on. You get to reconnect your social platforms once in a while, but yeah, I'm super happy.
Now I didn't do all the setup. I recommend that most, it was easy when I did back in
the day, but I wish more entrepreneurs and visionaries would realize their power of delegations,
right? Inspiring team members.
You must be an EOS fan boy, I think.
Which one?
EOS.
Elon Musk?
EOS.
Oh, EOS.
I'm a, you know, I don't know how much I, when I, when I finally learned that in order
to play basketball, you have to love the workouts like LeBron James, you know, like, and when
I see, I feel bad for business owners that stay stuck in the, oh, I hate doing X, Y,
or Z. And it's like, well, if you hate doing layup drills and you hate working out, then
you're actually probably not going to make it in that career. And the same is true.
I started my business right after the first time I ever went through strategic coach and
did unique ability. And like, I really pulled that in. When I started my business, I was
like, the whole point of me starting my own business is to be a hundred percent focused
in unique ability. Are there days when I do things that maybe aren't a hundred percent
not? Of course. But every day I just work more and more to be like, no, somebody else
should do this. No, somebody else should do this. It's not me.
For sure. Well, and for the younger people too, it's like when you get into sales, for
instance, right? You don't necessarily love sales, or love the idea of that, especially
if you come from like, oh, I was a musician in high school or I played basketball in high
school. There's an identity crisis that kind of occurs before you usually recognize like,
oh, wow, what if I dedicated myself to this the same way I dedicated myself to other passions?
And your passions can evolve because we're humans and we're adaptable and we can learn
to love different things. But Megan, what would you say your three favorite resources
are book, book wise, movie wise, your call? So in terms of like resources, there's a book
called traction. That's kind of the kicking off point to getting started with EOS. And
that is like a supreme tool for entrepreneurs and visionaries that are really looking to
get started. And then there's this one that's actually right next to me right now, the team
success handbook by Shannon Waller. This is just all about strategies for making your
entrepreneurial team more productive. And then honestly, just self shout out, I wrote
the MSP sales playbook, which is sales for MSP is exclusively and I'd never seen one
quite that focused. And so that's a huge resource if you're an MSP sales. I love the way you
positioned your resource. And I wish more individuals in the in the entrepreneur space
that had resources like that were able to be that bold, that authentic and that humble
as well about about the quality and value of the resource. I'd say the exact same thing
about the power marketing funnel, as well as the Academy of first class businesses.
So way to own your stuff, way to own the value you put into that. Let's dive into a little
bit of a break. And then when we come back, I'll do a proper introduction for you, Megan.
All right. Welcome in to Vision Pros Live with Jackson Calame. I'm your show host. We'll
be doing interviews for visionary entrepreneurs and guest leaders who are building fantastic
visions out there.
Hey, what's up and welcome into another episode of Vision Pros Live. I'm your host, Jackson
Calame, founder and CEO of First Class Business. Today, we're going to be talking to Megan
Killian, who has over 500 has sold over 550 million in new B2B tech revenue. And she does
so with with a highly ethical, high ethic, high ethic approach to sales. Man, I butchered
that, didn't I? Point being, we want to make sure that we are ethical in what we do and
what we represent. And we're going to be talking about how to do sales from that standpoint
and why it drives more revenues when that's your approach. And we'll probably be talking
as well about some of the corners that are cut or that we cut without even realizing
it. They kind of ruin our authenticity and ethics of sales. So we all do it. None of
us. None of us are perfect on this world. So let's not pretend we are. Big shout out
to Megan as well for connecting her audience live. Appreciate you guys. Definitely drop
some comments and let us know if there's a certain question you want us to go over. But
we are very much going to be diving into her vision. Now, before I bring Megan on stage,
I want to talk about these sponsors a little bit. People who are very important to my life.
The Wellness Shop 365 with Sean Lechuga. Sean is a growing entrepreneur, just like
myself, just like Megan, just like most people out there. And what I love is his integrative
nutrition and health approach focuses on a holistic approach to wellness that I hadn't
seen before. This 365 Harmony of Life will assessment really caught my attention. He's
looking at what is your joy and spirituality and creativity look like? What about your
career? What about your home environment? What about your relationships and your social
life? I've heard of holistic wellness, but I've never seen somebody really dive that
deep into the core of wellness. So I'm really looking forward to seeing his vision continue
to thrive and move to fruition. For those of you who don't know, he's also a part of
the Vision Pros live process now. And you might meet him in a pre-show, but I definitely
take a look at what he's got going on, support the development of what he's up to. And we'll
now move on to Melissa Gray of The Lost Spot. The Lost Spot was, I'll be honest, when I
first had the opportunity to host Melissa on my show, I was like, I don't want to host
an attorney on my vision show. These people are usually fairly pretentious. They're kind
of stuck up. They're rude in your face. Exact opposite experience with Melissa Gray. She's
a high nurture individual who understands that legal does not have to be complicated,
which is really nice because in business ownership, there are complications to it and you do need
protections, but 99% of the business owners I've talked to, maybe that's not fair. Maybe
95% don't have legal counsel thought through. And that becomes very dangerous and scary
once you receive your first trademark lawsuit or a cease and desist or a demand letter,
or you've got a worker's comp situation. There's so many different things where Apple
patents is your software, like they did with mine at Restaurant Connect. I'm like, whoa,
what do you do in those scenarios? It's very helpful to have somebody by your side who
you trust versus going and finding representation at the last minute, which Megwin also tell
you if you're in the last minute, supply and demand puts you in a position to where you
end up often paying a lot more than you should for the services that had they been well thought
out and we found that person who could protect us and help us, we'd probably be in a better
position to make a wise decision. Lastly, there's a water project. There's millions
of people who do not have access to clean drinking water, like I'm so blessed with every
day. And it's something that I don't ever want to forget. So if you have the opportunity
to get back to the water project and support one of these communities, I love that they
show us the outcome of whatever we contribute to. You get to see exactly what they build
and how their life has changed. If you don't have the ability to give back, then my request
would be that you, I hope that you're inspired to share this with other people because you
never know. You might be the one who connects the dots for the person who is going to be
able to give back 10,000, 100,000, maybe beyond. And the generational impact that we can have
by bringing clean and safe drinking water to entire communities is absolutely something
worth pondering and meditating on. So without further ado, Megan Killian, welcome to First
Class Business and Vision Pros Live. We're so excited to have you here.
Great to be here, Jackson. Let's dive into your vision for those you
serve. What is it that you hope that, what do you see on the horizon for those that you
serve? So our vision is to scale 100 MSP's revenue.
And it really comes down to taking them where they want to be. As entrepreneurs, we know
that like the goal of having a business, it varies, right? They could be trying to exit,
maybe do some M&A. They want to be acquired. That's their retirement plan. Maybe they want
to leave a legacy, leave it behind for their kids. Maybe they want to build a lifestyle
business. They want more time to spend with their families. They want to be working on
their business, not in it. But most frequently I'm helping companies that are around the
$1 to $2.5 million a year mark get to $5 million. I kind of tap out at $10 million where I'm
like, the stuff that I used to get you to here is no longer the scalable solutions.
You need somebody else who's more about scaling things that you're already doing, not implementing
new things.
Excellent. Well, then way to know the thresholds of where you're most effective. It's a really
good sign of somebody who's an expert at what they do. So I appreciate you saying that.
You mentioned an acronym people may not be familiar with, and I believe it was MSP's.
Do you want to describe that a little bit?
Yeah. So MSP's are managed service providers. And my agency, my consultancy, we have from
our fruition only really served B2B technology companies. But over the course of the last
year we've really not even so much on purpose gotten really niche down into the managed
service provider community, which is sort of outsourced IT. You're a small business.
You can't afford $120,000 a year IT director. Have somebody do it for you.
That's excellent. It's good to know too for just the general audience here so that if
you know an IT firm that's struggling or you have an IT firm that is working with you,
I would bet against them. Meaning I would bet that they're probably struggling to get
sales and they're struggling to win. Well, what happens when they go out of business?
So if you can connect Megan to that person and with enough of an endorsement or say,
hey, come at least go watch the show and see what she does. That would be an effective
way to help make sure that your IT team doesn't fall apart and go bankrupt.
Yeah. Historically, IT support companies are terrible at sales. They really understand
tech, but that brain that really understands tech has a hard time with sales and marketing.
Historically, human beings suck at it, all of us. And again, let's go to the stats on
that. 96% of businesses fell within 10 years. That's not something we should hide from.
That's something we should be aware of. Become self-aware of our realities. It becomes easier
to move forward. That means that 4% of businesses, I used to say 4% of businesses win. 4% survive
and after 10 years they're still hanging on. That's no 10. You're 10. According to sba.gov,
it's your 10. But again, the starting phase two and fizzling out, it's still not pretty.
But we're talking about massive, massive failures as an economy for businesses. So it's not
just IT that's limited. We all struggle with our ability to properly and ethically sell
and until we start paying attention. That's probably the thing that I see people say,
oh, I know how to do that. Maybe. Let's take a deeper dive and see what can we learn as
leaders to become better. So what's your vision for you?
So for me, it's all about impact. I have spent the early part of my career as a kingmaker
and I'm talking helping people buy their third private jets. And I sort of had like my man
on the mountain moment where I was like, this is not what I want to be doing. And I wasn't
sleeping well at night. I was in big tech and I didn't love what I did. And so now like
my vision is to help scale those MSPs and specifically to hook my wagon to and partner
with businesses that care about the same things I do. So those ethical businesses that are
giving back their local communities. Because when I go and I scale an MSP's revenue, it's
not just the owner that's benefiting. He's going to go hire a new techs. He's going to
go hire new admins. And so that impact happens in that community as well as my own. The other
side of it is that my vision is to be the hand up that I received. So I was a homeless
single mother. I was a teenage mother and sales changed my life. I now own two homes.
I make multi six figures and have for a long time. And I want more women to get into B2B
tech sales. And I want more marginalized people to be able to get into sales and to be able
to get into tech. And so like the agency's vision and my vision are hand in hand. We
want to scale revenue for businesses while elevating marginalized talent.
That's a beautiful vision. I got to ask, you mentioned giving back locally. Do you hate
my water project or is it okay that we support the one that's across the world?
That's really fine. Like that's marginalized, right? We sometimes hire local. Like I have
a lot of people from Orlando. I have people from a lot of New England because that's where
I come from. But we also hire out of Brazil. And I consider them to be marginalized as
well because they wouldn't have access to the opportunities to build their English the
way that they do by working.
Do you speak Portuguese?
A little bit. Like I know how to say, okay. And I had a Portuguese, I mean, she was Brazilian,
but she spoke Portuguese and I tried so hard to learn, but I kept mixing and you speak
Spanish, right? So I kept mixing my Portuguese and my Spanish.
Oh yeah.
Those romance languages.
Yeah. Very similar languages. Well, thank you. And I got to clarify too. I said my,
the water project, the water project is not mine. You know, I just, I really love it.
And so I feel like I belong to it, but it does not belong to me. Let's sign into-
I think we all agree that everybody should have access to clean water.
Yeah. It's hard not to agree with that. Right? Well said. So what's your, what's the, let's
start with a dark subject. What's your worst leadership experience ever?
So for me, the worst leadership experience was recurrent in my career. And it's just
working for narcissists. In the tech industry, particularly when companies are successful,
owners and the people they surround themselves with tend to really believe that they are
God's gift to this earth. And I disagree. And I actually have gone through therapy to
get over the trauma I experienced working for a narcissist. And you kind of tend to
think like narcissistic abuse is specific to being in like a romantic relationship with
somebody, but it happens in business all the time with like gaslighting and love bombing.
Always when I'm hired by these people, I am the best, most favorite person in the world.
And I can produce millions of dollars in revenue. And as soon as I disagree with them and call
them out on like probably the most specific example I can give, I still have to be a little
bit general because I can't call people out, is pushing DEI initiatives internally and
being like, hey, when I look around this room, I don't see any skin tone variation. I'm the
only woman in the room. We need to do something about that, especially as more millennials
are becoming business decision makers and they buy based on values. And just the amount
of torture I went through after that, where I was treated like an enemy to the entire
company and told that I was overly emotional and didn't understand business. That's the
worst for me is when I bring empathy to the table and I'm just met with a garbage reaction
because people feel attacked. And I tend to believe that I approach these things with
tact. I'm never just like, you're bad for being a CIS head or a white man because you're
not. You were born that way the same way as I was born the way that I am and someone else.
You don't choose the skin you're born in. And so there's nothing wrong with being who
you are. But when you look around a room and everyone looks like you, maybe you should
ask yourself why that is. Have you built yourself an echo chamber on purpose?
Right. I think it's an important topic. And that's an important topic. There's an important
debate within. There's also a really strong and importance for validation of what you
said. It sucks to be in a toxic relationship. And we all have our own toxicities. I certainly
have my toxic natures. And anytime I'm hangry, watch out. I didn't get enough sleep. I might
wake up as a grizzly bear. There's realities that I face. There's also the challenge of
and I like that you use the term, they think that they're God's gift to the world. It's
tough because one side may see that as like, okay. And again, I'm not talking about the
true narcissist. I'm not talking about the one who says I'm God's only gift to the world.
I'm better than everybody else. That's a different level. But I personally believe that you are
God's gift to the world and that the people who are listening right now are. And there's
some people who don't, who'd be like, whoa, he's love bombing now. He's really just trying
to manipulate her into whatever. What are your thoughts on that? I would be very curious.
No, I think so. I'm not like a, I'm not Christian. So I can't really specifically say it's, it's
God's gift, but like the whole concept of like higher power and spirituality, I believe
everyone is a gift and that there's something to learn from every single person that you
meet. Um, I spent my early years, like my, my teenage years, I was a special Olympics
coach. We ran a therapeutic riding clinic in my backyard and, um, you, you can learn
some of life's biggest, most important lessons from people who may not even be verbal, you
know, like I was taught so much patience, so much grace, what it means to accept help.
Um, so much gratitude in, in those situations, um, taught empathy, taught what unconditional
love looks like, how you can communicate nonverbally, the, the base concepts of behavioral psychology
that have built my entire career. Um, I've never met someone I didn't learn from, whether
it was, I don't want to be that, or that is what I want to emulate. Um, so yeah, I mean,
I agree with you a hundred percent that, that everybody has their own gifts and has something
to share with the world that's worth saying. Um, and I want to hear as many stories as
I can. I love that. There's so much depth to this conversation right now. Um, this,
I think, I think it's beneficial to the world at large, um, that I'm, I'm like sticking
with this topic. Um, the, one of my theories, this is a theory, I got, there's no proof
behind it. Um, but one of my theories recently that I've tapped into is like, what if I think,
I believe my hot bosses at the world, if the world went silent, meaning if there was no
more language and, and, and verbal communication, I think within a matter of four to six weeks,
we would understand each other better than we do. I speak ASL, so I'd be okay. And I
think even if that was taken away, right. I'm not saying we should take it away. I'm
not trying to control them. Just theorizing there's, you know, there's studies that show
that our body language, our cadence, our tone, the, what we're not saying speaks far louder
than what we are often saying. Yeah. I mean, I think those things transcend even humanity,
right? So growing up, like I said, I had a therapeutic writing clinic in my backyard.
I grew up with a horse and I communicated better with her, um, than I do anybody in
my whole life. She knew exactly how I felt immediately. As soon as I walked into the
barn, she knew whether she was getting snuggles or we were going for a run, you know? Um,
and like dogs are like that too, and cats, and there's so much that we communicate without
even consciously being aware that we're communicating it. Um, and I think like I'm autistic, so
I tend to be like extra sensitive to all the nonverbal cues because I had to very consciously
learn them. Like I have playbooks running in my head all the time for social situations
and I'm consciously looking at like body language as a cue because I don't want to miss it because
so much of my childhood was being penalized for missing cues. Um, and so yeah, I agree
completely if we lost our access to language and even like we have a habit in my house
where we just turn our voices off, like turn your voice off. Um, and a lot of that is for
myself for my own overstimulation, but it's also really good for us to work on how we
communicate and work as a team without the spoken word. All of this, all of this relates
to cells. All of this is the power and dynamic of influence, um, you know, and, and it's,
so while, while that scenario could force the issue, I think the greater opportunity
as leaders is are we willing to experiment and, and try, um, you know, to see what would
it be like if I stopped sharing everything on social media? Oh, what would it be like
if I, um, you know, gave people a little bit of space and decency and courtesy when they
show up late? What would it be like?
That sales all day long is the AB testing tonality. What's the difference between when
I cold call, uh, in the morning versus the evening? What's the difference when I cold
call and I smile or I don't? Um, what's the difference when I'm talking to a prospect
and instead of speaking, I ask questions and I let them talk. And I think a lot, so many
sales, but we learned so much during COVID when we lost access to in-person interactions
about just how important body language was to sales because you only have so much context
when all you have is voice or all you have is the written word or even, even in a zoom,
like I'm only seeing this much of you. So yeah, you're smiling up here, but I have no
idea you could be losing your mind underneath, like fidgeting yet. Like you could be really
uncomfortable right now. And I wouldn't necessarily know that, uh, because I think we're all pretty
practiced at controlling our faces at this point.
Yeah, that's well said. Um, it was a really interesting dynamic for COVID because then
you also have people masked up, put their pods in with sunglasses, with hoodies on.
You're like, Whoa, what do I have to work with here?
Are we the people anymore? I don't know.
It's hard to know how to, how to talk to somebody in that scenario or do you even write. So
let's talk about your best leadership experience. What does that look like?
Oh God, there's so many, but it's every single time that someone comes and tells me that
I made impact on their life. Right? So like I have a partner named Max, um, who does like
some of our technical SEO stuff. And when he called me and told me that he was going
to buy his first house because of work that we had done together in sales that I had brought
to him, like that was incredible. Um, landing last year, we had a really, we had a really
rough situation where our two largest key clients had to cancel at the same time because
they had internal cancellations that meant we were losing our contracts and I had to
fire a lot of people. Um, but being able to take my creative director who had never worked
outside of retail before and placed her in a social media manager role where she was
making more money than she ever had before. Um, and being able to take my copywriters
and place them internally at Orts where once again, they were making more money than they
ever had before. And having like my, this week I had one of my SDRs called me in tears
because of just how much it has changed her life for me to be positive with her, um, that
I breathe positivity into her. And so she went and got her motorcycle certification.
Um, it's, it's essentially like licensing for motorcycles. I don't understand it, but
she was like, I never would have had the confidence to do this if it weren't for you and her romantic
partner, um, just like gassing me up all the time and telling me how great I am. So that
there's never anything better than that. I don't care how much money we make. I don't
care about, I just care about being able to impact people's lives and make change. So
those are the best leadership experiences is when someone that you have managed or led
tells you that it matters. Yeah. That's awesome. If, uh, this is your last opportunity to share
a powerful lesson with other visionaries, they can learn from your experience. What
would the powerful lesson be? Lead with empathy before anything else. I think it's a constant
debate, um, in, in, in visionary circles and an entrepreneurial circles is like, what's
the most important leadership skill? And, you know, we can talk about motivation and
communication and all of those things. But ultimately for me, it's, it's empathy, it's
kindness, you know, care, just care. When you care about your business, the service
you deliver to your clients and the people who work for you, that for me is the biggest
indicator of success. Care about those three things and everything else follows it. Yeah.
Chip Conley in the book peak, uh, highlights a really great framework for how one can do
that with utilizing Mazel's hierarchy of needs, um, to kind of systematize it for those who
don't really pick it up. I would read, uh, Ken Blanchard's one minute manager and raving
fans first. Um, but peak takes those concepts to an entirely new level. That's that was
very helpful for helping me realize how to recognize the needs of those around me. You
know, sometimes we care, but we don't know what to do with the fact that we care. And
they say the path to hell is paved with good intentions. So the opposite path, um, being
one where we're only in tent full to do good, but we've learned how to actually, um, be
good to others and help people. So we're going to have good models for it too. Right? Like
if you work in the corporate world, you had nothing but bad examples of what, uh, caring
looks like and feels like. Yeah. I think a lot of what I learned was like, I don't want
to, I don't want my company to ever feel this way. Yep. We're habitual creatures for sure.
I mean, COVID proved that, um, as well, like with, with all the masking up. Um, and again,
neither here nor there, I'm not here to judge them. Just we are, we, you know, we tend to
conform to our surroundings. Um, and so it's, it's also great when we do put ourselves
in a room with people who are living life the way that, you know, we, we want to live
our lives. Um, we do have more choice over that. And sometimes we give ourselves credit
for when we live in a first world country, especially. Um, so with that said, we're going
to dive in and talk about ethical sales and why we believe it drives more revenues. Um,
you know, if, if people can make the shift. And I guess my first question for you is,
can somebody shift gears from unethical sales to ethical cells? Is that, is that a learned
skill or is it just something you're born with? They can absolutely shift gears. I think
a lot of the things that we do that are unethical are accidental. I agree. Absolutely. I know
people out there that are lying on purpose. They know their product is crap and they're
selling it anyways. Um, but I think most salespeople are conscious that they, they want to be ethical.
They want to be good because here's the thing about being a salesperson, right? Is that
you're probably not going to work at the same company forever. You're going to build a personal
reputation. If you do that, well, you will forever have a book of business. You will
never not be able to make commission. I have people who buy from me now who bought from
me when I was working at Verizon selling cell phones, you know, who have literally followed
me from company to company to company and bought what I sold. Um, and so when, when
done well, like ethical sales, it's just so obvious. Like your personal brand is everything
in sales. When you become someone who's not trustworthy, you burn a bridge. And if you
burn enough bridges, then they tell everybody else that you're a bridge burner. Um, so,
but, but it's absolutely can be learned. And I think the learning just comes a lot from
reflection and asking yourself if things are ethical. And this has been an ongoing process
for me because there are a lot of things that I was taught through sales training, um, that,
that I've been like, I don't know, is that, is that ethical? And there are things I ask
myself every single day. Is this thing I'm doing ethical is using chat GPT ethical. Um,
is having like, uh, a ghost profile on LinkedIn ethical for times when I don't want to use
my own name. Um, is cold calling ethical at all? Right. Is texting ethical. Correct. Is
web scraping ethical, you know, like there's some things that are very, very obvious. And
those are the things that I tend to coach on more is like, don't lie, tell the truth
under promise, over deliver, do what you say you'll do, say what you'll do. You know, like
these things, um, and that is very coachable. The other stuff I think like ethics is an
ongoing question. There are so many philosophers out there asking the question, like what is
ethics? What does it mean to be ethical? And it's a forever ongoing equation that we're
trying to figure out. Um, and at the end of the day, it's like, how does your gut feel?
Right. And like, what do other people say about you when you're not in the room? And
what do you want them to say? And how do you want people to feel after their interactions
with you and about you and about your brand? Like those to me, that's ethical sales, ethical
marketing. It's all wrapped up in how we make other people feel and how we carry that with
us. And so much of that just kind of all, it all kind of comes back to like knowing,
know your why, why are you here? Cause I don't think anybody started their business like,
well, okay, some people did, but most people do not start their businesses. Like I just
want to go out there and rip off as many people as I can. You know, that's not when I talk
and I talk to a lot of entrepreneurs, um, it, when I'm consulting and about scaling
their revenue and none of them are ever like, we just, we just want to rip people off and
be done with it. No, they're like, we want, we have a good product. We deliver on our
promises and we just want more people to know that. Yep. And that's, that's kind of like
that, that core piece of ethical sales. So it can absolutely be taught. Um, sometimes
there is some unteaching that has to happen first. Um, sometimes that's funny. I think
for me, I'm constantly on teaching. That's like my role. Yeah. I think it's a lot of
relearning. It's relearning the things, um, that, that we thought were true, especially
if you've ever been to corporate sales training, I had to unlearn a lot, um, in the pursuit
of ethical sales because you mentioned it. We're interested, we're, we're influenced
by those previous leaders, right? So we're not, when I'm, when I'm saying when you're
untraining somebody, you're not changing who they are, but you're giving them the opportunity
to get back towards their core identity that you know is, you know, you're hearing them
not be them. I was just going to say what I'm asking them to do is to embrace their
authentic self. So many people come to me where they have been templatized and processized
to death. Where they're just like, this is the script, this is the playbook, this is
how I win. It's proven. They told me it was proven. So if I just keep, if I keep doing
this, if I make more dials, if I send more emails, but I do it exactly this way, then
eventually I will win. And in reality, I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, let's
reverse engineer all of that. Who are you? What are you good at? And I, I frequently
ask people, like when you go to a party and you were invited, the host is somewhere in
the house, but they're not the one that answers the door and you walk in that party. What's
your gut instinct? What do you want to go do? Say hi to the host. Yeah. Some people
want to go find the host. Some people like, I'll go check out the food table. Other people
are like, Oh, I'll just talk to the person who let me in. I'm going to go mingle. Other
people like, I'll go see if I can find someone else. I know what the party. Right. It very
much depends on you. People are different. And so that answer tells me a lot about the
personality and like introverts can be great context as well. Right. Of the, of the host.
Right. So when you propose the idea of that party, um, my imagination might go to, Oh,
it was my best friend who's at that party. Um, right. Or my imagination might go, Oh,
I'm going to a party with Megan, but I don't know anybody there. And I'm not sure if I'm
welcome in this house yet or not. Right. So even us, like every different opportunity
we come across, we're going to have a unique, you know, and what are the person that answers
the door is super attractive and you're single, you know, like maybe you don't want to talk
to anybody else and you just say, Hey, let's go on a date instead. Um, you know, there's
all sorts of things that could happen. Tells me that you like to think about every possible
scenario. I love possible scenarios. So I'd be like, you know, what you're great at is
the market research portion of sales. And I want you to lean into that, but I want you
to limit it. So set a timer for your research because if you don't, you're going to get
dragged down the rabbit hole a lot and end up spending 60 minutes researching a company.
And then you're going to go to call their number and it's not going to work or their
email is going to bounce back and that's going to suck. Maybe. So that tells me about you
that you are very self-assured. Um, and to the degree where you'll tell people what they
need to do and that's okay. Um, reality. So, um, if you were my sales person, right? Like
if I was sales coaching you, your response would tell me enough about yourself that I'd
be like, okay, let's start talking about, these are going to be your strengths. That's
the brilliance of two self-assured people coming together though, and respecting each
other's space. Whereas, you know, it's funny cause some people would be like, well, wait
a second, Megan, you're just arguing. You're not, you're not listening. You're not hearing
me. You know, you're not, you're not respecting her. No, we're, we're learning to communicate
with each other. There is a healthy dialogue when we don't fear healthy conflict. Right.
So that's what sales is all about too. That's part of sales too. Right. Is like, there's,
there's a dialogue that's going to happen. And I think people, there's this whole concept
in sales, right? That's overcoming objections. I throw that out completely. Really interesting.
I believe in diffusing anxieties because first of all, if I've done my job, right, we shouldn't
be coming into objections in the final hour. Right. So when objections, when it really
is framed as an objection is when you're trying to close something, like you're trying to
push them to do a behavior and they're like, no, I don't want to do the behavior. Like
whether that's, I'm trying to close you on meeting with me, or I'm trying to close you
on signing a contract, whatever. If I do my job well, I should be the one qualifying you
out before we get to an objection anyways. So using what anxieties, anxieties. I like
that. And sometimes I call it diffusing objections. Cause you know, SEO needs me to use the word
objection. Well, you can use SEO by constantly going out against overcoming objections. Yeah.
And calling it this, like diffusing anxieties versus overcoming objections. And so if I've
done, let's just like, we're assuming that I did my job right. I qualified out the people
who weren't really interested, who were going to object. Yep. Then really what's going to
happen through the sales process is you as the buyer would bring to me your anxieties,
your questions, your, your worries about what can happen next. And so then it's my job to
diffuse that however possible. And that's where like a lot of conflict can happen in
sales, especially when the moat, one of the most important things as a sales person is
to disconnect from the outcome, right? Like I need to detach myself from the potential
outcome of this interaction and not take it personally. There's, there's this like messaging
that floats around in the sales space all the time about like people buy from people
they like. Depends on the sell. People tend to not buy from people they don't like. Right.
But they don't just automatically buy from people because they like them. Someone can
like me a whole lot, but have no need for what I do. Right. And, and so like detaching
myself from the outcome and realizing that it's not personal. And then then it decreases
the likelihood of conflict. Even though like I'm an extremely opinionated person and I'm
a very confident person. When someone doesn't want to buy from me, that's still okay. As
long as for me, right. I go through a checklist in my head where I'm like, did I do everything
right? Hi, Megan. Um, did I do the things that I needed to do? And if I did, then great.
That person wasn't a good fit for us. Or maybe I made a mistake and that's also okay because
I'm going to learn from that mistake and I'm going to work on doing it better next time.
And sometimes the mistake is even, I let this conversation go on too long. Right. Like you
were never going to buy from me. Yeah. Yeah. There's a, there's a lot of opportunities
there. Uh, sales is, you know, influence, um, you know, in a lot of respects, um, the
ability to help people see either what I think unethical selves is when you're attached at
all to the outcome for your own selfish needs. That's why, that's why I believe in the same
concept of disattach, but I do believe in it to the point of we're disattach because
if you're attached to the cell, you're not doing it for the person that you're serving.
So my number one rule is, is do what's best for the person that I serve. Um, which means
I can't go into this with preconceived notions of what I want and be authentically serving
that individual. Eli wild talks about the 10 clarities of, of cells and how, um, you
know, what, what, what systems exist. So I would agree with this diffusing anxieties
aspect. I love it. It's also what I believe in from my team standpoint of things that they
need to do. And you're 100% right that 99.9% of the time, if you get to the finish line
and they're not able to move forward, it's usually because something was overlooked that
should have been talked about or a question could have been asked. The biggest clarity
that I think, um, still can become an objection is trust though. Um, and it depends. Am I
buying a lollipop from you for 25 cents? You know, or in the case of my business, are people
bringing us in to build the infrastructure for their entire vision, for their legacy?
That's a much deeper conversation, much deeper level of commitment. There are hundreds and
thousands of realities people may want to and need to consider before they decide like,
Oh, I'm going to do this or buying luxury home. You're going to have more objections
overcome more. And when I say objections overcome more diffusing to do throughout the process
to make sure people know they're safe, you know, in your hands. Oh, a hundred percent
like that building trust building rapport is huge. And I, I'm sure you're familiar
with Bant right. Budget authority need timeline. Nope. I don't, I don't do a lot of acronyms
apparently. You're going to breathe it. I'm like, they go in and out of my head, but I,
you know, go ahead and get what you're talking about now. Bant is a framework from IBM from
like way back at the very beginning of tech sales, like began and Bant became a thing.
Budget authority need timeline. That's what you have to qualify to make sure that someone
should even be buying from you. Right. That's, that's our qualification criteria. Not specifically
ours, but like the overall world to sort of agree on. Right. It's like always be closing
or the frameworks that they stand on themselves has their own framework. Bank has their methodology,
their Kool-Aid that they drink to all these tactics, right? Bant is a tactic. Go ahead.
Yeah. So I talk about Bantur being budget authority need timeline and risk. Being aware
of how much risk you're asking someone to take and just how risky it really is for them.
So in the case of like ripping and replacing someone's tech support, you know, whether
it's an internal company or we're trying to bring in some, they're already outsourcing.
We're trying to bring in a new company to replace them. There's some pretty big risk
associated with changing the technical infrastructure of my business. We all rely on it. Like what
happens if the phone doesn't work and the internet doesn't work? That's a, we're not
making any money for most businesses today. And similarly, like if I'm doing an entire
brand build for somebody that's including like vision, mission, branding, their purpose,
that's a big risk to take. Not just on the side of how much money I'm asking them to
spend, but also what if I do a bad job and they're confidently taking bad messaging to
market? You know, that's big risk versus, you know, if you come from like a lot of my clients
come from a SaaS background where they're selling software and sometimes there's risk,
but it's like throwing away money risk. So if you're asking an enterprise company like
Disney to throw away 20 K, that's actually not very risky.
Right. And it's in, that's everybody has a different comfort zone and level with thresholds
in terms of budget and what they want to do. There's so many angles we can go down this.
We are out of time to dive too deep into more concepts, but visionaries who are listening
in, I hope that your takeaway on this is to realize that depth matters. Principles matter.
Knowing your philosophies matter. Knowing your core values matter. If there's one final
thing I would add to this, when it comes to ethical sales, the best thing you can do as
a visionary is learn how to hire ethical sales people. And it may seem simple like, Oh, I'll
just put a job description. Yeah. Your job description is going to be awful if you do
it. I'm just going to grab a template. You know, that template is going to have no depth
to it. I'm just going to do an interview with this for your interview process is missing.
Like you're, you're got, you need some help on this. So if you gravitate towards Megan,
that process, you gravitate towards first-class business on that process, you gravitate towards
Sam, their sales Institute on the process or Oracle and learning. There's, there's a
lot to be learned and your vision in order to clarify your vision so that people will
want to belong to it, that people will want to invest in it to help you become irresistible.
What you do and overcome trust factors, be careful about who it is that, you know, be
intentful. Who it is you bring in because I can't tell you how many companies I've
seen fail that said, Oh, we just hired the number one sales rep from Nike or we just
hired the number one marketer from Airbnb. We just hired the number one person from Cisco
and beyond, beyond, beyond, and that's one of the worst things a visionary can do. And
it's one of the worst sales person for a startup environment. Why I'll tell you, because if
you're the best sales rep for Disney, I'm calling you out person who won the award today
or this year, you're the fastest paper pusher. You don't need to sell Disney tickets. I'm
buying my tickets, whether you want to sell them to me or not, cause that's where I'm
taking my kiddos for more for our vacation, right? You have very, very little sales skills
outside of that incubated environment. And I'm not saying you're a bad person. I'm saying
we all have a lot to learn about new scenarios. So part of the ethics is being hungry and
willing to learn new things like Megan talked about.
You can really break your culture with a bad sales hire too. So if they're not checking
bonds, every single core value, right? Every single core value. Yes. And let's be honest,
like you probably don't have the same culture and values as Amazon or Nike. Like you have
your own values and it's more important that your sales hire meets your values than that
they hit quota every single quarter at their last company.
Absolutely. I love it. Thank you so much for that. And yes, anybody who wants to connect
further with Megan, we'll have it. We'll have her links in the landing page as well. We'd
love to get your book on there as well. Megan, the one you talked about that we got to get
into, we got to read. Megan, do you only hire Megan's? I'm just kidding.
We do have a joke that we only hire women with M names. It's not entirely true, but
it's like 60% of the staff.
That's awesome. Well, thank you again for blessing us with your knowledge. We wish you
the best on your continued path. We are one of those strategic partners who's very excited
to find out more about, okay, what type of coexistence can exist there? What opportunities
are we looking at? So we'll explore that. Vision pros or anybody who says, I might have
a vision to talk about, be our guest, go to the landing page, apply for the process. We're
looking for people who have a vision of serving others. And that may be globally like Mark
Zuckerberg and Bill Gates and Toby Keith and beyond. It may be that you have something
going on in your local neighborhood that means a lot to people. We'd love to meet you and
we'll see you guys in the next episode. Megan, thanks for being here. Thanks for having me,
Jackson. Absolutely. Thank you for being here today. I'm really happy that you tuned in
to vision pros live. I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions as these episodes continue
to move forward. This is going to get more and more fun. We'll have more and more engagement
as well. We'll invite people to participate in the show and thank you for giving us your
time and attention.