175: Selling Human: The Importance of Making Others Feel Seen with Alex Smith

0:00 Scott Ingram: This episode is brought to you thanks to the generous support of The Sales Collective. They've got a little something for everybody. If you're leading an organization, The Sales Collective can help you introduce real sales process or improve your own process so that you can consistently generate revenue and help your sales team deliver more. If you're an individual contributor, they have a ton of resources, including their Sales DNA test that will help you identify your own areas of improvement along with 250 videos to help fill those gaps. Check them out at thesalescollective.com or top1.fm/tsc.

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.

1:01 Scott Ingram: Today on the Sales Success Stories podcast, my guest is Alex Smith. Alex is a top senior account executive at Docebo and a longtime friend and member of the Sales Success Community. Welcome to this side of the podcast, Alex.

1:14 Alex Smith: Scott, I can't even tell you how happy I am. This is a long time in the making. Longtime listener, first-time guest, and so much to tell. A product of this community and this society. Just thrilled to be here, Scott. Thank you so much.

1:30 Scott Ingram: I wish I actually recorded the video of this because I've never seen you smile so hard. You know how we roll. We're going to start with some immediate value and talk about what do you believe to be the top 3 things that have contributed the most to your success in sales?

1:44 Alex Smith: Yeah, there's a lot of things, and I know a lot of people probably find it hard to distill a couple of things down. I did some work on this. I've thought about it a long time and actually reached out to people in the community and talked about this. So shout out, I know he's listening out there, Jack Wilson. We had a good talk yesterday about what he thinks my 3 things are, so I'll just rattle off 3 and we can dive into each one of these, Scott. The first, and Jack actually said this is the number one for me, is my understanding strategy is my sales strategy. And when I say understanding strategy, I do that in sales situations. I do it in life. If you have a conversation with me, I'm really deeply trying to understand you. I think people want to feel seen, heard, understood, and you can't sell something you don't understand, a product you don't understand. You can't sell to a person you don't understand, and you can't sell to a a problem you don't understand. We can dive into how I do that. And that's number one for me. Number 2 is I started a podcast on this and we'll talk about the story of starting that podcast and how the community helped me start it. But I believe that I sell by being human and I'll dig into that. But it's like you want to feel like you're dealing with a real person in the word salesperson, I think. And we've all bought things before. And when you feel like you're not being sold to, you're being sold with or you're being collaborated with. That's huge. And then the third thing is I find uncommon ways, Scott, and you probably know this about me, and we'll talk about some examples, uncommon ways to make people feel seen and to show them that I truly get them and know them. And I think it's the uncommon things that I do that really, I think, give me success in sales. Happy to dive in and have a lot of stories to tell. So can't wait.

3:29 Scott Ingram: Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. So much good stuff. And I think well packaged. I'm glad you had the conversation with Jack. Talk about feeling seen. Like there's a guy that I think a lot of us, he sees through the stuff that sometimes we can't see in ourselves. So let's talk more about the understanding strategy. I love this concept and the way that you wrapped it, that it's not just understanding the buyer, it's understanding everything around that too, in terms of their problem, what they're trying to solve for, what they're actually trying to do. So talk more about that. How are you getting there?

3:57 Alex Smith: Yeah, when I'm talking with somebody, I'm peeling the onion. I'm not just asking things like, yeah, I think a lot of us are curious and we're saying things like, tell me more about that and help me understand. And all those are great things and ways to go about it. But I want to really kind of go deeper and really kind of make sure that not only am I active listening and doing those things like saying, run this back for me and that sort of thing, but I think I want to make people feel that Alex is present with them. I'm doing things where maybe I'll not only say like, help me understand, but I'll say, hey, that's making me think about something. Like, tell me if I'm on the right track here. Or I love Chris Voss. So I'll say instead of like what I'm hearing is, I'll say like, man, I'll use the seems like, feels like, looks like that sort of things. Seems like, Scott, this is what you're thinking. Am I right or am I wrong? And I think generally speaking, I look at situations where, you know, when I'm having a conversation with you, people say he's really trying to figure out me and my problem. When I say like you can't sell like a product you don't understand, that's understanding what you're selling at a deep level, talking to different people in your company, understanding their roles, how they think about the product, that sort of thing. Again, to a person you don't understand, like understanding the person and then again the problem. When I say my understanding strategy is my sales strategy, it's like my intention is to understand first and hopefully let that lead me to a sale. And I sometimes say like, I'm a better problem finder. I don't want to try to solve problems. We sometimes think, oh, I hear something, go, that's perfect. We have a product for that. Let me go deeper. Like, why does that exist? How big is the problem? Who is it impacting? All of those things first before I get to solving anything. So problem finding over problem solving, I think, is a big thing for me.

5:51 Scott Ingram: Yeah, it's so interesting that you called that out because I was thinking as you were talking through that, that a lot of times we're sort of listening for the Like, what's the opening? What's the fit? And as soon as you hear that, it's okay, now I'm ready to pounce. And we stop listening and we stop continuing to understand. So when you say it's really about more deeply understanding and finding rather than it is getting to the solution, I think that's where the power is. It's like, let me continue to listen. Let me continue to listen past the, okay, I think I've got an idea here and I don't need to flip immediately into pitch mode and tell you I got the answer.

6:25 Alex Smith: I know people just want to be in control. We want to guide people. Yes. But you really want to kind of try to give up some of your control and put the spotlight on them. And I'm going to quote a lot of people in the community, so get ready if you're listening. But like, I just remember, I think it was the girl from Figma, I think Katie.

6:43 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Katie Jane Bailey.

6:44 Alex Smith: Yeah. Katie Jane Bailey at a summit who's like, my discovery is life. Like football is life. It just made me think like, she's not doing this just in sales. This is something like that is a lifestyle. Discovery is a lifestyle, I think she said. And it's true. It's for me too. Like, if I'm having just like a conversation with someone in the community, like I'm trying to really understand them and understand all about them. Same thing with you. And when I listen to this, I think that's why the podcast is so great because we can all hear different things, but we do different things with them and mean different things to all of us. I think that's amazing. Like, that's what I think is so great. Like, is just making people feel like you are truly trying to help them see things that they can't see. If people understood their problem or understood what they were doing, they don't need us. They can do without us. But when they feel like someone is actually really trying to understand them and find something that they didn't realize that was a problem, then that's where like the bigger sales happen. And we can all think of those bigger sales where we uncovered something that people didn't realize was an issue. And that's where I'm trying to get to.

7:51 Scott Ingram: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I'm sure that we'll come to some examples of that. I'll give you the full quote because it was so impactful and it's very very memorable for me. Katie Jane said that discovery is a lifestyle, not a stage. I think that distinction was so powerful and so impactful for so many of us. Let's move on to the second thing here. You talked about you sell by being human, which also happens to be the name of your podcast. So talk about what is that exactly? And maybe that's also a good opportunity to just kind of talk through the story of the pod as well.

8:21 Alex Smith: Yeah, amazing. It's funny, this is a question that's flipped on me, Scott. So I ask everyone, and honestly, I challenge everyone. I'd love to hear everyone's answer to this question. So even you, Scott, anyone think to yourself when I say the phrase sell something, but sell it by being human, what does that mean to you? And I ask every guest that. And I think I've heard amazing things like being authentic, being aligned, being curious, helping people, serving people, all sorts of great things. I've heard even people say don't sell it, which is funny to me, but there's a great book, To Sell Is Human by Dan Pink, and we'll get into tons of different things about it. But in that book, that's really kind of my guide in sales, and it's not written by a sales guru or leader. If anyone's familiar with Dan Pink, he's an author. He's a social scientist, I guess you could say. And he just realized… and this is someone who I've had the pleasure of actually talking to, which is freaking crazy. And we can talk this story about doing it. But the premise of the book is everyone in the world is essentially in sales. And he did a study and he asked people throughout all walks of life, educators, business owners, nurses, doctors, people that you would not consider in sales, like how much of your job is influencing, changing, persuading, that sort of thing? And it's the majority. People aren't doing like the ABCs, Glengarry Glen Ross, which is an awesome movie. They're not doing the always be closing. He said they're doing things like the new ABCs, which he said were attunement, really taking perspective, like getting in someone's mind and their heart and understanding like what they're feeling and thinking. He called that attunement. That was the first A. B, buoyancy. He called staying just levelheaded with a sea of nos, a sea of rejection. We all have to face it. How do you do that? And then C was clarity. He was talking about how the best sellers really help people make sense of all of the information out there. So much information. We're not as much sellers as we are curators of information. And that's a powerful distinction of we're not giving people information, we're helping curate it for people and making it easy to buy. So first off, that book is my guide. But when I hear the term sell something and sell it by being human, I just think too, we're all human beings that have emotions and we're more alike than not. For me, it's understanding that I want to lean on and index on the person in salesperson, meaning I want the person to feel like I'm dealing with a real person in Alex. He's not putting on a mask. He's not a typical seller. He's just him. He's the same person I'm talking to on a Zoom in a sales meeting if I met Alex on the street. So for me, it means like really showing people transferring belief is selling. That's one definition. Sales is the transfer of belief. I think another is doing it through the lens of human connection and really helping people feel like he's a real person. That's what to me selling by being human is. And a lot of what that book talks about, and we can talk about that. But yeah, that's kind of what I'm thinking about as I hear that question.

11:31 Scott Ingram: Yeah, I was actually thinking about our conversation this morning, and you're calling out sort of the mask and the theme of just kind of authenticity in this. I think a lot of people get stuck because they come into sales and they think, oh, I'm now supposed to think this way and talk this way and act this way. And the irony is they're all the wrong ways. They're all like these super stereotypical, awful things that give sales the bad reputation. And I think we've all had to go through this. So you sort of have to learn the hard way, wait, this works a whole lot better when I'm just me.

12:05 Alex Smith: Yeah, honestly, like it's hard. I've heard a lot of guests talk about like self-awareness, understanding who you are, and that's sometimes a lifelong pursuit. And sometimes that changes.

12:15 Scott Ingram: Yeah, I was just gonna say we change. Yeah, we grow, right?

12:19 Alex Smith: If you're not growing, you're dying. And like you are the same inside, but things that we want change and we care about the people closest to us and all that. This is part of my understanding strategy. Also kind of back to the first one, like I want to understand myself really well. Like I ask kind of what am I doing this for? What do I feel like I'm good at? Asking other people in the community. I've asked people in the community like, what do you feel like my skills are and what do you feel like I'm good at? Like I do it with Jack, I do it with others. I feel like part of selling by being human is like understanding you as human and who you are so that you show up When you show up, you're consistent in conversation. It's not just a trendy term to say be authentic. You see that on LinkedIn and be yourself, be real. I thought it was really funny in the pandemic. You saw all these people posting, you know, now more than ever, you got to be human and be yourself. I'm like, when did that ever not be a thing? I mean, the pandemic all of a sudden, like, gave us that wisdom and knowledge. It's just making us remember that. But yeah, just you know, pause every once in a while if you're listening to this and ask yourself some of those questions like, what's important to me? What am I doing this for? And it could be money, it could be your family, it could be whatever. And like, check in with yourself every once in a while. I know you were kind of dealing with some stuff too recently too, and it's like you just had to pause and use your friends in the community and people to help bring you back. And that's important to do every once in a while.

13:47 Scott Ingram: Yeah, totally, totally. Let's contextualize a little bit and just talk about what is your role exactly? Who is Docebo? Give us that high level. Yeah.

13:56 Alex Smith: So I always have to teach people how to pronounce it. Some people like Docebo, Docebo, Docebo. It's always about the che, and it's a Latin phrase for I will teach. And Docebo is a SaaS learning platform really built for the business of learning. So learning management, think of when you have to take training at work or for a customer has to take training with you, or maybe a partner has to run through certifications. We're the software that enables that kind of learning to take place. We sell a platform of different things. Learning management system is one, but we also offer things to help people create content, to develop experiences, to track and measure the learning in their different audiences. And so that's what Docebo is. I've been an AE on the mid-market team, which is kind of like employee sizes of about 500 to 5,000. So that's like the sweet spot of the company. I've been doing it since November of 2020, and I'll talk about the road to get there in a little bit. But my first full year, 87% to my number. And then my second full year, I went to President's Club, 100%. 18% and became the number 1 seller on my team at the time. We can kind of talk about, there was someone slightly ahead and then left, and then I was the outright number 1 person on the team. And then actually for the last, I just got this, we talked about it before, I got numbers and for the full, almost for the last 3 years, all time, I've sold close to $2.7 million. And the number 1, that's the most in my segment over that period. So. A lot of success during that timeframe.

15:27 Scott Ingram: Scott, as often happens, strangely and frustratingly for me, people have weird ideas in their head. I know your idea was I have to be like the undisputed outright number one in the whole organization before I'm allowed to talk to Scott and be on the podcast. So he had to get called out. We've already called him out a bunch, but Jack Wilson was like, Scott, we got to get Alex on. His story is amazing and he really is the number one on his team, which is incredible. But let's talk about that though, because I think that But if there's one shortcoming of this crazy criteria that I have for this show, this idea that I only interview number 1, top 1% individual contributors, while I still love that rule because it's very clean, it kind of bastardizes the definition of success to some degree. This is not to say that there's not somebody who's in the top 5% or the top 10% who their goal in life isn't to be like, I don't need to be the ultimate number 1 in this organization. Finding a lot of success in other parts of their lives and being really, really great and just a strong, consistent performer in sales. I'm not going to change it. It is what it is. But I want to understand, like, let's get inside your head a little bit in terms of this definition and why this didn't happen sooner.

16:48 Alex Smith: Yeah, it's a really good question. I can go on for a ways. I think if I had to give myself advice, and I hope I'm giving advice to me… there's me's out there that are like just doing exceptional things and maybe the number numbers or the leaderboard. Don't say you're the outright number one. I'm gonna say something, and I hope it hits home for a lot of people. So I heard this on a podcast, and it really kind of hit me between the eyes. And it was a quote by Adam Grant. Uh, Adam Grant, again, very much like Dan Pink, he's written tons of books about just givers and things like that. And he said a quote about hidden potential. He goes, I used to think comparison was the thief of joy. But now I've thought I've actually changed that belief. He now says envy is the thief of joy. What he meant by that is like comparison's good. It helps us drive farther and maybe inspire us and to do better. But I was comparing myself to some of these people you have on your podcast, Scott. They've been number one for multiple years and or back-to-back years outright with hundreds of people in the company. And you're like, ah, like I have a lot of respect for Scott's podcast as a listener and all all these calibers. So like, I just want to be the true number one. And I was at the summit a couple years ago, I think it was like 2 years ago, and I met Kevin Dorsey. And I told him, Kevin, I want to be on that stage, man. I gotta be number one and the outright number one. And I was like, really good, I'm just gonna increase my goal. And I think we all increase… and this is another thing I think we do, and I do it, Scott, in sales… we get in our own heads like, okay, if I did 118%, I have to increase my goal by the progress I've already made. I'm competing with my past self. But I think that competition isn't always fair. It's not… we're not waging a fair fight against ourselves sometimes because it's like, what is that for? This is another really changing moment for me is when I said that to him, he's like, do you really want to be number one? A lot of people said like the outright number one was the worst year of their lives. Like, if you do, great, but there's a lot that comes with that. And he wrote something on a piece of paper and he gave it to me and it said, what changes if? And just think about that for all the people that want to be on this podcast. Number one, what changes if, if I get that and I'm like, damn, well, I'd be on the podcast, but I go through it. I couldn't really answer it. It really messed me up. I agree with you. I think like instead of trying to be the number one in numbers, why not change your framework and be like the number one in certain things? Be the number one in discovery. Like try to index. Like I want to be excellent at discovery. I want to be excellent about having empathy. I want to be excellent at having negotiation skills. That's what I think a better number one is, because I think we compare ourselves. And when I say envy is the thief of joy, it's like, it's when admiration turns like, I want what they have. I should have gotten what they got instead of saying like, what can I do to learn from them and study them and apply it? And that's what I'm trying to do now. And that's another thing I feel like I'm good at is applying what I've learned from this in situations as a situational learner. I don't know, Scott. I think I struggled with myself because I'm comparing myself and had too much respect instead of just… and too humble, frankly. And I should have just accepted and looked back and said, you know what, I'm proud. I've come a long way. Like, someone had to freaking tell me, Alex, do you realize you've sold $2.6 million in the last 3 years?

20:15 Scott Ingram: And I didn't know.

20:16 Alex Smith: Someone had to tell me because I was just looking at my current numbers and where I was and not the road or how far I've come. So look at your starting points, not your finish line or your endpoints, is maybe my advice I'd give myself or someone listening out there.

20:31 Scott Ingram: Yeah, such good stuff. And I think one of the challenges is, to your point, the numbers don't always reflect what's going on. And where I've kind of shifted a lot of my own work and emphasis is control the controllables. And a lot of times you just don't control whether or not a deal closes. Like, oh, that team's whole budget got taken away and half the team got laid off. There's nothing in my control that I could have done to have rectified that situation. It's so funny that the experience you had in that moment in the summit, there's some weird things that happen. I can't remember who said this to me, but they said, Scott, I'm not gonna come to the summit until I can be on the stage.

21:13 Alex Smith: Yeah.

21:13 Scott Ingram: And I was like, you're robbing yourself and robbing us of that experience. I think we get in these traps sometimes of I have to be this demonstrated outright thing where, I mean, this is going to be sort of cliché, but it's the enjoying the journey kind of stuff. It's like, you know what, I can't only be worried about this number that is not 100% in my control when I could be enjoying this more. I could be having more fun. I mean, just this week I was on site with a client I hardly travel anymore. It was great to get back on the road, be with people, be making a really significant impact that I know I was able to drive, right? It had nothing to do with the sale. I mean, if anything, it was actually helping them just break through their own stuff. Like, they were stuck as an organization, and I knew, I'm like, if I can just get everybody in the same room, we can work through this and I can get you way more productive and way more successful. I guess the sales part for me was, and using way more of my services, but it had nothing to do with that. It was like that human impact, the impact on that organization, and just enjoying that and enjoying the incredible meal that we had and those kinds of things that I think you can lose sight of if all you care about is, well, am I going to get a contract out of this?

22:35 Alex Smith: Yeah. Yeah, so true. You're making me think like before my current job and I'll get into kind of like the road to, I feel like the story is really great looking back and seeing how far I've come and what I've done along the way. But like prior to finding you, Scott, like I found this podcast at a low time in my career. Like I was working for a company that a manager who they were just one of those hands-off managers was like, come to me when you need me. I'm here. I didn't feel like I was growing. I had a lot of freedom, but there's a difference between freedom and fulfillment. And freedom, like, we all want to make a ton of money and be happy, and we think money is freedom. And we… I had a company credit card. I could go to Vegas on the company dime, and Hawaii was my territory. Puerto Rico was my territory. I got to go to those places for free. Like, why would you want to give that up? That's amazing. I didn't feel like I was growing. I felt like I was stagnating. We'd go on the road and it was like a party all the time on the road. And I hate to say this, but my team was called Team Tito's. And I'm like, I don't want to work for Team Tito's, you know? Like, what the hell is this? You have to find enjoyment. And I was even again yesterday when I was talking to Jack as well, he's like, you know what, dude, you of anyone really find enjoyment in life. I'm always like, where's Alex? Is he in Hawaii? Like today, is he… he went to the Super Bowl?

23:59 Scott Ingram: Where is he? What is he doing?

23:59 Alex Smith: I'm like, I'm like, you know what, I do, because I don't look at it like work-life balance. I look at it like life-work balance. I want to live like a fulfilled and happy life. And we're in sales. It's hard to shut it off, Scott. Like, I don't know about you, but when I want to really achieve a lot, I want to keep going and working and make one more call and work on the weekends and stuff like that. And okay, at some situations, but also, are you happy? Like, How are you enjoying life? Again, like another quote out there, when Ian Koniak said success to him was the joy he gets in pursuit of his full potential, I mean, man, are we getting joy? Are we pursuing joy? Are we pursuing the money, the paycheck? Are we pursuing our full potential? If we're pursuing our full potential, your numbers are number one. Like, that will come, but that shouldn't be your number one thing. And I think for me, that's sometimes what I got caught up on. I lost sight of for a little bit, and I'm glad I'm coming back to seeing the light a little bit.

25:05 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Yeah. I think we all get in those positions, and I've always been good about making time for my family and stuff. But if you've noticed the inconsistency in the podcasts here of late, a lot of that's been driven by my oldest daughter. I have 2 girls. My oldest daughter is a senior in high school. We've been just going through the journey of figuring out where's college, and we did a long 5-day run through upstate New York, and she's decided on the Rochester Institute of Technology, where apparently all of my money for the rest of my life is going to go.

25:37 Alex Smith: Hey, she's gonna pay it back though, I feel like. Yeah, that's an amazing school, Scott.

25:43 Scott Ingram: But for me, it was really that understanding, like it clicked literally on that trip a couple of months ago. Where I was like, man, this ride is coming to an end. I'm just gonna lean into this super hard and hang out with her as much as I can while I have the opportunity. And then recognizing that same thing with my youngest too, like she's not far behind. She's only a couple years behind. And I'm like, man, I'm gonna have a lot more time coming up in the next couple of years. But in this moment, the most important thing is this. And if that means that the podcast doesn't go out every week, then so be it. That's the choice you kind of have to make. It's true in sales too. You have to kind of pick your shots and decide, where am I going to focus? What is the most important thing? And are there these life elements that are more important and need to take priority? Alex, let's go all the way back to the beginning. I want to kind of touch on a couple of stories in sort of your own journey and story arc. How did this all start? How did you get into sales in the first place?

26:40 Alex Smith: Yeah, what a question. I always like to say, I'm one of those people that didn't fall into it. Like I've been doing it at a young age. I was in the Cub Scouts hawking hams and cheeses door to door with my mom. I had a paper route, that sort of thing. And I've always really enjoyed meeting new people and finding out about people and also having this just thought that, hey, I want to get paid for what I put in, like my performance. I've had that a long time. So first job even out of school was door-to-door salesman slinging coupon cards. If anyone's ever heard of like multilevel marketing, wasn't a pyramid scheme, but it was a… if you have to say that, yeah, it was, it was a pyramid-like structured company that was essentially a scheme. But I made money. But the whole thing was like, hey, you go on this interview and everyone has college degrees. So I'm like, they're not dumb, there must be some here. There's a girl went to Penn that was doing this. I'm like, wait, so you go on an interview and it sounds ridiculous, but they totally like bamboozle you into, okay, you're on this interview, and then, oh, you're gonna jump in the car with me and we're gonna go on my route for like 6 hours and you're gonna shadow me. That's the interview. I'm like, nobody told me this. And they're like, you know what? They called them Fuji factors. They tried to manipulate you in wanting the job. They're like, listen, this isn't for everybody. If you don't want to put in the work, I get it. You don't have to go on this. Like, but like, if you're gonna go on, I'm gonna make a couple hundred bucks today. We're gonna have fun and I'm gonna own my own thing. But listen, if it's not for you, I get it. You can't really do it. Like, basically trying to say, what else are you going to do today? You don't have a job. You're already here. Might as well do it. I'm like, I'll show you whatever. I go on, get dumped in a residential neighborhood. We're selling Pizza Hut and oil changes and coupon cards for $20. But then the whole thing is you do that for 9 months and then you own your own business and then people are doing it for you. And it was ridiculous. But I learned a lot of what not to do. Do in sales. Some interesting things through that experience. I've worked for J.G. Wentworth selling, hey, I want my money and I need it now. So like boiler room style freaking call center. I've sold advertising for the… that was a really cool gig for the Philadelphia Inquirer and Philly.com. And then I sold Monster.com job advertising and then ended up running partnerships. And where this story arc is leading, folks, is like I found Scott literally because I love the book Gap Selling by Keenan. And Scott was on a podcast with Keenan. I'm in Philly, I'm driving like hours to Lancaster. I'm in Amish country and I'm like, I'm going to pull up, put on a podcast. This is like 2018, folks. And what is this? And wait, Scott has his own… he mentioned Sales Success Stories. I'm like, wait, who's this Scott Ingram guy? And wait, he interviews like top performing salespeople and it's free? What is this? And I found there was a guy from LinkedIn. I think it was Mike or Justin Bridgemohan. This is way back, like in 2018.

29:32 Scott Ingram: OG days.

29:33 Alex Smith: OG days. And I'm just listening on repeat. Scott always said, as a podcast host, you always wonder, like, so hard because you don't know, are all downloads the same? Are you really in someone's head or are they just downloading it like out of like 20 podcasts? Scott was in my head on this ride, folks. I'll never forget this. I'm at Lancaster Brewing by myself in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and I got out of the car and I kept listening by myself with my headphones while I was eating dinner. The waitress probably thought I was insane. I was like, man, every episode is just fire. There's just like so many tactical things. And I started listening for a few months. Scott was talking about a conference. I ended up reaching out, signing up for the conference. And then I think it was in 2019, Scott, in the process of me signing up for the conference, I was 130% to my number, been at my company for about 7 and a half years. And I got one of those just IMs, DMs from my boss. They had made some different, like in other parts of the company, there was some stuff and I got the dreaded, hey, hey, are you around? Like, I need to talk to you right away. And it was like a company-wide… they did a company-wide email, like, hey, we're going through some stuff as a company. And then I was like, cool. I totally didn't see this coming. I was completely blindsided. I really was. And I got on the phone and HR was on and it's like, hey, Alex, I have HR on the phone. They wanted to read something to you. I was like, cool. And then they just went into like this boilerplate document and told me it's not me, it's them. And they're going to get me a right management to help me outplace me. But the really messed up thing, and honestly, I think things are really changing because people are starting to film their firings and being laid off because they're done so impersonally. They really are. It's funny because I don't know if anyone's familiar with Brittany Peach, but she worked for a company called Cloudflare and she filmed her firing because it didn't make no sense and it's gone viral. I would have never thought to do that back then, but if I did, it would have been crazy because you would have been like, why? Alex is 130% to his goal. Like, Why? You never find out why. You never find out why. And what was really impersonal was like, they go to me, literally the HR person goes, all right, we're going to send you all this packet of information. Now, where do I send it to? What's your address again? I mean, I'm crushed. 7 and a half years. You don't know my address? I go, just read to me what you have on file. And she goes, oh, I'm sorry. I don't have it. Can you just read it to me? And I felt like almost being like, okay, cool. Alex Smith, 417 Flamingo Circle, Palm Harbor, go fuck yourself, Florida 34688. But I didn't say that. But it was like, to me, it was like divorcing your spouse and saying, hey, what's your middle name again for the paperwork for my attorney? We know each other. We're not new. There's a whole story behind that, Scott. But then a month later, my dad calls me out of the blue. I think all of us will get blindsided in their lives. And not only was I blindsided with work, but I was blindsided personally because my dad called me a month later and just says, hey, where are you at? Oh, I'm driving. Just wanted to tell you I have leukemia. And I didn't know what to do with that information. I've never known anybody, frankly, with any form of cancer at all. And to my dad saying that to me, oh, I'm fine, I'm fine. I just want to let you know, might be a few years. They've had a marker in my… that sort of thing. And that all happened at the same time, Scott. And right before 2020, I'm literally dealing with being out of work. And just picture me in January of 2020. Searching for work, having to send in those stupid, like, did you do 5 job postings or did you apply to 5 jobs today to get my $200 of unemployment from the state of Florida, which is criminal, going into like job placement. I'll stop the story here just to ask questions or context, but if I can put you where I was in January of 2020, I was in a job placement center in Florida because they make you go in person to go listen to like job advice to get your money. And I could have probably given this session, but I had to go in person. And I got a call from my mom saying, get up here now, Dad's been rushed to the ICU, get up here now. And I'm like, if my dad passes away while I'm in this job outplacement thing, I am going to set a fire to this place. Like, this is so messed up. I'm flying up there in January of 2020 to see my dad in the ICU, which is just a really wild and character-forming experience, Scott. So that was kind of the start of this whole thing.

34:04 Scott Ingram: Yeah, yeah. There's so many places I want to go, but I kind of want to talk about just… it's that finding your people thing. Yeah. Because so many of us have been through this super weird early stages sales journey, whether it was door-to-door. I think I've ever shared this story. I don't know if it was the first sales job I ever had, but it was just one of those like part-time things. I was going to college and I was working for a recruiter. I mean, this is so long ago. It was in the Bay Area in, in the peak times. Like this is late '90s.

34:44 Alex Smith: Exciting. Bay Area dot-com boom.

34:46 Scott Ingram: Tech recruiters, like all of that stuff. But My job was just to all out lie to people. They're like, okay, we're gonna do this ruse because this is so far before LinkedIn. Like they didn't even know who the people were. They didn't even know their names of who they needed to recruit. So it was like this identification thing. And they're like, okay, well call up, say you're calling from this city manager's office and you're putting together this conference and you need to know who to invite. Invite, who their people are that have this title. I mean, it was just all out, just lie to people. That's what we want you to sit here and do all day. It was absolutely horrible. And I think you have those experiences and you think, oh my God, this is what sales is, that turns so many people off. But it's when you figure out what this is really about and who the real sales humans are, and when you actually get to spend time and be with And I mean, we went through all of this stuff with you. You haven't missed a summit since you came to that first one. We became friends. I mean, I think you and I went on a run the day after, or one of the days, or some crazy thing. And the relationships and the bonds that you form with people who actually understand you… actually, one of the quotes, this is so funny. I'm sure he'll hear this. He'll send me an amazing handwritten note afterwards. We're at dinner after the second day of the summit, and he says, "You know what? I think I'm gonna bring my wife next year because I cannot explain what it is that I do and what this is all about and how much meaning it has. But I think if somebody experiences a summit, they might actually get it." He was half joking but half serious about I need the people who are really, really important. Important to me in my life to be able to actually see this and understand this. And I think a lot of people too, if you're in those earlier stages and you haven't found your groove in sales and you haven't found your people, it's tough. I mean, you were just on a complete island thinking, am I crazy? Why are people asking me to do these things? Why am I being treated these ways?

36:59 Alex Smith: Yeah, couldn't agree more. I agree. I want to bring my wife too, because I come in and out of the community sometimes and I need to get back into the society. It's a crime that I'm not in as much as I am. But, you know, yeah, she's like an architect. She doesn't get like, okay, what is this conference? Like, isn't work paying for it or whatever? I'm like, no, I am, because it's amazing. It's not the money I've gotten back because, yeah, I've gotten jobs out of the community. I've gotten referrals. I've gotten business. But it's the personal relationships gained, Scott, just Like the first person I met in you, you helped me. I couldn't afford it. I'm like, Scott, I don't think I can come. I lost my job. And you helped me with like a plan to get there and payment plan and stuff like that. And you need people to pick you up in sales. I don't care how good you are. I need my teammates to lift me up all the time, people to transfer their belief in you to you. I remember, Scott, I said, hey, can I get the emails of a couple of these people, your guests, like, and you're probably like, why are you trying to sell something or trying to get… no, I want to send them a Vidyard video of me and call out something that they said in the podcast that really impacted me. So like they could know who I am prior to coming to the summit. And I did that with David Weiss and a couple other people. So I do little things like that. Again, uncommon ways to make people feel seen. And Jack, I mean, there's so many… Mike Abel and Jacquelyn and Camille and DeJuan, and I can rattle off 30 or 40 people maybe more, they're not just people I see every year. They're people I talk with throughout the year. Jack in particular, like we have daily conversations sometimes in the morning, just a quick 15 minutes to like work through a problem, talk about my day, just get to know each other. These are like best friends I've had. I went up to him after the summit. I'm just like, your speech really hit me, man. Like, Ikigai like is everything that really hit me because I was going through a tough time. But yeah, I used to think, Scott, that the top number one… if you're not familiar with the community, you're probably thinking, man, number one salesperson at Microsoft or LinkedIn or whatever, or Salesforce, they've got to be like arrogant. They've got to be like, I don't need to learn from anyone. I'm the best. I'm a big shot. And it was the exact opposite and not even close. Someone like Ian Koniak, he's the most giving person you can meet. Same thing, like with their time. People that are big names like Dale Dupree, you're… that first year I was meeting people people like Dale and Scott Barker. And these are people that are huge on LinkedIn, and you would think they would never have time for you, but they want to lift you up and do stuff. I mean, Jack helped me do this, and you helped me with a job when I didn't have one. People are willing to help out like none other community I've been a part of. That's why I think community isn't just, for me, a group of people and once-a-year thing. It's a collection of people that want to give back. Back and continue it and make it better. And that's the type of people in this thing. Congrats on what you've created.

39:58 Scott Ingram: Yeah, but it's its own thing because that for me was probably the biggest stereotype that had to get smashed for me that I didn't know. I didn't understand until… it took me 2 summits to really get it. The first summit going in, I was so scared because I thought, okay, this This is dangerous. For those who don't know the summit, we do this every October. This year it'll be October 7th and 8th. The only people I put on stage are the folks who've been on the podcast. So by definition, these are real, true top performers. The first time I did it, I thought, yikes, I'm bringing a lot of really big egos into the room. And if they get into this thing where they're all trying to one-up each other, I'm like, this could get crazy. And horrible. But the reality is, and this is what you have to understand about what true top performance is, and that's why the theme of the second year of the summit became… it was all about servant leadership, because that's what this is. I figured out that the people who are the very best and who are at the top of the leaderboard and get these ridiculous W-2s, they're there not because they're trying to do that. They're there because they're just trying to help the most, and they tend to be the most humble and the most giving, and their results are just an outcome. It's a side effect of what they're doing. And the second year, I was still a little bit nervous. I'm like, oh man, I don't know, I got some real big deal people. It was just the same thing. And, and then you have that realization of like, oh wait, this is why they're at the top. They're at the top because people have helped us. We didn't get here by ourselves. I don't believe in this idea of being self-made. It's absolutely garbage. You cannot do this by yourself unless you're a complete narcissist. And you need people around you and you find people who have gotten to that place and they know, I've got to pay this forward. And it's the most fulfilling thing. It's that opportunity to being able to give back and being able to contribute and being able to make this difference is, is way more important than the money or like, oh, look, my name is high on a list.

42:11 Alex Smith: Yeah, I'll give you like an example. I love this conversation because I can go through all the different scripted questions you have and we will probably do that. But I love this. Just an example, Scott, for everybody out there. I was out of work and this is time with like one of the lowest. I'm dealing with my dad battling cancer and I'm out of work and I was out of work, guys, for 406 days. Just put that into perspective. Yeah, I counted every day and I counted all the rejection letters. I saved them. I looked at them because I'm like, I'm going to prove someone wrong. All these companies, like who's who of HR tech companies, right? And it was a collection of people through this community and communities of communities. So like you introducing me, I think I met Amy Volas through this podcast and you interviewing her and then she started a community with Scott Leese and Thursday Night Sales and I was a really active of that community. And then I'm going to that all the time. And then she's like, you know what, Alex, you're coming here all the time. I want to introduce you to Alessio Artufo. Alessio Artufo at the time was the CRO of Docebo. I mean, that's a pretty high… and she did it in front of 150 people on a Zoom call. I'm like, what? I didn't ask her to do that. And he's like, in his Italian voice, yes, great to meet you, Alex. Great to meet you. Yes, send me a resume. And I was like, oh my God, I know Sophia Jackson. Do you know who Sophia Jackson? Oh yes, one of our rising SDRs. Well, who's Sophia Jackson? Scott interviewed her for the Sales Success Stories thing, and she was highlighted. And that's how I knew who Docebo was. And she posted on LinkedIn something in the pandemic, hey y'all, anyone got any good recommendations for what to watch during the pandemic? I'm like, absolutely, let's connect. And I said, definitely Tiger King and O.J. Have you seen any? Oh no, I haven't. And we got into a conversation. I had a call with her. She broke down like the AE role, and I knew all about Docebo. Just those things… connections of connections of connections. Abel Lomas helped me prepare for my interview at Docebo, helped me do a role-play presentation. Jack helped me really get out of my own head. Like I'm not ready. You're ready. You can do this. And we talked through tons of stuff with it. Ended up being out of work for 406 days. And Dale Dupree… I made videos. I made a video like. A 4 or 5 minute video where I interviewed people that have bought LMSs or gone through that process. I interviewed Dale, I interviewed Jack, and I sent that into them. They're like, this is crazy, this is awesome. I ended up getting the job because of people in this community. No doubt. I still to this day lean on them. Top people, they don't do it by… number one people as well reach out to me, reach out to other people for help all the time. And I have countless people, Mike Simmons, like the list goes on, who I've had great conversations with to help them with what they're going through. And they've helped me with what I'm going through. And that's invaluable.

44:58 Scott Ingram: I think the other part of that DNA is you also don't get to be number one if you think you know everything. It's one of those always struck me again at the summits was the folks that I put on stage, they would give this amazing talk and then they were the ones who were taking the most furious notes. In the sessions that followed. I'm like, oh, they're there, they're in this spot, they're in this place because they're the ultimate students of sales. And so yeah, of course they're reaching out to each other, and of course we're learning from each other because, oh my God, I don't begin to know everything. There's a reason I have to keep doing these interviews and keep asking questions and wondering why people are doing what they're doing. Let's go back. So you've had this crazy journey through sales that, again, I think most of us do in one way, shape, or form. Like, there are very, very few straight lines in sales, let alone kind of careers these days. But knowing what you know now and having been through everything you've been through, if you could start all the way over and be really intentional about your path, where would you start? How would you kind of put that together?

46:02 Alex Smith: That's a great question. I know it's easy to say, I wouldn't change anything. Like, I don't regret anything that I've done. I definitely would have left my previous role sooner. And just recognized that when the party was over sooner, I think I got comfortable. I think we all do. Going back to what I was saying earlier, like knowing yourself, it's like we should all be asking ourselves, like, am I growing in what I'm doing? I've heard guests say some version of this, like, am I using the skills that I think I'm good at to the best of my ability? And am I in a team that's making me a better version of myself? That's so important too. Like the people that you work with, I've heard you say something about sales culture, like you can't have good sales culture, you can't be number one in spite of a terrible manager or something like that. It's true. So it's like you have to constantly ask yourself again, it may change. Companies will change, leadership will change, and you have to just be asking. My previous company, I bled for that company. It was really amazing. And for a long time I was really fulfilled and there were really smart people around me and I was doing Great, but at some point that changed, and I didn't recognize it. And it took me years to, and I probably lost years honestly in my career where I could have maybe been in a pure SaaS role earlier and learned earlier. There's making up that time and just being intentional. I kind of if I would have found this podcast earlier and heard some of those ways to manage your career because I didn't probably check in with myself in my career enough. That's probably what I would have asked myself more questions. Sessions each year to really check in with myself.

47:37 Scott Ingram: Yeah, it's almost like it's the boiled frog thing. Well, I've just been sitting in this pot. I didn't realize, oh, these bubbles forming around me, that's a sign of why is my skin peeling off? Something's going wrong. It's really interesting. I actually shared a couple of these ideas a couple of weeks ago on Daily Sales Tips, and we'll put these into the show notes because I have no idea what the episode numbers are. So if you go to top1.fm/ Alex-Smith. That's one way to get there, or top1.fm/whatever this episode number is, which I rarely know. I was basically sharing just a couple of observations, and some of this was kind of forward-looking futurist type of stuff. But Alex, those 406 days, I mean, that was the toughest sales job market I've ever seen. It was hard. Like, when a guy like Alex Smith can't get a gig. That's absolutely insane. The good news now, and what I kind of pointed out, is the stock market is a forward-looking indicator. It's sort of predicting what's going to happen. So if you look at like what the market has done recently, and we're sitting at or very near all-time highs right now, that bodes really well for the next period of time, like probably the next 6 months or So what's funny is I called this out to a friend of mine who is also a lightly boiled frog. He's like, Scott, it's time. I gotta go. Lightly. I like that. And I said, I think this is good. And I think the market is finally making a turn and there's gonna be a lot more opportunity. So if you're in one of these places and you need to get out, it's not like it was a couple years ago where like, no freaking stay. This is a dangerous economic time. Having a job is important. Just hang in there. There. Funny thing is, I shared this with him that morning. Later that afternoon, he texts me. He's like, Scott, I had 6 recruiters reach out today, and I haven't even turned on the, like, hey recruiters, ping me thing on LinkedIn. The market is turning. I think we finally are getting to a place where, hey, you can be picky again, and you can really think about… it's finding that fit. I mean, it's such an important thing, and just, I've got to find the the right culture, the right solution. For me, I think a lot about who do I want to sell to, because that's who you hang out with all day. Those are the people you're learning about. Are you interested in them or do they suck? Like, for me, I need to hang out with optimists and forward-looking people, and that's why I sell to salespeople and marketers. I've sold to HR and finance and very, very risk-averse CYA people, and that's not fun for me.

50:10 Alex Smith: That's just how I'm wired. Totally. It's so funny. I probably didn't ever ask myself, like, who do I want to sell to? I was comfortable selling into HR and I still love… those are my people. But like, why do you want to sell those people? What do you get? Ask yourself those questions. Who do you want to sell to? But why and what for? What do you personally get out of it? Because yeah, I'm selling mostly into L&D now, which they're technology And they're always trying to get shiny things and want to look at the latest tech and really care about that. And then customer education people, same thing, that they're always looking at like cutting-edge stuff. So I get a lot of joy out of that. I know that, I know HR people, and I personally like kind of what their mission is. A really strategic HR person, awesome. I love to deal with them. I was just at a conference with a lot of them. When I was interviewing for jobs, you want to answer all the questions, walk me through your career, your past couple of years, all that stuff. But I put like, what do I believe? When someone asks me the question like, tell me about your past couple jobs, I can do that. It's all on my resume. I don't say it like that, but that's all on my resume. Can I lead with what I believe first, and then I can get into my background? And they're usually like, oh wow, yeah, awesome. Yeah, it's like what really drives me is like, I love fostering connections that help people feel engaged and fulfilled at How I did that was all these things in my career. Having that statement, like what you care about, what you believe, is really powerful. And that goes to what you were just saying. Let's tell another story.

51:42 Scott Ingram: I mean, the freaking show is called Sales Success Stories. Yeah, I want to hear a deal story. What's your favorite sales story?

51:50 Alex Smith: Oh man, so many. Just a brief one, and then I'll share a recent one. Like I shared one, so this is even at my Prior role, and I'm working with somebody. They're a leading just bridal retailer in the U.S. They had been with a competitor for like ten years. Ended up coming over to us. I had been working with her for a couple years. Didn't ever meet her in person, and we had a conference, and she was going to come to it. But I couldn't make it because I was going to be in her area. But I was going to be like two hours away at another customer. I'm like, I can't be in Chicago and not see. You. This is crazy. So like, I'm gonna come to the conference. I'm only gonna be able to be there for like 10 minutes, but then I have to turn around and make a meeting. I was in the suburbs of Chicago, and if anybody's familiar with Chicago traffic in the suburbs, it's brutal to get into downtown Chicago from like this. I forget where I was. I was at one of the suburbs. It was going to be a 2-hour drive for me to get there, see her, and then 2-hour drive to make back for this meeting. And I couldn't move the meeting. It was just going to be to say hi Shake her hand, hug, and then that was it. Basically, it was just a Tuesday. Drove and did that, and I kind of say I live for those Tuesday moments because it was a year or two later. I think she was like, "Yeah, Alex." She called me to say she was selecting another vendor because of cost or something like that. Her team wanted to, or maybe their technology was built in, and we were going to be redundant. So she had to make the decision, and I was like, "Hey." That's awesome. Like, before you make that call though, like, have you considered this and like the impacts of that and what that will do with X? And no. Okay, could we get on a call where like I could bring in my technical person, we can talk through some of it? And we did and ended up saving that sale. And she was… years later kept on continuing. But they're just little things like that. It's just little moments like that. I'm proud of those things because they're memorable. That's I could talk about some recent things and wins as well, but I always go back to that one.

53:49 Scott Ingram: It's a good encapsulation of all the things you talked about because that opportunity to save a deal doesn't happen if you don't have that depth of relationship for them to call you in the first place. Because that could have easily been like, here's the formal letter that we're canceling because we've already signed this other contract. So you have no opportunity to do anything. And then And then it certainly doubles down on you knew the situation, you understood her world enough to go, well, wait a minute, you can't do that because this will break and that'll break and your life will come apart.

54:23 Alex Smith: And yeah, I want to tell this one because it was just something to go to my point of like how helping people feel seen in uncommon ways. And we have a lot of fun stories, Scott. Like I've done videos for you and I worked for Scott to do the sponsorship. So for Sales Success Stories and the conference, and I love Scott, the story that we had where reaching out to Gong, Udi, who's the chief marketing officer at Gong, put a funny video on LinkedIn of him playing piano at his house, just The Sound of Music he was playing. And I'm like, that's amazing. I'm going to make a video and try to change the lyrics up and sell him Sales Success Stories. I used his video in the background. And I said something like, it was like something on sales deals and whiskers on kittens. And, you know, I made this video and I sent it in. He's like, amazing, I can't talk, but I'm referring you in. And like months later, we closed a sponsorship. So I have deals like that. I also have one, I just have to mention this, like I closed a deal the year I made President's Club where they administer the biggest tests that high schoolers have to take. Okay, this company, nationwide company, is going to be a figure deal, really technical sale. Their customers are teachers where they're like taking them through like AP history, AP math teachers where they train them on how to coach students on taking a test. There's like a learning platform they were using that was just a really poor experience. Nobody liked using it. This affects tens of thousands of teachers in the US. And I'm like, man, this is a huge sale. How do I earn the right? Like, who do I know that's like an AP math teacher? Do I know? And I'm thinking, oh wait, my wife's cousin's… his wife, I don't know what you call her to me, like my friend, but she was related to my wife's cousin's… his wife was an AP math teacher. So I'm like, oh my God, this is a user. Hey, would you be willing to get on a phone to talk through this, this product? And she did. And she gave me tons of amazing info. I was like, would you be willing to… like, this sounds really weird, and if you want to tell me no, you totally say yes, totally tell me about… would you want to get on with my client, talk with them about how you use their product and what advice like you would give them and all this? And she's like, totally, oh my God, my client loved it, like ate it up. It was like user info to the max. And she took that, and what we were doing was going to actually solve a lot of her Like a year after, they ended up selecting us, got a 6-figure sale out of it, amazing deal. And they've grown. And like a year later, she attended like an event with us, with a customer event, and gave her case study and story. And what they built with our software is amazing. It's beautiful. Saved so many things that she was doing. Now later, that person was like, Alex, oh my God, I'm going into the new platform and it's amazing. Oh my God. Thank you so much. I'm like, you're a big part of this. And that's just so fulfilling to know the impact he made really to tens of thousands of teachers and students because of, again, thinking out of the box and making introductions where out of the blue. And I'm constantly thinking like that, Scott.

57:33 Scott Ingram: Yeah, what a great example. In all of this, what are you most proud of?

57:37 Alex Smith: Oh, personally, I'm proud of how I made it through 2020. 2020 for a lot of us was like obviously impactful and life-changing because of the pandemic. But for me, right before the pandemic, I watched my dad, Alonzo Smith, fight for his life. Literally was told… I'll never forget this… after the ICU, like, I think of a lot of sad things, but now I can laugh through a lot of the tears and stuff. And like, my dad, amazing dude, never lost his mind Even though his organs were failing and everything was shutting down. I mean, picture if anybody had been in ICU, it's hell on earth. It's like you're on the wrong side of 50/50. His breathing was so bad. I got to talk to him in the ICU, which was kind of funny. I gave him a book and I said, look, Dad, this happened to you. This was like one of those books, like the year you were born. So 1940 and what happened that year. And one of the things that happened that year was Winston Churchill was appointed minister of Great Britain. And he's like, oh, you know about Winston Churchill and Stalin? I'm like, no. My dad, a longtime history professor, worked at the Smithsonian. I'm like, no, Dad. Oh, Stalin was so upset at Churchill, or the people of Great Britain, because he was elected, but then he was not elected the next year because he was really harsh and people didn't like him. And he's like, I'm a dictator. Such a great man like Winston Churchill, how do you vote him out of office? You can't vote him out of office. He's dictator. And I'm like, what are you talking about? And then he looks at me and goes, never before in all of human history has so many owed so much to so few. And I'm like, what? He's impersonating Winston Churchill in the freaking ICU. When I say I'm proud of that, Scott, of making it through, because just a day later a doctor told me that there are no more branches we can pull. Your dad's gonna have like a week or two. I watched him like fight for his life, come back to life, make it out of the hospital, And what I learned through that is not just a lot about grief, but like myself. And I could have been like, you know what, screw this. I don't know, maybe I'm just going to take a job and take my first thing. And that really kind of started and propelled me because the last thing I'll say is things that I think about my dad. He wrote something on a book to me and it was on my bookcase. And he just said the day that he passed on March 5th, I opened this book. I was going to give it to him. I just didn't make it in time. But it's said… I didn't even know this existed… he just said, always see beauty and feel love. Love, Alonzo. I didn't even know this book existed. And always see beauty and feel love. And I'm like, you know what, my dad… I knew he told me he was proud of me a lot of times. And I think about Dale and his dad and stuff like that. But I know he's with me. He's talking when I'm talking on this podcast right now. I'm proud of how I use that to really propel me in the next few years and getting a job and what I'm doing and what I'll continue to do. Yeah.

1:00:27 Scott Ingram: Well, and having been through that with you, I mean, we were friends through that whole period. And as frustrating and challenging as all of that was, you were always positive. You were always giving. That's kind of another thing. It wasn't like, hey, this is a selfish thing and I'm stuck and I need help and woe is me. It was, you were just out there helping other people left and right. And even though you maybe didn't yet have everything that you hoped to have, such a cool thing. And I'm also trying to build a little bit of a bridge from that story before I ask you, what's the most challenging part? What do you struggle with the most? In sales, I guess, or just generally? I'm going to leave that open however you want to take it.

1:01:07 Alex Smith: Oh, nice. Okay. I mean, it maybe goes back to like balancing the paradox of being too humble versus patting myself on the chest and taking credit and that sort of thing. Thing. Sometimes I'm like, yeah, maybe I struggle with understanding how good I am at times and what I'm working towards. And what I mean by that is sometimes we think what we think we're going for, number one, and being just our abilities… sometimes we think that if I don't get that goal, if I don't achieve it, then sometimes I'm less or I'm failing and I need to just work harder towards it. And it's not about necessarily working harder. It's kind of like, again, when you ask me, what are you proud of? It's looking back and seeing how far have I come? Would I be… would the 2019 version of Alex proud of where I am now? If yes, then okay, I'm on the right track. Don't get offside of that. Sometimes I probably struggle with that a little bit. I'll just leave it there. If I had anything in sales, probably being too concise. So now we're, you know, an hour and a half in and we're talking talking about all sorts of stuff, but that's because I didn't script this, folks. I'm just kind of talking off the cuff here because I wanted to keep it conversational with Scott.

1:02:18 Scott Ingram: Yeah, I'm trying to understand that a little bit more. So fair to say that it's really just almost being proud of yourself in the moment?

1:02:25 Alex Smith: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yo, that's a very concise way to say it. Yeah, being proud of yourself in the moment, being okay, and finding things to be proud of yourself in the moment, finding those key things, because we all have those things, but we probably put the bar way too high sometimes.

1:02:41 Scott Ingram: Yeah, I think it's also kind of related to… it's like a branch of the curse of knowledge. It's like you're really great at this thing, but that's just part of what I do. It's not really that special when it really is.

1:02:54 Alex Smith: Yeah, the curse of knowledge. Yeah, yeah, no, it is. Like, we all have knowledge. We're all ahead of someone. We're all behind someone. And we have to realize, maybe not even look at it as like ahead, but like we have abilities and skills that people would love to have, but we don't give ourselves credit for them because they just come naturally. They're so easily… I'm doing it like a podcast and I'm not giving myself credit where like if I have a bad month or quarter, I'm like, man, I just focus on that one thing, which is like output and numbers, and I'm not thinking of all these other things that I'm good at and skills that I optimize for. So yeah, giving yourself credit in the moment, being proud in the moment, that's good one. Nice, nice.

1:03:34 Scott Ingram: All right, let's pivot really hard and get into the day dissection. So yeah, Alex, your alarm clock goes off. What time did that happen? Give me the blow-by-blow.

1:03:45 Alex Smith: Yes, ah, the great question. I'm a 6 o'clock in the AM guy. I'm getting up, I'm drinking some water, just kind of getting ready. You know, last couple years… and this has changed over the years… but last couple years, I'm going for a run like half an hour, maybe an hour I ran my first marathon like 2 years ago, and if I'm doing like a training thing, maybe I'm running a little longer. My wife travels a lot for work, so sometimes I want to be there and hang out with her before she goes in for the day, or if she's not, like, that could look differently. I try to say, okay, this is what I want to do in the morning and not be so regimented every day because I think there's a difference between like having a framework and then a strict routine. But I'm going to do something, be there for my wife for the first hour, work out for that, some combination of that for the first hour. I'm going to come back and I'm trying to be in front of the computer around 8:39. And I took this recent approach just in the last year. Again, I was in Jason Bay's Outbound class and he kind of like for AEs, I think he wants to really structure. If we don't build in prospecting into our schedule, it doesn't really happen. That first beginning, I call them golden hours from like 8 to 2, I want to like get done like stuff that I need to do, like, yes, my bottom of the funnel stuff and get that stuff done. But really that 8 to 2 time for me is it's new pipeline. It's researching. Like I put on like a block from 8 to 2. And then what I put in those blocks are common things like research for a 30-minute block, prospects, actually execution sequences and prospecting. It'll be like other 30-minute blocks of planning for a new business meeting. It's like stuff that I know that are important for me to get into done to move deals forward. And then the afternoon is kind of like, okay, if I have a demo or if I have administrative work, that sort of stuff is… or internal calls or trainings, I'll try to save till the afternoon. And that's kind of what I structure each week. I try to get done 5:00, 5:30. I'm not trying to work till 7:00 or 8:00 at night. Maybe that's different if there's something urgent or something, but I try to be done in that 5:30 timeframe. Frame and shut it off, like shut the computer down. And I'm into HelloFresh now, so like I'm trying to cook a little. I'm probably the chef in the house, so I'm cooking some type of nice meal. And then honestly, we don't have kids, so it's me and my wife, and she works a really grueling job as well as project manager at architecture firm and interior design. So she wants to kind of just lounge out and watch Netflix or watch TV. So probably watching TV like 7 to have to go to bed. And then lately I've been picking up a new hobby. I find like you got to do something outside of… this goes back to finding what you're good at. Like find something like that's outside of your goal of being really good at sales. Like find non-sales things that you can learn. Every year I have this thing where it's like I want to do one big thing to define the year. It's like this Japanese concept, like misogi. Big concept, one big thing to define the year. One was marathon 2 years ago. Last year was I picked up guitar. I want to learn how to play guitar. I don't even know if you knew that, but my friend gave me an acoustic guitar. I started learning on YouTube. I also got a teacher about a year ago, so he comes over like once every other week and I pick that up for like 30 minutes or 40 minutes. So I try to do that almost every day. I'm hitting the bed around like maybe 10:30, 11, something like that, maybe read a… read for 30 minutes before I go to bed sort of thing.

1:07:14 Scott Ingram: So nice. What's the one big thing for this year?

1:07:17 Alex Smith: I think, Scott, I didn't plan the one big thing yet because it was going to be like, yes, I have a marathon I want to do, like the Hawaii Marathon. That's my big healthy thing. But honestly, I think I want my one big thing… I don't know if it's possible or not, and if you have it scheduled, that's great, but I'm gonna shoot my shot. Like I sent Lex a in and she's like, Alex Smith will be… I want to be on stage. And she just wrote on my little notepad at Sales Success Stories, like, you'll be on stage, you'll, you'll be doing that one big thing. So you know what, I don't know, I'm gonna see if that could be a possibility. Either that or the Hawaii Marathon. Nice, nice.

1:07:54 Scott Ingram: Or maybe both. Yeah, we'll chat about that. So I am very, very close. There's a very, very significant announcement coming around the summit. And yeah, if it plays out the way I think it will, I think it's very likely we end up selling out the summit here in the next month or 2, whatever that is going to be, 6 months ahead of the event. Yeah, so some big, big stuff coming and really coalescing around. Yeah, I'm just gonna leave it there.

1:08:19 Alex Smith: Yeah. Wow. Wow. Cliffhanger. Wow. Scott just dropped a huge cliffhanger. Sign up now.

1:08:24 Scott Ingram: More details to come very, very shortly. You got me excited. Yeah, but we'll definitely talk about that. You know, it's really interesting. I was actually… this is dumb. Every now and then I sort of come up with those things. I did one a few years ago where I'm like, I want to learn to juggle. And some of it was just like something totally sort of random. It was part of what I'd read about that is like you literally create new pathways in your brain when you do those kinds of things. So I picked that up. It's actually no big deal. YouTube saves everything. It's only a little bit of practice. I'm like, oh, okay, cool. Like I juggle. And we're deeply obsessed. I usually do not get here. I don't often watch a lot of college basketball, but my wife and I would go to most of the UT women's basketball games. They won the Big 12 championship. And so I was thinking, I'm like, I wonder if I could spin a basketball on my finger. Maybe that'll be my next thing. I'm like, if I can juggle, I can probably find some YouTube videos to help me figure out how to be a Harlem Globetrotter. So that'll be my next thing. Do it. Let's do it, Scott.

1:09:26 Alex Smith: I want to see that. I want to see that at a summit. Scott juggling. All right.

1:09:29 Scott Ingram: All right. Yeah. So there's a certain light sveltness that I'm trying to get to for this summit. I've lost a little bit of ground here in the last couple of weeks, but on a, on a good track. So yeah, maybe the sveltness comes with basketball finger spinning. Let's talk about information diet. What are you reading, listening to, and watching? And when does that happen?

1:09:47 Alex Smith: Yeah, in the morning, like I run and I'll throw this on. I like other non-sales podcasts. So there's a podcast called On Purpose by Jay Shetty. So he's interviewing a lot of famous people, just talking about their life stories and emotional things and like human connection stuff. And it really takes like a really unique perspective about people and their purpose and what they do, and so many great insights. There's a few like 30 Minutes to the President's Club, Outbound Squad. I'll listen to podcasts when I run a lot. I'm listening to stuff. I told you that book To Sell Is Human, highly, highly recommend it. Another I'm reading is called Hidden Potential by Adam Grant, all about unlocking… how do famous people kind of unlock different things in themselves and learn things differently? And it's not just about putting in more hours or that sort of thing. It's like, just again, like, how do they create these new pathways in their brain and things like that? And a lot of great social science behind it. I like to say I'm a situational learner, not like a lifelong learner. Not just, I'll say, a lifelong learner. What I mean by that is like whatever gaps I need or whatever I'm looking for, I try to seek that out and out books for that and things like that. So I don't have a ton of stuff. I can't say like there's tons of news apps or newsletters. I am subscribed to a lot of newsletters, but I'm finding like I'm not reading them, you know, as much as I want to, which is not good. But I'm subscribed to David Priemer's newsletter. I'm subscribed to Justin Justin Welsh and Scott Barker's and all these. I'll get things here and there from some of these things, like when I need something, which is, I think, good. I don't know if like that's the information diet, some of the things that I'm doing at least right now. Nice.

1:11:26 Scott Ingram: And what about just kind of the tools and apps that you function on?

1:11:31 Alex Smith: Like what's core there? Yeah, I mean, a lot of similar things that people talk about, obviously Sales Nav and that sort of thing. One thing that's like a little uncommon that I'm not sure a lot of people know about is there's a site called… and yeah, Vidyard's obviously huge at making videos and that sort of thing. There's a site called mmhmm, and it's spelled just like you would sound it, M-M-H-M-M, I think. It's a really awesome way to not just jazz up your Zoom backgrounds, but picture stuff going off in the background in your Zoom calls, like you're in front of a video. You're in front of something on your whole screen. So it's not just like changing your Zoom background. It's really making it entertaining and engaging. And you can make presentations with it. People are like, wait, what the hell? Like, why does Alex have a taco that's moving in the background? It's like you can put in GIFs and it's really cool. And I've made videos on LinkedIn and sometimes on Zoom calls. Like I have that you can put your name in it and that sort of thing. So that's something I'm on there. They used me as an example on their website because I made a video before I went to a conference. I'm like, here's what I'm going to do. And there was like pictures on the right side of my screen of the conference and what I was going to do to introduce myself. And that was cool. I'm not a huge… tons of like really cutting-edge things that are not uncommon. We have Gong Engage, so I'm using that. We went from Outreach to Gong Engage, so I'm doing like AI follow-up emails and things like that. I need to get into probably ChatGPT and doing more with OpenAI, but not as much quite yet. I'm using that for notes on stuff like forming notes. Sometimes I'll be like, hey, I took these notes down, can you take this down to a page or 2 pages? I've done that before. Yeah, probably 5 or 6 like key things that are impactful to my day-to-day.

1:13:17 Scott Ingram: Yeah, nice. You've mentioned conferences a number of times, and you talked about some of the ways that you were proactive around the summit and reaching out to some of the speakers kind of beforehand. What are some of your favorite conference hacks?

1:13:29 Alex Smith: Oh yeah, I think that's a good one. Like, I want people to know me before I go to the conference. How can I make that happen? You're actually making me think I need to do some Daily Sales Tips about this because Mike Simmons and I talk a lot about this. Actually, we've had calls about this because Mike is amazing at this and we've put together like frameworks and I've pitched him. If anybody's listening from Docebo, please bring Mike Simmons in. Let's work with him. He's so He's so good about it. But that's one. I want people to know me before. So whether that's a video and I'm sending it before, whether that's getting in… like, most conferences have apps, conference apps, and you can get in and create a profile and start connecting with people prior to, and not just sell them stuff like, oh, I want to connect, let's meet up at the conference. But it's like, hey, so-and-so, like, I see this is your background, this is what you're doing. Like, hey, I'd love to learn more about that. If you have time, I'd love to ask you some questions and meet up. People like enjoy, you know, people sending stuff and going into those apps beforehand and like posting during the conference, taking pictures, putting it out on LinkedIn, taking videos. At the last conference, the last thing I'll do… this was hilarious. I went to a conference in Vegas, this conference called Transform, and the last night they had a singer and they were going to have Flo Rida. They were going to rent out a club and all HR people and Flo Rida, the artist, was going to play. It was amazing. Flo Rida's on stage. I'm going nuts. This is a conference Jack actually went to and the year before he gave his phone. I think he saw Nelly and Nelly took Jack's phone and was like, or somebody he was with took the phone and was selfieing themselves and it was amazing. But anyways, I'm at the concert and Flo Rida brings out Flava Flav on stage. So picture me, I'm literally like on this next to the stage. Like then he brought up all these HR people from the conference. And I started videotaping this. This was amazing. I'm like, man, if I was on stage, I would want this video. So I met some of the people on stage. And these are like HR people, VPs of HR, very, very prim and proper. They don't want to… but when they get loose, they get loose. And it was hilarious. And like, I met people through that. I scheduled a meeting because of it. This woman was singing, like, I forget the song she was singing, but she was amazing on stage. And I tapped her on the shoulder. I was like, hey, I don't your name, but look at this video of you. This is amazing. I just thought you might want to… she's like, this is amazing. Please, let's… she connected on LinkedIn afterwards. She's like, these are epic. Actually, I didn't know about Docebo. Let's meet. I want to learn if you could be a fit. So all that to say, that's pretty crazy. But I'm always thinking of how can I get to know people in uncommon ways before, during, and after an event? And there's a lot there that could be a whole series.

1:16:17 Scott Ingram: Scott. Yeah, so good. I wonder if the Flo Rida, Flavor Flav is like a Las Vegas thing. And this is embarrassing. I swear I've seen most of like the big musical acts in my life at corporate conferences, which is not the same level of thing. But I literally same thing like those two. I think it was actually Flavor Flav's birthday. Yes, it was his birthday at our thing. Maybe it's always his birthday.

1:16:41 Alex Smith: Always his birthday. It was like his 21st birthday and they were like popping off firecrackers. Oh my God.

1:16:47 Scott Ingram: I can't say that I got on stage, which is good for everybody, me included. One of the things I do is, so speakers at events are kind of a weird thing because as soon as they're done speaking, they're at like peak fame. It's like, oh, this is the person and there's a line of people to talk to them and you can't really make an impression on the speaker at that point. Right? What I will do is I will go find a speaker shortly before they talk. So nobody knows who they are. They don't have that crowd. Like they're going to have that crowd for the rest of the event, but before nobody knows who they are. This is kind of like a personal branding hack. I will try, because I speak a lot. And one of the things you want to be able to do is I want to be able to connect with the audience. In some type of relatable way or tell one of their stories or something like that. I know that, and I'll talk with them, and ideally I'll have like some little anecdote that they can share. And then what happens is that speaker is now talking about me and my story from the stage. I do this all the time. I don't know where or how I figured this out, but I'm sure it was sort of an accident the first time, but it's something you can do super intentionally. It's super powerful because everybody's like, wait, who's this guy that Jeb Blount is talking about from the conference? Because I do this and it's an all-the-time thing, but it helps them. It's one of those things like, I know you're wanting to make this connection to this audience and I've got this story because I'm a member of this group, right? Or I'm a member of this conference.

1:18:26 Alex Smith: Here's something you can tell. I love that. That's going to be something I take away. Yeah, it's so true. Like you can find the speakers beforehand and reach out to them. And like, they're flattered. They want people to attend. And like the fact that you go up to them, no one is going up to them and they're just attending events and taking pictures with their phones of slides. And they really care about the people that are like really intentional and like want really interested in their topic because they spent a lot of time on that talk they're about to give. And you helping them is huge. That's awesome.

1:18:54 Scott Ingram: Don't you have one of these stories with Dan Pink?

1:18:57 Alex Smith: Man, I almost forgot it. Yeah. So like he was speaking, uh, Philly. An HR tech conference, and afterwards I like found him and I was just like, I'm going to stalk him after. And we had a VIP event and he sat at a couple of tables and I was just like, I'm going to try to go up and just introduce myself. And I did that one time. And of course we got into an elevator and there was tons of people in the elevator and I didn't really get to talk to him. He comes a couple of years later and this time I stalk him and we're in an elevator, just me and him. And I just like, hey, you know, I just want to introduce myself and this book is so impactful. And here's one of the things that I loved was your story about the Fuller Brush guy who's in San Francisco going door to door, still selling it, 80 years old. Where is this guy today? And he's like, I don't even know. That's amazing. But he looked in my eyes like, thank you. Thank you so much. And I helped him get out of… he was rushing to get to his train. So we went through this construction floor. We got off at the wrong floor. We walked through some construction and he went on his way. Years later, obviously I start a podcast of his book, To Sell Is Human. Dan Pink wrote the book To Sell Is Human. Jack actually helped me. He's like, why don't you just ask him? I'm like, this is a New York Times bestselling global author. Like, I get like 30 or 40… like, I don't know how many downloads at the time, probably 30 or 40 a month. He's not going to take it. He's like, how do you know? This is flattering. Like, it's a podcast based off his book. What's the worst thing? No. Like, who cares? Who are you? So I'm like, you know what? You're right. Jack, screw it, I'm gonna ask him. It was after like 40 or 50 episodes. And on his website, you can submit an email to Dan Pink. And I titled it, I think it was like Elevators, Mops, Podcast? Or something like that. And I said, hey Dan, this is Alex. You may remember meeting me in an elevator in Philly after one of your talks. We talked about where the Fuller Brush guy was today, and also your book. And the second line was like, I heard you on a podcast where you said Einstein's quote, if you don't understand a problem simply enough, you don't understand it. Make it simple. Well, simply put, Dan, would you like to continue our elevator conversation and jump on a podcast with me that you inspired about your book? P.S., I think I said something funny about like, I'm sure the conversation won't be as crusty as my Hotmail email. Thanks, Alex. And I swear not within 5 to 10 minutes, I'm in my pool and I get an email back from like a d-something at Gmail. I'm like, oh, this is probably like like a hacker. And it said, hey, Alex, it's Dan. Sounds interesting. I need a few months, but like, I'm in. And I was like, what? And I said something like, that's amazing. How could I set this up? Let's just keep talking and I'll let you know. It was kind of one of those I'm back and forth with him and it was him. And sure enough, it was a day like 4 or 5 months later, we got on a Zoom and recorded an episode. Episode on my podcast, and that's like insane. Insane. People are flattered. I actually asked him, I said, Dan, why'd you say yes? He just thought, you know what, I thought it'd be interesting. And, you know, said something very simple about that, like, you know what, honestly, I thought it was interesting. This guy gets paid tens of thousands of dollars to speak. An hour of his time is probably worth a lot. That was really flattering. I mean, just shows like you can connect with people that are famous if you make them feel seen.

1:22:17 Scott Ingram: Yeah, I think that's a perfect analogy. People get in their own heads about this stuff too. Totally. And they just think, oh, this person is so famous and everyone reaches out to them, and who am I? And all this stuff. It's like, you know what, it's way less than you think. It comes back to your point about people being seen, because if you really call out their work or call out who they are Actually, somehow this didn't work out, but somebody else in the society reached out to me and said, hey, I have an interview with this person and I know you're connected to them and this, that, and the other thing. And he said, I've read their book. I'm like, man, that's all you need to do. I mean, if somebody's written a book and you've committed the time to really read that and you're thoughtful about it and pull some things out from that, people want to hear that, that validation of, wow, Like you really took the time to consume this is huge, but it has to be real. You have to have actually read it. Alex, you probably experienced the same thing. A huge percentage of the people that reach out to me because they want to be on the podcast is like, oh, I'm such a huge fan, this, that. I'm like, I can tell instantly you've never listened to my show, or you would know you shouldn't even be reaching out to me because this guest is not who I interview. You. Yeah, yeah. So I get reached out the same way. If you open your outreach with a lie, that's no good. Now the flip side of that is if it's very clear that you absolutely have listened to multiple episodes and you reach out to me, it's going to happen. I mean, that's how our relationship started. You reached out to me because you'd listened to a podcast.

1:23:54 Alex Smith: Mhm. Yeah, a bunch. Yeah, absolutely.

1:23:58 Scott Ingram: Alex, let's talk about sales philosophy. Do you subscribe to a particular philosophy or approach?

1:24:04 Alex Smith: Like a lot of your guests, I take from a lot of different things and I discern. I think that's a big word, discern what is valuable to me. So yes, I love gap selling. I love some aspects, you know, Challenger Sales, their latest book, The Jolt Effect, is huge.

1:24:19 Scott Ingram: Fascinating book.

1:24:21 Alex Smith: Such a good book. And Jack put me again.

1:24:23 Scott Ingram: Yeah, Jack did that to me too.

1:24:25 Alex Smith: Put me on to that book. It's all about customer indecision. It's not about… we're always taught in sales like we're fighting against the status quo and people don't want to change. It's not that they don't want to change. How many times have you had a sale where the person tells you yes, they actually think you're the best thing and you're going to solve their problems, but then there's something there and the sale doesn't close? Like, what the F? They gave me VOC and a year later, what happened? It's not about people afraid of change. They're afraid to fail. They know, even though things suck, they know what that is. The suck is, right? Right? Know your suck. Their certainty… they know their suck. And if they pay you 6 figures or whatever, even though everything on paper says that their suck is going to change, they don't know what that is. They won't know that until a year or 2 down the road. That's still… we don't know. Like, if it's amazing, awesome, they get promoted. But there's still a chance it might not be, and then they get fired. So people just don't want to make that big Because then the light's on them if it fails and they're done. So people like, they tiptoe around. And that book goes into so many tactical things about how you ask the right questions and get people to get unstuck from their indecision. And so, so you asked me about philosophy. So yeah, it's taking those different things and wrapping it all around and discerning from yourself, like, what do I need when is huge to me. So yeah, if I had to just summarize it, all these different methodologies are around the whole how do I really understand the problem well enough and how can I bring these methodologies into it to help move things over in a situation? Again, situational learner, like I take those things and try to apply them. Actually, it's not enough to just gain the knowledge from this podcast or books or methodologies. It's actually deciding when in your process you need to implement those things because some things like you can do in every sale, but a lot of times like every situation in sale is different. So you kind of have to know when to bring things in and be intentional about what certain things need, methodologies need.

1:26:34 Scott Ingram: Normally I would ask about what motivates you, but you're a big Dan Pink fan. So what drives you? Oh yeah.

1:26:41 Alex Smith: Drive is a huge book of him. There's all sorts of things, intrinsic, extrinsic motivators and things like that. What drives me is I think it goes back to like Ian's quote, the joy I get in pursuit of my full potential. So like knowing that I can grow and I have this ability, and money's great and goals are great and all that stuff, but like there's something I can do to be a little bit better and I want to find it. And whether it's the podcast or guitar or whatever, it's not saying that, oh man, he's just putting way too much in, like when does it ever end? No, it's It's just like knowing that, hey, I have the potential to do some great things and I want to pursue that. And that's what drives me because I'm excited to see what the 5 years from now version of Alex is or 10 years, because there's a lot that will happen, like a lot that happened the last 5 years. And I feel like a lot that can happen in the next 5. I think that potential, that pursuit of potential. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:27:38 Scott Ingram: Awesome, awesome, awesome. Now you've got me thinking, okay, that might be my next… I've got too many Audible credits I'm sitting on. Maybe I'm gonna have to grab the potential book. Awesome. Is there something you believe that the average or typical sales professional would think is crazy?

1:27:55 Alex Smith: Yeah, I think we already talked about it, and it's that the best salesperson at a company isn't necessarily the number one salesperson at the company. And sitting here to say numbers don't lie… if you're the best in terms of numbers, that's great, and maybe you are the best, but best is also subjective to term. And you have to kind of look at people that are maybe 10 or 20 or whatever and say like, what skills are they like? Who is the best at prospecting? Because maybe the number one salesperson isn't the best prospector or the best negotiator. Finding those people and then also saying like, wow, what are things that aren't directly focused to revenue that I could find somebody the best at? Who's the best? What if we all got rewarded? Like, who's the best at curiosity, the best at empathy, the best teammate, the best friend on the team? Who is that? So yeah, I don't know. I think about like most salespeople, I think probably say, oh yeah, if I need to be the best, I need to be number one in revenue. And like I said, numbers don't always lie, but they can. And not only do you not control sometimes what happens on the sellers, the buyer's end, you can't control what other sellers are doing. Maybe they get an awesome lead. Maybe they just happen to have like a whale customer. And no matter what, you could be doing amazing things. And then someone who's ahead of you just closed like the biggest sale of all time. And that was just a great blip on the screen for a year. So think about who is the best in what and what that means for you and what's important for you.

1:29:28 Scott Ingram: Yeah, it's such a good call out. And I think maybe you can almost boil it down in terms of top contributors. And think about contribution more broadly. So I'll give you a very personal example. I was working with a relatively small organization. New sales leader comes in, and he's kind of giving me crap about my position. Now granted, I'm like probably number two, but he's giving me stuff about like, oh, this guy's doing this much more and this that and the other thing. And I basically just dissected the numbers because I'm like, sure, this guy is ahead of. Me based on revenue, like top line total sales dollars. But I took him through and broke down that guy's deals versus my deals, and he had discounted the crud out of everything. So the margin, the amount of money we actually made on my sales, was way higher. And then he had all of these other costs in his deal in terms They just weren't good fits. They created this huge burden on the team. A lot of his deals churned. I'm like, well, which kind of revenue do you want? Do you want the high margin revenue that stays, or do you want the low margin revenue that churns? Again, numbers, to your point, a number may not tell the whole story. And this is why I call the show, and you have the same word in, in your show, or you did initially, like this idea of the story. The story tells so much more than just a number or a couple of numbers. And if we look more broadly at like, what is the contribution? And maybe it has nothing to do with revenue. Maybe it's some type of contribution to the culture, or heck, for that same company, I wrote a freaking book for them as a platform. Like, how many other salespeople wrote a book for you or started this podcast where we're interviewing customers and doing all of these other things and creating speaking opportunities and other things that are going on. So there's a lot of ways to contribute to an organization as a seller that has nothing to do with sales. I love that word contribution.

1:31:36 Alex Smith: And yeah, my podcast, same thing. It's all still about stories because I think we all sell differently and it's the stories that I want to bring out and tease out of people. One quick one. About this contribution concept is I worked at a company once where they put all of our team's numbers on a wall and brought us all in as a sales team, took the names away and just said, hey, we're going to have you vote on who is the number one rep this quarter, month or whatever. And so you could see like revenue-wise, you could see like new logos, you could see like activity, how many calls and emails and all this stuff. So we all saw that and then people got to vote. And I don't think mine was the top revenue. It was one of the top, but my activities were really high meetings and all that stuff. And out of like a blind pick, they picked me and I got to go to like Cancun, Mexico off of that because people were like, as a seller, whoever's doing this is really the best. It was really unique. And I'm not saying like that's the way to go, but when I hear contribution, like I made a huge contribution that quarter. To the company. Yeah, yeah. Other sellers voted me that. So it was awesome.

1:32:40 Scott Ingram: Love that. What about the flip side? Is there something you believe that other salespeople think is crazy? Yeah, this is gonna sound crazy.

1:32:48 Alex Smith: But I only recently found this. And you're gonna like this because the person who said it is from UT, Hook 'Em Horns. And it's said by Emmanuel Acho, who was a former linebacker for the University of Texas. And he said, goals are dumb. And it sounds so crazy and stupid, but then he said find an objective instead. And he has a book called Illogical, another one, really great. And he's done a TED Talk on this. And what he was saying was goals kind of give you a limit on things, like SMART goals, like, hey, I want to be this number, and it caps you. It's like energy pointed in a direction with a limit because you're limiting. Like, he uses analogy… people said there's no way to run a 4-minute mile until Roger Bannister was like, that's baloney. Like, and he trained and he ended up doing it. And since then, thousands of people have run a 4-minute mile, high schoolers even. And he said, like, as a Texas football player, he was in the draft, in the NFL draft, and he went to the Combine. Combine's coming up, and he had to run a sub-4.6 mile to get a $4 million contract. And if you ran over 4.640, okay, a 40-yard dash, and if he went over that, he would get like a $2 million or less contract. Well, he ran it and he tore it. He spent a year, he had the goal on his bed. He did his reps every day. Like this was his goal, 4.6 40, under 4.6. And they do the gun and within 2 seconds he hears a huge pop. His, basically his tricep like came off of his bone and he like tore his tricep and all this stuff. And he falls on the turf and all these NFL owners are watching him and he gets drafted the 6th round, doesn't make the million-dollar contract and whatever. And he's like, you know what, instead of a goal, he's like, he submits, if the number can't be changed or improved upon, then fine, a goal is fine. But like what he does is objectives, he said, which is energy aimed in a direction, like a slight distinction, but he doesn't have a cap. He doesn't want to put a limit on it. He just wants to look at like, what are the things if I want to be a top person, if I want to be a newscaster, which he is now, or sportscaster, if I want to write a book, what are the things I have to do? And kind of to Atomic Habits, what would that person do? What would a top rep do? And do those things and put that energy there. And maybe you go farther than that person. Maybe you go farther than that goal you would have set for yourself and you become you. You accomplish what you do well. So I don't know, it's something I just found 2 years ago, Emmanuel Acho and the concept of Goals are dumb. Do an objective instead.

1:35:23 Scott Ingram: Interesting. Yeah. So as always, when we put together the show notes, we'll have links to all the books and all the podcasts and all the TED Talks and all this stuff. So I'm definitely interested in looking at that one. But as you were telling that story, I mean, I was just thinking about that's so one-dimensional. What if the only thing you can do is run a sub-4 640? Well, can you cut? Do you have football intelligence? Are you going to be a good player? Can you just do this one thing? I think there's a great correlation between that and sales. Okay, so you sold this much, but like I was calling out, there's other dimensions. Did you have to discount everything 90% to make that happen? Like, well, that's not valuable.

1:36:03 Alex Smith: You could get to your number that we can all… there's a million ways to get to your numbers, skin a cat or whatever, but like doing it the right way and the healthy way and, and also the most fulfilling way. And maybe like you're setting goals like, and I have that too, that like maybe there's something else that you're not thinking about that goes beyond the goal that you can't see right now, that that goal kind of limits you on. I don't know, like, you know, number one, it could be by a dollar, but maybe you could have gone farther. And almost, he also says the goal is something like the penalty you have for receiving one, meaning like what you would achieve with it once you do. Like a lot of times I've heard people on the podcast, like even Ian said, like when he got… was the number one, it was like the most depressing year of his life or something, because he's like, once you got it, it doesn't mean anything. It's like deflating. Like if you don't get it, even more deflating. You can't find meaning or purpose or joy once you get it. It's just like, okay, now what? Again, what changes if… what Kevin Dorsey said to me and really stuck with me.

1:37:04 Scott Ingram: So yeah, this is probably a cruel question because I wouldn't want to be asked But do you have a favorite episode of your podcast, or is there just like one insight that really just like, wow, this was everything? So many.

1:37:19 Alex Smith: It's like a favorite kid. Like every episode I find something just really quickly. Like I want to say like, who told me this? I have to look back. The person who knows who said this to me is going to be… but one of my guests told me, he said the quote like potential potential is in the eye of intention. And I think what he was trying to say was who you can be and what you can do is kind of about like just what you put towards it and where your framework of mind is and things like that. So that was like a really quote that stuck with me. But man, obviously Dan Pink's episode. I've had one with Oz Pearlman, who was on America's Got Talent, was a fun one. Jack's episode is really fun. I don't know, man, that's tough. But everyone, I learned new.

1:38:02 Scott Ingram: Yeah, we'll link those up as a good starting point. I think that's always kind of the thing is like, where do I dig in? Because like I said, I know that that's an unfair question because I can't possibly have a favorite episode of my podcast, but there's a lot of people who have impacted me in a lot of different ways is one dimension, and there's other episodes that are just super popular, and it's always kind of an interesting thing. Alex, what advice would you give to somebody that is just starting out in their sales career today? What would you tell them?

1:38:29 Alex Smith: Yeah, it was funny. I actually met somebody last night. He was 17 years old at a bar. Like, it was funny. I met the mom and the mom's like, I can't believe I met you. Like, my son's like 17 years old or whatever. You know what? I just told him, if you just learn nothing else, like, again, sales is about understanding a problem. Without a problem, there is no sale. And ask yourself, okay, how can I really find what this is? Ask enough questions, get them to agree on it, and then you have something. And start there, just basics. And what's the size of it? How's it impacting them? What's going to really drive them to want to do this? Don't sell, don't talk about your product, don't talk about you for a second. Just get to know them and really understand that. Don't just ask them what it is, just try to get the whole scope of it. Going back to just understanding that your product, yourself, the person… understand the problem first and you'll be good.

1:39:25 Scott Ingram: Nice, nice. What about somebody that's further in? They're President's Club level, but they're not number one. They're trying to figure out like that last leg, or maybe they're struggling a bit. Like, what do you tell them?

1:39:35 Alex Smith: I'm gonna go with another quote from the community. Camille Clemons, she said to, I think, Jack or something like, be you, everyone else is taken. I think a lot of times people find success and they're like, this is my identity, and like, I have to be really good, and people are going to watch me and I'm just somebody who like performs amazingly. And you kind of let your results dictate who you are. And as opposed to like starting out with who you are and let your results like kind of follow. I think what she was meaning by that, what I took away from it, it's like we try to be again comparing ourselves to someone and we want what they have. We want to be number one. We feel like that's the thing or something like that. Just be you. Be the real version of you and don't feel like you have to conform to what you think, like, the success… like some other person's version of success or something like that. Just be yourself, and I think you'll find the right jobs that way. A lot of times people are probably searching for jobs still. Like, I've seen a lot of top 1% salespeople in this community find struggle with just hopping a lot to jobs. Obviously it's different from each person, but goes back to what you said, like, Scott, like, who do I want to sell into? What fulfills me? Be you and everything else will take care of itself. Love that.

1:40:57 Scott Ingram: Love that. I knew this would be a great conversation. I knew it would be…

1:41:01 Alex Smith: where'd the time go? Jesus.

1:41:05 Scott Ingram: Is there anything that we haven't touched on that you were hoping we would?

1:41:09 Alex Smith: Told the story of my dad, which is really good. I got that out there. There. And yeah, no, I mean, I think we touched on a lot of stuff in the interview. Scott, thank you so much. I think when I think about the road to get me here, like honestly years, and probably should have had this conversation a while ago, obviously. But man, we just covered a lot. And just thanks for the opportunity. I'm looking forward to more conversations with you over the years. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

1:41:34 Scott Ingram: Well, we got to make it actionable. So let's turn all of this into some type of a What would you challenge our listener to do over the course of the next week or two to improve themselves and improve their results?

1:41:45 Alex Smith: Yeah, easy for me, and I've given this advice to many new people in the community. Find somebody in community that you respect, that you know. Just reach out to them, call them. Don't just reach out on LinkedIn. Call them, have a Zoom with them, connect. There's something about this personal connection in this community that makes it so great, and you. Probably get caught up in your things that you don't think everybody else is going through the same thing, because we all are. We're all dealing with something. There's probably out there somebody in the community that's struggling with something. We all are. So just reach out. I challenge you in the next week, 2 weeks, call somebody I haven't talked to in a while. There's a lot of people in the community I haven't talked to in a while, so I'm going to challenge myself. I'm going to do it. Somebody new, you're going to get a call from… like somebody I haven't talked to in a little bit, you're probably going to get a call from Alex, Scott, there's people out there you haven't talked to in a little bit. So yeah, call one person and talk to them, have 30 minutes with them. You'll be better off for it and learn something you probably didn't realize because of the conversation.

1:42:42 Scott Ingram: Yeah, I'll add a layer to that. There's really kind of 2 levels to engaging with us. One is just come to the summit, top1summit.com. We'll get you to the details there. Last year after the summit, we kicked off the Sales Success Society, which is a deeper thing. And what's so cool about that is a large part of what I was trying to do is create something that was more organic and less dependent on me because I'd become a bottleneck in a number of ways. And it's worked. And what's amazing is without me saying anything, the biggest thing that happens that everybody's pretty intent on is just getting one-on-one. It's just finding those times to like, I'm going to connect with an individual and We're going to help each other, and it's so freaking powerful. I think that's the perfect call out to end a freaking fantastic episode. Alex, thanks for taking the time, my friend.

1:43:31 Alex Smith: Thank you. Thank you from the bottom of our heart. You're awesome, Scott. This was great. 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 top. Top1.fm.