Noob School - Sales Talk with Marty Osborn: Lead Gen Evolution, Team Management and More!

Episode Date: August 2, 2024

Welcome back to Noob School! Join Marty Osborn and I as we dive into the evolving landscape of lead generation tactics, and the importance of aligning your career with your personal interests. We discuss some insightful recruitment tips and tie in the themes from Marty's upcoming book, which he hopes to release in late 2024, exploring how great leaders can succeed without being abrasive. Tune in for all of that and much more. Get your sales in rhythm with The Sterling Method: https://SterlingSales.co 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 #SalesTraining #B2BSales #SalesExcellence #SalesStrategy #BusinessGrowth #SalesLeadership #SalesSuccess #SalesCoaching #SalesSkills #SalesInnovation #SalesTips #SalesPerformance #SalesTransformation #SalesTeamDevelopment #SalesMotivation #SalesEnablement #SalesGoals #SalesExpertise #SalesInsights #SalesTrends

News School. All right, welcome back to sales talk. I've got my good friend Marty Osborne here today. Marty, welcome back. Thanks, John. It's good to be back. My co-host. My co-host.

Oh, yeah. So we're going to talk about a couple of subjects today. We're going to start with something that we get a lot of questions about at the Noob School, which is how do we generate good leads to turn into sales? And I can tell you, I mean, I've had good experience in sales, but not a marketing expert. So with some of my ventures now, I'm frustrated that I'm not able to just say, hey, I'm going to do this and generate these leads, turn these leads into sales. I'm doing this. I'm spending the money, but not really getting any good leads.

So tell me what's going on in your world. What are you seeing as like latest and greatest best practice? Oh, goodness. I mean, I think the world in leads and sales is changing dramatically. I mean, it really is becoming a social media world. Like, I think a lot of us have kind of fought it. I think we thought about TikTok, we think about Instagram, but I think those platforms, LinkedIn,

I think LinkedIn is bigger and is being used by business people for sales or leads more than anything I've ever seen. And you're really starting to see people master that. And so I think some of the old methodology still the phone calls, right? Nobody picks up their phones. Nobody's doing direct mail. Nobody's reading that kind of stuff. So I do think we're looking for places to find this in new places.

I will say this, that what's interesting to me, just like this is a podcast, right? Yeah. Yeah. Is still that drip marketing where every month we're putting content out there. We're educating people, showing people, and sort of getting that permission. The hard part is where's the ask? And I think that's the harder part. Like when you said is we can do a lot of social media, but at some point in time,

we still have to have the ask. Like we've earned the right for the ask. And so I think that's where you still have to. blend sort of the new school of contacts, getting people's names, getting emails, and then still following up for the ask because, hey, you've seen this stuff. How can I help you? Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, we're effectively at Sterling Sales. We're doing that with our, you know, we put out a podcast once a week. We put out some digital shorts. We've got, I guess that's the main thing we're doing. We've got a, one. We've got a,

one ad in a local publication, business publication that we put out there. The actual print ad is to kind of test it out. Test it out, yeah. So again, most of my sales for this company come from this podcast where people see it and they think about it for a while

and then one day it hits them, I'm not happy with my sales. I'm going to call John and see if he can help us. So that is, working. I had someone, I mean, I joined a mastermind group of SaaS companies and the guy who runs a group, I was whining about Leeds. Whining, like a little child. Where's the Glengarry Leeds? I was whining about Leeds and he just chastised me, spanked me. I said, LinkedIn's not

working, not working. And he goes, well, let's just back up a minute. He goes, it does work. I mean, it's like a couple billion dollars worth of work. It does work. It does. It might not be working for you. Maybe you're not doing it right. Right. But he said, and I haven't done this yet,

when we're working on maybe doing it. He said, go to Zoom info or whatever, capture every prospect you can in North America. Put them all a database. And then cross-reference that on meta and LinkedIn. And anybody, you know, start running the ads directed towards those people. And if any of them click on it and they want the information, then put the, what do you call it, the tag-along ad? Yeah.

Where it follows them around. I guess. Yeah, that's new to me. Tag-along. Well, if you clicked on something on LinkedIn for, let's just say for Foxfire, and, you know, you're now a prospect. We would say, there's a term for it. I can't remember it. But from now on, if you go to Meta or LinkedIn or Google or whatever,

it's going to push my ad to you. Gotcha. Follow you around. And you think, gosh, companies everywhere. I was thinking about that. Yeah. So he said get them all, cross-referencing them social media and just start hitting them with ads

and let the ones that are interested, you know, drill down. Yeah, I mean, look, I still think at the end of the day, it all boils down to one thing we've talked about. This is work, right? We have to work hard. And moving to these new mediums, we still have to work on. So LinkedIn, what I've seen and people that are wildly successful is they're there all the time, all the time, right? And they're always putting content out. They're always putting content out.

And I think what you have to sit back is it's not whatever comes to your head. that day. I need to do a post or, oh, I'm at a restaurant, let me post a picture is you have to have a message of what you want to do because I believe, and we've talked about this, I think, in a previous one of my favorite sales book is Challenger Sale. Right? In the Challenger sale, what people want is teach me something new. People want to be educated. They want to learn something new. And so to me, as you go back, like even through LinkedIn, it's not so much the ad, do you need sales, help, but you're teaching people like we're talking about here is how to get a new lead or what's an effective way through LinkedIn, tie a picture with three

words, or do a survey, right, and start asking questions. So I just did a post as I'm doing research on my book and one of the posts was, what's a widely held belief and leadership that you had that you no longer have today. So it was a thought-provoking question, something get it. And people start chiming in and then people start going. And all of a sudden, you get 20,000 impressions of people seeing you. And then you have to come back and, you know, and that's where you start to make your plugs.

So I think LinkedIn's a great source today, probably better than it's ever been. It's just you have to work it. And I'll say one last thing is I don't think we want us to know the people outside. our network? I think the leads in our business is inside our network. It's inside your network. You just have to find ways now that people who have been following you, as Gary Vanderchuk said, right, jab, jab, right hook. You got to figure out a way to now hook them. You got to find that key there. Well, let's transition a little bit to your book. I know you've been working on it for a while and you're, what, two chapters away? I'm getting close. Yep. I'm down to the last few

chapters. He's going to be ready for Christmas? Hopefully before then. I think October 1st is hopefully the date that my book will be out. On Amazon? On Amazon, correct. I'm going to self-publish. And it's been a labor of love. If you've known, I've been at this book. I'd say I've been writing for five years. It's been a book in my heart for quite a while. And so I'm really excited that, you know, I can see the finish line. Do we have a title?

We do. We have a great. What is it? So this was a title. I bounced around and everybody, I keep not wanting to change it, but everybody loves it, but it's you don't have to be an asshole to be a leader. Okay. And it's really sort of my crusade against asshole leaders, like yellers, screamers, because I don't believe you get the most out of people.

And ultimately, as a leader, you don't realize your true potential. when you are an asshole. And the funny part is when I surveyed people, I'd put a survey out there and you'd say, have you ever worked for an asshole? It's like everybody's hand goes up. I was even in an Uber in Nashville and I was riding to meet one of my writers. And the guy said, what are you here for?

And I said, I'm working on a book. And he says, oh, what's the title? And I said, you don't have to be an asshole and be a leader. I couldn't get the guy to shut up. Like, oh, my God. He just went on and on. And so it's one thing there, but what it really then boils down to is the hook is what I have is five keys to becoming the leader people are happy to see. And that's, I think, ultimately not the leader for followers, but think about that leader you're happy to see, right?

And if you think about those leaders, when your phone rings, do you want to answer it? Do you not want to answer it? Is they helping you or not helping you? And so I worked through that because I do believe today and leadership, it is a different game than it was in the past. Definitely for a lot of reasons. But it'll be interesting. So October 1, plenty of time for stocking stuffers. Yeah.

Yeah, I've been with you, Marty, through this whole book writing process. Yeah. It's fun. I mean, you know it. When you wrote your book and I doing this, a lot of it is for ourselves, right? Because to me, and we've talked about success and sales and leadership, you know, to me it's a lot of success. To me is, and I've always said this, get up at 5 a.m., read, write, and meditate. The Miracle Morning.

You do those three things, and what writing does for us is it helps clarify our thoughts. It helps get us in the mode of what we want to do, how we plan the day. And, you know, I think we can tie that back to sales, just sales. leads, right? Every day, do we just wake up and just go through the day and say at a good day or bad day or do we actually plan the day? And so I'll say this, the irony of the book isn't really a leadership book. And it's it really is an awakening because there's a whole discussion, Carl Ewan, if you get into psychology and so forth, that he talks about how do we make the unconscious conscious? You know,

You know, you think about a week or days go by and we don't plan, we don't think, and all of a sudden, you know, we didn't get any leads, we didn't get any sales, we didn't make any appointments. When in actuality, if we become conscious every day of what we want to do, whether it's who we want to be as a person or a leader, what we want to be as a salesperson lead, that's what it all comes to. And so my hopefully goal is to bring some consciousness to leadership. Yeah, wonderful.

Well, I can't wait to read it. when it comes out or maybe before? You might get a sneak copy, yes. You better have a, I better get a mention in there. I got a couple good Sterling stories, yes. Good, good, good, good. Another thing we want to talk about was how people, and this may go back to the leadership thing,

but people very often aren't able to get what they want today based on what they did yesterday. Yeah. You have to change, you have to change the person or the behavior or change, change out the person, right? So what does that mean to you?

One of the things in studying leadership, and I know from myself personally in our team, one of the areas that I think we struggle with over time is I think it's the greatest line is what got us here is not going to get us there, right? So what got us to this, whatever we did over the last five years, last 10 years, whatever,

there's a moment where we get stuck. We kind of hit a plateau because what got us here was hard work. You know, we did certain jobs. We met certain people. But now all of a sudden that's starting to taper off and we have to have a new set of thinking. And that's a big challenge, whether you're in sales, you're in leadership, is how do we make ourselves uncomfortable? How do we keep learning? And again, I think your podcast, I think Noob School, what it does is whether you're in, and I've said,

this to you, whether you're new to sales or been doing sales for 30 years, we need to be continually learning. Every lesson there is to get us over that hump, to get us unstuck. And I mean, I think the greatest stuck story is, you know, Blackberry. It's, you know, there's a, the show on Netflix where, you know, Mike Lazario, you know, took the company to $70 billion. Yeah. And then wouldn't change the internet wouldn't change messaging and wouldn't change the keyboard. He dug his heels in.

And what got him to where he was, he was not willing to be innovative enough. And it's zero because he wasn't willing to change. And so that's the biggest glaring statement, but we see it in smaller versions of ourselves every day. Well, it actually happened. If you think about the World Trade Center when they had that first bomb that went off in the, in the basement or in the garage. And the solution for the people on the top floors was to go to the very top and the helicopter took them off.

Yep. And so when the 9-11 happened, many people went to the top, which was the wrong thing to do. The wrong thing to do. Yeah. So it's not always the same thing. How do you address that with managing people? Like if you have someone on one of your teams that you're like, I don't think this person can make it to the next.

level. Let's just say we're going to be a public company or something. What would you do? Well, again, I think you always have to look not, you look at behaviors, right? So, you know, I think early on we tried to coach our team to continually learning, you know, like Zig Zig, or what are you putting in your head? What are you doing to learn and educate yourself? Because I think as leaders, as sales managers, we go to measurements. too much. Like we look at measurability, like what are your sales numbers? What are your, you know, you know, your close rate, all that stuff. And that's important. But if you really back it up, it's behaviors. It's what are you doing each day every morning? What are we doing to drive good behavior?

What are our meetings like, you know, do we go right in the meeting and start talking about our company or do we get to know the person? And so I think the first thing we typically do is we look at the behaviors of what's going on and see if we can't correct it. Now, as a leader, you know trying to correct behaviors and tell somebody what they're doing is wrong. It's hard because they're going to stand in the moment. They're going to accuse you. Well, you don't give me lead.

You didn't do any of that. And we have to stand in the moment, but when we're there for them, then I think we can start to change it. I think we have to be really careful. And the other thing, I was talking to somebody the other day. One of the problems is as leaders or salesmen, we get mad at salespeople, but we're really mad at ourselves because it's about me. You're making me look bad. Well, if somebody's struggling, they're worried about themselves.

They're worried about feeding their family and their kids and they're worried about how they look. Well, I'm worried about how I look. Well, we're not going to help each other. So I do think leaders, sales managers have to look at the individual and figure out how can we, change or correct whatever behaviors are going on. Yeah. It's interesting, I mean, having been through it at one company, you know, we went from really small to really big,

so seeing that happened a couple of times, in several instances, there was no other solution, really, but to get somebody new. Yeah. You went from a good person who did a pretty good job up to a certain point to someone who already knew how to manage a bigger organization in that area. you just swapped them out and this person maybe did another job somewhere.

So sometimes that's the answer too. No, it is. Well, in that case, it's just they don't have the right skill sets and you're not in the right place. And again, I do think having difficult conversations with somebody like in that scenario, and we spent a lot of time on this is, you know, we like, John, this is not going to be an easy conversation, right? You signal right away what you're going to say, but, you know, this. this job is not right for you. And here's the skill sets that we see.

What we need, we don't see that, but here's where you can go. And so you almost, again, not make it personal, but it is a way for them to go succeed where they can. Because, again, at some point out of them, if they're not going to succeed, doesn't do them any good or you any good. That's right. That's right. Hard conversations. It's also, yeah, difficult conversations. Especially in today's world, we can't just pull a Donald Trump and say, you're fired.

Yeah. On the other hand, we had some examples where we thought that our existing person, good person, was not capable really of the next big leap. Yeah. And we went out and recruited someone who was like, looked on paper just perfect. And they couldn't hold a candle to the original person. Yeah. So, you know, it's not always, grass isn't always greener. I tend to want to give people a chance so they can't do it instead of just assuming they can't do it.

But I think you knew. I think, again, it's typically like, and again, we saw this a lot in software when you went from a more over-the-phone, quick transaction, small volumes, to bigger deals, which really were more relational. Yeah. And if you go into a bigger deal that requires a relationship and I'm just asking for the order, the guy's like, I don't know you, I don't trust you,

where we need to get them to slow down. You know, we've told them for so long to speed up. Now we're saying slow down, build a relationship, build trust. But they knew the product. They knew the success. They knew it could help people. If we could teach them that, you're right. They probably were a better rep than that outsider who didn't know the market, didn't know the product.

So it's hard, yep. Well, let's cover one more thing, and then we can put this sales talk to bed. But, you know, one of the questions that we get asked a lot, particularly from our new school folks, is help finding, not just getting the first job, but what job should I be trying to get? And then once I figure out what I want, how do I get it? And so I thought I would start with you and let you give me your feedback on that, and then I'll give you mine and see if they match up. I tell you, the first job's interesting. And we've kind of had this conversation that at first, you want to be successful. Yep.

But I'm kind of having a contrarian thought of it's okay to have a job you don't like and you fail. Yeah. Because you know what about failure is? You learn what you don't like. And sometimes knowing what you don't like is a whole lot easier than sometimes what you do like. And so I think that first job is really trying to find a skill, and that for me would be a skill that you want to learn. You know, again, it might be if I really want to learn sales, I might go in to, you know, selling copiers, right? It's probably the hardest sales that's out there.

But you learn hand-to-hand combat, and you may at the end of the day not want to do it more in three years, but you learn a lot. or certain industries that are there. So that's just maybe my opinion is finding something that you can learn a skill at. I mean, I look back at data stream. I mean, you taught some amazing skills to young people, whether they made it or not, is, you know, we talk about this, is you had to get on that phone and talk to people, and you would record that phone call. And that's one of the hardest things to now sit there.

and we'd listen to that phone call. But my gosh, how many people remember John working with them on the phone? They hated, I'm sure, at the time. They hated it. Hated it. But the lessons, they remember that. And so, anyways, that's maybe my view is, you know, maybe we put a little too much pressure on the first job. Yeah.

Well, I tell people that if you don't have, like, I believe in a perfect world, you have an area, that you like. That area could be as broad as sports, or could it be as broad as forestry, or it could be medicine. Like something that you like, you have some experience in, so you have a reason to want to be there.

And then you find your first job in that ecosystem somewhere. It might not be your final destination, but if you want to be in the field of baseball, You want to be like a general manager of the Yankees or something. You don't start with that, right? No. You might end up getting a job selling season tickets for the Greenville Drive.

But you're in. You're in the game, right? And then from there you start working your way up because you want to be in that field versus just whatever job I get. So to me that's ideal. It's not unideal to say I can't find that perfect, I don't even know what it is yet. So I'm going to get a job where I can learn sales. That could be copiers.

It could be working at Salesforce. Yeah. You know, it could be a lot of places and just say, I'm going to learn sales while I go figure out what I want to do next. And then believe me, you come out of, you know, all of a sudden you do six years at Salesforce and then get an MBA and you're 28. You can go selling them, go to baseball, go anywhere you want to. Yeah, it's powerful. Powerful. So you're using your job to, you're, to, you're, to, you're, to, you're, you're, to, you're,

to create your skill set. Yeah. I have a funny story. We were trying to hire a sales rep, and the team was really, they were struggling to find that right person. We did a lot of testing, and they just were like,

we need to get this person. And so they narrowed it down to two, and I let the team pick. I kind of knew what was going on, and they picked this one individual, and I said, well, why did you choose this person? And they said, well, they worked for a baseball company,

selling tickets so they knew how to use the phone and everything. I said, okay, fair enough. I like it. Hired the person. We're about a weekend and we were out. And so I walked up to the person that I said, oh, I hear you work for the Phillies selling tickets. What did you think of that job?

She said, I don't know. You know, it was okay. I tell you what, pissed me off. Is Bryce Harper making like $40 million a year? And they're paying me $15. And all she talked about was how pissed off. she was that Bryce Harper was making $40 million. And I was like,

this person's not going to make it. I went back to the team. I said, I'm not going to say, and I don't think this person's going to make it because their mindset wasn't right. Yeah, mindset. Well, yeah, but I have seen little glimmers of hope

where someone that I've coached has gone into an area they like, an ecosystem. Yeah. And they're just happy as can be. There was one who was an actual young sales rep for us. years ago, great guy, and he did pretty good on sales, but I could tell he just wasn't completely into it. Like all the rest of them were into it. He was just like, hmm, okay. I said, what are you into?

And he's like, Gamecock football. Yep. Gamecock football. And I'm like, really? Really? Yeah. And he's always one of the stats and all that stuff. And I said, can you get a job somehow in Gamecock football. He started thinking about it. And he got a job working for the silver golden spur or whatever it was. And then started a competition called Gamecock Central. Which is huge. Tony Morrell.

Oh, my gosh. Yeah. So Tony was one of our young sales guys. Really? Yeah. And we just moved him to what is it you're into? And now he's crushing it. And, you know, I told you another story, a kid that was about to go, a Citadel guy was

about to go to work in pharmaceutical. because that's kind of the hot thing right now, right? You'd pay good. And I said, what are you into? And he's like, hunting, fishing, forestry, timber, living in a cabin. I'm like, can you get into that area? And he goes, I don't know. So he called me last week.

And he's like, I got a job in real estate, you know, selling big pieces of land. And he goes, I just love it. The people I'm around, the clients I take out. I mean, that's what's interesting. It's if he was in medical, you know, he's up in New York and training at Merck or something, he's like hating it. Yeah. So if you can, you want to find that thing you like. I like working with salespeople and business owners that care about sales.

Yes. I didn't really love. I love some of our customers that did maintenance. Yeah. But wasn't my thing. Mm-mm. I didn't have much in common with them. Right.

So I'm better now. That's good. Closer. Yeah. Well, I think you like solving problems. You like helping people. And I think that's, you've always had sort of a teaching heart, which I go back to sitting on the phone and the recorded call was it was not to berate it, it was not to make them look bad.

It was a teaching heart that said, I need to be able to, let's walk through this because I can't help you if I don't know what's going on. And so, yeah, that's such a great thing. Well, that's what I think about that first job. Again, on the other side of the coin, I've seen far too many people that drifted into a job out of college and ended up in a field that they got no interest in. Yeah. They show up to clock in every day and clock out and, you know. Yeah.

One of the things, too, from a sales perspective, and I'm trying to think if we've talked about this, but we talked about testing. You love the Colby test. for quick starter, that kind of, the test I'm really into is called Working Genius, and it's by Patrick Lanchone. And it talks about having one of or there's six geniuses you have, too. And as I've studied kind of salespeople, the one thing I've found, though, is in sales, right, is are you a galvanizer? Do you like, do you get energy from talking to people or does it suck you dry?

And it's funny is I think as individuals There's certain things we crave and crushes us And I think we have to sort of balance that And within individuals, probably even in that Tony Moral's story Is he wasn't really a galvara He didn't enjoy, probably didn't derive energy From just picking up the phone like you and I We love talking to people

Yeah We talk to people the more we talk to the more energy we get Other people are like, oh my gosh You know other things you know he loved. And so I think it's also sometimes getting to know that person and what they crave and what crushes them. And those things through testing helps find, is this the right place for you? Or maybe even what is the right type of sales job. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. And one last thing is on recruiting, which is a lot of what I help my clients with, is we know what the right profile is for, let's say,

an aggressive outside salesperson. And my clients have a hard time finding them because they're looking and they just can't find them. And what I think is, well, they're just not available. If you get a Marty Osborne, he's not looking for work. He's already making a pile of money working for Salesforce or Oracle or scan source or somebody. And so they're like, well, how do I do it?

I'm like, you've got to get them before anyone else finds them. Marty's going to be the same score as a junior in college as he is today. So find him then, right? Yes. And then groom him up to be a future leader. And you did a lot of that with your last company, right? Yeah, I'm glad you brought this up because I think sometimes we always think we're going to shortcut the circuit. Right.

That's the circuit. We'll get a rainmaker. We'll got to find that rainmaker. One used to say, you know, superstars aren't on. you know, Craigslist, you know, they're not out.

Because if they're looking, there's something going on. Yeah. You know, I hate to say it, but we become so desperate to make that higher, but we go to their LinkedIn profile. I got,

you know, every 18 months they have a new job, which pretty much tells me their quota money ran out, you know. But I love, like, going, finding the younger,

hungry people where you can train them. They'll learn. They'll do it. And, yeah, I think you can develop the superstars as opposed to trying to hire the superstar. Yeah, yeah. Well, this was a hell of a good sales talk, Marty.

Well, as always, John, it's so much fun. So we're going to get you back, I would say, in the maybe September timeframe for the book kickoff? It'll be there. It's going to be, it'll be very close and we'll get people fired up. The pre-orders. The pre-orders, because in there that, you know, everybody's going to want to know my five keys to being that leader, people are happy to see. Well, thanks.

Another great sales talk. All right, John. Good to see it. All right. Thanks.