127: If You Want to Be Good at Sales, You Need to Also Be a Good Person with EPI-USE Labs' Pascal Kaldenbach

0:00 Scott Ingram: This episode is brought to you thanks to the generous support of QuotaPath, Skipio, and Vidyard. 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. Today on the Sales Success Stories podcast, my guest is Pascal Kaldenbach. Pascal is the top individual contributor and the head of sales at EPI-USE Labs in Central and Eastern Europe. Welcome to the show, Pascal.

0:44 Pascal Kaldenbach: Thanks for having me, Scott.

0:45 Scott Ingram: So I am super excited to dig into this with you just because of your history with the show. I'm sure we'll get into all of that, but I know you know better than anybody else that we always start with some immediate value. Why don't you talk about the top 3 things that you believe have contributed the most to your success in sales?

1:04 Pascal Kaldenbach: Yes, of course. Before I start, I need to thank my team who pushed me to do this podcast, honestly. But as this will not be an Oscar Award speech, let me get into my top 3 learnings from my sales experience. So the first one is to be good at speaking, you need to be good at listening. What I mean by that is to improve your sales, it is important to work on your listening skills, not on your rhetoric skills. So understanding the needs and wishes of a customer should be always your basic set of skills you work on every day. So the overall goal should be to tell the customer exactly what they need, not more, not less, not even what they want, right? So my second point is, if you want to go For the 120-130% of success in sales, it is important to keep a steady pace at 80%. Take care of your energy level in case you're going to face some hard times. This way, you will always not hit rock bottom afterwards, but can continue on the same level as before. Make sure you never work too long under pressure. Because otherwise you will run out of energy. Like, remember to keep some mind space to reflect and reconsider yourself, your processes, your work. Don't go for the big shots. Try to identify your daily routine and break it down. And then just ask the simple question, how can I make small improvements on my daily business? Right. So sales, from my perspective, It's a marathon, not a sprint, right? And last but not least, the third one, never ever, neither in a call, by mail, even by thinking or doing a podcast, never do multitasking.

3:00 Scott Ingram: Perfect. Perfect. I think your opening statement is pretty funny because your outreach, I think we really should contextualize this. I mean, you reached out to me. I'll have you maybe tell the story and I'll add some color.

3:12 Pascal Kaldenbach: So, you know, Scott, I'm listening to your podcast basically, I think, since episode 5 or 6, because it's perfectly what I'm looking for to get some information about how other salespeople are doing their business. Right. So I'm listening for it since years, early in the morning when I'm doing my fitness. But I never thought about being on your podcast. Right. So I could identify with the people, but I would never, ever think about that. I would be good enough to be on your podcast. And this year, after COVID and the gym reopened, I was listening to one of your episodes and suddenly it hits me and I understand, whoa, it's my last chance this year that I could be on your podcast to fulfill the requirements because it will be my last year where I will have an active quota. In place. So I thought, like, you know, whatever, I will just write you. So I just wrote you like a quick summary about myself and what I'm doing. And what you need to know about me is maybe unusual for sales, but the one thing I really do not like is to be in the spotlight, right? I'm more the person in the background. I'm more introvert. So being on the podcast, being in the spotlight is like the one thing I really, really do not like. So I I just wrote you, and if you would not have responded, if you would have said no, that would be totally okay for me. And I would never ever ask somebody else to be on his podcast show. But sadly, like some hours later, you directly responded, it sounds nice. Let's do it.

4:54 Scott Ingram: Sadly, that's so funny. Well, and the funniest part for me was, I mean, I couldn't not pay attention to the message just because, you know, this is my very favorite kind of interview where we take somebody who is just a deep student and fan of the show who's applied the lessons and who has, you know, generated incredible results. Your results are absolutely incredible. We'll talk about those next. But the funniest part for me when we did connect, as you said, Scott, this is the one and only time I will ever do anything like this. So, why don't we provide a little bit of context first around your role? So, talk about, because you've definitely, that's definitely been unique, especially in the last maybe year, year and a half. So talk about your role, talk about your company, who you're selling to, all of that kind of stuff.

5:44 Pascal Kaldenbach: Yeah, sure. So I'm currently working at a company called EPI-USE Labs, which is located in the SAP partner environment. So we are focused on providing add-ons and transformations for SAP systems around the world with roughly 1,100 customers. And we are divided in local divisions. And I'm working and I'm responsible as well for the Central and Eastern Europe market. So you could already recognize that English is not my main language. So I need to excuse myself for all of the listeners. Please bear with me for the next hour and I will try my best to speak in English. But right now I'm responsible for the sales team. So I'm the head of sales for our portfolio in this market. My team is currently the size of roughly 10 people. Including some trainees and obviously also some senior people. And it's a really nice team. But I'm also responsible still for the revenue itself, meaning that I'm an active quota-carrying sales manager in the team itself, which is a really nice situation because I'm not even managing the team. I'm also playing in the team. Obviously, this will be only for this year because the workload is way too high. You can believe me. So it will be the last year where I also have a target. And next year, then I will just focus on the management side of my role. What was important for me, maybe that's worth mentioning, is that I have a full account executive target. So I said to myself, you know, it's the last year, so Show what you can and don't be easy for yourself and give yourself a lower target because you have an excuse. You can say, you know, I don't have the time, I'm a manager, and I wanted to avoid the situation. So I gave myself a full account executive target. And this is like the summary of my year. So it's a nice year, not only with COVID and home office and not traveling, but also with 2 roles in place.

8:05 Scott Ingram: Yeah, and nice year is kind of an understatement. Why don't you put your results in perspective, not just for yourself, but also your team? Because you guys are kind of winning on both fronts.

8:15 Pascal Kaldenbach: Yes. So the moment we are speaking, we are 5 months into the new fiscal year, and I have a target achievement of 195% year to date. And this obviously leads also to a nice team performance. So we are really, really on track. We finished our Q1 with 150% target achievement. And from the history, Q1 is always our, let's say, baddest quarter. So we really outperformed that one. But we also already outperformed our Q2 with 130%. And we still have 4 weeks to go, so there's still a lot of time on the clock, but right now we already have a really nice target achievement.

9:06 Scott Ingram: Yes, let me interject real quick right here on behalf of our sponsor QuotaPath, because they too are relevant both for individual contributors and for entire sales teams in helping to manage and audit commissions. And if you're overperforming the way Pascal is you definitely want to make sure you're getting properly compensated on all of those wins. So if you're using a spreadsheet to track your commissions, do yourself a favor and click over to top1.fm/quotapath, and you can keep your company accountable to what they owe you. Or better yet, save your team an average of 17 hours per month in calculating commissions. top1.fm/quotapath. Speaking of teams, let's get back to Pascal as he talks about how his team is performing head and shoulders above the rest of the business. That's amazing. And your team has performed… is just way head and shoulders above the rest of the business, the way you described it to me before.

10:06 Pascal Kaldenbach: Yes, definitely. And what really was important for us, we had our first, let's call it, team meeting. So I asked all of my colleagues to come in the office in Walldorf. So also our colleagues from Prague or Poland traveled to come here. It was the first time since COVID that we met in person. And what we did is obviously we did a little bit of celebration, but the major part was that we sit down together in a room and ask ourselves, you know, we have some success right now, but are we still committed to give 100%, 120%? Because when you're on the top, Right? It's always the risk that you're getting slower or getting easier on small things and you lose the big picture of outperformance. So we were really sitting together, had some serious discussion. Are we still giving our best? Are we still on the top performance? Do we still also have not the highest revenue but also the highest activities to make sure that Q3 and Q4 will also be outstanding? And then I think this can be a really nice year for everybody in the team.

11:18 Scott Ingram: Brilliant. Brilliant. Now, before we get into your origin story, can you provide just a little bit more color around kind of the player coach role that you're in? So you, you were a very high, consistent, top-performing individual contributor, and then this opportunity to lead the team came about. Can you walk us through kind of how that happened and what that looks like?

11:39 Pascal Kaldenbach: I can try. Maybe it will be more clear if I speak about my background and how I get into the role at all. But I took over the team lead functionality or responsibility last year in March. I really have the nice situation that beforehand I was responsible for the training and onboarding of all of the salespeople in my team. So this makes me like having a really strong connection with everybody in the team. Right? We are not just working colleagues, we are also friends. We also go out, we do sports and clubs and things together. And this leads to a strong connection in my team. And I was always kind of a mentor for anybody. And this was the reason why I took over the team lead in March 2020. And as our head of sales left at the beginning of this year, I was asked to step up internally to take over also the personal responsibility, right? So, this already helped me because I know all of the people, I helped them in their training, I was responsible from the functional perspective anyway. So, stepping up to the head of role or the management role was, let's say, consequent because I basically just also took over about the personal responsibilities. If that makes sense.

13:05 Scott Ingram: It does.

13:05 Pascal Kaldenbach: It does.

13:06 Scott Ingram: All right, let's get into the origin story. How did you get into sales in the first place?

13:10 Pascal Kaldenbach: I think like anybody on your show, by an accident. So you need to understand about me. Before I started sales, there were basically 3 things I really hate to do in my personal life, and it was basically calling. So I never called anybody. I never picked up the phone. I'm a generation where you Use WhatsApp or messengers to write people. You're not calling, right? I really hated to speak in front of people, as I already mentioned. Like, I'm not that extrovert person, and I really hate to be in the spotlight. So it's basically the perfect requirements you have to be in sales, right? When I was 19, I was raising a child, my son. On my own. So I was like a dad who took care of his son by his own. And when you are 19, you basically do not have any kind of clue about life at all. You don't know what you need to do, where you want to be, or whatever. The only thing I know back then was that I need to take over responsibilities, right? Because there was like a foreign person that was highly addicted to me, right? So I need to take care of him because otherwise he would not be able to take care of his own. What I want to say about that is, for me, it was never an option to do a lot of studying, a lot of traveling. For me, it was clear that I need to earn money. And I sent a lot of applications. And in Germany, we have something which is kind of a training program. So it's basically a mix of school and working. So you're earning a little bit of money. It's not much, but it at least helps you to have a mix of work and education at the same time. This training takes place for 3 years. Like, that's the standard at every company. And I sent some applications to a lot of companies just to see, you know, I want to do something with IT. Or I want to do something with sport. That was my mindset back then. And I was happy and luckily that I was invited by my CEO, which is still my CEO. And we had an interview and he basically told me, you know, you're kind of young, you do not have any experience, but I can see something in you and I want to trust you. Just give your best, right? And I was like, you know, there's a total foreign person and he tells me that he sees something in me and he trusts in me and I should give my best. So I was telling myself, okay, then let's do it. And this is how I get into sales, right? So I was in sales without knowing that I was already in sales. But I could see all of the salespeople like driving nice cars and wearing nice suits. And I was like, oh, that's really nice. I want that same. How can I get there? So this was my beginning in sales, basically jumping a little bit of the month. I did understand that you need to do a lot in sales, so you need to be active because the more active you are, the more results you get. So I already started to do cold calling and presentation in my training program. So my day was basically sitting there 8 hours doing 50 calls per day. Right. Not because somebody asked me to do it, but because I wanted to do it. I want to do as much as possible so I earn as much money as possible. Luckily, I was also able to shorten my trainee in an insane pace, which is really unusual. So I shortened it to 1.5 years instead of 3. And I was even able during my training to create the first revenue. So I created my first customer with a really okay deal size. So it was not a small, it was not the biggest, but it was a really nice deal amount back then. And this is how I went into sales, basically. What happened after roughly 1 or 2 years is that I was getting bored and I did not really have fun. I was doing calls every day. I was doing presentations every day. I was basically having the same conversation, the same presentation, the same wording, the same sentence every time, every time. And it was really frustrating because I did not get the results I wanted. Right? I had my call. I explained them. Da da da da da. We are doing this. Do you want to have a demo? Okay, let's do a demo. Da da da da da. This is our tool. Is it interesting for you? Yes or no? Thanks. And then. Obviously, they did not respond anymore. So I really thought, is sales the right thing for me or not? Maybe I'm not the right person to be there. I hate calling anyways. I hate to speak in front of people anyways. So maybe I should do something with sports. You know, just try out what will happen if you do things differently. And this was basically the moment where things changed for me. Because I was raising the question to myself, why am I doing this? So if I call a person, why do I tell them my pitch? If I do a presentation, why do I start with the company introduction? Why is this my slide 3? Why is this my slide 4? Why am I saying this? Why am I not starting to listening? So I started really early, and this was kind of lucky for me. To change and challenge the way I was selling to customers. I was trying it out by myself and suddenly things changed and sales gets more easy. And I was able to achieve in my first year after the training 99% target achievement, I think. So it was 99% or 98%. And I was lucky about deal closing and winning customers. So what happened is that I were called the lucky boy. You know, I always had luck afterwards. For whatever reason, this streak continued now for 7 years. So I would question if it is still luck or maybe something else as well. But this is kind of my background. So long story short, when I finished my training program, I was at 99%. And afterwards, I was basically already outperforming every target by at least 130% per year. My best outperformance till this year was 185%. And this year, obviously, it will be way above 200%. I also closed 4 out of the 5 biggest deals ever. I closed the second largest deal ever, and I also opened one of the most valued customer So I was also able to close one of the largest companies in Germany, which are listed in the DAX 30. I basically closed or won 80% of the listed companies I was responsible for.

20:46 Scott Ingram: That's amazing. And that really stuck out to me when we spoke the first time is just how much success you have had in… it's sort of essentially the equivalent of the Fortune 100, if you will, in, in the US, right? Sort of the, the largest public companies in Germany who you've been able to bring on as, as your customers, correct?

21:05 Pascal Kaldenbach: Correct. Yes.

21:06 Scott Ingram: I'm going to do something a little bit different here and talk about 2 of our sponsors before I let you get back to the rest of the episode uninterrupted. Pascal just talked about how he made a change early in his career and started doing things a bit differently and more creatively. He also talked about his generation not using the phone a lot and instead relying on text. Why not lean into that preference that many of your buyers likely have? With Skipio, you can open up that channel in some really creative and human ways. Go to top1.fm/skipio to learn about them and check out some of their best practice resources. They've got some great ideas to help you better leverage text messaging in your sales process. top1.fm/skipio. You can also get creative and engage more authentically with people with Vidyard. You can use Vidyard for free to easily record video messages and include them in your emails or on LinkedIn. They're way more engaging. In fact, in just the last 2 weeks, I've started including Vidyard video messages in the weekly emails that I send to those of you who've joined the listener list. I can't believe I hadn't thought to do this sooner because all of a sudden the engagement rates on those emails are massively higher. Video just works. You've got to try this out. Do yourself a favor and jump over to top1.fm/vidyard to give it a go for yourself today. Again, top1.fm/vidyard. And now back to my conversation with Pascal without further interruption. Thanks for supporting our sponsors. So the way that you came into this, I mean, you know, I typically ask, you know, from a career perspective, if you would have done anything differently. I mean, it sounds like this was all a really great happy accident. Obviously it allowed you to support your, your son and kind of your family situation in a way that I don't know how else you would have done it. Right. Because we talked about this before as well. Usually that's kind of, you're kind of stuck. Like, I'm a single father. I'm a young single father. I don't have the opportunities to go to kind of the traditional university path, and you found this. So how do you think about that? Is there anything that you would have changed or done differently?

23:26 Pascal Kaldenbach: I would rephrase it. Our winners club. So we have a winners club in the company. We'll go to the Maldives, Maldives this year. Do you know them? Like the island?

23:36 Scott Ingram: Yeah, yeah.

23:36 Pascal Kaldenbach: I'm driving an Audi. A7, which was my dream car always. I'm living in a nice house and I have the possibility to do holidays or vacation 4 times a year. And most important for me, I'm happy and content to wake up every day, including Mondays. So seriously, Scott, I'm not even 30 yet, but I'm already living my dream. So I would never, ever do something different. But to answer your question more seriously, I would stop wasting too much time on trainers and gurus to find the hidden secret. So when I started to do things like the same way every day, I thought like there needs to be some secret. So I was trying to have the best email written with the best wording and send it out to the customer at the best timing. So I was reading a lot of studies, which is the best opening time for emails, or How do you write the best emails? And I was spending a lot of time on my slide deck. And from an information diet, I was reading books from trainers and gurus who told you, like, just do twice as much as you do now and you will be successful, right? No pain, no gain. Do 100 calls per day, do 200 calls per day. Just do more, just be better. I would really not recommend to do any kind of this one. So what I mean by that is I would be more clear about my information diet because you need to understand there is no hidden secret in sales, right? Sales is basically get the things done you need to do, listen to the customer, understand the customer, understand the processes, And then just push through it, right? So in the past 7 years I'm in the company, I never ever had this magic moment where I was standing in the front of 10 managers and I had the best slide deck and the best rhetoric skills and they were just standing up and clapping because of my outstanding performance. This is not how sales is working. Right? So sales is done in the background by sitting down, do your homework, understand the requirements of a customer, and put the customer into your center of your daily business, right? So this is something I would definitely do different today. Be more careful and be more recognized about my information diet. Obviously, we will get to this topic a little bit later as well, so I can spend some comments on this one. I'm in the happy situation that I already mentioned. I onboard our new colleagues and I train them up as well. So I have the possibility to do things different, not for myself, but for them. And the first task everybody gets in my team is basically they need to listen. So every time a new colleague comes into our company, they're basically just talking, talking, talking how great they are, how great their performance is, and how great everything is. And they talk and talk. And I basically tell them, please be quiet and try to understand the importance of listening. And I tell them, in every conversation you will have in the next 2 weeks, try to be as silent as possible and try to keep the conversation as long and valuable as possible. What I mean by that is it's basically what we are doing, Scott, right now. Just sit down, listen to somebody actively, and then ask a nice and really good follow-up question like you do always, Scott, and just keep the conversation going, right? And you will see how things suddenly change because people start to give you some insights. They will start to complain about things. So you really get into their point of view. And this will help you to work together with them to get them to the solution they are looking for. Another thing which is also important, which I would do differently today, I already said, like, there's no hidden secret. I often hear people saying, oh, look, he has so much talent. Oh, look, sales is in his blood. And this is the phrases you often hear by trainers, right? I think that's totally Can I say bad words in your podcast?

28:28 Scott Ingram: Sure, go for it. We'll call that the warning. Ear muffs, kids.

28:32 Pascal Kaldenbach: Yeah, that's totally bullshit, right? So nobody is waking up and saying, oh, I'm a lawyer, I have it in my blood. So that's not how the world is working. How do you get to a lawyer? You need to be a law student and you need to practice and learn hours for hours. And that's the same in sales. If you want to be successful, you need to repeat. And how do you repeat in sales? Well, you need to practice. So I mentioned it, I was doing in the beginning a lot of calls, calls, calls, presentation, presentation, and it was really boring at some time. But obviously, this repetition, this practice helped me to get through all of the scenarios that maybe can happen in the future. And this is really nice for me in my current role. Being on the sales side in meetings, but also being like a manager in the meetings with escalation and things like that, there are no situations that can happen that I'm not aware of, right? Because situations will just repeat. So the more situations you have, the more you know how to handle them. And this really takes a lot of stress away from me if I'm into end-to-end meetings, just jumping in and, you know, sort things out.

29:47 Scott Ingram: Awesome. Awesome. I'm curious about this transition to the leadership role, right? So it sounds like in a lot of ways, the last number of years, you've already been taking on some elements of this with the mentoring that you're doing. How has this transition been? I know it's hard because you're doing both jobs, but how do you think about the difference in the role and how are you working to set yourself up to be a successful leader, which clearly you already are? I mean, you already are leading the top performing team in the company.

30:18 Pascal Kaldenbach: Yeah, I would never say that I'm a good leader or a talented leader. I'm just trying my best. So you need to ask my team how good I am. So the way I was doing sales is I was always putting my customers in the center of my daily work. And I asked myself the question, how can I make their lives better? So if they have a better life, Obviously, our solution will help them. I will get some revenue. I will be happy as well. So this will always be some kind of win-win situation. So the way I was selling is I really spent a lot of time asking the right questions to learn more about processes, customers, people, behaviors. Obviously, it helped me a lot also to raising children, right? Because you can tell a kid, 10 times, please don't do it, please don't do it, no, please, please don't. And what are they doing? They're basically doing it, right? So you need to rethink how you can change the mindset and behavior of people. And I think there is not such a role like, you know, I'm a sales manager and now I'm switching to be a manager, or now I'm getting home and I'm a father. I think it's basically just having the right mindset to help people. And this is the way I'm also managing my team, right? So I'm not putting the customers into my centric. I'm putting my employees or my colleagues into my centric. And I sit down in every meeting and I'm listening, I'm listening. And then I try to find solutions to help them. And this is also the way I'm raising my kid, right? I'm listening, I'm listening. And then I try to push them a little bit in the right direction. If you would ask my team, they would definitely not describe me as an emotional person, right? So I'm not screaming, I'm not angry, because this would put myself in the center. And I really try to avoid that and keep my own emotions and my own feelings out of every meeting and every situation. And just try to get into their point of view to really help them in the long term. But obviously, again, it comes down to practice, right? So a lot of things I'm still doing horrible wrong, I would assume. But it's like you need to do it like the Beatles, you know, like the Beatles had amazing overnight success. What a lot of people did not saw is that they have done really, really bad practicing in Hamburg. Day by day by day before they had their success.

33:08 Scott Ingram: Yeah, yeah. And then there's obviously a great, you know, kind of 10,000-hour story around the Beatles that I think you're probably referring to. So if people have read… is it Outliers? Is that the book?

33:18 Pascal Kaldenbach: Absolutely correct. Yes.

33:20 Scott Ingram: Yeah, yeah. Great, great, great story. Well, speaking of stories, I mean, we call the show Sales Success Stories, and I always love to hear, like, what's your favorite sales stories? Like, what's the deal that either you're the most proud of, or maybe that blew up the biggest and taught you the most?

33:36 Pascal Kaldenbach: Well, it's both. So this is why it is my favorite story, because I think it's like the best example where I get the confirmation that the way I'm doing sales cannot be that wrong. To give you some context, it was the most complex, it was the most biggest, and also the most challenging, hardest environment including competitors, global company, everything you could imagine of was involved in this sales cycle. The sales cycle took roughly over 2.5 years, and there were, I think, over 90 people involved from customer side, but also our side, which need to be managed and led by me or by my introduction. The magic thing I totally did, and which is my hidden secret, you can find in my new book, which will be available soon. No, would be nice, right? No. What have I done special? Basically nothing, right? There was no magic. There was no secret. There was no special rhetoric. The first meeting we ever had at this customer was in front of 30 people. Coming in from all over the world. And I totally understood before the meeting, the meeting will be in English. There are 30 people. They all have more than, I don't know, 800, 900 years of experience together. I'm definitely 100% the wrong person to speak in front of them, right? They do not want to hear from a mid-20s high ego sales guy how great our software is. So what have I done? I was not leading the meeting. I was asking our senior vice president who was responsible for our product portfolio to fly in into Germany and to do the meeting for me. So in conclusion, I left my big ego at home and I understood that it's not about me to be in the spotlight of this sales. And this is how I went into every meeting, like it was my first meeting on the first day. I had no clue about everything. So I need to be really careful what the customer is saying. I need to be listening actively and ask the right questions to totally understand what they need and then get home into our company and Pull in the right persons to the right timing. And this was basically how I managed the sales cycle over 2 and a half years ago. And we had, I think, over 60 meetings in the whole processes. We had like a proof of concept and evaluation included, which took 6 months of preparation. We had people from, I think, 8 countries involved in the whole sales cycle. And at the end, it was one of the biggest deals in the year. And obviously I was like the great sales guy who was with his hidden secrets able to manage this deal and to get it done so easily without really working, just setting up some meetings and push some people. And yeah, a lot of people didn't saw the really hard work in the background, but This was for me the confirmation that listening to your customers, putting them into the center of your sales and sort out their stuff was the best way for working on really large deals like this one. A matter of fact, due to the fact that there was 30% more water in the river, the customer at this time were not able to ship out his products to delivery. Right? This was leading to a delay in the invoicing. And as this customer is on a stock exchange, they stopped their cash out because they need to have some nice figures and some nice numbers for their stocks so that they can go up. So even that it was back then one of the biggest deals, it was only 10% of the amount which was possible, if you know what I mean. So it was still the biggest deal in the year. It was still a nice paycheck, to be honest. But it reflects you that sometimes things can be horrible, go in a totally different direction that you can handle it. And sometimes you cannot change the weather.

38:19 Scott Ingram: Yeah, for sure. Okay, so I think I know your secret. And so I'm going to try and recap it and you tell me if you got it, because what I think you're describing that you do is, again, it comes back to this idea of everything is about the customer and you're simply listening to them, right? Having the time in your schedule to really be thoughtful about what do they need, right? Not what can I say, but what do they need? Who in my organization do I potentially need to connect them with? How do we keep this moving? And it goes back to the, the other kind of never multitasking because you're, you're just focused on them and that conversation and what you're having. And then it's just another step, another step, another conversation, more listening and rinse and repeat until you get there. Have I got it?

39:16 Pascal Kaldenbach: I will not tell you my secret, but I think you're on the right, on the right way. So yes, it's basically, you know, to sum it up, it's sit down, listen, And ask questions, which sound really easy. And a lot of people say, ah, yeah, I'm doing this already. But ask yourself and just check it on yourself. Everybody of us has his slide deck he's using on every presentation, right? Like the first presentation, you have your first slide deck. It's always the same. You know what to say. Just go through it and check on any slide deck how much you are speaking about yourself and your products. And how much are you speaking about the customers and their challenges and their solutions? And you maybe will be surprised how often you think you put the customer into your centric, but you're basically still talking about your own things and your own interests.

40:14 Scott Ingram: That's really interesting. I mean, it's so interesting. I mean, I am allergic to slide decks for that reason because By definition, they're about you. They're about us. They're not about the customer, right? And I guess a little bit of context here. We are having this conversation. It is ridiculously early in my morning and I have an important conversation in a few hours at a more normal hour in the morning. And I know in that there's nothing I can say in this meeting that will move the needle. The only thing I can do is listen to them and hear them and focus on that. So this is perfectly reinforcing for me. This has been super, super helpful. I wonder, you have had a lot of consistent success. To your point, I guess some would call it luck, but I think after 7 years of consistent success, we have to think that maybe something else is going on So what are you most proud of?

41:17 Pascal Kaldenbach: That's a really tough question. Getting back to the moment I was 19, for me, it was really important to be responsible for my kid, and I wanted to be a role model. Right. So I did not want to be like the classical young guy raising a kid, do not have money, put his kids on a bad school, and set his path on a negative way. And today I was joking about the money I earn and the life I'm living. But to be honest, I'm really proud to set this environment for my son and for myself, obviously, because I would never say that I'm good at what I'm doing. But what I can recognize, and that's what I'm really proud of, is that I'm making the environment and the person's lives better, right? Maybe not much. Like, I'm not a life-changing person you will meet, but somehow I can make the life of some persons better. And this is what makes me proud. And this is why I'm so much committed to sales, because I don't want to get too philosophical here, but if you want to be good at sales, you need to be good as a person. Right. People will quickly recognize when you are lying, when you are not telling them the truth, when you're working on your own best and not on their best. So in the long term, you cannot have success in sales without being like a straight stand-up person. And this is what I'm working on every day. I'm improving on myself, on my character. So I will improve on my sales. As well. And the better I get in sales, the better I get as a person. And this is what I'm working on. And this is what I also try to give back to my customers or to my team or everybody. Every person I meet, I always ask myself the question from their standpoint of view, how can I make their life a little bit better? How can I cheer their day up? Sometimes it's the small things. Just hold the door open for somebody, just make a small gift for somebody. If you are in like a coffee shop, pay for the person which is behind you. Or, you know, it's not about putting yourself in the spotlight and tell other people why you are successful or why you are a great person. You need to show it by your behavior and the results you achieve, right?

43:55 Scott Ingram: Yeah, I love that. I love that. I mean, you said it's something you work on. How do you think about that? How do you work on just yourself and improving your character?

44:05 Pascal Kaldenbach: I'm not a fan of work-life balance because I think there is no difference between work and life. It may sound a little bit strange, but you need to understand that every day you have 24 hours and 30% is sleeping, 30% is, let's call it, private or life, and 30% is work. So in the long term, Just to focus on private things and let work be work is not the way I want to fulfill my life. So I'm not differentiating between this is work and then I get home and I totally behave different, right? So I really try to reflect myself where I am today and have things broken down on a daily routine to improve myself. And I understood that sales, as I mentioned, is a lot about character and personal things. So in every life situation, I'm asking and reflecting myself, how can I improve myself? For example, I'm doing a lot of sports. So I'm coming from a fitness mindset, from a team sport mindset. So I'm asking myself, how can I get better in sports? How can I put more weights? On the table? How can I run faster or whatever? And the same is for sales. How can I ask better questions? How can I ask more questions? How can I get more an expert in the area I'm working to lead the customer? And obviously, that's also on the private stuff. So long story short, it basically all came down or comes down to my information diet. And I'm really trying to work on myself 24 hours. So what I mean by that is, for example, when I wake up, the first thing I do is take some time for myself, right? Before COVID it was basically that I wake up 5 o'clock in the morning, heading to the gym, and obviously listening to the most great podcast out there, which is Sales Success Stories. This was my morning routine, right? So I had sometimes for myself, doing some sports, listening to some nice podcasts, and have some thoughts about what will my day be, what is my week will be, what will be the month, what are the topics I have on my desk. And in the evening, compared to that, I'm more into reading books. So every time in the evening, I'm reading books about sales or information. We will get to that later, I think. After reading, when I go to bed, I'm still thinking about work, right? I'm totally okay to think about work 24 hours because work is fun for me and I like to work. So I do not care if I'm laying in the bed and think about, ah, there was this meeting this morning and you said that maybe it would be better to just listen. And when there is a meeting tomorrow, maybe I can do it this and this way. So it's, it's, it's basically for me just having the mindset 24 hours to reflect things and to work on things and to ask myself the question, how can I improve? Improve it? Yes.

47:27 Scott Ingram: Yeah, yeah. You know, it's one of my personal philosophies, and I'm fond of saying, if you don't love what you do, it's work, and work sucks. So I think you have to find something that… I mean, clearly, you're passionate about this, you care about this. And it's, it's not some type of drudgery that, that you have to, you have to go through. But I don't think we can get away with teasing your information diet any more times. Why don't, why don't we talk about that? No, no, it's all good. Why don't we talk about that and kind of walk us through, you know, if you're staying away from the gurus, so what are you listening to? What are you reading? What are you watching? What does inform your continual improvement?

48:09 Pascal Kaldenbach: Yes. So back then, when I started in sales, obviously, I had no clue. So what I've done is I went on a well-known online bookselling platform on the internet, and it's definitely not Amazon. And I just put in sales books, right? And this is how I get into all the gurus and things that did not work out for me. So I was asking myself, what is sales about? And sales is sometimes about negotiations. So I ask myself, who else negotiates things? So politicians are negotiating the whole day. So I start reading or searching for books about politics. And what else is sales? Sales is also asking questions. So I started to search for books about asking questions. And this was like my first entry points. As soon as the podcast will be released, I can provide you a list of my top 20 books, right? I sent you a picture, Scott, of them. For me, again, there is not that one secret book like Challenger Sale, for example. I really like the book Challenger Sale, but it's just one book out of thousands you could read. So for me, from an information diet, it's really important that you find a structure which is working for you on a daily basis. So think about one book you can read. You maybe will have like 10%, not even 10% of the book you can remember or you can recognize or you can even lead into actions. So it's more important to have a routine behind your information diet. And long story short, if you think about, you can read, let's say, 50 books per year, right? In the next 10 years, that would be 500 books you could read. So if you would start to read books, I would recommend to start with some books about reading books. So there are some nice books about how you could get better into memorizing things, how you can read faster, faster, because in the long run, if you are reading, obviously this would help you a lot to read more, to read faster. You know, we're getting back to the always improve yourself mindset. But getting back to my own information diet, I already mentioned I'm listening to podcasts in the morning because this is the best way for me to do other things in parallel, like being in the gym or going for a walk and just do easy things and let your mindset flow. Around. And to be honest, I'm mostly really listening to all of your shows because they're working the best for me. Over the day, I'm just browsing through, let's say, the news, right? I have some newsletters, I have some papers. I also spend a lot of time browsing through LinkedIn. But it's basically for me just checking that I'm up to date. It's not like I'm really practicing on things. And when I'm in the evening, I'm basically, as I mentioned, reading books because this helped me a lot to really dig deep into a topic or reflect on a topic. I normally read a book in 3 to 4 days. So I think I have a nice For me, working pace to have one book read per day. But I'm not putting any pressure on myself. So sometimes there are weeks or even months where I'm not reading at all because I'm not capable of doing it. I just don't have the right mindset to do it. And then I'm just more into podcasts. There is not like the one book I could recommend to anybody. I basically recommend your podcast to anybody. I'm speaking to Scott. But what I like about books is, or even your podcast, I listen to your podcast, for example, and if I have the feeling that I identify with the person, I then go to your website and check all of the book recommendations they made. And I will just go on any website, order the book, read the book, and if the book is fine for me, Then I will check for the author of the book. So who wrote the book? And then I will see what was the book they have published before or after the book to see how the writer involved himself in the writing. Right. And this is how I will get all of the information of books. Sometimes if you're looking at the back cover, there are also some recommendations. And this is how I just flow myself through the information. So today I may be reading a book about politicans. Tomorrow I read a book about questions. And in 2 days, I maybe read a book about inside Facebook, for example, which is also nice, right? So I think this is like really the most important part, to find a routine which is working for yourself. Do not put too much pressure on you and try to involve just 1% per day to get one thing out of a book and just read whatever you want to read. Because to stay with Challenger Sale, it's one of my favorite books I have because I learned and identified so much with it. But I would never just recommend it to my team because if they are not in the right timing, if they're not in the right mindset, For them, maybe the book does not make sense. It's nonsense, right? So I'm really careful about having book recommendations. But obviously I can provide you my top 20. I think it's just important to have a daily routine that works for you and find a medium which works for you, right? Listening works for me perfectly in the morning because I can have some thoughts about really Oh, that's nice. I will try this out today. And reading is working for me better in the evening because I can take things more seriously on the long strategic viewpoint and have some thoughts about that overnight. I hope that makes sense.

54:59 Scott Ingram: Yeah, it does. So, so much to talk about. So the first thing you need to do is go to top1.fm/this episode number or top1.fm/Pascal. And we will have… you sent me a picture with a giant stack of books, so we'll have that in there. Also, there's probably going to be a pretty decent delay from the time that Pascal and I are talking today to the time that I release this. And I've been having a conversation with John Reidelbach, who's been on the podcast as well, and he's really interested in leading kind of a book club, book exchange type of concept within the Sales Success Community. So by the time this releases, I may have some additional details about that in the show notes as well. Pascal, I want to ask, you suggested reading a book about reading books, which I think is a super smart idea, especially if you're going to read a lot of books. How do you listen to this show? If we're thoughtful about the way that we read, You are clearly great at listening. How do you listen?

56:07 Pascal Kaldenbach: Yeah, great question. Actually, the book I could recommend here is like Deep Work, because this really helped me to step away from the multitasking. And what I have bought is like noise-canceling EarPods. I think that's the right name from Bose. So you can put them on your ears and you can put the noise canceling on. So you basically do not have any kind of disturb, which is quite important, especially when you're in the gym because there's sometimes music going on and background noises. And I listen to podcasts all the time in the gym with some noise-canceling EarPods. And the other way I was listening to podcasts was before COVID when I was traveling. So I understood that I'm spending roughly 600 to 700 hours per year in the car, and I'm basically doing nothing, right? So this 600 or 700 hours or whatever amount of hours you're spending in your car where you could just listen to podcasts. And this was working for me pretty well, right? What's not working for me, for example, on the other hand, is when I'm driving to work, it's roughly… so when I'm driving to the office, sorry, it's basically a 15 to 25 minutes drive. I'm never listening to any kind of podcast, right? Because the period is too short for me. It's not working. I'm also not listening to podcasts in my lunchtime because this is more the time where I'm trying to get some fresh air, get some free space in my mind, reset the day. So I'm really sensitive about the timing when I'm listening to podcasts. But when I'm listening, I like to avoid any kind of distraction.

57:55 Scott Ingram: It goes back to the focus and multitasking. I mean, I know it's kind of hard to take notes when you're driving. You, you, it sounds like you're kind of going back afterwards. What I heard you say, and actually I think this is a really important way to think about this show, is the first thing you said was finding the people who resonate with you, because that's not going to be everybody. Like, there's sometimes you're like, okay, that is a totally different style for me. That's maybe not as relevant. So it sounds like your first sort of looking for identification. This is somebody who, okay, they're kind of like me. I think there's something I can learn from. Then you're going to top1.fm, you're going into their show notes page, and you're looking for the book recommendations. Is that kind of the whole of it? Is there anything else?

58:39 Pascal Kaldenbach: No, that's basically it. I was a really big fan of, I think it was a special episode between 120 and 121 by Brendan. He was speaking a lot about, you know, the work-life topic and your energy topic, and he was recommending a lot of apps and tools. And this is just how you go by it. And then you find a new book, and then you find in the book a new recommendation for a new book and just, just let the information flow, I would say.

59:11 Scott Ingram: There you go. There you go. And that episode was, yeah, the follow-up episode I did with Brandon Fluharty. And like we always do, we'll have the links. So Get into the habit that Pascal's in. Go, go look at the show notes because we do invest in those pretty heavily. There's always quotes and clips and links and all the books and all this stuff. And this one will be pretty deep. I'm sure there's a lot of stuff there. So Pascal, let's dig into your routine. And you know the structure. So walk us through, alarm clock goes off, you know, walk us through kind of your full day and the way that you set things up.

59:44 Pascal Kaldenbach: I know that question, of course. So I prepared it before COVID and after COVID. If that makes sense. So before COVID for me, it was really important to have sport done on a day. Having kids, basically time is not available. So I was waking up 5 o'clock in the morning when everybody else was sleeping. I hit into the gym basically 1 hour, which was perfect because it totally fits into 1 episode length of your podcast. And I will promise not to do any praise of your podcast for the rest of the show. But I was doing sport and listening to your podcast. Then I am heading home, spending some time with my family, starting to at least checking on the first mails to see what's going on, what happened, checking on the first news, like, is there something special happened? And then I always drove into the office or to the customer. So I was never working from home, which was really nice for me to have a clear mindset. Like, heading to the work was the same as heading to the gym. I had 20-25 minutes where I can get my mindset right, where I can focus on the things. So the moment I was hitting the office was 8 o'clock in the morning, which was still 1 hour before everybody else. And, you know, the things are going around in the office. So I use the time to get my worst thing done for the day. So the one thing that stressed you out, that's really painful, you really do not want to do. I always do this in the morning because then for me, I had a checkbox on sport, I have a checkbox on time on my family, and I have a checkbox that I have done something which really took out a lot of energy from myself. And after that, it's like 8:30, and your day cannot be bad. It will always be somehow a good day because you got something done. Then, you know, work just happened meeting by meeting. I always try to stay to one task. You could imagine that my workload is kind of high now. So being efficient in the way I'm working helped me a lot. And not doing multitasking is a key success to this. When it gets to lunch, I always try to get a break. I often use the time to spend it with some of my colleagues or to have some meetings like SureFixes where you can have a walk or lunch next to it. So I really try to have some easy time in the midday. And then obviously meetings will happen again and meeting, meeting activities and things like that. And when I'm Leaving the work, you know, I'm basically done. I just have free time. The work is gone. I never worked from home. I really made sure that my laptop is always closed to have this clear free time for my energy, to get healthy again, to have some rest. Sometimes I was just laying on the couch watching some series because I've done the sport, you know, I've done the family thing, I've done the business. So after 6 o'clock in the evening, whatever will happen will happen. And it's totally okay for me. It's totally the opposite after COVID. So I do not have any kind of separation between work and private. I'm working from home 100%. I was staying at home 100%. Obviously, we were not traveling at all. We were really sensitive about all of the COVID things because You know, it's about responsibility for your kids. So I needed to adapt my routine I had in a day, and it totally changed. So the amount of work I was doing increased by at least 30% to 40%. So I have working days with 10, 11, 12 hours, sometimes even 13 hours. But it was okay for me. So I did not have the feeling that I was stressed because I adapted my routine by the way that I did nothing in the morning, right? So I had always a long sleep. I tried to not start work too early, to have really an easy morning, have some time with my family, have some breakfast, have a long sleep, have an easy, lazy morning, right? So totally the opposite. And then I was trying to find a way to fit my life routine into my working routine. What I mean by that is that I still had a lunch break, but I went out with the kids on a walk, or I used the time to listen to my podcast in the lunchtime, right? Which was the opposite before. And I was doing it in the morning with sports. Now I did it in the lunch break by walking. Or sometimes I finished work more early to play something with the kids, and then I start to rework at 10 o'clock or 11 o'clock or 12 o'clock, whatever. So I really stepped away from having a structured routine at all and really tried just to listen to my body and to my emotions. And this was the way I was somehow trying to sort out the COVID thing, right? To be honest, it's not the way it's working for me. The most perfect because I cannot fit sports really good in it. So I'm kind of feeling stressed now. But as things are opening up again, it's getting a little bit better. And I'm facing my first vacation on Friday since basically 15 months. So yeah, sometimes it's also okay to be out of energy or to be stressed. I already told you, Scott, I had like a moving Till yesterday, I'm heading on vacation in 2 days. I'm now into work. I'm starting to be in Q2 closing. So yes, sometimes there is stress and sometimes you feel like you run out of energy, but you need to accept it and reflect it and then sort out that it will not happen too often.

1:06:19 Scott Ingram: It's interesting. You kind of answered the question I was planning to ask about kind of how you felt about your routine before and your routine now. Clearly, you and I are both pretty routine-driven people. And my challenge is always I have to adjust my routine a few times a year, partially because of, well, I mean, COVID for sure, right? I mean, that forces us to continually adjust and things are a little bit different from, from that perspective, but also my kids' schedules, right? The summer schedule always just kind of throws me for a loop and then I have to get back into the regular school year schedule and And there's always those kind of modifications that are going on. Are there ways that you're sort of thinking about… I mean, you sound like a very intentional person, right? So how are you sort of thinking about, okay, how am I doing this? How often are you changing that schedule? And are there any other kind of core habits and routines where you realize I always have to do these certain things? Like maybe there's some core elements in that.

1:07:23 Pascal Kaldenbach: One of the core elements is definitely sport. I mentioned I have a sport background, so sport is the way I can really relax and free up my mind and get away from stress. So this is why COVID somehow hits me really hard because I'm missing the sport factor. I totally agree with you, especially with kids. Like, routine is not realistic. So things always happen whenever you expect them. I also think from your own energy level, you have a different routine if it is winter or summer, right? So your behavior is changing also by the environment you're living in. And I'm just trying to recognize things like this by trying to take my stress level as low as possible, right? So if I get the feeling that I'm in a stress situation, I try to understand that the situation is something I need to work on later. So I have like a checkbox on my mind, remember this situation. And then in some easy moments in the evening or in the sport or whatever fits to you, I try to reflect on the situation and see, is this something I need to work on? Is this something I need to change? Or was it just like a bad day with a bad timing? Right. So my routine constantly is changing by the time of the year, by the feeling I have. My routine is even changing by me getting older, if this makes sense. The only recommendation I could give is get as much help as possible to reflect yourself. Right. Because obviously there's something like an ego. Especially in sales, right? You cannot rely on this. Also, I have a big ego sometimes. Every time you're speaking about an ego, it's hard to reflect yourself in an honest way. So it's really helpful to get support from outside. This could be your family, this could be your friends, discussions, this could be trainers, that could also be therapists. Like, you can go to hypnosis or whatever. It can also be podcasts or books. I mean, it really depends. On what kind of person you are, but get as much help or support as possible, right? If you have an issue to go to a therapist, just call it a trainer and everybody's like, whoa, you're going to a trainer. That's so amazing. And just find a way that's working for you. I think it's really important, getting back to that topic, to keep your stress level really low because when you are like in the tunnel, When you're stressed, when your noise-canceling EarPods are on, it's time to execute, right? You cannot think about everything when you do something. So working time, for example, for me is just execute mode. I'm not lying to you. Having a head of role and being an account executive is way too much workload, too less time to handle everything. If I would reflect myself the whole time or say, oh no, I'm stressed, I should go for a walk for 2 hours. I would definitely not be capable to do my job. So you need to be really careful about changing your routines too often. Sometimes you just need to stay in the execution mode, make some marks in your mind, and then when you have a lower time in your life or in your week, you can start to reflect on it and ask yourself if you need to change something or not. And again, I think just be patient. Right? It takes weeks, months, years, even decades to find a routine which is working for you the best.

1:11:17 Scott Ingram: Yeah, yeah, fantastic. What are kind of the core tools and apps and kind of tools that you're using throughout your day?

1:11:25 Pascal Kaldenbach: That is a really nice question, especially because I recommend Prenton's podcast, which is, I think, 90% about apps and tools. I'm I'm honestly not having any kind of apps. I'm not using any kind of tools, right? So I'm really like old school, conservative, boring person which tries to listen on his body. So the only apps and tools I'm using is basically, obviously I have emails, right? I have HubSpot as a customer relationship management tool. I have Teams for communication, and the most important thing for me is having like a checklist. I'm using Microsoft To Do for this one. And the way I'm structuring my work is basically I'm using my inbox in the emails as a to-do list. So everything which is in the inbox is something I need to work on, and I always try to keep my inbox at zero. And all of the work tasks I have are based in my checklist. And as soon as something is done, I obviously check it. And I'm trying to keep my checklist as low as possible as well. For me, it's just important that the apps I am using are working on all the devices I have, right? So there's kind of a running gag in our marketing team because if you check our marketing and the videos and the materials we A lot of ideas of this comes from me when I was at the pool on vacation. You know, I was like relaxing and laying around, and then I was, oh yeah, oh man, that's a really great idea. It will definitely change the whole future of the company, and I definitely need to give this information to our marketing to let them be successful. So I went onto my mobile phone, just write it as a checklist on the item. And after my vacation, I know, ah yeah, there was this checklist. Ah yeah, okay, I remember it was this and this and this. And then I can continue about it. So I just make sure I have every device synchronized. I'm not using any apps. I'm not tracking my sleep. I'm not tracking my training. I'm not tracking my work. I do not have any KPIs I ever watched. I did not check my connected calls. I did not check the emails I was writing. I really try to listen to my body, which is also some kind of training. And yeah, I just go from there.

1:14:03 Scott Ingram: So your marketing team probably has a note on their calendar that you're coming back from vacation and are going to have all kinds of great ideas for them.

1:14:10 Pascal Kaldenbach: They definitely have. I can promise. Yes. They always tell me, please go on vacation again.

1:14:18 Scott Ingram: Perfect. We got to get Q3 strategy figured out. So please go on vacation.

1:14:25 Pascal Kaldenbach: Please leave. That's amazing.

1:14:28 Scott Ingram: That's amazing. Now, do you subscribe to a particular sales philosophy?

1:14:33 Pascal Kaldenbach: It's a question I was thinking a lot about. I would say no. If I would describe my philosophy, I think I would call it customer-centric selling. But by my character, I'm really into the challenger sale. So I learned a lot from that. I really commit to that way because it comes down to, you know, you need to listen and you need to ask questions. But there's one thing we did not speak about, which is obviously you need to be the expert in the area you are working to also lead the customer. So you can have a nice conversation, you can get all of the information you need. But then you need to tell the customer what's the right way for them to solve their issue and what's the right way to get there. So how they proceed, because customers often are not aware of their sales process or their procurement or whatever, but they don't need to be expert in this area because they are functional people. You as a salesperson are the expert of procurement and sales processes. So you need to lead the customer and tell him how he needs to get things done, right? So I would describe it as a challenging customer-centric lifestyle of selling. Obviously, this sometimes leads to really uncomfortable situations in meetings because you're joining a meeting and you're really quiet, and then you say, That's a really nice thought, but it's totally wrong. I would not recommend to do it. Please do it this and this and this way. Right? So you need to be a kind of person who likes this strange, uncomfortable situation of silence, for example. But for me, I know that this is the moment where I am getting into the right direction, if that makes sense.

1:16:40 Scott Ingram: Yeah, it does. Clearly, you're good with being uncomfortable because you're doing great right now for a guy who didn't want to come on the show.

1:16:48 Pascal Kaldenbach: Thanks. I'm always playing like the silence game. So I am asking a question. Let's put in an easy example. When you're doing a presentation, you often ask, are there any questions?

1:17:03 Scott Ingram: No?

1:17:03 Pascal Kaldenbach: Okay, we can continue. And I also asked the question, Do you have any questions? But then I stay silent till somebody in the meeting speaks. And this can sometimes lead to situations where there is silence of 1 or 2 minutes, or people who are on a computer are saying like, hello, hello, is the connection still working? Are you still there? But this is forcing the customer to rethink everything I said or to have some discussion kicked off to really dig deeper into the challenge they are facing. But this sometimes also makes your consultant really sweaty because they're like, oh man, say something, say something. It's so uncomfortable.

1:17:46 Scott Ingram: Well, and what's interesting about that, that is definitely an uncomfortable move. But I think if you do it enough, and people know that you're going to do it, I'm sure this happens with your team. It serves as a forcing function. Okay, I'm actually going to need to pay attention. And I'm gonna actually need to interject and have an idea because he's just not gonna talk again unless I contribute.

1:18:10 Pascal Kaldenbach: Yes, definitely. You just need to be careful that it's not like you're not playing with the persons, right? It's not about I just sit there and be quiet and then I ask question and then I leave because I do not care anyway. You really need to take it seriously. And this leads to a situation that people will tell you a lot of things, also a lot of private things. So you have a lot of information, and this is also a lot of responsibility, I would say, right? So you cannot get all of the information from one person and then go to another person and tell them, ah, you know what happened, and he told me this and this and this. You need to keep the information really serious or confidential. But yes, this leads to a situation that a lot of people come to you, ask for your opinion, and give you really sensitive information. And you need to be just careful how you proceed with this information, which is getting back to the things I said about sales is also about character, right? You need to be a person where people can trust in that you will not use the information against them. Because otherwise in the long term they will not give you the information. And this is also the way, for example, my sure fixes with my team goes on. I will join the meeting and then I will mute myself in the best case for 45 minutes, and I will then just give them some advice or help them to sort out their things. And this is why we, for example, have a really open conversation in our team, which is kind of important for me, right? So you would never recognize at any situation that I'm like their boss, right? I'm just a person. I'm feeling like I'm part of the team and I'm somebody where people always can get to and ask questions or tell me what they're thinking about. And, you know, my pipeline is too small and I'm really lazy, or I don't have the mindset to do cold calling. I need this kind of open conversation, to have employee-focused selling, right, to help them sort out their things. And this only works by being a kind of trustful person, I would say. That makes sense.

1:20:32 Scott Ingram: Brilliant. Brilliant. Let's talk about motivation for a minute. Like, what, what motivates and drives you? And how do you think about motivation? Maybe not even just for yourself, but also in the context of working with your team as well.

1:20:45 Pascal Kaldenbach: I'm not quite sure if I can get it done in English, but I will try my best. I personally do not believe in motivation. I think motivation implies that there is something which you can have or you cannot have, right? So the consequence of that is people who are motivated can do it and people who are not motivated cannot do it. But I think this is wrong. And without getting too philosophical here, but you only have one life. And you need to understand that life is at least 30% work. And everybody needs… or not everybody, but most people need to work. But most of the people also need to sleep, right? And sleep is also 30% of your day. And you would never ask a person, oh, how do you motivate yourself to sleep? No, you sleep because it's mandatory to be part of your life. But what you can change is the way you are taking care of your sleep, right? You can improve your sleep by not drinking alcohol or eating fast food before going to sleep or taking away your mobile before going to sleep or buying a bed or so on or so on. So there's nothing about motivation of sleep but the way you are thinking about yourself and the behavior of sleep. And I think it's the same with work. There is nothing like being motivated to work or not motivated. For me, it's mandatory. And you will spend a lot of time in your life, especially when you're young. So for me, it's not about being motivated. For me, it's about making the best out of the time I have. Right. And this is my personal motivation each morning. I have only this life. I only have this Monday morning. And to be honest, working week is 5 days and fun time is only 2 days per week. So just make sure that the 5 days are at least the same fun as the 2 days are. So you have 7 days of fun. This is the mindset I try to have and I also try to adapt on my team. I hope this makes sense somehow. I love it.

1:23:09 Scott Ingram: I love it. Is there something you believe that the average sales professional or the typical sales professional would think is crazy?

1:23:17 Pascal Kaldenbach: You don't need to be nice in sales. You don't need to be a good speaker. I'm not a good speaker. And you don't need to be the most active in sales, right? I think this is a common mindset. Do the most, be good at speaking, and always be nice to the customer. For me, that's like the total opposite of a good sales. So if you are being the most active person, well, then maybe you are not the person that really spends the most time on one customer to listening and to understanding their needs. If you are too nice to a customer, you maybe want to avoid an uncomfortable situation, which is maybe necessary. To really help the customer in the long term. And you don't need to be a good speaker. You need to be a good active listener. But I think we spoke more than enough about listening.

1:24:14 Scott Ingram: What advice do you have for somebody that's just getting started out in their sales career today?

1:24:21 Pascal Kaldenbach: Yes, for me personally, it's not something bad to be new in sales. Right? You have a clear mindset. You have totally no plan about how the world is working in sales. But it's good because it forces you to be really good at listening. And this is the recommendation I give everybody in my team for the first 3 months, 6 months, whatever time period. In every conversation you have, be always the quietest person. And consume as much information as possible. And you can get there more quickly by learning how to ask good questions, open questions, and follow-up questions. And this is how you should break down your training in the beginning, right? Practice on your listening skills, because it's sometimes really hard to listen to a person. They are sometimes speaking really slow. They are sometimes really silent. Sometimes they're also speaking really fast or in a different language. So using words you maybe not know. So sometimes listening is really hard. Practice on it. And as soon as you feel comfortable about listening, try to ask more questions and ask especially questions on persons that are not speaking so much to you. Right. Sometimes there are people who are just quiet. As well. So maybe they are not a quiet person, but you were not able to ask the right questions to get them talking, right? So training your asking skills. And as soon as your listening and asking skills are set, learn as much about sales in general. So never ever start with your company, with your company products, with your company sales philosophy. Just start with sales in general. Read books, listen to podcasts, listen to any other podcast than Sales Success Stories because I cannot recommend it anymore. Read interviews, watch movies, right? We on the team event I mentioned before, we sit down together one evening watching The Wolf of Wall Street, right? Because it's a really nice and funny movie and shows you how sales should not be done. But you can still learn a lot of things about how you should not do things. And at the beginning, make sure that with these 3 parts you build up an information diet which works for you. If you're not the morning person, do not force you to wake up in the morning to listen to the podcast just because somebody from Germany told you to do it, right? If you have a dog Go on a walk with the dog. Maybe then you have a better timing or better mindset to have your information. So find a routine that's working for you. And if these 3 parts are set, then just be patient. Sales is something you need to put in a lot of hard work day by day, hour by hour, week by week, month by month, year by year. And suddenly overnight, you will be successful, you will be the one top performer in your company. Nobody understood how you get there, why you are so successful, why you are doing so much different. And you can still reflect on your own learnings.

1:27:51 Scott Ingram: Perfect. Perfect. What about somebody that is… they're further into their career? And, and they haven't, they haven't gotten to that, you know, they've been at it for years, and now they're an overnight success, they're still looking for that. What's your advice for them?

1:28:05 Pascal Kaldenbach: If you are successful, just continue. If you're like struggling, step back, take a breath. Maybe it's a good timing to reflect yourself. The good thing about being a little bit longer in your career is that you have some kind of data which you can rely on. So ask yourself the good questions you may learn. For example, are you still motivated? Are you still doing the best? How many books do you read per week? How many whatever podcasts are you listening to? Or even more sales-related, how many calls do you have on average per day? Right. So I often face the situation that people say, I'm doing so much and tomorrow I will call 8 hours and then I will be be so out of the top performance and I will do 80 calls. And then they have one day where they're calling a lot. But the question is, what is the average per day performance? And when you are somehow into sales, you can report on the data. Just take all of the calls you made in one year and divide them by the days you were working, excluding vacation or sick days. And then you have your average calling per day. And you would be surprised how low this number Because it's maybe somewhere, I don't know, it depends obviously. But maybe the number is saying you're doing on average four calls a day because you have the feeling that on Thursday you're doing the best, but then you missed the Monday and the Friday and the Tuesday or whatever. So the data are not lying. You're doing five calls a day. So this is your starting point where you can. Reflect yourself and ask yourself, okay, if I want to improve my sales performance again by 20%, ask yourself the question, how can I get from 5 calls a day to 6 calls a day? Right? Which is not a, I change everything now and I do a new sales philosophy and I will change 180 degrees and then sales will be great again. Just reflect on yourself, look at the data, Ask yourself the right questions to get an honest answer, and then just slightly, a little bit, change the perception or reduce the mismatch of your perception and your performance through the data. And by time, this may already help you to get back on track. Right?

1:30:48 Scott Ingram: Yeah, it's really kind of just the incremental improvement, right? What's the little thing that I can do that's going to make a big difference?

1:30:55 Pascal Kaldenbach: Absolutely. Absolutely. And this is what I mentioned by my top 3 things. When you're constantly working at 120% and you're stressed the whole day and you're doing a lot of things which you are often doing when you're a little bit into your career, you have your presales, your escalation, your customer, then your internal stuff, processes. Sometimes you're doing a lot of things and you have the feeling I did not have done anything today, right? Maybe this is a sign to step back, reduce your workload, get back to 80% to make sure that you are not working on a constant stress level. Because in sales, often things happen which you cannot change, right? Sometimes you get an email, oh, by the way, here's an RFP. Deadline is in 2 days. Sorry for the late response. Have fun. Then you need to execute, right? Then you do not have the time to reflect yourself or to take a break. You need to go the extra mile. You need to work late hours. But this only works on a short term, and it only works if you are not on a constant stress level anyways, because otherwise you will face the situation that you're working 80 hours per week and you have the feeling that you did not achieve anything. And you will miss the fun, and then you will get sick. And this is obviously not something which you want in your life, I hope.

1:32:22 Scott Ingram: Great advice. I have been so eager to ask you this question as somebody who's listened to so much of this podcast. And, you know, I usually say, you know, what would you want to know about the top sellers in other organizations? I mean, the reason I asked this question is I'm trying to get at, is there something I'm not asking that I should be asking of all these folks that I interview? Have you given that any thought? Is there something you're like, Scott, I really wish… I'd like to know more about something else from all of these people that you've talked with?

1:32:54 Pascal Kaldenbach: What do you think will my answer be on this question?

1:32:57 Scott Ingram: Oh gosh, you can't… see, now you're cheating and turning around the question. I'm not taking the bait on that.

1:33:03 Pascal Kaldenbach: I had some thoughts. Now I'm just kidding, Scott. I had some thoughts. And even before, like, your podcast. And to be honest, there is something I would know about other top sellers in other organizations, but only for one reason. If I had a wish, I would like to join every deal that I have lost and see how my competitors have done better. You know, just because someone is successful in another company with another attitude, another history. It would not help me to copy his sales style. From all the mentors I have learned in the past, if I would have done the same style they had, I would be horribly bad in sales because it would not work out for me. Right. There are some people who are perfectly working on networking. I'm totally bad at networking still today. Like, it's my worst case scenario to have a networking But to change the perspective on a competitor's view on the same deal I was working on, this is direct feedback where I was wrong, where I can reflect myself, where I've done a wrong decision or whatever. And I think this is where things get really interesting.

1:34:22 Scott Ingram: That's fascinating. Is that a conversation that you ever have?

1:34:27 Pascal Kaldenbach: Sadly, no.

1:34:29 Scott Ingram: No. As we get into the challenge stage, so here's my challenge to you. My challenge for you is go back to one of those deals that you lost and where you have good relationship and ask the customer why.

1:34:48 Pascal Kaldenbach: Yeah, totally good idea. I will also ask my team to do it.

1:34:52 Scott Ingram: There you go. There you go. All right. Now it's your turn to give a challenge. So as you know, this has been amazing. My face is hurting because I'm grinning through this whole conversation, Pascal. So I really appreciate you taking the time. We talked about a lot of stuff. We always try and make it actionable at the end. So what would you challenge our listener to do over the course of the next week or two to improve themselves and improve their results?

1:35:17 Pascal Kaldenbach: Yeah, that's easy to answer, Scott. The first challenge I would like to give everybody is basically the same I give to everybody in my team. In the next 7 days, in every conversation you have… private, business, family, friends… try not to speak. Listen, but listen actively and ask serious questions about what they are talking and what they are interested about. And the challenge is to have the conversation with everyone even with people you may not like beforehand, as long as possible. This only will work if you find a topic they are interested in, and this only works if you can listen and ask good questions. So this is also for beginners and experts a really nice challenge to see how they are going in their information exchange. All right, and yes. That would be my challenge.

1:36:17 Scott Ingram: Fantastic, Pascal. This has been absolutely amazing. Thank you for taking the time. Thank you for focusing on this conversation. I really think our listeners are going to get a ton of value from it.

1:36:30 Pascal Kaldenbach: Yeah, thanks, Scott. It was a pleasure. Thanks for the listeners who bear with me with my English. And also thanks to my team who pushed me to do it and the people who helped me to prepare it in English. And last but not least, also my girlfriend and my family who have always the patience to keep with me in uncomfortable situations I provoke.

1:36:55 Scott Ingram: 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.