Noob School - Episode 24: Some "Me" Time with John Sterling

Episode Date: November 19, 2021

John has a very, very special guest on today's show: himself! This time, he's going to ask himself the questions he normally asks his guests, so you can get to know your Noob School host a little better. Discover John's career plans in college (spoiler: not sales), his Kolbe numbers, and what he would do differently. This episode is a good peek into the mind of the man who wrote "Sales for Noobs!" Follow John on social media: Instagram: instagram.com/johnsterling_ Facebook: facebook.com/johnsterlingsales Twitter: twitter.com/johnsterling_ TikTok: tiktok.com/@johnsterling_

Hey, everybody. Welcome back to Noob School Special Edition, which is going to be me today. I've had more than one person say, gosh, John, why don't you answer these darn questions? And let's see what you say, because these are kind of the questions I generally ask everyone who's on these podcasts. So I figure, okay, I'll answer them. And hopefully it'll be helpful to you to at least know kind of where I'm coming from. So the first question is, how did you get into sales? And for me, again, I don't think I'm abnormal in any way. I was in school studying political science, and I kind of thought I wanted to be a lawyer.

And so I was just down this path of taking political science classes. You know, you study some law. You study a lot of politics, things like that. And it's kind of what a lot of lawyers do is take political science. And I decided along the way I didn't want to be a lawyer. I did some shadowing, I think my junior and senior year with other attorneys. And it looked like for me, it was like more detail work than I liked to do. I was not particularly good at homework or term papers or anything like that.

So it looked like, gosh, I'm going to have to actually write up contracts. and read through long documents and like, no, don't want to do it. So now what? Right? You're in college. Got a polyside degree. And, you know, you're not going to be an engineer with that or a doctor. You know, there's just an architect.

So sales is kind of a common place for this big bucket of people to go that have just general liberal arts degrees. It's a good entry point into the market. So I joined the. there. What else were you considering? Well, obviously, I considered legal stuff, also considered basketball. I was a college basketball player, and I played in Europe for a season. So I went down that path, and I was really just kind of drawn when I would, I guess what

I would read about entrepreneurial companies, you know, Apple, you know, people like that were trying to get rolling pretty good when I was in college. Microsoft, and it was like really interesting to be, much more interesting than just playing basketball as much as I liked it. I kind of want to go down the tech path. So I was kind of drawn to it, but I did consider that and play a little bit after college. What are some of the successes I've had since starting out as a noob, like everyone else, of course? Well, the biggest one I had was joining a very small tech firm called DataStream here in Greenville. And I was their first salesperson.

Then shortly afterwards was their sales manager. And, you know, really had to learn how to be a sales manager. And, you know, with my partner, Larry Blackwell, Larry, Larry was the founder, built up a nice big company. It's about 1,000 people. and a hundred of those were salespeople. So in terms of coaching new salespeople and getting them ready to go, that's a place where I've got a lot of skills. And it came from hiring and coaching and training,

you know, hundreds of young salespeople over the course of 20 years. So that's probably my biggest success to date is that company. and it's given me a lot of great friends and knowledge, and, of course, I've learned how to ramp up salespeople. So that worked out well for me. What is something I thought about sales that is different than I originally thought? And again, I probably heard me say this before, but my initial thought about salespeople was it was going to be kind of fast talk.

and talking people and doing things and kind of maybe a little bit what I'd seen on TV, you know. And obviously, what it turns out, the best salespeople are more like a very good doctor. They're trustworthy, and they ask a lot of questions, trying to diagnose what the actual problem is, and then they propose a solution. And that's the way every great salesperson ends up being over time. That takes a long time to earn the trust of a doctor. But that's where we want to be. And, you know, again, coming out of college, I thought it was more like, you know, used car salesmen.

And, you know, as I've seen it in practice, the good salespeople are more like doctors. Let's talk about the Colby. Have a quick Colby discussion. Any of you out there that haven't taken the Colby test yet, Colby.com, can go to colby.com and take it. I think it's 50 or 60 bucks. And it will tell you a lot about yourself. You know, you answer the same questions. Other people have answered for years,

and they kind of plot out four numbers that indicate whether you're more likely to be an accountant or a lawyer or an entrepreneur, salesperson, juggler, you know, whatever it is. So my numbers were 3393. three. And what that means is nine, it means I have a scale of one to ten. I've got a nine in Quick Start, which is kind of high energy, good on their feet, likes to speak in public, doesn't need much time to prepare. You know, those, that's kind of what, where I lean towards. And those kind of people are typically entrepreneurs or salespeople or, you know, the emergency room doctors is one of the things it was on my thing. Of course, I don't qualify for that, but people who are kind of

good on their feet versus people who really do well preparing a long time to do something. So knowing that about myself, it keeps me from beating myself up too much. You know, I'm not very good at a great long-term plan. I'm better waiting until near the last second and doing some preparation and just going without too much preparation. So it did say I would be good at sales or entrepreneurship, and of course I did both of those and started in sales and eventually became an entrepreneur. So what were some of the good decisions I made to help me along the way? And it might be a little different than you think.

The first one was, once I picked technology sales, it's kind of the place I wanted to start, I did something a little bit unusual. I just literally drove across the country, went to where the mecca of technology sales is, which of course is Silicon Valley, and started working there. So I didn't have a job lined up. I just knew that was kind of the center of all that was technology.

And I started networking and got a few jobs out there and learned a lot about how to sell over the phone, how to sell technology. That was probably, that's probably the most important move that I made. I would say another one was, you know, because of all that was going on in kind of Apple and Microsoft and all these startups,

I was kind of convinced I wanted to be part of the company. I wanted to own part of the company, at least have options and not just go work somewhere. And so that was part of my criteria when I was looking for a job when I eventually moved back to Greenville. and I found this little company data stream small. And as part of my negotiations, I said, you know, I'm looking for a place where I can have ownership of the company, even a small piece. And so that was a decision I made in my early 20s.

That was what I was looking for. And that's what we found. So here's something. What slowed you down? Well, I'd say the biggest thing was, I was so in a hurry to sell stuff and make numbers and grow the company that I didn't take near enough time out for training. And, you know, gosh, it worked out, but it would have been a lot easier and maybe a higher arc if we had taken, you know, half a day a week and said, how are we going to make the sales team better? How are we going to get them where they understand the problem better, how they're going to understand our solution,

better and just, including myself, coach them up and train and practice for how to get better and better and better as salespeople, not just making more and more and more calls. So that's one of the number one things I would suggest you all do as you start your career. Gosh, if you don't have a career yet, if you're not working yet, you can do a lot more than a half a day a week. But it's an investment, I promise you, if you make it, you will be so much stronger when your 25, 30, 30, 35, 40, if you're giving yourself a half a day a week of training on how to get better. And if your company won't do it, do it for yourself. Go to noobeschool.org. We got all kind of

training stuff there for you. One thing you wish you would have known when you started. And here's another thing. It's kind of around training. But again, I was so in a hurry to sell stuff that I didn't learn the solution as well as I would have liked to. I think if I'd have taken more time to learn the solution and learn what actual problems it was solving and just get a lot better, almost like someone that a paid consultant would go out in the field and analyze how this software is actually going to do it. We were more like salespeople and then consultants and we'd work together to sell. I think we'd have done better.

I would have if we'd have had the salespeople learn more on the front end. of how everything worked. So I'd recommend that. So what's your favorite word? My favorite word is absolutely. Absolutely. That's a word that we used a lot and I still use a lot. It is, for me, it's kind of a reminder.

You know, we hear a lot of people you say, hey, can you be there on Tuesday afternoon to help us with something? And somebody might say, yeah, sure. Yeah, we'll be there. Okay. We'll be there. We'll do it. You know, that's one way to do it. Another way to do it would be absolutely.

Absolutely, absolutely we'll be there. It just makes the customer feel different. I think it forms a better bond. So I just like the word and I think I like to live a life that's more of an absolutely, you know, let's do this kind of life versus a, yeah, okay. All right, we'll do it. Absolutely. Best advice.

for Noobes. Again, I would mention noobschool.org again, that's the website that we put together. It's got tons of free videos. It's got all the podcasts we've done. It's got some different levels of like coaching help that I give to people that want to get their first job and get trained up to businesses that are looking to have me maybe come train their sales team and get them where they're selling more stuff, I guess. And then we have something called Presidents Club, which you can subscribe to, which is like $30 a month. And for that, we have a regular weekly Zoom class every week. We're live on Zoom and we're coaching you up on how to get that first job, how to interview, what sales 101, what does some of the buzzwords you need to know. So it's just a continuous coming and going of people that are looking for that first job. So go to noob school.org. check out the presence club. So anyway, that's it for me.

I appreciate everyone tuning in for these episodes every week. And again, if I can help you, can find me at noobschool.org. And it's my mission to help people find a great path as soon as possible when they start their work career. Thank you. Hey, it's John here. Thanks for listening today. Please check out noobobschool. That's my website.

That's where we have other videos and content that can help you get started in sales.