Noob School - Episode 72: Panel for the Noobs: Marty Osborn & Johnny Bofilios

Episode Date: June 2, 2023

Noob School is back again, this time we have a panel! John is joined by repeat guest Marty Osborn, and a first timer in Johnny Bofilios. Delve into the vast experience of these three and take away helpful info to implement into your own sales career. Check out what Noob School has to offer here: https://www.schoolfornoobs.com/ I'm going to be sharing my secrets on all my social channels, but if you want them all at your fingertips, start with my book, Sales for Noobs: https://amzn.to/3tiaxsL Subscribe to our newsletter today: https://bit.ly/3Ned5kL #noobschool #salestraining #sales #training #entrepreneur #salestips #salesadvice

New School. All right, welcome. Welcome to Noob School. Today I have, I got a panel. It's a sales panel, and I've got two good friends and folks I used to work with. Marty Osborne over here. Welcome, Marty. Hey, John.

Welcome back. It's good to be back. Welcome back. Yeah, I'm glad. And Johnny B., or Johnny Bophilius here in the center square is here. Where do you work for now, Johnny? I work with Accenture. Accenture.

You work with Accenture. Okay. So these guys, when I worked with them, Johnny was a crack pre-sales man. So he would go out with the salespeople to create the product demo view that the salesperson had maybe promised. Or we promised together. Maybe you promised together. Of all the people we worked with, Johnny was the best at that, I think partially because there's a secret salesperson in him that has finally come out. That is correct. The demon has come out.

It was always in there. I think it just sometimes we didn't know it until it would come out. But by the way, one of the things, John, I want to get started. I have to tell a story about Johnny. Sure, man, do it. And he'll laugh. Like, one of my favorite things was I took over the pre-sales team. And I just remember, like, we were doing a demo, and I may have been for Chevron.

And the pre-sales guy was working and his systems crashing. And I'm like, what's going on? And he's like, you know, we only have a 10-meabite hard. hard drive, you know? And I'm like, you're kidding me. We spend like millions of dollars, right, to get this deal. And we came to afford a right hard drive. So we buy new hard drives. Larry thinks it's great. And he says, I want you to take over the pre-sales team now. I said, okay. So I hunt down Johnny and I hired Johnny. I said he needs to be part of the team. I've heard good things about him. And so the first year, I'm sitting down with the team and I list everybody's like

how much they've sold. And Johnny, do you remember what your number was? Yeah, I was a goose egg. It was zero. Zero. Literally, I'm going through it. I'm like Johnny Bofilios zero. No, he said goose egg. I said goose egg.

So what happened? Well, I went from zero to number three and eventually number one. So nobody's ever going to say I had a goose egg again. So when you started and you went goose that first year, what did you learn that moved you up the ladder? Well, so, you know, there's no excuses in why I had a goose egg, right? I had a goose egg. I was put into a new vertical.

We wanted to start a new vertical called Fleet. So it was brand new. I'm brand new in pre-sales. So now I'm not only brand-new and pre-sales, but brand-new. So at the time, I was trying to, I probably put more effort on learning the fleet information versus learning how to do my job, right? So the lesson there was focus on what's important, and it's important is what's, you know, selling, right? And the other stuff will come.

Yeah. And then the second part was the motivation was, I've never had a goose egg in my life. I've been working for data stream since I got out of college. I've always been successful in every role I ever had, even if you recall, I was in Europe, right? Yeah. And I'm like, I've never had a goose egg. Where's just goose egg coming from? So then that next year, it was, I went to every single salesperson.

They already had their favorite pre-sales folks. I'm like, no, no, no, no, you got to give me a try. And I work harder and faster and smarter to make sure I got their trust. And there you did. You did it. And I think, you know, part of the lesson, because I knew he had the talent. And so the goose egg was more or less like a challenge. Like, and I guess, you know, one of the things in sales is you have the tool, you have

the process. Sometimes you don't get right away the desired result. Right. And too many people quit. They give up. You know, million excuses. Johnny never said to his excuse. He just said, I'm going to work harder than anyone else.

And literally within two years. he was number one. And, you know, through that process, I think we all learned a lot. And again, it was funny is, as Key progressed, the other pre-sales, they're like, well, wait a minute, I used to be number one,

and then that person wanted it. So that was kind of one of my early days sort of favorite stories because people are afraid to rank, people are afraid of where they are. And, you know, we talk about sales over and over again, and I think Johnny and I laugh about it, but there's one commonality

to all great salespeople. and it's this thing called work. Yeah, yeah, and they want to win, yeah. One thing I like to add there, we were talking about you playing the saxophone, right? And, you know, it's a Basker, right? I don't know, basically, so there's one book that I read earlier when I was in pre-sales, learning pre-sales,

but I used to do a lot of reading on how to perfect it in the demonstration. But there was a book we read, Marty and I read about the Basker, and Basker is probably one of the best pre-sales persons out there, right? They do a show. They have to, they get, like, you know, things thrown at them. It's called juicing the jam. You know, we've got an issue.

We've got to make something out of it. So it's very important, you know, those. But learning was one of the keys to the success, right, if I had to say. It was a lot of reading and a lot of preparation and practicing. Well, I'd like to know about your transition from being a great pre-cells person to becoming a salesperson. And now, of course, you're doing very well at that, too. What was that like? It wasn't easy.

It said it was really tough. I had a great start because N4 acquired DataStream, and I was put into what they called the cross-sales role to help cross-sell En4EAM or DataStream A.m. At the time, into non-EAM-N-FOR accounts. So that was an easy transition in sales because I didn't really have to sell it. I had a team that helped me.

So it was kind of, It shielded me a lot from a lot of the sales stuff. But when I left In4 eventually, after 18 years, I was data stream info for 18 years, and I went to a reliability services coming, kind of like eccentric, small. It was my first real exposure into sales because I was dropped in by myself. And there was a lot that I thought I knew, that I did not know, right? You know, I could have the process. The process is the easy part.

It's going through each portion of the process. So I would say I struggled for the first, and Marty, Marty knows this, I struggle for the first five years in sales, kind of like the pre-sells role, except it took me a little bit longer because I was by myself trying to do it. But once the formula and the recipe came together, I think then from there, I was 15 years now, you know, everything's been going great and getting better and better. So I would say, I know a lot of people see sales as easy. It is not. It's not for the thing of heart. You know, I would say that it is easy at some point. You know, once you really know what you're doing and you have your customers you're working with, like it looks easy when you look at someone making a lot of money.

He's not working that hard, right? Exactly. But he's already got the relationships. He knows exactly what to do. So it can look easy. It can become easy. but the first, you know, so many years is not hard. Plus, you started somewhere that didn't have a big support system.

Correct. That's a tough way to do it. Exactly. If I was say a data stream or info at the time, it would have been different. Right. Because I would have had it. But there, I was on my own. Right.

And, you know, I was working with engineers that didn't know anything about sales. So I had to figure that out and work with those personalities. Right. But now I'm working with Accenture, which is, what, almost 700,000 people, you know, $60 billion in revenue. And last year I had a real good year. And this year I'm on board of doing it better than last year. So it's a lot of, it's exciting. It's kind of fun.

Now it's easy. That's right. That's right. But I think part of it is the process, right? Once you sort of learn that process and you have confidence in that is when it, when it shines. And it's funny, one of the things that we always run into is you go out to sell and everybody, the first thing you want to do, they want to talk about their product. They want to talk about how great they are.

Behind them, they're like trying to make quotas. And I think the one thing it drives me crazy when somebody says, I got to have this deal. Or I'm in trouble. And I'm like, what does that have to do with the prospect, right? And so I think one thing that Johnny's learned and watching is that there's a lot of intro meetings. Like sometimes he'll go two, three meetings without ever even mentioning the product or even talking about it. because if you don't have that trust, then you are just another salesperson. And I think that's to me, I've looked at over my career,

is being that trusted advisor, like earning that trust. Once you do, people are open to whatever you do, but right out of the gate, when you're just trying to jam whatever you have down their throat, their first instinct is... I'm not paying him to say all this. No, but I think you're right. And Marty, you know, I've seen...

you're particularly good at that. I think you can get to that place quicker than most people. Maybe because of your attitude in the way you approach you, but also with the title, you know, when you're present of something, it's a little easier to have that kind of, well, let's talk, you know, owner to owner kind of thing.

But that's a key thing that I've been talking about a lot lately and asking people about is how do you go from first meeting to that trusted advisor position? And of course, the wrong way to say, we'd like to be your trusted advisor. Yeah, yeah, right? Haven't heard that before. No, no.

No. Yeah. So, I mean, I think what you just said is exactly a good start in that you just, we're just here to learn. We're here to learn and we're to learn about you and not bring up anything, not say, well, we've been in business 17 years. We've got over 484 customer. Who cares?

Who cares? And we have an end of the month special. Yeah. Sometimes that works. Or sometimes the boss makes you. Only in case of emergency. In case of emergency. I mean, people love good deals.

We've got to be honest. But I think long term, it's when you show a general or a real interest in the other person in that prospect is when they know you're there to help. And I think we probably talked about it in my first one, you always asked like what's your favorite book. And hands down it's the challenger sale. Each and every day. And it's, I guess, another funny story is John put out a question around, I think, I think it was noob school. And, you know, you had some ideas on the name and so forth.

And so I sent John back on Christmas. I was probably Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. And I said, John, do you mind if I challenge you? But I think these are all really bad ideas. Bad names. And here's my idea. And you wrote back and you just kind of laughed and said, that's Marty the Challenger.

And, you know, that to me, you know, people want to be taught something new each and every day. And I think as salespeople, when we know our craft, and we know the people, then we can start to challenge them to think differently. And that's what I think you get the respect and, you know, to earn the right to then call in, you know, a favor or call in a deal. Yeah, I agree.

And if, you know, I would just say, I'll ask this to the group. Maybe we can all do it our own way. But if it was the end of the quarter, and you were under some pressure to make a certain number, just hypothetically, what is the best way to make that offer to your trusted customer. Well, that's a very good question.

So it all has to do, though, with what you've done before, right? The first thing is, and everybody knows this, all of my colleagues, co-workers, and friends that are in sales, and it's all about pipeline. So if you have enough pipeline, you're not going to have to worry about asking that question if you need it, so you have that favor. But there's a book I read by, it's called The Way of the Wolf. It was the gentleman, it was about the wolf of Wall Street,

but he wrote a book on how, you know, on playbook. Sales is not linear. Sales is, you know, if it was linear, it would be easy for you to close a deal. But it has these three attributes that, for sure, you have to go from a zero to a 10, that you have to have. Each one is you have to have trust and a relationship with the client. They got to believe in the product or your idea, and they've got to believe in your company and its references, right?

And you've got to take those from a zero to a 10. So every meeting you do, you've got to move that. If you've done all those and say the product or ideas maybe at a five or six, but the trust is at a nine, and you say, hey, look, I need a favor. You know, I know you need this. I know you have this slotted. But, you know, this is the time where I need to cash in one of my chips. And nine out of ten times, most of those times.

You get that end of the quarter number that you're looking for, right? You try not to cash it, but you. But if you have it, you have to, that's... So, Marty, how would you phrase it? Well, I got to go on that one just for a second. Do you remember, John, you put me out on the West Coast. I was the VP of Sales for while you were trying to find somebody. I said, I'll do it for a while.

And we had Louisiana Pacific. Yeah. It was the end of the... It was like Christmas Eve. It was, we were trying to close the deal. We had built the trust. They believed in the product. It's just we couldn't get over the line.

And I remember picking up the phone and somehow, maybe the receptionist or something was gone. So I got the guy on the phone and he's like, hello. And I go, this is Marty Osborne. We've been working with your team. And I kept going through all the things. And he goes, we'll just do it the next year, next year, next year. And finally I just said, it's Christmas.

Can you sign the deal? Like, I just did that. And the guy finally says, I'll sign it under one condition. You never call me again. I said, dude, it's done. Deal. Deal. We got the Louisiana Pacific.

So, you know, every once while, again, I think if you do those three things. Yeah. One other technique, and I thought, Johnny, you might have said this, but Jim Camp, which has a book called Start with No, is sometimes you start with the no, like you hand the no chips. I always said in deals, there's two things, right? If you give somebody the power to say no, then all of a sudden they dropped their defenses.

And so a good example is you get a call from a salesperson and they're trying to sell. your first mind is get them off the phone, get them off the phone, get them out the phone. I don't know what you're saying. I just got to get you off the phone. If I start to call with, hey, John, this is Marty. I know it's the end of the month and look,

I got something I want to share with you, but please, at any point in time, if you want to say no or just stop me, say no and I'll stop. I'll go away. I just have something I want to share with you, but I also know I want to respect your time, just say no.

Once I hand you that no chip, you're like, all right, well, I got to hear what you got to. say. And you drop that mindset. I say, we're at the end of the quarter. We have this deal. It doesn't normally come up. And I just want to know that you're aware of it if you want to take advantage of it. If not, I get it. I understand if you want to say no. And it's funny when you hand somebody the power to say no, they don't take it. It's weird. It's one of the greatest things that even in cold calling, we've talked about this, is say, look, I don't know if this is for you.

I don't know, but I would love to share some things with you. Is it okay? And again, at any point in time, you just hand me that no chip. And you drop their defenses and people will listen because you've respected their ability. And people don't say no. It's kind of funny, but you know, like, you know, if you don't do that, they're just trying to get off the phone. So that might be another way of doing it is start with that no, give them that chip. And you'll be amazed that how much further you get.

Well, I would There's many ways to get it done I know your way probably works for you But I would agree more I mean I would do more like what Marty did I would say something like Hey Marty you know It probably doesn't make sense for you guys

But I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't tell you that Our corporate people are throwing these end of the year discounts out there so if you want to get the stuff Anyway you can get it cheaper if not We'll do it next year You know something like that I wouldn't that's not wasting anything I'm not wasting a chip or anything

with them, not asking for it. I'm actually, so less likely to get the deal than your way, but I'm also not pushing them as hard. Well, actually, I guess I misspoke a little bit. It's not wasting a chip. It's mostly like if you ever read the book, jab, jab, jab, jab, right hook. Gary Van derby. You've jabbed a lot, and so you've never right hooked. And you've maybe that's a right hook.

Maybe that's a, hey, look, I put a lot into the bank account, and I know I'm asking for a withdrawal. You know, you could say no. but, you know, this is just an opportunity because, you know, we're trying to, you know. That's a good point. That's a good point. It's funny because that book, Gary Vee and that Jab, Jab, Right Hook, it really is like a boxing.

When you get in the ring, so many reps are trying to knock the guy out. You have not earned the right, and you're just going to flail. If you watch a boxing match, it is jab, jab, jab, jab until you're ready to hit him. And it's a great analogy for sales. Yeah. There. Yeah.

How about you? So you said you would do it. You would just put the this, you know, we'd say, hey, we're having an end of the year. It's a benefit. But then sometimes, like, you know, they listen to you. And, well, you know, it's okay. You know, I guess I get it. I know.

But that's the thing is I can say that, Johnny, but I hadn't been, I hadn't had my ass on the line to make the number, you know, at the end of a quarter, you know. Yeah. Yeah. I can be a little more, you know, gentlemanly about it. But I, this happened to me once back to our thing about being a trusted partner. It's kind of a weird story. but my old house, we discovered there was this just horrible mold in the basement, an unusual, kind of the underground part, not the part where you really, you know, you sit.

Like if you crawled under there. And so I said, well, you know, Jennifer call whoever the mold man is and get him over here. And so he was there when I got home from work one day. And he's sitting in the living room, like having a glass of tea with Jennifer. He was wearing like a suit or a blazer anyway and a nice, nice older man. And I said, well, hey, how are you, Charlie? You know, I was going downstairs, look at the damn mold. He was, I thought we sit up here.

I just want to get to know you a little bit and find out a little bit more about, you know, what's going on down there. And he just slowed me down. Yeah. Slowed me down. And he asked, even though it's kind of crazy to think he's asking me about, what do I know about mold? It just slowed me down and got me thinking this guy is actually trying to understand the big picture, how long we've been in the house, when do we plan to sell it. He's trying to figure out how much he needs to do.

And finally, after 30 minutes, we go down and do it. And he gave me a quote the next day and did the work. But it just, he became a trusted advisor compared to most mold men right off the bat, just having a glass of tea and talking to me. Well, he knew if you said, I'm going to be in this house for a while. He may have done one set of pricing because you want it long term. or if you're getting ready to sell, he may say, I know you're going to get money,

you're not going to be able to sell the house with this. I mean, he was just arming his gun for you, and you're like, blez, Brilbo Garcia used to say, right? I mean, one of the greatest lines, and to me, the negotiation is what's on their sheet of paper. Right. As salespeople, we don't know what's on their sheet of paper when, as they're saying it,

you're going to say the stupid comment. You're going to be like, I got to get rid of this mold and my wife is about to kill me until I get it done. And he'd be like, okay, right? He knows you can't argue. So, yeah, I think taking time to understand what's on that sheet of paper and then, as Bill always said, I love the greatest line is listen for the stupid comment. It's always there.

And just so that's a great story. Yeah. Yeah, I think, you know, he basically created the frame for you, right? and then the messaging and then the tie down. So he basically got you to slow down, kind of like, you know, Tom Brady, right? Why is he always winning? He always figures the way to slow down the game, right? He slowed you down.

You got your wits about you. Then he learned more about you. And honestly, he probably could have charged 10 times more and you would have paid for it because he just created that relationship. He did a good job. He did a good job. He really did a good job. So I got a question for you, John.

I mean, how many interviews are you now in? Oh, gosh, I think we're in the 70s. Yes, 70s. And, you know, I guess as you've gone through these, what are some of the things that jump out at you that just have kind of hit you differently that, you know, are techniques that salespeople use or we need to keep in front of us every day?

The best common trait of all the super winners that we've had on is kind of what we're talking about now. They wait and they learn and they're like, my job is to figure out how to make Marty successful. That's job one. Now, job two and three and four are working on the contract and negotiating the price and all that kind of stuff, winning the deal. All that's over here somewhere. But how do I figure out how I can make you successful is the first thing that Mike Bauer would talk about or Dirk Piper or any of these guys that are one of these big businesses in Greenfield? or, you know, Nate Barr and T.J. Pomeyam that are doing these monster deals for SAP and for

Salesforce. They're like, I'm in there trying to figure out what my buyer needs. And I won't quote until I really understand it. That's the number one thing. That doesn't surprise you, doesn't. No, no, it doesn't. And it's funny because I always said earlier, like the time chip, like that was the other thing that cracked me up is whoever kind of owns the time chip, like, you know, if you're holding that time chip, and I can slow down, then I'm going to win. And it cracked me up, like, with cars. Like last year, my wife wanted a new car.

I went in and they're like, we have two coming in August and two coming in December. Which would you like? I don't take the August one at whatever you charge. Because I lost the time chip. And so there are times when somebody comes to you and just says, I've got to have this now. I'll do whatever.

Then you respond. But most people, that time chip, is huge. Yeah. So that's the other thing, and we've talked about this, we can open this up, but is on interviewing, which is a real important topic for Noob School, because the Noob schoolers are either getting a job or they're going to switch jobs, but they really want to understand how can they put their best foot forward in the interviewing process. So what are some of the things that, like, Johnny, you've seen with the folks, like when you've interviewed or you've interviewed people,

what have they done well and what have they done poorly? So my framework is really, really simple, and I know probably, you know, everybody says, oh, duh, but the three things that I look at is, you know, do they understand their purpose, are they willing to put in the work, or have they put in the work, and are they willing to continuously learn, right?

And when I'm interviewing, and we get a lot of young people at Accenture to interview, and I look at them, and I'm trying to understand, all right, what is their purpose? You know, what are they trying to do? Are they in here? Because I want to make a lot of money. Great.

That's awesome. Right? That's what we all want to do. All right, how you feel like you're going to go about doing it, right? What was that, Art Williams? Just do it! I don't know if you've seen that, Just Do it. Anyway, that always.

want to say that when they say that when I make a lot of money. Just do it. But um and then I said, okay, you know, it's a lot of work. I mean, you know, it's like going to the gym, right? You can't, you're not going to just lose weight or be fit. You got to go to the gym every day. Each deal, you got to put on that effort. It's a lot of work and you have to continuously learn to be better. And so I try to get those traits out of them and I tried to explain to them that if you can do those three things, right? If you can, if you, if you, you know, if you, if you, you know, have some values and you have the work ethic and you do the right thing, then you're going to be successful and, and I can help you get there, right? But I, I can't teach those things. So if,

if you don't have them, you know, then it's going to be a tough world, right? Sure, you're going to walk into some jobs and you can sell like cell phones or certain things that don't have a long lead time. That's a lot. It's easy. Yeah. But when you're selling things that we sell, yeah, you know, It's not like somebody wakes up in the morning and goes, hey, Johnny, I need some of that censor stuff you're selling. I wish it was, right? So when we're going to go into this, if we're going to go into this journey,

I need to make sure that you've got that baseline, right? So that's what I look for. Three things. So the ability to continually evolve and learn. Correct. To put in the work and that they've done their homework? So part of the done of their homework is the work. Okay.

Right? I miss something. Yeah, no, the value. Right? What do you stand for? Okay. Right? Are you, you know, if I'm having, if we're going to have a meeting, right, and I'm not,

and I don't believe in the same thing as you believe in. Yeah. I'm going to try to be somebody different. Sorry, I'm going to be somebody different, right? So if I'm going to be somebody different, then I'm going to be fake. So, you know, you're going to work together. You know, you've got to make sure you nurture the client, you know, you learn about the client, you know, all that, let's go in there.

But I just break it down to those three simple things because that comes from your core, right? You're born that way or you grew up that way. And if you grew up, if you did not, then that's not something I look for or I even help them trying to go after because I just, I know it's just hard, right? It's a lot of work to do it. and if you don't, at the end of the day, it's all about work, honestly. It's all about work and effort.

What about you, Marty? What are your top, top advice? What's your top advice for interview? Well, one thing is I'll flip it a little bit just in when we interview, right? And one of the things we learned a while back was to slow down. And one of the challenges I think companies have is they hire too fast. He's a great guy. And then it doesn't work.

I don't know why. it didn't work out. Like, you only interviewed them once. And so it's kind of funny, but we have 15 interviews. So when we were at Voco, it was going to be 15 interviews because what I knew is eventually I'm going to get to who you are, right? We're going to walk through this. We're going to take our time.

And what we're looking for is that person, one, who is willing to stick with it, right, that believes in it, that did their homework that says, this is the company I want to come work for this is why I want to work there and I'm going to stick to it and believe it or not I mean it's shocking and is that I've had like parents send me notes saying why won't you hire my kid he's already been there twice what's going on wow and we're like yep got it exactly what we want we know who he is now yeah because everybody's really good at the you know what are your strengths what are your weaknesses that kind of stuff you were a tree if you were a tree if you were a tree You know, what was that one?

How many gas stations are there in the United States? That was my question. Yeah, you know, it kind of flips people to think. But part of it is it's one of the process. Like, how do you get people to, like, again, to show their patience and to show how and why they want it? And to me, you know, probably to last thing is just what questions they ask. Because a great salesperson is a great question. And if they don't ask any questions.

How long does that take, Marty, if you're doing 15. interviews. What's the, what's the, was that weeks, months? What is it? It could be anywhere from, I mean, it could probably take 30 to 60 days. You do a couple of interviews per day. Yeah, a couple of interviews. And then our favorite one is, what we do is we would go through, obviously we started with one of the fun things. And again, these are little, I hate to say, I'm going to teach the tricks. So people have them. We did something called Spark Source and, or Sparkhire. And Sparkhire. And Spark would be you basically get on a video and a question comes up and you have one minute to think about and one minute to answer. That's four questions. And it's hilarious because you go through it and you

just want to kind of get in their mind and what they think about quickly. There's no delete or redo because we want to know firsthand. And some people will screw up and probably the best answer is like, let me do it again. And it shows human. There's other people that are like, this is ridiculous. There's No, they get all pissed off. Out. Yeah. You're gone. So we always start with that, and then we go through the interviews.

And then our last interview is a 30-minute presentation in front of, we'll have six, eight, ten people. And you get to talk about anything you want. But it's 30 minutes to see if you can put together a cohesive presentation. And it's, I mean, we've seen everything all over the board. How many people who've gotten to that? presentation out of 10 and not made it. Oh gosh. I would say over half don't make it.

So they've done 14 interviews. And they don't make it because they can't do that. They can't do that. Wow. And like again, they start to weed out. But it's amazing. Like you can say all the right things.

And we see all the right attributes. And then we realize that you're going to be in whatever. And if you can't stand up. No. We used to do, Marty. we used to, after all the screening we did, we would then say in the first 30 days you've got to read this book, Atlas Shrugged,

which is a thousand pages long. Yeah. And we had people who literally lost their jobs because they couldn't do it. They were just, they would, listen, listen, okay, I don't know how many hundred salespeople read the book, all right? I don't know if any of them actually read the whole book.

Yeah. But a lot of them kind of read it quickly or scanned and looked at YouTube or something. But the ones who couldn't even fake it a little bit, who just said, I give up. Yeah, I'm out. I'm out. I mean, so anyway, it's another way to test. Obviously, you know, those people will find something they can do, but we don't want them on our team. I just, I'm amazed at how quickly people hire, fire, just change the game.

And so to me, if somebody is slow playing you, it's not a bad thing. Appreciate it. understand it. To get on the right team. To get on the right team. Because this is serious stuff. I mean, to me, sales, like, the greatest is when you can sell for five, ten, 15 years. But change in every two years. Oh, it's so hard. It's like Johnny, when he changed to a different company, has to learn a whole new everything, right? So you have to do as a salesperson.

That's no good. One thing I will say about Marty's approach to hiring before we both went to Accenture, you know, I was doing some consultants. for Voco and helping. And we were in really a big need of a lead generation person, right? I had to get him hired, him or her hired, because I was like, we're behind the eight ball. So I might have circumvented this process. And this person had all the attributes that I'm talking about, but there was something that

this interview does uncover. And first week, this person's on the job where we're having pizza and beef. here at this place off of Pleasenburg. I don't know where it was, not Pleasant, whatever it was. Grateful brew. Yeah, and this person makes a comment. Marty comes up to me and goes, oh, she's not the right person for us. She ain't going to survive. She ain't going to survive. Now what? And he told me, and oh, man, and by God, didn't survive for another week. And I was like, how did I miss that? Okay, we can't shortcut the process. Yeah. And you want to know what the comment was a stupid comment. She worked for the Phillies and ticket sales.

And I said, oh, that's pretty cool. How was that? And she went on a 15-minute rate about what's the big, what's the Bryce Harper, and how much money he made and that everybody in the ticket office was getting screwed. And that was her comment of the office was. And we hired it in sales. And so it's like, yeah, this is going to work. I got something. And I think, Johnny and I were having a conversation.

We're talking about data streams and you, John. Yeah. What was the one thing you said that John did that stood out to you? And I never got to be a true part of it. I did get to participate in a lot of your meetings when you bring Garcia and you do all those events. And you always brought the pre-sales team as part of it. But the one thing I noticed, you always made all your sales team record their phone calls. And then after you recorded it, you sit down with them and you'd go through not to berate them on what they did wrong,

but just to dissect that call and what the response could have been. And I've used that today. I have a tape of pro call. And I love that because, and everybody doesn't want to do it. It's uncomfortable. It's horrible. Right? But it's such a great tool, and you taught me that because I think that I can, okay, you see,

when you said this, another response could have been this. That your response was wrong, but, you know, and that also, that helped. I mean, you had like a significant amount of inside sales folks that you had to get on the right track, and that's an impressive feat to be able to do that, right? Well, the main thing. I learned from doing all those calls, and I still do some today, is just people talking too much.

Just literally, I'm like, here's the one piece of paper, okay, and there's seven questions on it, all right? Here's, be friendly, be friendly, you know, and ask for the order at the end or something. I mean, and it would just be all off of the races about something that's not relevant. Yes. And so,

if you can just stop people from doing that for one, for one thing, and then the second thing is just for somehow, I'm listening to your call and I'm like, hold on, stop the tape. Did you skip number five and number six? Yeah. Why don't you skip them?

They're right here in front of you. All you kind of do is read them. And so, particularly when people begin sales, if they can come up with a script and just literally, in their own voice, just work their way down and find out what's the situation. That's all you want to know. What's the situation?

You don't have to get the order and then come back to the next time. So I'm glad you enjoyed that, Johnny. If you want me to listen to a tape, let me know. Absolutely. I did a bunch for Marty's Inside Set. Yeah, yeah, we listened to them. We wrote the script.

I mean, I was like, because I had, you know, some newbies, and they were trying to make the calls, and everybody's sort of like, I don't know what to say, and I don't know what to say. And so Johnny, it was just a simple script that just gets them into the zone. And then what happens is they're going to get thrown a curveball. And so Johnny, we would tape it, and then you'd listen to the curveball, and then you'd listen

how they respond. And then you'd say, you know what? They're going to throw these every day. And this is in this category. What if we handle it this way? Yeah. And they're like, oh, yeah. And I'm even guilty.

Like, sometimes I'll be talking to Johnny, and I was going into this big negotiation deal, and he says, let's work through the call. Let's talk to me like you're doing. I'm like, no. He'd get irritated. I'd get irritated. He'd start doing it. I'd be like, I don't need any help.

I don't. And then I'd be like, and then I'd sit back and I'd go, okay, let's do this. And sure enough, 15 minutes, 20 minutes in, I'm like so much more comfortable. But, yeah, people like, when you get put on the spot, you freak out. Right. And, but, you know. Well, if you're like in that negotiation, I'm sure 90% of it went exactly like you practiced. It's amazing.

If people will practice these things, the call goes about like you think it's going to go. Why do you think that? Why? I think that we have heard a lot of conversations with people, and they're typically similar. If we ask this, they're going to say this. So, yeah, I think we kind of know about what they're going to say. And if they say something weird, like if we're on question number four and they say something like, is your company ever thought about acquiring any other companies?

Yeah. You say, you know, I'm not exactly sure on that, but let me ask you this. You go right back to number five. You don't get off, pwing, you know, off somewhere else. The red, what is it, the smoke herring, the red herring, the red herring, right? But here's the thing about that, is you're framing the conversation, right? Because if you leave a simple question, like, you know, like, hey, what's your favorite color? My favorite color is green.

Okay, well, we're good. But if you say, what's your favorite color? Well, growing up, I grew up on an island in Greece, and, you know, the ocean was blue and all the houses work, you know, white and blue. So really love blue because I just love that picture. It's always in my head. Now I just framed why it's blue. So we, so when we do this, it's like we're framing it for them not to interpret anything, which drives, which takes the conversation to where you want to go. So we do it. We just don't label it kind of like that. But that's what I, that's how I say. It's like I'm framing the conversation to go my way. Yeah. I mean, preparation. I mean, I laugh. I was in the

biggest negotiation of my life selling the company. And you get like my business partner and everything else. I have pages and pages. I would write the script. Every conversation I would write down. I would run it by Johnny and I would talk through it. And Steve would always look at me and go, how'd you know they were going to say that? I had no idea.

I just took them through these steps. I knew I wanted to go through these things. And it's just hilarious how when you prepare, people will follow. you. People will follow where you want them to go and you'll get the information you need. And so, yeah, I would say at the end of the day, we summed up the whole conversation, it really sounds like preparation and patience, right? Why don't we do one more question each? And I'll go last. So Johnny, you get the first question. I always get the first question. Do you want Marty to have the first question?

Okay. All right. So, um, so I heard. our interview earlier and I found a very, very interesting, especially your last question was when you asked the previous gentleman, you know, you asked them, what am I not asking, right? So I really love that question, but that's, that's, we can't, that's not for here. But I guess I heard you asking, like, what's your favorite book, what your favorite movie. So I am going to ask you what your favorite book is. Oh, Atlas Shrugged.

Atlas Shrugged, yeah, Enrand. We read it? Absolutely, like five times. It's my favorite book. I wish I'd get my 16-year-old to see it to read that. Well, you're going to have to use all your powers of persuasion to get the 16-year-old to read. That's correct. It's amazing how at that age, she wrote a book.

I mean, you know, a lot of people could debate that book, but, I mean, it's got a lot of similarities in the world. It does. It does. It does. Yes. What's your favorite movie, John? Oh, Pulp Fiction. Pulp Fiction. Yeah, all day long.

How about you? I was talking to Johnny. he asked that I said, I'm a little sappy when it comes to movies, and I love winner, like the rookie. Remember who, like, when he gets called up to the major league, like, I'm crying. The other favorite, and I don't know, I always looked at, you know, to me, you know, I'm an overnight success, you know, it took me 61 years to get where I am. And, you know, you kind of look back to going, what drove me.

Like, I don't know what drove me. And one of my favorite movies is Heath Ledger's a night's ten. Do you know that movie where he's jousting? And the only way you can be a jouster is you have to be of noble descent. And the dad basically wants his son, so the dad's poor, he wants his son to learn this, sends him off with a night and tells him to go change his stars. And it gets me now to this day is how do we as individuals change our stars? Instead of just being whatever, you know, I always laugh because my dad rode in a carpool.

at Eastman Kodak. And to this day, my sister's laugh, I said, I will never ride in a carpooling. You know, like that is, like to me, that was no, I'm going to own my own car. I'm going to drive myself to work. And so, anyways, that was the movie. Good, good.

Well, my question is, you both have such great, always enthusiastic, positive attitudes. What are your rules for putting on purpose good stuff in your brain? And what are your rules for keeping out bad? stuff. Marty? To me that, you know, it's funny because we fight it every day. And Johnny and I talk all the time.

And, you know, what is that? Zig Ziglar says, how do you keep out stink and thinking? And Zig Zig Ziglar was always at the forefront of who I learned, listened to. And he said, as long as you help enough people get what they want, you'll always get what you want. And so if you just, when things start going south, when you start getting mad, you just, you just go back to can I help somebody else and then you'll get what you want. Right, right. That's good. So, you know, I've been reading a lot about influence and the

human emotion and how people make decisions. And I think Marty might have made it, set it in one of your podcasts before COVID. I was all over the place. I might have been successful, but I was all over the place. I didn't wake up early. Now I'm a 5 a.m. wake up. Yes, sir. Now, I'm going to tell you why. What is that? It's called habit.

So what I did is discipline and habit. I put in a habit. So, you know, for my brain can easily sway and go and put the bad voices in. But if I keep my habit, which is get up in the morning, go exercise, read and write every day, you know, meditation, which you talk about, you know, those are the things that keep. Will you have an episode where you get caught off guard? Yes, but if you continuously stay on that path, you minimize the, or you mitigate that disruption. So to me, that's it. And Marty Kidd attested this.

I do not miss my workout, even if I stayed up two in the morning. I'm getting up and I'm doing it, right? I'm not going to, because if three or four days of that, I'm out, I could be going to off track. Yeah. Yeah, I think we're, I think the human condition is similar in all of us. and that we allow, you know, sneaking thinking or negative people

or, you know, negative news, television, whatever you want. I mean, you could easily fall into a whole 24 hours a day watching that stuff. And on the other hand, if you say, I'm going to fill my life with positive people, I'm going to have a steady feed of Zig Ziglar and Les Brown and, you know, all these other,

Robert Chaldeany, all these people that are going to keep reminding me of the positive things and what I can do to be successful. You think about, you know, even in tough times, how many businesses were started, like Amazon was started like in a horrible time. It's like, hmm, I guess it ain't that bad, you know. So I think it's a habit, it's a constant struggle

to feed the wolf, you know, not the sheep. John, one of my pep heaves and whoever's listening to them, I said that, when they complain about their territory. Oh, yeah. Oh. Yeah. There is no bad territory. No, not in this country.

There's not. No, there's so many businesses out there. It's crazy. I know. It's just bad workers. Remember we used to always argue about where's the Glengarry leads, right? I didn't get the good leads. You know, where are the good leads?

Well, listen, I remember when we had Starbucks and Amazon were both early customers, like of MP2 or something. I remember coming, I went out and visited out there. I came back and I'm like, ah, there's just not much business out there. There's just not much. I mean, we could have built a whole company around maintaining those two companies. I mean, you were, I remember, I don't know how much time we have, but I remember a Chicago Tribune. I was working with David Poe.

Yeah. And I was the priestess at the first meeting, and I went, this thing's baked for the competitor. But David's like, yeah, I wrote it to him in a piece of paper. We're in this big room. And we worked it. We worked it. And I think you were involved too, and John. And I was like, there is, I mean, I will, I never straight away.

I did everything I was supposed to. And I was like, there was no way. How is it possible? And boom, you made it happen, right? And if that noise would have stayed there, probably would not have happened. Well, I didn't know about that noise. That was good. I got lucky the CLO there was it.

But I was surprised too, because it's rare that someone has a competitor's product. Correct. And then switches out. Right. Maybe you just did a great job. Nah, well, it was a team effort, but I will say that keeping that positive out, sometimes, you know, you just got to stay on course. We had a couple of beers and the old hair, I believe, afterwards.

Sushi afterwards, all kinds of stuff. Well, listen, thank you guys for being on the very first Noob School panel. There we go. I love being first. We're going to do it more often. Thank you for having it's got. Thank you. Appreciate it.

We hope that helps people. All right. Thank you, J. Thank you, thank you, everyone. All right.