Hyper-Value Sales, with Justin Gray [Episode 826]

Justin Gray is the CEO of LeadMD and in this episode we discuss what Justin calls “Hyper-Value Sales.” Plus, we’ll dig into strategies you can use to bring value to your buyer earlier in their buying journey.

Episode Transcript

Andy Paul: Justin. Welcome back to the show.

Justin Gray: Hey, thanks for having me.

Andy Paul: It’s been a while since we spoke. You’re weathering, so to speak, the storm in Arizona.

Justin Gray: Yeah, we are a lot, I guess, a lot’s changed since we spoke last

Andy Paul: Yeah, so, um, family’s healthy and safe?

Justin Gray: Yeah, that, that I can’t complain about. So we’ve got, probably when we talked last I probably had one now I’ve got two. So we’ve got a seven month old daughter and then a three year old son who is like, I don’t know, 23, I think.

Andy Paul: Yeah. Well, yeah, you know, it’s funny. It doesn’t matter when, what generation, when you have kids. Um, everybody says the same thing when they’re young, they seem like an adult. Uh, we have friends who their daughter didn’t speak for awhile. You know, she was almost like. Two and a half or something before she really started talking, but then it came out in like complete, fully formed sentences, like speaking to an adult.

Justin Gray: Yeah, I know his, his book vocabulary is insane.

Andy Paul: Well, that’s good. So you said you can’t complain about that. What can you complain about?

Justin Gray: Oh, you know, honestly, not much. Um, I think this, uh, this it’s going to sound bad to say, but this has been a really exciting time, I think from a marketing standpoint, simply

Andy Paul: The pandemic?

Justin Gray: yeah, the pandemic simply because it’s paused-

Andy Paul: Yeah we want to get quote so we can put it on social

Justin Gray: Yeah Exactly. Put that on the, on the masthead. Um, you know, people really started, uh, I think a lot of people hit the reset button and really embraced a lot of the things that we know we should have been doing forever. And, and you could kind of skate by, uh, not doing those. And, and this has really forced everyone to put the customer at the center of everything that they do and really focus on, are we providing something that’s mission critical? And do we know what that mission criticality even is to that client? So in that way, it’s, it’s been very positive.

Andy Paul: Before we jump into that. So tell people a little bit about M lead MDF. They’re not familiar with you.

Justin Gray: Yeah, for sure. So LeadMD is a full service performance marketing consultancy, and really what that means-

Andy Paul: Performance marketing. Yeah. What’s that mean?

Justin Gray: So that means that we focus on exactly what I was kind of hinting at there, which is what is the true objective of the organization and how is marketing providing outcomes that, that influence that objective? All too often  marketing is clicks and, and attention and quote unquote engagement and so on. But when you look at the stats that are out there, they’re pretty abysmal. Uh, Forrester has like a 2018 stat that states that 1% of all marketing driven quote unquote leads actually convert into revenue. Um, and so-

Andy Paul: One percent. Do you think that’s changed since then?

Justin Gray: I don’t think it’s changed substantially. Uh, I think, you know, like, as I said, like a lot of leading or the foundational items that people needed to embrace are finally getting embraced the whole ABM, uh, movement. It was a lot of like flash and bang in the pan, but not a lot of true organizational behavior change.

I think you’re starting to see some of that actually take root now. Um, but on the whole marketing is the first that gets cut. And it’s the first that gets cut for a reason because people can’t draw or we haven’t done a good job of, of communicating what marketing’s true value is. And then providing the optic into how is marketing influencing the business. Like why should we spend our dollar there and why should that really be the first place that we spend our dollars? So I think that’s starting to change.

Andy Paul: How do you help companies turn marketing into a performance organization?

Justin Gray: Yeah, I think the first question is always why, right? Like, why do we want to do this? Why, why, why have you done that? We historically started from rev ops, which is really, you know, a discipline that was created by the movement of marketing into a software driven discipline, right? Like the marketing automation boom, and giving marketing its own platform and really transitioning marketers from vendor managers to a discipline that had to create things internally, launch initiatives internally, and then measure the results of those initiatives. So coming from RevOps, you, you have this notion of we’re going to buy X, Y, and Z, and it’s going to yield all these great results, uh, which of course doesn’t happen. And so the-

Andy Paul: By X, Y, and Z, meaning like your tech stack.

Justin Gray: Marketing automation, yeah, exactly marketing and sales technology, um, that, that purchase alone really does nothing but often amplifies gaps that organizations have. So there’s a lot of, you know, someone’s got their finger on the button and now we can send a billion emails or, you know, a million messages out to folks. And there’s a lot of danger in that. Yeah, for sure. So it really asking the why of what are we trying to achieve? Why did, why do you need to purchase this? You know, do you really understand at its core who your buyer is? The value that you’re providing to them, the messages and information and education that they need to empower their organization and, and just, you know, really getting there those fundamental dependencies in place so that you can scale a marketing engine, which I think is where most people start. Uh, but we walk them back to the beginning and, and, you know, help them make critical decisions along the way there.

Andy Paul: So if you were to look at sort of the landscape and say, okay, we’ve got this report in 2018, um, which, yeah. I mean, if only 1% of marketing generated leads are contributing to revenue, that’s obviously problematic is, uh, yeah, it’s sort of, as you do or walk it back with what is the beginning, what’s the first thing that, you know, the CMO needs to look at to say, yeah, we want to make a real contribution here?

Justin Gray: Yeah, I think it, it all has to start with relationship to the buyer and by buyer I mean, you know, someone moving through the stages of the customer relationship and certainly after that customer relationship is formed. I think marketing needs to curate and manage that relationship as well. Um, so that that’s, if you ask most organizations the one thing that they will agree on is that they have a data problem and data is our representation of how well we know that, that buyer and customer. So I think we have a customer relationship problem, and that’s always where are our first focuses is going to start, whether it’s just understanding the work that they’ve already done, and maybe they’re in a good spot there, or the much more predominant, which is no, we need to really do some, some further exploration there and understand who that customer is.

Again, what they fundamentally need. And that’s, that’s the benefit that, that this pandemic has brought is, you know, immediate everyone that was not mission critical was cut. So whether you wanted to or not, you just took a really large NPS survey. Um, and all of the attrition that happened to that process, I think was a big wake up call.

Inversely, day two, everyone wanted to immediately reach out to their customer and say, you know, how are you doing? How are you getting through this? How is this changing your business? And so on. And for a lot of organizations that was just a motion that they couldn’t run. They didn’t know who they should be talking to over there or if they knew that person, they didn’t have a relationship in place. And so that that’s, that’s a problem. And immediately the first fire that we want to put out.

Andy Paul: Well, when you’re talking about, they didn’t know who to talk to marketing, didn’t know who to talk to is you’re talking about them providing messaging to sales, to communicate to the buyer or marketing, talking directly to the buyer as well.

Justin Gray: Yeah, I mean, we’re relevant. Marketing has to be talking directly to the buyer as well. You know, most, most organizations, uh, certainly that we deal with have some sort of a tie in or benefit to the marketing department. Um, so you know what, let’s take a software provider for, for example, like oftentimes that software has legs in marketing, it, it, you know, the marketers within that order using them, maybe it’s a CMO. That’s the CMO and the CMO of the organization that provided the solution should have some level of a relationship. Um, they should know the other key, uh, you know, buying or members of the buying committee within that org and should be aligning and orchestrating the same folks within their organization to make those connections.

So does your executive team you know, have, have a good relationship with theirs. Are you helping them at the practitioner level? Uh, how are you supporting their, their usage? That’s the other thing, like if number one is the solution mission critical? Number two, how to get more value out of the solutions that we already have?

Those are the two questions across the board that we see organizations asking. So do we have a line of sight into how they perceive our value? Do we understand what they are relying on us for it? Do we understand the true reason why they even purchased our product solution, whatever it is in the beginning? Most often not. And that goes into measuring usage versus measuring impact. Most organizations measure usage, how many log-ins, how many activities, how many, you know, whatever that, you know, if it’s an email solution, how many emails did they send last month? Not indicative of the impact that your solution is making over there. And so, um, that’s a, again, a really loud wake up call.

Andy Paul: Well, and that’s also not understanding that is, is a failure on the part of sales as well. I mean, it’s chances are the, probably didn’t win the business if they didn’t, they didn’t know what that was. I mean, usually-

Justin Gray: It depends. Honestly, I find that, you know, oftentimes initiatives get filtered down into features and benefits at a buying level. Um, at least at the exploration, you know, at the time of exploration. Can you do X, Y, and Z? And so say I think

Andy Paul: I think the challenge for sellers is they have to find out  what is the one thing? Cause there’s always one thing.

Justin Gray: Yep.

Andy Paul: There’s always one thing what’s driving that decision. Do you need to find out what it is? Cause that’s to your point, precisely that’s six months down the line. It’s not about usage. It’s what is the value they’re getting from that one thing?

Justin Gray: Correct and then stewarding that so even if sales does a great job at that, how do we capture that in a way that immediately informs the onboarding process, the customer success process, the customer service process. How do we steward that as our North Star throughout that customer journey?

Andy Paul: But I think you also raised another interesting point to get back to is that, and I see this, and I, I guess I hadn’t been thinking enough about it to here in the last six months to a year is, yeah, I don’t see enough of the executive teams making those relationships with their counterparts.

Justin Gray: Agreed. And that’s such a powerful again, like when you look at the fundamentals of ABM and kind of that whole movement, that that was a really key element to ABM, right? The whole orchestration and threading within a customer organizations or, or any organization, partner, vendor, whatever. Um, that, that, that was such a great element there. And it kind of got pushed aside to your point and, and we need to embrace that as, as fundamental.

Andy Paul: For exactly the reasons you talk about. I mean, first of all, it’s really important with retention, I believe is that if you don’t have those relationships and it just gets down to usage, as you talked about, you’re going to be in a bit of a hurt right there.

Justin Gray: And they change all the time as well. Right? Like you look at the average tenure is out there and people are, are taking new positions all the time. Now we’ve got this element of folks that have been furloughed and let go. So that’s a relationship that has to be actively curated. And again, we focus marketing and sales so much on net new acquisition, and you look at everyone’s comp plans and they’re all centered around that, that concept.

But what we’re losing, you know, what’s slipping right through our fingers, uh, is, is driven by the fact that we’re not incentivizing people to, to, you know, steward that relationship and ensure that goal is passed along to each other yeah. Of, uh, of our organization. So I think, I think a lot of things have to change there.

Andy Paul: All right. So one of the topics you’ve been talking about, sort of, following what we’ve gone through here and recently is, is, and I think you make the point that should have existed prior to the pandemic, but now more focused on it is what’s you’re calling hyper value sales. So what do you, what do you mean by that?

Justin Gray: Yeah, I think so. Let’s get back to the fundamental of ABM, right? Like we, we should know if we know, if we’ve done an exercise to really define our addressable market, our ideal customers within that market, then we know that we can make an investment within those organizations and it’s going to be worth our time.

Again, one of the, probably the most valuable thing for me that ABM and the concept frames. So if we know that those are our valuable organizations, they’re the types of orgs that our solution fits really well with. We provide just mission critical solutions for. Then how do we, what, what, why do we put so many filters and Gates in front of engaging with those organizations? Like you have to, you know, by, in this certain way, you have to pay us money. You know, and that’s the fundamentals of, of capitalism commerce. I get it. But if you’re, if you know that that is a great customer for you, then why not make the investment earlier within that cycle? Why not enable them around the purchase of your solution.

Why not give them the things that we’re normally holding off, maybe providing late stage, you know, once someone’s already signed a contract and they’re into, uh, onboarding or whatever, then we give them these really helpful assets and tools. Why not give those to them upfront? Why not give them access to our solution upfront? Yeah. So I think you saw this with a lot of, you know, what I would call compassionate offers as a result of the pandemic. Um, you know,

Andy Paul: Educational software.

Justin Gray: Right. Yeah. Zoom, right? Like, Hey, take this platform, use it for three months and we’re going to, we’re going to really focus during that timeframe on making you successful with that platform. If you’re providing that to a group of folks that you already know are going to be great clients for you, what’s the harm in doing so. In fact, the conversion rate off of a marketing or sales activity along those lines is so astronomically higher than that, that, that terrible abysmal 1% that we talked about, like, why aren’t we leading with those types of activities, those assumptive purchase activities?

I think, you know, the, the, again, the pandemic opened up the door to be able to do so, but you’re great organizations have been doing that for a long time. You look at someone like a Slack, um, you know, Hey, let’s get them hooked on drugs. And that’s exactly what Slack did and, and, you know, to this day, it’s the one solution, you know, we, we, we spent a lot of money on technology, it’s the one that’s ever been driven, you know, unanimously across the organization. We want to use this. That’s great. We’ve got to get it. Now we pay Slack a decent amount of money for a month. So yeah, I think it’s just that mentality.

Andy Paul: But what you’re talking about though is not a freemium model.

Justin Gray: Not necessarily. I think, I think in some cases

Andy Paul: It’s much more deliberate than that.

Justin Gray: Yeah, exactly. At some point, in some cases it’s, it’s freemium. In other cases- I mean in all cases it is education and enablement. So you take the, like, let’s rewind to marketing automation, like 2008, you know, no one knew what they were committing to at that time. You know, you got this platform and suddenly you look under the covers. It’s like, Oh, what’s your lead scoring methodology? Well, no one really had a robust systematized lead scoring methodology. So I think Marketo for, for example did it, and HubSpot still does this, um, did a great job of giving tools to that buyer to show them like, Hey, when you actually are to the point where you need to purchase a technology like this, these are the things that you’re going to need to have in place. In fact, go, go use them with whatever you’re using right now. Um, and so like, you know, you saw a lot of their content, you know, that I think John Miller did a great job of, of creating and, uh, disseminating was about preparing the buyer for that purchase and that they, they could also realize some value of it even without, you know, buying that piece of technology. So that’s really at the heart of what I’m talking about.

Andy Paul: Yeah, I was thinking, um, those are good examples too cause I mean, certainly in pandemic, we’ve got, as you talked about Zoom, educational software or other applications? People had this crushing need that was identified. Um, but it’s thinking about it more sort of assuming we get past this period of time is a more mundane, uh, you know, sales situation is, you know, you’re talking about moving value to the top of the conversation.

So, I think a good way to frame it and I think you said something about this. Once I was looking at interview had done, is that it’s about really focusing on what is it that only you can provide to the buyer. This gets back to the thing, we talked about, the one thing, right? If you do a great job of identifying that one thing, it should align to that one thing that only you can provide to them.

Justin Gray: Right. Or willing to provide to them. Right. Like the, the, the, you know, so one of our examples. As I mentioned as we were chatting before the show that a lot of our clients. Took their go to market strategy back to phase one and really started kind of rebuilding. Okay. Now, during this period of time, who is our buyer now?

How has that buying process changed? What do they really need at this point in order to feel comfortable moving forward? And then the output for a lot of those folks were quote, unquote playbooks. How do we immediately enable. A sales team that is now fully digital. They’re, they’re fully inside, uh, with emotion that they’ve never conducted before.

And so we immediately started hopping in and just doing free, go to market workshops. You know, we, we, you know, normally on a one to one basis, like, Hey, uh, you know, account a, we know that you’re struggling with this. Hey, we just want to help you retool and restructure that, that go to market motion. As it pertains to marketing and sales, um, no strings attached.

Like let’s get in there and give them exposure to what is our greatest asset, which is the minds of our consultants that we would normally put behind this long sales process. Maybe they get, you know, involved and provide some value in the, in that process. But it’s still all about getting the engagement.

So why don’t we just move that to the front of the process and just start consulting with them from day one. And that does two things. Number one, it provides immediate value to them and, and builds the brand that we want to be known for regardless. And number two, it increases that conversion rate exponentially, because now they see like, wow, I want more of this person’s time.

You know, how do I get that? Um, and then you couple that with things like, okay, we know we’re, we’re, you know, everyone’s got budgetitis right now. And, and, you know, like we’re, we’re struggling with everything being reduced. Like what is the best way that we can help you both now into the future? And I think that mindset is really at the core of, of hyper value marketing and sales.

Andy Paul: Yeah. And I would add something, you know, parallel to that or aligned with it. Is, is that in a, to your point about how we sort of lost, lost track of this is, is what I call speed to value, right. And it’s like, okay, or speed to outcome. Let’s call it. What can be solved now? Right? I mean, yeah, we may have, we may have furloughed employees, we may have canceled projects, but we still have some things that are really important that we solve now.

And they may have been part of a bigger transformation project we’re looking at, but. We need to fix it now. And so I think for sellers, the real challenge and marketers as well, in the ABM sense, is let’s identify these, these smaller things, perhaps more compact, more discreet projects, where the customer needs to fix it now. They need to implement it now, and you can recognize, they can recognize their ROI more quickly and get that agai, speed outcome,

Justin Gray: Yup. Yeah, we use that.

Andy Paul: It locks you in.

Justin Gray: We use that term low hanging fruit all the time. Right. But this is, this is like critical. Yeah, this is critical stuff. That, again, like a lot of those blockers got kind of shifted away because people were focused on how do I stay in business? How do I, you know, make, make happen what I need to, to keep our doors open or to keep investment dollars flowing. Like these are really critical questions. And I think the, the, the value or the benefit was we were able to strip away a lot of the bureaucracy around that and just run, you know, and do so in a really agile manner. And that’s where organizational alignment comes into play. And, and the, the orgs that have that in place that you could quickly say, we’re going to change. How do we do that, uh, organization wide with our executives aligned in their teams, you know, uh, able to execute on that direction. Very, very swiftly. Um, that, I mean, that was such a, an exciting time in, in the midst of something that was really terrible.

Andy Paul: Yeah, why don’t we go back to, I kind of just mention about low hanging fruit. Cause I, I wasn’t really talking about long, low hanging fruit, and I think this is the part where most people miss it as they look at the low hanging fruit, but that’s, that’s a matter of convenience. Right?

Justin Gray: Sure.

Andy Paul: What we’re finding is what do they really need?

Justin Gray: Yeah. What are those critical items that we can solve for.

Andy Paul: And low hanging fruit is considered to be so obvious, right? This isn’t going to be obvious necessarily. It’s going to take some work, but to your point, if you’re providing the value upfront, if you’re having the conversations, then, then the right way, having the conversations, then you’re going to uncover what these, these really critical needs are.

Justin Gray: You have to put some really intentional focus on this and, and, and ensure that what is coming out of those discussions is really gonna move the needle.

Andy Paul: Yeah. And this is, this is, I think it’s been sort of the hard part for a lot of companies, because so many of the conversations I think are maybe well-intended, but very superficial. And because people are so afraid, I want to, I want to express my empathy, but in doing so, I make sure I don’t really want to push. And it’s like, it’s not a matter of pushing. They want you to ask about, yeah, we still have these critical needs. We need help and customers don’t always volunteer those.

Justin Gray: Well, I think that’s a great point about like, kind of that fake empathy, because so many people position that as a sales play, just to get over the hump of what was going on then they ran him right through the normal process so that they would, they would have before. And that’s, that’s not what we’re talking about here whatsoever.

Andy Paul: So what does, what does the future of work look like for LeadMD.

Justin Gray: Well, I think, you know, it’s interesting. You talk to vendors like, you know, was talking to my, my lawyer, the other day, like this was a really difficult and monumental lift for them, right? Like to get people to work from home and, and to try to promote collaboration, they’ve got security concerns. And so on. Fortunately for us, I mean, a half an hour after we announced, which is like March 10th or something like that, that, that we were going, uh, virtual in response to this, you know, people were up and running at home. Maybe they grabbed an extra monitor on their way out and you know, are fully up and running within minutes.

For a lot of organizations, that’s not the case, but I think the, the more, the deeper underlying aspect is that just like buyers our people want the flexibility to, to, you know, be their best self, to work in their best environment and so on. So we’ve always been a, uh, a work from home as an option culture, right? Like most people will take probably a day a week and work from home. We did a big re return to work survey and the biggest thing that stood out is, you know, I don’t, although we have that in place, I don’t always feel like I can actually do that. Um, and so I think it’s about the license to ensure that we’re providing that flexibility when needed, but we’re also understanding the, what the value in coming together is actually meant to provide, which is education for other folks and the sharing of stories and just the communication of that tribal knowledge and so on. So, um, it’s definitely more flexible uh, and at the same time, I think it has to be more intentional because when we are like, I think a lot of people are right now feeling that, wow, it is difficult when you don’t have those, like in-person huddles where you’re kicking around solutions to a client problem and so on. So, um, I think it’s just about doing what a lot of people have said that have kind of burned out and then they look back at it. It’s like, I wish we would have been more intentional about the time that I spent at the office. And I, you know, at the same time I want the flexibility to live my life, to be in an environment where I’m not distracted and so on.

So definitely that flex space and we’ve focused a lot at even changing the office to promote that. Um, we are, you know, we were a traditional bullpen environment where everyone’s out in the same space. And during this time we we’ve lit up a ton of privacy offices. Like we’ve remodeled the office, uh, while everyone was out to provide some of that, like alone focused, you know, non-disruptive time as well. So I think it’s just a better hybrid.

Andy Paul: So are people coming back to the office yet or are you still working remotely?

Justin Gray: No, no. So, well, we, we, we are starting this next week. We’ve got like five folks that have situations at home to where they’ve got kids that are there and they just are really having a hard time focusing. So we’re opening the office back up to a very select number of people, um, and ensuring that they’re not only six feet apart, they’re, you know, 25 feet apart. Um, but you know, Arizona is an absolute hotbed right now, so we’re trying to keep everyone separated for as long as possible. And I think September is kind of our, our bookmark at this point, but that bookmark may move

Andy Paul: Interesting. Yeah. I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s a tough thing for so many companies, um, and changing day by day and, and yeah, I mean, at this point we’re talking, you and I, we’re talking 2nd of June, July, excuse me. I’ve lost track of time, like everyone else. Um, yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s heading in the wrong direction, so it’s really hard to predict what’s what’s gonna take place. So a question for this more general question. I ask this a lot of my guests now, and you understand you come from working background, but you’ve, you know, CEO, founder, you do a ton of selling. Um, so other than, other than learning from experience, how did you learn how to sell? And what I want you to do is I’m going to, you get five possible five answers and they all, they all have, they all have to add up to a hundred percent. And so the answers are, coaches-mentors, one two is peers, three is customers, four is self meaning reading books, listening to podcasts like this wonderful podcast, and five is some sort of employer provided training. So coaches, peers, customers, self training added up to a hundred percent. Where, where do you think you come out?

Justin Gray: Yeah, I, I, I would say lowest on that totem pole is certainly employer provided trading. Like I’ve been through probably three, four, like formal sales training methodologies. And although I think they’ve got good chunks and elements to them, like, I can’t say that that’s been the predominant influence by far.

Like I’ll just make the math easy and say like 70% of that comes from, I’ll say mentorship because there’s, there are some intentional relationships there, but like observing someone that’s really, really good at the profession of sales. And like, I’m, I’m, I’m an echo type person. Like you show me someone that’s doing something really well. Like that’s the best way I learn. So yeah, definitely most heavily influenced by, by folks that were just at the top of their game that were reading the customer that were really, you know, asking a ton of questions and, and just, you know, mirroring a lot of that behavior. Certainly first and foremost. Um,

Andy Paul: Ok so mentorships number one, 70%. So you got 30% to split among four.

Justin Gray: Yeah. And then experience, right? Like that was one of the options out

Andy Paul: No, no setting aside, everybody learns from experience. So this is the specific things. So peers, customers, self, or training.

Justin Gray: Yeah. So I would say customers is definitely next on that line, but you know, customers, aren’t always as forthright with feedback at the end of one of those engagements. I wish they were more forthright honestly, it is a question that, that I ask and that we ask as an organization, just in terms of like, all right know, can we, can we dive in here? And I think there’s, you know, for whatever reason, there’s always a trust element. And if they’re not willing to share really deep insights in that, you know, that’s on us, we haven’t built the trust. So, so, you know, customer feedback is, is critical, whether it’s just saying yes and, and, and doing some retros and introspection on what went well there. Um, you know, I think that’s probably 10%, uh, tack onto my, my monster 70% item there. Um, Peers, definitely a good factor in that. Like, I love watching even non-sellers and you know, our consultants do a great job of this when they’re, when they’re talking to clients that we record. Uh, most, if not all of our calls here, we get questions like, what do you do with those? Like, we really do pass those around internally, you know, whether it’s, you know, you need to listen to this to be on the next call or whether it’s just like, Hey, I think this is a great example of, of, you know, objection handling or whatever happened in there. Um, you know, a lot of times non sellers are just an excellent point of reference there because, you know, we get into such a habit of quote unquote selling. Um, sometimes we, we don’t approach things from a different angle or just ask what is a really obvious question. Um, and so the, well what’s my last one?

Andy Paul: Self and training

Justin Gray: Yeah. Yeah. Training’s at the bottom. It’s like 1%, um, I guess I’d put the, the, the rest bucketed into self there. It’s just, you have to. You have to go out and, and, you know, consume things like this and learn on your own and get as many perspectives as possible. But to that point, like for me, self is really just a gateway into the mentorship and, and, you know, uh, example based learning. Cause if someone’s doing something really well, like I want to reach out and talk to them.

And that’s the biggest piece of advice I give anyone that reaches out to me is like, reach out to people like they will say, yes. I very, very rarely, has anyone said, like, no, it may be like a month gap before someone gets back to you, and so it’s like, Oh man, I meant to follow up on this and so on. But like very rarely do people say no when you ask them to, uh, to have a chat.

And, and, and, you know, I say just have some really intelligent questions prepared, uh, be intentional there. And I think that can just be suc a powerful resource

Andy Paul: Perfect. Well, that’s good. I like that answer. I mean, That’s your answer. I mean, it’s not that I’m judging the answer. I like that answer, but, but, uh, yeah, we’re gonna build a long database of answers, so.

Justin Gray: Yeah, it’s a one professional, right? He really doesn’t have, I mean, like there’s so many, you know, Sandler selling and challenger sale and so on. Like there’s so many formal methodologies out there, but I feel like there, there needs to be like a great database of examples as well. And that’s something that the profession could really use.

Andy Paul: Well, I think we also, we need to understand how we’re actually learning. So yeah, we spend $20 billion a year on sales training, and if everybody says that contributes, you know, they feel personally, it contributes 1%. Then that’s sort of a problem. Right. Why are we spending that $20 billion? So-

Justin Gray: $20 billion dollars. I had no idea that that number was that big.

Andy Paul: Yeah. In the US that’s the number I’d read online and so, my take is not on your five questions, but on, I think we have to ask ourselves as a businesses is, are we providing any value for that. And, you know, I can think alternatively, if we think that. Sellers learn primarily from coaches and mentors, let’s say then maybe we should spending the better fraction of that $20 billion training coaches

Justin Gray: Well, I will say that’s one thing when I ask other people like, Hey, where did you learn that? Or like, what’s been the biggest influence. Everyone always has that one person, you know, that they worked under. It’s like, Oh, that guy or gal like blew the doors off everything that they touched and they referenced that individual. So, yeah, I think that’s, that’s a big, uh, reference point for anyone.

Andy Paul: Yeah. I mean, for me, there were two people in particular, but, but yeah, I mean, they influenced me throughout my entire career. I always look back on what, what I learned. So-

Justin Gray: it’s powerful.

Andy Paul: All right, Justin. Well, thank you very much for joining me. Um, how can people connect with you and learn more about LeadMD?

Justin Gray: Yeah. Email is always the best way. Jgray@leadmd.com. I’m pretty active on LinkedIn. Uh, I’m actually forward slash leadMD on LinkedIn and Twitter at Jaygraymatter.

Andy Paul: Perfect. Alright, Justin, a pleasure. We’ll do it again.

Justin Gray: Thank you so much.