Business Innovators Radio - Christian Jack, Sales Coach, Growth Consultant, Fractional CRO

Episode Date: December 16, 2024

Christian Jack is a highly respected sales coach and growth consultant with a proven ability to scale businesses to multiple eight figures. He provides fractional CRO services, one-on-one coaching, and tailored sales training that empower professionals and entrepreneurs to achieve sustainable growth. Specializing in influence, persuasion, and sales frameworks, Christian has successfully brokered millions in deals and coached hundreds of professionals, managers, leaders, and sales pros on mastering key skills like body language, leadership, and communication. His practical, personalized approach enables clients to maximize their influence, boost performance, and achieve long-termLearn more: https://thesalesdojo.co/IEInfluential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saundershttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/influential-entrepreneurs-with-mike-saunders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/christian-jack-sales-coach-growth-consultant-fractional-cro

Welcome to influential entrepreneurs, bringing you interviews with elite business leaders and experts, sharing tips and strategies for elevating your business to the next level. Here's your host, Mike Saunders. Hello and welcome to this episode of influential entrepreneurs. This is Mike Saunders, the authority positioning coach. Today we have with this Christian Jack, who's a sales coach, growth consultant, and fractional CRO. Christian, welcome to the program. Thanks for having me, Mike. Really appreciate it.

So I love those many hats that you wear, but I know that they all intertwine and work together because a chief revenue officer also is a growth consultant. And also, you have to be good at sale. So I'm excited to learn from you about what you do in the industry. But before we dive in, get us started with a little of your story and background. How did you get into the industry? Yeah. So my background, I was a musician before. completely different industry, completely different role in what I was doing day to day.

I was a musician and I was a high school choir teacher. So I went to school every day just like I did growing up and just now I was in the teacher's seat. And it was lots of fun. But I quickly realized that I was capped and what I was doing. I realized there was a ceiling. And so often when we hit ceilings in our lives, we try to figure out, okay, how can we push past that ceiling. And so I started exploring other areas of life. And this was right after COVID as well.

So lots of people had kind of gone through COVID. They lost their jobs. Lots of people were really tight on finances, all that kind of good stuff. And so my job as a music teacher was one of those where a lot of people got laid off. And so I started to think of, okay, how can I be more essential in the marketplace, basically as my profession went. And I explored a lot of different options, but slowly came down to like a few meta skills that were always going to be needed, no matter what the state of the world was. And one of those was sales. And so then that's really where I got my start into business.

I started selling. And slowly over time, I basically just worked my way up the ladder, got better and better results, and eventually started learning new skills about management. and running companies and all that kind of good stuff. And so went from being a salesperson to a manager to a consultant to a growth partner to CRO and kind of have just done a ton of different stuff since then. It kind of just builds upon itself, right? And I would venture to say that you're not ever binding a time that you're no longer a sales coach

because you're always coaching, teaching. You come from that background, you know, to have that, you know, heart of a teacher. I love that you were a teacher and you weren't, you're not. not a former musician. I'm sure you still are a musician. You just maybe don't make you living from it. My wife is a church choir director and leads a women's career at a university here in Colorado. So we resonate with music and all my kids play multiple instruments. And so I think that's awesome that you've turned, you know, you took and pivoted. You know, you use COVID as, ooh, what can I do? What should I do? And then you learned a lesson and turned it into what you're doing. So now in your business,

Let's talk a little bit about some of the lessons that you've learned that you now coach people on regarding sales. Like what frameworks, blueprints, checklist do you use and teach? Oh, man. Sales goes pretty deep. So if I were to kind of operationalize, if I will, the word sales and what it actually means, a lot of people think that sales is just, maybe it's persuading somebody to do something or persuading them to buy something or whatever it might be. But at the end of the day, I do believe that sales is just connecting the dots. And so it becomes a lot more simple when you realize that. It's just connecting the dots of, you know, if I'm a salesperson and I'm talking to a prospect, like what are their problems?

What are their goals? How do they want to get there? What's the method that they want to use? how will that impact their day-to-day life, how will that impact their family, their business, et cetera, et cetera. And then you just connect the dots. If what you do connects the dots well,

then they're going to buy. And if it doesn't, then they won't. So a lot of what sales comes down to is honestly just, you know, what I know that you talk about a lot, which is just positioning yourself as the authority in something and allowing somebody to see that you can help.

That's really it. And then in terms of frameworks, there's a lot of different things that go on. but I think more importantly than any framework is just the art of human connection. If you can connect with another human being, especially this day and age, then you're going to have a leg up on pretty much anybody else who's selling. So I want to go deeper on that because that is something that's a platform soapbox that I've jumped up on for years and said, we've all gone through sales training and,

you know, here's script and let's role play and, you know, let's talk about. about where you want to be and where you are now. And here's the gap and how would it make you feel if and all of that? And my question is, how do you successfully be a human in an interaction to help someone understand what you can do and how you can solve their problem without it feeling like some scripted sales pitch framework that they go, okay, come on. You know, feel found again.

You know, I know you feel, you know, they felt that come on. So how do you. know the sales framework so well yourself that you can guide people through it without feeling like they're going through a process. Well, you said something really good there that I'll touch on. It's just knowing the framework so well. And if you think about it this way, anything in life where you learn something new, your brain can only comprehend that which it has already experienced or learned from a video or from life,

etc. And so there's this essentially if you think of like this the circle, right, that's inside your brain or this box that contains all of the information that you've ever learned, right? This is your brain. But when you start to learn something new, it's outside of that box. And so it forces that box to expand to encapsulate this new knowledge. Now, you have to start with small steps. I can't just teach you, you know, in an hour. If I'm an astrophysicist talking to, you know, a fifth grader, I'm not going to be able to teach a fifth grader the secrets of the universe through astrophysics. Like it doesn't exactly work that way, right? It takes time and it takes steps.

So as long as you go through and I think you give enough repetition, you give enough guidance, you give enough experience and practice and rehearsal and all that kind of good stuff, you will eventually get to the point where what used to be scripted is now natural, right? You don't have to go through. the script of like five plus two, let me pull out my fingers and count it on my fingers. Now you just know it because you've done it enough time. So that's like point number one. Even from a musical perspective, I'll bet you that there have been, you know, I play acoustic guitar. When before I started learning, I couldn't put, you know, two notes together. But if I were to look at some accomplished guitarist, it would be like, oh my goodness, that is just unbelievably amazing. Well, they just have become so good that playing that scale or playing that tune just

looks like it's flowing. Yeah, I think it's the idea of just getting enough practice in with something that used to be scripted that was, you know, encapsulated in this small box. And now you can use it in other areas, 100% correct on the music analogy. Now, the second thing, with making sure that you're in a position to have natural conversations is kind of the opposite of what most people think, but a really great tactical way that I like to teach my students is imagine that you're just sitting at the bar with a friend. How do you talk to them? Even if there's maybe some, you know, the deepest parts of sales conversations might get into limiting beliefs and, you know, emotional scarring and all sorts of crazy stuff, even if there's maybe some, you know,

If you're at the bar with a friend and you talk about those things, it's, it sounds different than on a sales call. But why? It's because you don't really have an agenda at the bar. You're just hanging out with a friend and you're helping them. Exactly. And so I tell my students all the time to just like, not just go to the bar to drink, right? But go and like meet people out in the real world and have real conversations with them that

aren't, you know, pressured by the sales context of having to close the deal in order to you know, buy bread for the next month. And the more that you do that, the more natural you'll get on sales calls because you will just naturally start bringing that energy and that vibe into it. And it gets into a lot of like,

you know, non-verbal communication and all sorts of crazy stuff there. Hey, have you ever heard of the nine-word email concept? Yes, I have. It's fantastic. Yeah, I, you know, like a lot of things in business,

you know, one person gets it from another person and swipes it adapts. I remember it hearing from Dean Jackson from Joe Stump and by referral only and all of that. But the concept simply is don't make do some long drawn out 19 paragraph emailed. Do a quick, it doesn't have to be nine words, but it's like a quick like, hey, are you still interested in? Blup, pop, pop, pop, let me know. And I've all, when I describe that to people sometimes to my clients, I'll say, hey, if you, it's exactly what you're saying about talking to someone at a bar naturally. if you emailed someone and wanted to say, hey, you want to go see a movie this weekend.

You would not create a image, a header image for the email. You would not create 19 paragraphs with callouts and links and you would just email them and go, hey, do you want to go see that movie this weekend? And so I think that's what you're saying is know your stuff enough to know where maybe pain points are or selling the features, not the future is not the features, you know, all of that kind of thing. But you start wording it into just conversational tone. I think that that gets really hard. That's an art form. It is, which is really interesting because you already do it with your friends on a daily basis.

Why is it hard in a sales context or in a business context? So interesting. Because you know that there's so much at stake, you know. And I think that that's, and, you know, I think one of the hardest things for a salesperson to do is, you know, being strategically silent, asking really strategic questions and then letting it sit and just letting someone, you know, ruminate on that question and then answer it and not just being blah, just talking all the time. And that time, that gets into psychology. And I know that you are really big into the psychology of persuasion.

So what are some of the, you know, obviously this is a three-day master class concept that you would, you know, teach for a long time. But what are some of the 30,000 foot views that you take on the psychology of persuasion? Man, if we're getting purely into psychology, one of, one of the things that I really enjoy is putting things into models and into boxes that I can understand, right? And one of my favorite ways to think about psychology, if you will, in terms of persuasion, is thinking of it in like six main doors, if you will. Or if maybe let's talk about if it's like a like a slider, right? Like a little, you got an electronic device. You're sliding the volume maybe left to right.

There's six main categories that you really want to put some attention on if you're persuading someone. Number one is focus. If you don't have the prospects focus, there's not going to be much that gets done on that meeting. Right. Same thing in marketing. If you don't have the leads focus, then there's nothing else that can happen because they're focused on other things. There's other priorities. The next slider that you want to really be able to turn up if possible is suggestibility.

This is basically somebody's acceptance and action on a suggestion that you give to them. And there's lots of different tactics there, but we'll skip over that for now. Next up is compliance. Basically the timeline between when you give that suggestion and when they actually elicit a response to it and actually act on that story or act on that suggestion. You got openness next, which is, you know, somebody sharing things that maybe they wouldn't normally share. Connection, the gut feeling of like liking and trusting somebody. Lots of people think of this as rapport. And then the last slider is expectancy.

the ability to visualize what's going to happen in the future. If you can take those six categories, focus, suggestibility, compliance, openness, connection, expectancy. If you can take those and basically just turn each one up by even just one small notch, you're going to be so much more successful in sales because it's just working with human behavior and the way the brain likes to operate. Yeah, I think it is, I just am a big fan of the. psychology of whatever marketing with the psychology of business the psychology of you know money because we really do have those things that we are ingrained at us that was like well why did i do that

reminds me of the book i'm sure you've read it by dr robert chaldeany influence and then his most recent work pre-suasion well so many times you know that example in the book about the waiter or the waitress that you know uh ask for the tip you know you don't really ask for the tip but they give such good service that they want to get better tips and when they would put one piece of candy down tips would go up or when they would walk away and then come back a second later and go oh hey by the way i i just wanted to thank you guys for coming in here's two pieces of candy that showed a little bit more you know and it was just so neat just to see how those little tiny things and too many times i think that we feel like it's got to be some big to do and it's in this a series of it's like

Darren Hardy says in the compound effect, it's like the 1% change here, 1% change there that really brings those big changes and don't discount the fact that, you know, there's just a psychology and how you are working with and interacting with people. Can I tell you a funny story? So I was at an expo recently. I was, you know, traveling out. I think it was in Orlando. We were doing a bit of networking, just meeting people, you know, kissing baby shaking hands. And I was walking around the expo, and just like every expo, there's a million different vendors, right? They all have their tables. They all have their different ways of attracting people to come over to their booth.

And some of them were pretty darn expensive. Lots of them were really big to-dos, as you said, trying to get people to come over to their booth. And then there is this one booth. It was kind of in the corner. It wasn't great placement. But he actually had the most people at his booth. And what he did was so much more simple than a lot.

anybody else. Some of those guys had like the, uh, the arcade game where you punch the bag to see how hard it goes. It was very like male dominated event in industry. Uh, and so lots of guys were there. Another person had like a whole pickleball court set up. It's crazy. Wow. This guy had an assistant standing at the edge of his table with a $1 laser pointer. One dollar. And what the assistant would do is basically point the laser pointer across. the aisle, like into the crowd where everybody was walking, where all the foot traffic was. He pointed it on the ground until he got somebody's attention with it. Somebody was just like walking around, looking at their shoes, and then they saw this laser

pointer on their shoes. And they're like, what's that? Immediately, like that script in their brain is broken. Focus goes through the roof, straight to that dot, even with all the other stuff going around in the world, all their focus is on that one dot. So then the assistant started moving that dot a little bit to the left. a little bit down, a little bit closer, and basically would lead the person with that dot, like a cat,

with, you know, I have a cat. He chases the red laser pointer endlessly. Led that person to their booth. And then the person looks up and they realize it was a way to get them over. And they loved it. They didn't even like hate it once they got there. They're like, dude, that was so smart. I love it.

What else, like, can you guys teach me about getting people's a attention. It's a perfect segue. You know, the thing that I always love hearing things like that, because I then relate it to, you know, what really is going on in marketing. So in marketing, we have to stand out. We have to do things that are different than other people. So like the punching bag or the pickleball or the whatever, it's like, that's what everyone else is doing. They did something different to stand out. And then they weren't annoying about it. They didn't have a megaphone going, come over here. And guess what they also did not do. Shine the laser in their people's eyes.

annoy someone. So, and I say that, you know, with all seriousness, because we can do something that you just described worked really well, but one little tiny difference would have annoyed people and turn them off if you put it on their chest and they would have been like, that's an invasion of my, you know, body or, you know, in the eye, ooh, that's annoying and that actually hurt. But they did it the right way to stand out and be unique and then draw people to them. I think that was just brilliant. 100%. It was great. I had to. talk to the guy afterwards. He had some sales experience. We went on a whole rant and whole business connection from it. It was great. So once you get some of these techniques and

frameworks and psychologies down, what are some of the ways that you would say to a client and entrepreneur, okay, now we need to go into growth mode and scale? What are some of those things that you are looking for first to advise your clients on? The biggest thing that I see, people missing out on is the word growth or the word scale is a really hot topic and people love it, right? It's a total buzzword. But what happens is almost, I know your audience has a lot of financial planners and such. Let's take if you set out the plan that you use for somebody who's, you know, let's say run in a $20 million year business, they're bringing in like 50% profit from it to their own take home.

and they have their whole financial strategy there. If you take that financial strategy, which is very leveraged, right, very scalable, it's meant to be, but you apply it to somebody who's only bringing in $60,000 a year, it's not going to work. But the problem is a lot of people do this with their business. Let's just take, you know, sales calls as an example. Lots of founders and owners really just hate taking sales calls. But I can't tell you how important it is for an owner to take a sales call every once in a while. And there's so many reasons behind it.

But the overarching idea that I'm trying to get across is there's no point in leveraging or trying to scale past where you are right now. There's a problem. There's a main constraint. There's a main roadblock in your way from getting. to the next level right now. And that's the only thing that you need to solve right now. You don't need to focus on all these other million different things.

Like if you don't have leads coming through the door who are hot, ready to buy, then you have a problem that you need to fix. If you have tons of leads who are coming through the door and they're ready to buy it, but they're not, you have a problem that you need to fix. And there's always going to be a million problems in business. Like one thing that is promised to us, right, is that there will be. be problems in life. But it's about prioritizing those problems.

I made a post recently that I said the secret to relief from anxiety is not the working of more hours, but the proper prioritization of those hours. Yeah. Yeah. It's the 80-20 rule. 100%. Yeah. And it's, well, first of all, it's using wisdom and understanding to know what the correct

20% is that brings you the 80% results so that you can then clone duplicate or focus leverage that 20%. So it's not just a simple one plus one equals two to go, oh, 80, 20, there's my 20. You need to study and be aware and notice so that you then will have that 20% to be able to go deeper. Yeah, huge. And don't try to start for problems that don't exist. Oh, yeah, that's a big one. I was going to say that if you have 100 clients and wanted to double your business, you do not need 200 clients. You need 120.

Now, not exact math, but if you're using that 80-20 rule, really 20 of your 100 clients are the best clients that you've got. So if you really got 20 more like them, you don't need 200 clients. You need 120. In fact, you probably only still need 20 clients because you probably need to fire 20 and get 20 new ones in that are like your top 20. So the whole point is being really, really, really efficient. Yeah, I think these are just some great, you know, you take some really cerebral approaches to sales. I really love that approach. And I think if someone is listening to this going, hey, how can I start noticing some of these frameworks and psychologies and be able to take some of these things that take my business to the next level?

What's the best way they can learn more and reach out and connect with you? Best way is probably going to be, if you'd like, Mike, I can just give you a link after this. and we'll make it the salesdojo.co slash i.e. So the salesdojo. dot co slash i.e for influential entrepreneurs. And on there, there will be just a couple of resources. There's some free stuff. There's some cheap stuff.

There's some more expensive stuff if you really want to skip the line. But all of that should be pretty self-explanatory on there. So again, that's the salesdojo. dot co slash i.e. Excellent. Well, Christian, thank you so much for coming on. is a real pleasure talking with you today. Pleasure being here. Mike, appreciate it.

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