66: Sales Strategies That 10x Revenue – How to Master Sales in Your Business

Behind Their Success: Ep 66

Paden: Christian

Christian: [00:00:00] it's a really interesting phenomenon. Same thing for pretty much anybody who ever sells, they'll learn all the skills, their results will go down. They're like, why am I not selling anything?

And then the ones who realize Their results shoot straight back up, oftentimes two to 10 X more than they were before,  

Paden: Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Behind Their Success Squires, the host. And today's guest is Christian Jack, the sales dojo. He is a master in influence, persuasion, and sales with a track record of scaling businesses to multiple eight figures. He's a sales expert, coaching hundreds of professionals on mastering key skills, such as communication, body language, and leadership.

Christian, welcome on behind their success. 

tell us about what you're currently doing in your career. 

Christian: Oh man, all sorts of stuff, but it is all centered around exactly what you said, helping people increase their level of influence in their life.

and then, you know, when we, talk about, the [00:01:00] B2B side of things, helping businesses just do more with sales. 

Paden: what got you to that level, of sales mastery or tell us a little bit of that journey.

Christian: I guess it depends how far back you want to go, but, I grew up and I was in a very disciplined household. Uh, I was 1 of those kids. I started working on things, uh, from the age of 3, uh, very consistently.

So my parents had me in swimming and piano. I was in a pool for, six hours a day from the age of three. and same thing for piano. I was sitting at a piano practicing for three hours a day since the age of three.

And both those things, my parents basically said I was required to do until I graduated high school. And then once I was done with that, I could do whatever I wanted with those things in my life or not do anything with them at all. So I grew up, With that discipline consistency part of me just like drilled in from a very young age When I went to college, I went to college for music, but then when I got out of college, I very quickly realized that Having a degree in music didn't [00:02:00] really provide me the life that I wanted to live.

I didn't love going to the same place every single day. Uh, I didn't love having to stick to a schedule that somebody else set for me. All these sorts of things. I am, I'm a person that craves variety in my life, despite having all that discipline. And so, you know, very quickly, I realized like nine to five probably isn't really for me.

And I was very quickly like, okay, what's a skill that I can learn, uh, or what can I do in my life to like have that freedom, but then also have this, Stability of this skill set that can always generate income for my life and this was kind of off the back of covid as well.

So a lot of music teachers had gotten laid off from their jobs. Lots of people in many different industries, right? Got got laid off from what they were doing. And so that was very top of mind. I was thinking, what is something that's covid proof? What's something that's. World war three, like who knows what's going to happen in the world these days.

Uh, and so [00:03:00] a lot of reflection on that ultimately led me to the idea of building your own business. And then even within that, I knew like building a business was a very large skill set to have. It's an amalgamation of a million different things that you have to learn. So what is the place where I can start with that?

And, what's like the most leverage for me? And so. What I came up with was sales. Uh, there's always going to be the exchanging of goods and services. I don't have to create them. I don't have to come up with them. I don't have to fulfill on them. Somebody else has already done the work. It's already all set up.

They just need somebody to facilitate. So that's where I got into that. Uh, very quickly. I realized I was terrible at sales, and being somebody who not only like played piano already, like piano plays are usually just a little bit weird in the head. Right. and then also a swimmer or it's like, like people kind of think of it as a team sport, but it's really an individual sport.

Like you are in your own head the whole time. You can't talk to people while you're swimming. So you have a lot of time to think. So I was a very introverted [00:04:00] person. Getting into sales, was a struggle. So I realized I wasn't really very good at talking to people and being sociable and having a relationship.

So I had to learn everything from scratch, which has its perks, but also really sucked. So, it took some time to figure things out, but. eventually I figured things out well enough to now having been in sales for about three years now, I've generated somewhere north of a hundred million in, revenue for different businesses I've worked with.

So I've had some, uh, pretty good successes and I've, I've done a lot of different things in that time from being a salesperson to managing sales teams to consulting for businesses. I've gone all the way up to consulting for enterprise level businesses, doing over 150 million a year. Like I've, I've done.

Quite a few different things within that. And I've since come back to, sales itself, because for some reason I may be a masochist and I just love sales. So I love talking to people [00:05:00] about sales and businesses about maximizing their sales. It's just a really 

Paden: good time, you know, just kind of, you know, kind of recapping the couple of things that stood out there from your story, you know, the parents and the discipline, right.

like it or not and think whatever you want of it. Right? Like that sets you up right to be, to understand, right. To understand what hard work is and like, okay, hard work leads to getting better at something, at least a more success and those kinds of like, 

Christian: on Christmas day, I, I kid you not Christmas day, I went to the pool and I spent Thanksgiving morning before everybody got started with cooking.

I was at the pool. I was done at the pool before people woke up like, and just the benefit of that, 

Paden: like, you know what I mean? from an outside, you know, some outside normal parent, they'd be like, oh, this is crazy or whatever. Right. Like the benefit that was instilled. 

Christian: I thought it was crazy. I was the one doing it.

Um, 

Paden: So, you know, sales, right? Sales master, like, you know, give us a few practical tips around that, like, if you can say, Hey, here's a couple things that you see that are like [00:06:00] major leverage points that businesses always have wrong.

Right. Or, or that could, Hey, you make these couple shifts that could be like game changing, right? 

Christian: I'll start on the sales skills side of things and migrate over to the business side of things. So, when it comes to sales skills, a lot of people make sales weird. They think that it's like this, this thing that you learn and you get good at and like, to some extent, yes, but also it is a simple conversation between one human and another.

And so the more that you can realize that oftentimes, the better the conversation goes. provided you, of course, like continue learning, continue getting better at like framing and objection handling and all that kind of good stuff. But once you like learn those core skills, pretty much every incredible salesperson that I've ever met.

we'll go through those skills and then their sales results will go down once they learn all those things. And it's a really interesting [00:07:00] phenomenon. Same thing for pretty much anybody who ever sells, they'll learn all the skills, their results will go down. They're like, why am I not selling anything?

And then the ones who realize that it's because they lost the human connection aspect of things. Their results shoot straight back up, oftentimes two to 10 X more than they were before, which is really incredible. so that's, that's definitely key point. Number one is human connection, person to person relationship.

It's a human conversation focus on that. It's a really big deal. number two, starting to get more into like the business and process side of things is. just kind of playing into that same vein, the more personal you can make the, interaction, the better. So obviously having, having, uh, having worked on the enterprise level, uh, for those of you listening who maybe haven't, things are very well operationalized because you have to have data to track in order to grow the business, see where things are going.

Obviously, it's a lot of money if you [00:08:00] lose 1 percent conversion at some simple step in the funnel that maybe you didn't see before. And so with all of that, oftentimes, uh, people who are entrepreneurs who are trying to get to that level will over operationalize their sales process, and make it, they'll lose that human aspect because they're trying to like send out automated, messages all the time and like optimum to, you know, uh, almost like a mini marketing sequence in the middle of the sales process and all sorts of things like that.

you know, standardizing what, yeah. The script is for the salespeople. There there's various different things, not saying that they're necessarily bad or good, but often I see they get in the way of that human connection. So the more that your sales team, or if it's just you, can humanize that process.

The better, especially these days, we're in what I kind of refer to as a post trust era. Everybody's been burned online at this point, pretty darn near everybody, multiple times often. And so, there's been a [00:09:00] certain way, that people have operated in the past that this person, if they're coming through the sales process and they see you operating that same way that last time they got burned through, they're gone, they're never coming back.

There's no shot. No shot to get them back. So, The more that you can, just break the mold and be more personal throughout the sales process, the better you'll probably do. And it can be as simple as, like, the first text when your salesperson reaches out, you're just like, Hey, John, question mark, like literally as simple as that is, or as, as that sounds, it has the highest conversion rate and highest response rate from.

Anything that I've ever seen, like, Hey John, this is my name at XYZ company. Just reaching out to get you. Yeah. Like just. Just make it simple. Like you're, like, you're talking to a friend. That's a really big one. and then last but not least, I would say number three for businesses is just, remembering to [00:10:00] keep the human aspect, not just in client facing relationships, but also internal.

So, having a good time with your team on a day to day basis, remembering that they're human beings with energy levels that you can push, that you can pull, that you can help them perform better and achieve more in their lives. And just as much as you might have a sales conversation with a client or prospective customer about their dreams, their goals or aspirations, you know what the software would do for their company's bottom line, how that would affect them as an owner and blah, blah, blah, blah.

You can also have those same exact conversations inside your business with your leadership team, with your sales reps, uh, at every level, and ultimately just help people perform at a much higher level than they did before. Which, uh, shockingly enough will probably make you more money and help you be a happier, more effectively.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. A hundred percent. 

Paden: it's a bunch of learned skills, but ultimately, and I think where I turned the corner, you know, maybe when I came around to college, I'm sure I was garbage at sales, like just garbage.

[00:11:00] But. The more and more I worked on myself, the more and more I'm comfortable I got with myself, having that connection, that honest, open connection with other people became so much easier.

Christian: 100%. I think a lot of people, uh, when they get into sales, they think it's about influencing other people. And it's like, once you get to a really high level, like you kind of come back to that, but, oftentimes what's needed to be learned first is being able to influence yourself. Because you are the person that you get to spend the most time with.

You are your own longest sales sale ever, and you are your most frequent sale. Every decision that you ever make every day, you're selling yourself on like, whether you're going to do the thing that you want to, that leads to your outcome, that might be hard in the moment, or whether you want to. Do the easy thing now, or whatever it is.

And so if you like the best training ground for sales is your own self talk and your own decisions that you [00:12:00] make in your own head. and oftentimes that, because that's the biggest training ground, I believe that sales is one of the best personal developments of all time. And like owning a business as well is the same thing.

Cause you're so focused on other people. As a business owner, as a sales professional, that like you're forced to think about other people more than yourself in business. 

Paden: running a small business entrepreneurship is like the best.

Self development tool there is out there, right? Because it gives you constant feedback. There's constant feedback loop. It's like, you put something out there, you know, smacks you in the face. Like, Oh, that didn't work. You know, you try something different, right? Like, and it's, it's brutally honest, right?

Like we can't, you, you can't lie about it. Like the market tells you. Right. Like, you know, the sales are what they are. 

Christian: people vote with 

Paden: their dollars. 

Christian: I had a, I had a conversation with Tony Robbins one time, and, it was on the topic of giving talks from stage, right. Learning, learning to really do that at a high level. [00:13:00] And one of the things that he mentioned was. One of the worst things that you can hear as somebody who's actually selling from stage, is you did a great job, loved your talk, and it's kind of counterintuitive because you'd think it's a good feedback mechanism, but if you're actually selling from stage, like I said, people vote with their dollars.

Like, that's really how people assign value in society these days. And so. It's, it's really interesting as a business owner, it's not like learning how to make money per se, it's learning how to provide value to other people in a very true, realistic way that can't be measured. Yeah. 
 

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Paden: So, you know, another question I like to ask a lot of people is, what would you say was, the best decision or the key decision you've made?
 

1 thing really sticks out in my mind above all else and. I, I talk about it often and it's the idea of your lowest hanging fruit. So, a lot of times [00:15:00] in life, in business, we're kind of told to take a look at our strengths and like, what are we naturally inclined to?

Christian: What are we naturally good at? What do we have? Uh, you know, people refer to it often as talent in and really go with that thing because you have this natural gift for it. And. Not that that's wrong. I think very rarely in thing in life are things like clearly good or clearly bad or clearly right or clearly wrong.

So, you know, it's, it's a spectrum, of course. But the realization that I had in that vein was I enrolled into lots of sales training and business coaching that played into my own natural Strengths at first, naturally, I am a fairly low pressure person. Like I'm good at getting rid of sales resistance. I'm good at, framing things in a way that might not necessarily rub people the wrong way.

and you know, for, for better or for worse, not even great at the [00:16:00] confrontation side of sales specifically. And I enrolled in all these trainings and spent tens of thousands of dollars on them and had very little increase in terms of my own personal earnings to show for it. And I was like, what am I missing?

Why, why isn't this working? Like I thought that it would, it's working for everybody else. Like why, why isn't it working for me? And I realized that it was because I was working on. things that I thought I was good at, but not on the things that I was losing out on business too. And that, that really hit me.

If you think about like a sales conversation, if you're really good at something, you're probably already closing the deals that require your help with those things, right? You get on a call, somebody who. You know, they're super resistant to the sales process or whatever. And I was very good at handling that.

I will close that deal. But if I get somebody on a call [00:17:00] who isn't willing to face reality in their own life and take a hard look at what's really going on, if I can't handle that sort of conversation, I'm going to lose the deal, right? not that like a deal is even a thing. I'm not going to be able to help that person come through that.

And so. Once I realized that, Oh, I'm losing out on business because I suck at this thing. Maybe I should improve the thing that I suck at, uh, improve my lowest hanging fruit at whatever it is in my life. That's when results shot up like a rocket ship. Like, uh, I think specifically. I enrolled into a coaching that really helped me with being more direct and being more of a leader on the call and helping people overcome, uh, you know, their own broken mindsets and different things.

In four weeks, I went from, I think it was like a 21 percent closing rate to 89 percent closing rate. It was 4X in a matter of weeks. And then from there, it was just like off to the races. And so the idea is that if you are. [00:18:00] In your life and you see things that you're good at, you see things that you're bad at, it can be very tempting to just like.

I believe that it's more taking the easy road to just improve the things that you're already good at, because you already have the feedback loop telling you that you're good at it, you have dopamine associated with it, et cetera, et cetera, uh, don't do that because you're already doing well at it. You're already getting the results from it.

What you should probably do and not necessarily all the time, but probably focus on that lowest hanging fruit things that you're bad at and improve those. And that will increase your bottom line. 

Paden: Yeah, yeah, no, that's, that's some great advice there. And I kind of. You know, the way I kind of visualized that was like, a bucket, you had a bunch of holes in it.

Like you were, you had a nice bucket and you kept working on the bucket, but you weren't, you know, you weren't plugging up, you know, plugging up those holes and losing all those deals. And you're right. And it's, yeah, you just weren't developing the area where, yeah, where all the deals were falling off.

Once I realized 

Christian: that, dude, I felt like. 

Paden: Yeah, it's just, duh, right? 

Christian: I felt like such a dummy. 

Paden: but you know, that's, yeah, that's a great lesson. 

So kind of on the flip side of that, Christian, [00:19:00] tell us something you made a big mistake in that you had a, you had a tough lesson learned. 

Christian: Ooh, that's a great one. say the, the biggest mistake would probably be that one. Like I had just invested a mass ton of money into things that I was already good at. So like that, that was a very big, like, you know, financial, financial mistake. Another big mistake, let's see,

the biggest 1 that comes to mind is probably not not spending enough time on 1 project, in terms of, like, a timeline focus. So, I went through a phase where I was working with a lot of different companies at any given time on sales and actually selling for them. And the pro like the upside that came from that was I gained a lot of experience that I wouldn't have necessarily gotten selling a lot of different things, uh, at very high levels, very low levels, different.

leadership teams, et cetera. So I gained a lot of experience very [00:20:00] quickly with that, but I wasn't able to capitalize at the level that I probably could have if I had just focused on 1 of them. that 1 was a pretty big lesson and. You know, it, there's some benefits, of course, to being fractional, uh, and there's some benefits, of course, to being more focused onto one thing.

So I would say it's not necessarily like the biggest mistake per se, but it was definitely a learning lesson that I, I chose one side of that equation over the other, and now I'm more focused on coming back to the focused side of the equation. 

Paden: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, you know, you, you kind of get that, you know, throughout your career, right?

You swing kind of pendulums, kind of, kind of back and forth. You go kind of one extreme to the other and, and, you know, as a person, like you say, somebody that seeks variety in your life, right? You're probably going to keep swinging that thing, you know, to a degree, looking back to 2019, if you can give yourself one piece of advice.

Christian: say avoiding [00:21:00] fear doesn't keep you safe. Avoiding fear keeps you stuck. 

I think. A lot of times in our lives as human, it's, it's a very natural thing to be averse to things that we're fearful of.

We feel like can harm us in various ways. Like negativity bias is absolutely real. Uh, uh, there was a study done with a mouse, they put it in a tube and at the end of the tube, uh, they, they tied a string to its tail to measure how hard it would pull and in front of the mouse, they put a piece of cheese.

Mouse pulled pretty hard to get to that cheese. It really wanted it. But then they did the exercise again where they put the, uh, scent of a cat and wafted it into the tube behind the mouse. The mouse pulled harder, right? It's a natural evolutionary, protection mechanism that's in all of us.

And so the natural tendency is [00:22:00] to avoid things that we're fearful of because we're fearful for a reason, right? Some sort of, occurrence as we were growing up, or, you know, how we were raised or, or some sort of thing, even fear. Uh, tendencies can be passed through generations, through your genes, it's that powerful.

And so, there were definitely times where I was fearful of taking the next step because I felt like I needed to have everything planned. Going back to that completionist mentality, kind of a, uh, for me, personality test person, you'll, you'll understand this. I'm. Uh, I'm an INTJ. I'm a strategist. I'm an analyst, combined with being introverted and a completionist.

I really wanted to like understand and get everything down. Before actually, you know, putting it out there into the world or before putting it out to test it, whether it be an offer that I was creating or a sales process that I wanted to try or whatever, I wanted it to be complete and pretty darn close to perfect [00:23:00] before I did it because I was fearful of what could happen if I didn't.

However, that fear doesn't help you, avoid these bad things that will happen, quote, unquote, right? Like there's, there's things that are going to happen regardless. It's your relationship with them that changes things. So avoiding fear doesn't actually keep you safe from bad things in your life happening.

Uh, it just keeps you stuck from moving on, despite those bad things. 

Paden: And, and yeah, you, you use the word stuck. It's like, if you never, you never turn and face it, it's always going to be there. You know what I mean? It's, it's never going to go away. 

Christian: my mentor put it to me with, uh, if you have like a glass of water and you put a bunch of vinegar in it.

Like, you, you can put other things in it to make it taste better, but the vinegar is always going to be there. It's not like you can't like stick your hand in and pull out the vinegar. It's now just part of it. And that's like when bad things happen to you as a [00:24:00] kid or, you know, opportunities that don't necessarily go your way or, uh, whatever.

And then. You know, you kind of have to just deal with it and move past it. You can remove it to some extent through like hypnotherapy and some really more woo woo stuff, uh, which is real hundred percent. Like I, I do that inside of my programs. But, at the end of the day, like you have to understand there's going to be vinegar in life and you just have to be able to move past it, uh, even when it happens because it will.

Paden: Yeah. A hundred percent. And it's, it's the people that do the work, face that kind of stuff that, that continue to dance in life. And, it's a choice, right? You, you're going to, you know, face, face your stuff. Cause we all got crap. We all grew up, had.

Crazy as everybody does. And it's, it's, are you going to deal with it or not? And it's, you know, ultimately no one can do that for you. You got to do it yourself. And, um, you know, hopefully you got people around you and point you in the right directions and whatnot, but you got to make that choice to kind of face, face your fears, period.

So [00:25:00] Christian, man, this has been a great conversation. I really appreciate you coming on. what's the best way people can get ahold of you or connect with you or just kind of learn more about you and everything that you do? 

Christian: Man, I've put together something special for anybody who's listening to this.

Just, if you've been listening to Peyton stuff for a while as a congratulations for being with such a quality human here for a while, it'll be www. thesalesdojo. com slash. Uh, bts slash bts, on there, there'll be some free stuff. It'll be some cheap stuff. Uh, if you want to ahold of me, you can get ahold of me there, or I'm pretty much everywhere on socials.

If you Google me, you'll find me somewhere. Just hit the contact button, send a message, whatever. I got a whole team that helps me just make sure that I am able to be that human who can connect with people. Uh, so you can, you can get ahold of me literally anywhere. 

Paden: Christian, man, I appreciate you. Anything else you want to leave for the listeners before we sign off?

Christian: I'd say there's, there's [00:26:00] a lot of stuff behind the success that I've achieved and that a lot of people that have achieved in their lives, but more than anything else, it's just doing the thing. So just go do your thing. Don't be, don't be fearful of it. Don't be stuck like I was. 

Paden: That's right, guys. Just do the work.

Listeners. Appreciate you guys. We'll catch you next time. 

Speaker 2: Thank you so much for listening to the podcast. If you found it valuable, please rate, review, and share it. That is the best way to help us build this and reach more people as we're trying to accomplish our goal of help creating more healthy, wealthy, and wise entrepreneurs. You can follow us on social media by searching for me, Payton Squires, or going to paytonsquires.com. On the website and social media, we're always sharing tips of personal growth, and there we can actually interact. I'm looking forward to it. Thanks guys.