119: Winning as an Intentional Individual Contributor with Kevin Piket of Ascend Technologies

0:08 Scott Ingram: You're listening to the Sales Success Stories podcast, where we deconstruct world-class sales performers to provide insights and strategies to help you improve. To learn more, visit us at top1.fm. Here's your host, Scott Ingram.

0:24 Scott Ingram: Today on the Sales Success Stories podcast, my guest is Kevin Piket. Kevin is a longtime fan of the show and recently took on a business development executive role at Ascend Technologies, where he has very quickly ascended and gotten to the top of the leaderboard after his first full quarter at full quota. Congratulations, Kevin, and welcome to the show.

0:43 Kevin Piket: Thank you, Scott. I'm very excited. I've been listening for a very long time, so it's fun to be on this side of it.

0:47 Scott Ingram: Awesome, awesome, awesome. Well, you know how this works, and I guess it's probably fair for me to just orient people a little bit if they're newer to the show, because it's worth noting that I only ever interview active quota-carrying individual contributors like Kevin who are either the outright number one top performers on their team or they're at least in the top 1%. And that happens every now and then. I'll talk to somebody in a giant company and, and when they're 3 of 800, we call that close enough. So Kevin, you're not working for a company quite that big, but we always start with the top 3 things that you believe have contributed the most to your success, not just in this role. I know you've had a lot of success prior to this. Talk us through what those are.

1:27 Kevin Piket: Yeah, absolutely. So the first one that comes to mind is do what you say you're going to do when you say you're going to do it. And this is… it sounds simple, but, you know, I've done in my past a lot of sales coaching. And this is, you know, one of the things that sales professionals, I think, fall down on a little bit is, you know, we get a little overwhelmed, we overcommit, those types of things. And I learned early in my career that, you know, if you don't do what you say you're going to do when you say you're going to do it, it's going to cost you. And, you know, the reality is I get a lot of message, you know, a lot of feedback coming from people I talk to that say, hey, it was nice that you actually got this in when you said you were going to do it. So that's number one. Number 2 is just put the work in. You know, I've always had a high work ethic. I like to compete. I like to win. I don't, you know, I'm not… I don't like to lose. So the reality is I'm always trying to put more work in than my competition is, and I'm trying to do the things that they won't do. I always say I don't leave a tool in the tool belt when it comes to sales. I'm going to pull all the strings out. And I got some fun stories around that we could chat about where ultimately certain things that people wouldn't do got the win over the top. And then really the last one is be prepared, be organized, and be productive. Being prepared is really, to me, starts and ends with research. There's just too many opportunities for us to research who we're talking to, the company, the people, for us not to do that. Being organized is all about my time management and just making sure that, you know, I am where I need to be. And I utilize Outlook religiously on that. And we can go into more details on that a little bit later. And just being productive with your day, you know, doing what I like to call revenue-generating activities and trying to fill my day mainly with that versus stuff that, quite frankly, just wastes time.

2:54 Scott Ingram: Awesome. Awesome. We will definitely dig into all 3 of those. The one thing I wanted to follow back up on was when you talked about your, your work ethic. You said you'd be willing to do things that other people aren't willing to do. What, what are some of those things?

3:07 Kevin Piket: Yeah, you know, so I… then this is the most recent sale I closed. It was… we were right at the finish line and the person was just not 100% confident. And, you know, ultimately a lot of, you know, what I ended up doing is I talked to our CEO and I said, hey, would you be willing to have a phone call with this person to talk to them? You know, and not a lot of people are comfortable talking to their CEOs in companies to do those types of things. Our CEO, Wayne Kiphart, it's Awesome. I mean, he is literally, what can I do to help in this opportunity? So we literally set up a call with just those 2, no one else in the call, and basically said, you know, just answer his questions and answer his concerns at what we have. And literally 30 minutes later, the deal's done.

3:43 Scott Ingram: Perfect. I love it. Great example. Let's talk about kind of your role, how you so quickly ramped and got to this number 1 spot. And again, just kind of another note here. Ordinarily, I'm looking for full-year performance being number one. I'm looking for a lot of consistency. But in your case, this was kind of special one because I think there's a lot of movement happening right now. And in fact, I'm going to be having a conversation… actually, it will happen probably before… anyway, this is complicated in terms of the timing, but soon you will probably have an opportunity, or maybe you've already had an opportunity, to listen to me talking with Amy Volus. About it's a seller's market right now and there's a, there's a lot of people moving and making changes and those types of things. And so I think that this is super relevant in terms of how do you really quickly get off to a great start and get to that number one position. So I want to call that out, but put this into perspective for us a little bit in terms of what you're doing, who's Ascend Technologies, all that good stuff.

4:40 Kevin Piket: Yeah, well, let me just take one step back. And so I was in my life and really the last 5 to 7 years, as you had mentioned, I've been in sales management, right? I've been in sales leadership. I did selling some on the side. I mean, I would always handle a couple accounts, but never full-time sales. And honestly, right before our 4th child, what we call our COVID baby, was born this July, I was putting a lot of thought into, you know what, what do I want to do with my career, right? So I met with a gentleman named Dana Bailey, who's our CRO at Ascend Technologies. I've known Dana since the first job out of college. We met back in 1998, and we've stayed in connections and done business together over the years. But, you know, we just met because Ascend Technologies was really a carve-out from a company called West Monroe Partners. And ultimately, through a from was built out. And we just had a conversation and just kind of check in, like, as we always done. And it kind of sparked my interest. I'm like, that sounds really interesting. And, you know, also I listened to one of the podcast guests that you had that talked about, and I love this phrase, being an intentional individual contributor. And honestly, I can remember driving and hearing that because that's where I listen to a lot of podcasts. And I'm like, wow, there's something to that, right? And that was always in the back of my head. And then I just, you know, made a decision that, you know, this is kind of where I want to be. I want to go back into sales full-time. I want to kind of step step back from the sales leadership role. And I called Dayna up and I said, hey, I'm interested in, you know, looking to see if you guys have an opening and would you be interested in bringing me on? 2 and a half weeks later, I was there. I had a job offer. And actually before that, my wife and I took the kids for 2 weeks, went on vacation just to clear the brain and started at the end of September. And Ascend Technologies is a… we're an IT infrastructure company. We provide cybersecurity services, managed service provider from an IT standpoint with you know, servers, workstations, that whole world. But we also provide data management. We have a Salesforce practice. So there's a pretty good beef. And in reality, I think we're a technology solution provider more than anything else, because we can do a lot of different things. So I came on board at the end of September. So really I had Q4 to kind of ramp up, right? Because you don't really get much of a quota, if anything, in Q4. And really what I focused on was I'm actually going to do the things that I've been coaching and mentoring for the last, you know, decades, and I'm gonna actually do those things as a sales rep, like I am the person. So for me, everything's about relationships. And I went out to my network and I just started talking to people. And obviously with COVID we couldn't meet. So it was a lot of Zoom calls, a lot of Teams calls, just setting up these calls and just, hey, here's where I'm at, here's what I'm doing. Do you know anything that's happening? And my whole mindset is about giving. So I have a pretty good-sized network and we can get into that a little bit more on the philosophy there. But it was building that pipeline, not only for a very good Q1, but really setting me up for Q2 and beyond. And I tell you, it was all the work work and the preparation that I put in in Q4 that put me in a great position to have a really good Q1 and off to a great Q2 start right now.

7:24 Scott Ingram: That's awesome. And I mean, you and I have had some of those conversations. I mean, over the, the years that you've been listening to the podcast, I mean, you were… I could tell you were just chomping at the bit. You're like, you know what? Yeah, I just… I know all this stuff. I'm telling these people this stuff. I want to just do it myself. I want to go back and get back in, in the field. And it sounds like you're, you're pretty happy with having made that decision.

7:45 Kevin Piket: You know, and I just told Dayna the other day, I said, I'm having more fun now than I've had in my career in a long time. I absolutely love doing what I'm doing right now. And, you know, I hadn't been able to say that up to this point, and it's just been fun. And that's, and that's important. It's important to have fun. And quite frankly, I did reach out to you multiple times because I value your opinion. I'm like, hey, here's what I'm thinking. What do you think? And you were always a really good sounding board for me on that.

8:07 Scott Ingram: Well, I'm glad that I could be helpful in that way. And it was actually me that coined that term, the intentional individual contributor, because it's what I am. Right. And, and I think there's, there's been a few of these stories that we've had on the show. And, and when we go into the show notes, if you go look up Kevin's episode, it'll be at top1.fm/kevin-piket, P-I-K-E-T. I'll include links to the other folks. There's at least one other I can think of, and there's maybe more who've made this transition and gone from, hey, like I was a sales leader, but I wanted to come back. And, and I have this conversation more often than you would think. With, with sales leaders, sales managers who are like, you know what? It was just the best part of my career. I've learned all this stuff. I've gained such great perspective having coached so many other people and seen so many other styles, but now I'm ready to go apply it to myself and just get face-to-face with the customers again and, and have that experience and, and being able to be in complete control of, of your life and your calendar again.

9:05 Kevin Piket: Yes. Yes. That's the biggest part of it, right? I was spending an… I spent 3 hours round trip driving to and from the office. Now, the good side is I listen to a lot of podcasts. On the bad side, that's a lot of time away from the family. That's a lot of time away in general. That's not really productive in my opinion. So this is wonderful that I can, I can do what I want to do and I go in the office when I want to. I work from home when I want to. It's just the freedom to not have to worry about other people besides my family. And that's really, that's my center focus.

9:31 Scott Ingram: Love it. Love it. Well, quantify this Q1 for us. What did you do exactly?

9:35 Kevin Piket: Yeah. So we have a quota of $25,000 in MRR for the quarter. Right? So that's our big world is MRR. So I finished Q1 just over $31,000 MRR. And then our total contract value, we always do 36-month contracts. So that was just $1.12 million in revenue and put me at 124% of my number. Q2 already, right now, this is an interesting one. I have the MSA and the SOW signed, but we're waiting on schedules to finalize next week. So I'm gonna throw it in there because we're, we're more than halfway through there. So I'll be at Q2 after, after next week, about just over $35,000 MRR for $1.28 million revenue at 142% of quota with a month and a half left of Q2 and a pretty healthy pipeline.

10:13 Scott Ingram: That's awesome. That's awesome. Congrats.

10:15 Kevin Piket: Thank you.

10:16 Scott Ingram: So let's get into the origin story and the journey. Where did this start? How did you get into sales in the first place and kind of walk us through all the places you've been?

10:26 Kevin Piket: Yeah, absolutely. So if you ask my mom, it started when I started talking. I was selling, you know, I'm the youngest of 7 kids. So I spent a good part of my young life negotiating to get all sorts of things that I'd like to get. Learning, quite frankly. But the first real sales experience I get, and this is one that always people, you know, get a little surprised with, but I don't know if you're familiar with Cutco Cutlery. It's vector marketing. Absolutely.

10:47 Scott Ingram: We've had their number 2 or number 3 all time on the show in the very early days.

10:51 Kevin Piket: Oh, that's awesome. So that is where I first learned to build a network. And what happened was, so, and you know, my brother Sean, so come back to that. Yes, yes, absolutely. So Sean did this the year before. And if you know anything about Cutco Cutlery, it's all about, you know, friends and family. It's kind of how you start, right? Well, he exhausted the entire group. So when I, when I came in, I'm like, I got to figure out something different, right? So one of the things I thought of was, do you know who's home during the summers? Teachers. And as long as you are nice, they like you. So I actually started building out a network of the former teachers that I had, and they'd love to meet with me. And I did them during the day where everybody else had to do it at night because people were working. They were home. So I would knock out 4 to 5 appointments a day, again, outworking my competition. And I would just start to sell. And I learned valuable skills about just raw sales skills. I learned how to ask for a referral and I learned how to build a network. That was really the foundation of of what I do today is around networking. So I went through that, did a couple years of that, ended up being a branch manager after the first summer. And my first job out of college was a referral from somebody in my fraternity. Again, I've really not gone to any company blind. I've always been referred in or I know somebody there. And again, it's about building my network. And that's where I met Dana. It was the second year I was there, he came on board. And it was just learning, you know, in some, you know, learning how to be a sales professional. Right? And just trying to understand what that means. You know, and I, you know, I started my career doing the cold calling, right? The 100, 150 calls a day. And I always said, people ask me, what's the worst thing that anybody said to you? I said, one guy told me literally, if you call me back again, I'm going to kill you. And my response was, well, that's not nice. And he actually just started kind of breaking down what happened was, and this was a valuable lesson to me. What happened was I literally called him right after he got yelled at by his boss. Now, I don't know that, right? I'm just, you know, dialing numbers at that point. What I learned was this isn't personal. I can't take it personally. I have no idea what's happening on the other end of this phone, or I have no idea what I'm calling into. So that was really a valuable skill to learn early on in my career. And where I kind of advanced on is, you know, so again, through my network, you know, I got, you know, as I got moved up in the ranks and was doing well, I get recruited into another situation. And I've done a lot in technology. Pretty much majority of my career was in technology sales in some form or fashion, you know. And I remember early on, a company called ReviewVideo, We were selling video conferencing systems when basically Polycom systems cost like $50,000 to $100,000. You know, video conferencing was done over ISDN lines, if anybody remembers those. It was very choppy, but it was, it was a big business. And, you know, we went from $6 to $68 million in 3 and a half years. And I was one of the leaders on that team, you know, selling and managing as it evolved into that scenario. But it was, it was amazing to learn about the sense of urgency. More than anything else, that we don't have the time luxury. When customers are ready to move, you got to move, and you got to remove obstacles internally to do that. So that was a valuable lesson. And then really from there, I moved forward into various roles within technology. And just, I love technology sales. I love the passion around it, but it's just one of those things from a standpoint of, I always knew I was going to be successful in sales and I love leadership. And I realized you don't have to be a sales leader to be a leader. You know, I do get a lot of folks on the team that come to me and ask questions. And, you know, I love mentoring, I love coaching, I love doing those things. I could still do that. I just don't have to worry about the responsibility of the people.

14:07 Scott Ingram: I love that. In fact, that's another of my kind of favorite sayings is this idea of you can lead from the field, you don't have to have a title to be a leader. And I'm huge on impact. Like, I really enjoy working for organizations where I can really move the needle across multiple departments. That doesn't work so well when I'm working for ADP and Oracle and these gigantic companies, which is why I didn't work for those companies for very long.

14:32 Kevin Piket: Right.

14:32 Scott Ingram: I, I love to make that impact and I can do that in smaller, mid-sized kind of scales of companies. So I totally feel where you're coming from. So we're going to come back to Sean. We're going to come back to the network, but I want to talk a little bit about, I mean, you've You've seen a lot of different roles, had a lot of experiences in sales. If you could start over today, knowing everything that you know now, how would you approach your career?

14:59 Kevin Piket: Yeah. This might be a different answer than you're expecting. I would stop eating bad food. I always would eat food that wasn't good for me. I'd do something quick and easy. And the reason why I think that's important is because, you know, that is your energy level, right? And how you, what you put, you know, I always say you don't want to put bad gas in your car. Well, that's no different from there. From that standpoint, I learned bad habits. That took decades to get rid of. And still today, I challenge with it as well. But if I'm starting over, I'm like, boy, I would love to have been more, you know, focused on the health piece of things, because I think the mind, body, and spirit help you in the sales process because you're there. Sometimes you get tired. It's not because you're tired, it's because you're just putting bad stuff in your body.

15:39 Scott Ingram: All right. So that's, that's amazing. And I totally agree with that because I say to people, my number one priority is my health, even above, even above my family, because it impacts my mental health as well, right? My physical health impacts my mental health, which is why I work out 6 days a week. And, you know, if you don't have that, you don't have anything else. Nothing else matters.

16:00 Kevin Piket: Yeah. And I tell you also, another thing is that I, you know, from a sales side of things, don't take jobs because of titles. And the reason why I say that is that I learned, I learned a valuable lesson. I actually learned it within the last 5 years, a valuable lesson where I took a VP of Sales role at a smaller MSP. Everything looked great. It was a VP title. This is fun. All that kind of stuff. Well, the owner himself was not, let's just put it this way, was not an ethical person and did very unethical things that we found out later, ended up literally closing down the company, came into the conference room and said, we're done. There was a lot of bad things happening, which we don't need to get into. But the reality was I took that role more, I was referred in, but I took it because of the title. I'm like, you know what? I'm done doing that. I need to focus on the leadership of the organization and not care about the titles or really the job. To me, there's a lot of technology companies out there, so I can find a role in that sense, but it's about having ethical leaders and people that care about you and are invested in you. Because they invest in me, I'm investing in them type of scenario. And that was a valuable lesson that I learned. And I think a lot of people do chase titles. And some companies give away VP titles like it's bubble gum. I mean, the reality is, I think you got to focus on the leadership that you're going to be going into. And that means when you're interviewing, you're interviewing them. As much as they're interviewing you.

17:13 Scott Ingram: Yeah, yeah. And heck, if you want a VP title, go into banking. Everybody's a VP.

17:18 Kevin Piket: That's… I always say that too. That's funny.

17:21 Scott Ingram: So let's talk about your family. When we met, I was like, wait a minute, you're related to Sean? Like, you have lots of sales in your family.

17:29 Kevin Piket: We do. My dad spent a 30-year career at Sears, and then my mom and dad did about a 25-year career together in real estate sales. So we were born into a sales family. And I would say everybody, we have either entrepreneurs or salespeople in our family. Sean, obviously, you know, but I have other brothers that do sales. I have a brother who's a sales engineer, so we get a little bit of that side of the house too. And it's just, you know, it was a big family. It was… it's fun, you know. And we actually have our reunion coming up this summer in Knoxville, Tennessee, so that's always a fun time. And seeing the next generation of Pikets come through with some of them, you know, definitely pegged for sales. From the future standpoint, I always say my son Cam, who's 4, probably sells better than I do at this point. He owns a room when he walks into it.

18:11 Scott Ingram: So it's so good. Yeah. So I haven't talked to Sean in years at this point, but Sean had a podcast that I was… I may have actually been the very last guest on his podcast. So maybe I broke it.

18:23 Kevin Piket: I don't think you broke it. I remember that because when I listened, I'm like, why does that name sound familiar? So then I went back. I'm like, oh my God. And Sean's like, yeah, no, he was one of my guests. So he had that one. So him and I used to own the Sales Integrity together. And since then, he's moved out. He's at Sirius Insight now, but he's a VP of revenue over there. But, you know, that was… it was a lot of fun together. And one of the things, you know, he started doing was the podcast. And, you know, I'm a… as you know, a big fan of podcasts, and I thought it was fun with the guests. But yes, no, I'm like, when I saw him, like, I went back after I listened to the first couple episodes of yours. I went back and listened to that one of you two together. I'm like, oh, that's… this is fun.

18:54 Scott Ingram: That's really funny. Yeah, he used to do this like speed round thing, and I'd listen to his show, like, I knew the format. I'm like, okay, I'm gonna win this, like, just outright crush this if If you put a competition in front of me, I will make it happen. So I did, and then he finished the show. So I hold the record forever.

19:10 Kevin Piket: That's good. And I told him, I said, "I wanted to. I want to beat that record too," but he wouldn't let me be on it.

19:15 Scott Ingram: So well, so you love podcasts. I know you love the stories. What's your all-time favorite sales story? And usually when there's these types of stories, there's some type of huge lesson embedded in the middle of it.

19:26 Kevin Piket: Yes, I've got you know in just knowing your podcast format, I got a couple. It's interesting. So the first one I wanted to share, and I'll share the small bites of them. I was at that review. Video company I told about earlier. So I was newer to the company, maybe there a couple months, and there was a lot of heavy hitters. I was young in my career and somebody called in and said, hey, I want to buy… and they called them Via Videos back then. So they're basically your desktop cameras, right? Lowest price item on the list. They're like, nobody wanted it. I said, I'll take it. So it was about a $50,000 order, which in the company size, that was a smaller order for them. So I said, sure, I'll take it. Absolutely. And so I built a relationship with the guy. He owned his own company. We were a master distributor. So he was a reseller out in California. That $50K opportunity turned into a $3.5 million yearly account for me. And, you know, really the lesson for me is never say no until you know what you're saying no to. All the other sales reps were saying no to this guy. I'm like, yeah, I'll take it. What the heck? I'm here 3 months. Of course I'll take it type of scenario. But we built some really good relationships over the time. So that was a really good one. Another one I had with most recent with my last company was, it was with a large pharmaceutical company and it was about persistence and patience. So this deal, and at the company, they're used to deals coming in 2 to 3 months, right? This was about a 6-month sales cycle. And they're like, oh, in fact, the COO at the time said, you know, you need to stop worrying about this one. I don't want to see it on the pipeline anymore. It's not going to happen. I said, no, it's going to happen. You know, and I knew there was some complicated pieces to this and I knew why it was taking long because I was doing my job, right? So I understood the whole piece of the thing. And really when we first had the call, it started off, they wanted us to manage some firewalls and switches and routers for them. And that would have been about a $5,000 a month account, which, you know, it was nice, but not, you know, not huge. And I asked one question, I said, so what are you guys doing for phones and internet? And the response was, oh, you guys do that? I had no idea. Yeah. Well, then that went down a different path. Well, this $5,000 a month deal turned out to be a $33,000 a month deal for 36 months. And literally, if I listened to my COO, I would've never gotten any of that. And I just kept on moving forward with that piece of thing. So those are 2 key stories that stick out in my mind of one, don't ever say no to something you have no idea. And it's okay to say no to bad deals. But you don't even know if it's a bad deal. You take the time to figure that out. And then just being persistent and patient at the same time, which is a double-edged sword, and they might be opposite of each other, but they work well together when you understand it.

21:45 Scott Ingram: Well, speaking of double-edged swords, I mean, I'm sure the COO was making that recommendation because how many times have we seen the deal that really isn't ever going to happen that somebody just continues to invest in and it's just a black hole? How do you make make that determination? Because I'm sure you've got that story too.

22:03 Kevin Piket: Yeah, to me, I think it's if you ask really good questions, you're going to get good answers, right? And just doing your, you know, back to my whole thing, you know, put the work in, right? And understand that, you know, their buying cycle. Ask them. And I knew the reason why I was taking long was because some of them had existing contracts that were not up for another 4 months, so they weren't going to double over, right? So they weren't going to pay for 2, that type of scenario. And we… it was a lot of that type of stuff. But if I didn't just get deep go high, wide, and deep into the opportunity in the account, I would never have known those things. I would say, oh yeah, sure, whatever. I was newer to the company at the time too. You would've thought that going against the COO would be a bad idea politically, but the reality was, and I had conviction and belief because I knew the facts. I always deal in facts. I don't deal in emotion. I deal in facts. I had the facts. I understood it. I had seen copies of the contracts where they expired. I had asked that because I said, you can… I always ask for those. I ask for everything. The worst thing they can tell me is no. I ask a lot of questions. If they tell me no, that's fine. Quite frankly, I put these 2 words in front of my questions, just curious, and I get a lot of responses from that because people like to respond to people that are curious. For me, it was just asking a lot of questions and understanding the deal because I had to report it out. I can't just say, oh, it's great. It's not good. I had to give them the details and why I felt it was this way. My manager, my direct manager had my back on it. The COO was shocked when it closed.

23:23 Scott Ingram: Well, I'll tell you, I'm just curious about all of the networking side of this, and I'm just going to kind of set you loose in terms of talking about how are you doing that, why are you doing that, you know, all of that kind of stuff.

23:37 Kevin Piket: Yeah, so I'm a natural giver, right? I always like to help people when people reach out. I'm always, you know, a big fan of, of telling people, hey, let me see if I have somebody in my network, right? And for me, LinkedIn is where I keep it. It's the old Rolodex. And depending on who I talk to, some of them have no idea what a Rolodex is. That's the younger ones. But it's where I keep my contacts. I have a different philosophy on that. We could probably go down that hole a little bit later. But the reality for me is it's about building relationships and keeping in contact with them and just, you know, helping them. You know, what can I do to help you? You know, let me know how I can be helpful to you is what I say a lot to people in my organization. And I'm always like, don't feel like you have to give me like 5 introductions because I've introduced you to a bunch of people. I said, if I believe in you and I believe in what you're doing, I want to make sure that people know about it. So to me, it's a, it's a great way to get a touchpoint into my network, but it also helps somebody out. And, you know, I love helping people out. So that makes things a lot easier. And I always tell people, listen, Listen, one good introduction is great. Don't just hand me 5 because you feel like you need to match the numbers. I don't care about the numbers. To me, I'm usually 3 to 1 anyway, referrals I give to people and what I get back. And I'm totally fine with that because the ones I get back are really powerful from that standpoint. But it's about helping people. It's about staying connected with people and just doing, you know, 15, 20-minute conversations. When I'm, you know, used to be in the car a lot, I would just call people in my network and just talk to them. You know, hey, what are you doing? How things are going? You know, what can I do to help? Where are things at? And just… and one of the things I always do is I always try to help people get a job, right? If people are looking for… I know tons of people are always looking to hire, and I'm always willing to connect good people. And I do that quite often, and that builds just champions across, you know, my network in my area.

25:08 Scott Ingram: Love it. Love it. You know, it's so interesting because I am very, very similar. I mean, this is the relationships and my network is so core to the way that I sell and the way that I work and the way that I operate, because it's crazy. We spend so much time in sales talking about how to get in the door cold, and it amazes me. It seems like we've lost sight of this recently because there's so much emphasis on like, how do I make that cold call? How do I send a good cold email? How do I reach out? How do I leverage LinkedIn cold? I'm like, well, wait a minute, what if you could just get introduced? Like, wouldn't that just work better? What if you walked in the door and somebody's already credentialized you and vouched for you and said, hey, you ought to take a meeting with Kevin because he's, he's a great guy. He's helped me a ton. I'm sure he can help you. Like, I don't get why we're not talking about this more.

26:00 Kevin Piket: Listen, I can tell you right now, I have not made a cold call in over 5 years. And I told Dayna this many times. I said, Dayna, if I'm making a cold call at my age and at my point in my career, I have done a really crappy job of building my network over the last 2 decades. And he agrees. And I said, it's just, it's a tough way to get into this business, just dialing for dollars. And to me, it's all about strategic and I make it even easier. So I actually created email templates that I give to people depending on the situation that they're going to introduce me to, because what I found was people are always willing to help you when they get a chance. And if I make it easy for them, it happens a lot faster. And I always tell people in turn, hey, you know, Scott, you want me to introduce you to this person? Just, you do a much better job saying what you do and I don't want to screw it up. But I got a lot of people, hey, Kevin's in software sales. I'm like, my first interaction is, no, Kevin's not in software sales. Sales. So I'm in this, this, and this. So I always kind of took the bull by the horn on that one and just make it easy for them. But I think cold calling, there's a place for it. I think early in a career, it makes sense because you're building that network up. But I think as you're more of a seasoned rep, and this is just me, and I'm sure there'll be people who disagree, and that's fine. But at this point in my career, I have built my network to the point where I should be able to tap into that network and be successful with it and in turn continue to help that network grow too.

27:10 Scott Ingram: Yeah, yeah. Well, and if you wouldn't mind, send me a couple of those templates. We'll include them in the show notes because I wholeheartedly agree. You You have to take the friction out and you have to be the one doing the work, right? You shouldn't have to invent how to introduce me and why that conversation is relevant. That's on me, right? I should literally, you know, I mean, I've evolved this over time, right? Because I used to kind of draft that, hey, here's, here's the intro email. Now we're all so damn lazy. I just create an email that they can reply to and add that that person by way of introduction. And I just say that in, in the body of the email, like, look, let me, let me make this as 2 clicks for you. Hit reply, add that person, and we're… and that's really all I need.

27:55 Kevin Piket: Yeah. And I think just, you know, people, you know, are busy, right? And, and if we can make it easy for them to make an introduction… the part that I think is, you know, when somebody says, hey Kevin, can you introduce me to this person? I jump at it for 2 reasons. One, I want to help that person. But number 2, I probably haven't talked to that person in a while, and this would be a great way to get me back in front of them. And I have found that, hey, you know, it's been a while, Scott, since we talked. Why don't we, you know, on a quick call too. And boom, yeah, let's do it, right? So to me, it's, it's a, you know, there's a win-win there. I just, the way I do my LinkedIn, I only connect with people that, you know, I either know personally or have had a conversation with. You know, when people like send me a blind connection request with absolutely no note or anything, I don't typically do that. And I will look at their profile, and if I feel like, you know, it's interesting, I'll send a message back saying, hey, I'd love to jump on a call with you and, you know, learn more about how we can help each other out. And just curious on why you, you know, feel it'd be a great way to connect. 9 out of 10 never respond. It surprises me because it's like they're just free connecting. Or now we get a lot of these connects where they pitch and sell and it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, let's take a backseat to what we're doing here. But to me, that is my Rolodex. That's where I keep my contacts. So I'd say 90% of my connections are people that I know that I feel confident I can put an introduction in front of. And I always do what I call a network cleanse about every December where I go through my network, literally every single one of them, and see, you know, I've got multiple messages to somebody, never responded. What's the point of being connected if you're never going to respond? Right. And then there's other people that I learn and then I write my list of who I haven't talked to in a while and then boom, that's kind of who I start my Q1 off chat with that I haven't chatted with in a while.

29:24 Scott Ingram: There you go. And that's the different philosophy around LinkedIn you were mentioning.

29:28 Kevin Piket: Yeah.

29:28 Scott Ingram: Yeah.

29:29 Kevin Piket: That's, you know, and I know a lot of, you know, there's philosophy, I want to connect with everybody, but I said, you know, I have a lot more followers than I do connection, you know, people I'm connected with. And I like to, and I, because as you see, I provide, you know, a lot of value and I, you know, a lot of sales information. I'm reposting the podcasts that I love and listen to and what have you. And so it's, I get a pretty good following that way. And I have all strategy on how I do it. And actually, ironically enough, it was a strategy from one of your podcasts that I've adopted from one of your guests and stuff. And it's just been powerful. And to me, LinkedIn, and this is another debate I get, I'm not on any social media. And everyone's like, well, you're on LinkedIn. I said, LinkedIn's a sales tool. And to me, it's not social media because I view social media like Facebook, Twitter, where people are like not nice to each other. LinkedIn can be a very… at least for my network it is, right? The feed that I see is very productive and positive. There's challenging questions and different things, but it's all done on a respectful basis. I cut all of the other social media out of my life 3 years ago. I tell you what, it's wonderful waking up in the morning being positive and not having to scroll through negative stuff.

30:28 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Yeah. I love that. I've said for years, I have been what I call a conscientious Facebook objector. And so I, I didn't delete it, but I, what did I do? There's, you can pause or somehow you can disable your Facebook account. I did that years ago. One time I turned it on to connect with a guest on this show who wasn't on any other channel. I'm like, damn it. Okay, fine. But that's really been it. And otherwise I haven't missed it at all. And I agree with you. I though have, have changed my LinkedIn philosophy because mine was exactly I was mentioning this. I had a lunch meeting for the first time in 14 months yesterday. Now that I'm in the all clear from a vaccination perspective, and I told him, I said, you know, before, I don't know, maybe 2 years ago, the only way I would have been connected is if we had done that. Like, if we at least had lunch, we had coffee, we had some type of substantive meeting or conversation or something where there was a real relationship built. There because what I wanted was, Kevin, when you reach out to me and say, hey, you know, can, can you introduce me to Scott Lise? I didn't want to have to say, well, I don't actually know Scott. Like that. Yes, that wasn't the purpose. But, and the reason I'm using Scott as the example here is he really challenged that philosophy in me. But it was also in some ways unique to me because what I've been doing with this show and what I'm building, he's like, yeah, you need to change your view. LinkedIn has changed the way that LinkedIn works. You need to be thinking a little bit more from an audience perspective and be more broadly connected. And he was right, and that has served me really well. But I think the key is you have to be intentional about which of those choices you're making. And Kevin, to your point, you can kind of have the best of both worlds because of the follow feature.

32:16 Kevin Piket: Yes. And you know what's also interesting? And I don't necessarily disagree with that point, but my challenge is when somebody blind connects, with no note. That's why I call it blind connect. And I reply, I said yes, because I tried it, right? I'm going to try this out, right? I'm going to just connect with people. And I literally would reply with a message, thank you for connecting with me, please let me know if I can ever be helpful to you, you know, and, you know, profile, whatever. I pick out something that looks interesting. 90% of the time they never respond. So my thing is like, there's no value in somebody that's never going to respond to you because there's no way I can make an introduction to you because you're not responding to me. Why would you respond to an introduction, you know, type of scenario? So that's where I kind of I'll draw my line now.

32:52 Scott Ingram: Yeah, my perspective has shifted on that too, but I think it may be partially because my profile is, is just a lot higher. I find, yeah, that if somebody sends me an empty connection request, that's okay. It's when they do send a message that is… unless the only message that's awesome and is my favorite is there's something real and tangible there. Hey Scott, I was listening to your interview with Kevin when you guys were talking about this LinkedIn thing. That really resonated. That's amazing because there's some… there's a real connection. There's, there's something there. That's great, but it's, it's 1%. I mean, it is a tiny, tiny bit. What I find now is those that are customizing that message are the ones that are going to connect and pitch.

33:41 Kevin Piket: That is interesting. Yeah, I mean, and so what I've always said is like, you know, and I'll throw it out to the audience here, if you want to connect with me on LinkedIn, just put I'll put on the note how, you know, hey, I heard you on Scott's podcast, and then I'll connect with them. And I've had some good conversations there. I also, because of some of the titles I've had, I don't know if people do a full research and just kind of see what role I'm in today. And I actually love saying this, hey, that's above my pay grade. I don't make those decisions, you know, whereas before I was. So I think people are still looking at, hey, you're in this position where you can make decisions. No, listen, and that's intentional, right? I don't wanna make decisions like that. The only decision I wanna make is what I'm having for lunch, you know, and ultimately who I'm gonna call next. I don't wanna deal with any of the other type of stuff. But yeah, so I mean, it's an interesting way that LinkedIn's flowing. And with what you're doing, it totally makes sense, right? You want to have a broad audience, you want, you know, you have a lot of sales professionals following you. So that totally makes sense from that standpoint. And for me, I'm inching closer to that by doing the, hey, you know, send me a message, I'll send a message back and, you know, let's connect that way. And I get much better results there than I do with the ones that just blind connect and then I respond, I don't get any response. At least the ones that send me a message, we have dialogue that goes back and forth.

34:46 Scott Ingram: Yeah, the folks that listen to this show are awesome in that way because it's it's the biggest piece of feedback I get from from the guests, especially those that have been on other podcasts. They're like, "There is something about your show." Like people reach out, they reach out really thoughtfully. We have great conversations. They're like, "This is amazing." So thank you all for being so respectful and and awesome in the way that you connect with with all of the guests because I know. They love it. They enjoy it. And the literal pro tip on that is share the most impactful thing that you heard, right? What was it that they said that resonated with you the most and what are you going to do about it? Right. How has it impacted you? How has it changed your thinking or something that you're going to try? That's the stuff that we all love hearing. Yeah.

35:30 Kevin Piket: And you know what? I'm one of those people that I've done that. I've reached out to folks that have been there and I would put in there, hey, Sergio, really thought this was great and we connected and I have good relationships. It's literally how I met Jack Wilson, who's phenomenal. You know, I reached out to him and then we jumped on a video a call and it was like, oh my God, this is awesome. You know, he's a great dude. And a lot of it, there's just so many talented people that you've had as guests. It's like, well, if you're not taking advantage of this as a sales professional, you're just crazy. To me, it's like every morning, like, you know, I'll get up and get up early and I'll do some sort of cardio. And this is, you know, now it's been my podcast time because before it was in the car, right? And I'm not driving, you know, to an office now. That will change a little bit now. But, you know, to me it's just, wow, this is really good people and they are excellent at, you know, connecting and talking and doing those types of things. But, you know, Jack was one of the ones that really early on I heard him on your show. That's what hooked me to the whole podcast. You can blame him for that if you want.

36:19 Scott Ingram: He will hear this, I guarantee it. And I know he will accept that acknowledgement. And the other thing that we do just to make that really easy is the Sales Success Summit, right? Like, let's just put everybody in the same room together where you don't even have to do the work. And it's super efficient for everybody. And man, the strength of that community is really, really something special.

36:40 Kevin Piket: Talk about wanting to be competitive, right? You're in the room with the best of the best. It's like the Top Gun of sales. And, you know, it's like, it's just sitting there and just learning, right? I always say, if you're in a room like that, you check your ego at the door, right? You know, just be open-minded to listen to new things. And it's not about one-upping somebody else. It's about learning, you know, and taking bits and pieces of it, right? And seeing not all of it's going to fit your world, but boy, if I can learn one or two new things that might help me be successful, I'm all for it. It.

37:04 Scott Ingram: The top gun of sales. I like that. I might use that.

37:07 Kevin Piket: It's yours.

37:08 Scott Ingram: Kevin, you have done a lot. You've accomplished a lot. In all of that, what are you most proud of?

37:14 Kevin Piket: The people I've helped, right? So I do a lot of mentorship. And if you've noticed my profile, I do a lot of volunteer work with the students in a local school district here, 203, actually, where I went. And they have an incubator class. It's an entrepreneurship class. And I've, you know, been a mentor and I've coached, which coach is like co-teaching, for years now. And I've been really volunteering in the school district since 2005. And that to me has just been a great way to give back to the next generation. And if you think about it, 2005 is a long time ago. So a lot of those folks are now in the work world and they're having successful careers and I stay connected with them. I've helped many of them get jobs through my connections. And to me, just the positive impact you can make on somebody is just the most meaningful thing you can do. I mean, I always say the best thing you can do for anybody is help them find a job. And I've done that quite often. Often in my career, and a lot of people reach out to me, or people are friends of somebody said, "Hey, so-and-so said you'd be a good person to talk to." I say, "Yeah, let's jump jump on twenty minutes," and they're just what's disappointing is they're surprised I would do it. And to me, that's I think we got to do better as sales professionals helping each other out. I was extremely fortunate that really good mentors in my sales career, and it's just a kind of that pay it forward mentality. And I just think anytime somebody you know reaches out and wants to have a conversation about sales, I'm all for. I love it. To me, it's just any way I can do to help somebody else is a positive thing.

38:31 Scott Ingram: Yeah. And there's so, there's so much of that. You know, people are, they think about, or I guess maybe they don't understand the early days of this show, right? Because they're like, well, Scott, you, of course you can get anybody on your show because you've got this huge platform and all these listeners and this, that, and the other thing. I'm like, yeah, but I didn't always have that. And the first guest I ever had was the number one guy at LinkedIn. And then we had DeJuan and we had Deb Rapson and Jacquelyn Nicholson. I mean, so many people that still are such a core part of, of this community, and almost nobody ever has said no because of that pay-it-forward mindset. As we all had help to get where we are today, and, and I really think of the show from that perspective as this is mentoring at scale. You know, you and I have had a first conversation with somebody that we're trying to help I don't know, 200 times, virtually the same conversation. So if we can have that here, right, and give the bulk of those nuggets and say, hey, start here, and then let's continue the conversation from there. Because the beauty of that is, or, or the horror in that is, depending on the perspective, is 80-90% of those folks you'll never hear from again.

39:49 Kevin Piket: Yeah.

39:49 Scott Ingram: But for me, it's the ultimate filtering mechanism because the 10% that I do hear from from, you're my people. And now I really want to help you.

39:57 Kevin Piket: Yeah. And for me, it's just, I like to help people because I think not everybody has connections, especially young folks in sales. Not everybody has connections that they can do. And so I'm also an adjunct professor. I teach one class a term at Aurora University. And how I got started there was I was a guest speaker in the sales classes. And the teacher goes, hey, Kevin, I've been doing that for like 5, 7 years. He goes, if you got your MBA, you could teach here. And I always wanted to do that. So I went and got my MBA in leadership, 14 months, and literally graduated in May and started teaching in that August. And I've been doing it for 6 years. And I mix between MBA and undergrad. I love teaching undergrad classes where it's sales classes. The last undergrad class I taught was sales prospecting. It was 32 classes on sales prospecting. And I bring in people from my network to guest speak. And that's some of the most powerful things you can do. I brought a guy that was on Shark Tank. He weekend. And this… and it was this college student, they loved it, right? And him and I met through the incubator thing, right? So I can always kind of… it goes all over the map and how we meet. I think we just got to do… actually, we could just do more of it, right? And I think there are a lot of people are doing a lot of it. I'm not saying that we're not, but I think we gotta get a lot more people in that mindset.

41:02 Scott Ingram: Yeah, yeah, that's so good, man. That sounds like a killer sales class.

41:07 Kevin Piket: Oh, it was fun. Jeb Blount, I used his book. So there's all sorts of… I was able to to choose the folks I wanted to bring in, which was even more fun. So I got to create the class.

41:15 Scott Ingram: Awesome, awesome, awesome. What about the flip side though? What do you find to be the most challenging part of sales for you today?

41:22 Kevin Piket: Time. I think, you know, there's so many things in my head. I just… my head is racing all the time with things I'd like to do and want to do and need to do. And it's just, you know, and I'm pretty organized when it comes to time management type stuff, but there's always just how do I effectively use my time better It's just because there's so much you can. And right now, you know, one of the things that's interesting is when you are at a top performing level, you got a lot of things going on, right? If you're not organized, that's going to be the downfall, right? They'll drop you down the ranks really fast. And just being better at my time management skills, even though it's something I think I'm strong in, I can get better.

41:57 Scott Ingram: Yeah, yeah. Well, that's probably the perfect transition into all of the routine stuff. So you could probably ask this next question of yourself? How do I ask the walk us through your day question?

42:09 Kevin Piket: Yes. What is my morning routine? What does it start with? My morning routine, right? So I get up between 5:30 and 6 o'clock every day. Now, if I go into the office, I leave by, you know, 5:30. But if I'm working from home, it's 5:30. I do some sort of cardio thing, right? So in the winter, because I'm in Chicago, it's cold, so I'm not going to walk outside. So I use an elliptical. And then now we're starting to get where I just walk, right? And this is my podcast time. So I'll go walk, you know, I don't know, 3, 4 miles You know, nothing crazy, but it just gets the blood flowing from that standpoint. And so when I get there, I get back, I cleaned up and, you know, I'm down probably about 6:45, 7 o'clock, and I start going through my LinkedIn, right? So that's kind of my first thing. LinkedIn is my homepage. So I start going through that type of stuff and just kind of sourcing through, you know, reading, learning. It's my learning time, you know, from 7 to about 7:45, because I drive my kids to school, again, intentionally, because I want to and I want that time. And then I get back about 8 o'clock. And 8 o'clock, my day hits with a lot of meetings. So my weekly schedule… so one thing I love about this company is we have a lot of internal meetings, but we do it in one day. So our Monday mornings is pretty much our meetings, and it's just back-to-back-to-back meetings. It's all internal type stuff. And I'm okay with that because now I've got the rest of the week to sell. And I've been in organizations where we've had meetings on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays. It's like you just don't get momentum going type of thing. So I really look at that as an admin day. My Monday is the internal meetings, admin day, just getting follow-up focus and all that type of stuff. My Tuesday through Friday is what I call revenue-generating activities. I'm meeting with prospects, I'm meeting with customers, I'm meeting with partners, I'm networking. We're starting to go live networking now, which is great, getting back into that type of thing. So I'm fully vaccinated, so I'm excited to get back out to those types of things. But I'm working those days and And so I'm very meticulous with my calendar. It's color coordinated. And the reality is I put prospecting as green and I had to look at my calendar. There's not enough green in my calendar. So I need to go find green, which is again, revenue-generating activities, prospects, customers, partners. Those are revenue-generating type meetings for me. So, you know, I fill my days up 4 or 5 meetings a day, sometimes more. I don't know about you, but I find in the Zoom world, people don't give you any chance to go to bathroom in between meetings. So it's like back to back to back. So I'm tending to get more meetings there. Starting to go live, you forget about the time, the drive time stuff. Like, wow, I don't do as many meetings. So I'm figuring that part out again as how do I make those drive times productive? So what I'm doing is I have my list of people I want to call while I'm going between the meetings and stuff. So just getting back into that routine has been fun.

44:36 Scott Ingram: Love it. Love it. So walk us through kind of the end of the day, right? So I've got a good sense of Monday is an admin day, Tuesday through Friday, meetings, meetings, meetings. How are you kind of winding things down and making that transition back into family time? Because you didn't only come from a large family, you have a large family.

44:55 Kevin Piket: Yes, I do. I have 4 kids. So we span the gauntlet there between 17 and 9 months. So, you know, it's quite a gauntlet. Yeah. So my last hour of my day, right? So it could be 4:30, 5:30. And keep in mind, when I ended my day before, I didn't get home till like 7 because of the drive. So now it's like, wow, I can actually be upstairs. You know, I have my office in the basement by 5:30. So literally that 4:30, 5:30 is recapping what I did that day, because it's important again for me to do what I say when I say I'm going to do it, right? So if there's any deliverables I need to get out, and then I'm also planning for the next day. You know, that whole methodology is, you know, plan the night before for the next day ahead of you. So that's why I understand there's no surprises. So that last hour is key for me to just knock off my list of things to do and making sure that I've got, you know, I'm doing everything I promise is getting done. And that's the time I do that.

45:40 Scott Ingram: Nice. Now, so is that strictly a daily process or do you also have kind of a weekly process that you're thinking about? Here's what's going to happen with the week ahead.

45:48 Kevin Piket: Yeah. So daily, and then Fridays is kind of that look for the next week, right? What do I got going? And I've, listen, I've had meetings and this is rare, but I've had meetings with prospects and partners on the weekends. And that's another thing that was interesting because, you know, I wasn't doing that before, but these were pretty large size deals. And then, you know, ultimately if I'm gonna take an hour or 2 away from my weekend, which is really with my kids and family and wife and everything, you know, I'm gonna take that hour or 2 in the week as well. So, you know, and that's the one thing about, I can do that now as a sales professional. I couldn't do that as a sales leader. Later, you know, because it wasn't my schedule. So I'm, I'm trading that off. Hey, if I got an hour meeting here, I'm gonna, you know, kick out an hour early so I can go, you know, go to my daughter's soccer practice just to watch it, right? And that to me is important to balance that out because you don't need to work 60 to 80 hours to do well. You just need to be productive in the hours you work.

46:35 Scott Ingram: Oh, there you go. There's gold in that quote. But also, I think the weekend thing is really interesting because I think a lot of executives… depends on kind of who you're selling to, and this maybe varies by industry a little bit, but particularly if you're engaging with entrepreneurs or kind of startup executives and folks in that space, we're all working a lot on the weekends. And, you know, because there's not as many meetings, there's not as many distractions, but it also means it's the perfect time to get somebody's attention. I was taught this when I was at Bazaarvoice by our CEO. He let me know that he's like, look, most executives almost universally are using… and they're really almost no different because you'll hear it in the conversations on this show. I don't think there's a very big difference between a top-performing sales professional and a C-level executive in a decent-sized organization. They're using Sunday afternoon, Sunday evening to prepare for the week ahead. So, it's an incredible opportunity. To get on their radar when they're not in the middle of wall-to-wall meetings with no bathroom breaks. They're not in the middle of other things coming at them. They're in a little bit more control. So your ability to kind of get onto their radar is so much higher than really any other time during the week.

47:57 Kevin Piket: Yeah, Sunday night's key for me. So Sunday I do 2 things. One, because I teach, I grade papers and assignments on Sunday, but that gets me into kind of a business mode. And then I'll, you know, put the kids, the younger kids to bed. My older kids would rather have their alone time as well. So it's a wonderful point in there. And then I would, I started working on stuff, right? I started getting ahead of the week and maybe, you know, if I put something to Sunday I need to do, but that Sunday night, you know, I take a couple hours to just get things done and get organized. I mean, you know, for me, I get the anxiety when I'm not organized, right? So I want to make sure that I am organized for the week ahead. And so those series of meetings I mentioned on Monday, well, those are meetings that we meet with our boss to talk about our pipeline type of stuff. We meet as an entire kind of company with the C-level folks to go through the pipeline. Right? So you got to be prepared for those meetings. You can't walk in there and say, hey, where's this deal at? I don't know. No, you got to know step by step where the deals are at. I always want a reputation to be, I'm always prepared. You know, I'm always ready to go and I always take the extra mile and do the types of things. And one of the things I've also done is like, you know, I have a couple really good sales engineers that I work with depending on the service we sell. And they had to join me on the weekend and I immediately sent out like a $25 Starbucks gift card to them. You know, thank you for taking time away from your family because I'm very conscious on that with other people as well. And stuff like that goes miles, you know, when you can do those types of things. We had a a prospect that I was talking about earlier that's being reeled in that, you know, we're kind of working on right now. They had their IT manager quit on them automatically. So we're trying to step in and help as we finalize contracts. And they had a server go down and the guy that was going to work on it was out of California. Well, I started getting calls at 6 in the morning Central Time. So, I mean, it's like early there, right? By the time 7 o'clock, it was 5:00 AM. So I said, listen, I apologize. I said, since my client woke you up early today, let's have the coffee on me. And I sent him a $25 Starbucks gift card for it. And it was like, wow. He's like, you didn't have to do that. I mean, but those types of things go a long way. And I think You got to take care of the people around you. So I'm thinking of that on Sunday nights too. And Sunday nights I also do my strategy on LinkedIn. What am I going to post that week? I'll look through my network. Who haven't I recommended? Because that's a great way to connect with your network as well. So I'm thinking through all that stuff on Sunday night. I'm a late night person and I get up early. Ironically enough, I'd never had a cup of coffee in my life. So I'm a self-generated energy type person when it comes to that stuff.

50:05 Scott Ingram: Love it. Love it. Well, I was going to ask what your 5 to 9 looks like, but it sounds like I need to ask about further into the evening than than that. What does kind of the after hours look like for you?

50:14 Kevin Piket: Yeah, so, so once I kind of stop around like the 5:30 timeframe, you know, it's about family. I'm driving my daughter to swim. She swims competitively, so I'm driving her to swim practice, driving there, you know, with a 9-month at home, you know, just with my wife and I. It's like, listen, we got 4 kids, and I get this because I grew up in a big family. She did not, so, so, but she loves it, right? And so we're doing a lot. It's all about the kids, right? Helping them out, you know, making sure they're doing the homework, doing all the stuff they need to do. And honestly, that, you know, that's a 5:30 to like about 9, 9:30, and And then, you know, the little ones are in bed and the older ones are in their rooms or doing whatever they're doing. My wife and I kind of sit down and, hey, you know, let's go through, you know, our schedule, your day, those kinds of things. And then like 9:30, 10 o'clock, I'm probably just jumping back on and, you know, just to, you know, learn. That's when I do a lot of my learning, like reading articles, read books, you know, those kinds of things. I got some books that, you know, I love reading and type stuff. It's kind of my learning time. So, because I think you have to do that and I can't do it during the workday, so I'm spending that night nighttime, right before I go to bed, either listen to a podcast, reading a book, reading articles, or doing something like that.

51:18 Scott Ingram: Awesome. And that is the perfect transition because I know you're going to just explode the show notes right now.

51:23 Kevin Piket: Oh yes.

51:23 Scott Ingram: What's, what's the information diet, Kevin?

51:25 Kevin Piket: All right, here we go. I wrote this down. This is wonderful.

51:27 Scott Ingram: Good.

51:28 Kevin Piket: You know that too. Me too. I will, I will. So from a book standpoint, there are 3 books that really have made a huge difference in my career, in my life. One of them is, and it's probably not as well known, but it's called Entrepreneurial DNA by Joe Abraham. I know Joe personally. The book is really focused on a DISC-type personality trait type thing, but he does it in a different way. It's a unique way where he actually… it's a story of 4 people that go through a journey together, and each one of them are one of those DISC characteristics type of thing. What it taught me was it really was the first book I read, and I read it over a decade ago, that helped me understand the person in front of me much better than… trust me, I took the DISC, I took the Myers-Briggs, all those types of things. But it never clicked for me until I read this book because I think it was done in a way, and I have high ADHD, so it clicked in a way where I was able to follow the story in a sense where it made sense to me. I've used that book and I talk about it all the time and I recommend it all the time because it's a great book for people to really understand why people do what they do. So that's one. The second one probably will not be a surprise to you, but it's The Go-Giver by Bob Burg. Great book. I mean, it was… I was reading this thing going, yep, I do that, I do that. Oh, I gotta do this, I gotta do that. It was just kind of like, it was one of those books that just kind of aha moment for it. Loved it. And then the last book I read, and this is someone you've had on your show, Todd Caponi's The Transparency Sale. Love it. And I think in today's world, it's so fitting because I love being transparent. I get accused of being direct. I always kind of like to say I'm professionally blunt. You know, to me, it's about being transparent and admitting, hey, listen, I've done this with deals. That one big deal I talked about earlier with the CEO, me, I screwed something up. And I told him, I said, that's totally my fault. And I screwed that up. And the guy said, you know, Kevin, that's refreshing because you're the first salesperson I've ever worked with that actually didn't blame it on somebody else in the organization for the screw-up. You actually took responsibility. This goes a long way for me. You know, because that's important to me, right? You got to own up to your mistakes. So those are the 3 books. So the podcast, obviously yours, the stories and the tips, right? I always say the stories is an investment because it's a lot longer than what most podcasts are. But boy, it's an investment that pays off. And it's one that you got to do. And the tips I love because they're just fast tips, right? And I'll listen to a like 4 or 5 in a row, you know, kind of jumping out there and stuff. The other 2 podcasts, 30 Minutes to President's Club, Nick Cegelski and Armand, that's great. Those guys are funny. I enjoy listening to what they do. And, you know, if I don't have a long amount of time, the 30 Minutes to President's Club is great because it's a short, short podcast. And then the last one is Make It Happen Mondays with John Barrows. I don't know if you've heard his podcast or not, but, you know, John, I think we're about the same timeframe age-wise. So I really love his '90s references because they hit home with me quite a bit, but he's got some really good guests on there. And he's, he's pretty blunt when it comes to things, but, you know, he's spot on with a lot of stuff.

54:13 Scott Ingram: Awesome. Awesome. All great stuff. Yeah, I've been on both shows, familiar with both. What Nick and Armand are doing is in a lot of ways like the evolution of this show. They were, they were big fans of this. And I think their show is… I could say if I had more time, I would have had a shorter podcast. That's kind of what they're doing. So, you know, we go, we go super deep and long here, and 2-hour conversations are totally fine. Mine. They have done a great job of, you know, doing the work to get it condensed down into 30 minutes. So yeah, big fan of their show. They're doing great stuff with that and threatening to have me on again soon, so we'll see what happens there.

54:48 Kevin Piket: I love listening to that. I don't know, listen, you, you have too many good things to say in only 30 minutes. That's the challenge. We need to have you on longer. It's got to be like 45 minutes of President's Club or something.

54:57 Scott Ingram: Well, that's, that's how I feel about this show. I'm like, there's no way, you know. It just, it takes time to pull this out into, you know, I, I think it is deconstructing world-class sales performers. I can't do that in 30 minutes. And I don't want to take it out, right? I think the process and being able to listen to, wait, how did you get from there to there? Like those details in the middle to me matter. So at this point we're preaching to the choir because, you know, we're roughly an hour in. They're all in. It's all good. So I don't have to, I don't have to justify myself for the folks that are still listening now.

55:29 Kevin Piket: No, no. If they're here, they get it.

55:31 Scott Ingram: So that's great. That is a fantastic set. What about your kind of sales tech stack? What are the tools and apps that you can't live without?

55:40 Kevin Piket: Yeah, so this is probably no surprise, but LinkedIn, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, I have both of those and we actually utilize it with Seamless AI. It's all 3 together in a sense and how I search and do research with that. So those are, those are key. Outlook, as crazy as that and simple as that sounds, but that's my calendar, right? I mean, it's on my… in fact, it took a while, but I got my wife to finally put in a joint calendar because she's like, I don't work for you. And I say, hey, can you put that in the calendar? But now we have this whole family calendar 'cause it's like, you know, how do we know who's going to what? And again, it's all color coordinated on my phone so I can, I know which activities are what from that type of thing. So, and then Teams, Teams has really evolved into a great tool for us 'cause we utilize it obviously for the video side. It is our phone, but it also is our chat, right? And that's important. So, you know, like a Slack obviously, but we use Teams and it's our internal chat and how we do things quite often within our company. It's like the lifeline and, you know, sharing documents out of SharePoint. So we're a Microsoft shops. So we're obviously utilizing all those types of tools, but those are the main tools that I use to be productive in my day.

56:42 Scott Ingram: Perfect. Perfect. Now, Kevin, do you subscribe to a particular sales philosophy?

56:47 Kevin Piket: Yeah. And, you know, every time I hear this question, it's funny because I'm going to give you the same answer everybody else gives you. Bits and pieces of a lot, right? You know, to me, you know, I'm never an all-in on one philosophy, but, you know, I believe from a core standpoint, it goes back to… and this is something that Sean created… was the be prepared, be organized, be productive mindset. And to me, that's the core base of what you need to be as a sales professional. But, you know, when it comes to different types of, you know, philosophies or, you know, banter or different… I don't, you know, I take bits and pieces of things that I read, I listen to, and I watch and incorporate them, you know, my style into my world. So I would say it's a little bit of a bunch.

57:25 Scott Ingram: Let's do style first, and then I want to ask you about prepared, organized, productive, right? So what is your style that you apply to all bits and pieces?

57:34 Kevin Piket: For me, you know, I think it's about discovery. If you don't do discovery well, you're wasting time. You can waste lots of time if you don't ask the right questions and getting over the fact of just, you know, being nervous to ask questions. I always say, listen, you got to earn the right to want them to do business with you. But how you earn the right is really how you ask questions and engage with them early in the process. If you're doing thought-provoking questions, you know, if you're, you know, I always say like, you know, walk me through, tell me more, share with me, that gets them some talking versus yes/no type questions and really help me understand. You know, I say a lot, and, you know, again, I throw the just curious out quite a bit to learn, right? And just generally wanna learn, right? And just understand that, hey, before I get… and I always tell people, you know, when we get on meetings and you've probably done this, hey, walk me through your stuff. Well, actually, I'd like to take a step back and I wanna learn about you because we do a lot of different things and I don't wanna waste your time with stuff that doesn't apply. They're like, okay. So I said, so I'd like to ask you some questions and then I'll boom, go through my questions. And I always say, you know, from a cybersecurity standpoint, can you walk me through, you know, what you guys are doing today from a security standpoint. And I've had people, you know, walk me through a long list. I had one guy a couple of weeks ago says nothing. Next question. I think it was just being active in the conversation and, you know, how do you do that? Right. So if you were to say some things to me and say, Scott, it sounds like you're, you know, this, this, and this is happening. I'm repeating back to you what you said to me. That was something I wasn't doing before that. And I started doing that after that. And all of a sudden it did 2 things. One, you know, you say, okay, well, you actually heard what I said. Said. And 2, it's kind of reinforcing in my head what they said. So, you know, from a memory standpoint, I'm a note-taker, but sometimes you can be in the moment taking notes and you miss things, right? So a lot of the times, especially when we do Zoom or team calls, hey, I'd love to record this because I want to be in the conversation versus writing notes. Are you fine with that? I can send you a link to it afterwards. And most people are like, yeah, that's fine, or I don't care, you know, type of thing. So to me, it's being active in the moment and really just doing something as simple as repeating back to them what, what they're saying and just trying to clarify and bracket what they're doing so you fully understand it. And it also gives an opportunity. Yeah, that's right. But I forgot about this, this, or this. That also means important to us.

59:41 Scott Ingram: Nice. Nice. So I want to come back to, you said the core of it is kind of the sales integrity philosophy around being prepared, organized, and productive. Can you either frame up each of those pieces or give an example of like the day-to-day application of those elements? Like, what does that actually mean for you?

59:59 Kevin Piket: Yeah, and let me take a step back on how we got that. And so Sean did a huge survey of hundreds, hundreds of sales professionals, and just truly, you know, the question was, in every organization you have a sales team, right? And you have a bunch of folks in the middle, but then you have a pretty good-sized gap, and then you have the top performers. And we wanted to focus on why was there a gap? What were those people at the top doing so much different than the rest of the group? And, you know, what we had found was, you know, it was astoundingly simple. The reality is those people were always prepared, they were always organized, and they're always productive. And what does that mean, right? From a preparation standpoint, they were meticulous on being prepared for every interaction they have, whether it's a phone call, meeting with a prospect, a customer, a partner. They did the research, they put the work in. And then today, I think it's so much easier with LinkedIn and other, other tools out there that you can do that, but they were never not prepared. Prepared, right? They walked into every pipeline meeting, they could tell you everything that's happening in the deals because they put the effort and they put the time in from a preparation standpoint. Organized. It was all about time management. That's where I got, you know, if you were to look at my calendar, it's like literally color-coded it to drive times in there, admin time, I call them, you know, the revenue-generating activities. You know, I put that in there and in there is my task list of things I need to get done in that certain timeframe. But everything is color-coordinated. I can look at it, I can tell you what I'm doing from that point. They were meticulous about their time management. They were meaningful about what they were doing with their time. And then from a standpoint of being productive, it was, it was all about having productivity, productive conversations. It was about, you know, being focused on things that matter, you know, within their day. And listen, you need to have fun and you need to be a good team player, but sometimes people do more of that than they do of everything else and just being meaningful and intentional in your productivity and where you spent your time and your effort.

1:01:45 Scott Ingram: Yeah, no, that's, that's such good stuff. I'm gonna bring Brandon Fluharty back onto the show here pretty soon. Um, one, he's just beating his own records by ridiculous margins. Like, the stuff that he's done recently is ridiculous. But the way that he's doing it and his thoughts on, on productivity and rest and some of the things that he's doing are, are absolutely fantastic. So looking forward to coming back to that. Kevin, you are doing a lot, right? You've got a, got a big family to manage. You've got a lot of extracurriculars. What motivates all of this? Like, what's driving you?

1:02:21 Kevin Piket: You know, providing for my family is the number one thing, right? And making sure that, you know, sales is an up and down world, right? You're up and you can make a lot of money, you know, but just being able to provide for my family is extremely important and helping people, right? And like I had mentioned earlier, I believe in the philosophy of paying it forward. And I had really good mentors young in my career and still to this day that I reach out to and I, you know, bounce ideas off of even at this point in my life, you know, you can always learn, but that's what drives me. Me, just helping people. And everything I do is intentional to how can this help my family? And, you know, how can I help others? I literally, part of the stuff I do when I go on LinkedIn is like, hey, I saw this job opening, let me connect you with somebody else. You know, that type of thing is I just like to help people. I just, it's a, it's the fire inside me. Right. And I think being in sales, that's kind of what we do. We help people make decisions. We help people, you know, when they work with us, we help them make their jobs easier, their lives easier, that kind of stuff.

1:03:15 Scott Ingram: So to me, that's been the driving Yeah, say more about the mentors that have impacted you. How are you leveraging your mentors? What do those relationships look like? Walk me through all of it.

1:03:25 Kevin Piket: Yeah, well, first of all, I appreciate their patience because I ask a lot of questions, and I always was like, you know, tell me about this, share with me. You know, anytime I could do a drive time, like even with my managers in the past, they've been helpful. My dad was, you know, it's funny, my dad is really good at the sales leadership. My mom was very good at the sales, so I had 2 people in the family that I could look to about sales and leadership and how to do those types of things. So they've obviously been big mentors. Sean has been a phenomenal mentor for me because he just, he's really good at what he does and he gets it. And he's, you know, everywhere he's been, he's been successful. You know, he's kind of like that turnaround specialist type guy and he just understands those things. So it's just having those conversations and just being able to say, hey, here's what happened today. What would you have done? Right. And I still talk to, I mean, reach out to another gentleman, Barry Salzman, who's been just an impactful mentor for me throughout my career. We just happened to meet at a trade show and happened to fly back on the same flight. That's how our friendship created. And it's just, he is one of the smartest people I know when it comes to networking and building relationships and just building your network in general. I mean, it's like everyone's like a couple degrees away from this guy and just understanding those types of things and just having those conversations and just being allowed to ask questions. And I think what's made the most impact is they were willing to do it. They were willing to have that conversation.

1:04:39 Scott Ingram: Yeah, yeah, good stuff, good stuff. All right, I'm so fired up to hear your thoughts on this. Is there something you believe that the average sales professional would think is crazy?

1:04:50 Kevin Piket: They think my calendar is crazy. Like, I will share that with people, they're like, this is nuts. They go, I've never… I mean, they're like, there's no way I can possibly do this type of thing. I'm like, really? Because I kind of feel like, I kind of feel like it isn't nuts. But they look at that and then a lot of people say, I have no idea how you do all this stuff. You do. You know, you're involved in a lot of things. And, you know, part of me is like, if I'm not, I get bored, right? And so I always have to have a couple things going on. And there's times where I listen, I do too much, and I… then I'm like, okay, I gotta track some things back a little bit. But, you know, I, I have what's called a helium hand. So like when somebody asks for a volunteer, it's up before I realize it. So sometimes I gotta sit on my hand and, and do that type of stuff. But that's the thing is people are like, you know, it's that whole combination of how do you do all this in, you know, in a work week? And I mean, does that even happen? And so they think that's pretty crazy.

1:05:36 Scott Ingram: Yeah, I've heard that.

1:05:37 Kevin Piket: Yeah, yeah. So you're in the same boat. Yeah, I do more than I do.

1:05:40 Scott Ingram: But I mean, at the end of the day, I mean, it does come down to the productivity and having a process and making it a priority. I mean, I have somewhat of a similar reaction. I'm like, well, I don't know, like, it's not, it's not magic. Like, I care about this stuff. It matters to me. And I'm gonna get after it. I'm gonna find a way to do it. And I think it really comes down to, like, are you really making the most of each moment? Yeah.

1:06:04 Kevin Piket: Yeah. And you got to be in the moment, right? And trust me, there are times where I'm like, I'm doing too much and I got to scale back and prioritize with that type of stuff. But I, you know, it's just, you know, a lot of the stuff I do now is around helping young people and I have a lot of passion around that.

1:06:17 Scott Ingram: Awesome. Awesome. What about the flip side? Is there something the average sales professional believes that you think is crazy?

1:06:23 Kevin Piket: That 100% of my business can come from cold calls.

1:06:25 Scott Ingram: Cold calling.

1:06:26 Kevin Piket: I believe in a blend. You know, it's not a part of my blend today, but I believe in a blend. And I think when you go all in on one thing, you're setting yourself up for failure.

1:06:35 Scott Ingram: Yeah, I think that's fair. And it gets away from the, you know, this is dead, that is dead. Like, nothing's dead, right? They're all useful in different ways at different times, you know. And, and you've just got to kind of find a way to use your thing and figure out what are you most effective at. There's some people who are just so incredible on the phone, and that's the greatest tool in the world for them. More power to them, right? I think you and I are much more wired in terms of, you know, like, no, I've got a ton of relationships I can have, you know, Kevin can introduce me to that person.

1:07:06 Kevin Piket: Yep. No, and again, I'm not bashing cold calling because I did a lot of it. I'm just saying at my point in my career, it's not one of the tools in the tool belt for me.

1:07:14 Scott Ingram: Yeah. What have been either the most important decisions you've made or the lessons you've had to learn to get to the level that you're at today?

1:07:24 Kevin Piket: My dad has a saying, don't get caught up in your long underwear. Now, for the people up north, you get it because we wear long underwear. It's cold. And really, the point of that is that we, we basically… less is more. And we basically do a lot of self-inflicted wounds, you know, where we get in our own way. And, you know, one of the things I had to learn early in my career was to not get in my own way, right? Because I get so passionate, I get so excited about things that I tend not to to shut up. And I learned that early in my career that I need to shut up, you know, and it's okay to shut up, right? When somebody says, hey, I wanna… I'm ready to buy. No, no, I haven't even talked about all these other things. Yeah, like, yeah, boom. So he always says, Kevin, don't, don't get caught up in your long underwear. Just be focused and, you know, in the moment. And you don't always have to do more, you know, when, when the deal's done type of scenario. So that to me was… that sticks out quite a bit.

1:08:12 Scott Ingram: Nice. And in all the work that you're doing with the younger professionals and the What's the most common advice that you're giving to them?

1:08:21 Kevin Piket: Patience. And this is a generation that wants everything right now. And, you know, the fun thing about this class, and I don't know if you're even familiar, it's like an Uncharted Learning, it's a national program, and they actually get to build a company. It's not a fake one. They actually build a company from the ground up. The one I'm mentoring now, a company called Polar Pockets, 3 outstanding female entrepreneurs, students. I mean, I'm telling you, this is the best team I've mentored in 5 years, and I've had some good ones. And we have a conversation weekly about patience. And I'll jump on a… I was doing video conferences before we were doing video conferences because they have the school set up with that. So to me, I'm like, let's jump on it. It's a 20-minute meeting. We're going to be very focused and we're going to knock down these things we need to do. And it's a lot of conversation about just being patient with the process and realizing things take time to evolve and to understand, and it's okay to fail. And I think the problem is that they don't think it's okay to fail. I said, listen, they're building a product, right? I said, you're going to have 10 versions of this before you get to the the final one. They thought they were gonna hit it out of the park on the first one. I said, no, no, it's this, this, and this. And so the reality to them is just preaching patience. And I do it across the board with all of them. And I'm actually going to be next Friday going to be teaching a class on sales and really more or less about personal branding and, you know, how to sell yourself and do those types of things. So, you know, I do one on LinkedIn. I have a couple of those on my LinkedIn page where the recordings are. I love doing that. I'm going to be doing… I had a teacher reach out to me from another school. Hey, can you do one LinkedIn, how you build your profile session. So I'm doing that on the 18th for that type of stuff. And the best thing about it is Dayna loves this, my boss. He's like, this is you, this is your personal brand. This is why we brought you here. You know, I mean, like a lot of this stuff, there's a lot of mentors. I'm actually working on a deal with somebody that I met through the mentor networking session within the school district. And it was just, you know, it was an unintentional thing that turned into a great thing, right? So to me it's like, and it's always a passion story because I have it on my LinkedIn. People always want to ask about that. People love hearing about those, you know, how are you helping kids, right? How are you helping students? Students type of thing.

1:10:15 Scott Ingram: Yeah. I love that. So, I mean, we've, we've spent a lot of time talking about the networking side of things, but I feel like personal branding kind of goes hand in hand with that. So I'm not going to ask you to teach the whole class, but give us, give us kind of the highlights. Like, how do you think about personal branding? How can we as sales professionals be productively acting on, on that, those ideas?

1:10:36 Kevin Piket: Yeah. And I'll share a story with you. So I was actually, you know, 2 years ago or 3 years ago, I was teaching in the classroom. We were talking about branding and personal brand to the students. I don't know why, but the packaged PowerPoint they had, the example was the Marlboro example, which is smoking. I'm like, when I'm in the classroom, and you've probably seen them, I'll take pictures and I'll share, and I'll share those stories on LinkedIn. I'm like, I don't want my personal brand to have a slide in the back with a cigarette manufacturer talking to high school students. I said, that's my personal brand. No way do I want to mix those 2 things together. So I rewrote the entire entire curriculum for that one and use Nike as an example or something. I think we should use Nike as the example for that one. But to me, your personal brand is kind of your LinkedIn. I tell them, I said, your profile is you, right? It's what people… when you see mine, I have a summary statement that really talks about my about, it's about me, right? My passions, what I like to do. And I leave it with my motto, which is, feedback is a gift. It's up to you how you want to unwrap it. And that's the two ways. I like giving feedback. I love getting feedback, whether it's good, bad, or ugly. I always tell people, tell me what you feel. And, you know, so to me, that LinkedIn profile is your brand. It's what you… it's who you are. It's what you are. And you want to make sure that everything you have on there, you're gonna be proud of and everything you have on there is accurate. Right. You don't want to put lies on there. You don't want to put things on there that are going to embarrass you or the company that you're part of and those types of things. So building out that profile with very intense focus on who you are. Right. And to me, extends to the things you post about. And I can't remember who it was and you probably will, but they talked about I make 3 posts every 2 weeks, you know, on LinkedIn instead of flooding with multiple posts. So I've taken that philosophy and I have 3 categories. I post something about my job, I post something about sales, right? So that's when I'll repost your podcast or some other things. And then I do a post about kind of my involvement. Which one do you think is the least viewed out of the 3 categories?

1:12:35 Scott Ingram: The one about your job.

1:12:37 Kevin Piket: What about my job? I mean, it's like ridiculously 2 to 1. It's getting better. But, you know, it's like, so the sales ones, but the one that people love the most is like, hey, here's what I'm doing. Doing in the community type stuff, because that's who I am. People are like, well, that's who you are, Kevin. That's your brand. And then you just parlay into a conversation about, hey, what do you do? It's not like immediate business comes out of this stuff, but these are long-term plays, which by the way, are all paying off for me now. A lot of people are coming to me, oh my God, where you're at now, this is great. I can refer this type of stuff. Because I went upstream a little bit. So we're in that upper mid-market. We go after companies that are $50 million to $1.5 billion in revenue. Whereas before I was more in that lower mid-market type of scenario. And people are like, I have actually, I can make referrals for you. I feel good because you've helped me so much. I want to be able to help you. So that's been a huge part of my success is that what I do now, and I've done a lot with, you know, I used to do CRM process consulting or sales process consulting. So now with our CM practice, all these things are coming together at one wonderful time where all of a sudden you can really tap into my network more than I ever could anywhere else I've ever been.

1:13:36 Scott Ingram: That's awesome. That's awesome. So that's the early stage advice. What about folks that are further into their career and, you know, they're just at an inflection point, you know, maybe, maybe they're struggling a little bit, maybe they're doing fine, but they're like, yeah, but I know there's another gear and I'm just not sure how to, how to get there. What do you tell them?

1:13:56 Kevin Piket: Get back to the basics, right? And, you know, do an honest assessment of where you're at, not just that I'm doing well, you know, really look at, you know, everything you do. And so one of the things that I think is important is you have to have an always-be-learning mentality. That doesn't end when you're young in your career. I still actively learn at my age and where I'm at. I've been doing this for over 25 years. I literally actively learn stuff. Be okay with that. And I think there's a difference between a job and a career. And, you know, your career is being a sales professional. You know, I hate sales rep. I hate sales. You're a sales professional. It's acting professional and doing what professionals do, which is put the time and the effort in. My guess is somebody that's in a rut, and I've been there, is you got to take an honest assessment of where you're at. And you got to be okay to make some changes.

1:14:41 Scott Ingram: I love it. I love it. So along those lines, I mean, this is kind of the perfect question, and I'm really interested in your perspective, just given how many of these episodes you've listened to. What do you want to know the most about top sellers in other organizations? Or maybe there's something that I'm just somehow not asking on this podcast. You're like, God, I wish Scott would ask this of all these folks. You know what?

1:15:04 Kevin Piket: Here's what I love. Love… I would love to, you know, get in a room with these folks and just listen to their stories, right? And just, you know, I love storytelling. I do a lot of sales through storytelling, and I just love listening to them because I'm always able to pick some things up that they might not even intended to be picked up that I'm finding, you know, very interesting in, in what they do. And I just like to know, you know, because listen, you've had so many excellent, excellent guests on here, and I've learned something from every single one I've listened to. And I learned the most when they share stories. And it's just like, you know, walk me through those types of things. And I'd love to just be able to just pick the brain of those individuals. And there are things that I don't know. I don't know it, right? So, you know, by when you listen to stories, you hear things that you wouldn't normally hear in a normal question-answer type stuff.

1:15:51 Scott Ingram: I love that feedback. I think that, you know, it's, it's something I really struggle with, with, with this show, right? Because we, we want to get to so many of the actionable, tangible things, but at the same time, it is called Sales Success Stories. Like, we, we love to get to those stories stories. And, you know, one of the things I, I may work on a little bit more is really getting into some of the deal stories too, right? I think those are often really instructive of just the ins and outs. Here's the 3 points in the deal where I thought I'd lost it, the 2 times they told me no, that we had to kind of break through. Do you have one of those that you're sitting on right now that we can talk through?

1:16:28 Kevin Piket: Yeah, I'm infamous for if there's meat on the bone, I'm not death stop, right? I mean, I don't take, you know, I don't, you know, a lot of sales reps will quit and I don't, I go extra with that. And that's kind of what I was talking about earlier about making sure I exhaust all the tools in the tool belt, right? And one in particular was the person, we were on a call, the person, you know, wasn't really liking what we heard, what he heard. And it just, you know, we kind of did some self-inflicted wounds. We overcomplicated some things. And, you know, the reality was there was some damage there and we were at almost at the finish line. And that's where, you know, I had to do a lot of extra work. And that's the one where I was talking about we got our CEO involved with it and did those types of things. It was just a matter of this guy, you know, in the MSP world…

1:17:11 Scott Ingram: Kevin, define MSP real quick.

1:17:12 Kevin Piket: Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, managed service providers. That's our technology world. We got too many acronyms. So in a managed service provider world, you know, if they're moving from one to the next, it's probably because it was a bad experience, right? So I always say that we're technically like that first date after the divorce, you know, and we're going to pay for the sins of the past. And You know, he wanted very clear answers and we weren't being very clear. And so ultimately I reset it, you know, I gave clear, concise answers to it, and then I backed it up with our CEO's guarantee on it. And that's what put it over the top. And the reality was he wanted to, he wanted to feel comfortable that we weren't going to do the same things that brought him to this point of wanting to make a change. And ultimately hearing from the top was what put it over the top.

1:17:53 Scott Ingram: That's great. I think those are sometimes the easiest deals, right, is when all of the wounds are just very fresh and raw and they're, they're in the emotion. It's like, gosh, if we could just solve these things. I think the… sometimes you have to educate them a little bit on, okay, but let's make sure, especially if it's competitive, right, because everybody's in that same type of situation, like, oh, sure, like, of course we can stop this hurting, but also getting them to like step back from that emotion just a little bit and go, wait, let's make sure that we're also thinking about this a little bit more holistically. Not solving those problems and introducing new ones.

1:18:30 Kevin Piket: Yeah. And going back to what I was talking about is that you do what you say you're gonna do when you can say you do it. That is where you start to build trust.

1:18:36 Scott Ingram: Yeah.

1:18:37 Kevin Piket: With them. And, and, you know, and I don't think it's intentional by a lot of people. They, you know, just whatever, something gets in the way and they don't, you know, get the thing done by the deadline they said they're gonna do it by. That's a big deal. Like when you say you get something to somebody by 5 PM, you're either getting them something or you're saying, hey, this is what happened, something came up as far as I need more information internally, I will get it to you by this day at this time. Because if you're not doing one of those two things, you're just saying ignoring them and you're telling them that you don't care, which is not really what's happening, but that's the impression you give and perception's reality.

1:19:06 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Yeah. Great stuff. Great stuff. So we went through all of my standard stuff. Kevin, is there something that you were hoping to share that, that I didn't get to some other, other ways or some other important topic that we need to, we need to dig into?

1:19:22 Kevin Piket: I think, you know, we could talk forever on how you build relationships and how you do those types of things. I, you know, always would say, you know, everybody you interact with, you is somebody that could be an impactful person in your life. And just, you know, and not everybody is, but, you know, figure out a way if they are or they aren't. But I think, you know, the biggest advice I'll give people and especially young folks in their career is just have conversations with people, be willing to be open to conversations, just build that network, right? And just, and help people, right? 'Cause that's the best, you know, too many times, you know, I meet somebody and like, what can you do for me? I'm like, well, that's not how it works, right? I will do something for you, but now you're kind of making me like not want to do something for you, right? So, you know, it just naturally happens and I'm, and be thinking, right? Be active in conversations because when I'm literally talking to somebody and they mention this, this, this, I'm like, hey, I should introduce you to this person, or, I should introduce you to that person. You need to talk to this person. This pain point, hey, I can't solve that, but I know somebody I can refer you to that would be wonderful. You would do that? Yeah, absolutely. Let me make the introduction and do that type of thing. Always be present in those conversations because there's so many things you can do if you just listen that you can help people with.

1:20:25 Scott Ingram: Yeah, that's great. One thing I meant to call out earlier that I think is important just from an an etiquette perspective is ask permission before you make introductions. Yes. Because I get this a lot and it is just, it's irritating, right? Because if somebody does make an introduction and they haven't asked me first, now there's an obligation on me that I might not want.

1:20:44 Kevin Piket: Yep.

1:20:45 Scott Ingram: So that's not helping you. But if you ask, you know, 9 times out of 10, it's like, yeah, I'm happy to help, you know, happy to do whatever we can. But it's an important step in the process.

1:20:54 Kevin Piket: Yeah. And it's also where you get the opportunity that, hey, I haven't talked to you in a while either. So exactly, I'd love to chat with you as well. Exactly.

1:20:59 Scott Ingram: You know, type of thing.

1:20:59 Kevin Piket: So to me, it's, it's I agree, because there are times when I'll just get a blind intro and just naturally I'll take the call because I, you know, that's just my personality. But the reality is there's nothing in this, you know, there's nothing I can do to help this person. I mean, they're wanting our business and I'm like, I'm just not in a position to give you that, you know, type of scenario. And it's like they go right for that ask within, you know, within 30 seconds of the call. Here's what I can do to help you. I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa. I go, you're talking to the wrong person. And, you know, again, the natural coach coach in me. Like, when I get those kind of emails, when I get that, I want to coach them. Hey, let me just explain to you, did you do any research? Because you… if you did, you know, you're trying to sell me services that we actually do. Oh, you know, and I get, you know, the time factor comes into it, but that's what drives me crazy about cold calls, because it's not allowed to have that time because you kind of look foolish when you're trying to call somebody. You're like, literally, we're your competitor, how do you not know that? You know, type of thing.

1:21:50 Scott Ingram: So funny. I think the lesson there is connect and pitch sucks regardless Oh my God, unfortunately seeing more and more of it.

1:21:57 Kevin Piket: Yeah, it's just like, and I don't know, like, hey, you as the VP of sales. Yeah, that was like a couple gigs ago. I have zero ambition to do that right now. So you know, it's so for me it's easy to say no, but then they like don't stop. Well, what about this? What about this? I'm like, listen, I'm being nice the first time. I'm telling you right now, there is nothing I can do to help you, unfortunately, and there's nothing I want to do now at this point because you're overly pushy in this scenario.

1:22:19 Scott Ingram: Right. I wonder. I mean, just connecting dots through this conversation, I wonder how much of that is. Goes back to the patience thing, right? If it's, if it's generationally, you know, it's, it's, hey, we want this right now, we're going to push… let it breathe.

1:22:33 Kevin Piket: Yes.

1:22:33 Scott Ingram: You know, like, build a little bit of relationship first, ask some freaking questions, you know, make sure you understand what you're going to lean into, because then it becomes natural to go into, oh hey, you know, here's how I think we might be able to help with that, be of interest. Like, that works. It doesn't work if you No.

1:22:52 Kevin Piket: And I get an email a week about how they can help us with our VAT taxes. I'm like, we don't do anything international. We don't sell hardwood really. We're a services company. You would know that if you actually looked at our homepage. But I mean, I'm just like, I only knew what VAT taxes were because I did sell international one time. So it's like, we had international stuff, we had to deal with that. But I'm like, most people don't even know what the heck that is type of scenario.

1:23:18 Scott Ingram: So, right, right. So this is going to be the last because otherwise I feel like this is going to turn into like grumpy old get off my lawn thing.

1:23:26 Kevin Piket: But no, we are, we are heading there.

1:23:28 Scott Ingram: Bonkers right now is the, oh, we're a LinkedIn lead gen agency and it's always connect and pitch. And it's like, so what you're trying to sell me is the garbage that you're doing right now? You want me to pay you to do this to other people? Like, are you kidding?

1:23:45 Kevin Piket: That is like a big one. And it's like, you know, I'm like, you gotta be kidding me. I'm like, what are you even talking about? I'm like, no, I'm not interested. I'll tell you, here's the best one I got. And I'll leave the person's name out of it. It says, hi Kevin, I'm blank. And I'm also an enthusiast from the United States. Just came across your profile and I wanted to share something you as a senior executive might be interested in. I'd love to connect and share my learnings. I have no idea what enthusiast… I mean, I don't even know what that means. And I'm like, I mean, like, I have this one saved because this is like… I use this in my class when I teach. I'm like, I don't even know what this is, you know? And it's like, an enthusiast from the United States. Well, that pretty much hopefully sums up everybody in the United States, right? Yeah.

1:24:30 Scott Ingram: All right, all right, we're totally getting too grumpy. We gotta, we gotta pull up.

1:24:34 Kevin Piket: We are.

1:24:34 Scott Ingram: We're gonna, we're gonna go into some positivity And why don't we close it out like we always do, right? So there's lots and lots that we talked about, but we're going to try and boil this down into an actionable challenge. So what would you encourage our listener to do over the course of the next 1 to 2 weeks to improve themselves, improve their results, and have better outcomes?

1:24:53 Kevin Piket: So I put a lot of thought into this because I think there's a lot of things you can do. And I think this one kind of goes to that core of getting back to the basics, right? So track everything you do for 1 week or 2 weeks, and everything you're doing during your day, every meeting, every call, all that, just track and basically write it down, put it into 2 categories. One is revenue-generating activities, and the other one is not revenue-generating activities. And you got to be very honest with yourself, and you put the items in one of those 2 columns. And at the end of it, see where you're spending your most time. Is it on revenue-generating activities or is it not? And I did that exercise myself. That's how I got to where I do the things I do, is because I realized I was spending too much time on non-revenue-generating activities? And I think if you have that honest conversation with yourself and then all of a sudden, if you can get to like 80% of your day in that revenue-generating bucket, you're going to find you're going to be a lot more productive than you are today.

1:25:43 Scott Ingram: Awesome. Let's just be really explicit, though. Like, what do you consider those revenue-generating activities to be?

1:25:49 Kevin Piket: Yes. Making calls, prospect meetings, customer meetings, partner meetings, anything that will lead you to revenue in a sense. Right. Not internal meetings. So if you're having too many internal meetings, just, you know, water cooler talk, right? And just, you know, and that's probably less now that we're remote, but, you know, playing video games during the day. I've seen that, you know, unfortunately watching television, just being distracted at home doing, you know, the things at home gives you like doing laundry, you know, do all those kinds of stuff. You're doing all that stuff during, because there's only so many revenue generating hours in a day. And I mean, where you can actually have a conversation with somebody where they're not upset with you calling at 9 o'clock at night, right? So maximizing those hours. Is that helpful?

1:26:27 Scott Ingram: It is. I want to get into the gray area though. So what… where do you put prep and research?

1:26:33 Kevin Piket: Prep and research is going to lead you to revenue.

1:26:35 Scott Ingram: Okay.

1:26:36 Kevin Piket: I think what I'm, you know, referring to is I think there's a lot of time people waste in their day on things that aren't work-related. And that's what you got to take an honest view at yourself. And I think when we work from home, it became so much easier. I'll take a quick break to do laundry. I'll quickly, you know, do this or do that. I gotta run this Because when you're in the office, you don't have that luxury to do those things. So I think that's an important thing in the office. On the flip side, it's like, hey, I've just spent the last hour and a half, you know, shooting the shit about the Bears game on Monday, you know, or whatever it is type of thing. So those kind of activities, and I've seen a lot of people spend a lot of time in those activities.

1:27:09 Scott Ingram: Yeah.

1:27:10 Kevin Piket: Now they struggle.

1:27:11 Scott Ingram: What, what about an internal meeting?

1:27:12 Kevin Piket: Well, this is, you know, so this is… this could get me in trouble. I think most internal meetings are kind of a waste of time. I read a study that says that no meeting should be more than 40 45 minutes. If they're going longer than 45 minutes, you've lost everybody from an internal meeting standpoint. I think internal meetings that have no agenda are a recipe for disaster. When I ran meetings, I always had an agenda. If we ended early, we ended early. I've been in a lot of meetings where, oh, we're 15 minutes ahead. Well, good. What else do you want to talk about? No, no. Let everybody go. Get us out of here. They do a nice job here. We're very focused on what we're trying to accomplish in the meetings we have. Built in those, those bathroom breaks in between them and stuff, which is nice. Because most people in the Zoom world, Beck, you know, you're back to back for 4 hours straight, you never have a break type of thing. So internal meetings, if they don't have an agenda, I always get nervous. And I put agendas on my prospect meetings, my customer meetings, it's in the invite, the agenda, and what we're gonna cover.

1:28:05 Scott Ingram: Good stuff. Good stuff. All right. There's also a very interesting tip from Matt Du Pont on the Daily Sales Tips podcast about not attending internal meetings. It's pretty good.

1:28:13 Kevin Piket: Oh, I should listen to that.

1:28:14 Scott Ingram: Check that out. We'll link it up in the show notes. There's gonna be a lot of stuff, top1.fm/kevin-piket. And then there's also Sales Success Summit. So Kevin hasn't gotten the approval from his internal in-the-house boss, but hopefully we'll be seeing him in Austin in October. I hope you will come and join us. It's really that opportunity. I, again, I don't talk about this value side of it enough, but it's all about these relationships and this network and opening up doors to your future and your career and new opportunities and everything. So check out those things and we'll talk to you next week. Thanks, Kevin.

1:28:52 Scott Ingram: Thank you. I appreciate it. Thanks for listening to the Sales Success Stories podcast. To be sure you never miss an episode and for an invitation to our Sales Success Community powered by Influitive, subscribe to our newsletter at top1.fm.