Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
From Comedy to Sales: What All Sales Reps Can Learn from Comedians w/Jeff Birk
33 Plays3 months ago
In this episode, Brian Dietmeyer talked with Jeff Birk, the Sales Enablement Director at Prophix, about the unique intersection of comedy and sales enablement. Jeff shares his journey from a budding comedian to a seasoned sales enablement director, illustrating how humor and stage presence can significantly enhance sales training and presentation skills. Through engaging anecdotes and practical advice, Jeff reveals how embracing fear, meticulous preparation, and the art of storytelling can transform sales pitches and client interactions, making this episode a must-listen for sales professionals looking to differentiate themselves and elevate their selling game.
Timestamps:
00:03.27 - Introduction to Jeff Burke and the concept of combining comedy with sales enablement.
01:31.62 - Discovering the connection between comedy and sales enablement.
02:48.25 - Transitioning from comedy to professional speaking and sales presentations.
04:36.11 - The impact of stage skills on sales and training.
11:44.31 - Emphasizing the importance of preparation and practice in sales success.
17:21.89 - The role of fear in sales and how to harness it positively.
22:01.76 - Differentiating sales pitches through storytelling and engagement.
29:45.93 - The safe use of humor in sales settings and its effects on relatability and success.
32:22.52 - Final thoughts: private victories leading to public victories and the importance of being "off book."
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Close Mode Podcast
00:00:03
Speaker
Hello and welcome to another edition of close mode, the enterprise sales podcast. I'm Brian deep Meyer, CEO of close strong. And today I'm really lucky to be here with Jeff Burke, who is the sales enablement director at Profix. Uh, Jeff is also a professional speaker, uh, trainer coaching, uh, coach, author, and and in fact has shared the stage with with Jay Leno, Martin Short, Wanda Sykes. So yeah, bring bring some impressive background, and I've got a lot of questions for him today.
Jeff Burke's Background and Humor in Sales
00:00:34
Speaker
But for those of you who don't know, just a quick blurb about Profix. It's a financial performance platform for finance teams. One portal, one experience, one single version of the truth. I love that. Jeff, welcome to the show.
00:00:49
Speaker
Yeah, thanks. and And just to add to that, Brian, ah in college, I majored in taxidermy with an emphasis in waterfowl. Of course you did. And as I've learned on our previous couple conversations, I i now need to to take all of those with a grain of salt, but it wouldn't it wouldn't so excuse me it wouldn't surprise me, by the way. So your your book ah is entitled Train Like a Rockstar. And yeah last last week we we were chatting and you know i I told you that I really love that intersection of like performing and then sales enablement, like how how you did those two to help train people like rock stars. So I'm curious when you started, did did you see an obvious connection between sort of comedy and sales enablement or did you just happen upon sales enablement?
00:01:39
Speaker
You know i really i really kind of happened upon it because as i look back to you know when i when i got out of college i pretty much was in sales the whole like my entire career right except in college i also started to go to the local comedy club at at nights and they had an open mic night and i went and tried it and The owner kept inviting me back saying why you're you're really good i hope you keep doing this and so i was kind of living in this parallel universe right i have my real job i have my college education i have my sales stuff going on but then i had this this side gig you know of the comedy stuff going on as well and and you know sales enablement had never really even entered my mind because.
00:02:19
Speaker
you know and In sales, I'd had a 100% commission sales job for a while.
Enhancing Sales with Comedy and Public Speaking
00:02:25
Speaker
I had your know your typical salary plus commission type of work. And as as I continued to go throughout my career, but I had some people notice me one night at a comedy club and they said, boy, we should get this guy to do our presentations at our trade shows. And this was during the dot-com bubble and things were really clicking along. And so so they hired me to be the guy on stage at these, you know, PC expos and comm decks and all of these other ah big, huge trade shows. And so that was when I really started to see, wow, I can kind of connect my comedy and stage presence into presenting high tech software, which was really kind of cool. And so I did that for a while.
00:03:13
Speaker
And then the next step up for me was one one year I went to a trade show that was all about training.
Training Like a Rockstar and Differentiation
00:03:19
Speaker
It was a trade show for trainers. And I'm walking this the the hallway looking at these horrible presenters and and many many of which were sales people on the stage going through a PowerPoint, you know, point by point and is my mic working and and just having their back, you know, turn to the crowd. And and i I just thought, you know, I'm going to write a book about everything that I've learned on stage and, you know, teach people how to train or speak, do public speaking like a rockstar and just kind of title it, you know, train like a rockstar speaking tips from a standup comedian. And so that was really, I think the final step, Brian, into wow.
00:04:02
Speaker
what I've learned has not only been able to help me in my my training and stage presenting, but it also helps me in my sales, in my virtual selling, in in live one-on-one interactions. And it all kind of really comes down to just helping sellers differentiate themselves a little bit more from the other person who starts with, okay, let me show you our demo and see if you have any questions. So I've really kind of flipped things on its head put it a lot of it into the book and i have able to you know just kind of now, like you said earlier, go out and and you know have companies actually contract with me to come MC their SKOs or come do sales training for their groups or even you know come in and do some public speaking training for their
00:04:50
Speaker
salespeople because that's all sales is really is public speaking. And if if you're not a good public speaker, you know, you're not going to do very well. So it's fun to teach people things like how to memorize better, how to be a little bit funnier, how to tell good stories. And, you know, we can probably get into that a little bit more if we wanted to. So yeah, that's kind of the ah gist of it. Along with, you know, again, keeping one hand on my craft of taxidermy, like I said earlier. That's cool because what what I was going to ask you is like what skills you have as an entertainer that help you be a better sales enablement director. and And I think you got that, but but double double click on that one a little bit about like specific skills that that I agree that we we are performers. We we we are entertainers to a to a degree, but what specific things do you bring to to the role that you think that that salespeople lean into?
Embracing Fear and Risk in Sales and Comedy
00:05:45
Speaker
Yeah, you know i think I thought of about two or three. The first thing that I thought of instantly was no fear. right you know what And I think about you know the first time I went on stage, I was sweating buckets. I only did about three and a half minutes. so I only had a few things written out that I wanted to joke about. But as I continued to practice my craft and get better and better and better at it, you know the fear started to go away. But I always do have a ah healthy respect for fear. Fear for me is good. It keeps me humble. It keeps me teachable. Whether I'm you know in a traditional sales role or whether I'm in my current role now as as director of sales enablement.
00:06:25
Speaker
Because when I came into my current role, there was no sales enablement function at my current company. And so I had to kind of construct, first of all, every for everybody, a sales methodology. um And then I had to go in to 50 sellers that I'd never met before and take two days and teach them this new sales methodology. So thankfully, you know I was very comfortable in front of groups of strangers or people that I hadn't met before. But i think for me that that lesson of having no fear has has been tremendously helpful the other thing brian that i thought of was also. I'm sorry jeff let let me let me double click on that one for a moment because i was looking at your personal website this morning and you know it starts with something like i hate public speaking or or whatever and shockingly there there are a lot of sales people that.
00:07:12
Speaker
that sort of have have this fear and I wanna jump into it a little bit because I've done a bunch of keynotes and breakouts and and public speaking and and I get what my wife calls my game face about 36 hours before you're nodding so and it's like I start getting serious, I start getting tight and up until the moment the first words come out of my mouth on stage, I am still saying, why the hell did I agree to this, right? So yeah, I just wonder for for people who either have it themselves, or are training others. um Yeah, I just want to click on that, like, tips and you talked about practice, but but what else? How do what what is it that's the antidote to fear? Well, yeah, what I think I said in a little bit, but I'll say it a different way. I embrace fear. Yes. I, I love risk.
00:08:05
Speaker
and I love being in risky situations and I also love Brian and you know this just from what you were talking about doing keynotes. I love just the element of not knowing really what's going to happen. and And I've done, I mean, I've had sales job.
Importance of Preparation and Diagnostic Skills
00:08:19
Speaker
I had one sales job in, in Southwest Florida, up and down the entire coast where I would go and do a 50 minute sales presentation. This was a hundred percent commission. I was, I was going into, uh, sell magnetic therapy products. And, and that presentation was, was word for word memorized and,
00:08:41
Speaker
And I knew where to pause for effect. I knew where to inflect my voice. I knew where the jokes were coming. And I had that thing down so well. But I still did not know how the crowd was going to react or who was going to be kind of the problem person ah in in the group or whatever. So it was always that element of, OK, what surprise is going to confront me this this time? And and so that that element of fear, I i you know i mean, I think of when I You know, when I opened for Leno and Cosby and Martin Shorten and Wanda Sikes, like you mentioned, game face, yeah, big time. Even though I knew my routine like the back of my hand, I was so thankful to have a little bit of fear because it kept me really on my toes. And so when I when i brought that over into my sales career, it's the same thing when I'm getting ready for a Zoom call or when I'm getting ready for a stage three or a stage four deal, we're starting to get pretty serious.
00:09:35
Speaker
i'm always I'm always just ready for anything that that could happen. right And and i think I think we have to be that way. And and as a as I talk about fear, you know it's just it's just a fun thing. And maybe that's just me. right Maybe I'm kind of one of those crazy ones who's, I'm going to go on stage for 20 minutes and I know what I'm going to joke about. Or I'm going to go into this sales call. I have a good idea of what I'm going to talk about. But if you if you just march through your your material or you march through your demo or your presentation without any heed of of knowing your audience, of how to you know recognize the cues, of being okay with going off course a little bit, it's really gonna be tough. and and yeah I tell my sales people, I say, look, I don't want you to have the attitude of come hell or high water, I'm getting through these 30 slides in the next 30 minutes. yeah right That's a whole other subject to say, no, we're gonna,
00:10:29
Speaker
We're going to take that down to about four slides. So I'm going to teach you how to memorize everything else. I've been schooled on that on multiple occasions from from my teammates. You know, I wonder, and you had a second point that I want to go back to, but this one is such, right? This is one of the greatest fears of life, right? So it's it's it's so fun to talk about. And I have a friend, Bob Marks, many years ago, 20 plus years ago, ah said to me just before I talk, it's not about you, Dietemeyer, it's about them. And yeah I found that, I'm just curious how you, like I found that switch to to really caring about them and and what their needs are, like one of those tips that that really helped me. I'm wondering how you feel about that.
00:11:10
Speaker
Yeah, that's something I try to teach and share with everybody. and And I say, look, that's part of the flip, right? You don't want to go in and show up and throw up and throw the kitchen sink. at the Hey, great to be here. Here's a little bit about our company. And I've got this demo. And if you take your questions at the end, I actually do the opposite. And and the the first thing that I want to do is is look at myself as as a physician or a doctor. And let's say, you know Brian, you come in. You sit down in my office. And I'm sitting there with you. and and I asked that initial question. so So what seems to be the problem? Oh, I got this elbow issue. I don't know. You're you're telling me about this this pain you got in your elbow. Okay. All right. Well, let's do this. I've i've got a prescription here. I'm just going to go ahead and write this out for you. um it's It's really good for knee pain, but I think it'll help me with your elbow pain too, because that's a joint after. I mean, you're going to go see another doctor, yeah but as a salesperson,
00:12:06
Speaker
You want to be a good doctor. You're going to come in, Brian, and instead of, you know, and you'll'll I'll ask that initial question. Great. But then I'm going to continue to question. I want to do really good discovery. Okay, Brian, why don't you stand up? Let me see. can yeah Let me kind of see you extend that. Okay. Can you move it this way? All right. How long have you been experiencing this problem? Have you had this problem before? and What kind of sports do you play? do you Does your family have a history of this thing? Have you had any injuries? Maybe back in high school. You see, I've already asked five, six, seven questions. yeah and And what I try to tell and only, but then am I able to give it do a good diagnosis and a prognosis and and and so on and so forth.
00:12:44
Speaker
that's why i tell my sales people i say look you want to ask so many questions and i know it's hard but sit on your hands and just be a good question and i know that would end the hardest thing at least in my experience brian is they'll ask one question You'll answer and then I'll say, oh, you know what's great about what we do on that is we do this and we do that and they're right back into talking about themselves and it's about themselves and it's not about the client for the customer. Yeah, it's it's it's interesting that you use the the diagnose and prescribed metaphor because it's
00:13:17
Speaker
it's a ah It's a pet peeve of mine, whether it's a doc or a mechanic, that a lot of people are brilliantly fixing the wrong thing. and yeah and i I really believe that, and and it's funny because even though I've done this my entire adult life, this and and I understand diagnosing as a rep, I didn't include sales. when i When I tell those stories about my frustrations with subcontractors who come to my house or whatever, and and and you're right, diagnostic skills in order to prescribe right, ah you've got to be good at those. you know the other thing you You mentioned quickly before I interrupted you to talk about fear. Well, related to fear was prep. And and that that's another thing too that that you just said that I agree with. I often tell people,
00:13:58
Speaker
the The first time the words come out of your mouth in front of the customer should actually be the fourth time. Like I don't care if you pitch it to your dog, you pitch it to your wall, but yeah, it's prep. There's there's a certain mental tricks we have to do. Like it's about them, not about you. And then there, but man, you you just can't, you can't short sell that prep, can you? Yeah, you can. In fact, I was on a call yesterday with a company that wants me to come into their November meeting. yeah They're an insurance company. So, it's about 35 insurance sellers and they told me that exact same thing. They said, our people aren't really good at doing the prep. Yeah. And so, I'm huge on on prep. It's just one of those things that is so critical and so important
00:14:39
Speaker
you know, I think, I think about, you know, when, when, when I'm talking with my, my current sales team and they're talking about concerns about pipe gen and pipeline and stuff like that, I said, look, if you want to remove those concerns, double your pipe yes or triple your pipe. yeah I mean, pipe cures all ills and it's the same thing with prep. You know, I think back to my, my, my comedy stuff that I still continue to do, but I also think about, you know, I've got, I've got our mid-year sales kickoff happening next week and I'm going through and I've got a story that I want to tell and I'm i'm memorizing it. I'm going over it. I'm making sure that.
00:15:16
Speaker
that I know the beginning, the middle, and the end, and so that I can make sure that when I'm at that moment of truth, or when a salesperson is in the conference room, or on that Zoom call, or whatever it is, that you're gonna nail that. And and yes this has really helped me in in bringing that over from my comedy world into my sales and my training world, because when you're on stage at a comedy club, you're the producer, you're the director, you're the writer, you cannot afford to miss an if and or a but because yeah especially that punchline. I mean, you can just, and I could give you examples and stuff of jokes that can be blown and whatever. You you don't want to blow that opportunity when you're, okay, right I'm here. I'm ready to close the deal. And I just have to do the prep. I have to know my stuff. I don't want to go in and wing it. And you've dealt with salespeople like this before. oh I've been here for 15 years. You know, I kind of know what to do and just kind of sit down and whatever.
00:16:14
Speaker
Well, that's all fine and dandy and well and everything. But those 12 or 15-year people, they can still improve. They can still do better. and And if they'll just open up, and if the new people as well as the old people just open up, be teachable, be humble, and and memorize a few key bullet points that are going to be your go-to things. You're going to be so much better off. And just like a pipe cures all ills, yeah prep will cure all ills when it comes to those moments. And the the point the point you just made about the folks that have been around forever, it it brings me back. for For years, I ran a company, a non-for-profit company called Acme Garage, and I manage bands and produce theater. and And a lot of these actors and a lot of these musicians, some of them were studio musicians, right? And and one guy, a pedal steel player, a studio musician in Nashville, you know, they rehearsed their tales off.
00:17:07
Speaker
before before every show. And so, yeah, that that just clicked for me that I don't care how long you've been doing this. Again, and the the pros, right, rehearse probably 10 acts to get up there and do an hour-long show on stage somewhere. Yeah. yeah Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah absolutely. and I went through the same thing and i I still try to keep that habit very healthy. And and I'll tell you, for everybody listening, It's the hardest thing to do, at least in my experience in
Sales Pitch Certification and Virtual Presentation Tips
00:17:32
Speaker
dealing with people. I just took our current company through the first time they've ever done a sales pitch certification. And we made it a requirement, said, okay, here's so here's the seven slides. We want you to take 10 minutes. We've got the script written out and we want you to record yourself. And we're going to certify you as to your ability and your skill in in doing the pitch. Yeah.
00:17:52
Speaker
And it's the hardest thing. You know, I got to watch myself on camera and blah, blah, blah, blah. And we have people come to us and say, gosh, it took me 15 times to record this stupid thing. But I got it on the sheet time yeah I got it. And I'm telling you, Jeff, I learned things about my presentation style that I never would have learned otherwise. had I not gone through that difficult experience. It's hard, but but do the hard things, right? the The learning is in the struggle every single time.
00:18:24
Speaker
Yeah, it's interesting because we we talked, we we dug a little bit into discovery, like being a diagnostic process, but but you just talked pitch. There is a moment where where it it does, it's all all all you coming out. What do you think are the the the couple biggest mistakes people make when when they're pitching or the the two changes they could make to be even better? Oh gosh. You know, it's funny because I think of virtual and then there's also live. Okay. And I get really tactical when I, when I talk about virtual, you can see that, you know, this is the way I like to look whenever I'm doing a virtual presentation. It's not, it's not like this or, you know, I'm not, you know, it's sitting down here, right? So when it, cut yeah, yeah. Right. Or I'm not, I'm not looking at my big monitor while I'm talking to you, right? I mean, it's those little things, right? Yeah. So when it comes to pitching.
00:19:18
Speaker
You know, put the pitch aside for now and make sure you look at the aesthetics. Am I am i lit very well? You can see I've got a separate light here. If I turn it off, doesn't look as good. yeah But if I turn it on, I'm well lit. I've got a cool background. My background gets, and this is actually not a background. This is my real office where I get comments on it. And and I just make sure that that all of that is in place when I'm getting ready to pitch, virtually as well as as in a live situation. on the on the pitching itself, I'm going to go back again to making sure that you get to a point where you're talking, I don't know, maybe 30% of the time, okay, you've got an hour, you know, I like to just make sure that incorporating part of my pitch involves doing some really good discovery.
Storytelling in Sales
00:20:07
Speaker
ah so that i can take notes and i can incorporate that stuff into the pitch when i when it's my turn to speak right and if i'm able to do that it's great because it takes a lot of pressure off of my shoulders number one oh my gosh i gotta fill an hour. But number two, it differentiates myself from all the other vendors that this client or prospect has probably already listened to. I mean, you've heard this as well. I know that people on the podcast, they'll, they'll get into an RFP situation. A great, you're the fourth vendor of, of four that we, and you just know they've got fatigue. But if you go in and you just completely differentiate yourself by starting off in no other way that anyone else has started, which is again, part of the training that I do.
00:20:51
Speaker
ah you know by by you know using a story to start off with or giving them a quote or giving them a statistic or or telling a joke or something like that. It just it's it really really helps. Yeah, I, so two things I want to hit on there. One one is storytelling, right? Cause that, that's, that's such a big deal. And then I i want to go back to jokes. So yeah, what, what's, what's, because that, if you, to me, the best that I've seen, they tell you a story and I've got a board member that it's in his early seventies and he spent a lot of time on stage and founded several software companies and, and man, he tells stories.
00:21:28
Speaker
I see him lean back in his chair and he's like, well, let me, you know, and then he goes through it. And I'm like, that was so much cooler than just stating the facts. Is there, yeah, how can can you teach storytelling? How do you turn this business thing into a story? Yeah, a couple of things there, Brian. First of all, personal stories are the best. If you've got a personal story that you know, it's going to come across a lot more genuine and impactful than if you're saying, well, let me tell you about something that happened to Brian. you know And he did this and he did that. So yeah personal stories are the best. And they're all around, right? there They really are. And and you'll see that and notice that with a lot of social selling on LinkedIn, people are telling stories all the time. Yes.
00:22:10
Speaker
So that would be one thing is to look for personal stories. And these can be things that are happening in your family. It could be something that happened to your dog. It could be something that happened when you were shopping at the supermarket the other day. But the second thing about storytelling is a little secret that I've discovered is that most companies already have a treasure trove of stories at hand and at available through case studies. yeah I mean, most companies I deal with, hey, can you give me a case study or two? Oh yeah, we've got this for this industry, this industry. So grab two or three case studies and you could, in today's day of a and or AI and chat GPT, you could take the whole case study, throw it into chat GPT and say, hey, can you condense this down to 200 words and keep the main points and and
00:23:03
Speaker
help me tell this story and give it a really good emotional pull at the end. Yeah, I mean, that's how easy it is. But then what you have to do is going back to the difficult things we talked about earlier, Brian, then you got to just memorize it, you got to know it, you got to be able to wow, I'm going to be able to tell the client this story. And, and and so use those case studies and personalize them. Because then you know, you don't have to sit there and kind of gosh, what what what am I going to tell this client? You know, So those are a couple of things on storytelling. The last thing I'll say about storytelling, yeah keep it simple, right? Keep it very, very easy. There's a great book by Kendra Hall called Stories That Stick. And I'd really recommend that book. It's a great one, but she talks about a very simple process and it's essentially three things. You've got you've got you got the problem, right? And then you have an explosion
00:23:56
Speaker
and then you have the solution. So these companies are dealing with this latara ratra and then something catalytic happens. yeah Make the company say, okay, we have to change. This has to change. And then the solution. So it's it's a very simple three-step process that will help you not get too far into the weeds when it comes to storytelling. Yeah, it's funny too because I've done some work on the whole storytelling thing and it's like, that's that's how most movies and books are written. It's it's the the hero's journey, right? I think we're all familiar. like there hero they've got a place they're going there's an obstacle there's usually a guide that comes in and helps and and and that the argument from neurologist is that our brains are wired for story like there's this is there's a scientific.
00:24:40
Speaker
part of this that connects. But I love that idea of taking something like a case study, throwing it into to Gemini or chat GPT and saying, give me this in a story with a good punchline. yeah So yeah, the the last question I have for you, because I i think it's really tricky, is jokes.
Using Humor Effectively in Business
00:24:56
Speaker
And I've noticed it was either in your LinkedIn or your personal thing about about joke telling in business environments. What are some guidelines? Because that's that can go either way, right? Yeah, I think it's it's pretty obvious to everybody, even more so now than you know back 20 years ago when I was hitting the comedy clubs pretty consistently, that there are certain things you can and and shouldn't joke about. I think the obvious things that you want to stay away from in ah in a sales setting, whether it's virtual or whether you're doing a live presentation, stay away from politics. Yeah. you know i was ah I was at an event in Arizona. I was emceeing a corporate event.
00:25:35
Speaker
And i had just such a great trump joke. Yeah and i went to our marketing guy and i said hey i'm. i'm I got this great joke. you know I don't think I'm going to tell it, but I just want to run it by you just for fun. And he's like, no, you're not going to tell it. We're right in the heart of MAGA country anyway, right with Arizona and everything. so So I stay away from politics. I stay away from sex sex jokes. i also I don't use course language. I never have in my whole life. yeah I just and just don't use it. right
00:26:08
Speaker
so if you if you you know, if you can, I think that's a bonus. I just think it, I don't know, you come off being more credible in that regard. Someone might disagree with me and that's okay, that's just me. So those are the obvious topics that that I think stay away from. And and remember this. you know you're You're not in a comedy club. right You're not there to make the salespeople laugh or or whatever. but So just remember that you've got a job to do. You've got to convince, you've got to convert, you've got to sell. And adding a little bit of fun and levity in there is is fine. And I learned this lesson early on because when I started at a particular company, when I was doing a lot of presenting,
00:26:51
Speaker
I was a little bit too steeped in the comedy mode. Hey, this is Jeff Burke. I'd go to these ah HR events, for example, 400 people in the room. and And it was a little bit too much of the Jeff Burke show and not about the client, just like we talked about at the beginning of the of this podcast is it was more about me and it wasn't about them. yeah So yeah so i've I've had to step back personally and really be 80% content and inspiration and storytelling and moving hearts as well as minds. And then I got a funny little thing that just came to my mind and and
00:27:27
Speaker
it just makes a nice blend yeah so you know in in my book in fact i at the end of my book i've list listed a bunch of jokes in certain categories if you're an i.t. professional here's a bunch of i.t. jokes if you're an accounting professional here's or you're talking to accountants here's those types of jokes if you're in sales here's some jokes like that so i think it's it's fine to to tell a joke i give some really good examples in in the first part of my book but it always
Conclusion on Storytelling, Humor, and Risk in Sales
00:27:58
Speaker
helps to run it by somebody but you know and and and do it that way and and's it's one of those things right brian where luckily my experience has given me a really good sixth sense to just know
00:28:10
Speaker
that people are gonna like this or that maybe not so ah but it it goes back to risk right yeah if you just take a good safe calculated risk and if it falls flat call attention to it i've done that many many times world i'll say something funny and. All right. So that worked really well. you know and And then people start to laugh because it's deprecating humor makes everybody feel a little bit more comfortable. Something like, wow, that guy on stage really blew it. But he just called attention to the fact that he blew it. So, hey, you know what? I'm with you. All right. Yeah. yeah that That's what I've just read about, like what, what really good writers do on like television shows is
00:28:47
Speaker
is is they they bring that into characters. There's characters that that you hate, but then they bring in some vulnerability. And I think that's what happens when you do that, right? It's like you you show yourself as vulnerable and people lean in. Yeah, this is this is really cool. You've reminded me of a bunch of things that are important and given me a couple of new ones, but we talked about prep. prep prep prep prep, just, just like, you know, any band or theater would rehearse storytelling. Uh, it's like, I feel like I haven't talked about that in a while on it. And it's so key. And then leaning in, leaning into that fear. I love that notion i'm leaning in and using it as, as sort of fuel or energy. um So.
00:29:24
Speaker
Yeah, this is this has been really helpful and it's funny. I've never promoted a book, but i do like I do love this idea of having jokes or people who say they aren't funny and train train like a rock star ah is is the book. And I would go there just for some of those alone. so But yeah, you've been you've been super generous with with your prep for this and with your time and your ideas today. So I really, really appreciate it. And thank you for being here. Yeah, absolutely, Brian. and And just if, if I could just say a couple of last things, you know, that again, to kind of sum everything up, the prep prep prep thing is again, I can't agree with that more. You know, I've i've done crazy things to help me prep. I mean, I'll, I'll record myself and on a device and I'll listen as I'm driving around to my own presentation.
00:30:12
Speaker
um and And I'll say, okay, I got to change that, I got to do that. and But it's also helping me just to memorize the order of of what I want to talk about. so So the prep stuff as well. And then just don't be afraid to take risks, right? Just step out there. And I think salespeople in general are some of the the least risk averse people that I know. And, you know, just just little, little victories. Right. I mean, and Stephen Covey said one thing I'll i'll leave everybody with. He said private victories precede public victories. Love that. So line up as many of those private victories as you can. Wow. I just went through my presentation three times in my office.
00:30:54
Speaker
and i'm feeling so much better or i just you know i just read this great book on negotiation skills and i'm gonna try this next time so line up those private victories and those public victories are certain to follow i i i love that and and it's It's what, again, the actors say, you need to be off book, right? And, you know, we talk about memorization, but being being off book, then you can lean into the color of it all. Yeah, this is this is super, super helpful. And I think your salespeople are lucky to have you and I was lucky to have you today. Thank you so much. Oh, thank you so much. It's been a pleasure.