Unpopular opinion: You should pay your top sales producer at least $900k per year!
Why? So he or she can generate millions of dollars in new revenue for your company, of course! (Why else?)
Obviously, that sounds great, but is it something even you (yes, you!) can make happen in your company?
The answer is yes, and our guest today is going to show you how.
On this episode of Evolved Sales Live, host Jonathan Fischer sits down with renowned sales trainer, Chris Manitius, to share the roadmap he and his team use to create million-dollar producers for B2B companies of all types and sizes!
Don't forget to follow us on LinkedIn for more engaging sales insights and discussions! Happy watching!
Meet Chris:
Chris Manitius got started in high ticket sales during the pandemic of 2020. After being forced to pivot from his events-based business, Chris was hired by Taylor Welch, CEO of Evans/Welch (The company that owns Traffic & Funnels, The Sales Mentor, Wealth Cap Holdings, and others.) Upon being promoted to head of high-ticket sales, Chris grew the division rapidly, helping his company become the fastest-growing and most profitable enterprise in Evans Welch's portfolio history.
Since that time, Chris has continued to focus on the art and science of predictably attracting and training million-dollar sales producers, and he works directly with internationally renowned author and trainer Jeremy Miner at 7th Level Communications as his VP of New Opportunity.
Check out the transcription of this webinar episode below!
Jonathan Fischer 0:04
Welcome back. Thanks for joining us. I'm Jonathan Fisher.
Well, from rocket engineers to Navy SEALs, the power of having highly skilled specialists on the job can yield remarkable results. The same is true in sales. Well, Chris Matthews is an expert in the art and the science of training, and finding first and training million dollar producers. He actually works as the VP of global sales for seventh level communications, founded by Jeremy miner, the highly renowned author and trainer and he on the show today, he's gonna show you and me exactly how we can do very much the same thing, find and train million dollar producers. Chris, fantastic to have you on the show today. Welcome.
Chris Manitius 0:46
Thank you for having me. I love that intro. I feel like I'm George Clooney on a TV show here.
Jonathan Fischer 0:51
Well, George Clooney is pretty tall order. Let's see if we can feel that one. How did you get involved with what you're doing? I love it. I always like to set it up. We got a great premise here today of finding and training million dollar producers, how'd you get swept up into that?
Chris Manitius 1:04
Well, so in 2020, I was running a business, it was a photography company called pic station. I still own it today. But that was my primary source of income, I was running this photobooth rental business that I built up from my apartment to be a national operation. You know, I had just hired my first employee about two months in took a big step, we had just hit our first $100,000 month in revenue, which was huge. I mean, I didn't at this point, I didn't really have a big warehouse or anything. Like there's just really me and my apartment. I think we had a small office at this point. But at any rate, the the what you all know happened is COVID the event industry specifically collapsed overnight, all my events canceled, people stopped booking events. So overnight, I lost my livelihood. Thank God, I had the critical insight that like if my thing isn't selling any more, I'm going to sell someone else's thing. And if it weren't for that insight, it wouldn't have brought me to sales. But that's how I ended up in sales. So what I did was I invested in my skills, my training, you know, with Jeremy and and other trainers who that were very good. And learn skills really, really well got my first sales job, made a little bit of money, then got a better sales job with more opportunity. And then in my first year in sales, I made $300,000 in commissions, total rookie, not an accident, I was a top producer in my company. It's because I learned the right skills so and so I went from 2020 Losing everything living in an apartment to buy my dream house two years later because of sales because of learning the right skills. So today, I hope to be able to help your audience with just, you know, understanding how to learn the right skills so they can accelerate sales.
Jonathan Fischer 2:42
That's a really powerful story. I love it. One of my mentors, Chet Holmes worked with him for years, he always talked about the great thing about skills. Anybody can learn them if you're willing. And whatever your your your your, your ultimate high point might differ from somebody else. But wherever you are, now you can get way better at it and enjoy the results of that. Well, the insights you're going to be sharing today about what it takes to become a seven figure producer. come from the real world, right? You have sort of the case study that you'll be working from. Tell us more about that, if you would,
Chris Manitius 3:11
oh, yeah. So So we trained specifically a guy named for Ken. And by the way, we've trained by 10s and 10s, and 10s of 1000s of sales reps at this point. And to back it up a little bit. So I'm with seventh level. So we're sales training company, we train 158 industries, including tech sales, specifically. So we've trained people in tech sales, one guy, specifically one thinking of who when he started learning from Jeremy, Archer chairman and founder he went from making 80k a year in commissions to 900k a year in commission selling the exact same thing. He did that by learning the right skills, learning skills, questioning all those things that we'll talk about later today. So that's just an example to show you the power of learning the right skills in sales. Thank you muted.
Jonathan Fischer 4:04
It is a super powerful story. And it doesn't happen by accident. I think you said that a moment ago. There's definitely some specific steps that you took in training this gentleman. So let's say we found a rockstar that we feel like they've got great skills, great personality, a lot of ambition. That's probably the most important one being teachable, being teachable and having a lot of ambition. Those are probably the key elements, right? different personalities can succeed. But would you walk us through what are the key elements and what did you do to work on those elements and hone them into into high end to a high level skills with this individual? Yeah,
Chris Manitius 4:33
so skills, pay the bills, I see someone just come to that. So ambition is great. Motivation is great. It's not going to get you very far if you don't have skills. Okay, so you really have two options. We're getting into sales like number one, start a sales job. Hope you do well hope your personality takes you where you want to go or hope that you have a gift of gab. The reality is that that's that's just not enough today. That stuff used to work maybe 20 years. years ago, you just talked someone's ear off until they bought, that doesn't work anymore, consumers are different, they've changed, they're more skeptical. And so then the modern sales producer has to act differently, and do his job differently to be able to sell more effectively. So what I would say to that person, if like, if you are an ambitious sales professional, just starting your career, you have two options. Number one, give it a shot, see how you do realize you're not making the kind of income you want to, you know, 510 years down the road, and then finally, maybe do something about it. Or number two, just invest in training upfront, like I did, like share candid learn the right skills to excel at your job quickly compressed time, get to the goal.
Jonathan Fischer 5:43
So what are some of the what are some of those specific areas that you need to work on to become that high level producer? Let's maybe make a list and then let's unpack each of those for the listener today if we can. Yeah, for
Chris Manitius 5:52
sure. So like, for example, for extra Ken So he had he cold calls, which perhaps some your listeners have sales teams that cold calls on a cold call tonality is huge. And if you don't have the right tonality, when you cold call, what's the prospect gonna do they're just gonna get rid of you because you just sound like a salesperson motoring through something. They're busy, they don't want to talk to you. So tonality is huge. So what you can learn how to do well, the first thing that I learned was tonality. And I can give you an example, typical sales rep. Hi, Hi, John, this is Chris with XYZ company, you know, yada, yada, yada. And they just go into their spiel, what most people do when they're like, Oh, I'm not interested, they hang up, versus the new model salesperson that we call it. They're going to use tonality. So they would say something like, Hi, do you want to roleplay with me for a second, Jonathan? Sure. Hi, Jonathan. Yeah, what can I do for you? Yeah. Hey, this is just Chris. I was wondering if you could possibly help me out a moment.
Jonathan Fischer 7:01
Okay, what can I help you with?
Chris Manitius 7:03
Well, I'm not even quite sure you could yet. I'm calling to see if you would be open to looking at any hidden gaps in your x, y, z, that may be causing you XYZ really bad result? Would you be open to looking at that?
Jonathan Fischer 7:21
We were just looking at our XYZ recently. Okay.
Chris Manitius 7:23
So what are you doing right now about XYZ pause. So now, in your opinion, being on the receiving end, how did that come back? How did you feel about that interaction?
Jonathan Fischer 7:31
While you keep me on the phone? I mean, because now I'm intrigued, like all that. All that open air. And that super calm, feeling coming across that was kind of almost mesmerizing.
Chris Manitius 7:42
It draw it triggers curiosity, because it uses human behavior to pull someone in, as opposed to like, if I just call him like, Hi, John. And this is Chris with XYZ Corp. You know, and they just went into their thing, what are you probably gonna do? I'm busy. Yeah, right. So the key there is to not sound like a salesperson. Because if you sound like one, you're dead in the water, especially on a cold call. Okay. So that's the first thing we train chicane on is tonality. Now, the second thing we train them on was skilled questioning. Okay, the way you we did that is by teaching him a sales structure that works in 158 industries, which is all of the industries, okay, teaching him how to have a skill conversation. So what that encompasses is the connecting stage, that's the top of it. So that's the beginning of a discovery call, like where you take the focus off of you as the salesperson or the prospect, okay, it allows you to connect with them with zero resistance and disarm the prospect and ignite curiosity that pulls the salesperson in. So we taught chicane, how to do that. We taught him situation questions, so it helps the prospect and the salesperson but more importantly, the prospect find out about their current situation, problem awareness questions. Those are what opened up the emotional door to find out what their problems are, why they have those problems and how those problems are affecting them. Solution awareness helps the prospect understand what their future could look like if their problem was solved. Consequence questions, helps the prospects question their way of thinking and explore the consequences of doing nothing. Then transition questions and then closing questions which we call commitment questions, which are four questions that we ask to be able to close sales in a low pressure non sleazy way that makes the client feel good, but also is has a calm, assertiveness to move the deal forward. So those are the things that we taught him.
Jonathan Fischer 9:32
You know, a lot of what you're talking about feels to me like it's all about measuring your energy in a way like really interacting in a way that isn't overly focused on pushing, but maybe pulling. Yeah. Is that Is that fair? Exactly. Right. Yeah, I like that a lot. So when we're talking about being prepared for these different industries, it's it kind of begs the question, there's some back you know, some homework that's required as well a part of a really good sales pitch. Session. All right, you can't just come to these calls and do it all on style, however skilled that style might be. You've also got to know about your industries. Do you have tips and tricks on that? What are some keys to coming in? Knowing your stuff? Are there some shortcuts?
Chris Manitius 10:12
Well, I mean, I don't know if there are shortcuts doing a little bit of homework before an engagement is good. It'll help you understand and have some context. And more importantly, won't like turn the business owner off if you don't know anything about them. So it's good to have some context. But a better a good discovery is where you're going to get the real meat potatoes of what's going on. And I would argue that's more important than just looking at a website, because you really want to understand what the problems are, everyone puts their best foot forward on a website, it doesn't tell you what the problems are. So it can give you a little bit of information, it's not going to give you as much as you need. That's where skilled questioning is going to come in to help prospects open up so they share with you what the problems are and how they're affecting them.
Jonathan Fischer 10:53
Yeah, good stuff. By the way, a quick reminder to our live audience. One of the great things about being alive is you have the opportunity to interact with our guests, we're going to ask you to go out and put your questions in chat right now we're going to bank those. And at the bottom of the half hour, we're going to have sort of an overflow q&a session for another 1015 minutes. So go ahead and put those questions in or whenever they occur to you, as we continue our conversation here today. Awesome. So Chris, as we're looking at the skill set was so we've got tonality, and we've got having a well structured conversation, maybe we could go a little deeper in so let's fly down a little a little bit lower altitude on these start, start us out was sort of the, the the front end of these conversations, what should that look like? Okay,
Chris Manitius 11:35
well, for example, like a connecting question typically would be something that along the lines of like, okay, so, you know, what is? So it's top of the conversation? Yeah, can you hear me? Okay, great. So the first thing we're going to do is it's not going to be like, how's the weather over there? How are you doing? These are typical things salespeople do? Like, prospects know, you don't care. Okay. So we actually advise to not really build that much rapport in that way. Okay. rapport, we believe comes from the back and forth a positive sales conversation that's productive. Okay. That's our concept of rapport. So a connecting question would be something like, so, you know, I was, so it looks like you've booked some time on my counter talk about possibly, you know, getting XYZ, is that the case? Okay, what is it about what you saw about what we do? Or about this resources? Or about this podcast, or about this ad that that attracted your attention? Oh, it was this and this. So immediately, what that's doing is taking the focus off the salesperson and onto the prospect and allows them to kind of get into the zone of thinking about what they wanted in the first place. Okay, so that's a connecting question. Sick, and that's going to be like in you're going to want to establish the overarching goal at the top, what is it that you're hoping to get out of possibly looking into this situation? This solution? Oh, I want to help my salespeople get better sales, so they produce more revenue? Okay, situation, question. So what are you doing right now about that issue? Oh, you're doing this and you find out some things about their situation helps them understand their situation to problem or illness? Do you like what you're doing the veteran about? Do you like what you're doing about what you're doing? You're gonna find out what they like about it, if anything, what they don't like, if they say they like things about what they're doing. To truce question would just be okay, well, sounds like things are going fairly well. Is there anything you would change about what you're doing about this? If you could, no one likes 100% of what they have. So this is where you're going to find problems? And what we teach people to look for is, what's the problem? How long has it been a problem? And you know, what impact is the problem having. So those are the really the three main things that people need to look for, that salespeople need to look for. And then solution awareness. So before you found us, we looking for a solution to solve XYZ problem. So you could have XYZ result and what were you doing about this? Find out if they tried stuff, if they have baggage, that's good enough information to know if your sales professional, ideal criteria, what would be their ideal criteria solution, help the prospect imagine and participate with you in the in the solution to your problem, you know, and building that and then the consequence of not solving the problem that would an example of that would be like, Well, Mr. prospect, you know, have you considered the possible ramifications of not doing anything about this? And, you know, this problem gets even worse, like what would happen at that point? skeptical, neutral, empathetic, key tonality there. So that's where you're going to help them build urgency, okay, but why do something about this now, though, like, why not just circle back q3, q4, hope it just gets better on its own Oh, well, because you know, now and they're going to talk themselves into doing it. Now, this builds urgency. So that's in a nutshell, what the sales structure is, you know, in a b2b environment, you're going to then book a second call where you're probably going to do a demonstration of your product and then you might do a proposal on that call, or you might do it on the third call, but at least from the first call, that is going to help you build a business case for You're solution to have leverage to be able to present that in a way that makes sense to the prospect move forward.
Jonathan Fischer 15:07
One thing that we one thing that we know about these large enterprise sales is that it's very rare that there is just one or two stakeholders, right? There are teams involved and the way decisions are made vary. What what do you recommend in your training for the sales pro on that front to help a discern who are all the stakeholders? Because that's not always immediately evident and be how can you shorten timeframes and get, get all those folks into the conversation effect? Yeah, so there's
Chris Manitius 15:35
a couple of different ways. So you want to do what's called stakeholder mapping in the conversation. So figure out like, who else is concerned about a problem? Who else is responsible for solving this problem? And, and then, you know, at the end of the conversation on the first call, you know, you could say something like, okay, so And by the way, like, before we part ways, like who else is responsible for making sure that this problem gets solved? Oh, it's this person and this person? How do they fit in? Okay? And you know, what, it helps you just so you don't have to like remember all the like the details of what we're going to be going over when you go to them? Would it help you if you actually brought them on for our next appointment so that we could talk about the problems that you're having? And how we'd be able to solve those? Would that help you more if they joined us? So getting them in like to show up to the second call? Is is a great, that's a great place to do it at the end of the first call? Or if if you're not able to do that, at the end of the second call, making sure like after you ask the commitment, closing questions, if that prospect is sold them that solution, and then we teach them objection handling on how to actually get them aligned with the solution and get other people to come for a follow up call to actually go over it with you. So there's a couple places where you want to ask questions to do stakeholder mapping to figure out who else is there and do your best to get them on a subsequent call?
Jonathan Fischer 16:56
And so what do you find, by the way, is more of an industry wide question. It's kind of a sidebar question. But how long are these cycles typically with with pros that you folks have trained? I IV track that much. Are you seeing any shortening of timeframes on decision making? We have building enterprise deals can be can take half a year or longer to go typically, right? Typically, yeah,
Chris Manitius 17:18
when you build more urgency in the prospect, sales cycles shrink a sales cycles fundamentally are linked to human behavior. If the prospect hasn't realized the full scope of his problems, and the consequences of not solving the problems, then the sales cycle is going to expand because the problem in his mind has not been as expanded as as it could have been right? As whereas if a sales professional, did his job really well for her job and found problems built urgency, built a gap, and built the consequences of not solving that problem? What do you think happens? sales cycles shorten, right? Because there's more urgency that is more need to make a change. And that's, that's the job of the sales professionals to direct focus, build urgency so that these things happen?
Jonathan Fischer 18:10
Well, and if you are good at pointing out the pain points, then you're more likely to shorten cycles as well. Right? Going back to good old Jay Abraham, people are far more likely to run from pain they are to seek a benefit. So we've got a good overall sort of set of skill areas we work on, I understand that they're at seventh level, you guys have a methodology and there's an acronym and E P. Q. I'm curious about that. Why don't you take us through that just in short form, if you would,
Chris Manitius 18:37
yeah. So it's neuro emotional, persuasive. Questioning. So it's using behavioral science to help prospects persuade themselves? Because no, like, who is more persuasive, a salesperson to a prospect or a prospect to themselves? Yeah, I think we all know the answer to that. When a salesperson says something to a prospect goes in one ear out the other when their prospect says that to him or herself, it's, it's part of them. That's what the methodology is based on skilled questioning, and using questions to be able to help someone come to their own conclusions. And the result of that is more sales, happier clients, and happier salespeople because sales is just easier and it's more fun and it's less combative, less stressful.
Jonathan Fischer 19:29
Yeah, for sure for sure. What what are what was the basis of this? Does this come from just kind of human psychology Jeremy miners on experience? What are the origins? Yeah, so
Chris Manitius 19:40
Jeremy studied human behavior in college and he you know, got a sales job because I think he was a young father this morning to make money was not good at that sales job because no one's born good sit like a top sales professional. This is these are learned skills. So he went back to his human behavior background did a lot of studying on his own right Probably 1000 books sought mentors, and then he developed this methodology over time then in his 20s. He was earning 6070 80k a month. And then eventually between two to 3 million a year, using this methodology that we've used to train 158 different industries. So works in every industry. As long as you're selling to people have problems and your prospects have problems, and they're not extraterrestrials can't help those people.
Jonathan Fischer 20:24
Well, unless, who knows? I mean, for all we know that there's something going on. I mean, it could be it could be a whole market about to open up. Yeah, but that's a different show. Different different podcasts? Oh, yeah. So, so that. So it's basically it really is based on human behavior. And I liked that a lot. One thing that I think that could be a risk, when you're talking about this idea of how to sell is it sounds like it could be manipulative. But the way you're role playing it for me during the program today doesn't feel manipulative. To me, it feels very calm, and confident. Those are two things that most people find very attractive, especially when they're, you know, the rest of the world is so stressful. You're almost, it's like you're creating a space for them to actually be pulled in. I think you're kind of doing someone a favor, if you have something really good to sell anyhow, absolutely. What are your thoughts on that? Do some of the trainees have to go through a learning curve on that and learn sort of this art and science of persuasion? How's that go with your trainees? Typically? Well,
Chris Manitius 21:25
okay, so I think what you mentioned earlier, like, is it manipulative? Well, I think it's the job of a sales professional to sell things that are good, that help people and to use superpowers for the forces of good. Because yes, you could be highly persuasive. And you could be someone like I won't even mention names that uses persuasion to scam people out of money. That's not what we're about. We're about helping people helping say, we want to make sales great again, okay. We want the profession to be looked at positively. We want people to have positive interactions with salespeople. Because salespeople are problem solvers. You know, there are many problems in the world wouldn't get solved, if it weren't for a sales professional had to go through a lot to get that deal done. So we are on a mission to help salespeople, you know, be seen better in the marketplace, have an easier time with their job, get paid more, and then have prospects have better interactions with salespeople? I hope that answered your question. I think I got sidetracked.
Jonathan Fischer 22:22
Yeah, like it makes sales great again, we can get the hat. And yeah, well, I mean, the reality is nothing happens till somebody sells someone, some something. I think that's a saying for many years ago in business and marketing. And it is absolutely true, and persuading someone to take action in their own best benefit. People have a hard time making a decision. So I think, you know, We're fans of sales Pros are here on the Evolve sales leader. And I think the key is to do it in an evolved way, which is what we're talking about here today. Well, Chris, for the next couple of minutes, if you would, what are some initial steps, you could tell the listener to take if he or she would like to either a make themselves a more of a seven figure producer or be trained somebody to do that?
Chris Manitius 23:03
Well, the first step would be to learn the right skills. And if you resonate with what I went over today than it would be to learn any PQ, the way you could do that is we actually have a special offer for you guys, it's seven bucks, just in basic training. It's called the any PQ Black Book of questions, you could start getting a taste of the methodology, get some ideas that you can incorporate into your sales process. So that would be the first step our Facebook page is sales revolution we have I don't even know how many people in there 15,000 16,000. So sales revolution on Facebook, it's the URL is sales revolution dot group join there, you can see, you know, it's totally free. You can see what sales reps are doing, how they're using any PQ, what industries they're in, we do free trainings in there. So there's a first steps I would take and if this is something that you're serious about, like in terms of leveling up your own skill so that you can be top 1% in your industry, like we've helped 1000s of our clients do. If that's something you're serious about, then, you know, they can reach out to me, we can talk about our more advanced trainings, which was the guy I mentioned earlier? Sure. Can we train to make 900k a year, he did advanced training with us and it wasn't cheap. But we I'm sure he couldn't be happier that he did it. Okay. But those little steps, just making sure it's a good fit, getting at least some training. So you know, you're effective what you do.
Jonathan Fischer 24:19
Yeah, I love that. One way to turn it around as well is maybe there could be a little analysis somebody could do on the call, like, what are some of the key mistakes that are being made? Could you rattle off a few of those the maybe the five or six things you might be doing wrong? That would tell you you need an update on your skills?
Chris Manitius 24:37
Well, if you're if you're talking too much, if you're defaulting to, you know, you asked me one or two surface questions and you're pitching, pitching pitching, that would probably tell me that would certainly tell me that you there, you will need a skill set update. Because that tends to be what sales professionals do when they don't know what to do prior to that and it's a natural thing to do. You just want to tell people about what you sell. So if that's what you're defaulting to It's not as effective as what we do. So I would encourage you do that if you're stuck in your head or you're freezing and you get an objection and you kind of freeze, you're like, okay, just call me back later, or Okay, let me know, if you're doing these things. Or if you're getting the end of the call and ends, and you don't know exactly what the prospect was thinking, you don't know why they didn't move forward. If you're if you're having those types of issues, then I would say it definitely makes sense to get some training. If you're a sales leader, and you're like, you know, I've tried everything with my team, they're just not hitting numbers, I know, we can sell more. I don't really know what the problem is. And then you can reach out to me directly and I can help you with some possible, you know, team training options, any of those things, you know, if you want your sales reps to be more effective, happier, the job making more money, and you feel like they're just doing outdated stuff, like maybe the the option close, like, do you want to do the red one or the black one? Okay. Well, it'd be Visa or MasterCard. If they're doing that stuff, it's probably not gonna go very well. So
Jonathan Fischer 25:58
you're not a fan of the either or close. So I thought that was a time honored tradition among Sealed Air. It's dated. It's dated. You heard it here first is dated. All right, it's time to move on. Yeah. Well, speaking of time to move on, I think we've covered some really good ground here, Chris. And I think it'd be a great spot for us to move over into some q&a. We've got some fantastic questions coming in from our live audience. And let me grab a couple of those. And let's maybe begin with this one. Ryan doll. Speaking of some older approaches, I'd like to get your impression on this one. Ryan says one tip that we teach our sales team is mirroring the tonality of the client, or their key points, he touched on it seventh level related to mirroring.
Chris Manitius 26:39
We train on tonality. Okay, so mirroring. It's a concept I'm familiar with. But we we train more on using tonality. And I think there's it's different ways of looking at the same thing. It's certainly an important principle, I think, like if someone's the problem with marrying, is this. If someone's going really fast, and you try to keep up with them, and you can't slow them down, then the the conversation could go off into the wilderness into the weeds. So keeping someone like out of the weeds on track is going to help your sales process go a little bit better. But yeah, mirroring mirroring can be good. But really, we train on like tonality, what it is, how to be aware of your own voice, how to be aware of how you're coming across, and so that we focus more on the tonality rather than the mirroring of the prospect, if that makes sense. Just to keep it kind of succinct.
Jonathan Fischer 27:38
Yeah, like that. Here's a question for Lindy. She's asking are certain personalities better suited for this approach than others? Or do you feel anyone could learn the skill set to be a seven figure producer, anyone,
Chris Manitius 27:49
any all different personalities, and I'll share a funny story. Jeremy, I think when he got his first sales job, they told him he didn't have the ideal personality for sales, and that he wasn't cut out for it and that little fire under him and he learned the right skills and now he's probably the best salesperson in the world. Okay? If not one of them so, and he so this works for different types of personalities. Even if you never saw yourself as a salesperson you don't like being a salesperson this works for all sorts of personalities.
Jonathan Fischer 28:23
Well, I think that's going to come as good news to a lot of our listeners. Thanks for sharing that I tend to agree I've learned over the years that it doesn't have to be the extroverted talkative type at all. In fact, some some outright introverts
Chris Manitius 28:34
do very well in sales sometimes better than extroverts. They listen more.
Jonathan Fischer 28:39
Yeah, listen more, say less. But when they do speak, it's better thought out. Let's see here. There is another good question here to shine the light on urgency I liked that says Can geniusness so that that's, that's a big one. I think we could even go deeper on that. How can you create more urgency. And a lot of times when you're speaking with people who are mid level and these enterprise companies, hey, they, they gotta be involved. But it's not there necessarily their pocketbook. It is urgent, but like, talk to me, maybe give us a bit more on that. How can you discover and or create some urgency?
Chris Manitius 29:13
Well, what is it? What are the ramifications for that person? If nothing changes? Is their job going to be more difficult? Or is the company going to have to downsize? Are they going to lay off people? There's always something driving someone what's in it for them? Why do they even want to fix this? Are they up for promotion? And if they don't solve this, and and problem gets worse, what happens then nothing happens. So finding the individual drivers of a person in that deal can be helpful. And consequence questions are huge for that, like, whoever you're asking you see what happens if you keep hemorrhaging funds through this ineffective advertising? And you're not able to, you know, stay above water? What would happen at that point? Yeah, that makes sense finding a gap. And then consequence questions are how you can build urgency.
Jonathan Fischer 29:57
Good stuff. Joshua asked this question how important As marketing and sales support a sales enablement in the mix,
Chris Manitius 30:03
marketing and sales are so important. There's such vital, intertwined, vital things to intertwine. Marketing helps sales more than, you know, sales relies on leads for marketing. But like it when you have powerful marketing that reminds your prospects about your offer, it helps salespeople a ton with their pipeline. So if you have a company that's just constantly putting out training and content staying in front of your customers, and the salesperson in a conversation with some two months ago, that prospect might be like, I've been meaning to call that guy back. I really want to solve this problem. It actually helps your salespeople manage their pipeline and get more pipeline deals, just having really good marketing to stay in front of people. So very, very important.
Jonathan Fischer 30:43
Yeah. I'll follow up on that for Joshua. Do you feel that that's typically lacking? I mean, is that an area that a lot of listeners on the call could maybe look at? How could we better integrate? Oh, yeah, and maybe maybe even have more like a unified pipeline approach? Because a lot and a lot of companies, especially the bigger companies, they're still siloed off, right? The whole the branding and marketing people are in different offices, and they're different people? Is it? Are you seeing that that's Is there a shift? And if there's not, if it hasn't happened in a given company? Do you have recommendations for making that shift getting more integrated, the
Chris Manitius 31:14
two departments need to talk there's so coworker reliant more than many companies realize, like, at some level, we're very good about this, like we do keep them siloed. But we communicate a lot like are the leads good? What do we need to change so that we can provide better leads, and marketing does a fantastic job staying in front of people? And so our sales team will have prospects that just say, hey, you know what, I was thinking about this, I keep seeing Jeremy, you know, I really want to make a change. That's just an example. But I would encourage anyone here with a company, if you have the ability to just put content out there. It has positive effects more than many people realize to help the salespeople close more deals to stay top of mind. So yeah, they should they should work like this for sure.
Jonathan Fischer 31:57
Yeah, for sure. If you can, if you want to go ahead and build on the previous plug. Jocelyn is asking, she's very interested to know more information on the ultimate training you mentioned is the best place just to go to the seventh level,
Chris Manitius 32:08
could it might be easier just to book in, you know, a call with me, if you're wanting to do that I can kind of give you a lay of the land, I'm happy to provide my booking link here. So that would be the easiest way. If you're not quite ready for that totally fine. I encourage you to join our Facebook group, you can kind of network, ask people, the ultimate training. So you know, in terms of like, what the investment is, it ranges and we have training options that are pretty basic, like I have a $7 one for you guys. It's like what cheapest one or more advanced trainings range from like, 3k, all the way up to like 15 25k just depends on what your goals are, what you need, and what's lacking. So and that's why I would encourage you to just get on a call with someone like me from our team, just so we can actually understand if we can help you and then what you need, how we can help you get there.
Jonathan Fischer 32:54
It stuff. Well. And if you want to put that chat chat booking link over to me, oh, yeah, provide that the listener no problem at all. Cool. Be happy to do that. This is great stuff. And the good news is there is it's a never ending need for salespeople. There's a lot of conversation when in the era of chat GPT and all of that AI have many different kinds of somehow salespeople will become obsolete. And I'm in agreement with other thought leaders that if anything, it just means you've got to be that much more skilled, but you're still going to be very much needed. The more skilled you are, the more longevity you can have. Would you agree with that? 100%.
Chris Manitius 33:29
I mean, at the end of the day, people like even with chat, GBT, they're going to crave human interaction. And, you know, technology will change the job of the sales professional, probably, it'll make the job probably a lot more efficient. It's possible that maybe not as many sales reps will be needed, but sales reps will always be needed because you can't replace human motivation and drive. And people I think at the end of the day, they want to work with someone they want some sort of human interaction, like we don't want to all just talk to robots. I know when I talk to a to a to a chat box, all I'm doing is screaming for a person. And I believe that people want that and continue to want that if the salespeople are, you know, fun and easy to talk to which we train people how to be
Jonathan Fischer 34:13
well, I think you put your finger on something that as we've gotten more and more and more and more technology based that lack of human touch and interaction I think could make you stand out right if you have a sales process that allows for more of that debt speaking to the marketers on my listening listenership. There's an opportunity for you in your pipeline. If you're if you're speed to lead, it's not just a bot, but an actual human just reaching out to me and you're gonna get you're gonna get my attention. So I resonate with what you said there, Chris. So here's a question from Josh, where they kind of it kind of occurred to me earlier, too. So. I mean, not every opening out there is going to have the potential for a sales producer to make a million bucks. And I guarantee a lot of the listeners are saying Where can I find these openings? Like I'm all about it. Do you have recommendations on that? Yeah, I'm actually
Chris Manitius 35:02
considering starting a Facebook group that actually educates salespeople on the landscape of that. And what I'm going to start doing is actually interviewing people from different industries to show them the good, the bad, the ugly, what people can make what they make on average, because I think that's just lacking so. So the short answer is, you're not easily going to find it just like with a job posting, because they're not going to advertise you can make a million bucks what happens is someone exceptional comes in there a few people, and they can do that. There are vehicles where that's easier and where that's more difficult. But it's a lot of the best sales jobs are not even found on job boards, although some or I can tell you that solar right now guys are making great money, you can make a million bucks and solar, financial services insurance, if you're good. Sales is either the highest paid or the lowest paid professional depending on how good you are.
Jonathan Fischer 35:51
Well, and in those areas that those industries you just named, you wouldn't be just any old job selling low cost insurance, you probably are talking about learning the art of selling larger types of products to more wealthy individuals correctly wealthy individuals or companies. Yeah.
Or companies. Yeah. Well, and with solar too, right. If you go enterprise or municipal, that's where the big, big bucks arbuscular Right. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Well, a lot of great clues, as well as golden nuggets dropped on our listenership today, Chris, I really appreciate you being on the show. It's been a great ride, and you've been really real value to us. Thanks for coming on today.
Chris Manitius 36:28
Thank you for having me.
Jonathan Fischer 36:31
Well, and if you've been enjoying the content and the guests that we've been having here on our show, you can check out any of our previous guests by going and finding the Evolve sales leader podcast, wherever you'd like to go get podcast, or that'd be Spotify, Apple iTunes, or wherever that might be. And a big shout out to our sponsor overpass.com. They are the leading resource for finding talent at a high level of quality very quickly if you need five STRS to grow your tech startup and you need them by last Tuesday. Well you could do by next Tuesday by opening your free account@overpass.com And the system will instantly send you appropriate opportunities to interview highly qualified and skilled individuals that work the phones and create pipeline for your company. Check them out overpass.com and just see how great they are to work with. Well for the whole team here. I'm signing off that's going to do it for this weekend. Thank you to you the listener that's making the show such a success. We continue to grow by leaps and bounds. Come on back the next time here on LinkedIn live. Bring a friend and we'll see you when you get here then take care everybody.
