108 - Elevate Your Sales Game: Expert Advice from John Golden

[00:00:01] Writing a book can be the foundation for sharing your important message, but it won't work unless you are consistently marketing. This podcast is for those who have written a book to share their message with the world. I love talking all things Authorpreneur and having guests join me to share their brilliance with you.

[00:00:22] Hello Authorpreneurs, it's Suzanne Tregenza Moore and I am excited to bring you another episode of All Things Authorpreneur. Today I have John Golden with me. John is a globally acknowledged sales and marketing thought leader, speaker and strategist. And he's conducted over 1500 video interviews of thought leaders for SalesPop, online sales magazine and YouTube channel,

[00:00:55] and for audio podcast channels where SalesPop is rated in the top 2% of most popular shows out of more than 3 million podcasts globally, and ranked by ListenNotes. Formerly CEO of Huthwaite, a global sales consulting organization, and Omega Performance, John is currently the Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer at Pipeliner CRM.

[00:01:25] In his spare time, John is an avid martial artist and seeker of wisdom. And John has two Amazon bestselling books, Winning the Battle for Sales, Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World's Greatest Military Victories, and Social Upheaval, How to Win at Social Selling. And John, welcome. I'm so glad to have you here. Yeah, listen, thank you very much, Suzanne, for having me. I'm delighted to be here.

[00:01:51] So I'm really curious to know, the first thing that comes to my head is, what made you want to write a book that ties back to military victories? Where is that interest in the military victories from?

[00:02:07] Yeah, well, I actually studied history in college, right? So way back when in Ireland at Trinity College, I was lucky enough to go to. I studied history. History was always one of my favorite subjects. And as you know, Irish people were a little bit obsessed with history.

[00:02:53] Yes, yes. And they went to Delaware and they scored this victory. And so I wrote this blog post comparing it to sales where sometimes in sales, when things aren't going well, you just need a victory. You just need a victory. And it doesn't even have to be a spectacular one. And so the blog post was very well received. And so, you know, then McGraw-Hill said, you know, yeah, do you want to take this and turn it into a book? And that's what we did.

[00:03:17] Oh, fabulous. OK, well, you know, market testing, right? You did a great job. You tested the market with that concept and apparently it was well received. OK, now I understand. By the way, fun fact, I grew up in Morristown, New Jersey, which is where Washington's headquarters was. Ah, yeah, there you go.

[00:03:34] Anyhow, so that is a fascinating reason to go with that. But let's talk a little bit more about winning the sales and, you know, your history with writing about that, your experience with sales and why why you wanted to write about that topic in the first place.

[00:03:52] Yeah, well, as you mentioned, I was running a sales consultancy that was based on the probably the most successful, one of the most successful business books of all time, probably the most successful sales book of all time, which is Spin Selling, which was written by Neil Rackham. And you're based on research. And the last time I spoke to Neil, it's still, I don't know, he still sells thousands of copies. And as you know, that's that's kind of unheard of for a book that's been out 30, 40 years now.

[00:04:21] But what I what I thought was one of the things that we all struggle with, and I think salespeople particularly is because it's such a frenetic job and you're always on the move. And there's so many different things coming at you that it can be difficult. Even if you go through sales training or you read a lot about sales, it can be different, difficult to remember the techniques and the the the things that you should be doing at a given moment. So I decided to use that age old technique of of just association.

[00:04:51] So I thought, OK, if I can take a sales lesson associated with something memorable, that's easy to remember, to recall like a battle or an incident, then it makes that it makes it easier for the salesperson to recall it in the moment because they remember the story because we do a lot of things by association. So that was the that was the idea behind the book was to and some of them and I even say the thing, some of them connections are a little tenuous, you know, and they're a little stretched at times.

[00:05:21] Yeah. But that wasn't the point. The point wasn't like that. It was absolutely 100 percent like reinforce this message. It was more as a reminder to you pick something that would just, you know, trigger something in your brain at the right time and go, oh, yeah, I remember that from. Yeah, that was the that was a naked duel or something. I know what I need to do.

[00:05:39] Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what are a couple of those principles that you feel like salespeople really need to remember in the moment, like maybe the top two or three that we should remind people of in this moment? Yeah, well, the naked duel is actually one of my favorite ones. And it was it was a duel between two, I think I can't remember exactly that, but it was between two, I think, English lords or members of parliament like a few hundred years ago.

[00:06:06] And they were in they were at the races and they're in the pub and some insults were flying. And and so they challenged each other to a duel the next day. And so everybody came down to the race course to watch this duel. And, you know, they lined up and one of them started to undress and stripped down to their underwear. And, you know, the crowd was like, well, what's going on here? And the other guy on the other side was like, oh, this is a bit weird.

[00:06:36] So anyway, cut a long story short, the duel actually never ended up taking place because the guy's like, I can't shoot it. You know, this is ridiculous. Why are you naked? And then they ended up resolving their differences. But there was a really good reason behind what he did is because he had served he had served in the British Army in India and he had seen and as a medic.

[00:06:57] And he had seen that when people get shot with musket balls in those days, if it enters through your flesh cleanly, you could take it out and you could probably survive. If it entered through your clothing, your clothing often has, you know, is contaminated and then you would end up getting gangrene or whatever and die. So the lesson was he was actually he was actually planning for multiple outcomes. So he wasn't just planning for one outcome. Like I win the duel and I go home.

[00:07:27] It's like, OK, if I win the duel, great. That's my that's the first outcome I'm looking for. But if I get shot and I did in the duel, at least I have a better chance of survival if I'm naked. Right. And so interesting. Yeah. The point there was that a lot of salespeople tend to go into a sales situation or a sales call with just one outcome in mind. This is the goal they want.

[00:07:53] And instead of going in with, yes, have your first outcome, but then have at least one or two fallbacks. So that if you don't get exactly what you're looking for out of the call, you can still get something. You can still move things forward because you have some backup outcomes. And that was the lesson is always have more than one outcome in mind when you go into a sales call. I love that. I love that.

[00:08:18] Because really, we all need to have sort of multiple levels or multiple ways that we can work with someone. Because when you only have one, it's either a yes or no answer. Right. Absolutely. And of course, we don't want it to be no. Yeah. But the history of that is actually fascinating as well. So now I know what the naked duel is. Yeah. Because you don't want to be, I mean, in a sale, it's like if you don't get the outcome you want, you don't want to be dead. Right. So you don't want to get the no, which is pretty much you're dead in that deal.

[00:08:47] Same as this guy said he wants to be able to get back up again. Right. Right. I want to talk for a minute about your other book, Social Upheaval, How to Win at Social Selling. So which book came first? And, you know, tell us a little bit more about this book. Yeah. Winning the Battle for Sales came first. And then Social Selling was a book that came when social selling first kind of started to gain prominence when people were starting to use LinkedIn and things like that for selling.

[00:09:14] And nobody really knew what they were doing or and it became as usual, it became a great buzzword immediately. Like everybody, oh, you're going to be a social seller. Absolutely. Yes. And then, of course, a lot of people who are in sales were going, well, I've always been a social seller because I've always liked talking to and building relationships. And so this was the digital element that was coming in. So, again, tried to do it in a very tried to make this book very short, to be perfectly honest.

[00:09:40] The goal of it was that you could you could jump on a flight from, you know, say, Boston to Chicago and the book could be done by the time you were landed. Yeah. So that was the that was the idea. And then it was just to start to start to introduce salespeople because at the time it was salespeople didn't understand. A lot of salespeople didn't understand how things were changing in terms of personal brand. Right.

[00:10:04] So and it all sounds it all sounds very common sense these days, but at the time it wasn't the fact that when you engaged as a salesperson with it, with a prospective customer or prospective vendor or whatever, they didn't just research the company. You know, they were researching you as well. And so, therefore, this was the first time you had to start paying attention to what is your what is your online presence like?

[00:10:30] You know, what is your if they if you come off as a very professional and very well-informed and insightful salesperson? And then I look you up on the Internet and I see you hanging off a boat in Cabo or something. Yeah. You kind of undermine yourself. So so this was like looking at all the ways of personal branding, of leveraging, you know, your online presence.

[00:10:55] But really it was it was in many ways it was it's sort of helping to wake up salespeople to the fact that your online life, your online life is now part of your professional life, whether you like it or not. But you can use it to your advantage. So making sure that your LinkedIn profile credentials you, et cetera. Yes, I love that. I love that. And not just LinkedIn, but, you know, what are you putting out there on Facebook, the more social, truly social channels as opposed to LinkedIn social media, which isn't really social.

[00:11:25] I mean, it's a little bit more these days, but yeah, it's so important. And, you know, as someone who has kids in high school, what they put out there, you're like, dude, be careful. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's very it's very scary nowadays. I mean, I have a 19 year old son and and the world that they live in today. It's yeah. I mean, I couldn't have imagined it actually back when I was writing this book once, you know, all of this was really starting to come online. Absolutely.

[00:11:52] I wouldn't have I wouldn't have predicted where it's gotten to today. That's for sure. Yeah. Yeah. So obviously you've had a very long career in sales. Right. And it's fascinating that you're at Pipeliner now, which is a CRM. I absolutely love CRMs. And as a small business owner, I think the day that I realized that a CR like really how helpful a CRM could be was a huge moment for me. Right. Right.

[00:12:20] Because before that, I tried to remember everything. Ha ha ha. Yeah. It was a bad idea. So let's talk a little bit about Pipeliner and how Pipeliner fits, you know, what's unique about Pipeliner and what you love about the company. Yeah. So it's very interesting because it actually relates back to the book winning the battle for sales because there's a chapter in the book about David and Goliath. And most people are familiar with that story.

[00:12:47] You know, Goliath's this big giant and David brings him down with the slingshot. But actually, when I read into it, there was a little more to it that I didn't realize. And that was that I think it was King David. They offered David the latest, greatest armor that was available and they put it on him and everything. And then he said, no, I don't want this. It's too heavy. It's too restrictive. And it doesn't allow me to move. It doesn't allow me to be flexible. I'm good with my catapult. Right.

[00:13:15] And so I'll be honest, at the time, I felt that this is what CRM was to most salespeople. It was an unwieldy, unwelcome burden that was placed upon them and it actually got in the way of them operating in a more flexible and nimble fashion. And the founder of Pipeline, Nicholas Kimler, he reads pretty much every business or sales book that's released.

[00:13:40] When I left Huthwaite and I actually had moved to California and I just started my own management consultancy, he contacted me and he said, I read your book. And I want to talk to you about the chapter on CRM because I basically said CRM is like the armor that David tried to put on or the king tried to put on David. And he said, I'm going to show you a product that's going to change your mind. And I said, OK. Oh, I love that. And so he showed me Pipeliner.

[00:14:08] And for the first time, I saw a CRM that was actually built from a salesperson perspective. And it was visual and it was easy to use. And the best part about it is you could embed your sales methodology into it because that is something we'd always struggled with spin selling is we could go in and we could educate people and teach them how to how to sell using spin selling. But we couldn't embed it in their systems, in their CRMs or anything because they just weren't able to Salesforce those. You just couldn't do it.

[00:14:35] And so when he showed me this, he said, I really want you to come on board and help me bring this to market. And so that's why I came on board because I said for the first time I saw a CRM that actually brought value to salespeople, was built from a salesperson perspective, not from a command and control perspective.

[00:14:53] Was everything was we focus everything on being visual, on automating where we can, just bringing intelligence into the system, just making life easier for salespeople. Because at the end of the day, our equation is very simple. If salespeople like and use the system, then management get the data they want. Absolutely. And the result they want more important. And the result they want more importantly.

[00:15:18] Because they probably, if they're getting a really good result, they're maybe less concerned about the data. Yeah. But so that's how I came to. So I came to Pipeliner directly from the book, which is quite an interesting story in itself. And then, yeah, so I've been working alongside Nicholas for the last 10 years now. And we have been working on building out the best product possible. We're very dedicated to salespeople.

[00:15:49] But it's not just even bringing technology. It's also trying to elevate the role of salespeople and the perception of salespeople. Because we believe that salespeople, it's a very noble profession. And we have the phrase, you know, salespeople are wealth creators and peace producers. Because at the end of the day, if you and I, if I'm going to sell you something and I'm nasty and horrible to you, chances are you're not really going to buy from me.

[00:16:14] However, if I build relationships and we feel like this is a fair exchange of value and, you know, et cetera, you know, then we're going to collaborate and work together. And if you think of the world we live in today is trade has a peacekeeping component to it. Absolutely. Because if you look around all the wars at the moment, I doubt any of those countries who are firing ballistic missiles or whatever at each other are trading very well with each other. Right.

[00:16:40] So that's why part of it is also not just to serve the salespeople and the sales leaders by giving them the best CRM, but also by elevating the perception of what sales really is and that it's a noble career and actually a critical one. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Interesting. When I started my own business, I really didn't think about the fact that I was going to have to sell all the time. Right.

[00:17:04] And I wouldn't say I thought of myself as a sales professional, but what I have learned, you know, having been in business for myself now for 13 years or whatever it's been, is that it is truly when you see the person in front of you that you are selling to and understand their needs and know that you can solve them and can communicate that you can solve them, really good things happen.

[00:17:32] And the rest of the time, you're far better off to say, you know what, I know somebody else who can help you or I, you know, build that relationship and pass them on to someone else. Because, yeah, it's about creating value for everyone in the situation. And when you do that, it always comes back to you in one way or another. Absolutely. It does. And that's where you build trust. And today, I think trust is such a huge issue in the world. Yes. Just in general.

[00:18:01] And therefore, you're being able to build trust by how if you go in with the attitude is that I'm I want to help you. I want I'm a problem solver. You know, let's create a great solution together. And as you said, and if it turns out that I'm not the right person or my product or service isn't the right one, then let me let me recommend somebody else for you to talk to or simply say, listen, I don't think I'm a good fit right now. Now, if I come across something that I think is I will forward it on to you.

[00:18:30] Then the other person walks away feeling like, OK, I can trust this person. And and who knows, later on, they may move to another company where your product may be or service may be the right fit or they might refer you to somebody.

[00:19:12] That is a good story. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it's great. And he did. And he did. And we have we've worked together for a long time now. And, you know, we have pipeline is in nothing. 44 countries. We have great customers across the globe. We've been growing. We grew through the pandemic. We're growing, you know, year by year. We were getting bigger and larger customers. We've kind of moved upstream a little over the years as well. You know, to mid market, larger, even enterprise customers.

[00:19:41] So it's been a it's been a it's been a fascinating, fascinating journey. Excellent. So I have a few questions I ask everyone who comes on the show that I want to ask you. And the first is, do you think you're going to write another book? Yes. The third time the charm. Third time's the charm. Yeah, I think I certainly I think Nicholas and myself are definitely going to write something together. Yeah, when when time allows it. Yes.

[00:20:08] And then and then there's something else that I do want to, as you said, like I'm I'm I'm big into martial arts or something. I want to there's something there that I want to write about. I'm not sure what it is yet. But so I think maybe two books, one I'll co-write. OK, excellent. And one I'll write my own. Excellent. All right. So in our discussion, I know that at a certain point you were your own boss. And you clearly have worked at a high level at an entrepreneurial company.

[00:20:38] And, you know, most of the people that listen to this podcast have their own businesses in one way or another. Is there one thing that you really think entrepreneurs need to do or have in order to be successful? Yeah, I would say a mentor, to be honest, a mentor or a coach. That is the most critical thing, because like, yeah, I mean, like I said, before I joined Pipeliner, I started my own management consultancy as well.

[00:21:05] So I was 100 percent working for myself, doing everything myself. Right. Yes. And and that is and as your listeners know, that's that's its own challenge, particularly if you're it depends what you're doing. But if you're in a service, you know, offering a service like I was management consulting, you have the challenge of you have to go find the business and you've got to go deliver. Yes. And you've got to and you've got to continue to build pipeline at the same time.

[00:21:29] It can be quite lonely, as you know, and it can also it can be, you know, just overwhelming at times. So I think having a mentor or a coach, I think is really critical. Just having somebody who is, you know, who's not invested in this is just invested in you and your success and wants you to do well.

[00:21:49] Somebody you can bounce ideas, somebody when you're when when things aren't exactly going your way or you're thinking, you know, why did I ever get myself into this in the first place that they can talk you off the range? Yeah. Or they can give you the benefit of their experience. So I think I think that is the most critical part is to is to get yourself a mentor or coach, maybe a number of different mentors, but just don't try and do it all on your own. And you'll find when you reach out and ask people, you'll find that most people want to help. Especially people who have been successful.

[00:22:18] They so want to pass on their knowledge. Absolutely. I think that people who've and particularly people who've figured out how to solve their own problems are like, oh, my gosh, I want to tell you how I did this. Right. Yeah. And I want you to not have the same problem because it sucked. Yeah. And the only other piece of advice I just gave is that when you do get to a situation where you start to you maybe hire people, maybe contractors, whatever, it doesn't matter.

[00:22:44] But when you start to hand off some of the things that you do, you have to be OK with people doing it differently than you did. Yes. That's so true. Otherwise, you'll just end up second guessing everybody being over their shoulder and it'll end up that you'll have actually increased your overhead, you know, and overloaded yourself even more as opposed to reducing it. Yes. Or you've created become the bottleneck in your own pipeline. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

[00:23:14] Last question I ask everyone who comes on. What is your favorite book? Wow. That is I think business book. It would be probably good to great. I think that's probably one of the best books ever written business wise. But my all time favorite book is a book about an Irish rebel called Michael Dwyer. And it's a book that was I think it was written a couple of hundred years ago.

[00:23:40] And it's just one of my favorite books because he was he was one of the rebels in 1798 when the rebellion against the British and the rebellion collapsed pretty rapidly, to be honest. But he and a small band of his followers stayed out, as we say in Ireland. They stayed out for five years. They basically kept on the rebellion for five years on their own up in the Wicklow Mountains. And he was just one of those kind of almost mythical figures like he had so many brushes and escapes from the British.

[00:24:09] They even built a road. They built a road into the mountains in the in the in the 70s, in the early 1800s to try and get it still there. It's called Military Road to try and capture him. And so that's it's it's my favorite book. I've read it a bunch of times. And like I said, it was written a few hundred years ago. And it's just I always find it inspiring that, you know, that somebody could just go, ah, rebellions fail. Well, you know, you can all surrender. I'm off up the mountains going to keep going.

[00:24:39] Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I got to say, if you can make people angry enough to have them build a road to come after you. Really piss some people off. I'm just saying. Yeah. Well, apparently, I mean, part of the story is they used to sit up on the mountains and they'd sit up on the mountainside and they'd watch the British like constructing a fort or something down in the valley. And then when nightfall came, they just go down and burn it. Oh, yeah. Yeah, they made friends.

[00:25:09] They made lots of friends. They did. They were great. Oh, well, John, this has been lovely. And before we wrap up, I'm wondering if there's anything else you would like to share with the audience about your books, about your about Pipeliner, anything, anything at all. Yeah, I would just tell people just to go check out Pipeliner, Pipelinersales.com. You can take a free trial or we'll do a demo for you. I guarantee you haven't seen a CRM like ours. I know you say, well, you would say that. And yes, I would.

[00:25:39] But this is true. But this is I'm 100 percent. I'm 100 percent certain that you will say this is definitely different. So I would encourage you to go to that. And then I'd encourage you to check out particularly my sales pop YouTube channel. It's sales pops with the exclamation point where you can find all the interviews with so many eclectic and different people from across the world. Excellent. Well, John Golden, it has been such a pleasure.

[00:26:07] And just to remind everyone, John's books are Winning the Battle for Sales, Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World's Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval, How to Win at Social Selling. See, I like to keep my titles pithy. And John, thank you so much. And to everyone listening, I hope that you've gotten as much out of this as I have. And I look forward to bringing you another episode soon.

[00:26:36] Thank you for listening to All Things Authorpreneur. Head to allthingsauthorpreneur.com and get your free guide, Seven Success Principles to Shift from Author to Thought Leader.