Doug Landis on How to Attract and Retain Talent in Sales

Hey everyone. The make it happen. Monday podcast is back in business. I'm sorry. We've been gone for a little while, but I needed to take a little bit of a break to reset and recharge as we retooled the podcast. And now we're ready to take things to a whole new level. Now I started this podcast a while ago with a goal of learning from people who are.

Smarter than me while sharing my journey along the way and trying to help others achieve whatever their definition of success means to them. And with your support and our Fredel guests. We're now one of the top sales podcasts in industry with over a million downloads. And I can't thank you enough.

Moving forward. My goal is to continue to bring you interesting conversations that will get you to think and execute more effectively. With guests who I truly respect and believe make a positive impact on the world, around us to kick off the new and improved, make it up in podcasts. I couldn't think of a better person to have on to my good friend, Doug Landis.

If you've been listening to this podcast, you've heard Doug before and you know, the knowledge and insights he brings to the table. He's been a leader in sales and sales enablement at companies like Oracle, Google sales. And now works as a growth partner at emergence capital. Who's a VC firm that invest in AI based tech companies.

In this episode, Doug and I tackle the importance of core values and how the past few years has forced companies and individuals to, we examine their own values and start living them with purpose to achieve real success. We then get into the so-called great recession and what companies and leaders need to be focused on to attract and retain talent.

We even dive into the metaverse and NFTs and the impact they're having on business these days, but I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I do. Let's get going what's happening, make it happen. Family big shout out to our partners today gone propose a five video card and chili Piper gongs de. It's more than valuable.

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See you soon, everybody.

All right. Let's welcome back to the podcast for, I don't know, third, fourth, fifth time here. My good friend, Doug Landis. How you doing brother? Great, great, great, great mattress. Good to be back. What is this? This is like the fourth time. I hope. Because you and I can read, we can, we can kind of go off and look, we're seasoned, you know, it's salty, gray hair.

I have gray hair. You don't, uh, I don't have any festival. I shaved it off. I'm going to keep the beard tight too, because of the beard goes a little too long. You start to see the graves. That's crazy. But it's funny. I was thinking of like, man, I can't, I can't imagine. You know, how, how much we've you and I have been riffing about?

I dunno, I just did a million topics. There are about, you know, sales go to markets, startups, leadership, the world we live in and life in general. And, um, I can never get enough through that. I hope your audience is, is in the same boat. I, you know, what been, um, the reason I started this podcast was to educate myself and learn from people who I respect and, and, um, I'm trying to be the proxy to the audience.

Right. And so to me, every time I have a conversation with you, I learned something new. So hopefully I trust the audience has got the same thing. And, and also, you know, um, to start things off, you know, with all the shit that's going on right now, I mean, you, you and I go back about 10 years now at this point, Uh, I decided that moving into the new year, I really only want to be around and talk to people who, you know, who are positive energy.

You know what I mean are like, I got this whole concept. It's not a time management, energy management, right? Like what gives you energy and what takes energy away from you? And I've committed this year to, I mean, obviously there's going to be things that I have to react to that take energy away from me, but proactively who I choose to spend my time.

Is going to be just people who I genuinely enjoy having conversations with and give me energy and the same thing with customers too. Like, I don't know about you, but I just don't have any tolerance or patients for negative energy anymore because there's just too much of it out there. I'm in the world is full of it right now.

Right. And so, interestingly enough, I think, I think before we had to think about ways in which, you know, we had to go, we had to go find the experiences that were giving us energy. Um, you know, and, and largely you had, I feel like you had more freedom and more. Now it's like, you have to be so much more mindful and particular about the things that are giving you positive energy, because there's so much negative energy in the world.

I mean, you, you had said something, you know, you did a post a little while back about the lollipop moment about people who, you know, have, have made a positive impact. Could you explain kind of what their cause I, I had never actually known about the lollipop moment. So could you explain kind of what that is?

Yeah, it's a, it was a really beautiful story that a friend of mine shared with me. It was his Ted talk. Um, and it was about leadership and the conceptually the idea is, is leadership basically exists anywhere in. And the lollipop moment, actually, this, as the story goes, and I might do a, I might bastardize this there just a little bit, but a guy was a young girl was going off to college and she was scared to death about going off to college.

And she went there with her mom and she was standing in line to register and, and everything in her body. Saying leave, leave, leave. This just doesn't feel right. Um, and at a, in a real way, when you see this guy speak and he's kind of a big dork and, um, he was there trying to promote a nonprofit organization that he was working with and he walked up and he was walking up to everybody, giving everyone lollipops and he walked up to her and he handed her a lollipop.

And he made a comment to her, to the person in front of her about, you know, Hey, is it you, you know, one of the most beautiful people you've ever seen and that experience the fact that he took time out of his day to acknowledge someone, to recognize someone, to be present with them. Um, really changed her life and she chose at that moment to stay in school.

And interestingly enough, she also started dating the person in front of her, the guy that, the guy that he said, isn't seeing the most beautiful person they dated, they ended up getting married. They invited him to the wedding. Right. So it's like it's, to be honest, it's like the ripple effects of the little things.

I think, you know, in this world right now, there's were, this world is full of so much negativity and so much hard energy. I think we have an opportunity if you're present and just be mindful about making someone's day. Just a little bit better, even though you may be in the midst of your own chaos, um, you can really change someone's life and in turn, change your own life.

And that's what he was saying is like, that's really. We think about leadership, for instance, this concept, which is, you know, oh, it's something that we all strive for. Like leadership lead to be a CEO or a, maybe a CRO or a president, president of a country in some cases. Um, but no leadership can happen in your house.

It can happen in your own. And it does happen every single day. You have the opportunity to lead, to show other people what life can be like if you make a difference. And, and, and that's a good transition too, to kind of talking about where we're at today, you know, because you know, another one, I remember you posted a while back about the great resignation is bullshit, right?

There's, there's no real difference, um, of the numbers now or lasting, you know, you know, six months ago or whatever it is that was two years ago, right. And the other part of this is that I think this, the, the, everybody talking about this great resignation, it's a very small sliver of society that is going through that if at all, because if you think of like a single mom working three jobs, like to try to put food on the table, there's no great resignation happening there.

They don't. You know, the privileged white kid, like me who works in the SAS world and says, oh, I don't like this company. Cause they don't fucking give me, you know, eight weeks of vacation. I can go over there and sure. That's a great resignation masses out there. It's not there's there's aren't those options out there.

And so, so, but I do think that I've noticed a pretty significant shift. In what people find important. Right. I think if there is a, you know, I think there's, there are a bunch of silver linings here with the COVID situation, but I think one of them is, is that I think a lot of people have taken that step back to say, what is really important to us, right.

What there is. And for me personally, like getting off of an airplane and being able to put Charlotte to bed every night and have dinner with my wife, you know, all that stuff like those. Far more important to me than, than you know, that trip to wherever the miles that I get here, the status that I get.

And so what do you from your stamps? You know, you work with a lot of leaders out there, uh, you know, of organizations that you invest in and everything else. Have you seen a shift in leadership? Um, as far as their actions, not their words. Cause I think a lot of people say, oh yeah, we gotta change. And no I'm, um, I've changed my approach, but have you seen actual concrete, actionable change in leadership?

Uh, over the past year? I think there's still a ton of room left to change, to be totally honest. I think we've been talking about it. It, you know, look change takes time and the great resignation is this topic that's been, you know, w we'll say kind of top of the it, you know, it's been kind of top of everyone's mind for the last six months, maybe the last year, we'll just call it that.

But, but let's, let's, let's think about this 80% of the world's workers do not work behind a desk. The desk-less workforce out there is much bigger than all you and I and our little SAS companies or VC firms, they're all stressed out worried about hiring, hiring ATS and SDRs and the CSMs, everybody else out there, it doesn't work behind a desk if they work in a manufacturing facility or a hospital or a hotel or a restaurant.

I mean, you know, so this rate, great resignation is, as you said, is impacting a very small percentage. And it's kind of like, you know what, you're in the 1%. Most likely, you know, the rest of us that are worrying about hiring. Now, I'm not going to lie. Hiring is become much more difficult. It's become more difficult for kids.

People realize to your point, well, if I can get my job done, if I can work, but not actually have to be in San Francisco or in the city of New York or in the city of Chicago, I can be in Idaho. I can be in Arizona. I can be somewhere where I have better work-life balance, where I feel that. Because I'm not caught up in the rat race, especially with the expenses, then why not?

And I think what's happened was, is COVID gave everyone an excuse to ask that question and leadership didn't have a good enough answer. And, and trust me, we had a number of early stage companies that were like, no, no, no. We're only hiring in San Francisco. We're only hiring in New York. We only are hiring where our headquarters is, I guess what happened six months into it.

They're like, okay, we have to change our strategy. Because we can hit our hiring numbers. Right. And I'll tell you for any, any sales leader, you know, right now, January. Most stressful month because you realize that if you don't get your butts in seats, you don't have enough quota capacity to actually get to your revenue targets.

And now you're you're online, right? So, you know, the great resignation to me was more of a wake-up call to say, Hey, listen, the perks that we used to love, you know, the free food and the games and the, you know, the happy hours and all that stuff. It's different. We we have, we w we have different perks that we want, right.

We want flexibility. We want, we want more freedom, but we also still want you to care just as much. Yeah. And that's, and that's the challenge, right? I think the, the, the disconnect. So I think you and I are in a, I mean, are fortunate in a lot of ways, but one of them is you've been, we've been in this game for a while, so, you know, uh, you know, 45, right?

Like, I, I did this. You know, worked in the bullpen with a crew and got to know people and learn how to develop relationships. Right. Learned. I went out to networking events. I mean, literally when I was starting my career, I would join like three networking groups a week where I'd wake up at six 30 in the morning, go there, network being cold call and meet with people all day and then go to five or six networking events a week to write and be up until eight o'clock.

Right. So, you know, 10 o'clock at night. So I learned. The skill of networking of relationship development. I am scared right now. I am worried, not scared, worried for the kids coming into the workforce in this environment. That is the remote environment. And so w what do you think we need to do now? Or where do you think this is headed with this whole?

And let's, let's go to our world now, like, not the 80%, but let's go to our world of these kids coming into the workforce. Well, I mean, it probably does speak to the 80% as well, that aren't getting that ability to sit with the team and get the, you know, the secondary conversations, the water cooler stuff, and, and, and learn how to cultivate those relationships.

Are you, do you see. W where do you see this going? And what do you see this, this over the next few years here? That. Yeah. That's um, that's the hardest part, to be honest, you know, that's the one thing that I say that I miss the most about this new, new environment that we're in is, um, you know, like, you know, I travel all the time.

I go to all of our portfolio companies all over the world, honestly. And, and the one thing that you miss is the dynamic water cooler conversations, right? You and I are having a conversation in the hallway. Somebody walks by, they jump in the conversation. Next thing you know, we're covering a really important topic that hadn't.

We didn't really thought about it, right. We didn't realize was actually something that we could potentially solve for, or elevate, or at least at a minimum discuss. And that doesn't happen in this new world. And I think we're gonna, we're going to have to find more ways to be more. And this is, this is a super risky statement because unfortunately in this environment, I feel like we're, we're on even more because we're online and we've got more people have more access to us and it's more.

Um, the hours feel longer. Uh, however, there needs to be ways in which we can have more create that dynamic environment. Right. So one of the things that I know people are doing with leaders in particular would be like, I'm leaving my zoom room on an open, come in, just knock on the door as if I had an office and come in and bring your conversations to me.

Um, and, and it's interesting because I actually just saw somebody post about this yesterday. Uh, they had their first experience in the metaverse and we've seen some applications that create, that create this environment where you are a figure in an experience in a room. And as you move around the room, you can hear different conversations.

And to be honest, a year ago when we saw it. So like, this is pretty cool. It still has a little ways to go today. It's it's it feels almost like you're there. And, and that's going to have to happen. There's going to be a happy hour and there's going to be a room. And all of us are going to have these little figureheads in there.

And I'm going to walk over here and have a conversation with you and Kyle. And I'm going to walk over here in the middle of conversation with, you know, with some new, some new leaders that have never met, and I'm going to be able to navigate that because we're all in a room together. And to be honest, I'm kind of excited about that because we get back to those like dynamic conversations that you don't have right now, because everything has to be scheduled meeting.

I will tell you right now. I mean, if there's one thing that I, you know, I got the Oculus goggles probably like three years ago, four, actually four or five years ago, I got the one that was hooked in and it had the cord. Right. And then I upgraded to the wireless ones. Cause my stupid rabbit ate the cord.

But, um, but like I, when I put those on the first time I was. Holy shit. And I finally saw that connection. And now NFTs, I don't know about you and your, your, your, you have your finger on the pulse of the tech side more than I do, but I've never seen in my life something printed. Faster than NFT. Metaverse defy like this claim web three shit, man, like a year ago, I was like, ah, and then it was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

And now it's taking over everything. And look, I think you and I are holding off again. So to remember that this is kind of like the internet, right? When the internet first came out in the mid nineties, people like this is a joke, it's a fad it's never going to, and then it exploded and there was all sorts of weird shit.

And then it crashed fucking overnight and it. So to, to basically run our lives now. And I see that with NFTs and metaverse, and as much as we roll our eyes at metaverse in a lot of ways being like, oh, fucking virtual environment, man, it is coming in strong a hundred percent, a hundred percent. There's going to be the new way.

We do conferences in many ways. Um, so, so it's funny. I was thinking about this the other day too. It's like, how do we train people to do, to. You know, we oftentimes talk about networking skills, right? So back in the day, when we used to do these networking events and, and to be honest, living in San Francisco back in the day, and of course we're dating ourselves now, but I could literally be fed by the number of happy hours and parties that I went to.

You pay 10 bucks, you get a smorgasbord of free drinks. Amazing, great. However, like today with this new environment, You know, one of the things we have to teach people is like, how do you actually approach someone in the metaverse or in this digital domain that we're, that we're in that we're because we're not used to because you know, we're all not sitting in a room together.

It's like, how do you teach them to approach someone? What does networking look and feel like? How do you network in this new environment? Because it's going to be slightly. Um, and people's boundaries are going to shift and they're going to change a little bit. So it's, it's definitely coming. We are super early.

It's like, you know, the edge of it. Microsoft buying Activision yesterday for $68 billion tells you this is real. This is happening. Facebook changing their name to Metta. This is happening. There's no question. So, so get on board now. And if keys, the whole domain, that's crazy. You know, what's interesting about entities.

My belief is this is like, look at the end of the day. It's all about someone's willingness to be. And so if you create enough demand, if you create enough demand for something, whether that's real or false, someone's going to pay for it. And if they're willing to pay for it, then there you go. There's the value of it.

What struck me, I'm actually taking a course on NFTs right now, which has blown my mind and, and he compared it where we're, and I crossed this bridge a long time ago because I first, I was like, this is dumb. Right. But I've been following, you know, I follow Gary V a ton and I watched his launch of his NFT thing and I've started to make sense to me.

And he was like, you know, I have. Rookie card, right? So it's a, it's an actual physical card. It's a Michael Jordan rookie. It's a condition it's probably worth, you know, a hundred thousand dollars, whatever it is. But Doug, you've never been to my house. Right. You've never been to my physical house. So I can't show you that.

Right. So people say, well, it's a physical thing, but this, this digital thing and who cares, well, guess what or the Mona Lisa, for instance, right? The Mona Lisa there's one Mona Lisa and people. Th the lube like 80% of the people that go to the. Are going for to see that thing right now, I had the Mona Lisa picture poster in my fucking college dorm room.

Right. So you look at it and like, well, what the fuck? Like I got the Mona east of there. It actually, it looks better here than it does in person. I don't know if you've ever seen the Mona Lisa in person. It looks like shit. It's like, you know, it's a tiny and it's between like eight inches of glass. But, but you think about that in the metaverse.

So you think about that and then Ft is now you come over to my virtual house and I can show you all my shit. And it's all those scarcity. So you just have to make this mental shift to understand that the world of, you know, ready player one is, is going to happen. Whether we like it or not. Now, how do we, how do we address that as the, both the physical and the virtual world?

That's what I'm super curious about is like virtual augmentation, not virtual reality. Right. Which is where I don't. I mean, you've seen the apple glasses that have come out now. Right. Have you seen those. Yeah, I haven't actually worn them. I just to your point about Oculus, which I just got one for Christmas, but I put it on.

I was like, I remember reaching out to him, like, dude, what games can we play together? Cause this is pretty cool. It's pretty cool. Now is this how I want to do business? Not exactly. Cause the headset kind of big and awkward and funky. And then when the headsets get a little bit better, I think, you know, it's, it's definitely.

It's definitely gonna be more a part of our everyday norm, to be honest, you know, let let's in this virtual world to be, to be totally honest. This is something that I know. Then we've tried this for years now, but I feel like over the next year or two, this is going to happen, but we're going to be able to start to send out the headsets to our sales teams so that we can actually train them in simulations, real life simulations.

You know, someone's going to walk in, it's going to be a computer program and they're going to, they're going to act as if they are a prospect or a customer, and they're going to have that experience without actually having to get on a plane and go meet with that. They'll meet with a physical customer so that when you.

And on your zoom call and you're having a conversation with customer. You can recreate that. In fact, I just met a company called generates. Now they do this for customer support, but it is a simulation where the AI actually talks to you. I saw it. And I was like, wait, what did she just say? And did you program that?

And they say, well, you know, it all look, all AI models have to be taught, right? So they, they, and then they learn and they get smarter and they better and they get better. And so you create a scenario, you teach the AI that scenario, and then. It's cool and creepy at the same time. So throw a headset on with this virtual person and next thing you know, you know, and so, you know, I think from a training perspective, that's, that's happened.

That's coming. No question. What's up, everybody. I know you're enjoying this conversation. John does a great job with genuine curiosity on these episodes and our guests consistently bring. We want to take a moment here and let you know that you've got an opportunity, an opportunity to become better than you were yesterday, and you can do so by gaining access to all of JV sales content, all of their training tips, techniques, tactics, and takeaways can be yours for $1 a day, $365 for the year gets you annual access to everything, including our private slack channel for members.

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Join us today and get the help you need to become the seller that you deserve to be that URL. One more time is join JBS. Dot com let's get back to the show with JB and our guests for this week. So I guess what skills from your perspective with, with this shift remote with this, you know, the customer, you know, the customer experience, being everything, um, you know, all these different macro things per product led growth, we've all talked about this on a previous podcast.

Like what do you think the skills, uh, That w rep or, you know, younger kids coming into the, to the environment or should be focused on at this point. Should it be the interpersonal skills? Should it be the, the technical skills we'll be able to use all this stuff. I mean, all of the above, obviously, but if there was one that you would pick, um, what skills do you think are going to be more important moving forward than they are now for.

Well, it feels like to me up in the, I'm always going to go back to the interpersonal, the technical. Yes. It matters. Some people just have an affinity towards technology and others don't. But the one thing that is shifting and I was having this conversation just yesterday. In fact, the buyer journey hasn't changed that much.

Selling by the way, it hasn't really changed that much. If you think about, you know, the snake oil salesman is our buddy Todd Tacony likes to talk about and what they were going through to today, it hasn't really changed that much. The thing that's changed is when I get ahold of you, John, and you finally respond, whether that's in the virtual world or whether I've run into you in an airport, or whether you pick up the cell phone.

Cause I get your cell phone number. I have to be on. I have one shot and I'm thinking of Eminem song. Now you better lose yourself in the moment, whatever you, right. Because I got one shot, the best song ever, or one of the top 10, at least. Right. But, but like I got one shot, so I've gotta be on my game. And so, you know, you.

You don't get a whole lot of opportunities because there's just not enough time. And also given how much work we've done as buyers to though leading up to this. Like you gotta, you gotta know. I, I know my stuff, right. I likely as a buyer have a very prepared mind. So you as a seller have to be even more prepared than you ever were before.

And this is why I'm more convinced than ever that, you know, and I actually, right before we got on this podcast, I was on a sales call with sofas and, you know, they were asking like, Hey, what skills? And, and my comment was business acumen, right? The, the, and this is why I think it's accelerating the shift of predictable revenue, because we've talked about this before, where.

You know, predictable revenue model of taking inbound kids, you know, 22 years old taking inbounds and then making them make cold calls just to set up meetings and then going to AEE SMB mid-market enterprise. That is fantastic. From a business growth standpoint, I can scale a sales team pretty, pretty efficiently with cheap resources.

Grow them up. That's not customer centric in any way, shape or form. Nobody likes to be handed off 15 times and COVID proved this because when COVID hit and everything went remote, you know, it SDRs these poor kids. I mean, executives don't want to talk to SDRs in a good economy for crying out loud, but in a bad economy to have a kid call you up.

So like a basic bitch pitch and then maybe ask a couple of questions and then maybe just hit the holy fucking grail where you're like, holy shit. I'm kind of interested in what you had to say. And you asked that one layer deep question, and then they fall apart and say, I can't do that. Let me bring in an a E let me bring in an se like that.

I have zero tolerance for that. Like if, to your point, if you catch none, and if you catch my attention for that brief second, if I don't get value out of that brief second, this conversation. Over your chances are done. And so I think that's where the, I think the. The shift of techniques and all this other stuff, that's fine.

That's just to get the conversation. But once you have that undivided attention, man, your business acumen needs to be fucking on pause to be able to have, to be able to get me to stop and think for two seconds and go, huh? I haven't thought about it that way. Or that's a good question. Why'd you ask that and I'm going to go deeper on this and you better give me that information right now.

Cause otherwise I can give you a second chance. Absolutely, absolutely. And so, and, and look, to be honest, the expectation is a lot higher because look, yeah. You're at home, right. You're working remotely, wherever you may be, that gives you more time and freedom and space to actually do your homework, to be prepared, to come prepared to the conversation.

Not like, you know, I, I tell you what I, I find I'm responding more and more to outreach. And what I'm noticing is it hasn't changed. And that's what, that's what makes me sad. Right? The tactics and the techniques that people were using two years ago, they're still using them today and it's, and it's like, dude, are you serious?

You still haven't done your homework. It's still not relevant. You're not bringing any, any value to this conversation quickly right out of the gate. And it's like, what are you doing? W, how are you using this time or working from home now or working remotely to, to get better. And, and to your point, I'd say, you know, business acumen, it's funny.

Cause that was all my focus for our companies last year is look, you have to understand how to come to every conversation with a prepared mind and a point of view and hypothesis about, about their business, about their role and about their current state and their environment, why they would ever want to change.

And if you don't have that, you are wasting my time as a. Yeah. That's I mean, time is the most valuable asset any of us have, obviously we can't get back. So if you're going to waste my time, this is what I mean to your point of like the same tactics, right? I mean, still to this day, I, you know, I rip on demos.

Like you read about cause every fucking one of them is the same thing. They start with the three slides of like our company background, our three, our client list and our rewards and, and I, and I just, and I, anybody in look, I got the marketing background, so I get. And I, but I just asked him, I go, let's just put a couple of data points together here.

What's the number one thing that everybody loves talking. Themselves, right. Nobody gives a shit about us. So, and what's the most valuable asset any of us have time. So you're telling me that you're going to take my time, my most valuable asset in the first 10, 15 minutes of the goddamn conversation.

You're going to talk all about you. Are you out of your fucking mind? Like you better be. You better be the, the influencer of all influencers that is like the challenger sale dream job. You know where you are, then I'll listen to you. But if you're some 20 to 25 year old kid make it like, boom, like I don't want to listen to this shit.

I want to have a conversation. And I think that's the, that's the zone I'm living in here, which I, and I'd love to get your perspective is that I've, I've really honed in on this, which is there's two thresholds, right? One is the give a shit factor. Like I can't get you to give a shit. Okay. So, but once you give a shit, and once you care about your profession, about growth, about that type of stuff, then it's about using tactics and techniques to get to a conversation and elevate yourself to eventually to the point where you'll be consciously unconsciously competent in what you do like you and I in a lot of ways.

I trained this stuff six ways to Sunday, right? I don't use a lot of the techniques that I train anymore because they're just internalized for me at this point, I'm unconsciously competent with my conversations. I can, I can have a mental agenda of how I want to see this conversation go and then know what my outcomes are going to be.

But that middle zone of the kids who are getting into it, they need these tactics to, to get them to a point where they can have a conversation. And so I guess, From your standpoint, what are some of the things that, that can accelerate that, that middle zone? I can't accelerate the, give a shit factor.

Right. And I think that's what leadership needs to do to, to figure out how to get the reps to care or hire the reps that care. Right. And that's what I think a big shift in the value of, you know, when you talk about your core values, right? Like once you align those, it comes a lot easier, but where do you see that journey breaking down?

Or where are some of the ways that we can accelerate? Wow. That was a lot in that question because for things that just popped into my head and I'm like, shit, where do I go with this? Um, the first thing is to give a shit factor. I think one of the things that we do when we're interviewing for candidates is we have to try and figure out how do we know they're how much they care about this problem, about our customers, about winning, about, you know, really re you know, succeeding.

How do, how do we test. For give a shit factor. Am I love that by the way, for everybody listening, put that in your damn interview process, but what is the give a shit factor? Right. Um, you know, I, you know, mark, Roberto and I have been talking about this for ages, largely driven by him, but there's, you know, coachability, there's emotional intelligence.

There's salesmanship, there's work ethic, right? There's not like the core characteristics that you look for. I think the give a shit factor is in one of those, what I call intangible. And largely, uh, you know, the way in which I test for that is if I'm interviewing somebody and they show up to the call and they are not prepared.

Right. Meaning they haven't, they don't have great questions to ask me. They haven't done their homework. They don't have great answers. Right. They're not on time. On like me. I was late to our call. I apologize. But unfortunately, I've got some districts that, you know, I give a shit, but at the end of the day, like you give a shit factor first and foremost.

So we can't take that for granted. Cause right now, you know, all the, you know, every employee out there is like, oh, I can jump ship and go get a new job and make 300,000. And at the end of the day, it's like not, if you don't give a shit, not if you're just jumping around from job to job, to job. So leaders make sure that you incorporate that as part of your process when you're evaluating people to hire.

So that's the first thing, cause you can't, you know, either you care or you don't care, I'd say, you know, the, the middle factor is we have to create experiences where we can test for that, because to be honest, Yeah. You know, once someone gives us shit, then we have to give them the tools and the skills to actually do something with that emotion, with that energy.

And, and, you know, I think, I think the biggest challenge right now, the world of sales enablement is like, well, how do I do this? Because you know, like to you, I can't bring John Barrows into a classroom anymore right now, at least not right now. And so how do I create that energy in that environment where people are going to learn in that, you know, to, to show up to a conversation with.

Uh, you know, having done their homework, their research, and they're prepared, and they've got a prepared mind, you know, at the end of the day, you can always say, well, look, you know, I'll look at the numbers and then we're going to work backwards. But those are all lagging indicators, right? That's after the fact.

And so I think at the end of the day, we have got to create a situation where everybody knows how to prepare everybody needs it. We're focused on to your point business acumen. We're focused on how to set them up for success. In the conversation. And if you know, the other thing that you're talking about here is, you know, great leaders, you know, the reason why CEOs and great leaders that we all know in our world, um, are so effective is because they come to the conversation.

They don't talk about themselves. They're already in other grades. I feel like they care so much about. The customer or the prospect, and you can see it if you've ever sat. And if you ever get the opportunity to sit in and by the way, Hey, CEO's out there that happened to be listening to this, do this, record yourself, running a meeting with a big prospect or customer and share that with your go to market teams, because that's how they learn what leadership is.

And that's how they learn. You know, how to show up, prepared for a conversation. Now, mind you, as a CEO or a founder, you can get away with a lot more because you're cause you have a, you have, you have an automatic amount of credibility. If you will, that a salesperson doesn't, especially in SDR, however, how someone holds themselves the.

How they treat their prospect with respect and, and, and, and how they show up to the conversation with a point of view about the prospect's business and how that conversation happens. That needs to be that right there is what needs to be modeled and. For our, our teams and to me, that's leadership, that's real leadership.

And that's one of the issues that we have in a lot of these companies, by the way, is we have too many leaders out there that are still managers. They haven't learned how to become a leader, their manager. And so they're managing to the numbers and the activities and the business. And they're not, they don't know how to make that shift from manager to leader.

And the, and it's, and that's not an easy shift to make either. You know what I mean? And I think any leader has to know, like those three pillars of coaching, managing and leadership, that's those aren't easy to master any one of them is an individual thing, but it, but true leaders needs to master all of them.

They need to be good coaches. Right. So they can teach people how to do certain things. They need to get good managers so they can know how to the numbers and, and the, and that, but then leaders to get people inspired. Yeah. To, to want to do better. Right. And I've always looked at leadership as, you know, like it's getting to people to do more than what their job description is, you know, and, and, and giving them a vision.

So they feel something bigger part than bigger than themselves. Right. Because if you don't, if I don't believe in a vision, then I'm just going to do my job. But if I believe in a big vision, I'll fucking bend over backwards and do 10 times more than my job to help achieve that. If I know I fit into this and I got somebody I can follow up.

100%. It's a sense of purpose. It's like, why are we here? Why are we doing this? Oh, by the way, as a sales leader, you need to have a sense of purpose for your own sales team. It's like the sales, the sales culture is equally as important as the company called. And you've got to realize that they're they're different, but they're also the same.

But as a sales leader, you also need to pay or a CS leader. You also need to have a create a sense of purpose for your own team. You know, it's interesting, you know, I look at, um, you know, one of my, one of my favorite leaders is Kyle Porter and SalesLoft. And the interesting thing is, you know, which you and I both know really well.

And the interesting thing that I've seen is, you know, Don't often leave SalesLoft. They don't typically they're not. And because I've been involved in the business for a long, long time, they don't jump ship very often to another job where they're going to make 50 grand more. That was never their ethos.

When they left, it was usually like, Hey, it was time. Like, I felt like I had maxed out my potential and it was time for me to go. And it's largely because Kyle and his leadership team created a culture and an environment where the sense of. Yeah, creating a customer and it was like, we can all get behind that and guess what people would run through walls for Kyle and the leadership team.

And, and by the way, forgive more mistakes too. You know, it's like if they make a mistake or if they don't, you know, like get the comp plans wrong or screw up territories, if something happens, the teams are always more. And I think that, I mean, I've always said that it, you know, I've never worked for anybody else cause I'm a pain in the ass, but you know, if there was one company, it w it would have been sales loft because of the culture that they had built.

And I think this goes back to kind of where we started, which was the values piece of this. I think if there's one thing that I would recommend to any leader out there right now, Too, by the way, is to go through that core value exercise of, you know, and I think I, I was introduced to it in Napoleon Hill's think and grow rich that I got to read again, but it was like somewhere in there, it talked about identifying your core values.

And I did that early in my career and it gave me a real. 'cause it was, it allowed me once I actually documented 12 personal guidelines to success. And what I started to do was marry up every relationship and opportunity to those values. And if they shared those values, then I went for it. And guess what?

It was fantastic because my reps knew, or my teammates knew. Okay. I was coming from, this was where I was coming from. So to your point, if I fucked something up or if I did something wrong or whatever it was, it was never malice. It was all, I made a mistake, but my core values were still there. And so I got a lot of leeway to do certain things that probably most people.

Yeah, yeah. To your point, I mean values. So you, as an individual need to understand what your core values are, because by the way, that's how you make decisions. And when you make a decision, that's not aligned with your core values, that creates dissonance in you and it gets uncomfortable. So by the way, if you happen to join a company or, you know, your core values and they don't know theirs, and you feel you're feeling some tension there, guess what a great exercise to recommend is like, Hey, as an organization, what are our core.

As an organization, meaning like the sales team or the SDR team. And, oh, by the way, as a broader organization, a company, what are your core values? We do this mission, vision values, exercise with all of our early stage founders. And it's largely to get them focused on who they are and what's their sense of purpose.

Why do people want to join your organization and what do they, what, what's your stake in the ground? What do you stand for? And if that doesn't exist, then guess what's going to happen. People are going to leave. Because they're not connected to something. And I tell you right now, they have to feel that sense of connection to something greater than themselves because they don't have the physical environment to go to have that experience of sharing the energy of like, yes, we're all in this.

So we're going to create it virtually, well, guess what it starts with making sure that you're really, really clear about your values and what you stand for as a company and then as an organization and as an individual. And if all that aligns up, then you're right. People will run through walls and you know, they're going to work extra hard, even though they're working from home and they're not going to take advantage of this situation, which I know there are a lot of leaders out there that are worried like, oh my reps working remotely, or I'll take an advantage.

They're not working, blah, blah, blah. And so they go back to becoming a manager, getting into the details in the weeds. You know, it just creates a toxic environment versus a healthy environment that we know that we want. Yeah. And that trust factor too. Right? Like once I have those, once I know you and I share my values, I trust you to get your job done.

I trust you. I mean, I tell my team all the time, like I don't care what happens if I get, you know, if a customer comes back and is pissed off about something, or if a partner's pissed off about something, if I can look back and say that you stayed true to our core values, I will defend you. Fucking nines.

But if you break those core values, I'm going to come down hard on you because you broke something that I fundamentally believe we should all share. Right. And so like, if you screw over a customer, if you've talked, you know, that type of stuff, then we're going to have an issue about this, right. I stood up for yourself because a customer is pushing back on you and it didn't fit our core values and they decided to want their money back or anything like that.

Okay. No problem. Here's your money back? I don't want to work with you anyways. Yes. We were talking, um, uh, on LinkedIn about this notion of like, you know, sales leaders and comp and all that stuff. And one of the things that I, I commented on was like, look, I think as leaders, we need to all adopt the mentality of like hire slow.

Fire fast. And to your point, if somebody is doing something, if their behaviors are not in line with our, as an organization core values, then guess what? It's likely not going to work. So don't, don't waste your time. Like, there's just a, there's a value. There's a, there there's a value issue. Right. But you can't have that conversation if you don't know what your values are.

If you haven't gone through that exercise. And that's like, for me, you know, the fastest way to get fired. Right. Yeah. Like if, if I catch you lying, there's there's not going to be a PIP. There's not going to be a fucking transition here. If I catch you in a hard lie. Right. I'm sorry. You're done. You know, 'cause I remember, like, I remember my dad when I was growing up.

That was the one thing my dad let me. Anything I wanted to do, literally like all my friends were like, Jesus Christ. Your dad lets you stay until one hour. And it was because my dad, all he cared about was me being honest with him. He was like, if you're out drunk and you don't, you know, and, and you don't want to drive home and you call me up at two o'clock in the morning and say, dad, I'm drunk.

I'm not coming home tonight. I will be upset, but I will be far happier with you than if you lie to me or tell me something. And the times that I did break. I mean, it was, it was months before I could earn that back and I felt it, you know what I mean? It's the same. So for me, I, that like core value is lying.

Right. And that's the F going to your point of firing fast it's. Okay. You immediately broke that value. And so this isn't a debate anymore. That does. Yeah. Yeah, totally. I think by the way, it also goes to one of the things that I'm hearing more and more about right now in organizations. And I'm also recommending it more and more is to go out and do an Enneagram test as an organization, or do Myers-Briggs or do a personal assessment for a couple, for a number of reasons.

Number one, because we're not all together. And so we're still learning about one another, and this is a great way to learn about how people operate, how they show up in the world and how they. Right. Enneagram. Are you a three? Are you an eight? Are you a seven? The more I know. And I understand that the more I know what you appreciate in communication and what works for you in terms of communication, right?

It's almost like getting back to, and by. We used to do this, you know, 20 years ago where we all get kumbaya on and sit in a room. And even though we're like in suits, we're all kind of going through this exercise. We all thought it was maybe a little, a little, woo-hoo a little weird, but the reality is today.

It's so much more important for your organization to do that kind of work, because you need to understand ways in which to better communicate and engage with. Because at the end of the, you know, because we're not together in a room, right. At least not for right now. And even when you do get back together in the room, you know, I know when we were a boxer, EMEA team did this, you know, red, green, blue, yellow exercise, what have you, and your dominant color, you would put it as like a box or like a little cube and you put it on top of your, your, your cubicle that you were sitting in.

And so people knew walking up like, oh, Hey, I'm walking up and you're this person. So that means that like all business, they need their numbers driven their data-driven. But like, so when I go into this conversation, I'm not going to sit here and shoot the shit for the first five minutes. I'm going to come into my I'm gonna come into your cube.

I'm going to walk up to you and I'm like, I'm going to give it to you. I'm like, here's what's up. So I want to talk about here's what I want to get through. And then afterwards, we can shoot the. I'll I'll tell you, that's my cheat code. Um, and I it's, this is why I'm still curious. My crystal knows hasn't been bought.

I know

it's my number one cheat code, because crystal knows for those of you don't know it's a disc profile, but it, it automatically does it based on your LinkedIn profile. And so what I do is I am like, before I meet with anybody, I put their name into crystal nose and I see, are they a high D and I, and SSC or whatever it is.

And really just the basics of it is I'm just looking, are you in, are you and I the same? Right? Because I'm a high D obviously. And so, so if you and I are high DS, fuck it. I'm just going to be me. I'm just going to go at this conversation. But if you're a high I or a high S or a high C. I need to take a step back here because I might run over you.

And to your point, going back to the limited amount of time that we have to make an impression on somebody, if I'm a high D and I'm coming after a high C, and I'm like straight to the fucking point and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Dude fuck off. Like I'm immediately going to turn you off and you're not even gonna listen to the value that I'm trying to bring to the table.

So that personality of being able to read that. And I think that the cool news is, is that there's tools like crystal mills right now that are helping us with that. And so it's a little bit of a cheat code, but it doesn't replace the, how I engage with you. It just gives me a, uh, an a. Kind of like a, Hey, this is how you should approach somebody.

Now take that into account when you have this conversation and it breaks down that barrier to develop that relationship a lot faster than what we used to be able to do is walk into somebody's office and look around and zoom,

which is funny too, which is goes back to the old school selling tactics, which is like, oh, building rapport, look around their office and look for things to connect and engage with. Peop people today, but like look at their LinkedIn profile and find things to engage them with and use that as a reason to reach out.

It's like, oh, don't do that. Please don't do that. So I see you went to Oregon. Okay, great. Awesome. So actually I got a quick idea and then we'll wrap this up, but think about it. I'd love your perspective on this. You know how let let's flip this around. I used to be able to walk in your office and see, right.

But now I'm looking at Doug Landis right now and I see two leather chairs. I see much, you know, or in, in other cases there's a virtual background. That is just a fake thing. So I can't, I can't develop the rapport based on what's in your background. So what I've started to tell reps is think really hard about what's in your background background.

Totally give them a rethink. And think about this as a B, and this is where this struck me was, uh, so Megan, our COO, her husband, he has a huge picture of the dude. Right. So, so you know, the dude from the big Lebowski it's right here. So when you log in and you see his zoom it's right there. Right. And there's two reactions he gets to that.

One is the person is like, oh, the fucking dude, I love that movie. And it's like an immediate rapport builder. Right. And the other is no. And if you don't react to a picture of the dude like you and I, I know you're a little different than I am, like type of thing. So it gets them to understand how to approach that person.

So what my thought is, and, and, and if anybody's out there listening, I recommend zoom do this, by the way, use something like a crystal nose and another data scrubbing tool to automatically. So I'm about to meet with Doug Landis, right? I'm going to push a button and it's going to scrape Doug's profile all six ways to Sunday and his personality.

And then on my background, it's going to auto change stuff in my background that you will relate to. And then if I meet with Kyle Porter, next, my background's going to change to, uh, to, to relate to Kyle. Like, to me, that'd be a fucking brilliant way to, to skip the line a little bit here, a genius, by the way.

See is, if I just move the camera a little bit to the left, what do I have? I have, you know, 800 bottles of wine. Most people when they, I don't, you know, they don't have the blurry background on that's oftentimes that's what they see. They're like, oh, you're a wine person. Okay. All right. I get it. However, I think that I, by the way, I think that's genius.

So anybody listening wants to build that, build that for us and sell it to zoom and you'll be. Because I think that is brilliant because you're right to the point is we're often thinking about what are the things that I can see in your background to learn something about you and from your profile or Facebook or wherever I do my, my stocking, but what if I can make that easier for you?

Right. I want to put up the Chelsea banner behind me for my. The ball club and the world, I'm going to put up my work behind me, you know, and you've got my bottles of wine already. So there you go. You got me in a nutshell sort of. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's so, but it, but I think it goes back to, you know, there's, there is nothing, I think that replaces relationships.

And I think that if there was anything that I would point. To, you know, people out there right now, figuring out this virtual world is just manufacture those relationships somehow. You know what I mean? Whether it be popping into zoom sessions and leaving an open forum so that somebody can come in and just have a conversation or proactively going out to, to, you know, just introduce yourself to people to get used to that feeling again, so that if it starts to come back a little bit more and starts to it's more natural.

Yeah, this, this year, one of the things I decided is because I felt like I was getting so disconnected from all my friends, because my wife and I moved down to LA from San Francisco, and I felt like I was getting so disconnected. So like every day I just try and reach out to. Every day and that's it. Even if it's just a text message, be like, Hey, what's going on?

Because what I'm doing is I'm I realized I was taking all my relationships for granted because when I was in San Francisco, I could be like, Hey, what do you know? Let's go grab a beer. I could be there in 30 minutes since I'm not, I'm like, Ooh, I actually have to be more proactive. Otherwise I'm going to end up isolating myself.

And then I'm going to go into a tailspin and be like, ah, you know, it's going to trigger all my, all my own, you know, insecurities and depression. I'm like, well, why myself? And. Shit, that's on me. What if every day I just reached out to somebody just to, just to check in and, and well, never check in it's J J Barrows

personally, you can check it. I was just making a joke, but, um, and to be honest, you know, I get so much more fulfillment from their reaction to the response. They're like, oh my gosh. That's the, that's the exchange I'm like. Okay, cool. Um, so back to, we were talking about values, it's also thinking about like, what's, what does fulfillment mean to you?

What, what fulfills you? What brings you that joy? And, and, you know, and if it's not working at the current company then, but a guy, but by all means go find something else, you know, but. But do it with the, for the right reason. Not because someone's going to offer you. I was listening to somebody said the other day, like, oh yeah, the rep two years of sales experience is making two 50 OTE.

And I was like, what, what. That's that's crazy. That's crazy. That's not sustainable. And also, you know, two years experience 250 felt like good for you. You know what I mean? Like you did it in your first two years. Where's that going to take you next? I quite honestly, I think that's going to set you up for a lot of, uh, disappointment and heartache moving forward, because if your base is two feet, if you start at two 50 and.

You don't go up from there, which is hard to go up from there. I think the top 1% of people in the United States make $400,000 a year. The top 1% of people in the United States. So everybody thinks about millionaires and all this other stuff. If you're making 250 300 GS a year, You are fucking in the top 5% at worst.

And so thinking, and then, and then you're, like I said, I think you're setting yourself up for failure because I'm all about getting better and improving. Right. I mean, I've always, I always say to kids when they get married, right. Make sure today isn't the best day of your relations. Right. Because a lot of people, all, it's this beautiful thing and I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no.

This is this. This is tomorrow should be better than today. Even though today's your wedding. Because if not, you're going to, it's going to be hard for you to sustain this. And so, you know, starting at a base of $250,000, like you're setting yourself up to not be getting better and, and, and almost be disappointed.

So. I agree. I think the value piece and, and, and really just looking at yourself of what makes you happy, man. Like I think happiness is the ultimate goal of success. Like when people say success, when I told Charlotte this, you know, whenever anybody asks me, what do you want to be? When you grow up? The answer is happy.

That's it. And to be honest, yeah. Exact figure out what that looks like. And by the way, don't ever stop thinking about that don't ever stop taking a look at that because you get comfortable. And the next thing you know, you're like, wait, wait, how did, how did I get here? Like the old talking heads on, um, yeah.

Now really getting ourselves.

No, my friend let's, let's wrap this one up, like used to, like, we could always talk about further shift for hours and, and I know, uh, I know Kim's reaching out to Lisa to try to schedule some time for us to actually go on a trip together. So let's try and make that one out. We need it. Yeah. We need to find it.

Yeah. To this audience here, you're going to see photos of John and I sitting on a tropical beach sometime this year. Cause we, uh, yeah. Absolutely absolutely. Made a little look I'm looking forward to, you said, you know, I wanted to, I want to just start off this year and kinda I'm redoing the brand. I'm redoing the podcast and I really just want to focus on people that I genuinely appreciate and, and, and give me energy as opposed to suck it away in year one on the top of that list of, so again, as always, thanks for thanks for coming on and thanks for being part of, uh, part of my world here, man.

That'd be brilliant. And for everybody love you too, man. And everybody out there listening, uh, you know, Doug nailed it. Um, but I say this every time and I'm still gonna say this every time at the end of every fucking. Which is no matter how shitty your day is go out there and make somebody smile today.

Because if you make somebody smile today, I don't care how bad your day is. You had a good day in the world, needs a lot more of that. So like Doug said, Kotex somebody today, just say, hi, make a phone call somebody you haven't talked to in a little while. All right, we'll talk to you soon. Okay.

Thank you so much for your time today and listening to the podcast. I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I do with your support and our incredible guests. We're one of the top sales podcasts in the industry with over a million downloads. And I can't thank you enough to keep the momentum going.

If you could go to your favorite podcast platform and leave us a five-star review, I would greatly appreciate it in return. I will answer any question that you have on Instagram. Hit me up there at John M as in Michael Barrows with a video question or a DM, and I will get right back to you. I promise.

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And it includes membership in our on-demand platform with weekly AMS. So you can go to Jay barrows.com/open to check out the details. Thanks again, and have a great day.