Unlearning the Old Sales Playbook: Mindset, Fear & Ethics with John Lester
Hey, friends. Laura here, CEO and cofounder of CommissionCrowd. Today's guest brings a perspective that challenges the way most people think about sales, not just because because of his success, but because of how deeply he understands what's happening beneath the surface of it. John Lester is a forty year sales veteran, the founder of Onboard Xi, and the author of Winning the Inner Game of Sales. He's trained and mentored countless reps as part of his sales mastermind, and now he's building a commission only sales team on CommissionCrowd helping agents create sustainable income streams.
Laura McGregor:One thing I wanted to say before we dive in. There's a big mindset mindset shift that happens when you move from employed sales to commission. In a salaried role, you're often trained to follow scripts and hit KPIs that rely on systems built for you.
Laura McGregor:structure can work, but it often limits creativity and consultative selling. In commission only, you are the system. You're not just executing a process. You're designing one that aligns with how you build trust, solve problems, and close deals with integrity. You're not just a sales rep.
Laura McGregor:You're a business business owner. You have to regulate your mindset, build trust fast, manage rejection, and create your own momentum every single day. And if you do that right, you can create income that's not just high, but also residual. Residual. This topic is especially close to my heart, not just because I run a platform that supports commission only partnerships, but because I'm also a certified clinical hypnotherapist.
Laura McGregor:I've spent years helping professionals work through subconscious blocks, impostor syndrome, and limiting beliefs that quietly sabotage even the most talented people. I've seen firsthand what shifts when someone starts leading with belief instead of fear. When you change your story, the story that you tell yourself, you begin to rewire your beliefs, and that's when real transformation happens. You build the mental muscles that allow you to stay consistent, confident, and resilient. Change your thoughts, and you change your outcomes.
Laura McGregor:And as every entrepreneur knows, mastering your inner game isn't optional. It's the foundation for true and lasting success. And that's what we're exploring today. We're talking sales psychology, ownership, freedom, and two real commission only sales opportunities that could unlock the next level of freedom, income, and alignment if you're ready to step into a new opportunity. So let's get into it.
Laura McGregor:Welcome, John. It's so great to have you here.
John Lester:Thank you, Laura. Great to be here. And no, folks, I am not hypnotized. I don't think. I don't think.
John Lester:I don't think.
Laura McGregor:You wouldn't know.
John Lester:I know. I know. There's a lot of things I don't know I'm told. What do I know?
Laura McGregor:I often tell a joke that my husband, and I convinced him to be with me, like, I hypnotized him.
John Lester:Hey, if it works, it works.
Laura McGregor:Yeah. Anyway, thanks so much. I have a lot of questions, so we'll just dive in.
John Lester:Let's dive in.
Laura McGregor:Yeah. So your mindset is costing you sales. Can you break that down, what you mean when you say the biggest obstacle to success lives between our ears?
John Lester:Yeah. And and we could go so many different directions, but we all have preconceived notions. There's, you know, there's enough work that's been done, in the scientific community that talks to the fact that 60 or so percent of our beliefs are formed before we're five or six years old. There's enough research study that says that certain parts of our physiology are shaped in the womb. There's been extensive research on PTSD being transmitted from a parent to a child and there was more recent research where PTSD went two generations.
John Lester:So there's an awful lot that we, unless we think about it, we don't understand is shaping our behavior. That's all mindset. That's also referred to as mental models. So things like, and some of it still happens in some places, some of it doesn't, but your mother and your father decide to go car shopping and you're five years old and you're in tow, you know, holding your teddy bear in your father's hand and they walk into the dealership and the first thing that happens is the car salesperson comes over, talks a bunch of nonsense to your parents, and they say, no, we're just looking. He walks away or she walks away and your parents look at each other and go, I can't stand these salespeople.
John Lester:Well, it seems like an innocent comment, but to a five or six year old subconscious who's not filtering that starts that whole process of, well, there's something wrong with salespeople. All right. Now, is there something wrong with that particular car salesperson? Yeah. But does that mean all salespeople are bad?
John Lester:No, but the five year old subconscious doesn't think about that. So you'll get into all sorts of things like, like buyers only want the lowest price buyers. Don't care about the person. I shouldn't care about the person. I should only care about the deal.
John Lester:It's okay to cheat and swindle people as long as they make my number. And the list goes on and it goes on and it goes on. Am I saying they're all bad and they're all wrong? No. All I'm saying is you should at least be aware of some of the things that are affecting you.
John Lester:Why do people choke on cold calling? Well, in a lot of cases, it's because they don't believe that they have any right to be in the same room or in the same call with the person. They don't believe they know enough. They don't believe they don't, they don't bring enough to the table. And so there's, it's all mental.
John Lester:It's all mental.
Laura McGregor:Absolutely.
John Lester:And the other side has no idea who you are or what you are. That's the other thing that people don't understand. It's it's our self perception is only on the inside of our eyes. Nobody sees it from the outside. I could tell you all sorts of stories of my screw ups, but nobody knew that I was screwing up, so I got the deal.
Laura McGregor:Exactly. It's such an important distinction. What often sounds like logic, I'm just not a closer or people won't respond, is actually just a belief system that's shaped by past experience, not present truth.
John Lester:Yeah. I think I'm not suggesting that that people try to go back and understand why they think the way they think. All I'm suggesting is understand that you didn't necessarily make a conscious decision to have that mental model or to have that attitude. And so if you didn't make that conscious decision, why don't you just reject it? Put a new one in there.
Laura McGregor:Exactly. You know, I start every session with my clients saying, I'm going to give you two gifts. There are two gifts that you can use anytime. It's accept or reject. You know?
Laura McGregor:Like, it's just an every single day. And especially our self talk, we can really use those tools immediately. Yes.
John Lester:Yes.
Laura McGregor:Yeah. Sales success really begins when people realize those thoughts aren't strategy. They're just stories, and stories can be rewritten. Definitely. Alright.
Laura McGregor:So control versus excuses. Why do so many sales professionals feel powerless when your mastermind grads are saying, I actually have more control than I thought?
John Lester:Because of these mental models. So if somebody walks in if a salesperson walks into a situation and doesn't believe that they have a right to be there, And this is more on the commercial side, but this is very, very true in large scale selling where you're talking to a c level individual of a 60,000 person company. You're intimidated. If you sell in New York and where if you sold in New York in the old days while we still had offices, and you walk into these super, super opulent imposing offices with big desks and 15 secondretaries and all these other things like, oh, who am I? How can I speak to this person?
John Lester:And you don't realize that you're there for one reason and one reason only. The guy's trying to solve a problem. He might might believe that you have a solution.
Laura McGregor:But very likely if he came in and and talked.
John Lester:Not necessarily. Actually less often than than you would think because the other part of the salesperson is they don't understand the dynamic of the sales call. And they and this is one of the things that drives me crazy with a lot of salespeople is they believe and still today, in fact, I just I just posted on LinkedIn about a really negative experience I had and detailed the whole thing. It's it's on LinkedIn. And and they don't understand what's going on in in in the mind of the buyer.
John Lester:Right? What are they trying to accomplish? They don't understand that people don't buy products. You deliver products, but people buy solutions. And if you can't have a solution discussion, if you can't have a problem discussion with them, then all you're going to do is wind up having, having a feature benefit checklist discussion and a price discussion.
John Lester:And very few people that I know sell the best products in the world. There's just not enough products for everybody to sell the best. Yeah. So you've got to sell what works the best for the specific challenge that that the client is having. If you do that, it becomes a conversation.
Laura McGregor:I always say that to founders too. I always say, you know, because most founders, they they they come to commission crowd and they say, I need the sales team because I can't sell. I'm not a salesperson. Well, sales is just conversation. You know, we're having a conversation.
John Lester:But they they they are incapable of making that connection without some work. And that's, that's who I also work with a lot is, is founders and owners of small businesses is because that's their attitude. So what's the first thing they do? They go, oh, I need revenue. Let me go hire a salesperson.
John Lester:Well, don't understand and yeah, people can tell me I'm crazy and boohoo hoo me and do whatever they want. But what they don't understand is that one of the things that good salespeople are very good at is manipulation. Now you can call manipulation bad, you can call it good. If I go to my chiropractor and he says, oh, I've got to manipulate your spine to take you out of pain. What am I going do?
John Lester:Look at him and go, oh no, manipulation's bad. Again, that's mindset. And so what does the founder do? They go out and they hire a salesperson. And what they don't understand is that the salesperson's job is to manipulate.
John Lester:So the salesperson's job is going to tell them that their pipeline is, is 10 X. Everything's going to close. They should increase their rate. And a year later, he's sitting there with not one thing closed. And yes, I've had these situations where I've had to tell founders delusional.
Laura McGregor:That's tough talk. Right? It's just
John Lester:it's just but it's just reality.
Laura McGregor:But, you know, one of the most interesting things with commission, they sold 200 of our memberships before we even had a launch product. And I don't I'm at that point in my career, I didn't think of myself as a salesperson at all, but I I just really believed in what we were doing. And I had the vision, and and I and I always say it was the very best thing I ever did. And it's why, to this day, I still have sales calls because I not only was I able to talk to people and understand them and get to know them, but also help shape the product and help shape the the key heuristics of the sales process that were just ingrained within me through that doing that lessons, doing that
John Lester:Yeah. There are so many so many people that I have asked, and I'm talking about I'm not talking about newbies. I'm talking about people who are coming out of corporate that have spent twenty five, thirty, thirty five years in corporate that are now trying to become entrepreneurs, not necessarily through a choice of their own. But I mean, the market upheaval has been, I think, white collar jobs since COVID. We've already surpassed something like 450,000 layoffs, which is a number we've never seen before.
John Lester:And I'll say to them, and these are highly educated, highly skilled people, and I'll ask them a few questions. What's your value proposition? What three problems do you solve? Who are you? They can't answer them.
John Lester:They cannot answer them. But yet if, if you're able to walk into a prospect and say, Hey, I'm here because I solved these three problems. You start the conversation in a completely different place. All right. I can solve for you or I can't solve for you.
John Lester:Do you have that problem or you don't have that problem? There's no animosity. There's no hard clothes. There's no it's it's just here's a conversation.
Laura McGregor:Yeah. No. I agree. I think that's really interesting. You know?
Laura McGregor:We just get out of your own way, you know, like, figure that out.
John Lester:No. I I was working with a client last year, small business, very, very intelligent gentleman, very intelligent in the tech space. Took months to get around to what three problems do I solve? Who's my target audience? Took months, not because he was dumb at all.
John Lester:It's just he, his, his brain wouldn't let him answer the question. And after about six months or so, I remember we got on a call because we speak to each other, speak with each other every week. And he's the CEO of his company. Granted, it's only like five people, but he's the CEO. He's the founder.
John Lester:And he said, you know, it it dawned on me. He said, I really don't know how to speak to a CEO. So you're going into business Yeah. Calling on major organizations, and you don't understand the value proposition that the CEO needs to hear. Nobody taught him.
John Lester:We straightened it out. The poor guy didn't know.
Laura McGregor:Yeah. Well and, you know, this is why I think chat DVT is so good for businesses in so many ways because it really can help you kind of it's like a a great resource for finding these things, you know, like exploring what it means and being able to different differentiate between sort of features and benefits.
John Lester:Yeah. But I I just I disagree. I completely disagree. Because it's it's not the knowledge. It's the understanding of the difference.
John Lester:It's the understanding of the significance. It's the understanding that you have to figure out how to speak with the prospect as another human being, as somebody who has challenges, who has problems, who doesn't know if you are the savior or an axe murderer, and they don't. They're making that decision in the first ninety to one hundred and twenty seconds of coming in contact with you. They don't understand that dynamic. And Chatche doesn't understand that dynamic.
Laura McGregor:That just gives you a jumping off price though. Right? Yeah. If you're so stuck in the features and benefits and you don't know because you're building it. Right?
Laura McGregor:So you're you're like, okay. And then we're gonna add a calendar and have this and have that feature. Great. Feature. Great.
Laura McGregor:Feature. Great. Then that's kind of where your head's at when you're building something.
John Lester:Laurie, I eighteen years teaching beginners how to ride a motorcycle.
Laura McGregor:Oh yeah.
John Lester:And got them licensed. And the biggest problems I came across were females. And I could spend three days teaching all of the mechanics. And I was actually pretty good, if I might say so myself, and teaching them one on one and in a group the mechanics. And I had so many females that failed and when we sat down to talk about what was going on, it was because they were there for the wrong reason.
John Lester:They got the mechanics, but they didn't believe that they had any right to be behind the handlebars.
Laura McGregor:Wow.
John Lester:No, it was devastating and shocking because their boyfriend or their husband put them down. So I could have taught them for a year the mechanics, but until I was able to shift their mindset and when I did, all of the training came through. So chat GBT will give you the mechanics, but it's not going to give you the mindset.
Laura McGregor:No, I don't mean it will. I just mean it will help you come up with the three things or whatever that you need. We actually we did some coaching last time we talked and after I got off the call, thought, oh, that's so interesting. You know? And I use CheckDPA as my little tool to think and explore and figure out.
Laura McGregor:And I thought that that was a really useful exercise from my perspective anyway.
John Lester:Yeah. No. It's it doesn't it does an awful lot of good. I I use it all the time now. I'm
Laura McGregor:just Yeah.
John Lester:Absolutely enamored by the kinds of things it can give you, but you have to understand its limitations. It's not emotional.
Laura McGregor:Yeah. Absolutely. Alright. So perfectionism is just procrastination in disguise. How do you help reps push through the fear of failure and finally start?
John Lester:What are the question I ask them is is what are you failing? And and what I what I would be more than willing to wager with you is that the vast majority of them are saying they're not closing. Well, so are you going into the sales call with the objective of closing? Because we have been trained and it's still in, in the lexicon today, it's still in the books, it's still in the training courses today, that the objective of the sales call is to close. Now and and I who was it?
John Lester:I can't remember if it it might have been it might have been Bulls. I can't remember where Spencer, came up with with a concept of of the raving fan. I don't know if you've ever run across that. The raving fan to me is one of the most powerful concepts I've come across in thirty years. And the raving fan concept is that you don't you don't close a deal and say that my job is done.
John Lester:You have taken one of the first steps to create a raving fan out of the customer. Because once the customer becomes a raving fan, margins go up, lifetime sales go up, hassles go down, cost of maintenance goes down. And you know what's so cool about raving fans? They will bring you more customers without you asking. Alright?
John Lester:So people walk in and they go, oh, I've got to close. I'm failing because I can't close. Wait a minute. Have you even, have you even gotten so far to understand what the prospect's needs are? Have you understood what's going on in the prospect's mind?
John Lester:Okay. So we, we had a situation. I was called by, Edmund called me. Was in car and I was selling interactive voice response at the time, doing very well with it. Financial company that was my customer.
John Lester:The admin called me up and she said, Mr. Salazar, remember the gentleman's name, wants to see you. I said, fine. When? She goes, now.
John Lester:I go, I'm two States away. She goes, he doesn't care. He wants to see you now. I said, fine. I'll be there in an hour and a half.
Laura McGregor:Wow. I
John Lester:stopped. No. I I did. I did. I take care of my customers.
John Lester:I have never taken a vacation without being connected to a customer. That's just the way I treat them. So I got I got down there and went into the conference room and the minions were all surrounded at the table. And he starts screaming at me about customer complaints and my system is horrible and it doesn't work. Okay.
John Lester:That's fine. That's all right. I understand. You have no idea what you're doing from a systems perspective because he shouldn't, but he's making this accusation. So now you have to start.
John Lester:How do, how do I tackle this one? I said, okay, could you tell me what the complaints are? So he rattled off a couple. I said, could you tell me how many complaints you have? He gave me a single or double digit number.
John Lester:I said, is that a day, a week, a month? He explained. I said, In that same time period, how many calls have you taken successfully? I said, because all I'm trying to figure out is do we have a 10% problem, a 1% problem, or a point 0001% problem? Turned out we had a point 0001% problem.
John Lester:I said, can I ask you a question? I said, do you ever survey your customers to find out how they're doing? Because in fact, what had happened is they had released an update to the software, which didn't take properly. That's where they were getting complaints. I said, do you ever survey your customers?
John Lester:Do you ever get a sense of how they feel about the services that you provide? He says, oh yes, once a year. So let me see if I understand this correctly. Because I just want to make sure I know what you're talking about. I said, so on that Tuesday morning, when one of your top customers, the alarm goes off, throws the covers back, swings his feet out of bed, drops his feet to the floor, and feels and hears at the same time the sound of the warm squish because the dog just dumped right next to the bed.
John Lester:So he gets up in a wonderful mood now goes and takes a shower, gets dressed, grabs his cup of coffee, gets in his car, starts to drink his coffee, but has to stop short. Coffee spills all over his shirt. Gets in the office, his admin isn't there, the phones are ringing and he realizes he left his briefcase at home. You now call him and say, Hey, How do you feel about our system?
Laura McGregor:Not good. No. It's so true. People don't understand what's going on in our day to day lives that are affecting how we feel.
John Lester:Yeah. The the side note to that is I then I then turned around and sold him a brand new custom built survey system.
Laura McGregor:Be selling. Right?
John Lester:Always be looking for opportunities. Always looking for opportunities. So it you know, why is the individual calling you? I mean, as I said, I my customers had 24 by seven access to me. They had every single phone number I had.
John Lester:They had every way to get in touch with me. The the only thing they didn't have was my wife's phone number. They had my home phone number. Had my office phone number. They had myself.
John Lester:Seriously, that is how I treat my customers because I reject more customers than I take. And 07:30, one Sunday morning, I was out 07:45 because we started our motorcycle class at 07:30. Phone goes off, I hear it, I don't think I want to take it because I'm in the middle of class, and I look at it and I see who it is and I look at the other instructor and says, hey, do me a favor, I've got to take this, put everybody on break for five minutes. I spoke to them and turns out one of our, one of the call centers had actually gone down with our systems. Now you say, okay, why is that, why is it so important that that guy bothers you at such and such time in the morning and why is it important that you take the call?
John Lester:Well, it turns out, management's bonuses in part were based on our uptime because we were handling calls at 82ยข a call and if they went to the call center, it was costing the it was costing them from the call center $3.28 a call.
Laura McGregor:That
John Lester:year we handled through that system 21,000,000 calls. So yes, if that call center has to take calls because my systems went down, I understand why they're upset. It's not arbitrary. No. It's not arbitrary.
John Lester:So I do my best to help them. Yeah. Which is why they then gave me another million dollars worth of business.
Laura McGregor:Absolutely. I get the same thing. All my clients have my WhatsApp number. I'm always trying to connect on some personal way, and they're always surprised. Did I always think that it's funny in today's world?
Laura McGregor:I think we're getting further and further away in a lot of ways from that personalized service. So next question is stop waiting for permission to win. What does it actually look like in practice for sales professionals?
John Lester:Again, I go back to kind of reframing the question I I said before about closing. Define winning. What are you winning? So if if if you make an initial call up, so if you cold call into somebody, what is the objective of that call? Is the objective of that call to collect information to set up the next call?
John Lester:Is the objective of that call to close? Well, first of all, if you walked in with the objective to close and you don't have a track record of being a one call closer, and there are people that are one call closers for certain products, but if your objective in your mind is to close when you have no track record of closing, Did you fail? No, you set your expectations wrong. And then you also have to understand that it's not just what you have as objectives. It's not just what you are trying to accomplish.
John Lester:There's another human being on the other end of that line that might have stepped in poo that morning.
Laura McGregor:Yeah.
John Lester:Okay. And you know, people have to start to really become aware of this, that might have gotten a call from the hospital that their mother died. I mean, these are things that I'm not saying we dwell on, but you have to be conscious of that. You have to be aware that these things do happen. You've got to be able to give the other side a moment to breathe.
Laura McGregor:Yeah.
John Lester:And then figure out what you're trying to accomplish.
Laura McGregor:And sometimes that that's where you find all the nuggets and the gems of how the call is gonna go in the report. Do know you know where that energy is kind of meeting you in that moment?
John Lester:Yeah. And and Yeah. I have had much better than average success in and I don't use the term rapport because I think that that's a very bad term to use. It's a very bad concept.
Laura McGregor:Tell me what you collect.
John Lester:It's just understanding what what somebody is trying to figure out in the first ninety to a hundred and twenty seconds is is is the reptilian brain firing off and going, you know, is it going to eat me? Is it going to kill me? Do I have to run? Can I stay? That's what they're trying to figure out.
John Lester:Okay. So understand that about them. Make it easy for them to say, yeah, I think I can I can trust this person? I would contend that the vast majority of deals, and I'm not talking about highly complex deals, but the vast majority of deals, you have won them in the first or lost them. Actually, you've won them in the first ninety to a hundred twenty seconds.
John Lester:And then you spend the next forty four minutes losing them.
Laura McGregor:I've heard that one.
John Lester:Yeah. But, but it's true. Unfortunately, it's true. All right. So understand that there is another person there.
John Lester:Understand the dynamic of that person and work with that. The notion of rapport that I have problems with is, and I hope, hopefully nobody does it now, but since there isn't that much new writing on sales techniques that I've seen, you know, walk in the person's office, not that we walk in people's office anymore, walk in the person's office, look on their desk, oh, they have a picture of their child who plays for I don't know, University of Iowa. Oh, your son goes to University of Iowa. Yeah. I went to University of Iowa.
John Lester:Who cares where you went? Who cares if you like to fish? Who cares if you're a Yankee fan? Nobody cares. They're trying to figure out why is this person taking my time because you haven't yet confirmed to them that you understand their problem and you can help them solve their problem.
John Lester:So in sales there are two sales and I haven't heard too many people talk about this. There is an initial sale and there is the subsequent sale. In virtually all cases, there is a subsequent sale. Yes, folks. Even if you're talking about a hamburger, even if you're talking about a pair of shoes, there is in almost all cases, subsequent sale or the potential for a subsequent sale.
John Lester:What makes the first sale is not what makes the subsequent sale. The subsequent sale is based on the feelings from the first sale, continuing a the continuation of the implementation and value realization, which then helps to define the raving fan. And that's where this where a modified notion of rapport comes in. Because yes, at that point, people would rather deal with people they know than people they don't know. But in the first meeting, they don't know you.
John Lester:They don't give a damn about where you go on vacation in the summer or what school you went to. They don't care. They'd rather you get out of their office or go off the phone or go off a Zoom.
Laura McGregor:Yeah. I don't agree with you, but It's okay. I don't because of my experience.
John Lester:But I but I'm the guest.
Laura McGregor:I mean, they may not they may not. I know you are the guest, and I think and I just haven't maybe I've just had different experiences, or maybe I'm fooling myself that No.
John Lester:I don't think I don't think either one.
Laura McGregor:I think we met, and we really liked each other. I thought that that was quite immediate, and I thought that you cared about me. I'm very sad.
John Lester:Of course. It's contrived.
Laura McGregor:Oh, that's that manipulation.
John Lester:Yes. But that's that's what it is. As as human beings and and it's really fascinating, because programmers understood this years ago. As human beings, we take we tend to take the continuum of things and group them into one, and make decisions about the start point based upon the endpoint. I have never spoken to anybody else who will actually dissect a sales call starting with the first ninety seconds.
John Lester:And I do. Because the first ninety seconds is not the first five minutes, it's not the first fifteen minutes, it's not the first interaction. So the difference potentially, and again, I'm not saying that that I'm a 100% correct, and I'm not saying that that, you know, what I'm what I'm saying is is a 100% true, but when you go back and and look at some of the situations, think through and try to think about that first ninety seconds and how that went and what happened next, the better people that I've found are able to, to make that one continuous smooth stream going through the micro and there really are their micro transitions.
Laura McGregor:Yeah. What would you say is the best way to to create the the first ninety seconds?
John Lester:First of all, so what you gotta understand. And and again, we are we are dealing with people to people sales here, folks that that are listening. We're not dealing, not dealing with product led growth kinds of concepts right now. We are dealing with people to people because it is, it is very different. The first thing is you have to understand that people trust people that they can relate to and visual cues happen before verbal cues because our technology and our society puts a high premium on visual, which is why we used to meet in person.
John Lester:Now there's no reason to meet with zoom. There really isn't. You can get, you can convey as much information on a telephone call, but we prefer it. We prefer to see each other. So understand, look, you have every right to wear pink hair and spikes and nose rings and every you have every right to do that, but understand that the prospect that you're speaking to might not appreciate that and might view that as negative negatively.
John Lester:You can say that they're wrong. You can say that that's not a moral proper way to handle things, but the reality is they might. So give yourself the edge to start with having the proper visual cues. Look the part. All right.
John Lester:When you meet somebody, don't jump into what you do. I mean, always will say to somebody, you know, do we have permission to continue this conversation? Tell me what time constraints you have. Most people just blurt out and, Hey, I want this, say I want it. And it's not about what you want.
John Lester:Respect the other person. If they came to you, why did they come to you? What problem are they trying to solve? If you came to them, you better give them value right away, right away. Who cares that your company was rated number one by Inc Magazine for thirteen years in a row?
John Lester:Nobody cares. What are you going to do to help solve their problem? People are more than willing to get into conversations once they understand that you're there to help them and not hurt them.
Laura McGregor:I like that. It's a good sound bite.
John Lester:Yeah.
Laura McGregor:Well, you know, you you said it best. Two people in a room, one walks out sold. You know, what does that mean to you, and what do most reps miss about it?
John Lester:There's couple of things. It's it's it's a it's a really great concept and it was given to me many years ago by a fantastic salesperson, one of the best I've I've ever known. There is always a perspective that is either accepted or is the dominant perspective. So and and again, we're not talking big stuff now. Friday night comes.
John Lester:What's the what's the first thing that happens with married couples on Friday night come around 06:00? What do you want to do about dinner? I don't know. I don't care. I'm tired.
John Lester:Well, yeah, I don't care either. There's nothing going on. I don't know. I want Chinese. Okay.
John Lester:I'll take Chinese. Got sold. It's as simple as that. All right. And there's nothing wrong with that.
John Lester:There's, there's nothing wrong with that concept, but understand that nobody likes to be sold, but everybody likes to buy. So if you if you appreciate the notion of two people a room, one gets sold, and by the way, let's go back down to microsales, micro events in in in the entire sequence. Understand that they are comfortable buying if you give them something that they want to buy. You get to control the entire conversation if you know what you're doing. But if you make it about you and about what you want, you're never going to get there.
John Lester:And that to me is the biggest mistake most people make is they start off with the traditional, hi, my name's so and so, I'm from such and such, we are wonderful, our product does x, what's wrong with you, you don't you're not interested. It still goes on today.
Laura McGregor:I know.
John Lester:I still because I just had just got off a call yesterday with unbelievable. I wrote about it's just unbelievable.
Laura McGregor:Is that what you put on LinkedIn? Is that the yeah. Yeah. I had one a few weeks ago as well, and I actually thought this was like, I I felt really offended actually because this wasn't a cheap product that I thought, how dare you send this little person to me who
John Lester:Well, I'll with you. I actually had an interesting conversation, I don't know, two weeks ago with, with one of the candidates on commission crowd. Yeah. And I didn't respond instantly or, or no, get a little trouble connecting. And he starts hitting me.
John Lester:Hey, can we talk now? Hey, I'm available. I'm like, okay, cool. Guy's pushing. I like it.
John Lester:He's pushing nicely. He's not being obnoxious or anything. I said, fine, let's jump on a call. I mean, you know, I'm happy to jump on a call. So we get on a call and it must have been about a ninety five five him talking versus me talking.
John Lester:And he's telling me all the things he does and he's telling me about how he builds relationships and it's all about these different industries and he's really good at this and blah blah blah. Never asking for confirmation, Never even read where it said, I am looking for one cold close hunters. And cause it's, it's, it's very clear in the description. Never focusing on which of the two jobs he's talking about. And at the end they said, you know, dude, I mean, I, I really like where you're coming from.
John Lester:You got some great skills. I said, I don't think it's fair to you to continue this conversation because you're not going to be happy here. If what you tell me is true, you need to go do that. Cause by the way, what you are telling me you do is valued in the market in the right scenario. It's not valued for me.
John Lester:Oh yeah, but you know, if I can get to then he tries the trial close. Well, but if if I can if I can get you business and it doesn't cost you anything, I'd like to tell you what, I don't think it's right. I think you would be doing a disservice to yourself and to your family. I said, however, it's Friday. If you think about it over the weekend and you really want to go for this and you you really can convince me that you know how to do a one call close, then call me Monday and we'll talk somewhere.
John Lester:Never called.
Laura McGregor:Well, you do have a wonderful way of doing pattern interruption. I've noticed that you have this just really great skill at interrupting patterns, and it really kind of could throw like, I remember when we were having our first chat, it really threw me the first couple times it happened because I went and it was so exhilarating too because it was like, oh my god. I was so bored. I didn't even realize until I had had that conversation with you that I had probably been just boring people for probably a week before that. Because we do.
Laura McGregor:We get into ruts, don't we? We get into our little la la la la, and everything's so busy and da da da da da. But you have this really great way of, like, interrupting patterns, and I think that we have to learn to do that for ourselves as well. And that what you did for him, I wonder how it settled. It's either gonna be an ego reaction.
Laura McGregor:It's either gonna be like, he doesn't understand me, or it'll be something like, wow. You know? Like, let me thanks for that really solid, honest advice.
John Lester:Yeah. But there's and and I don't know if if I think we mentioned it if you've if you're familiar with the challenger sale.
Laura McGregor:Yeah.
John Lester:Absolutely fascinating research. And I say that because it's not opinion, it's research. And it was done a number of years ago, and I'm not gonna get into the whole thing, but but basically they classify different types of salespeople. And the one they're focused on is what they call the challenger. And the challenger is able to go into a sales situation, basically stop the prospect and reestablish a reference point and a reference concept and tell them, hey, that's not the way things really are.
John Lester:This is the way things really are. And I look at that and first of all, it's it's it's a wonderful skill if you can do it. But the second thing is we spend so much of our lives allowing somebody else to believe their own bullshit when we can help them realize that it's not. I love it when somebody tells me I'm full of it. I don't want to waste my time being full of it.
Laura McGregor:Yeah. No,
John Lester:I agree. So, yeah, I I think we almost have an obligation to salespeople to, to help people understand the truth. And that's what annoys me about salespeople to just go through the, you know, hey. It's it's me from so and so. We're great.
John Lester:We're wonderful. We've been in business forty years. Who cares? Who cares?
Laura McGregor:Yeah. And I think that sometimes we come from that perspective when we when we're just stuck or we're we're trying to hit numbers or we're focused when we're not focused on the human connection, the relationship, the people, the problems, you know, like that kind of stuff. Do you know?
John Lester:Yeah.
Laura McGregor:Yeah. That's interesting.
John Lester:I made I made the bulk of my money in large corporate sales because I refused to be driven by my company's end of year stuff. And they, in the beginning really were annoyed with me, but then I turned around and closed and made president's clubs seven years in a row. Nobody had ever done it before because they took the buying cycle of the customer into into account, not my buying side. My boss didn't make his number, but that's because he kept driving it the wrong way. But I made my number and my customers were happy.
John Lester:I mean, seriously happy. I kept my customers very happy.
Laura McGregor:That's good. Well, you you mentioned you touched on this earlier, and I mean, seven years, let's take a minute to acknowledge that because I think that that's really impressive to them to to find different ways of doing that buying up against all the pressure of management, of all the things, you know, and instead lean into what the buyer cares, like when the buyer has money, when the buyer's cycle is like, all of those things are really important. You mentioned earlier when you were talking about, like, at that very young age when, you know, the little boy overhears
John Lester:Mhmm.
Laura McGregor:Why hate salespeople. But Mhmm. So most people secretly hate selling. Where do you think that stigma comes from, and how do you help reps unlearn it? I'm just just thinking of the correlation between
John Lester:those In two our society, we're taught that selling is pressuring. We're taught that selling is a win lose game. Some people talk about it win win, but come the end of the quarter, you've got to go out and make that client buy. Wait a minute. What are you talking about and make that client buy?
John Lester:But that's, but that's how it's presented to people. If you don't make your number or you're going to be in a lot of trouble because I'm going to be on your case. And these are real words. I'm going be on your case all the time. Look at the, you look at movies, you look at, at, you know, you read publications, selling has always been presented as I am going to do to you kind of proposition.
John Lester:Read, read the sales books, 15 ways to manipulate your prospect, a 100 words that sell, how to hypnotize your client, heck, get them to say yes, six times in a row on simple things and the seventh time they'll they'll sign for you. What are you nuts? Tell them you went to the same university and and you like the color blue and you'll have built rapport and they'll buy from you. That this is what we're fed and it's nonsense. It's nonsense.
John Lester:But we are still, we're coming out of it finally, recipients of living in a commanded control environment because in the forties, we all know what happened in the forties, we had a war to win and one of the reasons we won the war one, because I give a tremendous amount of credit to the armed services. One of the reasons we won was because we could produce what we needed for the war and we could transport it and get it where we needed it. And Patton was very famous for this. So now you have this whole command and control. You will do this, we'll divide you into specialties, etcetera.
John Lester:Education wind up being the same way. Medicine wind up being the same way. We're being told what's good for us. We're being told it becomes adversarial after a while. Sales is no different.
John Lester:And until people started to realize that sales shouldn't be that, but we're still selling books to talk about it, we're still teaching courses that talk about this, you still if you go to YouTube or if you go to LinkedIn, they're still selling, talking about the same stuff. There's only a few people that I am aware of that that are actually saying, no. That's not the way it should be. So when I decided to change that way, what I found out was I made a heck of a lot more money, I had more time, and had had more fun. Something's wrong with the old ways.
Laura McGregor:Yeah. Those, you know, those early encounters that so many of us have had with the transactional, the pressure heavy sales tactics. You know, I think reps who can reconnect with the idea that sales is just a service in motion. We just start to relax and when they relax, so do the prospects.
John Lester:Well, one of, one of the problems and reps should be aware of this. One of the problems I find is that it is the responsibility of the business, as far as I'm concerned, to convey to the rep the true value proposition of the business. It's incumbent upon them to convey to the rep the founder's story. Why was this started? What was the circumstances?
John Lester:These are things that people want to know about. This is what people relate to.
Laura McGregor:I love this story.
John Lester:And so many companies, large and small bring reps in, say this is the product. Don't give them any of the stories, any of the information that they can use to build the rapport. And I'll use the word there to build a rapport with the prospect and expect them to do it. Now, the interesting thing is a couple of years ago, according to HubSpot, the average tenure of a salesperson in The United States was fourteen months. The turnover of the average salesperson was four point something times faster than the general population.
John Lester:Wow. And yet it took the salesperson nine to twelve months to come up to speed. Well of course that's going to happen. So what happens if you onboard them properly? What happens if you provide them with the proper information?
John Lester:And here's the worst part, the sales reps, a lot of them don't know to ask because they don't understand how to sell value proposition. They don't understand how to sell what problems do I solve. They don't understand how to sell problem resolution. They think that discovery is walking in and asking the same 10 questions every time and never drawing those questions to the problem that the prospect's having.
Laura McGregor:Yeah. It's such an interest it's so interesting. Even this morning, we just hired a new marketing assistant, and I was putting together a document for him. I'm gonna put in my founder story in there too because, I mean, he's a marketer. He's a storyteller.
Laura McGregor:Right? Of course, he would wanna know. I mean, I thought. I mean, so yeah.
John Lester:I had a marketeer on the phone the other day. I don't know where I was. I was in some session. And they're talking about trying to convey what they do. And they were selling, they were selling through distributions.
John Lester:They were trying to create messaging. This was on a fellow who claims to do messaging. Okay. Okay. And so they're trying to figure out how to craft the messaging.
John Lester:And I said, okay, do me a favor, you know, cause I'm on this call, there's only a few of us. What do you got? What are you doing? And they start to tell me about the product and the and the benefits. I said, you're never going sell anything.
John Lester:You're go to business in six months that way. Why? Because what's important? And they go back to the product. I said, well, what's the benefit of this thing?
John Lester:They said, oh, well, from from the perspective of the end user, they're double, they're going from them to the distribution to the end user. From the end user's perspective, does x y and z. I said, are you selling to? They said, oh, the distribution. I said, what's the benefit to the distribution partner?
John Lester:Let them figure out what the benefit to the customer is. That's their job. Why should they choose you over anybody else? The marketing people could not understand this. Not.
John Lester:I'm watching hair go on fire.
Laura McGregor:Good thing. It was
John Lester:pretty, yeah, good thing I was. So that's, that's just kind of a snapshot of, of, of what I'm trying to, what I'm trying to change in sales.
Laura McGregor:Yeah. No. It's important. Yeah. Solo solopreneurs, they struggle with sales.
Laura McGregor:We've already said it. It's rarely tactical. So what's really getting in their way?
John Lester:Of the belief that it is tactical. Right.
Laura McGregor:That fear of rejection or
John Lester:It's just that they've been trained to think like that. Look. And I love stories. The mother and daughter are getting ready for thanks to to make thanksgiving to make Christmas dinner. The oven's all heated.
John Lester:They they get the ham, and to put it on the rack in the oven, the mother goes, oh, we gotta cut the end off. Takes the end, cuts the end off, puts it in the oven. Go turns around and goes, mom, how come we cut the end off ham before you stick in the oven? Mother goes, I don't know. We've just always done it.
John Lester:Well, where'd you learn how to do it? From my mother. Let's go call grandma. Say, call grandma. Silence on the phone.
John Lester:Grandma goes, I don't know. We've always
Laura McGregor:done My mom did it.
John Lester:My mom did it. So they called great grandma, who's still alive, thankfully. Great grandma, how come you did it? They explained the whole situation. She goes, you nitwits.
John Lester:The reason we did it was because the ham was bigger than the oven. Absolutely. So, you know, people I think there there are some excellent salespeople that that this does not apply to because they have this all figured out. But unfortunately, the rest of them fall into two categories. One, people that should just get out of sales because they have no business being in it, and that's fact.
John Lester:I'm not making fun of anybody or saying anything negative. They just they don't belong there. And then the ones that do wanna be in it, they they just need to rethink what sales really is. And they need to rethink their role and understand that a lot of the stuff that they've been doing, a lot of the training that they've had and the tactics that they use, they're they're inappropriate or they're being used in the wrong way and in the wrong place.
Laura McGregor:Absolutely.
John Lester:And you got to start changing that because otherwise not going to get anywhere.
Laura McGregor:I was just looking at that too.
John Lester:So I am, I'm looking forward just in case you know anybody else, I'm looking for sales guys that look, you can be one of the ones that, that needs the help. That's fine. I'll give you the help. I just really am looking for people who are honest, who understand what it means to care about their prospects and about their coworkers. I want them to be hungry.
John Lester:They have to be ethical. I'll help them with, I'll help them with the concepts. That's not a problem. I'm just looking for people to build a business around where people wake up in the morning and they want to go to work. I've been there.
John Lester:There is no stronger feeling than waking up at 04:30 in the morning because you want to be at your desk banging the phones at 06:30. There is no feeling. It's better.
Laura McGregor:That's the entrepreneurial spirit, you know, and that's sometimes why commission only is so interesting.
John Lester:Yeah.
Laura McGregor:Well, I really I'm I'm gonna link below. You've got two amazing sales opportunities, and this is really just so great to talk to you and hear your perspective on things. Really appreciate it. And pleasure. Yeah.
Laura McGregor:And you can also grab the winning inner game of sales on Amazon. Check it out. I read it. I really appreciated it.
John Lester:Thank you.
Laura McGregor:Full of amazing stats. Some really good stuff for that inner game as well. So thank you so much, John.
John Lester:And Thank you, Laura.
Laura McGregor:Well, I'll talk to you again soon.
John Lester:And if you find out that that the rapport building works, let me know.
Laura McGregor:My version. Bye. But it's but it's not, oh, my favorite color is red. It's yours. You know?
Laura McGregor:Take
John Lester:care. Thank you so much.
Laura McGregor:You.
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