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Highlights

• [01:13] - Becoming the number one elite enterprise sales director at Salesforce.
• [05:26] - From selling $10,000 copiers to being a more strategic salesperson.
• [09:45] - Mastering your message and the skills you need to sell change.
• [12:33] - Selling is helping: Why you must be an outward-focused salesperson.
• [16:17] - Underperforming for 3 years and how investing in himself changed everything.
• [21:59] - Why you must adopt a no-pressure sales strategy.
• [27:28] - How to be a more successful enterprise seller.

In this episode of the Transformed Sales Podcast, I chatted with Ian Koniak, the Founder and President of Ian Koniak Sales Coaching, Inc. He’s a sales coach, sales trainer, and keynote speaker. He helps B2B account executives perform to their full potential and crush their quotas by mastering the mindset, habits, and skills needed to perform at the highest level. As the former number one AE at Salesforce, his program is built by an AE for AE’s based on what works. 

Prior to starting his own business, he worked in B2B technology sales for 19 years at F500 tech companies as an individual contributor, sales manager, and director of sales, with over 100M in career sales and numerous finishes at number one nationally, including finishing number one in the US Enterprise Select Division of Salesforce. Most recently, he worked as a strategic account director for the enterprise west sales team at Salesforce where he partnered with their largest customers to help them drive growth, innovation, and success on the Salesforce platform. 

At Ricoh, he led a team of 10 sales managers and 70 reps responsible for 60M annual revenue across hardware, software, and services. After a near-death experience, he started his coaching business to serve others and help them achieve incredible success by mastering the mindset, habits, and skills needed to perform at the highest level. Ian will share why you should transition from transactional to strategic selling, the qualities of top-performing sellers, how to sell big deals to big accounts, how he became the king of enterprise sales, why investing in yourself is critical, and so much more. So don’t miss out.

Quotes

“The selling motion of selling change is much different than the selling motion of selling cost savings for products that are already being used” - Ian Koniak

“Selling is helping” - Ian Koniak

“You have to make that transition from an inward-focused salesperson to an outward-focused salesperson who cares more about helping your clients get the results that they want” - Ian Koniak

Learn More About Ian Koniak in the Links Below:

• LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/iankoniak/
• Website - https://iankoniak.com/
• https://www.UntapYourSalesPotential.com/
• YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/IanKoniak

Connect with Wesleyne Greer:

• Wesleyne’s Website - https://transformedsales.com/
• Wesleyne on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/wesleynegreer/
• Wesleyne on Facebook - https://web.facebook.com/wesleynegreer
• Wesleyne on Twitter - https://twitter.com/wesleynegreer
• Email Her at wesleyne@transformedsales.com

Hello and welcome to another episode of

the transform sales podcast today I am so excited to have

Ian koniec How are you Ian?

I am doing great. How are you doing? Wesleyne

I am doing fantabulous. I am so excited to

chat with you today. Let me tell you guys a little bit more about

Mr. Konya. How about that he is one of the strongest b2b sales

leaders in the world and a highly sought after elite sales

coach. His accolades include being the number one sales

performance at Fortune 500 companies and the number one

strategic account executive and the enterprise select division

at Salesforce. He shares his insights as a sales thought

leader in keynote speeches, webinars, training sessions and

podcasts. His sales success is rivaled only by his ability to

help others untapped their true potential, his elite coaching

service, Ian koniec, sales coaching is successful is so

successful that he has stepped away as strategic account

director at Salesforce. So run his business full time. Wow, it

is definitely a labor of love to have your own business. But I'm

curious how did you become the number one elite enterprise

sales director and transition into starting your own business?

Well, I became the number one sales director at

Salesforce after actually having some pretty big failures, I miss

my quota three years in a row before becoming number one. So

I'll take a step back and just kind of tell you how I got

there. So I was always very, very good at what I would refer

to as transactional selling. So think of transactional selling

as the grind, do a lot of activity, a lot of cold going a

lot of prospecting, show up, outwork everyone and get

consistent results. In fact, I was the number one global sales

rep and sales director at my prior company, Rico, where I hit

42 months in a row quota, I would outwork everyone period, I

would show up and you know, consider myself pretty

personable, and generally just figured it out. And that worked

great for my first 10 years of my career, then I go to

Salesforce, and the environments very different. Now I'm selling

software, and I'm selling to large enterprises. So I thought

I can go out and outwork and hustle everyone else. And I took

that same approach that it served me my whole career into

software sales, and it didn't exactly work out. So I did end

up hitting my quota. My first year, I got lucky, I found a big

deal after 15 emails to the CIO. And here I am thinking like, I'm

God's gift to the sales world, because now I have 11 years in a

row of quota attainment, including going to the

enterprise division at Salesforce, I got Rookie of the

Year. And then I bombed for three years in a row. So I

literally was out working out hustling everyone, and I was

missing my targets. And so I took a step back. And I said,

Well, maybe the approach of grinding and hustling is not

actually effective when selling software. And I ended up getting

really humbled. And really, my whole entire ego took a massive

hit, because I had always prided myself on my performance. And I

had been a top performer my whole career. So to go from this

high performer to now somebody who misses not one, not two, but

three years in a row, my whole world really crumbled. Honestly,

it led to a lot of like, self doubt, and a lot of beating

myself up over this. And so I decided to take a step back, and

I did what any smart person would do if they fail on their

own, which is go seek help and learn from others who are the

most successful. So for me, it meant investing, you know, over

$20,000, even though I wasn't doing great at that time, I

found the money to go and invest in a sales mastermind, a sales

program geared at helping elite sales performance get to their

highest possible potential, I hired a sales coach. And I just

took a step back. And I said, maybe what I thought I knew is

not actually the way and I spent a year really investing in

myself and learning what was needed to sell enterprise deals

at the level of elite performers. And that was the

year where I finished number one at Salesforce. And then every

year after that I made the club I cracked seven figures and

sales and generally just had this remarkable transformation

in my professional life and in my personal life that started

with personal development, and humbling myself. So I think

that's the real answer is how I got there. And then that evolved

into more of a calling of, okay, if I can do this, I need to help

other people do it. Because I'm a normal average guy. If I can

get to the elite performer level, I don't want other people

to go through the mistakes that I made of missing their quota

three years in a row and more importantly, the mistake of

putting all their self worth in their performance and feeling

like a failure dealing with all the struggles that I had during

that period. I want people to learn the actual way to get to

the top that's healthy that's abundant that's aligned that's

why I like to name your your podcast when we talk about

transform sales and and that's what I had to do myself is

transformed the way I sold and once I did that, and I saw the

results. The next logical step was to help others do that

because life is short. And if you're only working for yourself

and you're only serving yourself, you're not fulfilling

your mission on the To planet. And so for me that was very deep

and personal and spiritual in nature decided to leave that

business and serve others for living through my coaching

business.

Wow, you really embodied one of the things that

I speak so emphatically about. And it's that someone helped you

to get to where you are today. So you should reach back and

help somebody else up. And it sounds like in everything that

you're doing in your coaching business, like you're really

doing that. But I want to rewind a little bit. And I want to talk

about that transition from the first place that you left as a

superstar salesperson going into Salesforce. So what are some of

the things that you did in your first company and tell us a

little bit more about what that actual product that service that

you were selling was? And how did that not translate into this

new role?

Well, I was doing copier sales. So I sold

multifunction devices, they weren't like desktop printers

that you would buy at Staples, these were $10,000 copiers, and,

you know, very high level, but ultimately, it was a commodity.

Right. So for copiers, everyone's got him in their

office. And what I would do really simple as I lead with

price, and I'd go in and I'd say, hey, most likely, you're

spending a lot of money on lease agreements for these copiers on

toners. On printers, we can save you typically 10 to 20% of your

printing costs. And I would target the CFO. And you know, I

was very good at that. And I said, you know, you don't need

to be paying this money for printing, we have a better way

to help the environment, better way to reduce your energy and

better way to reduce the number of devices you have through

these multifunction devices. So I would go around and basically

assess what they were using and what the costs were. And if I

could help them great I would and if I couldn't, you know that

I would walk away and it was a very repeatable process, it was

a repeatable talk track, it was very easy, because everybody had

printers, copiers, scanners, faxes, you name it, they had it.

And I would just consolidate those and provide all the

supplies and maintenance and it was a very, I would say

financially driven business case driven sale. But that

necessarily didn't change the way they worked, right. They're

using these devices and whether they say Xerox on them, or

whether they say Rico on them, which is the company I worked

for, didn't really matter, maybe they'd have to learn the new

interface. But there wasn't much change management, there wasn't

much training, there wasn't much they had to do, it wasn't a

disrupter to the business. Whereas when I went to

Salesforce, you're talking if you sell any type of software,

you are literally disrupting how they work. Any software exists

to automate manual processes or to improve collaboration or

create reports or better visibility, any software is

going to take work they're doing manually are doing in multiple

systems and create a streamlined, automated way of

doing those things easier and faster. But that's going to

require change, that's going to require them to actually have to

rework their existing processes, it's going to have data

migration, it's going to have to require some support from the

users and from the stakeholders, it's going to need a business

case. So it's a lot more strategic in nature, because

you're changing how they work and the nature of what they're

doing. And people are naturally resistant to change. Okay, so

the selling motion of selling change is much different than

the selling motion of selling cost savings for a commodity

that they already are using anyway. So it didn't translate

very well. What did translate is my work ethic and my

determination to help my customers, but it didn't

translate to the actual stakeholder management and

needing consensus on a purchase and having to really understand

how they're doing things today in more detail. So they can show

them how they can do it in Salesforce, it was just a lot

more of a longer sales cycle and more strategic in nature. So

that's the transition that I was never trained to make. And I had

to kind of figure out on my own through the years,

and you really talked about that perfectly,

because a lot of times people come from selling a physical

product, you can see touch, feel and going to selling services or

something unsexual. And in your previous position, it was like,

here's money you can save in your pocket that you can

reinvest, I can show you an ROI calculator, I can give you a

beautiful report. But when you go to selling the software as a

service, and it is very different than what people have

done, and one changes are at one of the things I like to say is

do you drive home the same way every day, people who work in

office, do you drive home the same way every day? And some

people say, Yeah, I absolutely do. And other people say no, I

don't like to use a brand names on my podcast. But I use this

magical app that always tells me a different way to go home. I

was like, Yep, I'm one of those people too, right? And so the

thing is, it's like, Who are you talking to? And most times when

you're talking to these decision makers, they've been doing

something the right way. And it's hard, but they don't

realize how hard it is or how much time they're wasting and so

for you to get them to try something new, even though it's

gonna save them time. It actually does save them money

too. It's such a hard thing to convince.

Yeah. 100% it's changed, right? It's selling

change. It's selling a future vision. So you know, in order

for you to sell change. There's a set of skills that you need.

There's a set of you have to get people to admit they're in pain,

you have to get really extract the pain from them. You have to

get them to realize that they have a problem that they might

not even be aware of. So that requires educating that requires

educating and becoming a thought leader in the space and really

becoming a master of the problems that you solve, why

their problems and being able to teach them something new about

their business or their way of working that they don't already

know. Because if you say, Hey, how are you doing things today?

And they say, here's how I'm doing it. And you can

intelligently say, You know what, you could be doing it this

way. And here's why it makes sense. And here's how much time

it can saves you. How do you feel about that, if you can

explain that in a way that's compelling, and that, you know,

is naturally where they can object to it. Most people are

gonna say, Yeah, of course, that makes sense, I didn't realize

there was a better way of doing things. So that's the job is to

educate them without calling their baby ugly, without telling

them that you know how they're doing things completely ass

backwards, you can do it in a way that's very professional and

polished. And that's something that I teach my clients how to

do it. It's called Mastering your message. But it begins with

really knowing about the problems you solve, and really

knowing how to develop questions that extract not if they have a

problem, but extract what their current situation is. So you can

then tell them, here's why this is a problem. I'm not sure if

you've ever thought about this, or you know, consider doing it

another way. But if you do, you can actually save this much time

to reinvest in these key areas, because most likely the things

that your software or your services are going to help

improve are things that they don't necessarily enjoy doing

their administrative tasks, there's tedious manual

processes, there's back and forth, no one loves doing that

stuff. So if you can automate some of that, usually it makes

people's lives easier, it makes their stress go down. So that's

the kind of conversation you want to be having with decision

makers that actually want to save time and want to improve

the quality of their work every day. So yeah, it's a totally

different skill set,

the thing that so many salespeople don't get.

And when I'm talking to teams, I'm like, You need to get your

product out of your head, you need to step into the buyers

world, right? So what are the challenges and that's exactly

what you're talking about what is the actual challenges that

they are having every single day that is making their life hard.

And sometimes you'll find those challenges are not actually

something that your software can solve today. Sometimes they have

so many more roadblocks before they can even conceptualize

whatever your product or service needs to do. And your job is to

help them say, hey, you know what, I have a partner, I have a

company I work with, I know someone who can actually help

you with XYZ, and what are they going to do? They're probably 70

to 80% of the time, they're going to come back to you once

that problem has been resolved and be like, Okay, thank you so

much for helping me solve that. Now. Can we talk about something

else? Yeah,

I mean, selling is helping, selling is helping?

Absolutely. Period. Here's the problem with sales. And I've

been thinking about a lot of this Wesleyne sales, a very

inward, me focused industry, business, it's very much about

my income, my quota attainment, my goal is my position on the

leader board, my recognition status, it's very much in the

ego driven, selfish, driven sales industry. And the reality

is that that can get you really far in a place where hustle and

grind and hard work is rewarded. And you could get the

recognition of those accolades from outworking everyone. And

you know, it could be celebrated. But when you're

selling a software, or service or anything strategic in nature,

the best salespeople, the highest successful salespeople

are the ones that actually leave their ego at the door. And they

realize, hey, it's not about me, it's about my customers in the

qualities that make a very, and I'm talking about the titans of

software, I'm talking about the elite, seven figure earners that

are making millions of dollars, more than business owners more

than doctors and lawyers and accountants selling software. I

know several people who have made north of a million dollars

a year in the way they sell is very differently. So the

qualities are not the grinder the qualities are not the person

that's just hustling and focused on their own commission and

their own goals. What those sellers are doing differently is

they're actually focusing on the customer outcomes and the

customer problems. And in order to really dig deep and

understand what the customer is really going through, especially

in a large enterprise where it's very complex. And maybe this is

built over years or decades, in some cases of what's led to

these problems or these pain points. It's not some easy

thing. It's like an onion, you have to peel back. And there

might be multiple reasons and systems, why things are the way

they are. But in order to discover that you actually have

to be curious, you actually have to be empathetic, you have to be

very patient, you actually have to give a damn and care about

your clients. Those qualities right are sometimes counter

intuitive to the qualities which are rewarded or recognized when

you get into the industry of sales. So you have to make that

transition from an inward focused salesperson to an

outward focus salesperson who cares more about helping your

clients get the results they want, then you getting the

results you want, especially if You sell in the enterprise, and

you only have a few accounts that you're responsible for that

are multibillion dollar accounts, which is what I manage

at Salesforce as an account director. So it really does

require leaving your ego at the door and actually shifting your

focus to how you can help them. And when you do that, you get

helped in multiple intervals, it comes back to you tenfold, when

you just make it about others, everything you want more comes

back to you when it comes to income, recognition,

fulfillment, right? So that's the shift. That's the sales

transformation I wanted to make is helping people get out of

this me focus and make it about you focus in frankly, I think

that's what God put us on this earth to do is to help other

people and love other people in the sales industry doesn't

always lend itself well to that. And it's so much pressure that

we just, you know, we make it so much about ourselves. And that's

the opposite of what's needed to really get the best results for

your career. So that's kind of why I'm here. That's why I'm

doing what I'm doing. Anyway,

I love it. You mentioned that you had a three

year period, if you didn't hit quota, and you decided to invest

in yourself, a lot of times sales, people think, Well, I'm

not hitting my quota, I'm not getting what I need for my

company. So I'm just gonna find another job, they don't stop and

say maybe I should take some kind of ownership of my own

destiny, maybe I should kind of put some money behind it because

it's going to pay dividends. So walk us through that three year

period where you were really, you didn't know how to trust

yourself, you felt like I don't know what I'm doing. And that

decision you made to invest in your own development?

Well, you know, like many salespeople that are

underperforming, I tended to blame external circumstances,

those first couple years. So the first year I didn't perform, I

blamed my territory, I said, Well, this other reps have the

top accounts, I was Rookie of the Year, my first year, why

don't I get the top accounts, it was a very kind of resentful,

bitter kind of period. And because those thoughts were

going in my head, I actually didn't show up my best every

day. And then I didn't perform. And in all fairness, I didn't

have great accounts I didn't have I have, you know, six

accounts. And I think two or three of them ended up going

bankrupt. So there was some territory considerations. But I

also had a boss that generally saw me as a number he didn't, I

didn't feel like he cared about me as a person, I was just

someone who helped him succeed, rather than someone who he

wanted to make successful. That's how I felt, you know,

we've all had bosses, at least some of us have had bosses like

that, where you just feel like they care more about themselves

than you. And that wasn't the good experience. So I blamed him

a little bit, I blame my territory a little bit, then I

missed the number. And then the second year, I was still working

for that same boss, and I missed it again. And I had the same

territory. And it was like, man, you know what, I gotta change

teams, I gotta leave teams, I have to go to another division.

And I have two choices, I can leave the company and I actually

had a job offer from Microsoft. And because I felt so entitled,

the job offer wasn't as high as someone else who I knew that

went to Microsoft, and I turned it down. And I said, I'm just

gonna stay at Salesforce and Change division. So I go to the

commercial division of Salesforce, which instead of

having, you know, 510 accounts, I had 50 accounts. So I'm like,

I need more at bats. I'm a transactional guy, I'm going to

sell great in the transactional world. And I just need a

different boss in a different territory. So I switched

territories, I was given an opportunity to transfer to the

commercial team in that year, I said, I'm going to give

everything I can and I tripled down on my hard work on my

effort. I had a great boss had a great territory, I had all the

opportunity in the world. And I was sitting at 95%, of quota

going to the last day of the year, I was told that I was

gonna get one deal in that all I had to do was to come by and

pick up the paperwork in the office and went go pick up the

paperwork from the President, she said, everything looks good,

the CFO approved it, the CEO approved it, I just need to make

one phone call. And she tells me to wait outside, she keeps me

waiting outside for over an hour while she's on the phone

speaking Chinese. And she comes back and she says in I'm sorry,

but we can't do the deal today. Now, keep in mind, this was the

last day of the fiscal year, okay. And I had everything

riding on this, I changed teams, I changed territories, I done

everything in my power to control my destiny. And now she

tells me we can't do the deal. I said, why? What do you mean,

everyone's approved it? And she said, Well, I talked to our

parent company in China, and our CIO in China said they're doing

something similar with CRM in China, they don't want us to

sign off until we can compare what they're doing to what we're

doing. And that's gonna take a few weeks, and so we can't sign

the deal the last day of the year, and I said, that's

garbage. Let me talk to the CIO. It's not the same week for six

months, like let me talk to him and she gave me his phone

number. She's like, Look, if you can convince the CIO to do it,

then I'll sign you know, and I literally was in her office till

like six or seven o'clock, waiting for her to come out and

she finally kicked me out of the office. And she's like, I gotta

go home, try and get the CIO on the phone can do and I was

calling nothing. I was emailing nothing, and I kept calling till

like 10 or 11. At night. Finally the guy picks up he's like, em,

what is going on? I got your email, like, why do you want me?

I said, this is the last day of our fiscal year. You have to

sign this deal we've been working on six months, the deal

goes away tomorrow, if you don't sign, you guys are gonna miss

out, you got to do it. And he said in, I'm on vacation with my

family. This is not how I work, I have to go collect. And that

was my rock bottom. That was my rock bottom. I remember sitting

in the mirror, staring at myself, it was home, I'll never

forget it, I had a blistering headache, my head was throbbing,

I looked at myself. And it was like an out of body experience.

I couldn't even recognize myself in the mirror. And I just I was

at such a low feeling of failure on that last fiscal year after

I'd done everything to do that and still fallen short. At that

point. I'm like, I don't know what I need to do. I don't know

who I need to do. But I know that I can't do it on my own, I

need to get help. And once you get to that point, and I'm in

addiction recovery, I've been sober for two and a half years,

and I have given up a lot of vices and a lot of things in my

personal life that weren't serving me anymore with my

family and with my job and anything. And so I know the

importance of hitting that rock bottom, because I've had to do

it in sales to get help, but also in my personal life with

addiction to go get help. And when you hit that point where

you are humbled and you say, You know what, my way is not the

right way, my way is causing pain, my way is, you know, not

sustainable, that's when you become receptive. And that's

when the universe and God will invite people into your life to

go help you. And that's when all the answers will appear. But you

have to have a humble heart and a humble mind to be able to see

and acknowledge and accept those things, those opportunities. And

that's exactly what happened to me is right after that time, all

these opportunities to get help started emerging. I learned

about this program, I also got a mentor at Salesforce. And it

just, you know, everything was happening to serve him to take

me to this place where I could actually get better, if you

will, in the sales world. And that was my story. So that's

kind of the evolution of those three years, it was like from

one thing, pointing the finger to another thing pointing the

finger. And finally, I had to point the finger at myself. And

that's when I actually got help.

Wow, that story that was so impactful. I mean,

when you really talk about hitting rock bottom, like

literally being in somebody's office, thinking about me,

myself, I got to hit this number, it's the end of our

fiscal year, I don't care what you have going on, you're on

vacation with the family that matters to me, not I gotta hit

my number. And without you, I'm not gonna hit my number, and

really having that realization, like, it's not all about me, I

have to do something differently. And then in your

personal life, even sharing your journey of your recovery, right,

and I congratulate you on being two and a half years sober. That

is an amazing accomplishment. But really, when you see all of

those different bits and pieces, and all the different things you

had to do to realize I must do something different.

Yeah, you're right. And it's funny, you mentioned

that, like, that's what you took away from that story. Because

that was the thing that needed to change, that selling is all

about me and closing deals and my quota and my trip, I mean,

this deal would have put me on trip would have got me to like

130%, it was a decent sized deal. I mean, I had everything

riding on it, I did not care about the client. In fact, I was

in that situation. And I told myself, never again, I will

never be in a situation where I'm pressuring a client on

January 31, to do a deal they're not ready for. So I can hit my

number in the fiscal year, I need to be proactive, I need to

get ahead of that I need to get my numbers Well, early before

that. And so I don't have that pressure that I'm applying to my

clients. And in fact, there was a deal earlier that month, where

I put the same kind of pressure, and I lost it as well. So that

forced me to put more pressure on the other clients. So

pressure doesn't work when you put pressure on something that

cracks and breaks. And that's exactly what happens to our

clients. So my way of selling now is truly a no pressure

selling like this is good for you. I'm here to help you. If

you're not ready, and you don't want it. There's plenty of

people that do want my help my time, my resources, my team. So

it sounds like you're not a fit sounds like you don't want to

change something you don't have a problem. I'm going to spend

time elsewhere. Thank you for your time. Like that's exactly

how I sell now. And when you're pressuring when it feels like

you're pressuring when it feels like you're pushing somebody to

do something, they're they're not ready for it you don't want

it feels disgusting, it feels really icky. And that's kind of

what I teach in my sales coaching is like how do you help

people and shift this focus from pressuring someone to do

something that helping them get what they want and understanding

what they want and giving them a path to get what they want

making it easy for them to do business with you by designing a

really good experience that they can follow in purchasing and

working with you. So this is all kind of coming together now with

what I teach and when a coach it's been I'm the Dean of the

enterprise sales school over at pavilion and you know, what I'm

teaching has literally arose from years and years of doing it

the wrong way. And then crossing the chasm and realizing, hey,

this other way of doing it feels better clients respond better.

And by the way, my income tripled. I went from averaging

around $250,000 a year which is certainly no chump change. It's

pretty good in sales to averaging around 750 My last few

years of Salesforce so this way of selling not only did wonders

for the client, but actually, it did wonders for my family and my

income and enabled me to retire from sales at 43 to go pursue my

dream, and now help people full time, which I don't think I

would have been able to do had I not had the financial security

to take that risk and to actually, you know, say goodbye

to what was very stable and what I've gotten very good at. So I

just feel like every salesperson listening needs to make that

shift, that is the biggest shift you can make is to put your ego

at the door to humble yourself, and to actually become an empty

vessel is what I like to use, like air, an empty vessel,

you're nothing let God shine through you let your skills,

your experience or knowledge, let love shine through you on to

the people you're meeting with. And it'll come out naturally,

because you care, you're empathetic. So when you make it

about your agenda, you're trying to impress people, the best way

to impress people is to stop trying to impress, okay, you

leave the best impression when you're not trying to be

impressed them. You're just trying to learn and ask

questions and actually be curious, okay, another way to

say this is, if you want to be interesting to others, you need

to be interested in others. And that's the people skills which

the world needs in, especially the sales world needs, is just

stop making it about you and your company, and your products

and your services, and your demos and your bullshit and make

it about understanding your customers and what their world

looks like and figure out how you can help them. And if you

can help them great, the sales gonna come naturally, if you

can't, you know what, you're just gonna save a lot of time

pushing them to something they don't want to do. So that's

really in a nutshell, what I think is how to become an elite

seller. And that's how I got there myself is by making that

shift.

That's amazing. A few of the things that I kind

of want to highlight from what you said is, there's nothing

like hitting your quota three months before the fiscal year

ending, and you're just cruise control. And having being able

to make that systematize, where year after year, you're like

three months. And it's like, yeah, okay, I'm done anything

else is just gravy, and really stepping out of yourself and

realizing that no one cares about you, I'd love to say that

nobody actually cares about you, your mom, your dad, your spouse,

your kids, they care about you, but your customers actually

don't care about you or the product that you're selling. It

is all about them when you're talking to them. And they know

if you're into them, or if you're just trying to get

information to sell them. So really the thing that I like to

sum up what you say is serve, don't sell, right, find a way to

serve each and every customer, each and every prospect don't

sell. So you mentioned this paradigm shift the way that

enterprise sellers really need to change the way that they sell

the things that they say when they're out there in the field,

give us two or three things that you could help someone who was

on that bubble, they are struggling, they don't know what

to do, how to do when to push forward? What are some of the

two or three things that you would tell them to start today?

Well, what I did when I made this shift, like in

terms of actionable items is there's an old Paret it's called

The Pareto principle. It's the 8020 rule is what it's known

for. And it says that 80% of your revenue comes from 20% of

your clients. And so what I did is I picked my top 20%. So I had

a list of maybe it this time, it's interesting, after it

became number one at Salesforce, then I got promoted, I went to

the enterprise select Group, and I ended up going from commercial

back to enterprise. So it's funny how that worked out. But

fundamentally, the 8020 rule is that you need to pick your top

accounts and you need to focus there, a lot of people are

spending a lot of time on smaller opportunities, what I

did is I spent a lot more time on fewer opportunities, but they

were larger in nature. So that's the first thing is you know,

pick your your 20%. So if you have an account list of 10, pick

your top two that you're gonna go all in at, if you have a list

of 50, pick your top 10 accounts, right so that

segmentation and focus is number one. Number two is within those

accounts, you want to heavily research two components of

research that I do. Number one is account research. So

understanding what they sell, how they make money, what's

happening in their business, looking at the news, looking at

their marketing, become a customer if you have any b2b to

see or b2c customers actually go to their stores or buy their

products or go online or sign up for their newsletters or go on

their website and play around or go to their portal like whatever

you can do to go through the customer experience. So you can

have a very specific point of view on how you can help that

customer based on the research you're done. Do that right?

Again, that requires caring that requires patience that requires

a deep dive deep work is what my good friend Brandon foolhardy

calls it doing deep work on the account. Okay, that's the second

thing you can do in terms of research. And then there's the

individual research so once you've researched the account

what they do, then you want to research the people in the

account because ultimately, it's people who ended up sponsoring

your product or service and buying people that are the

champions of the cause that you're helping them with. So you

need to find out who are the key people in those accounts and

specifically who are the key executives in the accounts to go

after a lot of salespeople are afraid to go after senior

executives, they have imposter syndrome. They don't think they

can add value. What I did is I said, You know what I gotta get

over. It's not about me executives are the ones who

stand to gain or lose the most from the current situation. So I

need to be talking to the executives who can make

decisions, power compresses, deal cycles. So map out the key

executives in the departments that you actually can impact or

sell to, and then do the research on them. Look at what

news have they been on? Have they been on podcasts? Have they

done videos before? Have they gone to keynotes and given

speeches and literally take the time to listen to those

podcasts, watch what they're saying. And then pull out data

points of what they're sharing that you can use specifically

for prospecting, Hey, I saw you from this conference, you said

X, Y, and Z, I believe we can help you with X, Y, and Z would

you be open to meeting right? When you send that kind of

message to an executive it stands out versus every generic

sequence that they get from every other salesperson. And

then you have to be very diligent and following up

because executives are busy. Even if you have the perfect

message, it still takes on average eight to 12 touch points

before you book a meeting with an executive. So you need to

continue to follow up and be organized. And then the last

thing that I would say you can do so again, segment your

accounts, do research on the accounts and the people within

them, start targeting and personalize your prospecting.

And the last thing I'd say you need to do is go get help

actually, if you failed on your own, and you're trying to do it

on your own, go get help and frickin fork out some money. I'm

not talking about just watching free YouTube videos or watching

free podcasts. Because if you've already been doing that, and

you're not getting the results, okay, then it's not enough, go

get help from a mentor or a coach or join a mastermind or a

program that can actually give you hands on guidance and

support and coaching to get you to that next level. You cannot

do it alone. If you could, you already would have done it on

your own. So humble yourself and realize like what you're doing

isn't working in that accountability and having that

mentorship and knowing learning from someone who's already been

on that path is the fastest path to success modeling once they

learn to model other people. And I've done that in my coaching

business, I modeled the top coaches that model the top

solopreneurs my coaching business has been on fire. So

fundamentally, I am a firm believer of learning from the

best in skipping the learning curves. Why pay tuition if you

don't have to, and someone's already paid the tuition for you

so forth, got some money, the best investment you can make is

in yourself. Jim Rohn says if you invest in a job, you can

make a living. If you invest in yourself, you'll make a fortune.

And that's been my personal experience. I've never stopped

investing myself, whether it's with you know, the sales

training or whether it's with the addiction recovery, having a

sponsor and having therapy or whether it's with my coaching

business, having mentors and being part of coaching

masterminds, I've continued to invest in myself, you know, for

the past five plus years, and it's reaped amazing dividends.

So that's the third thing people can do is find somebody that you

can learn from that you can get support from and sign up for the

program. There's a plethora of whether it's me or whether it's

someone else's a plethora of resources for sales, coaching,

and sales support, and go learn from people who've done it. So

you don't have to go pay the tuition.

Wow, you just gave us a whole masterclass mini

MBA on what to do if you are a salesperson that is not

currently hitting quota achieving goals. And you know, I

would say even if you're right at the bubble, you're like

barely squeezing in at the end of the each month or the end of

each year, there's room for you to grow. And what I really got

from you is that it's really all about doing the deep hard work,

figuring out your top clients, understanding who they are, what

they do all these things that are behind the scenes, and then

investing in yourself. And so if you really are serious about

becoming that top salesperson and I always like to say when I

talk to sales leaders, because you know, I like to talk to the

leaders that are causing the salespeople to do all these

things. I tell the leaders that your goal should be every single

person on the team should be hitting quota every single

month. It's not just looking at it the end of the year. But if

you're not hitting quota, at least 10 months out of 12 then

there is room for you to grow. And there are resources there

are things that you can do to actually get better. So I am

curious, do you have a way that people can get in touch with you

or an offer or something they can do if they want to know

more? Yeah,

there's so many resources I have for the sales

community. The first resources is my LinkedIn I post every day

follow me on LinkedIn if you want send me a DM the second

resource is my newsletter. And if you send me a LinkedIn

request connection request or a DM I'll get you the link to that

but it's just untap your sales potential.com/newsletter Again,

untapped your sales potential.com/newsletter That's

the second resource. The third resource is my YouTube channel.

It's just the in Kodiak YouTube. If you Google me you'll see that

resource in the fourth resource is my mastermind class my

coaching program, which is a group of elite sales performers.

It's been sold out since it's in reception, I will be opening up

spots in December again for my next cohort, and there is a

waitlist of over 1000 people on it, but it is a first come first

serve waitlist. So if I blast it out to the entire waitlist, and

whoever signs up first is the one who gets in the program. So

it's limited to 100 spots. And we'll be opening in December and

the link for that is untapped your sales

potential.com/waitlist. If you're not ready to go on the

waitlist yet, just go on on top your sales potential.com. And

you can read all about the program. And what's included.

It's a one year membership, where you get coaching

mentorship and part of a community with me leading every

single week and even private one on one calls with me where I can

help you through your deals or whatever personal challenges

that you're trying to face, whether it's habits mindsets, or

just trying to break through that chasm that I talked about

and become your your best self. That's what I do for a living

now. And it's a great source of joy and fulfillment to help

others get to their elite level performance. So that's how you

can get a hold of me and I look forward to serving you at the

highest level.

Awesome. And all those links will be in the show

notes, guys. So you can click on them as you're listening as

we're wrapping up this time where we have gotten a complete

masterclass on how to go from being ordinary to extraordinary

and enterprise sales. And so I thank you so much for your time,

your talent and your expertise today. And you shared all the

ways that people can get in contact with you as we wrap up

this episode. What are the last words or the last thing you want

to leave with the listener, I'm going to

steal a line from the great Zig Ziglar. And he

says, If you help enough people get what they want, you will

always get what you want. So focus on understanding what

people want what your customers want, and show them how you can

help them get it and you will watch your results in your life

transform.

That is amazing. And you ended it with the best

word transform. Thank you so much. This has been an amazing

episode. I've learned a lot from you. And I know that my

listeners have had a rich experience. And so that was

another episode of the transform sales podcast. Remember in all

that you do and every day try to get one person better so that

you can transform your sales until next time