14: How Kyle Gutzler Doubled His Sales in 1 Year and Sold Over $1 Million Dollars at Payscale

0:06 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.

0:15 Scott Ingram: To learn more, visit us at top1.fm. Here's your host, Scott Ingram. Today on the Sales Success Stories podcast, I am super excited to be talking with Kyle Gutzler. Kyle is the number one senior account executive at PayScale out of Seattle, where he literally doubled his sales last year and sold over $1 million. Welcome to the show, Kyle.

0:38 Kyle Gutzler: Hey, Scott. Thanks so much for having me.

0:40 Scott Ingram: So Kyle and I connected because of a great post he wrote on LinkedIn called How I Doubled My Sales in One Year that basically went viral. He just posted that a few days ago, but regardless of when you're listening to this show, uh, I know I can accurately say that It's been liked and shared thousands of times. I'd actually recommend you take the 5 minutes to read Kyle's post before listening to the rest of this. And you can get there real quickly by going to top1.fm/2x, the number 2, the letter X. That'll take you right to that post, or go to top1.fm/14, the number 14, where you'll find all of this episode's show notes and links to everything we talk about or mention over the course of what I know is going to be a pretty long conversation. Because we've got so much great stuff to talk about. Also, when you're done reading Kyle's post, do us a favor and leave a quick comment mentioning Kyle and I and the fact that you're listening to the show. I would both appreciate that a lot. So Kyle, uh, we're basically going to dig into this thing in detail point by point, but why don't you start and outline, uh, the 7 adjustments that you made to double your results to start?

1:50 Kyle Gutzler: Yeah, so there's 7 on here. The first one on there is I sold myself. Then I ignored the perception of what's possible. I took absolute control of my sales process. I set huge goals. Then I have my MVPs. I took massive action and I always move forward. So those are, those are the 7.

2:11 Scott Ingram: Cool. And we're going to talk about every one of those points in detail, but before we go there, Kyle, I'm curious. I mean, this is a, a pretty significant transformation. What triggered all of this? Like, was there a switch that got flipped? And if so, what flipped that switch?

2:25 Kyle Gutzler: Yeah, I think, you know, for me, Scott, I was, I was never somebody that was like struggling with my sales performance. I always felt like I was a good performer and kind of like maybe a slightly above average performer. And for me, it just didn't settle well. Like, I always had aspirations to be a top performer really in anything that I do. And so I guess that the switch kind of came naturally just after the first of the year. Um, I felt like at the conclusion of 2015, I had built up a good amount of momentum. Um, and then going into 2016, I just felt like it was my moment.

3:03 Scott Ingram: Awesome. And we talked a little bit yesterday as, as we were kind of preparing that this wasn't a… you didn't start everything over. It wasn't really a massive change. Can you talk about that?

3:15 Kyle Gutzler: Yeah. So for me, I kind of almost look at it as 1-degree shifts in a lot of areas. Like, it wasn't a mass overhaul of my whole process. Um, and in my article, I, I kind of referenced that at the end. Like, I stayed the same person, my values remained the same, a lot of the things that I did remained the same, but there were some things that I definitely shifted. Um, a couple of things that were intentional, and then there were certainly some things that I just kind of reflected back on, honestly, when writing this article, which was about a week ago. Um, that I noticed that I did, and, and I was able to put that all together in the article for everybody to check out.

3:55 Scott Ingram: Yeah. So let's start going through those points. Let's start with you sold yourself. Talk about that.

4:00 Kyle Gutzler: Yeah. So for this one, I mean, I felt like I, in selling myself, what I mean by that is I made the switch from basically looking for other key leaders and managers to help me close deals and not necessarily just help close deals, but like in some instances actually close the deal for me. And I think probably a lot of the listeners have been in that situation before where you have somebody doing the majority of the work for you, to making the shift to actually becoming the man and owning the responsibility of the sale and essentially being sold on my capabilities to, to be the one that's in control and that's ultimately going to be selling the deals.

4:42 Scott Ingram: Yeah. So, so really kind of point of emphasis, it's, it's you sold yourself, not sold Kyle, but, but more you took control and decided, I'm going to be the one that's, that's doing this effort and be more in control.

4:54 Kyle Gutzler: Yeah, that's exactly right. And I think, you know, it's, it's a little easier said than done. I think if you're listening to this, then you're probably wondering, like, how do I get to that point? And for me personally, like, a lot of that has to do with self-confidence. And the way that I was able to become more confident as a salesperson is, I would say one of the main things was just repetition. And I almost compare it to like, if you were going to the gym, like it's something that you constantly have to work on. You're gonna see results if you are in the gym more often and consistently. And so with my sales process, I just really tried to jam repetition, do as many calls as possible, and really live in that moment as much as possible. And so I ultimately became more confident as a salesperson. And the thing that I think too, is like, there's a lot of people on the sales floor that they've actually got a ton of potential. And I was one of those people that I felt like I was good. But I needed that breakthrough moment. And I needed to kind of take it to the next level. And people have it inside of them like that. That's my belief. And it's basically just a matter of getting to that next step and realizing what's possible for yourself. It would almost be like if you were, you know, in front of a mirror and you were rehearsing what you want to say, and then you go out to say it to somebody and it comes out totally different. So like, we have it inside of us to perform well. But it's, it's my belief that once you get confident in the things that you say, then your results start to really click. And that's what happened for me.

6:28 Scott Ingram: And how do you think about… I think a lot of times kind of getting that level of confidence, or you use one of my favorite words to describe this in the article, you talk about swagger, right? And not in a cocky way. In just a very self-assured, like, I know what I'm doing, and, and it comes across. But I think a lot of times it's kind of catch-22 where you've gotta, you've gotta have some success to feel that confidence, and then it kind of builds. But how do you, how do you kind of get there? So yeah, what, what was that? And, and maybe I'll couple that with, you know, what, what, what did you use as the motivation and the drive to, to start to make some of these things happen?

7:06 Kyle Gutzler: Yeah, I mean, I'm gonna fall back to the repetition as one point, but I also wanna follow up with something that I think was really instrumental for me. And it's honestly kind of hard to explain, but the easiest way that I could describe it is I cut loose on the calls. I cut loose in the conversations that I was having with people, and I got out of my comfort zone a lot more. I got more bold with people. I called them out on things. I was doing things that I didn't do before because I was a lot more reserved and I just didn't have that confidence. So I think maybe for people listening to this, the best thing that you can do is throw yourself in uncomfortable situations, say things that you wouldn't normally say, challenge people, right? All the things that, you know, in your personal relationships, it doesn't come across as natural. But for the purposes of selling, I think it's, it's so important to, to do that and to push yourself outside of your comfort zone. And when you do that, at least for me, that's when I started to develop the swagger. And it didn't feel so weird when I called somebody out and when I was bold in a certain moment. And so I would say that you mix that with the repetition and that's kind of the recipe to get to the swagger level.

8:21 Scott Ingram: And did you ever worry that you were wasting an opportunity or, you know, taking too big of a risk in that process? Because that's a careful balance as well, right? Somebody sort of being aggressive in the way that you were and trying things out. And not feeling like, oh shoot, I'm… I can't waste this opportunity. I think a lot of people feel…

8:42 Kyle Gutzler: Yeah, no, I see what you're saying. I mean, I think it's… it really is a process of trial and error and figuring out what works for you. I can tell you for me personally, I was pleasantly surprised when I started to really step outside of my comfort zone. And I'll just use challenging as an example. I can't tell you how many deals for me closed last year that I literally almost started busting up laughing when it closed because I was thinking, man, me and this guy butted heads on this call. I can't believe that it just closed. But the more that I started to push myself outside of my comfort zone and outside of my boundaries that maybe I had in 2015, actually the better results that I started to get.

9:22 Scott Ingram: Nice. So let's go on to the next one. You ignored the perception of what's possible.

9:26 Kyle Gutzler: Yeah, that's right. So I think You know, for salespeople, honestly, quotas do a little bit of a disservice because I think the way that people view a quota is it's almost like a destination. And personally for me, in my sales career, I've seen a lot of people, once they hit their quota, then they kind of start to coast, right? And I've noticed for me, if I can continue to accelerate and continue to work off of momentum of, you know, if I've sold some deals and I've hit my quota, Um, there's really an opportunity for you to take off in maybe the second half of your month or the second half of your quarter. So for me, it's, it's always been about ignoring what other people have done at my company and what other people have sort of identified as what's possible, um, in terms of targets that you can hit, how many deals you can close within a given month, the size of the deals that you close, the total volume of sales over the course of a month. Um, and I outlined it in my article, but I think because of that mindset, I was able to set a couple of records for our company, both by selling the most amount of units for our segment within a given month, and then the most dollar amount. So basically sales dollars over the course of a month as well.

10:43 Scott Ingram: Yeah. And let me provide a little bit of perspective for the, for the listener also, because Kyle and I did spend quite a bit of time chatting yesterday. In fact, one of the things I think I'm going to try and do, we did record that conversation, not all of it is something that we'll be able to make public. But I'm going to probably take some pretty significant snippets of that and put it in our Sales Success Community. So, if you're not already a part of the Sales Success Community, if you… I guess the easiest way is if you text TOP1, that's the number 1, so T-O-P, the number 1, to 444999. Just follow the process and that'll get you an invite to that Sales Success Community. And we're going to load that thing up with some pretty interesting bonuses. But one of the things that Kyle talked about yesterday was I was asking about kind of putting this in context and understanding, you know, percentage of plan. Uh, where, where was this? And, uh, Kyle, your answer was, well, I, I think it was like 140%, but I don't even know. And I think that's really important. Like, quota was never a number that was on your radar. It was, it was much, much bigger goals. And, and now let's take this a little bit out of order, um, because I think that's a really natural transition point to your next point, which was you set huge goals. So let's, let's talk about that.

12:02 Kyle Gutzler: Yeah, so I think the main goal that I had set at the beginning of 2016 was I wanted to sell $1 million of new business over the course of 2016. Typically, the structure of my goal setting is it's not going to be all career-related, and this is honestly something that's kind of been ingrained into me just in my upbringing. My dad, Steve Gutzler, he's a huge leadership influence and does keynote speaking and coaching sessions. And so you could just imagine like the amount of influence he has on me on topics like goal setting. So one of the things that he had me do at a very early age is actually map out different categories of goals and then come up with specific goals for each of those categories. And then also try to take it a step further, like how are you actually going to reach those goals. So I break it down into… I mean, last year what I did was I did work goals, financial, spiritual, health and physical, personal development, and then fun was the last category. But for the purposes of this conversation, my main goal that I set out for in 2016 was to be able to reach $1 million.

13:24 Scott Ingram: And talk about how that actually happened because that's a great story.

13:29 Kyle Gutzler: Yeah, so the first half of 2016 was awesome. In the first 6 months, I think I had sold $600,000, so I was well on my way to hit that goal. There were, I mean, just because of the nature of our business, there were a couple of months where things were a little bit dry for me, but then in Q4, I was really able to cover a lot of ground and kind of do some makeup work. And I was telling Scott, literally on the last day of the last month of the year, literally on the last day of the year, I, on the last phone call that I made, I actually exceeded the million mark and was able to actually hit that goal. And it was just, I mean, I can't even describe the moment. It was amazing.

14:17 Scott Ingram: Yeah. And one of the things we talked about a lot too, you've, you've had a couple, it sounds like really strong sales managers that you've worked with, Talk about them and the impact that they've had and just that overall kind of contribution, how you partnered with them.

14:34 Kyle Gutzler: Yeah, I mean, I feel like I've always naturally just kind of gravitated to high performers or people of influence and leaders within companies. And so, there's definitely been a couple of key people that I've worked with here at Payscale and other companies that I've worked with. Worked at. Um, and I think, you know, for me, what's really helped me is number one, just taking the initiative to involve, involve myself with those people. Um, but number two, just trying to focus on being coachable and, and actually being able to take the things that they teach me and scale it myself. Um, in other words, not becoming reliant and not, um, having a crutch with that person, but being able to take the things that they do and they say and really work it into my process. And an example is like one of my biggest mentors, he actually moved on to another company, but I still do a lot of the things that he taught me. I still say phrases that he said on the phone, and I've been able to kind of latch on to some of that stuff.

15:37 Scott Ingram: Good stuff. And when it comes to the goals, I'm curious, how did you do against the other categories? Right. You obviously did extraordinarily well in the career category. Did that sort of transfer over and allowed you to have a lot of success in other areas, or were there, were there some that suffered just because of the, the focus in the, on the million-dollar goal?

15:59 Kyle Gutzler: No, I, I mean, I feel like I was able to hit just about everything. Um, you know, if you're, if you're doing well in your career and your work and you're crushing your targets, then I would hope that you're doing well financially too. Um, and then, you know, other categories like health and fitness, that's always been something that's been important for me. And I see a lot of crossover with that and the performance that I have in work. So I try to stay consistent with that. It's a little more difficult to actually create meaningful targets with that. But it could be as simple as, hey, I want to get in the gym 4 times per week. And I'd like to work out for at least 45 minutes. Simple things like that. And then in a category like fun, maybe you want to plan a couple vacations. So I was actually able to go to Europe twice last year. And so it wasn't like I I was all work, I still was having a lot of fun, um, and, and I was able to hit some of those goals as well.

16:52 Scott Ingram: Yeah, nice. And you did say that, you know, you had this great start to the beginning of the year, and then there, there was a bit of a, of a slow period. How did you make sure that that didn't, um, just allow the wheels to come off the bus and, and take you off course and, and kind of get back, get back on and, and regain the momentum that you had and finish strong? Sure.

17:13 Kyle Gutzler: I mean, I think honestly that the biggest thing is continuing to surround yourself with, with people of influence and people that bring you up. Um, I've made both an intentional effort to try to surround myself with people that bring the best out of me while also kind of removing the people that are toxic in my life. Um, the ones that, you know, if I was going through a tough season, would almost feed into that in a negative way. So I would say the relationships piece is probably the biggest aspect of that. But then, and I kind of got into this in the article a little bit towards the tail end, but using situations like that to actually create energy and movement for you. In other words, like, if you're going through a slump, then there should be no better time to get after it, right? And to be prospecting and to be building up your pipeline and to doing everything that you can to get things back on, back on course. So maybe it's me. I'm sure you're the same way, Scott, but it's like if things start to drift off a bit, I want to do everything possible to get back on course.

18:20 Scott Ingram: Yeah. You know, it's funny, I had a sales manager friend of mine early on. He had this great saying. He's like, you know, when things are going right and you get off a call and you got great news, maybe you just closed a deal. The best thing you can do is pick up the phone and make that next call. Uh, and, and then he would say, you know, when, when something goes completely sideways, um, and, and throws you off, you know, maybe you lost a deal that you, that you were really counting on, the, the best thing you can do is, is pick up the phone. So, I, I, either way, the, the best next step is just kind of keep going and, and, you know, take, take on that action. So, before I ask Kyle about how he took control of his sales process, I want to ask you, the listener, to help me thank our founding sponsor, Nudge.ai, by getting yourself a free account. So Nudge uses artificial intelligence to help you find actionable insights on your prospects and customers. So just go to top1.fm/nudge. That's N-U-D-G-E, top1.fm/nudge, and get your account today because if it weren't for them, this show wouldn't be happening and I wouldn't be having this awesome conversation with Kyle. So, Kyle, let's talk about how you took absolute control of your sales process.

19:31 Kyle Gutzler: Yeah, it was interesting because, you know, since I wrote the article, I just had a ridiculous amount of people writing comments and sending me messages and asking questions. And I think the fact that I wrote on the article, hey, I'd be happy to write a post on this topic alone, is probably the reason why so many people asked follow-up questions on it. But it is something that I think is, is so important. And I think, you know, if I were to break it down into a couple of things that are really important for taking control of the sales process, I would say the first thing is have a commanding presence and literally audibly sound like you're in control on the call. I almost compare it to like, think back to the days when you had a substitute teacher take over the class. I'm sure you probably had a substitute that didn't have much control of the classroom, and it's like literally by the way that they carry themselves and the way that they talk to the class. Um, for instance, when I was growing up, like, I used to always be the person that would drive teachers nuts, and if there was a substitute, it was like my job to make their life a living hell. Um, and so there were the substitutes that could literally shut me down in a matter of 20 seconds by taking control. Um, and then there were teachers that literally just let me walk all over them. I compare that to the sales process because that's what happens on the phone, right? You have people that in some instances take advantage of you on the call, or they're going to be the one that dictates what the next steps are and what the timeline is going to be. So for me, I've, I've found that I have a lot more control when I, when I take the wheel and I sound like I'm in control. So that's something, it comes back to what we were talking about earlier, like you need to practice that. If you're somebody that doesn't normally do that on the phone, well then practice it. Like it's something that you can change just like anything else. It's like a muscle that you can develop, so you just have to get out there and actually do it and try it. I think the next thing is almost just like reflection and remember that actually most people want to be told what to do, believe it or not. Like, this is probably, and this isn't scientifically backed, Scott, so maybe I'm wrong on this, but it's my belief that actually most people wanna be told this is the way that it works, and here's the steps to do it, and here's when we're gonna get on a phone call next. And so when I'm talking to people, I have absolute control of the process because I actually fundamentally believe that people wanna be told what to do. Not everybody, in my opinion, is the Type A personality, and you'll get those people on the phone that they want to have the control, and that's okay. Like, I would say don't be so rigid with your process to the point where you can't adapt on the phone and recognize, hey, this person is wanting it their way and they have to have the call next Friday, for instance, and I wanted to have it on Monday. That's okay. So, you know, be willing to be flexible for that type of situation. Another thing that I would add is just, you know, in order to have control, it's the power of… you have to think about the power of asking. And there's so many examples that I could give for this topic, but I'll give you an example. Literally 2 hours ago, I was on the phone with one of our reps because I help lead up the team here, so I'll jump on some other people's demos from time to time. And we had a really great call and the person said, you know, why don't we target for our follow-up call the 29th? So March 29th, which from the time that we're recording this, that's a couple of weeks out. Um, my response to that was, hey, you know what? And I apologize if this comes across as selfish, but the end of the month for us, especially the end of the quarter is extremely busy. I'm looking at my calendar right now and it's, it's already starting to get pretty full. How about we just do it a week or 2 prior? And I just simply asked. And the result of it was we shaved 8 or 9 days off the process because she goes, oh yeah, no problem. Why don't we do that? And that's, I mean, that's to me one fundamental part of having control is just being willing to ask.

23:54 Scott Ingram: And Kyle, what does the rest of that sales process look like? You know, what are the steps? Are you outlining the whole thing or are you just, you know, pushing them to make sure that you've got a really well-defined kind of next step?

24:08 Kyle Gutzler: Yeah, I think something that I'm, that I'm a big believer of is talking in terms of how other customers have won with, with my process or how other customers have essentially gone through the steps to get something approved. I think it's one thing if you're a salesperson and you say, this is why you do it this way, because I have a quota to hit versus you know, I'm going to speak kind of from a neutral standpoint and tell you, here's how this other customer did it. Not me, right? And you kind of put yourself as a neutral third party. And so I'm a big believer of saying what our customers would tell you, or here's how this customer did it, and having kind of a bank of different customer stories that are, that are ultimately going to help your timeline. And you can use that really for any topic, not just timelines, but literally every aspect of of your sales process, rely as much as you can on talking about how other customers have done it and how they've ultimately won.

25:12 Scott Ingram: Oh, love that. Love that. So 2, 2 kind of other ideas for those listening. One, I had an amazing conversation way back in episode 3 with Justin Bridgemohan of Influitive, who's got a really, really interesting process where he actually will ask his clients to opt in to the way he works because it's proven the kind of the path for his customers to be the most successful. And we even did a follow-up video interview just on that topic alone. So, if you go kind of find our YouTube channel, you can go look that up. I also recently did an interview with another fan of the show, Andrew Bermudez, who runs Digz.ai. And they did… they looked at a big hunk of data from the clients. They do a lot of work in the commercial real estate space. And what they were finding is something… there was a very small subset at the top of the stack that was getting something like 12 times the results of the average performers. And so, they looked at a whole ton of data to try and find some correlation and understand what is the behavior that creates that type of a result. And what they found was those top, top folks that were having 12 times results, they always had… and again, this is real estate, so it's very local… they had, after that first conversation, they had on the calendar a face-to-face meeting within a few days. And, and the impact on their close ratios was tremendous. And then they actually did that, um, Andrew and his team went back and kind of of A/B tested that with some average performers and just sort of inserted… they left some folks alone, like, yep, keep doing it the wrong way that you've been doing it and keep getting your wrong results. Hey, other guys, why don't you try kind of this new technique? And again, they saw something like a 4x improvement in results. So, I think you're exactly right. It's taking control of that process and your people want to be led. And if you do that from a place of confidence, and I loved what you share about it, it's not because this is the way that helps you close deals.

27:21 Kyle Gutzler: Yeah, it's, it's…

27:23 Scott Ingram: this is the way that other customers have been successful, uh, in getting this solution in place and, and seeing results very quickly.

27:31 Kyle Gutzler: Yep, absolutely.

27:33 Scott Ingram: So, Kyle, let's move on and talk about your MVPs. What are those?

27:38 Kyle Gutzler: So again, this is something that my, my dad had, had come up with and actually passed along to me. So what an MVP stands for is it's your most valuable and profitable And this began, I think, when my dad started to talk about this. He was talking in terms of his MVP customers. So the customers that are going to drive the most profitability for him, and those are the ones that he probably wants to spend the majority of the time really taking care of. But then it kind of evolved into what are your MVP hours of the day? What are your MVP activities that you do throughout the day? Your MVP prospects, for instance. So I guess if I could give you an example for me, like one of the things that I try to be really intentional about is number one, understanding where my slots are in terms of valuable hours of the day, and then really dedicating activities that are gonna drive my productivity more than anything during those hours of the day. So it's almost like, you know, if you've been in a corporate setting and you've been in a company that holds a lot of meetings, and they hold meetings during hours of the day that are like critical for, for your business and for prospecting or for having meetings. Like nothing in my mind is more frustrating than that, or, or doing things like, you know, administrative work in the early hours of the day. So specifically for me, I've, I've found that, and this is partly because I'm on the Pacific time zone. And so when it's 7:00 AM for me, it's 10:00 AM for people on the East Coast. I have to protect hours of, of 7 AM to 11 AM. Those have to be my hours for things that are ultimately going to close business, and I don't want to waste those hours on activities and, and meetings and things that really aren't going to drive my productivity.

29:32 Scott Ingram: And Kyle, did you have to push back? I mean, did you have to reset some expectations with your leadership and sort of get some of those types of meetings off of your schedule?

29:41 Kyle Gutzler: Yeah, I mean, it's, it's a tough conversation. I, I think there's, there's an art to that that I'm, I'm still learning. Um, I feel like I've done a really good job of getting things down in terms of how you work with people externally. Um, one thing I'm really trying to work on is, is there's, there's this internal… I don't want to say battle, but, but a process that you need to get down to where you have to be delicate with people, right? I mean, I think you know, at least where I work, like, people can be sensitive, like, if you, if you push back on certain items. And so I definitely have, and I've been intentional on saying, hey, look, I'm not going to be able to get to that type of thing until the end of the day because it's not that, it's not that valuable to me. I find it important, right? If we were to put it on a list of items that I have, it's probably going to fall closer to the bottom. And so, yeah, I think it's, it's definitely important to get that out there and communicate it to leadership.

30:38 Scott Ingram: Yep. Yeah. Now, in addition to kind of identifying the most valuable and profitable part of your day, did you identify the MVPs in terms of activities and the things that you're doing, whether it be in that window or other windows?

30:54 Kyle Gutzler: Yeah, I think, you know, for my type of selling, it's honestly pretty simple in terms of the activities that we do. I would say I'm a little bit more protective on the topic of prospecting, for instance. Like, if I have carved out some time to do prospecting, like, those hours or that hour is gonna be sacred to me, and I'm gonna prioritize that over other things. I also try to just keep my attention on one thing at a time, 'cause I've noticed, like, the more I'm multitasking, at least, the less I'm actually getting done overall. For instance, if you're gonna spend an hour making phone calls, and then in between those phone calls you write an email, and then, you know, you're fielding some inbound emails, that you get, and then you get sidetracked talking to, you know, the person next to you. By the end of that hour, if you were to look back at how many phone calls you've actually made, maybe it's like 4 or 5, right? And you don't want those kind of results. So for me, it's really being intentional on blocking those hours out. And it's not overly complicated on the different types… type of things that I could be doing, but it's going to be prospecting, having meetings, you know, working on contracts, all of those things that are ultimately going to help me close a deal.

32:10 Scott Ingram: And what percentage of your day or how much time are you committing to prospecting?

32:18 Kyle Gutzler: I would say probably 25% of my day. And one thing that I had actually recently read that just kind of opened my eyes on the topic, this is a book by Jeb Blount. It's called Fanatical Prospecting, which I feel like is just coming up all the time now. And I see it all over in posts on LinkedIn and so forth. But the thing that that I learned in this book is the things that you're doing now, the prospecting that you're doing now is really going to be what pays off in the next 60 to 90 days. So if you're having one of those up months, you still need to be prospecting to kind of build for the future months that are ahead. Because I've certainly had those kind of up and down roller coaster where I just crush it one month and then the next month it's a little bit dry. And I never really thought back to the fact that that probably was attributed to not prospecting. And so For me, even if I'm crushing it, I still want to dedicate hours of the day. And I would say probably about 25% of my day is dedicated to prospecting.

33:20 Scott Ingram: And let's talk a little bit more about some of the specifics of your time. So what… when does your day typically start?

33:27 Kyle Gutzler: So I usually… I mean, it fluctuates a little bit. I'm usually up by 5:30. And it's kind of interesting, like in the morning, I almost compare it to like a military drill where I'm just I'm just up, shower, and I try to get out the door as soon as possible. And then I'm in the office usually by about 6:15 to maybe 6:40.

33:49 Scott Ingram: Man, you're a machine. I was gonna ask what the rest of your morning routine looks like, but it doesn't sound like there's much time for anything.

33:59 Kyle Gutzler: Well, so, so usually what I try to do is I try to prep a lot of things that usually take time in the morning. So that could be… I mean, I'm not the type who's just gonna not eat breakfast in the morning. And so one of the things that I'll do either the night before or I'll just pack it really quick in the morning is I'll actually take my breakfast into work. There's usually a couple of things like when I'm at my house, I'll maybe have a handful of mixed nuts just to kind of hold my stomach over for a couple hours. Be sure to drink a good amount of water. I'm probably drinking 30 ounces of water like first thing in the morning. Most recently, I mean, it's kind of a weird thing that I'm doing, but I have a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar in the morning, which has its weird health benefits. And yeah, that one's probably gonna be… people are probably gonna think that's weird. But no, those things really only take me a couple of minutes, and then I'll pack my breakfast, and then I'll actually take it into work. I both value sleep, and so I don't want to be getting up outrageously early and then, you know, having to spend a long amount of time at my house before I actually get into work. And so that's why I try to make my morning pretty quick. But then I also value the fact that I need to be in the office talking to people at 9:30, 10:30 Eastern time, which is 6:30, 7:30 Pacific time. So that's one of the… I don't necessarily want to say disadvantages of being on the Pacific time, but it's just something you have to deal with if you want to be selling on a national scale.

35:35 Scott Ingram: Yeah, for sure. And, and is there a time, maybe it's an afternoon activity or an evening activity, that you're setting up the plan for, for that core selling window from 7 to… I think you said about 11 o'clock?

35:49 Kyle Gutzler: I usually don't. I mean, I, I'll, I'll do work-related things into the evening, but I'm, I'm not I'm not so organized to the point where I'm actually doing some prep work the night before. Honestly, the evening for me is… that's when I'm kind of working on my own personal development that doesn't necessarily have to do with my company. So that could be, you know, reading content and looking at things online and, you know, checking out different authors and that sort of thing. And I'll watch videos. It's pretty sporadic. But in the evening time, like if there's something that I'm doing that's relevant for this conversation, it would be that.

36:32 Scott Ingram: Got it. What does the rest of the day look like? So you've got this kind of core selling block. What happens from 11 until, say, the end of the day? And is that structure pretty consistent every day or is Monday different from Tuesday, which is a little different from Friday?

36:48 Kyle Gutzler: So a lot of it's going to be built around the appointments that I have throughout the day. So I would hope in a given day that I have 1 or 2 appointments in the afternoon. Um, and the nice thing is like a lot of those, you know, other customers that I might be working with that are on Pacific time kind of come around in the afternoon. So it's not like, you know, once 1 o'clock comes around, I'm unable to talk to anybody. Like that's a good opportunity for me to switch gears and maybe start talking to some people in California, for instance. Um, so for me, it kind of changes from day to day. It could be I'm doing a meeting because it's on the calendar, or I'm going to do a little additional prospecting. Or it could be, you know, those 3 or 4 things that just got deprioritized to the end of the day, and I'll be tackling it at that point.

37:34 Scott Ingram: Got it. Okay. And you talked about your evening being kind of personal self-development. What, what does that look like? What is your information diet in terms of the types of things that you're reading and listening to and watching?

37:47 Kyle Gutzler: Yeah, so like I said, it, it's, it changes pretty frequently, and I think I think a lot of that is probably attributed to just the fact that a lot of information that we receive now is through social media, and so if you're scrolling through something, then the odds are you're probably kind of bouncing around to different thought leaders and different people that you follow. So there's one piece of it that's just totally spontaneous. If I see an article that catches my eye, I'll check it out. There's, there's a couple of people that I like to follow occasionally, and these are all just huge names, but Gary Vaynerchuk, Tony Robbins, Grant Cardone, most recently Jeb Blount and the Fanatical Prospecting book. So a lot of big names that I'm sure a lot of people are well aware of that I like to dig into just a little bit further beyond, you know, just kind of the spontaneous stuff that I see on social media.

38:45 Scott Ingram: Yeah, fair enough. And the last thing on the MVP topic, what was the biggest shift you made to your MVPs? Because you wrote that you used to be wasteful in when and where you directed your attention.

38:56 Kyle Gutzler: Mm-hmm. Honestly, I would, I would say it comes back to the time aspect. And during kind of those, those golden hours of the day, I was extremely wasteful with those hours and I didn't prioritize them and I didn't recognize that they were so valuable. Again, for me, like, it's difficult to recognize the majority of the world is on lunchtime right now if it's 9 o'clock where I'm at, right? And so the first part of the day for me has become just so much more important and so much more intentional with where I focus my efforts. And again, I don't want to be committing to meetings that aren't going to be of value. I don't want to be committing to tasks that that, you know, don't require much creativity. And that's the other thing too, is like, I feel like for me and for most people, in that first half of your day, more than likely, that's going to be when you're really firing on all cylinders and when you have the most creative capacity. So why not target activities that are the highest value, right? And push off some of the things that literally you could do with a blindfold on at the end of the day. And so that's, that's kind of the purpose of just being intentional and shifting things around a little bit.

40:14 Scott Ingram: Yeah. And I think it helps to just take advantage of those natural energies. I mean, one of the things I try and do, fairly similar structure, right? The morning is when I am most amped, super high energy. That's when I'll do the hard stuff that's just got to get done. And then, as I start to have kind of that energy lull in the afternoon, that's when I like to put my appointments because I never lull when I'm having a great conversation, right? You and I are talking. It's actually quite late. Uh, yeah, in my day. And, you know, I had to get up at 3:30 this morning, and because that was the only time that the prep was going to happen for the… yeah, based on the conversation we had late yesterday afternoon. Um, but again, it's just kind of taking advantage of, of those opportunities and knowing where they are and, and knowing yourself, which is a pretty good transition to your, your next point, which was you took massive action. Talk about that.

41:09 Kyle Gutzler: Yeah. So I feel like, so when I was taking massive action, I felt like there's a few things that go into that. So I felt like I was surrounding myself with the best people, and I made that a regular thing too. So not only was I targeting people, and I consider this action. So you might be thinking action like just making phone calls. That's gonna be a piece of it, but part of the action is you need to target the people that are successful and that are where you wanna be. And do your best to make that something that you do on a regular basis. So one of the things that I've done with a couple of other people that I consider top performers at our company is we go out once per month. We go out and we have a brunch on a Friday. I think it's the first Friday of every month, and we just talk about things. And, you know, when you're rubbing shoulders with people that are top performers, it just, you know, it starts to rub off on you and it keeps your game sharp. Right? And so I would say, you know, the first thing you need to do when taking massive action is reach out to people that are really where you want to be. And it's hard for me to nail down specifics like dials, but the general feedback that I get is, man, you're just always on the phone. And I don't track my metrics that tight to say, hey, I've made 62 phone calls today. But again, the feedback is always, I'm just on the phone more than anybody else on the floor. I'm doing more meetings, and if I don't have meetings, I'm scheduling the meetings, right? And I'm always getting people on the phone as much as possible. So I think, you know, if I were to break it down to some different things, like, I, I want to have as many at-bats as possible. So a huge amount of meetings with people, and even if they're meetings that aren't going to close business for you, it's still… again, you're working that muscle. And so when the moment's right, and I wrote about this a little bit in the article, when it's game time and you got the ball in your hands, you're going to sink the shot, right? Because you've been doing it for the last several days and you've been talking to a ton of people and it just becomes sort of like second nature. So there's that. And I want to spend like kind of like relatively speaking, when you… if you have the opportunity to work in an office environment, use that as somewhat of a benchmark, right? You don't necessarily want to focus solely on that, but I want to feel like I have the sense that I'm doing twice as much prospecting as anybody else. And you can kind of tell. Right? Especially at our office, it's an open concept, and so we know like when people are making dials and trying to schedule demos and that type of thing. So I want to feel like I'm doing that type of activity just a lot more than other people are doing. And if you mix that with just the ability that I have on the phone, then I'm, you know, it's just a recipe to do a lot better than other people. I want to also do things outside of work that are you know, going to make me feel good about, um, you know, the time that I'm having in the office. And so what I mean by that is do things that are really going to up your game. So if that's, again, surrounding yourself with other people, or could be something as simple as going to the gym and kind of getting your mind right and your body right, those are things that I, I try to emphasize as well outside of work. Um, and I really want to have a ridiculous network of successful people that are pulling me vertically, that are pulling me upward, and also removing people that are… and I said this before… but that are kind of like toxic for you and that are going to be bringing you down and going to start bad habits and that type of thing. So action in all aspects, everything from dials to emails to meetings to the people you surround yourself with.

44:51 Scott Ingram: Nice. And I was going to ask how you set the bar for yourself around what that massive action means. So it doesn't sound like you're tracking necessarily like a, a specific quantity of activities. Is it more that metric of just the comparison and like, okay, well, if I'm doing twice as much as, as the average, I should be seeing twice the results? Like, how… what are you using as kind of the yardstick for that?

45:14 Kyle Gutzler: Yeah, I think, you know, I, I almost am visually… I'm almost visualizing like a pie chart. So comparing yourself to other people, that's going to be one piece of the pie. But I don't think that you want to be completely ignorant to statistics and just have no sense of how many dials you're making. So that's something that I'll certainly check tabs on from time to time and just make sure that, that I am where I want to be. One, one cool sort of diagram that I saw our sales director put together one time was in any given day, you want to have a win and And that win should be ideally you close a deal. So for us, that would be a great accomplishment within a day if you could sell a deal. Well, if you're not selling a deal, then you want to work backwards and you want to have at least had 2 meetings with people, right? So you've… if you didn't close a deal, you gave yourself the opportunity to close a deal by having 2 meetings. If you didn't have 2 meetings, then you should have at least scheduled 2 meetings. Right? So you're working backwards even further. And if you didn't schedule 2 meetings, then you should have at least put in the effort to schedule those 2 meetings. So you should have made a certain amount of dials. And so we have kind of our own metric of ideally where you'd want to be with dials. So I'm not going to get super paranoid if I didn't make a certain amount of dials, if I closed 2 deals in 1 day, right? And so it's all kind of, you know, you have to look at all pieces of the pie. But, but ideally for me, I do want to be making a good amount of dials and stacked up against other people. I do want to be making the most. But at the end of the day, like the whole goal is to be closing business. So if I'm closing business but not leading the leaderboard on dials, I'm okay with that.

47:03 Scott Ingram: Yeah. And to be clear, you're not talking about closing the same deal in the same day. That's a deal in a day because I think your sales cycle is a little bit longer than that.

47:13 Kyle Gutzler: Yep. Yep. So our sales cycle is usually 45 days or so.

47:17 Scott Ingram: Yeah, absolutely. So Kyle, talking about the way that you surround yourself with the best people, I assume that you were the one that sort of instigated the, the Friday brunch thing. How, how else are you seeking out and finding who you want to surround yourself with and, and putting that into action?

47:37 Kyle Gutzler: That's a great question. So I think, you know, it's, it's going to be a mix of things. When, when you've, when you've reached a good amount of success, it… I, I think it becomes a little bit easier to say, you know, we both have a mutual interest in getting together, whereas before getting to that point, it might be a little trickier to, you know, get in front of somebody that is a top performer. But it's gonna be a mixture of, you know, getting together with people that are at your work environment that are essentially where you wanna be or that are pushing you kind of to that next level. Um, and then, you know, reaching into your own personal network. It could be, you know, family, extended family, different mentors that you have, and doing your best to be intentional about getting in front of them on a regular basis and talking to them. So figuring out which people in your life are really driving your productivity and, and, you know, upping your game, so to speak. Um, so there's, there's going to be that. And And, you know, I'm like the other people that have been messaging me on LinkedIn. I'll do that from time to time. Like, if there's a, you know, a person that you admire and you'd like to spend a little bit of time with them or, you know, have a quick phone call with them or ask them a quick question, taking the initiative through that medium and reaching out to somebody through LinkedIn, setting up appointments with people that you can actually have it in person with. So there's… it's similar to the other question. I feel like the answer is going to be definitely a mixture of things.

49:10 Scott Ingram: Yeah, you know, it's interesting because it's one of the things I actually regret a little bit looking back when I was on Will Barron's show. Will runs The Salesman podcast, and he asks a great question about, you know, if you could go back in time and give your younger self some advice. I think we've all heard this idea, and I think it's typically attributed to Jim Rohn, who said you're the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with. With. Um, I've, I mean, I've heard that my entire career, um, but haven't acted on it aggressively enough until very recently. And, you know, one of the things I'm trying to do with this show is create that opportunity, even if somewhat virtual, right? Maybe, maybe folks don't know you personally and they're not spending time with you on a, on a monthly basis going to brunch, but they can listen to this conversation. They can come back to this conversation and listen to it again. They can listen to the other interviews and the other conversations we're having and expose themselves to people that are in that position. And the reality is it's challenging to surround yourself with people at the top of their game because, well, they're kind of busy.

50:22 Kyle Gutzler: Right, right. Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, what's worked for me with actually getting people's time is being very clear on the the expectations of what you want to accomplish in a call or in a meeting. I talk about making it extremely easy for people to say yes. For me, if somebody were asking for my time, I would probably want to know how much time it's going to be. I'd want to know, is there something in it for me? It's not a deal-breaker if there isn't, but that's also good to know. With doing this podcast, it's something that's mutually beneficial, and that was very clear. And then just, you know, the different things and the desired outcomes that you'd like to actually cover as part of that meeting. So I'm a lot more… I guess there's a much higher likelihood that I'm going to get together with somebody or mentor somebody if I know those things. And so I try to be aware of that if I'm trying to set time with somebody. Or establish a mentor, um, that I want to be really clear with the expectations.

51:35 Scott Ingram: Absolutely. Great, great advice. So Kyle, the last point of your 7 adjustments that you made was that you always move forward. What does that mean?

51:44 Kyle Gutzler: Yeah, I think the idea is, so look, all of us have had our own set of trials and, and things that we have to go through just as part of life. Um, it's not all going to be like if you're, if you're you're going through a great season in your sales career, it's not always going to be like that. So I guess the point that I was trying to make with this is no matter what season you're in, there should always be an excuse to move forward and to push forward. If you're not where you want to be, and I think we had touched on this a little bit, there should be every excuse to want to get back on track and to do whatever it takes to to elevate your performance. Whereas, you know, there's been times where, of course, I've closed, you know, very significant deals, and the next morning is extremely easy to get out, get out of bed and get back after it because you've got kind of that fire and motivation. So remind yourself of that. Remind yourself that no matter what season that you're going through, whether it's up or whether it's down, that there should be a natural excuse for you to surge forward.

52:51 Scott Ingram: Well, speaking of seasons, let's, let's take a giant step back and go back a number of seasons. How did you get into sales in the first place?

52:59 Kyle Gutzler: Yeah, so I think this is so similar probably to most people that have gotten into sales. I guess the easiest way to describe it is I sort of stumbled into it. It all began when I actually took an internship when I was in college, so I started I saw a presentation from a guy. He was talking to one of our hospitality classes, and one of the things that he said is, hey, if you want to make any real money, then you need to get in sales. And I see some of you guys, you know, looking into these positions in hospitality, like working for a restaurant or a hotel or something like that. And he's like, the reality is that if you have any desire to make a good income, then you probably shouldn't be doing those things. Um, and so I think that's kind of what intrigued me a little bit was just the opportunity, uh, from a financial standpoint. Um, I always felt like I was, I was pretty good with people, so it seemed like it was, um, sort of a natural career to go into, but there were so many things that I needed to hone and work on in order to actually become a good salesperson. Um, but initially getting into it was, was doing this internship, kind of getting a feel for And then that naturally led to, you know, as soon as I got out of college, literally the week after I graduated, I was, I was in a work setting and working for this corporation full-time and selling for them. And so they made it pretty simple for me because I did the internship, basically stumbled into that, and then they gave me the offer before I graduated college. And so I just naturally began working for them. Um, and I was unhappy with the company and, and, you know, after a year or so of a little over a year working for them, and then I actually made the transition over to Payscale and I've been there ever since.

54:50 Scott Ingram: Nice. And knowing what you know now, I mean, is there anything that you would have done differently along that path or maybe a way that you feel like you could have made the shift, the 2x shift a little bit quicker?

55:02 Kyle Gutzler: Yeah. Well, I think, you know, the, the thing that I did well was, you know, relatively early in my career, I feel like I've gotten to a high level of performance. Performance as a sales professional. So in that sense, I've done things right, and I feel like in my little world, in the company that I work for, I'm doing well for them, which is great. The thing that I'm realizing now is I want something that's so much bigger than the company, and I don't ever think that I'll be a company man. I just have desires that are a lot greater than just working for somebody else and building somebody else's corporation. It's great. The company that I work for, but the thing that I have realized is going to accelerate some of the own… some of the goals that I have for my life is the relationships that I build. So I guess the only thing that I would have done differently, Scott, is maybe earlier on in my career made more of an intentional effort to build quality relationships that weren't necessarily relationships that were immediately going to benefit me. Because I think, you know, last several years or so, Anytime I'm speaking to somebody new and I'm building a relationship, the odds are I'm probably trying to sell them my product, right? And now I think the shift has been, hey, I just want to build these great relationships and more than likely have a mutual benefit from the relationship. And that's what I've been starting to notice. And I've done a couple of things and I posted this article, for instance, which which got an awesome response. That would be maybe the one thing that I would shift.

56:45 Scott Ingram: Got it. Is there a particular sales philosophy that you subscribe to?

56:50 Kyle Gutzler: Nothing that I've necessarily subscribed to. Like I said, there's been a few people that I've pretty consistently followed. One thing that I sort of latched onto in 2016 was the Challenger Sales model, which I was able to see a pretty good deal of success from. But in terms of like religiously subscribing to something that I always check into and read content from and that sort of thing, nothing formal.

57:19 Scott Ingram: Got it. And any kind of go-to tools or apps or other things in your arsenal that are contributing factors?

57:29 Kyle Gutzler: Yeah, I would say One thing that I really like, and this is just standard for anybody who's a sales professional at our company, is we have a software… or it's not a software, it's just basically a web program that we have access to, and it's called Highspot. So Highspot is actually a content management solution. So it manages your content that you have within your company as sales professionals, but it also makes it really easy to then send that content out to other people. Not only send that content, but then actually be able to track when your prospects are opening it and for how long they're looking at it, which has been pretty cool because, you know, like, if you follow up with somebody and you send them 3 different things that they asked, you have a sense of, number one, if they even looked at it, and number two, how much time they actually spent looking at it. And so you know for certain, you know, the person who says, oh yeah, I checked out that case study that you sent over to me. It was pretty interesting. And I'll never say like, hey, I know you didn't look at it because we have this software that tells me that you didn't. But it's good for you. And, you know, sometimes what it'll help me do is if I have a meeting with somebody in a couple of days and I recognize they haven't even looked at it, I'm not going to say, hey, I'm watching you and I know you didn't open this, but I might say, hey, I just wanted to make sure that you got the content that I sent along, something that's gonna kind of give them the nudge that they need to look at it. The other thing is, like, when we went from… so when I started working at this company, it was around 120 employees, and now we're at 400. And so as we've scaled, as we've grown as a company, our content was just flying in a million different directions, and we had no consistency with what it was that we were sending to people. And a lot of times we called it like there was tribal knowledge around the company of what things you should use in what scenarios. But we've gotten a lot smarter with the content that we send, what actually works. And if somebody puts together, you know, an awesome, like, return on investment packet or something like that, it's good for everybody else to be able to easily access that information and then work it into their own process.

59:52 Scott Ingram: So Kyle, you mentioned the, the size of the company. I suppose I should have asked this earlier. Can you put your results last year in perspective for us a little bit in terms of percent of plan and the size of your team? And you mentioned you, you broke a couple of records. What were those?

1:00:08 Kyle Gutzler: Yeah, so I guess beginning with percentage of plan, I think I landed somewhere close to 140% of my plan. Um, the way the structure of our segment worked was We had 4 teams, and on each team there was about 12 or so reps. So collectively, there was about 48 reps, give or take. And I guess the award that I received was the Senior Account Executive of the Year. A couple of the milestones that I was able to achieve, and I guess the other records that I was able to set, were the amount of dollars that I sold within a given month, which was $237,000. And then I, in that same month, I sold 7 separate deals. And I would say the, like a good month is if you sell 2 or 3. And so that kind of changed, I guess, my perception on what was actually possible, kind of going back to what we were talking about earlier. Um, so I've actually hit that 7 mark 2 different times, but that was… those were the records that I was able to, to get. And then I guess the, the achievement that I was able to get as well at the end of the year.

1:01:25 Scott Ingram: Awesome. That's, that's great stuff. And you know what I like to hear about that is one, one of the types of people I try to avoid interviewing on the show is I'm not really interested in the folks that were number one because they walked into and sort of lucked into a mega deal that may or may not have happened without them.

1:01:42 Kyle Gutzler: Right.

1:01:42 Scott Ingram: So, you know, the fact that you've got such a broad kind of distributed set of results and did it over the course of the year, and this is a lot of different deals. So switching gears a little bit, who is the most successful salesperson you know personally, especially in your efforts to surround yourself with the best?

1:02:02 Kyle Gutzler: Yeah, I would say, you know, the… there's really a couple of people that come to mind and there's people that I like know of or that I've met But I think it's more impactful to really think about somebody that I've, I've lived in the process with and I've been able to sell alongside of and ultimately learn from. So I would say Zach Batson is the most talented sales professional that I've worked with, and he was in a leadership position here at my company, and I worked directly with him quite a bit. And there were, you know, a number of different deals that we worked on where he and I were like the perfect duo on calls. Like, he… his style just meshed so well with mine. And then, like I had mentioned earlier, I felt like I did a pretty good job of just latching on to some of the principles and things that he taught me, either directly or indirectly. And I was able to pick up on those things and kind of weave it into my own process. Process and sort of make it my own.

1:03:05 Scott Ingram: Nice. And what would you want to know about top sellers in other organizations? So those you don't know that are maybe even further ahead than you are?

1:03:15 Kyle Gutzler: That's a fantastic question. I would probably, you know, and this kind of has to do with the stage that I'm in right now where I don't necessarily want to know how do you become number one and what types of things are you doing, which I think are great things. If we were to kind of reverse the tape to a year, year and a half ago, those are probably the types of questions I'd ask. But for me, since I have such an interest in things sort of outside of work right now, just for the season that I'm in, I would probably ask something along the lines of, what types of things are you doing outside of work that are helping to elevate your game? So, you know, that could go a number of different directions, but I'd be curious to hear from other top performers what things they do to sort of up their game that they're doing outside of work.

1:04:03 Scott Ingram: Nice. And I always like to turn this question around, but maybe you've already answered it in terms of the other kind of development that you're doing. Is there anything that you would add to that, that you're doing that you would want to share?

1:04:14 Kyle Gutzler: Oh, I love that question. Um, I would say, you know, for me personally, you know, we've had a good opportunity to talk about the article today. Um, that's been something that I've, I've been working on a little bit is actually writing my own content. Um, And the purpose of doing that isn't necessarily just to create a brand for myself, which is something that I'm working on a little bit, but it's also almost like when you put pen to paper, when you're typing something up, it's like your own declaration of that thing. And it's like if you have sort of like a sturdy foundation, but then you really hammer it in, that's what I feel like these type of things do for me is it's great to get my name out there. And the recognition that I got on that article was way bigger than anything that I expected. Um, but the thing that I'm getting out of it more than anything is taking these principles and these ideas and these things that I think to be true and really ingraining them in my mind, um, and really, you know, creating a rock-solid foundation. So the content piece and just kind of getting my name out there is something that I'm working on right now. And I think that helps me in so many different ways. Um, other than that, you know, there's not, there's not a whole ton of other ways that I would answer that other than just kind of expanding my network and trying to be more intentional with the relationships that I'm creating.

1:05:36 Scott Ingram: That's awesome. Cool. And finally, the, the last question I typically ask my guests to try and wrap things up with something actionable that the person listening to this can apply right away. What would you suggest that someone who is doing pretty well right now but isn't yet number one, what should they do to set themselves up so that they can double their sales this year?

1:05:57 Kyle Gutzler: Yeah, I would say, and we did talk about this a little bit, but I'm going to reemphasize it. My actionable suggestion would be in your company right now, you need to locate the people that are top performers and are essentially where you want to be. And you need to ask for their time and try to set aside some intentional hours or minutes to speak with those people and to understand what it is that they're doing differently. That's, that's getting the results that you ultimately want to have. Um, so that, and, you know, not just people in your work environment, but also outside of your work environment that are, that are ultimately going to bring you upward. Um, so making more intentional efforts, and I would say in the next week that I guess that would be my challenge is find that person and actually reach out to them and try to set something up with them.

1:06:48 Scott Ingram: Oh, that's awesome. That's actually my favorite suggestion so far. And I'll add kind of 2 pieces to that. One is I think anytime you are trying to open that type of relationship. If I… Kyle already made some good suggestions earlier about making it finite and defining exactly what you need. I think the other thing you can think about is what can you bring of value to that relationship, and that's a place you can actually leverage me. If you are reaching out to the number one seller in your organization, one of the things you might want to suggest is, hey, I listened to this show called the Sales Success Stories Podcast, and they talk to top sellers like you, I would love to introduce you to Scott. And I'll give you my email address right now so you're in a position that you can make that type of intro because we've been friends forever. You've been listening to me for hours. So, you can send a note to scott@top1.fm. The other place that we're trying to create this type of community with not only the guests of the show but others who are listening and really intent on improving themselves and taking things to the next level is that Sales Success Community. So, would love for you to go get involved there. I realized I suggested that you text earlier. Realize that only works in the US. So, for those in the US, you can text TOP1 to 444999. For all the rest of you, for the other 30% of my audience that is outside of the US, if you go to top1.fm, you can sign up for the mailing list that way. And that's all it takes. Once you get on that mailing list, The very first email you'll get is an invitation to that Sales Success Community. And like I said earlier, Kyle and I had nearly a 2-hour prep conversation yesterday. It was really wide-ranging. It was really awesome. Covered some of the same ground, but I think there's a lot of other little tidbits in there that'll be really valuable. So I'm going to edit that down. By the time we release this episode, I would hope to have that available in that Sales Sales Success Community. So again, if you're looking to continue to learn from Kyle and learn from his success, that's one place to do it. The other place I would say, again, if you haven't done it already, go and read the article. It's well worth it. It's one that I think you may want to bookmark and keep in that, you know, call it a motivational tickler file. So when you're having a down day and you need something to kind of pick you up, I think it's that type of a piece. That'll be really helpful in doing that. And you can get there directly again at top1.fm/2x. And don't forget to leave us a comment and mention that you heard Kyle and I talking here on the show. So, Kyle, the last question I will ask is, I'm sure just like we've talked about, or you have suggested connecting with people at the top of their game, obviously, you're in that position. If somebody has now kind of invested the whatever it's been, 75 or 80 minutes or so with us here today, how, what's the best way for, for them to kind of reach up and maybe ask a quick follow-up question or continue to learn from you?

1:10:01 Kyle Gutzler: Yeah, I think, um, probably the easiest way to get in touch with me is just send me a message, um, on LinkedIn. Uh, it's probably, there's probably going to be a higher likelihood that I'll respond if you write a comment and then follow up with a personal message. Um, and typically, like I said, like if you can give some basic expectations of what it is that you want, as opposed to, you know, I've had a lot of people just kind of dump on me what it is that they're going through with their sales process and how can I help. It's a little overwhelming. So when I worked with you, Scott, like, you just made it so simple to work with you. You followed up, you said, here's exactly what the expectations are, here's when I want to talk to you. So if you send me a LinkedIn message, give me clear expectations and give me a time and what it is that you'd like to talk about. About. Um, I would say send that, and then if I'm not able to reply to you, just keep in mind I'm getting a lot of messages right now. Um, so follow up if I can't get back to you the first time. This is going to die down a little bit. I, I can imagine the, the attention that I get on this article. It's going to come to an end here pretty shortly, sadly. Um, but I would say, yeah, follow up with another message. I've even told a couple of people, hey, I really want to help you out, But I just don't have the time to invest in it right now. Follow up with me in a week or 2. And I would imagine the majority of those people actually aren't going to follow up. But if you really want to speak with me and set aside some time, I would say do the initial follow-up and then follow up again.

1:11:34 Scott Ingram: Perfect. Kyle, this has been amazing. Thank you so much for your time. For those of you listening, thank you for your time and attention and listening to this point. And we hope that you will share this with your, your audience. And connect with us as we've described. Thanks again, Kyle.

1:11:48 Kyle Gutzler: Thanks so much, Scott. This has been awesome. 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.