No One Graduates from the School of Sales

[0:00] If you want practical ideas that you can implement immediately to get instant results, you should listen to my episode. But if that's not important to you, don't listen. Welcome to the Full Funnel Freedom Podcast. If you are listening to this, you are likely leading a team responsible for generating revenue. Purpose of Full Funnel Freedom is to support people like yourself and keep your.

[0:30] Music. Welcome to the Full Funnel Freedom Podcast. I'm your host, Hamish Knox. Today, I am really excited to have Tony Morris as my guest today. Tony's why is to empower, develop, and inspire a million people around the world to be the best versions of themselves in the world of sales by delivering the sales methodology ask, attract.

[0:30] Funnels consistently, reliably full.

[0:59] Solve, and keep clients long-term through a variety of platforms. Tony, welcome to Full Funnel Freedom. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. I think you articulated my why better than I do, so I appreciate it. You're very, very welcome. Well, I've given the audience the 30,000-foot view of you and your story.

[1:18] Take us down a level. Tell us where you started and how you got to where you are today. Really, sales, I guess, began at school. i was 14 years old i used to buy we had some kind of tuck shop so i used to buy sweets and then sell them for a profit and realized that i i just loved it i loved the buzz was better than the money you earned right um so i suppose my first job in sales was in a call center i sold utilities and i became their top seller very quickly out of 300 people and i think what i did differently was my i was tenacious, never quit, and I didn't want to cause anyone else, and really those two things were a big factor, so I then sold software, address management software for five years, that was my first, I guess, entry into the professional world, you know, spin selling was what we learned, you know, I'm sure you're familiar with.

[2:13] And then I set my company up in May 2006. So, yeah, I've trained probably about 100,000 salespeople now across 32 countries, across 61 industries. So, yeah, it's been a cool journey. What an incredible story,

[2:29] Tony. Thank you for sharing that with us and appreciate you being a guest today. So, I love this idea of tenacity and, you know, always, you know, doing those extra activities. Of course, at some point we time out, right? There's 24 hours in a day, and our buyers don't want us necessarily calling them at midnight. So folks, take that with a grain of salt. So as you've been working with sales leaders and sellers in 32 countries around the world, 61 industries, what are a couple of those common threads that you've seen that align with how you got to be successful early on? The common threads in the sales teams, you mean, the sales professionals? Yeah, I think there could be two or three standouts. One is the ability to listen. And what I notice with most professionals is they seem to listen to respond as opposed to listen to learn. And I think if I look at the greatest salespeople, they don't miss a trick. And I call it your opportunity antenna.

[3:28] And we've all got one, but most is switched off. I think that's the first big trait. rate um the second is the the art of great questions because you can be an amazing listener but if your questions aren't great not much to you're not going to get the best outcome or the best desired outcome right um and i think attitude is key and what i mean by that is not that you just wake up smiling every day right and look in the mirror say you're the best what i mean by that we're they're receptive to learn they know that not everything's going to lead to a sale but they're very open to that and they have the courage to ask for help and they want to constantly invest themselves be it read books webinars podcasts etc because they just want to keep learning and there was a guy called art subjects the first book i read in sales called smart calling awesome guy and he's no one graduates from the school of selling and that's That's pretty stood out to me. So I think, yeah, they're the three sort of common things I see in top producers.

[4:33] Okay, I had another question ready for you, but I am very curious. No one graduates from the School of Selling.

[4:39] Unpack that for the sales leaders who are listening today. So whenever I interview a salesperson and a sales leader is looking to grow and recruit their team, the first question I'll ever ask is, what's the three best sales development books you've ever read and why? And if I can't answer that, that's a concern, that's a red flag. And I think the way I view this is if you're not prepared to invest in yourself, then why should companies invest in you?

[5:10] And I think you look at the best in the world, Hamish, forget sales, the best sports people, the best musicians, the best anyone, they all practice, they learn, they grow to develop. No one is finished. And for me, if Djokovic still has a coach, no one can question anything after that point, you know.

[5:33] You and I are very aligned on that. In fact, in our organization, one of our key hiring parts of our hiring is a prospective candidate has to invest in themselves to go through a portion of our program. And then I tell them, I'll pay you back. Right. If you make it, I'll pay you back. If you don't make it, well, you probably learn something that you can use to on your career. And actually, my very first seller that I hired said, well, if I'm not going

[6:01] to invest in myself, how can I convince anybody to invest in them? And correct they didn't actually work out but that mindset that you talked about about no one ever graduates from the school of sales is really really powerful just to add to that so something i always suggest my boss told me this 22 years ago which is have a sales bible so anytime you learn anything when you're listening to one of your team when you're out on a pitch make a note of key things you learn because we all learn so much right and then we forget it record questions Questions, rebuttals, statements, things you pick up and think, I love that. That's gold. And I'm going to use that in my, you know, my pitch, my approach. Amen.

[6:41] That resonates with me because we often don't do win analysis, right? Too often when we do postmortems, it's like, why did we lose? But we don't take those, why did we win? What were those things that we can then replicate? So that's a brilliant sales

[6:55] leaders who are listening. The sales Bible, you've heard me talk a playbook. do what Tony suggests record those things and support your sellers and on that two key points right one is as leaders we should have success meetings once and bring the team in with their success bibles and let's talk about the big wins let's talk about the best lessons so we learned, so what did we learn what how did that help let's talk about success stories as in case studies what What can we take from them? And what's inside the industry that we should be talking about?

[7:30] So I'm a big believer in success meetings and success bibles. But I think the other thing that leaders really got to touch on is to help the sales team with mindset. You know, what strategies are they suggesting to get, you know, every day to make it a sales day? And how they go about that, I think that's a huge part of the success process, you know. but when you get feedback from a client.

[7:58] We all say, why do people buy from us? What we say is irrelevant. Hear what your clients say. And I think that your UCB, your unique client benefit, I'm not a big fan of USPs, but I'm a big fan of unique client benefits. And once we hear the words of why our clients buy, we use that in our pictures. We want to hear your burning questions about sales and sales management. Whether you're curious about strategies, challenges, or career advice, send us your questions. We'll be addressing them in one of our upcoming episodes, providing ideas and insights to help you excel in your sales career. You can submit your questions in the link in the show notes.

[8:40] So don't hesitate, shoot your questions our way and help shape a future discussion. Thanks for listening to Full Funnel Freedom.

[8:50] Ultimately, when it comes from us or it comes from one of our sellers, the buyer is inherently distrustful because like, oh, you're a sales guy, you're trying to pitch me something. Whereas if we have that UCB that you just talked about, we say, hey, here's why people buy from us or why do you think people buy from us? And then, well, I don't know, say, well, here's a couple of clients in your vertical or in your geography that are working with us. So great insight for the podcast listeners today, day, Tony, around success meetings, success Bibles, and this unique client benefit that we can integrate. We can integrate. And what leaders should also look to do, I think this is key, is I call it your A to Z of success.

[9:29] So I mentioned, as you touched on, I've worked in 61 industries. So say B is banking. Sure. So I have a sheet, like in a playbook. So my sales team know if we get an inquiry about banking or if they're doing outreach to say Deloitte, they can name who we've helped in that space. What their problems were and the results of working with us. Amazing. So we can use that in our elevator pitch because it's there as a document for people to benefit from, you know. Very cool. That is another great insight for me as well, right? Like have those that, you know, wherever you work, A to Z, and have those cheat sheets or have those playbook sheets in there to support your sellers in going to market in that vertical or in that geography, whatever that might be. Tony, you brought up opportunity antenna earlier. That was what I was very curious about because I like this visual of the opportunity antenna. And what I heard is most of us, most sellers have it switched off. So tell us a bit more about that and how sales leaders might be able to turn the antenna back on.

[10:35] Great, great question. So a prime example is a company called Select Car Leasing. They're the second largest car leasing company in the country. They sponsor Reading Football Club, 180 salespeople. And they do what they do, something called BCH, business contract hire. So they do fleets and then PCH, personal contract hire. And this guy, Max, was chatting to a new prospect and ultimately he qualified. She wants a new vehicle because she's just been given a job. They've given her a car now, blah, blah, blah. and he got the deal and he looked to me after the call and he said i'm shit talks right and i said thank brilliant i said but you missed something and he just couldn't put his finger on him right and i said just talk about why she wants a car and he said for a company okay any ideas and he was like shit if she's been given a car allowance how many other people have been given a car allowance so he called her back to onboard her to the success manager and said you mentioned you're starting a new job who's it with there was a company called sap i said how many people are at your office like you getting an allowance and it was about three and a half thousand staff and that year honestly in that year you won 320 clients 320 fleet deals on the back of that and And his commission went from £200 to like £18,000 on that one phone call.

[12:04] Incredible. So that's why he went to go.

[12:06] Incredible. That is a great illustration of listening, like you said earlier, right? Those things that we didn't pick up. By the way, it's also a great illustration, sales leaders, of double jacking or listening to calls, whatever that might be, and coaching your seller through. Because if Tony wasn't there to support that seller, they would have thought they were shit hot and they would have got 200 pounds of commission that year instead of 18,000. And the leaders should be questioning the team. Say, right, let's look at your pipeline. Great. What other opportunities came out of those prospects? And if you're spotting them, it's like, okay, you're missing something. They're there. You're just not listening to them. Leaders have to keep, it's ultimately they've got to give ownership and accountability to the sales team. but they can help facilitate that, you know? Yeah, well ultimately the sales leader shouldn't be doing the selling because why do they have sellers, right? Like that's what you hired them for and they're the support and guide. Like you said, you know, Jokovic has a coach, you know, Yo-Yo Ma has a coach, you know, whatever, however you want to slice and dice success, the top performers all invest in themselves and they all have coaches. They never feel that they stop learning.

[13:22] We've got this opportunity funnel or opportunity antenna. We've got our antennas turned on because we're listening now. You also shared earlier about asking really good questions. And from my experience, a lot of sales leaders and a lot of sellers think they do.

[13:38] And in reality, they don't. So first of all, let's talk about what bad questions or uninformed average questions look like.

[13:47] And then we can transition over to what some of the good questions might be. so if i listen to my sales team when they start obviously i do coaching naturally with them but they'd ask like you know if you used a training company what are your goals what are you looking to achieve what problems have you got and they're okay they're what i would surface level questions right but yes they don't deep dive and there's nothing different to other training companies so what i noticed when they're asking stuff like what's your goal right to all these different training prospects 99 i want to make more sales i want to grow my revenue right because it was a bad question so my my thought is if you ask a bad question don't expect the right answer so what we have.

[14:37] To do is blame ourself and blame the question so i changed it to a future pace so i'll say to a director image imagine we fast forward six months from today day how do you know our training's been successful and when we ask that totally different answers improve morale conversion bottom line's gone up average deal size gone up blah blah blah so then you've got the real goal the real outcome so it's about it's about provoking you know thought provoking questions not and top surface level you know and that's just one example of changing one one question to another.

[15:18] Totally, and like you said, it's those surface level questions which are comfortable.

[15:22] We're all comfortable asking those. Hey, Tony, how's the weather? Right. That's to use a really gauche example as well. So when we're coaching and as you know, you coach your sellers, you coach leaders to coach their sellers. When you're coaching sales leaders to really instill this idea of asking good questions, how do you get the sales leader on board with this idea that the questions need to improve in order to get better results? So it's it starts with what what answers we actually want so i would as a sales leader i think right let's break down the criteria to quality disqualify which is what songs are about right to disqualify and qualify an opportunity and let's break down what that looks like and then say right based on that what is the the most the best questions to try and ascertain that information so here's an example so a sales leader should look at one of their team and say right who are the stakeholders within this opportunity and the salesperson will say you know tom dick and harry they'll say great so why did you only meet tom and the salesperson said well you know i said is it your decision and tom said yes so what could you have asked to find out who the other stakeholders were and then what would you have said to make sure all stakeholders were involved in that process.

[16:48] So really, the leader is there to, you know, going back, they need to know what criteria each salesperson should be getting, what then what questions should be designed to get that answer, and then questioning why that information is not being ascertained, because it will only be down to you're asking the wrong questions.

[17:07] Totally. And as a sales leader, just hearing you say that, I mean, I got a little uncomfortable, right if I'm a sales leader and you're now asking me to ask not only the surface level question but those second and third and fourth and fifth level to really ascertain the truth so that's a big step for a lot of sales leaders especially those that maybe want to be the player coach right or the player manager who just want to be liked so from your experience when you've got a sales leader who's got a bit of that need for approval or that desire to be be liked, what can they do to bridge that gap to baby step their way from I want to be liked to I need to be a leader? Amazing question. So I would say to that leader, what's the number one most important thing to you? Is it about being liked and being popular or is it about getting results? And once they answer that, if it's being liked and being popular, they shouldn't be a leader. Amen. Because that's not what a leader's about, right? Totally. It's a bit like me saying I want to be a boxer, but I don't like getting hit.

[18:12] So it's for me is what is your absolute why what's your why of what you're doing and what does success look like from your leader's lens and i think once you really understand that then it's about right what's the best way to instill that in my team and i think you've got to get your hands dirty i think as a leader you should be demonstrating it you should be getting on the phone and just demonstrating your not ability but your i guess the way you design and frame questions but then i'd get the sales team to give you feedback because what you're demonstrating is you're happy to turn up and do it you're open to feedback and you're developing the sales team's ability to identify where they can improve because if they don't know where they get better so hard to get them better totally and i believe lead dog sets the pace so that you know we learn by as leaders by doing by demonstrating and and for some sales leaders who are listening I appreciate that you come out of non-sales backgrounds, right? You're out of operations or accounting and you're like, I've never sold. That's fine. Listen to what Tony said. What's the most important thing? The most important thing as a sales leader, ultimately, get results. Get to that top of that mountain. And the truth is, Hamish, yes, leaders are going to be uncomfortable. They're not from the background. They're engineers.

[19:31] They're now selling engineering products. But the truth is, if they expect their sales team to have discomfort, comfort, then they've got no excuse, right? And for me, you know, comfort zone is danger zone. Comfort zone is danger zone.

[19:49] So when we look at mindset now, and you've highlighted mindset a couple of times, we're very aligned on that. I'm a very big believer in mindset and, you know, that whoever, if you think you can or think you can't, you're right. I think it's a Henry Ford quote.

[20:03] True. And we can't just have a bunch of people sitting around going, I think I can't. So now that we've got our mindsets on right as sales leaders, coaching our sellers on mindset, because that's a little esoteric, right? That's not like here's what you say to a buyer who says your price is too high or you're not experienced or whatever. How can how can sales leaders effectively have mindset conversations with their sellers to make them feel comfortable?

[20:30] To actually implement so there's a few things i think the first thing is does the leader really know what motivates and demotivates the salesperson often they know one not the other so that's the first thing and with that motivation i don't want to hear money money's irrelevant as how what are we doing with that right yeah what amount when how's that being utilized so i think that's the first thing yeah i think the second to understand what really um what part of the process the the salesperson dreads or is is really uncomfortable with because if we can help that then it's going to go up and then they'll get better results and then they're mine right so it's that snowball effect love it i think the other the other point right is about what i want them to focus sales focus on what they did achieve not what they didn't achieve so often they'll have a week of prospecting go got no meetings and the leader will be like what are you doing you know where's it going wrong whereas as a leader i want to say so what did you get how many decision makers details did you get how many companies in your pipeline did you disqualify their positives but so many leaders are focusing just on the numbers and the results and it's not about that so it's about all the little things that's going to lead to that result so i think i think that's really key and i I think the other thing is I would have, I call it my sales library.

[21:54] So I would, as a leader, I would be getting books that your team need to be reading, that podcasts they should be listening to like this, webinars they should be watching, because all these things feed the mind.

[22:08] And I think the final point about the mindset is really getting it is your motto. Your motto as a leader. And for me, the best motto that I've seen is catch them doing something right. Yes.

[22:23] Often it's the opposite and i think the reason sales people can get quite down and panicky in a meeting is they're waiting to be picked on they're waiting to have that negative conversation because if a leader can reframe it the motivation morale will stay up and the right mindset will be there i believe very fair and because in sales we hear no more than we hear yes and you know so we We get rejected more often. And if our leader is rejecting us as well, that's eventually going to create this downward spiral. So catch the news of the goods. Correct. And on that, just one more point. You're going to always get more notes than yeses, right? But it's about your conversion. Yes. And I also call it your leader needs to help the team reverse engineer. So in simple terms, if we know an average deal size is £1,000 commission for a salesperson, and I know they do two meetings to do a deal. Every meeting's worth £500. Okay. And I know if they do 10 pitches to get a meeting, every pitch is then worth £50. So when a salesperson thinks about a bad day, I've done three pitches, no appointments, the leader says, well, you've earned £150 commission because they don't see it like that. So it's the leader's job to be able to teach the salesperson about know their figures, know their convention and know, reverse engineer the numbers.

[23:48] Brilliant. One of my coaches actually gave me similar advice. And I think it was every time I dialed the phone, I made $71.62 Canadian or something. And I actually had it in a jar on my desk. So when I was feeling down, I could look at it and be like, you know, I just made a dial or let me make a dial. I'm going to make $71.62 just by picking up the phone and dialing a number. Tony, as a sales leader who has expanded into.

[24:15] Multiple different countries, help our sales leaders understand how they need to coach their teams to adjust because we're all fairly myopic as humans. And so we think that what works in Canada is going to work in the UK or vice versa or wherever. So what are some of the learnings that you've had as a sales leader about international expansion that our audience could apply to their worlds? So it's funny, I've learned it from my mistakes, right, Right. Which is where the learning is. So I did a conference in Germany and it was a company called Villaroy and Bock. And I was their headline sales speaker. Right. And I and I use some humor about habit formation at the end of the talk. And in the UK, I get rules of love because it makes the point. And it's hilarious. Germany, the exact opposite.

[25:03] 400 Germans. Right. And I thought, this is gone so badly. And it's about knowing your audience so i think you do need to understand the culture and i think the way we do that is is actually interview the clients that maybe you've won businesses one in those countries right and i think the other thing is about you know sales is adapting right the best sales people you know hamish are chameleons so for me it's about understanding the behaviors and profiles of the different stakeholders and then knowing how do we adapt to that so it's the The leaders need to help their team identify the right behavior traits of who the sales team is selling to and then making sure they know how to adapt to those behaviors, irrespective of culture, because that's really what it's going to come down to. Brilliant. That's a great insight, Tony. Thank you for sharing that with our audience of sales leaders today. I have a few questions before we wrap up our visit today. You and I could probably talk about this stuff all day long, but we both have lots on the go. So first question, if you could go back and coach younger Tony, go back as far as you like and go, hey, younger Tony, in the future, you're going to have this amazing company. You could be supporting people around the world. You're also going to have a lot of scar tissue and bumps and bruises.

[26:16] What would you coach younger Tony to say or do different to get to the same place with a little less scar tissue and fewer bumps and bruises? I would say make as many mistakes as you can. I would say record every mistake but then look at as what where's the lesson what can i learn from that mistake i mean that's the first biggest tip i'd say and i'd also say is model yourself from top performers so any company you work with find out and you'll know quickly who's the top one or two performers sit next to them question them listen to their calls go out for a beer literally sponge as a sponge get everything you can out of them and then bring that in your own style so i think they're the two big things and i guess the third is invest in yourself yeah keep learning don't fail as many times as you can and then sit with the best in your company and learn from them what are they doing.

[27:13] Brilliant. And that actually ties into the next question, which is, what have you read, watched, or listened to either recently or in the past you would recommend to the audience of sales leaders to check out for their own personal development? So much. Probably most recently, my two best books was Never Split the Difference, Chris Voss, an FBI negotiator. I love that negotiation. And I've just finished a book called Surrounded by Idiots, Thomas Erickson. Yes. and it's all around behaviors but he wrote another one i've not read called surrounded by psychos which i've heard is also very good and some leaders have been described as psychos because they can be on that on that line right um but yeah for me there were two amazing books because it gave you strategies how to negotiate but you know i i like something that's practical and real both of those books get you know furnish me with ideas that i can actually implement rather than theory. So they're probably the two best. And then I'm listening to Dyer of a CEO. I find that an amazing podcast.

[28:16] I just, I love Stephen Ball. I think he's got so much value to share. So yeah, I'm listening to that most evenings as well. Very cool. Thank you for those recommendations for our audience. The final question I have for you, Tony, is you've already given us so many great ideas and insights today. What do you have as a closing bit of wisdom, a final thought or something to plug before it's yours? Yeah, definitely get my book. so coffees for closers but but the reason i do recommend the book is when i started out in sales um there's every book i read i just it was a lot of theory and i thought that sounds so good but i don't know how i can apply that so for me coffees for closers was about the real thing the real life that you can learn from laugh at and implement so i guess my my final pearls of wisdom is be just We're all salespeople everywhere we go. And what I would consciously start to do is be aware of where you're being sold to. So when you go to Starbucks and they say, would you like a medium or a large? Notice they don't say, would you like a small one? When you go to a nice restaurant and they say still or sparkling, they do that because you're going to order still or sparkling. These are all clever sales techniques. techniques and i think it's very important we're all very conscious and aware of those because then we can use those and put them into our our patter and our pitch very cool what a great way to wrap up tony thank you for being a guest on full funnel freedom today.

[29:42] My pleasure. Thank you for having me.

[29:47] I had a ton of fun chatting with Tony today. Clearly, he and I are both high-energy individuals and very aligned on a lot of the ways that we think about supporting our clients, sales leaders, and sellers. For me, I love this idea of the opportunity antenna and how to switch it on for your sellers so that they're always listening. And too often, from my experience, both as a seller and as someone who supports sales leaders and sellers, we miss opportunities. We blow by them. The buyer says, yeah, we're really looking at this, and we're also looking at doing that. And our seller goes, well, let's talk about this, because to them, that's the most immediate term opportunity where they can get the fastest commission. However, they might also be able to expand that commission by talking about that second thing the buyer. What do you mean by that? When are you hoping to get a solution for that issue? I also really appreciate his insights around questions. You've heard me talk about a lot about this. If you haven't heard the early episodes of Full Funnel Freedom, go check those out where I talk about how do you ask really, really effective questions. And it's not the magic question. There are no magic questions.

[30:55] Yes, sometimes you ask one question and the buyer is so willing to share, they give you the information that you're looking for. However, coaching your sellers to be prepared with a second, a third, a fourth question to dive deeper into a challenge or an issue or an opportunity that a buyer talks about with that surface level question. If we just stop at the surface level or if our sellers just stop at the surface level, all we're going to be doing is solving surface level problems, which ultimately makes us a commodity. Arnie, the last big takeaway for me in this idea that Tony got from a book of no one graduates from the School of Sales. That lifelong learning, whatever cliche you want to put in, really, really powerful. And I talked to several people.

[31:43] Sellers and sales leaders, and they're usually on the technical side who feel like if they check the box and say they got the certificate or the diploma or the badge, they're good to go in terms of being a successful seller or successful sales leader. And if you're listening to this podcast, y'all know that just ain't true because we're always learning. We're always growing. We're always making mistakes to Tony's point. And if we feel like we've got it, that's usually where we're going to get passed by either by individuals in our organization or definitely by our competitors i'm really curious to hear what your big takeaways are in the comments on our social media so check those out give us your insights and until we connect on the next episode go create full funnel freedom thanks for listening to today's episode of the full funnel Full Funnel Freedom Podcast. You can continue to support us by leaving us a review and a rating, sharing this episode with a couple of sales leaders in your network who you care about. I'd love to connect with you. I'm easy to find, Hamish Knox on LinkedIn. Also, if you'd like a free 15 minute call with me, go to www.hamish.sandler.com forward slash how to Sandler. Until we connect on the next episode, go create full funnel freedom.

[33:02] Music.