189: From Near-Death to Number One: Kevin Bartlett's Sales Journey

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

0:24 Scott Ingram: Today on the Sales Success Stories podcast, my guest is Kevin Bartlett. Kevin was the top-performing enterprise AE at Horizon3 AI until he was just promoted to a leadership role. Welcome to the show, Kevin.

0:36 Kevin Bartlett: Thank you so much, Scott.

0:37 Scott Ingram: So super excited to dig into your story. But first, let's do what we always do and start with some immediate value. And let's talk through the top 3 things that you believe have contributed the most to your success in sales.

0:50 Kevin Bartlett: Yeah, I like this question because it makes me think. I think there's so many things that… but I narrowed it down to 3. For me, it's operate with the end in mind. 2 is what I call MOHO, my own hero. And then 3, delayed gratification.

1:07 Scott Ingram: Awesome. Let's unpack each of those just a little bit. I know we'll get into all of this a lot more as we get into this, but talk about operating with the end in mind.

1:15 Kevin Bartlett: For me, this started back in 2019. I had a near-death experience where I ended up in the hospital and quite frankly shouldn't be alive. So it was one of those moments that really has you put a different lens on life. 6-month daughter, my wife's pregnant with the second on the way. And just from a life perspective, like, what am I doing here? What is my purpose? What is my end goal? So I take that from the life aspect, but then being able to distill that into work because we spend so much time at work. So take that from what are your core values? What are you built on as a person? And then how do you implement that into work? But now from a sales aspect, with the end in mind. I now have a family. That's my most important thing. When I go into work and we travel and we do the activities we do, how do we do those with intent? So if we're going to sit down, I no longer sit down to do a coffee meeting to do a coffee meeting. What is the goal of this meeting? And sitting down with the end in mind and intentionality, I think, whether that be The books that I'm reading to get better and being intentional in those books. Like I said, if I'm hopping on an airplane and traveling, there's going to be that intent and the end in mind, the goal in mind. So again, I'm not a robot. I will meet people for coffee and be a normal human, but for the most part, what is the end goal? And we're here on a mission to go do and accomplish that.

2:44 Scott Ingram: Very nice. You set me up with a nice tease because we're definitely going to have to come back to this near-death experience and what happened there. But before we do that, talk about Moho.

2:53 Kevin Bartlett: Yeah, I think that's just come through the years. I think a lot of times people can let you down. You expect people to be able to train, develop you, and invest in you. But I think part of becoming a man is like, life is hard and sometimes you have to be your own hero. And as a father, that's one of the things I want to set for my children. Like, I no longer need other people to be proud of me. I want to be proud of myself. And in doing that, Like I said, there's some dark aspects of being a hero. Like usually heroes and villains have similar stories, but they respond differently. One does it for good, one does it for bad, but the story is usually about the same. And there's usually the not being understood aspect. You look at my kids watch The Incredibles. There's an aspect where everybody loves them, but then all of a sudden they don't like them anymore because they're saving people and people are mad at them for doing the good, but they have to be consistent with themselves. So for me, it's about being proud of myself, setting that example for my family and being my own hero. And that really distills down to a lot of things. That's where my grit and determination come from because I am determined and I believe that I deserve to be successful and I deserve it because I know that work that I do behind the scenes. And that's the thing that a lot of people don't see with the heroes is behind the scenes, the work and the effort put into it.

4:12 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Yeah. I think the other thing, knowing the full extent of your background and just how consistently successful you've been, I think you have to have that. The only person you can compare to yourself when you're beyond number one is you, right? You can't compare to anybody else because that's not really the standard.

4:30 Kevin Bartlett: That is one of my favorite things in the world. I quite frankly don't care what my quota is. I don't care what my peers are doing. I want to be better tomorrow than I was yesterday, than I was last year, and having those incremental gains over time. I am my own competition. It is a me versus me game. And quite frankly, I don't think it's a zero-sum game. We can all win.

4:50 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Love that. Love that. All right. So let's get into the last point. You talked about delayed gratification.

4:56 Kevin Bartlett: Yeah. Delayed gratification. I think it's that it's playing the long game and the long game in life and whether that's building your brand, investing in yourself, there might not be an immediate value to go to a specific meeting or a meetup and get immersed within your community. But over the period of time building those relationships, what is the long game? And I hate even calling it a game because it's not a game. It's really Again, it goes back to being intentional, but it's genuine, making those genuine connections. And I think from playing the long game in sales, you have to be patient. There's the urgency with the 90-day windows. Everything is urgent. It is always the most important quarter of the world in that quarter. But knowing that we're doing those small things to have the incremental gains, to have that delayed gratification, I think is one of the biggest traits Because quite frankly, if you're in sales, you are on a roller coaster ride. You're going to have ups, you're going to have downs. If you can't weather those, and once you have a down, you get scared and you leave and you go look for another job, it's going to be the same thing there. It's you versus you. So being able to have that delayed gratification and setting the stones for yourself for the future.

6:07 Scott Ingram: Does that come about in just your mentality and your psychology as you get to the end of the quarter? Right? And there's that deal that is maybe going to push you over the edge. Like, how do you think about that in the delayed gratification sort of frame?

6:21 Kevin Bartlett: Oh, that one's really hard. It's the end of the quarter. We've got to execute. That's our job. That's what we get paid for. One of my favorite sayings is control the controllable. So that intentionality of controlling what I can control, my outputs, the communication aspect, the driving the deal forward, understanding the nuances of the buying process, who's involved. In being able to do that. So controlling the controllables and having the patience, urgent patience, knowing that you can't control everything and not letting that rattle you and destroy you. So at the end of the quarter, if I've controlled everything I can control, and that's not just like Plan A, oftentimes that's Plan A, B, C, X, we're now into numbers at that point, but we're controlling the things that we can control and moving that needle. But also having to have that patience, knowing that we can't control everything. And there's certain things that are out of our hands. That is one of the hardest things in this job is that waiting and that patience aspect. I mean, I have a single deal that created that in me that I think made me a better sales rep and taught me patience.

7:33 Scott Ingram: Yeah, I'm going to guess I've not been in this position, but I'm going to guess that gets even harder from a leadership position because I always feel like, look, if it's meant to be and you've controlled everything you can control, Sometimes the timing just isn't right for the client. And for me, at the end of the day, when I play the long game, it's the client's timeline. I'm there to serve them. And so if that means we're doing that deal next quarter and not this quarter, even though this quarter would be better for me, we're doing it next quarter because I'd rather have the deal and the long-term relationship. And what I'm really focused on is the deal after that and the deal after that, whether it be that particular client Or those people who recall that I treated them right. We did all of the right things and now they've moved to a new organization and they're leading an entire new company and I've got a new opportunity and we did the right things together. That's one of the ways I think about the long game. But sometimes that puts you at odds with leadership who's like, hey, we need this number right now. Sometimes that number's just not ready to be had.

8:34 Kevin Bartlett: I know it's the nuances of sales. And I think from a leadership perspective and As you mature as a sales representative, bad news is okay as long as it's early and knowing and communicating the risks of the potential deal. And I think the communication between the reps and the leadership is paramount. So like surprises are not good for people. If it's, you've got it in on your commit status and there's a couple of weeks left in the quarter, like that's on you for the communication aspect. So making sure that those open lines of communication with leadership, if there are risks from those particular deals.

9:11 Scott Ingram: All right. Love that. So why don't we contextualize at this point, talk about maybe your most recent role and how you got to number 1, and then we can unpack a little bit more of your history from there.

9:21 Kevin Bartlett: Yeah. And I think probably the most recent role is a summation of the 20-plus years that I've had in the industry at this point. So building on itself. So I think it was a culmination of being at the right place at the right time with the right people, with the right technology. All of that and coming together. But as you said, I've had a lot of success over the course of my career. I believe we're 6 President's Clubs in 3 different industries and being able to do that. And I think the core of that success is really that intentionality. So the things that I focus on a daily basis are my ARR growth. What are we doing? What are we closing? That's my first metric that I'm always tracking. What is my pipe generation looking like? Am I building the pipe? Am I filling the pipe? Am I then looking at my activity? What are my leading indicators? So the leading indicators are, am I spending my time with my channel partners? Am I building those relationships? Are we monetizing those relationships? Are we moving those to the next level? And then looking at my OEM partners and my ancillary community and network, if you will, of those activities are the leading indicators of building that success. And then taking that operational excellence, I think once we're now into an opportunity, How do we execute at a high level? I think sometimes when you join a startup, a lot of times everyone's… the tech sells itself. Let's just show it, give it to them, let them play with it. Every company I've been at, that's the initial model is put it in their hands, let them play with it. They're going to see it. It's amazing. And that's not the truth. Like, the truth is our goal and our job is to be the Sherpa, guide them through the process. They don't need every widget within a product. There might be 2 or 3 things that they care care about for something that's an issue for them or causing pain or can make their lives easier. So finding those and focusing on those and having very targeted, specific next steps that are around, as you mentioned earlier, the customer's goals, the customer's timelines, and working together in helping them. We always say to be that consultant, to help drive that consultant-like approach to get the outcome desired. So how do we be really focused on the things that matter And not be distracted by the other things. And I think those are some of the things I did really well is execute from like a pitch, assess, propose, close motion and controlling that process.

11:38 Scott Ingram: Cool. And talk about kind of what was your territory? Who is Horizon3? And then maybe contextualize just a little bit around this new role and the team you're going to be building.

11:47 Kevin Bartlett: Horizon3. So right now we're one of the fastest growing cybersecurity companies on the planet. We were born out of the US Department of Defense and the Joint Special Operations Command unit. So with that, we're really fundamentally taking a proactive approach to cybersecurity. Most of cybersecurity is about stopping the bad guys. We're flipping it on its head and using offense to inform defense. So we're allowing customers to deploy offensive technology to go hack themselves before an adversary does. So they can do a few things. They can respond quickly. They can reduce and understand their risks. They can test their existing tooling that they've invested millions of dollars in. Is it working the way that it's expected? So now we give them that ability to be very proactive in their security. And to me, that's why I was seeking out Horizon3. And I intentionally came here because I believed in the philosophy. I believed in the people and the technology. And then from a territory, when I got hired, I was running the entire Southeast. With my peer Johan. He was my SE, my partner in crime, running day to day. Talked to him maybe more than I talked to my wife. And for he and I, we ran the Southeast this past year.

13:01 Scott Ingram: Excellent. And then talk about your new team.

13:03 Kevin Bartlett: So the new team, as of, I think we're week 1 into the job, so we are on rapid expansion. So I've been promoted to lead the Eastern United States and Canada for what we're calling our mid-enterprise. And in the mid-enterprise is accounts that are 500 employees all the way up to 5,000 employees. In that segment, we will be hiring all along the East Coast from Eastern Canada down to Miami. So anybody that is a top 1%er that's listening to your podcast or aspiring to be a top 1%er, we are looking for those people that have that drive, the grit. And that's me on the East Coast from our company. We're growing across the entire United States as well.

13:41 Scott Ingram: Brilliant. Let's talk about your origin story. How'd you get into sales in the first place?

13:46 Kevin Bartlett: So I think I was just born, you know, that movie Boss Baby. I was just born with a bag ready to go to work as a little kid. Yeah, I like this story because I think the foundation sets the tone of where it comes from. So for me, I grew up, most amazing family. There was one day that I remember I wanted like an Easton baseball bat and my parents were like, nah, we can't afford that. And I'm like, no, but I want it.

14:07 Scott Ingram: No.

14:07 Kevin Bartlett: And I'm like, but so-and-so has it.

14:09 Scott Ingram: I don't get it.

14:10 Kevin Bartlett: Why do their parents buy it? At that point, I was determined to be able to have any of the toys and things that I ever wanted. I didn't know how I was going to get there. I thought I was going to be an attorney, but I had a learning disability that really wasn't in the cards for me. So the reading processing wasn't there. I just went through high school. I was always working hard because of the disability. I think that was really my foundation of I had to study harder. I had to work harder to do the same things other people. It took me longer to do that. I still achieved at a high level, but the effort to get there, because again, I hate sucking at things, so I would work really hard So I could not suck at things. And I think that was the foundation. And then I was always a very personable person. I love being around people and doing that and went to college, Clemson University, greatest university on the planet. They have one of the most amazing career centers. I took time, I utilized the resources I had, did all the testing and who are you as a person? It all pointed to you should be in sales. And that was the point, probably my junior year. Of getting into sales. You look at that origin story, started business, I was mowing people's lawns, I was washing, you name it, anything they wanted, cars, to help the family and help me provide for some of the activities that I wanted to do that were out of our budget. That's the origin story. And then in sales, I got into sales, into the real estate development, I would call it by happenstance. I was at a career fair. And I think this is true in sales. Sometimes when… I don't want to say you don't care, but your guard's down and you're just genuinely yourself, it comes across more in a more genuine way. I guess that's a word, is when you are genuinely yourself, people see that. And my friend was going to talk to Pulte Homes, and I did not know. I didn't want to be in real estate, but I was just going to go find a sales job. And all the sales people that I was talking to at the career fair, I was very up to tight. And I still remember this because I wanted to be very professional and I wanted that job and I needed to present myself as the way I thought they thought I should be. And when I was talking to the people at Pulte, they're like, why'd you come to Clemson? I was just myself. I like orange and I didn't get accepted to Syracuse. And like, I didn't care. I didn't think there was a job there for me. My friend wanted to be a project manager. I just went to be by his side. And they're like, we started talking like, you got to come to Charlotte. I had an interview and we just started again. I was myself. I had nothing to lose because it wasn't something I really wanted. And I was able to get a job where I still had time left in school, went back and finished my last semester, graduated. And then I went to my first job with Pulte. And at that time they had a career change and leadership change. And the leadership team came in and said, hey, the old hires I had weren't great. Well, you don't have a job anymore. Again, the naive kid out of school. I'm like, oh no, I got a job. I got an apartment. I'm here. You're not firing me. Still to this day, Mark, it's one of the things we talk about. He talked about him being Bill Belichick and our Bill Parcells, I think at the time that he referenced, he's, I'm going to be very hard to work for. You have 3 months to prove yourself that you deserve to be here. And that was again, the beginning of my sales career, still having to sell myself a job, even when I had a job through that. My career was every single weekend, 100% commission in that job. I knew I wanted to have a family sometime. And to me, I want to be a very present and intentional father. And I couldn't do that working every single weekend, or I didn't think that I could be the dad I wanted to be eventually in the future. One of the things that delayed gratification, I think, in like personal life, like 8/80, what would my 8-year-old self say and what would my 80-year-old self say? But in work, I like to look in 5-year windows, like in 5 years, will I be happy with my decision? And again, that delayed gratification, doing the things consistently and looking a little bit further out. So I knew eventually I wanted to be there. I needed to get out, but I was killing it in the real estate world. So I took a job doing very well in the 6 figures, making like… take a step back to make like $30,000 a year to go get B2B experience because my goal and mission Was to get into med device sales because I saw people there and I thought that there was a pinnacle of sales. I was clearly determined to get there. Major step back, but that was okay. The 5-year window, I'm going to take the bump, take my lumps. Everybody wanted B2B experience. Went and got that at Cintas. I then wanted to get into medical. I didn't have medical experience. So I would do the jobs nobody wanted. I went and worked for a company collecting urine. So I could go get experience. I was a urine specimen collector because I wanted to go get that medical experience. So again, willing to do the things other people aren't. I'm always a guy that was never let in the front door, probably wasn't even let in the side door, but I would crawl up on the dumpster and find crack door in the bathroom and to get into places. So always being able to figure out those ways because that's just how I've had to live my life. And then I took that Was able to leverage that opportunity into a med device job, very entry level. I won't even talk about what the product is because it will make some people uncomfortable. But doing that again, the job people didn't want to do, take that and then realize I have an experience and an opportunity, leverage that, learn from that, build from that. And in that entry level job, there was an opportunity with Medtronic that was open. Quite frankly, they needed 3 people to hit an HR quota. They already had their person selected, and they started asking some of the surgeons of other reps that they worked with. And my name came up a few times from some of the surgeons that I'd been working with, and that put me into the running as that 3rd person. And fortunately, I had a leader that was willing to take a chance and bet on me. He saw the drive that I had and gave me that opportunity to get into the operating room. And that was my goal and my dream and my mission because I thought that was the pinnacle of sales. Did that for a while, had a lot of success, learned a lot, and then had the opportunity from a peer at the B2B opportunity at Cintas who was leading an IT team. And over a couple of years of conversations, I realized in 5 to 10 years, I was missing some of that executive presence that they have in IT that you don't necessarily get in medical, meeting like ROIs, TCOs, having those C-level conversations. That was something that I felt, hey, when I'm 50 years old, I don't want to be in scrubs running after cases anymore. I would love to have that executive presence, be in those board meetings and those larger conversations, and ultimately made the change into IT. And that was my third career. Like I said, I've been very successful in each and they've all kind of been very intentional, but also The delayed gratification, looking at the long term, taking the steps back. And my first step from med device into IT was the garbage patch, the things that were left over. But again, how do I take that? How do I learn? How do I execute on it? And then that then gave me the opportunity to move to ExtraHop, which then into Horizon 3 and maintain that success. So sales wasn't always at the top. There were some down years and some up years. So very long diatribe. There, but I hope that was what you were looking for.

21:23 Scott Ingram: Yeah, I have a ton of follow-up questions. I think we can maybe get there with what I naturally typically ask here, which is, given all of that, if you could start over today, what path would you take? What are the steps that you would take? Because it sounds like you had to like, okay, I'm here. Oops, wait, that wasn't quite what I thought it was or was going to be. And then had to pivot a couple of times. So if you were starting over fresh, How would you approach your career?

21:49 Kevin Bartlett: I would do the exact same thing over. I don't believe in regrets. I am where I am today because of everything that I've done. So from that philosophical aspect, I am where I am because of what I've done. I don't think there were too many of the oops. It was more of, hey, data points change. It's okay. Like some people get into industry and they're just there. I'm always growing and evolving and that's okay. Data points change and that's who I am. Like some of those oopses were intentional. I wouldn't call them oopses. Like I did them intentionally. I needed B2B experience, so I did it. I needed that experience. So I did it because I wanted to get there and nobody's giving me the opportunity. Let me go create that side door. So I think it was all very intentional at the time. I didn't love it. Let's be honest, right? Collecting urine's not super fun.

22:33 Scott Ingram: That wasn't really hands-on.

22:35 Kevin Bartlett: Yeah. To me, I think that's just who I am though. Like, I'm gonna go find a way to get it done. And if it takes a longer time for me, it's always taken a longer time for me, but that's okay.

22:45 Scott Ingram: Yeah, yeah, I think there's a couple of things that are so interesting in that. One is that you really sought it out, right? And just saw it for what it was like, I need this experience. It doesn't matter how I get it. I need to check this box. And I've seen this a lot with folks. And I don't understand why this is, but it is folks that want to get into SaaS, they want to get into technology, but they've not been in that space, they just across the board get discounted. So Paul DiVincenzo, you mentioned Cintas. Paul was the number one by miles top performer at Cintas. Could not get into tech because he'd never checked that box before and looked high and low to find that opportunity. As soon as you check the box once, they're like, okay, you check the box. Now you can go wherever you want. It was such a dumb thing. It's amazing to me how short-sighted people are. Like, look, at the end of the day, Sales is sales. And I would argue Cintas does a great job. Your breadth of knowledge and business acumen, they do an amazing job. Technology is just, come on. Or SaaS, like having SaaS experience to me is also hilarious. I'm like, it's a billing structure. Really? There's not anything extra that you're selling even. Do you want to pay monthly or annually? Really? So I have to have experience asking asking people, it just does. Anyway, I'm going to go crazy with some of that. Again, seeking that out. Sometimes there are organizations, some of them very well known, some of them in the last month as this gets recorded, maybe made like an $8 billion acquisition that are known for giving people the garbage patch. We're just going to give you a heaping pile of poo and we just want to see, can you get through that? Can you make something of this nothing that we're giving you? And okay, once you've proven that, then we'll start to give you a reasonable territory and a reasonable opportunity, but you're just going to have to like wade through some garbage to get there.

24:45 Kevin Bartlett: Yeah.

24:46 Scott Ingram: That's just their philosophy. That's their structure. Okay. It is what it is.

24:50 Kevin Bartlett: And you know what? I'm not opposed to it the more that I look back, because like I learned so much there. I needed to extract everything from it. It was a really good learning and breeding ground. And when you look at that, like, I don't expect anything. Like, I want to go work for it and earn it. Nothing's given to me. It's never been given to me. I had to go earn it. So that's fine. I'll take it. I'll put a smile on and I'll do the best darn job in that that you've ever seen. So when those other opportunities come up, I'm prepared.

25:15 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Again, I think that mindset is maybe the most important thing. I want to go back to something that you shared really early and figure out, did you get the lesson right away or did you have to learn it a few more times? So you talked about getting that job at Pulte and you got it through just That authenticity. Did you recognize that at the time and did you sell that way initially, or did you have to learn that a few more times to go, wait a minute, this works when I am me? This to me is like one of the first unlocks that sometimes takes years to figure out.

25:48 Kevin Bartlett: Oh yeah, I definitely didn't even realize I did it at the time until afterwards. So, and I think confidence builds confidence as well. For me, that was probably the first unlock retrospectively looking back at it. I thought it was a funny story to tell my friends and how I got the job, but I didn't genuinely understand what it was, that unlock. And then I think when I eventually got into the med device world, one of my mentors, Brian Wright, I was very formal. Again, learning disabilities, saying medical words like post-prostatectomy, like that for me was an effort of studying and I always felt inferior. To have those conversations. They're doctors. I'm just a dude with a marketing degree in here in the operating room. Like, I felt inferior. So my emails and my correspondence was always like, dear sir and madam, because that's how I felt I should act. And Brian was leading, I think, the Americas at the time for the organization. He'd wear his Grateful Dead shirt and he's like, this is who I am, unabashedly who he is in an organization that's full of suits, ties, and everything, he was genuine in himself. You're getting what you're getting. And that's what he told me. He's like, why do your friends like you? Why do the doctors that talk to you and text you, why do they like you? It's because it's yourself. Quit trying to be somebody you're not. Just be yourself. And for me, that was my unlock at that moment. That's, I think, where my career took the next step.

27:12 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Yeah. So fascinating. I think as I reflect back or I look at folks that are early in their journeys, I think the challenge with that is When you're 21, when you're 22 and you're right out of college, you don't even know who you are. So how can you be authentically yourself when you're still figuring that out? So I think no matter what, there's some process in getting to that place. But as soon as you can, because I think the other… we have this picture and the stereotype of what successful salespeople are, and it's, I have to act that way. And they put on like this fake persona and it's a trap.

27:45 Kevin Bartlett: Yes.

27:45 Scott Ingram: It seems like the logical thing. It seems like I should act this way when the reality is no, you should just be you. Being you works way better.

27:54 Kevin Bartlett: Yeah. And that's why each person is uniquely themselves. Be you. That's what made you successful. 100% on board. I think you hit the nail on the head. It is one of the first greatest unlocks, but you have to go through the process to get there. Because if you try to be yourself right out of school, you're probably a little bit immature. You're going to be having some conversations about going to the bar and happy hour or whatever. Versus being able to have some of the professionalism. So I think, like you said, there is some of that growing and training to get there, but still be yourself, be authentic in your emails, write how you talk, just be genuine. And I think that's the most important thing.

28:28 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Great stuff. Great stuff. So through all of this, what's your favorite sales story, whether you won or lost? Because sometimes we learn a lot from losing. What's your favorite story?

28:40 Kevin Bartlett: There's a deal. I won't name the account. That I think gave me that patience and again took away some of the anxiety of like the end of quarter and all of that. And quite frankly, then gave me the confidence because we ultimately won it. Most of the time I've lost more deals than I've won, but this deal was one that changed me as a salesperson. And it was a deal that I think they were engaged with my competitor for a few months, probably 3 to 6 months in advance. We were able to get engaged, built some great relationships, built some great value. We did the trial, had the success criteria put into place. Everything was textbook, executed great. We're going to move forward. Well, every Friday for the next 6 to 9 months, I think it was, they told me the PO was coming on Monday with my boss on the call, all of us. So great. And then we'd get on the call on Wednesday and the goalposts would move. So we would go get the team back on the field, go kick another field goal, execute. Yep. Great. We've got it. We're going to move forward. And I swear for 6 months this went on and again, my leadership was involved and it was a committed deal for a while. Finally, that deal came in. I think it was $735,000 on December 31st at the end of the year. That deal, I think, put me that year 70% percent year-over-year growth. It was a deal of patience. And again, I think, don't like going through the process because sometimes it's painful. And if I lost, I might have a different experience, but because we ended up winning the deal and by winning it, I think giving them the right solution that years later they still have in place in their environment. So it was absolutely the right choice. Even though I'm not with that organization, I still have relationships with them. It was That deal that was like, control the controllables. And I would get worked up. My wife knew every detail of that deal because all of the calls I would sanity check it with her, like, what is going on? So that deal single-handedly advanced me as a rep because it taught me to control the controllables and truly only focus on that. I can't control the outcomes, just my outputs.

30:48 Scott Ingram: Yeah.

30:49 Kevin Bartlett: Yeah.

30:50 Scott Ingram: Oh, brutal. At least had a good ending. Good things come to those who wait and wait and wait. Again, you've been top of your game in virtually every role you've been in. What are you most proud of?

31:01 Kevin Bartlett: I'm most proud of the person that I'm becoming.

31:06 Scott Ingram: I love it. I love it. Said, what do you struggle with the most? What's the other side of that? What continues to challenge you?

31:13 Kevin Bartlett: Yeah, I think like the dark side of it is like when you're… heck, when I was emailing you, it was 1 o'clock in the morning behind the curtains. To me, Work harder and smarter. I think the things that challenge me sometimes is that is like we're on an island. It is us. So how do we have a team and build a community around us, whether it be our family, but also like coworkers, other people that are in the trenches and really have that community around us? I think that helps with what I struggle with. For me, the biggest thing I used to struggle with, I think I've now unlocked, is caring what other people think. More so than what I think. And that's again where the my own hero comes from. And that's because I had been a people pleaser. I wanted to be a yes, give everybody everything they wanted. And I've come to a point now, and again, I think it's just growing and maturing. I've got 3 kids. Like, I'm intentional. My time is important. My time is also valuable. Let's be efficient and effective. And if I can't make everybody happy, I used to struggle with that. I wanted everybody to like me. I'm okay if people don't like me. I don't think they will, because I think I'm a nice guy. But if it does happen, it will happen.

32:20 Scott Ingram: Where did you feel that the most? Was it internally? Was it with leadership? Was it with customers? Where did you feel that the most distinctly? Everywhere.

32:29 Kevin Bartlett: Everywhere. Like peers, customers, coworkers, leadership. Again, I don't like sucking at things. So if I'm underperforming and I have that territory, like I felt inferior with my leadership. Even though I was executing and doing the things, because my numbers weren't always there in those early years, like there was a lot of inferiority. I'm doing all the things the other people are doing, but I'm not getting the result. And again, over time I realized, hey, I've built a stronger foundation than some of the people that had early success and now might not be having it later on in their career because they didn't have that strong foundation where I've been able to do a lot of the things like, man, I can SDR, I can prospect the way that I build and look at a territory and can execute it and break things down on the backend. The efficiencies that I have when I'm traveling to a state and a town and being able to pull up the people and existing customers and prospects and be able to execute that is all because I had to out of survival to be successful in those early stages.

33:27 Scott Ingram: You prompt something for me. I've never thought this before, but this is interesting. So we've heard the phrase that all things being equal, people do business with those they know and trust. And then they say, All things not being equal, they do business with people they know and trust. I think the like piece of that is wrong. I don't think it matters if they like you or not. I think it just comes down to the trust. Yeah. You know what? I may not jive with your authenticity. Maybe you're into different stuff than what I'm into, or maybe our politics are different, but if I trust you, that is all that really matters.

34:02 Kevin Bartlett: Wow. Is that fair? Well said. I agree. I'd rather be respected than trusted, right?

34:08 Scott Ingram: Deep thoughts on a Friday morning.

34:10 Kevin Bartlett: Yeah, I like that. No, but as you peel that back, I'm in 1,000% agreement.

34:15 Scott Ingram: Is irrelevant. There are people I would do business with. I don't like them, but I trust them to take care of me and do the right things. But personally, we just don't get along for whatever reason, but that doesn't matter.

34:25 Kevin Bartlett: But you still respect them for what they do and right and where they are. Yeah, absolutely.

34:29 Scott Ingram: I think maybe that helps people with that need to be liked unlock too, because at the end of the day, it's almost irrelevant if you do the work and you get to that place that you are trusted.

34:42 Kevin Bartlett: And that's where it comes down to, is the work, right? I think everybody wants the cheat code. What's the cheat code? I'll give you the cheat code: work hard. There is no cheat code. You got to go work hard. You got to go build the foundation. You have to do the things. And again, you have to be intentional. Like, we're When you're building out your things, like when you wake up, do you know what you're going to do that day? Really simple. The One Thing is a great book. I can't take anything for what it is. I got to go put my own Kevin Bartlett twist on it. But what are the 3 things I need to get done today? Because if I only do one thing, I might get fired. So I got to do more than one thing a day. What are the 3 things if the car shuts down and doesn't start today, no matter what I have to get done? And I don't necessarily do it in the morning. A lot of people are morning people. I'm an evening person just by nature. Take this back. I used to be a morning person, used to do Ironman, get up, be in the office by 7 with 3 kids. I wake up to a tornado, whoever's screaming, crying, pulling the covers off me, doing whatever in the morning. So I wake up in straight survival mode these days. There's no amazing morning routine anymore. So I get a lot of my effective work done at night when everybody else is asleep because nobody can bother me. I can do the things that I need to do do to move the needle for me with no distractions throughout the day. So that's typically… I don't expect people to work the way that I do at night. Like, if I respond to people, I don't expect a response. It's just doing the things I do without distraction. And that hard work and that discipline, I think, is paramount.

36:06 Scott Ingram: Let's keep going on that since you opened the door. So walk us through the routine and the day in the life. It sounds like it opens with chaos. The way I typically ask the question is the alarm clock goes off. What time does that happen? And give us kind of a blow-by-blow.

36:19 Kevin Bartlett: Scott, I got 3 of them, a 6, 5, and 3-year-old. And it goes off at different times every day. Sometimes the sun's still up or whatever. So from a morning aspect, we get up. This is where, like, I love when I listen to things of, this is my morning routine. I spend 38 minutes meditating, a cold shower. I then take my breathwork, I run and I do this. And I listen to that and I get angry. I'm like, man, that's not reality. Like, I love that you can do that. That's not me. So for me, because I do work later, I typically will wake up with the kids. And again, sometimes it's 5 in the morning, sometimes it's 6:30 in the morning. We get up, we do our morning routine, right? The intentionality with the kids is making them being self- efficient human beings and having pride in themselves. So making sure that the 3 things that they have to do is get dressed, make their bed, and brush their teeth. Again, there's a lot of supervision with that, but every morning we do that with the kids each and every morning. So getting up and supervising and doing that, it's amazing time. It's sometimes crazy, but I love it. There's going to be a day it's not going to be here and I'm going to miss it. So really being super present in where our feet are in the morning. And again, easier said than done with 2 kids. That's the morning is then we get the kids up and We get them to the door. There's different times for the different kids and where they need to be dividing and conquering. And then I get back to my desk and sometimes that will vary just depending on the day. My wife owns her own business as well. So we are a divide and conquer family. And some days I'm at my office earlier and she's going to take everything. Other days we're dividing and I'm here, call it 8:30, 9 o'clock in the morning, starting that day. At that point, that's where the 3 things comes in very handy. I know what I need to get done. Without that, you just jump into reactive mode. And most of the days my calendars, I'm pretty proactive or scheduled and we're off to the races. Every day is different in sales. So some days it's internal stuff. Sometimes it's project planning. Sometimes it's deal reviewing. Other times it's like being in the field. A lot of it's travel, meeting with our partners, customers, and prospects.

38:24 Scott Ingram: When do those 3 things get defined?

38:27 Kevin Bartlett: For me, it's usually the night before.

38:29 Scott Ingram: Yeah. So you don't have a morning routine. Let's talk about your evening routine. Yes. If there is one, like, how does that work?

38:34 Kevin Bartlett: I told you I'm a little different. So everyone's got the morning routine. Um, but I think it's also like finding who you are. That's who I am. And that's where I do my best work. And sometimes I'll just get in the zone. I'll be so productive and I should go to bed, but I'm like, oh, but this would take me like 3 more days to get this done. Let's just keep going. My evening routine, hey, we finish up the day. We do, we'll call it dinner time, but it's throw something in the microwave, sit down, have some fun, try to run out and go throw a ball, kick a ball with the kids for a little bit. Bit, let them be kids, and then we'll do our wind-down routine and then our bedtime routine. My wife and I will hang out for a little bit. She likes to go to bed early because she does have a morning routine. And then I love to be able to go to bed early as well. But on those days that I don't, I will come back down into my office, start back up, call it 9:30, 10 o'clock at night, get back on. And that's then where my uninterrupted time is. And now cleaning up the things I haven't done responding to maybe some of the emails that are sitting there because I've had other priorities. So I want to make sure I'm trying to get to my email box zero. But now once I'm done with that, I'm now taking my next steps of what are my activities, right? Where are my active opportunities? What are the things I need to do to move those? I do them or I will plan for them in the future. And then I'm now game planning of what are the accounts that I'm targeting, who the people, I'm aligning with them. I was running multiple states. So I'm doing a lot of LinkedIn Sales Navigator specific work and targeting people with specific personas that have a greater propensity to connect with us. So I'm building out specific searches from that. I'm building out intent things with ZoomInfo to then be able to, when I reach out, I don't want to just blindly reach out, but hey, they're looking at ABC XYZ. That's something that we align and our customers get value from, give me a better chance of a response by tying it to something that I see some type of an intent from and really being targeted. And again, like, how do I break out my territory in different zones? Maybe I'm focusing on Florida today, but not just Florida. Maybe I'm focusing on Tampa or Miami today. And what are the accounts that are there that I'm now targeting? Again, every day it's different, but those are the specific things so that work, the long hard work is actually so I can be more efficient, right? So I'm building the efficiencies by working harder and longer. But now next month when I'm down in Tampa, I already have my list built, my targets built. I know exactly who I'm going to see, what we're going to go do and accomplish when I'm there because I built the foundation. For me, I'd never covered that many states. I used to be a half a state. It was relearning of how to go to market. And it was one of the best learning experiences I've had. So then when I'm done and I finally shut it down, like, all right, here's the deals left in the quarter. What are the action items? It's usually for an active opportunity. What are my partners or OEMs that I need to follow up with? These are the 3 things that if the house lights on fire need to get done tomorrow, whether it's a quote get out, a quote get processed, wrap up a POV, have an executive email, you name it. Those are the things. And it varies from day to day.

41:38 Scott Ingram: Yeah. 2 observations. One is, and I don't travel nearly as much as I used to. It's amazing. I used to be on the road really consistently, 30, 40%. Now it's like 3%. But the hack that always worked for me, I don't know if it still works, but I have to imagine it does, is once you have that one meeting in Tampa, that anchor and being able to reach out to everybody else and say, hey, I'm going to be in town. It's for whatever reason, so much easier to book meetings, right? Hey, I'm in town. And whether or not you're name dropping whoever it is, but you're like, look, I'm in town for this meeting this week. Are you open Tuesday afternoon? Can we grab lunch? Like, I don't know what it is, but always worked really well. The other piece about what really stuck out to me is the uninterrupted time. Whether you're a morning person or an evening person, and if you are doing hard work, you're probably working more than 8 to 5, and you get to pick. Is it going to be in the morning before 8 AM, or is it going to be in the evening? Where one way or the other, you can get a few hours of, I can freaking crank without stuff coming at me.

42:51 Kevin Bartlett: Exactly.

42:52 Scott Ingram: And that, maybe that's another unlock, right? Is if you've read Deep Work.

42:57 Kevin Bartlett: Deep Work. Yeah.

42:58 Scott Ingram: If you understand this idea of getting into flow and to be in a place where you're uninterrupted, it's almost impossible to do that in the middle of the day. It is absolutely impossible. Slack, like some messaging app is going to go off. Texts are going to come at you. Emails, like stuff is dinging and beeping and buzzing.

43:15 Kevin Bartlett: Kids growing up. You got to come get them. Yes.

43:18 Scott Ingram: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Take that for what it's worth. Because I think again, there's a misconception around that too, of Oh, in order to be successful, I have to be this uber morning person. If you're not a morning person, just be an amazing evening person. Yeah, like, you do you, but you're gonna have to do one of these things.

43:35 Kevin Bartlett: Yes. Yeah, I agree. And that's what's beautiful with sales is the barrier to entry is low. Anybody can be in sales. Sometimes you don't need a degree. Like, I've got a marketing degree. The barrier to entry, but the way to success, it is a combat sport. Not everybody is willing to do that. And I think that's the separating aspect is doing it and then doing it well and building that foundation and continuing to go. And that's why, again, there is luck in what we do as well, certain aspects, but over the long period of career, I think it shows who you are ultimately as a producer. And for some people, that's great. Hey, I get to go out to dinner. I shut my computer off. They should never wonder why they're not on the top. But they still do well and that's the life they choose and that's awesome. And you can do that here and that's okay. That just isn't for me because again, I don't like sucking. So, and I don't like when I'm at the bottom of the stack ranking, even though I like to compare myself to myself. So there is that aspect of it. And now I've got a whole new challenge, right? So instead of building prospects and things of that nature, it's building pipeline in terms of like good talent as we grow and trying that evolution. So I think it's still sales and I'm really excited to work with people in different stages of their career, more senior, some earlier stage, to help train, develop, and be a guiding Sherpa that quite frankly, I feel like I never really had that I wished I'd had, but I'm glad I didn't at the same time. I could have learned a lot quicker if I had it, but I had to learn the hard way on my own. But now I feel like I've got an unshakable foundation that It's just there. But I'm really excited to hopefully give people in their career that foundation and help them grow as people in their career as well.

45:16 Scott Ingram: Love it.

45:16 Kevin Bartlett: Love it.

45:17 Scott Ingram: I love where your head's at as you take this new step, right? There's a lot of high-performing sellers who should not be leaders, but it sounds like that you've got the right sort of approach in mind for how to tackle this, right? So excited to see how that plays out for you. Let's talk a little bit about your information diet. What are you reading? What are you listening to? What are you watching? And when does that happen?

45:39 Kevin Bartlett: Depends on the day. Again, I don't have a specific routine day in and day out. Every day is going to be different just the way that my schedule and stuff works. But from an information diet, you're the sum of the 5 people that you hang out with. Hang out with my kids. I got a family of 5, so there's 4 of them. The other one is like what I'm consuming, the people that I spend time with. But like for me, like I do listen to certain podcasts, some on the sales aspect, some on the mindset aspect. I will put the earbud in my ear When I go to bed, I hope I can learn through osmosis. I'm intentional, like with some of the books that I read, like I, and when I say read audio, consume versus actual read, I will pick a couple books a year. For the last few years, it's been the same books and I want to not just read it once and move on. I want to read it, consume it, implement it. And if there's one or two things I grab from it, like, all right, I just want to be able to grab one thing and can I actually execute on that? Now let's go back and let's revisit. It this past year. Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters, Let's Get Real, Let's Not Play, and The Power of One More. I also had The High Five Habit were the ones that I was consuming on audio. Like if I'm on a plane, I'll put that in the ear. The other one too, because it is go a lot, I hate to even admit this one, but I love it and I try to aspire to get there, but I'm never going to. And that's okay. It's the book called Ruthless Elimination of Hurry. And I'm always hurrying and running. So I know it's not going to get there, but it's very aspirational. But again, that helps me reframe things of the intentionality, right? Sometimes we're doing things to do things and we're being busy to be busy. Stepping back and being intentional, like, hey, if we're getting on the airplane, I'm taking time away from my family, the place I want to be more than anything else in the world. We're going to be intentional about it and we're going to go do it. And we're still going to hurry. We're still going to go. We're not just gonna go take a meeting to take a meeting. We're not gonna go just sit down for a coffee just to have a coffee most of the time.

47:34 Scott Ingram: Nice. Good list of books. Some I haven't even heard of that we'll put into the show notes. So if you click over to top1.fm/189 or top1.fm/kevin-bartlett, you'll find that list of books and the links and all kinds of other goodies.

47:50 Kevin Bartlett: How about yourself? What are you consuming right now?

47:53 Scott Ingram: I'm actually trying to be a little bit more, I feel like I've read so many of the business books and my head is very full. And rather than more of that, honestly, it's been a little bit more on the fiction side, leaning more into, honestly, because I've always enjoyed it, but the sci-fi side of things. I am, I don't know, at some level, maybe a futurist. Like I've always been very forward-looking. I like to think about how are different things going to impact stuff. I've always been very future-focused. So just trying to wrap my head around how is all of this AI stuff and everything else going to play out. And who knows, but I think sci-fi does a great job of putting you in that place of being able to just think about the future and potential outcomes and things like that. I'll tell you, it's funny, it's been a few years since I read it, but I loved, and I'm also a huge Audible guy. So like you, when I say read. Most often it means listen to, but I loved the Ready Player One series. Will Wheaton narrates those books and he does such an awesome job with it. After reading Ready Player Two, I got how we are living in a simulation. I'm like, oh, okay. Something about the way that they described that and they got to that point. I'm like, oh yeah, this isn't real.

49:15 Kevin Bartlett: Interesting. I'm not familiar with the books.

49:18 Scott Ingram: Such fascinating stuff. So that's where a lot of my more recent attention has been. And then, like you, every now and then I'll tap back into just the greats rather than the new all the time. Here's the next book. I think that idea of going back to, hey, you know what? This book was really impactful to me. It's time to revisit that because maybe it's been 5 years since I read it the last time. That's where I'm at. Thanks for asking.

49:44 Kevin Bartlett: Nice. Yeah, it's for the future. I feel like it's here. I was in San Francisco and they got the self-driving cars and I was with one of my coworkers. I'm like, we're in the future now. There's nobody driving that car.

49:54 Scott Ingram: Yeah. The thing for me that's always just fascinating because I've been in fairly early stage tech for the last 10, 15 years with marketing automation and social media and these different things. And I feel like Things happen both much, much faster and much, much slower than we think. It's such a weird dichotomy of how that plays out. So some things happen much faster than you think they would. It tends to be those things you're like, oh, I didn't really see that. In hindsight, of course, it's so obvious. But then the things you're like, this has to be a thing by now, takes forever. Like, how is this taking so long? Anyway, I'm just fascinated by it and I love to think about that stuff.

50:41 Kevin Bartlett: Yeah, it brings me back to the quote is like most people overestimate what they can do in a short period of time, but underestimate what they can do in a long period of time.

50:50 Scott Ingram: That's it. That's it. And when you think about this idea of delayed gratification in that vein, I think people wildly not just underestimate the idea of compound interest and compound Growth. Humans think linearly. We cannot think exponentially. Our brains just don't work that way. Two x times two x times two x times two. Like, do that enough iterations and your brain can't process it.

51:20 Kevin Bartlett: Yeah, interesting way to think about it.

51:22 Scott Ingram: It's like, would you rather have a penny that doubles every day for a month or a million dollars?

51:27 Kevin Bartlett: Yeah, that's wild.

51:28 Scott Ingram: It's a classic, but again, it's one where your brain's like, how the hell? Could a penny be $4 million in a month? That just, huh? That doesn't make sense. I'm fascinated by things that are growing exponentially.

51:42 Kevin Bartlett: I just heard that the other day and my mind exploded and, you know, went to my wife and talked about it.

51:47 Scott Ingram: All right. Well, this has been a fun tangent. Yeah, this has been great. I'd love to get into kind of the tools and apps and some of the core levers that you're using. You already talked about LinkedIn. You talked about ZoomInfo. What else are you using that is really changing the game for you?

52:02 Kevin Bartlett: So in the past we've used Drift, like sending videos. Don't have that currently. I've done some of like private channel YouTube where if it's a specific message, I'll create a private channel, send a message. A lot of times that's around like product stuff. Hey, here's the next step. Here's simplification. I'm a video, like a visual learner. So sometimes I like to incorporate that as well as, hey, we talked about this. But now we're not there. You're going to do it. Here's a quick step-by-step. So from the visual aspect, so I use that. That's probably really it from like a tooling perspective. We're incorporating a lot of other things internally and we're in the process of that to create some efficiencies, some new tools, but I don't have necessarily hands-on stuff with them today.

52:46 Scott Ingram: Where does your list live? So those top 3 things, where does that go?

52:51 Kevin Bartlett: So I grab a piece of paper from our printer. And a pen and I write them down or a sticky note, but my kids steal those. They love those. So it's usually a piece of paper from my printer and I just write them down on my chicken scratch and I put them on my keyboard for the morning.

53:06 Scott Ingram: The best tech there ever was.

53:08 Kevin Bartlett: Yes. That's what I'm old school. I've tried the app stuff. I've done that. But for me, that pen and paper just sitting on the keyboard is the best.

53:15 Scott Ingram: Here's the thing. This is such a dichotomy and it's so funny because I went into this show and oh my God, I'm coming up on, I think, 9 years. I went into this thinking, oh, okay, I'm gonna find some of these top performers who have figured out crazy technology leverage. They're gonna have this amazing toolset. They're gonna have some like personal tech stack that makes them orders of magnitude better than other humans. The reality is that it's almost completely the opposite. I love tech, but it's fascinating to me because I honestly, I think the core tech of a top performer is calendar, paper. We all have to use email, but it's so basic and so core. And I think actually the tech can be a hindrance. I think we spend so much time and we get so sucked into all of this stuff that if you can, again, it's helpful from a focus time perspective. Nothing ever pops up on my piece of paper to distract me. Forever has that happened. Maybe my coffee, which that's a big surprise.

54:23 Kevin Bartlett: But other than that, I heard… I forget where… who was… but they said all an email is somebody else giving you a to-do. Yeah. So it's like again being intentional. That's the rapid communication world we live in and the distractions. But you're right. Like for me, I got the piece of paper. My Google Drive is probably the corporate Google Drive where we have like our shared accounts. We share different things in there. That's probably my best tech workspace.

54:47 Scott Ingram: Yeah. It's just such a fascinating thing. It continues to surprise me. So your answer, while you may feel it's very. Unique and old school is probably the most common answer by a long ways. So take that for what it's worth.

55:01 Kevin Bartlett: And I'm open for tech. I'm with you. If I get it and I'll go invest in it sometimes and I see the value, I'll do it. I'm excited for some of the things and to try them.

55:08 Scott Ingram: But yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Again, it's just a double-edged sword. I think you have to be aware of that and recognize that this could actually be more distracting than it's worth.

55:17 Kevin Bartlett: At the same time, I don't want to get left behind, so I need to be willing to try it.

55:21 Scott Ingram: Yeah, yeah. Kevin, is there a particular sales philosophy that you subscribe to?

55:26 Kevin Bartlett: The Kevin Bartlett philosophy. I know it's that mold of everything. Read a bunch of things. I think I talked about Let's Get Real, Let's Not Play. I think there's another one. What is it? Let me look up here. Oh, Pitch Anything. Love that book. So certain things that I'll take and just implement. So I think it's good to have the structure. So people earlier in their career, I think it's really good to go get great sales training, right? Coming to a startup right out of school might be more difficult because you're not going to get that corporate-level training. So building that foundation and having… we use MANTT or MedPic and those, and like understanding the philosophy. But then I talk to this rep over here and this rep over here, they do this thing over here and do that. So for me, that's not necessarily core philosophy, but it does revolve around operational excellence, which would tie to like your MedPic type of steps, but I'm not necessarily as super formal. But those are the things that I will do on a regular basis, like understanding the deal, moving the deal, understanding the champions and moving them, testing them, validating them, stress testing your deal as well. Is it real? And going through all those motions. But more important than anything, it's just the validation. If somebody tells you something today, let's revalidate it tomorrow, make sure things haven't changed. 'Cause sometimes they don't always tell you. So we gotta continuously validate or qualify.

56:44 Scott Ingram: Nice. Nice. The thing that always comes to mind from that perspective is, to me, it's like jazz and improvisation in particular, right? You don't start with improvisation. You have to learn the music first. You have to understand the scales and those types of things. The improvisation is the next level. And just quick aside, 'cause this was mind-blowing. So my wife and I, We are friends of Austin City Limits, and so we get to go to the ACL tapings every now and then. And we went to one just this last week with, I think it's Samara Joy. This woman, she's like 25, she's super young, but maybe the most talented jazz singer I've ever seen in my life. I'm like, this was such a surprise. And that's actually my favorite thing about this, right? I love going to see the Foo Fighters and all that kind of stuff, but I have no idea what I'm even signing up for, and you get completely surprised. And she's taking jazz to a whole nother level. Again, you can't do that if you don't have some type of foundational methodology. Like, you've got to learn some system or explore a couple of different systems and then take the pieces that are yours so that you can apply your own authenticity and be real with it. And again, like, your answer is super common there in terms of where people ultimately come to. I've studied a lot of this stuff and I've used different methodologies over time, and then it becomes your own structure.

58:10 Kevin Bartlett: And then it's like that art and science of sometimes I know I don't necessarily need this and I can skip this step and I'm going to be wasting time if I do this. So I trust my gut and we're going to go.

58:20 Scott Ingram: Yeah, love that. Love that. So within that and going back to the authenticity piece, like what is your style within the Kevin Bartlett method?

58:29 Kevin Bartlett: There's so many aspects of sales, right? So you've got the prospecting, the building, and then you've got the deal itself. So if we're talking like deal itself, my style is I look at it, as I mentioned earlier, is I'm a Sherpa. I help work and guide with my customer and prospect along the journey and taking them along that process. And I think that's most important is we are the professional, they are the professional at what they do. Sometimes they don't always buy as much as we get to see. So let's walk them through that sales process together. And part of the qualifying is, look, they don't have a lot of free time either. So I don't want to waste their time. I don't want to waste my time. Let's make sure it's a good fit. And now let's make sure we have everything aligned to go get it to the finish line together. Because if there is a problem, We want to solve it together. We don't want to just have meetings to have meetings. So I think my style on that is driven with that intent of, hey, if we're going to meet, we're going to assess where we're at. What are the things absolutely needed and required and who is involved in the process? We do try before you buys. Not everybody uses them, but some customers require them. And I have developed a very rigorous process to do a couple things, make sure they're efficient with their time, make sure we're all reading from the same sheet of music, to tie into your jazz analogy. And like, we're all reading from that same sheet of music. We know what the end goal is. We know the state before and where they're trying to get, the technical criteria. It's all defined before we just go do things together. So we're going to be really intentional together. I think that's my style, but also that humanistic, like, I understand people are people and, hey, my timeline might be different than yours. And having that, I would call it professional persistence. The timeline is a me problem, not a customer problem. And that's how we kind of work together on that.

1:00:23 Scott Ingram: Yeah, I want to come back to the try before you buy approach, right? Because I think that's a place that many deals go to die. So very interested to understand a little bit more about how you're structuring those, but I'm curious about what are the most important lessons you had to learn to get where you are today?

1:00:45 Kevin Bartlett: Most important lessons I've had to learn. I mean, it's going to come back to what I've already talked about is control the controllables. There's so many things out of my control and understanding what are the things that I can control. I think that's going to be consistent. I don't think I have a different answer for that. Like, that's it. And it comes through Again, I've lost so many more deals than I've ever won. Some of them weren't real. Like I've wasted a lot of time, vice versa. Like you said, things go to die from that sales motion. But, uh, yeah, I think I can tie those 2 questions of like, where does that come from? That's my learning style. So if I go into that trial process, I'm a hands-on learner. So when I started a company, I want everybody to see it. I don't care about the process because I need to go see how it works, how people are responding and reacting. I will, I'm going to throw in air quotes, waste time on doing that because I know I'm going to grab valuable information. I think we can sell through stories. People relate to stories and their peers. So I can gather some of that intel to be able to communicate better and more effectively and efficiently with other customers. So the early stages, I'm going to let everybody see it. Not everybody, but we're going to play with it as much as we can so I can learn. Not as focused on the outcome. As I get that confidence and understand where we're at, we're going to make that pivot of, okay, now we're at a spot, super confident. I know where we execute and the problems that we help solve and how we go about doing it and how the procurement process is. We're going to lay that foundation and move in that manner. So for me, might not be what everybody wants to hear, but that's how I learn. So I need to do that to become as good as I can.

1:02:21 Scott Ingram: You talk about controlling the controllables, and one of the biggest controllables is what you spend your time on. How are you making those decisions?

1:02:31 Kevin Bartlett: I don't know if I have a framework. It's how I feel that day. But some days it's prospecting, right? If I've got… depends on where we are in the quarter, where I am in specific sales cycles. So it's going to vary all the time depending on the data points in which I have. If I've got high priority deals where moving along or in the middle of customer reference calls or whatever it may be, those are going to be my highest priority and I'm going to focus on those. And then I'm going to then prioritize… take it back. It's always going to be different, but it's always going to be ARR. What are my deals? What is my pipeline? And what is my activity with my channel partners and my OEMs? So that's how I'm always going to prioritize in that order. So as I say, it might be different, but I might not have a high priority deal. So maybe I'm down to number And I'm focusing on pipe gen. But in order to do that, I've got to have my leading metrics and activity with the other two. So I think those are the four things that without fail, those areas are my areas getting focused. It just might be shifting on what's getting focused.

1:03:26 Scott Ingram: So yep, turns out you do have a framework.

1:03:28 Kevin Bartlett: Yeah, I guess so. Wow! Thank you for pulling that out of me.

1:03:31 Scott Ingram: So you were uniquely excited about this line of questioning. So I'm eager to hear what you have to say. And so the question is: Is there something you believe? That the average or typical sales professional would think is crazy. Yeah, and it goes back to that.

1:03:44 Kevin Bartlett: I think when you're in a meeting with a customer, especially initial meeting, the most valuable data in that conversation is the data that I receive, not the data and information that I give. That is so good.

1:03:57 Scott Ingram: Say it another way, just because I think that's a strong point.

1:04:01 Kevin Bartlett: A lot of times people will show up and throw up because they think. I'm going to show them all these amazing things that we do and everybody does. But that's not the value. The value is understanding where they are, what matters to them. I think a lot of times people will ask a question and it's not really the question. If you look at that question at face value, you can answer that question. But the next level is, why do you ask that? I learned that from my kids. They ask why on everything. So like, why do you ask that? And then all of a sudden that question is now a different questions. So if you answered the question, you would have answered the question, but it wasn't the question. So therefore, I think it's more important to understand where they are, where they stand, and the information that you can gather from them to then make your information more targeted and specific to land better.

1:04:49 Scott Ingram: Let's turn it around. What's the thing that you believe that most reps would think is crazy?

1:04:55 Kevin Bartlett: Yeah, I think that one. And then I would say probably maybe the fewest amount of people that I need to communicate with in an opportunity. As possible to get a deal done.

1:05:04 Scott Ingram: Oh, say more about that.

1:05:05 Kevin Bartlett: So I learned this one from Jason Gibbs, one of my old coworkers. He's a killer at what he does and he's probably the most patient person in the world. He will wait a year to meet with a specific person. Very patient, like targeted, unbelievable rep. And one of the things as we're talking, when I started working with him, he's, man, everyone wants to do these transformational deals and they're great, but those, you're going to introduce risk and you're going to introduce this. What the problem? Who are the people involved? And that's all I'm talking to. If other people get involved, there's risk, but everybody wants to talk to everybody and everybody. Sometimes you only need to talk to that one person and you can get something done. Again, how are you being intentional and targeted? Don't introduce that just because everybody thinks it's a great idea because they want everybody involved. Sometimes that isn't the right thing to do. Sometimes it is. And again, the fewest people possible to get a deal done.

1:05:57 Scott Ingram: That's fascinating. It's interesting. I have a similar belief and actually think that a lot of sales orgs are structured incorrectly because of this, because very rarely do I see that big mega transformational deal happens on the first deal. It's usually the third or fourth deal, right? It's, hey, we did a deal, we built some trust, we showed that we provide value, then we got bigger and then we do the really big thing, because it's actually a different way of looking at it that I've not really considered, is that risk piece, right? At the very least, you're going to make it take way the hell longer if you try to do that big deal on the first deal. And more than likely, it's not ever going to happen because you just made it too big and too… it's too hard. People can't chew it. So you're like, you're trying to sell me an elephant. Like, I haven't even had a bite yet.

1:06:46 Kevin Bartlett: Yeah, we've done some of the largest deals with 3 people involved.

1:06:49 Scott Ingram: Super fascinating. All right. So I want to come to the thing that I teased in the beginning, and I almost forgot to ask about. You opened talking about a near-death experience. What was that? What happened?

1:07:02 Kevin Bartlett: So talking about with family and things change, I think things are caught, not taught. Learned that from Ed Mylett, talks about that, is I wanted to set an example of doing hard things. Again, I only had one kid at the time, but prior to kids, I had done like Ironmans or half Ironmans. And again, I don't enjoy swimming, biking, or running, but I love doing them all together.

1:07:24 Scott Ingram: So you should totally do an Ironman.

1:07:25 Kevin Bartlett: Yeah, but I love them all together. It was really weird. I'd always been in that cycling and running. It was just who I am. And I put them all together and it was an extreme challenge. Like, quite frankly, I'll give you a fun little story. So I think it was like a Christmas Eve, I was at my parents' house and I saw a special with Hines Ward did a full Ironman. I'm like, oh, what a badass. And I got on my computer. I didn't own a bike and I hadn't swam outside a pool noodle and something in a koozie floating around. And I went online and I paid the fee and I signed up for my first half Ironman. And the next day I went on Craigslist. I bought a bike, ended up being a woman's bike, but I still rode it for 3 years. It didn't matter. And then I started going to the local pool and just started jumping in and swimming and trying to figure it out. So with that, I was training for my first full-length Ironman, and I wanted my kids to see me doing something hard. Retrospect, they were so young they wouldn't have seen anyway, but it was something I wanted to do as an example. In my early stages of training, I thought I was sick. I'd gone to the doctor. I was just struggling, just coughing up some blood, whatever. Come to find out, I had severe DVTs and pulmonary embolism, and I flew with them. I did all the things where you shouldn't be here. I think I ran 5 miles before I went to the hospital that day. The making connections… one of my friends is an ultrasound tech. The connection of the world works in wonderful ways. People that I've met… speaking of music, a gentleman who was playing guitar. I was in the medical field. He started getting his ultrasound license, got him connected in the vascular space. Long story short, he brings his mobile ultrasound sound over to my house because I'm like, man, I think I've got a DVT. And he brought his ultrasound machine, scanned it, and we immediately got admitted to the hospital and went from there. And when I was in there, they said if you weren't training, you'd be dead, because the way your body creates revascularization and allows blood flow to go around these things… because you were training to take all of that blood flow from the Ironman… if you weren't doing that, you wouldn't be here. So for me, that was one of those moments of, oof, we all have limited time on this rock spinning around in the universe, and sales is what we do. It's not who we are. And it was a quick reminder. I try to bring it up because I don't ever want to forget that, of like how I felt in those moments and to be who I am and everything that I do.

1:09:48 Scott Ingram: What changed on the other side of that?

1:09:51 Kevin Bartlett: Probably the 3 things that I gave you. Was, or maybe 2 of the 3, the intentionality. I started a podcast. I wanted, if this were to come back, one of my biggest fears is my kids, they don't know me, genuinely me, like the way I think. So I wanted to talk to people with 2 degrees of separation, have genuine conversations. Just how does dad think in case I'm in a scenario, maybe I can listen to his voice. So then in the process of writing a book that's almost complete, That's just called, it's called My Average Greatness, average people doing amazingly great things. Cause I'm nothing more than an average person. And I think average people are the everyday heroes. So that's where my own hero comes from. Awesome.

1:10:31 Scott Ingram: So good. So good. Glad I asked. Thanks for sharing. What advice would you give to somebody that's just starting out in their sales career today?

1:10:40 Kevin Bartlett: Get the foundation. Focus on 2 things. I would say, if you really are getting into sales and you want this to be your career, and you want to be a professional salesperson, go invest in your foundation, whether that be a company that has amazing training, whether it's on yourself. There's so many things on YouTube, but find some type of a structure and get really good at it and practice and practice and practice. Yes. Start with a foundation and have that delayed gratification. I think right now you see people, no one will stay at a job more than a year. I think you have to have that patience and that resilience. Can you go make it happen? Can you have that bad patch? Do you just cry and go leave and go find another job? Again, there's certain scenarios, but when you do that 7 years in a row, there's a trait. So have that patience, believe in yourself, believe in the process that you can go and execute.

1:11:31 Scott Ingram: Yeah, love that. You've worked for at least one of the organizations that I think of. Cintas is one of those. Again, old school, but their training is epic and is so hard. To find that in organizations anymore where like we have got a program, we really invest in our people early on and taking advantage of that. Because anymore, I mean, everybody is, oh cool, I'm on the tech SaaS path. And so I'm going to be an SDR and I only want to do that for 9 months and then I want to be an AE. And I'm like, okay, if you're going to do that, that prospecting foundation is probably one of the most core things you're ever going to get. Spend as much time there as you can. Take a year and a half, take 2 years, because you'll really have that down probably after the first year, and maybe you're promotable at that point. And then you can use your extra cycles to prepare yourself to be that AE, to shadow as many calls as you can and really get a sense of it before the weight of the world and all of that quota is on your shoulders.

1:12:34 Kevin Bartlett: Yeah, it's funny. Say that I often have those conversations with SDRs is like, hey, I want to be in the field. I want to learn full sales cycle. I'm like, let's get really good at this first. You have this opportunity. This is part of your foundation. SDRs aren't going to feed you and breed you. You have to go build your own pipe. So if you can be a great SDR and you can understand the processes and the flows and like how to do this at a high level, this is a skill that is like paramount for your success. Because you don't need to ever depend on anybody else feeding your pipe. You need to be able to be the one to do it yourself. So let's get awesome at this. And everyone says it's the hardest job in the world. It is very hard. But then a lot of times they get into the full sales cycle and they think they've been told that it's the hardest job in the world. And they're like, oh my God, there's 700,000 million parts that I got channels. I got full sales cycle. Yes. But now you have the foundation of building your pipe. Now let's go build that foundation of executing like a full sales cycle.

1:13:28 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Yeah. What about the advice that you would have for somebody that's now further into their career? And maybe think about this one of two ways, either they're struggling or I'm good. I've done okay, but I haven't found that gear that is greatness. What do you tell them?

1:13:44 Kevin Bartlett: I would ask, do you want to? And if the answer is yes, then I think it's finding that gear. I don't know if there's something I would tell. It goes back. I would probably ask more questions. Like, what are we doing? What are the things that we're doing? Okay, let's analyze that. Is it a certain part of the process that we're stuck? Is it in working from that, that we're going back and forth? I don't know if I'd have something I would just spit at them, but I would try to understand because I think everybody's stuck in different parts of the process. I'll give myself as an example. Last… what is it? I forget when it was. I was like stuck in this part of the process and I was getting to this great part, but I was interest to action. And I was at this thing and I just signed up, paid $1,000, did this course. And all right, this is where I need to focus. I need to unstuck myself. So for me, that was that. And that was what I needed. And that kind of gave me that unlock moving forward. And it was something as simple. I paid $1,000, but the main takeaway was like, make sure we have the next step. And I'm like, so sophomoric, but I only got it because I paid for it. And I value the things in which I pay for. And now that's stuck in my brain. I'll almost never perfect, but I'll almost never not have a next step set up again and not perfect. But that is my goal. I do everything I can to make sure I've got something on the calendar before I move. Super minor, but that for me was like one of my other unlocks. But it goes back to, did you take the time and effort to understand where you're struggling and then go fix it?

1:15:05 Scott Ingram: Yeah, it's the super top of mind for me because I'm in that time of year where I'm starting to build the agenda and the lineup for the Sales Success Summit. And uniquely this year, I have this vision of helping people build their own playbook for where they are right now. And not your territory plan, like even bigger than that, really thinking about it. And for me, it's a pyramid, right? And what is that foundation of, am I okay? Is my mindset in the right place? Are my habits in the right place? If you don't have that core life foundation, everything else is just gonna fall apart and be messy. And then are you in the right situation? Are you working in the right industry at the right company? Do you have the right kind of leadership? Do you have the right product? Are you in a place where you actually can succeed? Because maybe you're not, right? Maybe it's time to… I need to take really fast action on that. Or it's, yeah, this is okay for now, but I can use this as an opportunity and over the course of the next year move to the right next thing. And then we think about your territory and your opportunity. Are you doing the right things? Mostly this comes down to pipeline. Do you have enough pipeline? Are you doing the right things so that you have the opportunity to blow it away from a closed deals perspective? But that doesn't happen if you haven't laid that foundation. And then for me, it's backwards because I think everybody's looking for… they're looking for the tactics and the secret sauce and like that one little thing. I'm like, you know what? So little about that. To your point, it's the foundational stuff. If you don't have the basics down, seems like such an obvious thing. Do you have a calendared next step before you finish every conversation? Yeah. If you're missing that, sales can be hard for you. Yeah. Email, phone, target scoring. You are not going to be having the success that you could have. Yeah. I don't think we take enough time to really assess for ourselves All of those things and being intentional about it and just taking the time for us to think through, am I doing all of the right stuff? And there is, call it Scott's hierarchy of sales, right? If you don't have, I might have the greatest territory opportunity, but if you're not working in the right organization and they're not going to be able to execute on what you sell, to me, that's a huge thing because I'm playing a very long game. And the relationships that I build and the people that I sell to, damn it, I'm gonna deliver on the things that I promised you we were going to that you're investing in. Because if I don't feel confident in my ability to do that, this is all garbage. And then underlying that, if my health isn't there, it's all for nothing. If I'm dead next year, I'm not selling anything.

1:17:57 Kevin Bartlett: It's interesting because like I take that approach too, like the personal life, like how do build that. I have a, I call it the Bartlett Manifesto, right? It's like my personal, who am I as a father? Who am I as a husband? Who am I in my job? But ultimately it all comes down to what are our goals? Where are we today? Tracking things today on a 6-month progress and where do we want to be in 5 years? I think a lot of that will distill down to your core values and your foundation. And if you don't know your core values, it's really hard to make decisions. Sounds so simple, simple, not easy, but do you take the time? Do you know your core values? Like for me, it's my family, my financial, and for me, financial is security. 3 is playfulness because life is short. And then my last one, I say content. I'm not really content. I think grateful is probably the right word, but like, I want to be where my feet are planted. I am further along than I thought I'd be at this point when I was 20. I still know that I have so much further to go and I want to be there and I know that I'm going to get there. So I'm impatient, but I'm here where I never thought I would ever be. I want to be able to enjoy it, not just be thinking about the next thing. So for me, those are the things that makes it really easy to now make decisions like, hey, is it financial, family? Are we having fun? Are we actually present here? And the foundation of how I get there is it's all built on honesty, communication, trust, or reliability. This is for my family. I say safety because I want my family to be safe and then fun. So those are the foundation to the core values. And now I can easily make decisions. Hey, we're going to do this. I just come back to my core values. Does it meet these criteria? And now decision-making becomes easy. So take that from the personal side. And then on the work side, I look at like my career. For me, whether I leave it, like if I'm going to join a company or I'm going to stay at a company, there's 3 things. It's the people, it's the technology, and it's my opportunity. And those are always changing and evolving and some might be higher or lower. And that's how I decide, do I stay or do I go? Those are the 3 things for me that I'm always looking at. So kind of like building that and then understanding, be able to go from there. Yeah.

1:20:08 Scott Ingram: So good. When did you do that? How did you document that? What was your process to get To that level of clarity?

1:20:15 Kevin Bartlett: It's a work in progress. So I think it's like one of those evolutions. I started right out of school. I had a whiteboard and I wrote the goals that I wanted when I was 40, and they just sat there and I had them. I still know what they are. And then I think it probably went through periods of, I didn't necessarily was intentional about it, went through things, and then I just started documenting like, all right. And then I went through the process of finding my core values, probably Probably 10 years ago, but then it sputtered. And I think over the last 7 years, it's been like really the core of making sure that I know that and I revisit it, right? Hey, I might not always have it memorized, but hey, I'm looking at it every couple months and bringing it back and tracking and where we're at from there. So it's an evolution of a process, but it's something I always knew needed to put it on paper. And how do I get there and track it? But I'm not crazy anal about it. About it, but I will look at it. And again, it's the evolution. I got different tabs for the family that kind of came from the book of if I'm going to be intentional as a father, what does that mean? I care about my kids, who they are today and who they're going to become, to empower them to be humans that have an action, a bias for action. So like those are the things. So when I work with my kids, those are the specific things that we'll work on because I think it's really important. I want them to have a bias for action. I want them to have self-confidence. I want them to love themselves and I want them to have fun. When we do stuff, it's always based around that.

1:21:37 Scott Ingram: Love it. Love it. What are the things that you'd want to know about the top sales professionals in other organizations?

1:21:45 Kevin Bartlett: If they want to come work for me.

1:21:49 Scott Ingram: Anything else? Yeah.

1:21:50 Kevin Bartlett: I don't know if there's anything specific. I love riffing with other top talented people because you always pick up things. Like you said, you're that for me, hey, what are they doing around prospecting? Like it's getting a lot harder, like the SDR role, like people aren't answering phones as much or cold emails as much. What are the things other people are doing to continuously build that pipe differently in today's world?

1:22:13 Scott Ingram: Yeah. So let's touch on those 2 points. Let's talk about prospecting and let's talk about your trial process. So what are you finding is working like in your own prospecting motion? Where are you finding the most success right now? For me, It's multi-threaded.

1:22:27 Kevin Bartlett: Been doing this a little while now, so have at least people that I know and can reach out to in a mutual connection. So I'm not a big cold caller anymore. I will LinkedIn message targeted specific things and build those connections. And for me, the LinkedIn connection isn't me trying to sell you. I genuinely want to connect with you. I'm not going to sell you over a LinkedIn message. Like, I get that because you're not going to sell me over a LinkedIn message. Like I'd be naive to think I'm going to sell you. So like it's generally about connecting. It's then I hope to post insightful intent and our content, whether I'm sharing it or whatever it may be. And now that we're connected, I think you meet my ICP, would get value. Other organizations like yours do. Hopefully now there's a greater propensity for you to see what I'm posting to again build that long-term brand awareness within there. So that's like first step there. Like for me, LinkedIn isn't for selling, it's genuine connections, conversations, and then long playing. And then it's finding who's connected with who and working those networks, whether it be channel or OEMs of, hey, this is an account that I think is a great ICP. We see intent. Like I'm reaching out to people that I know that are either selling to them, have sold to them, or connected with them and trying to work those angles. So for me, that's my pipe gen prospecting strategy. In a minimized nutshell. Nice, nice.

1:23:45 Scott Ingram: And now give us just a little bit more detail on the try before you buy kind of process where it actually leads to a sale and not a stalled opportunity.

1:23:54 Kevin Bartlett: Yeah, so I think with everything, like, we're a Sherpa, right? So we want to guide the process. It's up to us just seeing it like nothing will ever sell itself. If it did, we wouldn't have jobs, no matter how good. So I've never seen anything that's ever going to sell itself, even as good as they are. They're always a process and managing that process and understanding what it is. So again, I think it goes back to the expectations. What are your expectations? What are ours? Are we aligned? If it's, we just want to see it, like we don't do that. We have a demo. I have videos. You can talk to some of our peers, come to an event. I'll have some customers there. But if you just want to get a free, we're not in the business for that. I don't want to waste your time, et cetera. Let's make sure we're communicating and having expectations. Is this a project? Again, you're busy. We're busy. Let's use our time. We'll make sure we've got cell phone numbers and we're on a texting relationship. I know I have a deal if we're texting. To me, that's one of the biggest indicators. So I try to get that established that early in a process. And again, a lot of it will depend on the size of the deal as well. And then who's involved? I'd like to understand the entire purchasing process before we even start an evaluation. What are the watchouts? Like last time you tried to buy something and you didn't. Why did didn't it work? I'm trying to uncover what might come before it comes. Was it political? Was it budget? Doesn't mean it will happen because people say, hey, I've never had something turned down in 20 years, and I'm the one thing that got turned down in 20 years. So it happened to me enough times where I try to uncover that in advance of investing our time, money, and resources from our side and theirs. And again, it's helping them understand the process too, and then understanding all the sign-offs, the legal requirements, etc. And then we have the technical requirements. And now at that point, we're going to have a very limited scope because our product is super easy to deploy, super easy to run. Within minutes you're running and getting valuable data. We can have a very short window to see how it works. We're going to set up 2 workshops and we're going to have an executive review at the end. We're going to pull up our calendars. We're going to schedule those before the license is activated.

1:25:50 Scott Ingram: Brilliant. You also said something that I thought was so great, I'm not going to leave it unturned. So the idea of being in a texting relationship being a huge indicator… how are you entering into… what's the first text? How are you getting the number? I think it varies on the situation.

1:26:06 Kevin Bartlett: Sometimes if we were out or like we're meeting at a trade show, hey, email is going to be tough, I'm not checking my emails all throughout it, but the text, I'll get the notification. So if we have some type of meeting from there, or hey, we're meeting for lunch. Hey, this might be the best way to communicate with me. Here's my cell phone number from that aspect. And again, it's just ease of communication for all of us. I think it's a pressure testing of your champion, right? That's another way. Hey, do we have their cell phone number? And then the other way is, hey, before we start, depending… I don't always do it. I'm not 1,000%. Like I said, I'm not perfect. But one of the things I'm pretty intentional on is trying to get that communication before we kick off the trial. Hey, if something comes up, like I want you to have my cell phone number. I'd like to have your cell phone number and start that process. And then I'll just shoot them a quick text and say, hey, this is my number. Here's the contact information. Save it. I'll have you saved. And then I don't bug them. I don't, because if you get somebody's number and you take advantage of it, you're just shooting yourself in the foot. So if it's real, and again, I think being genuine and authentic about it now, because getting it is one thing. It's like a Tommy Boy. You can screw it up. Like it's a little sale. Once you have that, it could go reverse if you take advantage of that.

1:27:12 Scott Ingram: Yeah, brilliant. We covered a ton of ground. Is there anything that we haven't touched on that you hope that we would?

1:27:19 Kevin Bartlett: No, I think maybe just like the bias for action. If I could tell anybody anything, have a bias for action. Like, I'm a ready, shoot, aim person. Like, and it took me a long time to get there, but I think the propensity for action will help separate you from the herd over that compounding interest of time. Like, you can always pivot. It's not the end of the world. Overthink things. Things don't have to be perfect. We can move and then iterate from there. So I could tell anybody anything, it would be that… have a bias for action. And it's simple, not easy.

1:27:50 Scott Ingram: Nice, nice. I always like to try and put a bow on this and have that bias toward action and make this actionable. So what would you challenge our listener to do to improve themselves and improve their results in maybe just the next week or 2, right? This doesn't have to be some huge big thing.

1:28:06 Kevin Bartlett: We talked about it from… I'll try to give something different, but my first thing would be like, hey, make sure there's a follow-up, right? Hey, if you have a meeting, whether it be a partner or anybody, have that next step in there. We'll go back to the intentionality of like, when you do have that, have the end goal in mind. If this meeting today, what does success look like before I go into it? Like, my goal is to get the next meeting with this person. Again, it might vary, but have that end goal in mind. We've talked a lot about those. I'm going to stay true to those because I believe in them. If you could do those things, I think that's going to be the best thing somebody can do over the next week, month, year to improve their efficiency.

1:28:44 Scott Ingram: Brilliant, Kevin. This has been amazing. Thanks for taking the time. Yes, Scott.

1:28:47 Kevin Bartlett: I appreciate it, man. Have a good one, and thanks for having me on. Thanks for listening to the Sales Success Stories podcast. To be sure you never miss an episode and for an. Invitation to our Sales Success Community powered by Influitive, subscribe to our newsletter at top1.fm.