Welcome to SALES with ASLAN, a weekly podcast hosted by ASLAN Co-founders Tom Stanfill and Tab Norris, geared at helping sales professionals and sales leaders eliminate the hard sell. At the end of the day, we believe that selling is serving. ASLAN helps sellers make the shift from a ‘typical’ sales approach, to one that makes us more influential because we embrace the truth that the customer’s receptivity is more important than your value prop or message.
The goal of these interviews is to spotlight various experts in the world of sales and sales leadership – sharing informational stories, techniques, and expert interviews on the sales topics you care about.
The following are notes from Ep. 157 – Pro Strategies from a Leader in Enterprise Sales – Randy Riemersma
In this episode, Tom and Tab are joined by Randy Riemersma, Senior AVP of the Enterprise Business Unit at Mulesoft and one of the most elite sellers and leaders out there.
Their conversation covers a range of sales topics, including, but not limited to: the drivers of success for the one percenters, situational fluency, access to power, how to stay motivated, personal brand, the six emotions that drive decision-making, Randy’s top book recommendations, and much more.
Listen to the conversation here:
Or check out the full transcript:
00:14
Tom Stanfill
Welcome to another episode of sales with Aslen. I’m your host Tom Stanfill, and I’m looking at what did we decide, Tab? Did you actually get the award for the best cohost in America or is that just something I made up? I feel like you got the award.
00:32
Tab Norris
No, but I like it. I’m running with it. I’ve been owning it.
00:38
Tom Stanfill
You’re running with it?
00:39
Tab Norris
Yeah.
00:39
Tom Stanfill
Tab, we jumped in on this podcast with our friend Randy Riemersma, who runs the enterprise division at MuleSoft, a 400 million dollar division at MuleSoft and somebody that we’ve known for years. He was first a friend of mine and I didn’t really even know what he did. I realized as I got to know him, he’s one of the most elite sellers I’ve ever met. He’s been sold multi multimillion dollar deals, been successful with some very well known brands, been in leadership. He also was one of our partners, one of Aslan’s partners. First was incredibly successful. He got recruited away by MuleSoft and we got him on the podcast and there’s so much gold here. We just jumped in. I was so excited.
Like, what are you going to tell us? We didn’t do a lot of relational banter. Super excited about having Randy on the company. He talked about I don’t know what your takeaway is, but this is one of the best. I really do think that we talked about the drivers of being of what the one percenters do, situational fluency, access to power, how to stay motivated, the six emotions that drive decision making. It was nugget after nugget after nugget.
02:05
Tab Norris
I know. I loved it. We got book ideas. I’m always looking for great new books all the time.
02:13
Tom Stanfill
I was a little hurt, Tab, that he didn’t mention my book.
02:16
Tab Norris
No, he didn’t.
02:19
Tom Stanfill
I was a little hurt, honestly. He didn’t like it.
02:25
Tab Norris
He just didn’t want to embarrass you. I think that’s it. He didn’t want to put you in a funny spot. When you tell law, you say to the guy that wrote the book, well, of course, it’s one of my I’m going to quote from it. It just feels awful.
02:39
Tom Stanfill
He did give us a lot of love and I’m kidding. I know. He’s so well read. He’s got a lot of it. He calls it scar tissue. This is one of the best episodes. We’re talking to Randy Rimrsma, who again is leading a large organization, sales organization from MuleSoft. You don’t want to miss this episode, so let’s dive in.
Tab, Randy Riemersma, welcome to the show, my friend. It’s been a minute since I’ve seen your beautiful face. How have you been?
03:11
Randy Riemersma
It has been a hot minute. I got to tell you, anytime I’m in the house of Aslan hanging out with Tommy and Tab, I’m going to say this is a great start to a fabulous day.
03:21
Tab Norris
Thank you, my friend.
03:22
Tom Stanfill
Oh, thank you, Randy. I appreciate that. I appreciate it. Well, as Tab and I talked about in the intro, you are one of the elite sellers leaders in our field and I’ve wanted to have you on the show for a long time. I know you’re busy, but I’m so glad to talk with you, connect with you because it’s been a while, but I want to start off with kind of your current role. You’re leading an enterprise team, senior leader of an enterprise team from MuleSoft, obviously one of the premier brands in the industry. I know a lot is happening out there in the market. I mean, we got the quiet quitting, the great resignation, and I know you’re recruiting. When you bring a rep on board, an account executive, you bring them on the team, they go through obviously on the onboarding, what are you guys talking about?
04:12
Tom Stanfill
What are you talking to your team members about? What’s that conversation sound like?
04:17
Randy Riemersma
Well, new reps have gone through all the enablement. They’ve gone through the 90 days. We’re not in a hurry to get them out in the field. We want to get super deep into the stuff. They pop out of that and they’re in the field. For that rep or that reps leader, frontline leader, the thing that I care about is if you’re going to separate yourself in this marketplace, you got to know your stuff. You got to be able to carry your message. You have to really know your personas. You have to get certified on some of our stuff to kind of make it through the run the gauntlet. My desire for everyone and this is what we coach too, as well, we run role plays and all that other stuff is situational fluency. That when the guy or gal on my team is going out and they’re going to meet with the CIO of a fortune 2000 company or something like that, no matter what direction that conversation goes in, they are going to understand their space, going to have done the work, they understand the personas so that they can roll with the call.
05:14
Randy Riemersma
You don’t know what’s going to happen. You show up with the script, you’re screwed.
05:17
Tom Stanfill
Yeah, they don’t follow the customer and follow the script. Wait, you’re not supposed to say that. Randy, this conversation, it’s like the survey at the mall. Next question. I don’t know what you just said. I got another question. Debbie, you’re going to say something?
05:34
Tab Norris
No, I just know because the personas are great but they only go so far. Right. You have to be so comfortable in the personas that you can flex and adjust and kind of go with the flow.
05:47
Randy Riemersma
You really got another language at that point. You really got another language. I’ve got a manufacturing team underneath me, discrete and process. I’ve got utilities, I’ve got the energy sector, we got automotive, we got travel and hospitality. All those have a language of their own. They got use cases of their own. Unless what the heck you’re talking about, everybody knows an idiot when they meet them.
06:15
Tom Stanfill
That’s going to be the subtext, the tagline. Everybody knows. That’s why decision makers, the real decision makers don’t want to meet with sales reps because they have nothing to say. We talk about it, as is you need to know what’s on their whiteboard. Obviously, when I’m meeting with the training coaching sellers or leaders, say, you’re about to call on the BP of manufacturing, right.
06:38
Randy Riemersma
Okay.
06:38
Tom Stanfill
I want you’re sitting in their office. Picture it. What’s on their whiteboard. If they can’t answer that question, they can’t have situational fluency. Right?
06:46
Randy Riemersma
100%. Yeah. The upper left or the upper right hand corner that’s got the big box around it that says do not erase. What’s in there.
06:57
Tab Norris
The permanent marker.
07:01
Tom Stanfill
On the left hand side. If you go to my office right now, there’s the lefthand section and it’s been there for it’s what I’m working on, it’s my top. I know it’s kind of cheesy, but it is what keeps me up at night. Right. It’s what I’m stressed about. It’s what I care about. It’s what’s most important.
07:18
Randy Riemersma
It’s probably what’s directly tied to your income, too, because, like these CIOs were talking, they got big bonus plans, right. We want to make sure. We need to understand. Okay. We talk about execution and empathy over here. Number one, we want to run our play. We want to run deeply in richland and with empathy. The people that anybody are serving out, we are all under systemic stress, right? Coming off of COVID We got the resignation. We’re facing recession. All right, let’s remember these people are human beings. They’ve got hard jobs. They don’t want to come in on the weekend and do a big patch. How do I make this stuff work better? By golly, the line of business is screaming at me because we’re nothing but a cost center. We’re always blah, blah. How do we help make these people’s jobs better? I tell my team, you got to know how am I going to get this person promoted?
08:08
Randy Riemersma
How am I going to get this directly below? If you don’t know how, you’re not aligned to their personal goals. I know you guys care about personal goals.
08:18
Tom Stanfill
I love that. How am I going to help the people that I serve get promoted? I love how you’re talking about this, Randy, because we’re worried about a commission if we’re in sales, right? We’re not worried about a number, whether your front line or your leader. You’re worried about a number if you’re especially part of the type of solution that you sell and the type of solution we sell if they screw this up, right, if this doesn’t go well, they’re going to lose their job and the respect of their entire community. As far as in their organization, it’s a big deal. There’s a lot of pressure. If a reps in there going, hey, we do this. I don’t know how it works, but here’s my billboard. Trust me, baby, I had a rep say this the other day. I asked him, I said, So what’s your response to the it’s too expensive.
09:07
Tom Stanfill
He goes, I take a key off my ring, I hand it to him and I say, here’s a key to my house. If you ever need me, you can just come to my house. That answers everything. He also says, I don’t stop till I call the cops.
09:26
Randy Riemersma
Yeah, when I come to your house, it could be a trailer or is it going to be like four car or something for us, just in context, why do we have to be so good? Why do we have to be able to reframe somebody’s mindset? Nobody got fired yesterday for doing what they’re doing in our world.
09:44
Tom Stanfill
Yeah, right.
09:45
Randy Riemersma
So, hey, my name is Randy. I’m going to throw kind of a provocative idea at you. If this blows up, you’re going to lose your job. You don’t care about risk, do for us, real quick and I got my hands going, I know that your listeners can’t see this, but we need to understand for this person that we seek to serve something that probably they’re not even aware of their current state and the negative consequences. The problem is it’s like the boiling frog syndrome, right? You keep raising the temperature up you don’t know that you’re doing this wrong. We got a perspective in a provocative point of view. We have to help expose the current state in the negative consequences. The purpose of that is two fold. Number one, anchor for the low point of value because the value is going to be defined by the current state and what it looks like in the future state.
10:33
Randy Riemersma
That value gap is what people pay for. Right? Right.
10:36
Tom Stanfill
That’s your role as a seller is to communicate how you bridge that gap.
10:40
Randy Riemersma
It’s not about it uniquely here’s how I uniquely bridge that. Because you can’t uniquely bridge it. You’re in a knife fight with every other yum out. They’re trying to sell some stuff and everybody gets cut in a knife fight. We got to anchor on the negative consequence. We also have to make sure that they see that, because without that, nobody moves.
10:59
Tom Stanfill
When we sell, you got to feel the pain.
11:02
Randy Riemersma
You got to feel the pain because we sell a deal, man. We land at 200 and 5300 thousand dollars for the next couple of years. You can spend another 800,000,002 with us. We’re talking at least in my house. Millions of dollars are still real money, right?
11:20
Tom Stanfill
It used to be for us.
11:23
Tab Norris
Real money. Is that what you said?
11:25
Randy Riemersma
Yeah, it is.
11:28
Tab Norris
Three things I’m going to use all the time.
11:30
Tom Stanfill
Provocative.
11:31
Tab Norris
I’m going to use that a lot more.
11:32
Tom Stanfill
Yeah, provocative. Tab does use that word a lot. Randy.
11:35
Randy Riemersma
It’s a great word. If you don’t provoke, you guys know this, the emotions of selling. You guys are experts at this. If we don’t provoke, if we don’t get them imagined, imagine what it could be like when it’s like, hey, imagine a bowl of Captain Crunch. You can’t not think about Captain Crunch.
11:56
Tom Stanfill
That was my favorite.
11:57
Tab Norris
For Crunchberries or no crunch.
11:58
Tom Stanfill
Beer.
12:00
Randy Riemersma
Coffee, black. Captain Crunch plane.
12:05
Tom Stanfill
We do the real milk.
12:08
Randy Riemersma
Cows deserve that. I respect cows. We need to drink their milk, right? We got to ank we got to get that current state with a negative consequence. It’s clearly defined because that a drives motion. That’s the compare to the future state, because so many and I think if you are a sales rep and if you are a front line sales leader and you’re listening to this podcast, forget everything you’ve heard so far. Forget everything you’re about to hear. But this is the key thing. I got my hands up again.
12:32
Tom Stanfill
Okay?
12:33
Tab Norris
Got a key thing in parentheses.
12:35
Randy Riemersma
Do not just sell the future state. I see so many people talk about the future state. Everybody’s like, yeah, I want to get that. Without the pain of today, they’re on somewhere. Somewhere. I will do that. Right. You cannot just sell. If you just sell the future state, you’re not going to get the deal that you want. You must gap that to the current state with a negative consequence that you’ve created.
12:57
Tom Stanfill
The visual that I have and every time I’m working with a customer or prospect is a bridge. It just so clear to me. You are here and you want something. You are in a current state, and your current state is unique to you, and I need to validate it, and you need to know that I get your current state. You want something, and there’s a reason you want it. There’s an informal reason, and there’s a formal. There’s what you tell everybody, and there’s what you don’t tell everybody, and then there’s a bridge to get there. And everybody’s freaked out about the bridge. No one knows exactly how to build the bridge. They’re not 100% confident. There’s a lot of but I love that I operate in those three zones. Our process, I think it’s probably like yours, is the first step is to define those three elements.
13:45
Tom Stanfill
What’s the current state? You’re saying make sure you define the pain. What happens if you don’t move, if you stay here? What’s the consequence? Is that what you’re saying?
13:59
Randy Riemersma
They’re often blind to it. Right? They don’t realize what’s going on. They don’t necessarily see the build up of technical debt or their inability to accelerate the delivery business services. They’re just denied to get fired yesterday. And I love your analog. I remember the slide when I worked with you guys that sliding with the bridge. The same kind of thing. If we don’t anchor the current state, what is the bridge going to hang on?
14:24
Tab Norris
It’s a rope swing. Which means.
14:30
Tom Stanfill
It is so true about how people experience. I’m just the same way, and I see this all the time. When I conduct an assessment of an organization, I feed back their current state to them. That’s where I always start. And the same is true for me. It’s like, unless you’re in the room, you just don’t see what’s going on. We all operate in certain rooms. We’re in this room. This is all that really matters. That’s why it’s so important to nail down events and get agreements to a certain process, because as soon as the meeting is over, they go to a different room, and what’s in that room becomes most important. Very few people can organize all of their priorities and be in all those rooms at the same time. Of course, I’m speaking metaphorically, but it’s like, I don’t think about my car until I go to the seat.
15:11
Tom Stanfill
They go, oh, man, you got a problem. And I’m like, oh. Otherwise, I don’t think at all about the car or my house. That’s why it’s like it’s covet. It’s like everybody went home, and then all of sudden, A, everybody freaked out about their house because they were in that room. Like you’re going, oh, my foundation, my roof. I’m like, I’m looking at all this. I went from, I don’t even think about fixing up my house to my house is falling down. It’s because I was looking at it. It’s the same thing, I think is what you’re saying, is we got to get them to look at, not make it up. I think that’s really important. Not artificially create pain. It’s not a technique. It’s not a think of the word manipulation tactic. It’s a realistic approach to what does it cost you to stay where you are?
15:58
Tom Stanfill
If there’s no cost, if there’s no pain, move on.
16:04
Randy Riemersma
Let’s go get pizza. Yeah, right. Well, there’s a couple of things I want touch on that if you are doing this authentically. That’s why one of my compass points for my team is execution, empathy, because we care if you are doing this well. People are like, oh, you’re trying to sell them software? I’m like, no, I’m trying to make their life better. I believe I got the best story for that. And I love them. I have deep affection for them. I feel their pain. That’s why I want to bring it in full force right. Do this hard work, plowing the field, as you guys referred to. Another thing, Tommy, you touched on the rooms. When someone leaves our room and they go to the next room, the emotional affinity that they may have had for you in this room does not get more. It starts ebbing.
16:51
Randy Riemersma
Right.
16:51
Tab Norris
It’s vanishing, doesn’t it?
16:53
Randy Riemersma
Yeah. Immediately. The second you hang up the phone, the second you walk out the door.
16:56
Tom Stanfill
I leave my house and go to vacation in Florida. I quit thinking about my house.
17:00
Randy Riemersma
Quit thinking about your house. Right. You got to capture when you’ve gone through that, AHA, exactly. Moment. Mr. Or Ms. Client that I’m talking with, this is what I think is going on. Let’s find that, refine that, and you go, oh, wow. AHA, I get it. You have this going on. They go exactly. That’s a moment of high affinity, and it never gets better than that. When they leave this room, you got to get to ask at that point. I love that part on that one, but I’m just should anybody be listening to this conversation among three people? That’s a key thing to remember, man. Get them while they love you. Because if you don’t schedule the meeting or agree to the process at that moment in time, every minute afterwards, your chances just keep going down.
17:45
Tom Stanfill
I got to double click on that. Something else you said, so I got to come back to situational Fluency because I love that concept, because I want to talk about that’s the, I think, most difficult skill to teach, and I want to know how you address that. I want to talk about this idea that you’re bringing up of being able to help the customer move forward, because everybody talks about deal velocity, and every organization that I work with, every seller that I work with has a process, whether it’s articulated, it’s informal, it’s in their head, and sometimes it’s a two step process, but everybody sometimes it’s more formal. Every single process I’ve ever seen is built around the seller. Here’s how I move an opportunity forward, which doesn’t motivate the customer to move forward. I think the most effective process is when you can lay out, here’s how you need to evaluate you.
18:42
Tom Stanfill
We’ve realized you’re at this current state, and you have this desire to be at this future state, and we’re talking about your current plan to get there. Now, here’s what we need to do for you to evaluate the best way to bridge that gap. Here are the steps that I’d like to recommend. To me, if you can lay out the customers journey and focus more on their journey than your journey, it’s much more likely to keep them moving. I want to get your take on that and how you taught your organization to do that, because everybody’s different, so it’s hard to say, hey, here’s the customer journey. I feel like it needs to be customized for each solution. But what are your thoughts about that?
19:20
Randy Riemersma
Well, I mean, we got three guys on this call right now. If were all to go buy a car right now, we would buy a car, and we do it in three very different ways.
19:28
Tom Stanfill
Good point.
19:29
Randy Riemersma
Yeah.
19:30
Tab Norris
Right?
19:30
Randy Riemersma
We kind of have to figure out the end state is they want to get us in a car, but my journey might be different than tabs, might be different than tom. For me and again, I’m reading slides from the aslan. The top of one of the slides is we make emotional decisions. We back them up with intellectual alibi.
19:50
Tab Norris
Right.
19:53
Randy Riemersma
Here’s what I’ve learned. I don’t know if I’m the oldest guy on the call, but I’m close to it. I’ve learned that rational commitment fades and ebbs very quickly. It does not have staying power, but emotionally driven activities have tremendous staying power. If you’re in a meaningful relationship with someone else, rationally, you may or should not be there, whatever. Emotionally, you’re going to fight for it. It’s why people fight for marriages. It’s not a rational decision. That’s an emotional decision. So the same thing with our clients. We got to get them involved in the emotion of what’s going on. It’s I’ll go super fast on this one. There’s three emotions that we need on the client side. Number one, the fear of pain. Right. Something’s going on. Right. We need to create A little hope. Hey, I met randy and his crew. Maybe they can solve this problem.
20:47
Randy Riemersma
And then there’s confidence at the end. Inside the red zone, risk is what blows up deals. Right. So we got to get them hope.
20:53
Tom Stanfill
And move them forward.
20:57
Randy Riemersma
Get them some urgency. On my side, I want them to be curious. Right? Hey, randy seems to know something. Then I want to be confident. Seems like he knows in randy. I want them to be confident in me, and then I want them to be committed. Right. They got to be committed on that. Okay. Randy’s going to be able to carry this through. I’ve done the reference calls. I’ve got the pantheon of other companies that we’ve helped solve this for, but I don’t all that around emotions that I think it’s critical for them to experience. All six of those motions three about them, three about me. You can have a very rational sales process. It kind of goes left or right, but last time I sold the CIO, it doesn’t go left or right. It goes left, right.
21:42
Tom Stanfill
It’s not linear. They can go forward and back, but there’s stages they have to go through, like evaluating like, they have to evaluate and define what the problem is. Like, what’s the problem? I have you just said this. It’s like, what’s the pain of the current state, the fear of what could happen? So that’s a step. I hear you’re saying, so whatever my process is, if I can feed that back to you, whatever my process is, it has to be tied to those it has to accomplish those three things, it has to drive those not three, six emotions. Three about them. Right. Three emotions they have and three about you.
22:17
Randy Riemersma
Yeah. Obviously, there is an element of left or right and all this stuff. Why do anything? Why do it with me? Why do it now? It’s kind of another model that a lot of people talk about. Why do anything is exposing the pain. Why do it with me? I’m the unique bridge. Why do it now? Hey, every day you’re not doing this, it’s a day you’re not experiencing it.
22:39
Tom Stanfill
Right.
22:39
Randy Riemersma
If it’s meaningful, let’s go. I think one of the things, too, is as you’re building that bridge, you got to build it in a unique way. Right. I want to be the unique person that can deliver, close the gap from the current state of the future.
22:56
Tom Stanfill
I got to be one.
22:57
Randy Riemersma
Yeah, you got to be different. And there’s all kinds of differentiation. If it’s comparative differentiation, that’s tough, man. That’s a knife fight. That’s a nice fight. Unique differentiation.
23:06
Tom Stanfill
That’s the price. That comes down to price.
23:08
Randy Riemersma
It comes down to cost. Right. Because it’s me and three other yums out there that are kind of going after the same thing.
23:13
Tom Stanfill
I like that. Tab, we have to add that to an actor.
23:16
Tab Norris
I don’t know what a yum is. I think it’s like a snail.
23:19
Tom Stanfill
I don’t know what it is.
23:22
Randy Riemersma
It’s a slow moving, nonsension slug. See?
23:26
Tab Norris
Okay, I was close.
23:28
Randy Riemersma
By the way, tab is between you and me. Yum yum is not a positive term.
23:33
Tab Norris
Okay.
23:34
Randy Riemersma
I met Tab. He’s a real yum.
23:37
Tom Stanfill
Thank you.
23:39
Tab Norris
Thank you. I love that about me.
23:44
Randy Riemersma
Because when you tie your unique differentiation, then it’s focused. Then it’s a pure value play. It is a pure value play. It’s really what percentage of value can I capture versus being in this knife fight?
23:57
Tom Stanfill
Yeah, it’s so simple when you think about it. We got to figure out what problem they have and what solution they need, but that doesn’t mean they’re going to choose you. They’ve got to figure out which solution provider. It’s really just two things. Not that there’s a lot of a lot that has to happen for that occur, but we’ve always got to keep that in mind. There a problem that needs to be solved? Right. Do they need to invest in solving this problem? Are you in the game? You’re a cardiologist. Do they have a heart problem now? They got to pick the cardiologist. A lot of times you just focus on, yeah, you got a heart problem. Let me know if you want to do anything about that.
24:35
Randy Riemersma
Here’s my number.
24:36
Tom Stanfill
I’ll follow up. You talk to your team, and I’ll follow up later and tell me no. You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to send you a proposal, and then I’m going to spend a lot of time. I’m going to write a proposal, and then I’m going to spend a lot of time following up, and you’re going to go dark, and it’s just not what I got to return back to. So love talking about this, Randy. You’re just so gifted, so smart. Situational fluency. Can you teach it? I think that’s the most difficult skill, as I said earlier, to teach someone is the ability to kind of hover over the conversation, watch, knowing what you’re going to say, knowing what they’re saying, reading the room and being mobile to flex because people don’t talk in a linear fashion, especially if you’re talking to someone who really cares about the outcome.
25:24
Tom Stanfill
Once they start to sense that you understand their whiteboard and you have something to offer, then they can go in any direction.
25:32
Randy Riemersma
Exactly.
25:36
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. Can you teach it? If you can, how?
25:42
Randy Riemersma
I know there are very different views out there on this point. I have a firmly held view that I will share with you, too. One of my favorite authors, Carol Dweck. She wrote a book called Mindset is Closed Mindset and Open Mindset. Closed mindset is things are the way they are, and they will always be that way. An open mindset is things don’t necessarily have to be that. I can change that, potentially. I’ve been selling in a technical environment for 34 years. I’ve been selling to CIOs. More than half of that time. I’m probably as situationally fluent with a modern day B to B. CIO is a top 10% on the planet.
26:22
Tom Stanfill
Right.
26:22
Randy Riemersma
Every rep on my team going to be able to do that? No, but what we can do is let’s say scale of one to ten, let’s say there are two. I can get into a four or five. By going from a two to a five, they’re separating themselves from a bunch of yums that aren’t at their level. Right. They’re improving their position in the marketplace. How do we do some of these things? We do a lot of role play. We do role plays. We’re kind of geared up. Okay, let’s do this role play. I’ll be the easy CIO. Okay. Now, I’ll be the medium CIO. Now I’ll be the real. Just I just lost 38% of my budget. Next year. That CIO. We amped that up and you work it around. We get tons of stories that we tell and try to learn from. We’re very much a storytelling organization as well.
27:07
Randy Riemersma
We follow that story arc. Right here’s where they were. Here’s a try to go. The confounding problem, they met us, that kind of thing. But it’s practice. I’m not very musically talented. That’s just not one of my things. I learned to play piano as a kid. Was I Beethoven? No. But I did get better. Right. I do believe not everybody is going to be able to achieve the same level as someone else. I will never play basketball like LeBron James, but I can get better at basketball.
27:37
Tom Stanfill
I can get better.
27:38
Randy Riemersma
I think that’s the key things have a realistic expectation. What’s going to take to get there? What do I need to invest? Is it training? Is it coaching? What it’s going to be? We can move all of our if we care for we love our customers. We love our people if we care for them. One of the things I say to my team all the time, you owe next year a better version of using this year.
27:58
Tom Stanfill
Got right.
27:59
Randy Riemersma
Got to get a little bit better.
28:00
Tom Stanfill
How many times we’ve had somebody that had been in their role for 20 years and they’re the same they were 18 years ago. It’s like you’re the same person. You haven’t grown. If you just get a little better every year and you have passion about the things we’re talking about, you will crush it. There’s just not that many people that I mean, most everybody I see or observe, they’re just cutting and pasting. Like they send an email. They just cut and paste. It’s the same conversation over and over again. They ask the same questions. It’s like they just throw stuff out there and say, hey, this is what we do. I love that. The idea of situational fluency is just practice. You’ve got to practice. One of the things that I want to get your take on this, Randy, is I think one of the killers of situational fluency is you cannot let go of your agenda.
28:52
Tom Stanfill
Like, if I’m sitting with the CIO and let’s say I’m a junior salesperson and I got the meeting right, I’m in the room, and I’m really focused on the five things Randy taught me about what’s on the CIOs? Whiteboard I’m not quite sure. I’ve been through training. I’m not quite sure. If he starts talking or she starts talking about something and enough about it, you got to know enough about it to ask an intelligent question. You say, look, I don’t know if this fits with my solution and I don’t even know if I can help you, but I really want to know what that means to you. I don’t know where this is going to lead, but I’m super interested. People will respond to that, kind of be authentic and don’t be so worried about your agenda of I got to walk out of this meeting with whatever the next step is and let it go.
29:36
Tom Stanfill
And just let it go. See where it goes. Now you have to have enough information to ask intelligence. Like I said, ask intelligent questions. It’s got to be related because you start asking stupid questions are not relevant questions, then they’re not going to participate.
29:49
Randy Riemersma
You keep talking about the room that we’re in. I keep thinking, I don’t know if you guys saw the play hamilton the room where it happens out of this song. That’s not going to be good.
29:58
Tom Stanfill
No, do that. Do that. Because you get to the piano thing, and we can situate skills.
30:03
Randy Riemersma
I got skills. They’re not very high skills, but I got skills to that point. That’s actually one of the things that I interview for Tom, is intellectual curiosity. Is this person fundamentally curious? Yeah. Because if you show up with an agenda is actually a destination. Right. If we’re not going to my destination, and we’re going to bump into guardrails and trees, and that’s going to create friction and problems. Whereas if I show up with intellectual curiosity that’s context based, I can roll, and I got it back, and they go on a rift. I’m like, okay, here’s what I heard you say that I get it. Right? Yeah, exactly. What else is there? What else is there?
30:43
Tab Norris
Yeah. Can I dig into that ? Because I love that. I think you’re tapping something that’s Tom and I are very curious about. This whole hiring thing. Intellectual curiosity. I agree with you 100%. Can you give me a little more? What does that look like? How do you discover that? Can you give me more specifics around that?
31:06
Randy Riemersma
If you guys recall the times that we work together, I’m a big fan of asking questions. Right. Close ended questions to wrap up a deal. Open ended questions. Clarifying. I love clarifying. You ask for clarifying questions. Open ended questions are great. I think clarifying questions is really what separates you. Right. Remember that role play that we do? You get a rep in somebody, and you kind of, like, go three or four or five times. The reps that ask great opening questions and the reps that ask great clarifying questions are the ones that get it so tab. How do I figure that out? I shouldn’t say this out loud because anybody that interviews in the future now, but I sound like I’m being a nice guy, but I say, hey, look, man, our job is easy. You got a whole bunch of people looking at you.
31:57
Randy Riemersma
That’s not that hard. Your job. You’re one person looking at a whole company. I want to turn the mic over to you. You do whatever you want to do. Ask me any question, whatever you want to do, and then I STF you. I shut the F up, and I look at them and reps that have intellectual curiosity, they’ve already prepared. They’ve got nine questions they want to ask me. What happens if this what are the key attributes you’re looking for? The ones that don’t have intellectual curiosity, they look at me, and then I just stare at them. Blank face, stare. You watch the life go out of their eyes, and you’re like, what do you mean? What’s your address?
32:36
Tom Stanfill
Are you okay?
32:38
Randy Riemersma
Yeah. Are you okay? Intellectual curiosity sometimes really not move at all, and they think the screen is frozen. Curiosity. The reps that have high curiosity, they will show prepared. There’s actually six attributes. I’m looking for one of them. The fourth come from Warren Buffett. Right. Passion, intellect, integrity, and coach ability. Right. You got to have those four. My first interview is really only about these six things. Right. Do you have passion? I mean, not like over the top emotion. Emotion and passion are not the same thing. Passion is internally generated. Emotions are externally stimulated. Right. So passion, are you intelligent? Right. Selling our stuff, you got to be smart. That just is true. Are you coachable? One of the things that we do at the end of an interview is we give people feedback. You can always tell the people that are coachable. They’re the ones that write a bunch of you can see them writing away like crazy.
33:32
Randy Riemersma
When you said that, what did you really mean? I don’t understand that. The ones that aren’t there, like, some of them, I should argue with you. No, I didn’t do that. I’m like, this interview is over.
33:43
Tom Stanfill
You won the argument, but not the job.
33:47
Randy Riemersma
I see one from Angela Duckworth, which is great. Right. And, I mean, tell me a story where you were, like, knee deep in mud and you freaking drug a big oak tree through it to the other side of the field. Show me where you could grind our sales cycles. Dudes, they could be two years long.
34:05
Tom Stanfill
Yeah, that’s another reason you can’t make a mistake. It’s going to go a long time to ramp them up.
34:11
Randy Riemersma
Yeah. I mean, every single three or five years with somebody that you’re asking them to break, you got a shot now, whatever. The last thing I’m looking for is intellectual curiosity. Are you just curious with how things go? Because if you’re not curious, you got to go to a script, and the script is screwed. I firmly believe that the only time I like a script is sometimes in that first call. Right. You want to have that kind of format because I don’t want all salespeople do not take this as an offense. I want my sales people to think as little as possible out in the field because they’re putting energy somewhere where they don’t have to. Let’s understand things as much as we can going in. Let’s be an expert in this person. Maybe it’s that first call. If we’re doing some pipeline that might be scripted, prepared.
34:55
Randy Riemersma
I know you guys have a model that actually is extraordinarily effective for that, but those are the six things passion, intellect, integrity, coachability, grit, and intellectual curiosity. You got eight out of ten on all of them.
35:10
Tom Stanfill
I love it. That’s a beautiful list.
35:13
Tab Norris
That’s really good.
35:14
Tom Stanfill
We talk about humble and hungry. That’s the grit. One of the things. I’ll throw something out for leaders that may be listening or reps who want to get better prepared for their next interview, which, by the way, is intellectual curiosity. Yeah, it’s so funny. I remember sitting at a bar at an airport waiting for my flight, and the guy goes, what do you do? We start talking. What do you do? I said, Well, I’m a trained phone company. This was years ago. At the time, were focused on inside sales and inside sales only. I go, yeah, we travel around the country, really the world training organizations on how to improve their inside sales organization, because I don’t know, what do you do? Because I’m an inside sales rep. If you had intellectual curiosity, what would you ask? I mean, think about the difference of Spot.
36:08
Tom Stanfill
This is a guy that all he does is work with inside sales. I’m an inside sales. What would you ask this person here’s what the guy said? Absolutely.
36:17
Randy Riemersma
The first thing I would ask the guy to say, tom, what are you drinking? Let me buy you another.
36:20
Tom Stanfill
Exactly. First of all, I’m plugged in to all these organizations. I also watch what’s happening. Whether I know what I’m doing or not, I’m in. The thing is, everybody’s missing. Like, if he would have dove in that situation, I would try to hire him, but otherwise, we didn’t even talk. It’s just crazy. That kind of leads to my point. I focus on the offcamera interview. I think that’s the most important part of the interview is when you’re not being interviewed, the interview is not happening. What do they say to the other people? What do they ask you when they’re walking to the hall? What do they ask if you take them some place, a restaurant, what? How do they respond to other people? They meet with them. We interviewed somebody a couple of years ago, and we took them to dinner, and they had zero interest in either one.
37:01
Tom Stanfill
The two people at Adam that were meeting with them, I think that off camera, you kind of see because they may have prepared, they may be smart enough to repair, but it’s not really who they are.
37:13
Randy Riemersma
I know you guys. One of the things we talk about let’s talk about elite salespeople, right? Elite salespeople are very curious. They’re not curious specific to what they can sell. They’re just curious. Yeah, they don’t care.
37:26
Tom Stanfill
They can’t turn it off. They can’t turn it off. Why is that? They can’t help asking why.
37:31
Randy Riemersma
Yeah, and it’s almost like you’re fascinated. They’re fascinated by other people. I’m in a room with this person, mr. And Ms. Whoever, who’s or whatever, who or tell me. If they talk about, like, I’m a juggling unicyclist, they’re like, wow, how did you learn that? Juggling or the unicycling, blah, blah. And they go to they’re just extraordinary. I find that some of the elite are just, like telling a cat not to watch a bouncing tennis ball that I can’t not do it right.
38:07
Tom Stanfill
This is why everybody loves Tab. Like, if you watch Tab meet somebody, he is so curious and excited about who they are, what their story is, where they’re I mean, and you can tell he’s like, genuinely excited. People will say, you actually care. My response to when people ask me questions is always give him just the 30,000 foot. What do you do? I got a sales training company. I literally try to limit it to, like, as few words as possible. How many kids do you have? Four. I don’t say anything else. Do you have a lot? Yes.
38:39
Randy Riemersma
If I don’t know, you can ask me a question.
38:42
Tom Stanfill
The percentage of time that someone says, well, really? Well, tell me about your kids anyway. So back to me, right?
38:49
Randy Riemersma
Yeah, I’ve got four kids, too.
38:53
Tom Stanfill
I got three.
38:54
Randy Riemersma
Let’s talk about Tab for just a second. Because on every call you can tell somebody’s leaning in or leaning out with your face to face on the phone, whatever, somebody’s leaning in and leaning out. When you get somebody that’s like Tab, who’s just curious and is charming and is going to ask is going to dig, it becomes magnetic. You only have to lean in because what I think you’re doing in that moment, the way Tab has a conversation and dude, I respect this in you. And I don’t naturally have this. There’s one of these things I’m getting better at. I’m going with 2.1%.
39:30
Tab Norris
Every little point counts, by the way.
39:34
Randy Riemersma
If I get 1% better per week, I will be 68% better at the end of the year.
39:38
Tom Stanfill
Compounding 1% per week. When would they have atomic habits?
39:44
Tab Norris
That’s atomic habits.
39:45
Randy Riemersma
That’s incredible. If you haven’t read my gosh, couple of books. So carol dwight mindset. Read that. Atomic Habits. I think it’s Sears. Right. James Sears. Yeah. And then there’s another one. I know you guys will like this book.
39:58
Tab Norris
What was the first one again?
39:59
Randy Riemersma
The first one was Carol Mindset.
40:02
Tab Norris
Mindset.
40:04
Tom Stanfill
All right. We love book that’s spelled Tab.
40:05
Randy Riemersma
That’s spelled M-I-N-G. Hey, as a young.
40:10
Tab Norris
I know how to spell.
40:16
Randy Riemersma
It doesn’t have a spell check built into his pencil yet. Atomic Habits by I think it’s James Sears. I think that’s his name. It’s a very good book. That book will change the way you look at your life. You will think you’re actually good at things. It turns out you’re just being controlled by habitats. The third book, and I know you two will like this one, it’s by Zoe Yates. It’s called Your Influence, your superpower, something like that. She’s a PhD professor at Yale and she talks about influence and she’ll talk to you about the judge versus the alligator. I’m just going to leave it there.
40:57
Tab Norris
Okay.
40:58
Randy Riemersma
I think, Bob, that’s called creating interest and intrigue. Everybody just leaned in. Tell me about the judge. In the alligator. I’m not going to do it. But you want to know the difference? I’ll buy this book as soon as.
41:08
Tab Norris
We’Re done, I’ll buy it.
41:09
Tom Stanfill
Activated the raz.
41:11
Randy Riemersma
Yeah, exactly. We’re taking our activating system just blew up. Everybody’s like, tell me about this alligator.
41:15
Tom Stanfill
Tell me about the alligator.
41:16
Tab Norris
Well, and it’s something Randy do. You always inspire me. That’s why I’m all curious about this because I feel like always try to get 1% better. Ever since I’ve known you’ve always been hungry to and another thing you do well is you talk about grit. You’ll outwork anybody. I mean, you’re not going to outwork anybody. That’s why, and I think you’ve already been dancing around it. If I can’t, tom, I really wanted because you said elite salespeople. I love 1%. I love the 1% better. I love that. I love your attributes. Are there any other specific things that you think the 1% really do beyond being curious?
42:04
Randy Riemersma
Remember before I said forget everything I said before? I forget everything I said before, but right now, don’t just sell the future state. Right, that’s the thing.
42:11
Tab Norris
Okay.
42:11
Randy Riemersma
All right. This is a high point. I’m going to say something that’s going to feel so extraordinarily unfulfilling and anticlimactic that you’re likely to hear click, click, click. Of all the phones in America and around the world, dropping off this call because everybody are you guys ready for the secret?
42:26
Tom Stanfill
Yeah.
42:27
Randy Riemersma
I’m a quotes guy. I like to read books and I like quotes and they help me kind of keep thoughts that are germaine, allow me to access them. This one comes from Rockefeller, right? From JD. Rockefeller for many years ago.
42:48
Tom Stanfill
We’ll try to edit some music in yeah.
42:50
Randy Riemersma
Have it kind of come to a crescendo here. I’m about to say the quote, success comes from doing common things uncommonly well.
43:00
Tab Norris
That’s it.
43:01
Randy Riemersma
Here’s what I see the elite do. Okay, let’s say your sales process has 100 little micro steps in it, right? Controlling, blah, blah. But there’s eight that really matter, right? Unique differentiation, access to power, validating funding, those kinds of things. The elite sales people know what those eight things are and they do them extraordinarily well, and they don’t get distracted by, hey, new stuff. If it’s true, it isn’t new. If it’s new, it isn’t true. Right? There are things that matter. People have been buying the same way forever, same message, different method. So the elite do those. They know what those eight things are and they do them extraordinarily well. The other thing the elite do, you go to sales kick off and everybody’s together, we’re having a good time. Everybody’s going to go to the bar and we’re going to stay at till 02:00 in the morning.
43:55
Randy Riemersma
The leap don’t do that. They’re in their room working on a proposal. They are willing.
44:01
Tom Stanfill
They outwork the competition, they outwork everybody.
44:04
Randy Riemersma
Right. They’re willing to do now what other people won’t, so they can live a life in the future that they want to that other people can’t.
44:11
Tom Stanfill
It’s so simple. It’s like there’s just no magic. I just wish there was a magic. There’s just no way around it. It’s like you have to do the work well.
44:26
Randy Riemersma
You can talk about working hard versus working smart. It’s not even more. You have to do both.
44:31
Tab Norris
You can’t do one of the others because I love that grit book, Randy. When she’s doing the analysis, we looked at all the intellectual IACT scores. Remember that whole thing in leadership positions.
44:42
Randy Riemersma
And blah, blah, blah.
44:43
Tab Norris
The only factor that was the same is the successful ones had grit. That was it. You could score a twelve on the act or whatever, or you have a 36 and it didn’t matter. It’s just fascinating to me.
44:58
Randy Riemersma
Yeah. Let’s say past the first six things with me, right? The next thing I want to do is kind of grid. I want you to be a road killer. You don’t stop a road killer. You only steer it.
45:08
Tom Stanfill
Right?
45:09
Randy Riemersma
I want to rotate this guy. This gal is not going to stop. They’re just not going to stop. They’re going to get punched in the face. They’re gonna get back up. They’re going to go again. I want you to be a Rotato. I’m not going to try to stop you. I’m just going to steer you.
45:22
Tom Stanfill
I love that.
45:24
Tab Norris
If I’m a sales person, listen to this. This is what they need to hear, and you’re a great person to deliver the message, Randy.
45:33
Randy Riemersma
This is not sexy stuff. There’s not something that’s going to come out or come out of this. It’s going to be like, oh, that’s the panacea to all my problems. Right?
45:45
Tom Stanfill
Some people are listening to this, Randy, and they agree with the truth that you’re sharing. They don’t feel it’s possible for them to be that person. I think I always like to think about that person when we’re sharing this advice. I’ve never been able to stop whatever or do whatever the hard thing. I think most of the time, those people aren’t clear about what they really want. It’s like they’re just sort of floating. I think that you got to start with stop and what do you really want? Because you can’t if you want to go to kayak or travel velocity or whatever, the first thing you have to do is you have to put in a destination. You can’t do it. People don’t know what to put in that box. Like, what do they really want? And I think that helps. I think the other thing is have somebody in their life like you or like Tab, that can do life with them, and they can say things like, I don’t want to do this.
46:44
Tom Stanfill
I want to go to the bar and drink. I don’t want to go to my room and do the proposal because I think were afraid to share that kind of stuff. I know I was early in my career I didn’t want to share, hey, I don’t know what I’m doing or I feel like an idiot or why is that other person doing better than me? Or I just was kind of afraid of the negative feedback versus the people that are really good. They embrace it. They’re like, yeah, I suck. I don’t know how to do this. I need help me several years. Any other advice that you would give the rep that’s sitting there going, I agree, randy, but I just haven’t pulled that off in my life.
47:18
Randy Riemersma
Well, I’m going to real quick address that and then I’m going to say something to reps and sales leaders that I think is extraordinarily important. Okay. Tom used the word really several times when you were talking to permit. There’s what I want. There’s what I really want. The stuff I want. I don’t do anything for the stuff I really want. I will go through whatever to get know what you really want. Most people, they say I want to be in my room working on the proposal while everybody else is down to bar. What I really want is I want the social connection that I get at the bar and I really want that even though I do want the proposal. So what I want is usually irrelevant. What do I really want? Know what you really want.
47:54
Tom Stanfill
Be honest about what you really want.
47:57
Randy Riemersma
The number one person we lie to, we brush teeth within the mirror every morning, right. Stop line to yourself. Which is kind of the second thing I want to lead people to. This requires an organization to have emotional safety. If you’re not working in an organization with emotional safety, then ignore what I’m about to say. If you do, then listen to this. One of the things we talk about all the time in my team. Run to the truth. Things are neither good nor bad. They are simply true. Simply true. Let’s not emotion. Let’s not tie an emotion to it. You mean? Okay, you have not gotten access to power. You have not controlled the decision criteria. That’s fine. Let me know that. We’re standing on truth island and we can make a plan from there. Because if I’m making a plan not from truth island, it’s going to be a bad plan.
48:42
Randy Riemersma
You got to have emotional safety because it’s got to be okay for a rep to say, I don’t know what the f I’m doing here. I need freaking help or I lost that deal. I need the whole team, right? They’re neither good nor bad. They’re just true.
48:57
Tom Stanfill
Run to the truth and you see that. I love that, randy. You see that in the win loss analysis when people share why they want or whether were you involved in the deal at all. Like I would say, I want you to talk about this related to what you could have done differently or what you did well. It is this game of managing your brand or trying to manipulate the situation, and you only learn from the truth. I got to ask one question. I know we’ve been going long, but this has been super rich and I love it.
49:31
Randy Riemersma
Before you ask that question, I want to stop about your brand. If your brand is to manipulate and fake other people that you actually know what the h*** you’re doing, that brand goes out of business at some point. I promise you that. If your brand is honesty, transparency, and authenticity, that will naturally force you because of the conversation you’d be having, to get 1% better every week. And your brand will become unexinguishable. It will become extraordinarily valuable over time. That is a brand saying, I don’t know what the h*** I’m doing, is a way to get better. If you’re authentically, open to help, if you’re going to fake people, Outlide them and manipulate them and try to get everybody I said it before, everybody knows an idiot when they meet them.
50:11
Tom Stanfill
Yeah, but I love that you actually have a brand. Companies have brands, products have brands. You have a brand. As we talk about it, Aslen everybody knows what your brand is, you don’t know it. You’re too close to it. You are not aware. You do not know the truth about you. Unless you’re passionate about finding that out and getting people in your life to tell you, hey, what am I missing? What am I blind to? Again, like you said, it has to emotionally safe people and hopefully your leaders that way or whoever you got somebody you can go to call me.
50:56
Randy Riemersma
I’ll laugh when you talk about brand. Like, they might not know, but you go into an organization, you go, hey, who’s the ahole around here? Tim?
51:04
Tom Stanfill
Yeah, everybody knows exactly. We show that Meme monster clip in our training monster. Everybody knows who the Meme monster is except the Meme monsters. Finally they’re like, do you understand that? I got to ask you one question before we close out tab. You may have one more, but I got to ask this one question. Does cold calling work? Can you do it now? Because people are I think there’s a debate out there that people some people like marketing has got to drive leads and you got to only follow up with people who are raising their hand.
51:37
Randy Riemersma
This is another one has an opinion.
51:39
Tom Stanfill
Everybody has an opinion.
51:40
Randy Riemersma
Yeah. So I’m holding on my phone. Nothing happens until this thing rings somewhere, right? At some point, you got to get on the phone with somebody. I’m going to say cold connecting because it’s not just calling you to be on the point, right? Text, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, phone. Email. There’s great tools. There’s lots of ways to do that. You got to get out there and your initial messaging must be curated and point towards some at least understanding or uniqueness. You guys know this all day long, right? You got to get the particular activating system going, get somebody to lean in hey, this guy might not be yummy. Sounds like he might know something. He sells the people in my space. I’m going to give him 15 minutes if he does that. 15 minutes, well, I’ll give him 45, right? We know how that goes. I do believe that, yeah.
52:34
Randy Riemersma
I want marketing working their butts off for me.
52:36
Tom Stanfill
I want a hot lead.
52:37
Randy Riemersma
The problem with leads, though, is often to me, somebody’s already in the mindset or they’re looking for something and their mindset is going to be already firmed up and it’s not as malleable. If I catch you cold and prove that, here’s what I love, if I can show someone a problem that they are not aware of, they immediately think that I’m uniquely capable of solving it.
53:01
Tom Stanfill
Right.
53:01
Randy Riemersma
There’s going to be less competitors, and I’m going to get all the rounds and they’re going to round up to me all the time. In answer, you asked a close ended question. I answered it with more than two letters of three letters. Randy, do you believe cold connecting still has a role? Absolutely.
53:18
Tom Stanfill
I love that answer.
53:22
Randy Riemersma
Let’s say no one ever talks to you, ever. You never connect with anyone. Here’s what you were doing, though. You were constantly refining your initial messaging, because at some point you’re going to talk to them, and then you say, hey, bald eagle, what do you do? We got to say something. Is that your branding?
53:52
Tom Stanfill
I always like to just ask a question back and say, can marketing generate leads? And they say, well, yes. I said, well, then so can you. Somebody is cold connecting. I like that word, though, and it’s not Billboarding, right? We’re not doing ads. Marketing, everybody’s.
54:15
Randy Riemersma
Marketing is just ABM rates, account based.
54:18
Tom Stanfill
Marketing, any marketing anybody can do.
54:21
Randy Riemersma
You got to know your stuff, though. This is where this is the differences. People that don’t know their stuff can’t cold connect. No, it doesn’t work with them because they’re idiots or yum. In the yum pool, you don’t want to be in the yum pool, clearly. All right, tab, that means you.
54:34
Tab Norris
I know I’m not in the pool.
54:35
Randy Riemersma
If your stuff, you have a provocative not just point of view, a provocative point of view. You kind of poke somebody metaphorically between the eyes, intellectually about their stuff, get some curiosity going. Anyone can generate a lead, but you got to know your stuff. Role play, study, be fascinated in. What these people do. Read the journals, read quarterly annual reports. Ten k’s. If you don’t know what’s going on inside the company, you just be another guy, another gal pushing software man.
55:02
Tom Stanfill
Randy, this was not gold. What’s the level?
55:09
Tab Norris
Platinum? Diamond.
55:12
Randy Riemersma
If you’re on Delta Airlines diamond. Actually it’s 360. Right? 360 is the highest.
55:17
Tom Stanfill
Yeah, I’ve heard about that. Our friends of Ed. I think I’ve heard that one, too.
55:21
Randy Riemersma
Yeah, I don’t want to travel that much, brother.
55:24
Tom Stanfill
This has been amazing. I’m inspired. You just got such great wisdom and truth. There’s no new truth. And if it’s new, it’s not true.
55:34
Randy Riemersma
Yeah, if it’s true, it isn’t new. If it’s new, it isn’t true. Let me ask you two questions. Meetings like this, I like to close with two questions, if I may. How was our time together? And how could I serve you differently?
55:46
Tom Stanfill
I thought it was a ten. Yes, I think you served, which I know you’re passionate about. We did not talk about that because it was just peppered throughout the conversation. You talked about how we can serve, help our sellers and leaders serve our customers. And that’s what we’re passionate about.
56:03
Randy Riemersma
I know you guys care about this selling. I believe selling is an active service.
56:07
Tom Stanfill
Selling is service. It’s like you’re more successful when you serve. You’re more successful when you’re a leader serving your reps who serve their customers. You’re more successful when you’re a rep serving your customers. It just all starts there. Why do we prospect? Because there’s people who are in pain who don’t know how to solve their problem. Why do we provide a solution? Why do we differentiate a solution? Because we have the best solution. If we don’t, we need to go serve people that weekend. So I think you just phenomenal. I’ll give you a ten.
56:34
Tab Norris
There’s so much more I want to talk about, so that’s not a problem. I mean, we just may have to do this again.
56:41
Randy Riemersma
It’s been three years since we talked last time. So I’ll see you guys in 25.
56:44
Tom Stanfill
Exactly. Can’t wait to be my friend.
56:47
Tab Norris
See you, Randy.
56:48
Randy Riemersma
Peace out, guys. Thank you.
