Latest / Founder Talk with Alex Sheridan / The Playbook Behind $1 Billion in International Sales with Zach Selch

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The Playbook Behind $1 Billion in International Sales with Zach Selch · Founder Talk with Alex Sheridan

• 0:00
  All right, Zach Selch, glad to have you on the show, man.
• 0:02
  I appreciate you coming. Thanks for having me.
• 0:04
  Yeah, I saw obviously you're a founder of Global Sales Mentor,
• 0:07
  but you've got a extensive history in sales and helping
• 0:11
  companies grow, especially internationally through sales
• 0:13
  team sales training and coaching.
• 0:14
  So, you know, I just was looking at your LinkedIn profile and
• 0:18
  kind of reading a little bit about you and I saw one of the
• 0:20
  first things I wanted to touch on is I saw that you grew up in
• 0:22
  a 29 foot trailer in Pennsylvania, rural
• 0:25
  Pennsylvania. And you went from that to, you
• 0:29
  know, you've closed over a billion dollars worth of deals,
• 0:32
  revenue, 125 quarters of beaten quota and you've just become an
• 0:37
  elite sales trainer and coach. So I wanted to ask you if you
• 0:39
  could take us back to that trailer in rural Pennsylvania.
• 0:43
  How did that experience and and growing up that way shape who
• 0:46
  you are today? Well, well, thanks that that's a
• 0:49
  great question. Like, and, and that's why I sort
• 0:51
  of put it in there is I want people to understand that not
• 0:54
  everybody goes to an Ivy League school, right?
• 0:57
  Not everybody, you know, comes from a comfortable background
• 1:02
  and sales is a great way to get where you want to go.
• 1:06
  And, and yeah, I lived in this in a trailer and and I the I
• 1:12
  like to say it wasn't even like one of these fancy nice ones in
• 1:15
  the trailer park, right? This is like a, you know, I've.
• 1:17
  Seen some nice ones, yeah? Yeah, there are some nice ones
• 1:19
  out there, but but at one point my family was really badly off
• 1:24
  and, and right down the street there was a flea market and I
• 1:27
  was at 11/10/11 and I walked down the street and I asked for
• 1:32
  a job and this guy gave me a job and I realized I could sell.
• 1:36
  And I thought like, you know, there, I'm like 11.
• 1:39
  I'm like, you know, if I can sell, I can like if I can sell.
• 1:43
  And I was selling factory second cutting boards and welcome mats,
• 1:49
  right? And I was like, if I can sell
• 1:52
  these, I can, you know, when I'm 10 years from now, I can sell
• 1:55
  something else, right? I can be selling machinery.
• 1:57
  I can, for some reason I was thinking about like airplanes
• 2:01
  and trains and ships. I was thinking about big, big
• 2:04
  things. I was like, if I could do this,
• 2:06
  I can, I can see the world. I can do anything I want.
• 2:08
  And that was sort of my goal from from them.
• 2:11
  And that, and that's the thing like, you know, if you, if you
• 2:14
  have the skills to sell, you can make money and you can do just
• 2:18
  about anything and you can get just about anywhere.
• 2:21
  And that was it. So you don't have to be a doctor
• 2:23
  or an engineer or an architect, right?
• 2:26
  Wow. Yeah, we're going to talk about
• 2:28
  some of those sales skills that you could build and in our
• 2:30
  audiences, a lot of small to medium sized companies,
• 2:33
  founders, CEOs, listening, spiring entrepreneurs.
• 2:36
  I think regardless of where you're at, whether you're a
• 2:38
  sales Rep or you're a sales leader or you're ACEO or a
• 2:41
  founder. Every company needs to sell,
• 2:45
  right? And you know, I'm a founder of
• 2:48
  my own company, but I've been one of the first employees with
• 2:52
  multiple startups. I've, I've been the sales
• 2:54
  manager of 11 startups and I've worked with a lot of founders
• 2:59
  and you know that there's really, I'll tell you, there's
• 3:02
  an argument in the LinkedIn world over do you have to be a,
• 3:08
  you know, should the founder be a salesperson or not?
• 3:11
  And very often, you know, it turns out that I'm, I'm a sales
• 3:16
  guy, right? But there are a lot of founders.
• 3:18
  I can't, you know, I can't invent anything.
• 3:20
  I can't build anything. I don't, I, I, I have trouble
• 3:23
  putting together IKEA furniture, right?
• 3:25
  You know, but you have people who are really great, they've
• 3:28
  invented stuff, right? They, they're, you know,
• 3:30
  physicists, they're doctors, they're all sorts of things.
• 3:35
  And but they don't know how to sell and then they kill
• 3:37
  themselves because they're like, well, I have to be the best
• 3:40
  salesperson in my startup. No, you don't.
• 3:43
  You can, you can, you know, the same way I can find somebody to
• 3:46
  put together my IKEA furniture, You can find somebody to to sell
• 3:50
  for you, right. And and that's, that's the way
• 3:52
  the world works. You don't your.
• 3:54
  Your answer to that question is no, you don't think the founder
• 3:58
  has to be. I don't, I, I really don't.
• 4:00
  And I not only that, I think it's detrimental when you think
• 4:05
  that the founder has to sell, you're, you're almost damaging
• 4:10
  the company, right, because what the founder should be doing is
• 4:13
  finding the best damn person he can to sell for him where so the
• 4:17
  founder can focus on what he does well.
• 4:19
  What if you're a 2345 person company?
• 4:22
  You find a fractional person right there.
• 4:24
  There's always somebody out there who can help you for, you
• 4:29
  know, the right kind of money now.
• 4:31
  But don't. Think it's important to learn
• 4:32
  how? It's important to.
• 4:34
  Your idea? Your story or narrative in the
• 4:35
  industry? Yeah, but but that said, I mean,
• 4:40
  look there, you know, in today's world, we we're getting used to
• 4:44
  the idea of like neurodiversion people, right?
• 4:46
  There are, there are people out there who are never going to be
• 4:49
  able to sell. There are people out there who
• 4:50
  are, who are not that not that they're autistic.
• 4:53
  They're just plain damn grumpy, right?
• 4:54
  Or they're, you know, they're, they're just never going to be a
• 4:57
  good salesperson. And then they kill themselves
• 4:59
  over that because they're like, well, I had, you know, for my
• 5:02
  companies to to succeed, I have to be able to sell.
• 5:07
  That's my opinion, right? I think you can buy that skill.
• 5:10
  You can find somebody who can help you.
• 5:12
  If you have the money to right. You know what that's true if you
• 5:15
  have the money to and maybe what you have to do is you have to be
• 5:17
  able to, but but there's no reason why your company should
• 5:19
  fail if you can't figure it out, right, you know?
• 5:23
  I think you need to have it to a certain degree.
• 5:26
  I think you need to have enough skills to get in front of a
• 5:28
  group to pitch your idea to be on a sales call to close.
• 5:31
  I don't know that I'd I'd argue with that.
• 5:34
  I mean, you, you should have those skills.
• 5:35
  And there are plenty of people, again, going back to Lincoln,
• 5:38
  there are plenty of people out there who give basic courses.
• 5:42
  Sandler, you know, if you've ever heard of Sandler, Sandler
• 5:45
  does great basic courses on sales.
• 5:48
  You can you can pick up the basic skills, but you know,
• 5:54
  being able to run a sales organization, being able to
• 5:57
  handle a really good pitch, all of those things, they might be
• 6:01
  things that you're just not going to be able to learn and
• 6:04
  and you shouldn't kill yourself over that.
• 6:05
  You shouldn't say, well, we're not going to be able to succeed
• 6:08
  because I'm not going to be able to sell right.
• 6:11
  If you, if you can make a great product, you know, and The thing
• 6:14
  is there are people out there who make fantastic products and
• 6:18
  then, you know, they think they're going to be able to go
• 6:20
  out and do the selling and they can't, right.
• 6:23
  Or they don't understand how to set up the systems of the
• 6:27
  methodology or every, you know, every sale the company has was
• 6:31
  done by the founder and they're there's just not scalable
• 6:36
  because the founder is putting 20 hours a week into selling
• 6:39
  when he really needs to be putting, you know, 80 hours a
• 6:42
  week into manufacturing or into developing the next product
• 6:46
  line. Well, it's one and I'm sure you
• 6:47
  would agree. It's one of the reasons I think
• 6:49
  the number one skill or job you can have if you want to become
• 6:53
  an entrepreneur is sales. Yeah, because when you jump into
• 6:56
  entrepreneurship, especially if you're by yourself, most are in
• 6:59
  the beginning, it's kind of a sales job.
• 7:02
  I mean, you've created a service or a comp, whatever you've done,
• 7:05
  but you got to market and sell pretty quickly.
• 7:07
  And if you haven't had a sales background?
• 7:10
  It's. Improving skills there it's it's
• 7:12
  tough because you're going to met with a lot of rejection.
• 7:14
  Yeah. And that's, I tell my kids like
• 7:16
  I don't think any of my kids are really going to be in sales, but
• 7:19
  I wanted them to get basic sales skills.
• 7:21
  I wanted them to work a little bit in sales because I think
• 7:24
  you're right. It's something that you're
• 7:25
  always going to be able to use. Every company needs it.
• 7:29
  Over the years I've had probably 10 or 12:10, 12/15 guys work for
• 7:36
  me who wanted to put in a two to three-year shift as a regional
• 7:42
  sales manager even though they had no, they wanted to be ACEO.
• 7:46
  They didn't, they knew they weren't going to spend their
• 7:47
  whole career as a sales guy, but they figured, you know, they,
• 7:51
  they were a manufacturing guy. They did some manufacturing
• 7:54
  stuff and then they wanted to do a couple of years in sales and
• 7:59
  then they went back into being, you know, the OPS manager for a
• 8:03
  factory and then they went on to be the CEO of a factory, right.
• 8:06
  But they wanted to get that skill and that and that's a
• 8:08
  great way to invest. Yeah, if you, if you can plan it
• 8:11
  out and do it that way, you know.
• 8:14
  Yeah, no, I totally agree. Do you going back to your
• 8:16
  because I don't want to skip over this part the the rural
• 8:18
  Pennsylvania and the trailer. What what did your parents do?
• 8:22
  I'm curious if you don't mind, Sharon?
• 8:24
  So, so my, my dad was just not very good at holding a job,
• 8:31
  right? My dad was a little pugnacious.
• 8:34
  He, he was a smart guy. He, he had been in, he, he, he
• 8:39
  had a little bit of post traumatic stress from, from the
• 8:42
  war in Korea. He, he also, he, he was raised
• 8:47
  poor, you know, he, he grew up, both of my parents spent time,
• 8:50
  you know, basically grew up on farms and my mom was a teacher
• 8:55
  and a housewife. But, you know, she, she didn't
• 8:59
  really have, she didn't have a college degree.
• 9:01
  My dad spent a couple of years in college and didn't graduate.
• 9:05
  So he didn't have a degree. And he would like he'd, he'd get
• 9:09
  jobs that were typically, they were a little bit beyond him.
• 9:14
  You know, he'd, he'd do really well in the interview.
• 9:16
  He'd get a job and then he'd struggle with it and he'd get
• 9:19
  fired and we'd end up, you know, unemployed for, you know, six
• 9:22
  months or a year. We'd move around.
• 9:25
  So we spent like I, you know, it's sort of funny, like there
• 9:29
  was this guy on LinkedIn a while, you know, so I, I spend a
• 9:32
  lot of my time on LinkedIn. I.
• 9:33
  Mentioned a lot, right? So there was this guy a while
• 9:35
  back and he was like, yeah, I was really poor as a kid.
• 9:37
  You know, if we went on vacation, we only went to Spain
• 9:40
  and we never went. I was like, who would say that?
• 9:42
  And I was like, you have no idea.
• 9:44
  Like I, you know, like we went through periods of time when
• 9:48
  and, and, and I'll tell you something else which I've never
• 9:50
  actually said on a podcast before or said in public before.
• 9:54
  So my dad, at one point he, he was getting unemployment and he
• 9:58
  cheated. He got it.
• 9:59
  He like was working under the table while he was getting
• 10:02
  unemployment and he got caught. So then we could never get any
• 10:05
  government assistance after that, right.
• 10:08
  So there was a period of time like my, you know, I remember
• 10:11
  like going to the supermarket with my mother and she'd buy
• 10:13
  like a 50 LB bag of, of pasta and these, these like, like a
• 10:21
  big barrel of, of margarine because that was like the
• 10:24
  cheapest thing you can get. And like, and we would have like
• 10:27
  peanut butter sandwiches and pasta and margarine for, you
• 10:32
  know, two months at a time. That was all we would eat
• 10:35
  because that's what we had. And you know, so we we were
• 10:39
  poor. That's poor.
• 10:40
  When you're poor, you don't take vacations.
• 10:42
  Like when you don't take poor, you know, I it was funny.
• 10:46
  I, I said to my wife at one point, like we were buying
• 10:50
  furniture for my kids. And I laughed.
• 10:52
  I said, you know, I didn't realize you could buy a mattress
• 10:56
  until I was like 22. Because what my dad would do, he
• 11:00
  would go to a hardware store and he would buy foam and he would
• 11:04
  cut it into shapes and then he'd put like boards down with
• 11:08
  blocks. And that's how we slept.
• 11:11
  And you know, again, it's funny, I'm not trying to cry to
• 11:15
  anybody's shoulder, but this is like, this is what poverty looks
• 11:17
  like, right? And you, you're, you live like
• 11:20
  that. And you say, well, I don't
• 11:22
  necessarily want to raise my kids like this.
• 11:25
  And what do you do? Well, you, you know, you go to
• 11:27
  school, you, you figure out. And for me, it worked out that I
• 11:31
  knew how how to sell. And I'll tell you, I'll give you
• 11:35
  one story that, that so I was selling this, this flea market
• 11:43
  and people would come in from, from Baltimore and Philadelphia
• 11:48
  to to Lancaster. And I was selling these cutting
• 11:51
  boards. And, you know, if you ever walk
• 11:54
  through a flea market, but everybody's standing in their
• 11:55
  hallway and they're going 3 for a dollar, three for a dollar.
• 11:58
  And I would stop people and I would say, hey, you know, did
• 12:02
  did you just come in from. I'm a bus from Philadelphia.
• 12:04
  You know, I'm here. I'm a 10 year old boy.
• 12:06
  And they'd be like, yeah, I said, did they stop for lunch at
• 12:08
  the Bird in Hand Diner? And they'd be like, yeah, I
• 12:11
  said, wow, isn't that good food? Yeah.
• 12:13
  Did you did you enjoy the Amish food?
• 12:15
  Yeah, You know, what's a great way to remember being in
• 12:18
  Lancaster is you could, you could you could make some, some
• 12:22
  local food and and you know, the people at the Bird in Hand
• 12:25
  diner, they're using these cutting boards.
• 12:26
  They're made locally. Wouldn't that be a great, you
• 12:29
  know, thing to to remember Lancaster?
• 12:32
  But. And they'd be like, yeah, you
• 12:34
  know, that sounds great. It's like, hey, you know, cuz
• 12:36
  these cutting boards, these are the same ones they're using in
• 12:39
  all the restaurants locally. They make them locally.
• 12:41
  The company's been around for 50 years.
• 12:43
  It's a great thing to take home. And because they're factory
• 12:46
  seconds, they're about 1/3 of the price.
• 12:47
  You'd buy them in a store in Philadelphia.
• 12:51
  And so I'd sell these boards. And this is, you know, 19751976.
• 12:55
  I was selling $30 boards like that.
• 12:57
  Right. How did you know to do that?
• 12:58
  How did you know to tell frame a story around it?
• 13:00
  An emotional reference? Pardon me for saying fuck if I
• 13:04
  know. Like really, I, I don't know,
• 13:05
  like I, it was just mad. Remember thinking about it like
• 13:08
  I remember, how do I sell this? Because, well, actually you
• 13:10
  might have thought like here's a cutting board, but you didn't do
• 13:13
  that. No, I was like, you know, these
• 13:15
  people wanna have a talk. They had, you know, they, they
• 13:17
  got, they're enjoying their day. 100 guys are jumping at them and
• 13:22
  saying 3 for a dollar, three for a dollar.
• 13:23
  And I was like, you know, he doesn't want to be pounced on
• 13:26
  like that, you know, and I'd, I'd talk to them and they'd
• 13:29
  engage with me and we get to talking.
• 13:31
  I'd be like, yeah, you want something, you want to take
• 13:33
  something home to remember that today from right, this is a
• 13:36
  great thing. You're going to use it for the
• 13:37
  rest of your, this is going to last you the rest of your life.
• 13:39
  You'll every time you use it, you're going to remember your
• 13:41
  nice day in Lancaster, right? And so one day I'm standing
• 13:47
  there, my boss calls me over and there's this angry looking guy
• 13:53
  and he has two cutting boards under his arm.
• 13:55
  And my boss calls me over and he says this gentleman and he's my
• 13:59
  boss is like laughing, you know, this, this gentleman has a
• 14:02
  complaint. And I look and I'm I'm scared
• 14:05
  when I'm eleven years old, my heart I'm the first time
• 14:08
  anybody's ever complained about me.
• 14:11
  And the guy says don't let him say anything points to me and
• 14:15
  says to my boss says don't let him say anything goes.
• 14:18
  My bought, my wife bought one of these crazy expensive cutting
• 14:21
  boards and I came to to return it and he sold me another one.
• 14:27
  And so my boss is like laughing. He goes, if he starts talking, I
• 14:31
  don't know what I'm going to do. I'll end up buying a third one.
• 14:34
  So my boss took took one back, right.
• 14:37
  So I just realized that I knew how to talk to people and how to
• 14:41
  get them engaged and how to get them to buy.
• 14:43
  And I've been doing the same same thing for 50 years now.
• 14:48
  So that would lead me to believe, based on your story,
• 14:51
  that being good at sales is something that you're born with,
• 14:55
  not taught for the most part. Would you agree with that?
• 14:59
  I would say like anything you can teach anybody to a certain
• 15:06
  level and then there are skills that you're born with, right?
• 15:09
  Like I agree, you know, I have, I look, I, I, I, I'm getting old
• 15:14
  so I'm slowing down. But I used to be a power lifter,
• 15:17
  right? And I can, I have, I have
• 15:20
  friends who are marathon runners, right?
• 15:22
  So I ran, I've run 2 marathons. I will always be a slow runner,
• 15:26
  right? My, you know, my, my friend
• 15:28
  who's run 3040 marathons, he's never going to be able to bench
• 15:31
  what I can, right? He just doesn't have the muscle
• 15:33
  mass, right. So we're different.
• 15:36
  So it's like that with sales. I think I was born or developed
• 15:40
  as a kid certain skills which somebody else might not have and
• 15:46
  might never be able to get there.
• 15:48
  On the other hand, yeah, and this is what I do, I teach
• 15:50
  people, right? So you can teach people a lot of
• 15:53
  those skills and especially the methodology of sales, what most
• 15:58
  people you know, I've known sales guys who are really,
• 16:03
  really good at getting to a certain level.
• 16:07
  They can't manage people. They can't teach people because
• 16:09
  they can't even explain what they do.
• 16:11
  They can't break it down into a methodology, right?
• 16:14
  So, so going back to what I was talking about in Pennsylvania, I
• 16:18
  can tell you exactly what I'm doing, right?
• 16:19
  I'm doing a discovery. I am engaging you.
• 16:23
  I'm making a quick intro. I'm getting you to talk about
• 16:27
  your feelings, right? You're saying, hey, did you
• 16:30
  enjoy, you know, did you enjoy lunch, right?
• 16:32
  Do you want to have something to remember your time in Lancaster,
• 16:36
  right? So I can break that down.
• 16:38
  And one of the things about I do with my clients is I teach them,
• 16:43
  you know, I'm, I'll put together 2.
• 16:45
  Like, you know, right now I'm working with clients where I'm
• 16:48
  putting together 280 page book on their sales process, breaking
• 16:54
  down every little piece of it so that they can train everybody
• 16:59
  and they can keep track of the conversion rate from one
• 17:03
  conversation to another and they can improve that.
• 17:07
  And that you're not born with that.
• 17:09
  You have to have to learn and you have to work on those
• 17:12
  details and you have to dig that up.
• 17:14
  So that's, you know, you can get to be sure I can sell a $30, you
• 17:18
  know, I can sell a whole bunch of $30 cutting boards, but can I
• 17:22
  sell, you know, a $2,000,000 piece of industrial equipment?
• 17:26
  Well, that that requires some, you know, some, some methodology
• 17:31
  to do that. Right.
• 17:32
  Did you, going back to when you were that kid, did growing up
• 17:34
  poor shape who you are and how so?
• 17:38
  So I'll tell you what like a you know, this is a funny thing,
• 17:41
  nothing to do with business. It kills me.
• 17:42
  My kids are wasteful with like like I'll go into the kitchen
• 17:45
  and I'll see that everybody's left like 2 spoonfuls of food on
• 17:50
  their plate and I want to kill everybody.
• 17:51
  I'm like, I would net like I can't believe you would you
• 17:54
  would do this right? So that, that shaped me, you
• 17:58
  know, I, I try and give my kids a whole lot of stuff that I,
• 18:03
  that I, you know, on the one hand, I want to give them stuff
• 18:05
  that I didn't get. On the other hand, I'm sort of
• 18:07
  like, well, if I, they're not tough enough, right?
• 18:09
  I'm not making them tough enough, you know, that's.
• 18:11
  The balance right there. I want to give them things, but
• 18:13
  if I give them everything, what's where's the grit?
• 18:16
  Where's the character? Where's the challenge and
• 18:18
  building that is really a very, very so I I made all of my kids
• 18:23
  work for two years either in food service or retail in high
• 18:28
  school. Wow right.
• 18:29
  So one of my kids who stallion, you know, in Graduate School I
• 18:32
  made them wash dishes in, you know, 9th and 10th grade.
• 18:36
  They were washing dishes in a in a local restaurant.
• 18:38
  I did that too. Yeah, it builds care.
• 18:41
  Yeah, right. And and.
• 18:43
  It's humbling, like you're at the bottom washing dishes, you
• 18:45
  know? And and hey.
• 18:47
  Exactly. You got to do the best you can
• 18:48
  at it. That was my philosophy.
• 18:49
  That that was exactly. The best dishwasher I could, the
• 18:51
  fastest, the most cleanest, you know.
• 18:52
  That that's exactly it, right? That's what I, you know, I said
• 18:55
  to my kids, right? And, and because all these other
• 18:58
  kids are, they're getting everything for free, right?
• 19:01
  And they they don't have to do anything and they're not
• 19:03
  learning. You never learn shit when you
• 19:05
  get it for free. When something comes easy, you
• 19:07
  would never learn anything. That that's exactly it, right?
• 19:10
  So that's, that's what I did with my kids.
• 19:12
  And so that type of thing shapes me, shaped me, certainly, right?
• 19:18
  You think that anyone now in America could start in a trailer
• 19:22
  and work their way up to what you've gotten to?
• 19:24
  I would like to believe you can. I would.
• 19:28
  I would like to believe you can. I think it gets harder maybe,
• 19:32
  but but you know what's actually easier?
• 19:35
  Again, I don't want to just education is so expensive now,
• 19:39
  right? But.
• 19:40
  Well, depends on what kind of education you mean.
• 19:43
  University and academia, Yes. But I think we've got YouTube,
• 19:46
  we've got Google Chat. You know that's true.
• 19:48
  Podcast now. But I'll tell you what, if it's
• 19:51
  very, you know, nowadays every like everybody wants you to have
• 19:56
  a college degree to get a good together.
• 19:59
  It's changing though. Yeah, it should change, right?
• 20:01
  And I don't think you need a college degree for most jobs.
• 20:04
  No kidding. But the college degree?
• 20:06
  Argue it's a waste of. Time, yeah, but college degree
• 20:09
  is 100K, you know, 130 K, something like that, right.
• 20:12
  So that's hard. On the other hand, there are
• 20:14
  ways to borrow that money. On the other hand, you have to
• 20:16
  pay it back, right? So it's hard.
• 20:18
  But I think look, you know, you can go into the Army and get the
• 20:24
  GI Bill, right and that so it's 3-4 years of your life.
• 20:28
  But that's, you know, also you're getting if you're
• 20:31
  reasonably good and you go into the Army, you'll get good
• 20:34
  leadership. Experience, yeah, it's also,
• 20:35
  it's 3-4 years, yes, but you're also probably going to enjoy the
• 20:38
  time, build relationships, gain. Skills serve the country exactly
• 20:42
  right. So, so I think, I think you can,
• 20:44
  I think anybody. I do too.
• 20:46
  I think you 100% can 100%. I think you can.
• 20:50
  I think you can. You can go from any level of
• 20:51
  poverty. You know, there are lots of
• 20:55
  programs out there there, There are good safety Nets right
• 20:58
  there. You know, there's SNAP, there's,
• 21:00
  there's all sorts of things to keep kids alive long enough so
• 21:05
  they can, you know, they can get into school, they can get into
• 21:07
  the Army, They can coverage the GI Bill.
• 21:10
  If you want to work now again, it's hard to go like, you know,
• 21:15
  IA friend of my sister's has been doing like retail for 40
• 21:21
  years. So she's, you know, the, the
• 21:24
  city manager for one of those, one of those clothing chains
• 21:28
  like the gap, not the gap, but something like that.
• 21:31
  Now, you know, so she makes reasonably good money.
• 21:33
  She, you know, she isn't like she isn't terribly bright,
• 21:36
  right? She doesn't do real like what I
• 21:38
  would consider real sales, but she's doing, she's running 5060
• 21:42
  a hundred retail people and she's making pretty good money,
• 21:45
  right. There are jobs like that.
• 21:47
  You know, you don't have to be selling, right?
• 21:49
  You know computers are selling industrial machinery.
• 21:52
  Right. Yeah, No, I think and I think
• 21:54
  not only do I think it's possible, you just have so many
• 21:58
  examples of people that have come from nothing and become
• 22:00
  something. And so the moment you start to
• 22:02
  say, well, I don't think it's possible.
• 22:05
  Or maybe it may be some people had an easier start or because
• 22:09
  of where they are, what class they're in, what area they're
• 22:11
  in, how they grew up or whatever it might be.
• 22:13
  There's no doubt that everyone faces different challenges.
• 22:15
  I think that's. That's fair to say.
• 22:17
  That's fair to say. But at the same time, time, I
• 22:19
  look at that and go, and now what?
• 22:21
  Right? What are you gonna do about it?
• 22:22
  Do you gonna sit and complain and you're the victim of your
• 22:24
  entire life or you're gonna say, hey, these other thousands of
• 22:27
  people have made it out of there.
• 22:28
  I can too. Oh yeah?
• 22:30
  Well, that's. Empowering.
• 22:31
  You know it. Really is and I'll tell you what
• 22:34
  you can't compare yourself with other.
• 22:35
  You have to compare yourself with with yourself.
• 22:37
  Yes, definitely, definitely not somebody else.
• 22:40
  And you know, I, I don't people. Look, I didn't, you know, again.
• 22:45
  Yeah, you asked. I'm not crying about my past,
• 22:47
  right? I didn't inherit it.
• 22:49
  And you know, I didn't inherit anything right now.
• 22:51
  A lot of people that you, you, you beat people and they're
• 22:53
  like, well, OK, so they have this really nice house.
• 22:56
  And then they also have a summer, you know, a weekend
• 22:58
  cottage like, but, but at one point, you know, when they were
• 23:02
  30, they inherited 1/4 of $1,000,000.
• 23:05
  For their grandmother, and that's.
• 23:06
  Really common, right. People don't talk about it, but
• 23:09
  it, but, but a lot of you know, they so somebody paid for their
• 23:12
  college and then when they were maybe 30, you know, a
• 23:15
  grandmother died. They suddenly got this infusion
• 23:18
  of 1/4 of a million, half $1,000,000 in cash.
• 23:21
  And they, that's how they paid for their house and that's how
• 23:23
  they bought their summer house. Great.
• 23:27
  You know, that isn't me. I don't have that.
• 23:29
  My kids aren't going to have it. On the other hand, you know, I
• 23:32
  have a pretty good life, right? My kids are going to have a
• 23:35
  pretty good life. So you can't really compare
• 23:37
  yourself with, with, with this, you know, there's a lot of
• 23:41
  inequality out there. I'm not, I'm not a communist,
• 23:44
  right? You know, these things happen.
• 23:46
  But if, but also if I had really wanted, if I, I like what I do,
• 23:51
  right, I don't think that I would really like to have been
• 23:55
  in finance. But if I'd gone into finance at
• 23:58
  22, I'd, I'd probably be worth 1010 times as much as I am now,
• 24:03
  100 times as much as I am now, right?
• 24:06
  And, but I don't know that I would have enjoyed my life as
• 24:08
  much, you know? So it's not all about, yeah, I
• 24:13
  like money, but it isn't all about money.
• 24:14
  I have, I have money to do what I want to do.
• 24:17
  You know, I, I could, I could have a nicer car.
• 24:20
  I could have a, a boat, you know, But, you know, I don't.
• 24:23
  And and I, I live in a really, I really like, I've made choices.
• 24:28
  I really like where I live. I live in nice area.
• 24:30
  Yeah, yeah. I'm happy with my family.
• 24:32
  I'm happy with what you know, They're going to good schools,
• 24:35
  you know, so. Life is good, man.
• 24:36
  That's, you know, you're doing something you love, your
• 24:38
  family's good, you're happy like.
• 24:39
  What else? What else do you really, really
• 24:42
  need? And and, you know, spending
• 24:44
  years doing a job you don't necessarily like.
• 24:48
  Or building a business that you deep down hate or resent.
• 24:51
  I see that all the time from founders.
• 24:52
  It's like building, building, building.
• 24:54
  We're going to scale. We're going to sell it.
• 24:55
  We're going to sell it. Meanwhile, they neglect their
• 24:57
  family and then neglect their health and neglect their kids.
• 24:59
  You know, it's like, so you're building this thing for what?
• 25:02
  Yeah, I mean, I don't envy that. Like, yeah, maybe you do sell it
• 25:05
  one day, but you 10. Years of your life, you hate it.
• 25:07
  Yeah. And even worse is you get people
• 25:10
  who whose kids don't want to go into the business and they're
• 25:13
  like, you have to. I built this for you.
• 25:15
  And which is terrible. Yeah.
• 25:16
  And it's like. But I didn't ask you for that.
• 25:19
  And you know what? My kids, it's an interesting
• 25:23
  discussion too. Like none of none of my kids are
• 25:26
  exactly like me, right? One of them I don't really
• 25:30
  understand that well, right, but but they're all doing well in
• 25:35
  their own thing. They're all happy, they're all
• 25:38
  healthy. I love them, right?
• 25:40
  And you know, and then like one of them, I'll see and I'll go
• 25:43
  that, that I can see myself and what they're doing or the other,
• 25:47
  and I love that. But they're all different.
• 25:49
  And that's the way it should be that, you know, and I said to
• 25:52
  them years ago, you don't marry somebody you don't want to
• 25:56
  because you think it's going to make me happy.
• 25:57
  Don't do a career as long as you can make a living and you're
• 26:01
  happy with your career and you're a good citizen and you're
• 26:04
  not breaking the laws and you're, you know, happy and can
• 26:07
  have a family. I don't care what you do or how
• 26:11
  you do it, you know? So Zach, growing up for you then
• 26:14
  and even into your further into your career, what was some of
• 26:17
  the foundational advice that you got that led you to where you
• 26:19
  are now and your sales excellence and mastering your
• 26:22
  craft? And who is it from?
• 26:24
  I'll tell you what. I had.
• 26:28
  I had. I did not I, I wish I had better
• 26:35
  mentors, right, which is sort of why I call my company global
• 26:38
  sales mentor, right? I wish I had better mentors.
• 26:42
  I think, you know, I read, read a few books when I was younger
• 26:48
  that really led me towards the idea of being excellent at what
• 26:51
  I did and working hard and, and, and like you said, like I worked
• 26:55
  really hard at doing what I did well.
• 27:00
  And I remember at one point thinking, well, you know, it,
• 27:04
  all these, you know it, nobody ever says, well, this is the
• 27:07
  best salesman in the world. And this is where I'm leaning
• 27:10
  towards, but I should try and do this the best way that I can.
• 27:15
  And, and, and so that's sort of how I tried.
• 27:19
  And I did have like, you know, I was in the army.
• 27:22
  I remember really like one of the, the most influential things
• 27:27
  was the first day when I'm, when I'm, I'm so the, the, you know,
• 27:33
  doing this sort of like this intro thing where where you're
• 27:38
  sort of testing to see if you can get into the paratroopers.
• 27:43
  And I'm doing it. And this Sergeant comes up to me
• 27:45
  and he leans over and says you have to apply for the
• 27:49
  reconnaissance unit. You're really good, right?
• 27:52
  And I hadn't really like that was just this this little piece
• 27:55
  of encouragement and that got me, you know, one step farther
• 28:00
  right. And it was just about be like,
• 28:02
  it wasn't that I was physically excellent or anything.
• 28:04
  I was just tough and and tenacious and and and you know
• 28:09
  that. That's a lot of what it is in
• 28:11
  the military, too. It really.
• 28:12
  Is. Your mindset, your your
• 28:15
  tenaciousness and basically, like I just said, you know,
• 28:21
  every time, like there's no sense in just, you know,
• 28:25
  slacking. So every, every chance chance I
• 28:28
  had to volunteer, like I was one of these guys who basically
• 28:30
  volunteered for everything, right.
• 28:31
  And through the military, you know, if there was a shift, you
• 28:34
  know, a mission, a patrol or, you know, whatever, I was like,
• 28:37
  Yep, I'm up and, and I did all that and I did the best I could.
• 28:41
  And then, but I also realized I wasn't going to be a
• 28:44
  professional soldier. And when I got out, I found a
• 28:46
  job and, you know, so basically it was always like, well, try
• 28:51
  and leverage what you do well, do what you can, be tenacious,
• 28:55
  Always, always take. You'll never shy away from work,
• 28:59
  never slack. I've never slacked from anything
• 29:02
  over, you know, my life. And that's pretty much where it
• 29:06
  goes like, that was it? It's amazing how a small gesture
• 29:11
  or words of wisdom or just encouragement can go a long way.
• 29:14
  It's kind of a good reminder to make sure that you're doing that
• 29:16
  for others. But yeah, the the fact that
• 29:18
  you've remembered that decades later.
• 29:20
  It's sort of amazing. And I, I think about that and it
• 29:22
  was a very, very influential, you know, 2 sentences.
• 29:26
  It was very influential in my life.
• 29:28
  Right? Yeah, yeah.
• 29:30
  And I someone that believed in you and said you got something
• 29:32
  man take don't waste it. Yeah, yeah.
• 29:33
  Take a moment with it. I remember I was trying to think
• 29:36
  of that, that question in my mind of like, what would, what
• 29:39
  would I say if someone was like, what's the best piece of advice
• 29:40
  that you got? I actually think it's
• 29:42
  interesting because I think, and I heard this on a podcast years
• 29:45
  ago, but the guy said some of your best lessons and even from
• 29:48
  your parents aren't always taught.
• 29:50
  They're caught, meaning that you catch things, whether it's I
• 29:54
  don't want to be like that, which we all have that from our
• 29:56
  parents too. And there's some things that I
• 29:58
  do want to be like that. And I, and I think from my dad,
• 30:01
  even though he wasn't necessarily sit down and teach
• 30:03
  you wisdom and that kind of stuff, he was kind of doing his
• 30:05
  thing and work. And my mom was, was busy too.
• 30:08
  So there wasn't a lot of like sit down and having these wisdom
• 30:10
  conversations. I don't remember, but I do
• 30:12
  remember watching them and seeing my mom and how loving she
• 30:16
  was and how she cared for people and our family and the kids and
• 30:19
  things like that. And I think I watched my dad
• 30:21
  work really hard and overcome adversities and, like, never
• 30:25
  complained. And just like, he just, even
• 30:27
  though he wasn't always in the best mood or joke about that,
• 30:29
  but like, but he just fought through adversities, yeah.
• 30:33
  You know, Oh, and that and that's the thing.
• 30:35
  My dad, my dad was tough and well, and my dad worked really,
• 30:41
  really hard. And, and I think, I think my dad
• 30:46
  was never meant to be like a middle class dad.
• 30:49
  And he just, it was really, and I think that's what my mom
• 30:53
  wanted from him. And so again, I'll tell you,
• 30:56
  I'll tell you something which you may or may not have caught,
• 30:59
  you know, about my stuff. So I was on my own after I was
• 31:02
  about 15. And my dad, you know, went
• 31:07
  through like, you know, he went through a lot of periods of
• 31:09
  unemployment. And then, you know, it's about
• 31:11
  1415, he lost his last real job. And he wasn't that old of time.
• 31:16
  He was, he was about 55 and he he had a couple of heart attacks
• 31:23
  and he was doing really badly. And I guess also this really,
• 31:28
  you know, tore apart his marriage, you know, with, with
• 31:30
  my mother. And at one point he just said to
• 31:33
  me, you know, I remember my, my mother, this is going to sound
• 31:38
  like a horrible story, but it, it, it, it really wasn't that,
• 31:42
  that bad, right? Like he had he came to the total
• 31:46
  end of his rope and my mother went to her, her mother died and
• 31:53
  she went to to help her dad settle settled in and and she
• 31:58
  was away from home and my dad can't.
• 32:00
  So it was just him and me. And he was unemployed.
• 32:02
  I had a job at the time. And he comes to me and says, you
• 32:05
  know, I can't do anything more for you.
• 32:07
  Do you mind if I leave? And I said, you know what?
• 32:11
  That actually makes sense. And he left and I was on my own.
• 32:16
  And then I basically said to my mom, like, you know, stay where
• 32:19
  you are. I'm OK.
• 32:21
  You, you're OK. You know, like the other kids
• 32:24
  are OK. I was the youngest kid.
• 32:25
  I was like, don't worry about me, I'm OK.
• 32:27
  And and then but I stayed on my own.
• 32:31
  And I remember when my kid, when my oldest kid was 15 and then
• 32:35
  when my younger kids, you know, I was like, holy crap, they
• 32:38
  could never survive. You look at.
• 32:41
  You look at it so differently. Yeah, it's like, it was like it
• 32:44
  made perfect sense to me at the time.
• 32:46
  But I also think like I, I, I think it must have been really
• 32:50
  hard for my dad to say, you know, I can't do anything for my
• 32:53
  family anymore. It's really tough, yeah.
• 32:55
  And now and, and he, he, he actually spent a little bit of
• 32:59
  time being homeless and then he got a job and he was able to
• 33:02
  save some money and he was able to get on his feet again.
• 33:04
  He was able, so he lived pretty like as a single guy, he was
• 33:09
  able to, to support himself for the next, you know, 30 years
• 33:12
  before he died, right? But as he couldn't, he just
• 33:16
  couldn't do well enough by his family.
• 33:18
  And I, I can only imagine how hard that was.
• 33:21
  And like for me, you know how it is.
• 33:23
  Well, do you have do you have kids?
• 33:25
  You know? Yeah, I do.
• 33:25
  Have two two daughters. How old are they?
• 33:27
  OK, yeah. So, so like they can be a pain
• 33:31
  in the ass, right? And and like, you know, couple,
• 33:34
  like when my kids were getting older and getting ready to go go
• 33:37
  to college, like, you know, they were just sometimes they were
• 33:40
  just a pain in the ass, right? And I love them, right?
• 33:43
  They're great kids. And at one point I'm like, you
• 33:46
  know, this is just killing me. Like between trying to make a
• 33:50
  living and, and dealing with my kids and all this.
• 33:52
  And I like, but I'm, I'm not going anywhere.
• 33:54
  This is, this is what I got to do.
• 33:55
  I got to take care of them. I got to get them to the next
• 33:58
  level. I got to.
• 33:59
  And and there's, you know, that's, that's what we do,
• 34:03
  right? We do what we got to do right.
• 34:06
  Totally. Totally.
• 34:07
  Yeah. Again, I think we learned things
• 34:09
  from our parents that we want to do differently, and we won't
• 34:11
  learn some things that we want to emulate.
• 34:13
  And I think that's the way it goes.
• 34:15
  My, my one piece of advice I was getting to that.
• 34:17
  I do remember someone saying it was when I was in corporate and
• 34:19
  one of the managers, I was talking about wanting to speak
• 34:22
  up more and like lead meetings, but I was like nervous my face
• 34:25
  would get red. I was like, I, I had like this
• 34:28
  confidence and belief in myself, but at the same time I was like
• 34:30
  nervous to go do it. And I remember him just telling
• 34:33
  me one day, Alex, when you remember your purpose, you'll
• 34:36
  forget your fears. That's a great, great piece of
• 34:39
  advice. And it just always stuck with
• 34:40
  me. And from there, it's like, yeah,
• 34:42
  because I think a lot of things in life is we hold ourselves
• 34:46
  back because we're scared of what if it doesn't work out?
• 34:49
  What if I speak up and I get shot down?
• 34:51
  What if I try to start the business and it fails?
• 34:54
  What if, what if I asked the girl out or the guy out and they
• 34:56
  say no? All of these things end up
• 34:59
  holding us back. And I think if we just think
• 35:00
  about why are we doing what we're doing and remember that
• 35:03
  what's on the other side of this, if it does go well and if
• 35:06
  it doesn't, I can learn from it. But putting that in perspective
• 35:10
  is always something I go back to.
• 35:11
  No, that's a great piece. I'll tell you something else I
• 35:13
  learned a few years ago there. So I worked at a factory, I've
• 35:19
  worked at different factories, but I worked at 1 factory for 12
• 35:22
  years as a head of sales. And we had a lot of
• 35:27
  manufacturing people, about 100 manufacturing people.
• 35:29
  And the nature of manufacturing today in a lot of places can be
• 35:33
  done at a chair. You're you're manipulating
• 35:36
  machinery. You don't have to be a big
• 35:38
  strong guy. Yeah, for sure.
• 35:39
  So a lot of people doing the work were essentially
• 35:42
  middle-aged women without college degrees.
• 35:45
  And I remember talking to some people in the cafeteria, and
• 35:48
  there are these women, about half of them were African
• 35:50
  American, about half of them were immigrants, no college
• 35:55
  degrees, most of them women who are in their 30s or 40s.
• 35:59
  And I'm talking to them and they're like putting their kids
• 36:00
  through college and they're really improving their lives.
• 36:04
  And this was a job, you know, being a waitress is, you know,
• 36:08
  $16.00 an hour. They're making $35.00 an hour,
• 36:11
  right? And this was a great job.
• 36:13
  And I thought OK, so you know I'm a sales guy but every time I
• 36:18
  sell we have to hire more manufacturing people.
• 36:21
  So I am creating every year I'm creating 304050 new
• 36:25
  manufacturing jobs is what I'm doing That's cool.
• 36:28
  Each one of these jobs is maybe putting 2 new two kids through
• 36:31
  college. That's.
• 36:32
  Incredible man, yeah. Isn't that a great feeling?
• 36:34
  And when you look at it that way, you say, OK, so it's nice
• 36:37
  to have the car, it's nice to have the vacation, it's nice to
• 36:40
  have the suits. But I'm also doing this right.
• 36:43
  I'm, I'm, I'm helping create jobs, which is, which are
• 36:47
  changing lives, which those jobs wouldn't exist if it wasn't for
• 36:51
  what I was selling. And when you think about it that
• 36:53
  way, it, it gives you a, a like talk about purpose.
• 36:58
  You say, well, this is what I'm doing.
• 36:59
  I am creating manufacturing jobs.
• 37:02
  Right. That's so cool.
• 37:03
  Let's talk a little bit about sales.
• 37:05
  Yeah. What is the state of state of
• 37:06
  sales right now because has it changed over?
• 37:09
  The last 10 years. Seems like it.
• 37:10
  Really has it really has. So, so, so going back to like
• 37:16
  sales isn't like a, a uniform block everything.
• 37:20
  There are a lot of guys, a lot of, and I'll use the term guys
• 37:23
  because because I think it's almost all guys.
• 37:26
  A lot of young guys are getting into the technical side of
• 37:29
  selling where they're not actually engaging with people
• 37:33
  and talking. So what they're doing, like a
• 37:35
  lot of sales today, is can I get more emails into inboxes and
• 37:43
  opened? Yeah, just what prospects want.
• 37:45
  Well, yeah. And, and there are people who
• 37:48
  that's what they specialize in. And they're almost all like
• 37:50
  young guys and they're working from, you know, from a basement
• 37:54
  in their pajamas. And they're, they don't
• 37:56
  necessarily have to talk to people, but that's a lot of
• 38:00
  sales. And you can make, you know, you
• 38:01
  know, 60 to 120 K like that. And there are a lot of young
• 38:05
  people doing that. And they, and, and they like, I
• 38:08
  hate to sound dismissive, but they think they're in sales,
• 38:10
  right? But they're never talking to
• 38:12
  anybody, and that's a big part of it.
• 38:15
  And and. By the way, that job's gone in
• 38:17
  the next year or two. It is because AI is going to
• 38:20
  take it over. But but you get all these these
• 38:22
  guys and they're really, really proud of themselves.
• 38:24
  And they're, you know, they're like the bro bro network, the
• 38:28
  sales Bros. And they're like, it's, it's
• 38:32
  really interesting. And that didn't like you said
• 38:34
  it, it didn't exist eight years ago, 10 years ago.
• 38:36
  It won't exist in three years, but it's a big thing right now.
• 38:42
  But there's always room for face to face sales and, and again,
• 38:47
  going back to like, you know, LinkedIn, their communities,
• 38:50
  everybody talks about SAS software as a service, but that
• 38:55
  is just a tiny fraction of what has to be sold.
• 38:58
  But, but, but you talk to people and like, well, if you're not in
• 39:01
  SAS, well you're, you know, the, the, the elite people are in SAS
• 39:05
  and. It's just like the sexy thing,
• 39:07
  like the shiny object. Thing but it goes through every
• 39:10
  every few years that. Now it's Ji, you know?
• 39:13
  Yeah. But I'll tell you what, like you
• 39:14
  got to sell everything. Every factory needs salespeople.
• 39:17
  And, and not only that, I'll tell you what, you, if you were
• 39:20
  to drive around the Midwest and go to all these $20 million
• 39:25
  factories in Peoria and Iowa City and, and Cedar Rapids, they
• 39:31
  don't have good salespeople. They need salespeople, right?
• 39:34
  Because what happens is a lot of the young people in those towns,
• 39:37
  they're packing up and going to Chicago or New York or or LA and
• 39:41
  they're doing this, you know, emailing, selling.
• 39:46
  But they don't want to be the guy who, who gets in there
• 39:48
  pickup truck and drives around and tries to sell machinery or,
• 39:52
  or, you know, paper goods or, or manufactured goods, right.
• 39:56
  And so there is, there are lots of sales jobs out there for that
• 40:00
  kind of thing. And that again, you know, for a
• 40:03
  couple of 1000 bucks you can get a good course from Sandler and
• 40:07
  get the basic skills and get yourself, you know, 20 books and
• 40:11
  teach yourself to sell. What do you think some of the
• 40:14
  most like maybe for founders CE OS listening?
• 40:17
  What are some of the, I want to say like super basic skills, but
• 40:20
  what are some of the maybe immediate, you know, middle
• 40:22
  ground to advanced skills that people need to know that they
• 40:25
  don't? Well, I'll tell you what they,
• 40:27
  they really need to know, they, they need to understand the
• 40:29
  methodology, right? Because what happens is people
• 40:34
  are very people who don't sell are very often very dismissive
• 40:39
  of the concept of methodology in sales, right?
• 40:43
  So the first thing you want to do is you want to try and
• 40:45
  understand what is actually happening, right?
• 40:48
  You know, I say, OK, so so you're identifying your, your
• 40:50
  lead, you're doing an intro, you're doing a discovery call,
• 40:54
  you're doing a demo, you're doing some negotiation, you're
• 40:57
  doing a proposal, you're closing right now.
• 41:01
  Can you break those down and how do they fit into your system,
• 41:06
  into your product, right? Maybe you do a demo, maybe you
• 41:09
  don't do a demo and maybe you send samples in your with your
• 41:12
  product, right? What are, what's the, what does
• 41:16
  discovery look like? How do you identify if
• 41:18
  somebody's a prospect or not? Let's stop there at discovery.
• 41:21
  If you're on a a meeting and let's say it's a salesperson,
• 41:25
  sales leader, founder, CEO, whatever and there's they're on
• 41:28
  a sales call, right? Someone booked a call with them,
• 41:29
  they're interested potentially. Where do you see kind of the
• 41:32
  biggest problems or challenges come into play with those calls?
• 41:35
  So so I'll. Tell you what kind of where I
• 41:37
  think is the hardest part too so.
• 41:39
  So I think there there are a couple of things here. 1 is let
• 41:44
  me tell you a quick story, right?
• 41:46
  Few years ago, I'm a, I'm a Marriott guy, right?
• 41:50
  So I go, I get this really good deal in Disney World for my
• 41:55
  family. I know four days for 100 bucks
• 41:59
  in a nice hotel. But we have to go hear a pitch
• 42:02
  for a timeshare. I'm like fine.
• 42:05
  So I go and hear the pitch and this guy comes up to me and
• 42:08
  goes, hey, yeah. He looks down his list.
• 42:10
  He goes, yeah, yeah, you're you're here because you're, you
• 42:14
  know, titanium elite with Mary and I go, yeah, you know, so how
• 42:17
  many nights a year do you spend in a hotel?
• 42:19
  I go about 160. He goes, you want me to sign
• 42:22
  your form? I go, sure.
• 42:24
  I said, don't you want to give me a pitch?
• 42:25
  He goes, are you going to buy from me?
• 42:27
  Do you Do you really want a timeshare?
• 42:29
  And I laughed. I said no.
• 42:30
  He goes, yeah, I'll sign your form.
• 42:32
  He goes, I'm going to go play some golf tomorrow.
• 42:34
  I'll get somebody who's who's really going to buy from me.
• 42:37
  He goes. Nobody who's Titanium Elite ever
• 42:40
  buys a timeshare because he goes how many free nights a year do
• 42:43
  you get? I go 2022, he goes, you don't
• 42:46
  need a timeshare. He goes, when you retire, maybe
• 42:49
  you'll come back and buy from me, right?
• 42:51
  He goes, I'm going to go play some golf tomorrow.
• 42:53
  I'll be in a better in a better position to.
• 42:55
  Sell. Look at that.
• 42:56
  That was a good salesperson. I said that's perfect.
• 42:59
  Like he wasted like 3 minutes on me, qualified me.
• 43:02
  He knows I'm not going to buy goes play some golf right
• 43:06
  Tomorrow he's going to be in a fresh, you know, fresh ready for
• 43:09
  the guy who is, is going to buy from him maybe right.
• 43:12
  So that ability to qualify really quickly is really
• 43:16
  important and that you get in your discovery.
• 43:19
  I'll tell you something else that I I think about in
• 43:21
  discovery, which IA lot of people don't.
• 43:27
  Discovery is the best place to really establish your
• 43:31
  credibility with a question. Because if I ask you a question
• 43:36
  that that your wife doesn't even know about you, about your work,
• 43:42
  you're going to say, hey, wow, Zach really understands me.
• 43:45
  Like what? What would an example?
• 43:47
  So I'll tell you there was a time when I was selling the
• 43:52
  essentially this tool that you would use for vaccination that
• 43:57
  you would be able to get twice as many doses out of a unit of
• 44:01
  vaccine, right? And our target were very
• 44:05
  specifically countries that were having trouble getting enough
• 44:10
  vaccine. So I, I knew there were, there
• 44:12
  was a small number, it was like 30-40 countries, but I knew that
• 44:16
  they were not being, they were not being given the vaccine that
• 44:20
  they asked for. And I knew that.
• 44:23
  But I would go and I'd talk to typically like the, the head of
• 44:29
  infectious diseases at the country, right?
• 44:32
  And they would always say, Oh no, of course we get all the
• 44:35
  vaccine we need. Why, Why do you think we
• 44:37
  wouldn't get the vaccine we need, blah, blah, blah.
• 44:40
  But I would talk to the person who was in charge of vaccination
• 44:43
  and I would say, so you know what?
• 44:47
  And I wouldn't even say, did you get all that?
• 44:49
  So what percentage of the vaccine you ordered last year
• 44:51
  was delivered? And they'd say 3040%, right?
• 44:56
  And then they'd be like, you, you know, I'm not getting all my
• 45:00
  vaccine. I'd say, yeah, I go, you know,
• 45:03
  you're not alone. There are about 20 other
• 45:05
  countries that didn't get all the vaccine they ordered last
• 45:08
  year. And they'd be like, you know, my
• 45:10
  boss doesn't understand that. My husband doesn't understand
• 45:13
  that. Nobody understands that.
• 45:15
  And then we'd talk and they'd be like, wow, Zach gets me.
• 45:18
  I'd say I can solve that problem for you, right?
• 45:22
  And I figured like, so I figured that out in that job.
• 45:25
  And then I figured if you can think those questions up, I'll
• 45:28
  give you another example. At one point I sold you, you
• 45:32
  ever watch on the movies or TV shows about hospitals?
• 45:36
  They have a code blue button and you press that, right?
• 45:40
  So I used to sell those. Wow, that's cool.
• 45:42
  Right. So I would say to people, I'd
• 45:45
  say, walk me through your code blue, right?
• 45:48
  And at the hospital and they'd say, well, you know, you press
• 45:51
  this button, I'd say, cool, what's the next step?
• 45:53
  And they'd say, well, it goes over here and, and, and it
• 45:56
  articulates on this desk. And, and then the person who's
• 46:03
  at this desk is going to start calling the people on the code
• 46:07
  blue list. I'd say, hey, that's that.
• 46:09
  That makes perfect sense. I'd say, but there's nobody at
• 46:13
  the desk, is there? And they'd go, no, I'd say, huh,
• 46:18
  that's interesting. I wonder why there's nobody at
• 46:19
  the desk. And they'd say, yeah, why isn't
• 46:24
  there anybody at the desk? And they'd walk around and
• 46:26
  they'd say, yeah, there should be somebody at the desk.
• 46:28
  But she probably just like I go, yeah.
• 46:30
  But if there was a code blue, now she isn't here.
• 46:34
  So we have a problem that you're you're not aware of, right?
• 46:38
  And I, I would, I would raise it like that discussion.
• 46:41
  They'd go, holy crap. I, I never realized that we had
• 46:44
  this problem in our system. I'd say, yeah, but we could
• 46:48
  solve that for you. Because with my system, we press
• 46:50
  the button and it goes to everybody's phone, right?
• 46:54
  So you don't need that person in the middle.
• 46:56
  We could bypass that. I said.
• 46:57
  And and I don't don't feel bad about that.
• 47:00
  I see this every hospital I go to it all there.
• 47:04
  Everybody has the same problem, right?
• 47:06
  So those type of questions, those are really powerful in the
• 47:09
  discovery call. Right.
• 47:11
  How important you think it is too, because I think this is 1
• 47:13
  area that I'm trying to get better at, is that you sort of
• 47:15
  identify a pain? Or desire.
• 47:18
  And then you kind of like get it and then you kind of go on to
• 47:20
  the next phase versus saying, hey, what happens if that
• 47:23
  doesn't get solved? Or why solve this now?
• 47:26
  Why not kick this down the next year?
• 47:27
  And that's. So those are some powerful
• 47:29
  questions, but I think sometimes we're kind of scared to ask,
• 47:31
  like cry. A little bit, you know, and part
• 47:33
  of that is I, I, I like, that's a really good question, Alex.
• 47:39
  Like what I like to say is we want every, you're talking to
• 47:43
  somebody else and they're dealing with 20 different
• 47:46
  things, 100 different things, right?
• 47:48
  And, and those things could be things at home, you know, their
• 47:50
  wife, their kids, their car, their dog, things at work, all
• 47:54
  these different things. But you only solve one of those
• 47:57
  problems. So what you want to do is you
• 47:59
  want to identify that problem, and then you want to make it
• 48:03
  worse, right? You want to make them think
• 48:05
  about, wow, I really should solve that problem.
• 48:08
  But you don't want to say, you know, you don't want to make it
• 48:11
  obvious, right? So So what you do want to do is
• 48:14
  you want to say who? Yeah, that that is a problem.
• 48:18
  You know, what would happen if you didn't solve that problem?
• 48:21
  What does it look like if we can't solve that problem for you
• 48:24
  this year? Like how bad would that be?
• 48:28
  Now you want to do that in a way that isn't terribly obvious, but
• 48:30
  you do want to make sure that it, you know, I, I, I, I like to
• 48:34
  say like there we, I was having a discussion with some, you
• 48:38
  know, people in the sales business, like the sales, you
• 48:40
  know, sales gurus, right? A while back when we were
• 48:44
  talking about, about our, our presentations.
• 48:49
  And I'd say I don't even talk about my product until about 1/3
• 48:53
  of the way through. I'm saying, you know, this is
• 48:56
  this is a problem and This is why this problem is really big.
• 49:00
  And boy, this is a big problem. Wow, this is a big problem,
• 49:03
  isn't it? This is a big problem.
• 49:05
  Hey, Zach has a solution to that problem.
• 49:07
  Let. Me ask you this though, what if
• 49:08
  the what if they say well we're not let's say it's marketing
• 49:12
  right well we're not really doing much marketing now so it's
• 49:14
  not like a big problem but I feel like we're missing out on
• 49:17
  opportunities I just think we. Are well, the problem isn't
• 49:20
  marketing, the problem is missed opportunities, right?
• 49:22
  The problem is do they have like, hey Alex, do you have all,
• 49:26
  all the revenue you really want, right?
• 49:29
  Do you? Do you guys are you?
• 49:30
  Growing at the rate growing at. The rate you're getting the.
• 49:33
  Leads you get the. Leads that one, you're getting
• 49:34
  the cash flow that you you'd like, right?
• 49:37
  Are you happy like I I, you know what I do right?
• 49:40
  I help people grow their international sales and I'll say
• 49:45
  every not everybody. Most people I talk to, they'll
• 49:48
  say, hey, Zach, I'm good. I'm covered in 40 countries.
• 49:52
  I don't need any help. Say great.
• 49:55
  Is everybody producing the way you think they should?
• 49:59
  Well, you know how it is. I mean the.
• 50:01
  Answer is never yes, right? The answer is never yes.
• 50:04
  I said no, I, I, I get that. I said, you know what most
• 50:07
  people tell me when they're doing well internationally is
• 50:10
  they say, well, I'm, I'm selling in 4045 countries, but about 20%
• 50:16
  of my distributors are doing all the sales and the other 80%
• 50:20
  suck, right? That's what I hear from a lot of
• 50:22
  people and virtually everybody I talked to, they'll say, yeah,
• 50:25
  that's, that's pretty much the situation I have.
• 50:28
  I say, yeah, those 80%, they don't seem like they're doing a
• 50:31
  good job, right? I say, yeah.
• 50:34
  And they'll usually say, well, there's this one distributor who
• 50:36
  really, like, really doesn't do a good job for me.
• 50:39
  I said, yeah, what kind of car does he drive?
• 50:43
  I'll go, Huh. You don't.
• 50:44
  He has one of those those Porsche SU VS you know, you
• 50:48
  know, that's a $200,000 car in Singapore.
• 50:52
  He must be selling something, right?
• 50:55
  And they're like, yeah, I go, he can't really suck.
• 50:58
  He must know how to sell. He isn't selling your product.
• 51:01
  I wonder why he isn't selling your product that he's selling
• 51:04
  something else so much that he can afford a $200,000 car,
• 51:09
  right. So that's type of conversation I
• 51:11
  typically have with. People, I noticed, I noticed
• 51:13
  that you and I think this is a good trait for people trying to
• 51:16
  sell things and influence people as you get you're very curious.
• 51:19
  I wonder why, Huh? I wonder why, Yeah.
• 51:21
  What's going on there? What do you think that is?
• 51:23
  What made you want to do this? Why would you stop doing?
• 51:24
  This, and I'll tell you what the biggest problem salespeople have
• 51:28
  is a lot of people get into sales because we like to talk
• 51:31
  right and. You got to shut up and listen
• 51:34
  and ask good questions. That that's, that's the thing.
• 51:36
  The biggest thing you have to control is you got to shut up
• 51:40
  because if you're talking, you're not selling.
• 51:42
  You know, you and, and, and we all struggle with that.
• 51:46
  We all struggle with that. I'll tell you something else.
• 51:50
  Like I'm. I'm a controlling kind of guy,
• 51:54
  right? I like to be in control.
• 51:56
  And you got to give that. You got to give that up.
• 51:58
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 51:59
  And I like to ask closed questions.
• 52:03
  Yes or no, Alex, Right. How many, How many, Alex?
• 52:06
  Right. And you got to ask open
• 52:08
  questions. And it kills me to ask open
• 52:11
  questions. I got to really fight with
• 52:12
  myself and say, tell me about that.
• 52:15
  You know, tell me, tell me that story and just sit back and wait
• 52:19
  because what I want to do is say yes or no.
• 52:21
  Well, I would argue that you are in control and that scenario in
• 52:24
  most cases, but maybe the prospect doesn't realize that
• 52:27
  you are in control. Yeah, I wanna be very much in
• 52:30
  control. Do you have a framework for
• 52:33
  running a call? I heard someone talk about one
• 52:35
  the other day where it was like make 3 buckets and put it, you
• 52:39
  know, previous state or past state, current state, future
• 52:43
  state. I find a lot of founders see a
• 52:46
  salespeople, we get into meetings and we don't have like
• 52:48
  a good structure and it's kind of like we're all over the
• 52:51
  place. No, I have I'm I'm very, very
• 52:55
  structured. Like I had a boss one to say
• 52:57
  about me that Zach, like she goes, Zach has a plan AB and C
• 53:02
  right? And and that's what IA lot of
• 53:05
  times I work with my clients on that because they real that's
• 53:09
  what they need is that methodology and that structure
• 53:12
  and and I've and I don't to be honest, I don't invent any of
• 53:18
  it, right? I aggregate material, I curate,
• 53:21
  I find really good systems and I pull.
• 53:23
  Them together. Right.
• 53:25
  And so, yeah, so I, I, you know, I've seen really, really good
• 53:29
  structures for those calls where you basically say, yeah, well,
• 53:32
  what would this cost you? Like how, how painful would it
• 53:34
  be to not solve that problem, right.
• 53:37
  We, you know, what's, what's the problem?
• 53:39
  What would happen if you didn't solve it?
• 53:41
  How painful would that be for you, right.
• 53:43
  And that really those type of, of structures really work.
• 53:46
  But like I'll go into a sales meeting with, I always carry a
• 53:54
  paper pad and a pen, even though, you know, I do so much
• 53:57
  stuff digitally because I like to, to be able to, to write
• 54:00
  notes. But I'll have questions written
• 54:02
  out and I'll have things I'll write on.
• 54:05
  Like I'll write myself little notes and say Remember, Remember
• 54:09
  to ask this. Remember the podcast with this?
• 54:11
  Thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 54:13
  Because I want to, you know. So do you have a set like 12345
• 54:18
  structure or past, current, future state or is it?
• 54:22
  Just kind of based on the yeah, so, so typically what with what
• 54:27
  I'm doing like so, so you got to keep in mind there are two
• 54:30
  different things here. 1 is, well, what do I prepare for my
• 54:33
  clients? So if, if a client is selling
• 54:37
  mining equipment, then I have to build that up for them, right.
• 54:42
  But for myself, it usually comes down to well, you know, are you,
• 54:49
  are you growing internationally the way you'd like to, right.
• 54:53
  And what would that look like if you, if you could, right?
• 54:56
  Because. Current state, Future.
• 54:59
  State couldn't couldn't current state, future state, what's
• 55:01
  keeping you from it? And do are you doing as well as
• 55:07
  you think you are, right. Because a lot of times what my
• 55:11
  biggest, my biggest, the thing that that limits my selling the
• 55:17
  most is people who I could probably get them 3400, I could
• 55:22
  get them 300% growth and they are happy with 10% growth.
• 55:27
  And you know, I got to say to them, well, really why don't you
• 55:31
  like, why are you happy with this, you know, and, and try and
• 55:36
  push them a little bit harder. Yeah.
• 55:38
  What's the secret to closing a sale?
• 55:45
  I'll tell you 2 very different parts of that.
• 55:49
  You close a sale based on stuff you did before, right?
• 55:53
  If you, if you're asking the right discovery questions,
• 55:56
  you're prepping, you're getting it ready, you're going to close
• 55:59
  it. But then there's the tenacity of
• 56:02
  going all the way and not giving up.
• 56:07
  I so, so my, I, I've, I've, I've had a single $30 million
• 56:13
  purchase order in my life, right?
• 56:14
  And that was like, that's, that's the big 1.
• 56:16
  And I don't know that I'm ever going to beat it, but I worked
• 56:19
  on that for a long time that. Was a good Commission check,
• 56:21
  huh? Yes, yes and no.
• 56:24
  Cuz that's also like every sales guy has a story of, of how their
• 56:30
  company screwed them out of their Commission.
• 56:33
  So that was my story. Like I, I got, I got screwed out
• 56:36
  of half of my bonus on that one, But it was still, it was a, it
• 56:40
  was a very good Commission. It just was half of what it
• 56:43
  should have been and totally different story.
• 56:46
  But but it was a beautiful process.
• 56:51
  Like I worked on that and I, I, I talked to all these different
• 56:55
  people in the company and I basically got them to build the
• 56:58
  specifications according to my product.
• 57:02
  So everything in the, in the deal, the only person they could
• 57:07
  buy from at the end was me, right?
• 57:10
  And I, I worked on it and worked on it and worked on it.
• 57:13
  And then the clothes was, was brutal because it was just a
• 57:21
  very, it was, it was with a large Indian corporation.
• 57:24
  The negotiations were tough. It was just, it was, it was
• 57:27
  brutal to close it. But I couldn't have closed it
• 57:31
  without work I had done two years before getting ready for
• 57:35
  that, right. And, and at the end it came down
• 57:37
  to just like the other guy saying, but you have to lower
• 57:39
  your price and say, but you can't buy anybody else's stuff.
• 57:43
  We are spect, right? Do you want to go and tell
• 57:46
  everybody that you're not buying what Spect but you have to lower
• 57:49
  your prices? But we're but we're spect go
• 57:51
  back and forth like it was. It was brutal towards the end
• 57:54
  but it was all about the work I had done before.
• 57:57
  True or false relationship sales is all about relationships.
• 58:04
  I hate to keep doing this to you, but it's like, yes and no.
• 58:09
  It, it's about relationships, but it's also about methodology.
• 58:13
  And I like I, I, I like to say that a lot of people think with
• 58:17
  international sales, they're, you know, people.
• 58:20
  I'll talk to people all the time.
• 58:21
  And I was like, I, I'm, I'm, I'm dealing with the, the nephew of
• 58:25
  the president. So I, I don't need anything
• 58:28
  else. I'm, I have the right guy.
• 58:30
  I'm like, you know, you're, you're you.
• 58:33
  There is a methodology. They have a purchasing process
• 58:37
  and you can't buy that. Like just because you met
• 58:39
  somebody and he told you something, you still have to go
• 58:43
  through the, the the purchasing process.
• 58:46
  No, no country is so corrupt that you that you're going to
• 58:50
  just because you know the right guy, right?
• 58:53
  And they have their own interest too, so it's not just like hey
• 58:55
  you're my buddy cool. But I also need this problem
• 58:58
  solved and I don't think you're the right person to.
• 58:59
  Do it. That's exactly it, right?
• 59:02
  So so you on the other hand, nobody will buy something from
• 59:08
  somebody they don't trust. There you.
• 59:10
  Go right now, they don't have to like you.
• 59:12
  They have to trust you enough to do business with you.
• 59:15
  Now, I, I like to say, say this like let's say you have a, a, a
• 59:22
  bus company and you transport kids to school and you buy brake
• 59:28
  pads, right? Your entire business, your
• 59:31
  reputation and the lives of hundreds of kids are tied up
• 59:35
  with those brake pads. So you really need to trust your
• 59:38
  supplier. OK, let's say you are buying a
• 59:43
  brake pad for your golf cart that you use in your summer
• 59:48
  cottage. You don't care.
• 59:50
  You pop by AutoZone and you buy a brake pad because you you
• 59:54
  can't go fast enough on a golf course for anybody to get
• 59:56
  killed, right? There's zero trust involved,
• 1:00:00
  right? So those are two like extremes.
• 1:00:03
  But the level of trust comes down to, well, what's what's
• 1:00:06
  going to happen if if this screws up?
• 1:00:09
  Is this going to destroy my business or people going to die
• 1:00:12
  right? Yeah, so we answered a couple
• 1:00:14
  questions. We got to a couple questions
• 1:00:16
  from the Founder Talk Club. Brian asked the first one, which
• 1:00:20
  was what foundational advice have been given and how stuck
• 1:00:23
  with you and what have you done with it?
• 1:00:24
  You answered that question, Brian.
• 1:00:25
  Thank you for the question. And if anyone is listening right
• 1:00:28
  now or watching the podcast and you're not in the Founder Talk
• 1:00:30
  Club, I would encourage you to go to the description of the
• 1:00:33
  podcast, whether you're YouTube, Spotify, Apple, you will see a
• 1:00:36
  link to join. It's free.
• 1:00:37
  You can ask questions like to to Zach who's on the show today.
• 1:00:41
  You can get questions before they come on the show, so you
• 1:00:43
  can join the conversation behind the scenes and you actually get
• 1:00:46
  access to how we make the podcast and the things that
• 1:00:48
  happened that you don't see on camera.
• 1:00:49
  So encourage you to join there. I think we had one more question
• 1:00:52
  come in and let me just ask you this before we get to that one.
• 1:00:55
  How do you see AI impacting sales?
• 1:00:58
  Oh, so I'll tell you something. My, my, my, my kids think it's
• 1:01:04
  sort of ridiculous how much I use AI.
• 1:01:07
  And I'll tell you, I use AIA lot, but but here's what I do.
• 1:01:14
  So if somebody reaches out to me and or let's say I'm reaching
• 1:01:22
  out to people and, and somebody comes back and says, yeah, hey,
• 1:01:26
  Zach, tell me more. So what I'll do is I will pull
• 1:01:32
  up their company and I will feed it into, into AI and I will say,
• 1:01:38
  well, tell me about the company and I'll say tell me about
• 1:01:41
  their, the, the business they're in.
• 1:01:43
  Because I deal, I deal with, with every industry, right?
• 1:01:47
  I deal with AG tech, mining, construction, Med tech, all
• 1:01:51
  sorts of things. So I'm looking at like 1 of my
• 1:01:53
  clients now sells the cleaning materials you use to clean off
• 1:02:00
  the lubricant off of mining grinding machines.
• 1:02:05
  It's a niche, right? So I was like, OK, tell me about
• 1:02:08
  this product. Tell me about the global market
• 1:02:12
  for it. Tell me what countries are are
• 1:02:16
  good for this. And then tell me like, what,
• 1:02:19
  what is this company missing that they, you know, this, that
• 1:02:24
  they should, you know, where should they be that they're not
• 1:02:27
  in based on, on them? And then it'll produce maybe 3
• 1:02:32
  or 4 paragraphs, which I will turn into an e-mail and I'll
• 1:02:36
  say, hey, Alex, I see you're doing pretty well in Germany,
• 1:02:40
  but you probably should be in Egypt.
• 1:02:43
  I could help you out with this. Is this where the conversation?
• 1:02:46
  So I'll, I'll do that kind of thing and it takes me, you know,
• 1:02:49
  5 minutes where it would have taken me 5 hours.
• 1:02:52
  Right, just synthesize, analyzes all the data, brings it together
• 1:02:55
  for you. Right.
• 1:02:57
  But that said, like, you know that.
• 1:02:59
  So that's how I use it, right? I use it to break down and
• 1:03:02
  synthesize data and analyze data.
• 1:03:04
  I use it for editing a lot. Yeah, help me say this better
• 1:03:08
  this line better something I do like.
• 1:03:10
  Yeah, this. Up, right.
• 1:03:12
  Short, Short it up. It's good.
• 1:03:14
  It's good at that. I'll also like I write a lot of
• 1:03:18
  reports and I find, you know, you remember in school you're
• 1:03:22
  trying to do like the get the paragraphs all right.
• 1:03:26
  That drives me nuts. So I have AI do that for me.
• 1:03:29
  I'll write everything up without, without organizing it.
• 1:03:32
  And then I'll say make this into an outline format and it'll do
• 1:03:35
  it for me. Stuff like that.
• 1:03:37
  It saves me hours and hours of time.
• 1:03:39
  That's it. When you compound that over
• 1:03:41
  months and years too, it's, I mean you almost got an
• 1:03:44
  additional part time person or full time employee working for
• 1:03:47
  you, right? The cost of nothing, basically.
• 1:03:48
  Right now, I don't know how well it's going to do with, I mean,
• 1:03:54
  to be honest, yes, I go into chat GPD and it's like a person,
• 1:03:59
  right? Yeah, it really is like a smart
• 1:04:00
  person. But I don't know that it's going
• 1:04:02
  to be able to to call and make make a phone call and and
• 1:04:06
  establish rapport and and all of that.
• 1:04:08
  Maybe it will. Well, it's making calls but but
• 1:04:11
  I don't know. How good they're ever gonna be.
• 1:04:13
  Like right now, they're not great.
• 1:04:16
  They might be fantastic in two years.
• 1:04:19
  I think you still need someone. You still need the human
• 1:04:21
  component. Not every sale, to be honest,
• 1:04:23
  but the bigger complex B to B sales.
• 1:04:26
  For at least the time being, there's gonna be a human
• 1:04:28
  involved, yeah. And look, I don't know that
• 1:04:31
  anybody's gonna establish that kind of trust.
• 1:04:34
  Yeah, because you know how frustrated, you know, remember
• 1:04:37
  it used to be if you needed to get somebody on a phone, you
• 1:04:41
  could get somebody on a phone. And now one thing, we're all so
• 1:04:44
  frustrated that you can't get somebody on the phone.
• 1:04:46
  So imagine you you buy a piece of machinery for $1,000,000 and
• 1:04:50
  then you can't get somebody on the phone to tell them that
• 1:04:53
  there's a problem. You know, would anybody be
• 1:04:56
  willing to do that? You.
• 1:04:57
  Used to be able to press 0 right away and get someone.
• 1:04:59
  Yeah. But then they figured it all out
• 1:05:01
  and so like, Nope, you can't even press.
• 1:05:02
  They're like, this is an incorrect number.
• 1:05:03
  It's now it's like 6 or. Something or it'll say we'd like
• 1:05:07
  to get somebody on the phone. Please explain what you want.
• 1:05:10
  Yeah. Just a.
• 1:05:11
  Person. I just want a person.
• 1:05:12
  Just a person. Yeah, last question from the
• 1:05:14
  Founder Talk Club came from Justin.
• 1:05:15
  He said. What's the biggest mental hurdle
• 1:05:17
  that founders or people that are trying to sell things encounter
• 1:05:21
  as they're selling that holds them back from winning big
• 1:05:23
  deals? What's the mental hurdle?
• 1:05:27
  So there is a a real thing of people like just hesitating to
• 1:05:32
  pick up the phone, right? It's like hesitating to, you
• 1:05:35
  know, people freeze over that human interaction.
• 1:05:42
  Why do you think that is? I don't know, it's just that's
• 1:05:44
  human nature, right? Fear of.
• 1:05:46
  Rejection, perhaps? I think that's a big one.
• 1:05:49
  Fear of rejection if they knew everything was going to be yes.
• 1:05:52
  I think they'd pick up the phone, but they're worried I'm
• 1:05:54
  going to get shut down. I'm a.
• 1:05:55
  Little and and they and there's always like and and and look
• 1:05:58
  when you if you run a sales team you'll see you know there are of
• 1:06:03
  20 people like any given day, four of them are really hesitant
• 1:06:07
  just to start calling now once they start calling they get into
• 1:06:10
  it right and and that's a big thing now if you're the the only
• 1:06:14
  person, if you're the founder and you have to do it right so,
• 1:06:17
  so so the only like I find the only way to really get past that
• 1:06:22
  is to have a good structure in place like Jeb Blunt, I think
• 1:06:26
  wrote wrote a book called fanatical prospect, right.
• 1:06:29
  You basically say this, I am going to do this two hours every
• 1:06:33
  day. And I said to myself a while
• 1:06:35
  back, like I go look, if my business and I'm sales guy,
• 1:06:40
  right? But I said, if my business is
• 1:06:41
  going to succeed, I have to do this much prospecting.
• 1:06:46
  And I basically said, or you know, or my kids aren't going to
• 1:06:48
  college, right? Like I'm not I'm going to fail.
• 1:06:51
  If I don't do this much prospecting, my business is
• 1:06:54
  going to fail. And that's what you got to
• 1:06:56
  understand. And you got to say OK at 9:00 AM
• 1:06:58
  or, or whatever time. Block it out if you.
• 1:07:00
  Block. Yeah, I, I block everything out
• 1:07:02
  time and you say this time I'm going to pick up the phone and
• 1:07:06
  I'm going to start calling. I'm going to start, you know, if
• 1:07:09
  you're not, maybe you're not calling.
• 1:07:10
  You're you're sending emails and you're sending a LinkedIn.
• 1:07:12
  Emails, content, video message or whatever it is.
• 1:07:15
  Right, whatever. It is generate the business.
• 1:07:17
  Yeah, right. And you do it and and that's you
• 1:07:19
  got to do it. And if you like that.
• 1:07:23
  So we started this conversation off should the founder be in
• 1:07:26
  sales or not? I, I, I don't believe the found
• 1:07:30
  like, you know, when I say the founder shouldn't be the best
• 1:07:32
  sales guy, that's I believe that.
• 1:07:34
  But the founder has to be doing some of the sales process, which
• 1:07:39
  means no matter, in my opinion, no matter what business you
• 1:07:43
  have, if you're going to be the founder, you have to be doing
• 1:07:47
  this business development, this sales, this prospecting, you got
• 1:07:52
  to block it out. And if you don't, you're going
• 1:07:53
  to like, you're going to fail no matter how good you are, no
• 1:07:57
  matter how good your product is. And if you don't do that, you're
• 1:08:01
  going to fail. And you got to understand if if
• 1:08:03
  that's not what you want to do, don't be a founder.
• 1:08:06
  That's it. Zach.
• 1:08:07
  Thanks for coming on the show. Man, this.
• 1:08:09
  Is such a great conversation. I'm really happy where it went
• 1:08:12
  in the beginning and we got a little bit of your story, which
• 1:08:14
  I think I need to maybe do a better job of with other guests.
• 1:08:16
  But thanks for sharing all that you shared.
• 1:08:18
  Where can people find you, connect with you, learn more
• 1:08:20
  about. What you great so you can find
• 1:08:21
  me on LinkedIn all the times. I'm the only Zach Selch on
• 1:08:25
  LinkedIn. My website is Global sales
• 1:08:28
  Mentor and my other sale, my other website is the most
• 1:08:32
  interesting salesmanintheworld.com, right?
• 1:08:35
  So you can find me one but. A good one.
• 1:08:37
  Yeah. You can find me at either of
• 1:08:38
  those places or on LinkedIn. And I'll just, if you don't
• 1:08:42
  mind, I'll just say what I do, please.
• 1:08:43
  I do fractional sales management for companies and some of my
• 1:08:49
  clients are pretty big, but they don't have an international
• 1:08:51
  sales manager. So they get me as a fractional
• 1:08:54
  sales manager. But I also do planning and
• 1:08:57
  advising for small companies. So if you need somebody to build
• 1:09:01
  a go to market plan or you need somebody to build you out that
• 1:09:05
  methodology and then I coach. So I coach CE OS and VPS and
• 1:09:10
  Sales and I help them build that methodology and stick to that
• 1:09:15
  methodology. Wonderful.
• 1:09:17
  Thanks again for being on the show, really.
• 1:09:18
  Thanks. For having me out.
• 1:09:19
  Thanks.