I’ve been working for Miller Heiman Group for nine years. I’ve been selling for 25-30 years, at least in an official capacity. I started right out of college for a small commercial printing and supply company. It involved a wealth of door-to-door, cold calling, and cutting your teeth on a lot of rejection. I’ve spent the last 15 plus years helping companies improve their people. I worked for an employee engagement surveying company for a while, which led me to Achieve Global, which was purchased by Miller Heiman Group.

The role has certainly evolved in these last nine years for me and for the company from the initial focus on training people through our methodology. Now it involves technology, talent assessments, hiring and developing, consulting sales performance, competency design, compensation design, and territory realignment. We have a really respected research department that focuses on benchmarking and defining what makes a sales organization best in class.

If you could give one piece of advice to someone that was just getting into the game, what would it be?

Always put yourself in the customer’s shoes. I know that sounds straightforward. Always think about what the win results are. What would be important for your customer? The minute you start thinking like a seller and how you could sell something, then you’re no different from any other competitor. Understand what’s important to them from their perspective first, and then tackle the solution from your perspective.

How do you find yourself handling rejection and overcoming it?

You have to be very short-sighted and thick-skinned. I don’t really think about rejection anymore. I kind of have this weird mantra that, no matter how many times, if you fail more than others, that means you’re probably succeeding in sales. You put yourself out there, you’re willing to jump into opportunities, and you’re going to win. A lot of it is just moving on to the next situation. You’re going to win some and you’re going to lose some and you’re not going to be the best fit for everyone.

What sports figure do you think best represents you as a sales professional and why?

I’m a huge Philly sports fan and it’s really raw how the Sixers just lost a couple weeks ago. But I would say that I’m not always easiest to get along with or play fair in the sandbox. I’m pretty passionate and a closer. I think of myself as Jimmy Butler. It comes down to the fourth quarter a lot for me, but I usually hit quota and I close the deal.

What motivates you?

There are two different answers. My biggest motivation is that I really, really do enjoy helping companies improve through their people. And that’s what our company does. I align solutions that have a direct impact on employee performance and have a direct impact on a company’s ROI, profitability, and turnover. This is really enjoyable, and I’m passionately driven by helping our companies improve and see those results. That’s my biggest motivator. If I were to be really blunt with you, I’m also highly motivated by fear. Fear of failure, fear of not doing. I have a chip on my shoulder as the middle child with an overly successful older brother and younger brother. I wouldn’t necessarily suggest that path for anyone, but it’s something that has worked for me.

Have there been any trends that you’re noticing in sales recently?

I would tell you that social selling is a huge growth area. For the last 15 years, it’s been about understanding your customer’s needs and aligning solutions. But what has evolved in the last few years and really separated the world of selling is you have to do more than that. You can’t just be a solution. That’s what everybody is. The real differentiator today is adding perspective early in the sales cycle, meaning that you’re coming to an opportunity with value, and you’re sharing relevant, compelling information in the pre-sale that helps you become a trusted advisor. Now they’re leaning on you for your expertise. One of the bigger trends, and our research bears it, says 80% of leaders and organizations that are looking for a solution have done all the investigation of that solution before they even engage you. And they pretty much are coming to the table with a decision made already. When you get brought to the table as a sales rep, you must differentiate yourself and come with a perspective because they’ve already done their work on you.

Something else I’m seeing, and it’s more from our customer side, is every decision is taking longer. Every decision requires more buying influences. You have to come to the table as a sales rep of the organization, leveraging all of the different buying influences. Who is the economic buyer? Who’s the decision maker? Who’s the coach that’s going to help you navigate throughout this? If you think about going back in the trend from the big recession 15 years ago, now everything is heavily scrutinized, meaning with any decision made, there are no loose budgets anymore. People are really finite and really prescriptive about how they leverage the limited budget they have. There’s more length in the sales cycle and more scrutiny.

Do you have any pre-meeting rituals or routines?

Regardless of how good of a sales rep you are, you need to continue planning for your bigger meetings. It’s like golf. You cannot master golf, you can only get better. The funniest thing I ever hear is when reps say they don’t need sales training or sales development. Does Tiger Woods practice before his Masters? Does he swing the club?

Yeah, the best in the world do more of it, not less of it. Right? How you hone your skills is critical as a sales rep. Every big meeting or call should have not only pre-call planning but writing your scripting out, your call objective, your backup call objective, your discovery, and what you know about the company. But the older we get and more tenure we have, we forget that. We don’t plan it. I think it’s a big mistake.

Do you remember the first thing that you ever sold?

The first thing that comes to me is when I was in Little League Baseball and I had to sell candy bars in Texas. I had to outsell everybody in the neighborhood.

Did you outsell them?

Of course.

Now that the Sixers are out, who do you think is taking the championship?

I actually think that this is the last and final year that Golden State will take the championship. I think there’s a new era coming in basketball after that and I think it’s open game after that.