Noob School - Episode 17: John Sterling

Episode Date: October 1, 2021

This week on Noob School, John's got something a little different in store for the listeners. Instead of bringing on a guest to interview, John interviews himself! Learn all about his journey from Noob to successful salesman in a booming industry. You just might find that his journey is a lot like yours. Follow John on social media: Instagram: instagram.com/johnsterling_ Facebook: facebook.com/johnsterlingsales Twitter: twitter.com/johnsterling_ TikTok: tiktok.com/@johnsterling_

So welcome back to Noob School. Special presentation today, just me. I decided today I'll just ask myself these questions. Same type of questions I ask our normal guests. I thought you might want to know kind of where I'm coming from on these. So anyway, here we go. Welcome John Sterling, one of my favorite people. So the first question we ask is, how did you get into sales or how did you make that decision? So coming out of school, I was a political science major, kind of thought I wanted to go into law school.

Again, that's just kind of one of those things people did. A lot of my friends became lawyers. And after doing some legal shadowing where I went and spent half a day here and there with different lawyers, decided I didn't want to do it. Just something about the field didn't appeal to me as much as long as law. like watching a show on TV about lawyers. That looked pretty cool. But actually watching what they did wasn't really up my alley.

So now what am I going to do? Well, business, of course, and kind of had that entrepreneurial bug. And, you know, there's no real easy job to get this listed as entrepreneurs. So a great way to get started back when I started and today is to get started in sales. That's where most of the business jobs are listed. Much easier to get a job helping people bring in revenue than just paying you to do something. So I decided to start in sales. And one of the things I did right, skipping down a few, is I picked a good industry.

So this was back in the 80s and computers, software was all relatively new, particularly on the PC. And so I said, you know, that's cool. I want to get into that. That's going to be a big opportunity. And so I picked that as an industry and actually went, physically went to where, you know, the mecca was, which was Silicon Valley still is, and just found my first sales job jobs out in that area. So that's kind of how I got into it. What I would have done a little bit different is, you know, why major in political science if you're not going to go to law school or politics? I mean, it would have been better to major in business or even accounting, kind of learn the language of business, maybe get some internships or shadowing around business people.

But again, you know, like anything else, you can recover from, you know, mistakes or maybe things you might have done differently, but it would have been easier, you know, if I had, if I had shadowed some business people, had some more business-related jobs before getting my first job. So that's number one. Number two, a question is, you know, what kind of success have I had, you know, since starting that first job? And, you know, what I did was kind of leveraged my time in Silicon Valley and how I learned sales from a couple of different companies out there. to come back and help buy into a business and help really grow a business that needed someone like me on board. Meaning they already had a founder, brilliant PhD, engineer, great product.

They needed someone who was going to be the sales creator, the sales engine, whatever. So I looked and looked and looked for that kind of company and finally found one and put my money where my mouth was and bought this little part of this little company called DataStream and built it up for 20 years as their kind of sales leader, sales manager person. So the reason I'm telling you that is there's just a couple of things I did right there that really helped me in my business career. First of all, I looked around at something I was thinking about doing. I was thinking about going into law school, and I did some shadowing, and I didn't like it. So I changed gears. So I didn't just get stuck doing something I wasn't going to love. So that's one thing I think I did right.

Another was I picked a good industry. I didn't just take the first job I could find working for whatever company and what whatever industry, I said, where's the best place I can go to, in the industry that's going to do the best over the next decade or two or whatever? And, you know, actually went there, you know, went there and got my first job in that spot. So I think both those things were good things I would recommend you do. Something that I would say, I would reconsider, not that we can go backwards, but if I was you, I would add to that equation and say, you know, if you've just got to pick an industry that's

going to do well and go do that, that's fine. But better yet would be an industry that you already know. So if you grew up in computers and you love them, you know, I get it, that would be fine. But what if you grew up, let's just say, in the music world, you know, and you were just all about music and, you know, so you play the guitar or you played piano or whatever and you were good. You're never going to be, you know, a multi-million dollar producer in music. But you do love music, you know a lot about it, you know a lot of people. Why not get that first job in the music area, you know, working for a music company or a company that manages bands or arenas or makes the instruments.

You know, so try to find something you already know a lot about. I had to learn all about computer software and all about the industries we served. And again, it worked out. But it would have been easier if I had picked something I knew something about already, which in my case could have been sports. I spent a lot of time in the gym, you know, playing sports, playing basketball, competing, you know, played in college. And then when I shifted gears to business, I just threw all that away and jumped in computers where I just as easily could have said, I want to stick to sports.

I want to go to work for Nike or Reebok or, you know, the ACC or, you know, any of a number of a huge ecosystem that makes up sports. So, again, it worked for me. I'm just saying it can work better if you pick an area you are. already know a lot about and that you love instead of something that you're going to have to learn. Colby. We talk a lot about the Colby test, and I know I've got some videos on it. Colby.com, K-O-L-B-E.com. Highly suggest you all, if you haven't already, go take the test.

You know, I think it costs 55 or 60 bucks. Not real expensive. And they will send you the results. same day. Test takes maybe 20 or 30 minutes. And where it helped me was it said, John, naturally you're not really good at doing your homework, right? When it's time to write the term paper, it's very difficult for you to do that. Naturally, it's not in your DNA to naturally want to just sit there and just happily do my homework. But I'm naturally very comfortable, you know, starting my first job in

California, you know, not knowing a darn thing about computers or sales, for that matter, and say, well, I'm just going to go there and do this. It turned out to be a good decision, but that's where naturally I'm gifted. You know, I can easily do that. It's no problem for me to try stuff. So once you know that, then you stop beating yourself up about how hard it is to do homework, right? So I've got to have systems in place. At this point in my life, at least for the last 15 years, I've had an assistant who helps me kind of do the homework.

Right. Keep kind of my life moving forward with the details and lets me focus on things like Noob School, you know, things that I really want to do. But I promise you, before the Colby, all I did was just kind of beating myself up for being a crazy person. Like, who wants to do this crazy thing and go to California and start a job? in the industry you don't know anything about. Who wants to do that? Well, a crazy person does. That's me.

Who struggles with literally writing the checks and putting them in an envelope and sending them to somebody? You know, you're paying your bills. It's just hard to do those kind of details. So Colby helps you understand that, and it will help you get the kind of job that matches up to who you are. Like for me to lead a brand-new sales team that's going to grow

and, you know, over 20 years, you know, we're constantly changing. It's a pretty good fit. As long as I had someone to help me, you know, someone to do the operational work. I was a pretty good fit for that. But if you said, John, we want you to be, you know, our chief of operations, our COO, it's exactly against my personality. So until you really have the cold, but you don't know, you know, where you're coming from, and this can be very helpful.

So it'll help you get the right job. which I highly recommend. So my scores, for those who you, keeping score at home, 3393. So fact finder follow through, quick start, implementer 3393. So almost all quick start starting things and kind of resistant in the other areas. So at least I know it, you can deal with it. So some of the things that slowed me down, you know, how could I be better? be better. I've talked about this a little bit in some of the other podcasts when I'm interviewing

other people is, you know, the ongoing, really seems so, it's really actually kind of simple. It is the ongoing training that you set yourself up, you know, whether it's the product you're selling, the industry you're selling to, you know, what the accounting looks like to solve the problem, you know, anything related to this business. that you're in that you have a regular, you know, daily or weekly or monthly, some kind of training, whether you're getting training from someone, whether you're studying it yourself, whether you're traveling to the customer to learn or doing a review. I think at some point it's very natural to kind of work, work, work, train, train,

learn something, and all of a sudden you're at this level, you're doing pretty well, and all of a sudden you get too busy, you know, to keep training. And what I'm recommending to you is no matter what, whether you're, you know, king of the world or CEO, that you just keep that steady drumbeat of training and just keep getting better and keep getting better and keep getting better. And the second thing I'll tell you in terms of things you can do that I haven't always done, and most people have it, is, you know, just your body and your psyche are so important. I mean, if you want to be successful and you're not healthy, you're not exercising, you're not eating right, you're not sleeping right, you know, if those things are going on, it's possible to be successful, but it's less likely. It's a lot less likely.

So when you take time to take care of yourself and get your sleep and drink your water and all those things that we know are good to tending to ourselves, what you're doing is you're making an investment in your future. you will be a better operator. You will be more likely to get promoted. All right, I promise you, you'll be more likely to get promoted, more likely to keep your job, more likely to sell something to somebody if you look like you've got your act together. So, you know, when you're doing that, you're not taking away from your sales time. You are adding to it. You're making yourself more effective.

So those are the two big ones I would throw out there to you that I have. haven't always done and it would just make you know just make make life easier to do those two the rest of your life um I've got one here promote yourself a little bit this is kind of you know what are you doing now so you all know the big thing I'm doing now is noob school so I wrote this book um sales for nobs it's on Amazon uh And I wrote it, you know, about a year ago, I wrote it during the lockdown. And I'd been thinking about writing it for a long time because I have hired hundreds of brand-new reps out of college and trained them and seen them go on to do great things. And, you know, not that I've got everything to do with that, but at the very least, I picked them.

I picked the right people in almost every case. They have the right Colby. They fit in well with our culture. They had a good work ethic. And they've done well. And some have chosen to stay in sales and kind of keep their life a little less complicated. You know, just one number. I got my job to do.

Some have moved up and they've become management at these great companies. And some have gone on their own and become CEO. and leaders at other companies that they started and some of even sold those companies. So I've seen it happen a lot. And I thought, man, I think I'll just write this down. Write down all the things that I think people should do when they're thinking about a career in business or sales

and throw it out there and see if it helps. And the very first thing, the first chapter is about being healthy. It's like, you've got to be healthy. You know, we would not allow people, really. We wouldn't hire anyone that wasn't healthy. Now, did we come out and say it? Of course not, right? You can't do that.

But if someone was like, didn't look like they had their act together, they didn't get hired. So you need to do that for yourself. That's chapter one in the book. But read the whole book. There's a bunch of stuff in there that will just, you know, most of these people, including me, have gone on to have very thankful good careers. Very thankful things have gone very well. But with some of the stuff in the book,

I wish someone had given me this book, you know, when I was your age. Just would have saved me time and heartache, right, if I'd have read that stuff back then. So that's really the purpose of the book. And then, of course, I got a website with it, noobschool.org, and I've got tons of videos in there.

I've got all the podcasts. You can buy the book on there, and then we've got this offer now where it's a president's club where folks can join it for a monthly fee. They can get weekly training. They can post questions and get answers and kind of network with each other around the world. As people join this, they'll be able to network and kind of try to figure out who they are, where their best job is going to be, what their industry is. and just go through the process together and just stay on there. The President's Club as long as you need to, really. So that's what I'm up to.

I'm really never been so enthused about something is this, because think about it. You know, before I was running sales for a software company, so we're selling software and we're selling to maintenance departments all around the globe. And, you know, there's parts of that I love. love. I love hiring the salespeople, training the salespeople. I love doing deals, love traveling around, you know, doing deals in different parts of the world. But I'm not trained up on

maintenance software, you know. I'm really not even a brilliant computer scientist, I know enough to be dangerous. But what I do know is how to take young salespeople and get them trained up and ready to have good careers in business and in sales. So really, I'm probably, you know, at my age, I'm as close now to my sweet spot as I've ever been, and I'm pretty, pretty enthused about it. So anyway, if you're thinking about checking out that site or joining the Preston's Club, I've got to tell you what my favorite word is, absolutely, absolutely. I think it's a very important word. It kind of gives me goosebumps to say it, but it's a commitment.

It's kind of an all-in type commitment that if somebody needs something or a customer wants you to do something, you just give them absolutely, give them a guarantee that you're absolutely going to take care of their issue. Don't be wishy, wash you about it. Be strong. So be strong, say absolutely. So anyway, I hope you enjoyed this podcast. On the President's Club, you'll be able to ask any questions you want. So we'll go back and forth.

And my goal, as you watch these podcasts, is to create, you know, a whole other wave of people like the ones you're seeing on the podcast that, you know, find themselves at age 35 and 40. and 45, you know, very happy with their career choices and giving them a lot of options for the rest of their life. So we'll see you next time on Noob School. Thanks for watching.