Beyond the Comfort Zone Live A CEO's Guide to transforming sales organizations

foreign [Music] live a show that helps you step out of your comfort zone into a place of growth and learning for those of you joining us for the first time I'm Aviva Walmer and I'm a vistage chair in Atlanta Georgia I lead three groups of incredibly driven and ambitious CEOs who want to accelerate toward their goals faster in addition I facilitate a group of growth-oriented key Executives who are dedicated to driving transformative change within their organizations our peer groups are a powerful Mastermind collectives where members come together regularly to share ideas and experiences and support one another no matter how many years of experience a leader has the reality is their knowledge and experiences are still Limited they don't know what they don't know because they haven't been exposed to it yet a peer environment creates valuable opportunities to explore the unknown be more proactive and make better decisions by leveraging the collective wisdom and diverse perspectives of their peers members are able to achieve more than they ever could on their own Our Guest today is a Visionary and innovator and a thought leader who has achieved remarkable success in the field of professional selling Steve Harrow is the founder and CEO of the sales Collective and his sales DNA testing process is transforming the way companies train teach and Lead their sales organizations in his 25 years in the industry of professional selling Steve has trained thousands of sales people to reach their targets LED multiple High performing sales teams and he's risen to the top of the field in numerous Industries with a natural ability to connect with people and account for storytelling Steve's goal today is going to be to share his unique insights and thought-provoking concepts for us to all leave here with a little bit of a paradigm shift when it comes to sales without further Ado I'd like to welcome Steve to the show thank you so much for being a guest thanks so much Aviva anything for you um appreciate the kind intro and hello everybody and if you're all watching or listening thanks for being on so Steve I have had the pleasure of having some of these discussions with you before so I know it is a real treat to have you on today um you help your clients in a multitude of ways to help build grow improve sales operations and you do so in a way that I would say is different than most sales leaders or sales professionals that I talked to so I'm curious um you know how would you describe your sales methodology um what are kind of some of the key tenets that you would say most other people would disagree with you on from the sales profession it's a long answer so I'll make it this short but I think the most important thing when you when you teach sales or you really teach anything it can't just be some blanket method or hey this is the one size fits all and I've been through every sale training you could possibly imagine I won't mention their names but most of it is a lot of just regurgitated repackaged stuff from 50 years ago that's just disseminated for the one size fits all and the the easiest analogy it can give you is doctors and patients so imagine you're a doctor and patients come into your office and they're from all walks of life with different injuries and illnesses and maladies and all these things and then you as a doctor don't ask them questions don't ask them what's bothering them don't give them an x-ray an MRI a CAT scan an EKG and you give every single person that walks into your office the same two aspirin that is exactly what's happening in the sales training world and has happened for the last 80 years what you have to understand what are these people's symptoms how are they thinking how are they feeling right what's the thing that's bothering them and you have to do deep Discovery in order to do that before you could ever recommend any type of medication physical therapy or some way they can improve and so that's really what we do but we use some something called the sales DNA test and many of you listening love assessments I love assessments but most of the assessments out there are personality based they have absolutely nothing to do with the predictive validity whether or not someone will be good in sales because there is no magic sales personality so when we're using the wrong tool to assess the particular skill you're looking for you're not going to be able to identify the challenges and hindrances and mindset self-limiting beliefs that these women and men have so how could you ever attempt to fix what you can't identify so that's generally the first step of everything we do is there's a sales DNA test for sales people both inside and outside sales different skill sets different competencies different everything so you have to test them in different ways there's a sales manager DNA test which again just because I'm in sales doesn't automatically make me a good sales manager I can't tell you how many times this happens and it wouldn't happen in real life Airlines don't say hey you're a flight attendant you want to land this thing um just because they've worked on a plane for eight years so you have to understand what lives in people's brains and hearts and that's why sales DNA is so critical when we identify these things we build training around what we need to fix so that's what I think makes us a little bit different than the rest so let's start and go deeper into sales DNA um sure how does it work and how to use it in the hiring process so do you want to start with that one so um think about if you all have taken uh p i c i uh Myers-Briggs disk you know there's a million of them right there's about 2 000 different assessments so this one is all online it takes about 45 minutes and there are roughly 100 to 200 questions-ish based on whether or not it's an existing salesperson or whether it's in the hiring process and the version that's in the hiring process which is really where this thing is is really best and most applicable and predictively valid is we're asking questions of people based on the ideal Avatar the client wants to hire for so these are all custom built so if you're selling Steel in Biloxi Mississippi the the talent the you know requirements the competencies the skill levels the mindset might be different than if you're selling Med devices in New York city so it would not be the same sales DNA test and so when we use this tool in the hiring process it's 9 92 percent predictive of success in sales there's not an assessment that's above 50 percent and so with 33 years of data testing 2.4 million sales people at the time of this recording um we know the math and we know what it takes to be successful and most of the things we measure people have never heard of uh the need to be liked that's one major hindrance that lives in roughly eight out of 10 sales people if you need to be liked as a salesperson you will give everything away you will not challenge the Prospect and you won't hold firm on pricing so if you can't identify this in an interview or a resume which you can't because it ain't on there you're going to have a difficult time hiring people that are going to be successful comfortability with money that's another one recovery from rejection that's another DNA hindrance we see an unsupportive buy cycle which means if a salesperson sells to their Prospect the way they buy they're going to lose customers because if you buy impulsively you will assume that your prospect should buy impulsively if you buy deliberately and you need to know every single piece of data Under the Sun that's how you'll sell so if you can't identify these things how could you ever fix them and so that's why unfortunately most companies get hiring wrong because they're using the wrong tool they're using some culture assessment or some behavioral assessment that has nothing to do with somebody's success in sales skills and traits that are really necessary but nobody I know on the market until I came across you know sales DNA does test for that the likability factor is really fascinating it's hard to lead your buddies and some of you know because you try to get them to just go to a restaurant you want and it's a big fight like you can't so if you're a leader of people you can't be buddy buddy and friendly you have to earn their respect and and you have to be like a bull but you can't need people to like you it's very difficult to teach and coach that way and of course as you know a parent that way it's very difficult to do that um one thing that I always hear because I'm a big proponent of Assessments overall for different reasons yeah they're great can't they game it don't they know those things so I'm curious your take on sales DNA can a salesperson game it yeah it's funny there used to be uh websites dedicated right to how to game right the sales evaluation and what's interesting is the algorithms change so nobody knows what each one means what is each question count for there'd be no way to judge because they're not all equal in other words they're not all worth 10 points for example um the other way that why it's not gameable is because we'll ask three four five six different questions but they're related to the same topic but it's asked in a different way with a different analogy and so nobody can figure out why the answer to this one is connected to that one the other thing is we'll ask people questions based on the way they buy and make purchases they have no idea that the way they buy alters and affects the way they sell and so they're not simple questions like rate your motivation level high medium low right so it's very diff difficult for someone to try to figure out what we're going for when we ask these questions um and that's why it's it's interesting to try to see if people can game it but some of the AI That's built into the testing will know how long somebody takes on a particular question or group of questions we'll see again are they quick quickly answering are they taking enough time to actually process what we're asking and so it's pretty cool to be able to do that and people really have no idea they can try um but the test will actually let us know that the results were unreliable based on how long they take how long they last on each question and so on so you would no one could tell your clients that it's pretty damn close yeah what they're trying to do something different oh yeah we've seen it yeah rare it's rare it's kind of like uh if you see these you know thieves or scam artists or you know these people they put so much effort you know into trying to scam people and steal their identity if they actually put that effort into something good they'd probably be gazillionaire you know business owners and successful you know people in society so if you spend all this time trying to gain you know a assessment we can tell and it's like this is not the right person right we already imagine what they're doing in your business and in your company if they're trying to fake some assessment so it's rare but we've seen it um we're pretty good at pointing it out now that's very cool it's great that you have that kind of Fail-Safe built in yeah training so you can imagine you can use this assessment the results with existing team members or someone you hire to help train on gaps is it a useful tool for that that's probably the number one use of it when we evaluate existing sales teams because every company and every sales leader wants their people to sell more unfortunately you know um keeping undo loads of pressure and you know unrealistic quotas that are pulled out of the sky you know that doesn't work uh this whole carrot and stick thing you know from 80 years ago it's not the society we live in nor the world we want to be a part of and so if you don't understand the intricacies of how people are motivated how can you motivate them it's kind of odd but the only style of motivation that most of the leaders today even employ are the I say this and you do that or I'll threaten this and you better respond to that and if you don't understand that the reason somebody's not selling is because there's a confidence issue around right recovery from rejection or maybe it's that need to be liked or maybe they don't have something called supportive beliefs which means they don't have confidence in what they're selling because there was no onboarding there was no training there was hey here's the list of people go call them or hear some specs or here's how to do the demo most onboarding is the cause of why sales people don't succeed as well as they should um and you may have remembered this from our time together but the average length of time for onboarding for a new sales rep is 19 days uh 19. you know your vistage members and people have been enlisted for 5 10 15 years every month and they still keep coming back and we give sales people 19 days and expect them to succeed so it's not just a training piece that's missing it's really a lack of an ongoing onboarding process um mixed with equal amounts of there's no sales process so I could train somebody on anything in the world but if I'm not training them to execute the process we need them to deliver what am I training them on so we found that's really the biggest hindrance related to training is there is no sales process roughly eight out of nine companies don't have one it's not documented it's not repeatable they don't check to see if their people are actually doing it there's no role play there's no practice but again the sales people are expected to perform with no help no tools no coaching no training no onboarding it's like McFly I mean this is strange how it keeps happening but it doesn't want to go back and highlight a statistic you just shared because I knew it was bad I don't think I knew it was that bad but you said eight out of nine companies yeah 86 87 do not have a documented sales process that you could pull out and refer to and it's it's again it's I don't know if people on that call listen to or watch football but imagine a football team not having a Playbook there's no place they just tell the guys or go hey just like get open or something you have 11 guys running different routes what you've got no chance uh a Broadway play where nobody knows where they're supposed to be on the stage and whose line comes when it would be a disaster but but that's most companies there is no process and sales people are thrown to the wolves and then expected to sell stuff without knowing every single step right that needs to be accomplished and so that's one of the biggest things we see um and one of the things we go in and fix so it's one of the areas you help companies is help them to develop or codify the process that already exists yes yes most of the time it's really improving upon what they have and polishing it up but sometimes it doesn't exist and and so we're just like how'd you get to where you got to will we have probably one now they do about 80 million a year like how do you do this and they they just have a great product and so it's not hard but imagine if they had a sales process and I know you know people love all my sports analogies all the time but in in golf you know if you watch men's tour women's tour it doesn't matter there is not one swing that is duplicated amongst hundreds of professional golfers not one looks the same but they all have a process they follow so it's not about some magic swing it's what is the process that you follow that she follows that he follows and getting good at executing your swing that's what we go in and do with companies we don't go in and go swing a golf club like me we go in and help them swing their Club more effectively so they can hit better shots that's kind of what we do you've got some great Sports analogies so let's talk about most of my other ones cooking and acting those may be more up my alley because I can tell you I don't Golf and I don't like yeah yeah watch football so yeah yeah I'm mixing in more which I'm working on so uh um so with training you talk about creating the sales process training on the sales process what other types of training do you help teams develop or do yourself based upon what you're seeing in sales DNA so I'm you I just took the test I'm an existing rep and I have a huge likability issue I have to yeah what do you do to come work with me where am I a lost cause no I mean it's funny somebody asked that in the group today and think of going back to this doctor patient analogy so as doctors you know we would have a variety of remedies for folks right whether it's Physical Therapy maybe it's medication whatever it might be but there is a physical therapy you know for the injury that somebody might have and so what I did was I built this library of tools and there's probably a 160 or 170 different training lessons that we built all online all on a world-class LMS right which is where we host all our lessons and so when we find out what someone's hindrances are we can assign specific lessons directly to them so they'll be learning X Y and Z or somebody else will be learning l m and n so it's customizable for each person and then more importantly we work with the sales leaders because the sales leader has to understand and the DNA of the people she or he leads and so we work with them on how to build something we call individual development plans where we work with them to coach their people on these specific things this month and then maybe next month we'll work on something else or maybe next month or next quarter work on something else so it's all custom built there really is no generic training we do and it's typically a combination of learning online and then virtual training we do most of our clients we've never met which is kind of crazy but we feel like we've known each other for decades but everything we do is virtual so we'll do live coaching and training with them and then they'll have their online content to support that and lastly we recommend 15 minutes a day right that's it um I asked this question in a group today what percentage of a salesperson's day is dedicated towards selling or productive related activities and it's 31 percent 69 of a salesperson's day is either admin or paperwork or quoting or whatever so 15 minutes a day is equal to three percent of a salesperson's working hours and so if we can't dedicate that what are we doing with our time so all of our lessons are four to six minutes in length it's short micro learning just get your 15 minutes in per day it's all you have to do uh so that that's what I think is missing in the training world because companies out there um treat sales training you know like it's just hey well maybe we'll check this box or we'll do it once a year and it's really weird because you know I can't not brush my teeth for a year and then take a day off of work you know and brush you know for 18 hours and then think oh I caught up but that's what companies do for training like that doesn't make sense you can't go to the gym one day a week for 13 hours and I made up for it but that's why sales people struggle so much because they treat sales training with intensity when it should be treated with consistency again we brush our teeth twice a day three times a day for a minute or two not once a month for eight hours or once a year for 24 hours um so that's the consistent part that we try to make sure that our clients are implementing yeah and 15 minutes a day is very palatable um you know most people fight I think training because it's so in disruptive at the end of the day but yes minutes is not disruptive it's just habit building yep that's it so and much more consistent I can tell you I've been through any sales trainings in my life that six months later I couldn't tell you one thing they said no because I didn't do anything with it along the way 100 percent so um let's see um so you mentioned before and that you know this struck me we went down the path of training um motivation and you know basically the carrot and stick principle um yeah we think you motivate people I mean you're right I mean Karen sticks most typical but what really motivates people yeah it's it's strange because a lot of the stuff that I believe in regards to motivation it's kind of the same way Daniel pink thinks and you know Daniel and how incredible you know he is as a leader but he talks about this in his book drive and so if anybody wants to read a great book on leadership get Drive um but the whole care and stick thing you know this is a hundred year old premise right if you give them this that they'll do this and that really only works short term and you know task related things right lick 200 envelopes and I'll give you 10 bucks right for your kids or something um but long-term motivation has to come from within and so we talked about this um recently a group around horses and so everybody on this caller you know a podcast has heard you know you can lead a horse in water but you can't make a trip um and if anybody knows anything about horses if you've ever tried to pull a horse you know that doesn't want to move yeah good luck so what we do with clients you know vistage chairs employees right Partners we just look for thirsty horses that's it they're very easy to lead so how do you do that that's what sales DNA does so we identify the Thirsty horses because we can see it in their motivations course we know if they're going to be a problem and we have to try to get behind the horse and push you all already know what happens when you do that so if you have a salesperson that's complaining about this and that and they don't do CRM and they don't want to do calls and they don't come to meetings and they're not prepared and they show up late to zooms got the wrong horse just don't changing the horse right so it's just much easier right to hire effectively than to try to push horses from behind to get them to do what you want right it's not going to work now as far as tools within the company a lot of companies use you know and this goes back to kind of carrot and stick again right yeah photos kpis metrics incentive programs commission programs um yeah are you saying we scrap all that or what how do those things have a place in the world that um you're describing yeah so um the overwhelming majority of long-term successful people in life are intrinsically motivated they're not extrinsically motivated they're motivated by their own determination Drive satisfaction Joy Mastery those types of things are not driven by how many millions they can make and so it's not really a function of what do my people have really what's better or worse because there are great sales people who are motivated extrinsically they want the money they want the parking spot they want the plaque on the wall they want that stuff however if I'm a leader of people and I don't know which style my people are motivated by talk about wrong carrot wrong stick um so you've got to know this stuff again if your loved one is a vegetarian and it's Valentine's Day you're probably not going to cook them rare steak probably not going to work out for you you should know that but most sales managers don't know that and so because they like rare steak guess what everybody gets served a nasty issue right we we practiced a golden rule which we should never practice in leadership and really in life right treat others the way you want to be treated no you treat others the way they want to be treated not the way you want nobody cares what you think until they know that you care about how they feel and so that's the key to leadership is understanding which carrot if you like that term right which stick and in which direction and how long and how often but if we don't know that stuff we're just guessing um and that's another great part of what DNA does is it will tell you how each person is motivated is it extrinsic is it intrinsic or is it altruistic which is the the lowest of the three but there's still a lot of people who are motivated by giving the shirt off their back and doing everything they can for others but if you don't know which one of those three right your folks respond to how could you possibly attempt to lead them and so that's why we use this test in training it just makes the job of a sales manager or sales leader 50 times easier so I'm curious then compensation commission programs and all that if you're motivated differently does that mean it could be different commission programs for each individual sales rep yes yep and I there's no right or wrong way we have clients that run the gamut one of my very first talks uh in Pennsylvania I met a gentleman has 57 sales reps they have 57 different complex oh that's what he said that's what the group said and he goes it took me an hour one time I go what he goes yep we did it all we have it all on except you know everything's done so he built right the algorithm to what should spit out for commission based on what everybody does and wants and all that stuff he built at one time and he has 57 happy people who get rewarded based on what they want some are higher commissions some are lower commission some are Bill commissions some are all commissioned some are huge base some are low base some have unlimited vacation time some have to it you know so it's really finding out you know what's your sales person's favorite meal and that's what you make them on Valentine's Day um we have a client they do 100 and well maybe 180 million now and uh food service business um they pay no commissions zero not a penny um their average length tenure for one of their sales reps is 12 years that's the average tenure wow the average tenure for a normal sales rep in this country is 18 months they're 12 years and they have a waiting list of people that want to work there but what they do is they pay really high base salaries right so they're 100K to 150k base no commission unlimited vacation time every benefit you can imagine Under the Sun and all the things all the perks right that they would want but the key is they do spot bonuses so what I mean is nobody knows when a bonus is coming and nobody knows what it's for so we met this guy Scott and Davis shipped like 500 pallets of Jenny O chicken or something to HEB so the company just showed up one day and go hey buddy here you go here's a Rolex then he decided what and he always wanted a Rolex he would never buy it for himself how did they know that he wanted a Rolex and so people say oh they asked them or that no they're very friendly with everybody's spouses they know the kids names the dogs names they know all of that so they asked his wife what is one thing Scott would never buy for himself that we could get him to show our appreciation and that's what she said this guy will never leave the company and they will never leave um and they don't make one cent of commission and all their uh Employee Engagement surveys you know where they do to see how happy their people are is always what 99 their client retentions like 98.8 it's crazy and there's no focus on sales there's no focus on revenue or outcomes or any of that stuff it's just Let's help our customers right and that's it so there is no magic way um but that's just one example of a company that doesn't pay a dime right and their sales people are killing it it's interesting to hear because you know we always have I think very preconceived notions that there's a certain way to do it um and to your companies that are successful doing it very differently of ending those Notions um yes you know it's growing you know this faction of people that think differently is growing and we're seeing it a lot in the benefits World um as a company we have unlimited vacation time right to take as much as you want when you let people do that they take less all the studies show that they take less the reason companies offer employee benefits is to you know retain them that's the point companies don't do it out of the goodness of their heart Unfortunately they do it so they can be competitive and attracting and retaining Talent so if you look at the benefits world if you come to a company and I say Aviva you can choose any of these benefits you want by the way we offer 19 different medical plans pick the one that's best for you and your family we offer 72 funds in 401K pick the one that's best for you and your family when employees are given choice that's what they want if an employee comes to a company goes here's your dental plan you have to see this dentist in this city at this time here's your 401k no I don't like that no well that's what you're getting not good and so you think about the same way as a comp plan if you have a salesperson and they get to choose the comp plan that is best for them what did you just do and that's what's missing because we have plenty of sales people who they're the only working spouse and let's see that the husband's at home with the kids right and the wife is working and it's a one income family and maybe their kids are about to go to college she might want a higher base salary for security reasons it's just maybe what she wants maybe it's a younger person maybe they're single not married yet and they just want to start saving to buy a house and they want all commission cool give them that so it's about letting them choose and and have the ability to either earn more money earn more vacation time spend more time with their family whatever it is but if you give people choice there'll be more app to stay longer term so no one said if it's all um and especially with cop people choices it's amazing to see what comes from that yeah so I know that you have some unique tools you use sales DNA obviously your strategies are very different and unique which is why I wanted to be my guest today I'm curious um is there anything new or exciting that you're implementing or that you're Brewing right now um yeah it's funny um just got off Zoom with one of the the companies we're partnering with we now have this exclusive but what we've done is created something we call a daily 100 um and you know this from our time together but kpis again Antiquated kpis most of them are lagging indicators they're not leading you can't learn anything from lagging indicators and if you just look at goals for growth and revenue and all that stuff asking somebody to hit this doesn't drive this it's making sure that they're executing the activities every day that will drive this and so we practice something we call dpis which are daily performance indicators not kpms and so dpis are things we can control right how many dials did we make how many folks do we reach out to to ask for an introduction of how many LinkedIn posts did we put you know whatever it is in your particular industry you've got to focus on what are the things that drive the things that lead to revenue and that's what you measure and so we've now gamified that so we turned it into a point system so now sales people they just accomplish their 100 points for the day and they feel good when they go home to their families and when they come into work the next day they feel good because they accomplish something so we've gamified that now through app so this app we have is now specific to what their dpis are every day they're little leaderboards and things for companies that like the competition so they can track and see their buddies and how they're doing and oh my God Jennifer just passed me and so on but every time they hit certain numbers and they hit their their DPI for the day they start to earn things points Badges and so on they'll actually be able to choose things whatever the company chooses when they accomplish those dpis and they hid their points it's not sales it's fun too um my old company our inside sales manager uh he it was all not digital like it is today but create a game of phones when Game of Thrones was a big thing yeah so they had a leaderboard and a whole big deal built around the game of phones and the team had so much fun with it um Everyone likes games you know your kids do adults do how big is gaming in the world today everything's gamification so make work fun when work is full of pressure and anxiety and fear mongering from the sales leaders it's not enjoyable and do you think frustrated anxious fearful sales people sell more no and so again there's so many things that a polar opposite of everything we've been taught but I think that's why we've had you know humbly you know some success you know with our clients so hopefully we can keep helping more people how do you balance though the carrot stick approach and then the DPI is because at the same time you're still putting metrics out there there's you are you aren't hitting them what does that look like how do you handle metrics in a healthy way um it's a good question you know finding things that people like to do so for example let's say there's somebody that is really good at doing demos but they're not good at booking the demos they're good at doing the demos so the kpi should be around doing what they're good at um and you have somebody in the prospecting world they're really good at doing trade shows or they're really good at knocking on doors or they're really good at email communication or they're really good at phone calls whatever it might be find out what that thing is that they enjoy doing and they're good at and so you build those dpis differently you and I both might be salespeople but I hate the phone and you love it and I'd rather Prospect through Linkedin or whatever you'd rather make call cool so base the dpis around that and it's not about the result it's just about the action so as long as I know right I sent 25 LinkedIn messages today awesome I feel good my brain tells me I feel good I accomplished something this is why people do to-do lists it's not to actually do the stuff the reason that they were created for people to check off a box is for their brain to tell them you did it so if you do those five things that's generally what we have now with our gamification and dpis it's really five or six things that's all you have to do every day but if you just do these five particular things you'll sell stuff and a lot of it we just don't know exactly when we know you'll sell it but it might not fit into the quarterly goal and guess what the money's still good last time I checked you'd probably still take the money even if it were 90 days from now um but that's the part that CEOs leaders just can't seem to grasp um but when you ask the salespeople they love it and they sell more stuff so sometimes we have to prove it but we're okay proving it and then they're like oh I didn't think this would work I go yeah we know um so sometimes they have to eat something yeah um are there any less thoughts you have that may help leaders better Inspire their sales teams to be more productive is a long conversation but in a short answer you have got to detach I mean is this such a negative thought for people this is just in general and all of y'all listening if you think about somebody that's constantly attached to outcomes and results and money and all that stuff you will never be satisfied because there's always another layer you have to get to and if you can somehow learn and it's all as far as stuff we teach but just detach from the outcome and focus on doing the activity and and I use this example today with fishing I would rather be fishing than doing just about anything on Earth and I could fish all day every day and not get a bite a nibble a flick of my line and it's the best day of my life why what do I understand I'm not in control of the fish the fish are so if you're a fisherman who gets mad because you didn't catch a fish like you gotta see someone okay so that's something's wrong I can put that fly wherever I need to put it I can get the right fly with the right water speed with the right color of sunlight all of that and I can put it exactly where I want it to go and if the fish aren't biting that day so be it that ain't my fault but if I'm in sales that's what I'm told you're a crappy fisherman yeah but I executed I did the demo perfectly I did a great presentation they just didn't buy that's not on me I can't control a buyer so if CEOs understood this and they just had their sales people executing you know these dpis or we also call them quality at bats right if you just give a quality presentation and that's all you can control as a salesperson that's what you should be judged on not some arbitrary result of somebody buying or not buying we all know people who've sold stuff who aren't that good at selling but it was a layup because the person was on fire and you had a hose that doesn't make you a good salesperson but you're told you are because you got a result therefore you think you're better than you are you will never learn train coaching it better and that's why everything we do is around the activity that will drive the result not the result okay so now I'm going to ask you a completely non-sales related question but I ask all my guests what is something that's outside of your comfort zone that you've never done before something outside you know your comfort zone is pretty big so real Curious I mean maybe skydiving I don't have a pro I just I've never done it I would do it um but I'm more of the um I don't I'm not like a thrill seeker it would certainly make me uncomfortable to be up there hanging out of a plane but I love Heights but the thought of like jumping out of a plane you know doesn't appeal to me that's the first thing that I thought of um and the other one which is I get this a lot luckily humbly you know from people they're like have you been to like Open Mic 9 or you've done stand or whatever so that would be weird for me um because I don't know how to like write material but in my talks around sales and Leadership and all that I you know feel like you know it's entertaining it's somewhat but um that would make me uncomfortable yeah being something open mic night at some club or something um you certainly are a man of many analogies I think you could probably do an open mic night pretty well it'd be fun I you know but it does you know I'd be uncomfortable yeah what if they don't laugh right um but all of y'all that are listening you probably could tell now it's still something you know to be worked on with people but that fear you know of public speaking or of my or whatever it's all tied to that need to be liked and so that's why people don't take risks what you mentioned before about your comfort zone why people don't do the things they love to do like dance or sing karaoke or all those things it's because they're worried that people will think badly of them or they'll be embarrassed or something and so the second you stop caring about what other people think about you you know that's the day that you'll start living um and only then so that's probably what I would say about that there you go how can people get in touch with you if they want to learn more uh easy way email you could you could email you know me or Janae on my team but Steve at the sales Collective that's an easy one.com LinkedIn you and I know we're we're on there a lot just Steve Haru h-e-r-o-u-x um but those are probably the best ways to reach out again if you want some more info or all that stuff like we're happy to help but I just want to keep adding value as much as we can so if any of you all have questions or comments or want to connect on LinkedIn you know we'd be happy to uh to connect awesome thank you so much for joining me today it is thanks again Aviva good to see you again honored to have you as a guest on my show and to um expose the world to some new ideas next time everyone on beyond the comfort zone I encourage all of my viewers to try something new outside your comfort zone because that's where growth occurs and Life Begins thanks everybody [Music] thank you [Music]