WIN
Business is a battle, and we came here to WIN!
Carrie and Ian Richardson are partners and serial entrepreneurs who specialize in strategic growth and exit planning for SMBs.
Every week, we ask business owners two important questions:
"What's Important Now?"
"How are you winning?"
Created by entrepreneurs and featuring entrepreneurs, we interview business owners at all stages of growth across multiple industries.
Learn from experts sharing their strategies and the tactics they use to identify and pursue opportunities.
Take away actionable ideas that you can use to help you scale and/or sell your business.
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WIN
Jim Doyle WINS by Selling With A Servant Heart
When the quest for success in sales becomes more than just numbers and contracts, it transforms into an art form. That's the philosophy Jim Doyle, author of "Selling with a Servant Heart" and founder of JDA Media, brings to the table in our latest episode. From the early days of selling candy as a young Boy Scout to his rise as a media sales magnate, Jim's narrative is a testament to the power of advocacy and service in the sales industry. His personal tales not only chart the course of his impressive career but also serve as a playbook for entrepreneurs at every level grappling with the realities of business growth and customer relationships.
Stepping down from the pilot's seat of a business you've poured your heart into can be as daunting as letting your children venture into the world. Jim's candid discussions on the emotional parallels between personal evolution and professional transitions reveal an unexpected journey towards hiring a CEO and the subsequent shift in his life's focus. Listeners will find solace and guidance in Jim's reflections on how service to others and community involvement have reshaped his definition of success and purpose after his business exit.
For those navigating the labyrinth of strategic selling and complex organizational structures, this episode is a beacon. The conversation zeroes in on the art of differentiation in sales, understanding the intricate web of decision-makers, and the necessity of embracing change, including the often-feared specter of technology. Jim's insights into managing sales teams—with a nudge towards the balance between trust and control—are a treasure trove for anyone looking to refine their sales management approach and, ultimately, their sales success.
Carrie Richardson and Ian Richardson host the WIN Podcast - What's Important Now?
Serial entrepreneurs, life partners and business partners, they have successfully exited from multiple businesses (IT, call center, real estate, marketing) and they help other business owners create their own versions of success.
Ian is certified in Eagle Center For Leadership Making A Difference, Paterson StratOp, and LifePlan.
Carrie has helped create and execute successful outbound sales strategies for over 1200 technology-focused businesses including MSPs, manufacturers, distributors and SaaS firms.
Learn more at www.foxcrowgroup.com
Book time with either of them here: https://randr.consulting/connect
Be a guest on WIN! We host successful entrepreneurs who share advice with other entrepreneurs on how to build, grow or sell a business using examples from their own experience.
Good afternoon everybody. My name is Carrie Richardson, I'm a partner at Richardson and Richardson and today I am your host for win. With me today is Jim Doyle, who is the author of Selling with a Servant Heart, a book that I had the opportunity to read right after it came out in December 2021, and a book that I also went back and read this week before the podcast, so that I had some good questions to ask Jim about it today. Jim is also the founder of GDA Media. How are you doing today, Jim?
Speaker 2:I am great. Thank you so much. It's great to be here.
Speaker 1:I was so excited when you offered to be on the podcast. It's not very often I get to interview the author of a book that I've enjoyed.
Speaker 2:Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 1:With that in mind, before we start, tell me about your life questions. I have questions about the book.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay.
Speaker 1:So first of all, I didn't know that Boy Scouts actually sold candy. You sold candy as a Boy Scout.
Speaker 2:That was my first sales job. I was the star of the candy sales bit. I think we sold toys one year and candy one year and see so that I knew because I fucked out of college and had no real skills that maybe I could sell. That was people say. When did you get into sales? It was like all other avenues were closed. I had a paper route. I had two paper routes, an overachieving entrepreneur at age 15.
Speaker 1:My favorite story, obviously because of Penny the van, is the story about Dave Wall and the luxury RVs.
Speaker 2:What I wanted to try and do was I had a lot of experience in the niche our company store, which was media salespeople, but I wanted to write a book that was for sales in general, and so I went out and interviewed all these amazing salespeople from all these different industries, and Dave is one of the ones that really sticks with me as well, because this is the guy who singlehandedly sells more RVs than probably most of the RV dealers in the world, and he does it as one person.
Speaker 2:He sells these big motor coaches. He has massive amounts of repeat business. He's just extraordinary, and a client of mine who I've known for a long time was the guy who said Dave Wall would be a great guy for you to talk to. I would get off the call with these people and interview them much like this and try to get the sense of what they believed in, and just get off the call and be, oh man, that was the best salesperson I've ever met, and then two calls later I'd be like, wow, that's the best salesperson I've ever met. I met some extraordinary people and hopefully what I captured in the book was the principles that lay laid out in terms of what caused them to be successful.
Speaker 1:I think the one thing that I took away from the book more than anything else was that selling is more about customer advocacy and customer service than it is about anything else.
Speaker 2:It was interesting to me that what I took away, I think, is exactly that. But it's how they define winning. I grew up as a salesperson where winning was when I closed the sale and I would tell you even today if I got in the car after somebody had agreed to an idea that we'd suggested. I'm still going. Yes, I loved it, but these sales reps love it too, and they certainly love the financial success. But they define winning as making a difference. If I make a difference for my customer, I'm going to obviously be rewarded by long term relationships, by more refraining. I'm going to be rewarded by long term relationships, by more referrals. So their definition of winning isn't just making a sale. Their definition of winning is can I make a difference?
Speaker 1:One of the things that we trained into our reps was the understanding that when a small business owner is making a decision, they have to make a decision between doing this thing for their business or potentially putting money into their retirement fund or their kids' college education, and you need to be a good caretaker of that.
Speaker 2:Money is important, I think, most salespeople think my competitor is the other people who might provide the same kind of service to that business. No, for a small business, your competitor is everyone, including the rent that may take up, because I think you would have empathy for that, as would I, because we've operated small businesses and we know that there are many times that there are decisions that you need to make and would like to make you just can't afford to make because the priorities are more to pay the bills than to do other things at that moment.
Speaker 1:You started a business, you wrote a book. How did it all begin?
Speaker 2:I was really lucky that I got hired to work selling advertising in Portland Maine back a long time ago. It was a while ago and I fell in love with the business very much for the reason I described it. I liked that idea that we could have longer term relationships and I liked the whole marketing process. I love marketing and that allowed me to advance through the chairs. And then in the mid 80s I got an opportunity to buy a radio station with some partners in Rochester, New York. We had a couple of years of magic and then it wasn't so magical.
Speaker 2:People say how do you get to be a sales trainer, which is the business that we started after that and I always say there's two reasons. One is it was always my dream to do it. But the other reason, equally true, was the format change didn't work. The partnership blew up. I lost a million dollars and you too can be a sales trainer. So I started the JDA company in the early 90s and by the time we got done, 30 years later, we were one of the largest training companies in the country and certainly the largest in the media business, the media space.
Speaker 1:You've recently exited from that business.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, we sold out to a great company at the end of June last year, and so it's a different phase, but to the beginning there was no dreams of selling it ever. I've great empathy for people who have begun businesses, because starting a business is hard and I was at two years in. I literally thought you know what I need to quit because I could have made way more money with a real job than I was taking out of this company at this point Way, way more. And I got encouraged to give it another year and something happened in that year that just changed it from being bad to starting to be good.
Speaker 2:And boy, we talk about hanging on. Sometimes I had to hang on. You have to hang on in order to get some magic, and in small business there's so much. I always counsel small business people, as you do, all the time that one gets you to two, gets you three and at some point six gets you 60. But getting to six is going to take you twice as long as you think it is and probably cost you twice as much money.
Speaker 1:Tell me about the very early days. You mentioned that you had a severed partnership. It didn't work well. You lost a million dollars and you were broke. How did you come up with the idea for starting your business?
Speaker 2:I had always loved to train salespeople. So I had gone to a seminar gosh a decade before that, and every time the guy gave an example of what you weren't supposed to do. I thought he'd been following me around. It was like, really You're not supposed to do that. So I came back with this sort of passion to train salespeople.
Speaker 2:So what I would do for years was I, if I hired a new salesperson, I call up all my buddies and they send me their new reps and I do a weekend session and I had so much love in doing that. And then there was about a seven month period of time before we took over the radio station, where we were delayed and that's what I did. So I always had this sense that, boy, I'd go back to this at some point. Now I thought I was going to go back to what may be doing one seminar a quarter and live it in Paris instead of having to pay the mortgage and just all do all that stuff. The first year of anything that you start, don't you think it's like one of the hardest things you'll ever do?
Speaker 1:I don't know, I was like you. I just started going through the newspaper we still read the newspaper back then and calling people and asking them if they needed someone to make their cold calls. And then finally somebody said yes, and then they asked me how much it cost and I was like I'll get back to you $30 an hour and they're like that sounds great and I was like, oh, that was not enough, I should have scratched more than that.
Speaker 2:That's that experience. Any entrepreneur can identify with this. What you just said, which is when the price goes down, between my brain and my mouth it's $50 an hour, $30. And part of it is we're so desperate to get any piece of business. One of the things that happened to our pricing in our company was when I stopped quoting, the pricing got strong Because for me it was a mortgage payment and for the other person it was just a price vote, and so when our marketing director started quoting the prices now I would still occasionally have clients call and say I don't want it, Elizabeth Price, I need a Jim Price.
Speaker 1:That's a hard transition, though going from being the person that's talking to the clients and making the quotes to trusting someone else to be able to do that as well as yourself and being able to take all of that institutional knowledge out of your brain and share it with someone else, and that kind of brings you into your genius zone. And the story about how you had to bring in someone to replace yourself as CEO.
Speaker 2:Yeah, most training businesses don't survive past the life of the trainer. It's fade out when people start calling, stop calling. So we did 15 years ago that we wanted to try to see if we could change that. So there were two approaches to do that. One is we had to develop business and products that did not require me to leave town. We got to the point where about 80% of the business was in boot camps, coaching programs on demand. We have a company built, an unbelievably robust learning development system online, and so we started. 100% of the business required me getting on an airplane and going someplace, and within a 10-year period of time it became like 20%. That allows you to have a business as opposed to a practice, and now that becomes a little bit more sellable. So we sold a big chunk of it 40% to an ESOP, which is an employee-owned ownership program, a retirement program, and we did that in 2012.
Speaker 2:And then I found for control freak, giving up any control you alluded to this before is very difficult and I struggled with that whole process because it was my baby and when you nurture your baby, you don't want to send them to college. One part of you is, oh, please go. But the other part of this I want to hold on. I remember crying when I took my son to college to drop him off. I wasn't going to see him again. It was like I'm in tears and yet I want him to go. And it's the same thing for me with the business. I knew that the business had to go beyond Jim, but I didn't want to let go of it because that's hard, and so I think it was hard for the incredible woman that I hired as my CEO. It was difficult for her as well, because she wants to be respectful of me but at the same time, she's not there to keep it the same. It's an interesting transition.
Speaker 1:You had mentioned, in around 2020, she gave you an ultimatum.
Speaker 2:Yes, she said I had control issues and the company only needed one CEO and we needed to decide which one. And, as you would say instantly, and many friends of mine said, that proves you got the right person, because they were strong enough to say, boom, I'm going to stand up and not do this if it's not going to be joyful for me. Yeah, and so I was like, oh, I think I'll write a book now.
Speaker 1:So tell us about the book. Obviously, I've read it and I really enjoyed it and I think that there was a lot of interesting takeaways. I didn't find it to be the usual hey, here's how you sell book which I appreciated, like I didn't really want. I wasn't looking for a step by step. It left me feeling positive about my chosen career and how I could make a difference in the world through that career, and I think sometimes people come to sales like you and I did. If you can close, you can always get a job in sales, but how do you make it fulfilling?
Speaker 2:I think I had come to understand that and boy, that may be the nicest compliment that you could give me about that book, because I really want people to understand. There is a view of salespeople as the clients got my money. My job is to get my money out of their pocket and it's the close early close often ask for the order. They didn't say yes to ask them again, and it's the stereotype of salespeople that we have, maybe from some unfortunate experience on a car dealer lot or maybe from somebody who's an aggressive appliance or furniture salesperson. It's usually formed by those situations where it's a one-time relationship rather than what I really value is where the sales position is, where we have the opportunity to build a longer term relationship, and I hope that it would give some people a sense. One of the interesting things about the book for me was interviewing a bunch of the people, and especially the men who were quick to say that selling with his heart was not their default. Rory Vaden, who's an amazing speaker and friend of mine and one of the people I have a great deal of admiration, said he said I was trained in that I got to get their money school and he said it took me a while to realize that there was another way to achieve success. That would make me go home at night. It's a lot better. And so today he's one of the most prominent speakers in the country, but he said my default was not that way.
Speaker 2:We talked to Rick Breeden to do the book and he's a researcher who tests sales candidates. So he's testing candidates and he said that men especially he called it. He said they might have a testosterone, testosterone-fueled desire to win, and he said sometimes, as they get a little bit older, they will then redefine what winning is. And it was really interesting to me. You think people were born that way. No, people looked at themselves and were honest enough to know this isn't really fulfilling for me and is there another way to do this? And another way to do this is really by serving others.
Speaker 1:That was the inspiration for your book. How did you decide who you were going to interview for your book? There's a lot of amazing people in there.
Speaker 2:Boy and I. So I called people. Don't you know, people carry that. If you called them and said I'm writing a book with this title, who does that remind you of that? They would know immediately because they would connect with that message. So that's what I did. I called people who I said here's the title, tell me who you think of. And every time they did it, they gave me some names and, without exception, every name turned out to be just going for the guys he was doing 10 times the amount of a top 10% mortgage brokerage. This guy was doing 300 in Houston. It's just. The stories are just beyond amazing. And then one of the lessons and that's what I was trying to do was distill what some of the lessons were.
Speaker 1:Excellent. So you've now exited from your business. Are you writing a second book? What's next for Jim?
Speaker 2:I have a meditation that I do carry. That is that everything I give is given to me in return. So if I send out love out to the world, I get love back. If I send out pissiness and sarcasm, I get pissiness and sarcasm back. I'm in a wonderful place in my life where I'm just looking for how can I serve. I'm posting some content of just ideas every week, that stuff that I think may help somebody folding laundry at the homeless shelter. I serve on a couple of boards. I'm just trying to look for how can I be of service to other people, and that's a blessing to be able to be in that position. I won all the toys, but it's just now about how can I give back even more.
Speaker 1:So you're legitimately retired.
Speaker 2:I've just saying that word. There's a sick feeling when you go from who's who to who's he.
Speaker 1:I think that's a really important conversation and a lot of entrepreneurs aren't like. We work with entrepreneurs and help them plan their exits, and one of the things that we talk about and you and I talked about this a little bit earlier is that life planning process that we take people through, and I think that the earlier people do that when they start going on the path to exiting from their business, figuring out what's going to be next for them, what brings them joy, what's going to bring them fulfillment, what are their energy and renewal cycles like, what's going to be next. There's a big business shaped hole in your life when you sell your company.
Speaker 2:You know it's interesting and I hit back to way because of Angela I'd been less involved the last couple of years, but it's interesting that you say that I always knew that the most successful people who retired to something, not from something. So what was that look like? And I thought I had a good idea of that and I thought I had a good sense of that. But what I never realized was the extent to which I was addicted to being the guy and for 32 years I was the guy. The company originally was Jim Doyle Associates and I was Jim Doyle and then it became I was the guy and I realized that I was more addicted to that than I thought, which made the transition a little bit more difficult for the first three or four months.
Speaker 1:I'm two years clear of my business and I'm still struggling with that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that who's who to who's he thing is.
Speaker 1:Who's who to who's he.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's a real. It's a blessing to have that transition and I'm glad that I've been given some tools to help deal with that. But it's not as easy as I thought it was going to be, because I thought I had it figured out, which is pretty typical for me.
Speaker 1:But you're resisting the urge to to come back to us in the business world.
Speaker 2:Oh, you know what? I made a conscious decision that I was going to take white space because I could sense that my desire to be somebody could cause me to make decisions that might be impulsive. I wanted to take some time to just really not overreact to what and really be open to what is going to be the plan.
Speaker 1:What was your favorite part of the book? If not necessarily favorite person that you featured with the favorite part.
Speaker 2:So I think the lesson that I continue to resonate with me the most is the chapter about becoming a lifelong learner and just really understanding. I share in the book a story of a Des Moines car dealer who had told me at dinner the night before that he just turned down like some outrageous 40 or $50 million offer for his company and he was at that age where it was a good time to think about that. I don't know about you, but $40, $50 million is a lot of money for a business. The next morning I'm doing a seminar for dealers and he's in the front row at 730 taking more notes than anybody in the room, taking more notes than anybody in the room, and then the seminar ends and he's the first person up there to say I clarify this for me, help me understand this.
Speaker 2:You said something that I think is significant Can I get my marketing person and you and I to do a conference call? And I thought, boy, that's the model for me. I cannot. I get afraid if I think I have learned everything, particularly in a world that's changing as quickly as ours is. So I love following your stuff because you're younger and hipper than I am and I can feel like I can get exposed to things that maybe can make me better in a nonprofit situation or better in coaching somebody.
Speaker 1:The only thing I hate more than things staying the same or things changing. I'm struggling with the AI taking over everything and all the things that I love doing. I love writing content, I love talking to people. All of those things are now being replaced by Clicks of buttons and weird prompts, and I'm not dealing with it but that's why I think we have to be enthusiastic about change, because they're gonna be opportunities created.
Speaker 2:How many social media strategies, jobs where they're 15 years ago? So they're gonna be new opportunities created by all of this change. So I've got to try to be enthusiastic about it, because if I start acting like a dinosaur especially my age it's I'm like that'd be dangerous. I want to see if I can't get excited about it.
Speaker 1:I don't know, I want to go mow lawns or, I don't know, working Healthcare, something right, I don't have to be in front of a computer all day.
Speaker 2:I used to always say that when I had a high stress day I said I'm gonna go work for the post office like mindlessly sorting mail, and then somebody a friend of mine said, doyle, you screw that up. You'd be down there for two or three days and then you'd say what if we tried it this way?
Speaker 1:I think the happiest ever was. I was probably in my 30s and I was working for a landscaping company and All I did all day was shovel gravel onto a truck and Then drive the truck to someone's house and shovel gravel off of the truck. That was my whole day. But at the end of the day, like between everybody that had worked at that place, we started with this ugly pile of dirt and at the end of the day it was somebody's beautiful yard, right with the trees exactly where they were supposed to be, and the flowers all put in nice and the Retaining walls and the mulch, and it was very beautiful. That was a very peaceful way to spend time. My shoulders are not going to allow me to go back to that place and I'm not sure that the for me.
Speaker 2:I did one of those kinds of jobs and the attraction was the beer, the prodigious amount of beer we drank at the end of that.
Speaker 1:This was when, like the first iPod had just come out. And you could load it up with like music and podcasts and news and all like. All I did all day was learn. It was fabulous.
Speaker 2:But don't you think that, for one of the things not to do is have to get comfortable with, is the idea that you're never, your to-do list is never done?
Speaker 1:That's true, and I didn't learn that for you. I worked 16 hour days for years before I figured out that there was going to be another 16 hour day tomorrow and for the day after that. Slowly but surely, I was able to shut my laptop a little earlier each night.
Speaker 2:I think you have to get clear, very clear, as an entrepreneur, on what is your high value activities and make sure that my I was great at crushing things off my to-do list, make to-do list and when I transitioned to prioritizing, which is connected to what you talked about before, which is the ability to delegate some of the low value activities or lower value activities, that's when you begin to start to to sword, don't you think?
Speaker 1:I think that's very true. I had trouble giving up the things that I Loved and the things that I was critical of, so I loved doing social media, I love being on social media and I loved it so much I stopped doing it entirely because I spent way too much time Doing things that I don't think were all that helpful and but I didn't know how to explain what I wanted to people. And that was my biggest challenge was I knew what I didn't like, but trying to explain to you what I did, what I wanted, it was easier for me to say no, do it again. And people don't like to be managed that way. It's so weird.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I never did.
Speaker 1:People hate being criticized. Imagine.
Speaker 2:It's like the little kid. You're not the boss. I mean, I am actually, but I think that's such a true point. But when I the more time that I could spend on the things that I was really good at Like, I'm terrible at details I got tested by one of these sales companies and I took it anonymously and he had a lot of feedback and and once I Somebody said but I have to tell you one thing about this guy he's incredibly disorganized.
Speaker 2:And that was the moment I stopped, was started laughing and outed myself that I was the guy and he really. He said, jim, I'll bet you made more money, as you can make more money as a salesperson, as a manager. He said when you get out on a call, you take over the call, don't you like? Yeah, he said. Why do you do that? He said. He said you do that because you can't stand to see anybody having that much fun. So that's if you look at the, the training business, all I did for the next 30 years was standard federal room and sell my ideas, work one-on-one with clients to sell our programs or be out at the end user, the car dealer or the lawyer Selling services of a TV station or cable company that we were working for. All I did was sell and I tried to delegate everything out Out out because I was horrible at details.
Speaker 1:How did you find the person that was going to take care of those things for you when you weren't very good at it? How did you evaluate them?
Speaker 2:you miss fire occasionally, but I still knew and I got lucky we had the greatest team here and I Just knew that I couldn't do that and build what we wanted to build if I was trying to balance the checking account here, there being a ha moment for you.
Speaker 1:Then was there and something that happened where you're like, alright, I have to put this stuff away and I have to move over here read.
Speaker 2:No, I think I knew that I was not going to be able to make any more money until I could find a way to Stop doing the things that were time-consuming but for me and important but for me, not really leading to grow the business.
Speaker 2:I remember reading years and years ago I forget the name of the book, but the guy talked about he was. He was the general manager's force general manager who got the job of selling season tickets the year after Gretzky left Ottawa and went down to the thing and he said he spent a lot of time. One one year he realized that it had been two days or three days before it had a customer contact and he said I made a decision that every single day I was going to do something that had me engaging with a customer, because that's a high value activity. If you're an entrepreneur, so if you're staring at your screen and you're answering emails and you're not engaging with customers, then You're gonna be challenged to start to grow the business that you want to grow. So I was just trying to figure out a way to get my head up out of the screen and do more of the things that I. That, coincidentally, also brought me joy.
Speaker 1:I think that reminds me of another thing that I enjoyed reading about in your book, which was Most sales processes are. We have to make 100 calls a day, and then technology allows us to make more calls. But if we're gonna increase the number of calls that we're gonna make every day, we can also increase the number of terrible calls that we're gonna make every day.
Speaker 2:I'm a manager at heart. I'm a recovering sales manager. I probably have a 12-step program I could go to for that, but I I think that the management of metrics is Is a mistake that I made as a rookie manager. If they make more calls, then they'll make more of this. Today, the only thing that I want to know is how many people did you ask and what's? And if you're an experienced salesperson, who I trust, I'm not even gonna worry about that.
Speaker 1:So what metrics do you look at? I?
Speaker 2:Actually, as a very young manager, stopped requiring sales reports.
Speaker 1:I'm feeling very anxious right now, jim.
Speaker 2:Because in our space, in the media space, how do I know that they went to see someone's, their fiction? So that's fair and so why did they, why are they spending One hour times 20 people or 15 people? And then I'm not reading them because I know their fiction and it's why are we doing this?
Speaker 1:to burning a ton of payroll for nothing.
Speaker 2:I'd rather spend 20 minutes or half an hour with you every single week, never miss a week, and I'll know what your activity level is gonna be and I'll know who, what you're trying to do and how can I help you. And we'll know by your performance if you're making the calls. And then that does not to say that I haven't done sales reports on a remedial basis oh yeah, often. But for somebody who's a high performer, somebody who's a good performer, just let him go. I think you can over manage people.
Speaker 2:What was a new manager? I remember I'd be standing by the door when they came back, like anything today. I Quickly found out if they had anything they'd tell you we didn't really have to, that you were gonna know. And it was like that over management that I tended to do. I think, probably as a baby manager, I I tend to over control, partially probably because of my own fear, and that's maybe how, the only way I knew how to do it. But I think we should write a book called the Karen feeding of superstars, because I think one of the things with superstars is they would tell you Leave me alone. I need, when I'm when I need, your help. Keep me between the rails just If I get off track. Nudge me, leave me alone.
Speaker 1:I think you can care about process, or you can care about outcome, and I like to know, going into any role, what the person I'm reporting to cares about more. Do you care about me showing my work, or do you care about me getting my work done?
Speaker 2:What do they say? The driver's attitude of a driver is leave out the baby, leave out the labor page, just show me the baby. I also felt if you're not reading it, don't make them do it.
Speaker 1:I think we're fortunate now that If you're putting your information into the CRM as you go, the odds on you needing to have to create a report are Are are no longer there. Right, everything gets recorded and installed somewhere. I can look at a HubSpot report now for a caller and it'll show me how much time they talked and how much time the prospect talked, and that one metric will tell me everything I need to know about that.
Speaker 2:Sales rep sure, confessions of a dinosaur. We used HubStot in our company for the last decade and I've been on it like 10 times, so I should probably not be talking about how people use the CRM.
Speaker 1:You quoted Patrick Lincione in your book. What other sales books would you recommend, other than selling with a servant heart, that somebody starting their sales career should Evaluate, or somebody who's owning a business and has to be the primary sales rep for that business for the foreseeable future?
Speaker 2:So there's a lot of good stuff out there. I my friend, mark Hunter if they just go on Amazon and look at his stuff, he's got some great stuff that he has written. That I that really resonates with me. I love everything that Patrick has written. I'm just such a huge fan of him.
Speaker 2:I there's a book that's been out for a long time that probably helped me more than any other book to look at the complex sale when there are multiple buyers in an organization. You know we may have a purchasing person and an economic buyer. It's Miller Hyman, is written, rewritten now it's called the new strategic selling. Strategic selling came out probably 30 years ago but it's this. It's probably the single best business book selling book that I read about complex sales. So the kind of sales that you know you and I focus a little bit on is dealing with entrepreneurs or small businesses. But a lot of the people who are gonna listen to this are dealing with more complex organizations and, frankly, most organizations are becoming more complex. So what is the difference in the motivation of that purchasing person, the technical buyer, versus an economic buyer, and how do you change your Efforts to depending on who you're talking to it? How do you get to the economic buyer.
Speaker 1:So a lot of good stuff in those books anything else you want to share with us today before we wind down.
Speaker 2:No, I just I think if we interrated one message of our discussion, it seems to weave through all the different themes. As the thinker said, the more I do for someone else, the more it gets done for me. He said it differently than that, but it's that when I define winning is making a difference, I'm going to win also Can't think of a better place to stop than that.
Speaker 1:Thank you very much for joining us today, Jim. It's been lovely meeting you and I really enjoyed getting to know you a little bit before the the recording today that was great, thank you.
