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Mental Selling: The Sales Performance Podcast is a show for motivated problem solvers in sales, leadership and customer service. Each episode features a conversation with sales leaders and industry experts who understand the importance of the mindset and skill set needed to be exceptional at building trusted customer relationships. In this podcast, we get below the surface, tapping into the emotional and psychological drivers of lasting sales and service success. You’ll hear stories and insights about overcoming the self-limiting beliefs that hold salespeople back, how to unlock the full potential in every salesperson, the complexities of today’s B2B buying cycles, and the rise of today’s virtual selling environment. We help you understand the mental and emotional aspects of sales performance that will empower you to deliver amazing customer experiences and get the results you want.
Welcome to Mental Selling!
[00:00:00] Gearoid Cox: the overarching point will always be the same. You need to be in tune with them. You know, you can't show up once a week, give a speech and walk away and expect things to work the way you want them to work. You are the one driving the culture and you are the one driving that direction of travel. And if you do and you drive it well enough, everyone will come with you.
[00:00:17] Hayley Parr: This is Mental Selling, the sales podcast for people who are dedicated to making a difference in customers' lives. We're here to help you unlock sales talent, win more relationships and transform your business with integrity. I'm your host, Haley Parr. Let's get right into it.
[00:00:35] Hayley Parr: Welcome to the Mental Selling Podcast, brought to you by Integrity Solutions, where we explore the human side of sales and what it really takes to build trusted customer relationships, drive performance, and create values driven sales cultures.
[00:00:53] Hayley Parr: On today's episode, I'm joined by Gearoid Cox. Founder and CEO of SalesPipeline.io. Gearoid has built and led sales teams around the world, and today he helps companies scale through outsourced and fractional sales leadership. In our conversation we'll dig into what it really takes to train salespeople beyond onboarding, why appreciation is such a powerful mindset shift, and what top global sales talent actually needs to succeed, especially in small or remote teams.
[00:01:26] Hayley Parr: Gearoid, welcome. Thank you for joining.
[00:01:29] Gearoid Cox: Oh, thank you so much for having me. I'm very excited.
[00:01:32] Hayley Parr: How are you doing today?
[00:01:34] Gearoid Cox: I'm great. I'm great. I'm, I've been very excited waiting for this podcast because obviously I think as you and I have discussed before, we have very aligned values across company and something I'm really passionate and my friends are sick of listening to me talking about, so I'm more than happy to be talking to somebody who's, who's willing to listen.
[00:01:50] Hayley Parr: Absolutely. Absolutely. And that was one of the things that you and I really zoned in on when we had our first conversation were those shared values. And it made so much sense to bring you on the pod, and dive in deeper. And that actually kind of brings me, to the first topic and which is training beyond onboarding.
[00:02:08] Hayley Parr: I wanted to start here because. It came up in such an interesting way when you and I were talking about having you on the show. I would love to have you share a bit about your journey, into the sales profession and how some of those early experiences really set you up for success. Because you mentioned that it showed you how important training is, especially as you encountered peers in the sales profession who had.
[00:02:36] Hayley Parr: A bit of a different path, and struggled a bit more. there was a market difference there, and it, showed you how different a career can go based on the positioning of training. And I just, I found that really, really important to hit on. especially as it led the path for your career journey.
[00:02:57] Gearoid Cox: yeah, so what we had discussed and, and what I'm always discussing is this is why SalesPipeline exists. Early in my career I was very lucky and I got to work for big companies, big name companies, NASDAQ listed companies who provided training far beyond onboarding. It was regular training, regular one-to-one training, right?
[00:03:13] Gearoid Cox: Get her group training. Topic situational, and I thought everybody got this, I used to see those metrics of 70% of sales hires don't work out and those kind of things, and I couldn't understand it. For me, I had been really drilled that it was an attitude and actions thing, that you follow the process, that you look after your attitude, that you get to know your customers you follow what you've been taught.
[00:03:34] Gearoid Cox: And people would regularly check in on me with them. And they taught me the checkpoints and how to do that. They taught me how to have a more open conversation and actively listen and not be just pitching all the time how to score leads, how to understand these things. And when I left those bigger companies as a top performer and went out to. Work in other roles and, ultimately be in business myself, I saw so many positions don't have that, and it becomes a lose lose situation. And what our company is all about is creating a win-win situation where you are not only, and we're gonna touch on the other topics, you not only appreciate your staff, you give them the training, you give them the time to develop, you give them the materials and help that they need to develop you help them with their motivation. it's so obvious what some of the gaps are in the sales industry or. What some of the gaps are for salespeople and for me, I think not enough companies are aligning to fill them for their people and provide them the opportunity to become as successful as they can. I think you see so much out here where really salespeople are working with their hands tied behind their back or without enough information to succeed.
[00:04:34] Gearoid Cox: And for me, my journey taught me that that was a lot of the answer, and that's what I went back to when I started my own business. And so far so good. You know, we're very, very happy.
[00:04:43] Hayley Parr: our first topic is training beyond onboarding. So talk to me a little bit about the one-time aspect versus it being a continuous training journey as this competitive edge to the sales profession at all stages in their career.
[00:05:00] Hayley Parr: I mean, you've built teams in all markets, built global. Sales teams, why do you believe? In your experience, where has a successful training program come in place and, what happens beyond onboarding in those most successful programs?
[00:05:20] Gearoid Cox: I think it depends how you view it, right? So it's possibly the most important thing because firstly. People are far too quick to start to look at the individual in sales and not the actual business itself. Like what's the ultimate goal of the sales team is to grow the revenue of the business, not to grow the revenue of an individual sales performer. it's of the whole team and the business as a whole, and training, especially when you give it just an onboarding. I view training a bit more like the theoretical side. Training is like the classroom you have to go and then put it into practice. You know so many people, you've got your onboarding out you go or, we gave you training six months ago, or we gave you training a year ago. Firstly, the most important thing about training is revisiting it.
[00:06:02] Gearoid Cox: It's understanding how it's being put into practice isn't being used well, sometimes when I think people go to the idea that we gave that one training a year ago, like maybe view it a bit like a sports team or maybe view it a bit like running, you went for run, run.
[00:06:14] Gearoid Cox: You're not ready for a marathon. That's not how this works. You know, like you take the theory in and you learn from a trainer, then you try to put it in practice. And as someone who's been part of the same training, maybe 50 times, I get something new from it every time. Or a very good example is early in my career, a great sales manager taught me that sales was all about attitude and actions.
[00:06:35] Gearoid Cox: You just follow the process. You have a good attitude, you do the right things, and it will come. You know, you don't need to be so worried about it. I've relearned the meaning of that 50 times, you know, or applied it to a different situation, or found myself falling into a bad habit or into a bad situation and realized, whoa, whoa, this is all I have to do.
[00:06:52] Gearoid Cox: It's that simple. You know, it's the same lesson you see in many sales trainings. Don't sell features and benefits. I don't think there's been a week that I haven't been on a sales call since I started my career 15 years ago. I still fall into that track sometimes, and I have to revisit and say, girl, you're selling the features and benefits again. You know it, it happens. So for me, ongoing training is crucial, especially when you look at it from a team structure because sometimes people think, oh, the top performers don't need it. Well, the people who want to become top performers should learn from your top performers. The people who are top performers should be revisiting because what happens when you become unmotivated or things fall outta sync, or you lose a slight amount of confidence, or there's a change. You know, if you look at it more like a fighting sport like boxing or UFC or any of those things, when under pressure, they fall back on their practice and training. And if you haven't done the hours on that side, it's gonna be very difficult in practice for you to fall back to what you need to be doing to get the good results.
[00:07:45] Gearoid Cox: When you're under pressure, you're gonna make mistakes instead. and For me, that's the crucial part of training. It's bringing your team together. It's having a cohesive message. It's driving the culture and direction of the business that you want to drive. By putting those markers in place and then revisiting them, and ultimately it's the rising tide will raise all boats.
[00:08:03] Gearoid Cox: If anyone takes something from the training, the whole team will get better.
[00:08:07] Hayley Parr: I like how you mentioned not just, The repetitive nature of training at onboarding and other stages throughout the career, but also within the event of training itself. The initial Event and then the sustainment after putting the learnings into practice through real world application. That's something that we focus very heavily on at Integrity Solutions, and that's what really sets the teams that see the success and the outcomes and the return on investment of training apart from the one and done and hope that it works because it, it just simply doesn't.
[00:08:40] Hayley Parr: So I, I really like that you called that out. I mean, speaking of wanting to see a return on investment, there is an investment. Associated with training and, and sometimes smaller teams can really struggle to find the budget. What are some ways that those smaller teams can, keep their skills sharp, but maybe they don't have a huge budget?
[00:08:59] Hayley Parr: Are there there practical ways that they can make the most out of maybe a training they've done in the past? any tips for that regard?
[00:09:07] Gearoid Cox: Yeah, so two-sided answer one, especially at the founder level or at the executive level. Put more budget for training because what you put in, you will get out a hundred fold here, like this is your revenue generating team. If you have no interest in putting training or putting budget in place to do this, then you don't have much interest in getting what you're actually asking from these people. Obviously for everyone, small team or big team, you should do the other pieces too. If the manager or leader needs to do the same thing, they need to revisit the training. They need to give feedback. They need to revisit the process. They need to have their teams share the ideas. They need to have their teams share examples, how they're putting these things into practice, what they're struggling with. But long story short, I think you have to invest in training one way or another if you want the long-term result, and I've never met a founder who asked for less revenue or an executive who didn't want to grow their business, you want repeatable growth. You want to be able to onboard people in the same length of time.
[00:10:00] Gearoid Cox: You want measurable results. All this comes from training, whether internally or externally. And as much as I believe in external training, and I think it's super important and something you should do regularly, we should always be learning like from a management perspective, from a salesperson's perspective.
[00:10:14] Gearoid Cox: And you need to create that environment. You need to drive that culture from a leadership standpoint. So I think for me it's something that I do in every weekly sales meeting that we do. We spend a portion of it working on the training or working on the topics that we previously spoke about, sharing examples, sharing wins, and helping with the top performers and the leadership to point out why it works and bring that theory on gradually.
[00:10:36] Gearoid Cox: You know, Rome isn't built in a day, and it's back to the same point that I made. You need to do the hard yards and hours of practice, which isn't just calls because it needs to be focused practice. So you need to give those reps the focus angles. Small pieces at a time, you know, you're building on a strong foundation.
[00:10:52] Gearoid Cox: And ultimately in the long run, your revenue will show plenty, plenty more in terms of dollars than you've put in hours into it, in, in advance. And to be honest, by the time that you're struggling and by the time that you're really searching for something, you've made mistakes long before. You know, this is a consistent process that everyone needs to be putting in to get better.
[00:11:11] Gearoid Cox: And if you are not doing it for your reps, and your reps are performing, they're doing it for themselves. You know, the process works. It's just about what you are putting in.
[00:11:18] Hayley Parr: Well, not to mention, engagement and putting integrity into action and investing in your people. And that's something we talk about a lot at Integrity Solutions. we're coming into fall, we're coming into Q4. A lot of teams have a training budget that expires at the end of the calendar year. and it's use it or lose it dollars, so why not make those dollars work for you?
[00:11:40] Hayley Parr: And it's a great time to be having those conversations. So, I really appreciate your perspective on this. Gearoid,
[00:11:46] Hayley Parr: All right, Gearoid. I love to pivot to the practice of appreciation in sales. It's something that came up when we met earlier and it's. Works very nicely with something we talk about a lot at Integrity Solutions. It's a model within, one of our training programs, which is the Congruence model, essentially aligning beliefs, values, attitudes, and behaviors.
[00:12:10] Hayley Parr: talk to me a little bit about appreciation as the hidden fuel of sales success. how do you see that shaping a rep's daily approach to selling?
[00:12:19] Gearoid Cox: Well, I think it kind of starts at my own journey. It's something that I had to find to become successful. I think every sales rep can understand this. It's easy to fall into negativity. It's easy to blame the leads. It's easy to blame the customers. It's easy to blame the software. It's easy to blame the product, the shipping times. We've all had that moment. And I think when I looked at a big part of my culture in Irish culture, people are extremely appreciative, right? Of people. Say, please and thank you a lot. And it's, it's something I noticed and as I traveled the world more and more and worked in different places and worked with different team members, I noticed it was a bit of a gap.
[00:12:50] Gearoid Cox: And Ireland has very, very strong sales people and sales teams, and I kind of thought of the idea a little bit myself, and then as I discussed it with more and more people. Found it was a more common idea. If you appreciate what you have, what you've been given, the company and the job that you have, the colleagues that you have, the customers that you have, it comes across in every word you say.
[00:13:09] Gearoid Cox: In everything you do, in every sales call you have. It makes you a far more approachable person. It allows you to see things through a very different eye and bring positivity into situations. And for me, one of the thing I've noticed the most was the opposite. It's so easy to carry negativity into a sales call. It's so easy to create your own objection or create your own problem. You know, sometimes an old sales training I got was talking about selling yourself the solution first, so that at least you were giving yourself that credibility in how you spoke. And I think for me, that comes from appreciation because I think the practice stops.
[00:13:42] Gearoid Cox: You ever miss selling someone? Making sure that you fully understand. You can never sell someone the wrong thing twice, And that every customer is another opportunity, whether it's this job or the next job, or if it's for a case study or a referral or whatever. It is a reference. Everyone needs to be treated with respect and their truth.
[00:13:59] Gearoid Cox: Their solution needs to be appreciated. You need to sit down and understand someone who has. Depends on the product you're selling, but if someone is trying to roll something out quickly, it doesn't mean they wanna sacrifice certain types of quality. You have to become appreciative and not just dive on that, you know, you have to dig a bit deeper and actively listen.
[00:14:16] Gearoid Cox: And I think that's all driven from you appreciating what you have, where you are, where someone is coming from.
[00:14:22] Hayley Parr: this is one of those things that is so much.
[00:14:25] Hayley Parr: Easier, easier said than done, right? When you have these thoughts and again, at Integrity Solutions, we call it being out of congruence, where you're like, oh, maybe I don't feel as strongly in this area as I should. Um, I'm having questions about. This area of the product I'm not sure if I can sell it because I'm not, I don't understand it.
[00:14:47] Hayley Parr: or my activities are off. Um, and it can be difficult if you're not in 100% congruence and you're misaligned to go into that sales conversation. in your experience or working with the teams that you place and coach, and train. What are some practical tips or ways you move through?
[00:15:10] Hayley Parr: feeling like when someone's not feeling appreciative and, and kind of fix that mindset or help move through that mindset to, to get to that place where they can be more appreciative to help. See more success in that area and, and even just not just see more success, but just have a, better mindset.
[00:15:31] Hayley Parr: 'cause it's a tough place to be and it can be really draining. it's hard to work in that space and, and feel like, man, is this the right role for me? It's hard to have job satisfaction. that's really difficult.
[00:15:42] Gearoid Cox: look, I think there's so many sites to this, and this is something that I could not discuss more often, right? Because ultimately what we do is help sales reps get new jobs. And become successful from an early process and obviously work with people in the mid and long term. It starts at the start with hiring.
[00:15:57] Gearoid Cox: You know, I think more often than not, when I am faced with some of these problems, they didn't hire for what they actually wanted, or they didn't know how to hire the right reps, then they didn't provide the onboarding the way that they should have or the training that they should have or the support.
[00:16:11] Gearoid Cox: And I think we're gonna touch on this more when we talk about talent and retention and those kind of pieces. Supported salespeople do better appreciated salespeople, do better salespeople with more freedom, do better. If you find yourself not being able to do those things. You are either wrong for the role or you're dealing with the wrong person. And a lot of the time those questions should have been answered far before. I think it's an awful situation to find yourself in with sales reps that aren't in the right place or aren't in the right motivation, and especially if you can't bring them back from there. Now, the other side is there's a big conversation here about perspective. You have to help them find perspective. That is your job. too often I see leaders give up on staff or not do the right things, or not do anything at all. That's our job. Our job is to keep the show on the road. Our job is to keep people motivated, focused. It's keep them moving in one direction of travel towards a known goal, right? It's our job to help them understand our clients and our customers and our leads mind frames, and help them get to the nitty gritty of what's actually going on. You know, we need to pull their head outta the clouds and put their feet on the ground a little bit, and that requires constant interaction. You know what I found, and it's kind of back to this appreciation piece. A simple thank you often enough will get you very far with a sales rep because a lot of the time they're the unsung heroes of business. And if you say those thank you's enough, every time they provide you something, if my staff provide me something I ask for, I thank them. I don't see why not. It doesn't cost you very much. And often what you can reap from the rewards is so much further. It also starts to build that trust, acknowledge what they actually do, and it helps them when you want to point out something to them, you've already built up that level of trust.
[00:17:46] Gearoid Cox: So for me, the overarching point will always be the same. You need to be in tune with them. You know, you can't show up once a week, give a speech and walk away and expect things to work the way you want them to work. You are the one driving the culture and you are the one driving that direction of travel. And if you do and you drive it well enough, everyone will come with you.
[00:18:03] Hayley Parr: Absolutely. and I think this transitions really well into our next topic, which is all around the new era of the global force of sales talent and really what they need.
[00:18:17] Hayley Parr: hi there. If you're listening to this show, it means you believe in making a difference in your customers lives and are looking for tools to grow in your career at the same time. At Integrity Solutions, we're changing the stereotypes about sales training in ways your customers will feel and experience every day.
[00:18:36] Hayley Parr: If you want to learn more about how we could help you and your team, go to integrity solutions. com.
[00:18:44] Hayley Parr: Alright. I'd love to talk a little bit about building distributed teams that perform especially globally. The pandemic changed so much and now it's almost the norm to have remote teams, over teams that are in office the majority of the time, or even hybrid. In your perspective, placing the teams that you do, how has the role of the remote salesperson evolved in recent years?
[00:19:10] Hayley Parr: What are some of the new demands that you're seeing from, top global sales talent?
[00:19:15] Gearoid Cox: To be honest with you, I love this question in some ways and, it's a conversation that we have a lot and I think it's often driven by people like us, right? Service providers and, more senior management. I think the salespeople have been asking for the same thing long before the pandemic. They wanted flexibility. Like sales is an extremely demanding job, right? To do it very well, especially with more global teams where you can be battling time zones. I often see salespeople have to stay after hours or get up early or you know, maybe travel before they do something. And I think they've always been crying out as long as I've been in the industry for the flexibility that they show to be shown to them. And I think that more often than not, it's easy to give, right? To allow a top performer or a well performing team to work remote isn't that hard anymore. Especially considering what you expect of them. if you are already in a situation where you're gonna have to say two hours late to take another call and you have an hour commute either side of your day, it makes it difficult for people to have normal lives and families and the things that go between.
[00:20:10] Gearoid Cox: And speaking to a sales rep of mine recently, a very strange example, but she was like, I'm so appreciative that we work from home because at lunchtime I did my washing. She was like, I do not want to have to face a 45 minute drive home and start to wash my clothes. And I was like, it's the smallest thing you can give someone. And ultimately, if you are not creating the system where they're trustworthy or hiring trustworthy people or where they have enough to do and the tools to do it, I think that's on you now. You know, I think we've made it super clear worldwide. We could all do it from. nearly all jobs can, and I understand the benefits to having an office and having people in them, but right now I think the best performing teams are the ones that are regularly appreciated.
[00:20:47] Gearoid Cox: Like we touched on. We don't need to go into it again. They have the flexibility to have the lives they want and still do the job that you want them to do and perform the way they want to perform. And I think the last point, and I won't spend too long on it, is having the right tools. Nowadays, there is a million in one types of tool that you can use.
[00:21:05] Gearoid Cox: For salespeople, there's a million in one communication tools. I think people want to be armed with a tech stack, one that isn't too complicated, but two actually solves the problems they need to solve and makes their job in life easier. So it's either the team structure coupled with the tech stack to make their specific role possible in the timeframe that they're supposed to do it, and things that are supporting them.
[00:21:26] Gearoid Cox: So supportive people, supportive tech stack, supportive structure. A clear and defined role in process and the flexibility to do it.
[00:21:33] Hayley Parr: I'd love to hear what are some of the misconceptions that leaders think that teams want? That really don't matter. Like where are some of the areas that we might be pouring resources in that we don't need to focus on? If we can just get back to the basics of all the thing, not the basics, but the, the things that really matter.
[00:21:56] Hayley Parr: and that can provide that work-life balance and that job satisfaction that give our teams the flexibility to thrive and, do what they need to do to be successful and happy. sales professionals.
[00:22:09] Gearoid Cox: you know what's funny? I think about this a lot because I have a lot of salespeople more than the average business, right? And, at least I am a salesperson. And, and I have an idea what I'd like. And, and the way that our business works is a lot of feedbacks, we get an idea what they like. And we've heard many varying, reviews on the same things, right?
[00:22:25] Gearoid Cox: And this is the problem. It's different for different people. you gotta know your people and you gotta align with what values that you want and what values that they have, their culture and all those things. I think the basic misconceptions are that more is better. let's take the monthly all hands meeting, right? Every company that I've worked with for the last, five years, two hours, three hours, hour and a half monthly, all times meeting about every single. Asset of the business, it goes on all day. I've never met someone who enjoys it. And
[00:22:55] Gearoid Cox: in a more recent time, I saw someone really drill it down into a very, very well produced video. And everybody had nothing but good things to say about it and everybody watched it and everybody engaged. I think the monthly all hands is a very useful thing, don't get me wrong, but I think for a lot of people it's very long. You know, and there's certain things that it's not cut, right. It's not practiced right.
[00:23:16] Gearoid Cox: The people who are presenting on it don't really cut it down to what just needs to be known, or done. It's the same with, you know, for example, gym stipends. They're a great thing. Some people use them, some people don't. I think where small businesses have the biggest advantage here is being more flexible, you know, putting budgets in place and asking individual people what they'd like to do. If you know your people well or, or you get to know your people well, you can do things probably cheaper, probably smaller, that they appreciate a lot more and in general in life. And I think this goes into relationships, to work to everything that you ever do. It's the small things people remember. It's the pleases and thank yous.
[00:23:55] Gearoid Cox: It's remembering what you discussed the last time. It's bringing someone a coffee. It's giving someone a break. I think buying someone a big, expensive present like watches is a very common sales thing. I love watches. I collect watches. I'd love one, and it's a great thing to have it's great to mark your successes, I will say that, but I think a coffee every week and a break every week and somebody just asking how you are consistently doing those small things every day or every week, that's what really matters.
[00:24:22] Gearoid Cox: That's what will really keep people with you. Startups find it easier to attract top talent than companies with all the benefits. It's exciting, it's fun, and they get to engage with the leaders, you know? I think that's something I will always believe.
[00:24:34] Hayley Parr: And another thing that comes out of engaging with those leaders is it gives those leaders an opportunity to listen to their people and hear from them what is it that you need? And I think something that came out of this is like, it's not going to be the same. It's obviously not going to be the same
[00:24:50] Hayley Parr: the key is knowing your people. You do that by listening to your people and don't, you know, send out a survey if you're not going to do anything with the results. don't have an all hands and ask questions if you're not going to do anything with the feedback. So it's, I think you're spot on.
[00:25:05] Hayley Parr: It's the little things and it's getting to know your people so that you can tailor your response and what you offer to what's actually going to make a difference because you know your people and you know them because you listened. that's really important.
[00:25:17] Gearoid Cox: so for a smaller business that either wants to maybe grow into a more global sales team or even just larger than they are now, where should they start or what are some of the pitfalls they should avoid?
[00:25:30] Gearoid Cox: I think this is probably an unpopular opinion with a lot of people, but stop hiring from your industry and your competitors. it's not something that I'm saying you should never do per se, but I think it's a common pitfall that people fall into one. You think you're the same, but you're not the same at all.
[00:25:45] Gearoid Cox: They have different tech stacks, different tools. A lot of them have lead flow, and you don't. They might focus on a different piece. You want to set yourself apart from them, then don't hire their staff. if you wanna look at someone who's perfect for your business, I think you're looking for somebody who honestly believes in your product and service, and this needs to be fished out in the hiring process. If you're a smaller team, you wanna look for somebody whose drive comes a little bit more from within than external things. And I think, again, probably not the most popular thing with salespeople, but for smaller teams, this is really important. You are gonna have less contact time with them.
[00:26:17] Gearoid Cox: You're looking for them to go and find out and bring back information to you to learn. So you need someone who's driven when you're not watching, you need somebody who doesn't need to always be pushed. And if you're in a smaller team, the leader's probably selling or pushing and trying to drive something as well. I think what I would say is that for me, if we go back to the attitude and actions piece that I was taught by a good sales manager of mine, you can do a lot better with a good attitude than just good actions. And I would rather hire someone with the right attitude and teach them the process than have somebody who has a process that I don't want them to run in a bad attitude. So for me, it would always be find someone with the right attitude. Decide the direction of travel, like we discussed earlier, set it with them, and if they're self-motivated, let them go. Regularly speak with them. Get the feedback, adjust as you go, and find somebody who's willing to go and work to find it out rather than someone who thinks they already know.
[00:27:06] Hayley Parr: I love that. All right, Gearoid. We could go. On and on and on. This has been an absolutely fantastic conversation. but we have to wrap and I know it's much later in the day, where you are than in Wisconsin at the moment. So if you don't mind, I'd love to close with some rapid fire and then we will, call it an episode.
[00:27:28] Hayley Parr: with that, we're just gonna go boom, boom, boom. What is one. Misconception about sales that you would love to see disappear.
[00:27:39] Gearoid Cox: I have one. The salespeople are born and not made. I think this is the polarizing opposite.
[00:27:43] Gearoid Cox: I think born salespeople are damaging for your situation. I think the people who learn the process first outperform in the long run and stay longer.
[00:27:52] Hayley Parr: okay. Okay. I I love that. I love that. And training plays in there very, very well.
[00:27:57] Hayley Parr: What is a market trend that's catching your attention right now?
[00:28:01] Gearoid Cox: The merging of sales and marketing and what GTM strategy means and who's responsible for it. I see GTM strategy as like sales driven marketing almost at times. or marketing driven sales. it is one or the other and it's probably split into again. And I think that's the most interesting thing right now.
[00:28:15] Gearoid Cox: And that's the thing that I think if you're concentrating on now, you're gonna outperform your competition.
[00:28:20] Hayley Parr: this one's my favorite because we've heard some really good ones. Do you have a favorite sales war story? Something went sideways or was really funny, or maybe you just learned an invaluable lesson in the field that you're willing to share
[00:28:35] Gearoid Cox: I'll give you a very basic one 'cause it's probably one that I think about the most. When I was very early in my sales career, one time I got an inbound lead. The guy rang the phone, this is when we had phones with cables and that was my job to pick up and dial on the phone. and he basically just made an order.
[00:28:49] Gearoid Cox: He was like, I want X of this product. I was like, great young salespeople. Free sale, you know, took his details, made the sale. I found out a couple weeks later that he bought like all of the accessories, the media that would work with these things, the other connected devices from someone else, and it was worth way more money. And I never stopped to ask. I never asked, why did you want them? I heard money and I thought, great. Like, here's a po. or get me the po. Here's a quote. and for me, that is a story I tell all the salespeople that work for me in many facets. If I can find someone who's a similar story, I constantly make them retell it. It's never over. You know, you can never have too much information. You can never be too inquisitive, and you should always understand why, as opposed to what?
[00:29:31] Hayley Parr: So you lost the source of the lead essentially.
[00:29:34] Gearoid Cox: Well, I lost most of the money, being honest. I got a small sale and there was a very big sale staring me in the face.
[00:29:40] Hayley Parr: And you never forgot it. While, while you learned from your mistake. That's the important part.
[00:29:45] Gearoid Cox: That's what we'll say anyway. Yeah.
[00:29:47] Hayley Parr: All right, last question. What's um, one mindset shift or practice that you believe makes the biggest difference for salespeople who want to thrive in the long term?
[00:29:57] Gearoid Cox: I got this one from a podcast that wasn't about sales at all. It was, it was about, um, like spies and undercover agencies and those kind of things.
[00:30:04] Gearoid Cox: But it really stuck with me is the difference between your perception and their perspective.
[00:30:10] Gearoid Cox: I think if salespeople spent more time trying to look at things from their leads perspective rather than from what they think, you would make a lot more sales. I've seen this over and over again where you say it's gonna be a fast solution, and the guy wants a valuable one. You know, he was, he's looking for robust and you're trying to sell him speed or vice versa. He's like, I don't need a robust solution. I need a solution now. And you're trying to sell 'em the robust features. If you look at things from their perspective and you ask questions from their perspective. You put yourself in those shoes and you really model out what your ideal client profiles look like and what they care about, and you continue to grow that knowledge from one conversation to the next. You'll ask better and better questions. You'll get more and more information faster, and you can help them solve their problem. 'cause their problem is in their perspective, it's not what you think it is.
[00:30:56] Hayley Parr: What I loved about that response is the examples you gave weren't even black or white. They were like orange or purple, like totally, completely different realms, that was such a cool way to frame it. Like you're thinking about speed, they're thinking about. Features and scalability and difficulty to adopt and how many stakeholders need to be involved and price.
[00:31:22] Gearoid Cox: even if you make the sale now, which is another big problem with salespeople, let's say I make the sale now, but I don't set up the future sales. Like, what if I sell you something fast now, but not scalable? Am I gonna make the next sale when I come back and say, Hey, oh, what I told you wasn't scalable.
[00:31:38] Gearoid Cox: Actually, we should have discussed that the first time nine months ago or the first time we spoke. You should be trying to understand the future of this product, the future of this business, the future of the person who you're selling to. Are they gonna be in this role or a new role? Are you helping them get to the new role? What's your job here like? It's so much more robust than solving this conversational problem. It's what's something that's gonna provide you the longest term value and relationship. And them the longest term value in relationship and draw the line in the middle.
[00:32:05] Hayley Parr: That's a good place to end. Anything else you wanna share with the listeners? Where can we find you?
[00:32:10] Gearoid Cox: You can find me on LinkedIn under Gearoid Cox.
[00:32:13] Gearoid Cox: You can find me at SalesPipeline. It's salespipeline.io. and if you wanna discuss hiring, scaling, growing sales efforts, outsourcing scale teams, fractional leadership management, or if you just wanna have a friendly conversation about anything we discussed more than happy.
[00:32:29] Hayley Parr: Thank you so much for joining. It's been a delight.
[00:32:33] Gearoid Cox: Thank you so much,
[00:32:35] Gearoid Cox:
[00:32:36] Hayley Parr: Thank you for joining us on Mental Selling. If today's conversation resonated with you, be sure to subscribe, leave a review and share it with your network. For more insights on how to go beyond winning deals and build real customer relationships, visit integritysolutions.com. See you next time.