173: Authenticity, Relentlessness & Patient Persistence with Vance Exstrom

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0:46 Scott Ingram: You're listening to the Sales Success Stories podcast, where we deconstruct world-class sales performers to provide insights and strategies to help you improve. To learn more, visit us at top1.fm. Here's your host, Scott Ingram.

1:02 Scott Ingram: Today on the Sales Success Stories podcast, my guest is Vance Exstrom. Vance is the top producer at Rent Dynamics, where he was number 1 last year of over 90 sellers and did 475% of his annual number. Welcome to the show, Vance.

1:16 Vance Exstrom: Hey, what's going on, Scott?

1:18 Scott Ingram: I am so looking forward to digging into this. So we will kick things off like we always do with that immediate value. Let's talk first about the top 3 things that you believe have contributed the most to your success in sales.

1:31 Vance Exstrom: Yeah, that's a loaded question, but yeah, I definitely can speak to that. First off, appreciate you having me. It's been fun watching you over the years and how this platform's grown. So I appreciate you having me. But yeah, I think to answer your question, Scott, 3 things I always kind of hang my hat on, so to speak, are relentless prospecting, making sure that's at the forefront of everything that I do. In-person connection cannot be replaced. That's a huge pillar for me. I think what gets overstated in our industry in sales is just clear and comfortable next steps. Those for me are the 3 keys that really I feel like set me apart from the rest of the seller base.

2:10 Scott Ingram: Love it. Love it. Let's dig into each of these just a little bit, especially the last one. And I'm an eat the dessert first kind of guy. Let's go there. What do you mean by kind of this clear and comfortable next steps piece? Like, let's talk through an example here.

2:22 Vance Exstrom: For sure. Yeah. So I'll give you an example of kind of next steps. And for our industry, we're in real estate or property management. In that industry, you're always needing to garner information from a prospect or a client. And most people have a way that they formalize a next step or information that they need to gather from a client or prospect. And what I do is I like to informalize that. So when I'm on a call or when I'm in a meeting, the next step after that first demo or that first call is getting a property list from a client. So for me, I think something that has really helped me with that, like I said, clear and comfortable next step is saying, hey, I know you have this at your fingertips already. So doing that assumptive at the very beginning, say, hey, I already know you have this at your fingertips already, so it'll probably be pretty easy for you to shoot over to me, right? Is a property list. And before I ask for it, already answer their question that, yeah, this is easy. I can get this to you by the end of the day type of wording. So clear and comfortable, meaning that It's very clear that I'm needing this and I'm going to get it quickly because I already know this is easy for you. And making it, like I said, comfortable is, hey, I already know this is easy for you. Get it over to me by the end of the day. That to me, I mean, it's a very subtle thing, but has made such a difference because moving that cycle forward can only be done when the prospect or client is actually performing an action item. Gotcha.

3:53 Scott Ingram: What I love about this, I had an epiphany a few years ago where I sort of recognized that sales is leadership. And one of the ways that shows up is the way that you lead the engagement. And part of that is just kind of having confidence, being clear about next steps, being clear about your asks. I mean, there's no reason to defer to them. You're the professional here. You know what you're doing. You know what you need. So to just Be real assumptive in that approach and lead them and ask for what you need, not pussyfoot around that kind of stuff.

4:23 Vance Exstrom: 100%. Yeah. And I think a lot of cases kind of going across your point there is sometimes you're teaching, you're teaching the principals how to buy something. You're totally right on the money there. Love it. Love it.

4:35 Scott Ingram: So talk about the in-person piece. I'm guessing you might have some advantage here. You're talking about real estate. It's in one place, right? Gotten a lot harder for me lately, but I'm super interested in kind of your perspective.

4:45 Vance Exstrom: Yeah. So from the corporate level, you have the personas that we're targeting. Can be in marketing, it could be in the C-suite, it could be on the VP level. But from our end, it's… and like I said, I think like from COVID and from just in general, salespeople getting lackadaisical about their methods, this has kind of fallen by the wayside, that in-person connection. So I know that you can get a lot done over the phone, but you can get even more done when you're sitting across the desk from someone. Or in a conference room, it makes the world of difference. And that relationship building that you get when you're in someone's office or when you're going to dinner or lunch with a prospect or client, like I said, it's such a tangible difference than having a phone call, an hour-long phone call conversation. That 15 minutes you get in person, you probably get a little bit more value from.

5:37 Scott Ingram: Well, and it's the informal elements, right? Whether you're in person or on your phone, like the formal part of the conversation is probably not that different, but it's all the walking to and from the meeting room or grabbing that cup of coffee or that drink or that meal where, to your point, it's the relationship and you get all the unsaid nuance stuff. I mean, what happens with me in these conversations, what people may not realize, the best parts of the conversation for me will be as soon as I turn off this record button and you're going to tell me some really great secrets and we get to build some real relationship because there's always elements So you're like, yeah, I'm not going to share this publicly or on a recorded Zoom call.

6:19 Vance Exstrom: Exactly. No, 100%. There's secret sauces that are the family recipe, right?

6:24 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we can't say everything, right?

6:27 Vance Exstrom: Exactly.

6:28 Scott Ingram: Exactly. Let's talk about the relentless prospecting. First of all, like, what does that mean? But secondly, how are you doing it? What is your prospecting motion?

6:37 Vance Exstrom: Yeah, totally. So it's funny that I mentioned relentless because I'm now remembering that At the beginning of last year at our sales kickoff in 2023, we all kind of picked a word that we wanted our year to be defined by, and relentless was the word I picked. So it's kind of funny that I picked that one. But yeah, no, I think like a lot of what success looks like in sales is never being satisfied. And with prospecting, this is something that 100% we can control in sales. And the more salespeople grow within their respective industry, the less I feel prospecting gets noticed. But there's just not as much focus on prospecting the more you grow, which I think is a complete oxymoron. I think prospecting obviously needs to be very heavy when you first get into sales, but it should never stop. And you should always have, whether it be a daily or weekly goal to prospect, because The more you keep up with your pipeline is the way that you outpace your competition and you outpace the industry in general. So I've always had that be like my number one thing, and I owe a lot of my success to the prospecting that I've been able to do and how to refine that prospecting process.

7:56 Scott Ingram: Nice. And what is that like? Walk us through that prospecting process. What is that daily or weekly goal for you?

8:01 Vance Exstrom: Yeah, so I usually do at least about 3 to 4 hours a week. On prospecting. Some days I might not get to it, but the next day I'm a little bit more heavy. So average about an hour a day-ish, just depending on the week. And then yeah, I feel like I typically try and do anywhere between 3 to 40 contacts a day. So whether that is… I don't really like using email. I don't feel like email does enough, whether that be a text, whether that be a call, whether that be A LinkedIn message if I have a relationship on LinkedIn with someone. So I think it's just 30 or 40 touches a day, I guess, is my average. Gotcha. Gotcha.

8:42 Scott Ingram: And the not liking emails, is it just because… well, I don't want to lead the witness, but just say more about that.

8:49 Vance Exstrom: I think we get comfortable with email in sales, and I feel like the business that gets done, and like I said, that really actually getting to the root of problems in general when you're solutionizing. It all is done over the phone, in person, and it's crazy. I've seen this over the last couple of years, but text has become so huge, at least in my industry for sure. So I just feel like more business and more traction gets done on those 3 modems.

9:17 Scott Ingram: Yeah, I think one of the ways I would think about it is like the inverse of the noisiest and busiest channels, right? So we probably get more emails every day than anything else, but we don't get nearly as many texts and we get even fewer phone calls.

9:35 Vance Exstrom: Yep, exactly. You hit the nail right on the head. I'm way, way more likely to respond to a text than I am an email. Yeah.

9:42 Scott Ingram: I haven't been great about this, but just an observation and something that I've kind of worked into the Summit experience the last couple of years. The ultimate underrated channel, I think, is the mail. If you rank those things, right, tons of email, fewer texts, fewer phone calls. How many handwritten letters do you get in the mail? It's like none.

10:04 Vance Exstrom: Yeah, that's such a good point.

10:06 Scott Ingram: So food for thought. Now, the challenge I have with the in-person piece is most of my clients are very large multinational organizations. And they've gotten so distributed and a lot of people, they just haven't gone back to the office. So it's difficult to get back face-to-face. I don't travel nearly as much as I used to. The flip side of that though is you can serve as the excuse or the catalyst that brings everybody together because they're just not doing it as much. So the stuff that I have done lately is, hey, why don't we put together a workshop and spend a half day together or spend a day together? And then everybody comes into the office, which they don't do regularly, and you get to be the one that enabled that. So different worlds that we play. And I think you probably have a little bit of an advantage there. I think that's a good jumping off point to contextualize. So talk about what is your role? What are you selling? Who are you selling to? What's the territory like? Give us the whole rundown here.

11:04 Vance Exstrom: Yeah. So I'm a director for the West Coast and my role is I basically run everything from prospecting to getting the contract signed for accounts that are national. And when I say national, they own property across the US. That could be ownership groups, that could be institutional groups. And then we also obviously deal with a lot of property management groups. In some cases, they're organizations that have 100,000+ units underneath their portfolio. In some cases, they're a little bit smaller, but I'd say I usually deal with anywhere from about 10,000 units and up.

11:41 Scott Ingram: Nice. Nice. And then I already gave away a little bit of this on the front end, but maybe just quantify your results for us a little bit. And maybe talk a little bit, not just this last year. You've been 18 months in role. Your first 6 months has its own very interesting stat. At least it was impressive to me.

11:59 Vance Exstrom: Yeah, no, for sure. This last year. So most recently my quota was $2.3 million in ARR, annual recurring revenue, and I closed $8.97 last year. So I think it's close to about 475% and I might be a little bit off on the numbers. My last report I ran plan was, it was about 475% of plan. So that might not be completely accurate, the numbers I gave you, but close enough. And then the year prior, which I know we talked about a little bit off air, but year prior I had a 6-month run where I started my role with 6 months remaining on the year in 2022, and I finished number 3 out of the organization with just the 6-month ramp and everyone else on their fully ramped quotas. I think I was, I want to say like 87% of goal, even just with the 6 months with ramp and all that. So once again, owe a lot of my success to the prospecting cycle and being able to just be a little bit more relentless on that side. But yeah, that was kind of the last 18 months roll.

13:04 Scott Ingram: Nice. What else do you attribute kind of that, that fast start to? Again, that's just a massively impressive stat to me, right? Top 3 on a team of 90+ and you only had half the year and you were brand new into it. Was it just you weren't working deals in the beginning, so it was just 100% prospecting and you were able to build enough pipeline.

13:23 Vance Exstrom: I should correct you a little bit. So it was a team of 20 and then we got acquired this last year. So that's when it became a team of 90. It's a little bit different. I mean, still being 3 of 20 is still great, but not 3 of 90. Fair enough. Fair enough. That said, I think like the success that I draw from is you never know when a relationship is going to be important. So I feel like in our arena, a lot of salespeople are targeting the people in their account list, you know, and they're saying, okay, these are my accounts. If I'm at a conference and I don't see so-and-so, I'm not going to talk to anyone until I see that account or my other account or whatever it might be. Right. I'm the type of person that I'll talk to anybody. So anyone at the conference that I am sitting next to that I see in passing, I am talking, hey, who are you? What makes you cool? What makes you special? How can we connect in some way, shape, or form? Because at the end of the day, everyone's industry is so small. Everyone knows everyone and you just don't know who knows who. Personally, in that 6-month ramp, I was able to meet somebody that introduced me to 3 different accounts and they weren't even involved. They're completely on the other side of the country, weren't in my purview at all. And they ended up being a connector for me to be able to get me introduced on some accounts. So you just never know. And just being a sponge and understanding where people people come from and who they are is just so huge and undervalued. Very cool.

14:49 Scott Ingram: Love that story. Well, speaking of stories, let's go back to the beginning and let's talk origin story. How did you get into sales in the first place?

14:57 Vance Exstrom: Yeah, so I'm LDS. So for those that don't know, it's Latter-day Saint, Church of Jesus Christ. So I went on a mission for 2 years in Argentina, and that taught me… one, it taught me how to speak a different language and all that good stuff, but two, it really taught me how to talk to people and just out of my comfort zone. I was selling one of the hardest things you can sell, right? Religion. That taught me very quickly just how to develop people skills. So I did that for 2 years. And then after I did that, I did door-to-door sales for 3 years, or I guess 3 summers. That once again, just really fine-tuned the way how to be assumptive, how to be outgoing, but persistently pleasant. All of those little key important details that you learn in door-to-door sales. And I think that's a really good base for anyone trying to get into sales because you have to garner somebody's attention and garner their trust within the first 5 seconds of someone opening their door. Did that for 3 years. And then after that, got into commercial real estate brokerage after I'd graduated college. And I mean, anyone who's trying to figure out how to prospect and cold call, I'd say go start in commercial real estate. Because I was doing about 250 calls a day. And that right there, the people that are in the commercial real estate industry are ruthless and they get calls all day long. Being successful in commercial real estate, I have a ton of respect for because you have to gain trust even in a shorter amount of period than door-to-door because you're not looking at someone's face. So you have to be interesting enough in those first 3 to 5 seconds before someone hangs up or curses at you. And that was hugely important in my career trajectory. And then from there, I went over to the tech side in property management software and haven't looked back since.

16:53 Scott Ingram: Is it fair to say what you've been selling through the course of your, not even just career, but life has gotten easier and easier?

17:00 Vance Exstrom: Weirdly enough, yeah. And I think it all stems from just having experience in anything. And Scott, I know you probably know this more than anybody, things get easier when you do them repetitively. 100%, though, it's gotten easier and easier as I've gone on.

17:15 Scott Ingram: Yeah, I'm really curious about kind of that initial impression, right? What you carried through in the first, say, 3 to 5 seconds from door to door to commercial real estate cold calling. How does that translate to your approach today and the way that you open a cold call?

17:33 Vance Exstrom: Yeah, it's so funny because it all has to do with how you approach a call. And so for cold calling, it took me a while to understand this, but historically cold calls have been done the same way for a long time. So you think about the calls that I get or you get on an everyday basis that are spam calls or people that are trying to sell you something. It's all, hey, I'm Scott Ingram from so-and-so company. Do you have a second of time to chat with me? It's that same script. And I kind of saw that routine when I was in commercial real estate, and I saw that everyone was kind of doing the same thing. Hi, I'm so-and-so with Marcus & Millichap. Hi, I'm so-and-so with James Capital Advisors. And I was just like, there's got to be a better way to do this. When I was cold calling 250 people a day, I would change that up. And instead of saying that, I would pick up the phone, and when they'd answer, I'd say, hey, how you been? Hey, Scott, how you been? And just that subtle difference of Hey, I'm Scott with Marcus & Millichap versus, hey, how you been? Made the world of difference. It opened people up, it threw people off guard, and immediately I was able to open conversations just with that small introduction.

18:43 Scott Ingram: It's so interesting. And any of these approaches, I always think about what does it feel like to be on the receiving end of it? And to your point, as soon as it sounds like a sales call, we like assume our roles, right? My role is you're interrupting me and I'm not interested. Exactly. When I'm getting that call, whereas your approach now is, now I'm curious because I want to know who this is.

19:12 Vance Exstrom: Exactly. Now you're asking me a question instead of me asking you a question. You flip it all on its head where you're saying, hey Scott, how you been? Now they're like, okay, wait, who do I know? Who is this? You know, so it's right. It's those little small, subtle differences. And sure, of course I had a couple of cold calls that went, who the hell is this? I don't know who you are. You know, and you take those, you scratch your teeth on those and it is what it is and you move on. But the amount of positive response I got from that, I'd say it's 8 out of 10 where I got positive versus negative.

19:41 Scott Ingram: That's awesome. Which is a lot better than the standard. So good on you.

19:44 Vance Exstrom: Totally. Yeah. So subtle differences, I think like just understanding Look around you when you're in a bullpen, you'll see the guys that are average performers or below average performers. And you say, okay, how can I differentiate myself from these people?

19:59 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Love that. Love that. Given that history and where you are today, knowing all that you know now, if you could start over again, what would be your approach? How would you build and structure your career?

20:14 Vance Exstrom: That's such a loaded question. I think like I'm so happy at where I'm at today and the work-life balance and the success that I've been able to see. So it's so hard to look back and think the things you'd tweak, but I think what I would do is probably try and find just a more creative way of going about my career. Although I feel like I am a creative being and a creative person, I think it's just looking back, you always say if, coulda, woulda, shoulda, and I think maybe even creating my own swim lane within the real estate industry. And also, I think I would've started learning about real estate earlier and making that a little bit more of a priority when I was at college, maybe doing some additional education on my off time. But in the grand scheme of things, I don't think I'd do a ton different. I'm exactly where I want to be. I really love the career I'm in. So there's always things I'd love to tweak. I'd love to invest in a certain portfolio back in the day, buy a house when I was 14, but I think that would probably be where I started.

21:20 Scott Ingram: Nice. Was real estate always of interest?

21:22 Vance Exstrom: Yeah. And I'm lucky my dad taught me really early on, investing was always at the forefront of my mind. He was pretty involved on a number of different investments and real estate always did interest me. I had a friend of mine, well, a friend of my dad's who was pretty involved at Marcus & Millichap and saw my dad and his success and kind of wanted to tailor my life out of that as well.

21:46 Scott Ingram: Nice. Nice. Lots of history. And given that history, what's your all-time favorite sales story? Good, bad, or ugly?

21:55 Vance Exstrom: Yeah, all-time favorite sales story, man. So many. I would have to go with the James Capital Advisors experience when I was doing commercial real estate. So I'll kind of set the stage a little bit. I was making, like I said, about 250 cold calls per day. I was commuting. So I used to live up in Ventura County. For those of you who don't know, I was commuting to LA and with traffic that can be a 3-hour deal or it could be an hour and a half just depending on when you leave. My schedule was insane. I was waking up at 3:00 AM just to beat traffic, work out in the morning, and then I would start work at about 6:30 and then wouldn't stop because I was doing East Coast hours and then I would also transfer over to the West Coast hours in the afternoon. I wouldn't end till about 7 or 8 and then get home at anywhere between 8 and 9, just depending on traffic. So I was newly married at the time. My wife was not happy with me, but it was a grind and the schedule was crazy. I was learning a lot. I was very new to the industry. And in commercial real estate, for those that aren't familiar, you as a broker are expected to not close a deal within your first 12 months. So I took that upon myself and I said, there's no chance I'm going to be working here for 12 months and not close anything. I had made a goal to close at least one deal and I ended up closing 2 deals that year. And out of, I think it was 13 others on the team at the time, I was the only rookie broker to close a deal that year, and I had closed 2. So I got Rookie of the Year that year, and that I feel like really jump-started and really gained my confidence to keep pushing forward in the sales in general.

23:41 Scott Ingram: Nice, nice. It's funny because the next thing I always like to ask is just around the accomplishment you're most proud of. Was it that, or is there something that you're more proud of?

23:49 Vance Exstrom: Uh, these are tough questions. It's hard for me to say no to that because I think the odds were stacked against me. I remember like my mentor at the time and the owner of the company, James Kapp, all of them were saying, yeah, you got to expect to not close a thing. You got to expect to just basically pay to work for the first 12 months. You got to invest in yourself before you're able to get the benefits. They probably thought I was crazy. I was like, that's not happening with me. You can think that all you want, but that's not happening with me. So I think that probably would be up there as one of my favorite accomplishments for sure, because I proved a lot of people wrong that year.

24:24 Scott Ingram: That sounds like such a double-edged sword though. Like on one side, it's good to have real expectations, but at the same time, like, aren't you just describing the future? You're like, okay, well, I'm not selling anything for my whole first year, which doesn't sound great.

24:38 Vance Exstrom: No, 100%. I think like in that industry too, like they see a lot of attrition and turnover in general. And I think they try and temper expectations for that reason, probably. I mean, of course, like they're trying to push you to work really hard and close deals, but at the end of the day, they want to keep you in the seat, you know? So that's probably my guess is why they do that. But you're totally right. Like, as I think about that, it's like, yeah, that's kind of a tough reality to sit with. Like, oh yeah, sit in your seat for 12 months and pay to work.

25:09 Scott Ingram: Yeah, crazy stuff. Crazy stuff. On like the challenging side of things, what do you find to be either the most challenging thing, or maybe there was a time that was the most challenging for you?

25:19 Vance Exstrom: Yeah, let me think about that. Like, I think like the biggest challenge for me, man, doing door-to-door was really tough. And there were days you woke up and you just did not want to wake up. I would be on the doors at about 10:30 in the morning and sometimes wouldn't be done till 9, 10 PM and be just knocking doors the whole day. And the tough part about door-to-door sales is not only is it just crazy amount of just rejection. But there's such a trust factor. You have to deal with Facebook groups. You have to deal with the police. You have to deal with so much that comes on top of actually trying to sell someone at their door. But on top of that, you also have the physical capacity, right? Where like you're actually walking door to door in neighborhoods when it was in the summer in California. So in some cases it was 100 degrees out. The mental and emotional and physical of all of that, I feel like was extremely challenging. I led my team every single year. And they were teams of… I think I started a team of 21. And then my last team I was a part of was 33 people. In regards to revenue, I was leading every single year. So I think overcoming that portion was definitely the hardest because there's just so many different aspects, the physical, the mental, and the psychological that you have to go through with door-to-door.

26:43 Scott Ingram: Yeah. What about today? Like, what do you find to be the most challenging thing at this point in your career?

26:48 Vance Exstrom: Yeah, I think like the biggest challenge for me is the continued excellence. Because when you talk about like the year, for example, I had last year where it was crazy year, did like 475% of quota, just completely smashed my number, which was awesome. But then you get to January 1st and that chalkboard gets erased and you're like, okay, let's repeat that. I think it's just staying motivated and finding a way to continually press on. I think that's my biggest challenge now is I don't have that chip on my shoulder as I used to have. Now it's like, okay, now I need to continue to be that pillar, continue to be that sales leader that I feel like is my biggest challenge today.

27:32 Scott Ingram: Yeah, this will be relevant to definitely a subset of the audience, but it's actually one of the reasons why I started the summit and why I bring a lot of the people that have been on this podcast together. Is because that is self-imposed. It's not like your organization is expecting you to put up 300%, 400%, 500%. This is all you. Yep. You're probably not really competing with anybody else on the team. Like, you're competing with you.

27:57 Vance Exstrom: Exactly.

27:58 Scott Ingram: What's the mind space around that? How are you thinking about that? How are you thinking about that at this point, right, where you're like, I've had 2 epic years and maybe there's a motivation component to this? Like, what drives this at this point for you?

28:10 Vance Exstrom: It all goes down to like my personal life. And I think like when you compartmentalize the two, it gets difficult. And as I've tried to merge the two different motivations from personal and professional, it's gotten easier for me to try and find motivation for this year. I'm like, okay, I made some great money last year, made great money the year before. And I just want to make, and I've continued to do this, just make a better environment for my wife and for my kid to have great memories. I just had a 1-year-old. He's 1 now. So now it's like more, okay, how can I create a better future and a better just life in general for my wife and my son? I think merging the professional and personal goals has been part of the way I've been able to do that.

28:56 Scott Ingram: Yeah. What's the goal for this year? What are you hoping to accomplish?

28:59 Vance Exstrom: I think one of my goals this year, and I had mentioned this, but we just got acquired recently, but one of my goals is to to be a better team member. I know that sounds like on a SalesPad podcast, kind of weird, but I think sometimes we don't emphasize enough how important those internal relationships are within an organization. Any organization I've been a part of, I've had to learn. And this is like one of the things that a lot of salespeople get bad reputations for is they think it's all about them, right? I've had to learn that over my career and slowly but surely, I think I'm getting to a place where I've really started to emphasize, okay, I need to see other people's WIFM, you know, what's in it for me. I need to see what's in it for those other people that are within our organization. So just bettering those relationships internally and also externally. So that's kind of like the big, it's not like a revenue goal or anything like that, but definitely want to make sure my relationships internally and externally are refined and in a good place.

30:01 Scott Ingram: Man, I want to bust out a giant magnifying glass on this because this to me was probably the biggest stereotype and misconception that I had even after being in sales for over a decade when I started this podcast. And my fear was that these top performers were there because they were selfish, right? And it was all about them. And the reality is it's the most selfless that get to the top. And the reason it is… so it doesn't surprise me at all that these are your goals, because the first way that it shows up is you care more about your clients and their results and what they get than you do about the sale. And then the sale takes care of itself.

30:46 Vance Exstrom: Yep.

30:47 Scott Ingram: And then on the flip side, we already talked about sales being leadership. The other way that it is leadership is there's a lot that you need to do to organize your organization around the goals of your clients. And you can't do that. You can't lead internally if you don't have those relationships and those people know that you care about them and they're willing to bend over backwards for you and you're not like abusing them.

31:15 Vance Exstrom: Yeah, exactly. No, 100%. And like, It's funny because once again, I've learned this the hard way and I'm sure you have too, Scott. Like we've all been in situations where we've been selfish and we've decided that whatever I'm going through needs to be accounted for and needs to be taken care of right now, right this second. And I've learned the hard way that the more that you think of others and you see one, where they're coming from, but two, actually who that person is, whether they're on revenue operations or whether they're in the finance division, whether they're on the contracting team, whatever it might be, you just need to be mindful of who that person is. Because at the end of the day, whether it's a CEO at a company that you're trying to sell or whether it's someone internally that's trying to help you get a contract through, at the end of the day, they're people and they're going through issues and they're going to remember when you ask them about their kid's sickness. They're going to remember when you asked about their vacation and they're going to say, you know what, Vance is a good dude. Vance is a good guy and I want to help him out. And at the end of the day, those relationships, and I kind of mentioned this earlier, you just don't know when someone's going to be an influencer or when someone's going to be an impactful player within a deal. When you are a genuine person, and at the end of the day, I quote that word person, that is what's going to make all of the difference in the sale process.

32:38 Scott Ingram: I love this so much. It's one of the things that I wish young sellers could just do, but it's one of those things I think you have to learn the hard way. Yeah, honestly, you just have to go through some stuff before you realize, you know what, the better way is to be the better person. I mean, honestly, this is why the Summit and now the Sales Success Society works so well, is because it's just a group of people that, I mean, we care more about each other than we do ourselves. Everybody is so selfless and so giving.

33:11 Vance Exstrom: Totally.

33:12 Scott Ingram: That it's absolutely remarkable. And again, it's so counterintuitive. It's not what you would think. It's not what we think that we observe. And I think we're just not exposed to enough great salespeople. I mean, it's why I do this podcast. There's not enough of these stories out there.

33:29 Vance Exstrom: No, 100%. And it's funny, like there's a scripture that I like always quote and it's Luke 6:28. Give and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. And I just always think about like, scratch someone else's back and your back will also be scratched. It's made the world of difference in my sales career.

33:53 Scott Ingram: Man. Was there a point where you realized that?

33:57 Vance Exstrom: Yeah. And it's funny because like, I think it took… it goes back to your point of like, everyone kind of has to go through it. You have to have that experience and learn the hard way, so to speak. But I had a manager call me out for it early in my career. He had a one-on-one with me and he said, Hey Vance, you need to stop being so aggressive. You need to slow down internally and really kind of figure out what everyone else is trying to get from this. Everyone has their KPIs that they're trying to hit, and it's not just your KPIs that matter. I think getting called out and actually thinking about that and looking a little bit more in depth at my own decision-making process, I owe a lot to… he was a great manager early on in my career, very, very good manager to work with. And it was a cool learning experience for me.

34:44 Scott Ingram: Nice. We need more of those. If you want to go deeper into this, if you're listening, last week on the podcast, I shared Ian Koniak's presentation from the summit. And towards the end of this, and actually I clipped it, if you go to Daily Sales Tips, you can get the 4-minute version. He describes it as inward versus outward selling. It's the inward that doesn't work. It's the selfish, this is about my quota and what I need.

35:06 Vance Exstrom: Exactly.

35:06 Scott Ingram: And I need to sell you something versus the outward, like, what do you need?

35:10 Vance Exstrom: Yep.

35:11 Scott Ingram: How are we gonna help you win? What are your metrics? What are your measurements? What success look like for you? And helping them find that, that difference. It's subtle, but it's everything.

35:21 Vance Exstrom: 100%. Eventually your back's gonna get scratched. You just gotta wait for it.

35:24 Scott Ingram: Love it.

35:25 Vance Exstrom: Love it.

35:25 Scott Ingram: Love it. All right. So we talked about a day in the life in a brutal period of your career.

35:31 Vance Exstrom: Yeah.

35:31 Scott Ingram: What's a day in the life like today? And I know you listen to the show, so alarm clock goes off. Tell me what time that happened. Give me the blow-by-blow till the head hits hits the pillow again.

35:39 Vance Exstrom: Yeah. So, and now in my career, I've kind of gotten to a different place, but I typically about 4 to 5 times a week, I'm a big surfer. I've been surfing since I was like 8. In the morning, if the waves are good, I'll wake up at 5:30, go surf for an hour or 2, and then get back at, let's say around 5:30, like 7:30, 8 at the latest. And then from 8 to about 9, I will hang out with my little guy. And help my wife with getting him fed or making him breakfast or whatever it is. And then from 9 o'clock till usually about 4 or 5, I am either going to be on demos just depending on the day or going to be traveling to someone's office in California. But very normal day for me is I would block out about an hour for prospecting, just depending on schedule. I could do an hour in the morning, hour in the afternoon, I do an hour on about admin stuff and pipeline health, hour, make sure my pipeline's in line. And then I have an hour of follow-up as well. That dedicates about 3 hours to make sure my pipeline is healthy. And then on an average day, I'm saying I'll be in maybe 1 or 2 internal calls that could be anywhere from 30 to an hour and a half. And then external calls, I like to make anywhere from about 3 to 4 calls a day. Hopefully on a good day, I would say that's like average. So some days it's like more 4 to 5, some days it could be 1 to 2, but yeah, that's kind of how my day is structured.

37:09 Scott Ingram: And are those like dedicated focused blocks? So in that hour you're prospecting and in that other hour you're doing follow-up and in that third hour you're working on your pipeline and just making sure it's all organized.

37:19 Vance Exstrom: Yeah, 100%. Yeah. And when I say pipeline health, I'm doing everything from getting admin work. So in Salesforce, making sure that the opportunities that I have in place are, you know, have all the information attached to it, have been updated. Have next steps put into place. Like I'm doing all that. But yes, dedicated hours to prospecting. So that hour I am turning everything else off. And yes, I may get an interruption or 2 here and there, but that hour I'm focusing on prospecting.

37:46 Scott Ingram: Nice. That pipeline hour, is that more about what you need or is it more about what your leadership needs?

37:54 Vance Exstrom: It's leadership. It's our finance team. It's our contracting team. And that once again goes back to what we were talking about earlier, where that's a dedicated hour that doesn't help me a ton, but it helps those around me.

38:05 Scott Ingram: Nice. Nice. And then what's your favorite beach?

38:08 Vance Exstrom: Favorite beach in general or close by me?

38:11 Scott Ingram: Maybe both. I mean, you're a surfer, so I'm curious about like the specific surf beaches.

38:17 Vance Exstrom: I went to school out in Hawaii, so I have a favorite beach out there. It's actually where I proposed to my wife. It's over in Oahu, over at Sunset Beach. Love that area. And then I think by the beach I go to the most here is just Oceanside Harbor. Surf out there quite a bit. So those are probably the 2 quick hitters. Nice, nice.

38:37 Scott Ingram: What's ironic is I spent, oh gosh, how long? 20-something, maybe 25 years of my life within 5 miles of the Pacific Ocean and never surfed in that time, but obviously knew plenty of folks. And I'm guessing that dynamic must have shifted though, because I think a lot of people used to like to surf at San Onofre. Okay. Yeah. And I don't know if that's Is that still a thing? Oh yeah, I know that's a huge thing. Oh, the water's warmer.

39:01 Vance Exstrom: Huge, huge thing. Yeah, no, longboarders, I'm a longboarder too. My wife and I longboard together and yeah, San Onofre is a great longboarding spot.

39:09 Scott Ingram: Nice, nice. But like I said, for those who don't know, San Onofre is kind of northern San Diego, big landmark because what you drive past is what now has been deactivated, but there's a nuclear power plant. So when I was a kid, the water there was warm.

39:24 Vance Exstrom: Oh yeah.

39:24 Scott Ingram: Because they were cooling the reactors.

39:26 Vance Exstrom: Yeah, there was a summer there was a lot of sharks. Like breeding right by there because of the warm water. You're totally right.

39:32 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Oh, it's so wild. Too fun. All right. So let's wrap up. How do you kind of close out your day?

39:38 Vance Exstrom: Yeah. So closing out my day. So let's say it's like 4 or 5 o'clock, just depending on the day. Like sometimes I have to, on those external calls, I have follow-up, right? So I have emails that I typically do at around anywhere from 3 to about 5 o'clock. I usually dedicate an hour or 2 just depending on how much I need to do. So yeah, that's kind of like the ending of my professional day is, okay, let's close out the follow-up items that I need to do over email, sending out to clients and prospects. And then once I get all my emails done, I'll sign off for the day, close the computer. I don't come back to it really. I'm very, very big on making sure my computer is closed and that I don't go back to it for the rest of the day. Because I just, I don't know, like you probably know this, Scott, like having kids and family is, it's so important to be present. I think when I look at my professional career and when I look at my personal life, they need to be separate. I can't have them merged or else both will fail. It's like when you're emailing somebody while also being on a call, you're just not fully invested in either of the two. I think I do this in my sales career as well as just being present at the moment. And making sure the person sitting across from you feels that. And I think that's been super huge to me. So at that 5 o'clock period, put down my laptop, make sure it's completely closed, close the door to my office, don't go into it. And then from there, I'm spending time with my little one. We'll go on walks, we'll go to the park, we'll go to the beach, maybe walk around on the beach or play a lot of basketball too. I'm on a couple of men's leagues teams, so I'll go play some basketball late at night, like around 7 or 8.

41:19 Scott Ingram: Nice.

41:19 Vance Exstrom: Head on pillow at like 9:30, 10.

41:21 Scott Ingram: I didn't know this was going to be relevant, but do you find that the surfing makes you more present?

41:27 Vance Exstrom: You know, that's such an interesting question because I do get away from everything out in the water, and a lot of surfers feel this way. There's few things in life where you really don't have anything on your person. You don't have your phone, you don't have your wallet, you don't have anything. And surfing is one of those things where really can fully disconnect. And that is huge for me. It's almost like therapeutic. It's almost like yoga in a sense, right? Like I'm spiritually connected almost. And it's like this weird thing where when you catch a wave and at the end of the wave, there's nothing to hold. There's nothing to have as an accomplishment, but you are so happy after that wave because it's just such a fun experience and there's nothing there. It's just energy, right? That's the only thing that's pushing you. I think it's very therapeutic for me and really kind of sets the stage when I I do surf in the mornings.

42:19 Scott Ingram: Yeah, I don't know that I'd ever observed this before or noticed it more directly, but as you were talking through this earlier, I was thinking like, man, my friends that did surf, they tended to be very present people. And I just think about it's like an extreme form of meditation, right? To your point, you're connected to everything. Like, you're super connected to nature and rhythms and the water and all of this stuff, and you're disconnected from all the BS and all the distractions and everything else. There's no TV, there's no There's nothing else, nothing else is coming at you.

42:51 Vance Exstrom: No, 100%. And like, I think in today's day and age, stuff like that is very important, right? Like my wife's really big into yoga and she gets kind of the same type of thing I get from surfing. I think it's just the disconnect, all the outside noise. There's so much out there. Being able to put everything away and go focus on one sole thing, it's very impactful.

43:11 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Are there any other kind of habits or routines that are core to just your day and your being?

43:18 Vance Exstrom: I have to exercise and I have to get outside. I think those are like the 2 things, whether that's playing basketball, whether that's going to the gym and lifting weights, whether that's running or coupling that with going outside, going on a walk, going to the park, going to the beach, whatever it is, just getting outside. I think our day and age that we're in right now in 2024 and the 2020s is just there's so much depression and so much anxiety. And a lot of that stems from, I feel like, not being in touch with what's around us and being in these like manufactured, man-made environments. I think you can lose a lot of that anxiety, depression that's going around by just simply seeing the sun or simply being outside in general. I have to go outside, have to exercise.

44:09 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. So interesting. I got a little bit of a preview of this, but we only talked about the podcast piece. What does your information diet look like? What are you reading? What are you listening to? What are you watching?

44:19 Vance Exstrom: Like I said, big basketball guy, big surfer. So I definitely listen to all those basketball podcasts, like the Podcast Peas of the world and Gilbert Arenas's podcast. But on a more professional note, where I get a lot of my info from the industry in general, I do love reading and seeing posts on LinkedIn. I get a lot of my information from there or blog posts, company websites. All that stuff is really good. But from like a podcast side, I listen to bigger podcasts. I listen to Joe Rogan. I listen to Modern Multifamily. Tech Nest is another one. Yeah, just try and be as diversified as possible and become more interesting.

44:59 Scott Ingram: Yeah, nice. And the first one you said bigger podcasts, but I know you meant BiggerPockets.

45:02 Vance Exstrom: Sorry, BiggerPockets. Thank you. Yeah, appreciate it.

45:06 Scott Ingram: Perfect. And now this might be counter to your like outside and exercise piece, but are there tools and apps or stuff on your phone that is kind of core to your function?

45:16 Vance Exstrom: Yeah, I think I get out in the water, but I do have a cellular device, believe it or not.

45:21 Scott Ingram: No.

45:22 Vance Exstrom: Yeah, I think it's funny. I'm a big music guy. The first one that comes to my head is Spotify. Like, even when I'm doing prospecting or when I'm following up on emails, I'm always listening to music. Spotify comes to mind. I think like messaging and call app are like so big for me. And we kind of talked about this a little bit earlier, but like texting and calling is like where I spend the majority of my prospecting. Those are so key for me. And then I'm also a huge connector in my personal life. So like FaceTime, I FaceTime probably 2 to 3 people a day, whether that's friends, whether that's family, whether that's… I don't really do it in my professional life. I don't do FaceTime, but definitely big on FaceTime. And then I'm thinking, I don't know if this applies, Scott, but some of the tools that I use in my professional life are like ZoomInfo, ALN. Obviously Gmail. I don't know. Those are kind of the ones that come off the top of my head.

46:18 Scott Ingram: Nice. Nice. And we already talked about Salesforce, so I think we got that covered. Yeah. Kind of switching gears a little bit. I'm curious, do you subscribe to like a specific sales philosophy?

46:28 Vance Exstrom: Yeah. Have you heard of gap selling?

46:30 Scott Ingram: Yep.

46:30 Vance Exstrom: Yep. Okay. So gap selling for me has been huge in my industry. I think the discovery process is so important. And gap selling has really… I've read that book. Who wrote that book? I'm trying to remember. Keenan. Yes, thank you. That's been a huge one for me is like just figuring out, okay, here's what you're doing today and you're trying to get to X future. What in the middle can I do to get you to that X future? I would say like gap selling off the top of my head is one of the philosophies I definitely learned and have applied.

47:06 Scott Ingram: How would you describe your style? How do you apply gap selling?

47:10 Vance Exstrom: Like I said, I think discovery is where I spend the majority of my time, is just having an ear out. And you know this just as well as I do, Scott. A lot of the early sellers or people that are earlier on in their career, in order to make sure their voice is heard, they're just talking the entire time during a discovery call. And I've learned this the hard way as well, but you just have to step back and ask a very inspired question and then sit back and listen and they'll tell you the issues that they have. You just have to be able to listen in order to hear them say them. First and foremost, I'm very heavy on discovery. Make sure I have planned and organized questions when I'm in that discovery process. And then something that comes to mind, Scott, is being patiently persistent. That to me is a very fine art, is being persistent but also patient at the same time.

48:09 Scott Ingram: I love that distinction. The funny way I like to refer to it is we're trying to get purchase orders, not restraining orders.

48:16 Vance Exstrom: That's awesome.

48:18 Scott Ingram: It's the patient persistence. It's the pleasant persistence. I can't think of a really negative P word right now. People will hit me up because I put these things out there. I'm going to get some very negative P words that show up.

48:29 Vance Exstrom: Painful, painful persistence.

48:30 Scott Ingram: Yeah, exactly right. Like this shouldn't be uncomfortable or horrible.

48:34 Vance Exstrom: Right, right.

48:35 Scott Ingram: And you've got a whole hour in your day dedicated to follow-up. So what does your patient persistence look like?

48:42 Vance Exstrom: It's an art, and I think over time I've been able to try. And I mean, I'm not perfect, definitely not perfect. I feel like I've gotten to a better place with it, where it's kind of like an art of being respected, but just knowing that everyone has a timeline. At the end of the day, it goes back to what we were saying earlier is everyone's a person and everyone has things going on. So the client or prospect might have 8 things bubbling up in their inbox that's super urgent. And then you send them an email saying, hey, where's that property list? Or, hey, was just following up on X, Y, and Z and when you're going to look at the contract. And they're like, yeah, you don't understand, but I have 85 things in my inbox right now that are just really, really important. And it's funny because you look at it the other way around. Someone internally will reach out to you and say, hey Vance, would you mind updating your Salesforce? And you're like, that is the last thing on my docket right now. It's taken me a long time to understand this, but seeing that and calling that out, whether it's an email, whether it's a text saying, hey Scott, I know things have been super crazy on your end and don't feel the need to respond right away, but just wanted to make sure I had a note In my calendar to reach out this week to you. So whenever you have a second, give me a call, or whenever you have a second, text me back, or whatever it is, right? Like that is pleasantly persistent instead of basically being like, "Hey, have you looked at the contract yet?" It's like, "Okay, shut up. I got things going on." Once again, very distinct, very subtle, but makes the world a difference.

50:15 Scott Ingram: Yeah, and I was thinking in your world, they might literally have something on fire.

50:19 Vance Exstrom: Seriously, no. That happened so many times to me. We're like, "Yeah, Vance." I have a building on fire. I can't do this right now.

50:26 Scott Ingram: I want to do just one big callback to the discovery thing, because I don't want that to get lost. And I actually had an opportunity to catch up a couple of weeks ago with my friend Katie Jane Bailey, who's on this podcast, spoke at the summit a couple of years ago. She has the greatest line ever. And this became a little bit of a theme a few years ago. She says, discovery is a lifestyle, not a stage.

50:48 Vance Exstrom: Whoa, that's pretty awesome right there.

50:51 Scott Ingram: Deep, right?

50:51 Vance Exstrom: Very deep, man. Katie, shout out to you. That's awesome. That's great.

50:57 Scott Ingram: I had to bring that one forward because it's so big. And to your point, the podcast for me, I love because it's such great practice for this.

51:07 Vance Exstrom: Yep.

51:07 Scott Ingram: Of asking questions and shutting the heck up. And it's hard. Like, you want to interject, like, I got this story, I got this thing, I want to ask this other question. Like, Let them finish.

51:17 Vance Exstrom: Exactly, exactly. And it's funny because when you say it's a lifestyle, and once again, shout out to Katie, that's so deep, is you can discover things about a client or prospect that has nothing to do with the sales process, right? Like discovering that their kid is ill or discovering that their grandparent just passed away or their dad or mom passed. Discovering that is almost bigger than discovering what their needs are on the professional level. You're totally right. Discovery is a lifestyle. And I think like that can be more important on the personal level in getting a deal done than it can be on the professional level in some cases.

51:55 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, whether it's B2B or B2C or whatever it is, at the end of the day, it's human to human.

52:02 Vance Exstrom: 100%. Couldn't agree with that more.

52:04 Scott Ingram: Vance, let's change gears yet again. And I'm going to dust off my soapbox and set it up here for you. I would love to know if there's something you that the average sales rep would think is crazy?

52:16 Vance Exstrom: That the average rep thinks is crazy. Okay. Something that I do that I think people would think is nuts is I will track down a prospect's cell phone number by any means necessary. Like, does not matter how I get it, where I get it, I'm going to get that number and I'm going to use that to my advantage. And in some cases I have done and have closed deals because of a cold text. I think that's probably an average rep would be like, you're nuts.

52:43 Scott Ingram: Nice. Tell me, what does a cold text look like? What's the opener in text? I love the way you're opening conversation, so drop this one on me.

52:50 Vance Exstrom: It's probably a little bit of a secret sauce, so I don't know if I want to share all of it, but I would be like… and this is just an example… but when I say a cold text, it's not someone I have never met in my life. It's more of a warmer text. But hey Scott, I'm Vance from Rent Dynamics, or whatever it might We met at blah blah blah. I'm gonna be in Washington next week and was gonna see if you want to grab a coffee. Like stuff like that, but that we've never had a text chain before, or maybe we've never spoke on the phone before. I've done that before, and that's led to deals. Got it, got it.

53:21 Scott Ingram: This is interesting because I was just in doing my little bit of research. I saw that you've got a conference coming up, and you kind of posted like, "Hey, I'm gonna be at this thing," and it speaks back to kind of this in person. Person thing. Talk just a little bit more about that, because it seems like that's a big piece of the way that you're going about this as well.

53:39 Vance Exstrom: Yeah. I mean, I go to probably anywhere from like 5 to 8 conferences a year and yeah, it's just kind of a congregating place for everyone. And I'm sure you've been to these, Scott, where you got booths and people moseying around, but yeah, I think like having the relationships beforehand so that when you're all in one place, you're able to say, oh, I'm super excited to see Vance. And I'm not doing a ton of the reach out. Now I'm getting reached out to. It's weird when you get to a place in your career when it's kind of been flipped and people actually want to sit down with you instead of you just being like, hey, please sit down with me. Right. I definitely still do the please sit down with me. Don't worry, that's still part of my gambit. But it is kind of interesting. It's very important to me, these conferences, because it's meant to be professional. People are coming to that environment to learn and to understand your business and to see how they can partner, but they're also coming to have a good time. So finding the balance between the two is always interesting.

54:41 Scott Ingram: Yeah, I think there's also something really special. Again, I'm doing it less these days, but anytime I'm traveling, whether I'm going to a conference, I'm going to visit a client in San Diego, or, you know, whatever it is, it's the like, hey, I'm gonna be in Right. Can we grab a coffee? Can we grab a drink? Can we grab lunch? Can we go surfing? Whatever that thing is, there's something about that. It doesn't work when you're in the same city.

55:05 Vance Exstrom: Yeah, it doesn't.

55:07 Scott Ingram: You're always in town, dude. This isn't special.

55:08 Vance Exstrom: Exactly.

55:09 Scott Ingram: But there's something about just that little bit of proactivity, and I get plenty of it too. People know I'm in Austin, like, hey Scott, I'm gonna be in Austin. You know, shoot, if I can make that work, sure.

55:18 Vance Exstrom: Totally. Yeah, no, it's true. It's when you get that email, when you get the text, or when you get a call saying, hey, Hey, I'm flying to this area. I'll only be there for a couple of days. Let's make it happen. You're totally right. People see that. It's way more attention grabbing, I guess is the word.

55:36 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Okay. So we talked about your crazy texting.

55:38 Vance Exstrom: Yeah.

55:39 Scott Ingram: What about the flip side? Is there something that the average or typical sales pro believes that you think is crazy?

55:47 Vance Exstrom: Yeah, easily. Got this one. Email. Email is where most business is done. That is false. That is completely wrong. I completely disagree. I think most people would say, yeah, you have to be very heavy on email. Most, I guess, average sales reps. I think that's false.

56:05 Scott Ingram: There you go. What about just lessons learned? What have been the most important things that you had to learn to get where you are today? Hmm.

56:15 Vance Exstrom: I think like for a lessons point of view, I'm like, at my core, not a patient person, and my wife would definitely agree with that statement. But I would say learning patience and trying to understand who people are have been the biggest lessons I've learned. Just treating people like people instead of a title. Just because they're a COO doesn't mean they don't have feelings. I think that's a huge lesson I've learned. I think another lesson is, like I said, the lesson on patience and being okay with, okay, hey, like that doesn't need to be done exactly today. I think like that is another thing. And then I guess if I had to choose one more, it would be how to manage people on your team, like on your actual sales team, just being more indispensable to people and sharing ideas and not being so… and I think it really just boils down to not being so selfish. I would say those are probably like the 3 things I've learned and are just huge lessons to me.

57:25 Scott Ingram: Dig it. Dig it. Let's dispense some advice and then we'll kind of wrap things up. So what advice would you give to somebody that is just getting started in their career today? How do they set themselves up to be successful?

57:37 Vance Exstrom: Be a sponge and find a mentor. I think those are like the 2 things I would say is when I say be a sponge, it's just there's no information that's bad information. So just go learn, learn, learn, learn, learn, and be a sponge to everyone around you and absorb everything you can. And then finding a mentor, find somebody that you look up to that's successful in the profession that you want to be in and bend their ear until… and do something. Actually, this is huge. Do something for them that makes them say, okay, I want to help you. Those would be the 2 pieces of advice I'd give.

58:11 Scott Ingram: Give an example there. Like, what could somebody do as kind of that thing that's going to have them want to help?

58:17 Vance Exstrom: There's a couple of examples, but I've done this a couple of times. So I've given up a commission completely on a deal that I've gone from A to Z and said, hey, I'm going to give up the commission on this deal and give it to so-and-so because he was a mentor to and just say thank you to that person so that now that person says, oh, this guy is awesome, or she was so impactful to me, she appreciated my advice so much that she was able to give up her commission, or he was able to give up his commission to me. Now I'm in your corner as a mentor. I'm thinking, okay, how can I help them? It goes all the way back to that scratch someone's back and they'll scratch yours.

58:53 Scott Ingram: Yeah. For me, it's even simpler. I think it's circling back and sharing the impact that they had, right? So giving the specific example of, hey, Vance, like several months ago we sat down, you suggested I do this. Yep, I did that. Here's the result I got. And it's all because of you.

59:13 Vance Exstrom: That's another great example that's happened to me in my career too. Those are both great examples, I think, of just doing something for someone that's spent time or that's given you advice and then showing them how that's impacted them. Or it's only going to create bigger dividends from that person that's been a mentor to you. You.

59:30 Scott Ingram: Yeah, yeah. And if you're a listener of this podcast, this is magic. And what's amazing, because I know this audience well, and I'll do this live because a lot of times I have this conversation offline, there are a lot of people that listen to this podcast, and you're going to get a fair amount of outreach on LinkedIn. And the crazy thing is it goes on for years. I have people who've been on the show like 4 or 5 years ago, they're like, Scott, still like 1 or 2 people a week reach out to me. But if you want to make that outreach really impactful, talk about the thing that they said that you did and talk about the impact specifically that they had. It is so different and, and so much more meaningful versus I liked what you said.

1:00:14 Vance Exstrom: Exactly, exactly, 100%.

1:00:17 Scott Ingram: Like it actually made a difference. All right, so speaking of actually making a difference, here's the favorite piece of advice I like to ask for. What do you tell somebody that is further into their career and like they're good, but they're not great. Like they're looking for the Vance gear.

1:00:33 Vance Exstrom: Okay.

1:00:34 Scott Ingram: What do you tell them?

1:00:35 Vance Exstrom: I've spoke to this a little bit, but it's just at the end of the day, being more prospect heavy. I think a lot of the people that I see struggling, not even necessarily struggling, but they're just mediocre, are kind of depending on leads coming into them, or they're depending on a reference, or they're depending on something outside of themselves to make them successful. And I think it needs to be a little bit more self-produced, whether that be you're prospecting more or even just more effectively, right? Like you're not in like some weird motion where you're just doing the same old thing over and over and over and expecting different results. Or maybe it's your follow-up sequences, or maybe it's the approach of those sequences, right? So like Just always getting creative and then obviously just being more heavy on the prospecting side and building pipeline. But yeah, I think like that, those 2 things are probably what comes to mind when I think of an average or just someone that's not getting to the next level.

1:01:37 Scott Ingram: Nice. Nice. And then what about for you? Like what, what's the thing that you want to know of other top sellers in other organizations?

1:01:45 Vance Exstrom: I would love to know how people get connected with prospects that they've been trying to connect with for years and have had no success. That's one of my, I guess, roadblocks. And one of my goals this year is there's like a handful of accounts that I have for some way, shape, or form just never been able to connect with. And I'd love to get some creative output on how top sellers do that.

1:02:08 Scott Ingram: Interesting. When you have been able to, what's been the key?

1:02:12 Vance Exstrom: When I get connected? Yeah, I would say multithreading. I kind of go back to your last point. Those that are struggling usually aren't multithreading too. So I think that's another thing. So like multithreading, is been huge for me. Once I get connected into account, okay, now I need to go find out who I need to get introduced to. Now that I know somebody at the organization, let me go find 3 or 4 more people that I can use that connection with to then know more people at the organization, get even more connected. So yeah, I think that's what I'd do.

1:02:42 Scott Ingram: Yeah. So a couple ideas that come to mind, just again, years of doing this and creative things. One of the things I always think about is Like every possible channel. Obviously LinkedIn's a channel, text is a channel, phone is a channel, mail is a channel, right? We talked about that. People they know are channels, so introductions and things of that nature. 2 things that just for whatever reason super impactful, and again it's physical and kind of mail-oriented. One is sending them a book. There's some meaningful connection to, and it's not just like, oh, here's a book, Here's a book and here's why, and here's this specific thing. So maybe you get the book delivered to you first and you're putting in some notes first to call out to them, to show like, Vance, I specifically thought of you with this. The other thing, and this is a David Weiss item, he would look up their alma mater and send them something branded from their school.

1:03:38 Vance Exstrom: That's cool.

1:03:39 Scott Ingram: Again, it's little things, little touches, but nobody does this stuff. Or again, it's that handwritten note because nobody does it.

1:03:46 Vance Exstrom: Nobody does it. Yeah. Yeah, no, 100%. I've sent something that I've done that's kind of along those same lines is I've sent prospects or clients customized bobbleheads of themselves. Nice. It's been huge. It's been great responses I've got. So that's another thing that I think would be feather in my cap. But yeah, I think those are great. I haven't done the book thing. That's a great tip.

1:04:08 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Yeah. The bobblehead is one up from there. You have to find a resource for that. You'll have to hook me up. We'll put a link into the show notes if you want to send somebody a custom bobblehead of themselves, top1.fm/vance-exstrom. We're gonna hook it up.

1:04:24 Vance Exstrom: Yeah, for sure. Definitely, definitely, definitely. All right.

1:04:28 Scott Ingram: So Vance, the last thing I like to do, I mean, we have covered a ton of ground. This has been an amazing conversation. What would you challenge our listener to actually do? What can they do over the next, say, 1 to 2 weeks that's gonna help them improve themselves and improve their results?

1:04:45 Vance Exstrom: Figure out what you are not doing that a top producer is doing at your organization. Spend 30 minutes with them and pick their brain. Figure out what their day-to-day looks like. Figure out, you know, a lot of the things that we talked about today, Scott, but in your specific industry, go talk to a top producer, figure out what they're doing that you're not, and implement those things and actually have those action items in place and dedicate time every single day to doing those things. And you'll see results. I mean, you might not see them day and night, but they're definitely going to come. It's just a matter of time of you being dedicated and persistent.

1:05:25 Scott Ingram: Nice. Nice. I'm going to add on to that because I'm still in, I've got a couple, but my interview pipeline could be a little bit stronger.

1:05:33 Vance Exstrom: Okay.

1:05:34 Scott Ingram: So if there is a person in your organization who is just the outright number one, super consistent, and you want to, I'm going to tie this back to do them a favor, do something for them.

1:05:46 Vance Exstrom: Yep.

1:05:47 Scott Ingram: Introduce them to me and let's get them on the podcast.

1:05:50 Vance Exstrom: That's great.

1:05:51 Scott Ingram: You get to be the one that's responsible for setting that up. And then I will interrogate them for 1 to 2 hours and I will get their secrets for you.

1:06:00 Vance Exstrom: Exactly. That, that's a really good way.

1:06:01 Scott Ingram: And then you can have a follow-up coffee. Yeah.

1:06:04 Vance Exstrom: That's a really good way to show your mentor, somebody you want to be like, man, get them on Scott's podcast, man. That's huge.

1:06:12 Scott Ingram: Awesome. Vance, seriously amazing. I appreciate all the time. This has been so fantastic. And with any luck, schedules will work out and And I'll get a chance to spend some time with you here in Austin in October.

1:06:21 Vance Exstrom: Oh yeah, that sounds fantastic. Yeah, we'll be in touch for sure.

1:06:24 Scott Ingram: All right, dude.

1:06:24 Scott Ingram: All right, man. 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.