The '3 Whys' Framework Top Performers Use To Close More Deals | EP26 | Scott Cowley

Mark Ackers: Hi everyone. Here's what's coming up in today's episode. Now today's guest. Where do I start?

He's an Australian who studied at the University of Technology in Sydney and has gone on to have an amazing sales career along the way. He's also worn hats of advisor, fractional VP of sales, and of course, he's one of our brilliant coaches here at my sales coach. But, and there's always a but it hasn't always been smooth sailing. In between those successes, there's also a job where I spent nine months for a cyber security firm, and he didn't close a single deal.

If you haven't guessed it already, my guest today is Scott Cowley, did you used to be crap at sales? Scott Cowley: God Yes. I was a super high performer, as I said. Joined this organisation and I was like, ready to make some serious cash, and it just never worked.

And then the CEO sat me down and basically said, This isn't working. Handed me my P 45 and I was out the door that day. I was very immature every role I'd been in. When I left, I didn't have any friends left in the organisation.

I understood what the product did really well. You could monitor a bunch of Twitter accounts. You could get a lot of information, but I had no idea why someone would pay at the time, two analyst salaries for this product. Some businesses, the seasonality is so easy.

HR tech, for example, the sale will happen in q4 implementation will happen in q1 Mark Ackers: you've actually gotten a journey where you've learned the three whys. You've created your own frameworks. How did you go from being let go for non performance to being able to sit here today. How did you learn all this?

Scott Cowley: You have to deeply understand why someone is buying your product. And I break it down into this three whys. Why buy anything? Why buy now?

And the one that people are really good at is, Why buy your product? Most people are really good at one of them, but it's the last one that they're really good at. Why buy anything? A lot of them are bought in.

Why buy now they got completely wrong. It's probably the one that the buyer is going to struggle the most to answer, but it has to be in that order, because if you don't have Why buy anything, they're not even going to entertain you long enough to get to why buy. Now, if you've chosen a path that requires sales, you either have to get good at it, or the business doesn't exist. The biggest thing I wish I had to learn a lot younger is Mark Ackers: Hello and welcome to another episode of The I used to be crap with sales Podcast.

I'm Mark Akers co founder and Head of Sales here at my sales coach, and I'm your host, Scott. Welcome to the UK, to the myself coach headquarters, and to the orange chairs. Is it okay say Good day mate. Scott Cowley: Yeah, Good day mate.

To you too. How you doing? You okay? I'm all right.

Yeah, I'm all right. Jet lagged. I've been in Europe for like, two weeks, so the jet lag is gone, but I'm flying out in two days, so the jet lag will be back. Mark Ackers: The opportunity to have you in offices and on the podcast was too good to resist.

Scott, we always start with a yes. No question, did you used to be crap at sales? God, yes. And how crap are we talking on a scale of one to 1010, being the crappest you could be.

Scott Cowley: I mean, I did have a sales job for almost a year where I didn't sell anything. I'm gonna say a one. So 10 is the crappest you can be. Oh, I'm gonna be a 10, a solid 10, like, I definitely used to be crap at sales, Mark Ackers: I tell you what, Scott, why don't we start there, then set the scene for us.

This was your job in London, wasn't it? The cybersecurity firm, yeah, one of them, yeah. Okay, so tell us a little bit about that role and what you were doing. Scott Cowley: So I did have a role before that where I was quite senior.

It was the role I started in Australia, moved over to the UK. Was a senior sales rep within that organisation. Left there. I was trying to find a job with the highest OTA possible.

I wanted to make 100,000 pounds. And then I joined. And I still to this day, have no idea why anyone would buy the product. The whole time I was there, I was listening to other people's sales calls.

I understood what the product did really well. I understood how it could you could monitor a bunch of Twitter accounts. You could get a lot of information and then make that information into a certain format. But I had no idea why someone would pay, at the time, two analyst salaries for this product.

I have looked them up not too long ago, and they have grown quite a bit as an organisation. So maybe they worked that problem out, but I could never work it out. And they have customers, so, like, it's 100% of me problem. That's probably my worst experience in sales joining I was a super high performer, as I said, join this organisation, and I was like, ready to make some serious cash, and it just never worked.

Yeah. Then the CEO sat me down just before he was going to the US for a trip, and basically said, This isn't working. I said, No, it isn't. It had to be my P 45 and I was out the door that day.

Things are slightly different now, but yeah, that organisation, I wish them the best. I just I couldn't work Mark Ackers: it out. Just for those listening for context, what year are we talking about here? When was this I Scott Cowley: think it was 2017 Yeah.

17. Yeah, it might have been 2018 when I left, but I think I joined in 2017 Mark Ackers: in a scary way. Doesn't feel like it was Scott Cowley: that long ago, but so recent. Yeah, so and you said before, Mark Ackers: and just picking up in your language, you said you were a super high performer.

What's your definition of that? The Scott Cowley: previous company when I was. Australia, I was top three in Asia consistently. Never was number one, but I was kind of two or three consistently.

Then when I moved to the UK, I was consistently top five for that. That office sold to Latin America, Middle East, Africa and Europe. So yeah, that office, I was consistently top five again. I was never number one, but I was always kind of there or there abouts and that organisation as well.

When I first joined, I set the target of being number one in something. I ended up being number one in outbound sales for two months running, which wasn't something they did track, but I tracked it. So like I was good at that job, but I think I got good at selling that product, not good at sales. And subsequently, I've had to learn how to be good at sales itself.

But there's definitely that imposter syndrome that's like, Am I still crap at sales? Like every time a deal that it should have gone a certain direction, in my mind, doesn't definitely that imposter syndrome kicks in and you're like, maybe I am still crap at this thing. So that's yeah, that definitely I have been a super high performer. I have been literally fired from jobs or a job in a sales capacity.

Mark Ackers: There's a few phrases that I want to pull out there. I just suppose again for context, when you said top three, top five out of how many? Scott Cowley: In Australia, it would have been 25 okay, in Europe, it would have been, let's say, double that 50. And then when I was number one, because right at the beginning of when I joined in Australia, when I was number one at the outbound thing, there would have been 150 reps worldwide.

Mark Ackers: Okay, so in Australia and London, basically what we're saying is in the top 10% Yeah, effectively, okay. And then the bit that pleased me, because I thought I'm gonna have to go here, and I don't know how you'll take it. Is when you said it's a me thing, oh, 100% that was a me thing. And that's what I was gonna get to because I was gonna ask, was the company successful?

Are people buying it? So Scott Cowley: that company, when I joined, there were four sales reps. One got fired three weeks after I joined for non performance. Two of us joined at the same time, so there's four, went to six, went to five, then myself and the other guy who I joined with Pro also left within the year.

I think the other guy did close a few deals. I think his was voluntary. So they Yeah, at the time, they had three successful sellers. I think Mark Ackers: so the interesting thing that, that you said was you took it straight to the salaries of two data analysts.

She was like, why would someone pay the equivalent of two data analyst salaries? And then you spoke about imposter syndrome. One of the things that I talk about a lot, and I see in sales people, are mindset issues around need for approval, imposter syndrome and a weakness for money. And the interesting thing I remember, early in my career, I used to think no one's going to pay the equivalent of my salary for this product.

And that's because what I thought was expensive actually to another business wasn't. I actually had this conversation my wife a couple of weeks ago, and it didn't, I didn't deliver it in the best way, but she was talking about something being very expensive. You know? She's saying, oh, one of our customers, they're paying, I can't genuinely come in the amount, but it's a lot of money.

And I said, is it a lot of money, though? Is that a lot of money? Because to you and I, is busy, and she, she just didn't want that conversation, like, What do you mean? It's like, it was like, millions, right?

And she's like, of course, a lot of money. I was like, Is it to them? And when you start talking about two data analyst salaries, we're talking about what's expensive to us, not to the business, I'm just wondering there, like when you say it's a me, thing, was it weakness for money at the time? Need for approval, imposter syndrome holding you back.

I Scott Cowley: think part of it is I didn't understand that product did not contribute directly to the bottom line. There was no way to use that product to make more money. I fully understand spending, and I I've definitely my opinions of how much is too much, how much is expensive, all those sorts of things these days completely different. But the reason I related it to two analysts is one of the quotes in all of the collateral for that company was from a navy customer who explicitly said this saves us two analysts.

So I was trying to relate it to the way that the customers described it, and I couldn't understand that product. There was no way it impacts the bottom line. So if you think about the reasons people buy anything, you've got more money or less costs and more revenue hits the bottom line. You've got more time or less time spent on certain things, so, like, more capability, or you've got, like, a grudge purchase or a reputation purchase, or something like that.

Like, no one buys insurance expecting it to end up on the bottom line. That's why you just don't pay as much for insurance as you would for something else. Whereas a salesperson, you're hiring them, expecting a multiple of their salary as an ROI. So thinking about in that context specifically, I was relating it to the way that the quote from their buyer related to it, I will say I've probably had, I mean, I've definitely had money issues and money the.

Thoughts over the years, but I do exactly what you do of Well, hang on, let's relate that to something. Because my my apartment in Australia, is a million dollars, like, that's a lot of money to a lot of people. To me, our apartments too small and we need to upsize so like relating it into the millions is I can I now have that conversation with other people exactly around the money worthiness element, and I don't think at the time it was a money worthiness thing, because I'm very good as well personally, of putting who is Scott and what Scott's worth completely to one side, because the product I'm selling, or the product that I'm coaching people and training people to sell, it's not us, like at the end of the day, no one really is buying us.

They buy into us, but they're buying the outcome the product gives them. One of the newsletters I wrote, I kind of remember how long ago was talking about how at the end of the day, if your customer or your prospect could solve the problem they had without ever speaking to you, they'd probably be happier, because they just don't have the problem. They don't have to put any resources into the problem. Therefore, the only reason they're talking to you is because the pain is so great that they have to invest in it.

They have to put cash into it. And that's that's one of the things that I do to get around the money worthiness when I'm coaching people. I'm coaching people, because it's coming back to your question. No, it wasn't me having issues with charging that much money.

It was me trying to relate to why would someone buy that? And that's why, as much as I can, I much prefer products that hit the bottom line so that are directly money, not time or even grudge or reputation, because money is so much easier to sell and you can charge a hell of a lot more for Mark Ackers: it. So again, lots of insight there. Here's something that went through my mind when you were talking and it feels like you're going to agree with me.

I hate the phrase, people buy from people. People buy people. Yeah, I'm with you. Give us your takeaway, because it feels like on the same page, but people still say that now, people buy people, buy people.

And I think it's a load of nonsense. Scott Cowley: No, it's 100% a lot of nonsense. As I was saying, if someone could solve their problem without ever knowing your name or spending any time with you, they would. They don't.

They don't want you. Even in the context of where it really is that they're buying you, in the employee, employer context, they still don't want you. They want their problem solved at the end of the day. There are so many examples of when a sale gets made, but a human is not in the loop.

I changed my electricity provider. I don't care who that company is. I don't I just looked at the deals that came up. I don't care this, like Australian owned and they do something with the Snowy Hydro scheme.

All that says to me is that maybe you're adding cost on that I don't need in my life. That's an example of where a sale got made and a person was not involved at all. Those sort of sales happen every day. And there's also the examples of where, like, as a buyer, and this is one thing that I think sellers really struggle with, is really properly empathising with the buyer and understanding because they've never really been a buyer, but like, buyers often don't want to talk to you.

They just want their problem solved. So there, there are definitely circumstances where the human, the seller contributes as a net positive. I'd probably say there's more examples where the seller is a net negative of the conversation, but the buyers already decided they need something and they're going to buy anyway. They're going to buy from someone.

They just, they pick that organisation, and then a seller just has to be involved to kind of square the Mark Ackers: circle. It's interesting if we start to look to the future, take your example about switching electricity providers. If we exaggerate that point and go far enough back, you'd have had to have gone somewhere to speak to someone. Then it become you could speak to someone over the phone.

Then it become you could speak to an agent. Now you don't need to speak to anyone, and you can do it. How do you see this playing out in the future of B to B sales, where buyers don't need or want to speak to sales people? How's this career and this profession and your mind going to change?

Oh, Scott Cowley: you hate my answer here, because I have this debate with different people at different times, and I never, I'm very wishy washy on this one, because no one can predict the future. Humans are never going away, because, especially in most B to B contexts, the buyer doesn't even know they really have a problem. When there's cold outreach involved, will there be less sales people. There's one angle of I can see a decentralisation starting to happen, because we've definitely seen, over the last kind of 20 years, 10 years a centralization where big businesses just keep getting bigger.

But I can definitely see a decentralisation happening where you then end up with a hell of a lot more sales people, because there's just more companies. And if, even if every company only has half the number of sales peoples as the really big companies, there's still just more jobs available. But I can also see the centralization continuing, and you end up with like, one seller, three or four assistants, and like, a really powerful AI behind them, and. And you end up with less sellers because the centralization continues.

It's super wishy washy answer, because I just don't know. But at the end of the day, I think if an individual is watching this and they're thinking about their own career in sales, I think there will always be a space for sales people, especially in B to B, especially in my sweet spot, is what I'd call me. And you always have to define that, because mid market means it's different to every business. Mid market, to me, is kind of that 10k a year, up to about 100k a year, where a seller is needed to help really scope and deeply understand if this buyer actually has the pain.

But it's not a complex sale that involves buying committees and multi year sales processes. It's a it's a much simpler, what I call a simple sale. You only really need one person. You don't need sales engineers, you don't need potentially even SDRs, and you don't need a cold call it to then hand over to closer.

I definitely didn't answer your question. I told you that I'm I don't know the answer your question, but I gave you two ideas there. Mark Ackers: I mean, both ideas, one will play out, I'm sure, I suppose, for what it's worth, how I see this going, I think the way in which I see sales leaders and businesses operating today, it's about, how can we get our sales reps to do more selling by removing all the manual, time consuming elements, and you think about like the way the tech landscape has changed over the last 15 years, I feel like I sound really old when I talk about the first year in sales.

I had a company directory, book, business cards from the desk that I inherited from the person that got let go, and a phone LinkedIn was a CV Library. But if you think about all the tech that you now have on top so businesses are like, how can we make sellers more efficient, more effective, spend more time selling. For me, the missing piece is, how do we make the sellers that we have better at their craft? And if we make them better at their craft, and we remove all the time consuming elements, we naturally need less salespeople, but the ones that we have are better and will earn more.

And I think that's where I agree with you. There will always be a space for salespeople. I think the missing thing is only the good salespeople. And I think, I think that's where I see it going, Yeah, Scott Cowley: but like, that's just not human nature.

That's just not how humans end up responding to these sorts of things, like, only the good sales people. Well, what about when you need to hire someone like you can either go down the path of hire a high performer from somewhere else, but are they going to be a high performer for you don't know, because at the end of the day, in a lot of the sessions that I run, I can show people scripting that's worked for me or that's worked for previous companies. And I know it works, but I don't know if it's going to work for you.

I don't know if it's going to work for your industry. I don't know if it's going to work for your geography. I can't defend there's no script you can write. This is exactly how to sell.

So you either go the high performer route and hope that they work it out, and you give them the tools. And one of the cool things I love about my sales coaches, it really is supporting those people as they come in, or you go the other angle, and you got to train them up from somewhere. And this is where I think it's really nice to only have high performers, but if you carve out the middle performers, there is no space for those high performers to appear from somewhere. Mark Ackers: So no, again, we're on the same page.

When people talk about like the SDR role disappearing, I think where are ies coming from? Yeah. And actually, just the strategy of hiring high performers, what a wish that would be. Yeah.

Here's the problem, high performers don't want to leave because they're performing. Well, when you've got someone applying for a sales role, they're unlikely to be a high performer, because that likely be a side step or a cut back in commission. Like there's got to be a real reason for them. So, no, no, we're saying the same thing.

You're going to have to hire people. But it can't just be about, well, hire anyone, throw loads of tech at them and make more efficient more effective. It's got to be, how can we improve them and their craft? That's why I see changing.

Scott Cowley: But is that? Is that any different to if you think about kind of the idea of centralization, decentralisation, the ebb and flow, like 30 years ago, there were a lot less sales people. In 30 years time, will they just be roughly the same number as a ratio of the population? Or are you, are you saying you think that there will be just a lot less in general?

Because I think the job of sales has exploded, but I think it's exploded without necessarily having them backing behind it. So we're almost returning to the norm. It's a regression of the mean, as opposed to now is the outlier, as opposed to now is the standard that we're going to Mark Ackers: stay at. Sales leaders, I guarantee this, the forecast you're looking at isn't accurate.

Why? Because your reps have deals that become stuck in the pipeline, things like champion leaving, not being taken to power competitor enters the deal at the last minute. They're ghosting. You imagine if your reps had access on demand to support where they could get one to one deal coaching with one of our expert coaches.

That's what we provide. Your reps can use it and. Proactively. Perhaps they've got a meeting coming up and they want to ensure they're putting their best foot forward.

They can book time with a coach and prepare for that upcoming meeting. Or perhaps it's reactively. There's a snag, there's a last minute problem. They need help moving an opportunity forward.

They can book same day coaching with one of our expert sales coaches and get help deal coaching gives your reps every opportunity to secure the best outcome and keep your forecast as accurate as possible. That's fair. I think when people talk about there being less sales people, they don't. They don't acclimatise the fact that whether to be more people.

You think last, I'm going to get this wrong now. But what maybe last 30 years, the population has gone up by 2 billion people, something like that. Who knows, right? But I remember it being six, it feels like it's eight now.

So you will have more sales people there, but I think the onus will be on removing low performers, mid performers, giving them the right tech stack, but focusing on developing them. And doing that quickly. You'll have to hire people that aren't top performers, but it's how can we improve their craftsmanship? Because whilst you can give them loads of tech stack, prospects have their own tech stack as well, and it sort of cancel each other out, you need to have that craftsmanship.

Well, you're Scott Cowley: also getting the idea of, are sales people born or made? And I'm 100% in anyone can learn to sell. Now, not everyone should learn to sell. But anyone can I have a this is like a secondhand story, but one of my I know a recruiter who just can't read people.

He's on the spectrum, and he just does not understand facial reactions and those sorts of things. But what he did, and he's a super high performer in his space, what he did is he learned if I say x, the response will be y. If they then say y, and my response of z will move them through as we're going. So he was forced to learn how to sell, but really he was just forced to learn how people work.

And that's the example of, like most people think, that sort of person who can't read another person, there's no way they're going to be able to sell. Because, as you were saying, a lot of people think sales is about people being sell from, sorry, people buy from people. In that example, he just learned a Mark Ackers: process. Is that the example that you spoke about earlier, where you've learned to sell a product, appreciate recruitment would be more of a service, but you can productize it in this example, where he's learned the process like you're talking about.

But actually, if you put him in another situation, he wouldn't be a great salesperson. Is that what you're saying? Probably Scott Cowley: okay. But if you think about your question around, are we only are we?

Are we going to have high performing sales people? If I'm a business leader, I don't really care if my team can sell I care that they can sell Mark Ackers: my product, agreed and that. Because why would you care about how they sell other products and services, but very few businesses have a product that just sells itself, right? Like very few, most people have the kind of problem that you spoke about with the cybersecurity firm.

People buy it, but you've got to go out there and educate people. You've got to make them aware. Not many people live this inbound life order taking. And then you could argue, well, they don't need to be great at sales, because it's the inbound life and it's ordered.

It's order taking. Scott Cowley: Oh, but I love the outreach guy. He talks about, build a product that people just want to buy and build a sales team that can sell any product. If you can get both of those, you're going to have a unicorn, like no matter what, which is really hard to do, by the way, both independently, building a product that people just want to buy with a mediocre sales team, or building a mediocre product with a great sales team that's hard enough to then do both.

That Mark Ackers: is probably why it's called a unicorn fair. Fair. So I want to get to the why, right? Why do people buy it?

I suppose just before we get there, we kind of needed to conclude the start in our tune story when you got let go for non performance, when that act did finally fall and you had that meeting, it sounds like you were in a place where you agreed. You said, Look, Scott Cowley: I was already talking to recruiters. I was already in the process of leaving. What did you learn about Mark Ackers: yourself, though, when you look back, because it feels like that might have been a real penny drop moment for you that you have to figure out that why?

What did that period of nine months not selling having been in the top 10% elsewhere, what did that teach you about yourself? Scott Cowley: There was a lot of humility that had to come from that. I also, up until that point, I was very immature, and I kind of every role I'd been in. When I left, I didn't have any friends left in that organisation.

I burnt bridges every single job or client I've subsequently worked with, literally from that moment, from when I when I did get fired, I have a relatively good relationship with maybe, like one or two, like a handful, that there's there's things have gone wrong, but even when that happens, I still think I have a pretty good relationship with them. So there's a lot of growing up that I had to do at that point. And I was in my early 20s at this point, so I was still pretty young.

But then also, it just taught me that you have to deeply understand why someone is buying your product. You have to understand I break it down into three. There's three Whys most people are really good at one of. Them, but it's the last one that they're really good at.

Mark Ackers: So I've been really looking forward to talking to you about the three whys. Let's just imagine someone listening doesn't know what what you're on about. Bring it to life for us, the three whys, what those three are. And then let's dive into why people are only good at one of them and Scott Cowley: etc.

So the three whys, and it's from your buyer's perspective, not from a salesperson's perspective. Why buy anything? Why do any change at all? Because, as we were talking about earlier, if an organisation could have their pain solved without ever talking to you, let alone buying from you, they would.

So why does that organisation have to do anything or buy anything? Why buy now? Why not last year? Why not next year?

Because if you don't have to make a decision, it's just human nature that you want you'll naturally delay that decision. And the one that people are really good at is, Why buy you? Why buy your product? And almost everyone that I work with, they can answer that third one super easily.

Almost anyone should be able to answer that third one, because it's really why, once you've already decided you want roughly what you're selling, or once your buyers decided roughly what you're selling, why you as opposed to competitors, all three of those. But it is in order to because, if you just have Why buy now, well, they haven't even decided they want to buy anything in the first place, and no matter how good your product is, no matter how painful The problem is that you're solving, you're still only solving maybe one, 1% of their pain, because everyone has 1000s of problems.

I deal with every day, and especially if you're selling into relatively senior leadership, if nothing else, they're recruiting all the time, and they're worried about their top performers are going to leave. You probably don't solve that problem with your product, unless you're a recruitment firm. But like, you're probably not solving the number one thing on their mind. So you have to give them the number one thing for their company at the at a minimum.

So why buy anything is by far the most important. Why do you have to change it all? Then why buy now? And the cool thing about this, I worked with a company who just got this completely wrong, and it's a good story behind it.

They were selling to sporting organisations, and they were mostly selling to Premier League teams. That was like, who they were really going after, and why buy anything? It was like this statistics programme around the players and how to build a team. Why buy anything?

A lot of them were bought in, like a lot of the I can't remember the job title, but a lot of them were 100% Yep, cool. We like this. We want this. Why?

By now, they got completely wrong. The person that I was working with kept getting the response from their really an influencer, not even a buyer. Our budgets get reset on the first of, I think first of August. That's the new Premier League season, right?

Why? By now they were looking like the first of August was their thing. It was also, it was budget reasons as well. The budgets for that organisation reset on that day.

But also the transfer window opened up. However, when they reached out to every single one of their buyers, and they claim to have about four or five teams ready to go. All the teams went, Oh no, the budget's already assigned. So they just completely messed up the Why buy now.

They had Why buy you like they're all all of the, let's call it heads of performance. I can't remember the exact job title. We're all on board with why buy this organization's product. But they messed up the Why buy now?

And they had to wait an entire year, well, about 10 months before the budget conversation came up again, and they were able to even do this because it was not a cheap product. It was not a discretionary product. They could have just just purchased, even when you get why buy anything? Why buy now is probably the hardest.

It's probably the one that the buyer is going to struggle the most to answer, but it has to be in that order, because if you don't have Why buy anything, they're not even going to entertain you long enough to get to why buy now. And if they don't entertain that long enough, and they have like that conversation, and they've got a buying committee, well, what happens when your your champion, reaches out to, let's say it's a CRO they then talk to the CEO, and they're like, hey, I want to buy this product.

They go, cool. What are the alternatives? They go, look to market, and they find something else. Why buy you is the moment you have to drop in there.

Maybe they have to do three tenders or something like that, so you have to have a good reason at the end there. But all three of those are vital, and they're vital in that order. And that's kind of one of the biggest things I learned from that failed job. I didn't know why they would buy anything.

I didn't know what the pain was. That was was big enough that I never even got to Why buy now Mark Ackers: it's a really interesting example you've just given. And whilst I don't want to hone in on this football example, I think the bigger point that I'm making is not understanding your craft, but you said it earlier, not understanding how buyers buy in that in their world, and the reason the football example, kind of irritates me. So I'm a big football fan myself, right?

If I was going to sell into that market, I would know the transfer window opens at the first of August. I would know the financial fair play, or PSR, which. Do is about profit and sustainability rules and financial fair play, so they have to spend certain amount of money each window. I would know that, and I would think to myself, well, you're not going to wait and have a recruitment meeting on the first of August.

You're gonna be planning who you're gonna be buying, January, February, March, maybe even two, three years out. Like sometimes football clubs track players for several years before they buy them. So it feels like a huge mistake not knowing how your company clients or in prospects buy to get the timeframe wrong. That feels like actually the biggest mistake they could be making.

Scott Cowley: Yeah, and that idea of understanding the seasonality of your customer is huge and understanding. And this is where, like some businesses, the seasonality is so easy. HR tech, for example, they will the sale will happen in q4 the implementation will happen in q1 that's just kind of HR tech. That's how it gets purchased.

When I was selling the yoga studio management tool, mind body, if they did not have a big January, that business didn't exist at the end of the year. If they didn't have a big September, they didn't make any profit for that year. So understanding the seasonality of how that fits in, but as you said, like they're not buying the tool on the first of January. Interestingly enough, though, because I sold that product, the mind body online, I sold that in Australia, and I sold that in the UK.

The seasonality is the same, which I thought was super weird, because it's actually flipped in Australia, January is summer. In the UK, January is winter, and then September, obviously spring or autumn, depending on but the January one kind of makes sense. It's like, okay, New year, new me, New Year's resolution, gyms and yoga studios do really well that time, but September was, like, totally unintuitive that it'll be both not 100% why? To this day, September was always the time.

I've kind of got some theories, but understanding that the seasonality of your customer, and it might not be intuitive, but you've got to then also as a seller, and this is what comes down to honing your craft. Understand, if that's the seasonality, when do they actually have to make the purchase? When do they actually have to start the implementation? Let's say your product, just as an example, has a three month pilot, and you just that's your sales process.

That's what has to happen. So if someone needs it ready to go by the first of Jan, at a very minimum, they need to go start three months before that. But really, they're probably gonna need a month in between the pilot and the implementation to do all the paperwork, which means you need four months, which we're getting back to, what October, September, whatever month it works out to be. And then think, like, you probably got to go a month earlier for budget approvals and legal red lines.

And, like, just really working out, okay, someone wants to start on that day. When do they actually have to make the decision? It's like, six months earlier. Mark Ackers: Do you think most sales people know the seasonality of their buyers?

Scott Cowley: Most know the good ones? Yeah, even if it's just intuitive, I think a lot of kind of top performers, maybe not a lot, but like a decent number of top performers, just intuitively learn how to sell that product, and therefore intuitively learn the seasonality of it. And then often they don't change industries. Because if you think about recruitment, like if you change from one recruitment provider to the to another, and you're still, I got a friend who she recruits financial crime.

So she deals with banks. Banks are the same regardless of whether she's at whichever company it is, so like, there, she doesn't have to learn how to sell, and she's actually very good at this, but she doesn't have to learn how to sell. She only has to learn how bank seasonality works from a recruitment perspective. So you don't necessarily, yeah, you don't have to go further, but direct answer your question, no, I don't think most understand it at a deep enough level that they could then apply it to their next Mark Ackers: job.

I agree with you. That's that's the second one. The first one is, Why buy anything? Now here's the challenges that I want to see of you, if you see as well, is that requires you to almost challenge your prospect, push them away, ask tough questions, almost not make the happy years assumption that, ah, we're talking you must want to buy.

This is the why can't you keep doing what you're doing? Why? Why would you you surely wouldn't want to rip out and replace what you've currently got. Why not wait six months like talk to you about the difficulties that sellers have with with that around please.

Scott Cowley: Okay, so I worked with a dude in Switzerland who was selling a package that would allow NGOs to train people where there was no electricity, like a projector, Speaker bundle, and let's just say it's 10,000 euros he could easily get on the phone with NGOs, and just like go through a discovery call and learn that they deeply had the problem of, let's say Doctors Without Borders, or however, the French, the French pronunciation is, they drop in a team into, let's just say Egypt, and they're going somewhere.

Like, right in the desert, and they're going to try and train up some some people out there from a medical perspective, but there's no electricity, so this thing had a portable battery. It had like, a pop up screen, like all those sorts of things. The NGOs loved it. They were like, Yes, super exciting.

He'd then have a demo so discover quickly, then have a demo conversation where they'd go through more details off the back of that. He then put together a proposal, which would take about two hours. And he needed sign off very small company. He needed sign off from the founder for pricing that whole thing, 30 minute discovery, hour demo, two hours of his time, plus a little bit of sign off from the founder before they ever had to say, yes, we're interested.

So, like, instead of thinking about it as does the buy? Like, do you need to push the buyer go the other way? Like, why are you wasting your time on someone four hours that's half a working day before they give you anything? When I showed him that, and we worked through that, he was pissed, because he's dealing like, spend a lot of time with these tiny NGOs who, as much as they want it, they're never going to get the funding allocated, because the NGO world, especially the way that, let's not go down there, but like, just that's a hard sell to spend any money on this product.

Even though they wanted it, they had no idea how to even get the budget for it. So he ended up, like, we basically flipped it around, and he came back, and he's like, Yeah, I'm saving two days a week just not talking to the wrong people. And also, he looks so much better to his the founding team, because he's not pulling them in all the time to, like, give approval on stuff that was never going to close. So instead of thinking about it from the buyer's perspective, I always think about as a seller, is this person worth your time?

Have they proven that they're worth your time? And yes, challenge them, but like, it's your fault if you go and spend a lot of time with this person and they were never qualified in the first place. Mark Ackers: So I agree with everything you said there. I think we're talking about different things.

What I'm saying is, when you speak to let's just say you're speaking to the right person. Sales people will struggle, in my experience, to understand why they're going to buy versus because the easiest thing to do is stick with what you've got, right? Everyone's got something in place, whether that's manual, whether that's whether that's a competitor, or, yeah, it could be something like spreadsheets, right? Whatever, they've got something in place, or they don't realise they've got the pain.

My point is, sales people struggle to go but why would you change? Why? Why? Why couldn't you stay the same?

And it's because we don't want to ask those difficult questions, what you're talking about. And again, couldn't agree more is, and I learned this too late in my career. But spend your time with people that can actually buy and want to buy, I feel unwell when I think about early in my career, how many trips to London, trips out the office. How many zoom calls I had with people that simply could never buy or would never buy, but I felt like it was my duty to spend time with them, because these are the leads I had, the meetings would be put on for me.

And what I never really, truly appreciated was, if I fell in this role, no one's gonna go. Yeah, but you spent your time with the wrong people, so don't worry about it. Yeah, they're gonna say you've not hit your number. You've gotten Scott Cowley: it's one of the, I mean, even just that last thing, it's one of the best things about sales, and the worst things about sales as as a career, it's really clear whether you're achieving your goal or not, whereas.

And then the best thing about that is it means it's also really easy to get paid a lot, because it's directly attributable. If you contribute a million quid, okay, you're easily worth 100 maybe 200,000 pounds, if not more. And I'm talking cost here, as opposed to salary. Whereas you go the other way, and it's like, okay, you work in the customer support team.

How much value did you actually attribute to the bottom line of the business? It's really hard to measure. And even if you're the absolute best support tech on the planet, are you going to contribute nearly as much as a salesperson who put a million quid on the bottom line? I mean, maybe, but, like, it's so hard to make that argument where if the sales team just goes, yeah, cool, we added a million pounds, super easy.

But the other side is it's so measurable, if you don't sell anything, which I did, once you're not giving the ROI to the business, you're going to be gone pretty quickly, whether voluntary or involuntary. So it's one of the one of the best parts and worst parts about sales. Where Mark Ackers: did you learn this stuff? Like, obviously you had your penny dropping moment when you had to figure out the why.

Why do people buy but you've obviously got on the journey where you've learned the three whys. You've created your own frameworks. How did you go from being let go for non performance, and I appreciate you were successful before that, but from being let go for non performance to being able to sit here today and really have such a strong grasp on selling your own frameworks, your own approach. How did you learn all this?

So Scott Cowley: the probably the easiest answer, is books and then applying it, reading a lot and then trying to apply it as well as, like, I'm one of those weird people that always knew I was going into sales. Like, I decided at about 15 I was going to go into sales. I ended up getting an accounting degree because I was following the Tim Ferriss advice of get two skills that don't normally go together, and then put them together so I can read a balance sheet like anyone's business, and I can build a cash flow statement.

But then I always wanted to go into sales. And the way that I ended up learning that it's both on the job, I don't think you can learn sales from a textbook, but you do have to. You do have to be open to new ideas and understand that your ideas are never going to be as, not necessarily as good, but like as varied as if you go and read a book from someone else. So read a book, then apply it.

I'm actually a really big believer, and I try and push a lot of my coaches and my clients, to make one change every day, if you like it, keep the change at the end of the day, if you don't revert back, if you do that every working day, that's 200 changes you've made your sales process by the end of the sorry, 200 changes in a year, your sales process is going to be completely different every single year, but it's only going to get better, because you're only keeping the ones that make sense.

So I think it's really important, as I say, read the books, listen to the podcasts. I've done a number of courses. I'm a big fan of Benjamin Dennehy, UK's most hated sales trainer, big fan of his. I just finished gap selling by Keenan.

That was awesome, the number one book, and I've given this book away at least a dozen times, if not more. Is Jeffrey Gitomer the Ultimate Sales Bible. Mark Ackers: I think it's just called the sales Bible. Sales Bible, black book.

Yeah, yeah, no, Scott Cowley: it's blue. This one, the latest 120, 15, is blue. He's got a bunch of them. I'm a big fan of that.

So what I and what I did with that one? This is when I I first learned to sell I would read one chapter of his, because the way he builds his books, he writes a column, and then he basically takes 50 columns and rewrites them a little bit and puts it into a book. So he writes a column every week for a newspaper. So it's very, very digestible, maybe two pages worth of content, maybe four at most, read it and try and implement it that day.

That's that's how I think that's the only way to learn sales, because it's not academic, or it's not something you can learn without actually applying. So you've got it, you've got to actually be selling as well. I don't know if I answered Mark Ackers: your question there. No, you definitely answered the question in the sense of, you've taken it into your own hands, right?

You've gone out there and you've looked for content in a way in which you can digest it and understand it. The penny for me that I'm a few years older than you, just the fact that I read that sales Bible by Jeffrey Germer a number of years before. Scott Cowley: Yeah, I had the original because I got it before 2015 and then since then, it's always been the 2015 one. But I love that Mark Ackers: book.

No, I it was what think, I think it was the first sales book I ever read. And I remember reading on holiday and someone took the piss army, like, just someone in the pool, because, yeah, the sales Bible and they and I remember like, just looking at him, thinking, well, this book's amazing. Like, you know what you're about, but it was just some old blown took the piss out of me for it. But anyway, my point being, you go out, you found content, you digest it.

Here's the here's the bit that people don't do, though, and anyone listen to this podcast will be able to relate to this. How many times do you hear something, read something? Think that's a great idea? Yeah, maybe even on this podcast.

And I suppose that's the one dynamic. People listen to this are doing that already, because they're already because they're already listening to the podcast. How many times you hear a good idea and think that's a good idea, I'm going to do something, and then you never, ever do it. And that's the bit that you're talking about, the most important bit, putting it into practice.

And that's where I found coaching is the most effective way. So talk about your experience. Obviously, you're a coach with my sales coach, and you've done that for a long time, but what about being coached yourself to be held accountable and put things into practice. Coaching Scott Cowley: and the accountability element, some people need different things out of coaching.

Me. Personally, I have my own coach, and he's not actually a sales guy, but he very much holds me accountable to every session. Okay, what are you actually going to do after this, what's your one thing? And even I was the coach to one of the my sales coach team just before recording this, and we talked about a lot of things.

And I said, okay, cool. Now you've you've got a sales call in nine minutes. Which one are you going to apply, and how are you going to apply it? And she said, we're going to do this.

And I said, Cool, then let's do it right now, and you roleplay it together. But then I think the hardest part about coaching, from a coachees perspective, is it can be anything like my coach is a is more of a life coach, even though I kind of hate that term, but he's, he's more of a life coach than anything else. We kind of just have a conversation and it ends with, so what are you actually going to do from here? As long as you actually have that conversation, it triggers something, and you're typically more likely to take action, especially if you then commit to it.

It's like, how are you going to apply that? Well, I'm going to get this to you by this day at this time, and then if you don't, well, there's a huge. When you're talking to that's responsible to say, Hey, Scott, you said you were going to do this. You have my number on WhatsApp.

Why didn't you do it? Mark Ackers: Give me some ideas when you've given people that change. One thing change. What are some of the changes that you see people make to kind of inspire people listening to this Scott Cowley: podcast?

Yeah, a big one is what I call the Sunday night test. And this is like, I'm almost certain I came up with this, but let's be honest, Nothing is new under the sun. Most people that I work with in the sales world, they don't actually talk to their customers in language their customer needs to hear. So I'll make that real for you.

Do you know what a widget is? I would think so it's if you crack a can of Guinness. Oh no, oh, thing, oh sorry, yes, busy. That's what a widget is, right?

I thought, you know, like a widget on a dashboard? No, that's my point. The it's not the original, but like that, that physical thing is actually called a widget in the Guinness. Can in the Guinness, or any, any soft drink that adds Mark Ackers: Guinness, can't taste nice in Australia.

No, Scott Cowley: it's different. It's different. But then again, it's not as good in the UK, Scotland. No, go to Dublin, and it's Mark Ackers: just going there next month.

I can't wait. Yeah, it's amazing. Anyway, sorry, totally off track. So that's Scott Cowley: what a widget is, actually, that thing inside a Guinness can but could you take a synonym for that is a gadget.

Now, if you walk into the Guinness factory and you start talking about gadgets, kind of the same thing. Gadget, etymologically, comes from widget. It's the same root for that word. But if you're talking at cross purposes, they're not hearing you, and every time you say gadget, they're like, What is he talking about?

And you're talking about the widget. So the Sunday night test, the first and most important thing to remember about it is you've got to talk to your customers in their language, the way they need to hear it. It's not about being accurate with information from your perspective. It's about being for them hearing you specifically.

Now, what actually is it? It's Imagine your customer is lying awake on a Sunday night at 2am in a cold sweat, and they are dealing with the pains that you solve. How are they describing that pain to themselves, and exactly what language are they using? And I mean, I can probably give you an example.

I don't imagine that my sales coach prospects are actually thinking, we need coaching. They're probably thinking, maybe one angle is, why is my team underperforming? Maybe another angle is, how do I support my absolute top performers to get even better? They're not thinking, I need my team to get some coaching.

So the Sunday night test then leads into when you're cold calling someone. Hey, we sell coaching. Oh, cool. I don't need coaching.

Hang up. Hey, we help top performers get even better. Oh, I'm intrigued. Let's keep talking.

So if there's one thing you can change, it's really deeply. Get into the Sunday night test on the pitch that you have. Does it pass? Does your audience actually think about the problem that you solve and use the language that you're already using with them?

Because again, if you walk into the Guinness factory and start trying to sell them a better way of doing that little thing, and you keep saying the gadget inside your cans, even if they like cognitively understand it, they've got to think about it, because it's actually called a widget. Mark Ackers: You've signed your team up to another E Learning course. You've hired a trainer to come in and run a workshop. But guess what?

Six months later, pipeline and performance is still lumpy, my sales coach turns learning into doing. We evaluate everyone on your team, we identify with real data the critical gaps that are holding them back, and then we remedy it. We match each person to their dream coach and provide consistent one to one coaching to help them fulfil their potential and hit the number less one size fits all, training, more personalised support, which results in the growth of your team. That's predictable sales execution.

That's my sales coach. I love the Sunday night test. I have a similar version of that, where it's your prospect comes home for dinner and they've had a bad day. How do they moan to their partner?

Yeah, here's the problem that sales reps have with this. It's twofold. One, most sellers have never done the job of the person they're selling to, yep, so they can't truly understand their world. But secondly, when you think about how lots of organisations onboard sales reps come and spend time with the tech team.

So the tech team do what technical people do, and they tell the sales person all the technical knowledge, how to build reports, how to customise, how to log in, password resets, dashboards, data, widgets, gadgets, etc, glance up with the marketing team. Well, the marketing team will give you all the marketing buzzwords of the product and how it works, and awards they've won, and why they're so great, how they stack up to the competition. You'll then spend time with other people across the business, and they will continue to speak to you in their language, in their world, which is very much organisation language, right?

It's their own internal vocabulary that they've created over a period of time. What rarely happens is someone sits down. Of a salesperson goes, let me tell you all about the person you selling to, their world, their language, and that's why so many pitches when you go out to the three Whys why us? I know you're right.

When you say out of those three things, people get that one right. The most people still mess that one up, because they, of course, all they do is talk about themselves. And that's why so many pictures aren't using the language of the prospect. They're using technical language, marketing language jargon, and it confuses people.

I had a cold call today, and if you think this should be just something that's easy to say yes to, for me, it's someone that's based in this city, in Newcastle, I still they've called me twice now I still don't know the name of their business, and both phone calls, I've said from where, sorry, I've still not clarified, Phil's. I don't want to feel stupid and ask for a third time on each call, because prospects don't do that. But all I could get out of this individual was that it's something to do with data, something to do with making it streamlined so we can use AI on it, right?

I haven't got a bloody clue what that does. It makes no sense to me. Whereas, if they would have said, look, and spoke in my language about a problem that would resonate me and led with, I'm just around the corner. Do you fancy meeting for a coffee?

That's really hard to say no to. It's a local business. He's the co founder of the business. Feels like someone that would be good to meet, but the phone call that I had a couple of weeks ago than the one I had chasing up today, which isn't all about like data and infrastructure, it just doesn't speak in my language, and that's where it goes wrong.

So that kind of ties to your point. We are seeing so many reps fail at what you'd call the Sunday night test. We're not enabling them in the right Scott Cowley: way. You're right.

And if you think from a business perspective, you can do the enablement, but from an individual perspective, my answer would be, that's nice, and it's not your fault. That's the way the training is, but the numbers still your responsibility. Go talk to some customers, like, how hard can it be find your auntie's best mate who happens to be in the industry, and just spend an hour with them? Just like, hey, how do you think about this?

Have you ever heard of this company? But Mark Ackers: this is a difference, isn't it, Scott, this is the people that see sows as something they've fallen into. They see sales as a thing that they do, and they don't have accountability. They don't take responsibility for their results.

They lack the motivation desire, they lack the commitment. And again, people listening to podcasts don't fall into that bracket, right? Because they're already doing something about it. But you're right.

It's about Turton Academy, but I think it comes back down to that mindset of imposter syndrome, need for approval, reaching out, having those conversations, almost admitting I need help, I don't know. I'm trying to learn, and that's very difficult for people Scott Cowley: to do. It's also really difficult when you're in the company like and you've been there for a year or two or three, to go to actually admit that to yourself, let alone admit that to the organisation. Because could you imagine someone and some leaders would be more receptive to this?

I imagine you'd be more receptive because this is still a small business. It's on its way up, but it's still pretty small. But could you imagine working for a fortune 500 as a sales rep and going to your leadership and going, I don't really understand what we do. I don't fully get it.

Can I go talk to some customers? I can't see anyone ever doing that. So there's, there's almost a like, you have to do it by stealth, and you have to decide that sales is a career as well as a profession, as opposed to it's a job. Did Mark Ackers: you do any of that in those nine months when you weren't selling?

No, and is it for reasons you've said, Scott Cowley: I had a lot of growing up to do before that role. So, yeah, it's a really good point. I didn't do that. I do it now.

I definitely do it now if I need to, but I'm also my audience. I just love talking to them. I just have friends in this space. It's kind of just what I do.

So I can also empathise with someone who's like, Man, I sell tables. I don't like the people that buy my product. I don't really want to go and spend time with them. I can kind of kind of empathise with that.

And table is just a random example. But like so many sales jobs, I get it like it's not an interesting thing. It's not a sexy thing to be selling. But at the same time, I just come back to do you want to be good at your job?

And if you do, then you got to put the effort in. It's a profession. So one of my clients right now is a an E Learning product for accountants, and specifically all accountants, that is an actual profession. You have to be to call yourself an accountant, you have to have a qualification, and you have to keep doing continuous professional CDP, CPD, whatever the acronym is.

She then sells a product that makes doing those hours easy, but ultimately, like everyone who treats their business as a profession has to put the time in. I know also one of the other coaches here who I have a lot of time for, Neil, when he was either an SDR or an SDR manager, he used to put time aside during the nine to five and. To go and do his own research into the industry, into sales techniques, a couple hours a week. It wasn't a lot, but it was still enough time.

So you can do this in a nine to five but you have to decide that it's a profession, it's not a job. Because if you think about it, if you're if you're a barista. Now, some people treat that as a profession, I'd say 90 to 95% if not higher, treated as a job. You don't really need new training.

If you're a barista, if you know how to use the machine, you know how to you don't have to go and do it, and you can do your job really, really well. That's just not true in sales. If you want to be really good at this job, it is always changing, but also you need to always be growing, because if you're not, someone else is going to be growing, and they're going to beat you to it, and especially if you always want to stay as an individual contributor, which I think most people want to stay there.

Like, my first management job did not end well, and it kind of burned me. I never really wanted to manage people again. Subsequently, like, I got forced back into it, because that's kind of the direction my career is going. And it took a lot of soul searching, and I read a few books, and I, like, I had to do a lot of work on myself to go, okay, I can actually be a good manager.

And then I added in as a question to all of my team, like, start, stop, continue. What am I doing that? What am I not doing? You want me to start doing?

What am I doing that you want me to stop doing? Like, you're like, hey, this, I hate this. What do you want me to continue doing? Because I don't, I don't know everything, and every person is different, and that's obviously in the sales world of like, being a leader within sales, but that's true with your prospects as well.

Like, there's things that you need to learn, that you're doing that you need to stop doing. There's things you need to learn that you that you need to start doing, and there's things you're pretty good at that you want to continue doing, but they never, as you said, they're never going to give you that feedback directly. So you have to experiment. That's where the one experiment a day comes in the market will tell you, if you do enough reps that you're going in the right direction.

And if you exactly like that guy who's cold calling, like, let's also take a second, he's actually doing the dials, and he's following up, so he's doing the initial work, which is the bit that a lot of people don't do to begin with. Then he needs to hone it. He needs to experiment. Change his pitch a little bit, see what happens.

As you said, if he had have said it in one certain way, that'll work for you. You got to remember, though you're only one prospect, he might be killing it with the rest of his audience the way he's reaching out to them. He probably isn't. But like most organisations, if you if you look at most pipelines, odds are any one person that the sell seller talks to will not close.

Let's say you got a 30% close rate. That's one in three people who even make it to an opportunity will buy from you. So two out of three won't. So no matter what you do, you got to remember you're starting from a baseline of this probably won't work, but if you don't try it, it definitely won't work.

That whole idea of the enemy of the great is good. That was Mark Ackers: interesting when you spoke about raising your hand internally, saying, Look, I don't understand. I need help. I'll tell you where that really plays out.

One when you just hired someone. Yeah, you can easily do it then, well, you say that, it can be difficult. To say, Look, you know the job, he was hired before. I don't know if I'm any good at it, right?

It can be, can I go and speak to customers, but to say I'm struggling or don't quite get it can be different. But the one where I see it the most is and this, this is what always seems to happen, is top performers get promoted into a manager role. Yeah, yep. Now, here's the thing, it's totally different job.

Yeah, they're not, they're not the same skill set at all, and that's where it's difficult to go. You just promoted me to a manager role. I don't know how to do it, and you obviously alluded to it there. Your first manager role didn't end.

Well, what? What happened there? Scott Cowley: I was a top performer. It was, yeah, top performer.

I moved to the UK to become a sales manager at mind body. That was the reason didn't stay in Australia. I Australia. Also, the Rugby World Cup was on, and I always wanted to go to a World Cup, 2003 Rugby World Cup 15.

Oh, okay, yeah, where Australia made the final? This is where I show my age again, because that's when England beat Australia in the 2003 final. See, I'm thinking of the one where Australia knocked out England in the pool. Yeah, I forgot about that one.

But no, I came over for that and also to there was no manager role in Australia, but I knew that was the next step, a little bit though. I I pushed too hard, too young. I was a good seller of mind body. I was not a good salesperson.

I was also very young, so I got into that role, and I kind of didn't understand what management actually was. And the guy who was mentoring me on the way in the UK, some things happened in his life, and he actually left the country pretty soon after I was promoted there wasn't really good now, I have to give them credit, though, there was an in house trainer, and I spent every week I spent an hour one on one with him. So like, they really tried. They actually did the opposite of what most organisations do.

They had training just for us managers. They also had, I had one on one support. That guy also had written a book on this and was doing a PhD in coaching and training. So like mind body, really, I had all the tools.

I still as a manager. I failed. I wasn't very good at the management thing. And.

Um, these days, I've had to learn skills, and I've had to I've also read a lot of books. I also the first management role where I think I succeeded. I found a great leader. I was working for an organisation where the CEO, when I was head of sales, he just knew what he was doing when it came to managing people.

So I think that one of the lessons to take away from this is, go find mentors. Go find people who are one or two steps ahead of you, ideally, and work with them. And other people have already been on this journey. Like, let's be honest, there's not that much new going on.

Most things are they've been solved before. They just haven't been solved by you in the exact way. So like, There are mentors out there who can help, or coaches out there who can directly help with the problem you've got. Mark Ackers: Here's the interesting you don't even need to go and find a mentor or coach anymore, because there is a company out there that will match you to your perfect sales coach and mentor in my sales coach, and you could be one of their coaches that they get matched to.

And that probably brings us to a nice sort of concluding chapter. You spend your time working with many people, but one of your key areas is working with founders that aren't natural sales people or consider themselves sales people, and that's really your passion. What's the fastest mindset shift that founders that aren't sales people need to make when they start working with Scott Cowley: you, the first shift is that anyone can be a salesperson. Do you truly believe that anyone, anyone can, not everyone should, but anyone can.

And if you, if you are a founder of a business that requires sales and you want the business to succeed, you Mark Ackers: have to learn to sell. Is it easier, though? Founder led selling? No, Scott Cowley: it's not easier.

It's different. As a founder, when you've been doing it for a few years, you are a true industry expert. You're not really a salesperson. Now, the bit that is easier is when you get in the room and you have the title of founder or CEO, people listen when you get in the room and you have the title of SDR or sales person, you have to earn the right so it is very different, but you got to remember, founders, sales is only one of their jobs.

It's the most important one, because a business without revenue is just a hobby, but it's still only one of their jobs. So I wouldn't necessarily say it's easier, because they don't get nearly as many reps to try new stuff, but directly, the number one thing that they have to change to begin with is anyone can learn to sell, and you've put yourself in a position where you either learn or your business doesn't survive. That's that's the long and the Mark Ackers: short of it. And what's the difference?

Then, if you believe anyone can sell, but doesn't mean they should, what's the difference between those that shouldn't, shouldn't. It's a Scott Cowley: life choice. So in this context, especially if you've chosen a path that requires sales, you either have to get good at it, or the business doesn't exist. That's kind of burning the boats.

That's the whole idea of you've backed yourself into a corner. That person has to learn how to sell. And if you've chosen a sales job and you actually want this thing to work. Because the cool thing about sales is every sale is slightly different, especially when you get into decent sized kind of the 10k plus deals, as opposed to selling something on the street, where it's just a repeat that's the same thing time and time again.

There is a skill set there. But every sale to a in a B to B context is an edge case, because otherwise they wouldn't need you as a salesperson. They just solve it themselves. And that's the example.

If we go back right to the beginning, I change electricity providers without talking to anyone, because I don't need any information. I don't need anything from them. I'm literally just switching something over. So if you're actually going to require sales people every single sales a slight edge case.

So you're always learning to answer your question really directly if you choose to do it, and I appreciate that this is a very high agency answer, but if you choose to do it, then do it. But you don't have to choose to do it. Just like, let's be honest, you don't have to learn how to swim. If you're in Australia, don't go to the beach if you don't know how to swim, but you don't have to go to the beach, so you don't have to learn to swim, but everyone can learn how to swim.

Yeah, I'm happy with that answer. Mark Ackers: Great. What is, and we'll wrap with this, Scott, what is the one thing that you wished you'd learned earlier in your sales career? Scott Cowley: Oh, there's too many.

The one thing would be, buyers. Buy. Sales people influence. So another way of phrasing that a sales person doesn't decide when a sale happens, only the buyer does.

In fact, that's a positive. If the sales person could decide, every salesperson will say, Well, I don't want to talk to them. I just want them to buy and credit it to my name, which means the profession doesn't need to exist. So the biggest thing that I I wish I had to learn a lot younger, is that it's not about me as the seller.

The seller is merely an influencer who's supporting a buyer, but the buyer actually decides to buy or not. The seller doesn't decide for them. And once you learn that, it kind of opens up. It's never about.

You at the end of the day, it's about them, and therefore, be the guide, be the influence that they need. But if you push them at the wrong time, they're just going to say no, and that's okay. So like really understanding that ultimately the buyer is the one who makes the decision. The seller just helps.

And Mark Ackers: this is where it comes back to understanding seasonality, understanding why buy anything at all, why now it all ties really nicely. Scott, I've loved this chat that we've had. I think we've covered a lot of ground, again, probably only a fraction of the things that I wanted to cover with you, but it's been great to have you here. Thanks.

You're definitely going to stand long in the test of time of travelled service to be on the podcast. I know he's a record that will live a long time with you, but yeah, thanks for coming on, and I'm looking forward to we're heading out tonight, right? Been a pleasure. You.