Don Buttrey and Ron speak to selling skills in our Industry.

Oh, yeah.

I've been doing training really for the last 25 years. I started out in manufacturing and moved up into sales and was training a lot of our, I was in a manufacturing company and training a lot of our distributors. And then from there, that just became a love. I love doing that. I was out on the sales field, developing salespeople. And then I just thought, I'm going to jump ship and do this, do what I love. So I've been doing this for 25 years.

And mainly focused on heavy equipment and equipment dealers.

I'm in Ohio.

In Dayton, Ohio, where I live.

Nope, didn't even have to move.

I, that's a, that's an interesting question. I have never, okay, first of all, training is, is kind of a tough sell because if somebody needs a backhoe to move some dirt, they got to get a backhoe. I mean, it may be one competitor, maybe another, but they've got to get a backhoe. For some reason, people think training is kind of optional and that they can put it off. And so it is a tough sell. My selling cycle is extremely long, but I have really yet to come across to anybody that if I said, hey, I'm Don Buttrey and I provide intensive fundamental selling skills, is that something you're interested in? The answer is always yes. Man, we need that. My guys need that. But the problem is they just don't pull the trigger and get off a dead center and make it happen. So I have to be a... carefully persistent sales stalker to help people do what they know they need to do. And then after they finally do it, they say, why didn't we do this 25 years ago?

Yeah, I think that, I mean, of course, we've got a lot of younger people coming in and they're more high tech and maybe entitled a little bit. But the reality is they're not going to make it in sales if they don't do the disciplines, do the fundamentals, and if they don't have skills. So I haven't really seen the attitude change. The ones I struggle with are some of the old dogs that have been in it for 20 years. I don't, you know, I don't need, I don't need any training. I don't need any practice. I'm good at what I do. And what they have is 20 years of, of experience, but it's, it's one year,20 times. Yeah. So they really haven't, haven't grown. So I haven't seen a lot of changes. I have seen a lot of change in the response to training over the, after, after COVID. Everybody knows they need it. They want it. But they're so distracted right now. And I'm just kind of sitting back and waiting to see if that settles back in. But they're like, well, we can't stop doing any training right now because right now we're just scrambling. We're trying to catch up. We're trying to figure out how to do virtual everything. And so there's been a lot of delay and hesitation. But I think that'll shake out.

Right. And I think as a general rule, Ron, that across the board, that's what I see. They like, send them out there, do your job, go out and sell. And a lot of times managers don't really know what's going on out. They don't know what their salespeople are doing and they don't really see them. And I ask them, have you done ride-alongs? Well, you know, I should do more, but I haven't. And so we've got salespeople out there that are just doing the best they can. They may be working really hard, but maybe not smart. And they're putting a lot of hours in and they can be demoralized. So I am a firm believer in training. and practice. And I think, I mean, we know how important training is. It establishes the fundamentals. It gives them a framework. It gives them language. It shows them what the discipline should be. It gives them hopefully a selling framework, a process to prepare and execute their selling. But if they get that in training and then they don't practice it, I mean, you play, I'm a firm believer in this. You play, like you practice. And unfortunately, in sales, we just don't practice enough. It's like, hey, you got through the training or we hired you as an experienced salesperson. So get out there and sell something instead of regularly, maybe monthly at least, if not quarterly, at the very least, to do some practice, go back and refresh the skills. work on it as a team and role play. I'm a big believer in role play. You know, you can't strap a GoPro on a salesperson's head to see what they're doing out there. The only way you can really know is if you sit down and record it. And it's not just the idea of role playing. The best dealers that I've worked with, the ones that... have the highest pins, they're performing, they're getting the job done, their frontline salespeople are good. If you look at their management team, their management team are coaches. They're not just putting prices on deals. They're working with them every day. When they got a big deal, the salesperson comes in their manager's office and says, I'm getting ready to call on XYZ Construction Company. This is a huge call. Can I bounce it off of you? And they do a pickup game. And they work through it and they'll say, nah, you probably shouldn't start that way because if you say that, that's going to, I know this guy, that's going to tick him off. Can you think of a better way to get to, how do you initiate this call? And what are some of the questions you have? What are you going to ask him? And the manager getting that feedback, it doesn't have to be a formal role play, even though I think that's good a few times a year, but just ad hoc pick up games before you go into a call. Now, why don't they do it? I don't know. I've got some. Why do you think salespeople are adverse to that? I'm curious what your thoughts are. I've seen some reasons.

Yeah.

Yeah, we always do a videotape and critiqued role play at the end. And here's the thing that I have seen. experienced veterans who make good money and who perform pretty well, that they're doing horrendous things. They're interrupting the customer. They're assuming stuff. They're not asking any questions. They're just presenting their brains out. And when they see it back, I mean, I saw a quote by, let me see if I can find it, by Larry Bird. He said, coaches can talk and talk and talk about something. But if you can get it on tape and show it to them, it is so much more effective. And they've seen that and said, man, I probably do that all the time. And I don't realize so that they could be getting good numbers, but what are they missing? And they don't realize it. So I think one of the reasons they're adverse is they're kind of afraid to get put on the spot. They're getting by. They're doing OK. They're afraid to get put on the spot. But there's other reasons they don't want to do it. that I have found is because they've had bad experiences in the past where somebody coached them and they picked them apart and they said negative things about them. They opinionated, they didn't train them first. They just went in and start beating them up. And so they're, they're hesitant with that. And, or they, they went, you know, and I love what I do and there's a lot of great sales trainers out there, but there's also a lot of them out there that it's just like, Do it the way I do it. I'm awesome. If you're lucky, you can be like me. And these guys are going to see right through that and say, I don't need that. I do not need to play. I don't need to sell the way you sell. So it has to be personal. It has to be adaptable. It has to be a process where they can prepare and execute their selling in a way that's theirs so that it's real, so that they're not like being judged by some standard that is not fair to them. People are scared. They're afraid of role plays.

But sometimes it also unfairly exposes them. And that's when they get threatened. Yeah.

I could be outselling and making money, and you're going to put me through this, listening to this dude, a rant and raving about how good he is and his 10 tips to sales. And that's why that's really, you know, over 25 years. And I'm not tooting my horn here. I'm saying that's why equipment dealers have responded to me and heavy equipment salespeople, because I'm not doing that. I'm coming in with proven disciplines, fundamentals, and then a very adjustable, flexible framework to prepare and execute their selling. So it's not like some, you know, there's 10 steps to selling and you have to go through all those. And if not, you don't get your 80%. No, it's not like that. It's very dynamic. It's this interaction. I always say that if you want to get action, you have to be a master at the interaction. And that takes a framework. I wrote a book called The Cell Process, which actually tools out that framework. What are you going to say when you start? What are some of the questions you're going to ask? How will you leverage your benefits and your value? And then how will you lock action? And that's not a step-by-step process. It's a very dynamic process. But if they have a framework so that they're prepared for all those components, then when they role play, in other words, they've been trained properly. It's kind of like, you know, I think Rick Pitino said it, perfect practice doesn't, or practice doesn't make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect. All practice does is make it permanent. So you've got to have a framework to prepare, and then you can start working on your execution and your skills. I saw a quote, and I wrote it down here. Yeah. John Beeline, coach of the Michigan Wolverines, he's turned a lot of programs around in very short order, usually one to three years to get a 20-win season. Here's what he said. He knows exactly what he wants to do both offensively and defensively. He calls his offense system organized motion offense, where the guys actually have to make reads. You know, what are your, what's your teammates doing? What's the defense doing? And then they make their cuts and their screens based on that information. And this says a lot of guys know how to run plays, but they don't know how to play.

And John Beeline gets his guys to know how to play. And I think that's the kind of role playing I'm talking about. Not some rigid thing where did you check all the boxes or did you, you know, like a robot did do some can selling technique where you're selling your value and pushing benefits. It's, it has to be. relationship oriented. It has to be a flow. And that takes practice. If you really want to get skill, you got to work on those skills regularly. You can't just go out there and expect to do it just because you went through three days of training.

Wouldn't you say the same thing? I don't want a surgeon operating on me who hasn't practiced that procedure and done it in front of people and done it in front of colleagues so that he's mastered it. And I don't know why salespeople think they don't need to do that.

Yeah. And the thing is, when you do know how to do it, all that worry and fear goes away because it's like, I got this. I know exactly what I'm going to say to start. I know what questions I'm going to ask to get a dialogue. I'm ready. And not only that, I've run run through it on the dry run four or five times. I got this down. That's you know, you talk about surgeons when I remember when my mom had a heart attack years ago. I asked the doctor, how's this procedure going to go? And is it high risk? And he goes, no, it's not high risk at all. I've done literally hundreds of these. I know exactly what I'm doing. Nothing's going to go wrong. I got this. And that's the kind of confidence we want salespeople to have. They're not going to get that if we just throw them out there and they don't have to perform in front of their peers and in front of their management. They're not going to be that good.

The job is easy.

And that's another thing, too. Every. industry and every type of selling has its own unique thing. And that's where I think a lot of times training or practice loses credibility because the salesperson says, well, you don't understand what I deal with in the rental segment or what I deal with, with, you know, I'm selling to mines and that's a completely different thing. And I think this is where, and this is what I've really tried to focus on in my training, give them the fundamentals. Give them the framework and then let them own it. Let them apply it. If you spoon feed them, and like you said, if the manager goes in and closes all the big deals, we've missed the point. We want them to have the skill to be able to recognize, to smell the opportunity, to know what works with that particular customer. Not only are different segments different, but every customer is different. And so every call is going to be different. You have to have game. And I think that's what we – we don't want to just give people a rigid framework or a few techniques. We want to give them game so that they can recognize what's going on and know what to do at the right time. And I believe, you know, Vince Lombardi said the most important thing a coach needs to know is that his team can or can't play under pressure. They've got to be able to do it. And as a manager, you have to know they can do it. You can't just hope. Hope is not a strategy. They've got to be able to do it. So I'm just a firm believer in regular role playing, even if it's just a quick pickup game or a quick bounce off a call before you leave or while you're sitting in the truck before you guys go in there and make that call, run through it. You know, OK, I'll play the customer. How are you going to start this? Let's run through it. We just don't do that enough. And that takes trust. It takes good leadership. But man, if you can get that in place into an organization, it's unstoppable what the team can do. When you get training and then you regularly practice, I don't care how good you are, you need to practice. Because I've been in this for years and I still make stupid mistakes like I interrupted that customer. Wow. I know not to do that. And I didn't ask enough questions. So, you know, you got to post-call critique every time and say, did I do what I was supposed to do? And if you don't know what that looks like, you're just hoping that you get the deal and you say, well, I didn't get that because that guy's a jerk. Well, maybe it wasn't because he's a jerk. Maybe you just didn't really find out what was going on.

mine too. Most salespeople. You know what I do for a living, Ron? I teach salespeople to shut up. They go to product training to learn how to talk, and then I have to reverse that and say, shut up, you guys.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

And they flow.

Yeah. Yeah, to work on those incremental little pieces of it, those small little things that can make all the difference in the world. And Lombardi said there's only five or six big plays in every game and you have to make them to win. You have to be ready. When that time comes, you've got to know exactly what to do. And sales is like that. It's dynamic. You can't know what's going to happen in that call. And so it's not this rigid. framework, but this flowing, fluid skill development so that you just know how to, and to be able to slow down, that's probably, I've seen literally thousands of role plays. And probably the most common piece of advice I get is I'm like, dude, slow down. You don't have to get in a big hurry. Just sit back and sit in it with them and say, really, what do you mean by that? Help me understand. So you said you've been having some problems with your equipment. Explain that. Can you fill me in? Oh, yeah, we just had some issues with the competitor. Really, what do you mean? You know, this slow, really just sitting in it and almost like a counselor. to sit in and really listen. You said you don't look at yourself as a salesperson. You look at yourself as a teacher. It's the same thing. They are the same thing. It's helping people understand how they're going to solve their problem and helping them get to that conclusion. It's a powerful skill, but it takes a lot of practice to get that good.

Yeah. And if they speak it, they own it. If you speak it, yeah, they may not.

Yeah, I was in a sales meeting and there was this old veteran guy there and he was hilarious. At one point, we were talking about selling value in your presentation and he stood up and he said, the best presentations I've ever made were ones I didn't have to end up making. You know, and I think that's, you know, we're salespeople are biting at the bit to prove their point and to they're making their closing arguments at the beginning instead of listening and really understanding what's going on. So that's it to get that to that point. And I think that's kind of been our topic of discussion to get to that point. It takes training, a framework, and then once they have that framework in place, then to practice, practice, practice until it becomes instinctive and automatic. And that's a level that not a lot of salespeople get to, but the ones that do, their job is easy. It's easy. And they have very low stress and they also have good home life because they're not working their butt off because they're making so many mistakes. They're just, it's easy if they get it done.

That's good that you got in that mode.

20 years earlier is coming and you're talking the whole time. It's like, are you not going to listen to me? So you got to the master level there, Ron. A lot of people don't get there.

Yeah. And reinforcement, I'm glad you brought that up, Brian, because that was something I really wanted to hit on. For the last 25 years, people would bring me in to do a sales training camp and to speak to their team, you know, kind of the Don Buttrey show. And it went great. But here's what happened. They would fly people in from all the branches and all the locations, huge cost, cater food, book lodging. Have some office assistant planning agenda, logistics, and all this time and investment, like five times what it costs for me to come in. Okay. And then the ultimate hope of that training was that it would start something, that it would start some disciplines within their people, that it would foster personal ownership. that it would be directly applied to their market, their system, their CRMs, that it would inspire some kind of a fire in their people to continue practicing and really working on their skills. Yeah, gathering in the room like that, there's some good stuff that happens. It's valuable. But that paradigm usually fell way short. I mean, I would go into a company and they'd get lit up and they'd say, we believe in the four pillars framework. We believe in these disciplines. We want our people to do them. And then they'd go back to the crazy train and never talk about it again. But with virtual, now we can do that. Now they can get the lecture, the content, and then get with their manager and everybody on the team get together and say, okay. How does this apply to us? How does this apply to our customers? That never happened in live events. This is a pretty strong statement here, Ron, but I'm not going to do live events anymore, not because of the pandemic, but because it's an antiquated way of doing it. I mean. I'm not saying that I wouldn't want to go to a sales meeting and interact with all the people, but the real gut level practice and work that needs to be done is not going to happen in some big meeting with some dude on the stage. It's not going to happen. The kind of gut level stuff that has to happen is going to happen in the trenches around the table every Monday with their manager.

So evangelists came in, but what are the pastors doing?

Yeah.

And I'll tell you what, here's the thing, Ron. They don't report to me and they don't report to you. And so my whole philosophy on this has turned to, we got to get the sales managers, the branch managers, the leaders to not only own it and then believe in it. but to coach it, reinforce it, apply it to their systems and have that dynamic interaction because they're the ones that write the checks. They're the ones that they have to answer to and the salespeople need to be accountable to them. And when it works that way, it sticks. But if it's just a rah-rah show, I mean, some of it sticks when you have that. Some people were highly impacted when you spoke to them and they're like, I'm going to start doing this. And they did it, but they did it on their own because of their tenacity and because of their desire to succeed. But can you imagine what a team would be like if the managers were, if that was the expectation?

So they start listening. Yeah.

Yeah, and I think it was right there in front of us, but we had these paradigms, and we just kept doing it the way we're doing it. The pandemic did us a favor in that regard. It helped us to see the technology. I've even seen it on TV shows and stuff. They're starting to realize, why are we spending all this energy, all this money when we've got the technology right here to do it? You don't have to have everybody in the same room. We just have to utilize that. I have had some of the best sales calls that I've ever had. on Zoom or Teams meetings. And here's the reason, because I didn't spend $1,000 to fly out there and then stay in a motel and not sleep any good and then get up the next day and try to be fresh. And then we meet and then the guy has something else that he has to do. So the meeting starts late and I'm in a hurry and we didn't get anywhere. Whereas with this technology, it's just on demand when it works. And we can get so much done. We just have to change our mindset. I'm really working with my customers to, I'm really, you talk about being a teacher, I'm trying to teach them to utilize the power of e-learning versus a lecture. And to get that information, just like you're providing your clients, I'm providing mine, they get that content and then process it incrementally with their manager. and their team, and let it really sink in and become a part of their culture and the way they sell. And I'll tell you what, if they embrace that, and I've got some equipment dealers who have, and they are just blowing my mind how good their salespeople are. And they started out really rough. Yeah.

But when they do it, and I've been doing this, I do four incremental things. I'm working with one equipment dealer. They've got seven new hires. They go through a segment of the training. And then on Tuesdays at nine o 'clock, I have a team's meeting with them. And they knew, and their manager and me, we said, you better do the work and you better be ready because we're going to ask you about the assignments. We're going to discuss. So take notes and be ready. And those one-hour meetings were probably more effective than three hours of training. Yeah, I agree. It's coming out. We're asking them questions and they're saying, yeah. I really like this segment. It did this. And I realized I wasn't doing this. And those meetings were some of the most profound meetings that they've ever had because they were processing what they learned instead of just taking a drink out of a fire hydrant and then going back to what they were doing before.

Absolutely. As long as the content is just the fundamental disciplines and then their applied process discussed with that unique group, some of the same content. There's nothing new under the sun. It's all fundamental disciplines, territory management, strategic planning, tactical planning. The thing is, how is it applied? Well, that's where the manager. is going to be better than the trainer in applying it because they know their people, they know their customers, they know, you know, rental is a completely different sales environment than equipment sales. CCE equipment, completely different than major heavy equipment. The selling cycles are different. The customer base is different. You know, instead of dealing with mom and pop construction guys, you're dealing with corporations. All that, you cannot create training that's just specifically applied just to them. What you have to do is give them the fundamentals in a curriculum and then they apply it and own it and process it. And the thing is, when they do that, it sticks.

And then you have to, once you learn some of those new things, especially if you're switching from one type of selling to another, then you have to practice it because it won't, you don't have the muscle memory, so to speak, to do it properly. So you're going to go down your worn paths and do it old school way if you haven't really. had the training and the practice. And so I think that's been the theme of our discussion is training is important and it needs to be regular, but practice needs to be ongoing from then on. You got to keep doing it.

He's a classic example of that. He, you know, they run their patterns over and over. And then when you get in game time, it's just. It's natural. It blows your mind how good they are. Tom Brady's a perfect example of that. And so was Peyton Manning. He was always one of my favorites. He wasn't a physical specimen, but, man, he could execute and he could read the defense and he knew how to apply his knowledge and then execute it beautifully.

This would be a good time. I pulled another quote out by Vince Lampardi. I loved it. He said, to me, the big thing in being a successful team is repetition of what you're doing, either by word of mouth, blackboard, or specifically work on the field. You repeat, repeat, repeat as a unit. Repeat. Repeat, repeat as a unit. So if you get the right practice, you get the right curriculum, and then you work it, that's when your team goes to a level that you can't even believe they could ever get to. It's amazing.

good. That's good. So no matter what the defense does, you're ready. Yeah.

Yeah.

I think this is kind of a good spot to even kind of wind this down. It always rises and falls on leadership. And I worked with a dealership some time ago that they put their people through the training and they were doing some of the practice and they were trying to drive home the disciplines. And they contacted me and they said, you know, the guys just aren't responding. And they got... They got attitudes and they're just like they think they don't need this. And I'm like, whose fault is that? If you let a teenager get away with murder and then you all of a sudden change the specs, they're not going to like it. You've got to stand up to this and they're waiting to see if you're going to go. Here's what your salespeople are saying. Let's just wait this out. Maybe they'll. They'll kind of get off of this kick of getting better and just let us go back to what we were doing. And I said, as a leader, you have got to stand firm. And if they don't get on board, get rid of them. Because otherwise, they're going to drag the rest of the – all the rookies are going to just get drugged down by them because of their attitude. You know, sometimes it's the high performer that messes up the whole team. And, you know, I always tell them, go watch Remember the Titans. You know, you got to get the whole team working together. You can't have somebody thinking, hey, I'm too good for this. I don't need to practice.

That's real clear to me, is if you haven't trained and developed your people. You've got to find some curriculum. Of course, I have that, but I'm not saying that that has to be it, but you've got to give them the fundamentals. They have to have territory management disciplines. They've got to have strategic selling, understanding, and more proactive selling instead of just going through the motions. And they have to have tactical skill. They've got to have a selling process to prepare for their calls. How are they going to run the call? They've got to have a process. And then after they get that under their belt, practice, practice, practice. Keep yelling it on the sidelines, preaching your message, making sure they hear it. It's not what you teach. It's what you emphasize. And so they've got to continue to emphasize that as a management team. Do a lot of ride-alongs. Do a lot of role-playing. Have that as the expectation. Get rid of all that ridiculous fear of coaching and being threatened by that and let them know, hey, we're here to help you get better. And if a company will do that training and then ongoing religious practice, that's how you're going to grow sales. That's how you're going to make it happen. So training and practice is the key.

I've been talking with you as always, Ron. Yeah.

com.

Bye now. Been a pleasure. Thank you.