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Transcript

Books4Guys - Amy Reczek · Books4Guys

• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: You're in California.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: Cool.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_01: I was in Colorado.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: I knew there I knew at some point you were in Colorado.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: Which is great.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: California, much better weather-wise right now.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: You can't beat San Diego.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's pretty, you know, I can't ever complain about weather again.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you're not allowed to.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 0:40
  unknown: I know.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: But off the table for me.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's right.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Amy is we've been waiting for this for a long time.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: We have been talking about your new book being released this month, and it is already topping charts.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: It is doing some incredible things.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I am so excited that this time is finally here.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_01: Me too.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: I know.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: I was thinking today.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_01: Gosh, it's been months and months since we started this conversation.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: So it's an honor to be on here with you today.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: Well, really appreciate it.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm excited to uh to dive into some sales talk because I'm in the sales space.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: I've been in technology sales, primarily from a recruiting standpoint, for a little over a decade now.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I work with a lot of sales individuals.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I know a lot of sales individuals that follow books for guys.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so I know there'll be a lot of interest in what you have to say and your methods that you've created helping people be better at sales.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it's really cool because you've built a career being passionate about sales, but it's not even necessarily sales, it doesn't seem.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's more about the process of communication and a lot of the little things you have to do to be good at sales.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'm really interested in just how you transitioned from a life of corporate sales to the work you do now, which is helping those become better at sales that are wanting to do the same.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: This may sound very familiar to some of the listeners.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I was bored.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: I was kind of stuck uh in my career.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: I did it was a good career, but I really wasn't uh gaining any ground with my learning by then.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_01: It was old hat, it was routine, it was the same thing, day in and day out, same issues day in, day out.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um, not really being able to grow any more territory because I'd been there for so long.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: So it was uh same, same thing, different day.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I I took a hard look and said, okay, can I do this for the next 20 some years still in my career?
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_01: Make good money, but is that really what I want to do?
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: Or do I want to go back to kind of that excitement that I had in the beginning?
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_01: The oh my gosh, I have to like walk into a corporate boardroom or I have to present something that in my back of my mind, I'm like, I don't know if I know enough to present this, right?
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_01: Like all of those things that get you really excited as a salesperson.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, and then when you get to connect with those people, it's like, oh my gosh, they turn into these clients that have been with you for 17 some years, are like this extended family almost of learning how they are and their kiddos and and the clients and then the connections and then the different companies that they end up going to, right?
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's this whole journey.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone listening in sales knows that.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_01: But that's the excitement part that I think gets buried with corporate, right?
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_01: And no knack on corporate.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_01: I love corporate.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: It's but it's the processes of getting to X amount versus how are we connecting in real time to then get that result.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: So I quit my corporate job and decided to lean on everything I was love, loving in sales, but also really curious about in learning on my own to level up.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_01: So I went back to my roots.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_01: I have I have a degree in psychology.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_01: I have always been a big fan of how people connect and work and why, curiosity about that.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: And then nonverbal communication came into play.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: So I got certified with that.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to do another up-leveling certification in the fall for that, which I'm extremely excited about.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_01: Took all of that together with sales and thought, okay, so what do I love about corporate sales?
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_01: And then what was I missing?
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: And I was missing all of those key things and didn't really know where to find it, didn't know how to put that into a tangible because those are quote unquote soft skills.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_01: We call them power skills.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: People, those are power skills.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_01: They will get you everywhere.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and really like, how do we put that into play to be authentic with ourselves, to get excited again and to move that needle?
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: So that's it was a whim, 100%, but it was something that I felt I needed.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_01: And if I needed it, then I was I was fairly certain that other salespeople would need it.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: No, I love how you describe it that way.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm curious to know, just as your time in sales, because I I feel like I've seen a little bit of a transition too, with just the difficulty of you're right, you talk about the numbers and everyone's all in the metrics.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: But then, you know, they preach, hey, you've got to build relationships with your clients.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: But then a lot of times, reps who are doing that, they don't get a lot of time to do that, but you do need time to do that to get to those levels that you know the corporation really wants to get to.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: Have you just in your time, it seems like maybe that was also maybe a trigger for you where you were like, yeah, this is not this is not the environment that I, you know, have been in for the last several years?
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: Something's changing, and and you saw, like, hey, I need to bridge the gap here between what what's being asked of sales reps and what sales reps maybe they're good at, but maybe a little reaffirmation of some of those processes.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: But just what was your experience personally on some of the changes you saw, I guess, take place in that corporate sales world?
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_01: Chris, you hit on such a huge, huge issue and huge topic.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, it went away from this.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_01: Let's build these relationships, let's, you know, if the ball is moving slowly, it's still moving, that's great.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_01: To where are things now?
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_01: I needed this yesterday.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_01: And it's a human element, right?
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: The sales is human, which means we cannot do that.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_01: We just can't do that.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I know that there are dollars.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: I know that companies need to run themselves.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I am I am own a company now, I get that.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_01: However, uh, if we focus on those processes and the habits within, we're gonna get there no problem.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's that pushing it.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_01: And it was kind of that moment of I call it the 1990s way of selling, you know, go out and just push and do all the things and be the robot.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: And it doesn't work today.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_01: If you think about sales as a whole, so a little history lesson for people, sales way back in the day, let's let's think of like the beginning of time, we would barter, right?
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so we would exchange goods, food for goods, whatever that is.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: And then money came along.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: And then if you move it fast forward now, then you have like in the 60s and 70s, that really was kind of that um the the door-to-door salesman.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_01: The I remember when I was a little, I'm dating myself now, but I remember the Hoover vacuum that they were like.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_01: I still, I still wonder how they pushed that thing.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: That thing is so heavy.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, it was really this this door-to-door kind of buy now car salesman type of mentality.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: And the reason for that was because they held all the information.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: We as consumers did not hold any of that information.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_01: We cannot find any of that information.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_01: So for the longest time in history, salespeople had control.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_01: And then all of a sudden, we started shifting with dot com.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone started, oh, I could Google that.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I want to look at that company first.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_01: Doesn't mean that the the information that they're taking in is 100% accurate.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_01: That doesn't matter.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_01: Your job as a salesperson is to explain that and to educate that now, right?
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: So not to push product, but really to sit there and say, okay, let's educate you on what we can offer and how that actually helps you.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_01: That is a very different ball game from where we had been sitting for years and years and years and years.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_01: And then now we move into a little bit of AI.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_01: We are, and then COVID hit as well.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: So we are in this pocket right now of reinventing of what sales is.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_01: And if companies are still way over in the 90s, they're behind so far in moving that.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_01: And that needle is those, those power skills and those connections and doing it differently than we always have.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_01: I always tell people we think of our ourselves as changing all the time.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: We think of our products and services as evolving and changing all the time.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_01: We forget, number one, we get lazy because we have a relationship with someone.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_01: So we forget that that person on the other side, our client, also changing in real time, always.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_01: And their company is also changing.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: So we forget that because we get comfortable, meaning that we need to get out of that zone and go into a bit more credibility.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_01: So going into this real time of how we're selling now, but then also recognizing that sales evolves.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's where we're stuck, is that everyone thinks that sales is sales.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: And hist oh, history tells us differently.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: And we are in this real interesting pocket of time where everyone is figuring out in real time how to sell now.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: I've never had anyone break that down quite like you just did with the history of sales.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm sitting here thinking of just personal experiences on a lot of this stuff.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: I've gotten to a place where I've gotten lazy in my process because I thought, you know, hey, I've done business with this person before.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: Little did I know, or I was naive, I guess, to think they weren't getting pursued by someone else and then potentially losing business.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: But that I learned that early.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: So that was a good lesson to learn.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone's I didn't learn, I didn't learn that early, Chris.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_01: I lost a client.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: I lost a client, I don't know, 12, 12 or so years into my career.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_01: They had been with me for seven or so years.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_01: Relationship was on point.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_01: Relationship was great, and I was super comfortable.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't live in the state, so would I always travel to the state, check in with them and say, you know, I'll be in town, so I'll stop by, see if you have any questions, if we had any bells and whistles that I needed to talk about for, you know, product that they're already using.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_01: We could talk about that.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_01: Any issues, of course.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_01: And then let's go to happy hour or dinner.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_01: I guarantee that that sounds so familiar to everybody listening.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: And 100%, I'm gonna tell you all right now, you're winging it.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_01: You're winging it.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: I was winging it.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_01: I was too comfortable.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't coming in, really asking around their processes, what's going on with them in real time, and then thinking around how the products or services that I was supplying could actually level that.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: And he would, he was so transparent with me.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: He would all always say, Okay, so so-and-so came in again today, who was my direct competitor, knew him well, knew him for years.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, Great, tell him hi.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_01: Because I was so naive to think our relationship is on point.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_01: This is great.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_01: And then just one day out of the blue, they stopped billing and I called them and he said, I have been dreading this day.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't know how to tell you.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_01: We we ended up going with him.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_01: Well, why did he do that that way?
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: Because our relationship was so on point.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_01: But I wasn't bringing enough credibility and recognizing that I needed to stay with the game and not lean on that relationship.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_01: Most, most salespeople are relationship people.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_01: Any of us can walk into a room and chat up a storm, figure out how to navigate a conversation enough, follow up maybe once or twice enough, right?
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: So we're we have that down.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_01: What I think that most of us are missing is is getting lazy or winging it a bit because we lean on that too much and not recognizing that this is a different game where we have to come in as really this trusted expert, an advisor, almost a con a consultant now in their business with what we sell.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: There's another layer to it for sure.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: I like that you go deeper about that.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: Because yeah, like you said, everything you're saying, every sales rep knows and they feel good about it.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and maybe sometimes you get stretched too thin, and maybe that's an excuse you use as you know, not going deeper for some people.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: But you're right, there is this next layer you've got to chip away at to really be the top of the top on the sales game.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: And there's always, you know, again, you mentioned too, there's always so much learning that goes on too.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: But do you focus, Amy?
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: Because what you're saying, I feel like can be heard on both the corporate leadership side when learning how to develop their teams and coach them as well as individual sales reps to be better at bringing their A game to their career.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: Do you speak to both the client side and the individual side?
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: Or where do you typically focus your work on?
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we're talking like your book, Connect to Close.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, your processes is that more individual focused or both sides?
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_01: I would say both sides.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_01: We have we do a lot of corporate training.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_01: So we sit in a lot of large, you know, we were just in with a 100 person team on Tuesday doing some training and some deep dive work.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_01: I do a lot of executive consulting as well.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_01: So that has definitely come into play the last three years or so of really supporting and helping them communicate down and communicate up.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_01: So when we're uh supporting down and then communicating up to people above us, we get a little stuck in that role sometimes of how to do both.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_01: So really designing that too and can consulting in real time there.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_01: We also do smaller group and we also do one-to-one coaching.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_01: That one-to-one coaching, however, is offered only through corporate.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: Got it.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: That makes a lot of sense where you, if you go into a corporation, you're speaking to both leadership and sales at the same time and getting everybody on the same page to this approach.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, this is this is what we need from you, and this is what we need from you.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: And if we can all commit that together and go in the same direction, this is going to be a much better uh oiled selling machine to get us where we want to go if we're all on the same page.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: So that's uh again, an approach that uh I think is very beneficial and needed, and there's probably not a shortage of work for you and being able needed to get into some of these places because it is interesting.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I there's not a better feeling.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: I I'm just sitting here again thinking of the the places I've worked and leadership, and I tell everyone how blessed I am to be at where I am now because leadership I feel like does take that approach of like serious relationship building, and that's always like the most important thing that's talked about.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: But I've been somewhere else too where it's a numbers, you know.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, how you'll you'll start saying something about your client's kids or what they're doing, and you get to, yeah, I don't care where they're at on this.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: And you're like, well, I mean, can't can't get there until I, you know, get this relationship going, which is what I'm working on.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but it just seems like you're right.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: There's such a changing in the market of how things are sold.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm, you know, I'm really good at the relationship part, but there's so many transactional type sales that goes on too.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: And you almost have to have a totally different salesperson who's good at that, focused in that space.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: And it's just, it's not like a one size fits all anymore.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: There's so many different types of selling you can be good at.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: So I just find that really interesting, even though I think the most important is still that relationship, which is what you're preaching as well, the communication, the body language, all of that helping you become uh, I don't know, better, even with all this AI stuff that's that's out there.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: So there's probably consistent learning from you too, still as this is progressing.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: There's probably things you're learning every month to incorporate as well.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, big time.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_01: We we look at, I'm a big believer of the stats within the sales community.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_01: So sales as a whole, we're constantly looking at Gardner stats, all of the CRMs hold stats, which is fabulous.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_01: So the Salesforce stops year over year, the HubSpot staffs, stats year over year to really combine and say, okay, what is working, what's not working, and really taking that down and constructing it into conversation for connection.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_01: That's something that we we definitely don't talk about enough in corporate as a whole or in sales, is how do we communicate our intent for the impact?
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: We have all opened our mouths, said something that did not land the way we intended.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: And we do that constantly in business as well.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_01: We don't recognize it as much as we would in a personal type of relationship because we don't get blessed, maybe from our personal side.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_01: However, we are running hot in real time.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone is moving so fast today that I think a lot of times we do not stop to say, okay, how am I for formatting this email?
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_01: How am I going to leave a message?
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_01: What am I going to say?
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: I think those are the biggest gaps that we have right now is communicating that in an actual intentional way.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_01: There are three words that we live by here, and it's intention, structure, and awareness.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: If you can hold all three of those in everything that you're doing, I guarantee you you'll start doing it differently.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_01: What is the intention behind this email?
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_01: Is there structure to this?
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_01: Or am I, is it all over the place in a big paragraph that they're not going to read?
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_01: What is my awareness on their response or their where they're at with this?
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_01: Am I recognizing them?
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_01: Am I talking about them?
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_01: Or is it all eye-focused?
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_01: So those are the things that we we pull apart once we have those three.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_01: We pull it apart to say, here's the way that you can put this into play in real time.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: Is there a real fear?
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: Not that you're putting out there, but is there a real fear that maybe you can recognize?
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm thinking specifically of like Salesforce and them having discussion of you know maybe in a playful way, but hey, we may rename this to Agent Force because we don't need as many sales reps.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: But like, is your methods that you're preaching specifically almost to say, like, hey, if you don't do this and become a high-level sales individual, is there a chance that your role may not be needed?
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: Like some of these other AI capabilities can replace?
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: Like we're seeing it in software development now.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: You know, junior and entry-level developers aren't needed as much.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: You need the high-level person who knows how to prompt AI correctly and they can do a lot more.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_00: Can the same thing or the same fear be recognized in the sales position?
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_01: I think there is a fear of that out there.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_01: I would say in if we say en masse or blanketed industries everywhere, I would say, yeah, probably somewhere in some sort of industry or some sort of level.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_01: What I'm seeing though is that it's another tool.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_01: So, like a CRM, like anything else that we're using, email, our phones, presentation decks, it is another tool for us.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: The idea there, however, is to still figure out the the connection and the communication piece.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_01: We use AI all the time over here.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_01: I use it every single day to draft emails.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_01: And then I go back in and reframe it a bit to make sure that I am one, still focused on them as the client.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_01: Two, it sounds like me.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_01: There are certain elements in AI that if everyone's using it, you'll notice that.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_01: You're like, I don't know about that one.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_01: And then, and then doing some visual elements around that too, to make sure that it's impactful in the emails that that we're driving.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_01: So we're not using it blindly.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's that's the biggest difference is that we cannot use it blindly.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_01: The other thing that we're doing is that we have it embedded with a lot of our coaching and training.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_01: So you'll do a company corporate training with us, and then we offer in real time AI role play on the back end.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_01: And we partner with a company that is phenomenal because they don't just do the top track.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_01: You are getting recorded.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_01: So it's it's what is your visual?
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_01: What's happening with your face right now?
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_01: Are your hands being, you know, all the things that happen in real time when you're having a communication with someone?
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_01: And then it gives you that feedback and prompts to do it again.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_01: So it's a and then we can program on the AI side what we're wanting to see in there too, which is fabulous.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_01: So there's some really great upsides to it.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's how you work it, how you embed it into your systems and to make sure it's intentional.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: Love that.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: Love that.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: Because I think your best sales folks, they they've they want to implement and they want to do it.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: And you don't want you have to.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: You can't not use it at this point.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_00: But I think it goes back to like the consistently wanting to get better and consistently educate yourself and learn new things and work with someone like you who can provide extra coaching and and examples and tools to use to better your craft.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: Because I guess that's kind of more the point I was kind of getting at is if you don't do that now in any profession really, that that seems to be the funds who could be fearful of advancing and and sales is very simple.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_01: 100%.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, 100%.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, we I went to a a huge conference in November in New York.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_01: Big names, like the entire stage was big names.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_01: And every single person who got up there to speak for the over the two days mentioned if they weren't focused on I, they mentioned if you were not using AI, you need to now.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_01: And it was in a room of execs, right?
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_01: So it was it's really like you gotta.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: You gotta start.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_01: Start somewhere with it.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_01: So it it is.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's here.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's not going away.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_01: It's not, you know, leaving us anytime soon.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_01: It's going to evolve, but starting to figure out how to utilize that to support you, really to support you in some things.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: But it all goes back, like you said, to to the connection, the communication, the bio like that's that's still the top thing, but you've got to sharpen your tool belt to support, you know, everything that you need to do there too.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: Amy, with your book, Connected Close in particular, I know we've talked a lot about it in your strategies, but as individuals read it, what's one or two just key points that you hope if they take nothing else away from it, what do they need to pick up on from reading this book that they can apply to be successful in their world?
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_01: But there's so many that they could apply.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_01: So the book, I'll give you just a back, a bit of a backstory in the book.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_01: The book was not intentional.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_01: I did not set out, you know, two years ago and say, I need to write a book.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_01: I need to write a book.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: We should already have one book as well.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: You never got another.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_01: I do.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_01: So it really was not the intention.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_01: However, in working with some of these just amazing clients that we have, we developed the system with the clients, really.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_01: So going in and saying, okay, what do you need?
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_01: We're a boutique firm.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_01: So it's really great that we don't come in with this core product, if you will, and say, okay, here's what you get by now.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_01: We can really mold.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_01: And so when we were doing that for over a couple of years, of course, the trends started happening.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, this is what this client, I guarantee this is what this client's gonna need.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_01: This is what this one's gonna need.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_01: And so all these trends kept coming up in real time.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_01: Also in one-to-one coaching, you get real live, immediate insight of what's happening boots on ground now.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_01: So all of those things in this book came from what we talk to clients about to raise them.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's what this is, which is phenomenal.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_01: So it's not just me, you know, out here saying this is what I randomly think you should do.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_01: This is what teams are doing for success.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_01: The other thing is that you all are the experts.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_01: You know what you're doing.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_01: I am absolutely not here to tell you how to revamp your system.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_01: I am here to show you how to level up what you're doing by 1% to have huge impact.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_01: So we're not we're we're not changing, we're tweaking things.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_01: To be curious a little bit more, to maybe get it excited again on how you do things, to get response, to move that needle forward.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_01: So that's really this entire book are these micro moments of how you put things into play.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_01: So tangible-wise, what we did is we have a methodology called the brew method, and it goes through each step of what this method is, and it follows the communication wheel.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_01: So the communication wheel is actually thinking, listening, speaking, and nonverbal.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_01: We think of speaking when we think communication, we cover all four.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_01: And so we make sure that we cover all four in this method, and then we take the method and we put it into every single process of the sales cycle for you in tangible ways.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_01: So if you're like, I am stuck on follow-up, you can go to follow-up in the book and it will outline how you can do that in a different micro way to have a little bit more success.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: I love that because it's such a competitive market out there in a lot of different areas.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: And you're right.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_00: Some is the micro differences that if you can hone in on and elevate those just one, two percent, how big of a difference that can make in a sale, in a commission check, you know, when you land that deal.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's so many just little things that line up to get it right.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_00: So I love that you break it down in just those smaller elements that you can say, hey, I'm good here.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: I could really use a little bit of help here.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'm good at it, but I need to be better at it.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um and it just top of mind again to focus on.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_00: So I love that you break it down like that, and that's really great.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_00: Amy, one last question for you, because this has been such an incredible conversation.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'm learning a lot, and I and I love that.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_00: I love having these conversations, especially around sales and just little things I can pick up on to better craft my game in the market.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_00: But I do see some other books behind you, and I always like to ask what is a book or two that has been very impactful for you personally or professionally, and what's uh what's another book or two that you would recommend to others, maybe specifically like those like me in sales that would uh that would benefit from reading?
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so the number one that I would say, well, that's so hard.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_01: So one would be Presence by Amy Cuddy, C-U-D-D-Y, is is her last name.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_01: That book changed the way I sold.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_01: And that book, honestly, if I look back, got me to where I am today.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_01: So that that is a phenomenal book.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's an educational book.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_01: So sometimes those are harder to read.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_01: It's FYI.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_01: The second one is Influence is Your Superpower by Zoe Chance, Z-O-E Chance is her last name.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_01: Both of them are professors, which are phenomenal.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you can't you can't knock anything that Simon Sinek does.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_01: I absolutely love anything that Simon Sinek does.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_01: So he's great as well.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_01: Lots of, lots of is in that more of that communication element within business.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_00: Love that.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_00: I'll add both of those to my reading list because I didn't I haven't read the first two that you mentioned.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_00: Simon, yeah, he's uh he's everywhere.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: He's great.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, everywhere.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_00: I find it fascinating.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_00: Like in the sales space, I know guys that like they never read, but they do have a book, like a professional book they've read where it's like, man, this changed the way I operate.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_00: Or everyone has like at least one where they're like, hey man, I read that and I actually could read that cover to cover because it made such a impact on me.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm always curious, especially like in the sales world of what people are reading and and what's impacted them and their career.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because I usually add that to my list too.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_00: Like, yeah, let me see what they took away from it.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_01: But uh Yeah And to your point, to your point, the sales, the sales community is loud, you know, and we as salespeople just are louder, I think.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but there's a lot of noise, I feel like, in kind of all the books that are out there, all the stuff.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_01: And uh to be transparent, most of them I don't get through.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_01: They lose me, or I'm bored, or there's nothing tangible.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's all 50,000 foot level, which no one needs.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, it's hard to find those really good ones.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_01: So I think to your point, when people are like, oh my gosh, this changed my life, because there was actually things that, you know, got them excited and motivated again, which is amazing.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_01: That's amazing.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I have mine.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's QBQ, question behind the question, John Miller, teach you how to be like a servant leader, ask how you can help.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_00: And that one, like I read every January because I'm like, it's just a good reminder.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, how can I approach who I work with, who I support, who how can I be a better person in this space?
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_00: So that's always the one I recommend.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm yeah, everyone always has that one where they're like, this one is what changed the way I think.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: But uh, Amy, thank you so much for for having this conversation with us in your book, Connect to Close.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's out now.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_00: We have it on the Books for Guys website, it's everywhere else you can purchase it.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_00: So go purchase it and follow up with Amy, and we'll make sure the links and everything are in the notes so people can find you and your work.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_00: But I can't wait to have another conversation in like five years when maybe you've written even another book and the world has changed again, and we're talking about different processes and things.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, until then, we really appreciate it, Amy.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for doing this.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_01: You are so welcome.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for having me, Chris.