yeah that extroverts is really push push push push push us Comfortable with rejection, you know 40-50 cold calls a day What they want is yeah I summarized it. Yeah, your buyers want curious open-minded problem solvers Um, what is it so the the actual title of the book um, we can definitely plug is yeah sell without selling out right and I want to know what that means Surprisingly, I have one here Um Well, the sell without selling out is to me is we have We all recognize sort of these conventional Say why call salesy behaviors that they make buyers cringe and Yeah, we're starting to sir catalog some of them and I talk about it in the book. I have a little chart that compares Salesy versus non-sales salesy why call it as selling out is is the salesy right that's the behaviors that Sort of persuasion driven behaviors that make buyers resist and cringe and We know there are We know they do this yet. We continue to persist. Let me give an example one example is Is we talk about persuasion all the time and then we got people be better at persuasion and this somehow Critical sales skill There was a book published in 2020 by Jonah burger professor awarding school Called the catalyst is about persuasion and you want to interesting things these sites and the book is research This shows that as human beings We to a person universally resist being persuaded It's innate behavior we resist persuasion So it stands the reason that of course that we would say well, let's make persuasion sort of this Hallmark of sales skills. We want to train people in You know, let's put them out in front of buyers exercise in some behavior that buyers universally resist so What I argue in the book is that There's you know the opposite of these salesy behaviors what I call the selling out behaviors with what I call selling in Which when you think about it is is All these behaviors that buyers resist that we we know sort of the stereotypical bad sales behaviors Those are all learned to behaviors And the argument that I make in the book is that if you lean into innate human behaviors Connecting with human being being curious being empathetic and understanding Uh being generous giving a value that these are innate human behaviors that we're all wired to do And if we lean into these and lead with these with our buyers Then we stand a better chance of establishing a trust-based relationship that enables us to Influence the choices trade-offs and decisions they make And they're open to that influence. I mean, that's what keep points is that There's a decision a buyer makes when you start dealing with them Where they make the decision I call the why you question Why should I invest my time in you why should I trust you why should I give you my confidence why should I listen to you Is it happens in every every interaction every situation you are in with the buyer And when they answer that question what they're answering is am I going to basically give Scott The ability to influence me That's what they're doing they're opening the door to your influence so In order to do that you have to make that connection you got to be interested in the other person It can't just be about pitching your product is about I want to Understand what's your earliest most important to you. I'm driven by that And so I've sort of framed the The contrast on stark terms in the book and I you know this is I think as a disservice we do to sellers is Is they're basically trained to think sellers that their job is To go out and persuade somebody to buy their product Whereas I believe a seller's job is To listen to understand what's the most important thing to the buyer and then help them get that And so if you think your job is to go out and persuade somebody Well, it's our stance of reason that you're gonna you're gonna be here be pitch oriented, right? I got to get my product out there. I got to persuade you that Regardless of what your product your problem is this is the answer Whereas if you think your job is to go out and to listen first to understand what's most important to that buyer and then Put together plan to help them get that Then you're gonna go down a different path. You're gonna lean into Your curiosity you're gonna lean into make sure you ask the sufficient number of questions that you really understand What the most important thing is and that you understand at a level that that makes the customer Feel like you've heard them and understood them And that you give generously of the value that you need to be able to provide whether it's through insights or content or whatever form That helps the buyer make progress toward making their decision Now I want to Understand one thing when it comes to these conversations that you're having with the buyer Of course, you still only have so many hours in a day. So it's important that if you Spend the time there still has to be some sort of performance objectives, but I'm curious does this conversation now extend to qualifying properly targeting properly and the importance of Measuring intent that a buyer could have so that the conversations are a little bit warmer when you get into them When I'm getting on the phone for the first time at the zoom caller whatever sure how important is that You want to take advantage of every bit of intelligence You can't have about the buyer Before you have these conversations I mean, I don't want people to get the wrong impression from earlier as the problem is not It's not the technology is how we use it Right and so yeah You want to take advantage of if you have intent data you want to factor that in you want to make sure you've done your homework sufficiently before you have those those first calls um Because I believe that you can't predict in advance Which of the interactions have the buyer have the most impact on them So Daniel common noble prize-winning economist psychologist Did some researcher came with this this rule he called the peak end rule and And What that said was that basically when people go through an experience when they come back to make a judgment or a decision A decision about the experiences they basically take into account two primary factors one is the peak Experience or peak event during that experience and the last event in that experience And think about that from the perspective of sales and go through the think about the buying experience Is you can't predict in advance Which interaction you have with a buyer is one that they'll consider the peak event It could be I have one client that Years ago read he sort of really transformed how they responded to their inbound leads And really beefed up their inside team Brought some real product experts to help with it We're just by getting back to their prospects More quickly with people who really understood the buyer and their needs and could really help them move through their process more quickly Yeah, they doubled the revenue and almost no time and when you surveyed the buyers It was all about that right their experience is that first interaction was the peak event For the buyer wasn't anything subject of that is fact we got back to you got back to you quickly with somebody Really knew what they're talking about I felt that was a great use of my time as a buyer to talk with them boom So as as a seller you want to take advantage of everything's available to you To say yeah, I want to maximize the impact at each of my interactions So I need to be very thoughtful about it. I need to be intentional about it I just can't be robotic and sort of roll through my process. I got treat every customer uniquely And prepare for them uniquely and when I do that Yeah, there's be more Value for the buyer in each of those interactions And value as I talk about in the book for me the baseline measure of value in the buyer's eyes Is that as a result of an interaction with you Scott They're closer to making a decision after that interaction than they were before that interaction But they've made progress That's what buyers want they want to make progress if they don't see a return On the investment of their time and attention in you Then they'll stop giving you time And you follow You want to say it just sort of becomes sort of the basic way that sellers have to look at every Every interaction that with a buyer is What is the value I'm going to provide what's the value of the buyer needs for me In order to make progress during this interaction And I want of getting this value what are they going to commit to doing as a next step The reason I wanted to go into this is because I think it's interesting because we spoke we touched on productivity before And when you look at the concepts of Productivity and efficiency and then you contrast that with uniqueness and individualness usually those run contrary Usually the more unique something is the less efficient it is And that's what I that's what I was curious about because if you want to be a top performer There has to be some velocity to what you're doing you have to be closing bigger deals or larger deals or more deals than the next person So How do you how do you make sure that you maintain velocity you maintain productivity But you still maintain uniqueness and you kind of mentioned it there you did touch on it It was every single interaction You you give it deliver the most possible value and that In theory would move things you're long faster than even if you systematize it right that's your baseline is Does this interaction help the buyer move closer making a decision? And if it doesn't if you don't know that in advance if you don't know how that's going to happen in advance Then why are you doing it? Why are you doing it why are you taking the buyer's time why you taking your time And And at this is something this is the the mindset that sellers need to have when they go through Yeah, every opportunity in their pipeline or if your sales manager you're going through a pipeline review This is the question you ask your sellers What value does the buyer need from us now in order to move forward in their process And if a seller doesn't know then they need to go back keep asking questions dig deeper Make sure they really understand this this understanding. I'd say there are four main pillars in my book There are four main pillars of selling in connection curiosity understanding and generosity and If you've Built the connection if you built this level of trust which is basically the customer giving a permission to stick your nose into their business You know to ask the questions make sure you understand Don't just default to your usual set of 10 or 12 questions as you ask but keep digging till you till you really feel like you understand Confirm it with the buyer is people are trained to do but then you have to go a step further Yes, there were many sellers just stop they may say okay. Well, I've asked these 10 questions. I'm gonna you know reflect those back to the buyer and Yeah, the thing is with the buyers don't always understand completely What the opportunities are or what even scope of their problem is so when you get chance to reflect back to the buyer Sellers need to get in habit of saying okay Now what are we missing? Just when you think we understand everything. What are we missing? And that opens up the door again to dig deeper until you really feel like you okay I understand what's most important to buy or I understand what's driving the decision because My experience in selling very complex large scale deals As well as small deals early in my career I learned early on that there's always one thing that's driving The decision more than everything else That one thing is usually important to one or more people So it's a seller as part of your discovery Which is not a one-time event something to do every time you interact with the buyer as you keep asking questions and learning Just trying to uncover what that one thing is What's the thing that's most important to the buyer And who is it most important to? And so many sellers just don't have a handle on that And so it's you know, they're sort of shooting Shooting crafts at that point sort of playing the odds I just want to take a second to thank the sponsor of today's episode swag.com now You know if you've ever received a corporate gift or swag in the past How many of those gifts did you actually keep? Probably not many Which is probably because the stuff that you got was not so great. I've gotten Like a lot of stuff from great shows and from companies in the past that I've just thrown out the second I get it. So this is why you need check out swag.com I've been on the receiving end of getting garbage gifts I've also worked in companies where I only had access to a really really small inventory of stuff That I wanted to give my customers and my employees and I knew that it wasn't gonna resonate I knew that was gonna suck. So what is swag.com? Well, it's like Swag upgraded. 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What is what is the main thing that you want that person to take away? Do you want them to for example a seller? Should go to a new organization or is it like this is the environment that you should Aim to create in your organization in your company I guess I want to look at it from different perspectives of somebody reading this book and they already have a job or they already manage a team right Well, I think from us from an individual Contributor standpoint. This could be from entrepreneur to who's you know driving sales in their organization Is to understand what your job is this is the big takeaway your jobs not to persuade somebody to buy your product Your job is to listen to them to understand what's the most important thing to them and then help them get that That's your job And the way to do that is not through Is overly prescriptive persuasion based tactics but through leaning into the your innate human side To connect with someone the human level to use your curiosity to to navigate through Yeah, there's problem their situation make sure you understand what's most important to them how you can help them get that and then Provide them the value they need in order to help them make that decision And it's it's much more collaborative You think about selling not as something you do to something to someone but something you do with someone And so entrepreneur's that mindset to me is is Life altering for them because they're going to have a choice Yeah, every time they have an opportunity to take a specific action to say Yeah, do I want to be salesy do I sell out or Don't lean into a human side and sell in Yeah, for a manager it's it's a cultural thing Is because as more and more sellers embrace this way of selling You're gonna get a little bit of pushback They're gonna say Yeah Yeah, this this overly prescriptive robotic process you wanted to follow that just doesn't work for me And I think I can do better If I'm giving the opportunity to experiment to come up with a way of selling that's aligned with who I am My character my values my strengths And as a leader you should want to encourage that you should want people not to be cookie cutters Clones of each other what you want People that are motivated to become the best version of themselves And to do that you need to give them some autonomy and and this is this is say I cite the research in the book, but Professor at Harvard Business School for Injustice Geno He's written about this is the power of giving people agency over the choices they make about how they sell Then they own it right? It's not imposing a process on somebody is they they own have ownership in this There would be more motivated To want to be on top and stay on top and So it's gonna require a little bit of a shift of mindset and manage as well A little bit It's you know, it's not old school, but it's it's understand that your your sellers are sort like your buyers As a manager you want to understand what's most important to your individual sellers And then say how can I help you get that That's my job. What do you aspire to Scott? How can I help you get that? It's not how can I make you make 50 calls Maybe maybe Scott O'Meyes make 20 calls and that's okay if Scott's delivering that's fine But there's this real sense of fear among many sales managers that if people deviate from the process as like I can't have that that's unpredictable That's like well That's fine. You're gonna get better performance deal with it deal with people's individuals And then that's an interesting point I want to I want to ask some some rapid fire questions at the end but before before we go into that There's one point that I thought would be very interesting for somebody who is a sales manager who's listening to that who said Okay, I'll I'll try and Deviate from process that I've done for the past 20 years But what if somebody isn't performing what if it's not working how do I measure what's not working if I don't understand the process anymore So what are you judging people on Right, I mean, yeah is Is everybody see everybody has their own number yeah, right everybody has their own set of metrics. It's always been the case Yeah, frustrated. You know in to talk to sellers. Well, say, well, what's your win rate? I don't know. What are your conversion rates since at your stages? No, what's like You don't be driven by the numbers, but we all have numbers Hmm, so when I talk about experimentation and improving become the best version yourself It's within the scope of what your numbers are Yeah, that's that I sold My large really large deals, you know seven figure eight figure even nine figure deals I know what my my numbers were. I know what my win rate was and and I I wanted to maintain those Mine was different than the guy next to me And he was good too Um, but he was he did it differently And that's fine. You kind of accommodate that. This is this I don't understand what managers think that They don't have time to accommodate. Yeah, it's like you've got nothing but time if you're frontline manager You're only job is to help your people succeed And not succeed by doing it necessarily your way But helping them learn how to become the best version of themselves and if that's slightly at odds so what Zons people are willing to be a held accountable for results And as the bargain I always made with boss to start my career is like Yeah, I may do things a little bit differently But I'm willing to be held accountable for my results and I delivered Because I felt I had to ownership and how I was selling And I felt like it was You know my business, right? When I got started sales is very common You're taught by your manager. You're the CEO of your patch, right? Brothers geography, you don't hear that as much anymore And we need to enable sellers more and more to think about that is you know you are the CEO of that small little business What are you going to do to make it happen? Because failure is not an option And the last thing that I noticed it was very interesting the four pillars that you mentioned connection curiosity understanding generosity None of those are focused on on business objectives none of those are focused on internal business metrics that will drive success These are all focused on the customer. Yeah, shocking, huh Oh, it's very good. Um, okay, most importantly if people want to Connect with you get the books where should they go all the socials and the dates and all that Sure, so you can pre-order the book well depending on this errors We'll say you can order the book your favorite online bookseller and the book is launching February 22nd We'll have a little bit of a launch event if people want to participate in that Um book is called sell without selling out a guide to success on your own terms And if you want to follow me Yeah, I dabble and LinkedIn a bit Scott's laughing is this yeah, he's sort of like me. We're there all the time Um, got a podcast sales enablement with Andy Paul Um, gosh, we're up to thousand plus episodes and encourage people check that out Amazing, okay, this is my website Andy Paul.com That's that's where you get everything else if you want to if you want to find anything go there, okay Um, let's do a couple rapid fire uh biggest challenge that you've overcome in your personal or professional life. What was that? How did you overcome it? Hmm gosh um Which one Pick one pick one one that one that comes to my first one that comes to my Why Yeah, I mean I think the hardest thing and yeah personal life was just you know a divorce I mean that that uh It impacts everything impacts everything you do and uh Yeah, my first marriage was You know these things don't happen overnight they evolved and yeah, I just look back and think Yeah, there was a period time there where I was I thought I was operating at peak performance So I really wasn't in retrospect and and also people could see so oh Yeah, so resolving all that and um Coming out the other end the divorce great co-parenting Uh between the two of us a great relationship Yeah, I think that's that's non-business, but it's it's uh something I was proud of Yeah, good good um if you had to choose one person who's obviously been many people But one person who has had a huge impact on your life. Who was that and what did they teach you? Why do I think It's My wife uh second wife um Something we had known each other forever reconnected after Third years one of those stories um Um But she's supported me down this journey that I've taken the last eight nine years of Yeah, exploring writing books and the podcast and and everything else I've done with the business that was just sort of a a right turn and Yeah, would not have been possible without her support Um a book podcast something you'd recommend people go check out uh Other than my own other than other than your own Well, you know, I think there's a couple books I'd recommend one is um A moment to think I believe it's titled by Julia Funt talks about the importance of building white space or thinking time into your day um Any of your busy people I think huge is important um yeah, I love atomic habits by James clear I think it's something I refer to and in my book um Yeah, I think that's a guide that people should pick up and and take very seriously because he writes very well about but have it formation And what's the other part of that question? Oh, no, just you got to do it already. You're good. You're good You can list off more if you want, but no, no, you're good. You're good um if you could tell your 20 year old self one thing What would it be to get a degree in engineering It's not about it. It's not a bad uh Um I'm very good and then last last question what is success mean to you Control over my life my time That's for me is is yeah, I've been extremely fortunate in my career. I mean it worked hard and and uh but Yeah, for me, it was always about having control over my life and and uh, when I started my company I started my company because I I wanted to take a step back actually. Yeah, I've been traveling extensively for 15 years internationally and Was missing a lot of things in my kids life and and lives and and so Yeah, made the choice to sort of step back a bit You know, it's fortunate. I had the ability to be able to do that. I mean, I still was working and building my business But at a much different pace So for me that's yeah, that's what success has been about is control