In this episode Derek Wellington Johnson discusses the importance of vision, strategy, and execution in business and shares insights from his books, ‘The Wisdom of Leaders’ and ‘The Strategic Sales Leader.’ Marcus and Derek’s conversation covers the gap between theory and action, the significance of congruency between words and actions, and the evolving landscape of sales and leadership. Derek emphasizes the importance of creating transformational relationships over transactional ones and the critical role of integrity in sales. The discussion also delves into human psychology, cognitive load, and the necessity of periodic stillness to sharpen one’s mental edge.
Episode Highlights:
06:54 Misconceptions in Sales Tactics
11:39 The Three-Legged Stool of Business Success
20:54 The OODA Loop and Business Strategy
24:57 The Rise of a Pizza Empire
29:40 Reducing Friction in Sales Processes
30:44 The Importance of Cognitive Load Management
39:04 The Role of Integrity in Sales
40:12 Navigating the Modern Sales Landscape
Derek Wellington Johnson brings a rich legacy of leadership, strategic insight, and tech expertise. With his father having served under General Patton in WWII, Derek’s foundation in strategy runs deep. As a military veteran and seasoned leader in the tech and startup worlds, he has over 20 years of sales leadership experience. Mentored by Brian Tracy, he’s led sales teams for established firms and cutting-edge startups alike. A recognized expert, Derek has been featured in top publications like Inc. Magazine and CIO Magazine and serves on UC Riverside’s advisory board, guiding leaders in transformative, disruptive leadership.
Find his books here: Derek’s Books
Episode Transcript:
00:30
Acta Non Verba is a Latin phrase that means actions, not words. If you wanna know what somebody truly believes, don’t listen to their words, instead, observe their actions. I’m Marcus Aurelius Anderson, and my guest today truly embodies that phrase.
00:59
Derrick Wellington Johnson’s background brings a unique perspective to the subjects of great sales leadership, strategic thinking, and successful execution. He is a military veteran, a startup veteran, and a lifelong student of human nature and history. With over two decades of sales leadership experience in the high-tech world, Derrick is recognized as the technological expert and a trusted advisor to C-suite decision level makers. He is the author of The Wisdom of Leaders.
01:26
history’s most powerful leadership quotes, which I highly recommend. It’s on Amazon. And if you haven’t got it yet, go order that. And more importantly, his current book, the strategic sales leader is one that I highly recommend because people don’t understand that leadership is seen in everything, and if you’re missing the aspect of leadership in sales, you’re missing sales. So, Derek, thank you for being on and thank you for taking the time. And I’m looking forward to this conversation, my friend. Good to be here. Yeah, absolutely.
01:54
You’re busy. You were just on a big podcast, which I can’t wait to hear that one. And then it was Merneson Acquisitions, yes? Yeah. M&A talk. M&A talk. Yeah. So that’s, that should tell you a little bit about what they’re going to be talking about. This podcast may be out before that one. We never know, but the goal is to be able to have powerful conversations. So in this book you were talking about how, and I loved that it actually reaffirmed what you were already doing. And how do I say it? Theorists and realists are different.
02:24
Yes. A theorist believes that theory and reality are the same. A realist knows that they are not. Yeah. There’s a pragmatism that you have to have. Uh, the theory is okay up to the point where you actually go out and act on it. You act on it. And there’s, there’s this gap between the theory and the action. The theory is great until you prove it. You can get a book on how to learn how to swim. Okay, great.
02:53
At some point you have to get wet. Yeah, that’s one of Bruce Lee’s great quotes, right? He says, you can’t learn to swim on dry land. There you go. You gotta get in there. And that’s what I think is, I love, and tell us a little bit about your father, just real quick to give a little bit, because that’s literally sort of the branch of the tree for you. Yeah, so my father was a tank commander in World War II. Served with General Patton’s third army. Saw a lot of heavy combat.
03:23
I was born, obviously, late in his life. It was interesting because my father was East Coast hard-ass. I spent my formative years in New York. He was from Jersey and just a hard, hard man. And he never really spoke highly of anyone except for General Patton. And so as a young boy, I thought that was really curious and got me on that path towards understanding, what is it about this guy who you bled for, like that had two purple hearts that you almost died for?
03:52
And you’ve held him in such high reverence, he revered this man. And so that got me into readership or reading on great leaders from Alexander the Great to Marcus Aurelius across the board. So that’s where that genesis of my, I guess you’d call it a borderline obsession with great leadership. And there’s, it’s so powerful because I like that you take into consideration, not just the leaders quotes, but you take into consideration how congruent those actions are with the words that they’re talking about.
04:22
Are they leading in that place? Yes. Yeah, that’s a big one in terms of the decongruency. It goes back to Acta non verba. It really does, though. I don’t listen to what people say. I watch what they do. There’s a lot of the leadership stuff that’s out there. We’re talking earlier about that corporate America spends over $14 billion a year in leadership and yet over 50% of its leaders are viewed as failures.
04:51
That’s not me saying that. That’s study after study after study that there’s this massive gap between the money, obscene amount of money being spent on leadership development and the efficacy. So we go back to the theoretical and the application, and there’s this massive gap when you have, you have, you know, what was I saying earlier, right? That 50 to 70% of executives fail within 18 months of taking on their new role, whether they’re hired externally or promoted from within. That failure rate is mind boggling.
05:21
And a lot of people think that if they can hire from within that they will circumvent that, that, that outsider kind of mentality. But as you’re saying, the statistics tell the tale is like, it doesn’t matter. We have to be able to put this person in a position of leadership, but more importantly, we have to train them because leadership training that training, right? Well, right. Well, think about that. Did you learn about leadership in school? No. Chances are the first time you learned anything in leadership was when you’re in the military, right?
05:49
Yeah, the martial arts gave me a little bit, but the military was very much the real kind of dictatorial training for sure. The real deal. Same thing. I started studying leadership as I was a kid, but my real world experience with leadership was when I was in the military. And to your point, martial arts taught me discipline more than anything. But the leadership came through the military. But you realize that what I think the stat is about 1% of people have ever served population. Right. So you have these people who are promoted.
06:18
into these positions either because there was a gap they needed to fill it in and the guy could fog a mirror, he was alive and he just threw him in the position. That’s one. There’s a lot of nepotism. And I could regale you with some stories about people who didn’t deserve to be in the positions that they’re in who all of a sudden are leading a team, a business unit or what have you because they’re the nephew, the uncle, the son, the fraternity brother, whatever. And now…
06:44
Now you’re trying to figure out, okay, how am I gonna make this work? Because the guy who’s above me or above him have no clue what they’re doing. And we see that very often. And I want to dive deep into your new book, but what’s the biggest misconception about sales or leadership within sales that you see parroted by people that is just completely detrimental? Those that seem like it’s like an assault as opposed to seduction.
07:14
It really is. I’ve got this image, obviously, we won’t name names to protect the not so innocent, who talk about stocking your prospect. Like driving over to the house, waiting out front, talking and calling 20 times a day to get them on the phone. Dude, you’re going to get a restraining order. That’s assault. That’s not… So the biggest misconception, I think, and there’s sales as a bad rap because you’ve got what? The use car sales
07:45
But there’s that weird thinking that salespeople have to force themselves upon. And that’s so wrong. What is chased runs away. Have you ever seen a flower chase a bee? And that’s the mindset that a good salesperson has to have. It’s, okay, I want someone to come to me, be the flower, and then the bee will come over. But you have to have something of value. And if you let the world know you have something of value, they will come to you.
08:13
Now that comes to what? It talks about marketing and that. But sales as a profession is not assaulting someone. It’s not overwhelming them with calls. I know that right now there’s all these technology stacks of 20 touches and 50 touches and 70 touches. Look, I get that. You have to try repeatedly, within reason, to get ahold of someone. I mean, have you ever tried to get ahold of a friend and you actually want to talk to them, they want to talk to you, you keep missing each other.
08:42
That’s different. That’s what I’m talking about here. Not the, okay, now I’m going to ping them, I’m going to text them, and then I’m going to call them, and then I’m going to send them an email. You still have a psycho stalker in this. That’s one of the biggest issues I have with what’s being pushed in sales. It’s that level of assault versus being the thing that pulls a person towards you that you want to magnetize your ideal prospect.
09:11
Yeah. You want to create the gravity that makes them go into your orbit as opposed to, as you say, chasing them. And here’s the thing that takes time. You have to cultivate that. And a lot of people, uh, dare I say, even in the entrepreneurial space, right. And social media, they make it sound like if you just buy my course, and if you just do this thing and follow these three steps, it’s like, no human beings are. They’re smart. They understand if somebody has an angle.
09:39
They’re you know, just trying to get sold something that they know the pitch is coming. So if that’s the case Why don’t you just try to be a good human being to this person? Why don’t you say if you need help? This is what I do. This is what I’m great at come to me Right. What kind of duty and that’s that’s what you’re doing now. You’re giving quality. You’re not providing value I hate that verbiage because it sounds like it’s a transaction like I want to give you this but you have to there have to Be reciprocity. I’m expecting it right so so so that one thing to talk about
10:07
My book is a difference between a client and a customer. I’m glad you mentioned that. A customer is transaction. You go to the grocery store, you fill up your basket with groceries, you go to clerk, you give them money, they give you product, done. Transaction. That’s a customer. A client is someone who you have their best interests in mind. And the challenge in life is that we look at a lot of relationships, personal as well, as transaction. It’s why there’s a lot of divorces.
10:37
I’m oversimplifying this, but if you come into a relationship, a friendship, a marriage, and you’re like, well, you’ve given me X and then I give you Y, and well, you’re not giving me X anymore, then screw you, we’re getting divorced. That’s a transaction. A great relationship, whether it’s a friendship, a marriage, a business relationship, is transformational. I want you to be the best version you can be. I want to help your business become the best version you can be. And if you can do that, whether it’s with friendships, with a partner, a spouse, or
11:07
business to business where I’m going to help transform your business to be the whatever the best version of it is possible. Now you’re talking and that’s also as it comes back to the selling aspect. I’m not necessarily selling to you I’m helping you transform who you are as a human being or perhaps your business. Yeah and that’s that’s they’re usually stuck at that point where the sales is the barrier that stops them from going to that next place, stops them from scaling, stops them from being able to add more people, more locations, whatever it is to be able to continue to
11:36
proliferating what this vision is. And with the book, you have it broken down into three different parts. So what was the first part that you were talking about as you kind of go through and you walk us through? So think of it as a three-legged stool. You have the vision, you have the strategy, and then you have the execution. And you cannot have one or two. You have to have all three. Because if a three-legged stool is gonna fall over if you’re missing one.
12:04
The vision is the why. Why are you in business? Why should a customer buy from you? Why should your team be excited about getting up every morning and work for you? If you’re an entrepreneur or business owner, the why, what sets a fire within them? The why is very important. So that’s a vision. The second part is a strategy. That’s the what. What are we going to do? What are we about?
12:32
But the what is really important because you have to understand once you get the vision, you get people pumped up and excited. Now you need a direction. And we talked about this right before we started. It’s doesn’t matter how fast you’re going, if you’re going in the wrong direction. And we see a lot of businesses that, that they’re doubling down on doing more of the wrong things rather than saying, wait, this is not working. Most companies, especially in sales. I see this in sales all the time. Sales people say, well, this is not working. Let’s do more of it. It’s mental.
13:02
Rather than saying, let’s take a step back, this isn’t working.
13:08
Let’s figure out what we can do instead that does work. Let’s figure out the what. If these people are like going really fast in the wrong direction, then they wonder why they’re not getting to where they need to be. And the final part is the execution. And this is where most companies, even if you’ve got the first two right, this is where most companies stumble. And again, this goes back to a lot of studies that have been done that 60 to 70%. And some as high as actually 90, but on average about 60, 70%.
13:37
the execution fails on strategy because they just don’t have the execution down. So you’re going to have, you have your why and a phenomenal what, but now you have to get to how, how are we going to do this? How are we going to scale this mountain in front of us? So three-legged stool. I think that’s a great analogy. And then in this book, you said there were over 160 footnotes to give context and. 161 footnotes that just about broke my brain. Yeah.
14:06
Yeah. And so, so it’s one thing to anecdotally understand something you’ve had this experience with over 20 some odd years. But you want to make sure and it still goes, the merging of the theory with the action. Hey, this has been my experience, but what has been, what’s a global experience? What’s a human experience? What’s a research show? And I want to make sure that my experience matched up with what the studies and research and other people’s experience.
14:35
And that’s when you know that it’s on point.
14:40
And you mentioned something in that second part of the equation, how people will chase this thing or money into this process, it’ll fail. And so in their mind, they have to double down on it. And that’s where that human psychology is because there’s all kinds of research that shows when there’s confirmation bias or when there’s cognitive dissonance. It’s easier for a person to double down on their belief than admit that they’re wrong and don’t.
15:08
If you don’t believe me, there’s a book called mistakes were made, but not by me. And they actually, they actually talk about how there are like detectives that from the beginning of an investigation of a homicide believe just in their head that the husband did it because that’s the most common thing. But then when there’s DNA, there’s all kinds of evidence, there’s all kinds of proof because that detective does not want to be wrong, they will try to circumvent all that stuff and say, well, he was able to manipulate this or this was done here, or this was a false alibi.
15:37
The reality is most of the time as human beings, because we’re human beings, we’re gonna be wrong at least 50% of the time, maybe 25% of the time if we’re lucky, but we’re gonna be wrong. So in business, if you’re wrong, trying to protect your ego by sacrificing your business to do it, that’s a losing proposition all day long. It is and actually I talk about that the ego and how it sabotages a lot of efforts, that’s a part of execution and that’s.
16:04
We talk a lot, most business books are a lot of theoretics, but they don’t talk about the psychology of the human behind that. What you mentioned about the police detective that locked in on who he thinks is guilty and they’re going to go all the way down, even though all the evidence goes against that. Ego gets people killed in combat, but in business it causes bankruptcies, layoffs, what have you, because you see these corporations again and again making these dumb decisions because of ego.
16:34
and see if I remember it. It goes something like this. It’s not what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s the things you know for sure that just think so. Yeah, Mark Twain also said, easier to lie to somebody than to convince them that they’ve been lied to. Yeah, yeah. So that goes back to the ego. And that’s the thing, especially if you’re a business owner or any kind of leader, you have to step back and think about, what are my cognitive blind spots? What am I missing here? And that takes a level of self-awareness
17:04
that more people should have. It also means putting your ego outside and being okay with, holy cow, I’m wrong. It’s better to admit that you made a mistake and change direction than refusing to admit. And again, there’s ego tied to that, whether you have to admit to your team, your company, your family, man, I was wrong. There’s nothing bad about getting new information, integrating that information, and realize I have to do a course correction. Here’s the thing.
17:33
The world right now moves so quickly that if you don’t adjust fast, you’re going to get crushed, you’re going to get left behind, you might end up banging. There’s a great quote from the legendary Air Force pilot Colonel John Boyd, who by the way, if you see the movie Top Gun or Top Gun Maverick, it was loosely based on him. He said that whomever can withstand the fastest rate of change is the one who survives.
18:02
His nickname was 42nd Boy because he could take anyone, right, imagine he’s in a jet from a disadvantaged position, he’s exactly behind, they’re exactly behind him, in 40 seconds he could blow you out of the sky. And he literally wrote the book for Air Force pilots that ended up, and he started the Air Force, their version of Top Gun, and then the actual Navy Top Gun was based on him. But that’s the thing in terms of being an entrepreneur and just being a human being in today’s world where it moves so damn fast.
18:32
it moves so fast. And our brains are wired to move that quickly. We’re not wired for this modern era of instantaneous everything. And so we have to train ourselves to make faster decisions and we have to be wrong and acknowledge we’re wrong faster and pivot and change faster. And that’s ego. And it’s easy to talk about it, but most guys won’t, I should say most people won’t admit when they’re wrong. And if you could just do that one thing.
19:01
It’ll transform your life. Yeah, and that will lead over into everything you do in every arena that you enter as well. And like you said, a conversation you have with your spouse, your children, a family member, somebody in your neighborhood. The other thing about that is I think that a lot of people get caught up in the semantics of, how could I have been wrong? And that means that they’re not really unpacking their process well enough. That’s ego again, though.
19:29
That’s that’s ego. And again, you have to decide do I want to be right make money or do I or do I am I okay? Being wrong and make money or do I want to be one quote right and Drive off into a cliff you have to make a choice at some point, but it’s gonna it’s going to catch up with you. So It absolutely will in in my first book. I say that when you’re one step behind in the fight When you realize that you’re actually not you’re actually two or three and this is that who to loop. This is the book environment This is John Boyd stuff. You’re familiar with work. Yeah
19:58
Yeah. You’re familiar with Mark McGrath and his no way out podcast. No, he’s amazing. I’ll I had him on. He’s got great stuff. He’s actually taken a lot of. Boyd stuff and just taken that kind of doctrine. He’s very big on having companies look for, you know, where is the mutation that we’re doing, what is this thing that we’re doing to evolve faster? What is the mismatch that most people don’t see that we can quadruple down on to get into the blue ocean sort of environment, which is very much.
20:28
where you are and what you’re doing. And so as a consultant, I think it’s important that people don’t, they may not see this, but as a consultant, just coming in and pointing out where the bad problems are in the business is easy, which is what you do, but being able to actually train, teach, and give them the pragmatic steps to change that, that’s what gives you a tremendous advantage in what you do, Derek. I appreciate that, and there’s a lot of truth to that, and going back to the OODA loop, Observe, Orient, Decide, Act.
20:57
And that’s the thing about how fast you can go through them. We’re talking about the world that we’re in, how quick can you observe, orient, decide, act. That’s a continuous loop. I think one of the things that most companies get wrong, especially on the strategy aspect of this, is most companies, and again, I’m talking like small mom, pop shops all the way to billion dollar corporations, I’m not picking on any. They do the strategic planning or create something at the beginning of the year, they get all excited, and then it gets.
21:26
Maybe it’s a PDF or maybe it gets printed out to a binder and it collects dust the rest of the year. But if you’ve subscribed to the OODA loop and you’re going through that cycle, observe your situation. What’s going on right now? What are the realities of the world and the ecosystem, the market dynamics that I play in? And then you orient yourself to it. Okay, okay, woo, this is good. Things are about to get ugly here. There might be a recession or whatever it is.
21:53
And then you decide what you’re going to do and then you act and that comes back to Okta. But that loop, whoever’s doing it the fastest wins. Think about this, if you were playing a game of chess with someone and for every one move they made, you were allowed to do two. The odds of you winning the game, assuming both are equal, changes really quickly. And that’s the world we live in right now. When you think back to how…
22:22
Blockbuster video, boy, I’m dating myself here. I was there too. Blockbuster video had a chance to buy Netflix for I think if memory serves like 150 million way back when. And as the story goes, they were literally laughed out of the Blockbuster office. So what happened was the Netflix leadership team were on their last leg, they were running out of money, they have a meeting, they’re flying on site, they’re broke. Broke, broke, broke.
22:48
They have a meeting with the CEO and the team of Blockbuster Video and they literally laughed them out of the office. 115 million. You cannot afford to have a Blockbuster Video mindset in the neck. I absolutely agree. Yeah. I think that you’d really enjoy Mark McGrath stuff and what he does. I’ll check him out. Yeah. I’ll send you some of his stuff and it’s right in line with everything that we’re talking about here. And I think that that’s the other aspect. As a person that’s trying to help sell things to people.
23:18
The idea is if we replace the word sell with help, I’m trying to help this person. I’m trying to get the answer to their problem. That’s what we’re doing. Right. It really is. If you think about this, I mentioned to you there early, uh, before we started recording how I had this ridiculous accident and I ruptured my quadriceps. So what, what did I end up doing? Well, you know, after I got home from the ER, I started researching the best orthopedic surgeon in the city.
23:45
I wanted someone who’d worked on professional athletes, because I know they were used to, I’m a bigger dude, and I wasn’t pretty good shape before, but anyway. But someone, so what did I do? I sought out what? A subject matter expert. And if you can figure out how to position yourself, your business, whatever it is that you’re expert on, and not whatever you do or you are great at, think of yourself as that orthopedic surgeon that I went out my way and I looked at a lot.
24:14
Read the reviews. I’m like, this is my guy. This is my guy. Right. And it was an intense surgery and he did a fantastic job. Think about that. No one’s going door to door selling orthopedic surgery services. And I think we lose sight of that. And so if you figure out, okay, I’m in business. What do I do? Well, you market. But remember, marketing is what? Marketing is letting people know your business. What is your brand? And branding is letting people know why you are the only solution to their problem.
24:44
And you don’t necessarily even have to be the best. And again, I’m gonna date myself here again. Domino’s Pizza back in the early days. No one ever claimed it was the best tasting pizza, but what was their brand? Fresh Hot Pizza delivered to your door in 30 minutes or less. That was their whole brand. And it became a monstrosity of a pizza organization. So I remember watching them as they grew. Fresh Hot Pizza delivered to your door in 30 minutes or less.
25:14
That was it. And dude, this is before like Garmin and GPS. You’re talking about some guys with a paper mouse, it was insane when you think about it. Like land pirates, what the hell? Right? I mean, when you think about it. But it wasn’t about, so people also make it harder and it needs to be, it’s like, well, I don’t have the best, this is what Dom was. No, to this day, it’s not the best tasting pizza. But back then, they knew, look, we know we’re not the best, so what can we do? How we’re gonna get to you faster than anyone else.
25:44
And that was it. So you have to think about what your unique value proposition is. And again, people overcomplicate things. I use the pizza just because it’s a very simple metaphor. But what in your business are you trying to sell? What is your personal brand? It has to be something that really stands out because if you’re just doing marketing, then you’re just going to be me too. And by definition, if you’re doing everything else that everyone is doing.
26:13
your results will be mediocre. And you can’t make a living if you’re gonna live in that band of mediocrity. So stop and think about, what is it that I do different than everyone else?
26:27
and push that. Yeah. What do I do better than everybody else? What is this niche that I own? And once you’re in a niche, especially if you’re the person that’s able to create that niche or that category, once you own it, you’re going to own 75% of that pie, no matter how many people come in, because they may try to race you to the bottom or they may try to do these other things, but they are not going to have the unique qualifications and experiences that make you qualify to do that thing. The way that you do it, which.
26:55
Which is and you alluded and you and you and you alluded to it when you mentioned blue ocean strategy, right? Which is by the way, fantastic. And the basic premise of blue ocean strategy is red ocean is where all this a lot of organizations are fighting and it’s Redwood blood because all the sharks are in that area Whereas if you create your own niche and you go over somewhere else and create your own market your own niche, whatever it is That’s blue oceans clear because you’re not fighting to death or all the other sharks. Yeah, and I think people lose sight of that
27:24
I think we take it for granted, for example, Red Bull comes to mind. Energy drinks. Is it the best tasting drink out there? No. But they create a multi-billion dollar industry by doing what? We’re going to jack up the caffeine of this thing until you are bananas high on caffeine and took off.
27:45
Same thing with the five hour energy drink, those little shot things, right? How am I working on them? Blast your brain with caffeine. Create a whole new market segment. So it wasn’t about taste, what is the product? Well, in this case is what? You’re alert, you need to be awake longer because you need to be functional. How did Coca-Cola and Pepsi and those guys miss that? It seems so obvious now after the fact. Right. The other thing too is with what you do,
28:13
As we’re talking about this again, your niche is not just sales, but it sells leadership and it’s getting to that human component, which again, I think is often left out of the equation. Yeah, there is. So the issue I have, especially right now because we live in such a technological world, especially if you do business to business sales, right? My background right now. Right now in B2B sales, the average salesperson is using 10 different tools from this prospecting all the way to closing the sale.
28:43
emailing tools and intelligence, a CRM and all that stuff. And tools, insane. Part of the challenge with sales in general is that only 28% of their time is actually spent selling. The rest is deal management and administrative tasks. So if you own a company with salespeople, your job is what sales leaders should be. Where do I get rid of the friction? Think about that. Let’s think about that for a second. It’s not me saying this is research.
29:10
The average salesperson spends 28% of their time selling. The rest of their time is spent with deal management and administrative tasks. So if you could somehow double that time, do you realize what that would mean to your company in terms of revenue growth? If you could figure out, okay, yeah, they’re spending a lot of time on order intrigue, putting stuff in the CRM quotes, this, that, and the other. How do we eliminate wasted effort?
29:40
If you’ve reduced the friction as a sales leader, a big part of your job is reducing friction and eliminating your problems. My job really is to make decisions twofold as a sales leader. One, it’s to remove obstacles in the way of the close. The person’s going from the prospect all the way through the sales funnel to the close. The sales leader, you have to remove as many obstacles as possible. Two, reduce that friction we just talked about. Here’s the other part to this. When you’re talking about that there’s 10 tools on average that most salespeople use.
30:10
close the deal, which that’s, again, just a whole onboarding process, and that’s ridiculous. If you can shorten the process where they can get to that training, where they can get through that quicker, that’s better. But again, if you can reduce the friction, you’re going to increase your sales. Changing nothing. I’m not talking about increasing the sales competency of your salespeople, spending more money on your marketing. If you can just focus on one thing, allow them to sell more, it’ll make a radical difference in your business. Right? So that’s one part.
30:40
The next part, we talked about the human aspect is, because again, the human aspect is we’re not machines, we’re not robots, and there’s a cognitive load from doing all that administrative stuff that wears us down. If you’ve ever spent a day on the computer, a lot of Zoom meetings, and switching from this tool to that tool to this tool, your brain did. And you need to think of your brain as a tank of gas. And neuroscience has shown that by the end of the day, our tank is quote unquote empty.
31:09
which is why neuroscientists will recommend that you do the most difficult mentally taxing things first part of your day when your proverbial mental gas tank is full. And then the other part is don’t waste your squander or your mental energy on anything, right? I still use my GPS when I’m going to places I already know because I don’t even have to think about it. I don’t remember the last time I memorized a phone number. Don’t clog your brain up. And with things you can…
31:39
refer to something else because it taxes you in a way that you don’t realize. It’s like the death of a thousand cuts. The third part of the human element is this. We’re so tech savvy and all these tools and gizmos. There are currently 8,000 sales tools available for salespeople right now to use. 8,000. It’s mental. I already mentioned the average person uses 10. Every salesperson uses 10. But here’s the thing.
32:08
dashboard jockeys are so fixated on all these dashboards and this and the other. But not everything that counts can be counted and not everything that can be counted counts. And that’s where we lose sight of human aspect of selling because, ah, I was traveling way back with one of my sales people and we did a three-state tour and it was brutal back to back meetings, a lot of windshield time. But one thing that was interesting is
32:37
Every single person greeted her with a bear hug. Every one of her either prospects or existing customers greeted her with a bear hug. Where do you see that in your dashboard? It’s not a KPI you can easily. That’s a point. That’s the point I was getting to. Where most sales leaders and CEOs and business owners are obsessed with KPIs. I’m not saying there’s not a place for that. But I’ll say it again. Not everything that counts can be counted. And not everything that can be counted counts.
33:06
And we get so obsessed with the dashboard and KPIs, what happened? Again, there’s a place for that. But if you lose sight of the human aspect of how do I, where do I put in my CRM about the bear hug at every customer? What is the value of that? Right. And then we get caught into, again, sales stuff. Let’s say you’ve got some quota for your sales team, where are you expecting to do 100 calls per day? Indeed.
33:33
I don’t care how many calls you make per day. I want to know how many good conversations you have. Because I’ve lived this as a sales leader where I had a person who made 100 calls a day and they maybe had 10 good conversations per day. And I had another person who did 50 calls a day but had about 20 good conversations per day. Who’s a better salesperson according to your KPI? So you have to take a step back as a business owner, as a sales leader, as a CEO. What matters? Again, 100 calls, 50 calls.
34:03
But the person in 50 calls it significantly better conversations, which led to what? A higher closing ratio. Yeah, it’s pretty simple. Right? What’s important? Yeah. I think we, if everything’s a priority, then nothing’s a priority. Back to your idea about, again, cognitive load. Well, my assistant books me to do something or gets my flight. I’ll have people say, where are you going next? Or what’s your next thing? I was like, I don’t, I mean, it’s on my calendar. I don’t know. Whatever my next calendar is.
34:30
Like, how do you not know or how do you not know what time your flight is? It’s like, honestly, in the grand scheme of things, that’s not, I mean, that’s already planned to start at reminders is there. I can take my hand off the wheel on that thing. And that’s what allows me. And it makes it easier for me to focus on what’s important. Like this conversation is more important to me than wondering about the update of when I’m traveling next week. And we got back to KPIs, as you say, we can’t necessarily measure the ROI on a KPI, but the KPI that I always, always, always look for.
35:00
the CEOs that I work with, how is their family? Ah, because that tells me all the other KPIs I need to know. Brilliant. It’s brilliant. And that’s, and that’s an important aspect that you have to have that as you have to have that understanding on the teams that I’ve led. I always encourage them to take their PTO because especially the best sales people, they’re obsessive and winning. And, and I would get a report every month of the PTO time. And I look at my, whoa.
35:29
And I would call someone up and say, Hey, you know what? You need to like F off and, and go enjoy your life. Cause you’re working way too much. Cause you’ve got 200 hours of PTO. That’s insane. Insane. Here’s the other part though. This, this goes ties into cognitive loan. If you take that time off, you’ll be better in the long run. It’s, it’s taking that time to the proverbial story of like sharpening your blade frequently. You know, the store basically goes.
35:58
There was this contest between two lumberjacks and one was a really old, grizzled, arthritic lumberjack and there was this other big strapping young hunk with a lumberjack and the young guy challenged a legendary old guy to woodcutting, tree cutting contest. As the story goes, the kid went out there and started just hammering away the trees and hammering away the trees and the old guy just sharpening his axe, sharpening his axe, sharpening his axe.
36:28
At the end of the contest, the old man had significantly more woodcut than the young kid and he was just the kid’s out of breath and he’s covered in sweat. He’s just a disaster. He’s like, I don’t understand how you do it. The old man come and said, well, I took time to periodically stop and sharpen my axe. And that’s something that’s lost in this hustle Ryan mindset that you resting, you’re doing nothing. Just absolutely doing nothing, vegging out, whatever it is that you enjoy, whether it’s going for a walk, a hike. I don’t know.
36:57
Lay on the couch, stare at the ceiling. Whatever it is that works for you, that actually will help you be a better salesperson, a better human being, a better business owner, a better entrepreneur, but we have this mindset. And again, I laugh at these things. I get up at four AM and then I do an hour of workout while listening to a podcast at two times the speed. I’m like, you’re so full of shit. All right. I mean, all that, that the hustle bros.
37:25
because it’s so absurd and it goes back to being a human versus being a machine. And that’s the other part where we want to connect with other human beings because we’re so in this digital world that the more you can bring your face as a human, which ties us back to what we said earlier about bringing transformational relationship versus a transactional relationship, it’ll serve you really, really well. Years ago, I worked for a networking manufacturer. This was in the early days of wire.
37:55
It’s hard to believe that we’d actually convince people to be un-tethered from your desktop if it’s a good thing. But our company rolled out their Wi-Fi offering. It kind of rushed the market. Being a good sales professional, I went down to the lab and checked it out, played around with it. It wasn’t a good product. So our company’s doing a massive push for this product. We’re wireless now. We’ve got products. Yay. And so I’d have my customers hearing, seeing all the marketing push and getting…
38:26
marketing, let’s be at receiving end of that. You’re asking me, well, hey, Derek, what do you think of that product that I want to order some? I said, don’t, it’s crap. You should see their faces. Because it happened a lot. Now, mind you, speaking of KPI, as a new product, I had a KPI, I did that. And I failed with a KPI in a spectacular fashion. But guess what happened? Because I was real with my customers, I said, no, it’s crap. I, someone else’s do not.
38:55
Now eventually maybe we’ll get the bugs figured out, but right now it’s crap. And they were shocked. Who says that? So I got a lot of trouble with my sales leadership at the time. And I didn’t care because it’s my reputation, which you work really hard to build as a sales professional. Whether I get a sales professional, a business owner, CEO, that reputation you spend years to build can be blown apart very quickly. So
39:23
I lost on the front end, I say lost in air quotes, right? But I became what? I became a trusted advisor because they knew they could trust me to steer them in the right direction. Because here’s the thing that’s changed in the last few years. In 2014, only 63% teams achieved their quota, their sales quota. Fast forward to 2022, 43% of sales teams are achieving their sales quota. And it’s plummeting. What is going on?
39:52
Well, part of the issue is that the buyers got more sophisticated. There was a time when the power was held by the salesperson. There was a time when if you wanted to buy anything, you had to go to show room floor or get a catalog or what have you. The internet flipped the power structure of sales. Now, studies show that by the time you’re face to face with a prospect, there’s 70% of the way through their buying journey. So.
40:21
You have to acknowledge that, respect that, and change your approach. The OODA loop again, right? The Observe, Orient, Decide, Act. You have to change. Because if they’re 70% of the way through the buying journey, by the time they talk to you, they’re a lot more knowledgeable than you realize. And if you even say anything that even sniffs of BS, you’re done. You’re gone. You lost them. That’s the first part. The second part is, and this is more towards business to business sales, the B2B side.
40:50
The average buying committee about 10, 15 years ago, buying committee, a group of people have to sign off and prove about whatever they’re buying. It used to be about five to six people, seven tops. And now that’s grown to, you ready for this, 11 to 20 people. Which is madness. Your price is going to go up. What changed? Well, a couple of things changed. Part of it is because people got burned in the past.
41:20
someone who signed off on a $1 million purchase, whatever is big to you and your industry, and the product did not work as you promised, you torpedoed someone’s career. And either they never got another promotion, or in some cases, I’ve seen this many times, they got fired.
41:45
So the expanded buying committee, which along with the expanded buying committee expanded average sales cycle, was because of a CYA attitude. Hey, there’s some salespeople that burned us, burned me. Or I knew this dude who was on a stellar career path and he signed off on something because he believed the salesperson and it was either a lie, vaporware, buggy as hell, whatever it was, didn’t work as advertised, and it cratered the guy’s career. So now you’ve got this expand buying committee.
42:16
makes everything infinitely harder.
42:20
And that’s the, I don’t think people see that. In Western society, our answer to everything is to add more. Like you said, if this isn’t working, let’s double down on it. If seven people aren’t good, let’s get 21. Let’s get three times as many people in the room. Which means we have three times as many people arguing, three times as many people that are not as qualified to have the opinion that they do. Takes three times as long to go through that red tape to get something finally asked. Something else that you say, I love that.
42:49
This idea of sharpening the blade is key. But as you were saying, if people don’t understand the vantage point, the orientation and the OODA loop, if you will, they may say, okay, if I had this hustle and grind mentality, then sharpening my blade as much as I can is the answer and the Taoist Lao Tzu says, continue to sharpen your blade and it will go dull. And I recently, and I recently had, um, uh, he’s a martial art master named Alvin Ketakunta.
43:17
And he trained all the stars for Dune, the all-the-march-of-art components, right? Oh, the knife work. Yeah, he’s amazing. All that stuff, badass, yeah. And so when he had that blade, he was talking about how that when he went to a blade master to get his blade sharpened, the blade master was explaining, he says, “‘Every time you sharpen this blade, “‘the blade gives up a piece of its life for you.'” Wow. So again, sharpening is important. Intentionality within the sharpening is important. Yes.
43:46
where you’re trying to go with that vision. And I think that all those things tie into what you’re talking about in sales, which is missing in most places, which is integrity to your customer, your client. Yeah. Yeah, integrity is one of the three eyes of leadership. So three eyes of leadership are insight, inspiration and integrity. So the insight is you have to have a vision to see further than everyone else to be able to take them there. So that’s the insight. The inspiration is goes back to the what?
44:16
the why people get excited. You help build a fire within that inspiration. Integrity is being true to your word, being consistent. Integrity means what? Being whole.
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And so if you’re going to be a good leader and you’re committed being a good leader, you have to have that insight, that inspiration integrity. Yeah, that’s, that’s everything. And if we can stay congruent within those things, and then we base all of our decisions off of that with our actions as well, obviously that’s key. And back to what you were saying about the PTO, you know, octanon verb is key, but the most important action sometimes is inaction. Yes. Still missing.
44:58
stepping back, breathing, giving yourself that space for stillness. Stillness, yeah. And that also ties into even the sales aspect of sometimes taking a break from engaging with the customer. Because if you’re always chasing them, again, if you’re trying to push a string uphill, what is chase runs away. And again, that sales mindset of pushing. The other part that’s interesting, I’m going to go off in a different handset super quick. This just popped in my head. This also ties into the red ocean.
45:29
The average closing rate ratio of someone that’s going to, after an opportunity that’s already out there, and everyone knows about it, is 17%. Somewhere in that neighborhood. Now, studies will vary between five to 20%. We’ll say 17%. If you, the opposite of that is status quo. There is no issue. No problems, no sale. Most deals are lost not because you lost to competitors, usually because they just may decide not to do anything. Yeah.
45:59
We’ll stay here. Either the pain wasn’t severe enough to move forward with the solution or the desired endstate wasn’t valuable enough to make a change because change is hard. And real quick, change is interesting because as a salesperson, as a business owner, as an entrepreneur, change is one of the hardest things we’ll ever undertake.
46:25
It changes hard even when you want to do it. There was a fantastic longitudinal study done in hospitals. The basis of it was people who’d suffered a massive either heart attack or stroke. One particular study that jumps in my mind was heart attack, had to get a heart stent, had to open up the clogged artery, almost died. They’re told, hey, if you don’t make serious lifestyle changes, reduce stress.
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eat healthier, start exercising, stop smoking if you’re smoking, all these things. You will die. Now the rational part of our brain is to say, well, that’s a no-brainer decision. Okay, cool. The reality is the studies show that less than 10% made those changes. Now 18 months or two years later, those very same people that did not make the changes were either dead or back in the hospital getting like a bypass.
47:26
Wrap your brain around that. So think about this. If you’re a change agent, and essentially if you’re selling anything in life, you’re asking someone to make a change. And realizing that over 90% of people would not make a change to save their own lives. And here you are, Mr. Business Owner or Salesperson, coming in and say, hey, look at what I got for you. That’s why it’s so challenging to be a consistently successful salesperson. So…
47:55
We’ve got over here, we mentioned the, there’s a known problem. It’s painful enough. People won’t change it. Right. That’s where the closing ratio is about 17%. Uh, on the other end, status quo problem, no pain, you’re not changing anything. Or the pain’s not enough. What happened? Now what’s often neglected in sales is the middle place. We call that, you can call it the window of dissatisfaction. You know that there’s a problem. It’s painful. You just haven’t gotten around to it yet because there’s other things that.
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are on fire and you’re working on the triage, put those things out first. And that’s the thing that we need to remember as, again, entrepreneur, salesperson, what have you, business owner, that that’s where your market is. Because if you focus on that market and get them in that window of dissatisfaction, studies show that your closing ratio shoots up from, remember, we mentioned 17%. Window of dissatisfaction, it shoots up to between 60% to 80%. Why? Because you’re the first person there. You get to frame the conversation.
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And you get to frame what the desire to end state looks like before anyone else knows. It’s a powerful place to be. That’s where you want to be. But most people are busy in that red ocean where all the other sharks ripping each other apart and wondering, my God, why is this so hard? Cause you’re not doing it right. Yeah. No matter how much you double down on it, you’ll never get it right. Derek, I could talk to you forever. The strategic sales leader, mastering the art of vision, strategic strategy and execution.
49:21
Everything that we’ve been talking about is in this book, a lot of statistics and everything. Where can we get the book? Tell us about your first book as well. And then where can people go? Because I believe you have a couple of openings for consulting as well for companies. Yes, absolutely. If anything I said resonate with you, do you want to learn more? Feel free to reach out to me directly at derrick at derrickwjohnson.com. That’s Delta Echoromeo Echokilo Whiskey Johnson, as in the baby powder, baby shampoo.
49:51
at DerekWJohnson.com, Amazon.com, books there. There’s also The Wisdom of Leaders, which is a great reference book I created years ago. It’s 500 pages, it covers 20 aspects of leadership. You’re like, what, there’s 20 aspects of leadership? Yes, there are. And feel free to reach out to me. Just any follow-up questions, email, happy to help you. Absolutely. Derek, we’re gonna have any more conversations in the future. Thank you for your time, and I look forward to talking to you soon.
50:20
It’s been a pleasure. Thank you. Thank you for listening to this episode of Acta Non Verba.
