Walker McKay, McKay Consulting Group; No BS Sales; No BS Sales Podcast; Author

0:00 The topics and opinions expressed in the following show are solely those of the hosts and their guests, and not those of W FOURCY Radio. It's employees are affiliates. We make no recommendations or endorsements for radio show programs, services, or products mentioned on air or on our web. No liability explicitor implies shall be extended to W four CY Radio or it's employees are affiliates. Any questions or comments should be directed to those show hosts. Thank you for choosing W FOURCY Radio. Churchill said, those who fail to learn from history are condemned. To repeat it. Kevin Helen n believes that certainly applies to business. Welcome to Winning Business Radio here at W four CY Radio.

0:43 That's W four cy dot com and now your host, Kevin Helenn. Thanks everybody for joining in today. We are live and I'm Kevin Hallanan and welcome back to Winning Business TV and radio on W four cy dot com. We're streaming live on talk for TV. That's talked the Number four TV, and of course we're streaming live on Facebook and that's at Winning Business Radio. And as most of you know, we're available in podcasts after the live show on pretty much every platform you can find podcasts, YouTube, iHeartRadio, Spotify, Apple, pretty much again wherever you find podcasts. The mission of Winning Business radio and TV, as regular viewers and listeners know, is to offer insights and advice to help people avoid the mistakes of others, right to learn best practices, the how tos, the what too's, the what not tos, to be challenged, and I hope to be inspired by the successes of others. Those are consultants, coaches, advisors, founders, owners, entrepreneurs, authors, people with expertise. But you know, virtually every one of those types of people, successful people I've ever had a chance to talk to, has said some form of failure in their lives and careers. So, as I say, every week, while we all have to get our knees skinned once in a while, I'm driven to keep those scrapes from needing major surgery. Let's endeavor to learn from history so we don't repeat it. I've spent the better part of my career equipping businesses to grow from solopreneurs to small and medium sized businesses all the way up to the

2:14 fortune fifty. I've seen some of those companies win and to varying degrees, I've seen some of them fail too. I've had the opportunity to rub elbows with some of the highest performing people around and with some who probably should have found other careers. In my own businesses, I've had lots of success, but some failures too, So I like to think I've learned a lot from those experiences. So you're going to hear from me my opinions and insights. But anybody who knows Newell will tell you that I sometimes have a hard time being quiet. Walker. Sorry, but mostly we. Hear from experts, those consultants, coaches, authors, advisors. Today's no different. My guest is Walker McKay. He is the founder and principal principle of McKay Consulting Group, founder of NOBS Sales and the Nobs Sales podcast, and author of the soon to be released book Some Will Some won't, So What Who's Next? Viewers and listeners may remember Walker. He was a guest on the show way back in This was a pivotal moment January of twenty twenty, right before the apocalypse, I mean pandemic. Here's his bio. After graduating from Washington and Lee University, Walker McKay began his professional career in banking.

3:23 He then transitioned to the commercial real estate industry, where he spent the next thirteen years owning his business skills that eventually starting his own agency and early three, Walker realized that he could make a career of helping other professionals develop their selling and business skills, and subsequently joined the Sandler Training Organization in Columbia, South Carolina. Innately curious and likely to say anything to anyone and get away with it. That's true if you get to know him. Walker coaches and trains salespeople around the country to sell without being sales e, to build trusting business relationships and decision makers with decision maker much more quickly, and you know what, to make more money without using pressure or cheesy sales tactics. Walker lives in Greenville, South Carolina with his lovely life. Hell a little bit, I'm gonna start that one again. Walker lives in Greenville, South Carolina with his lovely wife, Sally. They have two boys who left the Fish and Hunt Walker. Welcome to Winning Business Radio.

4:18 Appreciate you being here. Thank you, Kevin. I appreciate that one thing that clearly I wrote wrong or somebody wrote wrong in my thing was I live in Columbia, South Carolina. I say, got agreeable South Carolina. You said Greenville, But Greenble's a hell of a place. But it's just not Columbia. You know, I knew that. I just kept saying it wrong. You're right, it's all right. Thanks for clarified, because you don't want to be confused with that guy. No, absolutely no, not that guy. All right, So let's start with a little easy stuff here. Tell us about Sally and the boys. So been married twenty seven years. Two weeks ago, I still introduced Sally. It's my first wife. It catches her off guard every now and then. My first wife. Now, I had two boys, both in college. One is a freshman at Wofford College in Spartanburg, South Carolina, where's playing football.

5:07 They're now ranked twenty He just said there, ranked twenty fourth in the country. Wow. I don't know what that really means. But they did beat They beat University of Richmond and football this weekend, so he's feeling good about that. My other son is is Walker of the third and he is at Swane. He's a senior there studying forestry and he hopes to. His plan is to move to New Zealand after he graduates for up to two years to getting the forestry business down there before coming back here. So I'm excited because that means there might be at least one, maybe two or three fishing trips for me in New Zealand. Yeah, so I'm. Encouraging him to go do that. That is definitely a place on my bucket list. As well mine too. And so you like the couch, just go.

5:49 I'm there, I'm there. How do you developed that love of the outdoors. Yeah, I didn't grow up doing that, but I typically when I get into something, I get way into something, and so when I was in I was kind of growing up. My dad had a peace property on the country that had a lake, and I used to kind of fish and that kind of stuff out there. But when I went away to high school and college, I was more interested in alcohol and women than I was in being outdoors. So I kind of gave. Me to do. You can do at least one of those things outdoors. Correct, that's exactly right. But anyway, a friend of mine invited me on a fishing trip to Florida, and I was like, you know, I'll go I don't really care about that. I ended up having a really good time. And then another friend of mine said, come hunt with me.

6:33 I'm like, deer hunt and he's like yeah. So I took a book and I sat in a deer stand by myself and read. It was before these damn things, right, And I sat in the stand and read a book. I was like, this is I don't ever do this anymore. And so anyway, I kind of got hooked and I did it. I got really into it, and I started studying the biology of the animals and the seasons and all this stuff. I was like, this is really cool. And then my boys were born and I wanted to have something to do with them, and so I started taking taking them both on dove shoots when they were three or four years old. They didn't shoot at the town, but they would go pick up birds for me. And both my boys killed their first year when they were seven years old. So which is you know, which is down here not that big of a deal, but in a lot of other places in the country that's like holy shit. So so yeah, we've been around. We love the outdoors is something we love and love to do.

7:22 Ourselves awesome. All right, transitioning a little bit, How did you decide you wanted to study American history in school? Well, I was an English major because I was going to go to law school and I had a really good English teacher in high school who inspired me, and so I was an English Like I said, when studied English, was excited about that. And I ended up was in a class of three people's at three hundred level English class. And I was not a great student. I was a C student, mainly because I didn't really care at the time. And the class was on Thursday morning, and we our Wednesday, our party night was Wednesday night. And so I showed up in class on Thursday morning at eight o'clock and nobody else showed up, and I hadn't done the reading, and the guy who was the head of the English department made me stand up and read out loud to him, and I was like, he hates me, right, I think.

8:18 I'm so sweat just now thinking about that. It was terrible. So I was like, why do I say this? F this? I'm going to be a history major because that's easier. So I switched to history, and that's how I became history major, and I loved it. A lot of thought went into that. I was like, just get me out of here, out of college, get me out of college. So how did you get into banking? I was interviewing for jobs, and I was never coming back to Columbia, South Carolina, and I was going to go to Chicago or Boston or New York or LA or something, because that's what I was built for. And I got a couple of job offers, one like for retail in New York something like that. And I got an offer to come work for a bank bank training program in Columbia and somebody described that as a getting paid to get an MBA, and so I was going to come do that for six months and then go to all those other places. And that was almost forty years ago. So I just kind of stayed, and I'm glad I did. I stayed for eighteen months at the bank, and I don't remember if I quit or got fired.

9:24 It's very kind of foggy exactly what happened. But I was no longer at the bank, and I went into commercial real estate, where I knew i'd make my fortune exactly. So see if you remember this much, I like to ask what lessons did you learn from banking that you still used today? We're still. Yeah, that's a tough one. Well, you know what it was. I learned a ton of stuff. Number one was the value of your credit score, how important it is to take care of and take care of your credit to score and keep that high. I also understood, I learned the language, and I think this is a good thing of how of how banks approved commercial loans information they needed, what was going to be a good one versus a bad one as far as the when you're giving the information to somebody with the things that they needed. And that's been invaluable to me to understand a banker's brain and help me, you know, in some ways greatly and badly at others. If I needed to go borrow money, I knew what the hell that was looking they were looking for and what I needed to present to be able to get what I needed.

10:33 And you and I are in a position as trusted advisors to our clients where they typically ask us some things off topic, and that's one of them. Yeah, yeah, right, yeah. Yes, one hundred percent. It's funny. I was talking TOG the other day and I said, you know, my banker does this bagger that he goes. You know, I've always wanted a banker. I'm like, you own a business and you don't have a banker. For goodness sakes, what's wrong with you? You better do that. I had made an introduction that day so that he can have a quote banker. Yeah. So anyway, so how did you become interested in commercial real estate because that was the next well of transit. Yeah, buddy of mine came into my branch. It was some of that known for a while. And he deposited a check, a commission check for nineteen thousand dollars that he'd done forgotten for making doing a lease. And I made eighteen thousand dollars. I made eighteen thousand dollars a year, and he just a positive check that was more money than I'd made for the year. And I was like, holy cow, And he goes, yeah, I got like five more of these coming in. I said, I'm going to go do that so again. Whether I got fired or I quit, I'm not sure. But I ended up going and applying for a job at this commercial real estate brokerage firm because that's where I was. As I said, I'm going to go make my fortune.

11:41 Which you kind of did almost did you did well? Kind of sort out? Well, I did, Okay. I was mediocre, all right. And I tell people this, it's funny. I coach a lot of people in the commercial real estate business. Now. When I left the business in the in the company that I was in, it was very very much ego driven, egocentric, hero focused. It's one of the things we talk about a lot is that very much you're you're the badass and you're closed the deal and your one is very i would say, very honestly toxic culture. And when I left the when I left that company after nine years and went go work for a developer, and then I got out of the business, my boss at the time, he said, he said, you're not going to make it. Thank you? Said, what do you mean? Yeah, thank you, and he said he said, anybody that that leaves, he said, they pretty much don't make it. And I was like, oh, and he stabbed, basically stabbed me right in the heart. And so I for some reason, when I got out of the I went from there to work for a developer and left the developer to go work for myself because I clearly am unemployable and so ended up then going to work in the sales training business.

13:02 And I met with him again for some reason because I was a glad and he said he said once again, he said you're He said, clearly, you just didn't have what it took. Wow. And so the cool part for me was I felt there was this pit in my stomach and a not okay feeling for six or seven or eight years. And then, unbeknownst to that guy, I got invited to speak to the regional meeting for that grew in AI, right for all the Suffeast. There were one hundred and fifty brokers in AI. They were coming to one place, and I was the invited speaker, invited by another office, you know, come do that. And I was nerveless to death about how it was going to go, because here I am standing in front of a bunch of people whom I knew were thinking, well, hell, you didn't make it. What the hell are you going to teach us? Really scared to have my little talk written, and I was sweating bullets, and I ended up riding up the elevator with the guy that said I wasn't gonna make it. If they feel even worse. And I realized about one minute before I got on stage. I was like, you know what, I've got a written talk, but I'm not going to use that talk. Screw that, I'm going to talk about what I want to talk about.

14:19 And so I stood up on the stage and I said, many of you don't know that eight years ago I washed out of this business. I didn't make enough money to stay and I was not good at this business. And now you guys have invited me to talk to you about how to succeed in that business. And so I thought, instead of telling you how to succeed, which I never did, instead I'll tell you the mistakes that I made in a way that maybe you can avoid them. And so I was able to roll that out and just kind of shoot from the heart and talk about the things I didn't do, like prospect consistently his people's expectations, like understanding why people really did things, not just wait for them to sound motivated to do something, but they did deepen to find somebody's pain of why they would actually make a change. And it was fascinating because at the end of that talk, maybe this thing exaggeration, He's like, remember it several people stood up to clap, which doesn't happen a lot in my talks, but these people did and that meant such that made such a big difference to me. And at that point I was able to walk of that room with my head held high and say I slayed that dragon that was inside of me telling me I wasn't good enough. And that was one of the greatest moments, quite frankly, of my career. Slaying that dragon.

15:40 That was awesome. That is awesome. Hey, pause right there, We're going to take our first commercial break, everybody. We're going to be back in just about one minute with Walker McKay, founder and principle of a bunch of Things with Walker McKay and in the title we'll get back to him. You're listening to Men Business Radio with Kevin Helene on W four Cy Radio. That's W four cy dot com. Don't go away. More helpful information is coming right up right here on Winning Business Radio. Have you ever dreamt of being on the radio, Well, now it's your chance. Be a radio show guest on the number one ranked internet radio station and promote you and your business for free.

16:25 Yes you heard. It, free business advertising right here on w four cy dot com. Call five six one five zero six four zero three one now to get booked on one of our shows. That's five six one five zero six four zero three one. Get your free advertising now. And now back to Winning Business Radio with Kevin Helene, presenting exciting topics and expert guests with one goal in mind to help you succeed in business. Here once again is ken Than Helen. All right, we're back with Walker McKay, founder and principle of Ready McKay consulting group, Nobs Sales and Nobs Sales Podcast, and soon to be released author of Some Will Some Won't.

17:21 So what Who's next? All Right? I love that you talked about uh, you and I know the concepts, but I want you to unpack this a little bit. You talked that dragon was not a What do I say? That dragon was? Not? What do I do? That dragon was? How do I think? Yeah? Who am I right? So talk more about that? Yeah. So there's this concept that you and I both know that we are separate from who we are, is separate from what we do. And often time I only know about men. I don't know a damn thing about women, but I know that men will often wrap Yeah, well, men will often wrap their identity who they think they are around what it is they do right, And so if they have a bad day, week, month, quarter year in their business, or in their marriage, or in their golf game or whatever it is, they can begin to feel less than okay about themselves, right, And so we conflate.

18:23 And my belief is that our value is not in what we do. Our inherent value is in who we are, and in my mind, we are I'll just speak my truth on this. I believe that we are loved by our creator one hundred percent from a million, from a billion years ago to a billion years in the future, no matter what we do, Invariably that is the case. And so therefore our value comes from that love towards us. And so if I have a bad so and as we get older, we take on more and more roles in our life. There's been since there's family, there's all these other things that we do, and sometimes huh, coach, right, coach whatever else, though, we can begin to believe that we are we are what we do right. I am a lawyer, I am a coach, I am a trainer, I am or whatever, And so therefore, and we confuse those things. And sometimes if you have a bad time there, you think you're worth less, and you there's this wound.

19:26 It's like a child, a wound in your child inside. And that's what I had, was this wound that I wasn't good enough, when in fact, you know, I'm never perfect, nobody's perfect, but I'm good enough for whatever. Gosh on it, I'm good enough. You know, so's stupid, but I am. Yeah, I have everything I need to be successful, and I'm the same as everybody else. And so that's what I had to and you can, I can say it intellectually all day long, but at that day, I had to believe it. And I had to prove that to myself. And that came from taking a risk, from standing up and saying, y'all invite me to speak, you're paying me to be here, and I washed out of the business.

20:09 And I bet you can't believe you did that right. And here's what I did wrong, And it was And sometimes I believe that that being honest, being transparent, always in telling the truth in a way that benefits everybody around. You know, I think like telling the truth like you're ugly, I don't think that's helpful, but in a way telling the truth about things that benefits everybody in the conversation. And fit to work together. Yeah, and not seeing that as a move, but seeing that is the absolute truth. And I think a lot of people confuse this stuff like I use a lot of reverse psychology. You probably don't use reverse psychology in your business, right, And people will and people will say, oh, you're just doing that to trick somebody. But the truth is, when I say, you know what, we may not be able to help you or I don't know if this makes any sense or not, I'm not using that as a move. I'm saying that because I believe that's the absolute truth. You're walking through me wrong. But all that everything that I do, I teach my clients do, and Kevin, I know you do the same, is from a place of transparency and humility and empathy in a way to make people feel more comfortable and for them to share the truth, make it an easy environment for them to share the truth.

21:29 Yes, some of those things that salespeople and Connor every day you present to me, I'll take it to my boss. You know, I'm not sure right right? When you know it's a problem. I never used to bring it up till I learned, right, just like go along with the flow, yes. One percent, just put your head down, right, we go who we who going to notice? And the reality is that's just you're just creating bombs that blow up in your face and you're wasting a lot of people's time. And so it's better if there's going to be a problem, let's bring it up now. So I want to talk for just a minute about accountability. I know you believe in accountability. I believe in accountability. And when you and I met, we met uh and some people that are still you know friends, uh three four somewhere there.

22:12 And I don't know how this happened. We might have been encouraged, but we certainly we jumped on a call every Friday, you and I and one other guy, Matt Yep, and we held each other accountable. We would we would celebrate and encourage each other. We'd also beat the crap out of each other if we didn't do what we were supposed to do right and a loving way. But I remember saying to you, guys, I don't know if you remember this, but I remember it clearly because I've told this many times to other people. In one of those calls, I said, guys, I feel kind of bad. I'm not sure this is working. I feel like I'm taking more out of these calls that I'm giving. And you, guys said, it's pretty amazing to me at the time. You know, yeah, well, it's funny having somebody there. I'm a believer in accountability, and I think if you want to succeed, especially in sales, although I think it happens all around, I only know about sales. I only know about guys. Right, Sales is hard. It's one of the and it never and this is one of the things I've talked to you about. People say when does it get easier? And I'll tell you it never gets easier.

23:16 We just have to get better at it. And so as if we have a group, you and I and Matt. We had a group of three people and we met every Friday at a certain times. You had to show up and we had three things to talk about. What did you do? What did you say you're gonna do last week? What did you do last week? Victories and lessons. I guess that's four things. Would you say you're going to do, what did you do? Victories and lessons and then at the end we would say, all right, here's what I'm gonna do in this week coming up. And somehow we were able to remember what each other said and say, hey, you said you were going to make twenty five calls and you said you were going to call this guy. How'd that work out? And and it's funny when they're three people, two people, you can kind of let each other off the hook, but when they're three people, I was always afraid if I didn't do it.

24:05 I said I was gonna do this, y'all were gonna kick me out. And I didn't want to be kicked out of the group. I didn't want to let I didn't want to let y'all down because I didn't want to let me down. Yep, exactly exactly. So that was and that was that helped me. And also it was great to hear when I would get my ass kicked over something that y'all had experienced or were experiencing the same thing, had dealt with it before, or getting ready to we're able to kind of learn together at a much faster pace. I'm a big believer in that stuff. When you're doing something hard. Have somebody else that you can be accountable with. You know something I appreciate and you helped me learn this, as did Matt and others. But most people debrief the failures, what didn't go right. We learned to debrief the successes and repeat more of that right, talk about that from it.

24:58 So the cool thing, Kevin, you and I both teach a process, right, we teach a process for selling. And the good news about having a process for selling, well back up. A lot of people think that selling is a personality, right and the only and some people do have a personality that has brought them sales, and that's great. There only there's only a couple of problems with that. One is this not transferable. You can't look at somebody else and say just do what I do because they can't ever be you. But as far as looking back at the victories, is to go through your process and say, Okay, here's what I did, well, here's where I went, here's what I did, and I want to continue to do those going forward. So you go back and say this is what is this is what's been working in the past, is what I need to do? And if things stop working.

25:47 Then we go, Okay, where do I need to refine? Where do I need to go back? Where do I need to do better? Or what's changed? I don't know. I just answered the question you just asked. Is that what you were looking at? Good? Yeah, that's good. Right there, let's transition a bit. Well, we've got about four minutes, so the next break plenty of time. Tell us about McKay Consulting Group. You founded that in twenty fourteen. That's sort of the twenty fourteen. Yeah, about ten years ago, I was I worked for a training company and I had a guy who was, I guess sort of a business partner, and we were great friends. And then I at some point towards the end of that I kind of realized that i'd let the relationship fall apart, and so he owned the majority of the company and so my choice, I wasn't ever going to change him. And so I realized I needed to quit. And so I had no I had. This was a job. I was mailing it in, making good money. It just showed up for work and was doing great. And I decided that that was way too easy, and so I need to screw that up.

26:49 So I but you came home and Sally said, wait what you did? What it was? Well, actually you know for it? Bless her heart. I came home. I said, I'm miserable to sucks. She'd been hearing me say that, and I said, and I want to quit. She goes, do what you need to do, and I said, we'll figure it out. Well, I had no plan, as zero plan. I had about maybe ninety days money in the bank, ninety days eleven expenses. We just built a new house about two years before. I had a gigantic mortgage and two kids in private school. And so I came home and I realized that POINT had a three year non compete, so I couldn't do training or coaching. And so I said, McKay Consulting Group, We're going to figure out we're going to do. I thought it might be an outsourced VP of sales for a company or two. I didn't want to be in.

27:33 I didn't want to work for anybody ever again, so I figured business would poor to me. Well, I got two good clients to be outsourced VP of sales. There were two problems with that. One I sucked at it, and number two, it was a terrible business model. Because I wasn't quite making enough money with those two contracts. I needed a third and then maybe a fourth, but it didn't have time to go get them, and eventually one of them went away, and so anyway, it just was a disaster. And so after I kind of muddled my way through, we had to sell our house moved to a rental house. It was a disaster financially, but we made a choice to keep my kids in private school and sell the house and move to a small rental house. And so then eventually when my friends came back and said, why don't you get into training and I said, well, I've got you know, I don't really have any material. And they said, well, shit, you got ten thousand hours material in your head, and said why else won't you do this?

28:21 I said, well, I don't have a training room. They said, have you ever heard of Zoom before? And I said no, I haven't. This is twenty sixteen, seventeen, Yeah, no I haven't. And said well why else and said, well, I got this noncompete that goes over six months, and they said that gives you six months to get things set up any other excuses. I was like, damn, So I'm a literal jlassics, what a jerk. I'm a world class excuse maker, always have been. And so that's when pivot points in my life happened, is when I get caught making excuses. And so finally I was like, okay, that sounds like fun. And so the caa consulting group, is kind of the overarching thing, and that we run a podcast called an NOBS Sales School podcasts. It also is a training group where I do sales training for typically B to B companies that sell things expensive and complicated, typically with people in multiple offices. We do all of our training over zoom now to kind of the world's like, oh zoom.

29:19 When the pandemic came, I got a lot of business because people said, nobody's going to buy over video. This is ridiculous. Our business is going to like that's funny. I've been doing it for been doing it for six years. Now, you go ahead and tell me how it won't work, right. So but anyway, so that was a that was a kind of a boon for me, and I started with very little to nothing as far as income goes our clients. We started over from scratch and soon enough, here we've been you know, growing the business, and it's been really exciting to the last couple of years to do it. All Right, we're going to ask more. We're going to take our second break right here, everybody. We're going to be back with Walker McKay in about a minute.

30:02 You're listening to Winning Business Radio with Kevin Helene on W four CY Radio. That's W four cy dot com. Don't go away. More helpful information is coming right up right here on Winning Business Radio. The yp dot com website is your local search engine. If you're looking for a good restaurant, it can help you find the right one nearby with ratings and reviews. Or if your car breaks down, you can use the YP app to find the closest repair shop. Or maybe you're just looking for something to do on a Friday night. While it has great local coupons for all sorts of things in your area, no matter what, when or where. If you're looking for something, YP local search can help you find it. So go to yp dot com or download the app to search local to find local and save.

30:47 Local and now back to Winning Business Radio with Kevin Helene presenting exciting topics and expert guests with one goal in mind to help you succeed in business. Here once again is Kevin Helenett. We're back with Walker McKay. He is the founder and principal of McKay Consulting Group, founder of the Nobs Sales and Nobs Sales podcast. And the book. We're going to talk about it in just a couple of minutes. Here, tell us who your ideal clients are, but more than just you know, they're in this industry in the size right, Give me some attributes, give us the audience some attributes of an ideal client.

31:34 Sure, so, well, I'll tell you one. I'll give you a specific example right now. I work with a guy who runs three states for a commercial insurance brokerage company. And it's a it's a large company. They're nationwide. He's in charge of three states. He is a maverick. He is somebody that says we can do better. And in the insurance business, what they want to do is get broker of record letters where somebody the prospect agrees to fire their existing agent and then hire the new none of this quoting stuff. And so started working with one office with him, we got pretty good at getting broken of record letters and now he's expanding me to a couple of others. But he's somebody that says, we're going to do this differently than everybody else. And he almost got fired by hiring me so because he committed some funds that he didn't have the authority to commit. But he said, we're going to get it done and we'll figure it out. And so so that's that's one type of guy who's a maverick, who says, we got to figure this shit out. We're not doing the waver bales does.

32:37 I have another client of sales heavy equipment and he is owned by his company, sold half of it or forty nine percent of private equity, and so he's got to grow. And he says, we have to grow. We need a we need a system and a process that all of our sales team can use throughout all the different dealerships that we're buying. And Jim's one of those guys that says, we can't do it like everybody else. We have to make this work. And so oftentimes it is that person that doesn't like the status quo. That is, they're driven, they're ambitious, and they're ready to break things. They're okay if they say, you know what, dang it, we just can't. We got to figure out a different way than everybody else. I'm want to sound different, look different. Now, those people aren't everywhere, right, They're not. They're not. Everybody feels that way. There are lots of people that say, hey, we want to talk to you about training. But what they want I found not everybody. Well, I just want I want you to make me feel good about what I'm already doing.

33:36 Right, motivated, Motivate my guys. Motivate us, motivators, give them some good give us some of that good motivation juice. And you know, it's just like you tell people, Look, if if you're not motivated yourself, how the hell am I going to help you? Right, don't come to me. So motivation is funny because I hear it. I don't know if this my achilles heel, I will announce it on the radio and television. When somebody comes to me and says, oh, Walker does motivational speaking, it's like stabbing me in the eye with a hot knife. It is the worst. And so I always cringe when I said I tell people I learned this. I guess from that. I'm really more of a demotivational speaker. We'll show people how hard it is to do it right.

34:18 But anyway, so, yeah, and the duration of frequency and duration how often do you yeah? So typically yeah, so with I work with some individuals as well. Have a nice program just for individual salespeople that pay for themselves. And for those guys, we meet twice a week, seven eight times a month for live training and for coaching. And then for clients. For my corporate clients, was you know, five to twenty five salespeople, we'll meet once a week for an hour for thirteen fourteen weeks, and then we go to every other week and it's more coaching heavy in what we're doing. So, and we typically work with companies. For companies, I think average is like twenty six twenty seven months, and individual I think the average like this stay is about thirty two months for those guys, and typically the ones that are doing better that stick around longer. I don't know if you feel this, you probably find the same thing right that.

35:10 We all out counterintuitive to those that don't get it, But yeah, the ones that do get it stick with it absolutely. What's one of the best lessons? This is just opinion whatever pops in your head. Yeah, one of the best lessons you've taught recently. And then I'll ask you what's one of the best lessons you've learned recently. One of the best lessons that I've taught. Let's see this morning. I tell you a lot of times. The best lesson that I teach people and I love this is what I talked about a little while ago. Is the understanding that you are not what you do right, understanding you're innate, value, that it's okay to take risks, that you're gonna fail and failures. Okay. There's a guy named Steve Sims whom I love. He wrote a book called Bluefishing. If you and I were talked about blue Fishing by Steve Simms, I think I've sold a couple one hundred copies for him. I hope I have shout out to Steve Simms. But one of the things he says in there is nobody drowns from falling in the water.

36:14 You drowned from failing to get out. And so what we talked to you about is, look, failure is not that something didn't happen. Failure is what you do or don't do next And so helping people understand that if you're not failing on a regular basis, you're probably not trying hard enough. And in sales what we talk about, I think you and I do the same thing here. Failure is not getting a no. We don't control whether somebody tells us yes or no. Failure in our world is failure to get a decision yes or no. Right. And so to understand that that is that that's okay, right, and what are we doing next? And I feel like that's something that if more people heard that, I think they do better in sales and probably in life.

37:00 And I know this some people would think we're crazy to say this. I know you've experienced that. I have people come to me six, nine, twelve months into the process and they sit process and they say, man, this has helped me in my relationships. It's helped me with you know, I just got a great deal when I bought a car, or I made a decision. I didn't take six weeks to buy a car. I bought it on a Saturday morning. I mean all kinds of personal impacts because it changes us as an individual. And also the way we talk about like transactional analysis. Yeah, when you, how do you how much your tone matters when you're talking to somebody else, how much what you're giving off somebody else is taking in? And how we can we can trigger reactions in people if we're not careful, and if we are careful, we can do that. So, yeah, all.

37:45 Right, I want to talk about the book Some Will, Some won't. Sowhat Who's Next? A blueprint for sales success? Where the title come from. It's one of my favorite sayings. It's and in my world it stands for some people will, some people won't. So what who's the next person need to be talking to? And and so it's what we're trying to talk about is how do you take our emotions ours as the salesperson's emotions out of the selling cycle. The person who is most most emotionally involved in a sale is the buyer. And so if we're the ones that are getting more emotionally involved in the sale, then we're buying. And it's sure it's hard to make money if you're the buyer all the time, right, we need to be the sales guy.

38:29 So and so in that book, I just tell some it's kind of three sections. It's one is kind of the buyer's process, how buyers use us for information and this say, and why we need to have a process of our own. And then the second section is mindsets that we need to have to be consultative in our selling process, and I'll quickly tick through those for you. One. The first one is to is to ask, don't tell, right, be the person that asks and not most salespeople talk way too much. Wants to be turned that around to asking.

39:09 The second one. Is before you move on, you said we got to get rid of the mindset we got to convince them to buy in favor of we got to ask them thank you? Yeah? Correct, right, So we got to shed the idea we got to convince them to buy. Convincing has no place in sales for the salesperson. The buyer needs to be convincing us. If you do this right, they're convincing you. The second one is we're not the right fit for everybody. We need to shed the idea that everybody's a prospect because they're not, and adopt the idea that we're not the right fit for everybody. And there actually is a very narrow slice of people that would be ready for us. I mean, maybe they have the money and they're ready to go, but they would not be the right fit for us, right, So that's another one. The third one is we are all We all have equal business stat we have the same we have the same authority and the same responsibility as everybody we're talking to. And in the South, this is kind of funny. One of the hardest lessons I teach people, especially if they're under like forty five, is call everybody by their first name. That shrews people up down here. Oh no, my parents taught me to call every mister and missus. I'm like, okay, great at a cocktail party, do what you want. Your parents also told you not to cross the street, don't talk to strangers, and for good's say, don't bring up money, right, And so we got to shed those things as well.

40:31 And then the last thing we talked about is to be the guide and not the hero. There's a book that I know you've read Kevin Donald Miller called story Brand, and he talks about marketing how powerful stories are, and he talks about how from in a lot of stories, there's a hero who's a person's the beginning of the story that has a problem that they've got to solve. And then there's also some times a mentor or a guide, right, the wise man who doesn't say who doesn't solve the problem. He talks to the hero and asks the hero questions, helps the hero get enlightenment so the hero can solve the thing. Well, I've seen a lot of salespeople get into sales to be the hero, right, to ring the bell, to make the sale, to pound it and say yes, I'm.

41:21 It, but that's fun. I used to do that. Yeah, yeah, me too, same thing, right, And so the hero mindset. Heroes have to save everybody, right, nobody gets away, every heros everybody. If you don't make the sale, you're the opposite. You're a loser, and nobody wants to be a freaking loser and a bunch of and a hero makes it all about themselves. And so we've kind of flipped that on its head around here and we talk about how do you be the guide? And the guide is somebody. It's all about the client, it's all about the prospect, never about you. We really are going to choose who we work with. We've got a very defined group of people we want to work with, and we're very careful because we're going to take somebody up the path they want to go, but they got to do it our way. And a guide makes the prospect or their client was to hire them, makes them the hero.

42:14 Right, let me them like a listener or a viewer for a second. Wait a minute, you can't do that. I need everybody to make my number. I need, I need all those clients. Yeah, sure, I get it. And so here's the thing. You're not going to get them all anyway, right, You're not going to get them all anyway. And how so we give you an example of hero mentality. I asked my asked my mother to move her investment account from a broker to somebody's more of a wealth manager who was much better student for her. And they did a great job, right, help my mom get all their stuff straight, very low pressure. And Mom said, So I saw the person that moved the money to and I said, I just want to thank you so much for helping mom out.

42:57 It's really been a great experience. And the woman's thanks. We got a great team. And I thought you arrogant. Be right, I can't believe you. As opposed to had she been a guide, she might have said thank you so much. We love having your parents. Right, So it's still this, and so how do you build longer term relationships by showing people how smart you are or by letting them know how smart they are. I will tell you that people want to feel better about themselves. And if we're honest and we make our clients the hero, then they'll stick with us for longer. They'll refirst people and even during a sales call. Right if we say, look, I don't know that this makes sense. I don't know that you should hire me with the straightest, with the best of intentions, right, because if somebody's not going to be an ideal prospect for us, and honestly, it ends up host this more money than it does, we may regret the dollars we take in. I mean, I don't know about you, but I've had a couple that I wish i'd never taken. Now. I've fell for the money short term, and it was a disaster for everybody involved.

44:12 If I hope they're not listening, but I. Agree, not naming any names. Nope, it was a long time, long time. Never hasn't happened recently at all. So so yeah, I think while we say I would like everybody's a client. The reality is you're not. They're not going to come. They're not going to be your client. They may not be able willing to pay your fee, they may not treat your staff well. They may not be somebody that you're aligned with and your values, and therefore take that time you would have spent trying to fix them, and go find one that is an your wheelhouse. That's awesome. All right. You talk about mastering the mind probably the biggest problem to overcome.

44:53 How do you help people do that? First of all is to give some self awareness, right, we start with assessments to figure out kind of one of their skill sets and one of their mindsets and what they need to work on first. And so part of it is being able to show to somebody, here's some things that you believe you're you're not great at talking about money, or when you're talking to somebody, your way too quick to jump in and try and solve instead of to hold back. And a lot of this comes from insecurity. Some of it comes from parental training, you know, where our parents taught us these different things. And so part of it is to recognize that you are you have certain beliefs, and once you recognize those beliefs now they can hold you back. Then you could begin to adjust and recognize, Okay, this is my self limiting thing talking to me. I need to get that.

45:48 You need to get that away from me. I need to push that aside. It's a slow process for many people, but the first part is just awareness of who they are and where their tendencies are. That's really good it Uh. You also talk about preparation. When I was, you know, before I learned a professional too. I've learned professional level stuff here. You and I went to the same evolution, right. My preparation would be, all right, am I in the right location? Do I get my time? Right? Okay? Do I know the guy or the woman's name I was supposed to meet with? Do I look? Okay? How's my breath? Great? Yeah? Yeah? Yeah? What's your operation? I'm gonna go. I'm gonna go sell them right, so exact. Yeah, I created a little form that's five minutes sheet. Most of these people do what you do for preparation. I used to do the same thing, right is gon I set the appointment, go, I'm gonna go sell them right? And you show up and I decided, if we take five minutes and get our head right right and talk about the things like what are some Uh, the major thing is what is the ideal outcome that I want for this meeting? Is outcome? Yeah, the ideal outcome I want for this meeting. And because a lot of times our sales cycle, the number of meetings that takes to close a deal, they're long because the salesperson makes it long.

47:02 And I had a a a financial planner that I met with a couple of years ago. He said, Walker, I deal with people with high networth. He said, you know a million dollars or more, and it takes five. It takes five meetings and then their money. There's no way to do that faster. And I was like, no way, I guess no. I said, how about if your brother had a million bucks and he trusted you completely, how many meetings would take for him to say, okay, take my money. He goes, well, I don't think it take five. I said, why would it take anybody else? And I said so we talked about that, and I said, how about this, And we did the numbers. He said ten at the first meeting, and then five and then three and then two and then one. There's this huge wash out each time, and I said, that's what it looked.

47:43 You're losing nine people. So anyway, we said, how about I guarantee you could Let's see if you can do it in four scared him to death. He called me a couple days laterers a ands, I just closed a million dollar deal in four meetings. I was like, no shit, you can't do it again. And he did it again, and then we started maybe, what do you think maybe two? So within six months he was closing deals when one or two meetings. And the thing was he learned to say, typically at the meeting like this, we're deciding whether or not you give me your statements, and I'll go home and analyze them and i'll come back. We'll meet a second time. That meeting, you decide whether or not you want to hire me. Are you okay with that? And you know what, nine times out of ten people are like okay, great, right, Because he has a plan. If we don't ask for that and we just wait for them to beg us to take the money, he could take five meetings or forever.

48:39 That's upstaying. We've got to know what we want. So that's what we've got to be prepared for going in. All right, we got to wrap this up. I can't believe it's already four forty nine. We got a minute to get out of here. So what is the best way for people to reach out to you? There's spencermen for in the crawl. What's the best way for people to contact you? My email address is Walker at Walkermarcay dot com. My website is Walkermarchay Perfect there to listen to my podcast Nobs Sales school dot com or look up Walker mccainnywhere you're listening to podcasts. And the book will be out later this year. Later this year, yep, and it'll be available. You're going to tell me. I'm going to let the audience know for a couple of weeks. Where will they be able to get it. You'll get on Amazon and also have it available on my website, but they'll be available for Amazon here probably towards the end of the year. Looking forward to getting it out at along process.

49:27 Awesome. Thank you so much. I know you're super busy. I appreciate the time you took. Thank you, Kevin, You're the man. Appreciate you all you too, and Thanks everybody for listening and watching. As you know, this is a show about business and business challenges. If you've got concerns about the growth of your company and you're anywhere near Columbia, South Carolina, see I got it right that time. Feel free to reach out to Walker as you just heard. If you're up north here, you want to reach out to me Kevin at Winning Business Radio is one of the many email addresses. Maybe you want to be a guest. Maybe you know somebody who wants to be a guest. Maybe you know somebody who, oh, you know what, they may want to sponsor the program. We're talking about that too now. Our company is Winning Incorporated. We are part of Sandler Training. We develop sales teams into high achievers and sales leaders into true coaches and mentors. Listen, We're not right for everybody, but you know, maybe we should have a conversation. Thank you, as always to one for another job well done. Appreciate it. As you engineer and produce this show every week, be sure to join in Next Monday, September sixt eighth, My guest is going to be Laura Souder, founder of Brand Strategy design consultancy agency Bell.

50:32 Until then, this is Kevin helen In. You've been listening to Winning Business Radio with your host Kevin helen In. If you missed any part of this episode. The podcast is available on Talk for Podcasting and iHeartRadio. For more information and questions, go to Winning Business Radio dot com or check us out on social media. Tune in again next week and every Monday at four pm Eastern Time to listen live to Winning Business Radio on Double four c Y Radio W four c. Y dot com. Until then, let's succeed where others have five and win in Business with Kevin Helenan and Winning Business Radio