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Sandler Training Overland Park / Kansas City’s president, Dan Stalp, joins us on the show to talk about assessing, training and coaching your sales team. Plus, EAG’s Angela Ridpath is back on for another email marketing tip.
Transcript:
Jeff Randolph:
Welcome to the Small Business Miracles podcast. I’m Jeff Randolph. This small business podcast is brought to you by EAG Advertising and Marketing. We’re going to talk about marketing. We’re also here to celebrate entrepreneurs. We have marketing news and advice that business owners can use to keep moving forward. This week we sit down with Dan Stalp. He’s president of Sandler Training Overland Park in Kansas City. But first, we’ve got another small business marketing tip to talk about.
We are back for another marketing tip, and this time it’s not just me talking and talking and talking. I’m going to talk to Angela Ridpath, who is the VP of client services at EAG Advertising and Marketing. Angela, thanks for being with us.
Angela Ridpath:
Hi, Jeff. Thank you.
Jeff Randolph:
One more time back again, and we’re talking about email again. And this time it’s email deliverability very specifically. So I’m a business owner. I’m sending out emails. How do I really know that that email is making it into somebody’s inbox and not somebody’s spam or junk or any of the other billion folders it could go into that it means it’s not going to be read by the person I’m trying to send it to? There’s a lot that goes into email delivery.
Angela Ridpath:
Sure, yeah. Email deliverability is really important, especially now with there are so many people sending emails, and then there are this email spammers, and there’s cybersecurity issues, and people are really trying to make sure that when they open an email, it is a legit email from a legit sender. So focusing on a few simple but important steps can really make a big difference and making sure that your emails actually reach your customer’s inboxes. The first thing that I would recommend for any emailer is to make sure that you clean your email list.
Jeff Randolph:
Ah, yes. That’s an important tip, isn’t it?
Angela Ridpath:
Yes.
Jeff Randolph:
Let’s do talk about that.
Angela Ridpath:
Yes. So cleaning your email list, or we call it data hygiene, it’s really making sure to regularly remove email addresses that are no longer active or valid from your contact list. And it really helps show email providers that you’re only sending to people who actually want to receive your messages.
Jeff Randolph:
Got it. And is there any other other thing I should be doing to make sure I’m hitting the inbox?
Angela Ridpath:
Yes, authenticating your emails. So there’s a few simple technical steps you can take to prove that your emails are coming from a legitimate source, and that also makes it look less likely that they’ll be flagged as spam. And the beauty of this is that most email platforms make it really easy to authenticate now. It’s so much easier. It doesn’t really require somebody that understands how to get into the back end of your website and put something in a DNS record. Anyone can really authenticate these emails, and it’s really important that we go through that step and to make sure that they are authenticated before you send out any emails.
Jeff Randolph:
Yeah, even saying the word “Is that in your DNS record?” that can strike fear into the hearts of business owners and marketing people, seasoned marketing people who don’t have a strong IT background. People know you shouldn’t mess with that if you don’t know what you’re doing. But now, much easier.
Angela Ridpath:
Yes. One other thing that I really try to emphasize with people is to send emails consistently and try to really send them about the same rate and at the same time, because big spikes in email volume can make providers suspicious. So those drip campaigns and those nurture campaigns are really, really designed to make sure that not only you’re communicating in front of an audience on a regular basis, but also that you are a consistent emailer and you’re not going out with a huge spam email message once or twice a year.
Jeff Randolph:
Got it. Those are great deliverability tips if you want to make sure your messages are getting to the intended recipient, just a few little things that we could be tweaking and working on to make sure that your campaigns go through. Angela Ridpath, thanks so much for being with us.
Angela Ridpath:
Thank you.
Jeff Randolph:
Welcome back to the podcast. I am here with Dan Stalp. He is the president of Sandler Training Overland Park Kansas City. You are a business mentor and speaker. You have so many hats on besides that too. Welcome to the podcast.
Dan Stalp:
Well, thank you for having me.
Jeff Randolph:
We’re happy to have you here. First, so Sandler Training, it makes me want to ask right away, who is this David Sandler character? What’s this thing all about?
Dan Stalp:
Yeah, it’s interesting. A lot of people think Sandler is kind of a new company, but it’s really been around over 50 years. But part of it’s because they didn’t really expand into the ’80s, but David Sandler was a cookie and cracker salesman in the ’60s, and he had just a horrible record of selling. So this is kind of interesting how this all worked out. I think he was like 87 nos out of 88 calls. And finally he thought, “You know, what do I got to lose?” And he just went in. Instead of trying to sell it, he just said, “Hey, you’re probably going to be like everybody else. You’re not going to want this.” And that’s the guy that bought.
And so he is like, “Well, what’s that all about? I didn’t put any pressure on this guy, and he bought.” So anyway, make a long story short, the way he really expanded the business was he teamed up with some psychologists. And that’s one thing about Sandler, it’s very psychological-based, which I personally appreciate. And then he was basically just doing shows. They were really shows almost, but he would get hired by companies and he’d go there for a day or two and he’d be in a hotel or whatever. And that’s how he grew the business. But he really expanded the business in the mid-80s when they started franchising.
Jeff Randolph:
All right. So yeah, give us an overview of what you do because you’re focused on ongoing reinforcement coaching and training. What does all that mean?
Dan Stalp:
Yeah, so really what’s different about Sandler is people work with us for years instead of a couple hours or two days. And not that we don’t have people do that, but our primarily businesses where people master the system as opposed to just being informed or learning stuff and then it just fades. So the franchise that I have personally, it’s the Kansas City Metro in the state of Kansas. That’s where I’m supposed to be working, which I primarily do. So I work with companies based here. But like I said, they have classes up to two a week, hour and 15 minutes that they have open access to. They get unlimited coaching. So it’s really for that person who’s already doing well and wants to do better. Not that we don’t work with brand new salespeople, but the ROI is just greater with people that already have momentum.
Jeff Randolph:
I was going to ask that to paint a picture of where a business owner starts with that. Do they say, “I really need Gary to sell a whole lot more than Gary is selling.”? Or is it looking at their entire team? Or is it just, “Hey, I want to train all my new hires. I want them to understand the system as soon as they come in.”?
Dan Stalp:
Yeah, the way they come to us really isn’t the best way, but they come to us.
Jeff Randolph:
We can talk about both. We can say, “Here’s what really happens, but here’s what I’d like to happen.”
Dan Stalp:
Yeah. So it’s rare that this happens, but this is the best way, is when somebody’s already doing well and they go, “Hey, let’s throw some WD-40 on this and see if we can get it to go a little easier. But most companies come to us after they’ve kind of had the “oh crap” factor, things aren’t working. And a lot of times they sometimes wait too long and they want us to be a magician and just magically change things that they’ve been struggling with for years.
But anyway, but normally they come to us and they’re like, “Yeah…” This is what they’ll say, “These guys are doing great. Leave them alone. These guys are doing okay. And then these guys, they really need some help.” And that’s completely bass-ackwards, how we want to work with people. But we obviously still meet with them and then we help them discover that that’s not going to be where your ROI is.
Jeff Randolph:
Oh, that I can’t just untangle all of the bad things that I’ve built over the course of years and years [inaudible 00:08:37]?
Dan Stalp:
Or just bad hires. Yeah. And I kind of get it. Business owners, especially when they don’t have a sales leader, like a VP of sales or a sales manager, they tend to hire people like themselves. And yet they’ll say all the time, “I’m not good at sales.” But then they hire people like themselves. But the business owner can get away with things because a business owner posture that the average Joe Blow selling that can leave in any time just can’t pull off.
Jeff Randolph:
Yeah. I know a lot of business owners keep tabs on their sales teams by looking at that final number. They’re saying, Hey… And I assume in your previous example, they’re judging these guys don’t need help because their final numbers are okay. What should we be looking at besides just those closed sales if we’re running a business?
Dan Stalp:
Outcomes are important. I mean, you’re in sales.
Jeff Randolph:
Ultimately that has to happen.
Dan Stalp:
Yeah. So we do want to look at that and we want to… It’s amazing how many times I talk to people and they don’t even have sales goals for their people. It’s shocking. But you got to have a north star of sorts. So what’s the north star for each person? That usually is the goal. But what they tend not to track are the key performance indicators that lead to that. And particularly if somebody has a longer selling cycle, and I’ll just define that as six months or more, you can be having really good things happening and you don’t know it. You have not so good things happening and you don’t know it because your sales cycle is so low.
And so what we recommend they track are the key performance indicators of attempt to reach a prospect, whether they actually talk to them or they respond. It’s pretty simple stuff. Whether they actually meet with them, how often they meet with them, sales, or quotes, and then sales and average sale. And most people only do the sales and average sale. And the reason they don’t do that is they think they’re micromanaging them or they’re trying to control them. And that’s just not true. It’s about helping them. So if people are more… If you can look at two dashboards for two different people and one’s doing better, you can really identify how they’re doing better as opposed to just looking at the outcomes.
Jeff Randolph:
And if we do a full disclosure moment, I’ve gone through a training, I got to hang out with you for a couple days.
Dan Stalp:
You did. You’re a superstar.
Jeff Randolph:
Oh, I don’t know about that. Let’s not get crazy here, but one of-
Dan Stalp:
I’m going to test you in a minute.
Jeff Randolph:
Oh, God.
Dan Stalp:
Now who’s nervous?
Jeff Randolph:
It’s a repeatable process. One of the things I was going to say that I really enjoyed about that, the entire system though, is that it is a repeatable process. There is something that you can… There is structure to it, and then there is back planning that can be done. What is that ultimate sales goal I have? And what are the steps that need to happen along the way to get there? What should I be doing daily? What should I be doing weekly? What should I be doing monthly? And I like that.
Dan Stalp:
Yeah. You kind of reverse-engineer into it. We still need to have a goal. If we don’t have a goal, we got to get that. And then we can reverse engineer based on historical performance for you, not the industry average, not the company average. Because if you’re just comparing averages, at best, you’re going to be average. And nobody really wants that, but they don’t think about it that way.
Jeff Randolph:
Yeah. And you mentioned bad hire at some point, that we’re trying to repair all of the work of a bad hire at some point. Are there people that are just, hey, all the training in the world is not going to get you here. We just aren’t going to be able to get you from where you need to be?
Dan Stalp:
Yeah. I’m up with the growth mindset. If somebody wants to grow, they can, but sometimes there’s just such a deficit. And for example, you hired three zebras, but you want them to do giraffe work. We can train those zebras, but the neck’s never going to be long enough.
Jeff Randolph:
That is…
Dan Stalp:
It’s just sort of… Or this is what I hear a lot, “Hey, yeah, we need you to come in and help our people get more motivated.” And I’m kind of like, “Well, why’d you hire demotivated people?” I mean, help me out here. But to your point, can I motivate someone who’s not very motivated? Can we help with that? Sure, if they’re open to it. But if someone’s already motivated, it’s just so much easier.
Jeff Randolph:
Assessments come into play at this point. And you do several assessments to try to help business owners figure out who their right players ought to be. And tell me just a little bit about the assessments that you’re doing though to try to match up. It is motivation, it’s personality style, it’s all of those things.
Dan Stalp:
So there’s certain competencies. And so we do two assessments. One is more for in the training where they know how they roll and then they’re able to pick up on how the person across them rolls, and then they can modify their behavior to connect. We use a disk for that, and it’s very, very helpful for that. And there’s some things in there too. There’s some sales behaviors that help. We typically don’t use that as a pre-hire, pre-selection tool because you have to make a lot of assumptions. And so the other assessment that we use is called Harver. And so one of the competencies, and you already mentioned it, is ambition and drive. So how do you pull that out of a disk? You can’t. Because you can’t say, “Well, only D’s are ambitious.”
No, most of them are just loud and noisy and lazy. So you can’t just do that. So an ambition and drive can transcend personalities, but there’s not a personality that’s ambitious. Or another one that’s hard to figure out in the pre-selection process is accepting responsibility. Because in sales, a lot of it is out of our control, but if we’re not even controlling the controllables, it becomes messy in a hurry. And then, depending on the type of sale, like a shorter selling cycle versus a longer, you may need more control and close, or you might need more relationship management, or you might need more problem-solving or more process orientation. But those competencies transcend, depending on the type of sale.
Jeff Randolph:
Outstanding, I’m going to ask another question.
Dan Stalp:
Sure.
Jeff Randolph:
But before I do that, about assessment specifically, but I want to get into the lightning round before we do that. Are you ready for the lightning round?
Dan Stalp:
Sure.
Jeff Randolph:
Well, let me start out by saying this, that I’m going to take you into the lightning round where I’m going to spend five minutes or so where I’m going to ask you questions you have no advanced knowledge of. It’ll just take a few minutes and I’m looking for short answers. Now, Dan, if you get some of these questions and you decide they aren’t for you, how comfortable will you be telling me that these questions are not for you?
Dan Stalp:
I’ll just say pass.
Jeff Randolph:
That’s perfect. That’s good.
Dan Stalp:
He did learn something in our training.
Jeff Randolph:
I learned one or two things. I learned one or two things.
Dan Stalp:
Did a very nice job.
Jeff Randolph:
It’s a wonderful thing. Let’s talk about the assessments. Are you seeing issues where business owners could solve a lot of their problems if they only spent time looking at some of these assessments beforehand, if they just went to that direction first?
Dan Stalp:
Yeah, we would recommend in general to do that. Is it bulletproof? No. And I always say these assessments are guides and not gospel because you got people taking them, and people don’t always… They get interrupted. They are tired. Hopefully they aren’t out drinking, but I know it’s happened.
Jeff Randolph:
Maybe that happens.
Dan Stalp:
Shocker. So it’s just sort of like an X-ray of sorts. And then what’s nice about that is then they can poke around with questions that are in the assessment to be consistent. And then they can just say… And it even says, “This is what you’re looking for, is that what you’re hearing?” So it just helps them. Because most people, they might only hire, a small, medium-sized company, one or two people every year or two.
Jeff Randolph:
Right, right.
Dan Stalp:
So it’s not like they’re super skilled at this. And so if they can have a guide to help them just be more consistent, but also be more objective. So that’s what we would recommend. But having said all that, we always say the assessment is only about 20% of the hiring decision, not 80 or 100, because there’s just so many other things like… We do have a culture piece on there, which helps because you can have the right person but the wrong culture. But it can be like if they have a block of business, or it could be that maybe they were a business owner before, so they have a different posture. It could be that they just have tremendous industry knowledge. And you got to take all that into consideration, so this is just a piece of the puzzle.
Jeff Randolph:
Yeah. Let’s talk about the business for a second. Because you’ve been doing this for, I don’t know, a minute or so. How long have you been…
Dan Stalp:
It’d be 19 years in September.
Jeff Randolph:
19 years. All right. So what advice would you give to the first year you? The first year you were in business, as you’re looking back on it, what is something that you did then that you would counsel yourself against these days?
Dan Stalp:
Oh, counsel myself against. So what was interesting, so I’ve started two businesses. So this one, I was a lot smarter than the first one.
Jeff Randolph:
Hopefully, that continues.
Dan Stalp:
So what I was thinking about some of the smart things I did in the second time that I didn’t do in the first time. Can I go there?
Jeff Randolph:
Oh, please, please. Yeah. Let’s do that.
Dan Stalp:
Because that’s on the top of my head. So one of the things, so the first business, I was 29, and it took me five years to make what I was making when I left my sales job. And that’s too long. So one the things I did the second time… Now of course, I had some experiences. I gave my wife permission that she could pull the plug. We negotiated 18 months.
Jeff Randolph:
Oh, okay.
Dan Stalp:
And plus I was making more money the second time.
Jeff Randolph:
And now you’re on the clock. The timer has started.
Dan Stalp:
And it’s so interesting. Guess what? It was 18 months. And then I go, “Damn it, I should have done a year.” It would’ve been less pain and suffering. So my point there is you got to have… I mean, if it’s just you, you can still do a contract with yourself that if I’m not making it, I’m pulling the plug. So just that you’re doing it before. Because I run into people all the time, and they’re seven years, 10 years, and they really haven’t been profitable, and they keep thinking next year they’re going to be. Well, they’ve never put a limit on it.
Jeff Randolph:
Which puts boundaries and definition that you hold yourself accountable for. Or in your case, you have a partner hold you accountable.
Dan Stalp:
Yeah. I mean, we had four kids and she wasn’t working at the time. It’s like, this is crazy. And I agreed. If this didn’t work out, I had to go get a real job, but it did. So that’s one thing. The other thing is I see a lot with people that start their own businesses is they have a severance or something. I didn’t. But they’ll have a severance, like a one year severance. Yeah, I’m done with corporate America and I’m going to start my own thing, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And they really don’t start working until the severance is gone.
Jeff Randolph:
Oh, yeah. Where it would be so much nicer if they had that as a cushion.
Dan Stalp:
Oh, yeah. And then it’s like, oh, crap. Well, see, they have it as a cushion, but they’re not working… They’re working like it’s a cushion. So what I would recommend is that you just really keep that somewhere that you can’t get at it very easily.
Jeff Randolph:
What is the best thing about being an entrepreneur?
Dan Stalp:
Well, for me, I’m very self-directed. So basically I’m unemployable.
Jeff Randolph:
I have worked myself into an entrepreneur job where there is no way I can work for anyone else ever again.
Dan Stalp:
I have to fire myself, which I’ve thought about a couple of times. But no, I mean, and that’s one of the things that comes out in the assessment is how self-directed you are. And a lot of times when people are hiring sales people, depending on their culture, if they’re really self-directed, it’s not going to work. And I call that the entrepreneurial mindset. It’s not that they’re not coachable, but they just don’t really need to be told what to do, and they don’t want to be told what to do. I mean, they’ll accept it. So that’s one thing I think that’s important that you just really want and need autonomy, freedom, but that comes at a cost.
Jeff Randolph:
Right, right.
Dan Stalp:
You still got to do the work because it doesn’t just magically happen.
Jeff Randolph:
Exactly. I’ll follow that up with the hardest thing about being an entrepreneur.
Dan Stalp:
Oh, gosh.
Jeff Randolph:
I know you’ve got it… I mean, you’ve got 19 years of track record here. You’ve probably forgotten all the hard things that have ever happened to you.
Dan Stalp:
What could be hard would be if… I’m pretty social, and I’m pretty quick to ask for help, but what would be hard is if you weren’t social and you didn’t have a tribe of sorts. It doesn’t have to be somebody that works for me. It can just be if I have a really tough accounting issue, I know where to go. If I have a marketing issue, I know where to go. I have these people that I know that I don’t have to come with that myself. But if I was not really social and connected, I’d feel like I’d have to do it all myself. And then that’s when I think it gets really tricky because you can’t be all things to all people.
Jeff Randolph:
Right, right. Is there a part of the business that you wish you knew more about, like, “That’s my weak spot.”?
Dan Stalp:
Well, we are… I’ve always been pretty good with technology, but we’re really moving that direction. And I’m not going to lie, I’m kind of pushing back a little bit.
Jeff Randolph:
It’s that distance learning thing, man.
Dan Stalp:
Yeah, it’s after COVID, but even we have more online types of things. And I was a computer programmer for four years after I got out of college, so I always kind of had a little bit higher threshold for that. But right now, I’d say I’m just even with every other 60-year-old.
Jeff Randolph:
You’re doing all right. You’re doing all right.
Dan Stalp:
I mean, I might have a little bit more of a knack, but it’s just like, “Oh God, no, please.” But yeah, I don’t know. It just blows my mind who puts these things together because there’s so many steps to everything.
Jeff Randolph:
Oh, absolutely. Yeah.
Dan Stalp:
Do these people actually use this? Or do they just come… I mean, there’s so many steps.
Jeff Randolph:
And feature-rich. And you don’t know which feature it is that just messed up and caused everything to go badly. Yeah.
Dan Stalp:
I don’t know. It’s not super intuitive to me.
Jeff Randolph:
I get it. In a recent news magazine article, you talked about developing leaders, and one of the takeaways was that getting good peer-to-peer leadership at the top of the organization, the business owner, is good. We’re seeing a lot of that kind of training and development, but not that next level, the people just under that top level. What should a business owner do to make sure that there’s good quality leadership coming up next?
Dan Stalp:
Yeah. So depending on the size of the company, in all fairness, the leaders of these companies never got it either. So that’s why it doesn’t occur to them that they should give it to these folks. I’m not giving them a pass, but I had to do it myself. I hear that all the time, but I’m like, “If they were as good as you, they wouldn’t be working for you.”
Jeff Randolph:
That’s fair.
Dan Stalp:
If they can just do all this, why not just do it themselves?
Jeff Randolph:
That’s a winning argument.
Dan Stalp:
And that’s probably a little harsh, but so it’s those emerging leaders, second-in-commands. In our world, it’s VPs of sales, it’s sales managers. They just kind of fall into a vacuum. But there are companies, we happen to be one of them, that has programs for those people. But I’m telling you, we bundle it into our program. If we didn’t, I would say most people wouldn’t pay for it.
Jeff Randolph:
Because they don’t see the value in it right away because of that, I did it with my own skill or bootstraps, or I had to learn… I stayed up late figuring it out myself or something like that. And if they were motivated, they’d do the same, and I just need to keep beating them harder until…
Dan Stalp:
Yeah. And then of course, the salespeople have those outcomes that everybody sees, so that, well, you got to spend money on that. But then there’s this person who’s leading them, and that person is… Everybody says, “I bet you like it when there’s not a VP of sales and a sales manager.” Oh, contraire. No, I love it when they have… Of course, if they’re antagonistic towards me, I don’t like it.
Jeff Randolph:
Well, sure.
Dan Stalp:
But if they’re like, “Ooh, this is good stuff,” we make a way better team. They don’t see them as much as they used to, but they talk to them way more than I’m going to and see them. And so they can reinforce kind of like a parent reinforces what happens at school. It’s that type of thing.
Jeff Randolph:
Interesting. I checked out your LinkedIn profile. Of course, you know literally everyone. But one of your top voices, the popular people that you follow, is Tony Robbins, another well-known sales leader. Are you following him for competitive purposes, or is there enough room in your world to have all of those [inaudible 00:24:49].
Dan Stalp:
Yeah. Yeah. He does a tremendous job on the attitude piece. And we work on attitudes as well, but we work on behaviors and techniques. But I would say if you’ve hired a coach or a trainer that doesn’t have a coach or a trainer, that’s a red flag.
Jeff Randolph:
Like where does the therapist get therapy? That kind of a thing?
Dan Stalp:
Yeah, there’s a lot of that going on right now because anybody can a shingle, but you can’t get what you don’t have. So part of how I get better is not only the stuff I get through our company, but the stuff I don’t get through our company because I am able to transfer and leverage that to… I’ve got about 130 people that are getting training from me on a regular basis so that I’m able to transfer and leverage that.
Jeff Randolph:
Just adding more value everywhere you go. Was there a piece of advice that you got for either business or life that you’re like, “I’m taking this to heart, this is going to help me move forward.”? Something that you lean back on and go, like they always said…
Dan Stalp:
Yeah, I see where you’re going. For me, there’s two things. One is it’s really important for me to be a product of my own product.
Jeff Randolph:
Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Dan Stalp:
So for example, even though it’s always kind of a little awkward, it’s a compliment even if they don’t mean it to be one, where they’ll get in the program and they’ll be in it a while and they’ll go, “Oh, oh, you did that.”
Jeff Randolph:
You did that to me.
Dan Stalp:
“I wondered what that was about.” And I’m not trying to hurt, I’m trying to help them. And at first people would say, “Should I use Sandler with every single people?” I go, “Yeah, and hell yeah.” You’re doing it to help them.
Jeff Randolph:
Right. It’s not a trick.
Dan Stalp:
It’s not a trick, but all of a sudden it’s kind of like I’m like, I’m eating my own dog food. So that’s really important. But then the other thing that’s been super important to me, and this gets back to those key performance indicators, is the little… Don’t sweat the small stuff, worry about things, but the little behaviors do add up, the ones you do and don’t do. So there’s a couple of books that really exemplify this. One is… Darren Hardy has a book called The Compound Effect, and it’s basically, instead of money compounding interests, it’s the habits and behaviors you have that compound interest.
Jeff Randolph:
Okay. Okay.
Dan Stalp:
And then the other book that I read before that because it came out sooner was called Slight Edge by Jeff Olson. And so I am really into those little behavior things. They’re easy to do, they’re easy not to do, but to do them, to really form those habits, because then you don’t have to be as disciplined.
Jeff Randolph:
So you do that behavior for X number of days, it becomes a habit, then it becomes a lifestyle.
Dan Stalp:
Yeah. And I’m glad you brought up the days because a lot of people think 21 days was what they heard, and it’s way longer than that. Yeah. I think minimally now they’re seeing like 58.
Jeff Randolph:
I think it was something like that that I saw on a screen at Planet Fitness when they were trying to make me…
Dan Stalp:
Well, good point.
Jeff Randolph:
… keep doing it. And sure enough, I’m there once or twice.
Dan Stalp:
And it can be as many as 270 days because it depends on… Everybody’s got a different bent, just how God made you. And so then depending on what you’re trying to form the habit on, and this is what a lot of people don’t realize, is it takes a lot of more courage for certain people to do certain things. And if we don’t recognize that because of their bent, and that doesn’t give them a pass, but if we don’t recognize that this takes a lot more courage, then you’re basically wounding them.
Jeff Randolph:
That’s great, spectacular advice. It’s good to be able to recognize that and say, “Hey, I know that was a challenge. That was a lot of work. Well done.” Even if it’s not a challenge for me as a person.
Dan Stalp:
As opposed to, “This is easy, why does it take…” Well, there’s probably some things they can do that I’m not doing.
Jeff Randolph:
True. True.
Dan Stalp:
So just to recognize that it depends on the person, and again, they don’t get a pass. But to recognize that it takes a lot more courage for an introvert to say certain things than it does an extrovert, just as an example.
Jeff Randolph:
That’s a very good example. Last question in the lightning round. You’re also an author. Tell us about the reunion series of books. What was…
Dan Stalp:
Yeah. How’d that happen?
Jeff Randolph:
It seems like that’s not a sales thing in any way.
Dan Stalp:
Yeah, it kind of is though.
Jeff Randolph:
Or is it a metaphor like Tuesdays With Morrie?
Dan Stalp:
Yeah. I’ll give you the Reader’s Digest version. So I mean, some people don’t know what Reader’s Digest is. I got to come up with a new one. But anyway, so the other day I said something about it needs a little TLC, and there was a 25-year-old, goes, “What’s that mean?” So I’m like, “Oh, I got to start defining these things.”
Jeff Randolph:
Don’t go chasing waterfalls. That’s what it means. Don’t go chasing waterfalls.
Dan Stalp:
Okay, so in 2001, there was a guy named… Oh, I just forgot his name. He wrote Halftime. Bob Buford. And he was in town, and I went to this luncheon and I go, “This is solid.” It’s basically talking about when you get in your late 30s, mid-40s, you’ve had these careers, life experiences, and all of a sudden it just kind of melds into what you really were meant to do, but you didn’t know it. And all those jobs that you’re only there for a year, or you were at this really tough industry and go, “What the heck is this all about?” All of a sudden it just kind all forms into the role you’re in.
So I knew I was going to have another role, but it hadn’t manifested itself. So then four years later it did, and I met Sandler. I mean, as soon as I… I go, “This is my Halftime. I’ve been waiting for this.” Anyway, so then what I did was I wrote a parable. It’s about four classmates that go back to their 20-year class reunion. So 38 when the book starts, they’re 48 when the book ends. Because that’s when that stuff tends to happen. So anyway, so then you get it. There were even formulas in the Halftime book, which I can’t do.
But you learn through two characters pursued their Halftime, and they took a chance and they did what they were meant to do. And two just tried to get more of what they already had. But even when… My co-author is Jim Mathis, and when he and I were talking about this, we just had this vision there were going to be three books. It was going to be the trilogy. So it took us 10 years. But the first book’s The Reunion, second book’s Another Reunion, and the last book is The Last Reunion. And the last book is really the legacy book where the choices that these people made or didn’t make with their families and careers, the adult children rise up through the last book. I think it’s frankly the best one.
Jeff Randolph:
Well…
Dan Stalp:
You don’t have to read the other two, but it’s… I don’t know.
Jeff Randolph:
I need to see all the character development to get to that last book and understand it. So did that satisfy a writing need that you had, or is that just a…?
Dan Stalp:
Oh, and then the other part of that, no, I don’t like to write.
Jeff Randolph:
Then author, being an author is an appropriate thing for you.
Dan Stalp:
So it’s interesting. I discovered that you can be good at something and not like it.
Jeff Randolph:
Ah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Dan Stalp:
Because I’m good at writing, I’m fast, but I don’t enjoy it.
Jeff Randolph:
Interesting.
Dan Stalp:
Yeah, that’s the first thing I can really say I don’t enjoy that I’m good at. But what was happening was the first year or two, if you really ask the average salesperson if they ever thought they’d be a salesperson, 85 to 90% say “no” and “hell no.” I have an MBA. I have a computer programmer. I was a maintenance person. I was a CPA. And all of a sudden, they’re in this role. Right? So that’s the other thing that I thought that would be helpful is just to have a book to say you’re not crazy.
Jeff Randolph:
I can’t end the lightning round on anything better than that. That’s an outstanding story. You’ve survived the lightning round. I hope that gives you some-
Dan Stalp:
Oh, I didn’t know we did it.
Jeff Randolph:
That was it. There’s nothing to it.
Dan Stalp:
It was supposed to be short answers.
Jeff Randolph:
Short answers.
Dan Stalp:
That was not short.
Jeff Randolph:
Nobody cares about short answers here.
Dan Stalp:
Usually I’m pretty succinct, but you got me going on that one.
Jeff Randolph:
That’s the whole point. The whole point. Understand you better. Tell people where they can find you. Where do they get more information? How do they turn their entire sales culture around? All of those things. Where do they go?
Dan Stalp:
Yeah, so I’m the only Dan Stalp on LinkedIn. So that’s one easy way. Just S-T-A-L-P. But you can call me at (913) 451-1760. Or you can email me at DStalp@Sandler.com.
Jeff Randolph:
All right. Dan Stalp, president of Sandler Training Overland Park in Kansas City, thanks for being with us today.
Dan Stalp:
You bet. I enjoyed it.