There isn’t another profession out there that has more myths attached to it than the sales profession! CEO, podcast host, and President of the Sales Hall of Fame Bestselling Steve Benson sits down with Rob and provides a myth-busting bonanza!
Originally Published: December 26, 2022
Episode Notes
In this episode of Pocket Sized Pep Talks, you’ll learn:
- Myths behind how we train salespeople.
- Myths behind how we coach and develop salespeople.
- Myths behind whether great salespeople are born, not made.
- Myths behind the best time to negotiate. Spoiler Alert: It is NOT at the close!
- Myths behind closing techniques.
- Myths behind hiring great salespeople right now!
Rob Jolles (00:00):
Did you know that in sales, the more calls you make, the better results you’ll see? Well, that’s actually not true. It’s a myth. Now let’s have ourselves a pocket size pep talk. Cause today’s guest is here to talk about a collection of sales myths. And you’re not going to want to miss this,
Introduction (00:19):
A pocket size pep talk, the podcast that can help energize your business and your life with a quick inspiring message. Now, here’s your host, Rob Jolles.
Rob Jolles (00:32):
Today’s guest, Steve Benson, is the CEO of Badger Sales University and the CEO and founder of Badger Maps, the number one app in the app store for outside and field salespeople. He also hosts the Outside Sales Talker podcast, specifically for outside salespeople, podcasts that I’ve actually been on. And it’s a good one. And if that’s not enough for you, he’s the president of the Sales Hall of Fame. Glad to have you with us and welcome to the show, Steve.
Steven Benson (00:58):
Thanks for having me, Rob. Really glad to be here.
Rob Jolles (01:01):
Yeah, well, we’re go, we’re going to mix it up. We’re going to talk about some myths here. Let’s bust some of these myths. And I, I’d like, I figured, let’s come out of the gate and just talk about how we train salespeople. So you’re coaching and developing sales reps, and of course the best time to do that’s at the annual training, right or wrong?
Steven Benson (01:24):
I’d say that is myth number one, that coaching is kind of a thing that you do once a year. I think, you know, upleveling your team skills is always important, especially in difficult economic times, but for their career development for them to perform well. And it’s something that you do all the time. I think every manager should spend about 50% of their time coaching and training their team. Now that doesn’t just mean giving presentations to their team, but could be pre-call strategizing, post-call debriefing, could be doing joint calls with your sales reps. Could be opportunity specific coaching. Really anything that makes your reps and your team better accounts towards that 50% rule of thumb.
I think that on an ongoing basis, in terms of what needs to be coached, it really, and of course this depends on the team, the industry, and a great manager is making those decisions on the fly and spotting opportunities. But negotiation is something that you can always get. Everyone can be a better negotiator. Everyone can be better at building their pipeline. You often have to rethink who are we selling to? Who’s our ideal customer profile? How do we get in front of them right now? Where are we succeeding? Where are we failing? Why? But it’s always a great time to sharpen your sword and get out and hunt. And I think coaching is always something that we should be doing and not just once a year.
Rob Jolles (03:16):
Well, and it’s a good point, and I think we do, I learned this with my wife actually. I learned that I, I’m programmed where I’m going to do something really nice for my wife. I’m coming home with flowers and she’s explained to me that she likes the flowers. But there’s lots of little things that we can do, I can do that are nice instead of the big event. And I think when we train people, it’s the same thing. We look at the big training session, it’s like now we’ve checked that box, we’ve got them trained, we’re good to go. And what I hear you saying is not so fast. That’s an interesting percentage the 50%. But I’m really sitting here going, I don’t think I can argue with this guy because what’s more important than developing our people? So rather than that big bouquet of flowers rather than that big training session.
Yeah training session, but I just signed a contract with a client that has one two day training session and 26 1 hour virtual follow ups to that training session to figure out what’s working, what isn’t working, coaching, etcetera. So there’s those little taps on the shoulder, a little bit more going on. And you’re right. But if anybody has trouble with the 50% just, and maybe that takes a lot of time, think how much time it takes to retrain a new salesperson that you’re going to be hiring because they’ve failed. Yeah. Anyway I, I’m with you. I actually think the way we train people is not only in terms of the event, but man, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve worked with people and I would say, how many of you have been sales trained? And everybody’s hand goes in the air. How many have been sales trained a dozen times and everybody’s hand goes in the air? And then once we realized that it’s really, they’re confusing that with product training. How many have actually been trained not on the product, but how to get people to want it. And Steve, not many hands go up in the air. Why is that?
Steven Benson (05:13):
Yeah, I think it’s an area that we really underinvest in. I mean, people hire salespeople and kind of assume this person’s already an expert at their craft, their trade. I don’t have to teach why they have five years experience, 10 years experience. But really I think in general we don’t do a great job of coaching and training. And I think there’s a lot of opportunities there.
Rob Jolles (05:40):
And I’ll tell you, I’m a contrarian. I used to hire for Xerox, and I’m not kidding when I tell you this. I don’t know which three or four, but give me a minute, I’ll put ’em up there for you. But I’ll tell you fourths or fifth on my list is your experience in this particular field that you’ve sold. You’ve sold cars for this company. I want to know what you’ve sold. I want to see if you’re an athlete to me, one of the easiest things to teach is product training. Some people take a day, some people might take a week. But what’s not easy to teach? How to take a no, how to handle rejection, how to warm up a client, these things. And not everyone can do it. So I’m speaking to sales managers out there when I tell you send your cards and letters to Steve, but I’m telling you that you might want to be careful what you wish for 10 years in the industry is wonderful. I’d rather 10 years of success as a salesperson and we’ll teach ’em our product. So that’s me. Agree or disagree?
Steven Benson (06:50):
Yeah, I completely agree. I think people often hire for the wrong things. And I would actually say that that’s another myth. Yeah, there’s a lot of myths around recruiting in sales, right? Yeah. They’re myths that it’s easy to hire good people. I’ve heard both of those myths, but I think and it’s always an important time to be recruiting and I think that great leaders are always recruiting. I think the market for hiring great sales salespeople has been really tough for years. I think then during Covid it was relatively easy to hire great people. And now it’s October of 2022. It’s relatively hard again so many people have left the labor market during Covid and maybe cause they were retired a few years earlier than they planned, otherwise, maybe they got used to only having one income in a family, and they figured out they really liked spending time with their kids or a lot of reasons really. But that left us with a really tight labor market.
Rob Jolles (08:01):
Yeah. Well yeah. And we’re kind of rolling into another myth, I guess. It’s funny as every myth we uncover, we find two more we <laugh> even know we were looking for. But the whole idea that great salespeople are born, you know, got to be born a great salesperson. We can’t make you a great salesperson, you got to be born that way. And you label that as a myth. Sell me on that.
Steven Benson (08:29):
Yeah, I’d say there are skills that make people unnatural and maybe nature nurtures some of those you are born with. But I think that you can develop into a great sales rep. Whether you were born with charisma, dripping from your fingers or not I think you can learn to be a more articulate speaker. You can learn the things that kind of people attribute natural sales success to. Oh, that person’s a natural salesperson, the articulateness, the charisma, those sorts of things. I think a lot of those are developable, but even more important the skills that really make or break a salesperson building pipeline, qualifying well, asking the right questions, listening to your customers, becoming an expert in their industry negotiation, being an expert in your product, being truly an expert in consultant in your field. These skills are all learnable. And so I think that it’s a myth that great salespeople are born.
I think you can grow yourself to be a great salesperson. You can grow your team to be a great salesperson or a great team of salespeople. I think one strategy I love to grow a team and make everyone better at their craft is to sit down as a sales manager and ask yourself, Hey, who’s really great on my team at this given skill? And maybe you figure out these are the five skills that I think, or characteristics or abilities that people are who do well on my team in this industry. Really need to have, figure out who on your team have those skills. Let’s just say prospecting was one of them. Find the person on your team who’s great at prospecting and have him or her teach the rest of the team how they do it. What tools are they using? What skills do they have?
If it’s qualification, you’re like, Hey, this person really has a high close rate because they’re able to not waste time on deals and aren’t going to close. And figure out how they’re doing that. What are the questions they’re asking? How do they bring it up? How do they have uncomfortable conversations and get the answers they need? But you can identify who’s great and then empower them to teach the rest of your team. Have them put together a presentation, whether it’s a 10 presentation for something simple or an hour presentation for something complex, but let them be a leader in that area and get recognized. And people tend to listen to their peers. If one of their peers is, they know if that peers is a great negotiator, people have reputations and people can see who’s good at what. And so your team’s very likely to pay very close attention of someone who’s really great at something is giving away the tricks of their trade. So that’s a fun strategy that I think every sales team can do and seek out that the people who really have the skills and empower them to share them with everybody else.
Rob Jolles (11:41):
Yeah, I love that idea and I hope people are listening because not only that, but they all say if you want to learn something, teach it. It actually helps cement in because sometimes we have these people with great skills, but they’re a little bit unconsciously competent, meaning almost they’re like a little bit like a natural athlete. And having them do an exercise that obviously helps those who are listening. But it helps those individuals too to slow down and process what they’re doing because I’ve seen ’em far too often, very successful salespeople go couple years and all of a sudden, Hey, where’s Charlie? Well Charlie, he had a bad year and because he was an unconscious competent and he was starting to lose sales, he didn’t know what to fix. It was all very natural for him. So I’m always a believer in getting people to do that to help the others and to help themselves.
And Steve, it’s interesting, I had Tom Hopkins on the show a couple weeks ago and I was asking him about how he got started and she said just what you said, he said he was in real estate. First thing he did was find the most successful realtor in the company and just ask a zillion questions. And Tom Hopkins, one of the things that put him on this really on the map was he set a world record. He sold a house a day for a year and he claims he picked up a lot of his skills and training from the best, basically the best realtor in that company. So it speaks to what you’re talking about and that end, we’re talking about not being born but being made when we stop kidding ourselves and conning ourselves into believing, oh, I’m looking for that charismatic Alec Baldwin from Glen Gary, Glen Ross, maybe a kinder, gentler Alec Baldwin in that one.
But that’s, that’s the stereotype and that’s a great scene and a cool movie. But one of the biggest disasters we can do is try and mold somebody into what they’re not. And I’m assuming you do too. You handle that hall of fame. I know some of the greatest salespeople who’ve walked this earth and they’re not all that funny and they’re not all that charismatic, but they’re very comfortable in their own skin, they’re believable, they’re authentic and people trust them. And hey, he was funny or she was fu no, no. They bring what’s natural to them and they commit to it. So it speaks to what you’re saying, which is we don’t need them to be born now. Hey we can certainly, training will certainly help. Let’s keep rolling along. Okay, now let’s l more myths from Steve. How about around the close? And I’ve got a couple myths I want to throw at you. I know you’ve got one myth, which is best time to negotiate. Is it the end of the sales cycle or as we’re approaching the close you call that a myth? Tell us why. Well, yeah, I think
Steven Benson (14:52):
A lot of people think of negotiation as something you do at the bottom of the sales funnel or right before the deals get, a deal gets closed. But actually negotiation first starts in a sales cycle on the first call with the prospect. And you know, want to make sure that it starts with asking the right questions upfront throughout your discovery process and making sure you understand the value by gathering the information, by asking those questions and listening to the answers. Obviously you understand how yours product service is valuable to your customer and you can help them understand how much value exactly they’re going to get from that solution. So they can put an actual value, an actual dollar figure and really get to an ROI of what your solution is. And then later in the sales cycle, you can tie your proposal that you’re making to them back to that value, that return on investment that you already established with them early in the sales cycles.
So if they’ve been asking for pricing concessions for example, you can point back to that return on investment and hold firm on the price with confidence. But you have to gather the types of these information throughout the sales process starting right in the beginning. Because a lot of times once negotiations have started people’s guards up and they realize they’re negotiating for price, they’re going to be less transparent, they’re going to be less open to, they’ll understand what you’re trying to do. If you start it then, and another thing you can do, it’s worth back to what we were just saying, it’s worth looking at what are your best reps doing during negotiations to bring deals across the line. You can learn from them and replicate that across to your other reps and have them teach it A little negotiation training can go a long way for a team and it is becoming aware of how to establish price, how to hold firm one price and how to discuss how start putting together the deal from the very beginning of a sales cycle. I think it becomes more and more important, especially if you’re dealing with bigger companies who have procurement departments. Cause they basically have, these are professional negotiators that your sales reps are coming against, coming up against on the other side of the table. So I think it’s definitely that’s an important area to focus on.
Rob Jolles (17:28):
Absolutely. For me I was actually with on the one with a client today and they said, well what makes you different as a sales trainer? And I was sort of explaining it to it. They said it a little bit nicer than that, but I’ve always and Xerox taught me this. We got to create trust and we create trust, but I’m not really negotiating yet. I’m trying to uncover whatever what the issue is that brought me in here. If everything was running on a 10 out of 10, I’m here just to buy lunch. I’m not, why am I here? So there’s something, there’s always a little something but the biggest mistake we can make is say, okay, well I understand that little something and now I understand my features and benefits, so I’ll go fix that for you. And then we way at the end you’re talking about, we get hit with a pricing question.
For me, what I learned was you want to handle pricing, you want to negotiate. When you are given the blessing of a hint of what that issue is, ask five more questions about that. Take it deeper and deeper and deeper because if it’s a small issue, it becomes a small need. If it becomes a small need, you better have the cheapest product in town to address it. If it’s a big issue, and sometimes we have to get clients, it isn’t big yet, but we have to get them to look down the road. If we can do that and they say, wait, you know what? The repercussions of this could be a lot more dramatic than I thought. And we start going to how much that would cost and how long it would take to address that and where else, what other resources would you be pulling from?
Do you understand that for me, I’m negotiating right now because I don’t think they say, you know what, this is going to be one of the biggest decisions we’re going to make. Hey, what’s the cheapest way for me to do this? That one doesn’t follow the other. So really going deep into that issue, that problem is another way of, I never really, until I’m talking to you today, I’ve never really referred to it mentally as negotiation, but I do refer to it as diffusing price and to me more of an objection. But line salespeople, I’ve been asking ’em their biggest objection out there and it’s frequently price. So nice way to negotiate early on on how about this one? Let me throw a couple ones at you whether you agree or disagree, because I love talking about closing actually, if I do a two day workshop, I don’t talk about closing till we’ve written the paper till we’ve done figured out how to earn the right to get there.
But one of the myths I always hear is, for instance, you don’t really need to close to make the sale. And personally I find that to be a myth. And I’m not saying that. I know there’s always a hand that goes up. I was out yesterday and I didn’t even ask ’em. And they said yes, okay, wonderful. But who in your right mind would build a sales process that says this one is so good that you don’t need to ask? I believe it’s a myth. I believe that people you, you’ve got to know the right time to ask for somebody’s business. And I believe in trial closing that beforehand, but I’ll leave that for another conversation when the time has come. Of course you ask and you ask and succinctly and cleanly and directly now agree or disagree.
Steven Benson (20:56):
I agree. I think you know, always should be asking for the business or having them so amped up about it that they’re asking for how do we take the next steps? Yeah, but I, so either party can bring it up at the appropriate time in a conversation. And I’ve heard people try to get them to ask. But that I think a sale that has been set up properly and qualified well, and if you’ve done your job throughout the sales process it does close itself with just relatively, with a few relatively simple questions like how do we move this forward? What are the next steps?
And it comes from, as you were saying showing throughout the sales process how much inaction would cost them if they understand that an action and not doing this with you is going to cost a hundred thousand dollars a month and it only costs $50,000 a year for the solution. It’s just a no-brainer. Right? And so you’ve done a nice job of that throughout the sales process. Could you say, I didn’t have to close it. Of course you closed it, you asked for the business or you asked for what the next steps were to move forward, but it just seemed to close itself because you did such a good job throughout the process.
Rob Jolles (22:23):
And that’s where I want to meet in the middle here. I’m not saying that if you do a wonderful job, people won’t say, Hey, you know what? I want to do this. But to lay it out there, you don’t really need to ask. When I get in front of people and I’m training salespeople I frequently ask ’em, how many of you have a favorite pen? 80% of the room hold it is either holding it up is said, oh yeah, they’re very creatures of habit. How many of you have a favorite way of opening a call? Yen? Usually people will invest some time in that. What’s your line when it’s time to ask somebody for their business? Crickets. And that’s, that’s what concerns me because the myth that’s out there of, well, I’m going to do such a great job that they’ll just ask me. That’s more of an exception to the rule.
I want to be ready and if you beat me to the punch, good for you. You’re making my day. But if you’re not, I’m not going to go, well where have we been? I want to be right there and with a nice, for me stylistically, it’s a direct close and just, I love to have your business but something that you’re comfortable with that’s short, succinct, and then we be quiet. But let’s not live on that myth that everybody’s going to ask us. I think Steve and I are lined up on this and last one, I’ll get off this closing, but I also hear out there a lot of people saying, oh, there’s actually a thousand ways to close and each is good in its own way. I’m going to go on that one and tell you that to me that’s a myth. I think there’s about five or six and then there’s a lot of games out there. What do you think, how many realistic approaches to closing are there?
Steven Benson (24:17):
I mean, I don’t think there’s actually that many realistic ones. I mean, I think there’s a lot of tricks that, but in meaningful sales cycles where you’re selling to enterprise buyers, I, I think used salesman might, may have a lot of tricks and tips, but in meaningful enterprise sales, it it’s tricks. Tricks don’t work. And there’s really just a few things. It’s making sure it’s discussing what the process is to get things done. Like, oh, who has to sign off on that? How long does that take? Are you the person that is able to do this, this look like? And as you say, and asking for the business as you get an understanding of the process, I think asking the right questions about the process and what things look like, how things get done on their side, that keeps you from asking, saying, oh, I’d love your business.
Do you want to sign here too quickly? And also indicates when you should, but really, I mean, there’s a discussion around how something’s going to get done and then there’s asking, do you want to do this right now? Are you ready to do this now? And that can elicit a final objection or a discussion that needs to be had or a question. But I think a lot of the closing tips, the closing tricks that you hear about are really not, I think you’re right. I they’re all gimmicky and in the end it’s not super relevant for what most professional salespeople are encountering.
Rob Jolles (25:53):
Yeah, I think I, I’m with you. I actually, went out with a guy once, now I was in my early thirties, but we were meeting with a professional buyer. It was a purchasing agent and my friend threw an assumptive clothes out there and the person actually leaned back in their chair, opened their drawer, pulled out, looked through cards, was flipping through ’em, turned over one that said assumptive clothes and said Play later on the table, said do that again and you’re leaving. And I will never forget <laugh> because it was like, all right, at Xerox, while we have, and a way we went, I’ll add one more piece and then we’ll get to maybe our final myth for those of you who are listening and saying, okay, I’m trying to figure out how to ask, but I’m going to give you a nice quick, just fast warmup and see what you think.
Steve I’ve never liked the title of this. Sometimes people will call us a summary close, which already I hate because I don’t want to transition with to summarize, but I’ve always loved a closed-ended question confirming what we’ve tried to do before I ask for the business. So in a sense, I’m throwing a very easy trial close. So if I said, Hey Steve, wouldn’t you agree then with what we’ve talked about, you’re not only going to get this part that you were looking for, but that part as well. And then I pause what’s going through your head think’s coming next out of me, you think the what’s going to rain tonight? I mean, I’m getting ready to ask you for your business. If you say no, well, hey, hold on. Good. But at least haven’t boxed us into a corner of, now one of ’em is going to be right, one of us is going to be wrong, and I’m rooting for me. If somebody says, now, hold on. Well, then we clarify, then we wander down that path together. But if you ever ask a client at the, if you’re not sure and you want to ask that closing question, try just say asking them, wouldn’t you agree? And even if you say, wouldn’t you agree with what we’ve talked about? You’re getting the things you mentioned you look for, you were looking for, if a client says yes, I would ask them for their business and let’s not worry about it anymore. What do you say?
Steven Benson (28:01):
Yeah, I think you’re absolutely right. And sometimes right, then you may elicit some kind of objection, like, oh, your price is too expensive, is obviously a super common one. Or, oh, I’ve you run this off with this other solution and pick the best one slash cheapest, one slash whatever. You may run into things right there, but you wanted to elicit those objections so that you can overcome them.
Rob Jolles (28:30):
Absolutely. So here’s our choice. Steve, do you want to run into it now when I say, wouldn’t you agree with what we talked about? You’re getting what you were looking for, and somebody says, well, hold on because price is alright. Or would you rather say, okay, well where we’ve been, Steve, I got to tell you it’s been a pleasure. My hand is now extended. I’d love to have your business. Well hold on because pricey. That’s what I mean in terms of we just boxed ourselves into a corner. And sometimes there’s a statistic out there. I always love that said, ask somebody for their business, not a trial close. Ask somebody for their business. Get the answer. No. Your chances of making a successful sale just fell by 26%. I actually believe it, thought it would be higher because I believe there’s at least one out of four people out there when you ask them for their business and they say no, they’re locking into, and I’m not letting some sales guy that looks like Jolles. Make me a yes. And so now I got an ego and an issue to battle. So I guess that’s why you hear me going, I’m just a creature of habit of, I like to just double check before I ask somebody put my hand out there, figuratively speaking.
Cool. Okay, man. A last one. Cause we were talking about getting salespeople and interviewing salespeople, myth. And this is a Steve myth, it’s impossible to recruit great people to your sales team right now. You say myth, why?
Steven Benson (30:02):
Yeah, I think it’s very possible to make great hires right now. I think you need a good process. You need to be very specific about the criteria that you’re looking for in a candidate thinking about what does a salesperson need to be successful? What types of characteristics, what types of skills, types of abilities, what do you need to be successful here? And when I say criteria, I’m saying someone, my customers who would like to buy from, given who we are we’re selling to, and given our price point some of my customers will trust someone who is coachable, someone who understands how X, Y, Z manufacturing process works. What I don’t mean, and here’s where I think a lot of people get tripped up in their hiring process. I don’t mean to put things into a job posting that don’t need to be there. If you don’t need an MBA from an Ivy League school to be successful in the role you’re hiring for, don’t ask for one.
If you don’t need seven years of experience for someone to be successful, don’t ask for it. Because you can scare off great candidates from even applying who would’ve been really successful with false, false requirements like that. And specifically, one thing that comes to mind, and I don’t remember exactly what the numbers on that are, the stats are on this, but it was something along the lines of, women won’t apply until they meet 100% of job requirements. Men will apply to a job if they meet 60%. And so cutting requirements that aren’t actually necessary is a way of boosting how many women you’re able to hire on your team and having a more diverse team. And so this is super actionable to take those types of, I guess I call them false requirements out of your process. Did you can look at your job postings right now and say, oh, does it say that they need five years of direct selling experience when really frankly, three would be fine?
Or what if someone was a seventh grade English teacher for the last 12 years? I mean, they’re selling something to the kids, right? Does that, Is that equivalent to, can you say three years direct selling experience or equivalent? Can you add that modifier that then doesn’t scare people off if? Do you say, oh, I need them to have sold this X, Y, Z stuff in this industry before I’d hire them, wouldn’t really, like if they were actually from another industry, would that be fine? So I think I personally would rather get a ton of applicants for a sales role and then give them all a five minute sniff test with a phone interview then have a lot fewer applicants. And you can run into a situation where you’re like, oh, it’s just impossible to hire for what I’m looking for. But maybe are you looking for the wrong things, I guess? Yeah.
Rob Jolles (33:14):
Well, I think you bring up a great point and I’m really glad we’re coming down to home stretch on that one. I am 14 years in volunteering to help people who are in career development, career transition. So I am on the front lines with people who are being interviewed and getting ’em ready to be interviewed. And it just bugs the living daylights out of me when they’ve got a really good candidate who can’t get through the door for the interview because they only have four years of successful, fill in the blank instead of seven. I’m a Washington football fan, and when I was a kid and we had Joe Gibbs and a general manager named Bobby Bedford and I sort of followed the Bobby Bedard way, which was when he would draft, when he would recruit, he was looking for the best talent. He wasn’t looking for the best player he felt he wanted the best athlete.
He felt he could teach them the skills. And we’re going to lose that. Maybe finding that diamond in the rough of the best athlete. If we’re putting a unrealistic unrealistic requirements, let’s make ’em plural in there. So I like what you said, which is, if it’s my company, I’ll double the number of people that I’ve got to interview to find the right person for the job as opposed to eliminate a whole bunch of a potential athletes to, because I can narrow my pool down. So I’m glad you made that point for me. And I run a company I’m looking for athletes, I can teach ’em a lot of the other stuff, but I can’t teach speed, can’t teach desire and hunger and effort. So with you, and I’m glad that we closed on that myth but I have a bonus question for you and good news, it’s not a myth. You’re off the myth. Hot seat. How about a mentor or two for you? And then I’ll let you go.
Steven Benson (35:17):
Yeah, I mean there are plenty of personal ones throughout my life, but in terms of people that I’ve gotten some really powerful ideas from throughout my life.
Rob Jolles(35:28):
Other than me, Steve, which I know you were on the tip of your tongue, so I don’t count because that’s what Steve was just saying. I had to stop him, but keep going.
Steven Benson (35:35):
That’s right. That’s right. So one guy that I would definitely point to is Jason Lemkin. He wrote a book impossible to Inevitable. And he has a business blog called Saastr, S A A S T T R, and obviously very, very specific towards the software industry, SaaS industry. But I’ve learned so much from the things that he’s written about and learned so much from him. Another guy, Nate Latka, a friend of mine and also a thought leader in the SaaS industry. And I’ve learned just a tremendous amount from him about what metrics to pay attention to in a business and what to focus on, what to do in certain circumstances. And so I, I’d say those two guys are two key people. I’ve gotten a lot of thoughts from over the years.
Rob Jolles (36:38):
Good. And I don’t always ask that question at the end, but I should because it’s just a reminder to people who are listening that there’s it, there’s always people in the background. There’s always people that, I mean, I can name mine, Larry DCUs and my dad and different people, but I just like to remind people, a, let’s give them a shout out. And B we don’t not successful on our own. So look for those mentors. Look for those people that you might be able to learn from. Steve came right out of the gate and said one of his myths, but just finding somebody who’s successful and listening to them and never think that you’re so successful. If you can’t pick up an idea or two from another individual, you don’t want to be that person. All right, Steve, how do people get ahold of you?
Steven Benson (37:27):
Best place to get ahold of me is probably LinkedIn. Just search Steve Benson bedroom maps, I’ll pop right up. If you’re in field sales, that’s probably the best place to, best place to probably figure out what I’m up to is on badge mapping.com. The training platform, Badger Sales University is it’s masterclass or Netflix for salespeople. So that’s a cool business. Cool, cool product. And then my podcast is always a good place to hear more from me. It’s a podcast specifically for field and outside salespeople called Outside Sales Talk. So if you’re in that industry, it can be pretty helpful and great. We have great guests like you on there.
Rob Jolles (38:16):
I got to tell you, I was loading that one up here. You beat me to the punch. Was there a great you might want to? Has my podcast appeared yet? Have you launched it?
Steven Benson (38:26):
Oh, no not We will let you know before the episode comes live, but we record about three or four months in advance of actually releasing the podcast.
Rob Jolles(38:40):
Yeah. Okay, cool. Alright, well when people hear this, most likely it’ll be out. All right, my man. Appreciate you coming on. Learned a lot from me today. I think we’ve knocked around a few myths real well, and thanks for coming on the show.
Steven Benson (38:55):
Absolutely. Thanks for having me.
Rob Jolles (38:56):
You bet. Well, we’ll do it again as well as we can next time. Everyone. Until then, stay safe.
Outro (39:05):
Thanks so much for listening. If you enjoyed today’s show, please rate and recommend it on iTunes, Outkast, wherever you get your podcast. You can also get more information on this show and rob@jolles.com.