Embracing the Salespreneur Mindset by Transforming Sales Through Positivity with John Golden

Mike (00:24.562)
John, thanks ever so much for joining me on Higall the B2B Sales Club podcast. Great to have you.

John Golden (00:29.333)
you

John Golden (00:37.673)
Yeah.

John Golden (00:45.641)
Yeah, fantastic. Thank you, Mike.

Mike (00:48.5)
I'm really looking forward to this and you were very gracious and you invited me onto your show and then you also agreed kindly to come onto mine as well. So it's a bit of a show swap. So without further ado, who are you, what do you do and something unusual about yourself?

John Golden (01:04.213)
Well, my name is John Golden. I am the Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer at Pipeline or CRM. I'm also the host of the SalesPop podcast. something unusual about myself, I guess, I'm a fourth degree master in Taekwondo.

Yeah. And just, just as I have to, I have to say this because sometimes people like, know, there's a lot of snobbery in martial arts and sometimes people like to dis Taekwondo, but, UFC, 309, Saturday night, heavyweight division, John Jones, Taekwondo spinning back kick end of the fight. So there you go.

Mike (01:49.59)
Brilliant. So I know nothing about taekwondo, but it sounds like it's a pretty serious martial art to me. So just out of interest, where did taekwondo come from? So obviously we know about kung fu, but what was the origins of taekwondo?

John Golden (02:02.899)
Yeah, Taekwondo is, yeah, it's Korean. It comes from Korea,

Mike (02:06.594)
okay, very interesting. anyway, back to the podcast. So what we're talk about is one big topic. Normally we have like two or three themes to discuss, but on this one, we agreed that there was one big topic that was worthy of an entire episode, which is how to be your best self as a salesperson. So John, I'm gonna just kind of hand over to you to set bit of a framework and then we can dive into some, a bit more of a deeper discussion and obviously we'll find some rabbit holes as well.

So what's your view on that?

John Golden (02:39.687)
Yeah, I mean, think it's, number one, it's a very unique role. Sales, we refer to them as salespreneurs because we say that salespeople are the entrepreneurs in any enterprise because let's face it, the folks in accounting who do a fantastic job, they get their salary, et cetera. The folks in marketing get their salary.

And the folks in sales either have a lot of their compensation that's variable, your commission, cetera, or some of them even have 100 % of their income that's commissioned. So it's a very different role and it means that you have to be a lot more kind of entrepreneurial. You have to be a lot more nimble and you have to be very, very, very creative.

Mike (03:27.754)
a lot more creative.

John Golden (03:32.711)
I think with the backdrop of that, think when a salesperson, you wake up every morning, all the salespeople out there will know, and every day is a mixed bag. It could be a lot of rejection. It could be that one nugget that comes through. it needs a lot of like fortitude on behalf of the salesperson in order to survive. And I think there's a number of things that you can do. I think the first part is.

Mike (03:54.933)
It does.

John Golden (04:01.081)
is when you start your day, think about how you start your day as a salesperson, because maybe you're going, as I said, maybe you're going to get a lot of rejection, maybe there's stuff that's going to crop up during the day. So it's really, really important that you start off your day in the best way possible. So I would always say is, yeah, maybe avoid, when you wake up in the morning, maybe avoid the news because the news isn't the news anymore. Then it doesn't matter where you sit on the political spectrum. I don't care.

Mike (04:29.718)
You

John Golden (04:29.747)
The news is there to provoke a reaction from you. That's all. It's not there to inform you. So if you start off your day, pick up your phone and start reading the news. Chances are you're going to be angry before you know it. So not a good start to the day. Additionally, okay, you might say, okay, well, I'll skip with the news then, but I'll go on social media. Even worse.

Mike (04:40.27)
Ha

Mike (04:49.802)
social media even worse.

John Golden (04:52.629)
Because what happens is I see Mike standing beside a Lamborghini and I think, my goodness, Mike's doing fantastic and my life sucks. Turns out that it's Mike's neighbor's Lamborghini. But I don't know that. Yeah.

Mike (05:02.752)
Correct. And I was actually walking past it and I thought, I'll take a picture of that. Yeah. Next to my battered old Mini. Yeah, exactly.

John Golden (05:08.277)
Exactly. And there you go. So your start of your day is really, really, really important. Because if you let yourself start off in a negative framework from the get go, what's going to happen? You're going to do your sales calls, et cetera. Maybe the first one you get is a bit of a pushback and you're going to be in such a negative space at that stage. So

So consciously choose to go into the day with a positive outlook. And yeah, I know that sounds that's easier said than done, but it's something that you have to consciously choose how you're going to show up every day. And the, and that's one thing, you know, we always talk about lots of things we have no control over, but that's one thing you have complete control over is to choose how you, how you fit exactly.

Mike (05:43.572)
You do, absolutely.

Mike (05:51.242)
How do you feel? How you feel, how you approach the day. And I have that John, I I get it some days and I'm like, my God, really? and it's never about actually client work. I love doing my client work. I love being with clients. It's about, yeah, my pipelines a bit messed up. There's nothing in it. And I need to go and generate some more pipeline because I've been too focused on client work. And you get up and go, well I do, really?

Really? Do I have to do that? And then of course you do, because it's my own business. Like it's your business. You have no choice.

John Golden (06:26.185)
Yep. Yeah, no, absolutely. And then, and then to carry that a step further, you know, 70 it's acknowledged, I think it's psychology today and those, it's acknowledged somewhere that like 70 % of our daily self talk is negative, right. And I think that's an important thing also to keep in mind. And that doesn't matter whether you are, you know,

you know, whether you're somebody young and you're starting out or you're an established, very successful person. doesn't matter. We're hardwired, unfortunately, to talk negative to ourselves. So again, that's something to be conscious of as you go into your day. And we also carry baggage. And I think that's the, that's probably the hardest thing in sales because you carry all these experiences and baggage in with you. And that's the thing that you have to be very careful. Like if you're going into

If you're going on to a call or a Zoom meeting or a face-to-face meeting, you have to consciously check your baggage before you go in.

Mike (07:20.832)
So John, what's that film with George Clooney where he talks about the kind of like the stuff that we carry on our backs and you load things onto it. And I love the film, but it was, I thought a really interesting analogy. That's what we do. We don't discard stuff. We just keep on putting more of this kind of baggage into our backpack. It gets heavier and heavier and heavier.

John Golden (07:34.345)
Yeah, that's we do.

John Golden (07:44.157)
Yeah. Yeah. And if you think of it like, you ever see those, you know, the soldiers and stuff when they've got these massive backpacks and they're doing these route marks. Yeah. It's exactly like that walking into a meeting room. So you can imagine yourself walking into a meeting room carrying this massive bagged pack on your back. And it's, weighing you down because you've brought all the accumulation of different experiences and some of those negative. So you have to make that choice and say, yeah, I'm going to treat this as a new day, as a new meeting, as a.

Mike (07:59.51)
Hmm.

John Golden (08:12.405)
as a new experience. Yeah, I'm going to use my positive experiences, but I'm going to leave all those negative ones. You as I would say, like, you know, this is the one time when you need to check your baggage and hope that the airline loses it.

Mike (08:24.027)
Hahaha!

Exactly. So what happens, John, if you're at the early stages of your sales career, you deal like I do with an awful lot of salespeople and you get people that are very well established in their sales career and they've been very successful. And then you get people that are kind of like foundation salespeople, maybe in their 20s. It's really, really, really hard. Unless you've got a mentor around you that can show you a bit of a path, you can get kind of left.

John Golden (08:28.51)
Yeah, yeah.

Mike (08:56.896)
kind of hung out to dry effectively. What happens then?

John Golden (08:59.517)
Yeah, I mean, that's a really good point, Mike. But I do think that today you have access to so many resources out there that I think the key part is that is to in well, actually, a couple of things.

Number one, a lot of, a lot of young people who come into sales, right. Default into it. That's we need to acknowledge that, you know, lots of people go and do marketing degrees at college and then come out and then discover that there are only a handful of marketing jobs in various companies, but there's lots of sales jobs. people.

Mike (09:35.36)
Where's the sales degree, John? Where's the sales degree? I've never got that. It's like, where do I go and do a sales degree?

John Golden (09:37.949)
Yeah, well,

John Golden (09:43.315)
Yeah, well, thankfully a few colleges are starting to do that now. We have a partnership with DePaul University up in Chicago and they have an undergrad and a graduate sales degree. There's some other colleges that are doing it now, but it's a fraction. It's a fraction of the colleges. it still has a long way to go to be accepted. But like I said, a lot of people, a of young people come into sales and they default into it. And let's face it, they're not really that happy being in it in the first place.

Mike (09:48.86)
yeah.

Mike (09:55.871)
Amazing!

John Golden (10:12.467)
because it has got these negative connotations to it or whatever, or maybe it wasn't what they wanted to do. So my advice would be to go and educate yourself on sales. You're lucky today that there's so much free education. There's people like yourself doing podcasts. There's all this. And I would say go and invest in yourself. Because here's the one thing that I learned over the years is we come into work and we kind of expect.

Mike (10:25.066)
There is.

John Golden (10:39.219)
the company to do everything and invest in us and train us to do it. That may not happen, but the only person who cares, the person who cares most about you is you. So invest in yourself. Don't wait around. Go find, go train yourself, go find good sales training, good, read sales books, listen to sales podcasts, but really educate yourself. That is the best way. And to be honest,

Mike (10:49.707)
Mm-hmm.

John Golden (11:03.503)
Sometimes, you know, copying the most experienced people isn't the best thing to do because you know, they've learned a few bad habits in their time. Plus, you know, they're not always the greatest people that have been able to communicate what they do. Yeah, we say that unconsciously competent, like I'm really good at it, but I couldn't tell you how I do it. Really, I couldn't codify codify it for you. So I

Mike (11:23.21)
That's an interesting point, John, is that on the internet, I was reading about, just think about AI the other day. And if you look at the corpus of knowledge on the web, there's lots of content about what the output is, about the endpoint. But there's very little content about how that person got to that decision point or to that conclusion. And it's the same for salespeople, is that you can read lots of books about

John Golden (11:39.603)
Mm-hmm.

Mike (11:52.552)
sales and about sales success and about, but there aren't many about, well, the journey from foundation through to advanced, it's a story and everyone's story is different. And just looking on the web, you might find some interesting stuff, but talking to a sales person like you, you've been in sales, I don't know how many years, John, but trying to unpick what you just said, which is you are effectively, unconsciously highly competent.

John Golden (12:04.873)
Mm-hmm.

John Golden (12:21.556)
Yep.

Mike (12:21.706)
getting underneath that, getting inside your psyche about what happened, John? Tell me the story from foundation through to today. Where were the mistakes? Where were the breakthrough moments? What happened? And I'm not saying someone could repeat that, but you can learn from it if you understand the story.

John Golden (12:39.933)
Yeah. I think the biggest thing, is to be curious. For me, that's the key to it all is curiosity and want to learn and understand. So I think one of the things I learned from other people that I admire is, first of all, curious about business.

Mike (12:46.602)
Yeah, completely agree.

John Golden (13:02.643)
and about the business of business and the business of your prospective customers and the industry. Learn about business. Cause once upon a time, a lot of salespeople, you know, never really focused on the business side of things. They're all about, you know, top line, bringing the deal and all of that kind of stuff. But today I think you're expected to be much more business savvy. I think understanding the business of business and that curiosity.

And the next part, and I think this is the part that's the hardest when starting out or when early on in sales is the active listening part that is to be, and people don't understand active listening. Like listening is just a physical thing. just happened, you know, whatever, but active listening is when you start to try to understand and, you you know, really be cognizant of what the other person is saying. And.

Let's face it. We all fall into the, we've all fallen into that trap in the past where I ask you a question, Mike, it might be a fantastic question, but instead of listening to you, I'm kind of thinking about what's going to happen next and where I'm going, what, what's your, instead of just stopping for a moment and saying, just, asked a great question. Now I need to wait and let Mike actually speak and it's okay. And here's the other thing. And here's the hardest thing as well as if there's, if there's a gap of silence, it's okay.

Mike (14:06.752)
correct.

John Golden (14:22.997)
Because I asked you a question, but oftentimes I got to question and I'm, if you're not answering immediately, I jump in to fill the silence. Why just ask you a question? I didn't give you time to think about it. Right. And now I've distracted you. I think that patience and that active listening. And I think those are so critically, critically important and, and, and not being so anxious because that's the other thing. It's always the anxious to move you. I'm moving you. I've got to move you. Right.

No, I got to understand you. That's the best. That's the most important thing is I've got to understand you first because if I don't understand you first, how do I know where I want to move you?

Mike (15:00.64)
So, this is a great topic, Alethas. So, active listening. And I think every human being I've ever met has this as a, not a character flaw, but a fault often. We do exactly what you just said. You'll ask a question, but in my head, I'm thinking about something. So I'm gonna ask the next thing. So on sales calls, well, on sales training, we're all taught to do discovery.

John Golden (15:15.562)
Yep.

John Golden (15:23.135)
Mm-hmm.

Mike (15:29.482)
Well, discovery is a mechanism of inquiry. You're trying to find clues. Well, you can't find clues if you're constantly in your head thinking about the next thing, thinking about what was written down, where I'm in the sales process. I had to these four questions. I must have said, I've lost track of who you are, of how you look, how you're behaving, how you're not answering the question, answering the question.

John Golden (15:33.223)
Exactly.

John Golden (15:41.695)
Yeah.

John Golden (15:50.28)
Yeah.

Mike (15:58.25)
looking at your papers. That discovery process is all about tuning in to the other person, I think. What are your thoughts on that?

John Golden (16:06.569)
Yeah, no, 100%. And there's a there's a lot of recent surveys and research has come out and it basically just reinforces the same thing is that people want to be seen, heard and understood. And if you go into

every engagement sales or otherwise with that in mind here that I'm talking to somebody who deep down wants to be seen. they want to be heard and they want to be understood. So, how do you see somebody? see somebody by use, you understand their circumstances, right? So that's how you see them. Then you listen to them and then the understood part. And that's what we're just talking about here. And they use this in, in, in therapy, I can need couples therapy and family therapy. And that is.

Mike (16:37.387)
Hmm.

John Golden (16:50.261)
this idea of, you know, Mike says something and it's directed to me or says something and then my job is to repeat back to you and show that I understood exactly what you said and you're not allowed to move on until Mike says, yes, that's exactly what I meant. And it's a good lesson because...

you're not initially likely to give me all the answers I need just in your first answer, your first two sentences. And that's why you have to dig a little bit and prompt. And by doing that, what you're doing is you're showing, I'm showing Mike that I want to hear him and I want to understand him. I'm not just kind of superficially asking questions. So that's really important. And then I think you have to, the other trap,

that a lot of people fall into, especially early on is when I start to have the conversation with you, Mike, you mentioned something and that's something that I think my product or service can solve, right? So I pounce, I pounce on that. I'm like, yes. yeah, I got you. So we focus, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So we focus, so we focus in on that, right? Now it turns out.

Mike (17:57.942)
Fantastic. Glad you said that, John.

John Golden (18:07.913)
that that issue that you're talking about isn't a particularly strong one. It's not particularly, it's one that maybe you can live with. Maybe you're not that there's other ones that are much more compelling, but because I've gone, I've pounced on this and gone down this rabbit hole, I never get to the other ones. then you, and before you know it, the kind of thing has gone sideways. So that's the thing that I always say is B or, or, and it comes through as well. I mean, this comes back from spin selling and Neil Rackham and all of those is.

Mike (18:33.974)
Yeah, brilliant piece of work.

John Golden (18:35.055)
is to always go deeper and don't pounce on the first issue that comes up, right? Just explore, explore.

Mike (18:42.87)
So on that exploring, when I was a young consultant at KPMG, some brilliant, brilliant training. They did amazing things. They did some things that I wouldn't want to repeat, but they did a lot of amazing things that they taught me. And one simple thing was the five whys that you peel the onion back, which is what you're talking about. Is that, you know, that's why I like the podcasting, John, because you go, that's interesting. What do you mean by that? How important?

John Golden (18:52.149)
You

John Golden (19:00.307)
Yeah. Yeah, 100%.

Mike (19:11.518)
is that to you relative to other things that are on your mind. Asking that so anyone out there that's listening about things they can pick up tactics, tuning into John, when he says something that you think is like, that was something I was preparing for before, find out how important it is. Just asking why, why is that important? How relatively important is that? What would happen if you don't fix that problem?

John Golden (19:14.677)
Okay.

John Golden (19:28.017)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

John Golden (19:37.301)
Yeah. Cause that's the key one there at the end of the day. I mean, what happens if you don't fix that problem? Maybe you go nothing really. It's a little bit of an inconvenience, but other than that, now we may move on then, then we get to move on and we explore more and we go down the next road. And maybe I find that, and here's the thing is the more you explore. this is, this is, this is the, this is the, if you like the Holy grail, if you get to it is, is if I can help you.

uncover maybe something and the implications of something that you weren't aware of, or you hadn't thought about it that way. And suddenly you're thinking about, you're thinking about your situation differently. Now, now we're, now we're in a kind of collaboration circumstance.

Mike (20:17.694)
Yes. So classic spin selling. thought, and I still use that, the framework today. If you can help me, so to summarize back what I think you said, John, if I listened correctly, would be if we can find something together, which is something you hadn't really thought through and explore that and open your mind to something as an alternative, that starts to become really valuable.

John Golden (20:21.983)
Yeah.

John Golden (20:30.473)
Yep.

Mike (20:46.23)
because now I'm entering trusted advisor, not it's too early on the first call, but you're entering that kind of, yes, I trust you enough to have a dialogue with you about something that's a bit more complicated than we first thought.

John Golden (20:46.378)
Yeah.

John Golden (20:59.253)
Yeah. And that's where, mean, you hear that, that, you know, everybody throws out that thing or create value, create value during your sales call, create value. And a lot of people don't understand what does that actually mean? But that's what that means in a circumstance like that. You've created value because, because now we have talked about something that you weren't fully aware of yet and thought about it, or you hadn't looked at it from that direction. And now that's it, that's, you know, piqued your interest. You're now thinking about things differently. Now we're in a.

We're in a, as we said, a collaborative dialogue. That's where you're, you are now creating value. yeah. Neil Rackham used to say, and, and, he used to say that. If you execute a really good sales call, you should create enough value that you could, you could invoice them for the sales call and they pay it. Right.

Mike (21:34.1)
Exactly.

Mike (21:51.668)
It's a very good test actually, it is a very good test. So we... no, carry on. Lots of stories.

John Golden (21:54.835)
Yeah. But can I, can I just tell you a really quick story? So I brought, I brought, I brought Neil with me, many years because I ran Huthwaite for a while in that, which was Spence. Yeah. I was CEO of Huthwaite and Neil, Neil had, Neil had left by then long gone and that, but, I, used to meet with him and, talk with him and strategize with him on occasions. And one day, I was going to a.

Mike (22:05.61)
Did you? I don't know, Vagel. Wow!

John Golden (22:21.575)
A household name, shall we put it, a global name in the printing manufacturing, printer manufacturing industry. And they were having a serious issue between sales and marketing. so the CEO agreed that I would come in and I'd bring Neil and that we would get the sales leadership and the marketing leadership around the table, et cetera. And we had a bit of an exploration. So we did. So we spent about two or three hours in that meeting.

It started off, of course, with just people throwing things at each other across the table, verbal insults. And was clearly there was high dysfunction there. Anyway, we went through the process and by the end we had got a lot of alignment and we got an agreement and a plan what we would do to move forward and all of that. And I thought, okay, this is a sales call. I'm going to test Neil's thesis here. So I asked the CEO at the end, said, sorry, can I just ask you one question?

Mike (22:56.216)
Yep.

Mike (23:15.028)
Ha

John Golden (23:21.663)
I said, you know, we haven't signed a contract for a deal yet to, to, you know, do any work or whatever. This is just the initial meeting. then I said, did you get enough value out of that meeting that if I, sent you an invoice tomorrow for this meeting, would you pay it? And he stopped for a second. Then he goes, you know, I probably would. and there, and there it, so it proved Neil's, I mean, it proved Neil's thesis, which I actually always thought was a nice idea.

Mike (23:50.986)
Yeah, Brilliant.

John Golden (23:51.125)
But he actually proved that. it just shows you, mean, and that's an extreme, I mean, maybe that's an extreme example, whatever, but it just shows you that if you do things the right way, you shouldn't always see a sales call as just a means to an end. You should see it as thing in itself, right? An opportunity to create value, to create collaboration, not just as a stepping stone to something else.

Mike (23:59.252)
That's great story.

Mike (24:13.632)
Exactly.

Mike (24:19.712)
So something else that I was taught, John, many years ago, back in my days at KPMG when we were taught to sell consultancy services, which was based around Rackham's work. It was also based around Matt Dixon's work, The Challenge of Sale, which is brilliant, again. And those two pieces of work still last the test of time. I was taught a really simple phrase, which I still use today. If we were having a conversation, John, you were the potential client.

John Golden (24:33.269)
it changed, yeah,

Mike (24:48.894)
And I said, you know, I've seen this before, John, I think what your problem is is X, Y and Z. That it's our first meeting. How are you likely to feel? Go on, John, just chewing the cud.

John Golden (25:03.189)
Yeah. I love when people tell me what my problems are. Yeah. It's no, it's such an interesting thing. And it's, and it's something that, I mean, how many, how many prospecting emails and stuff do you get Mike where somebody says, you know, say, you're, you're, you're marketing is rubbish. You're, you're, your site isn't doing this or whatever. And it's like, it's like, where I always, never understood that. It's like, where

Mike (25:06.166)
You

So, on that point...

Mike (25:24.542)
Yeah, exactly!

John Golden (25:31.583)
Where do you, we're just telling you telling that your baby's ugly. How does that help? Right. Yeah. How does that start you off on a good footing? Yeah.

Mike (25:36.086)
Exactly, yeah. On a good foot, yeah. When did you earn the right to do that? So, I was taught this thing and see if this resonates with some of the things that did at Huthwait or you do now. It sounds really simple, but it seemed to work quite well. We would instead be told to talk to a client and say, you know, it's interesting. What we find across all our clients in different sectors is there are three dominant issues.

John Golden (25:42.761)
Yeah, exactly.

Mike (26:04.832)
that tend to be on the CEO or CMO or CIO's mind. It tends to be one of these three. What's interesting is, John, it varies by sector. In manufacturing, this is the priority, and in media services, this is the priority. Do any of those kind of like resonate?

John Golden (26:13.589)
Hmm.

John Golden (26:21.683)
Yeah. You see now what you've done there, number one is, is you've shown some expertise in the business. You understand, you know, you understand the business. You're not making any assumptions. You're not assuming that you know already what my issues are. And you're starting an interesting conversation. And the thing is, and here's the thing is what I like, what I like, when salespeople engage with me is I want to know.

I want to know what they know about other companies. I want to know what they have seen across the, I want that because for me there's the value. Yeah, obviously the product or service, but for me, a lot of the value is how, how has it been used elsewhere? What are the issues are people seeing that this is solving? What am I missing? You know, that's, that's, and if you can surprise me or you, I go, wow, okay, I didn't know that. I didn't know that about the,

Mike (26:54.729)
Exactly.

Mike (27:11.477)
Yes.

John Golden (27:18.229)
other, other companies were experiencing this or whatever. That's, that's huge value to me. And I think that's something that's underestimated, by salespeople and they don't do enough of it. They don't. And I guess, Mike, a lot of that comes down to when you were, when you were working at KPNG and you're a consultant, you know, you came in as a business equal, right? You didn't come in as like, hello, can you, do you mind if you buy something, please? And I think that's the key is you have to have confidence in yourself.

Mike (27:40.615)
Exactly right.

John Golden (27:46.517)
You have to have done your homework, you skilled yourself, whatever, but then go in as a business equal. Don't go in in a subservient role.

Mike (27:56.787)
They used to teach us, it's really hard to do. If you looked at partners inside KPMG and you looked at one dominant characteristic across all of them, they all had gravitas. It's really hard to teach, really, really hard to teach, but they all had gravitas.

John Golden (28:07.669)
Mmm.

John Golden (28:12.659)
And, yeah, and I think that's a bit of a lost art as well, because I mean, nowadays, and that's what, and the other thing I advise that we give to anybody in sales is, in any role really, but particularly in sales is like, be yourself. Don't try and be somebody else. Don't try and, I mean, nowadays you see some people trying to be super casual and funny and everything, and you're just like, you know, give me a break. Could you just kind of get back to the...

Mike (28:36.511)
Exactly.

John Golden (28:39.535)
You know, issues, business is serious. I want to be serious. That's, and, I think exactly what you're talking about is coming with, with gravitas with, with, even, even the way you communicate, like be professional, because here's the thing is you'll never get dinged for being formal and professional. Nobody's going to go, cancel that mic. He's so, you know, he follows up with such a professional emails. He's so professional and his communication. He really seems to take this stuff seriously.

Mike (28:59.317)
Yeah.

Mike (29:04.224)
Ha ha.

John Golden (29:09.365)
Well, yeah, what's with him? I want the other guy who turns up unprepared, who tries to make a lot of jokes and all of that. That's what I want. And so, yeah, I think it's, and I guess the great thing, Mike, is the bar set so low right now that if you, if you have some gravitas, if you are able to professionally communicate, if you're able to come across as somebody who really is interested and curious, you're going to blow most of the rest of them out of the water.

Mike (29:18.038)
Exactly.

Mike (29:23.732)
Yes.

Mike (29:38.228)
And bit of patience goes a long way as well.

John Golden (29:40.358)
Yeah, exactly. Which is something that you have to learn, especially from being Irish, patience isn't one of our strong points.

Mike (29:50.176)
So John, I've taken up 29 minutes of your time. In summary, what are the top three kind of things that you would say to someone who is either in their early stages of their sales career or indeed they've been selling for many, many years but are looking to improve because they're curious? What are the three takeaways from this discussion?

John Golden (30:07.274)
Yeah.

Well, I would say the first one is just pay attention to how you start your day. All of us need to, we fall into bad habits. So pay attention to how you start your day. It's hard enough as it is. Don't start off at a deficit because you've distracted yourself with negative things. Be aware of your inputs. would say that's the, be aware of how you start your day. The second thing I would say is

lean into your curiosity, right? And you may think you're a curious person, but you can always be, you can always be curiouser and really embrace that and understand that you have a lot of value to bring, but the more knowledge you have, the more value you're going to be able to bring. really invest, invest some time in learning and learning about business and maybe a little bit of extra time researching before you do your sales call, because that's the other thing is

Don't get out of that habit of doing, of doing your prep work for sales call. doesn't matter how good you get at it. So that's the second thing I would say, embrace your curiosity and, don't skimp on, on preparation. And then I think the thing that we talked about is just active listening, like practice active listening, be conscious of whether you're, because you can fall, you can be a good active listener and then fall out of the habit. It's like everything else. It's a habit.

Mike (31:34.121)
is.

John Golden (31:34.241)
And so you have to catch yourself and make sure always that you are asking questions. You're, you're giving the person space to answer. Then you're building on whatever the answer is, or you're validating it or you're clarifying it or whatever, but pay, pay super attention to how you're, you're focusing because that's the last thing I would say, Mike, we live in a world today where people say all the time I'm busier than I've ever been. busier than I've ever been. And, and Mike, my.

response as always, are you, or are you more distracted than you've ever been? Because I guarantee you, if I stood behind you with an old clipboard and did an old fashioned time and motion study on you, how often would I find this thing jumping out? How often would I find you checking your football scores or yeah, or there's a news thing came through or a text from your buddy or whatever. So, you're, so we're extremely distracted. So you've got to

Mike (32:08.8)
Yeah.

Mike (32:13.437)
Yep.

Mike (32:19.582)
WhatsApp's pinging. Yep.

John Golden (32:31.817)
Be conscious of your focus. And I think that's, that's another big thing is be conscious of your focus and try to eliminate as many distractions as possible. It's like your prep time for your upcoming sales call. That's precious. That nothing's going to interfere with that.

Mike (32:48.51)
Exactly right. John, I knew it would be. It's been amazing. Really, really fantastic. Four great tips at the end, very practical things people can do, great discussion. Had no idea at all that you run Huthweight. Amazing. Huge respect for Huthweight International. Huge respect. So thank you for being a great guest and for giving your insights. Really appreciate it, John.

John Golden (33:01.823)
That thing.

John Golden (33:09.639)
All right, cheers, Mike. Thank you.

Mike (33:11.434)
Thanks. And where can people find out more about you before you just go?

John Golden (33:15.15)
Yeah, you can find me at PIPELINERSALES.COM, can find me at salespop.net and obviously LinkedIn is the easiest place to find me.

Mike (33:22.314)
Brilliant. John, thanks ever so much indeed.

John Golden (33:25.247)
Thank you Mike.

Mike (33:26.868)
Right, let me just stop the recording and we're out.