Ditch The Pitch, Josh Braun Says Poke The Bear! | EP19

Josh Braun: Ditch the pitch. People resist pressure. Pitching a solution is kind of crazy, if you think about it, this idea of ditching the pitch is very counter intuitive. Well, if I'm not pitching, what am I doing?

That's the shift. It's from pitching or telling or explaining to asking. Mark Ackers: He's the man who made detach from the outcome go mainstream. He taught the world what commission breath is, coined the phrase zone of resistance and made the line.

You're probably gonna hate me, because this is a cold call famous. It's the one and only Josh born. One of the things that you talk about a lot is poking the bear, provoking gently without pitching. We Josh Braun: have a vendor for that.

Is not an objection. Everyone has sneakers. So at the beginning of the call, I'm just gonna simply ask, how are you guys doing this today? And then I'm gonna poke the bear.

So we're accustomed to these sales messages, and we're very sceptical. I call it scepticism as in and trust us out. And so when someone interacts with a sales person, they're not interacting with you. They're interacting with their perception of you based on all the experiences they've had with sales people.

I Mark Ackers: love how you talk about being detached from the outcome, but how am I meant to achieve it when I live in a career that is measured purely on outcomes? What would you say to them? Josh Braun: The less you actually care about clinging onto the sale, the more sales you end up making, because the energy shifts. This isn't something that happens overnight, and I'm still in a process of learning this as well.

I would start Mark Ackers: how Hello and welcome to another episode of The I used to be crap at sales podcast. I'm your host, Mark Akers, the co founder and Head of Sales here at my sales coach, we called the podcast out because it's true and our guests say the same. Today I'm joined by someone who probably doesn't realise this, but through no fault of their own, were one of the first people to make me realise that I was crap at sales. He's a former elementary school teacher, a former VP of Product Development, former VP of inside sales and business development at Jelly vision for over 10 years.

He's an ex head of sales at base camp, and now he's the founder and face of Braun training and the inside selling podcast. He's got 10,000 YouTube subscribers, over 130,000 Tiktok followers, with 1.2 million likes and over a quarter of a million followers on LinkedIn. He's on my list of people I'd love to get a beer with.

It's the one and only. Josh Braun, Josh big welcome to the podcast. How are you doing today? Thank Josh Braun: you for that amazing intro.

Maybe you could call me every morning and say such nice things. That's a great way to start my morning. Thank you, Mark Ackers: Josh. I've called you a few times, and every time I do, you always put a smile on my face and really excited to get into this with you.

We start the podcast always with a yes, no question, did you used to be crap at sales? Josh Braun: So I am learning finger style blues guitar on an acoustic guitar for the first time. Am I crap at it? No, I am new to it.

So when you're new to something, whether it's sales or a guitar, you're in a process of getting better each day. You have to have good instruction, you have to know what to do, and then you have to practice what good is, and then you have to have someone watch you practising to help you make different improvements. So I don't believe the premise of your crap at anything when you're starting something new. It's the normal part of learning something new, and every day that you practice it and learn about your craft or shadow top performers, or in my case, take lessons from an amazingly talented guitar teacher, David hamburger, you make your skills a little bit better.

The answer to your question is, I don't believe in the question. I don't believe there is such a thing as being crap at anything when you start. That's the nature of starting anything new. It's like saying, is it, you know, bad when it rains, you get wet.

I'm like, I guess it's the nature of rain. It just is. Mark Ackers: I love that answer is a really interesting insight into your mind. Your mindset, I suppose, to phrase the question slightly differently, or to go down a slightly different tact, when you look back at your career and perhaps think back to a moment where you realised you're not as good as you want to be at this profession, is there a particular part of your career that springs to mind where you thought it's not quite working.

Something needs to change. I don't look Josh Braun: at it that way. So again, the guitar analogy is a really good one. The swimming is the same thing.

I learned how to swim late in life. I never thought this is where I want to be. It was more a process of, can I get a little bit better every day, and am I enjoying the process of learning how to play the guitar or writing on LinkedIn or sales, right? So if I'm enjoying what I'm doing and I feel like I'm getting a little bit better every day, to me, that's good enough.

I don't have, like, five or 10 year goals. I don't try to, you know, think I wish I was here. I wish I was there. To me, it's good enough, enjoyable enough, to actually have the thrill of learning something and getting better at something.

I mean, I keep getting back to guitar because it's, you know, new now, but, like, it's really fun to learn something new. Like, you're like, wow, that's cool. I can, I can make it sound like this. Now, what else is there?

And especially if you have a great teacher, you know, that can kind of chunk it down and make it, you know, make you successful early. I had another great teacher in the in the pool when I was first learning how to. Swim, because I was not a swimmer as an adult, and I was going to do triathlons in an open water ocean, a very big thing for 50 year old guy, but he put me in the pool, and he broke it down really easily and made me feel motivated, because I was having some wins, and I was like, I'm getting a little bit better at this.

And to me, that's enough. Do I feel like I'm enjoying it, whether it's sales or writing or swimming or guitar, and do I feel like I'm getting like a little bit better every day? Have Mark Ackers: you always had that mindset? Or is that something you've taught yourself and learned throughout your life?

Josh Braun: I haven't always had it. So I probably discovered that when I got into stoicism many, many moons ago, and also psychedelics, kind of later in life. So those two forces doing some psychedelics, again, not not in a party situation, but in a controlled environment with a professional guide, as well as stoicism and Buddhism teachings heavy into meditation, has informed some of my thinking in this area compared to when I was in my like 20s or even 30s. I'm Mark Ackers: thinking of people that are listening to this podcast here, what you've just said, people might be thinking, don't quite know what he's talking about there.

Can you just elaborate a little bit more? Because I think what you're saying is really interesting. But just want to break it down a bit Josh Braun: more. Yeah.

So one of the core principles of stoicism, if you had to boil it down into one sentence, is to tune out what you don't control, and to tune in what you do. So I'll give you a couple of examples of that you can do everything right when interviewing for a job, like research the company, ask really smart questions, prepare well, like, knock it out of the park, and you still might not get the job. So if your goal is, I got to get the job, otherwise, I'm not going to be happy. You're going to be disappointed when you don't get it, because you don't have full control over what or over what, over whether you get hired or not.

Same thing in professional sports, like I'm watching full swing right now on Netflix, which is a documentary on the PGA golfers, and these guys play incredible golf and still lose, but they don't fixate on the scoreboard. If you watch the documentary, what you'll notice is that focus on practice and putting and driving and their technique and working out all the things that they can control, and they're sort of tuning out the rest. They're sort of doing their best and forgetting the rest, right?

So sales is like that too. A lot of times people get attached to the outcome, because that's how they're comped. But you don't have full control over the outcome. You don't really have full control over when or if people buy.

And so if you're attached to that and you don't get it, you spiral down because you're attaching your self worth to an outcome that you don't control. But if you shift just a little bit and you start to realise it is kind of madness to spend any calories on things that I don't fully control, everything changes because you just tuned all that stuff out. You just focus on what you do control. You know who I call, what I say, my tonality, you know how I how I structure my day, preparing my list in advance, before I call, and you just let everything else unfold.

And it's just a much more calmer, tranquil way to go through business and life. I mean, I'll tell another you know, story, just because it's sort of fresh. My mother in law lives a couple of miles here, so she's always coming in for surprise visits. One day, I'm on a podcast, and she just walks in, just like she would here, and says, How much money did you make last week?

That's a crazy question to ask, but if you know my mother in law, you know that that's how she is. Now, I could try to change her and try to push back, but that's not going to go very well. So instead, you move with that, and you say, you know, sounds like you really care about your daughter being taken care of. I'm on a podcast right now.

Can we talk, you know, afterwards, right? Because that's the nature of Bobby, my mother in law. The nature of sales is, you're going to get ghosted, you're going to have prospects. Your quote is going to go up.

Your territory is going to shrink. The nature of learning anything new is it's going to hurt your fingertips if you're playing guitar. So if you move in harmony with the nature of things. It's just a much more peaceful way to go through life.

I saw a guy at an airport losing his mind because the plane was delayed for the third time, because he doesn't understand that the nature of flight is airlines getting delayed. I saw another guy so upset that he stepped in dog poo at the dog park looking for the owner who left the dog poop there, because he doesn't realise that a world without dog poop in a dog park isn't possible, so it's the same thing with sales and life. So that philosophy is really core to stoicism. There's a bunch more there, but that's a central idea that is very has informed the detached mentality for sales.

Mark Ackers: I love how you talk about being detached from the outcome. I want to get one of those hats that you're wearing right now. Here's the reality, and I know you're taking the right way, and you know it's my job to challenge in this in this podcast, I feel like I've achieved that now in my career, where I am detached from the outcome. In fact, just before we jumped on here, I was on a discovery call, and I had no attachment to this person.

Wanted to move forward or not, but I'm 37 nearly 38 if I go back earlier in my career, where it was all about targets, the numbers, how much I sold every month, and if my if I was going to pass probation, if that probation was going to get extended, if I was going to get put on. The PIP if I was going to get the promotion, if I was going to get the pay rise, and I think back then, I would have found it impossible to not be attached to the outcome, because every one to one that I had, every performance review, was connected to the outcome.

And I think that's where lots of sales reps will think it's all good saying that it's all good, having that mindset. But how am I meant to achieve it when I live in a career that is measured purely on outcomes? What would you say to them? Yeah, so Josh Braun: couple couple things there.

I don't have all this figured out yet. The realisation that I've come to is that if you really just step back for a second and think about it, it is your job, as they say, if you're in sales, to have some kind of outcome, you know, to to be able to generate a certain amount of money, to be able to book under certain amount of meetings. Same thing with a golf pro or a professional athlete, their their job, you know, to to win the tournament. If you're interviewing for a job, the end result that you want is to get the job.

But like the professional athlete and like your career, there are so many variables you don't control. One of them is when or if people buy. You can do everything right, just like a professional athlete, and still not get a sale. So if you think your job is to get a result, and you just think about it for a second, it's kind of madness.

It's like saying, If I don't get the win, then I'm not good. There's plenty of people on the PGA Golf Tour that don't win, and plenty of people in sales that don't win every single time. But if you shift your mindset just a little bit and you think, what are the things that I can control, everything changes. Ironically, the more you're attached to the outcome from a sales perspective, the more you repel people.

That's because you emit an energy that feels needy and desperate. You push, you convince and you beg. You might not even know it, but your thoughts or your intent affect your behaviour. So if your intent is a clinging intent, where I gotta get a sale, I gotta book a meeting, I gotta overcome, I gotta push.

That energy can be felt by the prospect, in the tone of your voice and in the words that you use, it's biological. Your intent affects your behaviour and ultimately your results. But if you change your intent and you just drop back a little bit and you say, I'm just going to focus on what I can get better at and tune out the rest, everything shifts. This does not mean you're complacent.

This is a common misconception with detachment. Professional golfers are not complacent. Just go watch the documentary. I am not complacent learning the guitar or sales.

You if you're listening to this, you're not complacent interviewing for a job or doing your job. It just means doing the best you can do and then yielding to what happens without expecting anything to happen. Because the alternative, if you think about it, is a recipe for suffering. Like, if you really just drop back and get a little meta about it, you're like, Yeah, you know what?

I Why would I want to cling to that if I don't fully control it and I'm attaching all my worth to that thing, you're just going to be in a place of suffering and unhappiness, and this is going to just perpetuate. You might not even realise you're in this cycle, because you might not even be aware of your thoughts if you don't meditate, you're kind of stuck in this spiral, spiral, same intent, same behaviour, same results, same same same worry, same anxiety. But this two millimetre mindset shift is so freeing, because it allows you to only focus on what it is that you can control.

And ironically, and I know this from my experience and working with 1000s of sales people that have made the shift, the less you actually care about clinging on to the sale, the more sales you end up making, because the energy shifts. So let's imagine Mark Ackers: someone's listening to this, and they wholeheartedly agree with you, but they've not made that shift. How do they start? What are they what should they read?

What should they do? What's your advice there? Yeah, Josh Braun: so this isn't something that happens overnight, and I'm, you know, still in a process of learning this as well. I would start with two things.

I would read the Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle, or listen to the audio book 15 minutes a day, and then weave into your practice daily mindfulness. I use an app created by Sam Harris, no affiliation, called waking up. It is a study of the mind, and I can't think of a better use of eight minutes a day than learning how your mind works. What meditation gives you is not this idea of you got to clear your mind.

It's a misconception. What it gives you is the ability to observe your thoughts, meaning you are separate from what you're thinking. If you don't meditate, you become your thoughts. But if you meditate, you can actually observe your thoughts, and the simple act of observing them creates a distance between how you react and what you're thinking, and in that gap, you can choose to just watch the thought go by and like a page in a book.

What you'll notice when you do this, even for five or six minutes, is Wow, now all of a sudden, I'm thinking about tacos. That's weird, because you don't control the thoughts coming into your head. You only control how you're responding to them, and when you get good at observing your thoughts, and I do this sometimes. When I swim in the pool, it's fascinating, and they have a short shelf life when you observe them, this idea of being lost in thought and observing it is the practice of meditation, not no thoughts, just observing the thoughts.

When you catch yourself lost in them, you drop. Back. You can use a mantra, or you can just observe the thought, and that's the spot. Back and forth that strengthens the muscle.

Those two things are a good first step. So Mark Ackers: I'm convinced on buying and reading this book and checking out this app, I've never really meditated. Intrigued. Loads of people have mentioned it, given it a go.

Never really committed to it, but you've intrigued me. Where else do you meditate when you're gonna go and meditate? What are you meditate, where do you go? Josh Braun: Right here, just, you can just find a quiet place.

And it's, you know, five minutes, seven minutes, you know, a day you can, you know, start there. There's other types of meditation, but the waking up app is really good. There's a 30 day course that he has in there that's really fascinating. What's different about Sam's app, at least for me, and I've tried a bunch of them, is he also helps you understand how the mind works, which I find fascinating.

It's not just close your eyes and meditate for five minutes. There's some lectures behind like, what's going on, and I find it fascinating. Just like, you know, totally his book, there's a lot of understanding, you know, how the brain and mind works. Mark Ackers: Amazing.

I think that's going to be really helpful. I know there'll be people listening to this that take action based on what you've just said. I want to go back slightly back to the early years, because you mentioned about the impact of a great teacher, and I've seen you in action teach for those that haven't seen it, and I appreciate that be a lot of people, because it was seven or eight years ago. Now I on LinkedIn, released a video where I taught my co founder Kevin's son to cold call.

That video when what I would call for me sort of viral in terms of, you know, he picked up the phone, made locals, but then you had a session with him, and you taught this 10 year old boy how to cold call. And I remember saying to you afterwards, you know, it was incredible to see you teach this boy how to do that. And you said, Well, I used to be a teacher, and you've mentioned here about the impact of being a great teacher. When you were a teacher and you made the transition to sales, what what skills transferred over for you?

Josh Braun: Like anything, listening, teaching, storytelling. These are all skills that can be learned and improved upon. Anything that we're talking about here isn't like No one wakes up and is good at any of this stuff, right? So you can, you know, get better at things if you realise these are skills that can be learned and mastered.

One of the main things that transferred over is storytelling. So in elementary school, you're always looking for ways to teach concepts in ways that inform and entertain. And key to that, especially if you're teaching elementary school kids, is telling good stories, you know. So I studied deeply storytelling, and started to collect stories that were happening in my personal life, things that would happen with my dog, things that I heard on the you know, podcasts, things that I saw on billboards, I would just jot down.

I would always have my antenna up all the time for things, and I would just collect these. And if you imagine, if you saw my spreadsheet on the left side, would be all these ideas of things. I observed the guy that stepped in dog poo at the at the park, and he was so upset. I wrote this down.

I'm like, and then the next column, I'm like, What's the lesson there? Which is trying to control things you can't control. So I'm collecting stories, and then I'm relating them to some kind of sales or business or life lesson that I want to teach. You know, like my mom a couple weeks ago, I need a new computer.

Can you buy me one? Mom, what is going on with your computer? I can't log into Facebook. I go, you can't log into Facebook.

She goes, No, it doesn't remember my username and password. So I have to create another Facebook account. I have like, seven accounts now, so I'm like, okay, the root cause isn't, she needs a new computer. She needs a password manager, right?

So that's a sales lesson. So I just, I just jotted that down. And there's things that happen with my wife all the time, stuff with the dog. So there's an observation, you know, the muscle to work is observing, always having the antenna up, taking, you know, putting that in notes, and then just a couple little sentences of how you might want to relate.

That if you look at my posts and things that I teach, it's always a story, some kind of bridging phrase, and then some kind of thing that I teach. And when I do workshops, I start with stories. Stories are integral. I mean, every 10 minutes there's another story and that they kind of, you know, because the brain's wired for stories.

I like telling them, and if you realise it's a skill, you can start to learn how to get better at storytelling. Just like you would learn how to get better at guitar or sales, you can kind of go down different rabbit holes. Study great storytellers, read books on storytelling, start telling stories to your friends, see which ones grab them. People listening Mark Ackers: are going to go.

How do I get better at storytelling? What would you say is a better way to ask you that question to give the learner something more tangible? Josh Braun: So there's not, there's no these questions are not bad. I just have a different perspective on it.

You mentioned, like, what's the key to becoming better at anything? There's not like a key. There's not like a list of five things. It's a process of becoming a little bit better every day.

So anything that you're good at today, you know your your your sales, you're golfing, maybe you swim, maybe you play the drums. There wasn't like a key to mastery. Here's three things. Are you a Master?

No, you go to a workshop, sales workshop, and they tell you, these are the seven things you're not master at anything you have to actually do the things over a long period of time, and you start to get a little bit better at them. So it's not it's a process of becoming. But the thing that I want to stress is the key to becoming mastery. It shouldn't be the goal, because once you get to the top of the mountain, I used to bike these huge mountains in Boulder like, once you get to the top, you look around, you're like, okay, then you come down.

Like, it's kind of short lived. The fun is the training and the climb. It's the same thing with guitar sales, painting, Jiu Jitsu, all these things, the golf tournament, these PGA guys that win, and women that win. It's fine.

They hold the trophy up. But really, if you watch the documentary, they're real fun. And the joy is in the process of becoming, you know, is doing the actual work. That's that's where the joy is.

It's the joy is in the progress, not in the keys, Mark Ackers: the journey, rather than the destination. So one thing I was wondering, Josh, when I was preparing for the podcast, is I wondered, have you ever had someone that you taught as a teacher now in a sales career, and they're like, that's Mr. Braun, and they've reached out to you? Has ever happened?

Yes, Josh Braun: I've had that happen quite a bit since I've been on LinkedIn. Jen and I were in a rather remote hike in the middle of nowhere, like in Colorado, and I got stopped a couple times on a hike. I got stopped in the Grand Canyon. Are you Josh from LinkedIn?

I've been stopped even from my teaching days. Kids are like, I don't know, in their 40s or 30s, whatever, how real they are. Like, Mr. Brown, I'm like, wow.

Because I think that that shows like, the power of, a you know, storyteller, storyteller like, it's impactful. No good teachers are. They're impactful. Mark Ackers: Absolutely like, there's lots of stats out of the show when information is given as a story, how it's remembered a lot better than just information shared in terms of some of the things that you teach, one of the things that you talk about a lot is poking the bear and provoking gently without pitching.

How can a sales rep do that without coming across as pushy? I suppose it's understanding the line between challenging and being confrontational. Tell us more about that. Yeah, so Josh Braun: let me tell you a story.

We'll kill two birds here, right? So, little bit on storytelling, kind of behind the scenes here. Notice what I'm not going to do is, I'm not going to say, well, let me tell you about a time there. There was this, you know, when I went to the mall and this thing happened.

I'm going to jump right into the story, right? So watch what I do. A few years ago, I was in the mall with my wife. I did not need anything.

She was returning some things, as she often does, and I was just keeping her company. We were going to grab some food at true food kitchen in the mall to just kill some time, I walked into a fit to run store. If the store associate said, what brings you in today? I would have said nothing.

If she said, You got any problems with your sneakers, I would have said no. If she said, we just got in these new Brook sneakers. They got this new carbon sole. They're lighter.

You can run faster, I would have said, I'm not said, I'm not interested. But she didn't do any of those things. She looked down at my sneakers. She said, Are you a runner?

I said, I am. And then she said, this training for any races? I go, I'm actually training for a half marathon. And then she asked the question that I will never forget.

She goes, Oh, you've probably had a running gait test. It's actually more of a statement than a question. And I go, what's that? And moments later, I'm on a treadmill in fit to run.

I actually have video and of still of this. If you were in my workshops, I'd have it on the screen. She freezes the frame, and she zooms into my ankles, and she goes, You notice how your ankles are over pronating when you run? And I go, yeah.

So she goes, Well, the problem is, if you're running sneakers that are not made for pronated feet, you increase your chances of getting injuries like plantar fasciitis and runner's knee if you'd like. I could take a look at your sneakers to see if they're made for pronated feet. And about, I don't know, six or seven minutes later, I'm spending $180 on new sneakers and insoles, right? So what she didn't do is value, prop me or pitch me.

What she did do is ask the question with finesse that made me think differently about my current sneakers. It doesn't matter what you're selling. Everybody you're selling to has sneakers today. They have some kind of solution in place that is getting the job done, and they've probably heard about your sneakers and have chosen not to switch.

So your job on a cold call is not to fill your prospects head with information and to pitch your solution, because your solution may not have any value if there's no problem. Here's another example. I like to wash my car. I must have put my email in something where I'm getting car products from.

I get this email from a company called Adams, and I'll never forget the sentence. It said, Josh, looks like you love to wash your car on the weekends. Here's the stuff you bought. How do you know your car wash mitt won't scratch your Audi?

And I was like, what? It turns out that if you wash your car, your car with a normal bucket and sponge, dirt can get trapped in a sponge and scratch your car. Now, if you're a car nut like me, and you have OCD, that's a problem, because you can't just buff that out. Gotta take it to the body shop to do that.

Right? It's a couple grand. When you sell the car, they run a thin metre over it, they see it's been repainted. It's worth less.

And they sell this thing called a grit guard. It goes in the bottom of the wash bucket. It's like a grate. Rub your sponge on it, and the dirt settles to the bottom of the bucket and off your sponge.

And I bought it in immediately. It's about asking a question that allows you to think differently about the status quo. If you are selling to rev ops managers and your Captivate IQ, you automate commission payouts, and you're calling someone. Who's been in rev ops for 12 years, chances are they know that it can be automated, and they're not automating it, but using spreadsheets.

So if you were to call them and after your opener, you might say, Hey Mark, when you guys are calculating commissions for your 100 reps, is it like using spreadsheets, or is it more of an automated process? And they say, we're using spreadsheets instead of pitching them, assume they've heard about automation because they've been doing the job for 12 years. That might sound like this, oh, you've probably looked into automating it, and then Shut the front door and listen, because they might say, we have and then you might say, sounds like your rules were way too complex for automation.

And they may correct you and say, well, actually, it was this. And then maybe you have a gap or an opening there, or maybe not, or maybe they've never heard of it, or never known about it. So the idea here is you're labelling. You're bringing up how they're currently doing it at the beginning, because, as I've mentioned many times, we have a vendor for that.

Is not an objection. Everyone has sneakers. So at the beginning of the call, I'm just going to simply ask, how are you guys doing this today? And then I'm going to poke the bear when you go down to Miami to see a concert, like, I know you're going to see Sarah Silverman a couple weeks.

Um, do you drive down there and park like, at the stadium? You have someone drive you down there, or do you have a way to, like, reserve a spot near the stadium so you can get out of there and not have to be stuck in traffic? Wait, what was that last thing? Oh, you've probably heard a spot hero.

What's that? And now the prospect is leaning forward, right? So that's the that's the poke to bear. You know, methodology, in three, four minutes, I Mark Ackers: called you up to invite you on the podcast, and you went straight into that natural mode of yours, that curiosity.

I wanted to talk to you about the podcast, but you were like, so tell me about my sales coach. What's been the hardest part of setting up that business? Tell me how's business going? Tell me about this marketplace.

Have you always been like that? Because, you know, I've got a six and a half year old son that will ask me, Well, we were watching a movie the other night. The second part of Captain America was had to split it up, and I wrote down how many questions he asked me in 40 minutes. So, yeah, it started at 7:43pm and in the space of half an hour, he asked me 50 questions, 50 and like, you know, they were like, when's he gonna take his face off and become the Red Skull?

What just happened to him? What's he doing? Who is Hydra? And I think we lose that trait as we grow up for many reasons, like society talks about, you know, not asking questions.

Bone went to spawn to but what about you have you just never lost that ability to ask questions? Or is that just a state of being that you've taught yourself to constantly ask questions? Hey, sales leaders, do you want a cost effective way to develop your team skills and help them smash their quotas. My sales coach offers team memberships for just 20 pounds per month per individual plus VAT.

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The link is in the description. Josh Braun: I don't try to constantly ask them, but what I've realised, too, as an adult, like to your point, I'll be out with like, a couple, another couple. And I'm always amazed by how few questions other people ask, like, when I say how few, I mean, like, zero, I'll say something crazy, like, Jen and I just did drugs in the Himalayas and be like, Oh, cool. We just got back from Italy.

And then they'll start like, so I don't know there's, there's something there that I think people are more absorbed in what they want to say. I've always been a little bit curious about people. Sometimes it's a little bit much, you know, people like, dude, I'm not on a podcast. Like, I've been, I've been told that, like, can, can you just, like, not like, My wife tells me this sometimes he goes, You don't have to interview people when you go out.

So that could also work the other way. But, yeah, generally speaking, I'm a, I'm a very curious person, and I do have a tendency to ask questions, maybe so much to a fault there. I Mark Ackers: just resonate so much what you say. I say that's my wife all the time, like we're they didn't ask anything.

You know, we asked all these questions, and they don't ask anything. And I find that strange as well. But I've always put it down to just humans want to talk about themselves because they're trying to find connection and show we're just like each other. And you know, a great example I give is, well, I call it a great example, an example I give, I'll let you decide is great.

But you know, if you say I'm going to go to New York, rather than someone say to you, oh, who are you going with? How long are you going for? What do you got planned? They'll say, New York's amazing, I've been and next thing you know, they're telling you about their holiday.

And I don't, I don't believe it comes from a bad place. I think it comes from a place of, I'm like you. We're just like each other. Let me, let me connect with you as humans.

But that involves them telling, rather than asking. I don't know if you feel similar. Well, I think it's Josh Braun: a health. Way to look at it again, and this gets back to what we talked about earlier, when we expect people to behave in certain ways, and they don't behave in the ways in which we expect them to behave, we're going to be disappointed in talking about it on a podcast.

So you did something really healthy there, which is they're probably just wanting to share their experience, and they probably want to connect in that kind of a different way, and that's not their style. And so this is a process of you accepting people who they are, like, even the observation that I had, like, God, people don't like seem to ask a lot of questions. I might think, what is it about me that feels like I need to be asked questions? Like, you could always turn these things around.

This is what meditation gives you, and psychedelics, it kind of gets you like to rewire, like, Who is the person that needs to be asked questions? Do I need to be interviewed now? What am I on a podcast? Why can't I let people be how they are and I can be who I am?

And why am I asking so many questions? Many moons ago, I was on a trip with Jenna to Napa Valley. We were doing a bike tour, and this tour guide that we had was like, in a terrible mood, like he was rushing us. He was short.

He was like, not no good spirits. And I'm like, This guy is like, the worst, like, I was gonna I'm gonna leave, like, a bad review. And then Jenna, because she's wise in this way, sits next to him, and lunch with me, starts talking to him. And we learned during lunch that he just lost his 28 year old son, like, a week ago.

Like, his kid died in some crazy motorcycle accident. You're like, and in that moment you feel like a real jerk. You're like, wow, everyone is going through something. And there's always, always, always multiple lenses to view things from.

And there's always this opportunity to step back and ask the question that Sam Harris asks in his podcast all the time, which is, who's the person doing the thinking and the asking, like, Who is that? What is that? And you realise that that's some other thing. You're not that that's some other thing going that's what in the world's called ego, which drives everything.

And most people aren't aware that the ego is kind of steering the ship. But when you kind of drop back and turn your attention to it, like, Who is this person that needs to be asked questions, you sort of laugh at it, and it just takes this thing off. Versus, I can't believe they didn't ask me one question the entire dinner, right? So you're like, shout out when, when she leaves for work, she'll leave for coffee cup, and she doesn't clean it.

She just leaves it in the sink, right? So I'm like, one way to think of that is, it takes two seconds to clean it. Like, why wouldn't you just clean the thing? Another way to do that is like, Okay, I'll just clean the cup.

It's like, takes two seconds. It's not a big deal. I'm sure I do a bunch of things that she does that she doesn't like. It's just a better way to like shift through life, versus like dwelling on these things that are like.

The nature of Jenna is she leaves a coffee cup with her coffee sitting on a while. Now, what I realised about this was I wonder if I didn't do anything because I have a need. I have a need to clean it up immediately. So I, in that moment, I turned the attention back on myself.

Who is this person that feels they need to clean this coffee this coffee cup up immediately? And in that moment, I created the gap, and I walked away without meditation. I'm cleaning the cup and getting angry. And guess what happened?

A couple hours later, when she got done working out and done watching her shows and done talking to her girlfriends, she cleaned the coffee cup. It wasn't that it never got cleaned. It was it didn't get clean when I thought it should have gotten cleaned. So it kind of gets this, gets back to meditation again.

This is the superpower I should I don't even like that word, but this is the skill that it gives you, this ability to just observe what you're thinking with regards to people asking questions or the coffee mug, or when a prospects talking about something, and then just turning the attention back on yourself, like a prospects talking and you're normally thinking about what you want to say next. If you don't do meditation, do meditation, if you do meditation, you're aware that you're about to think about what you want to say next, and in that moment of awareness, you could turn your attention back to the prospect.

Without that skill, you don't have that ability. This gap, as Sam Harris calls it, the gap, is the thing that allows you to decide. You may still want to talk, but at least now you have a choice. Mark Ackers: Just listen.

Vase. This episode is really just reinforcing the power of story time, just sad, just listening. And you probably didn't realise it, but you're one of the people that first made me realise. You know I was I was crap at sales.

And I know that's not a statement you agree with, but it was April 2017 the sales team was sent this youtube clip, and it was a clip of you role playing with another AE, and I think they were British, actually teaching them to lead with problems, not pitching. And I was mesmerised. And I even messaged that AE to say, like, look, who is this, Josh guy. Like, how did you get to speak to him?

How did this happen? And and he come back to me and just sort of explained that how he found the experience, and I wanted it for myself, but I was too nervous to raise my hand and message you, because back at the then I looked at your LinkedIn profile, you had like, 20,000 LinkedIn followers, and I was just unimaginable to me, I'd barely broken the 500 connection at that point. So what I did is I bought your B to B, bad ass growth plays book, and it was the most I'd ever spent on myself at that point in my career to learn.

And I saw mesmerised by this book, and I dropped your LinkedIn message one of the plays wasn't loading. It was, it was about being ghosted. I dropped you this message, and you replied, and we went backwards and forwards, and you were so helpful around this play about being ghosted, but you were asking me questions. And then I got this message that I won't totally show because he's got your phone number, but it just said, give me a call.

I have an idea, and I remember crapping myself because I had to call you now, I almost couldn't believe it. And and you were so generous with your time. As I say, my mind was overwhelmed by how much we spoke about half an hour, right? And it was, it was when everyone had left the office, and I just sat there.

I remember my wife was like, you're home really late tonight. I was like, speaking to Josh Braun, this guy in America, and she's like, and Josh Braun: she said, Sure, you are speaking to Josh Braun, sure. And I think Mark Ackers: that was such a key moment for me. But how did you get to that place, right?

Like you obviously started a career in sales who helped shape you as a seller, to get to a place where you can have such an impact on so many sales people, Josh Braun: yeah? So again, I kind of want to get back to this idea, because these questions, to me, they feel like there's this mastery place that everyone's trying to get to. And what I'm suggesting is there is not that place. This is a place of just becoming a little bit of a better version of yourself, depending on what that is for you, right?

So this is not like a plan of me mastering or reading some book or looking at some like six, you know, point list, it's a process of growth. I mean, I'm a different person in my 30s or 40s and 50s, and I was in my 20s because I was interested in different things, you know, I got interested in and stoicism that leads you down a certain path. Of interesting people to listen to that are not sales people I got interested in mentioned before. You know, psychedelics, that leads you down another path of interesting people.

Got interested in meditation. You listen to people like Sam Harris, and he has a podcast, and he interviews all sorts of interesting people, you know, you stumble across, you know, Chris Voss, and you stumble across different psychologists. I went to, I've gone to therapy. You're like, wow, that was an interesting way.

They got me to figure out my own motivations. What is that? There's a thing called, you know, cognitive therapy. There's, there's all these, like, little interesting areas to learn how like people tick and how your own mind works.

I've always been interested in learning how I tick. Like what? Why am I the way I am? And I don't like this about me right now.

What can I do, maybe, to change that a little bit. What kind of things can I start to do? And one of the things I do on LinkedIn sometimes is someone will say something. I'll say, give me a call, and we'll just, like, have a conversation.

I don't schedule, like, podcasts in advance. Like, too far in advance anymore. Like, this is an example. You want to do a podcast.

You want to do it today, tomorrow, you know, Monday or Tuesday, but not three months out, because I don't know where I'm going to be in three months. I might be in Japan. I might not want to do podcasts anymore. So these aren't things like I set out to do.

It's just like, oh, I don't want to do that anymore. And my friend Jason freed doesn't do that. I'm like, You know what? I don't want to do that either.

He goes, I just, you want to do a podcast. Just say you want to do it today or tomorrow, but don't schedule it out. I go, you can do that. He goes, Yeah, that's what I do.

I'm like, Okay, I'm gonna start doing that. So you just, you pick up things when you you you brought in your circumference. If you're just reading about sales stuff, following sales people. You're going to learn in a little circle, but depending on what you're interested in, you can broaden that circle out.

Like, I'm learning stuff from David hamburger. He's a he's a musician, he's a phenomenal teacher. Like I'm learning some stuff about him, about how to teach better. You know how to package things up.

But you can learn from all works. It just depends on what you're interested in. So to answer your question, I haven't always been anyway. I'm just in a process of seeing, learning about myself and just, you know, trying different things out.

Mark Ackers: And again, I love that mindset. I suppose. What I was curious to hear was, was there ever a mentor figure for you in one of your sales roles that kind of helped you understand how to approach sales, the way that you now approach it, or did you kind of figure this out yourself gradually, day by day, step by step? Josh Braun: No, tonnes of people.

I mean, Jill Conrath, she's wrote a book called selling to big companies. The Challenger sale was instrumental. There was a gentleman by the name of Ari galper Who did like a cold calling series that was very instrumental as well. But more even so than that was the books that I read outside of sales that I had mentioned before.

You know, books on psychology, going to therapy myself, uh, stoicism. Those books have also informed a lot of my sales philosophy, too, and Mark Ackers: that probably leads to a great place, like on your website, you've got the 10 rules that make selling joyful, and would sit under philosophy. I'll just read out the 10 Rules, but we've got, number one, have no expectations. Number two, let it go.

Don't let a mistake ruin your day. Number three, detach from the outcome, which we've covered. Number four, be honest all of the time. Number five, be patient.

Six, don't compare yourself to others. Seven, everything's gonna be okay. Eight, ditch the pitch. Nine, slow down.

And 10, rewire your brain to listen. Which of those rules do. You think reps most struggle to live by. I think Josh Braun: it's the ditch the pitch one, because there's so much pressure for reps to perform.

And I think most reps have been taught to value prop and to pitch. And my take on that is, you know, if you are in a mall and you're walking with someone, and a kiosk person locks eyes with you and says, Can I ask you a couple quick questions? You already know what's coming, and therefore you're going to resist because people resist pressure. The other day, I went into Hugo Boss and the store associate said, what brings you in today?

I said, I'm just looking that's a lie. Like it's an outright lie. I didn't just wake up one day and decide to go drive to the mall to go to Hugo Boss. I can't stand going to the mall like I went there for a specific reason.

I did that because I don't want the pressure of a commission based sales person throwing clothes over the dressing room, right? So this idea of ditching a pitch is very counter intuitive. Well, if I'm not pitching, what am I doing? We're switching from pitching to asking.

We got into this a little earlier in the podcast, asking questions around specific problems in a neutral way to create this moment of, I'm not sure what. That's a good question. I didn't think about that. Like, what do you mean moments on cold calls?

And I've got calls of this. Like, if you look at my course and follow me on LinkedIn, you'll hear these moments of, like, pause after the you kind of get this question nailed, or the prospects like, yeah, I can kind of do that. Or that's a good question. Or, what do you mean?

That's the shift. It's from pitching or telling or explaining to asking same thing in your personal life. If you're explaining something to someone, you should do it this way. Nobody wants to be explained to no one wants opinions about something to be told they're doing, because you're basically saying, as Chris Fauci is, when you're explaining, you're saying, I'm right and you're wrong, or if you're convincing, right.

So this idea of leaning back and not assuming there's even a problem, because pitching a solution is kind of crazy, if you think about it like I'll give you an example. My grandma had the worst toaster you could possibly imagine. It made one slice of toast, it only made light toast, and it took forever. So I, being a salesperson, brought her a new toaster, objectively, way better than her toaster, two slices of toast, fast and dark toast.

And I told her the value proposition, I pitched her the product, and she said, I'm not interested take it back. And I said, Why, grandma, two slices of toast, dark, fast. She said, I only like one slice of toast. I'm not in a rush, and I prefer light toast.

So it's madness to pitch a toaster if there's no problem. And yet, that's the traditional approach. Is we gotta the reason for my call is we've been helping X, Y and Z. I don't like that.

I only like light toast, or I don't even do that, or I don't even run anymore. Have you ever had a running game? Josh, are you running any races? No, I only walk.

I hate running. She's not going to pitch me a running gate test. It's premature, right? So, problem before product, problem before pitch, I'd say that was the out of the list of 10, I'd say that was the probably the one I'd pick.

And Mark Ackers: what about yourself? What one of those 10 do you most struggle to live by? Josh Braun: The one I have on my hat I work on every day. That's why I practice meditation.

I mean, I have a tendency to get wrapped around the axle on things that are not within my control. I mean, like just the other day, see that window back there, there was my wife leaves the door open, which drives me crazy, because flies come in here. She likes the dog to come in and out, right? And so there was a fly in there, and I'm doing the guitar, and I'm like, hearing this fly, and I'm like, God, man, this is fly like, and it's driving me crazy.

And in that moment, I'm lost in thought, and I'm angry at my wife for leaving the door open, even though I've been practising this and this stuff. And I generally there's a fly like, I call her out, Jenner stuff, like, as if she's gonna so she comes in, the fly swatter gets the fly out. And it's another reminder of flies are the nature of houses. Sometimes flies get in the house.

You can get wound up on the fly and yell and scream and be angry at the fly for buzzing around. Or you can get a fly swatter open the window and let the door and let the fly out. So this has just happened yesterday. Like I say, this is a process of becoming, I am nowhere near, you know, even moderately good at this.

I'm better than I was, but I have a long way to go, as evidenced by the fly story. Yesterday, everyone has a fly story, by the way, something that kind of sets them off. That is like, if you step back and you're like, it's a fly. Mark Ackers: So for those that aren't able to watch the video, it detaches what's written on your hat, and it's detaching from the outcome.

And I think again, that that was why I was so keen to ask that question. I've got it down this part of the podcast to ask you, how does a rep do that when that's what they're measured on? But naturally asked it earlier based on where the conversation went. I also want to talk about rule number four, be honest all the time, because you say if you if you're not honest all the time, then you're not honest.

And I suppose I know that reps will be in situations where there's a white lie, a small lie, to be told, because they feel like that's. Going to be the difference between winning and losing the deal? And I want to ask this question because I just I know you're going to have a great story and a great talk track for this, but what's the long term upside of being honest all the time that reps miss out on in the short term by telling those little lies to win deals looking to unlock your team's full potential?

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We provide coaching that sticks and delivers. Visit my sales coach.com use the link in the bio and start achieving your goals today. Josh Braun: Well, you know, I was, I think I was like 16 or 17.

I was like, leasing my first car. It was a white Mazda Miata, and the salesperson told me it was going to be, I don't know what it was, 299, a month at the time. Was like a lot. I think it was like a three year lease, 12,000 miles.

And, you know, I signed everything, and at the end of the three year lease, got to turn the car back in, and they're like, there's like a 2500 hour turn in fee. I'm like, What do you mean? 2500 turn in fee? And there was some fine print in the lease agreement.

I'm 1617, years old. I didn't read it. And, yeah, it was, there was like a $2,500 fee. And I got my dad involved, and I my dad involved, and ended up having to pay it.

And I just never, I never went back to that dealer again, because it just didn't leave a good taste in my mind. And this is why sellers have a bad reputation. Everyone has a story like this. Even going back to when I was seven or six years old, I saw an ad in a comic book for sea monkeys, which looked amazing.

They're six feet tall. You can train them. I was going to train them to beat up my brother. I ordered brother.

I ordered them. They came. I put them in the water, and they're like these little brine shrimp that die in like, a week, like so we're accustomed to these sales messages, and we're very sceptical. I call it.

Scepticism is in and trust is out. And so when someone interacts with a salesperson, they're not interacting with you. They're interacting with their perception of you based on all the experiences they've had with salespeople, and so you have to reset that a little bit and ask yourself, Do I wanna sell like? How I wanna be sold to I think integrity is at the heart of selling.

It's a choice. You can certainly continue doing what you're doing, but I think integrity is at the heart of selling. It feels so much better to me to tell people the benefits and the drawbacks of working with me than to just tell them the benefits of it, and ironically, at least based on my experience, the more honest and transparent you are. People actually believe the positives more, because they know nothing's perfect, like when someone wants to bring me in for a sales kickoff.

This just happened this morning. I get on an initial call with them, talk about the event. If it's a fit, I'll say, Would it be okay if I went through a couple of things that might be problematic for you guys? And they go, Sure, I go, thanks for because they follow me on LinkedIn.

They're all wound up, right? They're like, at a 10 and I say, first thing, it's a three hour workshop. It's not an hour, it's not two hours, not 45 minutes, three hours. I only do one workshop.

It is customised to your audience. It's 20 grand. I don't do net 30 or net 60. Payment is needed two months before the advance of their workshop.

I don't show up. You can get your money back. I don't sign service agreements or NDAs. I have a one page agreement, and I just let that marinate.

Now, some people really appreciate that. They're like, Well, thanks, man, I I think this is going to be okay, but I'm not sure, but I'm not I'm just bringing out the negatives. You know, I'm bringing out the negatives. One of the exercises I do in my workshop is I tell people to write down all of the negative things people might have or think about their solution or their product or why they won't want to switch, and bring them up proactively, like I was working with a young broker who believes businesses, and I said, What's one of the things?

He goes, they think I'm too young, I don't have the experience. I go, bring that up. I go, it sounds you've got some hesitations. Probably because I'm young, you don't think I have the experience, right?

So I'm gonna, I'm gonna tell people the whole story. And I have found when you do that, when you tell people the drawbacks and the benefits, it creates more trust. And as Chris Voss says, really well, no matter what business you're in, you're in the business of trust, because without trust, there's no transaction, and you'll get, you'll get more trust by being completely open and transparent and calling out the uglies of your product or service than you ever will by just saying, here's why.

This is the best Mark Ackers: I'm going to guess the answer is no, because detach from the outcome. But equally, that's the hardest one for you to live by. When you get on a zoom call with somebody, and you're talking about maybe a kickoff, and you share all those things, they'll have a perception of you because they follow your content, they'll probably be really excited to speak to you. Do you ever worry about how you might come across when you're delivering that look?

I don't do this. I don't do that. It's 20 grand, it's upfront, it's two months before. Do you ever worry about what they might be thinking about you?

Do you struggle to deliver that message and have to tell yourself the reasons you do that or not at Josh Braun: all? The answer to the question is no, for the same reason that I don't think about my audience when I write posts on LinkedIn. It's also the same reason that I think I don't know him, but Joe Rogan talks about six or seven or eight things that he likes to talk about. He's a certain way, right?

So I'm a certain way. Some people are. Are okay with that. Some people are not.

So I know it. I'm not for everyone, but I don't try to water myself down to get a sale or to, like, sugar coat anything. I don't, I don't think I deliver it in a way that is off putting i i preface it by saying, hey, you know, sometimes I'm a little problematic to work with for a few reasons. Rather than, you know, you walking down the aisle prematurely and finding out at the end.

Would it be okay if I discuss those right now with you? Sure, and then I just rattle them off. I don't think I offend people. I don't know.

The whole detach thing is not just the outcome of the sale. Detach is broader than that. It's about letting go of what you don't control. And one thing I don't control is how people perceive my message or me.

The only thing I could do is be who I am. You know, write what I like to write about to the best of my ability. Say what I want to say to the best of my ability, and just let it be. It's easy to do when you have a lot of abundance, like, if you have $50 and something costs 25 bucks, you're going to pause for a bit.

But if you've got five grand in your pocket in disposable income, and something costs 25 bucks, and you want it, you're not going to probably even give it a second thought. So it's the same thing with what I'm doing now, at this stage of my career where I don't need everyone like the example that I give in my workshops is, you know, Spotify is, in my opinion, phenomenal. For $12 a month, you get every song you want. Play it anywhere, share it with the family, listen to it anywhere, create playlists.

It also, every week, serves up songs that it thinks you're gonna like, and it is really good. And yet, every day, people cancel Spotify. Is it the product? No.

Spotify isn't for some people. Why? Probably a bunch of reasons. Does it matter?

No, because Spotify as for some people, but not for everyone. It's the same thing with me. I'm for some people, but I'm certainly not for everyone. That's Mark Ackers: the luxury that you've afforded to yourself.

You're at that stage of your career where you can be really at peace with that. And I think that's that's the the difficulty that people have when they're starting out in their career. They don't have that luxury. And I suppose that's one thing I've always struggled to get an answer for the audience, is if you don't, if you don't have that luxury, how to live and be that way in sales?

And maybe that's because it just isn't an answer. And you've kind of got to go on that rite of passage to get to that. What do you think it's Josh Braun: a process? This is no different than what we've been talking about for the majority of the podcast.

These are not like switches that get turned on and turned off. You start by having a point of view about something, you know, like, like, David hamburger, there's 1000s of people that teach guitar on the internet, maybe 10s of 1000s. He's got a different angle. So he caught my attention, and he gave away, like, a lot of free stuff.

And then by the time I was ready to buy some stuff. I was like, I was all in right, same way. Maybe you met me. So you have a point of view.

You learn how to communicate. A great skill to learn is how to communicate in ways that entertain and inform. How do you become an explainer? Have you ever been taught how to explain, or do you just take explanation for granted, like everyone?

Well, explanation is a skill, and once you realise it's a skill you can start to learn. So you learn you're hone your skills. You're the best you can do, and over time, you attract an audience. But I agree with you, when you have $25 in your pocket and the thing you want, someone's gonna give you another 25 or 10, and you only have one of those, you're it's gonna be really hard to detach, you know, because you're like but, but ironically, what I'm suggesting to the audience is, the more you cling, the less sales you make.

Even early on, if you start to lean back a little bit, and when I was starting out, one of the one of the questions I would always ask in a on a discovery call, one of the kind of paths I would go down is, hey, we're looking for, like, a sales trainer. I would say something like this, you guys have been in sales for like, 15 years. You've been individuals and contributors. If you don't mind me asking, why not just do the training yourself, rather than bringing in like an external person?

And what I realised was, if I could easily talk someone out of it, they weren't going to switch anyway. Because we know from jobs to be done, theory, which is a whole other podcast, that there's this sort of like Journey people go through before they switch. They try a bunch of things. They don't just wake up and buy something expensive.

There's a process they go through. And so I even back then, I was kind of like leaning back a little bit. And what I realised is, the more I lean back, the more people lean forward. You've been around people that are needy and desperate and clingy.

It's not a good look, you know. So even early on, when it's hard, and I know I can understand it, even if you just sort of have that an energy of leaning back a little bit and giving people the full story, being what I call the arbiter of unbiased information, so people can make a more informed choice, even if it doesn't involve you assuming that they don't. They shouldn't switch right now, you know, see if they can do it like internally, and that's going to sort of get the muscle going a little bit.

Mark Ackers: Josh, what an episode. There's just so much more I could ask you to say, but this feels like a great place to say, thank you so much for your time today, coming onto the podcast and sharing so much wisdom and stories. You've been an amazing guest. And again, just wanna say thank you for coming up.

Thanks. Thanks Josh Braun: for having me. I appreciate it. You.