AI and The LinkedIn Edge with Jeb Blount

I'm Todd Miller of Isaiah Industries, manufacturer of Specialty Metal Roofing.

Welcome to Construction Disruption, the show that explores what's new,

what's next, and what's working in the construction and remodeling worlds.

Today I'm joined by my co-host, our VP of sales, Seth Heckaman.

What's the scoop, Seth?

Hey, looking forward to this conversation.

Uh, known this guest for a long time.

Learned a lot from him, so going, looking forward to learning some more today.

Sounds good.

Well, I have a quick story to share if I may.

Okay.

Seth, I know you've been the owner of a horse or part, owner of a horse

for what, a few years now, right?

A few years.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's cool.

Hopefully your daughters enjoy that.

Well, I gotta tell you, my wife and I recently bought a horse.

Um, I know I haven't said anything about this here at work.

I probably should, I haven't mentioned it, but we did buy a horse.

Um, it's interesting though, so she will only come out of her stable after dark.

Honestly, she's becoming a bit of a nightmare.

Okay.

That was an appropriate one.

'cause our, you know, uh, Jeb knows more about sales and horses than

horses.

So

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Well, let's get started.

You good to go, Seth?

you have looking forward to it.

Fantastic.

Well, today we're thrilled to welcome a true giant in the

world of sales and leadership.

Jeb Blount.

If you're in sales and you don't know his name, you probably do know his books.

Things like Fanatical Prospecting, selling In a Crisis, people Buy You

the AI Edge and his newest book.

The LinkedIn Edge, which I just started.

So I, for one, am especially excited about his newest book, given how important

relationship building is in today's world.

Um, Jeb is also the founder of Sales Gravy, focusing on sales training

and enablement, enablement solutions.

A highly sought after speaker and a master at helping people learn to connect better,

sell smarter, and lead stronger jab.

Welcome to Construction Disruption.

We're truly honored to have you with us so that we can dig into some topics

of great benefit to our customers.

Thanks for having me on.

It's been a long time since we've been together and, uh, I think

of you and your company finally.

Um, and, uh, and I appreciate the intro.

I need to get you to follow me around and like when I walk into a

room, if you could just do that for me, it would be so good for my ego.

Well, I'd love to do it.

I had a few words in there I've struggled with though, but I'd love to do that.

Well, like we've alluded, we've known each other for a few years.

Um, can you share a little bit though with our audience, the roots of your

passion, um, for helping people to sell better, helping people to lead better?

What's, what's the genesis of all that?

That's a really good question.

You know, I don't know that anybody's really ever asked me that question.

Like, what's like, how did this come about?

I started selling when I was super young.

I started selling in college.

Maybe the genesis was in my mid twenties, I became a sales leader, so I got, I got

my first sales job and I fell in love with coaching and developing and training

my people and watching them succeed.

And so much so that I would pick up opportunities to train other

teams or teach things, or the organization that I worked for would

have a big sales conference and they would bring me on stage to speak.

And so like, I gave my first like big keynote to a huge crowd of people in

Palm Springs, and I think it was in like 1996, so a really long time ago.

But that, um, it, there was just something that, that gave me joy.

To, to do that.

And then, uh, as my career progressed and I grew in the corporate world and

started running really large sales teams and advanced, um, I kept finding

myself even with my large sales team.

So at one, you know, at one point I've got a sales team of about a

thousand people that I'm working with.

then.

I would gravitate to going out and seeing those teams and teaching them something

or working with them on a strategy, or when we did our sales conferences doing

workshops and breakouts and training.

So just, I think, um, probably the, you know, the best way to

put it is, um, whatever God's purpose for me was on Earth.

Um, he, he, he put joy in my heart when.

You know, when I'm doing that work.

Um, so to, and to do so, you know, that joy makes me or perpetuates

continuation of doing that.

And so, so much so that, um, the reason that I have people in my company around

me is that I love doing it so much.

I'd probably be broke because I just do it.

I do it for free because no matter where I'm, no matter what I'm

doing, if you ask me about sales, I'm gonna spend some time with you.

I've always noticed that about you.

You are very willing to share and help people get better, and I love that.

Well, as I alluded earlier, you have just been amazing at

all the books you have written.

I think when, uh, we first met, it was right after people buy, you had

come out and man, it's just been a.

Flurry of activity since then.

But I wanted to talk a little bit about the book you released last

year, which was the Ai A Edge, and of course, AI is just disrupting

everything, including construction.

Kind of curious what inspires you to write this book because, you know, it's,

it's a little off the track in terms of a normal sales training sort of book,

but how is the way that you see AI changing business owners and even how

salespeople should approach their work?

I'll answer both those questions 'cause they're, they're a little bit different.

So what was the inspiration?

The inspiration was a phone call.

I was in San Antonio.

I had just left a keynote, uh, that I delivered for a big company.

And my editor, who's a vice president, John Wiley and Sons, the, the

company that publishes my books.

Called me, I answered the phone and you know what's up Shannon?

And she goes, Hey, you know, we we're looking at AI and we're thinking we

need to have an AI sales related book.

And uh, we don't want anybody to write it, but you at the time, Todd, I'm

not thinking I wanna write an AI book.

Like literally when I'm saying she's saying the words to me, I'm

thinking, like you said, this is way off of what I normally write.

I'm really not that interested in it.

But she did the one thing that, you know, I can't help.

Like she go, we want you to write it.

So she made me feel important, which is important, by the way, for relationships.

Absolute.

um, and then she created exclusivity because then I'm thinking, well, if

I don't write it and someone else will write it, and then I'll regret

that I didn't write it because they're getting all the glory.

So I'm like, okay, I'll do it.

So I shelved another project.

Um.

Uh, fanatical prospecting sequences that has been pushed off to next year.

I shelved that product, uh, project and wrote on the LinkedIn edge,

and I brought my good friend Anthony and Reno in, uh, to, uh,

to help with the, with the process.

So that was what inspired it.

Now, once we got into it, it was a little bit different.

I, we totally got into it.

You started looking at AI and the impact it's gonna have on everyone.

And I use AI every single day of my life.

and.

And then start weaving it into like, how do you work this into sales?

Now, the core premise in this book that, that I stand by vehemently,

is that sales professionals are not gonna get replaced by ai.

In, in your world, for example, in construction and roofing and, and I,

I work through a lot of work in home services and in big time construction.

The people that are outstanding in the mud, the people that are climbing up on

roofs are not gonna be replaced by ai.

Now, they may be augmented by ai, like you can use a drone to go up and help you run

measurements and take a look at things.

But your, your work in the field is never gonna go away because when people

are making those complex decisions.

They wanna spend time with another human being that can help them

make those complex decisions.

So if you're a business owner or you're a salesperson and you're looking at

ai, and let's do this from a business owner standpoint, my, my team is,

uh, we have 34 people on my team.

So if we go back when, when we first met, I had two people on my team and

it was me and my wife, and that was it.

Today we have 34 people on the Sales Gravy team.

And I met with them back in June and this was my message.

So I took, brought 'em all to Asheville, North Carolina.

We had a summit, sat down with them and said.

We're not gonna build more people, and we have added a couple more people,

but we're not adding a lot more people.

We're not gonna double the size of our, of our footprint.

What we're gonna do is we're gonna start using AI to be more productive.

what I'm looking for is I'm looking for a group of people who has, you

know, a, a total span of 34 seats or 34 sos, and we're gonna start operating

like a company that has a hundred.

We're gonna leverage AI to make ourselves that more productive so that

we can compete with bigger companies, even though we're small in size.

the way that I describe this to people, and this is not in the AI book, but

this is sort of the, the, the thought process in trying to help my own

team adopt and put AI into practice is that that you are standing in

front of a symp, the new orchestra.

So you can imagine you're in a, you're in a auditorium and there's a crowd

behind you, but you're standing in front of them and you're the conductor.

In front of you is a little pedestal.

It's got the music on it.

You're holding a baton, and in front of you are all these instruments.

So there's oboes and violins and uh, and symbols and flutes, and all the

things that are in a, uh, an orchestra.

That is what it, it's like for business owners and for the

people that work in businesses.

In the age of ai, you are the conductor and all of those instruments out there,

those are your ais and it's your job.

the conductor to get those ais working in unison to, to make beautiful music

or to help you solve a problem or to fix something, or develop something or

think about something, but that, that orchestra is going to make you bigger.

Because if you imagine the conductor standing in front of all the seats

and they're all empty, the conductor, maybe they can play one instrument, but

that's all they're gonna be able to do.

as we move in into the next year, two years, three years

down the road, I encourage people to do is look at it that way.

I'm the conductor.

using my human intuition.

I'm using my emotion.

I'm using my creativity.

I'm using my ability to think in non-linear ways.

I'm using my ability to look at problems and think about problems and, and, and

conceive problems that I've never like, think ideas I've never had before.

Knowing that I can go right back in front of my AI orchestra

and I can say, you know what?

I got this thought.

Let's think about what we should do about it, and I know exactly the ais

to tap into to make that a reality.

A good metaphor.

That really is, uh, and it's just such a, it opens up such an amazing universe.

Well, I'm, I'm kind of curious.

I mean, and, and it seems like ai, I think.

A lot of people are starting to dabble in it and finding out, gee was, this

is pretty easy, but is there anything you could imagine a salesperson trying

to do with AI that would be a mistake that that would not be helpful to them?

Yeah, the number one mistake would be thinking that you

can replace yourself with ai.

No.

Gotcha.

Great example.

Today I was on a, a, a webinar, um, or no, I was on a, excuse me, on a

conference call a day, but it was a video call like this, and one of the people

had replaced themselves with a bot.

Hmm.

Um, now they were actually doing the speaking, but their

avatar was AI generated.

that was a mistake because there was no way to connect with

an AI generated face, right?

It wasn't, it was, we, you knew it was AI generated, you knew it wasn't them, and

you and instantly knew it was artificial.

So when you think about, um, communication, if I'm writing

a letter to someone, the.

And by the way, in, you know, in the LinkedIn edge, there's

tons of prompts in here, and we talk about the same thing here.

This is a really good continuation from, from the AI edge.

But if you're writing an email and you let AI do all the work,

people know you're faking it.

Everybody knows you're faking it.

So if you use AI to help you get there faster, and then you put your human

touch on it, if you, if you write it, then you're gonna be able to express

what you wanted to express faster.

it sounds like you did it and you wrote it, and by the way, you

put some heart and soul into it.

anytime you're putting AI in front of you and your customer and, and, and

you're not doing it in a transparent way.

So for example, let's just say that, um, you and I had a sales

meeting, a discovery meeting, and I sent you an AI generated summary.

If I wrote, if I wrote you a note and said, Hey, Todd, it's

jab over blah, sales gravy.

Hey, thanks for the meeting day.

Really appreciate it.

Hey, I've, I've attached the summary that my AI put together.

I've had a chance to go through it and read through it.

I've edited it, but I think it captures our conversation and our next steps.

I thought I'd send this to you as a convenience.

That's perfectly okay.

I'm completely transparent about the AI generation.

The, my note to you is completely human.

The conversation we had was completely human.

So the biggest mistakes that salespeople are making primarily right now is that

they're using AI to build their messaging, and they're not going back and they're.

editing that.

So what I call AIing it in, right?

So you're just using AI to do the work for you.

The second mistake that salespeople will make is trusting ai.

So robot rule number one, uh, in the AI edge is never trust, always verify.

give you an example, a day I was writing a letter today, it was a long letter

and it was an important letter, and I was using AI to help me get some

sources for that particular letter.

It was a legal issue that we were dealing with.

it would give me a source.

I went back and checked all the sources.

in other words, I didn't, I didn't just trust the ai.

AI did a great job.

I could have just copy pasted what, what I did right into the letter, and

it'd been fine from a legal standpoint.

But the last thing I wanna do is cite something.

and then it's wrong.

So I went back and checked, and of all the sources, it was right on 99% of them.

There was one source when I went and read the source, and then I

did a search inside that source.

The AI cited something in that source that didn't exist.

So it was a hallucination.

So.

It's super important to us when, when it matters and when, you know, when,

when we've got something on the line.

Never trust, always verify.

And by the way, for all the people that are hopeful that all the AI companies

are gonna work the hallucinations out of their ai, they're not gonna do it.

Um, no matter what they say, they're not trying to do it.

They're focusing on other things.

Those hallucinations, the things that AI do, the, with the things they

do to that lie to us, essentially, they're gonna keep doing that

and they're gonna do it forever.

So.

Just get used to it.

Always check your sources.

Very interesting.

Well, I wanna jump in because I, I, you touched on something that I had

already picked up on, and that's the fact that the LinkedIn edge, um, really is.

A follow up to AI edge in terms of, you know, telling you,

Hey, here's steps further.

And, you know, again, I'm just starting into the book, but one of the things I

picked up on real quick was the, uh, way that I could use AI to help me, uh, learn

more about who's out there on LinkedIn.

And, you know, it's, it's really opened up my world quickly.

But, um, I'm, I'm kind of curious, so, you know, what are just some great

things that you think people will learn from reading the LinkedIn Edge?

The, the number one thing I think you're gonna learn in the book, and this

is called Gratuitous book promotion.

Um.

Hey, I'm, I'm doing it for you too.

Um, I think the, um, I, I think if we, if we start at what the LinkedIn

Edge is, this is a pipeline book.

So the primary purpose of this, of this book is not to teach

you some conceptual, here's what LinkedIn is, here's how you do it.

purpose of the book is a follow on of the book I wrote, fanatical Prospecting.

So it kind of take the AI edge, take fanatical prospecting, take

the LinkedIn edge, plug that in.

That's what you're gonna get.

So the, the, the primary focus is how to use LinkedIn to put more new

opportunities, new business opportunities into your pipeline on a consistent basis.

Uh, those opportunities could come from existing customers, they

could come from new customers.

And we also break down prospecting because there's been a lot of noise on

AI o or on LinkedIn, say over the last 15 years or so that tells salespeople that

you don't really need to do traditional sales work and prospecting work.

Just go use LinkedIn and your pipeline's gonna be magically full.

We all know at 15 years later, after everybody used all that

hype that that's just not true.

Um.

And so what we really focus on is two forms of prospecting.

There's fast prospecting and slow prospecting.

So fast prospecting is what we would traditionally call fanatical prospecting.

So fanatical prospecting is, I need to interrupt people, I need

to engage them, I need to convert them into pipeline opportunities.

The people that you're interrupting could come from inbound leads that

you're generating through marketing.

They could come from lists that you're building through research.

They could come from lists that you are building on LinkedIn and we walk

you through how to go do the research, do the, do the sorts, do the searches,

uh, and build those particular lists.

the fast prospecting motion is primarily in my world, pick up the

phone and some people's worlds, it's go knock on a door, go swing doors.

Um, it could be email, it could be direct messaging, it could be smoke signals, but

the intent is interrupt, engage, convert.

And we're doing that fast because when you need to fill up your

pipeline, it's like being in a room and not having enough oxygen.

You can't breathe, so you gravitate to that.

If we take, go to the next level, which is slow prospecting.

Slow prospecting is a sequence.

Strategic and intentional set of interactions with someone over time,

that then creates an opportunity to open a buying window in the future.

So, uh, I work heavily in like heavy equipment in construction, for example.

I've got a lot of clients in that space.

And if you're, uh, let's say you're own a construction company and you're

gonna buy an excavator, and the excavator's gonna cost $800,000 or

it's gonna cost $500,000, you're not making a decision like that on a whim.

You're looking at your current equipment, you're looking at

the lifecycle of the equipment.

You're looking how much it's costing you to maintain the equipment.

You're looking at future projects, you're looking at all those things,

so no one's gonna call you up and say, Hey, you wanna buy a piece of equipment?

You're gonna go, yeah.

They're gonna call you up and they're gonna build a relationship with you

over time, and they're gonna get to know you and you're gonna get to know them.

And you're gonna create a level of, of, of, uh, familiarity.

And so hopefully your salesperson is identifying by having their conversations

with you at future buying window, and then they're using, say, a LinkedIn, or you

could just do this in person networking.

I mean, LinkedIn's just online networking.

But you could use this in a way so that, that when the buying

window opens, I'm in play.

I'm, you're talking to me, you want to talk to me.

I've gained trust over a series of touches and the bigger the dollar

volume of the sale, the more complex the sale, the more likely that strategy

is gonna work out for you long term.

But no matter who you are, if you're running fast and slow at the same

time, in other words, you're using a LinkedIn, for example, for your fast

prospecting se prospecting sequences.

And in the book we tell you about how to do that through LinkedIn direct

messaging and how to use different touches on the, on the platform to do that.

you're filling up your pipeline now.

You're running slow prospecting.

So think about the candy now and later, right?

I'm using slow prospecting for later at the intersection

of fast and slow prospecting.

That's where top sales professionals are making a lot of money

because one is feeding the other.

And, and, and they're no longer in a situation where they're

constantly running out of oxygen.

And that's, by the way, what a lot of businesses do, right?

We're super, super busy, and then we're absolutely empty, and

then we're super, super busy, and then we're absolutely empty.

We can end that cycle of the desperation, rollercoaster, the up and down, up

and down feast or famine with a. A more, um, dialed in blended strategy

that uses all of those pieces.

So the whole framework for the book is built around that.

The first part around, um, part one, fast prospecting, part two, we dial

you into time management for it.

So how do you, you leverage LinkedIn but in both fast and slow.

And then the, the, the back part of the book and which is most

of the book is built on that slow processing, uh, prospecting

process, which is everything from.

The connections, the familiarity.

How do you, um, create a lead gen machine from your LinkedIn, and

then how are you using that to multithread into the accounts and

the deals that you want to get into?

Such good stuff.

And I, that's what I always appreciate that about your content Jeb, where

it's always this like both and of, it's not only phone and it's not, you

know, not the email or the other, uh, new technologies that are available

to us and it's not swinging the other.

Uh, too far the other direction.

You know, I, I want to tell you that Fanatical prospecting along with, uh,

Anthony's book, eat Their Lunch, has just transformed how we operate as a sales

team and what our outbound efforts are.

And, uh, we frequently in sales meeting, quote in sales meetings,

quote that, uh, salespeople who don't prospect have skinny kids.

a favorite of ours.

And then also, yeah, we were just in familiarity season.

We've sort of coined that one around here of, Hey, yeah.

are busy.

We may not get the conversation right now, but they're gonna

remember us in three months.

But, so o other than what you've laid out in the AI edge and you know,

using LinkedIn, I'm just curious, you know, years now since Fanatical

prospecting, is there anything else that, uh, new or different or things

you would supplement that content with that you're teaching folks now?

And before I do that, I just recognize that, um, uh, I just wanna, you know,

go, go dogs for all Ohio people up there.

I know y'all are feeling high and mighty right now.

That was targeting on Marvin Harrison, Jr. That changed that game three years.

I had my University of Georgia.

You have a big game this weekend.

Oh, Ole Miss is coming Town.

We do really big game this weekend, and, um, you can bet that, uh,

uh, Kiffin is gonna be looking to, uh, to take some scouts with him.

So, the, uh, oh, and this is the, my University of Georgia College

of Medicine Veterinary Medicine.

So we, um, my wife and I have an endowed scholarship at the veterinary medicine

place for people who work on horses.

So how about that?

Very cool.

Um, that, you know, when you, when you think about, um, that the concept of

slow and fast prospecting, there's a couple of pieces in this book that I

think are, I think, really important.

One of those is this concept of familiarity.

So, uh, and I was just on a, a podcast yesterday with a college

professor had done a lot of research in this, and he'd done research

in how familiarity leads to trust.

So the more people who see your face, hear your name.

That actually creates this level of trust.

And it's not like a, you get trust immediately.

It happens over a period of time.

In, in the book we talk about, uh, how you, like if you, if you saw someone

on tv, and I always think about this ages me a little bit, but I remember

watching er back in the nineties and the first time you saw, saw George Clooney.

He wasn't famous at all.

but he, he kept, you know, he kept showing up and then he ended up in another

movie, another movie, another movie.

And pretty soon he is one of the, you know, the biggest movie stars ever.

And you'll, you'll watch anything with George Clooney in it.

If you like George Clooney or, um.

Bruce Willis, like who, when he was on, um, this is back in the eighties,

right when he was on Blue Moon or whatever at Blue Moon, but he, but

he, nobody knew who he was and then he got bigger and bigger and bigger.

Ryan Reynolds is the same example of that, where he was on some sitcoms

and then he got bigger and bigger.

And now when you see them, you trust him in any movie.

Like they say, Hey, this is starring, you know, um, George Clooney or Ryan Reynolds.

You go, I'm going to that movie 'cause I like this person.

It's the same thing in life.

if you're out, like talking to your contractors, you're out having

conversation with your contractors and you're just showing up, then the

more you show up, the more you become familiar, the more they like you.

I mean, as long as you're not a complete putts, they're gonna like you.

Right.

And, and so in, you know, in the book we talk about the five S's of LinkedIn.

That's the final part, part five of the book.

And one of the S'S is showing up.

How are you showing up on LinkedIn?

What are you doing?

And we, if you go back to part two, which is how do you, how, you

know, how do you manage your time?

Everybody who's hang hung out on social media nodes that you

can eat up an entire day hanging on social media if you want to.

But if you've got your time blocked every day for LinkedIn, like

any other prospecting channel.

Part of that is showing up.

You're showing up in your network.

You're showing up in front of your contractors, your customers.

You are liking the things that they're posting, and you're making

comments on them, and they see your face and you're maybe tagging them

in things had something successful.

The more that you do that, the more familiar you get.

And if you combine that with being intentional about the network that

you're building on LinkedIn, who you're letting into your network,

how you're organizing your network.

How you're showing up for them that begins to create that ecosystem of trust

so that, again, when a buying window opens, like, and, and a buying windows

can open because there's, they're gonna open, like, I've got a project coming up.

The buying window opened, right?

I, I got, I've got a new customer.

The buying window opened, could open because I've got a contract that's

expiring with a competitor, and I'm interested, it could open because

we're opening up another division of our, of our company that is gonna be

focused on, on high-end luxury roofing.

Like we, it could be any of those things, right?

But we've, you've got a buying window open.

You can create buying windows.

So if I've got trust with you and I'm building trust with you, and,

um, and I come to you and say.

Listen, I've been watching you in your business.

I've been looking at some of the challenges you're facing.

I've got something that can help you and it can change something for you.

I can create a buying window, but the customer's not gonna engage and

have a conversation about that if there's not a reasonable amount of

motivation on their part to go, go, go through a sales conversation.

So in some cases, in fast prospecting, those buying

windows are easily identifiable.

other cases, um, they might, might not be.

So when we start thinking about, um, the slow prospecting and familiarity

piece, we're talking about covering, essentially covering accounts over time

in a way, both in person by phone doing traditional synchronous conversations

and using LinkedIn to create that leverage so that one day you walk

through the door and they're like, man, you look just like George Clooney.

And they start throwing money at you.

It's, I think it's that concept that can be hard to understand, like

that can be hard to grasp because if you think about it, that's a lot.

And it feels like, how can I ever get there?

And it's completely overwhelming.

And what I love so much about this book, and I, I gotta tell you,

I've, you know, there's books I get excited about and this was one that

I got, I'm, I'm so excited about.

I love this book.

Um, because doesn't just go, okay, here's the big concept.

It literally breaks down how to do this and how to put it in place.

And I think importantly, it doesn't, like you said, it doesn't

say, here's the black and white.

You have to do this.

It says, here are all the ways that you can do it, and you're gonna need to start

picking the things and the ways that you can do that are gonna be best for you.

But here's how you do it.

And if, and you know, Todd, you're going through the book and you start

looking at like the how to is like step one, step two, step three, step four.

Like, it's, that's, and.

I haven't written Law of books that go step one, step two, step three step.

Yeah.

this book, um, this book just lays it out for you.

Yeah, it's fantastic so far.

Well, I wanna touch on another book you wrote that's very important called

Sales eq, and it talks about the importance of emotional intelligence

on the part of the salesperson.

Um, just reflect a little bit on why that is important for someone, say, in

a high trust situation such as sales.

Let's go back to the AI edge.

Okay, so here we are in the age of AI If we start thinking about what

AI can do, it can do everything.

I mean, it's, it, it's like I sometimes it's like watching magic because

there's gotta be some sort of a witch doctor behind the whole thing.

So if we, if we think about that in the context of selling, and I'm clear on my,

in, in my, um, on my belief that selling is the ultimate human career choice.

AI is not gonna displace us.

the Wal, the Walmart, CEO said this recently, he said, as long as human beings

are walking into our stores, there's gonna be human beings in our stores

taking care of them rather than robots, because human beings don't like robots.

So in a world where AI can do all of these magical things that are

just unfathomable, just a few years ago, where does the salesperson fit?

salesperson fits into human to human connection.

And human to human connection is basically governed by emotional intelligence.

Emotional intelligence is simply your ability to own, to perceive, to understand

and manage, and have the discipline to control your emotions so that you

have the ability to perceive and to influence the emotions of other people.

That's all emotional intelligence is.

Now, there's a lot that goes into that bucket, but that's what it is.

let's think about what the future salesperson looks like in a world

where AI can do so much of the things that, um, that we used to do in a

world where your customer can go on to AI and say, tell me all about boom.

And they can get a whole dissertation on whether that is, what is your role?

The role of the future salesperson is the role of a consultant.

Now, we've been talking about consultative selling since the early

1990s, maybe the late 1980s as a, as a, as a discipline, and ever since

then we never really actually did it.

Like no one ever really like totally put in consultative selling.

I remember going through consultative selling skills when I was in,

you know, in my first sales job when I was like 23, 24 years old.

We weren't really talking about consultative selling, we were just

labeling something, consultative selling, and we were just going through

the process of getting people things closed, now we're in a different place.

Right?

So I can go through all this information on ai.

What does a consultant do?

Okay, well, I'm a consultant and businesses hire me and my company

to go in and help them fix their go-to marketing challenges.

And it is not uncommon for me every day, you know, every week to be sitting

in a boardroom sitting with a group of leaders, and all I'm doing is listening.

They're telling me what's going on.

They're showing me data.

They're trying to fix a problem, and then they look to me for advice to

help them make sense of all this.

They have all the information.

There's a saying in the consulting world, what all consultants do is

tell you what time your clock says, or that's, I mean, I'm, I'm not like coming

in with some rocket science insight.

I'm coming in with perspective.

I'm coming in with experience.

I'm coming in with business acumen.

I'm coming in, as they say, down here in the south with no dog in the hunt.

So I'm, I'm, I'm not attached to any outcome, I'm coming in with

the, with the, with the, heart.

I guess the, my, you know, my, my entire purpose there is to

help them solve a problem so that they can achieve an outcome.

That's why they bring me in and pay me big bucks to be a consultant.

I'm not like giving them information about their business that they didn't

know, nor am I giving them information that they couldn't read in a book.

Look up, find someplace else.

I'm not doing any of those things.

I'm usually just asking really provocative questions or evocative

questions that get them to think The future of the salesperson is that.

future of the salesperson is the expert.

You are the consultant.

We're not coming up with information.

We're taking all of the information that people get and we're helping

them solve complex problems that they don't trust themselves to solve alone.

And you can't do that without a high degree of emotional intelligence.

Because without a high degree of emotional intelligence, you are unable

to develop and build the relationship and manage your emotions and influence

their emotions so that you earn the right in those conversations to

make recommendations with confidence that they believe and will follow.

I, I love what you just said there about earning the right, because so much of of

sales is about that, earning that right and you know, when you think about it.

Yeah, absolutely.

Um, consumers are gonna go out.

There and get all the information they can from ai, but they still

need that sales person to help them sort through it, figure out what's

gonna make the most sense for them.

Um, great, great, great story.

Well, curious, what would your top advice be to someone out there who may be just

getting started with a career in sales?

What, what would read all of your books, I think would be the number one thing.

Yeah, like I've got a brand new Jeb Blount box set on, uh, Amazon

that's got everything in it.

I would, it's beautiful.

I would encourage you to get that.

Yeah.

So I would definitely go do that if you're, if you're.

Brand new in sales.

I, I would encourage you to do a couple of things.

I would, I would encourage you to focus on your mindset and belief

system, and let's start here.

Sales professionals are the elite athletes of business.

And why do I say that?

Because if business is a game of getting and keeping customers, which it is,

and the number one reason why people go out of business is that they don't

have enough customers because they're not getting and keeping customers.

If that's the truth, then you are the most important part of your business bar none.

And if that's the case, we picture a business like an NFL team.

There's people that are there on the sidelines supporting medical

people, coaches, there's people up in the, in the in the home

office taking care of everything.

The players are on the field playing.

They are elite athletes.

if you were to dial into an NFL team and take all the all everything else

away, those elite athletes, they play the game and then the next day

they're in the room watching game film.

Then they're on the field and they're running drills.

They spend almost all of their time practicing, either mentally practicing or

physically practicing almost all the time.

They spend a tiny, teeny bit of their time actually playing the game.

that's true for elite athletes in every sports league, um, even at Ohio State.

Um, everywhere you go, that's what they're doing.

The Georgia Bulldog spin almost their entire week practicing and

watching game film, working on drills.

They know what to do.

They drill, they drill, they drill, they drill because they're elite athletes.

It's a skill position, and every single thing that they know and learn how to

do on a football field without practice will begin to diminish over time.

And by the way, same thing for lone Wolfs like.

Professional golfers.

Um, and, and if you, if you're an amateur golfer, you know, you

practice, practice, practice, practice, play, play, play, play, play.

Incrementally, you get better and better and better.

So if you're brand new in sales, start there.

This isn't something you put sales in your business card and you're gonna be good.

This is a lifetime of, of learning and getting better and uh, and

trying to get all the information in.

And, um, we alluded to this earlier, but understanding that there's a lot

of people out there that will tell you this is the one way to sell salvation.

Well, there isn't a one way.

There's lots of ways and those ways are gonna change based on

who you are, your customers are, your industry or what have you.

So first, adopt a mentality that I am a work in progress and I

must always be a work in progress.

And that I must practice and role play and learn, and even if I've

heard it a million times, do it again because it's a craft and a skillset

that you have to maintain over time through the work of an elite athlete.

Number two, understanding that on the cells, chess, board cells is

simply a game of probabilities.

There's nothing that's right or wrong.

There's nothing that's dead or alive.

There is nothing that is better or worse.

There is simply probability.

So when we start thinking about this concept to say, blending different,

different formats or blending different communication channels, my goal is to

choose the best technique, the best channel, the best message for that

particular customer at that particular moment in time that is gonna deliver

the greatest possible outcome at lowest cost of time, energy, and emotion.

And if I play the game that way, everything that I do on it, on the

sales chess board is about probability.

add that to training and skill development and uh, mindset development.

What happens is you will very quickly burn, bend the curve, and you'll

move into the elite ranks of sales professionals because you understand

that your entire focus of both training and technique of tactics

and strategy is that you are bending the wind probability in your favor.

That at any particular moment, you are able to achieve your, your outcome.

That what you want to achieve, um, with that customer.

And that is essentially the game of sales in about three minutes of, of, uh, shtick.

That is beautiful.

So tell us about Sales Gravy, um, and also the consulting services and

support that you offer to business.

Sure.

So, um, since we, since we last worked together, we have, um,

become a different company.

We are.

Um, we are much bigger than we used to be.

We are all over the globe.

Um, we have a team of 34 people, but essentially what we, we serve three

different groups of, um, of customers.

We have individual salespeople who come to us for.

e-Learning on Sales Grave University or books they consume our podcast.

And those, those are all the individual salespeople that I'll

stop and talk to anywhere, anytime.

Pick me up in the airport.

Y'all are all coming out of the woodwork.

People call in.

You can call in on Ask Jeb and ask me questions.

Um, so we've that, that group.

Then we've got, um, our large enterprise customers.

So we've got, you know, our Fortune 1000 customers, and we are serving them in all

kinds of capacity, from building playbooks to developing customer custom training

programs, delivering fanatical prospecting bootcamps, and providing e-learning and

digital learning that they put directly on their learning management systems.

And we're doing a, a, you know, we're doing, um.

Go to go to, um, go to market, uh, consulting and fixing comp programs and,

you know, doing sales process improvement.

A lot of basics for the large customers.

And then we have our core group of, of customers, and they're, they're our, you

know, I would say our favorite companies.

are the, the small and medium sized businesses from, you know, say.

You know, five to $10 million up to around $300 million.

A lot of 'em are family owned, they're founder led companies and they're

trying to solve all kinds of problems.

And, uh, with small companies like, you know, you got two or three salespeople.

What our most popular services is our team hub.

So we have a team training hub on Sales Grave University.

If you got a small sales team, you bring your sales team in.

We give you an account manager, you get access to learning

paths and about 1500 hours of of on-demand sales training content.

And every single week we run two to three live workshops

and courses, the same courses.

By the way, we teach big companies and your sales team and your salespeople

can jump into those courses and learn from our master trainers.

It's a really thing that we, um, we started two years ago for

small businesses and we're, I don't know, 1500, 2000 businesses

somewhere in that space these days.

Uh, when we move up into, um, into to larger family owned companies,

we are, um, in some cases literally just putting a, one of our people,

one of our consultants or trainers in their world, and we are, and they're

on their, we're on site with them.

We're going in the field with their sales people.

We are helping them build out their sales processes, build out their training

processes, developing those companies.

And we really come in as a true partner.

We call them integrated partnerships.

And these, these become years longs engagements as we grow

and develop their businesses.

One of the companies, for example, that we.

Started working with a few years back when we started working with them, they were a

30,000, a $30 million company, and today we're on a new, a new track with them.

They've crossed a half a billion dollars.

Now we're helping them get to a billion dollars, but that

relationship changed over time.

So those are companies that are just using every single thing that we have

and they're bringing it into their organization so that we can help them.

Grow faster and really develop those systems so that they can,

they can move faster over time.

So through all of those things, we're able to serve those three

different, um, constituencies.

And it's one of the reasons why we're adding trainers and

consultants as fast as we can.

That's the one place where we're growing our headcount because

that's something that AI can't do.

And, um, and it's, it's fun.

Like it's a great.

Business to be in that, um, that we can look back and see our footprints

all over, especially the United States, these businesses that we've

been a part of their transformation.

That is amazing and I know that, um, even despite all of this, you're still kind of

a family owned bus, family run business.

Uh, is Carrie still active in the business?

Gary is, um, she's, um, she's our COO.

Okay,

is, um, she runs everything.

And, um, we've got, uh, his family, my, my daughter-in-law is, um, our,

uh, head of our account strategy

I saw that.

Yep.

And then my son works in marketing and he's out, uh, building

websites and marketing things.

I'm actually gonna go see him just a bit because I got him

building a framework for me.

So, um, so yeah, it's all, all in the family.

My brother-in-law, um, is, is my, my number one.

salesperson, consultant, trainer, um, Brad Adams, uh, shout out to Brad.

He, he's killing it.

Uh, so we, it is, uh, it's, it's both a family business that it's expanded into

a lot more other families that we, I know that, that you feel the same way about

your people, but you know, we, we feel a responsibility because we're, we're

making an impact on their lives as well.

Yeah, cool stuff.

And you know, you have produced, you have, like I mentioned earlier,

just been prolific in terms of the content you have produced.

Going back to the sales gravy.com days, and then all the books and

just thing after thing after thing.

And so much great information for folks.

But, uh, the really cool thing is if they wanna go deeper and, you know, sometimes.

You know, business owners I think, realize, okay, I can read these

things and I can learn it and I can embrace it cognitively, but I

can't actually put it into practice.

And I think that's where you folks can step in and really help

them put it in practice also.

Absolutely.

And then, you know, and, and one of the things for, especially

for small businesses where you've got a founder led business and

you've got the vision to change.

Change we.

We've been doing this informally for a long time.

Um, we formalized this over the last couple of years, but we provide

fractional sales leadership for businesses where you're trying to scale

up, and our goal is to be temporary.

So.

When you're a business owner and you're trying to manage all the hats and, and

you're trying to run a sales team, and any business owner that's not from sales

recognizes that it's like herding cats.

And it's almost, how do I manage these people?

They're crazy.

I know.

I get it.

I'm crazy too.

Um, so, uh, we, we'll install a fractional sales leader, leader who can

help that do it in an affordable way.

Then as we get that sales team stabilized or built in the right place, then

we'll help you go hire a permanent sales leader that fits your culture

and won't blow it up so that then you can continue on, um, down that road.

And, um, and that's been like crazy helpful with those, those, those

businesses that are on that shoulder.

Where, you know, maybe you're five, 10, 15 million, but you're at that place

where, you know, you can get bigger, but, but you just, you just don't have the

enough leadership or people on your team to get there and, the damage that you

can do to your organization for hiring a bad sales leader, it's just too risky.

Um, we can jump in and fill that gap temporarily to get you to that place

where you can get that stability.

I love that because I have been there as a business owner, you know, times

where I hired people that I thought could help me tame this sales thing,

and they did literally blow it up.

Uh, I, I've had a couple of experiences like that, so.

Gosh, that's good stuff.

Well, Jeb, it's just been a huge privilege to have you here today

and to be able to talk with you.

Uh, gosh, we've covered so much, but so much more we could cover.

Is there anything we haven't covered today that you wanted

to be sure to, uh, talk about?

I, you know, I'm just gonna give you one more book, book, uh, book plug out.

Go by the LinkedIn Edge.

I'm, uh, you know, I've written 17 books.

This is number 17, and I'm, I'm saying this from my heart.

I love this book.

I love all my books, but there's a couple that I love more than

others, and this is one of those, um, you, it will not hurt you.

It will make you better and you're gonna want to get it from, for

all the people in your team.

And by the way, even the people that aren't in sales, there are parts and

pieces of this book that will help you greatly in marketing in terms

of, of expanding your footprint.

Yeah.

Well, and I'm even picking up on, I mean, we think of LinkedIn as being

strictly B2B, but there are things in here that are gonna help you if

you're a B2C business primarily also.

So.

Absolutely.

I mean, look, if you're doing B2C business, and let's say you're doing

a high-end, um, uh, construction or you're, you're building a

Roofing system.

How about that?

High roofing system, like, I mean, you're like, I think about, you know,

the roofs that you guys do that are like, I, I always look at those as

like, one day I'm gonna grow up and have enough money to be able to afford, um,

you know, one of, one of your roofs.

But if you're doing that, think about the people that you're building

for and you're doing that for.

Th they're, they're not working at Walmart.

They're

Right.

someplace.

They're running a company.

with them.

Get to know them.

Let them see that you're there.

'cause they're, by God gonna look you and your company up on LinkedIn first, because

if you're in business, you're on LinkedIn.

So just think about it that way, uh, and, and think you're, all you're doing is

connecting all of the dots so that when they think about you, they think trust.

I'm glad we touched on that because I think that's an important point

that LinkedIn, uh, strategies are not strictly for B2B folks.

Um.

Well, Jeb, this has been a very valuable time together.

I appreciate.

Before we close out, I have to ask you if you're willing to participate in a

little thing we call rapid fire questions.

So these are five questions.

Um, the ones I picked for you tend to be a little bit more on the serious end

of things for the most part, but all we're looking for is a quick response

you up to the challenge of rapid fire.

Okay, Seth, I'll let you ask the first one.

Here we go.

Uh, rapid fire.

Question number one.

What is a product or service you've.

Acquired recently, or perhaps even a book you have read that

was a real game changer for you.

Um, product or service that I've acquired I'm gonna have to go new golf clubs and I

got, uh, ping irons and Callaway drivers.

Awesome.

Good for you.

It was my reward, uh, for breaking 85.

So when I broke 85, I'm not a great golfer, but when I broke

85, I got brand new clubs.

That's impressive.

It was a two year, it was a long, long wait.

Uh, second question, what, if anything, should people

immediately stop doing on LinkedIn?

Uh, one of the most important things you can stop doing on LinkedIn is the,

what we call, what you can call it a pump and pounce, but you go, you send

someone a connection request and then you immediately hit them up with a

pitch or your connection request is a pitch that stop doing that immediately.

Good.

Question number three.

Uh, what is the most powerful word or phrase in selling?

Ooh.

Um, help me understand,

Oh, I love it.

That's good.

Good.

Uh, what is the worst sales advice you've ever heard?

oh, where do we, where do we begin?

I gotcha.

You know, uh, the worst, I, I, I would just, I'll just say cold calling is dead.

That would be the worst sales advice I've ever heard.

and, and add that to a, put a phrase in front of it, in front of it, dead.

All of these things are dead.

Sales is dead.

But the, the worst advice is stop talking to people, which is essentially what we're

saying when we say cold calling is dead.

Yeah.

Good stuff.

Last question.

What would you like to be remembered for at the end of your days?

I would, I would like to be remembered for as a person who truly desired to make a

positive impact on other people's lives.

And, um, and I, and I did that just because, like, I just, you

know, I was a person that, that's what I woke up every day and did.

I would say you're doing that.

Good job.

Well jab, you truly are making a difference out.

Aaron, that's just amazing.

So thank you.

For folks who wanna learn more about you or about Sales Gravy, what are some

of the best ways for them to do that?

We can go to sales gravy.com.

Um, or if you wanna learn about our digital learning, go to learn dot sales

gravy.com and you can connect with me and our, our company on LinkedIn.

So, um, just you can click the follow button for me or

send me a connection request.

And, uh, and our company page is Sales Gravy.

Easy to find.

But those would be the best ways to get in touch with me.

Uh, if you wanna send me an email, I'm at jeb@salesgravy.com, so pretty easy.

Cool.

Thank you.

You do make it easy, and we will put all of those contacts down

in the uh, show notes as well.

Well, thank you again for joining us, Jeb.

This has been a pleasure.

Thank you for having me on and I appreciate y'all with, I know we tried to

get this thing going in the summertime.

We had to make a quick adjustment, so thank y'all very much.

Fully understanding.

Um, well thank you to our audience for tuning into this episode of Construction

Disruption with bestselling author and leading sales coach, Jeb Blount.

Please watch for future episodes of Construction Disruption.

We always have great guests.

Don't forget to leave us a review.

Give us a thumbs up.

Keep on disrupting, keep on challenging folks out there looking

for better ways of doing things.

And don't forget to have a positive impact on everyone you encounter.

Uh, make folks smile and encourage them.

Simple, yet powerful things you can do.

So God bless and take care.

This is Isaiah Industries signing off until the next episode of Construction.

Disruption.