S3, Ep.15 - Your Sales System Is Broken: Behavioral Science Explains Why | with Dr. Deepak Bhootra

Introduction

0:00Welcome to Organizational Sherlock's, the podcast where business meets psychology and your organizational puzzles meet their match. Join us for captivating stories and practical solutions to unravel your toughest challenges. I'm Morgan Ashworth, one of your guides to a prescription for business success. So let's dive in. Listeners, we have an amazing guest on today.

Guest Introduction

0:35Dr. Bucha, could you please introduce yourself to our listeners? This is the first mistake you just made, Morgan, because as anyone who knows me knows, never give this guy the microphone. He's just going to take over and then you got to pay him to get off and then he's going to sell your microphone back to you again. So Morgan, 55 years on the planet, having the best time of my life. I left the corporate world after 34 years. I now spend my time and effort in helping salespeople become better at what they do. I focus on two very

1:05specific things, sales longevity, because sales has a longevity problem. And we'll talk about that in more detail. And you have a sales background. So this should be really, really cool bringing that out with you. And then the second thing I focus on is career longevity. And you could argue, aren't they the same thing? They are, but there's some nuances to it. And my career progression work that I do or longevity work that I do actually led me to create a second business on the side, which is now becoming my primary business. And it's called Rise Up. And I actually wrote about it quite extensively. And I'm taking all the frameworks up and together and bringing it to the world. And my

1:38ICP for that, Morgan, you will like it. It's 21 to 26 years olds who actually cannot afford a coach, but need the most life and then go get advice from wrong people. So that's the intent and purpose of my life for whatever 15, 20 years I left on this planet is to contribute as best as I can in that way. Wonderful. Well, as our listeners just heard, so Deepak here, he has an experience in sales,

Behavioral Principles

2:00but he is applying behavioral principles, life principles to what he's doing. And he's connecting it not just to sales, but careers in general. So you can probably tell why this is going to be a great conversation. Deepak and I probably have a lot of similarities between what we do with him with tons of experience that we're happy to be bringing to you. So Deepak, why don't you start by telling us a little bit about sales longevity versus career longevity? What's similar? What's different about them? Yeah. So Morgan, think of it this way. There are some statistics I'm going to

2:38throw at you. And people always tell me, Deepak, why do you talk about numbers all the time? I says, because I've been an overweight guy the whole of my life. I was born a big baby. So there's one thing that I respect is a weighing machine because a weighing machine always tells you the truth. You can stand on it. You can suck your stomach in. You could, you know, ignore the cellulite, but there you are, baby, right there, the number. In sales, 35% of salespeople will leave sales by the age of 35. The number is actually higher, Morgan, but since 35 by 35 sounds more cool, I use that metric,

3:08right? You got to ask yourself a simple question. We know that salespeople are cut from a different plot. We know that, right? We know that these guys have sustained stress. So therefore, it's really intriguing that we actually should be spending more time and effort to actually understand what's going on. And I was so intrigued by this question that I actually started looking at the sales longevity equation. Now comes the flip side, which you asked about. So what's career progression then? Career progression is slightly different. Career progression says that we acknowledge that there's stress and angst and so on along the way, but we are not so bothered about how long you're going to

3:41work. We're going to bother about the decisions you take along the pathway to how long you work. We spent five, six years in high school and college and Morgan, you know what people tell me, oh, the toughest time of my life. My son used to tell me, this is the toughest time of my life, math, calculus, this, that, profs who suck. Then there's profs who are awesome, but I can't get into their classes. And I used to smile. Then he gets to work. And the first call he makes to me, says to me, my boss never has time for me. So career inflection points or career progression to me is as follows. You have prepped yourself. You've done well. You get your first job. Your

4:15parents are proud of you, proud of yourself. And now suddenly something hits you. You actually realize that, oh my gosh, the six years that I just did were highly structured. You knew exactly what to do, Morgan. You knew exactly when the examination was going to be. You had exactly the textbook.

Career Inflection Points

4:28You were actually told by the prof. If you do these six models of organizational behavior and you memorize Edgar Sheen this and you do this, you'd be okay, guys. And now my son says, then my boss is in a meeting and the boss actually turned to my son and said, I don't understand your body language. You're just low energy. In my meetings, I need you to be high energy. And my son calls me because he knows I'm a coach. And the first question he says to me is, what does that even mean?

4:54Yeah. Career inflection points is where now my son says, I think my boss is toxic. So I asked him, what does that word even mean? Where did you get that word from? Or my son says, I'm feeling depressed today. So I asked him, what do you mean by that? I says, guys, when you use these big words, where do you get them from? And then I realized he gets it by reading LinkedIn banners, LinkedIn posters. Now comes the real story that happens here. Both my sons took career choices, which I thought was odd. But remember one thing, Morgan, when you try to deal as a coach with your own kids, they don't give you that value because they've seen dad in this underwear. They've seen dad crying with the

5:28back pain. They've seen him screaming at mom for like, oh my gosh, I can't take this anymore. My tooth hurts. For them, I am dad. I'm not a coach. So they went outside for guidance. 10 sessions, $3,500 later, my son took the same decision that he was going to take anyway before those sessions. Because he never did self-reflection. So very long answer. But what I'm now trying to say to you is

Self Reflection

5:48that sales longevity is about surviving the stress and making sure that you have a long career in sales. Career progression that I'm working on is about saying, how do you make decisions in the moment that do not impact your career? Ensure that your career compounds and delivers to the results you deserve. And some of the numbers I looked at, and this is again, another number I'm going to throw at you, Morgan. It's going to blow your mind. On average, people make five choices in their careers. You get even two wrong. You are going to set yourself back. And you know what I mean. So as an example, boss is doing something you don't like the boss. So you decide to push away from you repelled

6:23from your job. You never look back and see how you could manage your job by boss better. You take a 10% salary cut, which my son did, by the way. And now you could argue, single sample example, Deepak? No, no, no, no. I've spoken to 1.5k customers over the last 15 years. Morgan, I'm telling you, this is far more pervasive. You're a human. Forget the word psychology, organizational psychology. Human nature itself is so much fun that I can actually predict that it's going to be unpredictable. So you take a 10% cut, and it takes, you know, four years to come back to that. At an average median salary of

6:5860-70k, you've set maybe yourself back by about 20k. 20k over 30 years is nearly 100,000 bucks from compounding. You could have bought yourself a one-bedroom flat somewhere in the, you know, in the rural area of Iowa, maybe as an example, or Texas somewhere, right? But at the end of the day, that's how you erode your value and your worth. 37% is the net gap that we have noted that people will end up with at the end of 30 to 35 years. You've got to ask yourself a question, Morgan. One third of your net worth is at risk because of your inability to navigate your career.

7:33Boom. And that's where the space I want to play in. Help people make the right career choices at those inflection points and navigate this mess that you find yourself in because you don't know what to do when you're at 21. You've not been trained for it. Yes. I think that is a great

Celebrating Success

7:48foundation for our conversation. And I say that because I 100% see what you are talking about. People tend to place blame on others too for their circumstances. And so when we see that happening, when we see a new student or just an entry-level person even going into a brand new career, entering in, they are reliant. They act reliant on those above them and they lack those quote-unquote

8:21soft skills or essential skills, as my co-host Elizabeth usually likes to say, to problem solve, to make decisions, to navigate the workplace and the people situations. They have authority above them, but they also have a level of autonomy. And yet when they have that level of autonomy, they're not taking it and using it and moving forward with it, they almost act, as the term goes, as quiet quitters, where they do the bare minimum because they don't want to figure out what to do.

8:51Yeah, absolutely. Yes. And then they tend to blame others. They tend to say, oh, I have a toxic boss. Well, Deepak, I love that you said, do you even know what that means? Do you even know what that means? People tend to use these terms, often psychological, sometimes scientific, sometimes used as constructs in science. They use these terms and they have no idea what they mean. It is so important to be able to verbalize exactly what you mean because oftentimes the label you're giving something is not the right label.

9:24Truly, I'm so excited for this conversation just based off of how you started it. And let's dive in. Let's dive into why do people label things wrong and how do we stop them? You've kind of

Self Awareness

9:39hinted towards it. Self-reflection is a pain point for a lot of people. And the reason why I'm such a big fan of self-reflection is that because I think if you do not examine yourself, Morgan, and you leave it to other people examine, you do yourself a huge disservice. At the end of the day, you know, motivation is internalized. You can be motivated by money. But when I speak to sales people and I ask them, when you got to the top of the summit, what did you feel like? Here's a funny thing they tell me. Yeah. I'm like, what does that mean? It's like, yeah, yeah, they're at the top. I

10:13liked it. But I'm already thinking about the next summit. The thrill of the chase is a weird behavioral thing that I've noticed with salespeople. Of course, they won't do it without the money. But the thrill of the chase is actually which keeps them sustained and drives them. And self-awareness is very big. Salespeople, rock stars that I deal with, I actually sat with eight rock star salespeople at the end of 2025 to just ask them how the year went. And the conversation around two things. How much did you learn about yourself? And number two, how much AI do you use in the work you do? And we talk about AI separately, Morgan. That's such a sensitive point for me,

10:44right? The first one was really shocking. They said to me, oh, self-reflection and self-awareness is a ritual that I apply every day. And I was like, he says, I know what makes me tick and what makes me talk and what makes me explode. I figured that out many years ago. But I keep a focus on it every day. I sit and think about how did you react? What would you do next time? And I'm constantly trying to improve myself. Morgan, that's mind blowing. Here's people who I would say I'm making, and I kid you not, and I have to throw this number because there's a rationale for it,

11:16right? Morgan, you know, at the end of the day, you know, someone is successful and they tell you how much they made from sales. On average, between those eight people, they are about half a million dollar mark. And I can tell you that's not a small number. That's a massive number. And to make a number like that means that you're selling millions of dollars per month as well. So that consistency is very important and the ability to work with other people, ability to serve, not sell. That's ultimately what happens at that level, right? So here's a hint I'm giving people is that self-awareness, self-awareness is not a once-off attribute. It's not that, you know, blue pill, green pill. Think of

11:48it as something you need to do on a daily basis to sustain, right? That's why a doctor tells you, you're going to take the antibiotics for 14 days, twice a day, because you need to take it. So it's a cycle. And these guys self-motivate themselves, self-talk to themselves. I think they come back with a vengeance. So let me just pause because I'm kind of getting into a lot of, into the weeds there, but that's, they come back with a vengeance. And I think that's really important. Your recovery, your recuperation, your, you know, coming back to reclaim the next steps. That's very powerful with these people. Yeah. Yeah. So the patterns I'm seeing you talk about, it's the idea of

12:23doing things consistently make you better at them, right? So just to really break it down, doing things consistently make you better at it. So the more you self-reflect, the better you get at self-reflection and the better you can then adjust the direction you're going or the way in which you're going about something. So that's something I do talk to my sales team about is when you are having a conversation with a client, you're having that conversation. Great. After the conversation, you should automatically be thinking, what could I have done better? I'm like, and this is not to,

12:56you know, self-inflict pain and to, to make yourself constantly find the issues with things and the negativity. No, the purpose of it is to then make you more solution focused that you can better attack the next situation that you're in. It is so critical to just look at what, how is that conversation and fix it for the next time. This is also why role play is very helpful when it comes to training. And then coaches oftentimes will bring in role play as well, or coaches will have the, okay, let's test this out for two weeks, see how it goes. And then let's talk about it and let's

13:29adjust for the next two weeks and then adjust again and then adjust again. But I'd argue you have to do it even more often. Morgan. Now, wow. Okay. Yes. I could at least three threads there. We can spend an hour on each one of them that you just dug into, right? One of the things I agree with you on, and I want to just really highlight this and you're spot on. And this is very important for people out there because a lot of my customers telling me, my gosh, they were pleasing you so difficult. As a sales manager, I used to be told that my response is as follows. I am a big proponent of celebration. I want you to celebrate every small win.

14:07Here's what salespeople don't do right, Morgan. And it's very critical, right? You work, you can set your bar and you raise the bar. That's important in this day and age. Because today that bar raising effort, if you don't do it, will lead you getting out of your job. And a lot of people raise the bar by using AI perhaps into their jobs to add more value. But there's something very truthful in what you said. A lot of people react initially to this type of conversation and say, my God, there's no pleasing Deepak or my pleasing sales manager. He's always pushing hard, hard, hard. The problem is that in sales, your job is not to get onto a treadmill and

14:39go nowhere. In sales, your job is to go from point A to point B and take the customer with you. You need to show the customer a six-month forward future. You cannot get that vocabulary right if you're always stuck using old techniques. To show the future, you need to know what the future is going to look like. So you need to extrapolate. And those visions, that can't come from a static mind. It has to come from a dynamically constant thinking mind. Now, people make it, then people ask me, isn't that tiring? I don't know what that means. If you enjoy the act of selling, it's like burnout, right?

15:13I am right now working 16 hours a day, as an example, right, Morgan? Of those 16 hours a day, though, my wife is sometimes surprised. She'll see me standing in front of a whiteboard for half an hour, just doodling. Now, at the same time, I hate journaling. I actually suck at it, Morgan. I cannot do it. But guess what? That's my journaling. When I'm standing up there thinking about what I need to do, how this conversation went, it's surprising. And just for listeners, just to be sure,

15:43Morgan, when I finish a call, I actually have a environment that I've created. My agent picks up my transcript and then critiques me on the Sandler system methodology itself and tells me. It is so critical that if any salesperson out there, the single biggest victory that you can achieve right now is to allow someone to tell you and reflect with you. I'm not saying an AI is the best way to do it. But the reality is that an AI is to beck and come at. At 2am, when you finish a call with a customer in India, you can use AI. Your boss ain't there right now to analyze your stuff,

16:13right? So celebrate. Celebrate constantly. Keep thinking about six months into the future and doing things very differently. But keep going, ma'am. I can see what's going to happen. We're going to go. Keep going. Bring me back. Bring me back. Bring me back. We'll definitely go back and forth, back and forth. And we'll have to pull ourselves in for our listeners to make sure our listeners aren't full. It's the kite moment, right? You let it loose. The kite gets high in the sky. Then you pull it back in and it rises further higher as well. So let's just keep going. And what a house sales conversations go. Naturally, you talk about the person's personal

16:47which, which, which Morgan, I'm going to bring back to you because you said something about role plays, right? And I am actually a, you, I have a huge challenge with role plays. I'll talk about that later because most managers get it wrong. You know, it's like, I don't know how to explain it. It's like self-medication, right? People usually will self-diagnose. They'll put some stuff in their bodies. They'll do it at the wrong time. You're supposed to take it at 8am and 8pm. And then they're doing it halfway. Oh, I forgot. I went to dinner. And then they complain about why I'm not feeling well. So role plays is also an extremely sensitive topic for me because my gosh, two thirds

17:19of humanity does it for wacky wrong. So maybe if we get some time, we can talk about that later as well. Yeah. Yeah, certainly. Yeah. You're bringing up so many thoughts in my mind already. You know, there's so much to talk about in this. I do think I want to point one thing you set out as really important. Sometimes self-reflection is not just critiquing yourself, but it's also celebrating yourself and celebrating the things you've done well. And that is where you will find that when there's celebration, that equals more longevity. You know, you have to have positivity built in to the critiques. Again, I'm not going to call it negativity. I'm going to call it critiques.

17:54Another thing on top of that is challenges. You know, people are, you've talked about the thrill of the chase. People like a challenge. And so sometimes those challenges is learning. It is keeping up with the industry trends, the industry standards. A lot of times you'll see job descriptions say, you know, part of the job is keeping up with industry standards. And that might be learning AI right now and learning how to use AI to supplement your work, but in a non-debilitating way. And then also working with the correct coaches to make sure that the role play scenarios are not just

18:32self-medicated. They are actual unbiased views and used for a certain purpose. Elizabeth and I just talked about that actually in our last podcast, but I don't want to get too far off topic. I have a really important question I think we really need to hone in on for our listeners. And it's honestly

Sales as Behavioral System

18:53the first question that we had written out for you, which was when you describe sales as a behavioral system, what does that mean in practice for organizations? I want to kind of hone in on that question as we continue building this conversation. Yeah. So here's the fun part. Look at the numbers. I mean, again, Morgan, you're going to fall over laughing, right? Companies spend billions and billions and billions on CRM scripts. And as we just discussed role plays, right? And then you

19:24actually realize that sales is not about those outcomes that come from systems. Sales is ultimately outcomes that come from behavior, which is typically under uncertainty as we call it. Right. And I've always said to salespeople, you know, AI is one of those things that's going to reveal the good or bad about you. Right. But to me, it's really interesting. Now, when we talk about sales, right? Sales is actually, in my opinion, three structures to it, right? At the end of the day, you've got a structural system, which is the compliance, which governs you. And remember something about compliance, people react

19:56to what you pay them for. You can tell someone, this company wants you to have a consultative approach with a customer. Take your time. But then you're measured on how many demos did you do this week? How many cold calls did you do this week? Now, if your remuneration structure is asking for something different, but you are verbalizing something else, that's a gap. So you realize that this gap actually means that there's going to be a behavioral issue in sales and selling that's going to hit you at some point, right? Now comes the real thing. We are all born with biases, whether we like

20:30it or not. Or let's put it this way. And I think there's a better word for this. Some things I do better. As an example, as a child, I was told, never ask a person how much they earn. Don't talk about money, money, money all the time. And you need to always work for the same organization the day you die. When you are ingrained with that type of stuff, you're going to walk into a conversation, you're going to have that. So it takes a rockstar salesperson to actually break this and get out of that vibe, right? And for me, then there's also this conversation that happens, right? You are

21:00talking to a customer and the customer says, I don't like your price. And you literally don't pause. You are immediately panicking because your brain is thinking about, if I don't win this deal, I'm going to be 8% less than my 100%. I need this deal to make 100%. Just look at all of what I've just said to you. Companies actually look at sales and think that, but I gave you a playbook. I gave you a CRM. I gave you an assistant. I gave you an inside sales rep. What's happening over here?

21:32It's always behavior. And behavior under pressure will always lead to very weird outcomes. And as an innocent engineer, I always tell people, variation. When you're producing and manufacturing something consistently, you will always have a situation where every third or fourth beer bottle, the label might just be off of it. Now bringing, now that's in a controlled process. Now bringing sales where everything, and that's one of the reasons why role plays and scripts are so dangerous because scripting gives you the perspective that you are knowing what to say. And as my nephew,

22:08who is an actor on Broadway says to me, fun with salespeople that they think that the script is a way to go. And he actually co-wrote a paper with me and he actually, we both had a great conversation and this will make you laugh, Morgan. He started the conversation by saying as follows. He says, in drama, scripts work beautifully because both parties know what they're supposed to say. And when I miss my cue, the other person steps in and says, ah, so what did you do on Wednesday? Because he's supposed to tell him what he did on Wednesday. And he says, now let's go to sales.

22:38You are there scripted, ready to go. And here comes a moment of truth. Customer leans back instead of leaning forward and you lose your entire script. And now you are in this pool of angst. And that's when maturity, professionalism or something else kicks in. Judgment in the moment. And that's what I keep telling people. You're getting very good with AI to write your emails. Congratulations. But the reality is that you're going to be sitting on an airplane one day or you're going to get a call. What exactly are you going to write to that person without AI at your back end call? So don't lose that basic stuff. I think you used the word debilitating earlier, right?

23:12You point to something extremely critical when it comes to the role play, which is that the system of scripts is not necessarily the way to go. Yes, scripts are helpful for, you know, typically the way you start a call, right? You know, your script might be good to help you start a call, but scripts don't really apply when it comes to the continued conversation. You simply need the knowledge and the practice to back what you're doing. And so oftentimes these role play circumstances should actually throw your sales reps for a loop. They, it should make them

23:48say, oh my gosh, I don't know this. Or, oh, I don't know how to answer that question. Or, oh, this is how I will answer the question. And it's constantly changing the game. So that way they have the practice of dealing with circumstances they weren't expecting. Because not oftentimes in sales, you know, sales, they say it's about 10% of, it's, you land about 10% of cold calls as time goes on. That's what they say. And when you think about it, yes, that's a cold call, not necessarily a warm call. I like to say warm calls are more important. You should get to know your person before you actually

24:20call them. So you can start the conversation and already be more personable, right? That is so important. But these role play scenarios should prepare them for actual real life conversations and situations. I, I love that. I love that. And I want to call this out to your listeners. Anyone who's a salesperson listening in, there's something that Morgan, you touched upon, which I want to just double down on. Morgan, your job is to use a script and a style to survive the first one minute of a cold call. Typically the first 30 seconds is what really matters. I'm being gracious in giving you a minute.

24:55Because sometimes out of the people you call, there will be someone who will actually give you the opportunity to get out of the hole that you most likely are digging for yourself. Scripts are a great place to start from, to get the engine running. Now, once you got the engine started and now you're cruising at 60, 70, 80, 90, you need to be in a different frame of mind, which is that if that deer jumps across, I'm alert enough to know what to do. So that's what this is about. So you're right. And I always tell this to novices first. I tell novices, despite what I say

25:27about scripts or role plays, always start there. It breeds some element of familiarity. Think of it as the airbag that you are aware is in there. But when the airbag goes off, that's when you're going to lean back to make sure that you don't get a purple mark on your face for three weeks. That's bruising. So this is a very powerful context. And I want to make sure that people don't misunderstand where role plays go wrong. It's the funny part. And just, this will make you laugh.

25:54It helped me because I didn't really get too deep into all, but the whole, the haythorn effect is where you have this spotlight on you where your behavior changes, right? Right. And this is the big problem. People will never admit to it, but I've watched salespeople, particularly novices, as I call them. The first three to five year guys will always switch into nonsense. They will switch into trying to sound too smart, too intelligent. Then you have another problem. The guy on the other side tries to be too smart, too intelligent by coming up with trick, trick, trick. I actually sat in a role play where someone was cold calling. And this is

26:28in 80% of the time, they would tell this guy, like as if he's a robotic setting, be rude.

26:35And he gets rude. And then one salesperson looked at me and said to me, if a customer is rude, I just tell them I'll call you at a different time. Or can I send you an email? I don't even entertain this conversation because it's degrading. Why are we doing role plays on this type of stuff? Isn't there a simple rule that simply says, and that's back to a script. If a customer is behaving in a certain way, I've had a customer telling me, I'm dropping the kids off right now. Do you think I have time for this nonsense? And how did you get my number the first place? This is where you quickly tell them, not a problem. I respect that. You carry on. Can I send you an email to follow

27:11up with you? Or can I call it a better time? What time works for you? Sometimes just listening to the tone, you say, I'm really sorry for catching at a bad time. Let me call you after two o'clock. Does that work? Just, and that is not, scripts can teach you how to react to those extreme situations. Do it. No problem. But don't belabor it. Don't try to keep winging it. Also, you got, there's a level of intelligence required. You know, it's like when you walk home, Morgan, and you look at your spouse. Now you want to complain to them about something that your spouse's mother did to you. But you go and you see your spouse's face and you know

27:43that at this point, there's no point in raising what you wanted to raise because it's just not, it's going to, it's the same thing with salespeople. You've got to have that antenna that kind of tells you when and what. The bad news is that novices antenna is still not fired up yet. But then you have the extreme, which is you've got 10 years experience and guess what happens now? Those guys now start doing the basic stuff and they're now at a level where they've also ingrained bad habits. So there's this very interesting dichotomy that always occurs on both spectrums. But yeah, there's definitely, there's different people in sales, different personalities in sales,

28:18specifically when it comes to the sales reps, people are going to handle things differently, naturally based off of their self, not self-bias, but their, you know, their natural way of handling. Their natural way of, exactly. And so what I tend to do is when I'm having conversations with sales teams is I actually, and this is actually, this is something I do in general within workplaces, anytime I'm working with teams, but specifically with sales, since they're working with people most of the time, we talk about, Hey, what does your life look like when it comes to you getting calls? What does your

28:49life look like when it comes to like, are you the friend that forgets to text? I literally had this conversation yesterday. Like, are you the friend that forget to text back? Are you the ones that take two business days to get back to your friends? Or are you the one that's constantly reaching out and your friends are the ones that are forgetting to reach out? You know, we're, we're applying these real life circumstances. And so it feels like what they're doing in real life is more easily replicated in business and, or maybe adjusted for both scenarios. I often say that your life circumstances,

29:20your life situations, your life experiences and skill sets do apply in the workplace. And so if we can kind of hone in on those, it tells you who this person is naturally. And so that allows this person to self-reflect a little bit more, even compare themselves to others. Morgan, again, you open a nice can of worms here. Now you are cut from a different cloth because you have a very strong practitioner orientation. You know how to bring the breast out, breast out of people, right? Now, and your intent also is not, not, how do you say this? Since there's a boot on my

29:54neck, therefore, damn it, I'm going to put a boot on your neck. Believe it or not, there are lots of sales leaders out there. And I just don't want them to get upset and stop listening to this podcast. But here's a message to them. If you are still coaching the number, but not coaching the person, then you have not understood what to do in a post COVID world. Salespeople today, Morgan, are in a different situation. Yes, they make the money, but there used to be a time when sales leader used to tell me, I pay the guy 280K. He better deliver. So my question to them was,

30:29okay, since he earned so much, and since you seem to want to take this blood out of him, what if you find him at his desk having a mental breakdown? Would you treat him differently because you pay him so much? Or would you do something in from a human point of view? And he's like, what are you talking about? I have a question for you. You don't understand. Mental health is not something that's just visible to you. Mental health is how you talk to and you understand people. Morgan, you say something which is a million dollars worth, which is the old thing was, you know, that leave your personal stuff at home and get to work and you need to be switched

31:00on at work. That led to so much problems, so many problems. Sales leadership needs to understand what you just said. What you actually said was, I had a conversation where I went into some personal conversations around how they were doing and what they were doing. So the questions change. Instead of saying, I see you're 8% away from your quota, which deal are you bringing in next week to close that gap? Boom. There you go. That's coaching, isn't it? That's what coaching. The other coaching is that you're only 8% away from quota. And I looked at your pipeline, you're

31:32six deals there. Hey, buddy, let's sit down and make a plan. You're not ending at eight minus, you're going to be plus eight. What just happened there? It's actually the same words, but one is it's motivational. It's forward looking. It's actually telling you that you're not alone. I respect what you do and I will help you, which is what a sales manager's job is. And here's another reality, Morgan, and you realize this. Most sales teams promote the most efficient salesperson to become a sales manager. Not always right. Exactly. Now let's go back and look at coaches in the NFL as

32:03an example, right? And I don't understand the sport, by the way, but I read a lot. Some of these guys actually were not A-grade players. They were good, but they were not that good. They were not outliers, right? They were actually between the average of what a good NFL player is supposed to do. But they became massive outliers because of some things that they did, something they motivated, some techniques they put into place. And I think that's what I tell managers. Don't look for the rock star guy that is making 190% of his number and feel obligated out of loyalty. You know what? And this is a true story. Sachin did such a great job when we had COVID going on. Everyone was

32:39drowning, but this guy stuck with us and he delivered the highest number. They say, therefore, in a post, let's make Sachin the sales manager because that's loyalty, misplaced loyalty. And believe it or not, sales managers do that all the time. Roger, I need this deal, man. My reputation is on it. Bring this home, baby. Bring it home. He brings it home. And the next thing is in a meeting, the boss is saying, you know, Roger is reliable. I think Roger should be taking over for me. He should be my successor. And that's where people need to actually dig in and ask,

33:09are we doing this the right way? And this is a big thing in sales. They always say you're as good as, and this is what salespeople do as well. And you know it, Morgan. You're very good in the first quarter, but you, in your heart, know that will not last. Second quarter could be better. So when someone walks up and gives you an opportunity to do something different or rise above it, you take it because guess what? Since it's such a confusing scenario, it requires a very mature sales person to actually say that, you know what? I'm not going to be a sales manager. And I actually spend a lot of time with rockstar salespeople making it very clear to them that if you decide to take a sales

33:43manager role, understand this is the amount of time. This is the amount of focus that you need to put into developing people. Your number is now not your own success. You need to make 10 people successful so that you are hyper successful. Are you ready for that? And that's when people come back and tell me, you know what, Deepak, I didn't understand what you meant, but now I understand. Every day I walk home and I feel like, wow, I just had this very amazing conversation with Morgan, with Deepak, and I feel like I need a shower. Because suddenly when you become human in your interactions, you understand people will talk to you in human terms. And that's when you actually see the warts. That's suddenly when you

34:16realize that someone is having trouble at home. Someone is actually in financial problems. Someone's car keeps breaking down, but they can't afford to fix it. Or that's when the fun starts. So you need this. It's a new extreme maturity that sales managers need to have. You need to lead with heart, but you need to be ready to know that the heart is compulsive. The heart speaks. And then you sometimes kind of relate to that. You need a very different game plan. Yeah. The leaders of a sales team should oftentimes be just that, the leader. Yes, they need to have sales capabilities. Yes,

34:49they need to have sales in practice. And they may have been A-plus players once upon a time, but they're actually an A-plus leader. And that makes them help the sales team and each individual sales team member become greater in their success. The problem with, and we talk about this a lot on the podcast, is the problem with simply promoting that A-plus player to be a leader

Leadership in Sales

35:12who isn't a leader, but they're just, they're good at what they do. And you know, you can depend on them to make sales. The problem is they don't know how to then coach others. They don't know how to then mentor others. And there are different levels of mentorship. You know, you might have an A-plus player who does bring in people and does naturally mentor them, but they might not understand the behavioral system behind sales that then affects what they are truly doing. And so there are missteps, there are biases, there are, you know, those natural ways they would do something that

35:47we don't actually want replicated. And that's why it's important to separate leaders from A-plus players. Oftentimes those A-plus players can be leads in some way, shape, or form, but they are not I would agree with that Morgan. When I started my, when I became a people manager, I was actually given 11 people to run. I didn't even ask to be people manager. I was just given it. I had my first kickoff meeting and understand also these 11 people were people that were part of the team. Some of them were peers, some of them were other. And now Sunday, so there's already this angst that

36:21someone from within got promoted and why him, why not me? I walk into the room, I do my little horrible meeting, horrible meeting. I walk outside, I bump into my director of sales, my boss. And he looks at me and says to me, what happened to you? No, exact words of what got under your skin, because I'm a very emotional guy. I said to him, these 11 guys, I just don't understand. I think they are, and I use a very harsh word, literally stupid. I actually said that. And he says, why? I says, I'm trying to explain things to them. I don't think they agree with the way I want to go

36:51forward. So he said to me something that actually blew my mind. And Morgan, I just give this message to everyone. When 11 people that are exceptional at what they do are in a meeting and all of them are not in sync with you. The problem usually is you, not them. And he said that to me, to my face, he said to me, buddy, you're in a one way street and you're honking at these 11 cars that are actually trying to figure out what are you trying to do? Did you tell them what you're trying to achieve? How much did you talk? Because he knows I talk a lot, right? How much did you talk? I was like,

37:22I sat there quietly. Now, the good news about me is that actually, Morgan, as we said earlier, you remember, we said that Deepak, you need to be self-aware. So I do spend a lot of time because I do know that greatness won't be enlisted if I don't spend time with that. So I sat down, ruminated. And that is actually how I became a coach, Morgan, believe it or not. I actually went and became a coach because one thing that people told me was that you're the type of guy that's the coach's worst nightmare. If you go and see coaching Deepak as someone coaching you,

37:53you're just horrible. You're going to drive them nuts. So I actually went and got certified as an ICF coach. And I can tell you, Morgan, I raised my hand and I said, best decision of my life. He told me how to use this two is to one ratio, not just in selling, but in personal relationship at work. And it's very, very critical. Two, it also taught me how to not take control of a situation, let people get to their conclusions, not help people jump to your conclusion, because that sounds very nice and cool. You know, that's also why today's sales coaches, the sales leaders, as you call them, right? They remain managers because they do ride-alongs.

38:28They go into meetings to tell your buddy how it's done. Watch me.

38:34Kid you not, Morgan, kid you not. I've actually done research on this. 90% of ride-alongs fail because one, the guy has no clue about the customer history. He always is pompastic and full of gas, as they call it. He's just, I've been in sales for 20 years. I'll just, osmosis, you cannot do that. You cannot do that. And they do it all the time. Ride-alongs is the biggest nightmare, especially for rookies trying to learn. It requires a mature person to allow you to actually understand what's going on. Otherwise they just take over. And then, look, everybody,

39:04I know I got this deal for you, but you do a better job next time. And the guy's sitting there thinking, but buddy, I never asked you to come along. I think I was doing well. And now you've just lost that credibility, you lost that momentum. And that's why you remain a manager. You never become a leader. I think you kind of hone in on something. I do say that, and they teach us as a psychology is there are managers, there are successful leaders, and there are effective leaders. There's three different levels. And a manager could be a successful leader, but a manager

39:35is oftentimes, it's just the boss. It's the person sitting on the cart, pointing at the people that are pulling the cart. Then there's the successful leader, which is someone who is motivating them, certainly, but not helping them get to the ultimate level of where they can be. And then the effective leader is one that's kind of trudging along with them, but is not just motivating them, helping them, but is helping them self-reflect, helping them improve, and helping them grow, which then naturally grows that effective leader to being a higher level. I tend to talk about build your foundation,

40:09which builds you up. You know, the higher level individuals in an organization can only grow with those under them. It's really interesting. As you were talking, as I follow your hands, right? I had this visual. You have the manager who has got a whip in his hand. Come on, guys. Move it. Move it. You. Then you have the middle guy, right? He's in front with a bullhorn. Okay, let's go. Let's go. Let's go. But then you have the third guy. He keeps screaming, but then you see that someone is not using the or the right way. He comes up, steadies your hand, shows you the technique,

40:41does it for you, and then gives a thumbs up and runs back to go back to his bullhorn. That's the image that I was having in my mind at how to differentiate between these three layers, because people always talk about the two layers, but I think I really like the fact that you said, but wait, even in the second layer, there's nuances. You have the guy that is doing, but then, and this is why I love the English language, right? Effectiveness versus efficiency and stuff like that, right? And it's very important. You want to take the term leadership to the highest level. And people ask me, Deepak, what's leadership? To be honest with you, Morgan, that I could not,

41:13I cannot define it till now, but leadership is an X factor that makes great followers follow you, not blindly, but follow you because they learn from you and they know that you actually create what, let's use a term for a second, which triggers a lot of people, psychological safety, right? But when you feel that you are... We've had that question three times, the whole psychological safety and the trigger word of it. We've had that the last three podcasts, so it's so funny. It's really hilarious. And I ask managers, I was with a manager and I said to him that,

41:44you know, I like coaching because I think that it's my job to create a psychological safe space. And the guy says to me, this is the type of nonsense that brings us down on our knees. We need to stop with this politics. And then I got a lecture on there are only two genders. And I'm like, where are we going? So where are we going? I says, let me tell you what psychological safety is. If right now we just bleached it because now I'm going to shut up because now I'm scared of you. I will not share my opinions because I suddenly realized that you are getting into a corner. Now, because of that, I'm going to shut up. Now ask yourself, if I were your employee and this

42:15would happen at work, do you feel I'm going to be safe to share an idea with you in a room? And I just did this. And he looked at me and said to me, what does that have to do with psychological safety? I said, that's exactly my point. You guys are reading about stuff. You don't understand what all you're doing is you're saying to someone, you're in my room, you're in my domain, you're in my time. I am going to make sure that you are comfortable enough to share with me. And by the way, he then said to me, Morgan, I just fell over laughing. He says to me, yeah, but what if someone's going to open their mouth and tell me about some bodily function that's gone bad for them? I just tell them I'm not a doctor. I'm not a therapist. I cannot help you

42:49with that. Bring people back to what you're comfortable with. If you feel you're in and outside, don't necessarily, that's the point of being a leader, right? At times people will say things that leave you standing. They're like, where did that come from? Now you can attribute it to human failure, human stupidity, whatever you want to call it. But the reality is that as a leader, you're going to see more of humanity and you need to be ready to see both aspects of it. The super intelligence that you require, people will do a great job. People will do a bad job. You will see both. How will you? So this is why I just love it. Great. Back to you. Sorry. Sorry.

43:21I just see another podcast for an hour on this. I know. Yes. We always tell you that with our guests, like, oh, we could talk forever and ever and ever. And I know we'll stay connected and it could turn into later podcasts with more specific hone-ins on some of what we're talking about. But there's also so much to teach our listeners. One thing I just, I want to point out is when you talked about leadership, you use the term followership. That is so critical to use because leaders develop followers. And then I would say those, the best leaders, the A plus leaders, the effective leaders,

43:54those followers, those followers then turn into their own leaders. That, that to me is effective for leadership. It's very correct. And the reason why I like that definition is because Morgan, it takes, I don't know how to say this to you, but there is a sense of, there's a word, maybe you can help me with the word. When you look at yourself as a leader, when you put yourself on a scale as a leader, there's a bit of self-aggrandization there. You're putting yourself on a pedestal and you need to be very cautious about that. And I look at some of the guys that we recall, right? Ask not what your

44:28nation can do for you. Ask what you can do for your nation. These become legendary lines, right? Because they turn the lens outwards. They do something different. It's just not the norm. It's a pattern breaker. So for me, when I, and I've always told people, someone told me, how do you know you have great followership? I said, well, that's easy. You're in an airport, you're on gate number one, and there's a gate number five, both flights are boarding. And at gate number five, someone looks across and says, that's Deepak. He was my first boss. And he says to his wife, can you go on board? I need to just quickly go pay my respects. And she said, you're going to miss your flight. He says, no, no, no,

45:01I'll be right back. He comes running up, screaming to the person at the gate, stop him, stop him, stop him. Makes a complete show. And then says to you, boss, I'm catching a flight, but I saw you, I had to pay my respects. Stop. That's it. That's when you know you have reached a certain point in your career where people will make that extra effort to acknowledge you, to thank you. And then he says, I got to go. My wife is going to kill me. Gone. Yeah. Good. Done. And by the way, that's happened to me multiple times. So I'm just using that as an example, because that's the moment

45:34when you realize, at times when you do this work, you actually ask yourself, and my wife has always asked me, what did you get out of it? I think I lost my husband along the way. You were a polite, simple guy. When I married you at age 24, today at 55, I consider you to be sometimes just weird. You get so in depth with things and it's just arrogance. There's something that's happened to you. Your language changed. Language does change. Yes. Your language now becomes very pointed, very demanding. And she just says that sometimes she feels that the corporate world takes it out

46:07of you. And I think that's where leadership steps in. Leadership is the only way to remain grounded when all else around you gives you privilege in class. When your flight's a business class and the rest of the company sits in economy class, that doesn't sound like a bad deal. But I can assure you some leaders or some managers let it go to their head. Yeah, no, that is true. I'm glad you changed that term. Not some leaders, some managers let it go to their head. This has been such a great conversation. I wonder if you would be open to having a secondary conversation in a later podcast

46:42surrounding AI and developing line of sales instead of including this one. I feel like we really honed

Conclusion and Next Steps

46:48in on role play. We talked about scripts. Scripts, I feel, are what people need to use when they're still learning, right? But they should then have these scripts as a part of themselves and adjust the way they use it a little bit as time goes on. But it should be, you know, singular lines of specific information that they need to use and or the start of a call. More so... Here's the funny thing, Morgan. I think you relate to this. I'll quickly just give me a minute here and I'll just make a point here on scripts. I don't want to sound like I hate scripts, but Morgan, there's something interesting that you

47:20said. Morgan, let's go back to theory. Medical doctors, psychologists, I think are the people that get the most nonsense. Do you know why I never studied psychology? Because, oh my gosh, it sounds cool. But the very first Psych 101 requires you to go into some theories and really need to understand Jung this and I used to call him Jung and Jungian. I don't even pronounce those words, right? You literally have to go to 50 theories and if you're not skilled at understanding all that or being able to connect the dots, you're not going to progress forward. And to me, that was mind-boggling.

47:52Scripts, because of the multiplicity, may create cognitive overload for you, right? Here's what I tell people. Take those scripts, bucketize them. You will suddenly realize that there are only five types of objections. When you do that type of what I call classification, you suddenly will get smarter and that you actually realize, oh my gosh, it's not 50 scripts I need to learn, it's five types of scripts I need to learn. And when you type, then you actually understand the relationship. So when you hear something and you see a script, you said it's very granular, correct. But the granularity

48:26starts dissipating because now you understand where the classification goes into. So I coach people and I train people on themes. Customer says, wow, your price is just too high, number one. Second customer says, we can't afford you. Number three, customer says, your competition's price is better. Number four, customer says, no ways can we pay you more than what we spent today. You just got price objections in four or five variations. But it's ultimately a price objection. And the answer in all of that simply is, do not say anything at that point. Pause. He is waiting

49:02for you to drop your guard. Don't drop your guard. Pause. Wait for two, three seconds and then tell him, I hear you, but I'm actually not able to understand the context of, could you tell me a bit more as to why you think my price is higher than my competition? It's the same thing you do in all scenarios. Why? Because you wanted him to keep talking. And as he keeps talking, he's going to tell you more. And as he tells you more is when the real script is going to emerge on what you need to do. So therefore, scripting is powerful. All I'm telling people is don't say to the world that I

49:32need to learn multiplicity of scripts. You actually need to learn themes. And the rock star reps hone in, hone in, hone in to the point where they actually tell me it's on just reading his LinkedIn profile. I can tell you three objections are about to come. And they also use the coaches and champions internally. Right, Morgan? That's critical. Know the lay of the land. Therefore, you can play the lay of the land. That's how I call it. Yeah. They do say there's the 10,000 hour rule to become an expert in something, right? And so scripts, breaking them down into the different scenarios that you might

50:06see, and then maybe having a variety of quote unquote scripts they could use to help with that. But again, you're applying it to the people differently. And it takes a level of maturity to read the situation, to read the person, and to best explain it. Oftentimes, those scripts are used for entry level people, whether that be entry level into sales, or entry level into an organization to make sure they're explaining things properly within the organization's terms and mindset and capabilities and services, right? And scripts should be used for training someone, helping them

50:42practice, helping them know what to say. Absolutely. Absolutely. They can go on screen, right? Let's think back to the actor level, so that they can go on screen and not need the script in front of them. It's just a part of them. It's just a part of them. Now, and they might not say the line, perfect, but that doesn't need to happen, right? It doesn't need to happen. Because as long as they're using that script to educate their response to the customer, that is it. That. Agree. Absolutely aligned. Morgan, that was fun. Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for joining us, Deepak. Is there

51:17anything that you feel our listeners should specifically take away from this conversation? Yes. If you're a salesperson and a professional, the only thing I really want you to do is I would like you to go back to the very first five minutes of this call, where we spoke about celebrating the small wins. Really do that. Make a loud noise around it. You'll be surprised at how cathartic it is. And I don't even know what that word means, by the way, Morgan, but I like the sound of it. It's cleansing for the soul. Two, it's a simple way of also showing yourself some grace and some

51:49self-compassion. We live in a world where everyone is critiquing you at all given times, right? And whether you like it or not, most of us are not mature enough to take criticism. Morgan, right? I have a boss who told me, let me give you constructive feedback. I can tell you, at age 55, when I hear those terms, I get the hair rises because here comes crap. Here comes something bad. And then he talks to me. So my reviews used to be 30 minutes of time with the manager. The first three minutes is, thank you. Here, then 26 minutes of what you could have done

52:21better. Beat me up, beat me up, beat me up. It took us three decades to move away from that to the point where we also, many companies have stopped giving ratings because they suddenly realized this rank and stack nonsense, I would say has harmed companies a lot. Now look, Amazon is proud of the fact that they use rank and stack and rank, right? And yank. Let's forget that. Don't forget the yank part because they're okay with a four-year attrition model that is, I would say, industry breaking because the results are there. They don't care. You are a cog in the wheel. And if that's the

52:53culture, then I accept it. But if you are not that culture, then you need to do something different. But now we're digressing. But Morgan, I really enjoyed this. Thanks for having me. Yeah. Yeah. Of course. Thank you again, Dr. Deepak. This conversation was great. I know it's going to continue. I know we're going to have more. I would say for our listeners, for what you should take away from this conversation is think about the humanity behind sales. And even then, with what we've talked about within sales, this doesn't just apply to sales. This actually applies to all sorts

53:24of different types of teams. Because when you're in business, you're in sales, no matter what level of business you're in. Every organization is doing sales. And every support piece of that organization also is doing sales. It is also customer-oriented in some way, shape, or form. So most likely, what we've talked about today is applicable elsewhere in an organization. I would agree with that. I would agree with that. Yes, ma'am. Well, thank you again, Dr. Bucha. This concludes another intriguing episode of Organizational

53:55Sherlocks. I'm one of your hosts, Morgan Ashworth, reminding you that the journey to success is an ongoing investigation. Remember to stay curious, stay strategic, and keep utilizing insights to decode your business mysteries. Join us every Friday for your next whodunit. This is Organizational Sherlocks closing today's case. See you next time. Thank you.