Sales Gravy: Jeb Blount

On this fun Sales Gravy Podcast episode, Sales Gravy Master Trainer Gina Trimarco and Account Executive Jeb Blount Jr discuss how they learned to love selling. From cold calling, to losing deals, and all of the challenges in between, you’ll love the story of how a young college grad finds his way in the sale profession.

We want to hear from you. Let us know what you think about this episode – we love your comments and questions. Just send Jeb a text message at 1-706-397-4599 or CLICK HERE TO TEXT.

Ps. You can access Sales Gravy University Here

On this episode of the Sales Gravy podcast, Jeb Blount is joined by the Women Your Mother Warned You About – Gina Trimarco & Rachel Pitts.

We get behind the scenes with the WYMWYA podcast, learn how Gina and Rachel almost broke up, the value of getting a coach, and why when you are coachable, other people will invest in helping you reach your goals.

We want to hear from you. Let us know what you think about this episode – we love your comments and questions. Just send Jeb a text message at 1-706-397-4599 or just CLICK HERE TO TEXT.

Sales teams that read together, succeed together. Download our FREE Virtual Selling Book Club Guide for a complete kit for starting and running a book club for your sales team.

On this episode of the Sales Gravy podcast Jeb Blount and Keith Lubner explore sales messaging tactics for closing bigger deals. From stories to images to stepping into your buyer’s shoes, these tried and true techniques will help you both grab and hold your buyer’s attention and rise above your competition.

There is no doubt that developing powerful sales messaging is one of the most challenging skill sets for modern sales professionals. Jeb and Keith break the process of down in a way that makes it easy to begin crafting sales messages that resonate.

We want to hear from you. Let us know what you think about this episode – we love your comments and questions. Just send Jeb a text message at 1-706-397-4599 or just CLICK HERE TO TEXT.

Ps. You can access Sales Gravy University Here

How to celebrate success during the pandemic? Salespeople and their leaders are asking this question.

This season, the pandemic has canceled President’s Club and moved Sales Kickoffs from physical meetings to virtual. Its left many sales professionals feeling that the work they did to reach the top is anti-climatic and empty.

In this Sales Gravy Podcast episode,  Jeb Blount and Victor Antonio discuss the keys to celebrating success and staying motivated this year and beyond.

We want to hear from you. What are you doing this year to celebrate success, reward yourself, and stay motivated? Send Jeb a text message at 1-706-397-4599 or just CLICK HERE TO TEXT.

We are here in studio blue with the great Victor Antonio, who I believe is one of the greatest orators of our generation. His presence on stage excites me. It’s incredible, it’s engaging, and his stories are real. The path that Victor took to get to where he is today is inspiring. You came up from poverty and you’ve built an empire since then.

I want to talk about some of the issues that people are dealing with today in that context. We’re in the third wave of the pandemic right now, and I’m hearing stories of salespeople who just feel down. One of the people in my insider group sent me a text message and it broke my heart.

She’s like, “I worked all year long. I put everything into getting to President’s Club, and then we had our virtual sales kick-off. I saw my name on a bullet point on a slide and it was just completely anti-climatic. How do I celebrate this? How do I tell my family and friends that I had this victory in my life?” It hurt me because I know how that feels.

I loved to walk on stage and get a trophy, I lived for that as a salesperson. In fact, I told my sales manager, “I don’t care about the money. I want to win. I want the trophy.” So in this world, I thought there was no better person than you to have a conversation with. What can salespeople do to celebrate their victories, both big and small?

It’s interesting to me that people want that external validation. A trophy is an inanimate object, you know what I mean? The real victory comes from looking at everything you’ve done. Take a moment to reflect and say, “Look at what I did!” and walk on your own mental stage. We all want recognition.

We all want our successes to be meaningful. But if I just nailed that year, my biggest trophy was always the check. That was my trophy. For people who need that external validation, why do you need it? Why depend on somebody else’s appreciation of you to determine your value? Appreciate it. Live in that space, man.

One of the things that I’ve always lived by is that when you’re in second place, your job is to take first place. When you’re in first place, you’re competing with yourself.

The problem with getting good is that you get in first place, you win the trophy, and you forget who you’re competing with. You forget that your job is to put the accelerator on instead of getting complacent. Looking at your trophies is living in the past. There are basically three places that you can live at any given time. You can live in the past. You can live in the present. You can live in the future.

The only place that’s real is the present right now, the future hasn’t been written, and the past doesn’t exist anymore. It’s just something that happened. One of the problems that we face when we’re struggling to motivate ourselves or feel that recognition is that we’re living in the wrong place. We need to spend more time in the present than these other places.

I want to challenge your perception of your success a little. I think your joy really comes in the process of getting to the next level. It has nothing to do with actually reaching the next level. Everything’s a game of inches, and you’re a guy who lives like that. “How do I make it a little better?” “How do I fix that?” That in itself is your thrill. You’re always thinking, “What else can we do?” And there’s a joy in that.

For us, the fun part of the journey is to see if I can take it to the next level. Some people see that as effort or work or almost fatiguing. The person who was disappointed in just having their name in a bullet point on a presentation is one of those people. What they’re not looking at are all the things they probably did that year to adjust, to make it happen. Even if they hit the same number in a pandemic year, I think that’s a win. Now, if you killed it, congratulations! Really celebrate. High five yourself!

If you are building anything, whether it’s a sales pipeline, a sales year, or a business, it’s long stretches of grind and suck interrupted by a few brief moments of elation. So when you get the elation, you have to be able to celebrate it. You can’t celebrate too long, but I do think it’s part of the journey. In many cases, people don’t take the time to celebrate the little wins.

You have to be in the moment, enjoy the journey and the small victories along the way. Long stretches of pain, long stretches of grind, and a few brief moments of elation. That’s the formula. It’s not a lot of elation and a little bit of grind. It doesn’t work that way. You’ve got to pay for success in advance with some pain.

I want to go back to the person with their name on a bullet point. They think, “I did all of this work. I expected something at the end and for somebody to give it to me.” And what you’re saying is, why don’t you just give it to yourself every day on a daily basis after you do something cool?

I’d rather have a lot of small little celebrations over 365 days than wait for one big one at the end. A big one’s always going to disappoint me, but man, if I can celebrate 365 wins, I’m good.

An optimist says, “Hey, let me move to the next thing, move to the next thing, move to the next thing.” And I think that optimism also allows you to change your self-talk. And one of the things that I read recently is that the way that we talk to ourselves is much faster than the way that we speak normally.

We’re speaking up to 4,000 words per minute to ourselves in our head because we compress the way that we talk to ourselves in our brains. Let’s say that you went to your sales kickoff and your name got up there, and then you felt like it was anti-climatic. If you’re telling yourself that over and over and over again, when you leave, you’re like, “Oh God, I didn’t get what I needed.”

And you become the victim, instead of saying, “My name was on the bullet point. I mean, there were a thousand other salespeople out there. None of the other people got recognized.” It’s all in the way you look at it and how you talk to yourself.

In this environment, you have to learn how to fail fast. When you’re in a situation and you are trying new things, you have to always be iterating. I’ve probably got a hundred thousand dollars of studio equipment in a closet someplace because we tried them and they didn’t work. So we said, “Let’s do it again.” We didn’t say we’re never going to buy anything again.

We said, “We still know what we want to accomplish. What we’re looking for, this just isn’t going to get us there. Let’s do something else.” So we get better and better and better. I think this is also part of optimism. It’s looking around and every time you see something, explore it. You have to be present and say, “Look, this didn’t work.” And instead of beating yourself up for it, say, “I learned that it didn’t work. Let’s try something else. Let’s do something else.”

You have to keep trying. Do it again, do it again, do it again. Iterate, iterate, iterate. And I think that is a big part of me being in the present. I love iteration. I love doing something and finding out, “Okay. I can make it a little bit better. Let’s do it again. I can make it a little bit better. I can get a little bit better at this.” Over time, that creates small victories.

I think it’s all momentum, isn’t it? Just be better than who you were yesterday. That’s all it is, right? That’s your motivation to be better— who you were yesterday. That’s the true competition because if you start looking at what other people are doing, you lose focus on what you should be doing and what is meaningful to you.

When you look at what other people have, you start saying, “Why don’t I have that? I should have that.” It really takes the focus off of what you really want. Your journey is your journey alone. It sounds so cliche, but the toughest road to success is the road back to you. It isn’t until you figure out who you want to be, how you want to roll, that you’re going to be happy. There is no external validation that can beat that.

I don’t know about you, but I have my own happy dance. I do a 30-second happy dance. And I do it at my desk. Nobody else sees it. Nobody else will ever see it. But it’s my dance. I love that because it’s my personal celebration moment. That’s what matters.

The Coronavirus third wave is putting a strain on the mental resilience of sales professionals and impacting performance.

The last time I came to you with the coronavirus talk was back in July. Back then we were talking about new possibilities— about how going through a crucible of adversity helps you lift the chains of limitations off of yourself so that you can see that anything is possible if you make the choice to persevere. 

I come to you now in January, during the third wave of the coronavirus, because I’m noticing a big problem. Salespeople are beginning to wear out. In some cases, it’s depression and loneliness. In other cases, it’s waiting and hoping for this to all be over and constantly having your hopes dashed. 

All of this stress and anxiety combine to put you in a situation where you just don’t feel very good about life. In sales, if you don’t feel good about life, it’s going to be really, really hard to feel good about selling. 

The net result is that many people just feel mentally and physically drained. In sales, you need a great deal of mental resilience because you often face so much rejection. The job is hard. And now, you have to work twice as hard to accomplish your sales goals. 

In this environment, you need a great deal of intellectual acuity in order to outwit your competitors. Mental acuity requires a great deal of physical stamina. Likewise, mental resilience is directly impacted by physical resilience. 

If you’re allowing those days when you just feel depressed to take you down with them, then it’s going to be a lot harder to to to gain the physical stamina that you need. 

So my challenge to you on this Coronavirus Talk is to go look in the mirror:

If the answer is yes, resolve to make changes. Reach deep down inside of yourself and find the discipline.

Before I made these changes, I didn’t feel good, didn’t really look good, and I wasn’t performing at my very best. Flip forward a couple of months, with a real focus and discipline on taking care of my physical health, and I’m in a much better place.

I’ve got so much more energy and feel much more equipped to handle the disappointments, stress, and anxiety that come along with this horrible pandemic. 

So take action now. Start eating right, getting enough sleep, and exercising. Do this and I promise you that you will not only get through this, but you’ll also put yourself in a position to win on the other side. 

I want to hear from you. What are you doing to keep yourself mentally and physically fit during this pandemic? Send me a text message at 1-706-397-4599 or just CLICK HERE TO TEXT.

On this episode of the Sales Gravy Podcast, Jeb Blount (Virtual Selling) and Matthew Pollard (The Introverts Edge to Networking) take on networking for introverts.

One of the biggest myths about networking is that to be an effective networker you need to have the “gift-of-gab” and be an outgoing self-promoter. The truth is, it’s just the opposite. In fact, introverts often make the best networkers. You just need a plan, system, and authenticity.

On this paradigm-shifting podcast episode, you learn tips and tactics for leveraging your innate introvert superpowers to target prospects and influencers, engage in networking conversations, and turn networking into a repeatable system that helps you build your business and pipeline.

On this episode of the Sales Gravy Podcast Jeb Blount (People Follow You) and Kristie Jones discuss the trials and tribulations of building and sustaining a sales accountability culture. You’ll learn that without accountability your sales team will generate inconsistent results and devolve into the wild, wild west.

I actually started in SaaS sales leadership back in 2000. As I progressed through my career, I started to work for some VC-backed companies, and I got that VC-backed startup bug. Accountability is so critical when you’re dealing with people who have given you money and expect a return on the investment. Early-stage startups and fast-growing startups are all about urgency and results. I was working as a VP of Sales and it was clear that those environments needed to have a sales accountability culture. We needed to create and maintain one.

In about 2016, I left the W2 world and started my own sales consultancy. I’m passionate about helping early-stage tech startups build their sales teams and formalize their process. I spend a ton of time doing executive coaching on accountability culture. I’m still walking into companies and talking to them about accountability culture after really not seeing it. That includes everything from not having firm quotas, to not dealing with “accountability dodgers”.

In some cases, there’s zero leadership, too much money, and people run wild. In other cases, you’ve just got a founder who is trying to put everything together. There’s an inflection point where if you don’t create some accountability, it’s a disaster. What advice do you have for a business, no matter where they fit on that spectrum, for sales leaders or executives, to shift into an accountability culture?

It starts with setting expectations and putting those in writing. In the middle of this pandemic, it’s more important than ever. There’s more uncertainty than ever before, which also means that sales reps need accountability more than ever before. They need to understand: “What will cause me to lose my job?” Everybody’s worried about that. They need to understand the circumstances around that. A sales accountability culture starts during the interview process. During the interview process, I’m already starting to set expectations just by the behavioral-based interview questions that I’m asking to ensure that people will walk their talk and that people will fall on the sword when they need to.

During the start of COVID-19, I went back to all of my clients and former clients and wrote a little how-to menu and said, “You have to create accountability around the work schedule because the work schedule is not eight-to-five anymore. You have to understand what you can expect from them, even from a work schedule standpoint.” Also, expectations are a two-way street. As a leader, I can’t just sit down with you and say, “Here are my expectations, let’s negotiate them and put them in writing.” I also need to say, “Here’s what you can expect from me.” And then, at the end of our expectations meeting, I ask, “What do you want me to do if you don’t hold up your end of the bargain?” I let them set their own consequences.

Why would I wait until it’s gone south on me, just to go back to fix it in a way that may not work for the rep? I hear everything from, “I need a gentle reminder,” to, “I need you to take me out to lunch, clearly something’s going on and I need some one-on-one attention.” I hear a lot of different answers to that question, but I write those down on the document, too. And so it’s so much easier for me to go to a rep who’s not walking their talk and say, “We had this conversation and this is what we discussed. This is what you told me to do if you weren’t holding yourself accountable. I think we’re at that place, so now we can have that conversation.”

I let the conversation happen a couple of different ways. So I want that first conversation to happen in the first one or two weeks of onboarding. I spend a lot of time helping my founders onboard new reps, and I build that in. I create an hour-by-hour, day-by-day, formal onboarding plan for the first two weeks for my founders, including a two-hour expectations conversation. If I worked with the founder before, they can run through that themselves. I want them to understand not only expectations but also communication.

For example, how does the employee want to be communicated with? We’re dealing with a lot of Gen Y and Gen Z, right? So they like having conversations over Slack. And I always say to people, when my door is open, you’re welcome to come in. But I run a very tight schedule. I say to them, if it’s a 911, you better text me. If you need an answer in 24 hours, email me. Those are expectation conversations, too, that people just don’t think about. Business is shifting so quickly that you really need quarterly expectations conversations.

You can’t just set expectations in week two and expect them to not change by month nine. So we need to sit down quarterly as a team. What are the expectations of the team, as well as individual expectations? We’re going to have these conversations upfront so we don’t have to have a very awkward conversation in the middle of a crisis.

That expectation meeting matters, because when I look back on the early stages of our company, our biggest mistake was not having those conversations. So when there was a crisis, it was pretty easy for the employee to look at me and say, “You didn’t tell me what to do.” And there is a truth in the fact that if people think they’re doing the right thing, it didn’t even occur to them to do anything else.

You’ve got to go in with that attitude. I assume everyone is doing the best they can. Sometimes the best they can do is subpar, but only because I failed them as the leader. When executive coaching, I’m teaching them how to do this because my clients can not afford to make hiring mistakes. They can’t afford to let people go because they didn’t know they should have had these conversations. And now things are so left of center that there’s no coming back to the center.

I think one of the harder things for people who are the hiring manager, whether that be the founder, whether that be HR, whether it be the VP of sales, is that you might’ve mis-hired. That’s accountability for yourself. That’s saying, “I made a bad hire. I’ve got to fix my own problem.” And again, it’s not the employee’s fault. I always take full responsibility for bad hires because I should know better.

We had a mis-hire that happened, and I consulted with the founder and said, “This person is not qualified for this job. You’re going to set them up to fail, and it’s never going to be their fault.” And now seven months later, after two of the four sales reps quit, now we’ve got ourselves a problem. Now we have to make the decision we should’ve made if we were disciplined during the hiring process. But the other thing that people don’t realize is the morale problem that it causes. When I terminate a rep for accountability issues or non-performance and another rep walks in my office and closes the door and says, “We weren’t sure how long it was going to take you,” it’s embarrassing.

The managers always are the last to know, right? We’re not living amongst the gossip and we’re not going out for a beer afterward with the employees, but I’ve had that happen to me two or three times over 20 years. And it is embarrassing and humiliating that your team was waiting patiently for you to get rid of the bad apple so we could change the culture on the sales floor.

That is one of the keys to creating a sales accountability culture. You’ve got to recognize that people who aren’t accountable pull down and hold back the very best of the best salespeople. They are lifted up when they’re surrounded by people who are accountable to the mission, accountable to the numbers, and accountable to integrity. I think sales is a competitive environment where everybody is working to get to the top of the leaderboard. There can’t be backbiting and people doing side deals behind your back. And I’ve had that happen in my own business and people didn’t tell me, so I found out later on.

It pulls the entire organization down. Even if they are your top salesperson, it pulls everybody down around them. That’s just a key part of building that accountability. One of my early leaders and mentors, Mary Gardner, who in my early twenties taught me how to be a sales leader, said to me: If you have to fire somebody, the first thing you do is go into the restroom, look in the mirror, look yourself in the eye, and you say, “This is my fault. It is my fault that I have to fire this person. I own this, I’m accountable for this.”

Then you go fire them. It sounds weird on the outside, but it was a really important lesson. I’ll have leaders even say to me, “Well, I didn’t hire that person.” But they don’t get a free pass on that, either. You’re firing this person and it’s your fault because you couldn’t coach them. It’s your fault because you couldn’t make them better, and it’s usually your fault because you hired them in the first place. You did it too quickly and you didn’t ask the right questions. I think that as leaders, if we’re accountable to ourselves, then it’s easier for us to lead from a place where we’re saying that this is a place where we’re all going to be accountable for the things we’ve promised the organization.

Don’t forget that it’s a two-way street. I can’t set expectations for my sales reps, but not be willing to be held accountable myself. Tell them: “Here’s what you can expect from me now. What else do you need that I didn’t mention? What else are you expecting from me?” These sound like complicated conversations, but with a couple of these under your belt, they’re not. I promise that it will make your life as a sales leader so much easier. It will add a level of respect to your organization and the team. Not every department has an accountability culture, either. I tell sales leaders that we’ll lead the way for the company and set the example.

Everybody’s looking to us anyway, so we’ll create an accountability culture. Set those expectations, and then set consequences. You and I talked a lot about termination today, but it doesn’t have to get to that point. There have to be milestone consequences along the way. How are we going to handle that? Ask the employee, what do you want me to do? Let them set their own consequences. You have to negotiate that and agree to that.

As a new leader who comes into an existing team, you have to sit back within the first two weeks and have those expectation conversations. You have to start all over again, no matter whether the last leader did it or not. This is now your team. It needs to be run by you and they need to understand what they can expect from you.

Get Kristie’s free resources here: https://salesaccelerationgroup.com/salesgravy

On this inspiring episode of the Sales Gravy podcast, Jeb Blount (Virtual Selling) talks to Brian Knox, owner and founder of B Knox Photography. This young entrepreneur leveraged Fanatical Prospecting to quickly ramp up his successful and fast-growing photography business that he started this year.

This conversation about sales and entrepreneurship is both educational and inspirational. Sales and the things that we do in sales matter, wherever we are in life. And we can all chase and achieve our dreams if we just make the decision to take action.    

Listen all Sales Gravy Podcast episodes here.

I was in corporate life from the time I graduated college in 2000, all the way up until 2020, and the last four jobs that I had in the corporate world were inside sales and customer service. Then between 2013 and 2015, I moved into more of a pure sales role where I was cold calling. 

Our training was basically watching a guy do it for two days. Then they hand you a computer and a phone and you’re kind of on your own. There wasn’t a lot of sales training. That was when I first found your material, because I was honestly trying to ease the pain of, “How do I sit here for eight hours a day and drum up business?” I was averse to it.

Then, I moved into a sales coaching role with a local plumbing, air, and electric company where I was teaching their technicians some of the basics of sales psychology, and going out in the field, and helping them with their sales process.

After that, I was in development at Habitat for Humanity of Greenville, which was essentially a sales role. That’s where I put into practice what I had learned in those first few years, and what I was teaching the guys on the field, in order to bring in donations for Habitat for Humanity. I finally left that job to start the photography business full-time in February of this year.

I got my first digital camera in 2004 or 2005. My dad was into photography. He didn’t train me, but I was at least exposed to him having a camera. When I got my own digital camera, that kind of launched it for me. It was very simple to make art by just going out and clicking a shutter.

I did it as a hobby and on the side. I started picking up initial gigs, which were typically family. I chugged along making a little money for about ten years. But then I began to apply sales techniques to what was my side hustle, at that point. I started to get traction with that and then I went through six months of wrestling with the question, “Do I quit and go full time with this, or do I just kind of keep it as a side thing?”

I felt that it was more of a contribution to society and to the world to take my skill and talent and give that in the form of photography, as opposed to being in the sales trenches. 

I remember when I first started Sales Gravy 13 years ago, we were in the middle of the Great Recession and I had to make a pivot in my career. I decided that at that point in my life, I was either going to be an entrepreneur, or not.

I always wanted to run my own business. Because I was good at selling and great in the corporate world, there wasn’t a lot of incentive until I found myself on the street trying to figure out what I was going to do.

But for about three years, I was constantly terrified that I was going to fail. I would wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat. Like, am I going to make it, am I going to have to crawl back and beg for a job?

What was it like when you first started? And are you still in that place of, “Do I let go of what I’m used to”?

It’s gone really well this year, but I definitely have those same concerns. I also remember waking up in the middle of the night and wrestling with things like, “Well, what if it rains that whole next day? Then I can’t do the outdoor construction shoot, so I don’t make any money.” Your brain just goes to all of these irrational places about why you’re going to fail.

Someone told me to remember that it’s reversible. If at some point it’s not going well, you can turn around and go back and get a day job or a W2 job. You also hear people say to burn the boats and don’t give yourself an opportunity to go back, then you’ll drive yourself to success. I was in that first group that was like, I’m going to go try this. I’ll regret it if I don’t.

And if all else fails, then I can go back and get a regular job. The stakes were higher because I had the Habitat job, which was the best job that I ever had. Those are the best people. It was the best mission. It was my favorite job. I felt like if I failed, I’d have to go back to something that just wasn’t as great.

But if you go out and try, I don’t see it as a failure. If you don’t have great success, and you do have to turn around, I think the credit still goes to the person in the arena, the person who goes out and tries their hand at their dream. 

I think there’s a lot to be said about how your belief system and your attitude attract people and opportunities into your life. I believe that about prospecting as well.

I think the salespeople who are prospecting get lucky. It’s not always a direct, “I talked to this person, therefore I get”, but more like, “I talked to this person, they told somebody that links with somebody else, my phone rings.”And sometimes we don’t put all those dots together, but I do believe that’s true. 

Photography is one of those professions where people have that dream and then they get into it and they don’t realize how insanely competitive it is. Everybody wants to be a photographer. Many people get into photography and very quickly exit because they find it hard to make a living.

I think this is important for salespeople as well. They’re out there thinking, “Man, my competitors, they got lower prices, they got this, they’re beating me up, blah, blah, blah.” You jumped into one of the most competitive industries in the world and tried to make a living in it. Talk to me about that. 

I think people buy you. I really believe that. The marketplace is super crowded. There are a hundred other photographers that can come and take your real estate listing photos, your headshot photos, your company’s website photos, and do it well.

You really end up, especially as an entrepreneur, selling yourself, your vision, your passion, your process, how you go through homework before the shoot, your personality, and how you respond to texts and emails.

Jumping into a crowded marketplace is daunting, but in another way, it really lets you express yourself fully and be who you are. By being a little different, by being unique in some way, you can separate yourself from the competition.

I just started to sell myself. I shared my life and my photos on social media, and that started to attract what I’ve been able to build into a pipeline. 

The more people you talk with, the more pictures you take, the more clients you have, the more opportunities that come in.

Let’s break down the real estate example. If you’re working with a couple of brokers and they’re listing houses, what they really want is they want to trust that you’re going to pick up the phone when they call. You’re going to go get the job done. You’re going to go get the photos that they want because you’ve taken time to understand them.

And then you’re going to get it up and running for them fast on Zillow so that they don’t have to think about it, so they can go focus on real estate. They could probably go take the pictures themselves, right? But they want to go knock on another door and get another listing. 

Exactly. I’m not selling just a well-exposed bedroom photograph, I’m selling that real estate agent their time back. I was able to understand the value of sales. I started to see it in my own journey, my own life. The realtors are selling their butts off every day. They can have another meeting, another coffee, get another contract. That’s what’s paying their bills. Shooting photos is a very low-value activity for them.

That’s what I would put right in the copy I would send to real estate agents. I’m not saying my photos are tremendously better than anyone else’s, but you can trust me and rely on me to operate efficiently so that you can move on to a higher leverage activity, like getting the next lead into your pipeline. 

Problem solvers are the champions of the world. Photographers, they’re pitching pictures, but you’re pitching what your pictures solve. It’s the service. It’s peace of mind. For example, if you’re taking pictures of a wedding or of someone’s family pictures, there’s a lot of emotion involved.

What I’ve found with those types of relationships is that it’s the photographer that sits down and creates the entire experience. It’s not just that they’re snapping photos, but they’re sitting down and talking with us and asking us, what do you want? And what’s important to you? What do you want to capture? What are you looking for? What are your family values?

And by listening to us and making us feel like we’re part of the process. Then there’s the artwork on the back end to make them look the way that you want them to look.

But it’s still the same thing. It’s not about the picture, it’s about the emotion that we feel while we’re working with that individual person. And it’s that emotion that causes us to tell other people. Your buyer’s emotional experience while they’re working with you is a more consistent predictor of outcome than any other variable. You said this, people buy you, right? But you have to talk to people. 

As an entrepreneur, you have to be fanatical about prospecting. You have to be a nut job about building your business. Many entrepreneurs forget about the selling side as they’re building this ideal vision of what their business is going to be.

And in the meantime, they don’t make any money while they’re building their blog and putting together their business cards. How do you remain consistent in your business development practices while you’re running the rest of your business?

I think a great tactical shortcut right here is to show your work. That’s how I started this job. I would go shoot. The photos I would shoot, I would edit them. I’d post them to Facebook. Shoot, edit, post to Facebook. Then I started to get traction: “Hey, can you come out and shoot the swim meet?” “Hey, can you come out and shoot me with my dog?” “Hey, our company needs new website photos.”

So it started to build a little bit organically. When I was showing my work, I wasn’t waiting to be discovered. It’s one of those big soapbox topics that’ll get me cranked up like an old van. You’re not going to get discovered.

No one’s going to discover you. You have to show your work. I think people will be better served by consistently putting their stuff out there instead of sitting back and thinking, “I’m excellent. I’m a killer photographer. Why aren’t companies finding me?”

They’re not going to find you. Sometimes you have to pursue, and you should pursue the ones that you want to work with because they will say yes, eventually.

It’s easy to start to reach overwhelm when you’re the sole proprietor and you’re doing the billing, marketing, shooting, and everything else. I’ve stayed pretty close to burnout much of this year, I can say. But I’m also very excited by the possibility of selling, and I very much believe in it.

I wrestle with the fact that I have a lot of business and this is great, but at the same time, I want to be selling more. I’ve just kind of wondered, how do I throttle between driving or pursuing the business that I want, but also delivering on the day-to-day?

I think part of the answer lies in curating the type of business that you’ve taken. I said yes to every job when I first started, and it’s just not the best technique. I realized that every yes that I’m telling a company is also saying no to another opportunity. 

When I started Sales Gravy, I took anything because I had to build. Some of those yeses came back to haunt me because they were taking me away from other things. Some of them turned out to be the greatest yeses I ever said yes to, because they changed the organization.

I don’t think, as an entrepreneur, you have much of a choice. It’s really nice to idealistically say that all customers aren’t good customers, but when you’re trying to pay the light bill, any customer is a good customer. I think what happens over time is that there’s a curve.

As you grow and get more mature, you can be pickier with what you want. It’s no different for a salesperson. If you’ve got a full pipeline, you can be really picky about the deals that you’re going to work on so that you spend your time on the most lucrative deals with the highest probability of closing.

If you’ve got an empty pipeline, you’re going to take anybody that calls or says yes. You’re going to show up. You’re going to drive across town for eight hours, in order to go see a company for 20 minutes that may or may not do business with you, ever.

But when you’re full, you don’t have to. This is part of being an entrepreneur. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with saying yes when you get started. You just start teaching yourself what not to do through the mistakes that you make.

We talk about the 30-day rule in Fanatical Prospecting. The prospecting you do in any given 30-day period has a tendency to pay off over the next 90 days. In other words, the work that you’re doing now to connect with people will start to pay off in the next 90 days.

Well, you take a week, two weeks, three weeks, or four weeks off, then suddenly you’re on the desperation rollercoaster. Too many entrepreneurs live in the feast or famine amusement park. It’s up and down, up and down, up and down. Salespeople do the same thing.

It’s an awful way to live because there’s so much anxiety, stress, and pressure. Then what do you do? You make really bad decisions. You start saying yes to everything again, and you don’t want to do that. It is key for entrepreneurs to schedule time every single day for business development. Clearly, there’s going to be some days where you can’t always do that. My advice is to never let a day go by that you don’t do something, even if it’s just five minutes.

You said something earlier about passion, and I love the way you explained it. The way I look at passion is that it’s awesome to be able to follow your passion. But it is way better to bring your passion with you wherever you go and with whatever you’re doing. You need that passion to help you do the hard things. Working on a project, serving your client, taking care of them — that’s the fun stuff. Calling a stranger, cold calling, reaching out, going to networking events, following up on things — that’s the hard stuff. As an entrepreneur, if you’re not willing to do the hard work, what you have is a hobby, rather than a business that you can grow. 

My advice is that you’re going to reach some level of success where you have to start making some decisions about what type of business you’re going to be. Are you going to continue to be a sole proprietor business where you’re doing all the work, or are you going to scale? If you do scale, you have to bring on other photographers, because you’re a good salesperson.

You can cover sales for a while, but you can’t cover the work. So you have to go out and bring more business in and bring another photographer in. The more photographers you bring in, the more you can scale up.

They don’t have to go prospect, because there’s a lot of people out there whose ideal is to be a photographer, but they don’t want to hustle the way you’re willing to. As a result, you have the opportunity to build a much bigger business you can grow into.

You’re right. I don’t know exactly what that looks like for me yet. I’m still kind of young in the business and just want to figure out how to design my life. I don’t want to create a soul-sucking job or a tremendous amount of stress.

But I do have to relieve that active income versus passive income gap somehow. It’s very active income right now, so I have to be on-site with a camera. But I am definitely looking at ways to try to change that percentage a little bit.

The good news is that you know how to sell. Find something that you like to do that you’re good at. Then understand that just because you’re good at it, just because you’re talented at it, that’s not enough.

It’s all about hustle and your ability to make connections, talk with people, build relationships, and build your business. If you get really good at that, if you can sell, then you can accomplish anything. And entrepreneurship is selling at its heart and soul.

If you have one last piece of advice for our listeners from what you’ve learned over the years, whether they’re salespeople or entrepreneurs, what would you leave us with? 

I hear this a lot from entrepreneurs: “I don’t like to self-promote,” “I don’t want to sell myself,” “I don’t know how to do it,” et cetera. You can actually get around a lot of that by talking to people every day. It might take the form of texts, direct messages, phone calls, or emails.

You should be passionate about your work, and be good at it. As Jim Rohn says, even if you approach someone and ask, “Hey, you don’t want my service, do you?” Eventually, someone will say, “Maybe I do. Tell me about it.” When you infuse it with passion and you’re decent at it, people will want your service or product.

Get out there and talk to people. The more people you talk with, the more you’re going to sell.

Most of us, at one time or another in our careers, have heard some trainer or manager exclaim,

This philosophy is prevalent in business culture.

A while back, I was at an Ivy League University for a speech by a successful businessman to a group of MBA students from the top business schools in the world. The speaker was so well respected that when he walked into the room there was a hush.

The audience members were on the edge of their seats in anticipation.

And what was the message?

What was the secret of success that this revered businessman offered?

“Never forget how important it is in business to first sell yourself.”

The entire audience nodded in unison.

For this wise man and many others, the phrase sell yourself  has become an easy-to-use cliche´. It just rolls off the tongue. Like the audience at the speech I attended, most people will nod their heads in agreement to the statement as if some prophet on a hill had just read it from stone tablets.

Sales expert and bestselling author Jeffrey Gitomer teaches a simple philosophy, “People love to buy but they hate to be sold.”

In other words, most people prefer to buy on their terms. They do not want or appreciate a hard pitch or a features dump. They buy for their reasons not yours.

Yet daily salespeople across the globe, on the phone, video calls, email, social media, and in person, sell to their customers by dumping data, pushing their position, or simply trying to talk their way into a sale.

They sell themselves to anyone else they can get to stand still for more than five minutes.

But it does not work, because people like to buy, they don’t like to be sold.

The harder you try to sell yourself to others, the more you push them away. A conversation where the other person tells you all about themselves, their accomplishments, and how great they are is a turnoff. It is a features dump.

Think about it, the most unlikeable human in the world is the person standing in front of you talking about themself.

You don’t walk away from that conversation thinking how much you would like to spend more time with them. Instead you think, “What a jerk,” or “How boring,” or “Wow,  that guy is full of himself.”

Still, we do love the opportunity to sell ourselves. Most of us, if given the opportunity, will talk for hours about our favorite person, oblivious to the negative impact it has on how we are viewed by others.

When pressed, experts who are quick to tell you to sell yourself, are unable to explain exactly how to do it. Sure, they will offer tips, but it’s mostly hyperbole.

Here is the brutal truth: You cannot sell yourself to others; you have to get others to buy you on their terms.

Even if you are preceded by a great reputation and others are anticipating meeting you, your attempts to sell yourself can backfire. I learned this lesson at a speech I gave to a large dinner group. One of the audience members was such a big fan of one of my books, that he lobbied the meeting organizer to be seated right next to me.

During dinner he asked me questions, and I talked and talked and talked—about me. A few days after the speech, I called the meeting organizer to follow up and offer my thanks. I thanked him for seating Daniel next to me and asked him if Daniel had had a good time.

He hesitated for a moment and finally said, “I’m telling you this because I like you; but Daniel did not come away with a very good opinion of you.” It was like being punched in the gut! I responded that I thought that we had a great conversation and asked what went wrong.

The meeting planner explained that Daniel felt that all I did was talk about myself.

The truth hurts. I sold, but Daniel did not buy.

People buy you for their reasons, not for your reasons. So, when we sell people on why they should like us or buy from us, it backfires.

However, when step into their shoes, truly listen, and build bridges to what is important to them, it creates a powerful connection that makes almost anything possible.

Learn how to gain influence through Effective Listening Skills

I love blending text messaging into my account management process. As a communication tool, it’s fast, efficient, less formal than email, and allows for arm’s-length, nonintrusive, synchronous communication that still feels personal. 

There are two reasons why blending text messaging into your account management process works:

Text messaging is extremely versatile virtual communication channel. You can attach videos, images, voice messages, and links to articles and resources. And, when the person you are texting is not available, texting shifts from synchronous to asynchronous communication. 

For account management and communicating with customers text messaging is a tremendous tool. It helps you nurture and maintain relationships, keeps customers updated, and allows you to quickly respond to concerns from anywhere. 

It’s for these reasons that text messaging is the perfect virtual communication channel to blend into your account management system and process. Text messages are an easy way to: 

The real key to blending text into your account management process is ensuring that your text messages are intentional, systematic, and part of an account management plan

A brutal truth is that most customers are lost because of neglect. Not prices, not products, not the economy, not aggressive competitors. Neglect!

Neglect happens slowly. It creeps up on customer relationships. 

Salespeople delude themselves into believing that if their customers are not complaining, they must be happy. So, they spend all of their time putting out fires and dealing with squeaky wheels, all the while ignoring accounts that that don’t raise their hand. 

Wrapped up in this warm blanket of delusion, salespeople swing the door open and invite competitors in.

Aggressive competitors don’t miss an opportunity to displace salespeople who neglect their customers. When you fail to proactively anchor your customer relationships, those competitors slip through and encourage buyers to consider other options. 

This is exactly why you must never lose sight of the long-term consequences of neglecting accounts. 

Relationships matter and must be protected against an onslaught of competitors. You must not take any relationship for granted. Assume that every customer and every relationship is at risk. 

I’m not saying this is easy. One of the hardest things to do is keep your fingers on the pulse of your customer base. 

Quarterly business reviews and other formal meeting are time consuming. You probably have a large account base and you can’t possibly meet with everyone. Every single day you are putting out fires and dealing with immediate customer service issues. 

The good news is the one secret to defending your accounts is completely in your control. Pay attention to them.  

A simple, regular, inexpensive check-in by text message can make all the difference. It doesn’t need to be anything particularly special. You don’t need a reason to tell your customers that you appreciate them.

Staying in regular contact with your accounts ensures that you are top of mind with customers. It lets them know that you care. 

Just remember,  it doesn’t cost a thing to pay attention to your customers. 

Even though text messaging is a quick and convenient channel for communicating with your accounts, you must not allow text messaging to become a substitute for meeting with you customers by phone, video, and in-person. 

I recently ended a several-year relationship with one of my vendors because my account manager was just “texting it in.” We’d always used text as a way to stay in touch. I appreciated being able to communicate with him and quickly get questions asked or problems solved. I’d even made several purchases after he sent me special offers in text messages. 

A year earlier, though, text became his primary channel. Where we used to talk, now he never called. He was no longer blending texting into his account management process; texting had become his account management process. 

If he had an upsell or special offer, he sent it via text. When it was time to restock, he sent a text. Soon, I started to feel that he was taking me for granted, like he felt he no longer needed to make an effort in order to keep my business. 

This is the dark side of text messaging. It’s fast and easy, but it is not a substitute for talking with people and investing in relationships. 

Sadly, for my account manager, one of his competitors called me. She invested in the relationship. I gave her a little of my business and she did a great job. As the business relationship bloomed, I gave her more and more of my business. Soon, she had it all. 

And my old account manager? He has still not called. But I did get a text message from him this morning asking how I was doing. All I can do is SMH.

Direct messaging is a SALES MEGA-TREND. More than four billion people communicate on mobile messaging tools each day. Learn how to gain a massive competitive edge with strategies, tactics, techniques, and tips for leveraging text & direct messaging for prospecting, sales, and account management in our course: The NEW Essentials of Text & Direct Messaging