David Priemer, CEO of Cerebral Selling | How To Sell The Way You Buy

Welcome to success story, the most useful podcast in the world. I'm your host, Scott D. Clary, and today I'm sitting down with David Primer. David is the founder of the organization, cerebral selling, where he uses a science and human-based, or rather empathy-based approach to teach anybody how to sell better. David actually came from a background in chemical engineering, as well as chemistry and atmospheric science, but like most people in sales, he didn't purposefully go into sales, but he was purposefully successful. He is a 4X entrepreneur, a VP of sales from Salesforce, where he built out innovative sales strategies that, if you're listening to this and you are an entrepreneur, CEO, founder, or if you are trying to figure out sales as a career, this is a place to start. David has had an incredible career, teaching people how to sell in a way that's effective, but also makes you feel good about yourself. He speaks globally, he's been featured in Forbes, Entrepreneur, Inc., his book, Sell the Way You Buy, is a best seller with a nod from Daniel Pink, the author of The Sell is Human, and he is also an adjunct professor at Smith School of Business, as well as the London Business School. This is a masterclass in sales from somebody who is highly scientific, logical, and processed-driven, so anybody can learn sales from David. All right, without further ado, David Primer, CEO of Cerebral Selling. I say like three things. Start small, practice often, and create accountability for your own progress. Thanks again for joining me. Today, I am sitting down with David Primer, who is the founder and chief sales scientist of Cerebral Selling, very interesting background. He started his career tinkering with test tubes and differential equations as an award-winning research scientist before spending the next 20 years, leading top performing sales teams at high growth tech companies, including Salesforce, where he was Vice President of Commercial Sales, and creator of the Sales Leadership Academy Program. David's unique science and empathy-based approaches to driving revenue and talent growth have been published in the Harvard Business Review as well as Forbes, Entrepreneur, and Inc. He is referred to as the sales professor, and he is the author of the best-selling book, Sell the Way You Buy. He holds a BSC in chemistry and atmospheric science from York University and a master's degree in chemical engineering from the University of Toronto. David, thank you for sitting down and joining us today. Very interesting background. I love the story. I need to understand why the hell you decide to get into sales when you had such incredible academic credentials. Who hurts you? But no. I'll tell you, I was on another podcast on the hosted. Were your parents ever upset with you if you went through all that education just to end up in sales? Like, what do you mean just end up in sales? Well, that's what everybody thinks, right? So, who is it? Rob Jepson, he's one of the first, I heard him through, I can't remember his podcast, now that's horrible, but I loved his podcast. And he has a line. He says, accidentally, so accidentally in sales, and then, oh, he got accidentally in sales, but purposefully successful, or something along the lines like that. Like, nobody means to end up in sales, but once you get into it, yeah, anyways, walk me through your story. No, it's like no one, everyone gets into sales by accident. Like, it's one of the only professions. You know, no one becomes a doctor or an accountant by accident, but with sales, one of the reasons why we get into it by accident is because we don't teach it at a lot of schools, and we don't tell people like no guidance counselor says, oh, you know what? Maybe you should think about like a proper career in sales. And look, I was no different. Like you said, I was a research scientist at the turn of the dot com boom. And like, when you think about it though, like for those of you who are trying to figure out what to do with your career, like, what is this, what does a scientist do? Right? Like, we love to learn, and we love to synthesize. So we love to kind of figure things out and explain them to other people, and we love to like experiment, and we love to ask why? Like, why did this happen? Why does that happen? And I ended up getting into sales around 1999, 2000, ended up joining a startup as a sales engineer, so shout out to all the sales engineers out there. And really it was a very easily transferable skill because I was doing a lot of demos and presentations, and I was doing coding and all that kind of stuff. And I just fell in love with sales because when you think about it, like all of that nuance that you get in like the science and engineering fields, you get like 10 fold in sales. Because I mean, look, science and engineering, it changes quickly, but the world of buying has changed so much. Never mind in the last five, 10 years, in the last year and a half, the world of buying has changed quite a lot. So there's so much nuance and beauty to sales that I just love, and then for the last 20 years, love picking it apart in my roles. Primarily at high growth technology startups where there's a lot of stuff to figure out. So one thing that I've noticed is you probably take a very logical and scientific approach to understanding why people buy, how to sell, how to position, how to get people to, I would say accept your messaging. Like you said, an empathy-based approach to driving revenue. What is cerebral selling? Because that almost to me sounds like a psychological tactic, almost like a neuroscience approach to sales. Explain what cerebral selling is and I hate doing a two-part question. That's a two-part question. So what is cerebral selling? But also how did it manifest from your role at Salesforce? Yeah, so I'm gonna actually go back to Dan Pink. I love Dan Pink in his book to sell his human. And he talks about, I'm gonna horribly paraphrase it, but he talks about the fact that in a world where consumers are armed with so much information, it used to be like the sellers had all the information, you go by used car and maybe it was a piece of crap, maybe it was good, but you would never know. Now as buyers, we have tons of information. There are a million different solutions out there that all do the same thing as what we say we do. And we are busier and more distracted than ever before. And so what he says is in this kind of environment, sales is now a thinking person's profession. And so if you don't understand the way people buy, if you don't understand the mechanisms by which human beings make decisions of any kind, if you don't know how to align your sales and marketing motion like that, you will fail. And so cerebral selling is just, I mean, what does cerebral mean? Cerebral means really understanding at a foundational level, like why the tactics you're using from a sales and marketing perspective work, why they don't, like what's the pathway? Because so much of sales over the course of time has been, you know, here's what I did, Scott, like here's what you should do, right? And that's how we get into trouble. I actually called it in my book, I call this the Cobra Kai Paradox. I'm 46 years old. So when I was nine in 1984, this was the movie The Karate Kid came out. And so like when you think about like The Karate Kid, and now thank goodness it had a revival, so everyone can understand what happened. It's a relevant reference again, yes. It's a relevant reference. So like you have these kids who were, you know, bullies and jerks, but they weren't bad kids, and it's funny you kind of see this now in the new incarnation of the show, where like you have, you know, kind of the bad guys are actually like good kids that have been corrupted. And that's what happens so much in sales is we learn how to do it the wrong way, the old way, right? And so the idea behind cerebral selling is just being very curious about how the mechanics of a sales interaction work. And then, you know, again, being able to execute that tactics that you learn, just kind of very effortlessly in a very human way. So that's what cerebral selling is to your second question, like how did this all manifest, you know, from the sale of forced experience? So first of all, I mean, I was at sales force for five years. I love, love, love my sales force experience. I ended up joining because they ended up acquiring my third startup. So I kind of just came over with the ship and ended up at the end of my sales career there running small business sales for the Eastern US. And I love sales force. It's a great company, great culture, very sales centric. And so it would be in these very busy sales periods, like the end of month, end of quarter, and the business had like a very, very big cadence to it. You know, a lot of hustle. And I would be going out there and I would be telling my reps, you know, hey, look, tell the customers, there's never been a better time to buy, make the calls, make the calls, leave no revenue unturned. And then I would go back to my desk and my phone would be ringing off the hook because I'm a VP at sales force. And people want to sell me stuff. And people are trying to blow up my LinkedIn. And I'm just ignoring them. And you want to know why? Scott, why? Because I realize, I don't like talking to salespeople. And, you know, I can be in a room, you know, with 1,000 salespeople, I say, you know, I can't show hands who here likes talking to salespeople. Very few will raise their hands. And so I realized like I had this kind of existential crisis where like I was not selling the way I buy. I'm going out and telling my reps, like do this stuff, which by the way was not unethical and not categorically ineffective. But it was just stuff that was not working on me. So I thought, well, this isn't right. Like what would my reps have to do for the stuff that they're doing to work on me? And that was kind of the epiphany that led me to my current practice in the book. It seems like sales force, sales force is an incredible organization and a lot of sales learnings and a lot of like leading sales individuals, thoughts have come out of sales force. It's interesting how that evolved because another person who, you know, you're, you were coming out of sales force and this is cerebral selling Aaron Ross in predictable revenue. I'm pretty sure also came out of sales force. I think like John Barrows, if I'm not mistaken, also came out of sales force at some point or he was teaching them or training them and consulting, I could be incorrect. But like there's a lot of really, really incredible leading sales individuals that have come out of sales force. I'm curious, do you have an idea of why that is? Why what, I know it's a sales center of organization, but there's a lot of sales center of organizations. Sales force is a cloud first organization. That's how Benioff really, you know, created that category and dominated. But why was there such forward thinking sales leadership in that org? Did they just recruit incredible people? I think in part yes, but also because like, do you think about the growth trajectory of sales force? Like sales force, when I started at sales force, there were 6,000 employees, which was the biggest company I'd ever worked for. And then when I left five years later, it was 24,000 employees. And now it's like, it's over 50,000 employees. And part of that is organic, but it's a lot of acquisition. So sales force has had to reinvent itself and figure out how are we going to grow revenue over the course of time with, you know, like, great. Everyone knows we have this leading CRM product. But what else? And so it's really forced the organization to make, you know, changes on an ongoing basis to keep up with the time. So I think that's kind of like probably the number one thing. It was interesting when I saw that you came from sales force. It's, you know, it seems like to be a breeding ground. So for, for incredible, for incredible sales thought leadership. So sales leadership academy, was that while you were still at sales force? Because that's something else you have on your resume here. Was that something you built within the company or was that after? No, it was there. So, you know, like, the interesting thing is, when you're an entrepreneur and you come in from the outside, like, sales force loves it when people come in from the outside because they bring in those fresh ideas. And that's actually another secret of their success is they, they take the CEOs and the leaders from the companies they acquire. And it's not like, oh, we're just acquiring the technology and then we're going to kind of turf you to the curb. Like, no, they want those leaders to come in and bring those fresh ideas. And so one of the things they let me do while I was there, they said, you know, hey, David, would you like to write for the sales force blogs? I'm like, yeah, sure. So I started, you know, crafting these articles. And so, and that's, and that's how a lot of my content ended up getting picked up. I like the Forbes nonchalenderer. And in a way, the kick started what I, what I do today. So they love it when people come in from the outside with those ideas. And, and that's one of the reasons why they've been so successful growing. But that sales leadership academy and some of the programs you ran, you know, when I kind of came in, I said, look, sales force is great. I had been a sales force customer a few times before. But I said, like, in terms of like the events and the content, like a lot of it is like a thinly veiled product pitch. You know, like, well, what if we just had events where, you know, we focused on like our customers business and the culture of our company and leadership and these things and, and look, and, and we, some of these concepts were new. Like, and, you know, in all fairness, like, sales force had grown to the point where it had with some amazing tactics and marketing. This was just another thing that we could add. And so, for example, coming from the small business background as I did, one of the things I started to do was I started to organize these customer dinners. And of course, you know, people are familiar with customer dinner. Oh, yeah, we'll get you out. We'll get, you know, we'll get around the table and we'll have some steak. And then eventually we'll sell you something. And I, and I was kind of like, let's not do that. How about this? I ended up buying the participants in these dinners. A copy of one of my favorite books of the time, which Unite's book about. It's called The One Thing, the surprisingly simple truth behind extraordinary results. And I love the book. And, and we just used it to catalyze a conversation saying, hey, you know what? You know, in your business, your, your CEO, your C level exact. Focus is really important. You're probably, you know, working on a whole bunch of stuff. Like what's the one thing that you think would be valuable to you to focus on? And we would do this in a round table with like 10 to 20 CEOs. And they would get so much value to that interaction. We would not pitch anything. We would tell them not to talk about Salesforce. And those turned out to be the highest ROI events we did, even bigger than Dreamforce. Because we added so much value to our customers into their experience. And, and we never once asked for anything. Now we asked for things later, you know, sign the contract. Yeah, yeah, we want to access to your organization. But that's where, you know, a lot of these great programs and ideas came from. It's just this kind of, this renaissance Salesforce was going through. So that's, that's the, that's the inception of cerebral selling. That's, that is, now you're, now all the pieces are starting them together because you're understanding the, the way that you would actually want to buy. And I mean, assuming that's what led to the sales leadership academy. Walk me through, walk me through the steps you took. Maybe while you were finishing up at Salesforce into creating this program and what the first iteration of this cerebral selling program was the different components and whatnot. Yeah, we'll look, you know, as, as, because VP at Salesforce, I would be training my reps. And certainly we invested in third party training, but it's still on us, right? So I would teach my reps some of the concepts, you know, that I now talk about in my training in my book. And, and the nice thing was, you know, they would, they would catch on, not because they were so novel and like, I've never heard of this before. But because they were so human feeling and, and I was focused on small business. So a lot of my reps were younger, like they had just been BDR, just been promoted into their first sales role. And the problem is when you have a younger sales rep who's trying to connect with an older, more experienced buyer, whose job they've never done, what can sometimes happen is a sense of fear manifest. It's like, I have three kids. So like when one of my kids comes to me and they're about to hit me up for something, like they're about to ask me for something that they believe I'm probably going to say no to. I can, I can feel it, like I can feel it just by the way they approach me. And so what I would do is I would start listening to some of them, you know, my reps phone calls, reps who were, you know, hustling to no end, but had no pipeline to show for it. And I would be like, you know, so Scott, what's going on, man? Like you're making all these calls, like do you not have enough accounts? Like what? And like no, I, you know, everything is going, going good. Like I have accounts. I'm calling at the right time. I'm speaking to the right people, but there's no productivity. And so when I would listen to their phone calls, and I would close my eyes and I don't even care about like the words that they're speaking, the undertone of the call is such that it feels like they're bothering the customer. That's what it feels like. It feels like you're afraid that you're not going to add enough value. And so I can hear it and feel it in your voice. The same way when you get a call from a telemarketer who's about to pitch you on something, it probably takes you like a split seconds of tell, right? That it's a telemarketer about to, you know, read from a sales pitch. So people are very sensitive to being pitched. And that's kind of, you know, that those kinds of experiences where, you know, we were driving like a high velocity sales machine, lots of reps, different geographies with different kinds of customers in each. You know, I was, we were working through some of these tactics. And I was trying to kind of train them in and part whatever knowledge I could, that not just the tactics themselves, but the empathy, like how to execute the tactic with the right tone. Because I'll tell you, we had tons of reps that were going out there with really good sales tactics and getting completely blasted and shut down by customers because they weren't, they weren't approaching it with the right tone. So that's kind of where, you know, I did all that stuff. I ended up, you know, continuing to write for the sales force blog. Even when I left sales force to be VP of sales at my fourth startup, I continued to write for the sales force blog. And eventually, you know, when now my buddy Scott calls me up and says, you know, hey, David, I hear you got some great sales content. Can you lay it on me? I was sending you like links to like all these sites, right? Like that's not good. That's stupid. I need my own website to like just keep all my stuff. So cerebral selling was born one night. Remember my wife came home from working. I'm like, hey, honey, I created my own website. It's called cerebral selling. She's like, oh, that's a good name. The URL was available, right? And so I just started to write about this stuff and continue to concentrate that information and all my content there. Spend up a YouTube channel by the same name. And then, you know, a little while later, people started to subscribe. And people were really picking it up. And I just said, this should be my job. And then boom. So I love that. And you know, it's interesting. It's a good, it's a good thing to know. A good point that regardless of the sales strategy or whatever you subscribe to, if it's spin or challenger or I don't know, there's a, there's a million and one different things that different organizations use. Miller, I'm in like a whole bunch of different types, right? This underlies all of them. This, this, this could or can be added onto because if it's how to use tone and how to, I would say be more human and more authentic in your approach and be more, I don't know, more confident in your approach. And I'm sure that I'm using very general words. And you can probably go a little bit deeper on how this actually manifests. And when a rep uses it, this can be implemented in line with any sales strategy, because it's not, it's not a different strategy. It's something that you have to add on, correct? Correct. It's, it's very foundational. It's very human feeling. Now, there are a lot of tactics. We talk about messaging tactics, discovery tactics, you know, objection, healing, negotiation, and so on. But like, for example, people are familiar with like bands or medic, you know, people have these discovery methodologies where they say, hey, look, Scott, when you go into the call to the customer, like, here's the list of things that you need to come out with. And then what happens is we get too tethered to like those lists. And we say, so Scott, like, what's your budget? And you're, you say, oh, I don't know, we haven't said it. I'm like, okay, awesome. So who's going to sign this thing? You know, like, I don't know, maybe my boss. I'm like, okay, great. And when you need this by and your customers can feel that you're, it's like a polite interrogation that you're just working down a checklist. It does not feel human. And so when we talk about tactics, it's about using tactics that you can execute with passion, conviction. They're not all easy to execute by any stretch, right? But that's the whole idea behind sales, being a thinking person's profession. You really have to unpack it. Some of them are easy. But yes, manifesting the emotion, the conviction, using words like, you know, even just like a very simple thing. When you have a lot of let's say young sales reps, and they go in and talk to a customer and they say, well, you know, Scott, like, what I think and what I've, what I've seen and Scott's there thinking, like, who the hell is this kid what I've seen? Yeah, if it's you've seen nothing anything, okay? Like, you're not Oprah, like, you're not Bill Gates. Like, you've seen nothing. So, you know, one of the tactics I talk about, and this is just like a small little thing is I, I call it the eye phrasing trap where we start saying, well, I've seen I found and like, no one cares what you think. So I say, well, who has credit, if you don't have credibility, who does your customers have credibility? Third party, you know, articles and studies, and reputable journals have credibility. The collective experience of your company has credibility. So I say, shift your eye phrasing to we phrasing and invoke the credibility of the entities that have it. So I say, you know, well, what we found, like, we've been in business for 10 years and what we found working with tons of customers like you is, and you can use that on day one of your job, right? You just have to execute it with passion and conviction, and there's lots of ways to do that. But just like these little tweaks to your repertoire can make you feel completely different about how you execute that sales motion. And when you feel completely different, your customers can feel it too. And it's very powerful from a conversion perspective. So let's break down what the current modern day iteration of cerebral selling is. Because now you have a book out, you have a course that's been broken down into, I'm pretty sure it's six different components. What is the full complete cerebral selling when you train it, when you teach somebody how to sell this way? I just want to take a second and thank the sponsor of today's episode, Ladder. 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You'll get up to $3 million in coverage and then you can start to investigate and hopefully get life insurance so that you and your family will be taken care of. All right, let's get back to the show. Well, you know, it's funny, like when you start a business, like mine, when you're focused on training, it's not just about the content because there's lots of great content out there. I oftentimes will focus just as much on the delivery mechanism and the retention, right, because people forget. And actually as a consumer of sales training over the years, where the sales trainer comes in and does it, the thing for two days, you forget most of it. And this has been proven out. So what I do is I focus on a particular topic, like messaging, and we focus on that. And then I leave you to execute those tactics in the field for two, three weeks before I come back and I teach you something else. So we focus on the fundamentals, messaging, discovery, objection, handling, negotiation, leadership, focus, and in each case, we focus on like science-based tactics executed with the right empathy and tone. It's especially relevant now when you think about the current buying climate. Whatever it is you say you do, there's a million people that will say the same thing, at least in the, now you think you're this delicate snowflake and you're unique from everyone else, and maybe you are, but to your customers, you just all sound the same. So no one really cares what it is you do, and a lot of times when I say, oh, so Scott, what are you doing? You're like, oh, well, we're a platform to, no one cares about your stupid platform, and I'm saying that the best possible. No one cares about your platform, okay? People walk around caring about their problems and their lives and not even like features and benefits, right? So speaking the language of like pain and enemies, like for example, if you say like, so David, like, what do you do at cerebral selling? I can say, oh, it's a sales training and thought and practice and I have a book and like, no one cares, right? So I said, like, like, I work with sales teams who realize that like people love to buy stuff, but they hate talking to sales people, right? And now you've had like a little ammonia piphany of like, oh yeah, you know, I also hate talking to sales people. All right, tell me more, right? So when you think about from a messaging perspective, it's not just having empathy for your customers, but like really thinking like, how does my customers brain process this information when I give it to them so that I maximize my chances of creating interest and conversion later on down the road? And none of this is like, this is all completely about board. It's easy stuff, it's stuff that you can execute with passion and conviction, but that's how it breaks down and in every step messaging, discovery, objection, handling, there's all these like little tips and tricks that you can manifest. I mean, I can give you more examples. No, I think that so what I wanted to do, so I saw there's messaging, discovery, objection, handling, negotiating, leading for growth, which I'm not sure what that actually means. And then I don't know what that actually means, but it sounds interesting. And then it sounds great. I like the copy, it's great copy for these little, for these breakdowns and then mindful executions. So five and six, we can shell those for a quick second. So messaging, discovery, objection, handling, negotiating. These are things that if you sold anything to anybody and put an ounce of effort into researching how to sell something, these will come up again and again and again. So let's break down the cerebral approach, excuse me, to the other three. So discovery, objection, and negotiation. And how do you do that with the cerebral nuance? For sure, well, with discovery, I kind of think about two things. And you go into a discovery call with a customer. Well, what is it that you want to know? Like what do you want to talk about with that customer? Because there's like a million things you could talk about. Not all the things will be equally important and not all things will have an equally emotional impact on the customer. So we talk about that. The other thing we talk about is the science of self-disclosure. How do you get people to tell you things that they don't want to tell you? Like when I come to you and I say to Scott, like what's your budget for this project? Like even if you walked into a car dealership and the car salesperson's like, so Scott, like what's your budget? All of a sudden you're, the hamster wheels cranking in your brain, you're like, hey, I don't, I don't want, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Why are they asking? What are we gonna do with this information when I give it to them? What should I say, should I lowball, right? And so we get into like the science of self-disclosure and like how to kind of recognize the kind of pictures that are going on inside people's heads and how to kind of approach those discussions with objection to handling. It's all about understanding, before we even handle the objection, it's understanding what the intent. So for example, the most common objection in sales of any kind is too expensive, right? Everything's too expensive. If everything was free life would be good but everything's not free unfortunately. So when someone says, oh, it's too expensive, it's like if I ask you out on a date, Scott, and you don't want to go with me and I say, so Scott, hey, look, we mad like Saturday night, I'm free, you want to go Saturday night and you don't want to go with me and you say, oh, David, I'm sorry, I'm busy on Saturday night, right? That's the equivalent of it's too expensive. So I don't know, what does that mean? Like you want me to make it cheaper for you? You want to go out, you want to go Sunday, you want to go Friday? Yeah, that's right. So well, exactly. So now if you tell me you're busy Saturday and I say, well, hey, look, I know Scott, and I'm springing this on you on the last minute, I look, what about next Saturday night? How's that looking, right? And now if you say, oh, okay, next Saturday night's good, well, I realize this was just a logistical issue. Like that was your intent, it was to find a date that you're available. Just like if I say, well, it's too expensive and I say, well, what if I could show you how we can make it more affordable? You're like, okay, great. But maybe that's not, maybe you never want to go out with me and you say, oh, I'm really busy that Saturday night too. And so now I'm creating a deeper picture of like, okay, it's not a logistical issue anymore. It could be something else. So it's the same thing when someone launches it too expensive. So really, does understanding like when people have an objection, well, what do they try, what's the intent behind it? And then what I teach, and this is one of the biggest, I say mistakes that people make when they think about objection handling, is they think about objections as like a two column chart. Customer says this, column A, then I say this. I call them B, I say this, and the objection goes away. And like, that's not how, you know, that's not objections. Work objections are like anything else. They're conversations. So what we try to do is we try to teach the elements of that conversation and layering and I, there's 10 objection handling tactics I teach, but I also, they're in my book. So if you want to, you have my book, you can read about these tactics. And the purpose of these tactics is that they can be combined together. So almost think of it if you're like a gamer and we were talking about, you know, playing in the arcades as kids grown up. Think about this as like buttons on your controller. So the, you wouldn't just like stand there and the hit the A button, just to keep punching and punching and punching, like you would have to combine that with a bunch of other tactics. And so that's what we teach. But you know, at the end of the day, messaging discovery objection handling, the customer doesn't care what part of the conversation that they're in. It's not like, oh yes. And I remember as a kid taking karate, and I remember, you know, the instructor would line us up and we'd be, you know, across from someone else and he would say, okay, great. So Scott, you're going to punch. And then David, you're going to like block like this and then punch back and I'm like, oh, okay. So we're practicing this thing. And I remember saying, I said, you know, to the instructor, can I just ask a question? In real life, if we ever, if we're ever in a fight, how, how will we know what the other person's gonna do? It's like such a naive question and like, oh, this is all choreographed, right? And the reality is like sales is the same way. There's a choreographed like the customer doesn't say, we are now in the negotiation portion of the conversation, right? It's very free flowing. So, you know, I start with the fundamentals, the messaging and discovery, but once you get objection to handling, you start looping in discovery and messaging tactics back again. So kind of all hangs together. And that's one thing that I think any sort of, I guess, linear sales, training or sales process really misses the mark on. It's assuming that once you finish that one step, it's on to the next. But in reality, a true conversation, you're always doing all of these things almost constantly. And to take it a step further, if the messaging and the objection handling, when you have those, when those pieces are injected into a conversation with the customer, if that messaging and that objective handling is not also built into your marketing messaging and your website copy and everything else that the customer sees, it has to be holistic. It has to be, everything has to be feeding into everything else all the time. Because if it isn't, then you're assuming that the customer will move on to the next step and the next step and the next step. And that's not how people buy. That's never how they buy. Absolutely. Look, we're all in sales, everyone, right? And it's funny because sometimes you meet marketing people or people who are in customer success or account management and they say, well, I'm not in sales. Like, first of all, they think sales is a little gross, which is why they end up, they say like, I'm in these roles because I don't want to be in sales. But like, guess what? You are in sales, we're all in sales. And in that alignment, I actually call the messaging supply chain is so important because the worst thing is when sales says, oh, we can do A, B and C and then they sign. And then we move them to our support customer success teams and they say, what? Sales told you that? No, we can't do that. And so it's very important not just from that perspective, but also as you say, like on your website and marketing can play a tremendous role as far as arming the sales team, disarming objections, creating the right copy. Like if you're the most expensive product on the market and the sales team is going to get that objection 90% of the time, marketing can help by creating content, air cover, perspectives to establish that value, even before someone gets to a sales person. So that alignments is super. Next one negotiation, just a high level of what that looks like from again, from a cerebral perspective. Yeah, so the way I kind of think about negotiation is also two parts. There's like the preparation part and then there's the execution part. And people, when they think about negotiation, typically what people think about is, how do I minimize concessions? Like how do I minimize what I give away? But they don't stop to think about oftentimes, like, okay, what's the balance of power? How much power do I want to have going into the negotiation? What can I fall back on? Who am I negotiating with? Like, what is it that I want? At what point should I stop negotiating? What's important to me versus what's important to them? Because the things that are important to both of us may not be the same, right? Like my organization might be, especially in SaaS, might be focused on getting upfront contracts and multi-year agreements. And the customer might be okay with that. They just need a better price, right? So that's what negotiation is. We focus a lot on like the preparation, like what do you want to know going into the negotiation? What are the levers, you know, what are you gonna do? Because oftentimes with sales, we just, we don't practice anything. We just go in and get our ass handed to us and realize, right? So doing some of that preparation and then, you know, the execution pieces. But again, there's a lot of like discovery. For example, if in a negotiation a customer says, oh, we love your product, but it's too, it's just too expensive. What is that? Are we negotiating now? Like, are we negotiating for price or? Or have I just not established the value? Maybe I did a bad job of explaining what it is we did. So do I have to go back to the messaging? But to put a bow on it, because you asked about the leading for growth as well. One of the biggest sources of leverage that we have in our sales organizations is coaching. You know, the reps that get good, proper coaching are statistically and scientifically proven to be more likely to exceed their quotas. And I'll tell you, like we would do sales reps surveys all the time at Salesforce and my companies and we would ask reps who would say, like, Scott, what's one thing that you wish, you know, you had more of? And Scott would say, more time with my manager, I want them to listen to more of my calls, write along, all that kind of stuff. So sales leadership has a tremendous role to play in the success of the organizations. We all, you know, essentially believe that. But sales leaders actually get one third of the investments in training of their skills as their reps do. And usually it's not how to be a better coach, how to give better feedback, how to create more transparency, how to advocate for your team. But all of these things have, again, scientific principles rooted in that can help us get better. And that's actually one of my favorite leadership books. Actually, my favorite Simon Sinek book, I'm a big Simon Sinek fan, is Leaders Eat Last because he gets into kind of like the science and leadership. And so that's, you know, what I do in my academic background now, I teach sales leadership in my practice as well as at some business schools. But sales leadership is such an under invested in element of the sales motion, but it has a massive impact if you can get it right and really help these leaders get better at their craft. I have one more question that I'm curious to get your thoughts on because you had mentioned it before, and I think it ties into what you do for a living. So you had mentioned that you have, and then I'll do a couple rapid fires to pull some last insights from you. You had mentioned that you have a certain way that you actually teach and train people. So not only do you have your own, you know, you have your own sales process and training program, but the way that you actually teach it over. So you do this for a living. What are the best ways to learn new ideas, new concepts so that they stick? If you are interested, if you're an auto-died act and you want to go learn yourself, how do you learn these concepts and apply them so that they stick? And they're useful if you're a sales leader. How do you get your team to buy into them? I'm curious how you have success with that. Because that's the thing that people, I mean, I probably would. I say like three things. Start small, practice often, and create accountability for your own progress. So what do you mean by that? You know, like I said, starting with like the whole Shabang and like sales training, like all at once is too much. You're going to forget everything. So starting with one topic at a time, small, bite-sized tactics that you can memorialize, that you can execute very simply and easily, that's the first thing. So don't overwhelm the people that you're training that you're working with with too much content. Number two is like reinforcement of the practice. So it's not just, okay, great, sit there smile and nod and say, oh, this is great, David. And then just go back to your desk and do what you were doing before. You need to practice this. And so what I'll actually do is I'll say, you know, so you know, reps between now and our next sales lesson. What I want you to do is I want you to start doing this in the field. And when you do it, I want you to remember what you did. If you use any of these kind of, you know, conversational analytics tools like Gong, record the conversations, you know, surface it up to your manager and get the coaching that you need. So I say, you know, start small and create accountability for the practice. And then what we do back to kind of this accountability. And this is the same. If you want to lose weight and get in shape, rent a triathlon, it's the same thing. Go for a go for one K then for five K and then have a running buddy. And then having someone that you are ultimately accountable to, to answer to. And so, you know, what I'll do is we'll actually as part of like the kind of the training practice, what we do is we do the training. There's the practice in between. And then I will come back and I will listen to your calls with your managers and with your peers all together. We do these call review sessions, which are very like reps have never often done this before. They've never exposed themselves and like listen to their, let their colleagues listen to them on the phone and these kind of pre-recorded things. But it creates a, it creates a compelling event that like, oh crap, like I got to, I got to do this stuff because, you know, there's people we're going to be listening to it. And it makes them more conscious of what they're doing. And I'll tell you, like even though it's a little bit uncomfortable to do it first, it creates so much, I mean, the teams love it. They love cheering each other on. They love kind of seeing things like every, the best players have coaches, right? Because they see you play the game and they pick up on things that you can't see. Even like you, you know, never split the difference. Chris Boss, you know, he talks about how, you know, when you're training, like how do you train to be a hostage negotiator in any hostage conversation? There's five negotiators on the phone, one speaking, the rest are just listening for like the things that the first person's missing. So the secret starts like one tactic at a time, one topic at a time, practice, practice, practice, create accountability to review the content. So like you can't, you know, you're not hiding in the corners there. We're all learning from each other and then rinse and repeat. And that's, you know, I mean, there's lots of other ways, you know, people have, you know, LMS systems and other kind of enablement platforms, like and stuff, which is great, but it's the content, the simplicity, the reinforcement and accountability. That's how you make stuff stick. Very good. Okay. Closing thoughts on, on cerebral selling. What's, what's next for you in your career? What is it for startups? Couple of VP roles, book. And so what's, what's next for the sales professor, miss? Well, you know, maybe the audience can help me a little bit with this. No, you know what? Look, I, you know, the mission, like, why I do what I do is, right? Like I, I love sales. You know, sales has given me in so many people so much in their lives, like so much, you know, fulfillment. And it bothers me that when you tell someone you're in sales, you become the enemy, right? Like no one gets into this on, you know, on purpose, we all do it back to that. So my mission is to get the message out there around getting into the profession on purpose, doing it the right way, always, like treating it seriously, always be learning and adapting. And so, you know, my goal is with, with my content, I continue to write, you know, I continue to, you know, create videos and the book, these are just ways of getting the message out there. So that is the mission. That's the why that will always, you know, be the same. And, but look, at the end of the day, I'm a light bulb guy. Like I love connecting with people and kind of, you know, having them see the impact that like real human feeling tactics can have on their sales motion. Because there's nothing worse than getting into sales, then feeling a little bit gross every day when you come home. There's no reason for that feeling for a career. Like no, you know, it's not like emergency room doctor, you know, sales person. Like it's, they're not in the same, you know, a stratosphere. So the idea is, you know, just, just keep doing more things to learn. I love learning is the number one thing I love to do. And there's so much amazing knowledge out there. And just be, be part of the solution to help salespeople execute this amazing profession with like passion conviction, with the right tactics. And, and hopefully one day, you know, when you tell someone you're in sales, the bullying and say that that's amazing. Tell me, I love that, I love that. It's very good. Okay, a couple of rapid fire to pull out some insights from your career. What is one misconception that you had when you first started going to sales? And how is your mindset shifted on that over the course of your career? It's probably going to be an easy one. Misconception. Well, I mean, you know, the first thing is you think like, oh, like sales, like that's a job, right? Like can't any, like I'm, you know, I can't anyone do that. That's something people actually get into. And then, you know, and to the credit of all those amazing sales professionals out there, and you mentioned some of the beginning, there are many who get into this on purpose and who do take it seriously and, you know, refine the craft. And so for me, like that, that's the number one thing is just like appreciating how amazing and nuanced sales is just like the most complex engineering problem, but you know, with the complexity of human emotion thrown into it as well. Just the deeper appreciation for that is the number one thing I would say. What was the biggest challenge in your personal career? You know, so, you know, and actually I talk about this in the book a little bit. So about 10 years ago, I was diagnosed with cancer and, you know, kind of threw me for a loop. There was a lot of obviously, you know, look, I'm not, I don't have a moratorium on personal struggle. Everyone has something that they deal with in their personal lives. And they bring it to work, right? You're going to relationship problems, disease, you know, things going on with your family, you know, there's all sorts of stuff. And so I'd say like reconciling those two things of like, you know, when you have a big disruptive force in your life, you start to question, you say like, well, why am I doing this? Like what's important? Right? And, but I have to say, you know, after all this time, you know, one of the things that, and you're never, you know, with cancer, like you're never really done, you know, it's always like, it's always the ghost that haunts you a little bit. And, but I think, and I talk about it in my book, it's the best thing that ever happens to me because in a way, it makes you much more mindful, it makes you much more appreciative of things. And I don't know if I would have started my business and started cerebral selling or had the courage to do that per se if I didn't have that experience, right? Like it made me more mindful about having an impact. So that's, you know, I'd say the number one thing for me. What would be a lesson you would tell your younger self? Yeah. So the thing I would, I would tell myself is to kind of like follow the patterns. You know, a lot of, you know, and I say this to all the young reps out there, a lot of times in life, we think about what we think we should want, right? Like you and I were reps at a company were both junior reps and you want to grow up and be a senior reps. I'm like, yeah, okay, that's what I want to. And over the course of your career, you could be tempted to jump ship, go to another company for more money or do something that sounds a little bit easier or kind of do something you're not really passionate about just because like, you know, the fringe benefits are good. And we look at our, to the left and our right of people across and we say, well, that's what they want. That's what I want. And I say like, take a step back and think about like in your job, what are the things and I kind of break it down to three categories, the things that you love to do in your job, the things that you like to do in your job or it's okay, the things that you don't like to do in your job. And every time you move to like a new job, try to figure out how you make that the love bucket. So to speak, like, how do you make that bigger? How do I do more of the things that I love and not just, okay, I'm moving it. I'm doing a little bit less than things I love, but like the money is really great, right? Because at the end of the day, people can tell, like I can tell if you believe in what you're doing or not, like people can tell and it comes through when you're doing what you're passionate about, what you feel like you were put on this earth to do, people can tell. And it's absolutely true what they say. You're always worried about, okay, well, what if I do this and it fails? But like history has shown, there's amazing people out there have shown that your passion will carry you through, right, especially if it aligns with something that people need. So I would say like my advice to my, you know, for myself is like, just keep asking yourself, like what am I passionate about? What do I love to do and try to do more of those things? I'll tell you like the things that I used to do when I was a research scientist, I still do now, right? Not because, not because it's part of my job, per se or the title, but because it's part of what I've always done. So take a look at what you've always done, what you love and do more of that in every job. Good advice. One person that had an incredible impact on your life, who is that person and what did they teach you or how did they impact you? Well, I, you know, there's like the business answer and then there's personal answer, but I'm just thinking about this today. I'm coming up on 25 years with my wife and I have to say, you know, she, we met when I was in the university. So she lived with me through the whole, you know, research scientist space and all the startups and cancer and three kids and the whole thing. And you know, I just say like none of this would have been possible without her. You know, it's true. When you have like love and support and people that just kind of stick with you no matter what. They don't, they don't take your bullshit, you know, they call you out. It absolutely makes you better. And my wife, she's a grade six or great or six grade teacher, depending on where you're listening to this kind of the US, she, she is the, like the kindest, most empathetic person I know. And I learn so much from her, you know, and seeing how she raises our children and we, you know, we do it together, but you know, in all honesty, it's a lot of her genius. And that has filtered so much into my life, it's the support, the empathy. So my advice to all of you, find a great partner that will stick with you and they'll prepare you to do great things. So I give all the credit to recommend a podcast, a book, an audible, somebody should go check out. Even though you've already recommended some, I have to ask at the end anyway. So drop some drops up besides your own book, which will link in the show notes. What are some other ones? Yeah, like, you know, to sell as human by Dan Pink, I love, and it was funny because I was, I was saying earlier, I was looking at your bookshelf and I have a lot of the same books online. So the one thing, essentialism, yes, 50 scientifically proven ways to be persuasive. There's some great podcasts out there. So I love Doug Bredett and the marketing book podcast, Andy Paul and the sales name of podcast. You know, these are great hosts that put a lot of, of, of just kind of effort and professionalism into what they do. They source really great, great guests with great perspective. So yeah, those are, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm name and name is those are some of the ones I, I encourage you. I have to, I have to just get it on the record. The podcast that I referenced before was the sales leadership podcast by Rob Jepsen. That's also, it's also a good one. I just feel obliged to drop it because I said it was one of my favorites and I completely blanked on the name. There you go. Anyway, last question and then I'll get some contact info from you. What does success mean to you? You know what? The first thing that comes to mind when you say that is just, just happiness. Happiness is, is the most important thing. Success doesn't, isn't a, isn't a number. It's not a financial statistic. It's a feeling just like anything else and happiness comes from, you know, of having, you know, things but not having massive amounts of expectation. In fact, one of my favorite books that I, I won't reach for it on the, on the wall behind me there is a book called Saul for Happy. If you've heard of this book, it's by a fellow by name of Moga Dot and he was the head of business at Google X. So like Google's like kind of fringe experimentation arm and he tragically lost his son at the age of 21 in a routine appendix surgery. And he talks about this idea that, you know, like, so now he has to rebuild his happiness and figure out how he's going to be happy again. And now his mission is to make millions of people happy. One of the things he talks about is, is just, you know, not having expectations. So for example, if it's your wedding day and you have an outdoor wedding and it's like the weather is crappy, you're upset because you thought your wedding day should be wonderful and magical and nice weather. But if it was just any other day, you'd be like, oh, it's like it's raining outside no big deal. So this idea of just happiness, like, you know, be grateful for what you have. Remind yourself of what you have and be grateful for it. You have goals, but don't overburden yourselves with expectations of what things should be like, because you're most likely going to be disappointed. So happiness, you know, existentially from a health from being centered, that's the best advice I can give. Try to try to search and be happy, search for happiness and be happy. And then where do people connect with you, the socials on website? Yeah, so look, the reality is I give away a ton of stuff for free. So I mean, you can always hit me up on LinkedIn, tell me, you know, that you, you know, you heard me on this podcast. I love connecting with people, but I have a website called cerebralselling.com. I'm, you know, all my content is there a YouTube channel by the same name. I give away everything for free. It's un-gated. You don't have to subscribe. And then the book is called, Sell the Way You Buy. And it's available on Amazon, Audible, wherever you, wherever you buy books. Awesome. That's it, man. That's all I got. Thank you so much for having me. Scott. And that was awesome.