51: John Reidelbach - Senior Account Executive at Emerson

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 John Reidelbach. John is a senior account executive at Emerson. Welcome to the show, John.

0:33 John Reidelbach: Morning. How you doing, Scott?

0:34 Scott Ingram: I am doing fantastic. And as I promised in the last episode, after interviewing a series of sellers from startup companies, we're overdue to get back to someone who's working for a much larger, more mature company. And Emerson certainly fits the bill there. And John, you have been with Emerson for coming up on 17 years, right?

0:53 John Reidelbach: Pretty close. Yeah.

0:55 Scott Ingram: Very good. So lots of, lots of history, lots of experience. And let's jump right in like we always do with the top 3 keys to your own success.

1:04 John Reidelbach: Yeah, so the 3 things I would attribute to… first would be to pay your dues. I mean, there's no shortcuts to success. You have to go at it with a learning mentality and you have to pay your dues. You have to start off basically where you're at and keep on moving. That's the first thing is you can't expect to be at the top of the leaderboard overnight. You've got to put the work in. The second one is to keep learning. And a lot of my peers tend to shy away from that, thinking they know everything. But there's always something you can pick up, whether from a book, or from a podcast or even from classroom training. There's always something you can take with you to use in your daily job. So I focus on that. And then the last thing is just to stay humble. Even though you may make it to the top of the leaderboard, there's other folks who aren't there and you can always reach out a hand and help bring them up and actually help them improve their game as well. So never get too full of yourself. Always stay humble.

1:57 Scott Ingram: Beautiful. Well, let's, let's talk about each of those in turn. When you, when you think about paying your dues, what does that look like? What's the expectation that you think people should have.

2:07 John Reidelbach: Right. So in my situation, when I came on to Emerson, it was actually through an inside sales role. And the recruiter came to me and said, John, we have an inside role for you. And I said, nah, I'd really rather do the outside role if I could, because I had been doing outside sales for the 4 years prior. And so he said, all right, we'll interview you for the outside position. And the hiring manager took the time and sat me down. He said, John, I like your background, but You don't know the industry and you don't know our company well enough. So instead of setting you up for failure, we really think you'd fit better in an inside role for a couple of years and actually learn the business and learn the customer base. And that way you'd be better prepared. And initially I didn't want to do it. I told the recruiter, I'm not interested in this. I'm not going backwards from outside sales to inside sales. But he really said, if you, if you pay your dues and you really focus on growing with the company, it'll be worth it to you. And it's a good company to be involved with. So I took his advice and took a step back and did inside sales for 3 and a half years, learned a tremendous amount about the power industry and a lot about sales and customers as well. And that way, when I was… an outside position opened up that didn't require me to move, I was ready to jump into it. And I've been in that role ever since.

3:21 Scott Ingram: And you feel like that investment of time, I mean, in what may have felt like a step back, that 3 and a half years and paying your dues, did it pay dividends? Right. Was, was that investment of time worth it in the longer term?

3:34 John Reidelbach: Certainly it was. And in our role, you know, having the ability to know how to do the inside sales role, meaning the offers and the orders and all the other inside part of the business, helped me tremendously. Because over the years, you don't have to rely on a person to do that for you if you know how to do it. And currently now we're actually looking for an inside person, so I'm doing that role anyway, my own offers as it relates to that. But certainly you have to put the work in. And I wasn't afraid to, you know, roll up my sleeves and get involved in some things and it helped me in my career. So I think it was definitely a wise move.

4:10 Scott Ingram: Awesome. And we typically talk about this later, but let's just jump, jump up the schedule. When, when you talk about keep learning, what is that for you? What is your information diet? What, what are you using to continue to grow yourself and improve yourself?

4:25 John Reidelbach: Right. So I'm actually big into podcasts and in the past I'd listened to a whole lot more, but I found that To try to keep current on all of them was more of a task and it was more of a chore. So I really only listen to this one. This is the one I can digest in a week and not get too far behind. But then, you know, books. This podcast has been a great opportunity to expose some new books that I've been in. And recently I'm going through Start with Why by Simon Sinek. And I actually never saw his TED Talks, but quite a few people saw me reading the book on the plane and they're like, yeah, that's a great book, that's a great book. So I'm enjoying that currently. And the one before that was another one recommended from this podcast, 21 Secrets of Million Dollar Sellers by Stephen J. Harvill. That was a great book. That was a really good one. I took some good notes on it. So between the podcasts, books, I would also say classroom training. You know, a lot of my peers, like I said before, try to pooh-pooh the idea of having to sit through more sales training, but there's always a different spin on it. And, you know, each instructor will have a different set of experiences and different things that he can bring to the table. And there's usually a couple nuggets that you can take back with you that you can use in your day-to-day sales role.

5:39 Scott Ingram: Yeah, well, at the end of the day, I think it is, it is those nuggets. And I love that, you know, you've settled on, on this podcast. That's, that's certainly flattering. And I love it. Sort of validates what we're trying to do here and help people find a consolidated space where they can get those kinds of insights. And I'll actually take the opportunity, I've decided to self-sponsor this episode, and we're, we're way ahead of it, but we're, we're really starting to roll out the details on the 2019 Sales Success Summit, which is actually going to be in October of 2019. So super premature. There is no agenda yet. The speakers haven't been identified. The structure will be very much the same as last year. And I should have looked up the dates before I did this, but I believe it's October 13th and 14th. So we're gonna do a Monday and Tuesday again. And what's interesting is historically, if things work out the way that they almost always have the last number of years, that will be the weekend before. So this will be Monday and Tuesday. So that weekend immediate prior would be the second weekend of Austin City Limits. So great excuse to come into town early and have some fun and experience just a great music festival here in Austin and then go into the show. And then the weekend after, Uh, will likely be the Formula 1 race. Now that weekend, the hotel rates in town will get to be outrageous. Uh, so all the more reason to get way, way ahead of this, uh, if, if either of those things are, are of interest. But obviously what I hope is of most interest is the summit itself, and we're going to do something special. So since it, we're releasing this episode in September, we're over a year before that event happens. One, obviously you will get the very best rate that's possible. I mean, this is, They typically offer an early bird rate. I feel like I don't know what it is that gets up so early that it eats early birds, but that this is what that is. And the other opportunity that we're going to offer is the ability to basically subscribe to your, to your summit fee. So instead of just laying out the cash right up front, you can pay $75 a month. We'll set up a subscription. So you'll pay that for, for 12 months and we'll have you all set up for the summit and totally recognize that it is so far out. Lots of things can change. Schedules might change. If for any reason that doesn't work out for you, we'll make sure to either get you a refund or find another home for your ticket or find some way to, to take care of you for having, having taken advantage of that. And I'm very confident that the event in 2019 will absolutely sell out. We're only going to have a capacity of about 200 people and that's it. We want to keep this thing intimate. We want to allow people to connect. So hopefully we'll have folks like John on the stage. I've got about 25 5 more interviews that we'll do between now and then. So we'll, we'll find the best of and put a lot of those folks on the stage and really looking forward to that. So, John, your last point was staying humble. And one of the things that you and I went back and forth on, cuz you reached out and said, hey, you know, I, I think I might be interested in being on the show. And you were number 1 last year. But one of the things I always ask about is the consistency. Also talk about kind of your track record over the last number of years and what that's looked like and, and some of the, the peak and valleys, not that your valleys were particularly low.

9:05 John Reidelbach: Right. So hired in 2002 and then I was in outside sales starting in what we call fiscal year 2006. So in 2008, I set the record then with $11.2 million, which is the first time anyone went into double digits. So that was pretty exciting. Unfortunately, the next year someone knocked me off the throne and took my title from me. But I had a really, really great year in 2014 where we brought in $20 million. And that actually earned me a right to go to President's Club, which was a very, very good time. They flew us out to Mexico. And then 2017 was again the banner year for me. I was able to bring in $25 million, which was the all-time record for anyone in my position. So that earned me a return trip to President's Club, which will happen next year. Really excited about that. But it's been great. But through those years, I wasn't on top of the leaderboard all the time. There were some down years. And so you have to remember that Some years are going to be great, but some years they're not going to be so great. So you have to stay humble during the good times and just know that you're in it for the long haul.

10:10 Scott Ingram: Yeah, great stuff. And I just realized I didn't bother to tell anybody where to go if they, if they want to go to the summit. So if you go to either top1summit.com, that's where we'll have the details. I'm working on updating that right now. So by the time you listen to this, all the details should be there. Or, and I'd say, and you should always, if you're not there already, get on the mailing list. That's where we offer all of the, the best offers, and I try and bury folks in, in value there and just give the best stuff. So, you can do that at top1.fm and get on that list. So, John, let's contextualize this just a little bit. You've already started to give us some hints into your history there with Emerson, but what, what exactly is your role?

10:54 John Reidelbach: Right. So, what I'm in is what's called aftermarket sales, which means I only focus on existing accounts in a defined territory. The way Emerson works, we have a separate sales force for business development or new systems. But my role is specifically focusing on the accounts that already have my equipment.

11:11 Scott Ingram: And how many accounts are you generally managing?

11:14 John Reidelbach: It was probably… it's a 4-state area, so I'd say it's probably, wow, probably 30 accounts, 30 power plants. Uh, that's my… that's my customer base, is installed power plants in the Midwest, the Upper Midwest.

11:27 Scott Ingram: Perfect. And when that inside sales role is intact, or, or when you're wearing that hat, what is, what is that? What are they doing against these install base accounts?

11:37 John Reidelbach: A lot of it's offer generation. So for smaller parts and smaller projects, they're handling the offers, they're handling the order entry. A lot of the funnel updating would be handled by them, which is a tremendous amount of work. But it's also… they'll do demonstrations, you know, product demonstrations, support trade shows, a lot of bits and pieces. That's things that happen behind the scenes that as a salesperson, you need someone in that role to help out with. And you're very much appreciative when that person's there to help you out.

12:05 Scott Ingram: Yeah, but it sounds like you're doing all of it right now and sounds like you're having a really great year yet again.

12:10 John Reidelbach: Yeah, it's going to be another good year. I don't think we'll be quite to the level I was last year, but it's been a great year for the territory. But it would be nice to have some help behind the scenes because certainly there's a lot of work going into it.

12:24 Scott Ingram: Yeah, I'm sure that has an impact on the overall when you don't have that help. And so, the next thing I always like to ask is just about your origin story. How did you get into sales in the first place?

12:35 John Reidelbach: Yeah, so my dad was in sales, strange enough, in a competitor of mine, but he had been doing sales all his life. And growing up, I saw the lifestyle he was able to provide my family, and I said, you know, that wouldn't be a bad idea. So after I graduated from Purdue, my first job out of school was working for Square D, which is now Schneider Electric, selling circuit breakers to the manufactured housing and RV industry, which was an incredibly price-sensitive and competitive market. But I learned a lot about selling through channels and working with distributors. And after that, I worked in the energy sector selling power-related products and services and natural gas contracts. Then I found myself looking for new opportunities and I worked with a recruiter to bring me to Emerson, which is where I've been to this day.

13:20 Scott Ingram: There you go. You know, it's interesting. I think there's pretty much only 2 paths into sales. Either your parents did it or some close relative and you saw what it is for what it really is. Or I think the vast majority of the other 80% of us came to it by some sort of crazy accident. So it's interesting sort of how often that family connection comes in, because that's about the only time that I see people intentionally going into sales.

13:47 John Reidelbach: Yeah, because a lot of people have preconceived notions or I don't want to do sales, I don't want to sell cars. Well, that's not really what it is. I mean, if you, if you see what it is on the industrial side, it's completely something different. And I love it. I couldn't see myself doing anything else.

13:59 Scott Ingram: Yeah, absolutely. So given that origin, I mean, is there anything that you would have done differently if you could start over today knowing what you know now?

14:08 John Reidelbach: Yeah. So there had been quite a few opportunities for relocation over the years and, you know, discussing them with my wife, we had always been just 100% against it because all of our family lives within a half hour of us now. But I think looking back on it, I think once you get older, you start to think, well, you know, that wouldn't be that bad of a place to live. And, you know, it's a whole lot warmer there than it is here. You start thinking about things in a different perspective. So I'd probably maybe have a second look on some of the positions that were open that required relocation because it's, it's not a bad deal to live in other parts of the country. And it's, you know, I think it'd be interesting to look at. So we'll see.

14:47 Scott Ingram: Yeah, there you go. So over those 17 years, is there a favorite sales story that you have? Maybe it was the biggest deal, maybe it was the hardest one deal, or maybe it was just an epic failure that you learned a lot from.

15:02 John Reidelbach: Yeah, so there was a good one. So this was several years ago, but I was pursuing an enterprise deal with a large utility, and we had all the follow-on meetings with the engineers, with the technicians, and everyone was on board with it. And finally, it was time to present to the supply chain. So I had my boss with me, we go to headquarters, we get the slide deck out, we present all the values and benefits of the project, and then it came time to go to the price slide. And so a lot of times in supply chain, they don't really understand what they're buying, but they know there's a price tag to it. So we get to the price slide and I put the price up there and someone from supply chain raises their hand. I'm like, oh great. And they said, John, is that the price per year? And I about fell out of my chair because that was the total price for the entire contract. So let's talk about leaving money on the table. What it showed me is that just because you think a price is big and that had been the biggest deal I had ever worked on, you shouldn't assume that the customer always thinks it's that big because they might have had bigger contracts with other vendors and that may not have been that big to them. So you shouldn't prejudge something just because the price tag is high. That doesn't mean they're going to push back.

16:15 Scott Ingram: Such, such a good, valuable story. You know, one of the things, one of my own personal rules, and it took me a while to develop this, is I have a rule that I never negotiate with myself. You know, and, and meaning that, you know, as you're putting together that proposal, you're thinking, ah, no, it should be less than that. That seems like a lot of money. Like, why are you doing that? Put it out on the table and, and see how they react. And I've heard a ton of stories like this. And, you know, you're, you're tempted to say something like, oh yes, this is our new subscription model. So this, that will be your, your annual price.

16:47 John Reidelbach: I mean, as long as you understand the value and you feel confident that that's a good deal, I mean, you're not trying to, you know, push something that's too high. As long as you understand that, then you present the value and hey, there's, there's a lot of value to this. So I think it's… I thought it was a good story.

17:02 Scott Ingram: Yeah, absolutely. I think that's a great story. Great example. And again, the lesson that comes from it, I think, is what's most important. So you've accomplished a ton over these years. What are you most proud of?

17:13 John Reidelbach: So probably some of the deals I'm most proud of maybe weren't the ones with the biggest price tag, but the ones where the customer had told me that, John, you know, we've chosen another vendor. I'm sorry, but it's going to be sole source to them. Them. And I don't really like taking no for an answer. So they just gave me an opportunity to regroup, try to strategize and see who I can talk to, to try to make another attempt at this. And on a couple of those occasions, I was able to actually break through and secure the order. It was a lot of work, but the fact that they said it was impossible and I was able to pull it off, those are my best stories.

17:45 Scott Ingram: That's awesome. And is there… when you've won those opportunities, I mean, it is a lot of work. So I guess 2 things. One, how do you make the choice and decide to double down and that it's going to be worth that extra effort to try and make that happen? And when you have broken through and won, has there been something that's allowed you to do that or something you did in your approach?

18:07 John Reidelbach: Yeah. So, on the ones where they told us we were, you know, the decision was already made, I found out that the decision is actually made by a committee and there may have been one person who wanted to go with another vendor, but the other folks were open-minded. So, I made sure to talk to those, you know, director-level and above people to say, look, here's the value. Here's what we can bring to the table. And, you know, when it's on a committee, if you can get a majority of the people on the committee, you're going to be successful. So we'd use that. We also used some performance guarantees that we knew our competition couldn't do. And so once we put that in the offer, really the decision was made to go with us. So it was 2 great opportunities.

18:45 Scott Ingram: Awesome. Awesome. And I love that because you really sweetened the deal, not with a discount, which I don't think in those situations ever wins, right? If somebody has made a decision or has made that verbal decision and is like, you know, this is what we're going to do. Dropping your pants further does not appear to, appear to do anything, but adding something of additional value, that certainly can.

19:07 John Reidelbach: Well, and the bigger thing is you have to get into the opportunity early enough to where you can influence the specification. And that was the big part of it, was that I was chasing the opportunity for so long, I was involved before it hit the street. And so I was able to craft where our strengths were regarding performance guarantees, where I knew my competition couldn't go. So that's really another part why we were successful. Got it.

19:29 Scott Ingram: Now, what is the biggest challenge that you face? Or maybe put us at a time when you found yourself struggling the most.

19:37 John Reidelbach: Well, there was a specific opportunity I was in with probably the toughest purchasing agent I'd ever worked with. I mean, we submitted the price, the plant wanted to use us, but once it goes to supply chain, you know, all bets are off because they could take it in a whole nother direction. And he took our price, Scott, and he sliced it and diced it 8 ways from Sunday, broke out the hardware, wanted all these different levels of information, and this all took time. And my contact at the plant said, John, I'm not sure what the holdup is, but we certainly want to go ahead with this project. And they knew that they were running out of time. So when it came down to it, eventually you just have to draw your line in the sand and say, look, this is my final price, and if we don't get this project going soon, we're gonna miss your outage. And once he realized that, you know, he had run out of time, then the game stopped and he eventually cut us a purchase order. But it was, it was brutal. So sometimes you get a hold of a purchasing agent and they just, uh, they're very good at what they do. And you could tell this guy had been to his negotiating classes. Thankfully, that purchasing agent left the company, so I don't have to work with him anymore.

20:42 Scott Ingram: Well, and we deal with that a fair amount. I mean, there are, to your point, sort of professional negotiators in procurement and sourcing. What have you found is sort of the best way to work through those challenges?

20:56 John Reidelbach: A lot of times, you know, they're incentivized on getting a lower price. And, you know, this is business. You do have to negotiate without a doubt. But what he was asking was completely unreasonable. And the things he was going after, no one had ever asked me to do before. And as long as you have the solution buy-in from the people that are going to be using it and, you know, actually people in the plant that have to put the equipment in, then you know that, okay, I realize everyone has to get a good price, but at the same time, we have to get it done. Otherwise, we can't give it to you on time. Yeah.

21:26 Scott Ingram: And I think along those lines, sounds like what you did and what I've found success doing is there is that delineation between the business and sourcing. And a lot of times if you can get your business champions to put pressure on sourcing, like, dude, enough, we need this, let's make this happen, that oftentimes will break through the roadblock that is the sourcing team.

21:49 John Reidelbach: Exactly.

21:49 Scott Ingram: Yeah. So, John, let's talk about routines, starting with just, you know, what's a day in the life like? What goes off? You hit that. What time is that and what happens from there?

22:01 John Reidelbach: Yeah. So when I'm home, I've got 4 kids, wife and 4 kids, from high school all the way down to almost 3-year-old. So that is completely busy and chaotic in the morning. But once that's done, the first half of my week, first couple of days, I spend in the office sorting through items, getting work done, talking to customers. But then the latter half of the week is when I'm actually on the road in an airplane flying all over the place and then on-site meetings. I try to break it up that way. Being in sales, it's almost impossible to not miss any sporting events or any kids' school events because there's always some of those. You have to really try to find the work-life balance, which you never get 100% right, but you try to do your best to make it all work out. When I'm on the road, the biggest thing I try to do is to stay… I try to be as productive as I can. If I'm out at customer dinners late at night and I'm on the laptop until the wee hours of the morning. The more I can get done there, the less I'll have to do when I'm back home, and I won't have to be stuck in a closet with the laptop while the wife and kids are looking for me. So I really try to make the most of my time when I'm on the road.

23:12 Scott Ingram: Got it. So yeah, I have to imagine that with 4 kids, that's, that's at least twice as many events that I have to manage through. So that, that's got to be a challenge. But give us, give us a little bit more detail. I mean, get… let's get more granular in terms of what the structure of maybe each of those days is, right? So an office day in the early part of the week and then just how you're managing travel on the back end.

23:34 John Reidelbach: Yeah, so office days, I mean, the phone never stops ringing, as I'm sure you're aware of. So you have to be flexible to deal with the emergency that's coming up or the customer that needs this bit of information immediately. So there's a lot of flexibility in the first couple days a week because you have to be. You also… one of the things I do pretty religiously is I use the Tasks portion of Outlook because if you don't have a reminder of what you committed to people or what your headquarters is working on for you, you're gonna miss commitments. So I use that very, very religiously to make sure I'm on top of all the tasks I promised and make sure my headquarters folks is delivering on what they need to. So that's a lot of what Monday and Tuesday is, but come Wednesday, I'm at the airport flying out to anywhere in the north, in the upper Midwest, but it's all about making the most of my time. So again, the laptop is on when I'm in that hotel room and after the customer dinners are done and after the site meetings are done. One of the things I do to stay organized is the night before, I'll always do a pre-call plan. So if I have a big meeting the next day, the night before I'll write down, you know, the key objectives of the meeting, who's going to be in the meeting, some notes to make sure I'm prepared, some questions I want to ask, some objectives I want to get out of the meeting. I find that if you do that the night before, then when the morning comes and everything starts to get chaotic, you already have that down and you're more prepared when you walk into the customer meeting. And the other thing I do that's pretty, pretty consistent is that I'll always write my schedule out the night before. So if I know I've got to be somewhere at 8 AM, that means I have to wake up at 5 to hit the gym, and then I've got to get breakfast and then get the donuts. And I plan it all out to the hour. That way I'm not running behind the next day.

25:18 Scott Ingram: Beautiful. Good, good plan. Are there any other kind of habits or routines that are central to your success?

25:25 John Reidelbach: Yeah, one of the things I do, which probably some of my peers don't do, is I keep meticulous sales records of all the orders I book. And a lot of folks just rely on headquarters to tabulate that for you, but sometimes people make mistakes, and if it's my money that's on the line, I want to make sure that it's all there. So I keep really meticulous notes on all the orders and all the offers that went out, just so I'm organized to make sure nothing falls through the cracks.

25:50 Scott Ingram: Yeah, that's, you know, it's a good one. And I've actually not been doing a great job of that of late, but I'm typically like you really on top of that and just keeping track of the commissions. And, you know, I often will find mistakes and, you know, strangely they're almost never in my favor.

26:06 John Reidelbach: No, funny how that works out.

26:10 Scott Ingram: John, we already talked through some of your information diet and some of the books that you've read. And as always, we'll have links to all of those if you go to top1.fm. Pretty sure this is going to be episode 51. Top1.fm/51 will get you to all the links and the notes. And actually, John, now that I'm thinking about it, do you have, even if it's just a template, maybe without detail, or if you're comfortable, maybe you provide one with some sample detail. Could you send me one of your call plans that I can include in those notes?

26:40 John Reidelbach: Yeah, I certainly could. No problem.

26:42 Scott Ingram: Fantastic. I think that'll be a great takeaway. I think it's a really important process. It's again, one of those things that you spend a few minutes getting ready and thinking about who's going to be in this meeting, what do they care about what are the things that I want to get out of the meeting, what are the questions I want to be sure to ask. Just taking that little bit of extra time and sticking to that, you're going to have much, much better outcomes. What about the tools and apps that you're using on a day-to-day basis?

27:11 John Reidelbach: Yeah. So, there's a few that I definitely could not live without. First of all, the number one is Yelp. And the reason that's important is because when I'm in a new city, I need to know, number one, where the restaurants are if I'm taking people out to eat, but number two, where the bakeries are. I'm a big fan of bringing in donuts to sales meetings and Yelp is great with that. From the local bakeries to the places that get the most reviews, I rely on Yelp a ton. Another one I use every time I travel is called FlightView and it basically tells you exactly when your flight is arriving in and you can track the previous destinations where that airplane was. So a lot of times, the airline will not be the first to tell you if there's a delay, but if you can see where that inbound flight, when it left, if it left an hour late, you can bet that it's not going to be arriving on time. So I use that to make sure if I'm going to make a connection, if there's going to be delays, I stay on top of it. I'm a big Delta guy. I'm pretty much exclusively with Delta Airlines, and their app I think is great. It helps you choose your seats, helps you rebook connections if stuff gets… with the weather delays or flights being canceled. I'm on that quite a bit. And then the last one is LinkedIn, specifically more recently. I don't use it to prospect per se, but I use it to find out, you know, know, where my contacts are, if they've been promoted, just to get a feel for if there's someone new to the company, I can do a background search on them and understand, you know, where they're from, what their experiences are. Those are some of the tools I use that are really valuable.

28:42 Scott Ingram: Awesome. Awesome. And we'll have links to all of those on top1.fm/51 or, you know, plus or minus 1 if I screw it up. So, you know, and, you know, it's interesting you talk about that. I think that we're… I'm gonna need to do some type of… maybe we do a panel-style webinar or something to talk about travel programs and how to maximize those because, you know, those of us that are on the road, there's so much opportunity there that I think we can take advantage of. So, if that would be of interest to you, will you drop me a note and tell me that's a good idea or I'm just crazy and that's irrelevant? You can just send that to scott@top1.fm. I always love hearing from you guys that are listening to this show. John, is there a particular sales philosophy that you subscribe to?

29:28 John Reidelbach: Yeah, recently our company just sent us through solution selling, and to me that was real eye-opening. I picked up a bunch of nuggets from it, but the main one is that you could have the greatest product that there ever was and the price could be right, but if there isn't a pain that you're trying to solve, if there's not a problem on the customer's end that they're trying to fix, your project is going to go nowhere. So you have to diagnose the pain. And what I also found from that is documenting every step of the sales call from when you're in a face-to-face meeting to the follow-up action items, to the documentation as it moves forward. You know, the solution selling I thought was a great philosophy. Now, I don't use all those methods 100% perfectly now, but it's something we're getting… we're taking as a company, we're standardizing on, and I think it's going to be a great change.

30:17 Scott Ingram: Awesome. And so that is some of that classroom-style training that you were referring to earlier?

30:22 John Reidelbach: Yes, exactly.

30:24 Scott Ingram: Perfect. What is the structure of that? I haven't… I'm not hearing about a lot of companies doing kind of formalized sales training programs anymore, so that's great to hear.

30:32 John Reidelbach: Yeah, so what it is basically, you know, you have sales guys like us, we're on the road constantly. So you had to lock out a week where there's an instructor going to be in and they bring all the sales force in. And the biggest thing with solution selling is you're not pushing widgets, you're not pushing something onto a customer, you're diagnosing what issues they're having from an organizational level to that individual's problems he's having at the plant. And then you're helping to understand that pain and then matching that pain with a product or service that you can offer. So it's a whole different way of selling. Than just trying to push product onto people.

31:05 Scott Ingram: Yeah, great stuff. Now, how would you describe your style?

31:09 John Reidelbach: Personally, I'm more of an introvert, so I'm not the in-your-face loud sales guy that maybe people are used to seeing, but I take a more methodical approach, a lot of planning, and I really care for my customers and I want them to do what's right. So it's really more of a laid-back approach, not something that's very aggressive.

31:27 Scott Ingram: Well, and that's fascinating. I have done… I need to go back. I need to do a SurveyMonkey or something and go back to the folks that are on the show because I I'm pretty sure the split is pretty dang close to 50/50. I mean, it's right down the line in terms of those that identify as extroverts and those that identify as introverts. Talk a little bit more about just kind of in general, kind of introverts in sales and how you manage that. And again, I think it's just a stereotype, right? Everybody thinks that all great sales performers are extroverts, and I think that's Certainly, we've debunked that myth, but how do you sort of operate in that model with some of those assumptions?

32:06 John Reidelbach: Right. I mean, I think the biggest thing is whether you're this slick-talking sales guy or whether you're more quiet or reserved, at the end of the day, the customer wants his problems resolved. And so, even though that you're an introvert or whether you're an extrovert, the most important thing is that you're keeping track of what you promised, you said you would do, and you're delivering on that. To me, I think that's the most important thing a customer wants is to make sure the salesperson's reliable. And he does what he says he does. So in my case, you know, like I said, I'm more of a quiet guy, but nevertheless, if I tell you I'm gonna do something, you can believe that I'm gonna do it. And I think that means a lot to my customers.

32:43 Scott Ingram: Great stuff. Now what about motivation? How do you think about motivation and what motivates you?

32:49 John Reidelbach: Yeah, so some of my part-time hobbies is running. Like, I'm a marathon runner, and all runners are the same in that you're always chasing your personal best. You're always chasing a PR. So in sales, it's no different. You know, I know at my best, you year is, and I always want to do better than that, and I want to lay out a plan to get there. So you're always trying to find out how you can better yourself and how you can do your best year ever.

33:12 Scott Ingram: Awesome. So it's really… and I've certainly heard this before… it's, it's more self-competition and just making sure that it's, it's improvement and moving that line up into the right.

33:24 John Reidelbach: Yeah, I always want to do better than I did the year before, and it doesn't always happen, but that's always an internal goal for me regardless of what the quota is or what the objective is, I want to do my best.

33:35 Scott Ingram: Well, I guess we didn't really touch on that from a context perspective because you had talked about your numbers and your achievement in terms of dollars, but what has that looked like from percentage terms if we look at what your quota was?

33:48 John Reidelbach: Right. So management is, of course, very good at taking what's in the pipeline and certainly adjusting your quota accordingly. So this… I had a mega deal. Deal in my sales pipeline last year, $17 million. Management knew about that and certainly adjusted the quota accordingly. But even with that deal, on the last day of the fiscal year, I still wasn't at my quota, if you can believe that. I closed a deal on the last day of the fiscal for a little over $2 million. That was able to push me to $25 million, which helped me get above my quota, which is, as strange as that sounds, you know, having the best year ever, but it's the expectation management has of you and you want to live up to your expectation.

34:32 Scott Ingram: So yeah, well, and how are you managing both those expectations and also a situation like that where, you know, one deal is… I can't do the math accurately in my head, but, you know, call it 70% of your number and making sure that you're getting the rest of the way there?

34:46 John Reidelbach: Yeah, it's so with these mega projects, you know, they're a good thing and a bad thing. You know, it makes your one year look really, really great great, but then the next year that's not repeatable. So the challenge is finding enough other stuff in the pipeline to get you to your goal. And so you're always having to prospect and try to find out opportunities from your customers and maybe some holes where maybe they need your help to fix, whether it be products or solutions or services. So yeah, these big projects are great, but you're going to need a lot of other stuff to get to your quota as well.

35:16 Scott Ingram: Yeah, so it sounds like it really just comes down to making sure that you've got a good strong pipeline to manage through not only that risk, but making sure that you're gonna be able to put up decent numbers in the next period.

35:28 John Reidelbach: You always have to have a solid funnel.

35:30 Scott Ingram: Yeah, absolutely. So, John, is there something you believe that the average sales professional would think is crazy?

35:38 John Reidelbach: I do, and your listeners aren't gonna like this too much, but you can be a successful salesperson without picking up a golf club. And I'm not… I'm certainly not the best golfer, and I don't hardly golf that much at all, but what I found is the people that I'm interacting with with, they don't have a whole lot of time to golf. Now granted, you will have a couple customers that do like it, but overall that's not a necessity. So if you think that all salespeople are, are scratch golfers, that's just not the case.

36:06 Scott Ingram: That is so funny. I am part of that camp. I do not golf. I, I gave it some, some attempts some years back, and I, I just found that the level of effort just not to suck at that sport is way too high for the amount of time that I have available, and I like to be really good at the things that I do.

36:24 John Reidelbach: Well, the other thing is that, you know, with a family with 4 kids, it's tough to get out on the weekends for a round of 18 holes when there's baseball games and basketball games and family events. And especially if I've been gone during the week, makes it even tougher. So it's really an uphill battle, and I'm… I don't really golf that much. I golf when I have to, but it's not something I would go out and do, you know, willingly.

36:47 Scott Ingram: Yeah, yeah. Well, I don't even do that. I just… I don't do it. So you can certainly survive and do well with without without doing that. And one of my favorite… it's absolutely not safe for work. We're going to put it in the in the show notes. But if you have ever seen there, it's a… it's probably three or four minutes. Robin Williams does this stand-up bit about golf. And John, have you seen that? Do you know what I'm talking about?

37:11 John Reidelbach: No, I have not seen it.

37:12 Scott Ingram: Oh, I'm going to send you this. It is the funniest thing on the planet. And it's you know it's Robin Williams and just Robin. Williams style. He is like way over the top and it is absolutely nuts, but he's just absolutely railing about the invention of the game and like, oh, what are you gonna do? Well, we're gonna, we're gonna put a hole and you hit the ball into the hole. And it just, it goes on and on. Like, no, we're gonna give him a crooked stick, not a straight stick. And it is the best thing. Whether you love golf or you hate it, you'll, you'll love this, this video. So again, top1.fm/51. We're gonna have a, we're gonna have a fun set of show notes, uh, this time. I I think for sure. So John, what about the flip side? Is there something the average sales professional believes that you think is crazy?

37:55 John Reidelbach: Yeah, something that I think that other people think is crazy is that some people think training is a waste of time. And my opinion is there's all value in training, and you can always learn something from someone else who has a different perspective or maybe is coming from a different industry. So some people who think that training is crazy, I think that is crazy. I think there's always something you can learn.

38:16 Scott Ingram: Yeah, yeah. Well, you're probably speaking to the choir with, with this crowd. I think we all believe in, you know, it's not training necessarily what we're doing with, with this show, but just, you know, continuing to invest in your craft and learn. And you don't spend an hour or more listening to these episodes if that's, uh, if that's not of interest. John, what have been the most important decisions you've made or lessons you've had to learn to get where you are today?

38:42 John Reidelbach: I'm gonna go back to when I took the inside sales position at my current company, and that was something that I thought and prayed long about because that's a career move to change what you're doing and completely change the role. But I took a long-term approach, and so my advice would be don't just take a job, take a career, and look at if you see yourself with that company in the long term. And that's the decision you should make, is to look at a long-term view of it, not just the short-term job.

39:12 Scott Ingram: Oh, great stuff. I like that. Well, so I think that's a really great transition into kind of the advice dispensing section where I ask what advice you would give to somebody that's just starting out in their sales career today.

39:25 John Reidelbach: Yeah, I would say, you know, we talked a little bit about training, but I would also lean back to reading. I mean, basically, when you listen to this podcast, when you read books about sales, you're going to find people in other industries that they're still in sales, although it's a different product, but there's things you can learn from the approaches they take to the philosophies they're using. You're going to get fresh perspectives when you look outside of your own company and see how other people do it. And that could be in the form of a book. It could be in the form of classroom-based training, or it could be in the form of just listening to other podcasts to hear how other salespeople are doing it. So the other thing I would say along the lines of training is, you know, my company offered tuition reimbursement for graduate school. I took advantage of it. And for the longest time, I thought, nah, I'm never gonna go back and get my MBA. But then there was a key person in my company said, John, you really should think about it. It's a good move for your long-term career if you invest the time into it. And I really thought about it. I said, you know what, I am gonna do that. So I went back and got my MBA and I never looked back. It was a great decision. Now, when did you do that?

40:29 Scott Ingram: Because that sounds extraordinarily challenging with the household that you have.

40:33 John Reidelbach: Yeah, so that was between 2014 and 2016, and I went with University of Phoenix for their online program, and that was the only way I could do it was an online-based curriculum. And it was a really, really tough year and a half because every time I was in a hotel, you know, I was on that laptop doing the coursework, doing the reading, taking the tests. It was a humongous time drain, but I'm so glad that I did it, and I'm so glad that it's done because it brought a whole new perspective of business in general. I would recommend that to anyone who's thinking about Yeah, that's fantastic.

41:07 Scott Ingram: And I am also a University of Phoenix grad. And it's so funny. I have so much fun with that because I went and actually got my bachelor's from University of Phoenix because I started my first company when I was… I don't remember if I was 19 or I was 20. But I went and I was working and building that company and kind of did it as a bit of an afterthought, but I felt that it was an important thing. And it has certainly been a critical part of my career where I need… most importantly, I just needed to check that box in a couple of instances where I wouldn't have been able to progress without it. But I always turn it into, you know, people ask where you went to college and, you know, it's not the most grandiose, well-known university. I always turn it into a trivia question and the way I spin it… now I've already given you the punchline, but I always ask people, I say, well, look, I went to a college that has hosted multiple football national championship games in their stadium. Stadium, but they don't have a football team. Nice. So, nobody's ever gotten that answer. Now, fans of the show, you know, I've ruined my joke here, but I always, I always have a lot of fun with that. And it just confuses the crud out of people. I did it. I was still in Southern California at the time, and I actually went to a local campus. So, I didn't do the whole thing online, but people are just confused. And, you know, the first hint I give them is that it's based in Arizona. And that doesn't help anybody. It just confuses, confuses the world. So, we have a lot of fun with that. So, the other question that I always ask is, as a follow-up to the advice that you'd give to somebody starting out, is the advice that you'd give to somebody that's a ways into their career and they're either doing okay, but they're not at the top, or maybe they're struggling. You know, what advice do you have for them to break through and get to the next level?

42:58 John Reidelbach: What I would say is, in my situation, I'm in a larger corporation, is that there's other sales forces in that corporation. Corporation that may be calling on the same customer base as you are. You can actually network with them and glean quite a bit of information from them in like a peer-to-peer fashion, like what contacts are moving, who's been promoted, when are the outages, what projects are coming up. Some folks in my company think that, well, I don't know if there's that much in it for me, but what you're really into is sharing information across organizations, especially if it's within the same corporation. If you have an opportunity to do that, I would certainly say do that because it would pay dividends. Awesome.

43:38 Scott Ingram: Now, John, you probably know my trick here, but I'm going to ask the questions anyway. And the first is, what would you want to know about top sellers in other organizations?

43:48 John Reidelbach: What I would want to know is how often they have sales meetings or an opportunity for their peers to interact. I really wish our company did more of that, the more peer-to-peer interaction, because I want to learn from the folks on the East Coast and the West Coast. You know, what are they doing? How are they setting up their sales calls to bring about success? So, that would probably be my main question is that how often do they get together as a sales organization to share best practices?

44:17 Scott Ingram: That's interesting. So, like, you know, most organizations have some type of, maybe it's an annual sales kickoff. Others might have quarterly business reviews that typically my experience has been that's been a subset of the team. That's not bringing the whole team together. What is your own experience with that? How does that work at Emerson?

44:34 John Reidelbach: Emerson? Well, you know, we've had sales meetings in the past, but lately we've tried to rely on more WebExes, which is a more cost-effective way to share information, but you're not interacting with people the same way. And that's the kind of the thing we miss, or at least the part that I miss about it. The other question I would ask Scott is, you know, we're getting ready to launch our first CRM for Emerson, at least for my division. And I'd be interested in knowing how they interact with CRM. How much time does that take? You know, what does that entail? Because we're getting ready to launch that next year, and that's going to be a big step change for us. So I'd be interested to know how other companies handle it. Yeah, great, great, great question.

45:15 Scott Ingram: You know, one of the things that I alluded to in the previous episode that I'm going to work on a little bit more is, and I think you can do this inside your organization. I remember the conversation I had with Kyle Gutzler back in the day. He brought together sort of the top salespeople. I think he was at Namely at the time. He brought together the top group of sellers. He wasn't one of those yet. And then in the next year, he would become the number one, but, you know, just got together. And I think it was once a month he hosted sort of a breakfast and brought them together. And I think this idea of a sales mastermind, if your company is not offering that, or you could get additional value from doing that, I think one of the things to consider is doing it for yourself inside your organization, right? Be Kyle, be the catalyst that brings some group of people together and maybe Maybe it's a virtual thing, right? If you're spread out all over the country, maybe it's a Friday afternoon. Hey, we're going to get on a Google Hangout or Skype or whatever your technology is. And heck, maybe we're going to have a beer. It's Friday afternoon. Let's set up a call, 4 o'clock. We'll have pretty much wrapped up our days. And let's just talk about what's working, what's not working, and have that opportunity. Because anymore, so many of us are remote or we're in these distributed teams and folks are all over the place. Place. That's what I think you can do within your organization. I'm also looking at finding ways to help put fans of this show together into groups to do that for themselves, not from any type of profit motive perspective. Frankly, I don't have time. I've got enough on my plate than to add one more thing that I'm trying to manage. So I think we're going to do a bit of a pilot of that model and some other community things that I'm working on for the folks who sign up and take part and register for the 2019 Sales Success Summit. So go to top1.fm, go to top1summit.com, get involved in that, right? Throw down the credit card, invest in yourself and in your future, and know that you're not going to have to wait an entire year to get value. I'm going to do some other things in the near term to hopefully help you realize some, some more immediate value and get something out of that. John, who is the most successful salesperson you know personally?

47:36 John Reidelbach: Yeah, so there's someone who I would say almost as a mentor to me, was there when I hired on, was a guy by the name of Stuart Miller. And as I was in the inside sales role, he had had that role previous, so I relied on him daily for questions and just needing more information. And he was never too busy to spend time and answer any question I might have or show me some things. That I needed more information on. And it's just, he's been a phenomenal seller. He's since been promoted to sales manager, sales director. Now he's a vice president of the organization, just recently moved to Singapore. So he's a great guy. I got to catch up with him last year. He's doing phenomenally well. His family's doing well. So he would be the guy, Stuart Miller, that I'd recommend as one of my main influences.

48:22 Scott Ingram: Fantastic. Well, as you know, we always try and… and actually, before I go there, is there anything… you're, you're a big fan of the show. I know you did a lot of prep. Is there anything that we didn't already talk about that you were hoping to mention or share with the audience?

48:38 John Reidelbach: Yeah, I guess in the sales role, sometimes people are drawn to it because of the glory of being the number one salesperson. What I found is that there isn't a whole lot of glory there. I mean, it's… you realize that if you had a great year, you had a great year, but the folks in engineering, the folks in projects, they could care less. You're just another sales guy. So, if that's one of your motivating factors, I wouldn't put too much weight on that. You do your best, you stay humble, and I think that's some of the keys to be successful.

49:08 Scott Ingram: Great perspective and certainly ties back to your third point of being humble, and clearly you are. So, I really appreciate you taking the time to share with us today. So, let's create our challenge, right? So, this is the part where we've talked a lot, but now let's have something actionable that the person listening to this can now do over the course of the next 1 to 2 weeks to improve themselves and improve their results, what would you challenge them to do?

49:34 John Reidelbach: 2 things. I would say pick up a sales-related book and actually start to read it. I'm not the most avid reader, but I read 3 to 4 books a year, and it's important to get fresh perspectives from people that aren't in my company of new ideas and things that I can use on my job. The other would be to start, I guess, documenting every sales meeting you're involved with with a customer. Customer, just not only to verify you had all the information right, but to double-check that they heard the information right. And if you owe them something or if they owe you something, you've got it documented. And I think that's the best way to move deals forward. If you have commitments, they're aware of it, you're aware of it, you're not going to let anything slip through the cracks. I think if you start those 2 things, I think you'll see some positive results.

50:18 Scott Ingram: Fantastic. John, how are you doing that documentation? Is that longhand? Is that in a tool like an Evernote or something like that? What does that look like?

50:27 John Reidelbach: No, it's nothing too fancy. It's just going on Outlook and drafting up an email, say, I appreciate your time. Here's the things we talked about. I owe you these 3 things. And we talked about the following projects may happen in 2019 or 2020. And just get something documented on paper just so that they can have it because a lot of Sometimes you'll forget what you talked about or they'll forget what they talked about and you have a record of it. So, that would be nothing too fancy, just something on Outlook, you know, copy yourself so you've got a record of it as well, but just something to remind you of this, of the meeting you had and the action steps moving forward. Great stuff.

51:05 Scott Ingram: So, not just documenting it for yourself, but documenting it with your customer. Yes. Beautiful. John, this has been fantastic. Thank you for being a fan of the show. Thank you for reaching out and being willing to give back and contribute to the community. And continue to inspire us and help all the rest of us improve. Thanks for having me, Scott.

51:25 John Reidelbach: It's been a pleasure. 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.