What does it take to unite sales professionals in a collaborative network that tackles today’s go-to-market challenges? Join us on this episode of ’73 and Sunny’ as we chat with Erik Aberg, founder of Avant Garde Collaborative and a seasoned sales expert with over 18 years of experience. Erik delves into the formation of his business, a platform designed for sales and go-to-market professionals to share successes, learn from failures, and leverage a fractional go-to-market model. This model has proven crucial for companies in the early stages of product development who lack the resources for a full-scale deployment. Tune in to hear Erik discuss the intricacies of aligning sales, marketing, and operational strategies to enhance customer experiences and drive business growth.

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Damien: Hello, and welcome to ’73 and Sunny’, the podcast about the journey of getting things just right. We talked to tech sales and marketing leaders about how they’re growing, dialing in best practices and getting closer to that sweet spot. Today, we are happy to have Eric Aberg join us. Eric is a seasoned sales professional with over 18 years experience.

And is also the founder of Avant Garde Collaborative. Thanks so much for joining us today, Eric. 

Erik: My pleasure to be on the podcast today, Damian. Thanks for having me. 

Damien: Of course. We’re excited to get a little bit more of your expertise and a little bit more of your perspective, but why don’t we just start off in terms of understanding a little bit more about Avant Garde Collaborative what it is, how you started it and where you are today.

Erik: Avant garde collaborative AGK for short is really a business model that I’ve been contemplating for a number of years and had the opportunity more recently to start building out the platform. It’s really an environment where go to market and sales professionals can come together, share some of their experiences and what’s made them successful, some of their failures, how they’ve been able to bounce back from those failures, and at the same time, provide an environment for organizations that are in earlier stages building out the platform.

Testing out their product roadmap, getting the fuel for what that placement might look like in the market, but don’t have the resources to do a full scale go to market deployment. So being able to leverage a fractional type model through the AGK business offering here has been really a breakthrough for organizations, especially in this type of economic climate.

Damien: Got it. And when you talk about. Go to market professionals and sales professionals. Where is that overlap? What’s, what does that Venn diagram look like in terms of go to market and sales? Because I think some people think that there’s sales is go to market. Some think, it’s marketing is go to market because they’re all about the messaging.

But help me understand your perspective in terms of. Go to market versus sales versus marketing versus maybe operations. 

Erik: The way I look at it, go to market really touches on anything that is customer facing at the end of the day. When we begin to plan out our interactions from a customer journey standpoint, we really need to look at it even from the forefront of that moment when somebody is trying to find your organization through.

Natural Google search as an example here, what that messaging is to get in front of them, bring them, what is that experience like once they come to your site and from there on out, what is that interaction like all the way to the close of that relationship and then being able to drive the adoption going forward and working towards that expansion and renewability of that relationship.

So it does dovetail a lot into different organizations for marketing operations, customer success, and sales all have a handle. On the go to market platform product management, product marketing. 

Damien: Got it. So it’s maybe not so much a Venn diagram where they’re separate distinct circles, but more of a wrapper around all of these entities to be able to say, Hey, what is our go to market strategy in relation to sales and product and customer success?

And basically it’s a strategy that encompasses basically all of the pieces of a company puzzle. 

Erik: Yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head there. It’s, we like to tend, we have this tendency to think in containment silos and we’re naturally structured in that sense. But when you take a, an experience of the customer that really is going to involve all parts of the organization.

So it’s not just an individual owning that relationship. It’s really the organization that owns that relationship. And that’s where I begin to view it from a go to market standpoint. 

Damien: Got it. And avant garde or AGK can help companies with any part of that go to market life cycle. 

Erik: Really more so on the front end, I would say, when we began thinking about, how do organizations think about getting their messaging in front of an end audience, what that end target user, what are the plays that need to be done both internally to operationalize that, and what are the processes and procedures to help accelerate that, and then not to lose touch with your own individual employees, being able to have that mindset of.

working with them from a culture standpoint, helping them become better from a professional standpoint without losing sight of working towards those end outcomes that are mutually shared with the client to in your own organization. 

Damien: Got it. And I appreciate that. One of the biggest pieces that I think is just the key driving force of any go to market strategy is, The ICP or the ideal customer profile in your experience.

What have you found that works or doesn’t work any advice or tips or tricks that you can give our listeners in terms of creating an ICP 

Erik: tricks and tips, I would say is formally form formal formally documenting the process out. A lot of us, I think, may have a tendency initially to work on a whim.

Think that we understand the products so well and what that end customer looks like and be able to put a square peg in a square hole and it’s dynamic. It’s iterative. It’s. The pain points for different individuals and different organizations are going to vary, and then we have this own perspective of what we think would benefit well for somebody else without really taking into consideration the perspective from the other side.

So when we’re building out and modeling out these ICPs, it’s important to understand. Really getting to the demographics of it using whether it’s signal liquidity or inbound messaging inbound data that’s going to help you be more intelligent about how you’re defining it, but formally planning it out and then.

Poking holes within it, testing it and adapting it in the wall being really having that formal documentation and that process established at the forefront is something I think we, a lot of us in the industry tend to take for granted. 

Damien: I would agree with that to be able to understand, Hey, what is our goal?

Because I think we just say, Hey, let’s just start working. And you could be working in the wrong direction, right? As long as you have that process, you have that goal. And I do think. In order to build that bridge from where you are today to where you’re going. It’s the data, like in, you had mentioned it, people working on a whim.

We don’t want our perspectives, as you were saying, or our whims to be coloring the, our go to market strategy. I do think that it really has to come down to the data. Hey, this is where we want to go. Who’s going to get us there. What kind of customers can get us there? And then looking at the data who have we sold to in the past?

Who do we believe? Has this need? What? What are those needs? How many companies are out there that actually can do this, can’t afford this that are in our market that are in our region that might be, actively looking at things in terms of intent. You talked about demographic. I’m talking about intent data or firmographic data or psychographic data.

So I think all of those, Yeah. Are the planks that can get us to, to that end goal. 

Erik: Yeah, I couldn’t have said it better. 

Damien: So when we’re talking about psychographics, and I know that you’re a huge EQ enthusiast. So first let’s, for everyone online, let’s Let’s define EQ, especially in the in the context of business or sales.

So when you say you’re an EQ enthusiast, help me understand what that means to you. 

Erik: Yeah, without using the words in the definition itself, it’s really self awareness, self attentiveness, and at the same time, also being able to take a look at that from the perspective of others. We really have our own individual realities.

When we begin to think about what reality is, we have our own version of reality in that sense, and that’s just our own interpretation of the world. So we need to implement self awareness and emotional intelligence. To really understand how our interactions and the interactions of others are impacting what are perceived and what their perceived reality is as it comes together.

Damien: And I think that’s huge in terms of marketing or sales, because it’s not what makes sense to us in terms of a marketing message or a sales demo or whatever we’re doing at that time. But it’s not about our perspective. It’s. It’s not how easy can you sell it? It’s how easy can someone buy it, right?

And we need to shift that into their own perspective. And so I I do think in terms of reading some of what you’ve written that it’s not just about the EQ in terms of emotional intelligence that we would normally think of. But it’s also about bringing in a form of mental health, right?

I think this is a huge part of we’re always talking about a work life balance. And I do think, especially in sales, which is a super stressful type of environment that is always very results driven, very. deadline driven, quarter end year end that there is this type of emotional baggage that, that comes with the stress that comes with this.

I didn’t always have, this gray hair, but after 25 years of selling, it just it can get there. So what are your thoughts in terms of emotional intelligence? As as a a marker for mental health in sales and mental health, meaning like how to, how do people actually stay mentally healthy within our really fast paced, stressful environment here in sales?

Erik: Yeah, that is just a phenomenal question. I’m really glad you asked that. Cause that is really important. At the core of my passion for this particular area and tying that into the sales profession more specifically, the society of human resource management earlier in the year published a report that said.

Employee satisfaction is at an all time low over the last four years. So this actually takes the data back before the pandemic. And that’s really striking to think about. The pandemic brought a lot of challenges to the human psyche, just in and of itself, getting isolated and remote. And then the economy’s faltering as well.

So all of that can really take an individual, have an impact on one’s individual self being. When we begin to think about that statistic being at the lowest level of employee satisfaction. And I think it was some 52 percent of employees don’t even think that their company or their leaders care about them.

That sends a message to me that as sales leaders, as leaders within our own organizations, we are failing our employees. Yeah, we may be. Implementing from an onboarding standpoint, company, knowledge, product, knowledge, ICPs, what the go to market strategy may really entail. I don’t think we’re really helping our teams understand the implications that the business and the world may have on one’s individual health.

And there’s not enough coaching being implemented or integrated into our weekly one on ones, our quarterly reviews, whatever they might be to bring that forward. And make it more of a center of attention for individuals. It’s not uncommon when you go look at job descriptions or employee job requisites to see grit and resilience, especially in the sales forum, be highlighted within that.

And that’s not something that is easily trained. I would say from a sales perspective. That’s something that we believe to be inherent to oneself. And I think that’s a fallacy in and of itself. It is something that we can train, but the priorities that are being pushed upon sales executives and go to market executives and how those align with the priorities of the organization don’t necessarily align with the mental health capabilities that we should be focusing on with our employees to help drive some of those gains going forward. 

Damien: I love that message. Is that something that AGK. Implements or weaves through in terms of your help with some of these go to market strategies 

Erik: It is so You know i’m designing a number of playbooks. One that i’ve recently completed is focused on the sales process and Taking a look at the essentials from lead generation all the way to scoping out the engagement and finalizing and onboarding, but another playbook that I’ve been working on and hope to complete here within the next month is one that’s focused on the emotional intelligence side of how you can begin implementing EQ into your own practices from a leadership standpoint.

And as the individual, we can’t just rely as individuals on happiness being given to us. Happiness is something that we attain ourselves. It is a, from immediately being born, that’s really going to be the happiest we’re at because we don’t know anything else. There’s a great book written by Dan Gilbert stumbling upon happiness.

And within that, he highlights that. A lot of research and one of the ones that kind of stands out is anxiety is really driven from the fact of not knowing. So there’s this mentality of not being able to predict our future is actually scarier than being able to predict a bad future. And humans are one of the only species to really be able to formulate imagination and to foresee a future that we would like to predict or anticipate.

Sure, there’s, other species, apes, apex predators, who can socialize and come together for hunts, things that are going to be more instinctive from a nature standpoint, but actually being able to imagine or philosophize what a state of future would look like is something that’s unique to us. And that actually has an impact on, our own state of happiness.

And when we’re not able to really begin to anchor in on some of those and set the mind in a more appropriate setting, it can be a downward spiral. And things can get pretty dark for some people out there. 

Damien: That is a perspective on happiness that I have not heard before, which totally makes sense.

And and I was looking more of it as some of the qualities. are dealing with focusing on the positive, right? Like training the brain to feel like to end it to just look at gratitude. And we’ve talked about this on 73 and sunny in the past, but just gratitude being part of this so that you can Feel accomplished and successful yourself and then look to others which actually then has a multiple fold result in terms of your happiness, but not knowing being the key to anxiety and fear is actually very interesting and I guess now that you’re saying that I know that filmmakers also Do this trick like if you think of some of the scariest movies in history you think of psycho Or you think of jaws and the very, and some of those scenes, like the the scene, the shower scene in psycho.

Like what Alfred Hitchcock did it makes you think that someone was killed because they have the knife and they have the shower and they have the scream, but you never actually see, unlike today’s movies where you see that all the time, you never see it. And cause he knew that people’s imaginations are worse than what he could ever show.

As same thing with Jaws, Steven Spielberg said at the very beginning, it’s, it’s a dark. And this woman is swimming and then she’s pulled down. It’s super scary because you don’t know what it is. And that is anxiety inducing. And so I, I actually never thought of just the fact that not knowing is is one of those keys to anxiety.

So it’s interesting to bring that up. 

Erik: Yeah. Great examples. I think Hitchcock was a master of implementing that fear without actually Showcasing that fear itself. 

Damien: Yeah. And going back to the sales side of this you recently wrote on I believe it was LinkedIn about love and friendship.

And I, by the way, I love this. I love that the interplay between professional and emotional or psychological emotions, because they are like, we are all emotional beings. We are not selling. Literally to companies, we are selling to people at companies and those people make rational or irrational decisions based on their emotional state or what the information that they have.

And, if we can give them more information, their anxiety goes down lower. That’s why we try to do the best demo that we can and the best information that, and how we differentiate because it, it actually lowers the anxiety of the buyers. And so there is a huge part. I think of selling that is underrepresented.

And you talk about another part, which is the the personal side of people, of business people, whether in sales or not, but you posted about love and friendship and the connection between having healthy relationships. And how that can be converted into sales or sales relationships.

I’d love to, if you could expand on what you meant by, having that connection between love and friendship and then being able to translate that into sales. 

Erik: Great question. It’s a tendency, in my opinion, to delineate between how we act outside of work and how we act at work.

If you do a disc assessment or any kind of personality assessment, Myers Briggs, sometimes they’ll incorporate this is how, these are your characteristics when you perceive you’re being watched, and these are your characteristics when, You perceive us. No one’s being watching that.

You’re just completely independent and autonomous, and it’s interesting to see at times how those might deviate for individuals. And when we look at the kind of line between work and personal life, it’s important to maintain that balance for sure. But it can also be almost a trap to shift personas and shift personalities from one to the next.

And I think that’s when we become inauthentic to ourselves is when we’re adapting a different persona. From an employment standpoint, when we’re in that actual work mode, it should not be a much different persona than what we are on a personal side. And so if we’re continuously evoking and maintaining a mentality of giving instead of taking being, putting yourself out there, being vulnerable, trustworthy, dependable, reliable, giving love, as opposed to just expecting to receive love.

Then that carries over to everything that we do, and that translates in the business side to stronger relationships and, the post that you’re referencing, I think I conclude with relationships are ultimately the greatest definition of one success and a number of individuals think Warren Buffett, who’s an idol of mine, that’s really how he defines success.

Success at the end of the day, one of the wealthiest individuals in the world, looking at it from something that’s a complete intangible and looking at it from the quality of relationships. 

Damien: I think that’s super interesting. And I think that Apple. TV has created a show that kind of shows the separation between exactly what you’re talking about, that we try to separate our work life from our personal life.

It’s called severance. And it is like the, people, I don’t want to ruin anything, but basically there’s a definite line between a personal life and a Professional life. And I think it’s just a commentary on exactly what you’re saying that’s where we’ve been or where we’ve been trained to think that we need to have completely separate lives in that. 

Erik: Yeah. Ultimately, at the end of the day, our experiences are truly unobservable to anyone except for the, to that individual themselves. My experiences, you’re not going to be able to observe, except, the only person that I’m going to be able to observe that is my own experiences.

So again, coming back to that, how we perceive others and that perception there really helps us understand and build those relationships even further. 

Damien: It’s a very stoic mindset, right? It’s only, how we perceive thing that is reality. Love that. I love the conversation. Eric, this is fascinating.

Getting, speaking of, what to do, what not to do in terms of relationships within sales. I know that there’s constantly a a struggle of that, the go to market sales methodology. So like within the go to market, I think sales methodology is probably the encapsulation of how sales is going to market, right?

Whether you’re using Vant, Medic, Medpick, spin selling, whatever, Challenger sale. I’d love to get your thoughts in terms of what you’ve learned with these. What, if you have a preference for one or the other, or, if someone, if people are looking, Hey, what would be the best sales methodology for us to implement?

Erik: Yeah it’s something that’s constantly evolving. And I think if you ask a hundred different sales leaders, this question, you’ll probably get a hundred different answers coming back at you. Yeah. Yeah, the sales methodologies and frameworks are great to provide that guiding light and in my opinion are often better used to help disqualify opportunities to poke holes within those opportunities you’ve mentioned earlier on, adapting to a sales cycle and how that differs from a buyer’s process.

And I think the evolution in today’s market is actually more evolving to Sales organizations adapting to the buyer’s process and understanding that and aligning with it, as opposed to trying to fit the buyer into a sales cadence, a sales process, our brains are really filled with all types of information on a daily basis.

And our predictions about what a pain point might be, or POV on a particular way to approach an account or a relationship are largely going to be influenced by those experiences. So we continuously make. All kinds of assumptions about things that we predict based on our past exposure and, what we have or have not heard before.

And that gets tricky when you start implementing that into your own kind of impact bias on this is what an organization or an executive has had struggles with in the past. So therefore this must be a struggle for you. And based on that, this is how you should be able to address and resolve. And that is what we’re counterintuitive to what we’ve been talking about because it’s removing the perception and the mindset of the individual that you’re working with.

And it’s becoming very isolated and more siloed and nonsense. I think, when you think about those frameworks, it’s great to have that information and that insight and that curiosity to always continue to discover more about the person on the other side of the phone or the relationship on the other side, on the other end there, but it’s really important to break away from those at the end of the day and.

Yeah. Rethink what that situation is revisit our own beliefs, question our own opinions and adapt and be open minded to how that flexibility and that ability to rethink some of those established views already. 

Damien: Yeah. And I think it is very similar to what we were talking about with the go to market strategy, where here’s our goal and we need to build that bridge.

Based on data. And I think that, say any of these sales methodology are in some way collecting data, like with band, Hey, do they have the budget? Are you talking to authority? Is there a need, do you have the timing, medic or med pick or medic with two C’s or three, whatever, however many C’s you want to put in the medic side but I do think that it was interesting out of all of them that I’ve read, and I’ve read a lot of them and implemented several of them.

Is around the challenger methodology, if only because that seemed to me like it had the greatest amount of data backing it up. And that to me was something that was of interest. And I know that there are some things About teach Taylor and take control with that, which is great, but it can be hard to implement.

So I think it’s it is a little bit different in terms of actually implementing the challenger sale, like within sales force or something, whereas, medic or med pick is easy. You have these, little pieces. But I it is. I think it’s all about the data. And if you can, and it’s not about our feelings again, it is.

Hey, what is happening with these deals to get away from our own perspective? As you said, it’s just a conduit for us to be able to get more information with and about our prospects and customers. So I think that’s interesting. 

Erik: Yeah, the data doesn’t take sides, right? And it doesn’t represent just one opinion or one point of view.

It’s going to be holistic about what that entire engagement looks at. And that is really the crux of it. We don’t, we won’t change as individuals. It’s in our human nature that we don’t change our own experiences until we can’t change that experience. And at that point is when we begin to look for ways to change.

Our point of view of the experience at the end of the day. So when we’re having sales engagements and as a sales professional, if you’re just running into a wall and not being able to advance an opportunity forward or overcome an objection, we need to rethink about how you’re approaching that. And.

And how that experience is being received on the other end as well. 

Damien: And I’m a huge fan of the data and I know that Gong, I don’t know if you follow Gong. 

Erik: Great organization. 

Damien: Yeah. Yeah. Cause it’s all it’s data driven and if you’re talking about I read something, a while ago that Gong said, Hey, introducing ROI.

Too soon in a sales cycle equates to a lower win percentage, which to me was what? I don’t get it But I guess the it I think the reasoning behind it is still not totally clear But the fact that they saw so many of them where ROI was talked about at the beginning sales of bidding beginning stages of a sales cycle Equated to lower sales wins.

I think it is because You are pushing something out there. Hey, listen, here’s our ROI. So it’s, 10 X, a hundred X, 5, 000 X. And people are like, if without the value, I don’t really see that. And I, maybe I don’t trust you because everyone’s talking about ROI, but I do know that you’ve had some perspectives on maybe not how to communicate ROI, but how to communicate.

In terms of pricing in a sales cycle, and I know that I agreed with all of those points in terms of avoiding proactive discounts and delivering price within the context of value. That’s, I think, one of the keys. So I’d love to get your thoughts in terms of pricing during the sales cycle and psychologically what that can or can’t do with some of our prospects.

Erik: Yeah, pricing I think is one of those areas that makes sales executives very uncomfortable at the end of the day and instead of Leaning away from it. We need to lean into it. Not necessarily shy away as to when the right timing is, because again, that’s going to come down to the buyer. A close colleague of mine actually posed the question to me the other week about if a prospect is asking about pricing before you enter into the discovery, should you share the pricing with them?

And, my feedback was this kind of takes us back to that sales process example of if you’re adamant about not sharing the pricing with them at the onset, you’re ignoring that. A critical element of where they are at in their buyer’s process. So from the buyer’s process for them, pricing is something that is going to be helpful for them to be able to make a decision.

If there’s fear ensuring that that fear is emulating from something that you don’t actually know. And what you don’t know is probably what that pain point is or what that business objective or that business outcome that prospect is looking to work towards. So you’re not comfortable presenting that.

And it’s, in my opinion, fine to share a range, but add the caveat that as that relationship begins to evolve, as you begin to understand the needs of the other party, and as they begin to understand the resources and solutions that you’re able to offer. Pricing should be something that’s more fluid and natural to talk about towards the end of the engagement and then begin positioning What that engagement is going to look for how you start working towards?

You know addressing the outcomes that you know This client is really beginning to look at you to solve some issues for 

Damien: I totally agree with that And I think it’s a great way to qualify or disqualify Prospects, if they are at the very onset of a sales cycle, only worried about pricing, they are most likely going to go with the lowest priced.

And that’s fine. It’s then you’re not wasting your time. There’s always two winners in a deal, right? One who wins the deal and the person who gets out first. And so I like it. Listen if we’re not the low cost leader, I won’t, I don’t want to waste my time. I don’t want to say let’s do a demo and let’s do a comparative study and let’s do a, business as usual.

And ROI, if they want to know, Hey, listen, this is X amount per month, and if they say that’s way beyond my budget. Great. Like I don’t want to waste my time, but if they say gosh, that’s expensive. Why is it so expensive? Then they are inviting you to share the value. And so I agree with you that we shouldn’t be scared of it, right?

We shouldn’t have that anxiety around pricing especially around people who are asking for it at the beginning, because at the end of the day, most of those are probably not the best fits. People are typically who are serious about it are typically looking to solve a business problem. And if they’re looking to solve a business problem.

It could be worth a lot of money. 

Erik: Yeah. And that’s a great point. And when you think about ROI going back to that topic that you were bringing up, ROI, when we present ROI at the onset of a relationship and the onset of discovery, you’re presenting returns. For other organizations, other clients.

Again, that’s going back to the mindset that you’re grouping everybody together with the same pain points and I’ll be it, there are arguments for that, especially when you go back to your ICP and where you’re playing within the market, but the cost of inaction at times, that’s going to be more specific to that prospect at the end of the day.

It’s going to be something that you can usually begin to work towards. 

Damien: That totally agree with that. And speaking of pricing, it is because salespeople want to maximize the deal and get on the leaderboard and, go to club and get all this, you’ve also written about comparison in sales, which I find interesting because I think it’s almost antithetical to what salespeople want to be like salespeople want to be compared to everyone because they want to know that they’re on the top.

And if they’re not then they might have to be looking for another job. But like in terms of the comparison in sales and along with EQ, I’d love to get your perspective on. On, on comparisons, because I think you wrote that it, Hey, maybe it might not be as, as good and maybe mentally you shouldn’t be comparing yourselves against others, even though inherently sales is a competitive game.

Erik: Sales is absolutely a competitive game, but I think ultimately at the end of the day, the greatest competitor is oneself. So as opposed to competing against others, you’re actually doing yourself a disservice. If I’m stack ranking myself and looking at number two, number one, number three players, if I’m not at the top there, now I’m starting to mold myself to the actions of others, which there’s a lot to learn from at the end of the day.

But if you’re a top performer and you start beginning to compare yourself to others and practices that others are doing now, you’re starting to lower the level there from a playing field standpoint, and you might be actually taking on practices that aren’t the best practices for you as an individual.

So it really comes down to that self awareness. I’m hyper competitive, but there are definitely situations where I find focusing on myself and focusing on the process and what works well for me will give me a better outcome personally than if I were to focus yet to what Damien’s doing and the successes that you’re having in that sense.

So it’s a it’s a dangerous measuring stick to start looking at when you begin comparing yourself versus others. And I’d say even more importantly, when you begin to draw self esteem from that comparison, because now you are placing your mental health and mental happiness on something that is outside of your specific control.

And again, that’s going to be. That’s teeing you up for a lot of challenges going forward. 

Damien: I agree with that. I think in terms of it’s, I guess it’s a slippery slope from looking at a leader board in Salesforce or something like that to. Equating your value as a person with who you are. And I know that there was I’m in Silicon Valley.

And I remember when I was getting out of college in 98, 99, and there’s a. com boom and people were going to different places and like they were paper millionaires and I was like, Oh my God, this is, it’s crazy. I need to do this. I need to do that. And then everything shook out and it was like, Oh, maybe it wasn’t.

Maybe it wasn’t that bad. Maybe people weren’t doing as well as I thought, if someone was at pets. com and then that collapsed and everything was done. So I think it is good to remember that we shouldn’t equate our self worth, our self value with how we’re doing professionally. I think it is, it’s something that could, Could help us, in terms of affording things, but I think it’s a good reminder to, to make sure that, that those are two different value sets.

Erik: And that brings forward, this bias of miss wanting, and that is thinking that we want something. Then when we get it, we’re left hanging with that sense of satisfaction associated with it, right? We create this great ideal of if I can attain this, I’m going to be exponentially happier.

And then when we get there. We’re not and that becomes a trap. I think we also have become susceptible to fall into when we start comparing ourselves to others and start looking at it from a competitive standpoint again. Our own reality is going to be different than what’s a perceived reality of somewhere else.

So that person who could be a top of the game at the head of the leaderboard, they still might not be happy. And at the end of the day, if you’re emulating if you’re emulating and mirroring, the tactics and processes of somebody else, and they themselves are not happy, you’re following a dark path.

Damien: Yeah, what is it? Comparison is the thief of joy, right? And that’s that goes to gratitude as well. Like it’s Oh, you can’t be grateful for what you have when you’re always looking at someone else. Last question I have. Actually, I have two questions, but the next one’s fun. But you are a proponent of continuing education.

So why do you think there aren’t more opportunities to learn about sales or to get a degree in sales. I was looking up U. S. News and World Report, and I think I was only able to find less than 200, maybe 150 150 companies across the United States and Canada. That actually had a degree in sales.

And I think that a lot of this, there’s a degree in marketing, there’s a degree in, business and business administration and all these, but there’s not a degree in sales, but I think every company is selling something, whether you are for profit or nonprofit, you’re, you are philanthropic or, you’re there to sell a service or a product, but everyone is selling something.

And so I would assume that there would be more companies or more colleges and universities. That would be having sales degrees. Like what are your thoughts in terms of. Being a fan of continuing education and also being a salesperson, but not having that being reflected in the university system.

Erik: Yeah I, that’s another great point. I think the university system is so designed to address the general education at the onset and then begin to get a bit more specified with electives and ultimately the end profession of that individual wants to use their education to move into and sales is something that’s prevalent in the Everywhere with everyone, every day.

It’s not just a profession, but it’s a way of engaging with others. If you’re my wife and I try and plan out wheels meals on a weekly basis, there’s days I’m trying to sell her on, the pizza that I want to have for for dinner that night and vice versa. So I agree. It’s something that’s really should be brought more into the education system, especially at a higher level, maybe even introducing, I would say.

Biology on how the human mind functions and, some more of the neuro based teachings and courses that really get to the essence of what sales is, in my opinion, it’s just really understanding how one individual thinks and how you as a an individual can persuade might be a harsh word, but, persuade others into adopting what your belief system might be.

Damien: Yeah I totally agree with that. And my final, hardest hitting question, you brought it up just a minute ago. Does pineapple belong on a pizza? 

Erik: Absolutely not. 

Damien: Oh, wow. Oh, wow. Okay I’m shocked actually. I am shocked. I, 

Erik: I know. I think that’s just my own personal preference. Admittedly, on that one, I’ve eaten some, if you ask me what my favorite pizza is, I’ll say it’s a tostada pizza, actually very non traditional in that one, but for me, pineapple doesn’t cut it on a pizza.

Damien: Okay. All right. If you’re ever in the the San Jose area, I’ll take you to a place that has a great a great Maui Wowie pizza, my heart down here. And they actually won an Italian pizza, like the traditional, it was several years ago for a traditional Italian pizza that they wanted.

They’re from California, but it’s pretty darn good, but Eric, thanks so much for joining us today. I’ve really enjoyed our conversation again for all of our listeners. Eric Aberg, you. A Berg. You can reach him at Avant Garde Collaborative. And Eric, thanks so much for your time and insight.

I really appreciate it. 

Erik: It’s been a pleasure and thank you so much for having me. Thank you.