How do you go from selling tools at DeWalt and copiers at Xerox to becoming one of the top sales trainers in the industry? In this episode of ’73 and Sunny,’ we sit down with John Barrows, founder of JB Sales, who shares his journey through decades of sales experience, transforming sales training for tech giants like Salesforce, LinkedIn, and Google. With over 25 years in the field, John discusses the evolution of sales, the power of authenticity, and why he believes core values and enthusiasm are critical to success. Tune in as he offers hard-won insights into staying relevant in sales, navigating the modern sales environment, and what it means to elevate the profession through mentorship and self-belief.

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Damien: Hello and welcome to ‘73 and Sunny,’ the podcast about the journey of getting things just right. We talk to tech sales and marketing leaders about how they’re growing, dialing in best practices and getting closer to that sweet spot. I’m super excited today to have John Barrows. Join us. John has been in sales for over 25 years and is an entrepreneur creating his own highly successful sales training company, JB sales, JB.

Thanks for joining us today. 

John: Hey, Damian. What’s going on, man? It’s good to see you again. 

Damien: Good to see you. For the three people who don’t know you or who haven’t heard of you, can you tell us a little bit about your journey in sales and in sales training? 

John: Yeah. Yeah. I think you said it right.

I’ve been around for a while. I’ve been around the block a little bit. I think that’s probably longevity is more than anything else. The white people know me, but and we can talk about like the grind it takes to stay in sales. I had a rep actually asked me recently, John, like you, it’s been almost 30 years in sales.

Like how the are you still in this profession? And it’s, and I’ve had leadership, whatever, but I’ve always been a, but a direct hand to hand combat sales rep for 30 years of my life. Grew up Boston, went to school, Maryland, drank my way through four years of college, got my degree in marketing cause I didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up back then there was no degrees in sales.

And actually sidebar, I was just down at Bryant university down in Providence, Rhode Island, and they have a great sales school down there. And I am extremely optimistic about the future of sales based on what I’m seeing is happening at the university level. Finally we can dive into that, but, I got into sales with DeWalt, that was my first job driving around Dodge Ram pickup truck, giving away free tools to construction workers, which was cool.

Did that for a year and a half. And I sold it Xerox. And that’s ultimately where I think I got my true sales. Background fundamentals and probably the best training I didn’t know I got, I, they had this eight week back then sale Xerox was really well known for their eight week sales training program.

You went up to Rochester, New York, and you spent eight weeks in this. Now I didn’t do that. I was like part of the first class that came regionally. So they did it in Boston, but it was still eight weeks of like heavy, every day training. And and I sold copiers. To the government, which is about as rough as it gets from a commodity standpoint.

Did a year and a half of that. And then joined a buddy of mine who started a company IT services. I was the fourth person on board to run sales and marketing. I was 24, so I had no clue what I was doing. So I took all the training, Sandler, Miller, Hyman, Taz, spin, you name it, I was taking it. And, came across this group called Basho and Basho was the first training that I took that I really liked. It, it resonated because it was super tactical and it was quite frankly, the first time I had seen a sales professional train. So my mentor, Jeff Hoffman, trainers, they’re either failed sales professionals or professional presenters for the most part, right?

If you can’t do it, teach it. You always take it for a grain of salt. You’re like, all right, dude, that’s whatever. But you sit through usually a full day of training and you pull one or two nuggets out and you’re like, all right, good. This, when I sat in the bash show open session, I was like, holy .

That’s what a sales professional is. And it really made me realize like I’m nowhere near as good as I could be. And so it helped me take that next level. I use the training grew thrive. We ended up being the fastest growing company in Massachusetts for a few years in a row sold.

It got us up to about 85 employees and about 12 million in revenues. And then we sold off to staples. So staples came and bought us. Spent about a year going through the integration and come to find out apparently I’m not a corporate guy. Don’t have much of a filter and really don’t like playing politics.

So after a little while, Staples offered me another position. It’s a really nice way of firing me. And and I was looking for a job and Bastio said, you want to be a trainer? I was like, absolutely not. Again, I don’t like trainers. And they had a model where you had to sell to train. So you couldn’t just be a trainer.

You had to go use the techniques to sell. So you could train and it was a whole practice, which you preaching and come to find out, apparently I was supposed to be a trainer. I love sales. That’s my patent. That’s my primary passion. But I remember my mom was a career counselor and I’ve had a Myers Briggs since I was five, whatever.

And and she goes and I go, my, I got this really interesting opportunity here to be a trainer. But I just, I’ve never really thought of myself as, sales training. She literally starts laughing out loud. She’s like John Michael. And she’s the only one who calls me John Michael.

She goes, I never wanted to tell you what to do in your career. She’s but if I ever thought that there was somebody who was cut out to be a trainer and a teacher, she’s it was you. And I was like, what really? So I vividly remember going to cause they had to, as part of the interview process, I had to I had to train Basho on something.

They said, give me no guidance. Pick a topic, come in here, train us for 10 minutes on something like . And I had never formally trained. So I went to Barnes and Noble. I got literally training for dummies. And I read the, and literally on the inside of the cover, there’s like the 10 characteristics that you need that, whether you’re not, you’re cut out to be a trainer.

And I’m not joking you, Damien. I, every one of them, I was like, Holy , like that’s me. Apparently I’m supposed to be a trainer. And so I just took to it like fish to water ended up being, one of the best reps at Basho took on some bigger counts, brought on some bigger ones.

I’ll make a long story short, they screwed it up and I took it over. So went off on my own. About 15 years ago after they tanked it, took all my clients with me and, get to work with some cool clients like inside view, even demand based back in the day too. Salesforce, LinkedIn, Google sure.

Amazon, a lot of the tech and the SAS companies, but. I had to rebuild this company probably three times. I’m back on my own now. I brought it up to about 20 employees and about 6 million in revenues. And then the early 2023 hit and kicked me in the teeth cause all my clients were SAS and all my clients had money with Silicon Valley bank.

So that was fun. So I went up from like 6 million to zero in the course of two months and back on my own with my COO, Megan, and back on the grind again, getting out there, still selling every day. 

Damien: Awesome. Awesome. Thanks for the background. And I actually. I guess I took the opposite approach because I was, I got my master’s in education thinking I was going to be a teacher and instead I got lured into the evils of Silicon Valley and I’ve been in sales.

But I am I do feel like I am teaching every single day and train, helping people train up and sales people. But it’s super interesting to, to hear the story and and the basho. Piece of it. And I am going to just say one nice thing about you John, and that’s it and that is yours, yours was the most memorable and most effective sales training I’ve ever been on.

There was a close second. There was another one about selling to a CFO, which was very specific, which was great, but in terms of actual, just day to day selling, It was Jay Barrows and and, some of the things like immediately you could tell that you’ve been there, you’ve done that, and I know that the part of the what you want is to help people sell their products.

Authentically and you can tell, not only just that you’re an open book and Hey, listen, this is what it is, but what does that mean to a salesperson to actually sell authentically instead of what we’re thinking salespeople are, which is putting up a front and saying, Hey, you, we think of a used car salesman, but what does it mean to sell authentically?

John: Yeah. The, I always. Scratch my head about authenticity. And the fact that it is a superpower these days is curious to me because it’s so much harder to be fake than it is to be you. I just don’t understand why people try too hard. As I think, as long as you’re a good person, you’re trying to do the right things.

It’s a hell of a lot easier to go through this life and okay. Except the fact that certain people aren’t going to like you for you, but I don’t give a because some people do, and I think the thing that I try to impress upon sales reps is that it’s not about convincing anybody of anything.

I give you, I think if you’re in sales and you think sales is about trying to convince somebody about something, I think you’re doing it wrong. Sales will be ultimately is about helping people solve problems or achieve goals. That’s it. And if your problems aren’t big enough, your goals aren’t big enough.

Why are we having this conversation? And so what I tell sales reps all the time is, cause a lot of them are looking for jobs right now, or they’re out, unemployed and what do I do? And where should I go? I go take a step back, slow down to speed up here. Go do your core value exercise, right?

Which unfortunately I did a little bit too late in my career, but I, I’ve always had core values, but I never really documented them and really went through the process. And for anybody listening, all you got to do is Google core value exercises, plenty of them out there or chat, GBT, right? And once you really nail down what your core values are, right?

And then what you can do is you go look for companies, businesses, leadership, everybody who aligns with those values. Because when you align from a value standpoint, you can do some special things. If you don’t align on values, you’re just going to tear each other apart. Case in point this country, but that’s another topic.

But but with that, then. The, then the next thing I tell sales reps is the number one thing I think you need to be successful in sales is a belief in what you do. If you do not believe in what you are selling, if you do not believe in what you are, that your solution makes a real difference for the right type of person, go find something else to do.

Cause sales is a brutal profession. If you don’t believe it, it is a thousand times harder. But somebody told me something early in my career that I still live by this to this day that sales is the transfer of enthusiasm. It’s I believe that strongly in what I do that I just, if you fit the profile of somebody that I could help, it’s about transferring that enthusiasm.

That’s why I believe everybody’s in sales. We could have the, interview, but here’s an example. I used to work with engineers. My first company was Thrive Networks. We did outsourced IT support. I was one sales guy within 50 engineers. And like 10 of those engineers were Linux engineers.

And if you’ve ever hung out with a Linux engineer, they’re a different breed. Do they hang out? 

Damien: Do they hang out? 

John: Is it, I don’t know, actually, One of the Linux engineers told me this joke about Linux engineers is like, how do you know a Linux engineer likes you? They look at your shoes instead of theirs when they’re talking to you.

That’s right. So that was not my joke. That was their joke too. So anyways, but my point is I could take the most introverted engineer you’ve ever come across and tell them that they’re in sales and they will swear upside down and sideways. They’re absolutely not. But then I say okay. All right.

You’re not in sales. Let’s take a sidestep here. Could you give me an example of the last time you solved a problem? Or the last time you were like deep in code and you figured something out that was really cool? Or the last time you created something that was like really interesting to you?

And you literally watched them light up like a Christmas tree. And they’re like, Oh, the other day I was working on this. And it was like two o’clock in the morning. I finally cracked it. And this is what happened. And you see them passionately describe whatever they just did. And I say, Hey, congratulations.

You’re in sales because if I needed what you just told me. I’d want everything about that. And so that’s why I think this, it’s so important to understand sales from a fundamental, I don’t want to say right, because I’m not right, but my opinion of right, of, of being like from.

A position of caring, a position of service. If you look at it that way, and then you believe in what you sell and you have core values, man, you can do some really special things. 

Damien: And if you’re talking to anyone, whether they’re a Linux administrator or, developer or whatever it is, you just got down to their authenticity, right?

You just got down to, Hey, listen, I love. I love doing this, and then they’re authentic and they’re like, of course, I’m going to build this code to solve a problem. No one’s going to build code just to build code. No one’s going to sell just to sell that you, you have to sell to solve that problem, which is exactly what you were just saying.

In terms of the. The authenticity piece I would look at that most times as a trait, right? And I think that there’s a lot of different things, I look at this like trait and skills, right? Like I can teach skills. I can teach someone how to make a hundred calls a day.

I can teach someone how to do that. But then there are traits, right? And to you, is authenticity a skill or a trait? 

John: Interesting. I think it’s a trade, but I think it can be, I think it can be learned or I think you can evolve to it because I think so much of us right now are in this fake and especially kids these days, right?

In this fake Instagram world where everybody looks perfect and the FOMO factor and oh my God. So I have to be like that because everybody else seems to be looking good. But there, I think there, and some find it sooner in their lives than others But I think there is a point in a lot of people’s lives where they realize that it, that again, it takes so much effort to be somebody that you’re not and the benefits of it just aren’t there.

You know what I mean? Like you faking it, like even the whole fake it till you make it thing, like I, I don’t even agree with that anymore. I say face it till you make it right. Keep going after it and get knocked down and coming back up, but don’t fake it because fake is so obvious. And I think when you’re like in a meeting and you’re trying to be fake because you don’t, you, you don’t want the client to know that whatever, like they know.

They know. I can tell that you’re full of . So don’t fake it. Just tell them that you don’t know. And they’ll give you more credit than if you do. 

Damien: Maybe the skill then.

Maybe the trait is honesty and the skill is taking away those layers that you were just talking about, taking away those Instagram filters and the, Hey, listen, look how great it is and everything like that. And being able to get to the end and say, Hey, listen, I don’t know the answer to that. Or why would you need that?

Because I don’t have all the answers. It’s a great question. I’ll go back and get the answer to that. Maybe the skill is being able to to be vulnerable and Hey, it’s okay. And I tell new salespeople this all the time. It’s you’re not going to know every answer.

And and it’s great to be able to say, Hey, great. Let me go back and get my boss or something, because then you’re going to have another conversation. 

John: So I, I think I would have agreed with you probably about three years ago on that. Cause well, in fundamentally, I do agree with you. Okay. However, I think the challenge that today’s sales rep faces is that the tolerance for that is a lot lower than it ever has been before.

And I say that because of the advent of AI. So in, in the sense that it was understandable 2345 years ago. If you didn’t have all the intel or if you didn’t come prepared, it was what it was. I will tell you right now. And I did this actually, let’s go back to Bryant University. I did this experiment because well, this, they asked me to come down and speak to the team, right?

It was a big conference or this big competition that they were having. She gave me no guidance of what to do. She’s Oh, they just love you. Just go to, I’m like, I don’t know. I really like, what topic, right? So they had all gone through these scripts, right? Of these role plays and they did great jobs on these role plays better than 80 percent of the sales reps I see out there, quite frankly, but there’s that transition from the script to reality.

And I said, look, you guys are all great reading off scripts. We need to have a real conversation here because. A, if you try to pull that with me in a real world scenario, I’m going to kick you right out of my office. I’m going to tell you to stop with the canned questions here. You’re not getting graded.

B like you better come prepared for this meeting and have Intel and be and be able to answer a lot more than you should have in the previous, the days of pick my brain type of thing. And I told him, I go, look, a bunch of you are going to come out into the real world and you’re going to reach out to people like me and say, John, can I pick your brain?

And I’m going to give you one chance and I’m either going to let you for 30 minutes, have a conversation, going to tell you what you need to know. If you’ve come prepared and all those stuff, or the conversation is going to be about five minutes. Because I’m going to say, what do you know about me so far?

And if you say, Oh, I just tell me how you got to where you are in your career today, or, what keeps you up at night or , I’m literally going to hang up the phone on you and say, dude, when you respect somebody’s time, do your homework, come with better questions and stop with this .

80 percent of what we need to know from a client right now. Is something we can discover before the meeting sure. Yeah, it’s just Which I now have a 10k analyzer where I can take your 10k upload it and do that I have a buyer persona gpt. I have like I the amount of info So i’m not coming in if I qualify you like qualifying me Like I don’t need a sales rep to just ask me a bunch of questions that I already know what my problem is I need you to come with a perspective Right.

So I’m worried quite frankly, for this generation of sales reps that we have over engineered and not taught the fundamentals because we’ve given them too much technology and we haven’t taught them business acumen, how to engage with people, how to have a normal conversation, those types of things.

And AI is now doing all of that. Long winded point on your point was, that yes, authenticity matters as far as, look, I just don’t know the answer to that, but quite frankly, I think the answer is, you know what, Damien, hold on a second, let me open up my laptop here and fire up our internal GPT here, or let me get you that answer now, because the minute I leave your office or I get off this Zoom and I’ve lost control of the process and who knows what’s going to happen as soon as you go meet with somebody else or do your own Google search or use chat GPT yourself, you don’t see any value in me.

I have to be bringing like crazy value to any interaction right now. And that is a very challenging thing for a young sales professional. 

Damien: Got a bunch of thoughts about that. So thank you. When you said come with a perspective, I look at that as what. The CEB challenger sale would call it a commercial insight, right?

It’s like something like coming with a perspective. It’s Hey, listen, you might not know this. Like everyone knows, Hey commercial real estate took a big hit after COVID. No kidding. Why are you telling me this? That’s not a commercial. No one, everyone knows this, but if you can have a commercial insight, it’s you.

Hey. The fastest growth segment in the commercial real estate is X, Y, and Z, or it’s in the, it’s in the Northeast or whatever it might be. And this is why and, but I think also this, I’m contrasting that with what you’re saying is come with a perspective or come, be prepared or almost be an expert because you, an expert in something.

As opposed to what we were also just talking about is the ability to say, I don’t know, and and I think for young salespeople, that’s a hard, that’s a hard tight rope to walk. 

John: So here’s a super tactical example, right? John tell me about your priorities. I don’t know you.

I’m not gonna, whatever, open up to you right here, like Captain Sales Guy Hey John tell me about your priorities in your business so I can sell you some . That is get out of my It takes, so I’m a, let’s say I’m a CI and let’s use a complex scenario here, right? CISOs in healthcare.

I’m a 22 year old kid. I went to school for, communication or maybe psychology or something like that. I know nothing about technology. Five minutes before my meeting with you, Hey, chat, GBT. Okay. What does CISOs in the healthcare industry care about in 2025 and moving in, what are the top priorities for CISOs in moving in healthcare, moving into 2025 and what are some interesting questions related to my solution that I could ask to uncover some of the key pain points that they might be faced with and what are some areas that my business can potential.

That takes literally these days. Like you write a prompt for that. There’s tools that do it for you for crying out loud with AI. So now Damien, instead of me coming in and saying, Damien, tell me about your priorities. Hey Damien, look, I, CISOs in healthcare, man, obviously congrats for being, doing what you’re doing.

One of the things I’m curious about is, I was doing some homework here and I understand that a lot of CISOs walking into 2025, some of the top priorities are X, Y, and Z. Are you are you aware of that? Do you have the same priorities or are you looking at a little bit differently moving into the new year?

That’s all you got to do. 

Damien: Yeah. 

John: It’s like knowing a language. Here’s an example. Here’s another example. It’s like knowing the language. Like I went to Paris, right? For the first for one time a little while back. And all my friends were like, Oh, Parisians, they hate Americans. Oh God. They’re so rude. And I’m like, really?

And they’re like, yeah, we had a horrible time. They treat us like . I said, huh? And so I took French when I was a kid, right? I don’t remember any of it. But I do remember, anglais? As bad as that sounds, excuse me, do you speak English? And so what I did was I would just walk, where I was in Paris, and I would come up to somebody and say, excusez moi, parlez vous anglais?

And nine out of 10 people, Oh yeah, man, what’s going on? How can I help you? And I got treated like I had a blast in Paris because I respected their culture. And so I walked back to my friends and I was like, Hey, can I ask you what your approach was when you went to Paris? Did you respect the culture in any way?

Or did you do the typical American ? Excuse me, do you know where the Eiffel tower is? You know what I mean? And yelled at him, like they’re deaf. It’s the same thing with an executive’s time. Everyone’s most valuable asset is time. If you’re going to ask for my time, you better value it, which is do your homework and answer the questions that you can answer before you walk in the door and then ask for clarification of that .

I will give you, there’s something called confirmation bias or anchoring, where if I asked you, tell me about your priorities, who knows where that’s going to go, but if I had Damien, I’m working with other executives like you and they’re telling me that their top priorities are X, Y, and Z. Are you seeing the same stuff?

You’re going to say no, and, or yes. And, or no, but, and you’re going to give me way more detail because you’re more apt to correct me than you are to answer an open ended question. 

Damien: And my go to is pardon, mon français c’est très mal. And it’s Hey, my French is really bad. And they’ll say, oh, it’s okay.

Like it will. Because you’re, you are just, that’s a sale. That interaction is a sale. You want something, you want to know where the Mac dough is, where the McDonald’s is, they’ll tell you now, if you meet them where they are. And I think that is, this is getting to another point that I had is that you said that you’re, you have said that your why is to elevate the people and profession of sales.

And I think a lot of that is that we’re not, we are the, but Hey, where’s where’s the Eiffel tower. Like in sales, we’re not meeting the customer, the prospect where they are. From your perspective, why does sales need to be elevated? And what are you doing to elevate it?

John: It needs to be elevated. There’s a lot of reasons. Because first of all, historically it’s the least educated profession on the planet. It is the default profession, right? We all go to college to get our degree in whatever we think we want to get. We get out into the real world and realize either we, I don’t want to do this or I can’t make money doing this.

So I get into sales. And because it’s a low barrier to entry and there’s very limited training, it’s okay, here’s your territory. Here’s your quota. Good luck. So the reason that we have such a bad perception is because of that. It’s a self fulfilling prophecy, right? Because you take a kid who comes out of school with a, who’s got decent ethics and is usually a pretty good kid, you give him a territory and a quota and you say, you don’t make your number.

You’re not, you’re going to get fired and you’re not going to be able to put food on your table because your base salary is not going to cover it. You’ll have a normal kid do some pretty abnormal things. You know what I mean? They’ll cut some corners. They’ll say some stuff that they probably shouldn’t.

And that doesn’t do any of us any favors. But I think the main reason is because I think sales is the reason it needs to be elevated. And I’m going to be selfish on this is because I think it’s moving into this weird world that we’re going to be in with AI and how no job is safe. If you know how to sell, you can usually chart your own path.

You can usually, the freedom that sales allows is significant. And it’s also the ultimate equalizer. So it’s not just white guys, even though this is a bro culture, quite frankly, in sales, but women, people of color, like there’s limited barrier to entry. And it is truly one of those professions where the harder you work, the more you get paid.

Yeah, and so for financial freedom, to break the universe like I personally higher education right now I think is just absolute dog I think high like college i’ll be shocked if my daughter goes to college i’d rather so i’m paying for private school right now. So she gets like high school So she gets exposed to a bunch of stuff And who knows?

I college? I’ll be damned if I’m, if, I’m, she’s not going to go into debt, but if, if I’m going to drop 300 G’s for her to get a 40, 000 a year job that’s probably not even going to be there next, by the time she graduates and be beholden to some employer who doesn’t give a about her.

Sales is one of those things. If you learn the skill of sales you, interviews, ideas, selling, you go, if one industry gets completely disrupted by AI, okay, that sucks, I go do something else. Whereas like an engineer, say you went to school to be a coder, man. You got to go reskill yourself or you better be the best damn coder out there to, to code the GPTs to do this stuff.

Whereas sales, like you can just ebb and flow and go where, what you believe in, and then you could ultimately sell yourself if you wanted to. 

Damien: And I did hear something very interesting recently, and this is a trait versus skill thing. Again, that, Hey, you can teach someone how to code. You can teach someone finance.

You can teach someone how to build a spreadsheet and, plus minus this and that but they said it is the great equalizer chat GPT being another equalizer to be able to say, Hey. Write this code for me, but it is taking people with arts and humanities backgrounds or people who know how to communicate to be able to say, this is what I’m trying to get at and how can I build this?

And you’re not having to be a coder. So it’s easier for someone who knows the soft skills. To now in the future to be able to code as opposed to a coder being able to communicate. So 

John: Very hard to teach. Yeah. 

Damien: Let’s talk a little bit about the university piece. So you said that, Hey, at the very beginning Hey, I’m super excited about the future of sales.

Why is not, we have marketing degrees are all over the place. You have, communications degrees, you have all these management degrees. Why is there such a dearth, a lack of sales degrees? Why what is it? What’s the bad, why would we do it?

Every company sells. 

John: Yeah, I think it’s because it. Up until you should have Todd Capone on your podcast here. Cause he’s a sales historian and he’s got, he educates me all the time where sales used to be taught in high schools. Sales used to be an extremely respected career.

The 80s screwed it up capitalism like totally like really when the 80s turned into that greed culture. Let’s go. That’s when sales took a real hard turn to the other side. I think that I think historically, it would be because I think a lot of people consider it more of Oh, natural born salesman, you just either have to have it or you don’t, right? Like the skill trait thing. It was nature, nurture there’s some people that just aren’t cut out for sales. And I think the more we learn about it. The more we understand that it is a science, it is, it is more of a science than an art.

Yes. There’s absolute art to it when it comes to engaging with people, how to relate to people, those types of things. But there’s a structure and a process that, that actually, if you put it in place, allows your art form to be that much better. So I think through psychology and through understanding of metrics and those type of things that we start to realize, wait, this is actually something that fundamentally can be taught at two kids at a young age.

Damien: And you’ve said that you’ve said that we need to get back. Sorry, I was doing my homework, right? I was, you’ve said that we need to get back to the fundamentals. In sales. And it does remind me, those are the building blocks that you were just talking about. It does remind me of the John Wooden story about when, very first practice.

I don’t know if you know this, but at the very first practice with the freshmen, the very first thing he would do is teach them how to tie their shoes. You hear about this? And it’s, Hey, and one of the guys said why are we learning? I know how to tie my shoes. Why are we doing this? And he said, if you don’t tie your shoe correctly, your shoes not going to be supported in your high top. You could get, you could roll an ankle. If you roll an ankle, you’re not going to be able to practice. If you can’t practice, you’re not going to be able to play in the game. If you can’t play in the game, then we can’t win a championship. And those are the fundamentals that, that I agree with you.

We need to get back to the. Tie your shoes type of thing, do the research type of thing. So maybe if you can if we can bring some of these things full circle, what are some of the fundamentals that you learned in terms of sales from Basho or Xerox that you use today? 

John: Oh, man. School of hard knocks teaches a lot, right?

And that’s actually what I’m a little worried about right now. And that, so I, the answer to my search right now is what I was just talking about with Bentley that we’re, I’m sorry. Brian that we’re educating at a younger level, right? As opposed to making it the default profession and having a sales rep start at zero when they start at a company, right?

With no understanding of sales, that type of thing. That is over. And the reason is because all the grind, all the work that I did in sales early days, the hundreds of cold calls that just, updating CR and keeping notes and a handwritten thing. And. Standing follow up letters and going to a networking events and like juggling a million things and doing full cycle sales without any support from SDRs or any of that stuff that all turned me into the sales professional that I am today, right?

So exactly. And so I have context for every conversation that I have. I can relate to almost. Any scenario because I’ve been through it and I went through the pain. Now, two things are happening. One is kids aren’t willing to go through the pain as much anymore. And I don’t blame them. We do old man here a work ethic and work ethic is an issue, I think, but it’s not necessarily a generational issue, quite frankly.

It’s a societal issue, but I think that I understand why reps don’t want to go through that pain anymore because they don’t have to quite frankly. They have way more options to make money and have a career than you and I ever did. Sure. You and I had to go to, we didn’t have to, but realistically, we had to go to college, we had to get a degree, we had to get a job, we had to bust our ass at that job and shut our mouth and get told what to do forever until we earned the next promotion.

And it was just, that’s the way it was. I didn’t like it, but it forced me to understand. Now you can set up an Amazon shop and go to Alibaba and drop ship to Amazon and mark it up by 50 percent and make 10 grand a month if you really wanted to. So who am I to sit here and tell the kids that they stood, she’ll grind it and earn it and rah.

When they could go make 50, a hundred grand doing basically something on their couch and, rarely do it, but the other problem is. Yeah. Is that now these GPTs, these agents. Can do all that stuff, all that grunt work, all that low level we used to have the, the newbies do effectively now is being done a thousand times better than than with AI.

Like I, I just got off a call. I’m part of Salesforce stock, Salesforce, the sales blazer . And they were showing us all the agents and how to set up agents. And I’m looking at them. I’m like, this is better than 80 percent of the SDRs I work with. Like it just is. Yeah. So my, my fear is like, All this AI stuff is going to be awesome for guys like you and me, who have contacts, who has business acumen, who have all this stuff and can leverage it and take away all the work and be customer facing, but these kids without the context are getting erased.

And so that’s why the university is so important so that when they come into the working worlds, they have those foundational things and they can leverage the AI from day one, as opposed to learning at zero and trying to build up their curriculum to from there. 

Damien: Asking someone who doesn’t even have the patience to sit through a commercial to make 90 calls a day is going to be rough.

So that it’s a good segue into another question I have for you in terms of the book you wrote with your daughter, who now might may or may not go to college. The book’s called, I want to be in sales when I grow up and JB, I’m actually going through this with my son who did just graduate from college and he’s looking for A career in sales, despite seeing how stressed out I get and me pulling my hair, gray and everything.

It’s just he’s Hey dad, I want to do this. I was like, are you sure you want to do this? So one, one, why did you write this? And what are the lessons that, that it can teach? Not only the younger generation that we’re talking about, but also the older generation. 

John: Yeah, I appreciate it. The reason I wrote it was, a couple of everybody was always asking me like, John, when are you going to write a book?

I’ve been around for a while, whatever. And a lot of these other influencers, they have these books and they go on tours. And I was a state school kid, drank my way through four years of college. I don’t like reading. I’d feel like I’d be a hypocrite if I wrote a book. Yeah.

And also, what am I going to say that hasn’t been said a million times before? And I was, and I didn’t want to do it just to do it. I hate doing things just to do them. But I had a unique opportunity and it evolved because my daughter, when she was six, she came to me she was a Girl Scouts, right?

So she had just gotten into Girl Scouts. And she said, Daddy, I, I have this link here. And if you if you share it, people can buy cookies from me, to online. And she’s I know you have a big social media following. So could you maybe share it online? And I was like, no. And she was like, what?

I was like, absolutely not. And she’s like, why not? I’m like, A, that’s my network. And I work my ass off to build it. And B, why would they buy from you over every other little kid who’s buying who’s pitching them, girl’s called cookies. And she goes what do I need to do? I was like, you gotta give me your pitch.

And so we practice, like we, we set it up all the, did a video of her and she put a wig on cause she was a little nervous. And she’s like, all right, I’m going to ask her a few questions what’s your favorite cookie? She’s the lemonades. And I was like, why? She’s because they make a sweet taste in my mouth.

And she which goes through this whole little thing. We record it. I write a blog post on it. Obviously it explodes. And she becomes the number one cookie seller in the town by far. And then the second year she’s doing it again. This year we were going door to door and it, and Girl Scout cookies are in February and we live in Boston.

Yeah. February in Boston, it’s about as bad as it gets when it comes to just . So like her out there, like with her little thing and going, it was just, so we practice like objection handling and stuff. So we did a little recording on that and then we did a little, and then whatever. And then I wrote another blog post, took off number one.

And then the third year I was like, you know what? This is a cool story. And my daughter, I was a weekend dad, basically. I was traveling every single week for my, for 10 years, like ever since she was born, basically, I would leave on Monday. I’d come home on Friday. And when you try to explain, first of all, that’s a hard realization.

To look back on it, I wish I was around a lot more, but, when you try to explain to your kid what you do and you’re in It’s hard because. They see doctors, they see lawyers, they see police officers, they see nurses. So when you say you’re one of those, they have reference.

But when they, when you say you’re in sales, they’re like do you just talk to people all day long? And so I was like, how can I a connect with my daughter? And you have her help, help her understand why I’m doing what I do and what I do. And this little story was just a perfect example of it.

So we sat down and we mapped out this story of this girl, Charlie, who’s Charlotte my daughter and and her she had gotten this assignment at school where she had to write a report on a profession. And one kid pills out firemen. One other pulls out police officer and she pulls out sales and she was all bummed out about it.

She’s Oh, and she comes home and she’s daddy I got to do this thing on sales and I don’t even know what it is. This is a terrible. And I was like, all right, let me help you understand. I go, here’s an example. And this is the main point is I go see this. See this butter dish that we have right here?

Because we were making, in the book, we’re making cookies, right? I go, see this butter dish? I go, somebody had to sell the supplies to somebody for them to make this butter dish. Then the person who made this butter dish had to then sell it to the store so that it could be on the shelf. And then that store sold it to us so that now we are sitting here without butter dripping all over our hands.

I go, that’s what sales is. It’s helping people. It’s solving problems. And so we went on this journey of like her understanding of that. Okay, cool. Now let me go sell Girl Scout cookies and knocking on doors and giving a pitch that nobody liked and bad timing. And somebody was allergic to cookies, to to nuts.

And so she felt bad about that and gave it to free. And then at the end is the, the eight takeaways. Of it’s not all about making money. It’s about helping solve problems. It’s about working hard, all these different things. And so all those, I tried to instill in her are the same things I try to instill in, 50 year old men and women who still might not get it, go through my trainings.

Damien: There’s a lot of food related lessons to be had there John. I appreciate it. JB, thanks for so much for your time and insight today. If our listeners want to learn more about John or JB sales, feel free to connect and follow him on LinkedIn. Visit jbarrows. com and listen to his make it happen Monday podcast, wherever fine podcasts are sold.

John, thanks so much for joining us. Appreciate it. 

John: Thanks for having me on Damien. I appreciate it.