It’s been suggested that an overwhelming amount of customers don’t do any kind of a win/loss analysis. This means they don’t understand why they win business and more importantly why they are losing business. Twenty-five year sales veteran Kurt Greening sits down with Rob and shares his thoughts on a variety of sales topics including why you are winning and losing business
Originally Published: February 20, 2023
EPISODE NOTES
In this Pocket Sized Pep Talk, you’ll learn:
- Not just learning from winning and losing, but the value of doing just that!
- Why so few enterprise sales reps make their quota in their first year.
- Thoughts about growing your sales pipeline and why doing so is so crucial.
- How can companies increase their customer retention.
- What questions a new sales rep should ask their customers to start the flywheel of the reference selling model.
- Mentors of Kurt’s, and the lessons he learned from them.
- Lesson Kurt would teach a younger self about selling!
For more information on this guest:
www.kurtgreening.com
Rob Jolles (00:00):
It’s been suggested that an overwhelming amount of customers don’t do any kind of win or loss analysis. And this means they don’t understand why they win business and more importantly why they’re losing business. Well, let’s have ourselves a pocket size pep talk because I’ve got a guest here whose sales model amongst other things, tells you why you’re winning and
Intro (00:20):
Losing business. 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 (00:37):
Today’s guest, Kirk Greening has over 25 years of experience leading sales teams in line of business operations while leading teams at NetApp, the company grew from 800 million to over 6 billion, making it one of the five fastest growing companies with over 1 billion in annual sales. You currently head of sales at sebe, the company that helps companies secure applications that are unmanageable by their single sign on providers. It’s nice to meet you Kirk. Welcome to the show,
Kurt Greening (01:08):
Rob. Thanks for having me on.
Rob Jolles (01:10):
You bet. Well, it’s a pleasure. So you know me, I like to diving right in and I know it’s a big question, but let’s tackle that learning from winning and losing piece. Are there common themes for both? I mean, give me a 30,000 foot look at that one.
Kurt Greening (01:28):
Yeah, I mean absolutely. If you don’t ask your customers why you won and why you lost, you really have no idea. I mean, I talked to so many people who they bring in experts to come in and tell them how to market, how to sell best practices and without that information, hiring a consultant really isn’t going to be helpful for you. So maybe you do hire a consultant and they do that work for you, but ultimately if you want happy customers that tell other customers about what you do, you really have to understand the customers that are successful.
Rob Jolles (02:09):
Yeah, and it’s not foreign to me to hear why we’re winning. The interesting part is having the courage to ask why we’re losing and because a lot of times we don’t want to hear that. And in fact, at least for me, the way I’ve always gone about it and I’d love to hear your views on this, is I always have to get into what, when I’m talking to a client after I’ve lost, to make sure that I’ve got something in there early that says, I’m not trying to, I respect your decision. I know where you’re going. I just want to get better. What could I have done differently? And that’s one of the phrases that I like to use, but maybe that’s why people shy away from it. But is there a way to ask for that without the customer thinking, are you still selling?
Kurt Greening (03:00):
In my opinion, you need to go end it with the assumption that not all customers are good customers. And so losing a deal could actually be a wonderful thing because if you bring on the wrong customer and they’re not a fit for you, they’re not inside your ideal customer profile, they’re not going to be a profitable customer. They’re not going to be successful and they’re not somebody that you want to have. So I think it’s important to go into it with the mentality of losing could be a good thing, but understanding why you lost. I think the goal would be to lose those deals early in the process because you really understand your ideal customer profile. You can build trust quickly with the customer. And one of the sales gurus that I follow, Ian Altman, he talks about same side side selling, get on the same side as your customer and really understanding them. Building trust quickly, but being honest that not all customers are a fit. And so I think if you go into that with the mentality that it isn’t necessarily bad that you lost. Now if you find out that you lost because your sales process stinks or your sales team is not very good, well that’s a different story. But losing deals can actually be a good thing assuming they were the wrong customer for you.
Rob Jolles (04:35):
Yeah, and I hear you quite frankly, a lot of times I’ve got a sense of the wrong customer fairly early in the conversation. It’s just a matter if I listen to that Spidey sense of mine. Cause it’s almost always right. But we were battling, I also want to make my quota, I want to make a club, there’s a lot going on in a salesperson’s mind. So it’s not instinctive to listen to that voice that says you knew this two sales calls will go. And maybe the worst thing will happen is we actually get this person sold. Do you have a trial closed that you’d like to use? I mean, let’s process this a bit. Okay, first of all, we’ll put the Spidey sense for just a second and it’s not that obvious we’re moving along. Matter of fact, I’m going to take this case study out to a sense of I want this customer, so I’m always trying to take measurements if this isn’t going to happen, I don’t want to waste a whole lot of resources and time. So typically we trial somewhere along the line. Do you have any trial closes that you like and maybe where they’d be placed? And I’ll swap with you. I got a couple of my own here, but you’re my guest. Yeah,
Kurt Greening (05:49):
I mean I’d love to hear some of yours Rob, but I mean closing should not be a big time event, right? It’s not sign here on the line that is dotted. If you’re a fan of some of the popular like
Rob Jolles (06:02):
Gary Glen Ross, you, I’m with you, keep going. Right?
Kurt Greening (06:06):
There should probably be, I don’t know, in a complex enterprise sales cycle, 15 maybe as much as 50 closes in a sales process. And the goal is constantly reaffirming is the customer actually a fit? And so if you’ve done that 15, 50 times in a sales cycle, the actual closing of getting a signature on a paper or purchase order, that should be a non-event, right? That should be not any more stressful or a big deal than all the other ones provided that you really had a sales process that you continually validated that they are a good fit and constantly given that the customer and out and also given the customer information on, hey, here are the people that are a good fit, here are the people that aren’t a good fit. Can we work together and be super honest with each other? If you don’t fit in this category of people that are really a great fit for us, let’s just be open and honest with each other so that we don’t waste your time. We don’t want to do professional meetings. This, you know, sure you become friends with customers, I get it right? But we’re in business to make money and so we want to focus on people who can actually be successful. I don’t know if that answered your question. I’d love to hear some of your closing since you have some.
Rob Jolles (07:41):
Sure. We’ll swap a few. I mean, look, you’ve been listening. Ian Altman happens to be a good buddy of mine, so I know Ian real well and he’s a very talented guy. But, and Ian and I share a lot of concepts together. We’ve known each other for years. And I like the fact, and it’s where I hear this, so I want to pay a compliment to you that most people think that it’s all about the close or maybe there’s a trial close. As an insurance salesman, I had a couple of trial closes and if you said yes to any of them, I was filling out a medical form, I was moving forward. But when you start talking about 40 or 50 closes, you are in my camp, you’re in Ian’s camp, which says, oh, I’m just trying to measure where I am right now and figure out whether it makes sense to continue to the next level of this conversation.
(08:32)
But I’m not asking for your business. I might actually be asking you, do I have a good idea of your business? And I’m all for open questions, but I like a good question to test information, confirm understanding. So most of my trials are closed. A couple of the big ones that I happen to love because I study decision cycles is I know the first decision a customer makes is not to whine about an issue. They’ll call up a salesperson and do plenty of whining. I want to know if they’re actually committed to making a change and I can’t walk in, shake your hand and ask that question, have to earn that. And so that comes from studying the problem. That comes from really trying to understand, get a consensus that we understand this customer, we understand the depth of the issues. And now, and I say depth because the deeper we go, the better chance we have at getting a yes to the answer.
(09:24)
Yeah, I think it’s worthwhile looking at some other ideas, but once we do, that just allows us to move forward. So I think what we’re both saying, and I want this audience to hear is don’t be afraid to measure where you are. Take some temperature reads. A temperature read is not Tuesday good? Or is Wednesday better? Or what’s it going to take to get you in this vehicle today? A temperature read is, I feel like I’ve got a good sense of what you’re looking for. Did I miss anything? That’s a trial close to me.
Kurt Greening (09:56):
I mean, the first trial close might be as simple as, Hey, based on what I’ve heard about you or the research that I’ve done, I think it makes sense for us to spend three to five minutes deciding whether or not it would be worth investing. 30. Are you open to spending three to five minutes at the end, one or both of us could decide that 30 minutes is not a good investment of time. Does that make sense? I mean, literally that’s the first trial close. Does three minutes make sense to decide if we should spend 30?
Rob Jolles (10:28):
Yeah, you’re actually, there’s a model out there that enterprise uses for fleet sales, which I’ve always liked. I nickname. It’s like a, sounds like a three, two zone defense, but they’ll go in very quickly cold say, just want to do three things. One, I want to learn a little bit more about you two, I’m going to tell you a little bit about us. And three, if there are any unique challenges you might be having. I want to go a little bit deeper, but at the end it speaks to exactly what you said, Kurt, at the end, we’re one of two things are going to happen. You’re going to find value in the conversation or you won’t. If you don’t let me know and I won’t waste any more of your time. And if you do, then we’ll sit and we’ll figure out if it makes sense to continue today or find another time. And what I love about what you are saying and trials like that is we’re giving the client permission to say no and not keep pushing. We’re more lethal when we do it that way. I think we sell better that way. You agree?
Kurt Greening (11:29):
Yeah, absolutely.
Rob Jolles (11:30):
Yeah. Cool. Alright, well let’s slide to the sales reps a little bit. We beat up closing. Oh, one last thing I got to tell you. Just, it’s just a journalism, but we’re both fans of trial closing. I’ve always been a fan of a summary close, which I hate the title of cause I don’t want people to go to summarize, but I’ve always been Fran a fan of summary clothes because it has a trial close in the close. Meaning when I say, Hey, Kurt, wouldn’t you agree with him what we’ve talked about in this podcast, you’re getting everything you were, you said you were looking for. That’s act, that’s a mild summary, but that’s actually a trial close. Cause I haven’t asked you to buy anything from me yet, but what are your things coming next? And I, I don’t want to get our egos involved, so I like flushing those objections out A see whether we’re wasting our time, but B, so I can at least try and manage the objection without saying, well no, Kurt, that’s not correct. Or You’re going to have to see things my way. Not a good position for a salesperson to be in, but we could do a whole talk on just trial closes. Quite frankly, I’m almost sorry we’re leaving this area, but I got too many other things to talk to you about, but I wanted to whittle that one in if I could. All right, let’s talk about reps. That first year is shaky for most people.
(12:57)
Why do you think sales reps, other than the obvious, there’s a few less obvious reasons, why do you think they struggle making quota in that first year?
Kurt Greening (13:07):
Yeah, I think a couple of things. Unfortunately, I don’t think a lot of companies have a great system for making sure that those sales reps really understand the customer’s problem, right? I mean, you hear in sales books or on podcasts, Hey, you want to become your customer’s trusted advisor. Well that sounds wonderful, but how do you do that? In order to be a trusted advisor, you need to be an expert in the customer’s problems. And so, you know, talked about life insurance, maybe somebody’s been selling life insurance for 30 years and they’re an expert. But what about all those people that are new sales reps? Do they even really understand the personas? Do they understand their ideal customer profile? If they don’t have a great understanding and they can’t understand customer problems pretty well, and the first say 60 to 90 days, the chances of them becoming productive in their first year is very, very low. And so when I’m hiring an enterprise sales organization, I pay these sales reps a lot of money. And so my board expects me to have a return on an investment and 6, 9, 12 months, which is really hard to do when enterprise sales cycles are anywhere between six months and two years. So you got to get these people productive and adding value in the first 60 to 90 days. Yeah.
Rob Jolles (14:50):
Yeah. Let’s go a little deeper into this though. I’m not satisfied. Yeah,
Kurt Greening (14:58):
Keep going.
Rob Jolles (14:59):
No, not, it’s not a matter of your answer, it’s a matter of, it’s a puzzle name for everyone. There’s millions and millions of dollars just being spent on various, not big fans of them, various tests and models to just see whether somebody could be a good sales rep. So what would you be looking for? And let’s agree on one thing. They don’t have to be the smartest person in the room. I’m not saying I’m looking for people who aren’t intelligent. I’m just saying, you don’t have to bowl me over with your knowledge quite yet. Once we get, get somebody’s a little seasoned, everybody’s going to be smart. So you’ll get looking to hire characteristically. What are you looking for?
Kurt Greening (15:45):
I mean, I would say curiosity is probably the number one thing, right? I need somebody who can ask good questions, who learns quickly. Empathy, the ability to understand and deal with different types of people, a whole host of qualities. And I know that there are batteries and things that you can purchase to try to measure these qualities. I’m typically hiring pretty seasoned people. So I also look at track record. How many years have you exceeded your quota? How many years have you been to been to club? But I’m typically trying to drill in on those attributes. I, the other one, I think the big one is what do you do in the face of adversity that happens to all sales reps? And ultimately you’ll eventually be successful in sales if you don’t give up. But most people either give up or reduce effort when bad things are happening, the economy gets bad, you get rejected. Three of your four deals get delayed. I like to understand, well, what’s the sales rep’s plan when Mike Tyson says, Hey, everybody’s got a plan until you get punched in the mouth, right? Well, what’s your plan when you get punched in the mouth?
Rob Jolles (17:15):
Man, I’m going to tell you something. You just knocked it out of the park. I was actually on a panel, a virtual panel in Europe about a year ago, and the question, that same question was asked, and I went last, and quite frankly it was a couple other people, they took some good answers, but still I was hearing, well, they got to really know their features and benefits. Well, they got to really be, have a long experience in that specific industry. And I was coming right from where you were, I used the phrase, I said, I want to know if they can take a punch exactly, pretty much what you just said, you know, get knocked down a lot in sales. And that’s, where’s that one on the test? I mean, how do you determine that one? So I like where you’re coming from. You’re coming in the side and you’re going, well Rob, I’m looking for track record that’ll tell me whether we were one and done.
(18:05)
But it really is that ability to dust yourself off and put one foot in front of the other, because those who don’t sell look at our industry and they’ll go look at those guys. They got golf clubs in the back trunk. Are they even working? Yeah, they’re working. Some days are much harder than other days. But I like that. I think it’s really, I feel like I can teach you almost anything, but getting up when, what was it, unforgiven? Deservings got nothing to do with it. Clint was standing over Gene Ackman, deservings got nothing to do with it. Yeah, you deserved it didn’t happen. Maybe that’s a good argument for people to listen to us earlier and go, why don’t you listen to Kurt, who’s 50 trial closes. And yeah,
Kurt Greening (18:58):
Rob, if you don’t mind, I’ll share two things that haven’t worked very well that I’ve heard other sales leaders say that they’re trying for, even when I’ve been early in my career and I have a boss or boss’s boss say, well, this was what you should be looking for. I’ve heard people say, oh, you should hire somebody that already knows all the customers, has great relationships. And then you already mentioned hire somebody that knows the industry. That’s the only thing that they’ve done, right? Well, when you put those together with the other attributes, you’re usually talking about a unicorn that doesn’t exist. And if you focus on those two attributes, you typically ignore the other ones that we talked about that are way more important than those two. And you’re disappointed and you find out, hey, this guy that’s been selling in the industry for 20 years doesn’t really know the industry that well and these people that he says he knows doesn’t seem to like him. And then, okay, now what do we do?
Rob Jolles (19:55):
Yeah. And actually, while you were talking about track record, that always worried me because I remember when I worked for Xerox, we had some reps put up some really big numbers. They were selling in New York in Manhattan, they were selling Beverly Hills. I met the guy who sold in Mississippi and we was about the best sales rep I ever met in my life. His numbers were really good, but they were phenomenal for where he was selling. And so a lot of times it’s geographic, heck sell for Xerox in the eighties or the seventies, it patents, you want a copy or no, and then you don’t get one. How’s that for a sales process? Not that I’m knocking Xerox, they have amazing sales process, but they had to wake up and create some because it’s nice when you only show in town. Most of us aren’t in industries. We’re the only show in town. And if we are, that ain’t going to last long. So anyway, but it’s kind of cool to me, that’s it. It’s about the pipeline. It’s crucial. I’m not sure everybody understands when we say pipeline. So let’s talk about the pipeline for a second.
(21:11)
Well, first of all, what’s your definition of whether it may we get up on my soapbox, tell everybody what a sales pipeline is, and I know you know that.
Kurt Greening (21:20):
Yeah, I mean for maybe people who aren’t in sales, I would relate sales pipeline to sales funnel. And maybe that starts at the top. You have a marketing organization, maybe they bring in marketing qualified leads for you if you’re lucky. If you’re not lucky, then sales is responsible for generating their leads. And so that usually comes down to territory planning, territory management, ranking that territory, abs and Cs, finding personas, getting to those personas, and then eventually qualifying so that you get to the start of a sales pipeline, which to me is a sales qualified lead, right? And at Zerbe, we have three criteria for that organization being a sales qualified lead. And we have criteria as you go down the pipeline from next step of being qualified with a demo, typically going through a P O C, and then understanding and managing a procurement process, and then the deal being closed one. But a pipeline typically starts for a salesperson with a sales qualified lead that they’ve met some criteria that they’re even worth putting in the C R M. I’m not a big fan of just sticking opportunities in CRM because I don’t know, I’d love to sell the Peloton. So I put their name in there and I put a number, but never talked to Peloton. I’ve seen that in sales organizations. That’s not a pipeline to me, that’s a pipe dream.
Rob Jolles (23:08):
You used that line before, it should just come up with it. That’s a good one.
Kurt Greening (23:11):
I actually, I think I came up with that one on the fly believer or not.
Rob Jolles (23:14):
Good job. Good job. Well, let me push you on the fly a little bit. I was going to break in, but you were on a roll. I like that. How we take in a sense, let’s see, it’s a prospect. There’s qualified pro. Oh, it’s a suspect. A suspect. And this is my definition, somebody that’s walking up down the sidewalk outside my house right now. Okay. A prospect has some known potential and you were sort of nibbling at that. Do you have, I think you just basically with your Peloton example said, do I have a realistic opportunity of getting this business? Yeah, I want to sell Apple too. Do I have a have a realistic shot of that? Do you have any other criteria you put in there to get that? To define, take it from suspect and make it to a prospect?
Kurt Greening (24:07):
Yeah, I mean, I would say, I mentioned the term ideal customer profile. So some of the methodologies that I implement in our reference selling model is to build that ideal customer profile to understand that ideal customer profile and then figure out as much as you can from publicly available data, is that organization likely to have the same problems as other successful customers that we have? So it could be industry specific, it could be, Hey, they sell to consumers. We do well with people who sell to consumers. It could be, we know that they use social media and that they have a mobile based app. Those are attributes that we can find out publicly. Maybe revenue, sales, growth, acquisition. There could be various types of attributes that could be publicly available that might make you say in that first conversation, back to what we said before, Hey Peloton, I did a research on you and these five things are true. All that tells me is it’s worth a three to five minute conversation to figure out if, you know, have these three main problems that we solve for other customers. And at the end we can decide, hey, it’s worth 30 more minutes. Or the publicly available data doesn’t line up and you guys don’t really have these problems, you wouldn’t be a good fit.
Rob Jolles (25:48):
I wrote a piece one time, I said, if a model spells a word or rhymes with something, I don’t like it. However, I will tell you a very simple model I learned at Xerox, and I’m not so sure Xerox wrote it. It might have been RMU wrote it, I’m not sure, but it was called the now model. And it’s so much more to it, but just from the top needs order worth now. That’s how I remember it. Do they have a need? Does Peloton have a need? Yeah, maybe their sales aren’t quite what they want to be. Okay, good. Do I have a realistic shot of getting this order? Oops. Maybe not. Oh, wait a minute. I’ve got a really good network contact way up within Peloton. Okay, we got two. Is this worth my time? And quite frankly, if I did have a proc, somebody helping me up top on that network, it would be worth my time. But you just, there’s so much more to it. And I hate to simplify it that much. And I’d love to say that’s my model. It isn’t. But I’ve always used that. And to me, it’s helped me a little bit of stopping my competitive juices from wanting to sell anything that’s moving and really look at it and figure out needs order worth anyway, that, for what it’s worth, that’s a model that I’ve always kicked around.
(27:09)
Kurt is nodding at me right now. He’s nodding yes,
Kurt Greening (27:12):
I’m nodding. I agree, Rob. Nobody can see that. So I guess
Rob Jolles (27:17):
I thought I’d narrate your nod if that’s okay. He’s nodding. He’s nodding big time. Oh, he loves that. The last thing, I’ll leave the pipeline, but I’ve always, from a sales perspective, I’ve always felt that I actually take punches pretty well when I don’t sell them all. I don’t know if you sell ’em all. I don’t sell ’em all, but I’d like to think I sell a higher percentage of them all. I don’t get all that disappointed when I don’t sell, assuming I put everything into it. I’ll tell you when I get a little bit antsy, when my pipeline isn’t full, when I don’t, it’s easy to say, all right, let’s scrub up and get the next one. But when that pipeline is anemic, when that pipeline is weak it, I’m a pretty grizzled vet here, it will shake the core of a grizzled vet.
(28:03)
So for those who are listening, we spent a moment or two on pipelines, spent it there because you build a good pipeline. I want you to be wonderful salespeople, but if you build a good pipeline, you can make some mistakes and still survive. Got to have that pipeline. Don’t lose focus of the pipeline. Very important for the head and the heart. Me, I agree. Okay. Yes. Kurtz a green and saying so. All right. Alright. Right. Let’s, let’s jump to your flywheel as we say, you’ve got this reference selling model and congratulations because I love talking to people that take it past. Well, I get in front of groups and I motivate and inspire them. Good for you. But once I see a sales model, I went online, I took a Pikachu sales model, it impresses me. So talk to me a little bit about it and let’s talk about just starting that wheel, that reference model, because we don’t do that. The rest of the model doesn’t work. Give,
Kurt Greening (29:04):
Can I tell you a story, Rob? Would you be,
Rob Jolles (29:07):
That’s why you’re here, man. Alright, good story time. I’m ready.
Kurt Greening (29:11):
Let me tell you a story, right? Because this didn’t come down from my, on a high, right? It came down from lots of experience, lots of repetitions as they say. And what really got me thinking about it was I worked at this company, NetApp. It was a really great place to learn to learn and great products, great customers, so I enjoyed it. But we had a customer reference team and I got to be pretty good friends with them. And they actually started sharing some statistics with me that, hey, your team has more case studies than any anybody else. And I can’t remember, I actually had written down the statistics, and I have a blog on my website that I think I wrote down what the statistics was, but it was ignored, inordinately higher, like 10 or 20 x compared to other districts. How many case studies we had.
(30:11)
We also had really great numbers. In fact, that year I actually had the privilege of every one of my sales reps going to club. Now that doesn’t happen very often when you have a really competitive en environment. And it was that question from the customer reference team that they were just asking me, Hey, why do you have all these case studies? What’s making your team successful? How do we bring that to the rest of the Salesforce? That got me thinking about that model. So there were a lot of things that we were doing, but initially when I was asked the question, I couldn’t articulate it and I couldn’t teach it to somebody quickly. It was something that I probably took six months or a year to teach my reps. And I wanted to find a way, how do I turn this into a model that I can teach to somebody in the first 30 or 60 days? So that was kind of the genesis of what I called the reference selling model. And it eventually got rolled into the new hire training at NetApp. So I wanted to share the story, how I came up with the idea.
Rob Jolles (31:27):
Oh, it didn’t fall off a tree and smacked in the head.
Kurt Greening (31:31):
No, that did not get golden tablets that they were dropped.
Rob Jolles (31:35):
No, it’s funny how it’s the same with books. It usually does find us. We don’t find it. And I appreciate that because rarely do I meet somebody who’s built a model and working with a process who says, oh, I don’t know, I’ll just kind of drive around and figure what the heck. Usually there’s this, there’s something, there’s a burn in the belly as we say. So it doesn’t surprise me. Hey, you mentioned your website. Tell everybody your website and we’ll in a minute we’ll repeat it again, but what’s that website so they can find you?
Kurt Greening (32:06):
Yeah, absolutely. So it’s my first and last name. My first name is spelled k u r t, last name is Greening the Color Green. And then you add i n g to it. So www.kurtgreening.com, we’ll find it. And this particular blog that talks about the model is called the reference selling model. You can find it by searching the website or you can find it via Google, either one.
Rob Jolles (32:31):
Good. And when we go off the air here, you’ll give it to me and I’ll put it on our landing page here. So if you’re listening, you can jump on the landing page and see it there as well. Okay. Makes sense. Alright, let’s shift from the world of Kurt to a little bit further away, to maybe any mentors or somebody that inspired you in sales. And don’t bring up Ian again, because I’m very jealous you brought up Ian and bring up Rob Jolles. But what the heck you forgot to show you on. It happens. Don’t you worry.
Kurt Greening (33:00):
Can I bring up anybody
Rob Jolles (33:01):
Laughing out there? Cause you should be. Go
Kurt Greening (33:03):
Ahead. How many mentors do I get to bring up Rob?
Rob Jolles (33:06):
Who and I, and you can’t bring me up cause we just met.
Kurt Greening (33:10):
Yeah, yeah. So if you ask about mentors, I’ll, I’ll give you three. So I already mentioned Ian, but I found Ian through Marcus Sheridan. So I would call Marcus Sheridan, the marketing version of Ian. And Marcus is really big on content marketing. But the biggest thing that I learned from Marcus and marketing that was so counterintuitive was around actually telling your customers what you’re not good at. So give them a way to self-qualify, make sure that they understand the type of customers that are successful with your products, and then make sure that they understand the customers that aren’t. So Marcus Sheridan is one. The other one I’ll have to, the other two I’ll mention are both people I worked with at NetApp. Tom Mendoza was our head of sales, eventually became president and vice chairman of the board. Tons of leadership lessons, I learned things from him.
(34:16)
Recognition, catch somebody from doing something. If you don’t follow him, I’d recommend, I think his Twitter might be Tom Talks. I would recommend anybody in sales follow Tom Mendoza, search for some of his culture and leadership. And then third mentor, another person I worked for at NetApp was eventually head of the America’s, Eric Mann. And he just taught me a lot about leadership, a lot about the psyche of sales reps and how to motivate them and how to get them excited about working for you as a sales leader. So those are three that come to mind, Rob. Okay.
Rob Jolles (35:00):
All right. You didn’t short change us with those three. Good job. Last question. If you could go back 20 years and tap yourself on the shoulder, whisper one thing into your ear and let’s make it a sales thought. Okay. What would you tell yourself 20 years ago to keep an eye on that you’d probably still be watching? To this day,
Kurt Greening (35:28):
I think older me realizes that you need a plan to manage stress as a salesperson. And I never thought that. I would say that things like meditation are actually helpful for a salesperson. Younger me would’ve said, Hey, what you need is to ram your head through that wall harder. And I’m not saying that repetition, effort, all of those things are important, but I think it’s important as a sales professional and just as a professional or a human being to get yourself in a good state where you can serve your customers well. You can serve your coworkers well, serve your family well. So I think mental health, and for me, most recently, meditation has been part of that. I’m a person of faith, so my meditation is of a religious sorts. I know other people’s meditation may not be religious, but in my case it happens to be.
Rob Jolles (36:33):
Okay, good. Well, mantra is a mantra, be it religious or not comes to mind. When I ever ask a question, I start thinking about how would you answer it? Rob, I’m not that far off from you. I was Marilyn grad. I went to school when Lefty drl was coaching, and across on the other bench was Dean Smith. And I was, so, I’m not a big North Carolina fan, but I love the quote of Dean Smith, which said, you can’t approach every game as life and death to begin with. You’ll be dead a lot. And I think that I’d probably be similar to you. My competitive nature is what made me successful. And at the same time, it could have harmed me a lot worse than it did. Thank goodness I had some good managers and some good people managing me. I had a wonderful wife because that competition is a double edged sword and it can get to you a little bit. And so I’ve always sort of processed and sort of dropped back. Coaching kids, by the way, helped me with this too. When I played, I was a fierce competitor as a point guard when I coached kids, I was a fierce competitor for the first two games. And then I realized you’re just kind of a fierce idiot. You got to calm down. And I listened. Do you remember a basketball player named Kevin? Greedy? I’m just throwing it out from the side. I don’t know if you ever heard of
Kurt Greening (37:53):
It. I’m not a deep basketball fan, but I do recognize that name.
Rob Jolles (37:57):
Yeah. Played for Kentucky and then met the Washington Bullet slash wizards. I went to something that he delivered a workshop and it was amazing. Somebody asked him his best coach, and he said, oh, he named this guy. And he said, the guy never told him to go out and win. He said, we’d say that to the press, go out and execute. Let’s do what we’ve been working on. Let’s execute our plan. Let’s play our game. Let’s do what we’ve been taught to do. And if we do that and do it to the best of our ability, we’ll win a whole lot more than we’ll lose. But that’s all controllable. And so I think that tapping a younger you is probably delivering that message of go give it everything you got, but when you have, don’t beat yourself up. And anyway, I think that’s a good message. We’re both trying to deliver, but you got the lead on that one. I like it. How do people get a hold of you personally? I know how they get to their website. Can they email you or just find you at the website?
Kurt Greening (39:00):
Yeah, I mean, my website does have a contact me form. Okay. But I’m pretty active on LinkedIn, so I generally try to accept people’s invites if I think that they’re going to be kind. Right. And I’m not a big fan of the connect and pitch. I don’t need a lot of life insurance. I think I’m good in those areas, but if somebody’s wanting to connect, to learn, or maybe to share insights, I’m always looking for people that might learn from me, then I might learn from them. Maybe somebody in my network can help. So yeah, I mean any of those type of people that want to reach out to me on LinkedIn, I love helping people. I love mentoring people. I might not be able to do an hour call with everybody, but if I can point people to a book that’s really helped me or provide an encouraging note, I enjoy that opportunity. And LinkedIn’s usually an easy way to connect with new people in that way.
Rob Jolles (40:03):
Yeah, I’m the same way. I rarely turn people down, but it does irritate me. And folks, you’re listening to the two sales guys talking about selling, so we’re fine with you selling, but that LinkedIn quick sale through that bounced email, it’s not making a whole lot of friends, at least not from me either. But okay, we’ll look you up.
Kurt Greening (40:26):
Surprise. I think as a head of sales for a growing startup that’s raised venture funding the amount of, Hey, can you tell me about the three problems that are keeping you up at night? Man, if I told everybody about the three problems that kicked me up at night, I’d never do my job. I don’t have time to share those with every SDR that’s out there.
Rob Jolles (40:50):
I gotcha. No, the, that’s kind of almost like selling through a message or a message or leave it on somebody’s cell phone or trying to sell something through an email. Listen, the numbers just aren’t good for that. That’s it. Almost bruises the reputation of selling when we do that. So let’s listen to some of the things that we talked about today and earn that trust and do some trial closes and just walk alongside that customer, try and follow their decision cycle. Anyway, Kurt, it has been a pleasure getting to know you. Loved batting it around in sales. I have a little sign on my desk that says, don’t talk so much, but I was sort of putting my hand over it because this topic was too juicy. So I hope I didn’t too much. But I really enjoyed listening to you and learning from me, and I’m grateful you were on the show.
Kurt Greening (41:38):
Yeah, thank you for giving me the invite. I hope I shared some things that will help your listeners learn. And I got the double benefit of learning some new ideas from you. So we’re both better. And if your listeners are better, then this was a good use of 45 minutes for
Rob Jolles (41:59):
Us. You bet. All right, man. Well thank you and listen, we’ll do it again as well as we can next time, everybody. Until then, stay safe.
Outro (42:11):
Thanks so much for listening. If you enjoyed today’s show, please rate and recommend it on iTunes, outcasts, wherever you get your podcast. You can also get more information on this show and rob@jolles.com.