Interview transcript

Read (00:00):

two. One. Welcome everybody. Thanks so much for joining us here on the growth secrets interview series. I'm here with Fred diamond of the Institute for excellence in sales. And he's also the host of the sales game changers podcast. Fred and I had a really great conversation before going live this morning. I think y'all are gonna really enjoy this. Do me a favor though, if you're watching this live on Facebook right now, just leave a comment that says live. But if you're watching this later on as a, as a replay, do me a favor. Just leave a comment that says replay that helps us understand when we're getting our viewers so we know the right times that we need to publish these interviews. So without further ado, Fred, thank you so much for joining us. Why don't you tell the folks who you are, what you do, and how you help people read. It's great to be on your show. I appreciate it.

Fred (01:02):

It's great to be on your show. I appreciate it. It's also nice to have just learned that we both went to Emory university. I'll be at 28 years apart. So it's always good to be fellow Emory Eagles, I guess. Mris, I think we used to call ourselves. So I'm based here in Northern Virginia, right outside of Washington D C and I run what's called the Institute for excellence in sales. Our mission is to help sales leaders acquire, retain, motivate, and elevate top tier talent. And like you, I also host a podcast. It's called the sales game changers podcast. We broadcast twice a week, every Tuesday and every Thursday. And I interview VPs of sales chief revenue officers about their career journey and we seek a tips for how our listeners, you can take their sales career to the next level.

Reade

That's fantastic. So tell us if you would a little bit more about what the Institute does. Is, is it a training organization? Is it more of a, a, of a networking or, or that type of organization? Help us understand what what you guys do. Sure.

Fred (01:52):

Sure. We basically do three things. We're a membership organization, so organizations like Salesforce, red hat software, IBM, they're all members of the Institute and they send their people to our programs. We have a very robust sales leader program, a women in sales program. We do live events, of course we're [inaudible] recording today's show, right smack in the middle of the [inaudible] [inaudible] 19 virus. So we've had to do some adjustments, do a lot more things online. But basically we do programs for sales leaders and their teams. We also act as a portal for sales services organizations around the globe. Come to us looking for sales training and consulting resources. And and finally we have our podcasts that sells game changers podcast. So we also publish the content insights ideas from the sales leaders who we interview around the globe.

Read (02:59):

I gotcha. What have been some of the most interesting we'll say nuggets that you've pulled from that podcast. I know that, that I have just had such a great opportunity to learn from so many different people as I've been doing this. So I'm sure you've had some as well. So I'm, what have been some of your Favorite moments?

Fred

So I've done over 220 shows, so a couple of them stand out. Here's the cool thing. When you interview successful people, they're all good. So I'll tell you right now, every show that I've done has been at least a great show. There's, there's three that stand out. I know you're down in the Northern Georgia area. Are you familiar with, with Dollywood over in? So I interviewed the VP of sales for Dollywood. Her name is Cordelia Mar Zack. I actually went down to Dollywood for a for a for an event for one of my children, a dance competition. And I reached out and her name is Cordelia Mar Zack. And we talked about a Dolly Parton as a business leader and everybody knows her as a successful entertainer, but she's just as great, if not better as a business person. She's actually brilliant. She's made some unbelievable decisions.

Fred (03:53): So Cornelia gave us some insights into her career. The other show that stands out is I interviewed a guy named Dominic Dominic Strada and Dominic is a senior VP at Nestle and he was in the Purina product line for a long time and now he's in the Gerber product line. So man was brilliant. It was like almost like an MBA class in 35 minutes. But he talked about, you know, just you know, how you communicate to the consumer, you know, how you need to constantly be changing how you bring in your supply chain, including your down chain as well. And I love that one. And the other one that was great too is I interviewed a guy named Frank [inaudible]. Frank is the senior sales leader for Hilton in the USA. Hilton's headquarters is in Northern Virginia right outside of DC and Dominic has been, I'm sorry, Frank has been in the hospitality space for his whole career and seeing everything.

Reade (04:47):

And of course that industry right now is is being very, very challenged. But prior to that he just talk about how he built his team and how he trains them and how they practice before they go on sales calls and how much of a practice mentality they had at Hilton. So every show has been, every show has been great. I learned something from every show. There's some themes like persistence, mindset active listening, questioning a lot of things that you would think would be obvious, but, but they all come down to execution, you know, it's easy to say, well, you need to be a better listener. Okay, great. Well, how do you be a better listener? Oh, by asking better questions, by being more prepared, by letting the guests talk. 90% of the time we're not guest with prospect. So there's so many amazing things that have come out. I'll tell you one quick thing. We got every show transcribed. So I have a transcriber who transcribes every show and we make the transcriptions available. And I was talking to my transcriber and she's a young lady who lives in Spain, but her English is better than most people that I know. And

Fred (05:57):

I was talking to her and I said, you know, have you enjoyed transcribing? And she said, she's become such a better person by listening to our show. She's listened to it over 200 shows. She's become a better daughter. She's become a better spouse. And she's just become a, she was also going for her for graduate degrees. So she also understood better ways to ask questions and listening. So a lot of the things, you know, people kind of take for granted, but you have to practice those things in, you get better at it. So you said something that's really interesting, you talk about practice and execution, right? And I've always said that sales is like the ultimate execution driven career or, or I don't know. I don't even know if I'd call it a career. I mean I would call it a career but, but it's so much a part of it. [inaudible]

Fred (06:47):

Oh, many, many roles. Right. I, my, my father and grandfather were about entrepreneurs and both considered them sale selves and spoke with, with a very high degree of pride to the fact that they were, they were salesman and they used to say that, ah, everybody that comes in contact with a customer, is it a sales role in that moment? Right. and so, so that, and then the idea of execution because your, your results are staring you in the face every day. You can't hide in a sales driven career. Right. The numbers are what they are. So I want to then shift to something a little bit more practical and talk about sales especially cause it would be, it would be tone deaf if we did not talk about the elephant in the room, which is this COBIT 19 [inaudible], you know, economic shutdown that we're dealing with.

Fred (07:40):

You and I are very fortunate we're able to continue in our business to at least a certain degree. A lot of people are much more hampered. What are you saying to maybe your clients or the people in your network about how they can continue to move their sales career and keep their, keep their pipelines moving in this whatever we're calling this period that we're living through. Right. Yeah, that's a great question. And there's a couple of things that come to mind. So we're staying in touch with our customers who are VPs of sales and sales leaders at some of the best companies in the world. And there's basically three things. One is if you're in sales right now, and again, we deal with corporate sales, enterprise sales, but one quick comment, we like to say if you have a spouse or a child or a parent, you know, you're in sales at some level. We are, we all are selling something. And sometimes there's a stigma attached to what sales is because people think, you know, car dealerships and you know, someone like, you know, trying to Ram something down them. But the professional sales that we deal with, it's, it's a, it's a very yeah, it's a very thoughtful career. You know, to be successful in enterprise or corporate sales, you need to be strategic.

Reade (08:55):

You know, it's not just about the charisma. You need to be thoughtful. You need to be someone who's willing to research someone who's willing to learn, someone who's willing to listen. So right now there's three things that we're hearing from the sales leaders that we deal with. One is everybody has a new job.

Reade (09:11):

So everybody has a new job. And the interesting thing is opportunity comes during times of challenge. You know, if you think about it, think about all the industries that were built after nine 11 and the industries that were built after the 2008 recession, if you will. So even though we're right deep in the middle of it right now, you know there are still opportunities. So we're telling salespeople three things. One is how do you be of service to your customer right now? Just be of service, be a leader and be of service to your customer. Be a serve of leadership to your constituency. How can you help them? Empathy is a key word. Yeah. Just reach out without having to sell something. You know, a simple email that we found to be very, very effective is how are you, you know, just how are you, you know, either via LinkedIn or via email, if you will.

Fred(09:59):

Second thing is you need to take care of your mind. You know, one of the, you asked before, what are some of the key things that we hear? Mindset, you know, when people ask me, what is the one thing you've learned by running the Institute for excellence in sales and having done over 200 podcasts, everything. My friend comes down to mindset. One of my favorite quotes is from Henry Ford. If you think you can or think you can't, you're right. So it's not easy. You know, especially if you have little kids running around and you know, you can't go to the office. No one's going to the office around the world right now. You know, I talked to people in Australia, Canada and the United States and Singapore. We have a member and nobody's going to an office. So everyone is ensconced at their house. So how do you keep yourself focus during difficult times?

Read (10:44):

You know, we have an expression, it's called B a M see, breathe. Meditate for a minute. Call a friend. You know, find ways that you can just kind of get grounded and get your mindset focus. And you know what read you have to, you have to keep that mindset. The moment you find yourself going down the path, you need to quickly get back on course. And we're spending a lot of time with the sales leaders that we work with to focus on that. And the third thing is, again, not just touch base with your constituency, but think about how you can provide value to them in the long run. You know, your, your customer may be going through some very, very difficult times right now and he's not necessarily looking for solutions from you, but he will, you know, your customer will cause. Cause this will pass. It's going to be tough. You're going to have to tough it out. You're gonna have to be creative. You're going to have to figure out how do I get better right now? You know, instead of bingeing, you know, shows on Netflix. Maybe you use this time to listen to podcasts like yours and mine. If you look behind me, if you're watching this, you know, this a webinar or you see bookshelves with yeah. Tons of books,

Fred **(11:54):

You know, now's the time to read, to talk and get better. So I think the successful sales people right now, we're going to do those things, be focused on their customer touch base. Second, really focused on your mind. And third, no, build up yourself as a professional. You know, one of the other key themes that keeps coming across the IES on the podcast is sales as a profession. You know, you can't just becoming VP of sales at Microsoft because you want to be, you know, you can't to become a VP of sales at [inaudible] American airlines because you want to be, you know, a lot of the people that we've interviewed on the podcast for 20, 25, 30 years of success. So how are you, how are you building yourself as a sales athlete for that opportunity? Okay, so you mentioned two things that that I have to hone in on.

Fred (12:43):**

So, so one of them I, the last thing you said, I could not agree more. I think there's this, and I'm sure not the folks that you're dealing with feel this way, but, but on the, we'll say it on the, on the entrepreneurial side of things and without offending anyone, I think people who are a little bit younger tend to think that, well, I have this type of personality, therefore sales is my thing, right? I am, I am comfortable talking to people or I'm not comfortable talking to people, therefore equals sales. Right? But it is, it's, that's only a tiny piece of what goes in to being a professional salesperson. I would absolutely agree that it is a skill. It is not a personality trait, right? Certainly some are are a little bit more, we'll say predisposed to being comfortable in that environment.

Reade (13:44):

But it's, it's a skill. And I like the word you use being that sales athlete, right? Just like you and I talked about before both of us be in, you know, at least interested in sports and, right. And so you can't just expect to go out on [inaudible] or the football field or the baseball field and just say, I want to be good. And so today I'll be good, right? It takes hours and hours, practice and execution so that on game day or on that sales call or in that presentation or when building out that strategy, you can actually be effective. Oh, I see. You're looking for a book there. Please go ahead. Here's the book. It's called the introvert's edge. It's written by Matthew at all. It's written by a guy named Matthew powered. And basically his whole premise is, is that is you know how you can be successful by being an introvert. Know when we look at all the factors that go into sales success here's the number one. I think the number one factor in sales success. Everybody that I've met, it's not charisma. It's not energy. Although those are important. It's courage, you know? Do you have the courage to pick up the phone?

Fred (14:52):

Yeah. Do you have the courage to be interested in your customer's business? Do you have the courage to ask your manager for advice? Do you have the courage to practice? You know, you know, it just winging it. You're, you're going to get caught, man. Because here's the thing, once things are like normal, if you will you know, and even right now because of the internet and because of social media and now webinars and things like this, your customer can know more about your product and your service or your service. Then you could probably tell, you know, the internet has completely flipped the sales world, if you will. The customer's in charge. Now, you know, 10 years ago, maybe even five years ago, you know, salespeople were walking brochures, you know, your customer needed you for information, they needed you for product line, direction and strategy.

Reade (15:40):

Now your customer could just type in and what database should I user? What cloud solutions should I use? Yeah, well, 10 million pages come up on your searching. So how are you providing value to them now? So the energy and the charisma, I mean, energy is hugely important. Charisma, much less. It's how committed are you to your customer. And then being successful. Do you have the courage to understand your customer's business? Yeah. Do you have the courage to be vulnerable? You know, one of the best podcasts interviews that I ever did, I was with a woman called Alyssa Berwyn. She's a VP of sales for LinkedIn sales navigator in, in Americas. And yeah, she's fantastic. And she talked about vulnerability. You know, one of her key leadership traits was being vulnerable. And when we passed, I posted her show a whole bunch of people who work for her or knew her, commented on my LinkedIn posts.

Fred (16:34):

Absolutely. She's, that's what makes her a great leader. Builds the trust, if you will. So, you know, energy and stick and hacks, that doesn't really work in sales. It's about courage. It's about preparation. It's about really being committed to helping your customer be successful and for you to be committed to understanding what's going to help them be successful. Otherwise, yeah, they don't need you. You know, they don't need anything that you have to offer unless you're going to bring you value. And here's the cool think about right now. It's difficult as it is that we're going through. Ah, there's an opportunity for you. Truly figure out what value it is you can bring to customers. I'll tell you right now, my company, these two for excellence in sales, we do live events. So obviously if you were at the event business and April and may of 2020 right, it's a real tough time to be at. That's all you do. So we're not doing four webinars a week. Yeah, we're doing a webinar as we speak today. It's a Tuesday. We're doing a webinar on Tuesday for women in sales. We're doing a webinar on Wednesday with three sales leaders from my podcast. We're doing a webinar on Thursday just on mindset, and we're doing a webinar on Friday on a sales lesson. Fred (17:49):

Wow. So example, this week we're doing one on using LinkedIn to build empathy.

Fred (17:53):

So it's what we're doing right now to show our customers that we're committed to helping them at least get some information to help them be successful right now. Same thing you're doing with your show as well. Yeah, I mean I think you bring up a really good point. I think, look, there's two ways that that, okay, you talk about quotes that you like. One of my favorite quotes was that you're either getting better or you're getting worse. You know, there is no stagnation, right? So there's two things people can do right now. They can squander this time let their pipelines run dry. They can allow their influence to wane or they can be creative. They can do, they can be bold, right? They can, they can take a little bit of a leap of faith because here's what I'm, I'm actually seeing is everybody get is right now we're all kind of giving each other a lot of grace . Reade (18:48):

And what I mean by that is you have an opportunity to try something that you may not have tried a month or two ago, right? Throwing up, throwing together a webinar in your home office has a level of, of charm and shows a level of, of grit and perseverance that maybe you couldn't have gotten that same emotion across two months ago or a year ago. Right? So just doing something, you get a pass if it's not perfect because we're all dealing with this. That's the unique thing about the situation. Everybody's dealing with this right now. So being creative and doing something to add value is going to help you move forward as opposed to just fallen out of your customers and your prospects minds completely. Well, that's a great point. You know, this is a, this is not a vacation, you know, April was not vacation month.

Fred (19:48):

First of all. There aren't too many places you can go to right now. Yeah. If you want to take a vacation, you know it was interesting. I had a, an interesting moment two Tuesdays ago. I did a LinkedIn post on working from home. So I've worked from home pretty much most of the last 20 years. I've had various offices here and there, but me, a lot of work I had done from home. And so I did a LinkedIn post. Here's five tips and it was the first day when everybody was working from home and the post got like 10,000 views and got like 200 comments. And you know, this is again when it was noodle a whole bunch of people and I, I, you know, felt good about that. But I, I get a lot of people paying attention to our LinkedIn. Anyway, the next morning I got an email from somebody who was on my show who I'm not particularly close with, but he said, yesterday's post was amazing. You need to post more things about what people should be doing right now with their instance. And you know, I said, you know what, we're, we're all more leader ish than we might think that we,

Fred (20:47):

You know,

Fred (20:48):

Especially because not everybody right now read, it's showing leadership, you know? Right. I'm surprised how many people have reached out to me because of our webinars and our LinkedIn posts and the things that we're doing and have said, man, you guys are showing leadership right now. And I look around and I'm like, where's everybody else? Now there's, there are a lot of people. It's like you would think everybody would use this opportunity, man. If you're in sales, you gotta be showing your customers right now that you care for them. Because your customers are going through a very, very difficult time. Everybody going through a difficult time, but your customers are going, especially if they're in hospitality and our teammates know a couple of the big hotel chains are members of the Institute for excellence in sales. They're like, man, they're not doing an right now, right? People aren't flying to hotels. So

Fred (21:39): Mmm.

Read (21:39):

You know, 90% of the staff of hospitality industry and entertainment or have been furloughed, you know, there's no reason for her to have the event staff if there's no events. So your customers are going through a very difficult time. You've got to show empathy right now, but you got to show up. No, you got to show them that, Hey not, could you help me by buying my thing today? Because they're probably, that's probably not the most important thing on their mind unless there's something that they critically need. But at the same time, you know, you just need to show up. I love what you just said there. You got to show up. You got to show them that you're there. Even something simple like how are you doing today? Or Hey, do you want to touch base via zoom later on? Mmm. You know, everyone's at their home office, you know, everyone's, everyone showing themselves from half the torso upright now.

Read (22:29):

So I read a report yesterday that Walmart said that there business insurance is like quintupled in their business of pants, like falling way off. Cause everybody sees everybody from, you know, from the, from the mid torso up. But you know, just, just show up man, just LinkedIn message, simple text message. Hey, how you doing? Thinking about you, you know, they may not want to chat, they got their own problems, but at least show that you remember them right now and that you're there at least a chat if they want to. Yeah. And that's what's look at that sales man keeping the contract.

Reade (23:05):

Yeah. I mean I could not agree more. Is it, this is not a time to relax and to rest. I think I, I've been describing this [inaudible] 19 arc. It went from what in the world is going on to the world is ending too. I guess this is the world now, right? And we kind of went through those different things and very big a minute there, everyone thought, well, maybe is this just a week? I mean, I remember we took our son to school on the Friday before they canceled school thinking, well maybe they'll just move spring break up a week, you know? And so I think everyone felt like, well, let's just get past this. It'll be like a snow day, right? And maybe not for where you live. But in Georgia when snow falls, everything shuts down for the half day that it's, that it's snowing. Right? But then the whole week goes by and then we're looking at another couple of weeks. And now here we are at the time of this, we're looking at another month at least. Right? And so it's, it is not the time to just duck and cover and wait for the storm to pass, cause we don't know how long the storm is going to be here. So adding value and, and, and being in touch with your

Reade (24:17):

Customers and your prospects

Reade (24:18): Is the most important thing you can do. Fred, I want to be conscious of your time. So as we approach the end, what and now I may hit you with something kind of off the top of my head because I think you're a great person to ask this too. What do you think is one thing that you talked about mindset, you talk about daily practices. What is one thing that you want people to know when they walk away and they say, I just listened to his podcast with Fred diamond and he said this [inaudible] I know this is going to make an impact on my business or my life. Right? What's that one thing you want to tell people?

Fred (24:58):

Yeah, that's a great question and there's so many things, but back to what we just talked about before because of the timing of when you're going to be taking the sat and once again, Reed, thank you so much for, for having me on your show. I think you're doing a great job. And like I said, it's always nice to see that we had that Emory contact there as well. So I'm actually motivated to reach out to some of my some of my Emory friends just along those lines. You know, I think right now empathy is a huge word that keeps coming up. You know, everyone's going through stress. I mean, if you own a restaurant right now, and you know, I live in Virginia right outside of Washington DC and our governor came out yesterday and said that he wants people to stay at home until June 10th.

Fred (25:38):

So, you know, if I own a restaurant or violin, the small store right now, you know, everybody like started to do the reply, you know, their response, which was we're going to open up for takeout and delivery. But yeah, a lot of restaurants depend on alcohol. So if people aren't going to be either drinking two or three drinks, you know, you're, you're selling the low margin products, which are basically food. So if I'm opening a restaurant, it's a tough place to be right now. So I would say everyone's going through challenges. You know, I'm, I'm trying to paint a powerful rosy picture here for the salespeople, but we're all gonna go through through tough challenges cause they say recessions, it hasn't happened yet. It's going to be happening. So the key thing is when you're try to keep yourself balanced with your mindset, but use this time to be empathetic to your network, to your customers.

Fred (26:27):

You know, it's simple. Reach out. You know, it's funny when, when we get people who call me trying to sell me something and they go right into the pitch, you know, it was like, Hey, I want to tell you about these leads that I can get for your business. Well, you don't know me. You don't even know if I have a requirement for these. You haven't asked me anything about my business. So no, I'm not that interested in your leads right now or your tool. No, I hate when people on LinkedIn reach out to him. They go right into the sales pitch. You've got to spend this time. Empathy again, is a big word that keeps coming up all the time. Let your customers know that, you know, just let your customers know that you're out there. You know that no, you're just, I know what you're going through, man. I'm here to chat. Just checking in, just seeing how you're doing. Hey, I found this podcasts or webinars that you may want to have your people be aware of, but how can I be of service to my constituency right now? And in a lot of cases, you know, you just gotta tough it out. It's, it's a storm, like you said, and it's a, it's not an easy one or a fun one as it gets realer.

Fred (27:32):

Okay.

Reade (27:33): But you have to do those three things.

Reade (27:35):

Yup. I'm, I'm with you. I love that. I appreciate that Fred, and I appreciate you for being on here today. Hey, where can people learn more about the Institute for excellence in sales and about Fred?

Fred (27:47):

Well, the best way to find me is on LinkedIn. So just type in Fred diamond on LinkedIn and I'm very active on LinkedIn. I, I post something every day and I comment whenever somebody reaches out to me and asked me to comment as well. So that's probably the easiest way. And then you could find the sales game changers podcast. We're still broadcasting shows every Tuesday and every Thursday you could find that on the Apple podcast store. Just go search sales, game changers, podcasts.

Reade (28:14):

Awesome. Well, we'll make sure to leave links here in the comments and in the YouTube description as well. Fred, I really appreciate this time. It's been great chatting with you and I hope we'll get a chance to do this again soon. Thank you. And thanks for reaching out. All right, talk soon everybody. Thanks so much for watching.