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It's the one thing that AI can't do is give a [beep]. I call it the give a [beep] factor. It can pretend to. Mine kisses my ass all the time, even though I tell it not to, but it doesn't. It fundamentally can't care.
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Welcome to Relationship Capitalists, where super connectors share how they build trust, create value, and thrive when AI changes everything.
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In a world where expertise is being commoditized, your ability to build and sustain high value human connections is what sets you apart. I'm your host, Jason Ashrelli. Let's dive in. Welcome to Relationship Capitalists.
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I'm your host, Jason Ashrelli. In a world being reshaped by AI, the one asset that cannot be automated is your ability to build deep, high value human connections.
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Today, I'm joined by one of the most respected voices in modern sales, John Barrows. A man who spent more than twenty-five years in sales.
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He's trained teams at companies like Salesforce, LinkedIn, Google, Amazon, Box, Slack, and Okta, and built JBSales into one of the most trusted training organizations in the world.
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In this episode, we're going to explore how AI is reshaping the buyer-seller relationship, why sales fundamentals matter more than ever, and how intentional human connection becomes a competitive advantage in an automated world.
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Let's dive in. Hey, John. Thanks for joining today. I'm excited to have you share your perspectives on human connection in sales in the age of AI.
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And over the years, you've trained some of the best sales teams in the world and have seen every major shift in the profession.
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So I guess the question is that we want to start out with here is, as AI starts to automate more of the sales process, what is the one human sales skill you believe will be the most valuable in this space?
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I think curiosity by far. I think curiosity, it's something that I've been searching for a while the answer of, is it a nature nurture thing, right? Are you naturally born curious or can you develop it?
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And I, I think genuine natural overarching curiosity is something you're born with. But I do think you can become curious. And the way that you become curious is by getting interested in something.
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So once you're interested, you become curious, you wanna learn more. And I think that's the thing with AI right now is if you are curious, it is a superpower. It is an absolute superpower.
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You can pretty much do, ask whatever you want. It's the best business coach you've ever come across, best sales coach you've ever come across.
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But if you're not curious and you're just basically looking for the answer, it's a replacement. You know, 'cause I talk a lot about, you know, we've gone from this search engine to an answer engine.
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And to me, that's a dangerous thing because for guys like you and I who are curious, it's, like I said, superpower. Tell me more. Would you get this? Source check this, please. What's going on?
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Give me a different perspective. What am I missing, right? Holy smokes.
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But unfortunately for the vast majority of our population who are just, let's face it, lazy, they're gonna take that answer and copy paste it and send or whatever.
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And in that case, I don't understand the value of the human in that scenario. Absolutely. So things have changed obviously in the last twenty-five years since you've been in sales.
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From making hundreds of phone calls, I was there as well in the trenches, and now you're running a business that you've trained, you know, some leading top sales orgs at Salesforce, Google, Amazon, LinkedIn, and more.
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And so when you first realized-- you know, when did you first realize that this was the path that you wanted to take, and what keeps you really passionate about it? Yeah, it's funny, right?
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'Cause there's two sides to this coin. There's the sales side of the coin and then the training side of the coin.
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Sales, I kinda fell into just like everybody else 'cause back when you and I were getting into it, there was no degree in sales.
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Like it was the-- it kinda still is, but there's at least two or three hundred colleges here in the US that you can get your degree in it, but it's still kind of the default profession, right?
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And so I got my degree in marketing 'cause I didn't know what I wanted to be when I grew up, and then I got out and I realized I don't wanna do this. And I eased into sales.
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I think my journey was very fortunate in the sense like DeWalt power tools, right? So Black & Decker was my first job and DeWalt power tools.
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And it was under event marketing, so marketing was there, but it was really sales/event marketing, so my job was to drive around. I didn't have a quota, but it was like I, I had to evangelize, right?
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And get people to buy DeWalt tools. And then I got promoted and I went to the Home Depot team.
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They had to buy DeWalt obviously, but I had to take that ten thousand dollar order, turn it to a fifty thousand dollar order through relationships, cross sell, upsell, so it was a little bit more sales.
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Then I got to Xerox, and that's where I was like got my real formal sales education, right? I mean, talk about selling a commodity.
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And I don't know, I just felt I've always known that I wasn't the brightest kid out there, but I always knew I had a strong work ethic and I could outwork everybody.
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I still to this day at fifty years old, I still feel like I can outwork the vast majority of people out there.
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And to me, I always thought, "Well, if I work harder than everybody else, I should probably get paid more than everybody else." And so that's why I was a waiter when I was a kid and all those things.
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So sales was kind of in my DNA whether I liked it or not because I just didn't like confinement.
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And when I found my passion for it was when I started to really realize, like, I'm pretty decent at this, and I like making a difference. I was never jazzed up by the close.
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Like my mentor, Jeff Hoffman, that dude, oh, man, to watch him close a deal, it's art, and he gets so fired up for it. I liked it. Obviously, I like getting paid, but I loved the relationship.
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I loved seeing the difference that I made for implementing something that somebody was like, "Holy smokes. Thank you so much."
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And so fast forward, started another company, IT Services, sold it to Staples, and then Staples fired me. And I was in a bit of a panic because I had been seven years at this startup. It was, uh, Thrive Networks.
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It was our-- started from zero, grew it, fastest growing company in Massachusetts, and then I had no plan B. I was all in on this. This is what I did, right? And even though when Staples bought us, I knew it was wrong.
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I-- it didn't feel right. I didn't fit in the corporate structure, it whatever, but I kept fighting, fighting 'cause that's what you do. And then they fired me. Well, offered me another pos-- they fired me.
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And I was in a panic because I didn't know what to do. And I'm like, "Oh man, am I an IT sales guy?" I'm like, "Is that what I am? Gross. I don't even like computers," right?
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And my wife is the one who helps me out with this. She said, "All right, let's take a step back." She goes, "Stop panicking.
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Let's take a look at your career, and why were you one of the top reps in each one of the roles that you... Right? So let's look at DeWalt. Why were you one of the best reps in the area for DeWalt?"
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I'm like, "I don't know. DeWalt power tools are kind of cool. I don't know, they're pretty easy for me to talk about 'cause they were badass tools, right?" "Xerox, why were you one of the best in Xerox?"
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It's not like I loved copiers, but I genuinely believe that Xerox was the best copier company in the industry, so it wasn't hard for me to represent them.
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And then Thryv, my company, like, it wasn't that I cared about the technology, but I genuinely believed that the people that I was representing and the work that we were doing was better than anybody else out there.
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So then it dawned on me that it doesn't matter what I sell, it matters that I believe in what I sell. And so there was an aha moment one.
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The aha moment for training was very soon thereafter because Basho, which is-- I loved the training and because it worked so well for me, they said, "Johnny, you wanna be a trainer?" And I was like, "No."
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And they're like, "Why not?" I'm like, "Well, first of all, I had never met a trainer I'd really liked," 'cause they were all either failed sales professionals or professional presenters, and I was like, "Gross."
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But they had an interesting opportunity, like, where they-- you had to use the techniques to sell so you could train. So I had to sell to train, which I, "Okay," 'cause sales was my passion.
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And I remember my mom's a career counselor since I was a kid. I've had a Myers-Briggs since I was, like, twelve.
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And I called her up and I said, "Ma, I got an interesting opportunity, and I'd like, like your feedback on this. It's to be sales training. It's just so weird." And she literally starts laughing.
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And I was like, "What are you laughing about, John Michael?" And she's the only one who calls me John Michael. She goes, "I never wanted to tell you what to do in your career."
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She goes, "But if there is anybody that I thought that would be a good teacher/trainer, it's you." Wow, you're sending chills down my arm, man. I was like, "What?" I was like, "How?" She's, "You just have that."
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And I was like, "Huh." So part of my interview with Basho was I had to do a training, and I'd never formally done a training before.
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So I literally, this was back in the day, I went to Barnes & Noble, I got Training for Dummies, and I started reading it.
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And literally the first page, it says, "Here's the ten characteristics of whether or not you know you're cut out to be a trainer."
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And Jason, when I tell you every single one of them, I was like, "What the-- Apparently, I'm supposed to be a trainer." Like, oh my God, like, every one of those things I love doing.
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And so between sales and training, it just, it was kinda like fish to water for me, and I, and then I took off.
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So those are the two aha moments in my career that really got me grounded in the why I love this profession, why I keep doing it, why I keep grinding.
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And the fact that the last piece I'll say is a lot of people have a misperception of sales about what it really is because of the movies, and they've probably, you know, rightfully so, they've had shitty experiences from a sales standpoint.
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But I always say, if you think sales is about convincing anybody of anything, you're doing it wrong. Sales is about helping people solve problems or achieve goals. That's it.
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And if you have that mentality and you like solving problems and you like helping people, sales is the, I think, the greatest profession in the world.
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And I think there's so much lip service around that, but it's actually genuinely caring and actually genuinely driving that success all the way through because it's almost like the close is the beginning. Yeah.
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And looping this back to AI, it's the one thing that AI can't do, is give a [beep]. Yeah. [laughs] I call it the give a [beep] factor. It can pretend to. Mine kisses my ass all the time, you know what I mean?
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Even though I tell it not to, right? But it doesn't. It fundamentally can't care. So if you can really care, and that's where Morgan Ingram, who's in the space, like I-- he worked f- with me for a while.
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He was my first hire from a training standpoint. And I tell this story where he was doing really-- He was a manager, and he was doing fine.
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He was creating sequences, and we were going through, and he was getting okay results, but it kinda leveled up. And he came to me one day and he goes, "John, I don't understand.
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I feel like I should be getting better results based on all the work I'm putting in here. What do I need to do different?" And I said to him, I said, "Morgan, your results aren't gonna change until one thing does."
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And he goes, "What?" I go, "Until you start giving a shit, man." And he goes, "What?"
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I go, "Look, I know you care about your job, I know you care about all this stuff, but until you start thinking about the person on the other end of that email as a person who gets up in the morning, has to put their kids on the bus, has to sit in traffic, has their boss yelling at them.
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Like, until you start thinking of them like that as opposed to a number you have to hit, a cadence you have to send, a call you have to make, like, until you turn that bridge, man, your results aren't gonna be any different."
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Yeah, it's not just caring about going through the motions. It's actually caring about the important stuff. People, the human factor.
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So I was listening to some of your podcasts, and you talk a lot about that you carry a quota, and you think of it that way, you know, running your own business.
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And, and so, you know, what's really kind of shaped the way that you teach sales compared to others that are out there just teaching theory? Yeah, I think that's my competitive differentiator, is that I'm not a trainer.
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I'm a sales rep who trains. That's what drives me nuts right now with all these influencers and sales gurus, if you will, who were successful back in two thousand and fifteen and two thousand and twenty.
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You know what I mean? "Oh, I was the first person at XYZ company to take it from zero to a billion, and now I'm gonna implement all my metho..." I'm like, "Are you using that today? Have you tried what you just said?
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Have you tried it live in a scenario in today's environment? 'Cause if you haven't, I have a hard time listening to you." If you were over at Zoom in twenty twenty, shut up. I literally don't wanna listen to you.
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Even Salesforce, quite frankly. On the rocket ship, that was a lot of order taking. And so I think that what differentiates me is I'm in the [beep] right now. I had a great Q1. My Q2 and Q3 pipeline, poof, disappeared.
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And even though I did everything right, executive alignment, all these things, and pain and impact and gap and all that stuff. "Sorry, John, the priority's changed.
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Sorry, John," because things are moving so fast right now. So I'm in full-on prospecting mode again.
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I'm doing LinkedIn, and I'm grinding the shit out of this, and I'm learning what's working now compared to what worked six months ago, two years ago. And so as I train, I translate that.
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I think you learn a lot more from your failures than you do a success, so you'll see me share all my failures. I'm like, "Oh, did that. Whoa, that didn't work. Don't try that. That was a disaster." You know what I mean?
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So I think that's what gives me the competitive advantage, is the authenticity and the no bull [beep] and the fact that I'm doing it. So you've talked about AI as being both frightening and exciting.
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So what specifically worries you about how sales teams are using it right now? Well, I think it goes back to that answer engine versus search engine.
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I think we have, if I look back, again going back to the golden age of sales, two thousand and ten to two thousand and twenty-two, I say, you know, you didn't have to work too hard back then because you could just set up, you know, send out generic templates, cadences, disco calls, anybody with a pulse, drone through demos, offer discount.
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Like, that was sales. And look, if you ask like sales science, art, it's both.
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I actually think sales should be a little bit more of a science than an art 'cause the science, the structure, it lays the foundation for the art form. But we have way over-scienced sales.
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I did a presentation at Pavilions event a little while ago called Anything But Predictable, and the idea here was that predictable revenue, as much money as I've made off of that model, I think it ruined sales.
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The segmentation of roles, it turned it into this assembly line, and we focused way more on process and tech and data.
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We didn't teach fundamentals, and so we effectively turned a whole generation of sales reps into robots, and guess what? Now they're getting replaced by robots. And there's no context to it.
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So going back to the answer engine thing, AI is gonna write something that's gonna sound fantastic to the uneducated. The example I use is like merger and acquisition.
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Let's use like if we're gonna go prospecting, you know, the trigger event, merger and acquisition. AI is gonna write you a beautiful message about, "Oh, you just went through a merger and acquisition.
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We can help you do this." But my little ten million dollar company got bought by a twenty billion dollar organization. I was the VP of sales. I was the point person for that.
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To the uneducated, whatever that email is about is gonna be fantastic, right? But what I was going through at that point, I was worried about getting fired.
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I was like panicking about what my team was thinking and all this other stuff. So if you send me this email about how you can help me transition through this, I'm gonna go tell you to pound sand at that moment.
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So if you don't have the context around the output and the fundamentals behind it, like all the grind, the challenge that I find right now is you and I went through the grind, right?
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Like we did the dirty work, like handwritten notes, like going to offices and literally knocking on doors, like taking pictures of directories and going back to the office and doing a little bit of homework.
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All that [beep], as bad as it was, it allowed us to be who we are today and to not have a script, to be on a call and understand the nuances and body language and everything else.
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But now AI is doing all that entry-level [beep] better than any rep ever could. So my question is, A, where do the fundamentals come from? But B, I think more importantly, like what are the fundamentals anymore?
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That's what I'm searching for, 'cause I don't know if we need to get really back to fundamentals so we can leverage these things the right way, or if the fundamentals have fundamentally changed so that we need to look at things completely differently in this world.
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Because I'm not worried about all these AI tools that are coming after sales as far as automation. That's not what I'm worried about. I'm worried about when the client wakes up and realizes they don't need us.
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We are friction. The vast majority of sales reps are friction in the process.
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So now, you know, y'all hear that stat, by the time somebody comes to us, they're already sixty to seventy percent through the sales process, blah, blah, blah.
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Well, that was an overused stat back in the day, and that was directly on inbound leads. Now it's about eighty to ninety percent across the board.
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'Cause five minutes before we get on a call, Jason, if you're a sales rep and you're pitching me something, literally five minutes before I get on a call with you, I'm opening up Claude and being like, "All right, what's this solution all about?
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Do I really need this? How does this align with my strategy here?
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And by the way, where do they stack up against the other top three vendors on G2 Crowd, and what are some questions that I should ask the sales rep to get some clarity on that I can't get from you?"
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And if I get on this call and you try to drag me through your sales process and BANT me or MEDDIC me through some canned piece of [beep] demo in front, like there's zero tolerance for that.
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Sales reps better level up and level up fast because if you are not adding value and meeting the client where they are, not trying to back them through, you're gonna lose.
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Do you think that reps are losing their way in terms of they're confused on where their value add is these days? I think it was tolerated back when money was free, grow at all costs, right?
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So I think it created a false sense of security of what my role was and what my thing was. Like, I'm part of this assembly line. This is what I'm supposed to do. I need to fill out my MEDDIC form.
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I need to make sure I get this thing. Next steps. You're in the negotiation stage of the contract, so I am now negotiating. So I think they've lost their way because the structure's gone.
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Actually, I did a keynote a long time ago with Morgan, actually, who is a millennial, and I think there's a fundamental difference between the millennial generation and the Gen X generation.
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We were the last ones to, quote-unquote, "figure it out." I came home, my mom kicked me out of the house and said, "Be home by dinner. I don't give a [beep] what you do, just don't burn the world down," right?
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And so we had to figure things out, where now with my daughter, I notice every moment of every kid's life is structured. So they go to school from this hour to this hour.
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They have their soccer practice from this hour to this hour. Then they have their iPad for twenty minutes. Then they could talk to this, and they could do that.
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And literally every minute of their lives is structured, and they're taught to the test. They're no longer critical thinking. It's MCAS, it's this.
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And so you take a kid whose entire life has been put into structure, and then you put them out into the real world, and you get a jackass like me to say, "Figure it out," they look at you sideways.
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"What do you mean figure it out? Tell me what to do." And the problem is, is the reaction of somebody like me to that is, "Oh, you don't know what to do? I'm gonna tell you exactly what to do.
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Here's a template, here's a script. Do that." And you give a kid who's been indoctrinated into that their entire lives a script and a template, they're gonna read the script, they're gonna send the template.
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So I think scripts aren't the answer, structure is. You put structure on me and I try to break it. I'm like, "Nope, there's gotta be a better way." But I love building structure.
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These kids need structure, but they will execute within structure better than you and I ever would. The problem right now is structure's falling apart. Social norms of society are falling apart.
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The interaction with clients and the power that they have is falling apart. So the structure isn't there, or it's a lot looser of a structure, if you will.
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And so I think they're losing their way because the structure is unwinding, quite frankly. And you can have this argument across the board as far as our society is concerned.
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I mean, I'm not a religious man, nor will I ever be, but there you can make the connection of religion gave people structure to stay in the lane, and now without it, it's, it's chaos.
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I, you know, we could have that argument a-across the board, but you can make the connection there, right? So, you know, looking at the two sides of AI.
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So it can genuinely improve the buyer experience, but it can also damage trust. What are your thoughts on where it can help and where it can damage trust?
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I think as long as human's the last mile, I think that's where it can benefit because you can just skip the line.
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I think these days the most insulting thing you can say to any client, these three things are the most insulting things you can say to any client: Tell me about your business, tell me about your priorities, and what keeps you up at night?
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I think those are the most insulting things you can say because I can figure out your business in five minutes. I can understand what your priorities are in five seconds. You know what I mean?
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I can type in what keeps somebody like Jason up at night.
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And so if I can do that prep and respect the fact that your number one most valuable asset is time, and I can respect that time by doing my homework and answering the vast majority of the questions that I would need to ask you in the first place, but then coming with a real maybe hypothesis or, "Hey, here's what I'm seeing out there," and maybe bring some insights to that relationship and have a real conversation.
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That's where I think it can amplify this. And by the way, it's never been easier to add value to people's lives.
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I always used to cringe when, you know, sales trainers, I'd talk to them, and they'd be like, "Oh, you know, add value." It's like we're crackheads selling crack to crackheads. It's pretty easy for us to do this.
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But tell that twenty-two-year-old kid who's selling cybersecurity to a CISO to add value. Historically, it was damn near impossible for that twenty-two-year-old kid. Now, going back to curiosity, they can.
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'Cause I can go in and be like, "Hey, I'm about to meet with this CISO in this industry at this company. Claude, give me five ideas of things that I could have you do that would provide value to somebody like that."
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You know, maybe a trend analysis of something or this or whatever it is, and it gives me those five. "Ooh, that one's good.
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Could you go do that deep research and come back with a two-page prompt, a whitepaper on this topic based on how they compare against their competitors?"
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That forward it off, "Hey, I was thinking about your business the other day, and I actually ran this trend analysis of some of your topic." If you're curious, you can come up with value across the board.
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If you're just gonna use it as the answer engine, you will shatter trust because I can't put my finger on it, but I could get the most personalized AI email and still know it was AI.
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My theory on AI, and I think a lot of people are on the same track here, if I know it's AI, if I know it's generated by AI, if I know it's a video or whatever it is, and I know it, I'll read it. I'm interested.
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Oh, this is cool. But the moment somebody tries to use AI to pretend that they're human and I sniff of it, I don't give a [beep] how valuable that content is or whatever it is, I discredit it immediately.
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And I think it's the duped factor. You know what I mean? If I feel duped, and there's that sixth sense that we have as humans that something's not right about this, you know what I mean?
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And then when I get that something's not right about this, I lose trust in you because you're trying to pretend like you're smart when I know you're not. Or they've half-assed it.
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They haven't really done the effort to really understand where they can help. Exactly. So that's why I still believe human needs to be the last mile, right? Let it do all the heavy lifting. Let it do the research.
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Let it write the emails. Let it put together the presentation. But please, Lord, please read it, understand it, make the adjustments, humanize it, add your flavor to it.
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Do you think that there are ways that reps can learn how to be more personable and, and more connection oriented? Yeah. Get out of your apartment. Go to networking events.
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Every city has network-- a thousand networking events every single night. Get out, and don't just go to your friends' social events and stuff like that.
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Go to shake hands, kiss babies, look people in the eye, understand body language, practice your pitch, be curious in other people.
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Those are the type of things that we've lost because not only has this generation grown up a lot differently than you and I did, but COVID, I think, fucked up a lot of stuff. COVID forced us into this world.
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And in this world, it's a transaction world. We used to have the ability to go into somebody's office and be, "Oh, so you're a fisherman," and you know, that type of stuff, and read the body language.
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So that's why I loved going to networking events because when I was early and like a kid in sales and I'd go to a networking event and I'd, "Hi, how are you doing?" And I would give you my pitch.
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I could literally feel you uncomfortably trying to get out of this conversation. I would watch you look here instead of here. I would watch your body language just be like, "I am uninterested in this."
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And I didn't know it at the time, but I was like, "Wait a minute, this person didn't really vibe. This obviously isn't working." And the more at bats you get, the better you can make that human connection.
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So my point is just get out. Get out of the house. Go to events. Meet people. Go to a bar. Stick your hand out. Shake somebody. Hit on a significant other, whatever. Go try it out.
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Put yourself in those positions to, to fail and know what it's like to try to get somebody to engage in a conversation with you.
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Know what it's like when you talk way too much, and you can watch the person's eyes glaze over and lose interest in the conversation.
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See what it's like when you start asking real questions and becoming genuinely curious in people and see how they light up and think that you're a rock star even though you said five words.
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That's what they need to do, in my opinion. I don't think about it, but you're right. That generation has missed out on that. They really have, and it's a shame.
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So if you look at like top performers that you see in your clients, how much of their success comes from what I'd call relationship capital versus pure sales technique? It depends on the sale, quite frankly.
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Mid-market, SMB enterprise, right? But I think, you know, relationships matter. People say they buy from people they like. I tend to disagree with that. They buy from people they trust, and trust takes a while to build.
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And so you can, you know, you can try to build some trust in short term things, but I think they have a balance. They're grounded in the fundamentals.
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They know almost inherently what to do, when to do, how to do it, how to manage their time. But they also know when the relationship does matter, because not all clients are created equal.
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Not all prospects are created equal.
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So they have either a sixth sense or they have a process of identifying, "This one's worth my time, and this one's a long-term opportunity for me to nurture, and this one's a short-term opportunity that I just gotta get through here."
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So I think that there's a balance of their ability to know where to focus their efforts.
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What do you see as an effective way for sellers to build trust with buyers before they actually have a deal that they're trying to close?
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I think that, you know, the homework piece, the curiosity piece, the problem-solving mindset versus the I gotta get my commissions mindset. So here's an example.
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A lot of reps ask me, "John, how hard can you push to get a deal done end of the month, end of the quarter, end of the year?" And my answer is always the same.
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It's in direct proportion to how much it's in your best interest versus their best interest. If it's in their best interest, then you can and you should push as hard as you want 'cause it's in their best interest, right?
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'Cause you figured out what the pain is. There's a real impact to that problem, and if they don't do it, there's gonna be an issue here.
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But if it's just in your best interest 'cause you gotta close the end of the month, end of the quarter, end of the year, you're just a jackass sales rep and there's not much I can do about that.
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Unless you've actually done the hard work of building that deep trust and they value you and you've got a strong relationship that you could actually make a withdrawal. And that's kinda where you're at the next level.
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I always feel sleazy with that too, man. I've done it where I've earned the relationship. I've asked for that favor, "Hey, could you sneak it in this month versus next month?" Yeah, it's a very rare thing, yes.
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And you almost feel the trust go like, "Oh, John, we had it, man," and I-- like there. So yes, and I think, yeah, you gotta earn it, but I think that...
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Here's another one the best reps do, and this is why I think it's so important to, you know, to learn how to prospect and prospect well, 'cause there's one solution to every other problem at every other stage of the sales process.
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You know, negotiations, discounting, all that stuff, and it's a big fat pipeline. You got a big fat pipeline, you put yourself in a position where you want the business, you don't need it.
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And when you want the business, you sell the right way. I close on your timeline, not mine. I cl- you know what I mean? It's your needs, not me. When I need the business, then I do some shady shit.
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Everybody can smell panic when you need the deal. That's just it, you know, when you hear commission breath and all that stuff so... Yeah. It just burns the investments you've made in the relationship, yeah.
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So in your own career, what relationship has changed the trajectory of your career in your life?
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If you think of one person and one connection that really made a difference in terms of building your business, closing a big deal, or rethinking the way you sell.
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I mean, Salesforce was the one, but I think Jeff Hoffman, who's my mentor, he's the guy who came up with Basho in the first place. And, you know, we talk about natural born sales professionals.
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I personally think there's only about five percent of our population who are like the natural bo-- and when I say nat-- like in all the right ways. Like not the sleazy ways, but just the holy [beep], man.
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Like you just know how to engage and people to focus on... Wow, right? He's one of those guys. And I remember it was at Thrive. I was kicking ass, man.
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We were the fastest growing company in Massachusetts a few years in a row. Like my [beep] didn't stink. At twenty-three years old, man, I was the VP of sales and marketing.
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I was doing all of it, and we were smoking them. So my ego was pretty high as far as how good I was at sales.
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And then I went and I went to a public workshop for Basho, and I saw Jeff Hoffman up on stage, and I sat back and said, "Holy [beep]. I got a long way to go. I am nowhere near. That is sales.
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That is a sales professional, and I got a long way to go." And then I bought in hook, line and sinker in the content, and then I ended up working for him, and now him and I are just really good friends.
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Like he lives up in Andover, and I-- we see each other once every other month or so.
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So I, I think if there's one person that I-- I mean, outside of my mom obviously and my wife and daughter and all that fun stuff, you know, he'd probably be the one that I would say had the biggest impact on my career.
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Not purposely, like he didn't say, "I'm gonna make a diff-" You know what I mean? But just him being who he was and being open to me engaging with him and stuff like that, it was-- that'd be the one.
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Did he become a mentor as well and a coach for you? Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, mentor is an interesting thing, right? There's like I, I don't look for formal mentorship, but yes, he is a mentor. No question about it.
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So if a sales professional's listening and it's a Monday morning, they're feeling the pressure of quota, AI disruption, kind of all the things that are happening in the market, what's one daily habit that they could start today to start compounding their relationship capital?
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I mean, there's a routine factor here that I come back to where people treat a lot of stuff in sales like an event, you know what I mean? All my pipeline's empty, so I gotta go prospect, right?
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Or I close all these deals and oh my God, now my pipeline's empty or whatever. So I think it's finding a way to create a routine where you're doing a little bit of a certain thing every day.
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And for me, that's prospecting.
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So I carve out an hour every single morning to pick a few accounts that I wanna get into, do some deep research on them, put together sequences or contact strategies and stay up to date, and then I spend another thirty minutes educating myself.
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So talk about like personal brand building and social selling and that type of thing. You know, a lot of people shy away from it for valid reasons. Personal brand building, there's no short term benefit to it.
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It's definitely the long play. But man, brand in a world of AI is really important.
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And so I, I teach reps how to kinda do what I do as far as building their personal brand, which is you don't have-- A lot of people worry about like posting on LinkedIn or whatever, and like, "I don't know, what am I supposed to post?
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Who am I? I'm not a thought leader or anything like that." I'm... And you don't have to be. You don't have to be the content creator. You just have to be the content curator. And so what I do is pick your niche.
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Say you're going after CISOs in healthcare.
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Go into Claude, GPT, whatever, and say, "Hey, could you give me the top five thought leaders, CISO healthcare who are talking about the challenges and priorities that CISOs in healthcare are dealing with right now?
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Could you give me their name, their LinkedIn profile, and if they have a blog, what it looks like?"
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And then you find those people, you follow them in some way, shape, or form, whether it's on LinkedIn or a blog, you know, aggregator or something like that, like Feedly.
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And then every morning you read some articles from those people with the focus of learning. Forget about posting, sharing, anything like that for a minute. Just focus on learning.
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Okay, I wanna learn about this persona so I can speak better, let you know, have better conversations, business acumen, improve that.
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And if you come across an article that you've learned something from, and only when you learn something from it, then what you do is you take that, you know, maybe comment on it, whatever it is, but then you share that piece of content on, on social with your context.
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So you'd be like, "Hey, a really interesting article here by Jason. Some of my key takeaways were X, Y, and Z, and I was kinda curious, what do people think on this?" Now what happens is your primary goal has been met.
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You've learned something. So who gives a [beep] how many people comment, share on it? It doesn't matter. But say I write a blog and you read my blog and you like it. So you do that.
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"Hey, a really interesting blog by John here." And you share it. Now, somebody in your network who you're connected to reads my blog because you shared it and they get value out of it. Who do they thank? Me. You.
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They don't say, "Thanks, John, for writing the article." They say, "Thanks, Jason, for sharing the article." So you get all the credit, I did all the work.
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So in thirty minutes a day of being hyper-focused on learning about your industry from the actual thought leaders, you read a couple of articles, your business acumen goes up, you post some stuff on social so your feeds start looking, oh, this is not just a sales rep trying to sell [beep], this is somebody who's trying to learn about the industry, and you get people to connected, and you might even be able to take one of those articles and share it with a CISO that you come up.
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"Hey, did you..." So when you're in a conversation with them, "Hey, did you see that article the other day in Gartner about how CISOs right now are dealing with these things? Are you seeing the same stuff?"
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That type of conversation goes over. And actually, as I say that, there's the other piece that I would say is case studies. Go talk to customers. You gotta believe in what you sell.
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The number one thing I think you need to be successful in sales is a belief in what you do, and the easiest way to do that is go talk to clients and talk to them about the difference that your product or solution makes.
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And it-- once you realize that, you can translate that into everybody else. So those two pieces are the two things that I would do as a rep who's trying to figure out their way through this mess.
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Which ties again into trust and value. So what's one thing sellers should stop doing immediately because it makes them seem transactional and erodes their trust and their focus on delivering value?
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Touching base and checking in. Two most meaningless phrases in sales is touching base and checking in. It means there's no reason for your call or reach out, so there's no reason for me to talk to you.
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Always have a reason. If you're gonna reach out to me, you know, hold me accountable for what we talked about. "Hey, John, you said this. Are we still on this timeline?"
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Or, "Hey, John, you know, I've been keeping myself updated on you guys. I noticed this happened. Thought it'd be worth a conversation." Like, have a reason. Be purposeful. Don't just go through the motions.
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So in wrapping up, in terms of you talked a little bit about your mentor and kind of who inspired you, is there another unlikely or surprising relationship that you formed throughout your career that ended up being a strategic advantage for you?
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I don't know if it's unlikely, but you know, when Basho went belly up, so the way that worked was, you know, two thousand and seven, new CEO came in, Jeff left, a new CEO came in and just tanked the company and fired us all on the spot one day.
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And I remember there was this woman, Megan. She wasn't the CFO, she was the director of finance. And I had developed a good relationship with her while she was at Basho.
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And she had a law degree, she had a finance degree, and she had a personality, right, which is a rare trifecta. And she was just really competent and really good at her job, and I enjoyed working with her.
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And so when we all got fired and I kinda started the separate company, Kensei Partners, keep that thing going, I went to her, I was like, "Megan, I can't afford you as the C-level that I think you are.
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You're not an admin, but could you do our books on the side? And then one day, when I can afford you, I want you to drop whatever you're doing, and I want you to come work with me." And she said okay.
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And then fast-forward a couple years, I was like, "I can afford you." And she did.
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She dropped everything, came over and worked, and she's been my ride or die since then, all through the mess and dropping, you know, six million down to zero. She's the only one who stayed by.
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You know, and I tell entrepreneurs all the time, if they're gonna start a company, please, I beg you, do not start a company with somebody who can do what you do.
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Unfortunately, after Basho went belly up, there was three of us left. You know, Megan was outsourced. But there was three of us left, and we were all sales trainers, and we could all do the same job.
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And that sounds great 'cause, oh, we all can talk, you know, because eventually you kinda look at it and be like, "Eh, I can do that better." Right?
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Or-- And so I always say, like, if you're gonna go into work, go into somebody who's completely different. If you're a business dev in sales, then get an operations person, get a finance person, get a technical person.
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That three-headed monster, that's what should start a business because you're the expert in your space, b-- and you can push on those other people, but you rely on them to do that thing.
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And I've watched business after business fail because they don't have the foundation. They don't have somebody from an operations and a finance standpoint allowing the business development person to do what they do.
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And this is where E-Myth comes into play, where you end up working for your company, which is the worst possible thing you could do as an entrepreneur.
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So I think that relationship, I don't wanna say unlikely, but it's one that I think is critical to anybody who wants to get out there and start building and doing their thing, is just don't go with just because your friend is good at what you do and you guys have the s-- share the same brain.
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That's actually a terrible business partner in my experience. That's a great point. Awesome. John, been a pleasure.
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I thank, thank you so much for taking the time out, and I, I look forward to connecting up with you in person at some point. Thanks for having me on here, Jason. I appreciate it.
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What a great conversation with John Barrows. John reminded us that the fundamentals, prospecting, discovery, negotiation, trust, and real buyer relationships are not going away.
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If anything, they're becoming even more important in the AI era. To help us grow this community, please take thirty seconds to follow, subscribe, and leave a review on Apple Podcasts.
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It's the best way to support the show. You can listen to us on Spotify, Apple, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'll see you in the next episode. Thanks for listening to Relationship Capitalists.
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If today's conversation sparked something for you, the best way to invest in your own relationship capital is simple. Share this episode with one person in your network who needs to hear it.
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To learn more about how to build and scale your relationship capital through proven frameworks and simple daily actions, visit relationshipcapital.com.
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And if you haven't already, search for Relationship Capitalists on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen. And hit subscribe so you never miss an episode.
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Relationship Capitalists is produced by FAME, the B2B podcast agency that grows your business. I'm Jason Mashrellie. Thanks for being here. [upbeat music]
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It's the one thing that AI can't do is give a [beep]. I call it the give a [beep] factor. It can pretend to. Mine kisses my ass all the time, even though I tell it not to, but it doesn't. It fundamentally can't care.
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Welcome to Relationship Capitalists, where super connectors share how they build trust, create value, and thrive when AI changes everything.
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In a world where expertise is being commoditized, your ability to build and sustain high value human connections is what sets you apart. I'm your host, Jason Ashrelli. Let's dive in. Welcome to Relationship Capitalists.
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I'm your host, Jason Ashrelli. In a world being reshaped by AI, the one asset that cannot be automated is your ability to build deep, high value human connections.
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Today, I'm joined by one of the most respected voices in modern sales, John Barrows. A man who spent more than twenty-five years in sales.
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He's trained teams at companies like Salesforce, LinkedIn, Google, Amazon, Box, Slack, and Okta, and built JBSales into one of the most trusted training organizations in the world.
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In this episode, we're going to explore how AI is reshaping the buyer-seller relationship, why sales fundamentals matter more than ever, and how intentional human connection becomes a competitive advantage in an automated world.
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Let's dive in. Hey, John. Thanks for joining today. I'm excited to have you share your perspectives on human connection in sales in the age of AI.
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And over the years, you've trained some of the best sales teams in the world and have seen every major shift in the profession.
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So I guess the question is that we want to start out with here is, as AI starts to automate more of the sales process, what is the one human sales skill you believe will be the most valuable in this space?
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I think curiosity by far. I think curiosity, it's something that I've been searching for a while the answer of, is it a nature nurture thing, right? Are you naturally born curious or can you develop it?
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And I, I think genuine natural overarching curiosity is something you're born with. But I do think you can become curious. And the way that you become curious is by getting interested in something.
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So once you're interested, you become curious, you wanna learn more. And I think that's the thing with AI right now is if you are curious, it is a superpower. It is an absolute superpower.
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You can pretty much do, ask whatever you want. It's the best business coach you've ever come across, best sales coach you've ever come across.
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But if you're not curious and you're just basically looking for the answer, it's a replacement. You know, 'cause I talk a lot about, you know, we've gone from this search engine to an answer engine.
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And to me, that's a dangerous thing because for guys like you and I who are curious, it's, like I said, superpower. Tell me more. Would you get this? Source check this, please. What's going on?
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Give me a different perspective. What am I missing, right? Holy smokes.
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But unfortunately for the vast majority of our population who are just, let's face it, lazy, they're gonna take that answer and copy paste it and send or whatever.
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And in that case, I don't understand the value of the human in that scenario. Absolutely. So things have changed obviously in the last twenty-five years since you've been in sales.
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From making hundreds of phone calls, I was there as well in the trenches, and now you're running a business that you've trained, you know, some leading top sales orgs at Salesforce, Google, Amazon, LinkedIn, and more.
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And so when you first realized-- you know, when did you first realize that this was the path that you wanted to take, and what keeps you really passionate about it? Yeah, it's funny, right?
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'Cause there's two sides to this coin. There's the sales side of the coin and then the training side of the coin.
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Sales, I kinda fell into just like everybody else 'cause back when you and I were getting into it, there was no degree in sales.
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Like it was the-- it kinda still is, but there's at least two or three hundred colleges here in the US that you can get your degree in it, but it's still kind of the default profession, right?
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And so I got my degree in marketing 'cause I didn't know what I wanted to be when I grew up, and then I got out and I realized I don't wanna do this. And I eased into sales.
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I think my journey was very fortunate in the sense like DeWalt power tools, right? So Black & Decker was my first job and DeWalt power tools.
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And it was under event marketing, so marketing was there, but it was really sales/event marketing, so my job was to drive around. I didn't have a quota, but it was like I, I had to evangelize, right?
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And get people to buy DeWalt tools. And then I got promoted and I went to the Home Depot team.
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They had to buy DeWalt obviously, but I had to take that ten thousand dollar order, turn it to a fifty thousand dollar order through relationships, cross sell, upsell, so it was a little bit more sales.
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Then I got to Xerox, and that's where I was like got my real formal sales education, right? I mean, talk about selling a commodity.
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And I don't know, I just felt I've always known that I wasn't the brightest kid out there, but I always knew I had a strong work ethic and I could outwork everybody.
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I still to this day at fifty years old, I still feel like I can outwork the vast majority of people out there.
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And to me, I always thought, "Well, if I work harder than everybody else, I should probably get paid more than everybody else." And so that's why I was a waiter when I was a kid and all those things.
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So sales was kind of in my DNA whether I liked it or not because I just didn't like confinement.
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And when I found my passion for it was when I started to really realize, like, I'm pretty decent at this, and I like making a difference. I was never jazzed up by the close.
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Like my mentor, Jeff Hoffman, that dude, oh, man, to watch him close a deal, it's art, and he gets so fired up for it. I liked it. Obviously, I like getting paid, but I loved the relationship.
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I loved seeing the difference that I made for implementing something that somebody was like, "Holy smokes. Thank you so much."
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And so fast forward, started another company, IT Services, sold it to Staples, and then Staples fired me. And I was in a bit of a panic because I had been seven years at this startup. It was, uh, Thrive Networks.
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It was our-- started from zero, grew it, fastest growing company in Massachusetts, and then I had no plan B. I was all in on this. This is what I did, right? And even though when Staples bought us, I knew it was wrong.
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I-- it didn't feel right. I didn't fit in the corporate structure, it whatever, but I kept fighting, fighting 'cause that's what you do. And then they fired me. Well, offered me another pos-- they fired me.
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And I was in a panic because I didn't know what to do. And I'm like, "Oh man, am I an IT sales guy?" I'm like, "Is that what I am? Gross. I don't even like computers," right?
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And my wife is the one who helps me out with this. She said, "All right, let's take a step back." She goes, "Stop panicking.
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Let's take a look at your career, and why were you one of the top reps in each one of the roles that you... Right? So let's look at DeWalt. Why were you one of the best reps in the area for DeWalt?"
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I'm like, "I don't know. DeWalt power tools are kind of cool. I don't know, they're pretty easy for me to talk about 'cause they were badass tools, right?" "Xerox, why were you one of the best in Xerox?"
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It's not like I loved copiers, but I genuinely believe that Xerox was the best copier company in the industry, so it wasn't hard for me to represent them.
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And then Thryv, my company, like, it wasn't that I cared about the technology, but I genuinely believed that the people that I was representing and the work that we were doing was better than anybody else out there.
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So then it dawned on me that it doesn't matter what I sell, it matters that I believe in what I sell. And so there was an aha moment one.
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The aha moment for training was very soon thereafter because Basho, which is-- I loved the training and because it worked so well for me, they said, "Johnny, you wanna be a trainer?" And I was like, "No."
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And they're like, "Why not?" I'm like, "Well, first of all, I had never met a trainer I'd really liked," 'cause they were all either failed sales professionals or professional presenters, and I was like, "Gross."
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But they had an interesting opportunity, like, where they-- you had to use the techniques to sell so you could train. So I had to sell to train, which I, "Okay," 'cause sales was my passion.
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And I remember my mom's a career counselor since I was a kid. I've had a Myers-Briggs since I was, like, twelve.
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And I called her up and I said, "Ma, I got an interesting opportunity, and I'd like, like your feedback on this. It's to be sales training. It's just so weird." And she literally starts laughing.
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And I was like, "What are you laughing about, John Michael?" And she's the only one who calls me John Michael. She goes, "I never wanted to tell you what to do in your career."
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She goes, "But if there is anybody that I thought that would be a good teacher/trainer, it's you." Wow, you're sending chills down my arm, man. I was like, "What?" I was like, "How?" She's, "You just have that."
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And I was like, "Huh." So part of my interview with Basho was I had to do a training, and I'd never formally done a training before.
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So I literally, this was back in the day, I went to Barnes & Noble, I got Training for Dummies, and I started reading it.
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And literally the first page, it says, "Here's the ten characteristics of whether or not you know you're cut out to be a trainer."
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And Jason, when I tell you every single one of them, I was like, "What the-- Apparently, I'm supposed to be a trainer." Like, oh my God, like, every one of those things I love doing.
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And so between sales and training, it just, it was kinda like fish to water for me, and I, and then I took off.
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So those are the two aha moments in my career that really got me grounded in the why I love this profession, why I keep doing it, why I keep grinding.
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And the fact that the last piece I'll say is a lot of people have a misperception of sales about what it really is because of the movies, and they've probably, you know, rightfully so, they've had shitty experiences from a sales standpoint.
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But I always say, if you think sales is about convincing anybody of anything, you're doing it wrong. Sales is about helping people solve problems or achieve goals. That's it.
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And if you have that mentality and you like solving problems and you like helping people, sales is the, I think, the greatest profession in the world.
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And I think there's so much lip service around that, but it's actually genuinely caring and actually genuinely driving that success all the way through because it's almost like the close is the beginning. Yeah.
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And looping this back to AI, it's the one thing that AI can't do, is give a [beep]. Yeah. [laughs] I call it the give a [beep] factor. It can pretend to. Mine kisses my ass all the time, you know what I mean?
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Even though I tell it not to, right? But it doesn't. It fundamentally can't care. So if you can really care, and that's where Morgan Ingram, who's in the space, like I-- he worked f- with me for a while.
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He was my first hire from a training standpoint. And I tell this story where he was doing really-- He was a manager, and he was doing fine.
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He was creating sequences, and we were going through, and he was getting okay results, but it kinda leveled up. And he came to me one day and he goes, "John, I don't understand.
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I feel like I should be getting better results based on all the work I'm putting in here. What do I need to do different?" And I said to him, I said, "Morgan, your results aren't gonna change until one thing does."
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And he goes, "What?" I go, "Until you start giving a shit, man." And he goes, "What?"
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I go, "Look, I know you care about your job, I know you care about all this stuff, but until you start thinking about the person on the other end of that email as a person who gets up in the morning, has to put their kids on the bus, has to sit in traffic, has their boss yelling at them.
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Like, until you start thinking of them like that as opposed to a number you have to hit, a cadence you have to send, a call you have to make, like, until you turn that bridge, man, your results aren't gonna be any different."
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Yeah, it's not just caring about going through the motions. It's actually caring about the important stuff. People, the human factor.
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So I was listening to some of your podcasts, and you talk a lot about that you carry a quota, and you think of it that way, you know, running your own business.
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And, and so, you know, what's really kind of shaped the way that you teach sales compared to others that are out there just teaching theory? Yeah, I think that's my competitive differentiator, is that I'm not a trainer.
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I'm a sales rep who trains. That's what drives me nuts right now with all these influencers and sales gurus, if you will, who were successful back in two thousand and fifteen and two thousand and twenty.
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You know what I mean? "Oh, I was the first person at XYZ company to take it from zero to a billion, and now I'm gonna implement all my metho..." I'm like, "Are you using that today? Have you tried what you just said?
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Have you tried it live in a scenario in today's environment? 'Cause if you haven't, I have a hard time listening to you." If you were over at Zoom in twenty twenty, shut up. I literally don't wanna listen to you.
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Even Salesforce, quite frankly. On the rocket ship, that was a lot of order taking. And so I think that what differentiates me is I'm in the [beep] right now. I had a great Q1. My Q2 and Q3 pipeline, poof, disappeared.
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And even though I did everything right, executive alignment, all these things, and pain and impact and gap and all that stuff. "Sorry, John, the priority's changed.
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Sorry, John," because things are moving so fast right now. So I'm in full-on prospecting mode again.
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I'm doing LinkedIn, and I'm grinding the shit out of this, and I'm learning what's working now compared to what worked six months ago, two years ago. And so as I train, I translate that.
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I think you learn a lot more from your failures than you do a success, so you'll see me share all my failures. I'm like, "Oh, did that. Whoa, that didn't work. Don't try that. That was a disaster." You know what I mean?
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So I think that's what gives me the competitive advantage, is the authenticity and the no bull [beep] and the fact that I'm doing it. So you've talked about AI as being both frightening and exciting.
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So what specifically worries you about how sales teams are using it right now? Well, I think it goes back to that answer engine versus search engine.
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I think we have, if I look back, again going back to the golden age of sales, two thousand and ten to two thousand and twenty-two, I say, you know, you didn't have to work too hard back then because you could just set up, you know, send out generic templates, cadences, disco calls, anybody with a pulse, drone through demos, offer discount.
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Like, that was sales. And look, if you ask like sales science, art, it's both.
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I actually think sales should be a little bit more of a science than an art 'cause the science, the structure, it lays the foundation for the art form. But we have way over-scienced sales.
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I did a presentation at Pavilions event a little while ago called Anything But Predictable, and the idea here was that predictable revenue, as much money as I've made off of that model, I think it ruined sales.
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The segmentation of roles, it turned it into this assembly line, and we focused way more on process and tech and data.
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We didn't teach fundamentals, and so we effectively turned a whole generation of sales reps into robots, and guess what? Now they're getting replaced by robots. And there's no context to it.
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So going back to the answer engine thing, AI is gonna write something that's gonna sound fantastic to the uneducated. The example I use is like merger and acquisition.
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Let's use like if we're gonna go prospecting, you know, the trigger event, merger and acquisition. AI is gonna write you a beautiful message about, "Oh, you just went through a merger and acquisition.
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We can help you do this." But my little ten million dollar company got bought by a twenty billion dollar organization. I was the VP of sales. I was the point person for that.
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To the uneducated, whatever that email is about is gonna be fantastic, right? But what I was going through at that point, I was worried about getting fired.
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I was like panicking about what my team was thinking and all this other stuff. So if you send me this email about how you can help me transition through this, I'm gonna go tell you to pound sand at that moment.
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So if you don't have the context around the output and the fundamentals behind it, like all the grind, the challenge that I find right now is you and I went through the grind, right?
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Like we did the dirty work, like handwritten notes, like going to offices and literally knocking on doors, like taking pictures of directories and going back to the office and doing a little bit of homework.
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All that [beep], as bad as it was, it allowed us to be who we are today and to not have a script, to be on a call and understand the nuances and body language and everything else.
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But now AI is doing all that entry-level [beep] better than any rep ever could. So my question is, A, where do the fundamentals come from? But B, I think more importantly, like what are the fundamentals anymore?
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That's what I'm searching for, 'cause I don't know if we need to get really back to fundamentals so we can leverage these things the right way, or if the fundamentals have fundamentally changed so that we need to look at things completely differently in this world.
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Because I'm not worried about all these AI tools that are coming after sales as far as automation. That's not what I'm worried about. I'm worried about when the client wakes up and realizes they don't need us.
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We are friction. The vast majority of sales reps are friction in the process.
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So now, you know, y'all hear that stat, by the time somebody comes to us, they're already sixty to seventy percent through the sales process, blah, blah, blah.
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Well, that was an overused stat back in the day, and that was directly on inbound leads. Now it's about eighty to ninety percent across the board.
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'Cause five minutes before we get on a call, Jason, if you're a sales rep and you're pitching me something, literally five minutes before I get on a call with you, I'm opening up Claude and being like, "All right, what's this solution all about?
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Do I really need this? How does this align with my strategy here?
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And by the way, where do they stack up against the other top three vendors on G2 Crowd, and what are some questions that I should ask the sales rep to get some clarity on that I can't get from you?"
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And if I get on this call and you try to drag me through your sales process and BANT me or MEDDIC me through some canned piece of [beep] demo in front, like there's zero tolerance for that.
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Sales reps better level up and level up fast because if you are not adding value and meeting the client where they are, not trying to back them through, you're gonna lose.
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Do you think that reps are losing their way in terms of they're confused on where their value add is these days? I think it was tolerated back when money was free, grow at all costs, right?
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So I think it created a false sense of security of what my role was and what my thing was. Like, I'm part of this assembly line. This is what I'm supposed to do. I need to fill out my MEDDIC form.
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I need to make sure I get this thing. Next steps. You're in the negotiation stage of the contract, so I am now negotiating. So I think they've lost their way because the structure's gone.
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Actually, I did a keynote a long time ago with Morgan, actually, who is a millennial, and I think there's a fundamental difference between the millennial generation and the Gen X generation.
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We were the last ones to, quote-unquote, "figure it out." I came home, my mom kicked me out of the house and said, "Be home by dinner. I don't give a [beep] what you do, just don't burn the world down," right?
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And so we had to figure things out, where now with my daughter, I notice every moment of every kid's life is structured. So they go to school from this hour to this hour.
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They have their soccer practice from this hour to this hour. Then they have their iPad for twenty minutes. Then they could talk to this, and they could do that.
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And literally every minute of their lives is structured, and they're taught to the test. They're no longer critical thinking. It's MCAS, it's this.
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And so you take a kid whose entire life has been put into structure, and then you put them out into the real world, and you get a jackass like me to say, "Figure it out," they look at you sideways.
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"What do you mean figure it out? Tell me what to do." And the problem is, is the reaction of somebody like me to that is, "Oh, you don't know what to do? I'm gonna tell you exactly what to do.
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Here's a template, here's a script. Do that." And you give a kid who's been indoctrinated into that their entire lives a script and a template, they're gonna read the script, they're gonna send the template.
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So I think scripts aren't the answer, structure is. You put structure on me and I try to break it. I'm like, "Nope, there's gotta be a better way." But I love building structure.
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These kids need structure, but they will execute within structure better than you and I ever would. The problem right now is structure's falling apart. Social norms of society are falling apart.
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The interaction with clients and the power that they have is falling apart. So the structure isn't there, or it's a lot looser of a structure, if you will.
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And so I think they're losing their way because the structure is unwinding, quite frankly. And you can have this argument across the board as far as our society is concerned.
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I mean, I'm not a religious man, nor will I ever be, but there you can make the connection of religion gave people structure to stay in the lane, and now without it, it's, it's chaos.
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I, you know, we could have that argument a-across the board, but you can make the connection there, right? So, you know, looking at the two sides of AI.
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So it can genuinely improve the buyer experience, but it can also damage trust. What are your thoughts on where it can help and where it can damage trust?
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I think as long as human's the last mile, I think that's where it can benefit because you can just skip the line.
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I think these days the most insulting thing you can say to any client, these three things are the most insulting things you can say to any client: Tell me about your business, tell me about your priorities, and what keeps you up at night?
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I think those are the most insulting things you can say because I can figure out your business in five minutes. I can understand what your priorities are in five seconds. You know what I mean?
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I can type in what keeps somebody like Jason up at night.
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And so if I can do that prep and respect the fact that your number one most valuable asset is time, and I can respect that time by doing my homework and answering the vast majority of the questions that I would need to ask you in the first place, but then coming with a real maybe hypothesis or, "Hey, here's what I'm seeing out there," and maybe bring some insights to that relationship and have a real conversation.
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That's where I think it can amplify this. And by the way, it's never been easier to add value to people's lives.
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I always used to cringe when, you know, sales trainers, I'd talk to them, and they'd be like, "Oh, you know, add value." It's like we're crackheads selling crack to crackheads. It's pretty easy for us to do this.
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But tell that twenty-two-year-old kid who's selling cybersecurity to a CISO to add value. Historically, it was damn near impossible for that twenty-two-year-old kid. Now, going back to curiosity, they can.
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'Cause I can go in and be like, "Hey, I'm about to meet with this CISO in this industry at this company. Claude, give me five ideas of things that I could have you do that would provide value to somebody like that."
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You know, maybe a trend analysis of something or this or whatever it is, and it gives me those five. "Ooh, that one's good.
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Could you go do that deep research and come back with a two-page prompt, a whitepaper on this topic based on how they compare against their competitors?"
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That forward it off, "Hey, I was thinking about your business the other day, and I actually ran this trend analysis of some of your topic." If you're curious, you can come up with value across the board.
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If you're just gonna use it as the answer engine, you will shatter trust because I can't put my finger on it, but I could get the most personalized AI email and still know it was AI.
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My theory on AI, and I think a lot of people are on the same track here, if I know it's AI, if I know it's generated by AI, if I know it's a video or whatever it is, and I know it, I'll read it. I'm interested.
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Oh, this is cool. But the moment somebody tries to use AI to pretend that they're human and I sniff of it, I don't give a [beep] how valuable that content is or whatever it is, I discredit it immediately.
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And I think it's the duped factor. You know what I mean? If I feel duped, and there's that sixth sense that we have as humans that something's not right about this, you know what I mean?
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And then when I get that something's not right about this, I lose trust in you because you're trying to pretend like you're smart when I know you're not. Or they've half-assed it.
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They haven't really done the effort to really understand where they can help. Exactly. So that's why I still believe human needs to be the last mile, right? Let it do all the heavy lifting. Let it do the research.
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Let it write the emails. Let it put together the presentation. But please, Lord, please read it, understand it, make the adjustments, humanize it, add your flavor to it.
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Do you think that there are ways that reps can learn how to be more personable and, and more connection oriented? Yeah. Get out of your apartment. Go to networking events.
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Every city has network-- a thousand networking events every single night. Get out, and don't just go to your friends' social events and stuff like that.
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Go to shake hands, kiss babies, look people in the eye, understand body language, practice your pitch, be curious in other people.
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Those are the type of things that we've lost because not only has this generation grown up a lot differently than you and I did, but COVID, I think, fucked up a lot of stuff. COVID forced us into this world.
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And in this world, it's a transaction world. We used to have the ability to go into somebody's office and be, "Oh, so you're a fisherman," and you know, that type of stuff, and read the body language.
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So that's why I loved going to networking events because when I was early and like a kid in sales and I'd go to a networking event and I'd, "Hi, how are you doing?" And I would give you my pitch.
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I could literally feel you uncomfortably trying to get out of this conversation. I would watch you look here instead of here. I would watch your body language just be like, "I am uninterested in this."
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And I didn't know it at the time, but I was like, "Wait a minute, this person didn't really vibe. This obviously isn't working." And the more at bats you get, the better you can make that human connection.
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So my point is just get out. Get out of the house. Go to events. Meet people. Go to a bar. Stick your hand out. Shake somebody. Hit on a significant other, whatever. Go try it out.
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Put yourself in those positions to, to fail and know what it's like to try to get somebody to engage in a conversation with you.
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Know what it's like when you talk way too much, and you can watch the person's eyes glaze over and lose interest in the conversation.
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See what it's like when you start asking real questions and becoming genuinely curious in people and see how they light up and think that you're a rock star even though you said five words.
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That's what they need to do, in my opinion. I don't think about it, but you're right. That generation has missed out on that. They really have, and it's a shame.
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So if you look at like top performers that you see in your clients, how much of their success comes from what I'd call relationship capital versus pure sales technique? It depends on the sale, quite frankly.
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Mid-market, SMB enterprise, right? But I think, you know, relationships matter. People say they buy from people they like. I tend to disagree with that. They buy from people they trust, and trust takes a while to build.
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And so you can, you know, you can try to build some trust in short term things, but I think they have a balance. They're grounded in the fundamentals.
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They know almost inherently what to do, when to do, how to do it, how to manage their time. But they also know when the relationship does matter, because not all clients are created equal.
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Not all prospects are created equal.
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So they have either a sixth sense or they have a process of identifying, "This one's worth my time, and this one's a long-term opportunity for me to nurture, and this one's a short-term opportunity that I just gotta get through here."
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So I think that there's a balance of their ability to know where to focus their efforts.
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What do you see as an effective way for sellers to build trust with buyers before they actually have a deal that they're trying to close?
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I think that, you know, the homework piece, the curiosity piece, the problem-solving mindset versus the I gotta get my commissions mindset. So here's an example.
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A lot of reps ask me, "John, how hard can you push to get a deal done end of the month, end of the quarter, end of the year?" And my answer is always the same.
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It's in direct proportion to how much it's in your best interest versus their best interest. If it's in their best interest, then you can and you should push as hard as you want 'cause it's in their best interest, right?
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'Cause you figured out what the pain is. There's a real impact to that problem, and if they don't do it, there's gonna be an issue here.
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But if it's just in your best interest 'cause you gotta close the end of the month, end of the quarter, end of the year, you're just a jackass sales rep and there's not much I can do about that.
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Unless you've actually done the hard work of building that deep trust and they value you and you've got a strong relationship that you could actually make a withdrawal. And that's kinda where you're at the next level.
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I always feel sleazy with that too, man. I've done it where I've earned the relationship. I've asked for that favor, "Hey, could you sneak it in this month versus next month?" Yeah, it's a very rare thing, yes.
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And you almost feel the trust go like, "Oh, John, we had it, man," and I-- like there. So yes, and I think, yeah, you gotta earn it, but I think that...
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Here's another one the best reps do, and this is why I think it's so important to, you know, to learn how to prospect and prospect well, 'cause there's one solution to every other problem at every other stage of the sales process.
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You know, negotiations, discounting, all that stuff, and it's a big fat pipeline. You got a big fat pipeline, you put yourself in a position where you want the business, you don't need it.
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And when you want the business, you sell the right way. I close on your timeline, not mine. I cl- you know what I mean? It's your needs, not me. When I need the business, then I do some shady shit.
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Everybody can smell panic when you need the deal. That's just it, you know, when you hear commission breath and all that stuff so... Yeah. It just burns the investments you've made in the relationship, yeah.
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So in your own career, what relationship has changed the trajectory of your career in your life?
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If you think of one person and one connection that really made a difference in terms of building your business, closing a big deal, or rethinking the way you sell.
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I mean, Salesforce was the one, but I think Jeff Hoffman, who's my mentor, he's the guy who came up with Basho in the first place. And, you know, we talk about natural born sales professionals.
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I personally think there's only about five percent of our population who are like the natural bo-- and when I say nat-- like in all the right ways. Like not the sleazy ways, but just the holy [beep], man.
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Like you just know how to engage and people to focus on... Wow, right? He's one of those guys. And I remember it was at Thrive. I was kicking ass, man.
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We were the fastest growing company in Massachusetts a few years in a row. Like my [beep] didn't stink. At twenty-three years old, man, I was the VP of sales and marketing.
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I was doing all of it, and we were smoking them. So my ego was pretty high as far as how good I was at sales.
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And then I went and I went to a public workshop for Basho, and I saw Jeff Hoffman up on stage, and I sat back and said, "Holy [beep]. I got a long way to go. I am nowhere near. That is sales.
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That is a sales professional, and I got a long way to go." And then I bought in hook, line and sinker in the content, and then I ended up working for him, and now him and I are just really good friends.
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Like he lives up in Andover, and I-- we see each other once every other month or so.
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So I, I think if there's one person that I-- I mean, outside of my mom obviously and my wife and daughter and all that fun stuff, you know, he'd probably be the one that I would say had the biggest impact on my career.
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Not purposely, like he didn't say, "I'm gonna make a diff-" You know what I mean? But just him being who he was and being open to me engaging with him and stuff like that, it was-- that'd be the one.
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Did he become a mentor as well and a coach for you? Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, mentor is an interesting thing, right? There's like I, I don't look for formal mentorship, but yes, he is a mentor. No question about it.
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So if a sales professional's listening and it's a Monday morning, they're feeling the pressure of quota, AI disruption, kind of all the things that are happening in the market, what's one daily habit that they could start today to start compounding their relationship capital?
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I mean, there's a routine factor here that I come back to where people treat a lot of stuff in sales like an event, you know what I mean? All my pipeline's empty, so I gotta go prospect, right?
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Or I close all these deals and oh my God, now my pipeline's empty or whatever. So I think it's finding a way to create a routine where you're doing a little bit of a certain thing every day.
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And for me, that's prospecting.
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So I carve out an hour every single morning to pick a few accounts that I wanna get into, do some deep research on them, put together sequences or contact strategies and stay up to date, and then I spend another thirty minutes educating myself.
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So talk about like personal brand building and social selling and that type of thing. You know, a lot of people shy away from it for valid reasons. Personal brand building, there's no short term benefit to it.
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It's definitely the long play. But man, brand in a world of AI is really important.
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And so I, I teach reps how to kinda do what I do as far as building their personal brand, which is you don't have-- A lot of people worry about like posting on LinkedIn or whatever, and like, "I don't know, what am I supposed to post?
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Who am I? I'm not a thought leader or anything like that." I'm... And you don't have to be. You don't have to be the content creator. You just have to be the content curator. And so what I do is pick your niche.
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Say you're going after CISOs in healthcare.
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Go into Claude, GPT, whatever, and say, "Hey, could you give me the top five thought leaders, CISO healthcare who are talking about the challenges and priorities that CISOs in healthcare are dealing with right now?
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Could you give me their name, their LinkedIn profile, and if they have a blog, what it looks like?"
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And then you find those people, you follow them in some way, shape, or form, whether it's on LinkedIn or a blog, you know, aggregator or something like that, like Feedly.
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And then every morning you read some articles from those people with the focus of learning. Forget about posting, sharing, anything like that for a minute. Just focus on learning.
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Okay, I wanna learn about this persona so I can speak better, let you know, have better conversations, business acumen, improve that.
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And if you come across an article that you've learned something from, and only when you learn something from it, then what you do is you take that, you know, maybe comment on it, whatever it is, but then you share that piece of content on, on social with your context.
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So you'd be like, "Hey, a really interesting article here by Jason. Some of my key takeaways were X, Y, and Z, and I was kinda curious, what do people think on this?" Now what happens is your primary goal has been met.
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You've learned something. So who gives a [beep] how many people comment, share on it? It doesn't matter. But say I write a blog and you read my blog and you like it. So you do that.
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"Hey, a really interesting blog by John here." And you share it. Now, somebody in your network who you're connected to reads my blog because you shared it and they get value out of it. Who do they thank? Me. You.
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They don't say, "Thanks, John, for writing the article." They say, "Thanks, Jason, for sharing the article." So you get all the credit, I did all the work.
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So in thirty minutes a day of being hyper-focused on learning about your industry from the actual thought leaders, you read a couple of articles, your business acumen goes up, you post some stuff on social so your feeds start looking, oh, this is not just a sales rep trying to sell [beep], this is somebody who's trying to learn about the industry, and you get people to connected, and you might even be able to take one of those articles and share it with a CISO that you come up.
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"Hey, did you..." So when you're in a conversation with them, "Hey, did you see that article the other day in Gartner about how CISOs right now are dealing with these things? Are you seeing the same stuff?"
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That type of conversation goes over. And actually, as I say that, there's the other piece that I would say is case studies. Go talk to customers. You gotta believe in what you sell.
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The number one thing I think you need to be successful in sales is a belief in what you do, and the easiest way to do that is go talk to clients and talk to them about the difference that your product or solution makes.
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And it-- once you realize that, you can translate that into everybody else. So those two pieces are the two things that I would do as a rep who's trying to figure out their way through this mess.
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Which ties again into trust and value. So what's one thing sellers should stop doing immediately because it makes them seem transactional and erodes their trust and their focus on delivering value?
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Touching base and checking in. Two most meaningless phrases in sales is touching base and checking in. It means there's no reason for your call or reach out, so there's no reason for me to talk to you.
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Always have a reason. If you're gonna reach out to me, you know, hold me accountable for what we talked about. "Hey, John, you said this. Are we still on this timeline?"
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Or, "Hey, John, you know, I've been keeping myself updated on you guys. I noticed this happened. Thought it'd be worth a conversation." Like, have a reason. Be purposeful. Don't just go through the motions.
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So in wrapping up, in terms of you talked a little bit about your mentor and kind of who inspired you, is there another unlikely or surprising relationship that you formed throughout your career that ended up being a strategic advantage for you?
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I don't know if it's unlikely, but you know, when Basho went belly up, so the way that worked was, you know, two thousand and seven, new CEO came in, Jeff left, a new CEO came in and just tanked the company and fired us all on the spot one day.
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And I remember there was this woman, Megan. She wasn't the CFO, she was the director of finance. And I had developed a good relationship with her while she was at Basho.
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And she had a law degree, she had a finance degree, and she had a personality, right, which is a rare trifecta. And she was just really competent and really good at her job, and I enjoyed working with her.
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And so when we all got fired and I kinda started the separate company, Kensei Partners, keep that thing going, I went to her, I was like, "Megan, I can't afford you as the C-level that I think you are.
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You're not an admin, but could you do our books on the side? And then one day, when I can afford you, I want you to drop whatever you're doing, and I want you to come work with me." And she said okay.
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And then fast-forward a couple years, I was like, "I can afford you." And she did.
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She dropped everything, came over and worked, and she's been my ride or die since then, all through the mess and dropping, you know, six million down to zero. She's the only one who stayed by.
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You know, and I tell entrepreneurs all the time, if they're gonna start a company, please, I beg you, do not start a company with somebody who can do what you do.
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Unfortunately, after Basho went belly up, there was three of us left. You know, Megan was outsourced. But there was three of us left, and we were all sales trainers, and we could all do the same job.
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And that sounds great 'cause, oh, we all can talk, you know, because eventually you kinda look at it and be like, "Eh, I can do that better." Right?
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Or-- And so I always say, like, if you're gonna go into work, go into somebody who's completely different. If you're a business dev in sales, then get an operations person, get a finance person, get a technical person.
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That three-headed monster, that's what should start a business because you're the expert in your space, b-- and you can push on those other people, but you rely on them to do that thing.
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And I've watched business after business fail because they don't have the foundation. They don't have somebody from an operations and a finance standpoint allowing the business development person to do what they do.
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And this is where E-Myth comes into play, where you end up working for your company, which is the worst possible thing you could do as an entrepreneur.
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So I think that relationship, I don't wanna say unlikely, but it's one that I think is critical to anybody who wants to get out there and start building and doing their thing, is just don't go with just because your friend is good at what you do and you guys have the s-- share the same brain.
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That's actually a terrible business partner in my experience. That's a great point. Awesome. John, been a pleasure.
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I thank, thank you so much for taking the time out, and I, I look forward to connecting up with you in person at some point. Thanks for having me on here, Jason. I appreciate it.
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What a great conversation with John Barrows. John reminded us that the fundamentals, prospecting, discovery, negotiation, trust, and real buyer relationships are not going away.
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If anything, they're becoming even more important in the AI era. To help us grow this community, please take thirty seconds to follow, subscribe, and leave a review on Apple Podcasts.
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It's the best way to support the show. You can listen to us on Spotify, Apple, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'll see you in the next episode. Thanks for listening to Relationship Capitalists.
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If today's conversation sparked something for you, the best way to invest in your own relationship capital is simple. Share this episode with one person in your network who needs to hear it.
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To learn more about how to build and scale your relationship capital through proven frameworks and simple daily actions, visit relationshipcapital.com.
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And if you haven't already, search for Relationship Capitalists on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen. And hit subscribe so you never miss an episode.
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Relationship Capitalists is produced by FAME, the B2B podcast agency that grows your business. I'm Jason Mashrellie. Thanks for being here. [upbeat music]
