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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] Brad Jung: Those that really are at the top of their game in sales performance are resilient. They’re resilient to client challenges, to being fired by your top client to having the most successful day ever, and then the next day, it’s your worst day ever of the year, right? They’re resilient in life. They’re resilient with their teens, they’re resilient in their personal lives as well. It makes you think about not the short term, but really the long term. You’re building something for the long term.
[00:00:26] Hayley Parr: This is Mental Selling, the sales podcast for people who are dedicated to making a difference in customer’s lives. We’re here to help you unlock sales talent, win more relationships, and transform your business with integrity. I’m your host, Hayley Parr. Let’s get right into it. Welcome to the Mental Selling Podcast, brought to you by Integrity Solutions, where we dive into the mindset and skillset needed for high performance sales leadership. Today’s guest has had a front row seat to some of the most profound shifts in the world of financial services, and he’s helped lead many of them. Brad Jung is a seasoned executive coach and sales leader who currently heads the North America Wealth Channel at Russell Investments from launching his career with a paper route to overseeing digital strategy and sales teams at scale. Brad’s journey spans both the personal and the technological blending high tech with high touch in a way few can articulate as clearly as he can. We talk about the leadership lessons that shaped his career, how top performers go beyond product knowledge and why trust and emotional connection still matter, even in a tech driven world. Brad also shares sharp takes on hiring culture and how to prepare the next generation of sales talent. It’s a thoughtful, grounded conversation with one of the best in the business. Let’s get started. Brad, welcome. It’s so fantastic to have you on mental selling. Thank you for joining,
[00:01:56] Brad Jung: Hayley. Glad to be here and just a privilege and honor to finally do this. I know we’ve talked about it for a couple of months and I’m glad we were able to make it happen.
[00:02:03] Hayley Parr: We’re definitely in the busy season, but it’s such a delight to have you on and talk all things sales and culture in the wealth management space. I had love to dive right into your journey. How did you end up in that space? What kind of drew you to that intersection of technology, leadership and sales things that we talk about all the time on the mental selling podcast?
[00:02:24] Brad Jung: Yeah, it’s interesting when you go back on your life and you actually figure out how did you make this journey happen? I think there’s two elements of it. One is you have these angel mentors that come into your life that actually challenge you and they actually take you and give you guidance and you don’t know that they’re mentors until 10, 15, 20 years later and you realize they impacted your life. And so my journey was simple as I went to a high school, we switched from my sophomore to junior year and in the junior year we had economics class and they had a stock market game. And to me, knowing nothing about my parents bought their first house when they’re 16, you’re looking at it going, wow, this is pretty interesting that people can actually make money in stocks, they invest in companies. And that was a new passion for me and that’s really what drove me to be interested in financial services. It’s really continue to learn from it, from reading different books or getting involved and following firms like Merrill Lynch and looking at different sort of stock analysis that were put out by different firms. That was a big part of what shaped me and got me interested in the financial services industry.
[00:03:30] Hayley Parr: That’s incredible. Any early lessons that continue to guide your approach from your career?
[00:03:38] Brad Jung: Yeah. You thought about it is one of the things is not having, we’ll call it going up with not a lot. And you talked about the paper out in the beginning and really working in farm fields and all that other stuff, just really that work ethic for me was a big foundation for what shaped me into who I am today. But more importantly is there’s a mission involved with what we do in financial services and it’s not about who has the best returns. It’s not about who makes the most money. It’s a fundamental belief that you’re given a gift. And one of my mentors told me that, Hey, this gift is about helping people. And when you actually shift your mindset that you’re not selling a product, you’re actually helping people improve their financial security and you start to think about that journey along the way, it changes the way you view your career, your passion and what you’re doing in this industry is you’re helping people improve their financial lives.
[00:04:39] Brad Jung: And when you think about it, over 70% of Americans are financially illiterate and you start to think about we don’t have classes on finance or investments or managing credit cards and loans and all that. Do you take out a car loan or not? All of that stuff. And what you think about is not taught in schools. So how do people learn it? They learn it throughout their lives and they learn it, either. Most of ‘em don’t. They actually make the same financial mistakes that they’ve done early on in their life journey. So for me it’s about the mission. It’s about helping people. And when you think about that, whether you’re a sales leader, a leader, a manager, your job is really to help people achieve their personal best. And so what really hit me, Haley, is my personal mission every day I wake up and I say this to myself, is my job is to empower others to achieve their personal best. That’s my personal mission, that’s my why. That’s why I get up every day. When you think about it, it’s not about me, it’s about others. It’s about helping others using the gifts I have to make that happen. And it’s the same thing we try to ingrain in our culture is leadership is about helping people, not necessarily about holding them accountable all the time. You have to do that. It’s really helping them achieve their personal best. And when they do that, the team wins and our clients win.
[00:05:52] Hayley Parr: And it demonstrates that you have a true understanding of whatever problem that they’re bringing to you before just proposing something off the shelf in a scripted way. That’s so cool. That’s exactly the type of human connection that we talk about Integrity Solutions all the time. I would imagine that in today’s high tech, high touch rise of technology and AI and automation, that those core principles, it’s not that they’ve gone out of the way, but they’ve had to evolve. Do you have any experience with how you maintain that core principle in today’s day and age? In the wealth management space,
[00:06:36] Brad Jung: I grew up as the Atari generation, right? You start to look at the Gen Xers first technology enabled generation and you start to look at how businesses changed over the time. It used to be high touch, right? When Larry Roberts, who is an integral part of ntegrity selling, came on board and taught us about sales and went through integrity selling years and years ago, we talked about it as very high touch way to engage people. And over time what happened is technology helped improve the sales productivity of our teams, the engagement, the client experience. And so what happens is everyone thinks it’s a technology or an AI sort of solution today. And it’s not. It’s about personalization, it’s about me understanding you, Haley, and my client as a client of one. And what technology allows me to do is instead of mass servicing people, which you still need to do it sometimes, but I can actually personalize that service based on high tech and high touch of how you want to engage us.
[00:07:37] Brad Jung: Like in our industry, it used to be, okay, sales managers are taught, you have to see every client a quarter, once a quarter, you’re seeing a client, it’s high touch, you got to see ‘em, you got to be there. And they put incentive plans to get there, but is that in the best interest of the client or do you stop and ask the client, Hey, how do you want to engage me? How do you want to service me in a technology driven environment? And what you’re seeing is instead of four in-person meetings, it might be two, it might be three, it might be zero because that’s the way they want to be talked to. So your job is a salesperson is to understand and leadership is to build systems that help salespeople understand how to deliver high impactful sales and service support using technology and inner human or personal type of relationships.
[00:08:21] Hayley Parr: I want to shift a little bit because you’ve developed and grown so many teams and you mentioned personalization at scale being of the utmost important product knowledge is table stakes in the best teams and leaders that you’ve developed, what are some of those other elements that really separate the top performers?
[00:08:45] Brad Jung: That’s a great question, Haley. I mean, when you really boil it down to, and you look at the top performers, the words that you hear are problem solver. They’re a solutions provider. And what they do a really good job of is they go into meetings and they just listen. They’re such good listeners. So number one is you have to have strong listening capabilities. They know what you sell, right? They know what names on your business card or your LinkedIn, they know. But what you want to do is what’s differentiated is instead of leading with product, you lead with process. You lead with an understanding of what are the problems that you’re currently having with your current providers? What are the problems you’re having with your business today? What would happen if we gave you more time back to grow your business, engage more clients? Number one is great listeners.
[00:09:36] Brad Jung: Two is they understand and they’re really good at understanding the problems. And then three is prioritization. They actually put it back into the client and say, Hey Haley, you’ve named these three problems that you have in your business. If you were to prioritize those for me is what’s causing the most pain? And where I can help you with what would that be and why is it a problem? And sometimes we can’t help them. Sometimes in sales we’re going to refer them to somebody else, a competitor because we can’t help them. But now they remember that and they remember me as coming into my team coming in as saying, here’s the problems we can help you with, but more importantly, I’m resourceful enough to give you solutions that are not related to my company. Now, that is a differentiated sales approach and integrity selling, which interesting is it’s ingrained in me, and we shared this with you before is it’s really ingrained in that the eight ink process is really important.
[00:10:34] Brad Jung: It’s the interview, the close is a non-event. The close means I’ve identified the problem, you agree that it’s a problem, we have a solution. And you agree that the solution’s there, the close is a non-event. You don’t have to ask for the business. It should be implied because you’ve done a good job when you have to ask for the business, you have to do that once in a while. But it’s not the center point of what we do because we always go back to the interview to say, did we do enough to understand the true problem that we’re trying to solve? And if not, we haven’t done a good job in the interview process.
[00:11:03] Hayley Parr: It’s funny you mentioned getting to someone’s why and doing that through really, really deep intentional listening skills because I remember before we started recording and we were chatting ahead on what we wanted to do, you mentioned that the financial services sale is an emotional sale, and I was just struck by that because that’s not the perception at large. How do you build that trust at scale and how has that manifested in your experience?
[00:11:34] Brad Jung: It takes time, right? And that’s where the balance is, is between the time it takes to build a trusted relationship. And once you’re in the trusted relationship, you have a commitment to one another. So you start to look at this and say, it takes time. It’s not an email. So for example, if you are in sales and you think an email is going to sell good luck, it might get you open the door, but I haven’t seen any successful salesperson just do it via email or chat. What you have to have is you have to have that personal connection. You have to have a connection with the people that you’re selling to. And so what that is is it comes back to what common interests. Like Haley, when you and I talked, you’re like, wait a minute, I’m living in Wisconsin. I’m like, I’m from Wisconsin.
[00:12:19] Brad Jung: And then literally 15 minutes later we’re talking about Wisconsin. But that connection is building a level of trust that takes time and that time is important and you have to have the patience because sometimes you have the right product with the right solution, with the right service model, and it’s the wrong time. The timing’s not ready to do that, but that’s what builds a strong relationship. And there’s many times where the time the T is pushed out a year and all of a sudden they’re one of our best clients. And the reason is is you connected with them in a personal relationship. They trust you as a trusted advisor and they know that you’re going to bring value, you’re wrapping value around a product that is the same everywhere else. And it’s not as differentiated as we think there’s 15,000 different ETFs and mutual funds that we sell, right? They’re all about the same. But what it is, it’s the distribution, it’s the value you wrap around and it’s the people that you bring that are the differentiators to your business.
[00:13:20] Hayley Parr: And because you took that time, because you listened, because you can pick up on these things that you can bring back into the conversation at the right moment. Maybe it’s not now, maybe it’s in the future, but you have that in your back pocket. Maybe you can reignite a relationship or uncover an opportunity that wasn’t apparent from the jump. Do you have any specific stories that you’re able to share where it was just really a cool moment because you were able to draw on those strengths and develop that
[00:13:51] Brad Jung: Way? I have a really great moment just for me personally. So I was going to a large producer in Springfield, Missouri, and this person runs, call it hundreds of millions of dollars for clients. I was kind of intimidated because he was kind of the number one salesperson in all of the area of the city. And people said he was tough. And I made a decision at the time to leave all the literature that I had and all the electronics including the iPad in the back. And I walked in with just a piece of paper in my notebook and a pen and I just had a conversation with him and he’s like, literally he turned right away, just like every other salesperson walked in, what do you got? And I go, I’m sorry, I don’t know what you need. So I got nothing for you until I understand what you need.
[00:14:41] Brad Jung: I’m just a transaction. I really want to build a relationship with you to understand if I can help you. And if I can’t, you’ll never see me again. And we had a great conversation. We talked about his business. I helped him prioritize his business through we can bring some value in programs called practice management to help him build a better business. We had insights into 3000 other financial advisors on how they run their business. So for us was his big pain point was his business was running him and he needed time back, which is not even a product. Think about that. So the lesson was ask more questions, realize that the product, if you lead by product, you die by product. But if you lead by problems and solutions and try to be this resourceful person that can solve client problems, they will view you as a committed partner and a trusted advisor for life.
[00:15:33] Brad Jung: And that person became one of my top clients. I took the time understand how he wanted to be engaged with what his biggest problem was, was something that I didn’t even get paid on. And it took me a year to two years to get into his actual model portfolio with the product we had. But once I got there, he brought me a lot of money. As you can see, hundreds of millions of dollars were a part of that transaction. So that just told me a lot about what sales is and what it isn’t. It’s not a product, it’s a solution.
[00:16:01] Hayley Parr: And it turned into something that you hadn’t even wrapped your mind around until you walked into that conversation and you came in with an open mind, literally an open notepad, and the possibilities were endless. Hi there. If you’re listening to this show, it means you believe in making a difference in your customer’s 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 an experience every day. If you want to learn more about how we could help you and your team go to integrity solutions.com a lot to take away from that story for sure. Congratulations on that deal.
[00:16:44] Brad Jung: It was differentiated. The one thing I could look back at it when you made me think about it was, was differentiated. I differentiated the service level compared to every one of my competition, my competitors, and that’s what I think these sales is. As you look at, we have 26 plus regional sales teams in the external, in the field. 26 of them are different, meaning they have a different approach, they’re each individualized, but they have a consistent client experience that we try to teach about how to engage clients. And they all each bring their own flavor. Like you and I are different. We grew up in different parts of it, we have different approaches. I might be an extrovert, you might be an introvert, I might be an expressive driver, you might be an analytical, amiable, all these different things, but the personality is what makes it differentiated. But the solutions, the approach, the process is all consistent. So it’s this consistency in the process and that discipline allows you the freedom to use your own personal experiences and your personality to really build those relationships with clients. And you
[00:17:50] Hayley Parr: Totally read my mind. I was going to ask if that approach with that particular client was just kind of gut instinct
[00:17:55] Brad Jung: In
[00:17:56] Hayley Parr: The moment, or if it was part of a scalable, repeatable process, but personalized in the moment for that particular conversation. I think that’s, if you can find that balance, it sounds not
[00:18:09] Brad Jung: Balance,
[00:18:10] Hayley Parr: It doesn’t sound easy to do, right?
[00:18:13] Brad Jung: Sounds really easy to do, right? It’s difficult managing salespeople too. It’s like, wait a minute. And business leaders, how do you make it repeatable in how do you create systems that not only, a good example is we tell everyone to track stuff in crm and then leaders, we don’t do a good job of giving ‘em stuff back to say, here’s how you can two x your business. I always hear all these podcasts, how to foreign X sales. And they’re like, oh, negotiation. You see all these books that sell. But you can go back to the basics. It’s not about the negotiation, the close, all of that is differentiated. It goes back to how do you bring value around your product, but more importantly, how does the process and the client experience be consistent across your entire Salesforce? And when they put something in the CRM, we can give data back to them that says, what’s interesting is if you do this, this and this, you’re more apt to see success.
[00:19:16] Brad Jung: And so we try to use data and data analytics to give salespeople insights into their business and those insights are more productive. Lemme give you an example. So we looked at all of our sales teams in the US and Canada and ran through metrics. We stack ranked our clients, and what we found is the bottom 50% of the clients generate less than 5% of the sales in our group, yet we were spending 25 to 30% servicing. So what was happening is the sales teams were servicing a lot of business, but when you overlay that with the internal sales teams, they were really over servicing the business. It was almost like stocking, right? So then when you actually put in systems and you work with marketing and all your business units within the firm to figure out a consistent service experience, a leveraged service experience. So you’re putting in those systems to free up capacity to do what? Go sell more, go engage more clients, more prospects. So that’s what we do is look at the data to help us there.
[00:20:11] Hayley Parr: Well, and not to mention that putting those processes in place and even something as simple as documenting them
[00:20:17] Brad Jung: That’s right,
[00:20:18] Hayley Parr: Is how you lay a foundation to create a consistent experience with more folks that are going to come in the door, the next generation of sales talent.
[00:20:27] Brad Jung: That’s right.
[00:20:28] Hayley Parr: What are you seeing in the direction the wealth management space is moving with the next generation of sales talent? What’s exciting them? What’s exciting? What are the trends? What are you picking up on there?
[00:20:41] Brad Jung: Yeah, it’s interesting. What’s exciting them about wealth management is the way that we’re moved from just hiring people and letting ‘em run to really training and investing in their future. For us, it’s been the investment that we’re making in training and development in the leadership team that I have. I’m so blessed with, they’re great coaches. They’ve all had great experiences both within our business and outside of our business unit at Russell Investments. But they’ve done such an amazing job of putting the people in our team at the center part of what we do. And they’ve also built a culture that allows people to challenge each other to really help each other grow. And one of the big processes we put in place is creating this learning culture is around our top salespeople. Our top salespeople are our best trainers. Everyone who comes into our organization is paired with one of our top salespeople, and they teach them the business because that’s the greatest gift. They get excited about that, teaching younger professionals and early talent professionals about the mistakes they’ve made, but also how to build a great business.
[00:21:52] Brad Jung: And then they have also, this is how it is led is that’s even evolved into pods. So now these pods of senior salespeople and these internal, newer associates are all building upon each other. They’ve clustered into these pods across the country to really learn from one another and to share best practices and to help each other get better. And then you start to take this step further is we built in systems called our next generation of sales talent. So the management team working with our learning and development team, we own that relationship, meaning we invest into this next generation of talent. Now they have to apply for it, they have to demonstrate success, but once you get into it, we train you to become a salesperson either here or somewhere else. And it’s okay if we can’t get you to where you need to be. So we just want to improve each other. It goes back to my why, inspiring others to achieve their personal best. That’s what the culture is. That’s what the team is. It’s an unselfish way to lead.
[00:22:49] Hayley Parr: I love the pod concept too. My ears perked up. That’s really cool because not only are you providing that learning and development that we’re hearing it too, that being invested in and knowing that your leaders care about your personal and professional growth is something that these up and coming members of the workforce are looking for
[00:23:10] Brad Jung: That from Haley. It’s interesting. One of our clients shared this with it. They call it a study group of financial advisors, and we’re like, well, if they’re doing it, why can’t we do it? That’s how it came. It’s like the best ideas sometimes are those you get from your clients, and it was a really good opportunity for us to put that in place here at Russell Investments.
[00:23:29] Hayley Parr: That’s so cool. Not to mention you’re providing the environment for them to make connections that they might not otherwise have access to in their career. So that’s so cool. That’s so cool. So gosh, we’re coming up on time. We can keep going on forever. I want to know two things. One, you’re obviously making waves and developing the next generation of talent, but what are some timeless skills that just never go out of style that will be important no matter when the career was? And then two, I’d love to hear a moment in your career that’s radically changed how you sell or lead.
[00:24:11] Brad Jung: Oh my goodness. Okay. So one timeless skill that will never go out of style is resilience. And the reason is, is that in life and in sales, you have to be resilient. You wake up one day and your plan is this, and it goes over here right away, right? Life. You wake up one day, same thing happens. But those that really are at the top of their game in sales performance are resilient. They’re resilient to client challenges, to being fired by your top client to having the most successful day ever. And then the next day, it’s your worst day ever of the year, right? They’re resilient in life. They’re resilient with their teens, they’re resilient in their personal lives as well. And I love that word because it makes you think about not the short term, but really the long term, you’re building something for the long term. The other thing, I love it, it’s a mindset, and you’re going to think it’s kind of hokey, but I’m going to share it with you anyway. There’s this phrase from Wisconsin called Keeper Moving, right? And I love it because
[00:25:08] Hayley Parr: Yeah, I’ve heard that mindset
[00:25:11] Brad Jung: This, it’s a mindset tip by Charlie Barons. Okay, I’m going to give him the props on this. But it’s a mindset where you’re always moving forward and that resilience is important. You can have this misery loves company. You guys can get in there and talk about the past all you want, but the mindset is moving forward, the top performers move forward. They’re always moving forward, they’re not going in reverse. And so if you think about keeper moving is Keeper, I say it’s a mindset shift internally that we can talk about and complain about why we didn’t do this and that and this. But if you learn your lesson, you make a mistake and you move quick, faster, that’s what separates the good from the great performers. Now, getting back to the moment of career radically changed how you sell or lead, golly, to me, I’m going to say it and I know it’s a little homer with Integrity Solutions, it, Larry Roberts, that guy, he is one of the best human beings I’ve ever met, but he came in from integrity selling and went into a product driven organization where there was a lot of naysayers, including me going, ah, we sell performance, we sell, we did 8% and somebody did 7.9, so you should move over to us.
[00:26:26] Brad Jung: But what he’s taught us was a system that put the client at the center
[00:26:32] Brad Jung: That then added a ton of value around that client experience. That differentiated the way that we went to market. And that has permeated not only my previous firm that I was at for 10 years, but also my current firm I’ve been at for 21 years, and that foundational selling system has been time tested and has really changed my career and the way that I teach people how to sell. And when you go back to the interview side, the listening to client and your solutions provider wrapping value around it, there wasn’t any sort of moment in my career that was changed more so by Larry Roberts than anyone else that I’ve known in my industry and in my career.
[00:27:15] Hayley Parr: Well, that just warms my heart, as in
[00:27:19] Brad Jung: Now Derek has got to work a little harder from integrity, but that’s
[00:27:22] Hayley Parr: Okay. Yeah, no, that’s incredible. And the fact that you brought that methodology along with you throughout your career and found value and were able to take it and make it work, it is a flexible system, right? It works within the culture that you bring it to. So that’s so cool. Brad, this was absolutely awesome. I wish I would’ve had my own blank notebook sitting in front of me to jot down all of these ideas that are popping up in my head. We’ll have to continue the conversation, come back anytime, and I cannot thank you enough for joining the Mental Selling Podcast. Thank
[00:27:56] Brad Jung: You. Thanks, Hayley.
[00:27:58] Hayley Parr: Bye-bye. 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.