Noob School - Episode 37: How to Succeed in Sales with Zero Training with James McKissick

Episode Date: March 4, 2022

John Sterling Noob School Podcast Descriptions Jim, aka "Yummy," had an interesting start in sales: liquor. After college, he and his buddies opened up their own shop and earned their chops the hard way in one of the most competitive industries around. Once he got his start in investments for SunTrust, he had a rough start due to little formal sales training beforehand. He kept grinding and came out on top! Strap in and get ready to learn some key advice from Jim as he shares how he made his way from Noob to Pro. Screen reader support enabled.

Hey there, welcome back to Noob School. We have a special guest today. James McKissick, his friends call him yummy. That's right. Good sales name, by the way. James and I have been friends a long time, and I know him to be a great salesperson through personal dealings with him, through his real estate, and some of the entrepreneurial ventures he's been involved in.

So I've known James a long time, and hopefully we'll be able to glean some of his experiences that'll be helpful to the nobs. So, James, welcome aboard. Well, thank you so much, John. I'm delighted to be here, and I'm thrilled that you asked me. Awesome. Awesome. So tell us how you got started in sales in the first place.

Well, I guess my father was an entrepreneur in pretty much every sense of the word. Yeah. And he was into all kinds of different things. Yeah. And he had one of his good friends down at the beach was a man named Jimmy Moore. And Jimmy was just a consummate statesman politician, great guy. Yeah. And one of my dad's closest friends. And I think my father had to put down his job title somewhere for some position,

something that he was doing. And Jimmy Moore found it. And it said, Foster McKissick, and it said, what's your job title? And he said, sales. And so I knew from an early age, I mean, everything, everything involved. a sale. Yes. And even Zig Ziglar says that right.

Yes. You know, nothing happens without a sale in some way, shape or four. Yeah. And so my father, you know, that was just his mantra was everything that he did. There were sales involved with. Right. He's viewed himself as a salesman. Right.

That's interesting because everything I know about you, business-wise, you know, a couple of times you've actually been a salesperson, but when you're running a business or whatever you're doing, you were always in sales. I could tell. You're always a cell. So I'll tell you, since you brought your dad up, when I was in college, I got paired with him for dinner one night at a sedative event. And I was a little nervous, you know, because Mr. McKissick was, you know,

probably the most successful business guy in South Carolina. I had, you know, developed beachfront stuff and car dealerships and convenience stores and movie chains and I don't know, all that stuff. I didn't know what he want to talk about. And so we sit down and kind of, I was kind of, I was kind of, I was kind of clamped up. I wouldn't say anything. And he goes, well, John?

I said, yeah. He's seen any good movies lately? He wanted to talk about movies. Oh, man. And, you know, that's the salesman. He's not leaving his area that he might be selling something in unless he has to. Right. Why would you?

He don't want to talk about Baltimore Ravens football unless he owns the franchise. He's demoted movies. That's exactly right. I love it. Let's love it. I never forgot that, that moment was your dad. So when you got out of South Carolina, did you go right into sales, or were you thinking about some other things? Well, right when I got out of undergraduate school at South Carolina, my brother and I had opened a liquor store.

That's right. Up there off 291, right. Ferris and 291. You know, we figured we were so good at drinking liquor, we could sell it to. Didn't Perry have something to do with that? Barry Keyes worked with us for a long time. Wasn't there some like pilferage? No, Perry drank a lot of the profits.

I mean, you know. He thought, you know, he was getting paid in dollars and all he could drink. Yeah, yeah. It wasn't a smorgasbord. Yeah. No, Perry was fabulous. That's great. That's great.

He's great. We're going to have him on the Noob School soon, I hope. Good. So you all opened up a liquor store right after college. That's right out of the shoes. So entrepreneurial, just right off the get-go. Okay. And that really, I learned.

much from doing that, John, because I thought, okay, here we go. You just open a liquor store and people will come, right? I mean, that's the way you do it. Yeah. It's a really competitive business. And I learned a lot about sales and I learned about how to reach people and about understanding what their needs are. A great deal of it is convenience.

But I learned in that instance that a lot of it is price too. Yeah. Interesting. Or maybe our customer is buying so much that they were price sensitive. I don't know. Yeah. I don't know. Um, so price was a big deal.

Yeah. I remember asking you back then, because I was a customer, I remember asking you, why do so many people buy the small bottles of liquor? Because we'd just always buy the, you know, the handle or whatever. Right. Put it on the bar. And you said, because a lot of those people would drink it all. That's right.

They have to control their drinking by how much they buy. Mm-hmm. Interesting. Yeah. Well, we never would have that problem, would we? No, no, no. Not a million years. No, never.

Well, let's talk about the next thing you did after that. So after being in that business for a couple of years, I realized, you know, one, that that wasn't something that I saw myself in long term. And it was a great opportunity and I learned a lot and unfortunately, it was a painful lesson. It was an expensive lesson, let's put it that way. But it gave me a lot of practical experience and things that I needed to know. Yeah. And even though I'd come out of the university with a business degree, I said, there's a lot I still don't know.

And so that prompted me to go back to business school. Okay. And so I went back and got my MBA at Carolina, which was fabulous because I had a couple of years. Not only, you know, oftentimes you see people go back to school who have worked for somebody else, but I was one of the few that had worked for myself and started a business and come back to a graduate school. And I mean, I tell you, that first semester, I think I worked harder and studied more than I did my cumulative four and a half years of Carolina. Yeah. Just because I was so interested in it and I had practical knowledge that I needed to learn.

Interesting. Okay. So you'd done that business for what, two, two or three years? Mm-hmm. Okay. Yes. All right. And what would you say was the number one thing you took out of the business school that you learned?

Gosh, that's a great question. And I think preparation and knowledge or two really good things that I learned out of that. And understanding finance, my degree or my MBA was in a concentration of finance. And I really learned the time value of money. You know, managing cash flow at a small business like that is a big deal. And you're not worried about at that time investing the money and making sure you're getting the maximum utility out of it. You're just worried about making it sure your checks don't bounce on Friday. right when the jukew liquor comes in right that was but learning the finance end of it

in the financial and how money works and how really how big money works was something that was really impaling to me good it really enlightening I should say that's awesome that's awesome did you have like as much social fund then as you did when you were undergraduate no no not at all you just had to work it was more work I mean we got together as a as a class yeah they did some things But you weren't down there at the elbow room. No, no. And my buddy Bo was in law school at the time down there in Columbia.

I think we went bowling one time together. By and large, it was study, study, study. That sounds very different than what you did as an undergrad. Yes, sir. Tell us something about sales that you thought was true that turned out to be different. Well, I really thought with sales that, you know, you just opened the door and you let people know that, hey, I'm here. I've got what you need. Come get it.

Yeah. I never understood how much work goes into a sale and how much you need to know. And really, the psychology behind somebody that's buying something is just so unbelievably important. Yeah. Wow. Interesting. So you thought that it was more just, you know, we're open for business. You've got a fish market.

You know, come get your fish or whatever it is. And the idea of trying to understand their needs, what their problem is. before you really even introduce your product. Right. And in fact, when I got out of graduate school, having talked with you about what I should do at postgraduate school, you introduced me to a fellow named Tom, and I really can't remember his last name.

I think he worked for Robinson Humphrey down in Atlanta. And so I went down to Atlanta, and I spent the night, and I went and met him one morning at 6 o'clock and did the morning routine with him and went sat beside him for a few hours while he worked. Tom Young. Tom Young. That's exactly right.

He was an investment banker. Yeah. And he was just, he was a great guy and he was killing it and just really enjoyed what he did. And so I thought to myself at that time, I said, you know, that's what I want to do. I really, and that's why I majored in finance at MBA school because of that conversation with you. Interesting. But when I got to SunTrust and, you know, I was in Atlanta, and I was in the capital markets

group and I was selling municipal bonds, which is a very specific product. You know, there's a finite universe for people to buy municipal bonds. They're tax advantage for high net worth individuals, and then property and casualty insurers have to buy them and that kind of thing. So I thought, okay, here I am some big shot coming out of Columbia. You know, I'm going to work for SunTrust in Atlanta. You know, so my sales manager gives me a list of accounts. He said, we'd like to break into these accounts.

I said, okay, great. I'm your man. Then it's like, well, what I do next? He says, we'd like to break into these accounts. So I started picking up the phone and I was calling these New York money managers and I would say hey this is James I'm from SunTrust and they're like who from where James from Atlanta and SunTrust collect it was really an uphill battle just and I really learned to appreciate people's time because these guys I mean they're under the clock the money

managers I mean you know they've got a finite window to sell their product and trade municipal securities or whatever they're doing during the day. And here I was trying to call them in peak business hours and introduce my product and service. And that didn't work out very well. Until I figured out what I was supposed to be doing. And my sales manager, Tom Chuck, was fabulous. And he really helped me along the way. He said, this is how you do it.

He let me for a couple of weeks just churn and burned on the calls. And then he pulled me inside. He said, okay, well, let's try this approach. Okay. So, and I think that's a common tactic. in particularly financial services and probably a lot of sales organizations, is they just, they kind of give the noob a really hard thing to do, even almost impossible.

You say, do this for a while, just to see who's willing to try. And if they're not willing to try, maybe they quit or you run them off or something. And you're just trying to, one more way to figure out who's going to be a long-term player. You think maybe? Absolutely. Okay. And I was, you know, it's when one, you had to, even though I'd come out of graduate school and I knew the product, really to understand it is different from knowing it in a contextual sense from a textbook. So what was the correct way to do it?

You had to build the relationship and figure out what they were looking for. Every money manager. I know. Every money manager is different. I mean, I was calling on Northern Trust in Chicago. Yeah. They were buying munis for retired people. who lived in Florida or Texas or whomever, wherever,

that had had net worth portfolios, and they just didn't want to pay taxes. You know, that's a different product than I would sell in lower floaters to a guy, you know, Peachtree Avenue, or, you know, going to somebody like Goldman Sachs who I was trying to break into. And they were the pinnacle at the time,

and that was, you know, if I could have gotten that account, which ultimately did, you know, that was a really, that was a feather in my cap for that bank, and I'm not trying to, I mean, it was just, That was something I was really proud of doing when I was there. That's great. That's great. Well, I mean, something you just said is so important.

And I hope that the nobs don't forget it is you want to build a relationship the best you can. But then really focus on firing out. What is it they need? Not what is it you got. Right. You don't call and say, hey, this is James from SunTrust. I got some three and a quarters that mature in March. You know, they don't care.

They don't care about any of those three things. Atlanta, SunTrust, James, three and a quarter. known of it. Right. They only hear about their little problem. And could this guy possibly solve it for me? Yes or no, right? So that's a great, it's a great lesson.

Great lesson. Once you learn that, sales becomes a lot easier. Absolutely. So then what? Then what happened? So then we moved back to Greenville. We started having children and decided we needed to live in Greenville and not in Atlanta. And it was, I mean, this was, gosh, 20 years ago.

And it was booming then. I mean, I couldn't live there today. My God bless those people who do. But so it came back to Greenville and tried a few different things and ultimately decided I wanted to get in the real estate business. And that's what I did. I went to work for the Cliffs communities. And that was right before the big bust. Yeah.

Right before the Great Recession. And I really enjoyed that. And I really enjoyed real estate. And one of the things about financial sales or anything, you have to understand really what people are after, number one. But, you know, what is it that's going to meet their need, like you said? And then how can I make this applicable to their life? And if it's real estate, like luxury real estate, I mean, that's a different animal. Because I was so used to selling something on a financial basis.

Yeah. Okay, you're going to buy this and you're going to get X return. Yeah. It's going to, these are the advantages of owning this. When you're selling real estate to somebody who's, you know, coming down here from the Midwest, and this is a second home that they're going to put $2 million in and use it four times a year, you don't talk about ROI. You talk about the experiences that you will have by owning this and the family time and

painting a picture, and I learned how to tell the sell by using stories. Yeah. And it was a complete paradigm shift for me, but I really enjoyed that. Awesome. That's another piece of your. your sales journey was selling that kind of property. That's wonderful. That's wonderful.

The cliffs is an amazing company. They still call the cliffs? It is. It is. But seven great golf courses all around West, you know, around Greenville, Western North Carolina. I've met a lot of people that have come down here because of the cliffs and ended up settling in Greenville or really like it.

So all thanks to you, James. What are some of the things, sales-oriented things that you've done over the years that you'd say to the noobs, hey, this was a good thing I did. This is something I learned. I want to pass it on to you. I would think one of the things that I didn't do in the beginning, which I would love to do over again if I could, was I would read as much as I can. And I would get the knowledge base. That was my buddy Dan, he gave me all kinds of things.

And he would give me Zig Ziglar, Stephen Covey tapes, Tony Robbins. I mean, anything. And I really enjoyed those and listened to them frequently and read the books. And I think that that had I done that earlier in my career, I would have catapulted me a little bit more. Another thing I would do is make sure I had more of a process. You know, especially in the beginning, I think I let my feelings get in the way too much. And, you know, the head trash that you talk about, the Noob's book. I had plenty of head trash and especially coming out of SunTrust and selling to those money managers.

I mean, if I had two minutes on the phone with them, that was a fabulous call. They're just that busy. And so one of the things when I came back to Greenville, I mean, it was much slower pace. I really had to train myself to say, okay, this person has more than two minutes and I'm not bothering them by calling them. Right. And, you know, that's, if you have something that you are passionate about selling and that can help them, you're doing them a favor. It's not, you're not, they're not doing you a favor. If you can help them and they can help you, it's a win-win situation.

Yeah. Like Zig Zigler says, if you can help enough other people get what they want, you'll get what you want. Absolutely. Well, those are great. Those are two great pointers for the nubs that are just starting out is this is the time to set that foundation of knowledge. and most of what you're going to learn about sales has already been learned. Right? I mean, not you won't figure something else yourself or some clever way to do something,

but you don't have to figure it all out. You know, 90% of it's already right there in these books and tapes and websites or whatever. So highly recommend people do that. Innoobstool.org, fantastic site. Yeah. I wish that had been around when you were here. And psychology books, too. Reading about psychology and why people buy is a good thing.

I agree. And the other is just the process. We talk about this with some of the other people. But instead of just kind of being, you know, do this, do that, a little bit willy-nilly, is to have your checklist every day, your 12 things a day you're going to do, no matter whether you had a good day or bad day, you're going to keep doing the prospect and keep doing the learning, keep doing whatever your things are. And again, the weird thing about it is they're watching us, James. And, you know, we both, we've done well. We've had nice business careers so far. But we're telling them all the stuff that we wish we'd have done different

because it would have been so much easier. That's right. I mean, it would have been so much easier. So we're trying to help you, all right? So you mentioned head trash. Do you have any, you want to talk about some head trash, things that you thought, you know, were true as you were growing up. But once you kind of got out in the real world, you figured out this isn't so true.

I think one of the big things was I come from a, my parents were old when I was born and I had great respect for them. And all of their friends were much older than I was. And I was always deferential and taught to be reverent and taught to be respectful of the elders. And so when I first started selling, you know, I was putting them up on a pedestal. And I was down here that slowly I'm not worthy. I can't believe you're even taking the time to talk to me. that lack of self-confidence and that that that didn't that didn't serve me very well and i know you even talk about it in a book when you say you know you call people by their first name and you

establish an equal footing right away yeah yeah because it's you know we're just two people in this earth doing the best we can and um we're all equal in god's eyes yes i i agree that's a wonderful head trash for the nubes to remember and i had the same thing you know my mom's from charleston so it was all this you know yes yes ma'am no ma'am yes mrs so-and-so and you know I I wish I would have figured that out sooner because there was a long time when I was in my mind I was lower than they were right and you know it's it's just it's first of all it's just not true it's just something that we falsely believed so you know you got to go in there equal and equal you know have an equal stature

with the people you're talking to. That's a good one. That's a really good one. And one of the things I like to do now is, especially if I'm talking to somebody who's really successful. Yeah. And instead of being intimidated by that, I go in saying,

how much can I learn from this person? Because they have accomplished so much and seen so much. Yeah. What can I glean from them and help them at the same time? Yeah. You know, instead of going in that scared or inferior attitude. I'll give you another idea is there's two things you can do there. As you can think,

What is it that you do that you are better than them at? Tennis, right? Probably. You're probably a better tennis player than they are. You're probably a better runner than they are, right? There's probably many other things I can't even think of. And so, you know, I try to think of that when I'm talking to someone who might be like, you know, super rich or some big CEO or something. It's like, well, you know, we've got to check all the boxes here.

You know, maybe we're about April. That's right. I only got switched places with you. The other is, and I've seen this done a few times, is that you, whatever that thing is that where you kind of own the home court, is you try to get that person on that court with you. So if you are, and I've got a friend who does this, he's out in Seattle, he's great oarsman. So he's like he does the crew and all that kind of stuff. So he just tries to get his people to go, you know, let's go, let's do some crew. and some oren or whatever.

So he's like the boss out there. You know, no matter who's got, how much money you've got in your pocket, once you get on one of those shells, he's the boss, you better listen to him because if not you're going to fall out of the shell. It's freezing cold.

So he tries to get the playing field kind of on his terms. And you can do it with tennis. You can do it with golf. You can do a lot of things. That's a good point. Yeah, that's a good point. So do you have one last piece of advice for the nubes?

One last piece of advice. Be diligent with your process and your knowledge. Make sure that you're doing the things that are getting you closer to your goal every day. I remember one time, and I didn't ask you this, but there was somebody that was working with you or for you at DataStream. And they wanted to take Friday afternoon off to go to the beach or whatever, something I probably would have done. And you asked that person, you said, well, I mean, you know, that sounds. reasonable but how was that going to help you get to your monthly goal yeah yeah that's true it's true well yeah I mean we would at that there's different

there's different situations but we know we had we had a hard drive in fast growing company we want people like taking off early and right you know all that kind of junk so so let's do this now let's promote yourself a little bit tell us what you're doing now and how how you might be able to interface and partner with these viewers. Well, sure, thank you. I am, I have what I call professional ADD or business ADD, so I like to do things for a few years and then move on. Yeah. And most recently I built, I was in the property management business. I've always, I've been in real estate since 2005 and selling commercial real estate, but my finance background,

I said, okay, you know, you need residual income. Recurring revenue really helps you build wealth. And so I said, property management does that. Especially coming out of the Great Recession, you know, there were no real estate sales. So I built that business up and sold it. And so now I'm doing something completely different. I still do a little real estate, but I'm in the medical waste business. And we have been, we have really persevered on that one because working with state regulators, it's a tough permit to obtain.

And then once you obtain it, it's tough to keep it because the regulatory issues are tough. Well, they're checking you all the time? Absolutely. Yeah, okay. And a good thing. I mean, we're dealing with infectious waste. I mean, things that could harm the public. And so they're doing their job and they're doing it very well.

But so now what we do is we do medical waste. So we pick up on infectious waste, biohazard stuff from doctors offices, funeral homes, hospitals and the like. And we treat it in our plant. We're one of two in South Carolina that can actually treat medical waste. And we have the largest permit at 25 million. pounds. So you treat it and then what happens to it? Then it goes to the landfill. Okay. And that's per de-hex guidelines. So once you treated it to some degree,

to the degree that they say it's okay, then it just goes to the landfill. That's right. Okay. Yeah, it's a very strict process that we have to go through. The autoclave gets on 285 degrees and treats it for 30 minutes with steam and pressure and kills all the microbes and we have a test tube that we use in there to make sure it does that. That's well. So, So what are you trying to do with that business now? We're just trying to grow it like crazy. We did really well last year. We were up 250%.

Nice. And had a good year. And we just, you know, that's, they're not, with people aging, medical waste is not going anywhere. And it's, we've got a new technology that we're chasing that will hopefully be fun. And I can tell you more about that later. But for right now, we're just blocking and tackling and trying to get new accounts. We're the local guys.

And really the big player in the market is, it's not very nice and they kind of bait and switch you with a low rate but then they kill you on the insular fees so we just do a flat rate pricing and you know we charge you from what we pick up period yeah and so our customers like that it's much more transparent but good but eastern med waste we're located right here in greenville okay we serve a south carolina north carolina georgia and florida okay and um yeah sir we've got 18 218 wheelers running now and six sprinter vans and you have getting to drive it? I do. It's good, clean fun. I've driven it out of the parking line. I know, I know. I would like to bring over my grandsons and ride around the truck in the parking

line. There you go. Do we do that? Absolutely. Now we're talking. Now we're talking. All right. Well, James, always mighty proud of you, all the different things you're doing and your great, wonderful smile and attitude. We're delighted to have you on the Noob School to help the Nobs out. and we will bring you back, you know, bring you back soon and get an update on what's going on with the business and everything else. Well, that would be great. And again, it was a pleasure being here. And thank you. I'm super proud of your book.

All right, man. You know, a published author here. You know. You have a lot of knowledge, and you have been very good to counsel me over the years. And I certainly appreciate it. Well, thanks for listening sometime. Thanks, James. Thank you.

All right. Hey, is John here? Thanks for listening today. please check out noobschool.org. That's my website. That's where we have other videos and content that can help you get started in sales.