Through John Sterling's journey as owner of Sterling Ventures, he has learned a thing or two about sales. John is not only an entrepreneur who has started a bunch of successful businesses, he is also an author and wrote the book, "Sales for Noobs". The book offers advice on what you ought to do if you are interested in going into sales. During this episode of the Convenience Economy Podcast, John gives his insight to aspiring salespeople. However, as author of "Sales for Noobs", he offers input that is valuable to all salespeople, noob or not.
John's goal of his book is not to teach readers the specifics of selling such as how to close the deal or how to find a new lead, he instead aims to teach the characteristics of how to be a good salesperson. Throughout this episode, you will gain valuable insight regardless of your status as a salesperson.
John is a big believer that to be a good salesperson, you should take a lot of time in high school or college or whenever you can, to figure out where you fit best. The reason for this is that if you do not take the time to think about what you like to do and how you can try aligning yourself to that, then there's a chance you will be unhappy at your job.
He recommends investing in yourself and you can do that by following these two things in specific.
John also advises those who are looking for a sales job to figure out what trade show they would hypothetically like to go to every year for the next 20 years. He suggests finding a way to get into that ideal space where you're hanging around what you love.
Greg Dickinson: Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of the convenience factor podcast. I'm really excited today for a couple reasons. But I've got a great guest today, john Sterling. And before I introduce john, just confession that is what's great about this is john is from Greenville, South Carolina. And I'm here and Easley and we've were able to see each other, which is pretty, pretty cool to be able to have someone on your podcast that you could go grab lunch with anytime you wanted to. So without further ado, let me introduce john Sterling, and have him give you a little bit of his background. On the podcast only 20 minutes, john could spend a couple hours talking about the success and the different things that he's done. But let's, let's let him introduce himself. John, tell you already tell your tell our audience about yourself?
John Sterling: Well, thanks for having me on, Greg, I appreciate it. Um, you know, in a nutshell, after college, I made a couple of good choices. One was to go into sales, the other was to go into technology sales back in the you know, back in the mid 80s, when everything was kind of taking off, you know, Apple and the IBM PC and just kind of jumped into that space, and eventually got ahold of a small company with some partners that was developing an application, industrial application for maintenance. And my big run was building that sales team from zero to about 100 people built the revenue up to over 100 million in in recurring revenue. And you know, we've sold it, it's sold once more since we sold it. But now literally this little company that we started with four people, it just sold for $2.7 billion. So somehow, you know, we created a little unicorn, a double unicorn. And, you know, since then, since we sold it, I have started a few other businesses. I've done some coaching. But the main thing is I wrote this book, this sales for noobs book, which really documents what I think what I've learned about if you want to go into sales, here's some stuff you ought to do. Here's some stuff you shouldn't do. And hopefully it's kind of funny along the way. So that's my big thing now, promoting that book and the consulting that goes with it.
Greg Dickinson: Yeah, absolutely. It's really exciting. So the, for those of you that haven't looked at it yet, you should, because I think that the most interesting thing about John's book, I mean, listen, John's got his career at that company he spoke of right built from zero to over 100 people 100 million dollars. I mean, listen, that's an entrepreneur's dream to be able to have someone to talk about that. But then he went on and started another software company, they kind of some investment areas. And now this around around the coaching, and what's really struck me and want to join on this podcast today is that the book is not about Hey, make X number of calls. And here's how you do objection handling. And here's how you do pricing. This book is about not necessarily selling, but how do you be a salesperson? John, what was the impetus to write something that's very unique? I think an issue talks about the person's character, their values, how to work hard, and what things to do and what things not to do what, when, what was your thinking behind the author his book, because it was really unique? I've read it, you know, I've read it. And and and, and I think it's pretty cool.
John Sterling: Well, thanks. Well, first of all, you and I both have had a lot of different sales experiences that we could write about, we can write about international deals, or large deals or lots of different things. But when you look on Amazon, or Barnes and Noble, you kind of just see a bunch of general sales books, like you said, how to close the deal, how to find a new lead, you know, those kinds of things. I just remembered back, you know, the coolest part for me was, was finding these bright young people of good character when they're in college, and, you know, picking them out, and then teaching them how to sell. And, you know, I had a huge percent win rate with those people. It was held well over 90%, if we found the person who went to a school that were familiar with similar major, maybe they were a leader on campus, they tested a certain way, you know, they were perfectly aligned to do the job we wanted. And so when we got them in there, they generally worked. And so the point is, you know, if I'd gotten somebody else who wasn't perfectly in line, as good as sales managers, I think I am, it probably the percentage wouldn't have been near as good. So I'm just a big believer that to be a good salesperson, you should take a lot of time in high school or college or whenever you can, to figure out where you fit best. What do you like to do, what, how can you sell try to align yourself to that. Versus what most people do is they kind of get out, they kind of maybe they're a little bit lazy, they don't know what to do. And they just kind of take a job. And they they kind of consider the job as how much money they might be able to make gosh, I might be able to make $60,000. Well, if you're miserable, or don't like the industry you're in, or aren't you know really aligned to it, it's not a very good job. So I really, really, really think it's important that people take the time to do this. And that's why I chose this subject to write this book.
Greg Dickinson: Yeah, and let's, let's peel that back a little bit. Because I think one of the things you said here that you don't give yourself enough credit for, and it really is well thought out in the book is that, and I agree with this, and that, you know, you can teach people to quote unquote, sell, but it's hard to teach someone to be a sales person. And and I think what you've said is, how do we find the characteristics of someone that may be a good salesperson, their values, their ethics, not afraid of things, they're, they're willing to be coached, they're willing to be trained? Right? Let's talk about that a little, because I think it's one of the things you and I talked about over lunch is one of the things that is really well, you know, well thought out in the book is this idea that, you know, that have that right, if I can teach someone to make cold calls, I can teach someone to do objection handling, I could probably teach him to be a good pre sales engineer, but man, what are the characteristics that that that make that person up?
John Sterling: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I think, you know, I believe in testing the psychological profiling, Colby.comm one of the tests I use. The disk is another test that we use, there's several that we use that help, you know, the end of the day, it summarizes it says, Hey, Greg, we think you'll be graded, outside sales, close big deals, and you know, kind of in 100 formats, you're good at going out finding new business over and over again, where somebody else it might come back and say, you know, john, you'd be better at like getting the customer and working with them for years, and really get to know their business holding their hand, and taking them you know, through a multi year deal. So, you know, even within sales, there's different places where you're going to do better or worse, and people shouldn't confuse that. But just in general, the sales characteristics we look for, you know, campus leadership is one you'll typically if someone's out of their fraternity, they're going to be you know, comfortable. Being a leader and taking the leadership, a sales opportunity just got a comfortable doing things. It just as much, you know, we like people to write, and I've done this in interviews, also, I don't know, maybe I did mention this in the book. But when I interview someone that I find interesting, and a nice person, and we talk and I'm like, you know what, I really like you, but I think I would be doing you a disservice if you came to sell. It sounds like you like to, you know, play music or, you know, do whatever you do, but you know, whatever that thing is that interest level you have I think people should pursue that field to some degree.
Greg Dickinson: Yeah, yeah. And I couldn't agree more. I just a quick example for me. My previous company I had, you know, I had I had a partner and, and they had a guy that wanted to come work for me and the people's, I don't hire him, he's no good. He's a C player. And I'm like, Well, you know, Yeah, I do. Like, I'm gonna I'm gonna put him over here, though. I'm gonna have him do this. And they're like, Well, what do you mean, it's, as it turned out, he was a C player and what they were asking me to do, which was they were asking him to go get new business and as a consultant, go grab new business and make it grow. I brought him over to run projects. And he was an A player for me. He was absolutely, like, he loved working for us. He loved his job. He that he worked 20 hours a day cause I put him someplace where he wanted to, he didn't like to sell he liked to be having to ask the customer for a larger SOW he was but government SOW and, and he would make it home. Right. So I think that's what you're you're saying is that, you know, even though you know, sales people sometimes get I think they look into why, you know, they can make a lot of money doing it there, OTE is really high, I'll go do that. That doesn't mean just because the money is good, because you want to, right, wanting is not enough. You got to work for it. And what you're saying is, there are some characteristics that if you have these characteristics, they you're more not not a guarantee, but you're more inclined to be successful at that versus, you know, someone may not be.
John Sterling: Absolutely and one piece I didn't really, I love your example. I think it's exactly right. People need to be in the right spot that was in that book. Good to Great, you know, the right people on the right seat on the bus. Yeah, so yeah. But another thing is, you know, if you're in college, you're about to enter business or enter the business through sales. You know, you know, there's this whole thing about, you know, don't don't pursue your passion, you know, forget your your music, forget your sports or whatever. You got to be in business now. Well, I disagree. I mean, certainly there comes a time that an athlete's life when you're not going to play any more pro sports and it happens to everybody. But you don't have to leave the sport. Right, but you could stay and be a coach, you could be an agent, you could work in advertising, work for Nike, you can have all these things where you can kind of stay in an industry if you like it. And so I always tell people, if they're looking for a sales job, I'm like, let's figure out, like, what trade show would you like to go to for the next 20 years? Every year? You know, do you want to go to the national Electronics Show in Vegas? Or do you want to go to the big jazz show in Chicago or whatever that show is you like the most, find a way to get into that space somehow, where you're kind of hanging around what you love? Yeah.
Greg Dickinson: Yeah. That's, that's so cool. It's so funny, because my hobby is I'm a woodworker. I say it as a hobby. First, but but I love it, right? And I've been looking at, you know, getting some new tools as new things. And I met this this, this guy the other day that sells wood drying kilns. And he's, and I'm like, wow, it's pretty interesting he said well Greg, he said, My passion is wood. I love wood. I'm a carpenter I I make furniture. I have a sewing sawmill. So I went and found a job in which I could make a living, talking to people that like what I like, and I'm like, wow. Like it was really interesting. Because think about it, what he said to me, because I wanted to job where I could talk to people that like what I like, pretty interesting.
John Sterling: It's exactly I think the world's a better place. If more and more people do that. Yeah, I think it actually works exactly the opposite now, because of the head trash that we're given that says, forget what you forget what you love, you have to go to work now. And, you know, I just think it's exactly wrong. I think if you love something you ought to, if you can't do just that thing you love you ought to do something in the area, kind of hang around, hang around the net, you know,
Greg Dickinson: I'm with you, I mean, I gave my I gave that advice to my daughter. She's an equestrian rider. And, you know, she's kind of bottom of the totem pole. As far as you know, she was he went and got another job. And she said Dad I don't like the job. So we'll go back into what you were doing. And the other Sony will come you day one, but but once you're in the business, once you're doing it day in and day out, as long as you can support yourself, you'll find something and sure enough, right? You start to say, Well, I can make money over here, I can make my way I can do this over here. Because you're in the job. It's like It's like, it's like to your point earlier on selling once you're in, you start seeing Wow, farmer hunter customer success, right, prospecting, outside sales, right. And, you know, as I remember, once in a president's club, I read off a list of all I had 120 some odd salespeople, when I read, you know, most of the list on Listen, there's no degree in calls called sales. I mean, there were chemical engineers that were engineers, political science, marketing majors, business majors, liberal arts majors, right? Because they found their passion, they're obviously a presence cause they're good at what they did. And that's what you're referring to as even at college, you're not saying hey, Greg, I go into this department and I find all these people No, I go to, I go into I know, these certain areas are prosperous for us and finding but they also are they in a fraternity, are they in sports or these other things, right? Because they make up the characteristics, regardless of the major, whether they'll be successful at what you're trying to advocate. Absolutely. Yeah. John let me just pin you with another question here real quick. Right? You've been in the business a long time. If you were if you wrote the same book, let's go back 10, 15 years is it the same? Or are you? Are you seeing that, you know, the fact that the buyer has, you know, is doing more the work now is doing more of the buyers journey, when you're not reaching out to sales, day one, and the salesperson holds all the cards and Salesforce has to give the person all the way buyers are able to do some of that journey on their own? Does that change the new sales culture to be a little bit different than they were perhaps, you know, 10, 15 years ago? What what's your thinking on that you've been? You've been, you've seen both sides of the spectrum early days. And then now today?
John Sterling: Yeah, I mean, still, the internet obviously changed a ton because the buyer can get so much information without talking to a salesperson, obviously, that's the biggest change. But another huge change is how split up the sales process has become you know, you've got your your lead finders, your qualifiers your appointment setter, you're closer, and then your customer success person. So you have four or five people in a typical sales organization, touching the account and handing it over. And it just, it just goes all the more into needing to know who you are, and where do you Where do you fit best in that situation? And, you know, just just being cognizant that any of those places is okay, you know, it's it's all right, just depends whatever, wherever you're best at that's where you ought to be. Yeah. And you know, that, you know, people typically used to fall down on or the farmer in boats could be very successful over a long period of time.
Greg Dickinson: You know, but john, if people were gonna think we stages and we didn't, but you know, one of the chapters in your book you talk about Teamwork. And if you think about today, right, the the, the SDRs. And the inside of the appointment setters and the discovery team, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? And then the salesperson, the customer success, you know, you're gonna fall flat in your face and not be successful. If you can't work within that team environment, you're not willing to give up some control and work with those teammates. Right? I mean, you talk a lot about that in the book around the the idea of a team, and I'm not trying to be the, you know, Mr. know it all. And he didn't say that your book, I'm saying that?
John Sterling: Yeah. Yeah, well, yeah, I agree. I agree, it's because of that dynamic It is, it is more teamwork than ever. And it's also been from a real positive perspective, if you're a noob. If you're a new salesperson, and you find a great opportunity, you can bring in all kinds of help, you know, kind of used to be that, you know, you remember Greg, Give me the phone book and say, you know, find somebody and you're kind of on your own. But now with all these different resources, you can say, Hey, I talked to these people. And, you know, there's a huge opportunity here, and all of a sudden, you'll, you know, the help will come in and help you close a big deal. Yeah, as long as you're open to it. And, you know, we've seen that before with, you know, we've had 25 year olds, you know, haul in $10 million deals, because they found them, and then they brought in help.
Greg Dickinson: Now, john, you know, I won't say where my son works for us, I work for a software company. And he is, when he asked me, he said, Well Dad you know, I really worked hard to get this job, I want to be successful. I said, Well, other than the basics of just having to work hard and don't know you're going to get what you inspect not what you expect. But there'll be willing to share and ask for coaching and advice. And he's like, Well, my bosses said, they've been doing it a long time to your boss for a reason. And sure enough, right. He's, he's running to pickles with accounts, and he's been able to go and his boss jumps in, right? You know, he's told me, he says, sometimes my boss will will go to my meeting for me if I'm too busy. If I can't actually, yeah, that's teamwork right here, by the way, you're both incentivized for the same thing. There's no us versus them. It's it's you if you approach as a team. I mean, I think that's critical John, especially a young person, because they they want the glory they want if I did this, right, I, you know, is that tendency to be more about I need to, I need to make a mark for myself. And that's how I get promoted instead of working amongst a team sometimes, right is one of the best criteria to do to promote somebody.
John Sterling: Well, I agree, I agree, Dropping the ego is a recipe for success. And in this in this day,
Greg Dickinson: That's another that's another thing in the book. And like I said, I've read the book, I've known, john for a number of years, and I saw the book come out, and I picked it up. And I actually took it and gave it to my son to read because he's a new salesperson. And so I I encourage people to, you know, not an advertiser for the book, but I think you'll learn some stuff. And again, when I'm what's important to me is that, you know, as john said, you go on Amazon and listen, in search under, you know, sales closing sales prospecting sales book, you'll get a million books, right? And frankly, I think some of them are, well, let's not go there. But this one is not about that. This one is about the characteristics and you look at John's LinkedIn channel, and he'll talk a lot about his his videos are all about interview steps, right and testing of Do you have the right makeup? So john, what I'm going to finish it here at the end of the end of the podcast, but any words of wisdom for the for the audience things for them to think about as they as they go through their day and go through their week and go through their month and go through this year.
John Sterling: Two things. The first is, particularly for the people who want to be salespeople the noobs is to remember to take time to think about yourself, and your plan, kind of looking at yourself from 30,000 feet. As if you're advising yourself, I think it's very important. Instead of instead of what many people do, including me at the beginning of just focusing on today, and what I'm doing right this second, and you know, looking at the big picture, what do I need to add, what are my skill stack look like? So spend time on yourself? Maybe you put it on your calendar and your view at once a month, you know, at a minimum kind of what am I looking like what is my career looking like? And then the other thing is, for more resources for me, you can go to noobschool.org noob in ob school.org we've got more and more videos, we've got a president's club kind of thing coming out where people can join it and help each other. We've got our podcast on there. So go to noobschool.org and it will be hopefully we can help you as well.
Greg Dickinson: Beautiful Yeah you and I talked about that. And you so you finally got that kicked off where you're got you're gonna have that that online virtual. You call it training and coaching, right? That's what you're going to be?
John Sterling: Yeah we've got it it's a private Facebook group and we've got it right now with kind of the beta testers. We've got 12 people beta testing. We're doing a weekly zoom class kind of sales one on one question, answer and then we'll do some private postings. So the idea is you join this thing. And you just keep working at it until you get that first Good job. And then you go to a, let's just say it's chairman's club after that. But, you know, we'll kind of everyone stays in that club until you achieve that goal of finding that great first job. And then you graduate. Great, beautiful.
Greg Dickinson: Well, listen, tons of resource out there from john, here's a gentleman that says, as a stellar career, he could have just, you know, gone fishing or played golf all the time. Instead, he's given back and he's he's, he wrote a really good book. And I think it's got some good areas that people can learn a lot from, I think, as even I read it, and I'm not a noob by any stretch. If you could see me right now, you know, I'm not a noob. So, but it made me stop and think about some things. And I think what he just recommended is invest in yourself. He talks a lot about health and eating right and taking care of yourself and staying in the right frame of mind. Because as we go to work if we're in the right frame of mind, and we do a better job. So, john, thanks for for this half hour of your time and giving back and telling everyone about some of your learnings and what the news is all about. I appreciate you joining the podcast.
John Sterling: Well, thank you for having me. I appreciate what you do as well.
Greg Dickinson: We'll talk soon. Take care john.