Noob School - No Fluff, Just Sales: Walker McKay on Closing Deals and Boosting Margins

Episode Date: January 10, 2025

In this episode of Noob School, I’m joined by an incredibly insightful guest, Walker McKay, a sales coach and expert who’s helping businesses transform their sales strategies and close deals faster and more profitably. Walker is the founder of No BS Sales School Podcast and a seasoned sales consultant based in Greenville, South Carolina. He’s worked with a wide range of industries—everything from financial services and commercial real estate to medical equipment and law. His approach? Cut through the fluff, get to what really works, and start closing deals that matter.We dive deep into Walker’s business strategy, his sales mindset, and the principles that guide his coaching. If you’re a sales leader or business owner frustrated by inconsistent sales performance or a sales team that’s not hitting their targets, this episode is packed with actionable insights that could change the way you sell. Walker gives us a peek behind the curtain at how he helps sales teams and leaders close deals faster, protect their margins, and most importantly, stop chasing dead-end leads.One of the highlights of our conversation is Walker’s method of quickly identifying which deals are worth pursuing and which ones need to be disqualified—saving valuable time and resources. He also shares his thoughts on building a repeatable sales process that works for both seasoned sales pros and new hires alike, and how this process can empower teams to become more self-sufficient and confident in their selling.Walker’s no-nonsense style is perfect for anyone looking to eliminate the guesswork from their sales process and take their team’s performance to the next level. This is an episode you won’t want to miss if you’re serious about getting your sales team to perform consistently and profitably.Tune in for a candid conversation about how to transform your sales approach, improve your leadership skills, and—ultimately—close more deals!Get your sales in rhythm with The Sterling Method: https://SterlingSales.coI'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/3tiaxsLSubscribe to our newsletter today: https://bit.ly/3Ned5kL#SalesTraining #B2BSales #SalesExcellence #SalesStrategy #BusinessGrowth #SalesLeadership #SalesSuccess #SalesCoaching #SalesSkills #SalesInnovation #SalesTips #SalesPerformance #SalesTransformation #SalesTeamDevelopment #SalesMotivation #SalesEnablement #SalesGoals #SalesExpertise #SalesInsights #SalesTrends

Newb School. All right, welcome back to Noob School. Episode 138, the big 138. Pretty happy with that. Today I have a very good friend, I would say kind of a mentor to me, even though you're younger. So funny. The heck. Anyway, Walker McKay has been a good friend for, I mean, how long has it been now?

10 years? At least 10. That's awesome. Maybe 15. Yeah. So anyway, Walker. Walker currently has just come out with this great book. Some will, some won't, so what, who's next?

Great book on sales that I've read probably half of, maybe half. And he also has a company established several years ago called No BS Sales. And he does coaching, consulting around the country and speaking, right? Yep. All kind of stuff. And so I kind of do some of the same stuff. when I get stumped, I call Walker, and he's nice enough to tell me what to do.

He's so funny. It's mutual, I promise. He's really good. He's really good. But the weird thing is, the funny story, the first sales story I'll tell is how we met. So Walker was at the time working for a sales organization. He was a sales coach at the time in Columbia. And I'd never heard of him.

And he started calling me and emailing me and saying, hey, you know, I'm a coach and like to spend a few minutes see if I can help you. And then he would, I would ignore that. And then he would send me a book on sales and say, hey, I thought you might like this book. I'm like, thank you. Ignore. You know, no, ignore. I mean, I swear, I think this went on once a quarter for two years. So maybe eight contacts.

And you even had a good friend of yours who was my first cousin, And it's kind of like, you're calling me because Mike said, you know, I should call you, whatever. I just didn't want to have, I didn't want to hear it. Yeah. And oftentimes somebody might have a problem, but they don't want to hear it because they're just too busy dealing with other stuff. They don't want to add something to their list, right? Yep. And I was that person because I was dealing with, you know, I wasn't satisfied with our sales at our company, even though I consider myself a guru.

I was just too busy to say, I'm going to listen to somebody else talk about it. I'm going to do it. But finally, I think I just answered the call one day. Like I was walking down the street, the phone rang. I'm like, hello? A couple things. First of all, you never acted like in any way

that anything I did was bothering you. Like, why didn't you call me back? Or I tried to call you, I didn't call me back. Or I emailed you didn't call me back. You never got confrontation. It was just like nothing ever happened. Yeah. This is the next thing.

And so when I finally answered the phone, you said, you said, John Walker McKay. Yeah. And you didn't say I've been trying to reach you. He said, I'm just calling to see if we can spend two minutes today to find out whether it's worth to set up a conversation. Right? Yep. Yep. And, of course, everything he's saying is so logical.

How can I say no? Right? Is it, just to see if it makes sense, okay, okay, oh, yeah, okay. I said, all right. And so blah, blah, blah. And I said, well, yeah, I think we could have a conversation about it, Walker. Certainly, I don't need any help. And so he had the conversation.

And then you said, well, today's purpose of this call is to find out whether or not I should come see you and lay the whole thing out and see if I, you know, whatever. So long story short, Walker became my coach 15 years ago. You're missing the best part of this story. I was scared to death. John was this mythical sales guy, right? No, John Sterling. Talk about sales guy, John Sterling. And for some reason, I had you, I was like, I need to meet this guy.

I need to meet this guy. And you and Dustin and there was another guy there. I was in your conference room and I was sweating bullets because you guys were badass. You all had sold more stuff in a day than I had in a lifetime. And I was, uh, and the way we set things up, or let's figure out whether or not it makes sense to take any step at all. If you're not sure you want to do this, let's not. And it was to do assessments.

Yeah. And anything less than you're saying, hell yeah, let's go, let's call it and know. And you said, okay, great. And we got the end of the call. And you said, okay, thanks. We need to talk this over. Yeah. Like, get out of my office.

And I was like, I was like, okay, I'll wait outside. And I sat on the bench and you looked at me like, what? And I said, I'll be right there. Yeah. Just let me know when you're done talking about it. Yeah. And I was like, holy shit, I just did that. And you looked at me like, holy shit, you just did that.

And then at the end, you guys said, okay, let's take the step forward. Yeah. And, but I was scared to death. That's funny. Because I always, I mean, seemed to me you were like doing it on purpose a little bit. But you weren't. I believe you that you were maybe a little bit nervous. But the weird thing was, we were, Dustin and I anyway, we had had great experience selling.

But it was at the highest level. It was in a big company selling global enterprise deals, you know, big Fortune 500 deals. And now we bought this little company and we're scrapping it out, you know, with plant managers and less budgets. And just, you know, we were used to kind of walking in the front door and cutting deals. We're from data stream, for that's saying. Right, right, right. We had a nice logo. And so that's one of the things you helped us with is figuring that out.

So, yeah, but, yeah, the moral of the story, though, I think is. people talk about calling. Certainly you did a good job when we finally got on the phone for that one minute. Yeah. But everything else was just building up in my mind that there was someone out there who's willing to look into whether or not he could help me

if I had a problem. And I knew I had a problem. You finally caught me in a moment, you know? Because like you said, people's world changes. Yeah, every 90 days. And my guess, I mean, somebody asked me, I've got over a million problems. But there's only so many that I've got the bandwidth, time, give a shit, money, whatever to fix.

And so you've got to figure out your prospect. Are they even willing to have a conversation about what's going on? Are they willing to explore whether or not this needs to be a priority? And if they're not, as the book says, some will, some will. So what? Who's next? Move on to the next guy because at some point, every 90 days people's world changes. Maybe they care more about it then.

Right. So if you had, using the book title, and this is something that we used to study in Walker's class, the book's title would be it's very important for Walker's business that you have a lot of John Sterling's out there that you're trying to get this quick little meeting with

you know is there and I might say no there's no problem everything's going great we're going 30% a year okay yeah see you later know anybody else you know yeah but what most people do is most people wait for the leads to come in

call their same prospects and customers over and over again get a deal bucket of two or three things that are trying to close and are they going to close and they forget about that prospecting. It's the most important thing. Most important thing.

You become the most valuable salespeople are ones that can bring in their own leads. Right. Right. The most you'll ever be as mediocre if you're just taking company leads. Right. Those that can go get their own business,

through referrals, through prospecting, through whatever. And really that book doesn't focus as much on prospecting as it does on a sales process. but the front end is the hard part. You ever heard this before, John? You know, if you put me in front of them, and close them.

Right. How often do you hear that bullshit? Right. Put me in front of them up, well, sure you can, right? If someone wants to talk to you. We all can, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I remember saying that as a young sales person. Sure. Like, you know, we need the good, we need the good warm leads. Yeah. Or the good leads, for God. You give me those, I'll make my number. That's right. The leads suck.

It's hilarious. Oh, my God. And I've said that. I've made every excuse in the book. Yeah. I was talking to a team the other day, and they were telling me the seasonal excuse, like the holidays, nothing's going on. National screw off, huh?

Yeah. I said, well, what's going to happen in January is people are going to be back to work. They're going to be so busy with other things. That's not a good time to call either. Correct. And then pretty soon we got summer, and we know nothing's going to happen. Nobody buys in July. So there is basically no good time to call.

Correct. In fall, I mean, kids are going out of school, and, you know, you have like a week when people are buying. Do you remember what Ziegler said when he was selling? calling pots and pans door to door. I don't remember. He said early on, before he knew what he was doing, he said he would get out and he would drop him off in a neighborhood. They'd go to the first house and he'd look at it.

And he goes, that yard's not been mowed in weeks and the paint's peeling off of the house. These people, they do not have the money for potts and pans. I want to go to the next house. It's Augustine's next house. Paints perfect, yards perfect, everything's perfect. He's like, they already got pots and peasant. Yeah, they don't need it. That's hilarious.

That's a great story. Yeah. I love that. Yeah. He's got a bunch of good stories. Yeah, he does. He was a master at that. He was.

So tell us more about your business now. No BS sales. I think I know what that means. So I told my mother. No bad salespeople. No, that's what I told my mother. That's for no bad salespeople because she was just, she's like, what is the name of your business? Yeah.

A mother, a little southern lady. And so I got really fed up with all the bullshit. that happens between buyers and sellers. And salespeople are often afraid to be direct. They're afraid to be transparent. And buyers take advantage of prospects take advantage of that. And so I realize that sales is easy, but it's not simple. And what it really is is building, I don't want to say building rapport or relationships,

but it's having somebody trust you enough to give you money, to make a problem go away. And the first part of that is trust, right? And I read something the other day that what they really are doing is they want to make sure they don't look like an asshole for making the wrong decision. Right? And so they need to trust you enough that they're not going to look bad for saying yes. And so part of this is if we're very transparent and our whole, my whole mindset is to be

skeptical that your prospect is ready to make a change because most people aren't. And so as we are skeptical and say, my guess is this is not a problem, you're probably not worried about that. And some people see that as a move. But the reality is most people aren't worried about that kind of stuff. There are two questions that a prospect has to answer for themselves before anything happens. And I think most salespeople get it backwards. But the first question they have to answer is, am I going to do anything different or differently? Am I going to do anything different or differently? If they've answered that in the affirmative,

then they're going to decide who will I do that with? Most salespeople do that backwards. Let me show you this bottle of water. You're going to love it. It's the best bottle of water. I can make you a great deal, blah, blah, blah. And then the pressure's all in the salesperson to prove it. Yeah, right.

And then that's when you're like, are he talking too much, he's putting too much pressure on me, as opposed to, you're probably not, well, typically people who like this are ones that say they're thirsty. And they say, I don't want to spend a ton of money on water. I just need something this handy. My guess is you've got something already that's taken care of that. You don't need this. And I have a conversation. And I figure out if it's going to be a no, you do this too. If it's going to be a no, let's call it a no right now.

No reason to waste their time. I don't waste their time. So I have a lot of short conversations with people. If somebody says, no, actually, I really am having that problem. or no, I really do care about that, I'll say, really tell me why. And then there's up to them to prove why it makes sense for us to have a further conversation. Yeah, yeah. And those become the best clients. Well, again, having gone, I was so, I was so fortunate that I went through the process as the prospect with you.

Because you never would have believed it. I never would have believed it. I never would have believed it. But I feel like, you know, you, you, you, from the, from the, every step of the way, from the, even the times I ignored, everything was honest and direct. You know, I know Mike, trying to reach you, see if I can possibly help you, don't know if I can't. Yep. All true.

Yeah. And then, you know, anyway, all the way through to when we started the process of, you know, well, tell me about the problem. What is it? How big is the problem? It's a million dollars a year, whatever it was. How would you pay for this? You know, do you have a budget for this? How would you make a decision?

You know, I ask these questions, and I would think to myself, well, I can, I just need to answer the question. He's asking me a direct question. He's not, there's no frilly things going on. I'm also not leading you anywhere. I'm just trying to figure out. Maybe it's not good. You know, maybe if you say, how are you going to pay for this? I might say, well, that's the problem.

I don't have any money. Yeah. Call me in January. Yeah. And then, you know, when would you want to do it? It was a delightful way to buy because it was just, you know, at any point I feel like I could just veer off or stop it. I would have encouraged you to say no at any given point.

Yeah. So it's a wonderful selling system that you sell. How does it work when you go sell a new client? How often does the sales manager and the owner and the salespeople say, oh, this is great? You know, we adopt it. How often do they push back and go, well, that's not kind of how we do it around here? So usually the first, the owner is who buys in first, right? And it's got to be important to them. Yeah. And so they need, and typically that's going to be, you know, somebody who's a Maverick who says, we got to win and we got to do things. We can't keep doing things the same way. And so usually the owner is my friend, meaning that we become, they trust me to fix it at that point. And then I'm often introduced to the sales manager who might see me as a threat at first, right? And I've got to make him feel comfortable that I'm not a threat to make his life easier. And then the rest are the sales people are, the salespeople are.

a mixed bag. People are cynical. You've been to shitty sales training before. I certainly have. And most people are like sales training, what the hell is this? And so it's up to me to engage people as quickly as possible. And so I work, you know, it's, as you know, it's a skill to be able to, especially now, since we do most of the stuff on video, it takes an extra amount of skill to engage people over video. But what I tell the owners, and I'll tell anybody in the class, if after like five or six weeks of us meeting once a week, if there's somebody still in the back of the room doing this, then we bless them and release them.

I'm not here to try and fix somebody who doesn't want to learn. Don't have to come to training anymore. It's all good. I don't want to argue with you if your way's so good as long as you hits your number. And I tell the owner that. As long as they're hitting their number, I don't give a shit if they do it my way or not.

Right. Who cares? But if they're not hitting their number, then you ought to care. Yeah, yeah. It's not that what matters is the success. Right? Not so much. If they can't follow my questioning strategy perfectly, who cares? As long as they can close business and can do it the right way and make the right margins and make the right money, I don't care.

But if I can give them the confidence, if they take one little piece, I tell people, I'm going to, I've got a toolbox of a thousand tools. And you might figure out that one tool changes everything. And maybe you work with that one tool and that changes anything. Or maybe you try that one tool and that works. you say, wow, what else you got? Yeah. We'll try another one, right? And then it's a process of refinement. Yeah, yeah.

And maybe you figure out you're a carpenter, right? And you can nail shit and somebody else figures out there a plumber. And this is how that works. But I've got all those tools. And I'll break them out and you've got to go try them. Yeah. And so ultimately, what we find is often the people that were the most cynical at first, as long as they'll show up and they'll have an open mind,

even ones that go I'm illustrating I find they can be my greatest advocates after a couple of weeks so you probably find the same thing my experience there is similar

my mistake has been when I don't stay close enough to the owner you know when they kind of say well great we're glad you're here John so you know Charlene over here is going to kind of be your contact now

right and then and then you lose all your power and I just can't let that happen again but I've done that sucks. Thank you so much, John. We've really had enough.

Really great stuff. It's worked well. It's worked well. It's canceled. It's worked very well. It's worked very well. I tell them a story is a little different. I might steal your story about the tools.

But I say, you know, I've been going to some form of sales training at different places for decades. And, you know, let's say hundreds of them. Yeah. Hundreds of them. And my tool set that I have taken from those things. might be 20 things, not 100 for me. It's like 20. Mine's probably 22.

Yeah. And so I'm going to go through lots of those with you over the course, all of them, of the course of training. And if you only pick away one or two or three, and it changes like how you look for the upfront contract. Yeah. You know, if you just do that, that'll change your world.

Or if you take this thing and, you know, I'll steal this from you and use that, we just want to find out which ones are. Yeah. Some will buy. won't, so what, who's next? Just a mindset, you know, the mindset, for the confidence.

Right. The other thing that you taught me is, you know, when you start a conversation with someone, let's just say they went to your website and they came in, they want to have a conversation, and you start asking them, you know, your basic, whatever, and they say, well, hold on a second.

Hold on this, Mr. Fancy Pants. He goes, what we want is we want, we want a demo. We want a demo. We want it this afternoon. We got four people that are going to, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So they're being confrontational right of the gate.

And Walker says, goodbye, right? Yeah. Right. So if we start to fight right of the gate, if they won't play, then that's going to be the worst customer you ever had. They give you signals during the sales process. If they're assholes in sales process, it'll be worse when you work together.

Right. You didn't call back fast enough. Your price is too high. There was a guy in a friend of mine owns a company in North Carolina, industrial company. They sell a line of products. And he and our great friends. We had done some stuff on LinkedIn together.

And I called him and I said, it time for you and me to talk? He said, yeah, that's great. He goes, I got a sales manager, our VP of sales. He's really great. I'll be on the phone, but I'm going to introduce you guys, and blah, blah, blah. And so he gets on the phone and my guy, my friend is great.

And he says, okay, y'all are good to go. And so quickly, as soon as the owner got off the phone, sales manager was like, I said, look, we're going, why don't we just talking? figure out whether or not. I wish you do assessments, I think, is usually my first step. And he goes, no, that's not the next step. I said, okay.

What do you think the next step? He goes, well, I, you know, I think we're probably going to talk three or four times. And I'm not spending any money with you until you come up here to Greensboro and press the flesh. And I was like, and I said out loud, I said, I don't even like the sound of that. And he became very, he's like, well, What do you mean? And I said, that's not my process. He goes, well, that's what it takes for me to buy.

I said, okay. I said, but it doesn't sound like we're going to work together. And he goes, why would you say that? I said, because I can't. Yeah. And I called the owner back. And I said, I'm so sorry. I couldn't figure out how to get into your passive aggressive ass old sales manager guy

who had to be in control, right? And I just, so we walked away. And I'm sad because I would love to work with my friend's company. But if that was the rule, I wasn't going to do that. Yeah. Well, that's it. That's what I, that's my learning lesson for the day is you just kind of, you kind of walk away from that. But I've heard things like that before too. That's so weird. And you know, people want to, some people are just, they're defensive. They're afraid. I mean, you see what we're trying to do, John, is help people. And you just to drop. I feel like most people have a veil. I do this because there's in yoga. There is something called the dancing Shiva. Right? And she has this veil in front of her face. And part of her, she's a goddess. And part of it is that you never see her face. And so we as human beings have these shields up so that nobody really sees the real us.

And I don't know that I just want to take down the, I try and approach it with, this is who I am. I'd like to be as transparent as possible. I want to have a real conversation. And if you'd like to have a real conversation with me, that's great. But if you're not ready to have a real conversation, then, let's not talk or let's we can do something else we don't have to be friends we don't have to have another conversation ever we can talk whenever you're ready yeah but that but to drop the shield and let's have a real a real as I call a no BS conversation yeah and what kind of things like

one of the things I know you you teach you talk about the book I think is is that we don't want to look like a salesperson sound like a salesperson act like a salesperson so when you show up somewhere for a meeting, how do you walk in the door to not look like a salesperson? Well, you know, interesting and things have changed so much. I started using Zoom in 2016, maybe 2017, because I didn't have any money for a training room. I couldn't afford rent in a training room, even if I rent it by the day. I didn't have the money. And so a friend of mine says, why don't you use Zoom?

I said, what the hell is that? And so I started doing my training over Zoom. and so then when in 2020, when the world shut down, everybody's going, nobody buys our video. How the hell do we sell doing video? This is crazy. I work with old people. They don't know how to use video.

I'm like, they talk to their kids on Facebook every day. They use or FaceTime every other grandkids. So don't worry about that. So most of my sales calls are over video. I don't ever, well, the first thing I do is pattern interrupts. I don't know if that's the persona I have or just who I am. I'm not concerned about my nasty language. And so if that, my first test is if somebody gets pissed off and doesn't want to deal with me because of that, then so be it.

Yeah. Right? This is who, I feel like this is my language. It's often the language of salespeople. And so if you can't, if I offend you with that, then that's probably the first thing that's going to run off. I'm very direct. I get right to business. How much time do you have?

What do you want to make sure we talk about? Here's what I want to talk about. Let's figure out whether or not we should take another step and we'll define that. So it's not, let me tell you how great my company is. Nothing of that. Yeah. And some of them, and you know this if we're doing it the right way, all they know at the end of the sales call typically is they have a problem that they don't know how to fix.

They trust me to fix it and they know when to show up. Yeah, and the way I explain you and kind of what I try to do now is when you have the conversation with the owner about their situation is that you really find out what's going on. You know, not just, you know, do you want to go forward, but like what's happening at your company and how's that going to impact you and your family and how does this make you feel? All that stuff to really. And so you're the first person, maybe in a long time, to actually get them. You get them. You understand what's going on. And as soon as you understand them and you're the first person to do that,

they immediately think you're the person who can solve it, right? And also, just by the questions that we ask, they too are getting themselves. There's something magical that happens in the vibration of your jaw. So when somebody's asking you a question, and maybe I've never had another. brain other than one I have, right? Big time ADHD. It's a gift as long as you manage it correctly. But my brain, I picture somebody's brain in the thoughts in it like a mixed up ball of string with knots and ties and all kinds of stuff. And that when you ask somebody a question and they talk, string comes out. It's part of their ideas start coming out and it begins to come together and they

go, it's not necessarily, sometimes it's the questions I ask or my clients will ask, but it's the questions that they ask themselves after you ask a question. question that helps them clarify. So we're helping somebody clarify their own position and their own mind. What are their opinions about their current situation, make them slow down and think about that. And so by being intentional and by slowing down and paying attention and asking why they said that and asking them to explain a little bit more, and then they can become more self-aware. And they realize, holy cow, nobody's helped me think this way before. Right. Right. Yeah. Well, that's Certainly the way I was.

I mean, no one, I hadn't talked to anyone about my situation when I, when I met you. Because we were thinking about this month's numbers or, you know, lead counts or weren't really thinking about the big, the big picture. As far as you were concerned, you didn't have a sales problem. It's just people weren't buying. That's right. That's right. That's right. People are so stupid they're not buying.

I told my partner one time, he said, we're going to make our number. I'm like, yeah, but we're going to need some extra days this month. Yeah. Can you stretch that out? Yeah. Well, let's back up a little bit. We've got time. I want to hear a little more about, I mean, you grew up in Columbia.

Yep. Center of the universe. The center of the universe. Screen door from hell. It's center of the state anyway. And you went to Heathwood Hall. Yep. Which was one of our competitors, you know, where I went to high school.

Christchurch, Mighty Cavaliers. Still is. Will you John Mormon's age? John is a couple. He's like three years older than me. four years older than me. He was my roommate for a while. He's a good friend.

Good. Well, tell him I say hello. I will. I saw him last night. He's probably a very good salesperson. Yeah, he's good. And then you went to the great Washington and Lee University up in Lexington. Lexington, Virginia.

Correct. And how was that? It was the most fun I've ever had in my entire life. Uh-huh. I was not a good. I was great at college. Yeah. Not good at school.

Yeah. I was immature. and I had unrecognized at the time ADHD and which also included depression and anxiety. And I didn't know any of those things. Didn't know those terms. I didn't know any of it. And I self-medicated with alcohol and drugs and all kinds of things. Other things.

You can delete that or amplify it, whatever. No, I don't, you know, it's, I did all kinds of stuff. and I had a great time and I was president of my fraternity. I got out by the skin of my teeth. I had my last class. My parents drove up for graduation. We had a spring term, which is we had two full semesters and then a last six-week term where you take one class or whatever.

And so I took one class. It was supposedly the easiest class on campus. It was history of the papacy. Okay. And which I knew nothing about. and we called it popes for dopes. Because all you had to do, John, in six weeks was memorized any thirds,

pick a place, 30 popes in order. They're by their name, the dates of their reign and something significant. So the only problem with that was, I suck at memorization. Not good at it. But I took popes for dopes.

And so I figured out about, I don't know, at W&L, you just take your exam when you want to. Exam start on a Friday and on a two. Tuesday and there's a morning and an afternoon, you just show up. So I realized I was going to take it on Friday, especially to graduate on Thursday.

And so I wasn't ready Friday, wasn't ready Saturday, wasn't ready Sunday. Finally, Tuesday afternoon, the last day I could take the exam. I took it. My parents are on the way up. And I walk out of the exam. I was making shit up in the exam. I was like, you know, Leo the 5th. And I was like, oh, my God, dying these years.

And I was like, I probably didn't pass. And so this is back in the day before, you know, before Al Gore and vented the Internet, before computers were really a thing. And my parents were like, hey, we're here. And I'm like, things might not be good. I said, grades posted five. So I'm like, oh, shit, we're going to kill you.

And so I went up the hill. We called up the hill to the main administration building where the grades were posted at five. They said, not ready. Six, seven, eight, nine, ten. My parents are about too strangled me. And I got up there, and I don't know how. but I got a C, which is all I had to make to get out.

And I was like, I ran back down to see my parents and I'm like, I made a C like, oh my God, we're so pretty. And I was so glad to be out of college. And I tell my children now, I don't care what you study. I don't care what your grades are. You got four years. Go study something that you love. My children are both very ADHD.

They've got to take medicine, all that kind of stuff. but I'm like, you know, nobody cares about your grades and after you've gotten your first job. Nobody cares about your grades until you've gotten into your law school, whatever, that's fine. But go and study something you enjoy. And grades aren't that big of a deal. Now, again, don't go be a dumbass like I was.

And, you know, now both my children have high threes, three-somethings, all A's and Bs. I tell them I'm very disappointed. They ruin the family tradition. Where did they go? My older son Walker is at Sawani in Tennessee. He's a senior studying forestry. And then my other son, Mitchell, is at Wofford.

And he plays football, and he's a freshman. Awesome. Well, we'll see more of you then if you're coming up to Wofford. Yeah, we came up for all the football games. Yeah. And he's got a three, six. That's great. I ruined my perfect average, my senior year, and I got an A-minus.

It was the only A. I got my entire four years of school. Well, what did you major in at Washington, Lee? Well, history is what American history is what I ended up with. Okay. And I love that. You're still into that? I'm still a history guy.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love that. And it was, I did that because it was easy. It was no intent there for learning, but I learned a bunch and I enjoyed it. But I got out and went to work at a bank. And I found that all of a sudden working was so much better for me because I didn't have to memorize stuff. If I was taking tests for certifications at the bank, they were tests I could pass.

Nobody was trying to trick me. I always felt like the professors at school trying to trick me with questions. But I was interested in what I was studying, and so I started doing fine or whatever, and working was a whole lot better. I tell a lot of my friends who have kids with ADHD, and I tell the kids themselves,

you just got to get through school. Yeah. Get through. Don't put your value in that. I was, it's funny, I found some report cards. I told my therapist this. I found some report cards about two years ago, from my ninth and 10th grade years at high school.

And I opened them up and I read and it said, Walker's not trying. Walker's not putting his best ever. You know, one to three for effort. You know, three is bad. One's good. And I got a lot of twos and threes for effort. And I wept when I saw them at whatever,

57 years old, 40, 40 years later. Because that was a, I felt such shame for that. but I didn't know how to study. Yeah. And I think this was giving me kind of an attitude now. So it's interesting. I mean, you know, one of the things that we also talk about is people understanding themselves, you know, testing, doing a Colby test or some kind of test, where you start

to understand those kinds of things. And instead of beating yourself up about it, you know, revel in it. Say this makes me a great off-the-cuff speaker. Absolutely. Right? But let's get some help for the other stuff. A assistant, you know, something. Yeah.

And that's helped me so much because I was the same way. If you left me alone and said, you know, do a PowerPoint. I'll be like, you know, I would start playing an eye spy or something. I couldn't do it. Can't do it. But if I have a person sitting with me and working on it together, I'm good. I can be helpful. Yeah.

I'll give my ideas. Someone's over here. You press the buttons. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, that's a very important point is that. emotional thing you have going back to ninth grade is because that teacher didn't understand you and you didn't understand yourself. Yeah, I didn't get it. I didn't know because the only brain I ever lived in was my own. And you look at the people next to you in class and they got all their

homework ready to go. Yeah, and they're folded and ready to go. And I, you know, I kind of knew, I didn't think I was stupid, but I knew my brain didn't work like theirs. Yeah. And in college, too, you had those people in college that never had to study. Right. And I would go try and study, but I didn't know really how to study, and I couldn't memorize anything. So I struggled. Bless I was drunk all the time. You could have worked. There's probably somewhere between 9 and 11 in the morning.

Could have figured it out. I know. But I was so hungover. Oh, this is great. Anyway. So who do you still follow in sales to get continuing, like, you know, knowledge, information? Who do you still look at? You know, there's a guy on Twitter that I just think he's magnificent.

and his bow-tied sales guy. Bo-Tide. Yeah, I've seen him, yeah. I don't know who he is. I get a lot of ideas from him. I love his take on things. He's a little bit more bro sales than I am. I think that's more of a tech culture thing. But he's got very good insights.

I like him. I read Dave Curlin, K-U-R-L-A-N, has a good blog that I read. My friend Matt Nettleton, who's, with Sandler. Yeah. He's a freaking genius with stuff. He's very smart. Where's he out of?

He's out of Indianapolis. Okay. I remember you talking about him. There's another guy, Kevin Halanan, who's in Boston. And he's somebody that I follow. He's a good podcast that I listen to. And also, he's got a Paul Castain, who's just, you ever heard of him before? No.

He's this crusty guy has a podcast, but he's really smart. I like him. And then I think my, yeah. So those are kind of the main ones that I watch. that I watch. And they just roll into your ex-feed every day. Yeah, I'm ex-fader of my LinkedIn feed, and I pay attention to that stuff. And some of it I discount or say, how would I see that differently?

And oftentimes I'm listening or reading to think, what's my take so that I can write a post on LinkedIn or so that I can be inspired to do a podcast? Right. Like if they're talking about a big deal or something or how to close a big deal, you might spin that a little bit your way. Yeah. Well, what's the experience I've had that's similar in how would I handle it? I tell you, I get overwhelmed. And I think that's, that's on me. I need to have a better system because I'll just see so much information that's interesting to me on sales.

I kind of put it in this folder of information content and then don't go back and look at it. Well, you know what somebody told me a while ago was quit reading other people's shit. Read your own shit. You don't need new sales ideas. You got plenty of sales ideas. Yeah, right, right. And so I think putting in the folder is a great idea. I do.

Yeah, gone. There's a comedian, and I can't remember his name. Oh. Might be Louis C.K. I don't know, but he, but he, but he, it, he says he never, ever listens to anybody else. Doesn't listen to any other comedy because he wants, he wants to look at the world with his own brain and think his own things. But if you start hearing 10 other people, you start thinking what they're thinking. Maybe you're afraid you're going to steal their stuff or like, damn it, I'm,

was going to do you know yeah yeah I get that well those are good those are good ones um how about uh like which which which uh which uh AI tool do you prefer so um right now the one that I use almost every day bunch times a day is is uh it's AI search called perplexity okay you ever use perplexity yeah that's Amazon right well no I don't think it's owned by Amazon is Bezos is it really I didn't know that Yeah, I think so. I'll probably have to quit using it then. But I like that I can get very granular with a question I can ask.

It's funny, I have a company, I have a client of mine who runs a specialty steel company in Omaha, Nebraska. Crazy, right? And he was talking about specialty steel, which is typically railings and staircases. And we're trying to figure out how to expand his business, right? And so we're talking about sales stuff. and it's really out of my realm of expertise, but I said, what other kind of products can you sell?

And he said, well, never really thought about that. And so I typed into perplexity. I own a specialty steel company in Omaha, Nebraska. We do about this much volume. I'm typically doing stairs and railings. What are some other things that I can do for, what are some other things I can sell with high margin, relatively high dollar,

that I don't need new equipment? Boom. And four seconds later, it shoots back and says, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. I was like, holy shit. And I said, I don't know enough about his business to know which of these is legit,

but I said it to him and said, we probably ought to explore these things. Yeah, that's amazing. But what about you? What do you use? I like Grock, which is the X. I need to do that. It's, I mean, X a lot,

so it's easy for me to use that from my engine, but they also, you know, they throw a little bit of humor into it, so it just kind of makes me laugh sometimes during the day. But it's really, because, I mean to act so much. So you have to have the super premium payment.

It's like $12 a week or a month or something. Yeah, I think about the $8. I should go up to $12. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, you definitely have to have the premium to use the GROC. But I also have chat GPT. So I'll try both of them.

And yeah, so that's cool. I mean, it's certainly in terms of writing things or PowerPoints or anything, it gives you that first draft so quickly. Right. You tell it what you want. I used to do this with people, right? I would say, hey, do me a PowerPoint, make it 12 slides, and make it about these things, and make this the point of it all,

and a summary page. And they would do it, and then I would start editing. Tinkering, yeah. Yeah. I can't do the first draft. Right, me either. Right, I love that. The blank paper. I have not done that with a PowerPoint before.

That's fascinating. You hadn't done that. Just tell it, man. Tell it what you want. And Grock will do that too? Yeah. Grock will do pictures now. I've seen that.

It's unbelievable. People have loved that stuff. Oh, my God. I couldn't see it. stop doing it last night. I tell people if you don't want to be, people like, oh, this job will be overtaken by AI. And I believe that the way you don't get overtaken by AI is to become a user.

Yes. I mean, that's, that you have to remember back in the day, people say, I don't know how to turn on a computer like my father would say. I'll never use a computer. I'll never, why don't he use a computer? Well, that was the other thing. It was going to take everyone's job, you know, the computer's like, no, no, no, no. Everyone uses the computer now.

It's created more jobs. And AI, I think we'll take over some jobs. I tell people, if you're not. If all you're doing is order taking Yeah And you're not adding any value and you're not prospecting AI can do your job Right

And you better get ready because your AI has me a hell A lot cheaper than you are Yeah easier to work with I mean I would prefer to use the AI chatbot For support Or even in some cases sales with a website Like blink, blink, blink blink blink You know

Because at least there's someone will answer Yeah, that's right That's exactly right because I can do it right the second not to wait. So let's, let me ask you this, but you're the big reader, the big history man. What's your favorite all-time book? Well, my favorite all-time book

is the old man and the boy. By Robert Rourke. Robert Rourke was a writer and a hunter, and the reason it's my favorite book is a friend of mine gave me the book when my first son was one years old. And he said, when he starts asking you to read him bedtime stories, you're going to read him some cows and other kind of stories.

But this book, when he gets a little bit older and he goes out in the woods with you, five or six years old, this is stories of a boy who grew up in eastern North Carolina and his grandfather taught him how to be a man through hunting and fishing. And it is some of those beautiful scenes and the, and you watch this. Anyway, Rourke is a beautiful writer and he describes the relationship between the old man and the boy

and there's a lot of Socratic method teaching of this and you could tell that Rurke was writing about his own grandfather, the experiences that he had and about quail hunting and fishing and duck hunting and all these things in the 1930s and 40s when game was so prolific and so I read that

allowed to my first son and then I read it aloud to my second son and then each of them have read it on their own, and I've read it a time again on my own. And it's just, it's meant so much. So that one's a great one. And again, it's not famous literature or anything like that, but it's one of my favorite books.

I'm going to read that. That sounds great. It's a terrific book. It really is. I've got some grandchildren that might need that book read to them. And the other book that I like, that my father told me, he said this is like,

and I guess I'm caught in this for right now, but it's called Lanterns on the Levy by Walker Percy. And that was, again, about growing up in the Old South in probably the 20s. And that was a fantastic book as well. And it helped me see, kind of understand where my father came from. Have you read all the Conroy books? Read a lot of the Conroy books. Yeah.

He was one of my favorites. Unbelievable. Yeah. A friend of, he dated a friend of mine's mom. Really? Huh. Well, he was, unfortunately. didn't know him, but, you know, T. Hooper, my good friend here in Greenville was his roommate on

the basketball team. Yes, he knows him, do him real well. Wow. That's been great stories. Quite a character. Yeah, great character. And, you know, I think the thing about being a great writer like that is, you know, we think of the book as being the person. Yeah, right. 100%. That's not the person. The person is this guy who just has to disappear for a year or two and just do research and homework and, you know, all. It's just so labor intensive. It's crazy. It's crazy. Especially if it's any historical stuff to it.

And you've got to actually do the, not just making shit up like I just. Yeah, right. I mean, if we were making up a book, that would be different. But I think, you know, I think he had to do, I remember reading that he had to do, like, research for a year before he started working on such and such book. I don't know how people do fiction. Anybody can write fiction. He must be a special kind of genius. I cannot imagine writing fiction.

Well, we could probably get your, your, your perpetually do it for you. Yeah, probably could. It's funny. I uploaded my book to chat. GPT and to ask it for, you know, tell me stories, give me, give me insight of this, help me write a post for LinkedIn. And it wasn't as helpful as I thought it would be. The writing there is not, again, it gives me a good start.

But it's not something you can just turn in and use. I have had to work on that a lot. I was thinking the other day about children's books, oddly enough, and I was thinking, because I was reading some books to one of my grandkids. And I was just reading kind of whatever he pulled off the shelf. And some of them were just like, this doesn't say anything. This is just dumb or whatever. But I thought, what are the all-time greatest?

And I went with the little engine it could, the three bears. And I like the cat in the hat. Just kind of my creative side. Love that. Likes that. And I'm sure there's others that we would put, you know, top ten. or something. There was just...

Dr. Seuss, definitely, like you said, with Cat in the Hat. You thought about writing a kid's book? Yeah. I think you could take what the lessons from what you've written there. I think it's very applicable. Very applicable. That's my favorite audience. I would love...

I love when people who are... I had this experience and I wrote about it in the book at the very end that a guy called me, went to Citadel. And he called me out of the blue. He went to Heathwood. with my older son. And he called me out of the blue and said, Mr. McKay, I am a rising junior at the Citadel. I'm in Columbia for the summer.

I'm in your older son's, was in your older son's class. Yeah. And I wanted to learn about sales. So I co-called companies in Columbia. And I got a job with this heating and air conditioning company. And I'm now selling commercial heating and air conditioning contracts. And I've been doing for about a week. I don't know what the heck I'm doing.

Will you help me? I was like, are you kidding? me. I'll do anything you say. We met for lunch. And he had, I mean, I knew who he was, but he didn't know him. And this kid, he very coachable, very trainable, wanted to learn and learned and did, and ended up selling three or four commercial HVAC contracts. And those are hardest shit to sell. Most people, if they don't have one, they don't want one. If they've got one, there's no reason to change it. And, but he was just diligently worked hard. And I feel like if I can help somebody in the 19 to 27 year old age and help them get on the right path like I wish I had gotten

on the right path. That's the way I feel. Can change the world. Yeah. Change the trajectory of their lives. We can just teach them how to be direct, how to be kind, how to have empathy, and to ask what you want. Yeah. And so you and I are both fortunate people, right? We grew up going to Heathwood Hall and Christchurch. We're fortunate. And yet having said that, when I was 20 years old, and I was about to graduate from the Citadel, I had no idea what I wanted to do. I had no idea how to do it had I known how to do it. And I would go to people. I went to the guy who was the career counselor at the Citadel.

It was just one guy back then. Yeah, yeah. He's like, well, how can I help you? I'm like, well, I'm looking for some guidance. Yeah, career. And he said, well, what are you thinking about? Of course, I just, whatever I read that morning, I'm like, I thought, maybe Wall Street, you know, like trading something, you know,

hiring, Wall Street, New York. And he goes, well, let me know if you find a job up there. I mean, so like that guy didn't help, right? Right. And I went to my favorite professor, okay, say, love the guy, love him. What do you think I ought to do? And he goes, well, son, if you don't know what you want to do, you need to go out to the beach this weekend by yourself

and sit on the pier and think about it. and when you come back, come see me Monday, and we'll figure out how to do it, because I know you can do it. I'm like, all right. So I went out there, came back to see him. He goes, well, what did you come up with? I'm like, nothing. I want to fish. Nothing.

I mean, you go sit by yourself. It doesn't, it's not like a movie or something. You've got to figure this stuff. Someone can help you and say, well, gosh, John, I think you'd be good at sales. And what would be a good sales job? And where do you want to live? And how would you get that job? And, you know.

And also to tell people, look, the lot of people's, I don't want to do that because I don't do insurance the rest of my life. I don't do this. You're not going to. I mean, some of the time it's the best blessing you get somebody to say, look, whatever you start doing, I guarantee you will not be doing that. Probably four years from now, much less 40. Get in the game.

Get in the game. Get started. Go somewhere where you can. My point to your point was, I didn't have, I'm fortunate and I had no guidance. And so it made me very uncomfortable. And again, things worked out. But I'd like to help those people today. they were in that same spot.

100%. Those are the guys who inspire me. Those are the ones that make me really want to get better as the young people that have courage enough to say, hey, can you help me with this? Yeah. They don't know where to reach, most of them. Right. Which is they probably reached you on LinkedIn.

I know you do a lot speaking at Citadel. I do. I go to the sales club down there, which you did. Done that. And that's a great way to find these up-and-comers. Yeah. And I've got my weekly all-commerce sales class, which I think you either have or used to have.

Yep. which is also, you know, scratching that itch of mind to help people that age. Yeah. That's fantastic. I didn't know you did that. Yeah, I do it, yeah. Won't you come be a guest speaker? I'd love to be honest. Okay. I'll pay you when I get paid. And then favorite word? Bullshit.

Bullshit. No bullshit. And then most importantly, favorite band. Favorite band? I've got a buddy Blake Edmonds who went to Citadel and he plays in a band called The Gas Pumper's

and they are they're a cover band and they're fun and they're approachable and I've been up on the stage with them fencing around and they're fun as hell to be doing that

and they play 70s and 80s music but then otherwise I'm pretty much I'm pretty much standard 80s, 90s music, almond brothers, you two, all that just good, you know. Such good music. The gas pumper is playing around Columbia? They do. Okay.

They do. I'll let you know next time they play. Yeah, I'll come down. What about in terms of promoting, won't you tell people how they can reach you if they want some help from the NDA? Sure. I just have a conversation. So that's the easiest place to find me is on LinkedIn.

I'm pretty much prolific on LinkedIn. We post there every day. Got my information there. I also have a podcast called the No BS Sales School podcast that you've been a guest on a number of times. And now I don't have guests anymore. I do it just me. I'll share a lesson on sales or sales strategy or sales mindset. They're five to 12 minutes, quick hits in out.

And then I'm on X. I just play around on X. I'm not very visible. I'd mostly take in stuff. but my website is walkermakey.com. Got all information you can have. I have a question for you, though, John. Okay.

Is that the turnaround part in this last? He's going to ask me some questions now. Is this okay? Yeah, do it. So what I love about you is that you are constantly evolving. It's one thing I have, since I've known you, you've always been evolving. And I'm curious, I mean, and, you know, there was the banjo, and then there was the, then there was the saxophone. then there was these just different things.

What's the next evolution of John? What's now the seed that's going to sprout, would you guess? I mean, what I've been most excited about lately outside of the training is I've been acquiring software companies. So I've been looking for more companies similar to Foxfire. Yep. B-to-B companies, you know, not too large, kind of older. Yep. Not so complicated.

I can't understand them. and just adding them to my little holding company. Yeah. Yeah, and I've got, you know, I used the same customer service group, same group. And so that's been a lot of fun. And I think there's a lot of opportunity there. So it's something that I could do and make very productive, you know, over the next five years.

Where are you finding these? Man, it's so funny. You know, I'm a, with my Quick Start background, you know, I just get started. So I call the local business. broker. That wasn't a good idea. Right. Okay.

That was like, it was not a good beginning. Yeah. But I just kept going and kept asking, kept asking, now I've got a network. Yep. There's probably, there's probably seven websites that cover all of North America

that are business brokers. And you can filter them in. I want laundromats over a million in Idaho. And they'll just send you an email anytime those things come available. And if you like it, you know, you contact the broker. sign on the NDA, talk to the owner, see what you can do.

So I bought one, I bought one a few months ago using that model. What is the hook for you to say this is one I want to buy versus that one's similar but not good enough for me? Well, I want it to be North America, business to business software over 10 years old. Interesting. So not newfangled. Yeah. I want them to have somewhere between 500,000 and 2 million in recurring revenue. Okay.

So if it's under 500, it might be someone just buying a job. Like I've just got this little thing I manage. If it's over $2 million, it gets big enough where a private equity company will want it. So there's a little slice there that seems to work. And then the owner, to make it perfect, the owner needs to be at a stage where they really want to move it. They want to move it to someone that knows software and they can't sell it to a P.E. company. Right.

They're not big enough. It's a nice, a nice, a nice, a nice arrangement. Is there certain, is it, is it a return that you're looking for? Is it, or is it just that I like the concept, I like the guy, it's making money, no reason I can't keep it making money. Yeah, I mean, it's, it's, it's, that the, the company is, is easy enough to run that you can operate it without, you know, coming close to spending as much money as you bring in. Right.

So a nice profitable business. And you could put your systems in place, your accounting, your HR, your customer service. Almost looking at it more like a real estate play where this thing costs this much and it's going to generate this much. It grows off this much cash. Yeah. And if we find a way to grow and sell, that's even better. Just by itself is what I'm looking for.

Are you managing sales teams? Are you training sales teams in those partner companies? Yeah. I mean, within there, we have sales teams that we work with and that we train. And, you know, we're hopefully going to be looking for some of these young guns to hire in the next year or two. Fantastic. So you can, I think some of the Citadel people are the best targets for salespeople anywhere. Yeah, I do too.

I talked to a lot of my business centers, but you need to have a network inside of Citadel to find out who are the people because they got a work ethic. They understand about working hard. They're smart enough to. know what needs to happen. They're often they come from a business family or see or they want to go into business. And so. I also think another piece of it is they took that harder path. 100%.

And they took it for a reason. They expect to get out and do something. Yep. And that's my experience with almost all of them is they're like, we want to move up and be a manager and do this, you know. So yeah, I think you're right. It's good advice for your customers. higher, just or those, but you know, sometimes the college kids themselves are year or two out of college, I don't recommend.

But the Citadel guys, depending up where they are, I got no problem with that. John, thank you so much. Thank you, Walker. I've had such a good time. That was awesome, man. You're such a good friend. Thank you, my friend. I appreciate you very much.

Awesome. I appreciate you.