Bridging Generations in Sales and Outreach

E8 with Adam Rojas - Sales Has Changed. Now What?

• Butch Nicholson • Season 1 • Episode 8

Share episode

In this episode, Butch Nicholson sits down with longtime friend and sales strategist Adam Rojas, founder of Bellmore Consulting, to unpack how seasoned professionals can evolve their outreach strategy without abandoning their relationship-first approach.

Adam shares how his career went from door-to-door telecom sales to leading enterprise strategy at AT&T and now, coaching small businesses to create repeatable, buyer-first sales processes.

You’ll hear why the buyer’s journey has fundamentally shifted, how to earn trust in a digital world, and why understanding your prospect’s world matters more than ever.

He breaks down how outreach today mirrors dating apps, why insight beats information, and how small changes in your content and process can move you up the food chain inside target accounts.

If you're a Gen X or Boomer business leader facing a digital sales environment, this conversation offers practical advice for staying relevant, without starting over.

Bridging Generations in Sales and Outreach is hosted by Robert (BUTCH) NICHOLSON and produced by Fist Bump

Helping Gen X and Baby Boomer leaders turn their reputation into revenue—without losing the human touch.

📅 Join us LIVE every Friday at 10 AM ET on LinkedIn

Follow Us on LinkedIn and YouTube

Subscribe to our Newsletter!

(Butch) Welcome to Bridging Sales, Bridging Generations in Sales and Outreach. My name is Butch Nicholson. I am the host of the show today and our show is where experience comes to level up. Wanna thank Fist Bump for being the sponsor of our show today. And I am honored to have as a guest, my good friend, Adam Rojas.(Butch) And I'll let Adam take care of, or introduce himself in just a moment. If you're here watching live, please put in where you're from, that would be interesting. And if you have any questions or comments for me or for Adam, just put them in the chat(Butch) and we'll do our best to address them. And if we're not able to, we'll get in touch with you after the show. So that's all the preliminary. So with that, I want to introduce Adam Rojas. We edited up yesterday, and I think between us, we have over 70 years of sales experience. So if nothing else,(Butch) we can bring y'all our experience of those 70 years. I have most of those 70 years. I'm a little older than Adam, but we've experienced pretty much the same thing and how sales has changed over that period of time and that's what we're going to talk about today. So with that, Adam, introduce yourself please and give a little background on where you started and how you got to where(Butch) you are.(adam) Sure. So thanks so much, Bruce, for having me. I appreciate it. So my name is Adam Rojas, and I am the founder and managing partner of Bellmore Consulting. We are a sales strategy consulting and coaching organization focused on small and medium sized businesses who are struggling to have that sustainability and repetition in their sales process and in their sales organization. Yeah, our vision really is to empower and enable small businesses and small business owners to live their vision. So it's a great job and it's a great opportunity to get in and work with some phenomenal small business leaders across the country. So, but you asked a little bit about my background. So I always like to say I started sales at about five. So, you know, with if you add the the(adam) non official sales, I've been doing it about 45 years, but I was always an entrepreneur always wanted to do that. I did retail sales, you know, through high school and college, but it wasn't until I left college that I joined the the quote unquote business sales professional sales world and that's where I spent my career. So I started with a telecom company called Bell South that used to be located here in the southeast doing small business sales. I was calling on the mom and pop companies and I'm going to age myself here selling local long-distance and DSL for your restaurant(adam) hair salon Convenience store you name it move from there to the middle markets and then Ultimately to global sales where I had some large companies Fortune 100 companies, and it was a phenomenal time to be in sales. And then I had a great opportunity to move into sales training. And so I trained(adam) salespeople with at what became AT&T. So AT&T was purchased by Bell South. So after 15 years of sales, I moved into training. And, and I did that for a lot of years. And then I had a phenomenal opportunity to move into strategy. And I worked on sales strategy across AT&T business sales. So working with sales leaders across the company, and helping them really build solid, repeatable strategies. And so now I've taken that experience and that knowledge(adam) and I'm bringing it into the small business space through my firm.(Butch) That's quite a background, Adam. So you're the, one of the reasons I wanted you to be on the show, you're the perfect person to answer this question. Sales, I don't wanna say sales has changed because I don't believe fundamentally sales has changed.(Butch) But the way we sell has shifted tremendously from let's say 2005 till now. This statistic may be a couple of years old, but I really doubt that it's changed. In fact, the number may be even higher. You know, when you and I started,(Butch) buyers had to call salespeople to get information. But now, thanks to these, they can get all the information they need without a sales guys. So. The research said that buyers today do 75% of their research before they want to talk to a salesperson. So explain that shift since 2005 and how you're teaching people to deal with it.(adam) Yeah. So you think of that in terms of the buyer journey, right? And you're right. I mean, that that pesky internet has really ruined things for salespeople. It's, it's given our clients and our customers way too much information. I say that tongue in cheek, of course. But yeah, so, you know, the the buyer journey really has shifted. As you said, of course, but yeah, so, you know, the, the buyer journey really has shifted.(adam) As you said, you know, back in the early two thousands, even into the middle to late two thousands, the only way to get information was directly from the source. You think about it. If you were in 2006, 2007, you were going to buy that brand new iPhone that nobody knew much about. And there were a couple models out there.(adam) How did you have to buy it? You had to go to the store, you had to talk to somebody, learn the different models and the different features to actually make a purchase. Nowadays, who buys an iPhone or any type of cell phone by going to the store?(adam) The percentage is really, really, really small. Same thing with cars. And so the journey really has shifted in terms of where the client and prospect identifies the problem and starts to do their own research and sets up the requirements and all of the different elements of their buying process. And it's only once they are at have to change their tactics and change their approach and really try to bring themselves earlier into the buyer journey.(Butch) I'd like to get your view on this, Adam. The one thing I believe has always been true in sales is buyers want to buy from someone they know, like and trust. And they may not even know that they want to buy from someone they know, like and trust. But how does how does how do sales people or how are sales people able to build that today, given(Butch) the way sales has changed?(Speaker 8) So my theory on that is you build that no like and trust(adam) by demonstrating credibility, by demonstrating authority, right? You wouldn't go to a foot doctor to get your heart checked. that doesn't understand what you do and your industry? So you've got to develop those skills as a sales professional to really understand your buyer and their needs and their challenges(adam) so that you can demonstrate that authority, that credibility with them before they can develop that know, like, and trust with you. So, you know, we, in my firm and in my practice, we work a lot on how do I develop the skill set to understand my client almost as well(adam) as they understand themselves, right? And get into that mindset of, if I come to my client showing expertise, not just in my industry, but in theirs, and showing that knowledge, I have a much better opportunity to be a thought leader within that client. So one thing you shared with me that I think relates to this is the dating app analogy. Yeah, so you know, I use that analogy a lot when I think about prospecting.(adam) So back in the olden days, we picked up the phone, we called people, and nine times out of 10, maybe five times out of 10, we'd get somebody on the phone, we'd be able to have a conversation with them. Nowadays, the paradigm has really shifted in terms of how we connect with our prospects.(adam) So I use a dating analogy a lot, or dating app analogy a lot. I recently, five years ago, I re-entered the dating world. And so the dating app was the thing that everybody was doing. And if you saw somebody, you took a minute, you looked a little bit at what they did, who they were.(adam) If you liked them, you swiped right. If you didn't, you looked a little bit at what they did, who they were, if you liked them, you swiped right, if you didn't, you swipe left, and that was the end of that. And so when I think about prospecting now, the way we connect with our prospects is akin to that dating app. So let's say your process,(adam) and this is one of the ways that I teach prospecting, your process is when I identify a prospect, I connect with them on LinkedIn. They have the power to accept that connection, swipe right, or not accept that connection, swipe left. So now if they've swiped right, boom, now we start an engagement.(adam) The blind date happens or the first date happens. This is my first opportunity to reach out and demonstrate that knowledge, that credibility, start to develop that know, like, and trust. Over the course of your lead nurturing, lead generation process,(adam) you continue down that same dating process. So you've had the first date, maybe you went out and had coffee or you grabbed lunch or something like that. That went well, so now we move on to the second date. You maybe go out to dinner, go dancing,(adam) go see a movie, whatever the case may be. And you continue down that dating cycle. Well, it's the same way with prospecting. Once you've gotten them to swipe right, now you nurture that relationship. You engage with them through social media,(adam) through email, through all of the different forms of connection that we have. And so that's why when I say prospecting is a lot like dating, that's the truth, because ultimately at the end of the day, what you want is that extended time with that prospect,(adam) just like you are looking for extended time with that prospect, just like you are looking for extended time with the person that you engaged with on the dating app. That's a great analogy. Feel free to borrow it whenever you want.(Butch) Well, I believe it's a great analogy you have to be very careful with. So, one of the things I found, and it's been my experience, that a lot of salespeople, let's go to LinkedIn, it could be the same, it could be the same for YouTube, the same for Facebook, the same for Instagram.(Speaker 4) They post stuff, but it's more like the company brochure.(Butch) And that company brochure is one, that your prospect's probably not gonna look at it anyway. And number two, it doesn't really add any value. And I believe when we're posting things on whatever the platform is, we need to be posting comment, we need to be posting content that adds value to that buyer. One of the things I believe is buyers want to know how you can solve their problem, that you can solve their problem before they care about how you can solve it.(adam) Yeah, well you know and again that goes back to where we started the conversation a few minutes ago. It's about demonstrating knowledge, demonstrating understanding of the problems that they face? So let's say you're in the software space and you build apps for staffing companies, right? Nobody cares about the bells and whistles of the app until you can articulate the value it brings,(adam) the impact it brings to them in their role. So if I was a software company who builds staffing apps, I would probably start with targeting that director of recruiting, director of talent acquisition, something along those lines, and identify the problems that that person faces,(adam) which is that they have a gap between their client, the business looking for staffing, and the pool of people that they're staffing. So that's the problem, right, is that there's a gap there between how do I quickly and easily facilitate bringing the two of those together. The impact in that is a increased time, so reduced productivity, and B, reduced revenue because the longer it takes me to create that,(adam) the longer it takes me to start bringing that income in or the increased likelihood is I lose that opportunity to somebody else, to my competitor. So now that I've identified those things, my messaging via social media or whatever needs to be how my solution well first off how I(adam) understand the problem that you're facing and How my solution brings an impact to that problem? Right because at the end of the day they don't care how the sausage is made(Speaker 7) They care how it sausage is made.(adam) They care what it does for them. Yeah, as I said earlier, I used to I worked for 25 years for AT&T and many of we had phenomenal sellers, but so often we got in the weeds of the speeds and the feeds and the bits and the bites and all of those sorts of how the sausage is made and at the end of the day the client really only cared about what can that do for my business how can it provide a measurable improvement to my business so going back to your to your question your messaging really needs to reflect your understanding(adam) of the industry that you are targeting or industries that you're targeting, the problems that they face, because that's what's going to resonate. That's what's going to get them to stop and take the 20, 30 seconds to read through that blog post or watch that video or whatever the case may be. Because if it doesn't resonate with them, they don't have the time to invest in it. And so you're wasting your time in your social media.(Butch) So what would you say? So I believe what I'm going to say and tell me what you would say about this. I believe the first thing that you need, well, not the first thing. At some point, you need to get with a prospect. You either need to show them how you can solve a problem they have told you they had, or how can you make something better quote unquote(Butch) that they're doing that would add value to them because they would be doing it better?(adam) So you know yes you've got to show them that you can solve the problem that they face. Right. And the problem is X, whatever the problem is. I will say that even making something better is really about solving a problem because what they're doing may work, but it may not work as well as it could. And so if you are able to provide that measurable benefit,(adam) that measurable impact, then yes, you're going to have a much better connection and that messaging is gonna resonate with the client. There is a school of thought and I tend to agree with it. I had a sales leader kind of couch it in this way, but the avoidance of pain is a much more powerful motivator(adam) than the acceptance of pleasure. Meaning that yes, it's great to feel good and to have something kind of new and different, but it's much more powerful to remove that pain from what the prospect is experiencing, what the company is experiencing, what the client's experiencing.(adam) Does that make sense?(Butch) I agree with that a hundred percent. It's, if somebody, if somebody is doing great, it's difficult to convince them that you have something that's going to allow them to do it better. But if they have a problem and believe you can solve it, they'll be all over that.(adam) Well, you know, so here's the interesting thing, right? It's sometimes, and if you're really good at your job and really good at what you do from a sales perspective, you start to pick up on what we call insights. And so that's the ability to identify a gap or a problem before it actually occurs. Right. So, for example, one of the things that I do a lot is help clients identify what's going(adam) on in the industry that they are addressing. So let's take retail as an example, right? So obviously it's not to get political, but it's big in the news. Tariffs are impacting retail, right? The retail space that is also impacting shipping and logistics and things like that.(adam) Well, if you can start to think about what those challenges are as they're starting to bubble up before they really become an impact to the client, now you're adding insight, adding value to them that they hadn't even thought about yet. So we talked at the beginning about the buyer journey(adam) and awareness being the first stage. Well, what if you, as a sales professional focused on how do I make my customer more aware of what is about to happen or what their competitors are doing that they haven't yet experienced? And so that now develops a tremendous amount of credibility with your prospect because you're truly being that thought leader to them and bringing them problems and solutions(adam) before it even started to impact them. So they can see how, with your help, how that problem will become an impact if left unaddressed. But whoa, Adam's got a solution for me. So let's move forward with that and fix the problem before it actually becomes a problem. It's kind of like, you know, changing the tires before you go, before you don't have any more tread left on the tires. Right? So it's, let's be proactive with our clients(adam) and bring ideas and bring those insights to them and move up the food chain from a strategy, from a thought leadership perspective.(Butch) And what I just heard is that salesperson is adding value. They're showing them something that he or she understands that can help them do something they're already doing but do it better or solve a problem that they haven't foreseen.(Speaker 5) Yep.(Butch) So, hey Bob, thanks for being on the show today. So Bob said solving problems is what everyone is taught to do. In reality, some things aren't solvable. They have to be managed. Solving implies a one and done fix. Managing problems acknowledges long-term approach is needed.(adam) I think there are cases where problems aren't solvable. You're right. Oftentimes though, and that could be due to outside influences, outside impacts, things like that. The better we are at getting to the root of the problem, the better we are at identifying(adam) what's causing the ultimate problem and identifying a potential solution. And it may not be even the solution that we can provide. It may be something extraneous, something outside of that. But now I agree that we're taught to solve problems, but(Speaker 6) But you know if you can get to that root cause of the problem and(adam) That gets through your discovery phase and things like that, which we haven't even touched on yet(Speaker 5) Your ability to get to that to that heart of the problem and avoid all the superficial stuff positions you better to solve it if it is solvable. So,(adam) yeah, but great question, thanks Bob.(Butch) I also believe in that there's a place where you can start helping that the salesperson who's adding value can start helping them moving toward what may be a solution given that it's(adam) there's not a short-term fix. Sure yeah I mean a lot again a lot of it depends on what you're selling who you're selling to how you're selling it you know it the problem may the problem you're solving may just be a microcosm or a small element of a larger problem within the organization. But if you can provide some measurable impact,(adam) then you're demonstrating some benefit, right? You know, think about going to the doctor. Maybe you hurt your shoulder, it's not torn, it's just tender, whatever. And so there are things that they can do to help mitigate the pain that you're experiencing(adam) while other things, your body starts to heal you. Same thing in sales, we try to solve, fix, maybe what is just a small piece of a larger problem that is going on within an organization. But our role is still to identify where we can provide some measurable benefit.(adam) Maybe it's not the ultimate benefit, but it's something that can provide a level of improvement in a larger problem.(Butch) Makes sense. So let's talk about this. In the title of our show is outreach. And one thing we know is outreach, there's not one size that fits all. And the analogy that I always use there,(Butch) my daughter is a Gen Xer. I am a baby boomer. Actually, the year I was born is right in the middle. So I'm younger than half the baby boomers and older than half the baby boomer. Actually, the year I was born is right in the middle. So I'm younger than half the baby boomers and older than half the baby boomers.(Speaker 5) Gotcha.(Butch) But if I call my daughter, unless I say, this is your father, this is something I really need you to talk to you about, call me. If I call her and don't say that, probably 20% of the time, she may call me back three days later. But if I text(Butch) her, I get almost an immediate response. So obviously, we communicate different. How do you deal with it? It doesn't make either one right or wrong. But one size doesn't fit also when you're when you're training sales teams, how do you deal with that?(adam) Yeah, so, you know, prospecting is the hardest piece of the sales process. Without a doubt, it is the hardest piece. It is the hardest piece of the sales process, without a doubt. It is the hardest piece. It is literally, going back to the dating app analogy, you are in a sea of thousands of people who are reaching out to your customer. And you've got to figure out a way(adam) to differentiate yourself so that they swipe right and begin the conversation.(Speaker 5) So, um,(adam) one of the things that that drives me nuts is, and I probably get 30 to 50 of them a day are messages either via LinkedIn or email or some other format with a pitch, right? I can do this for you. I can do that for you. I can whatever. 99.99999 times out of a hundred. When I scan through that, there is absolutely nothing that demonstrates to me that they(adam) understand me or my business meaning they are just Blasting things out there to try to get somebody to swipe right? So the first thing I do The one of the first things we talk about is going back to that concept we said earlier, insight. I want to demonstrate to my prospect that I understand them, that I understand their industry, that I understand the problems that their industry faces, because(adam) that immediately increases my chances of that prospect swiping right. Because now I've shown credibility, I've shown knowledge. So that's A number one. And regardless of how you're communicating, because we've got to be multimodal in our communication. So, you know, LinkedIn or Instagram or Facebook or TikTok or wherever your target prospect(adam) is or email or God forbid cold calls. It's the same game. I have to be able to demonstrate a reason for you to talk to me. And I've got to be open and willing to do it in new and different ways. Um, so that's number one.(adam) Number two is you've got to think outside the box for a while. The whole idea of sending a short video became the new way to connect with people, Loom and those types of tools out there to send short videos. The problem is those same people that send 1,000 emails out(adam) are doing the exact same thing with Loom, and so it's losing some of its value. So you've got to then change the way that you're doing that. If that's the modality that you want to invest in. Um, one of the things that, that I'm seeing that picks up some, some interest nowadays, simply because,(adam) especially at a business perspective, we don't get enough of perspective, we don't get enough of it or we don't get a lot of it. Physical mail, especially of things that will target and resonate with your prospect. So that's an idea that we talk about with clients. You know, flipping the script. So I actually worked with a client recently and we didn't prospecting for a ton of people so we could really target in on that specific prospect and that specific company we were(adam) going after. And we created essentially a newsletter spotlighting them as a customer. And we sent it to them with articles about new opportunities and new things that they were doing and the caption was, this is what could be if you start working with us. So you've got to be creative, You've got to think outside the box in terms of how you connect with your prospect and be open to trying different things. And the challenge that people like you and I face, who did it the old way for so long, is that these new ways are uncomfortable. But guess what? We don't(adam) get better when we're comfortable. You know, if you're going to the gym, you're going to the gym to work muscles and it's uncomfortable if you're doing it right. It's uncomfortable to work and build those muscles. Same thing with the muscle of your sales skills. You've got to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. You've got to go out and try and do different things to find that success.(Butch) That's a great point, Adam. And one of the things, and I'm addressing this more to the baby boomers, because I am one, than the Gen Xers. And I love the Gen Xers, I love the baby boomers, but some things are different. And one of the things I preach is, we have to find where the buyers are and go there.(Butch) If the buyers aren't where we want them to be, we don't have a choice. We have to go to where they are. And just as an easy analogy, if everybody in the company that we could possibly have to deal with is on LinkedIn,(Butch) you use LinkedIn. If none of them are on LinkedIn, but they're is on LinkedIn, you use LinkedIn. If none of them are on LinkedIn, but they're all on Facebook, you gotta use Facebook. And I'll just tell this story on me. Three years ago, when I started doing what I'm doing now, I thought, and I know there are a lot of people out there(Butch) that think this, a lot of baby boomers think this, that LinkedIn was for your resume if you needed a job.(Speaker 5) Yeah.(Butch) When I started working with Fist Bump, my LinkedIn page was two jobs old, all the contact information was wrong, and the only thing that I had ever posted was an occasional happy birthday or congratulations on your new job using the LinkedIn graphic that they provided. So I believe and you said it. And for me, it was very uncomfortable, very uncomfortable.(Butch) I've learned more about technology in the last three years than I did in the 65 years before it. But that's what we have to do.(adam) You know, link, it's a great point, but LinkedIn, for many of us, is essentially what the website used to be five years ago. Right? So I use LinkedIn as a way for me to demonstrate my credibility with my prospects, just as you would a website.(adam) So, um, I don't have enough followers where I get viral content going. You've got to get to about 10,000 followers or more to really get that viral content, uh, in LinkedIn, like you would expect in Instagram or Facebook or any of the other modalities. So for many small businesses especially, it's a source for me to share knowledge and for a prospect to go and verify, oh, Adam knows what he's talking about. It's not just the email he sent me or the LinkedIn message he sent me.(adam) There's actually more meat and potatoes to it. And so we've got to use that modality for what value it brings. But I also agree with you 100%. You've got to find the customer where they are. Yeah, I had a friend of mine a couple of months ago,(adam) he reached out and he said, my business has fallen off, I can't figure out why. I hired a marketing company where I'm spending a bunch of money on marketing and I'm not getting the traction and so I won't go into all the details, but(adam) Essentially he is target. He was targeting a demographic in Facebook Who is a demographic that never touches Facebook, right? Or if they do, it's once every three months to see if there are new pictures of their grandkids. That's the type of, for that demographic he's targeting. And so the marketing team was pushing(adam) all this Facebook content out that nobody was seeing. So back to your point, you've got to go to the prospect where they live. You're not gonna find, truth and honesty, you're not gonna find a lot of C-suite, especially for businesses over maybe 10 to 15 million(adam) in revenue, spending a lot of time on LinkedIn. You're going to have to go find them somewhere else, or you're going to have to build relationships further down the food chain that will help move you up the food chain to get to that C-suite that is your ideal client. So it's very much finding the clients and connecting with the client where they are. And you've got to,(adam) going back to what I said a couple minutes ago, you gotta just get comfortable with being uncomfortable and be willing to try new and different things.(Butch) Yeah, Adam, you said something I think is very important and most people miss. And that is with LinkedIn, if you learn a little something about how LinkedIn actually works, chances of getting to somebody in the C-suite(Butch) with one call or one email or one LinkedIn post is probably one half of 1%. But a great way to get that credibility with them is to find the key players in the company. Start with the person that's on the same level as you. And then when you ask for more contact, when you ask other people to connect with you, they see you're connected, you know, they see you're connected to Adam. So they say,(Butch) well, if he's connected to Adam, he'd be a good guy. And that's how you move up, up the chain. It's obviously a long term play,(adam) but sales is a long term play. Yeah, sale, you know, unless you're selling bubblegum, sales is a long term process. You're one of the things when I build out an ICP with an ideal client profile with my clients, one of the first things we look at is obviously the problems that they solve. And then we break down that problem of who in an organization experiences that problem, right? What's the end user who suffers when that problem isn't solved? And that's an important(adam) thing to capture. And then we take it up a notch and say, OK, so now we've identified who's impacted. Then we talk about who is responsible for fixing the problem. Who's that person? What's that job title or titles? And then the third one is, who is ultimately(adam) responsible for deciding to fix the problem? Who holds the purse strings that gets the problem fixed? When you can identify those three levels. Now you become that you get into that ability to now say, OK, you know, but I know you're a front line worker at XYZ company. And this is a problem that I see.(adam) Is this something that you are experiencing? Yeah, this really drives me nuts, and I'm constantly fussing about it. Okay, great. Can you help me get to that person who's responsible for fixing the problem? Yes, I'd love to put you in touch with them because you have the expertise.(adam) You can solve the problem. Fantastic. So then you move up the chain. Now you demonstrate to them, here is how we fix the problem with other companies. Here's the impact it's had on them.(adam) Can you help us move up the chain to that next person? And so all those steps really, and this is really designed more for that larger sale, obviously, to that bigger client. But that's really how we leverage those internal relationships to go through the food chain.(adam) The other thing I would strongly urge people to think about is once you get into a company, how do you go deep and wide within that company? Right? How do you identify other areas of the business where you can solve problems? Because now you can leverage that relationship. Let's say you're working with a risk manager over here, but you know that there are problems(adam) from an operations perspective that you can also solve. So this risk manager, obviously, they work in the same company. They can create a really nice warm introduction to you who will be able to then facilitate further discussion and ultimately get you more opportunity within an existing company.(Butch) Great stuff, Adam. So let me ask you one question and then I'll let you deal with Tim's question. Or ask you to do one thing. And I really liked the way you said this. Talk about the messy middle.(adam) The messy middle. You know I think well so give me a little more context. Tell me more about what you're what you're asking. So I'll(Butch) read what I wrote down. How about that? Okay. Common struggles Adam sees among small business... no wait minute, where is it? Yeah. I put helping clients navigate the messy middle. Common struggles Adam sees among small business owners and sales leaders.(adam) So, I'll break it down into two different things. The small business owner. Many of the small business owners that I work with are also responsible for running sales in their organization. And they started their business not to be a salesperson. They started their business to do whatever it is they love to do. So sales oftentimes falls to the wayside. It doesn't have the highest level of priority. We work on strategy skills to streamline and create a repeatable process. What that allows them to do is then bring in people(adam) who can work on certain aspects of the sales process, you know, whether those are business development reps or things like that, and help alleviate some of that front end work for them. Sales leaders, well, so sales leaders have, I think, one of the most challenging jobs out there. If you are managing salespeople, leading salespeople, they are a different animal. And they need to be inspired. They need to be developed because otherwise they will find other places to work.(adam) Right? And so the trap that sales leaders often fall into is they spend more time managing and less time leading. And so I work with them on the skillset of how do I effectively pull that management piece into a much more important role of leading, inspiring and developing my people.(adam) Because you know, the old adage, people don't leave jobs, they leave managers, they leave bosses, and this is especially true in sales. I've seen it throughout my career. So I work with them on how do we develop those skills? How, what does that look like? Right?(adam) How do I take my sales person hat off and put my sales coach hat off and help that sales person become inspired and do what they are capable of, not just what they have to do. So I hope that answers your question.(Butch) Yeah, it does. So Adam, Tim is a friend of mine and I know he's very passionate about helping people with epilepsy. Yeah.(adam) So, but I would like you to answer his question. Yeah, so I think the way I'm reading it, maybe Tim's looking for people to be guests on his podcast from the epilepsy world. And it's funny, it's actually, it's a world that I'm very well involved in.(adam) And so, Tim and I can definitely connect offline about this. My daughter suffers from epilepsy. My wife is actually a pharmaceutical rep who specializes in an epilepsy, a seizure medication. But if I'm thinking about how I connect to the decision makers and nonprofits,(adam) there's a lot of great tools out there that can help you identify that particular person. I'm not trying to show for any of them, but one of the most powerful ones I've seen recently is knowledge net. That's a great one for, for connecting to specific people. So now I see Tim's question pops up.(adam) So he's looking for viewership. How, how does he expand his viewership? You know, the, the thing with podcast viewership is, there's a couple ways you expand it, and I'm not by any means a podcast expert. But the more decision makers you bring into your podcast, the leaders thought leaders in that industry, and getting them to share that(adam) podcast, just like, not just Butch's channel, but it's also streaming on my LinkedIn. And so by doing things like that, that will help build that viewership.(Speaker 5) Um, Google ads are still a great place to be able to,(adam) um, target that or, and micro target that person those those viewers you know YouTube ads are also great for targeting people because it's a relatively low cost of ad they've actually got to watch the entire YouTube video before they will subscribe, but it's going to be, or before you have to pay for it. But it is a long process to build a viewership for a podcast.(adam) It's not just challenging.(Speaker 4) Yep.(adam) Yeah, it's tough when you're talking about viewership.(Butch) I'll connect you and Tim.(adam) Sure.(Speaker 5) Happy Tim.(adam) So, let's, we're getting near wrapping this up, Adam.(Speaker 4) One of the-(Speaker 3) You're kicking me off already.(adam) I see.(Butch) Yeah. One of the things that I talk about all the time is, especially for baby boomers and older Gen Xers. And I felt this way, but I felt like I was going to have to start over and we really don't have to start over. It's about evolving. If you made it in sales to being a baby boomer or a Gen Xer, you know how to sell,(Butch) you know how to build know, like and trust. In my view, what you have to evolve with is the technology side, because that's where the buyers, that's where most of your buyers are gonna be. How would you answer that, Adam?(adam) Yeah, so I would say, and I have seen this, I would say that the baby boomers and Gen Xers actually have one really key advantage over our millennials and Gen Ys and Gen Zs and all the rest of them. We're about to have five generations in the workforce. We've got resiliency. And I don't just say that tongue in cheek. My first job was call, I was 16 years old,(adam) 15 years old, somewhere in there. And I was calling people to renew their magazine subscriptions. And so at 6 p.m. Eastern, I was calling people to renew their magazine subscriptions. And so at 6 PM Eastern, I was calling the East coast at seven o'clock. My time at seven o'clock Eastern, I was calling central and so on and so forth. And this is mid nineties, late, late eighties, mid late eighties, actually.(adam) Um, showing my age. And so I was calling these people when they were sitting down to eat dinner so oftentimes no was the most polite thing that I heard from people um on the phone and so we have a level of resiliency that some of our you know I'm not disparaging them but some of our younger brethren in the sales world do not because they've never been told no before.(adam) They've never had that come up. And so that's an important armor that we carry. Now, what I'll say to changing is it's not about changing or it's not about starting over. It's about getting a better tool belt. You know, 10 years ago, 15 years ago,(adam) if you brought a contractor into your house to do some work, they were having to plug in their drills to the wall and everything else. Anybody use a drill with a cord anymore? No. We've all got our cordless drills that have, you know, the battery that I can just pop in and I've got 17 batteries sitting in my shop so that I grab the next one and go, I've just improved my tool(adam) belt. It's the same thing with sales. We just constantly have to be improving our tool belt. It's the same thing with sales. We just constantly have to be improving our tool belt. And so you talk about technology and there are great technologies out there that will help you improve your tool belt. I mentioned using creating insights. AI is a fantastic tool that helps you accelerate your ability to create insights. I'm not saying throw something into chat GPT and then copy and paste it into your social media, right? By no means am I saying that(adam) because you can spot that kind of stuff from a thousand yards. What I'm saying is AI is a tool now, just like the internet was to us 20 years ago, it's a tool now that will help us do things more efficiently, do things faster. Same thing, I mentioned KnowledgeNet, there's other ones, Apollo, LinkedIn, Sales Navigator.(adam) There's a lot of tools out there that will help us identify that ideal client profile. Our job as sales professionals is to figure out what the right tool is, because not everything is a nail, so we can't always use a hammer. Figure out what the right tool is so that we can accelerate our processes and stay ahead of the game and stay ahead of our competitors and learn more. So whether it's identifying insights on an industry or using it to do your competitive analysis of who else is out there,(adam) or having it help you think about different ways to message to a prospect, or helping you do analysis of a specific prospect so you better understand their communication style so you can adapt to them. It's not about starting over. It's about using and building on the skill set that you have as a sales professional that you've honed over the last 10, 15, 20, 25, 45 years(adam) and continuously grow to figure out what else you're capable of. I've got a video that I shot yesterday. It'll be out on my social media probably early next week. And I attended a talk yesterday. Um, and we were talking about the performance pyramid, you know, low performers and how you engage with the low performers, the middle of the road(adam) performers and how you engage with that middle of the road, the high performing, especially in salespeople and what they're like. And then he had a topper on it and he called it the meta performer. And that's what we try to, I think you're trying to encourage in this call is how do we become meta performers and do what we're capable of. So that's my final thoughts. My final wishes for all of us is to be meta performers.(Butch) Thanks Adam. So Adam, tell our audience where the best place to reach out to you is.(adam) Yeah, so you can find me on LinkedIn. I am Adam Ross, or you can find my firm, Bellmore Consulting also on LinkedIn, or you can email me on LinkedIn. I am Adam Ross or you can find my firm Bellmore Consulting also on LinkedIn Or you can email me at Adam Ross at Bellmore consulting.com I'd love to connect and talk more about what your challenges are and how we can help(Butch) Thanks, Adam. I want to thank Adam for being on the show today. I want to thank Fistbump for sponsoring our show today. And I want to thank you for watching this today. And if I can help you, you know where you can reach me. So we just said this, but I'm going to say it again. And this is what the message I want you to take away. It's not about starting over, it's about evolving.(Butch) It's not about starting over, it's about evolving. It's the same wisdom, but using new tools.