The Charlie Kirk Show - March 01, 2021


How to Pour Rocket Fuel on Your Career with Jim Holden


Episode Stats


Length

35 minutes

Words per minute

167.5365

Word count

5,928

Sentence count

417

Harmful content

Toxicity

3

sentences flagged

Hate speech

4

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Jim Holden has a new book out called Selling in an Anxious World, and it's a must-read for anyone who's ever wanted to know what it's like to be a sales executive in today's hyper-competitive world.

Transcript

Transcripts from "The Charlie Kirk Show" are sourced from the Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool. Explore them interactively here.
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Hey, everybody.
00:00:01.000 Special episode of the Charlie Kirk Show today, an exclusive conversation with my friend, Jim Holden.
00:00:09.000 I've known Jim for years, and I actually helped contribute to his latest book, Selling in an Anxious World.
00:00:15.000 And so, if you guys want to check out this book, go to sellingcharlie.com and use the special code Turning Point.
00:00:22.000 Just keep that in mind throughout this entire episode.
00:00:24.000 Jim Holden is a dear friend.
00:00:26.000 He's a good man and a great person in a variety of different ways.
00:00:30.000 You have a lot to learn from Jim Holden.
00:00:33.000 If you want to support our podcast, go to charliekirk.com/slash support or email us, freedom at charliekirk.com.
00:00:40.000 Jim Holden is here.
00:00:41.000 Remember, sellingcharlie.com, special code TurningPoint.
00:00:45.000 Buckle up.
00:00:46.000 Here we go.
00:00:47.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
00:00:49.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campuses.
00:00:51.000 I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.
00:00:54.000 Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.
00:00:58.000 I want to thank Charlie.
00:00:59.000 He's an incredible guy.
00:01:00.000 His spirit, his love of this country, he's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.
00:01:08.000 We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
00:01:17.000 That's why we are here.
00:01:20.000 By now, you've heard me talk about how my pillow is terrific.
00:01:24.000 And look, Mike Lindell is under fire right now.
00:01:28.000 And so maybe you're going for a walk.
00:01:29.000 Maybe you're riding your bike.
00:01:31.000 Maybe you're shoveling some snow.
00:01:33.000 You say, Mike Lindell, Mike Lindell is under fire.
00:01:37.000 And so if you want to support Mike Lindell, who's a courageous American, he's a friend of mine, then there's one way you can do it.
00:01:46.000 You can buy great pillows that are made here in America.
00:01:48.000 You can wash and dry them, and you know how great they are.
00:01:51.000 You see the commercials and all this.
00:01:53.000 But look, I'm going to tell you something that no one else is going to tell you is that Mike Lindell loves America and that millions and millions of people want to help Mike Lindell.
00:02:03.000 I know I get emails from people all the time, thousands of people.
00:02:06.000 They say, how can we help Mike Lindell?
00:02:09.000 How can we get behind Mike Lindell?
00:02:11.000 How can we support Mike Lindell?
00:02:13.000 So go to mypillow.com and guess what?
00:02:15.000 You can support two people at once.
00:02:17.000 So you can support Mike Lindell, the Charlie Kirk Show, and get something in return.
00:02:21.000 You might say, how do I do that?
00:02:23.000 You go to mypillow.com and click on Radio Listeners, Radio Listeners Square, and use the promo code Kirk.
00:02:29.000 It's that easy.
00:02:30.000 So mypillow.com.
00:02:32.000 I know that a lot of you want to get Mike Lindell and you say, how can I help?
00:02:36.000 Go to mypillow.com, promo code Kirk.
00:02:40.000 You can get a queen-size premium, MyPillow for $29.98.
00:02:43.000 Support the fighters, metaphorical, of course.
00:02:47.000 I know a lot of you want to do that.
00:02:48.000 Go to mypillow.com, Radio Listener Square, promo code Kirk.
00:02:52.000 It helps me.
00:02:52.000 It helps Mike.
00:02:53.000 And you get a pillow and you sleep well.
00:02:56.000 God bless America.
00:03:01.000 Hey, everybody.
00:03:02.000 Welcome to this episode of the Charlie Kirk Show.
00:03:04.000 I am thrilled to have with us today a friend of mine, someone who I've learned a lot from, and someone who has a very exciting new book out, Jim Holden.
00:03:12.000 He has a new book called Selling in an Anxious World.
00:03:15.000 Boy, isn't that the truth?
00:03:16.000 Driving sales success by crossing the crevice from bad to good culture.
00:03:21.000 And this book is, I think, helpful for all people, even if you're not in the sales world.
00:03:25.000 There are so many amazing nuggets of wisdom to be shared in this book.
00:03:29.000 Jim, welcome to the Charlie Kirk Show.
00:03:32.000 Thank you, Charlie.
00:03:33.000 It's great to be with you.
00:03:34.000 I'm really excited to be here.
00:03:35.000 Awesome.
00:03:36.000 And incidentally, I would also like to thank you for your contribution to our new book, Selling in an Anxious World.
00:03:44.000 What you did with the chapter that you wrote was great, illuminating culture, war, and the universities and how that could impact corporations with a younger generation coming into the workforce.
00:03:57.000 So thank you for that.
00:03:58.000 Thank you.
00:03:59.000 I believe it is chapter six that I contributed to, culture and caring.
00:04:04.000 And I encourage everyone to check it out.
00:04:06.000 You and I spent a good amount of dinners and late nights going through that together.
00:04:09.000 That was a lot of fun.
00:04:11.000 So, Jim, why don't you just kick it off and tell us why you wrote this book and just walk us through the big ideas and then we can go from there.
00:04:19.000 Sure.
00:04:20.000 Happy to do that.
00:04:21.000 Well, Charlie, it goes back a couple of years, actually, when we as an organization began to observe that sales effectiveness was in decline.
00:04:30.000 And it wasn't clear why, what was happening, what was damaging sales.
00:04:34.000 So even with large companies, industry leaders, we're observing that they just were not growing organically.
00:04:43.000 And so we began to focus intensely and trying to figure out what was going on, what was happening.
00:04:49.000 Now, at the same time, part of our business is consulting and working with companies on very large, important pursuits where we provide guidance and direction.
00:04:58.000 It was there that we began to see what was essentially invisible, that the problem was all about culture conflict.
00:05:05.000 That is the conflict between the supplier's culture, the norms, the values that influence behavior, and that set expectations for how you get things done in the organization, conflict between that culture and what salespeople in the field had to do to be successful in servicing clients, winning business, that type of thing.
00:05:26.000 So we started to focus on that and very, very quickly realized that the problem is that culture is not visible.
00:05:34.000 People can't see it.
00:05:36.000 And so we decided, well, we're going to bring some structure here.
00:05:40.000 We began to work to categorize culture to create three types of culture, to identify three types of culture.
00:05:49.000 One that's good, one that's bad, and one that's a mixed deal.
00:05:53.000 Now, as we began to do that, we took a quantitative approach, if you will, very objective to being able to go in and assess culture.
00:06:03.000 We found that with some customer organizations, the culture was very positive.
00:06:08.000 And we termed that a client-centric culture, where the company really cares about clients and client experience, where they listen to the customer, where they bring thought leadership to the customer, really focusing on delivering value and at the same time, differentiating from the competition.
00:06:27.000 Very, very positive.
00:06:28.000 But when you talk to CEOs or corporate executives, they all tell you that, hey, customers are very important, customer satisfaction is very important.
00:06:40.000 But even in the book, we talk about a study where 80% of CEOs who were surveyed said they provide a superlative customer experience.
00:06:52.000 But yet, when they talk to their customers, only 8% agreed with that.
00:06:56.000 So there's a huge gap between what executives think is happening, but on the ground is actually not happening.
00:07:03.000 And that creates the opportunity for a bad culture, what we call looking glass culture.
00:07:08.000 Now, looking glass culture is one where it's like looking in a mirror because you're not focused on the customer and what's good for them.
00:07:15.000 You're focused on yourself.
00:07:17.000 This is a situation where the supplier really doesn't care about the customer, doesn't care about bringing thought leadership, doesn't care about making sure they make a contribution to their business.
00:07:32.000 Instead, the focus is on themselves and what they do.
00:07:37.000 And what happens there is that it puts the salesperson in a situation of conflict because either he does what's right for the customer and he alienates himself from the culture and the people that are part of that culture, or He goes along with the culture thinking and rationalizing that, hey, you know, customers will come and go, but I have to live with these people and I don't want my career to be damaged.
00:08:07.000 So he aligns with them.
00:08:09.000 And then that results in losing business and began to drive this decline in sales.
00:08:15.000 Well, you'd say, well, why don't executives do something about it?
00:08:20.000 Well, first of all, it's invisible, so they don't see it.
00:08:24.000 And they think everything's good, and it's not.
00:08:26.000 So it never gets addressed.
00:08:28.000 The problem with this looking glass culture that's so internally focused is that it damages sales in a way that's very, very difficult to fix because the company tends to go into, like people, a denial phase.
00:08:49.000 So when an opportunity is lost, they rationalize and say, well, you know what?
00:08:54.000 This customer wasn't very intelligent anyways.
00:08:57.000 They're not very competent.
00:08:58.000 In fact, their operational practices are somewhat dysfunctional.
00:09:02.000 You know, probably best that we didn't get that business, right?
00:09:05.000 They just rationalize it away.
00:09:07.000 They blame it on the customer, not being smart enough to see the value of their offerings, right? 0.99
00:09:13.000 Now, but after a while, and you lose enough business, there just can't be that many dumb customers out there. 0.97
00:09:20.000 So who do they blame next? 0.95
00:09:22.000 Now, after depersonalizing the customer, they depersonalize their own people and they blame the salespeople and they start firing salespeople.
00:09:32.000 We were brought into one situation with a major company, Fortune 100 company, that had fired all of its salespeople in North America.
00:09:39.000 The average tenure when we came in was a year and a half in a business where it takes 18 months just to get up to speed.
00:09:48.000 So, you know, with this kind of thing happening, this type of culture is very destructive.
00:09:54.000 And Charlie, it's not just about sales.
00:09:57.000 It's also important to customers that when they want to work with a company where they want to partner with a company, because when they're working with a client-centric supplier, it's a real partnership that starts with them, goes through sales all the way to RD, because RD then produces innovation that customers can really use.
00:10:18.000 They actually buy it.
00:10:20.000 But a looking glass culture will produce RD and innovation that nobody wants because nobody's talking to the customer.
00:10:28.000 And even if the customer tries to tell you, nobody listens.
00:10:31.000 So, Jim, can you help explain to our listeners how you diagnose that culture?
00:10:36.000 You go through this in chapter two, Hugh, where you assess it.
00:10:41.000 Can you go through some of the steps that you talk about?
00:10:44.000 Because there's a lot of people listening to this right now.
00:10:46.000 They do have jobs where they're in sales or they're in leadership and they're looking for ways to best assess their company culture.
00:10:53.000 What are some ways that you suggest that they go about and do that?
00:10:57.000 Well, the criteria really looks at what the supplier company is doing from a sales point of view.
00:11:04.000 And, you know, areas to focus on are the types of proposals and presentations that they give.
00:11:11.000 If you look at the proposal, is it all about the supplier or is it all about the customer?
00:11:17.000 Is the supplier aware of the customer's vision, direction, and priorities?
00:11:22.000 Are they projecting real value that's relevant?
00:11:25.000 Or is marketing spewing out generic stuff, most of which the customer has no interest in?
00:11:32.000 It doesn't relate to their business, but you know, it's one to many.
00:11:35.000 It's scale.
00:11:36.000 Scale the business.
00:11:38.000 Use technology.
00:11:39.000 Just throw it over the transom.
00:11:42.000 So when we get involved, we look from the customer's point of view at a particular company.
00:11:47.000 We looked at their presentation.
00:11:49.000 And you know what?
00:11:50.000 There are times when they don't even mention the customer's name.
00:11:53.000 It's all about them, all about them.
00:11:56.000 So what we did is we listed the sales, the bad sales practices that illuminate a looking glass culture.
00:12:05.000 And, you know, if there's one message I could deliver, Charlie, I think is really important.
00:12:10.000 It's to the young people today.
00:12:12.000 You know, they start their careers.
00:12:14.000 They join a company.
00:12:15.000 And I will tell you, I tell you the truth, one of the most significant things they can do as they look at joining a company is to assess its culture.
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00:12:34.000 Gold is up more than 30% since March of 2020.
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00:12:44.000 But providing financial protection is not the only role that precious metals play in the fight.
00:12:50.000 Precious metals also have broad applications in the medical field that go well beyond the dental uses most people associate with their value.
00:12:57.000 But providing financial protection is not the only role that precious metals play in this fight.
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00:13:26.000 Call NobleGold today and tell them Charlie Kirk sent you for a special gift with all qualifying transfers.
00:13:34.000 What should the young people look for?
00:13:37.000 Exactly this.
00:13:38.000 When they go in, they're going to go through a structured recruiting process.
00:13:42.000 What they should do is take the criteria that we have in the early part of the book, ring up one or two salespeople, county executives, and just say, hey, I'm Jim Paul.
00:13:53.000 I'm looking at joining your company.
00:13:55.000 I want to like to chat with you, better understand the company and see if I can really provide value and if it's a good fit for me.
00:14:02.000 Would you talk with me?
00:14:03.000 And they will.
00:14:04.000 They'll tell you, hey, it's a great company.
00:14:06.000 You know, we're customer-centric.
00:14:08.000 We work with customers.
00:14:09.000 We partner with them.
00:14:10.000 We listen to them.
00:14:11.000 Or they may say, well, you know, it can be tough at times.
00:14:16.000 We have stack ranking here.
00:14:18.000 The bottom 10% in every department on every project gets fired every year.
00:14:24.000 Oh, and by the way, you know what?
00:14:26.000 If you decide to leave the company, you resign online.
00:14:30.000 Nobody really cares.
00:14:32.000 You know, you can, and this is so important because the trajectory of a young person's career will be set by that first company or two that they join.
00:14:44.000 If they join a good company, they will accelerate their career, reduce their time to success by at least five or more years.
00:14:52.000 It's that important.
00:14:53.000 Wow.
00:14:53.000 So if you just go beyond the recruiting process and take an unconventional, a non-traditional approach of understanding what is the real personality of the company I'm joining.
00:15:05.000 And it's not just about career success, Charlie.
00:15:08.000 It's about having some fulfillment, joy.
00:15:11.000 I would say to every young person who may be listening or watching this podcast, you are probably associated in some way with Turning Point USA, right?
00:15:21.000 Okay.
00:15:22.000 How do you feel about that?
00:15:24.000 You feel pretty good, right?
00:15:26.000 It gives you a sense of purpose, of meaning.
00:15:29.000 People respect you.
00:15:30.000 I mean, what are the things you don't see at Turning Point USA?
00:15:33.000 Bureaucracy.
00:15:34.000 It just ain't there.
00:15:36.000 Ego, it just ain't there.
00:15:38.000 I mean, people work together.
00:15:40.000 They help each other.
00:15:41.000 The Turning Point USA Today culture is a client-centric culture.
00:15:46.000 It cares about its people, its donors, and our country.
00:15:51.000 And you want to join a company as you start your career that's like that with a client-centric culture.
00:15:58.000 And you can make that determination because if you don't, you will set your career back and you will see the oxygen sucked out of the air.
00:16:06.000 It will be one of the most unhappy experiences that you can imagine.
00:16:10.000 So we have a client-centric culture. 1.00
00:16:12.000 We have a looking glass culture, which is bad, and we have a mixed or confused culture, which is a mix of the two.
00:16:19.000 So maybe in the North American division, it's client-centric, but in Europe, it's a looking glass. 0.99
00:16:26.000 And there you have to be very, very careful as well.
00:16:29.000 So, Jim, can you also, can you get to part two where you say a deep dive into culture?
00:16:34.000 And you talk about different types of power bases, foxes and jackals.
00:16:38.000 Can you explain that to our audience?
00:16:40.000 This is chapter five in your book that I want to repeat the title, Selling in an Anxious World.
00:16:46.000 Yeah, by all means, it is very, very critical whenever you're dealing with an organization that you separate influence from authority because they're not the same thing.
00:16:57.000 You can have high-level people in a company who have a lot of authority, but very little influence, maybe close to retirement, or have no interest in what you're doing.
00:17:05.000 Conversely, there can be a lower-level person who has influence disproportionate to his or her authority.
00:17:12.000 These people can exert influence across departmental lines, but it's like culture.
00:17:18.000 It's invisible.
00:17:19.000 Why?
00:17:20.000 If it were visible, these powerful people would be viewed as usurping some other manager's authority.
00:17:26.000 So they can't do it.
00:17:27.000 So what you have in an organization is a power base, a group of people networked together that exert influence across company lines.
00:17:37.000 And at the center is a fox.
00:17:39.000 A fox is a brilliant, high-integrity individual, rarely surprised by events, can work in exceptional policy.
00:17:47.000 And this person is the individual you want to align with.
00:17:51.000 When you're in a recruiting process, you're looking at joining a company.
00:17:57.000 The first thing you look at is, is it a culture I want to be in?
00:18:00.000 The second is, who am I going to work for?
00:18:03.000 Is this guy I'm going to work for in the power base or out of it?
00:18:06.000 Because if it's out of it, your career success is going to be dialed down dramatically.
00:18:13.000 In a corporation, your success from a career point of view is a function of not just providing value, but having that value recognized by powerful people who can promote you.
00:18:26.000 So if you go in and you work for a department and that department is out of the power base, you've just screwed yourself without knowing it.
00:18:35.000 In sales, it's imperative, you know, particularly on large ticket sales, big stakes, strategically or dollar-wise or Euro-wise.
00:18:45.000 You go in, it's imperative that you go beyond the decision-making people, the people formally involved in the procurement, and get to people in the power base who can create budget, who can give you a non-traditional source of competitive advantage to defeat competitors.
00:19:02.000 Politics is critical.
00:19:04.000 So the two areas that I feel strongly about for young people today, and by the way, this was a motivation in writing this book, was to help people.
00:19:12.000 And I know even on a podcast like this with an author, you think, well, okay, the intent is to sell books.
00:19:19.000 And that's great.
00:19:20.000 We'll sell books, but that's not why I'm here.
00:19:22.000 I'm here because I care people, care about people, and I want to see young people succeed.
00:19:29.000 Well, I know that about you, Jim.
00:19:30.000 And that's why I contributed to this book.
00:19:32.000 And we did that in chapter six.
00:19:34.000 And we talk about how college campuses are really not serving the best interest of its graduates and what it could possibly, what it could impact when it actually goes beyond the campuses.
00:19:47.000 I want to go to chapter seven.
00:19:48.000 Say, when seeing is not believing.
00:19:51.000 You say, quote, when people become preoccupied with their company culture due to the perceived career risk, they're not only in the culture, but of it.
00:19:59.000 With a diminished ability to see what's really happening, the irrational becomes rational and sales decline.
00:20:03.000 What do you mean by that?
00:20:06.000 Yeah, it's very simple.
00:20:07.000 And, you know, this book is pretty non-traditional and it uses a lot of metaphors and analogies to try and make the invisible visible by looking at it in different ways.
00:20:18.000 And one of those ways is scripture.
00:20:20.000 And scripture is really clear that, hey, you're going to be in a culture and you'll be in it, but you don't need to be of it. 0.90
00:20:28.000 You don't need to be of that culture.
00:20:29.000 That culture doesn't need to define you as an individual.
00:20:33.000 Just the opposite.
00:20:35.000 You want to be in sales.
00:20:36.000 You want to be successful in working with the customer.
00:20:39.000 You want to build good relationships over time with customers.
00:20:42.000 But at the same time, you don't want to be alienated.
00:20:46.000 You don't want management to view you as not being a team player because it will damage your career.
00:20:51.000 So you have to balance.
00:20:51.000 Yes.
00:20:53.000 You have to, you can create your own path.
00:20:55.000 And that's what the Bible's saying.
00:20:57.000 You can create your own path.
00:20:59.000 You're going to be part of the world.
00:21:00.000 You're going to be exposed to good things and bad things.
00:21:04.000 But you can make a difference for yourself, for your company, and for your family.
00:21:10.000 That's really well said.
00:21:12.000 Chapter eight, you say putting a face on culture.
00:21:15.000 In chapter eight, you're introduced to the concept of personifying culture to better understand how it actually works, what drives it, what threatens it, and how it protects yourself.
00:21:24.000 Can you talk about this on actually putting a face to culture?
00:21:29.000 Yeah, it's, you know, when you think about culture, it's this very abstract thing.
00:21:36.000 And the academics talk about it in ways that can be very esoteric.
00:21:42.000 And it's just not helpful.
00:21:44.000 It's not practical.
00:21:46.000 But culture is something that you can view as an entity that's living and breathing, that has intelligence, it has sustainability, it has tenacity, it has influence.
00:22:01.000 And so when I go up against any kind of adversarial situation, I tend to personify it.
00:22:08.000 I treat it like a person.
00:22:09.000 And one of the metaphors that we use, an analogy in the book, is dealing with multiple myeloma, which is a form of blood cancer.
00:22:17.000 And when I, and this happened to be in a feline model because I had a cat named Zuza, which means gift in Swahili, by the way.
00:22:24.000 And this little cat was diagnosed with cancer.
00:22:27.000 The vet said he's going to be dead in 90 days.
00:22:29.000 I mean, you know, we can do a textbook solution with chemo and this and that, but it isn't going to work.
00:22:35.000 I couldn't accept that.
00:22:36.000 So I took two years off work to develop a protocol.
00:22:39.000 What I did was I treated it as an adversary, as a thinking, tenacious adversary.
00:22:46.000 And so doing that, I looked for where does it get its strength from?
00:22:50.000 And I was able to determine the chemistry of how it developed its strength.
00:22:55.000 And then I took a version of that to create a protocol, which actually cured the cat.
00:23:00.000 Wow.
00:23:01.000 So personifying things.
00:23:02.000 And we've seen it in the arts, you know, Starlight Express, the play, and others, you know, where trains were personified.
00:23:12.000 You know, trains were treated as people in the play and so forth.
00:23:16.000 It can be in a very effective way of building non-traditional insights into situations that for most people are very confusing.
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00:24:16.000 They said, quote, we've generated more revenue, decreased vacancy rates, and pulled in more leads than we could in multiple years.
00:24:22.000 That is priceless.
00:24:23.000 The South Tampa Family in Cosmetic Dentistry collected over 1,200 reviews, averaging 4.9 stars, saying, quote, the number of walk-ins as a result of our reviews has skyrocketed.
00:24:32.000 Before we were seeing 50 to maybe 100 new patients a month, now we're seeing closer to 200.
00:24:36.000 So right now, get started today at podium.com slash Charlie.
00:24:40.000 Remember, podium gives your business the messaging tools to turn your website into a thriving storefront.
00:24:45.000 So maybe you have some form of a website and you're like, how do I drive business?
00:24:48.000 That's what you do podium for.
00:24:50.000 It's podium.com slash Charlie.
00:24:52.000 That's podium.com slash Charlie.
00:24:57.000 In part three of the book, you say winning important deals.
00:25:01.000 On one of them, it's the pursuit team and the pursuit team mission.
00:25:05.000 What is the pursuit team and why is it important that people that are in sales know about it?
00:25:11.000 Yeah, that's a great question.
00:25:13.000 When it comes to really large opportunities, and so in the U.S., they could be 100 million plus or even with government procurements over a billion USD.
00:25:25.000 When that happens, a team is formed.
00:25:28.000 And the tendency is for the team to not be configured correctly because so many people want to get involved with this major pursuit because it can be career advancing.
00:25:38.000 So it attracts people like moss to a light.
00:25:42.000 But what it also does is it creates great visibility for the lead sales executive and the sales team, the core team that have to make this successful.
00:25:52.000 Because everybody will be second guessing.
00:25:54.000 Everybody will be watching what that team's doing.
00:25:57.000 And this is where you run into the most significant cultural conflict on big deals.
00:26:04.000 Now, when that happens, a senior executive can tell the team lead to do X when the team lead knows that's a disaster and he really needs to do Y.
00:26:16.000 And at that point, the team lead has to make a decision.
00:26:20.000 Do I protect my career and do what the executive wants or do I risk losing a $100 million deal?
00:26:27.000 That conflict, we have a phrase for that.
00:26:30.000 We call it the monkey dance.
00:26:32.000 Tell me what that is.
00:26:34.000 It is, well, here's what happens.
00:26:36.000 And it's a real good analogy for culture.
00:26:38.000 You get a bunch of monkeys and you put them in a cage, right?
00:26:41.000 In this habitat.
00:26:42.000 And you build this little mountain.
00:26:44.000 And at the top of the mountain, you put some bananas.
00:26:46.000 Well, what happens?
00:26:48.000 The monkeys want to climb up and get the banana, right?
00:26:51.000 But when they do that, you spray them with cold water.
00:26:54.000 Well, okay, they learn pretty quickly.
00:26:56.000 After they get sprayed a few times, no longer do the monkeys want to go up to get the bananas anymore.
00:27:02.000 So then you take a monkey out of the cage and you put a new monkey in.
00:27:08.000 Guess what the new monkey wants to do immediately?
00:27:10.000 He wants to go up to get the banana.
00:27:13.000 But do you think you have to spray him with cold water?
00:27:16.000 No, don't have to.
00:27:17.000 Why? 0.82
00:27:18.000 The other monkeys stop him.
00:27:21.000 And this is what happens when somebody tries to operate counterculturally to make sure we win the deal, going up against the senior executive.
00:27:30.000 The other people, his colleagues, her friends, will actually come in and stop him or try to stop him from doing it.
00:27:39.000 Just like what happens with the monkeys.
00:27:42.000 So we developed an approach for solving the monkey dance problem.
00:27:47.000 And it involves having an executive sponsor for the account and how that individual can work in the white space to keep you from never getting into the monkey dance because it's tough to get out once you're in it.
00:27:59.000 And so how you configure your team, how you configure it and how your pursuit team operates is key to not only getting the business, but protecting you against the monkey dance.
00:28:12.000 Wow.
00:28:13.000 So chapter three or the third section of the book is all about that.
00:28:17.000 And by the way, just to come back to our young folks again for a moment, if they really want to fast track their careers, not only should they go and talk to salespeople in order to determine what culture they're going to walk into, but also to examine whether or not they might like to get into sales, because it's one of the fastest tracks to advancement, particularly if they're with a great company in big ticket selling.
00:28:44.000 That's exactly right.
00:28:45.000 And sales is more than the derogatory term some people use to describe it, right, Jim?
00:28:50.000 It's the art of persuasion.
00:28:51.000 It's the ability to be able to convince people to not just buy your product, but align with you and connect with you.
00:29:00.000 Can you talk about how the word sales is a filler word for actually something that's more comprehensive in the economy?
00:29:08.000 Yeah, I mean, you're absolutely right.
00:29:10.000 And people do tend to view sales superficially because there are a lot of salespeople working in looking glass cultures and it's all about them.
00:29:21.000 Management is pushing them to close the deal this quarter, even if it's not in the best interest of the customer to do so.
00:29:27.000 Yes.
00:29:27.000 Even if it's going to damage relationships.
00:29:30.000 But sales is very much based upon caring and trust.
00:29:35.000 When you care about your customers, you will take the time to learn their business.
00:29:39.000 When you learn their business, you can bring thought leadership.
00:29:43.000 You can guide them not only to provide value, but to go beyond that and provide unexpected value.
00:29:49.000 And when you give them value that's unexpected, same thing when you're working for a company.
00:29:54.000 When you not only do what the boss expects you to do, but you go beyond that and create a value he didn't know was possible, it does wonders for your career.
00:30:04.000 Well, the same thing is true with sales.
00:30:07.000 Selling today is really a lot more consultative.
00:30:11.000 But if I had to use one word, it's about caring, caring for the customer, caring for your own company in a way that's balanced and building trust-based relationships where not only the customer trusts you, but also people in your own company that can provide you resources to better serve the customer.
00:30:33.000 They trust you.
00:30:35.000 And it all aggravates to the positive.
00:30:37.000 Totally.
00:30:38.000 That's perfectly said.
00:30:40.000 And the last part of the book, you say, imagine that you're climbing a mountain that symbolizes the relationship with your customer or the person that you have to persuade.
00:30:48.000 You qualified the mountain in that condition.
00:30:51.000 Conditions are good for the ascent from the base camp, but just as you would qualify an important opportunity.
00:30:57.000 But unlike selling, if you make a mistake, you could die.
00:30:59.000 This last part of the book deals with emotions that define and influence all of us when confronted with real challenges.
00:31:05.000 Can you help explore that with us?
00:31:08.000 I'm interested.
00:31:10.000 Yeah, you know, today we're seeing more and more risk aversity with companies than we've ever seen before.
00:31:18.000 In fact, with customers, you know, it used to be they would have certain needs.
00:31:23.000 They look for a solution.
00:31:24.000 They'd look at pricing, availability, delivery, kind of traditional stuff.
00:31:28.000 Today, the number one issue for most clients is managing risk.
00:31:34.000 And excuse me.
00:31:35.000 And as a result, often your competition can be no decision because they just perceive risk.
00:31:42.000 It could be career risk, risk for the company.
00:31:44.000 When you get onto a mountain, it's all about managing risk because there's going to be physical endurance required and emotional, psychological endurance required as well.
00:31:56.000 And you need on a mountain to have really good situational awareness.
00:32:00.000 If the freeze point's going up and avalanche conditions are going to set in, you need to be able to move quickly, decisively.
00:32:08.000 Everybody on your team has to move as a group, as a unit, and they have to trust you as the team leader.
00:32:15.000 There are a lot of analogies between mountaineering and sales because on big deals, people put their careers at risk.
00:32:22.000 Now, admittedly, it's commercial risk and not life-threatening.
00:32:29.000 But if I could, when I recruit people, if I could take them on the upper part of a mountain, I'd do it in a heartbeat.
00:32:36.000 Because you know what?
00:32:37.000 Whoever you think you are, strong, arrogant, smart, whatever, the real you becomes visible to everybody when you're on the steep part of a mountain making an ascent at high altitude, especially if you're up 18,000, 19,000 feet.
00:32:52.000 And even to you, you'll see who you really are.
00:32:55.000 That's well said.
00:32:56.000 So, Jim, can you just give us some other big picture points from this book as some takeaways, what students can take from it?
00:33:05.000 And I encourage everyone to check this out.
00:33:08.000 It's a great book.
00:33:09.000 I contributed to it, Selling in an Anxious World.
00:33:12.000 What parts did you want to touch on that we didn't get a chance to cover?
00:33:16.000 Well, Charlie, you know, I think we've hit the major points to this book.
00:33:22.000 The book will go into a lot more detail.
00:33:25.000 I think that we're in a new era now.
00:33:28.000 We have the ability, we have the tools, having classified culture in the way we've done it for companies, for senior executives to really see what the culture of their organization is to maximize productivity.
00:33:40.000 For people joining companies to see really what the personality of the company is and do I sit there?
00:33:47.000 Will it match what I believe is important values?
00:33:50.000 I also think that from a customer perspective, they will never be able to partner with a company that operates with a looking glass culture.
00:33:59.000 Will never happen.
00:34:00.000 Never, ever happen.
00:34:02.000 For young people joining companies, if they go into a looking glass culture, they're going to damage their career before it's even started.
00:34:10.000 So, you know, if there's one point I would make, it's make the invisible visible.
00:34:19.000 Most people in the world discount the intangible.
00:34:23.000 They always default to what they can feel, see, hear.
00:34:27.000 That's what they focus on.
00:34:29.000 But that's not where the opportunity is.
00:34:31.000 The opportunity is not only to see what other people haven't seen, but to be able to think differently about that which everybody sees and build competitive advantage if you're in sales, build career acceleration if you're joining a company.
00:34:47.000 And if you're a leadership, view culture as an executive as something that needs to be accretive to your shareholders as well as to your employees and your customers.
00:34:59.000 That's well put.
00:35:00.000 Everybody, it's selling in an anxious world.
00:35:01.000 Jim, thank you for joining the Charlie Kirk show and thanks for your friendship.
00:35:05.000 Everyone, check out this book and hope to see you soon, Jim.
00:35:07.000 Thank you.
00:35:08.000 Thank you, Charlie.
00:35:09.000 You bet.
00:35:12.000 Thanks so much for listening, everybody.
00:35:14.000 Email us your questions, freedom at charliekirk.com.
00:35:17.000 And please consider supporting us at charliekirk.com slash support.
00:35:21.000 God bless.
00:35:22.000 Speak to you soon.