Watch above or read below.

Dennis Collins: Hi, guys. It’s Leah, the beautiful one on the screen. Paul, the smart one on the screen. And me, I just hang out, Dennis. 

Leah Bumphrey: Dennis is the wrangler.

Paul Boomer: Yes.

Leah Bumphrey: He’s the wrangler.

Paul Boomer: He’s the really smart one who just doesn’t want to move.

Dennis Collins: I’ve been called worse than that, so… But thank you anyway. Here we are. We’re doing confessions. Yes. Leah was pretending to be a priest there because we’re gonna hear confessions from small business owners, business founders. These are things they don’t tell anybody not their spouse, certainly not their team. These are the quiet moments when they say, “I am a smart, capable guy or gal, but I haven’t figured this out yet, and I don’t know why.” So that’s why you’re here. That’s what we try to do. We’ve had a combined hundred-plus years of experience working with small business owners. Yes, 97% of those are mine. No, not really. But we want to share real confessions, real stories about real people, so that you get the impression you’re not alone, okay? It isn’t just you. Don’t think it’s just you that has these feelings, these confessions. So let’s do the next confession. Are you guys ready for this confession?

Leah Bumphrey: We’re here.

Dennis Collins: Okay, I need your support on this one. This one hits close to home. Okay, small business owner confession: “I have spent untold thousands of dollars on sales training. I see no evidence that it’s worked. I think I’ve hired some pretty good sales trainers. I mean, the material looks good to me I’m not a sales guy, but it looked good to me. But I never see the massive transformation that was promised. I don’t know if that’s my fault or their fault, but it doesn’t happen. So now I question the value of any training. I’m very gun-shy, and I know I get a lot of advice: well, you can’t be perfect and do everything yourself, you gotta hire trainers occasionally. Too bad, I am not in that space right now. I don’t see an ROI. I don’t think training works. I can’t see spending another dollar on it. I admit I could be seeing this all wrong, but my evidence says it’s a waste of time and money. So I guess my question to myself is, am I seeing this all wrong? No one has really shown me a better way.”

Okay, panel, it’s your turn analyze that confession. What are we hearing?

Leah Bumphrey: Go for it, Paul.

Paul Boomer: Well, to me, that confession just comes from… I mean it’s clear it comes from disappointment. Not ignorance.

Dennis Collins: Yes, massive disappointment.

Paul Boomer: Yeah, pure disappointment. And it’s not anti-training, it’s anti-wasted effort and time and resources. And it’s frustrating.

Dennis Collins: Well, it’s directed at training because that’s the tangible thing that I spent money on.

Paul Boomer: Yeah.

Dennis Collins: And I don’t see the results.

Paul Boomer: And it’s common that the money’s spent, enthusiasm spikes, but old habits keep returning quickly, and there’s no visible…

Dennis Collins: But I thought that was what training was supposed to do, Paul. I thought training was supposed to get rid of those old habits. That’s why I paid all that money to bring in those highfalutin sales trainers.

Paul Boomer: And that’s common even with good trainers, though.

Dennis Collins: Well, it’s common, but I don’t like it.

Paul Boomer: But it’s because most trainers are designed for delivery and not integration.

Dennis Collins: Ooh, another boomerism delivery but not integration. What’s the difference?

Paul Boomer: It’s a show. “I’m here to show, I’m here to deliver this thing that I packaged for this company, and I’m gonna do it well, and it’s gonna come across great.”

Dennis Collins: It’s a performance.

Paul Boomer: But it’s not actually designed to say, okay, how is what I’m gonna deliver actually gonna help somebody change the way they act and behave?

Dennis Collins: That sounds pretty difficult to me. I mean, I was told at one time in my career, if someone gives you an assignment to change somebody, refuse the assignment ’cause it ain’t gonna happen. So how am I gonna… I mean, even if I hire a great sales trainer, how the hell am I gonna get ’em to change anything? I am so jaded right now that I just can’t see it.

Paul Boomer: Leah, jump in, Leah, just jump in.

Dennis Collins: Is Leah ready? She’s chomping at the bit.

Leah Bumphrey: Well, no one can change anybody. Nobody can.

Dennis Collins: No. Nobody.

Leah Bumphrey: We can’t even change ourselves unless we…

Dennis Collins: Sometimes.

Leah Bumphrey: Well, we can’t, unless we decide to. I’ve got a girlfriend she’s fantastic, wonderful, active, brilliant woman and it’s impossible for her to lose weight. She’s told me she’s done all the things: she’s joined the gym, she’s gone to the gym, she’s changed her diet, she tracks her calories, she drinks more water, she visualizes, she limits her TV watching, she does all the things. And her weight won’t budge. Her weight has not budged. She’s given up. So what’s really going on here? There may be a thyroid issue, like a fundamental physical issue.

Dennis Collins: Could be a physical problem, yeah.

Leah Bumphrey: Could be a physical problem. Or, what she thinks she’s doing is not what she’s doing. She’s, like… I couldn’t add anything, right? She’s saying all the things. So what is the first step as a coach that we have people do? I want you to write down everything you’re doing, right?

When we’ve taken it outside the sales arena, we’re talking about weight loss you take it outside, you have real information, you’re honest with yourself, you’re actually showing… Because we always overestimate what we’re doing, we always underestimate. And the critical thing is we stop we chicken out just before we get to the point that it’s all gonna happen. We had one episode where we were talking about lag indicators and lead indicators.

Dennis Collins: Lagging and leading, yeah.

Leah Bumphrey: Yeah, so we’ve got this ultimate lag indicator here of she wants to drop 50 pounds. And her lead indicators, what are they? But are they valid? Are they valid? And if they are, eventually it will catch up.

Dennis Collins: So I hear you saying, Leah, that sometimes we lie to ourselves about what we’re doing. Is that what I’m hearing?

Leah Bumphrey: You gotta know. And sometimes it’s garbage, what we’re doing, right? Sometimes it’s not enough, what we’re doing.

Dennis Collins: And sometimes we totally misrepresent it. We say, “Oh, we’re doing…” I’ve had people say, “Sir, I’m doing everything possible, I cannot do any more. I am doing all the things to get to that.” The activities should lead to that goal, and it’s not working. And then you check up and find out what what do you find out, Leah? They weren’t doing it.

Leah Bumphrey: They actually weren’t doing it. “Oh, well, on that day I couldn’t.” “Oh, well, there was no way I was calling that person.”

Paul Boomer: So how does this relate back to hiring a trainer?

Leah Bumphrey: What do you want them to do? Why are you hiring this trainer? What kind of track record do they have? What is it that you need them to do? Have you talked to your people? There’s a whole bunch of things to make sure you hire the right trainer and stick with it. Plus, ask them: what are they promising you? If you hire a sales trainer that’s telling you that they will absolutely guarantee that your measurement of success is to double your sales “Yeah, I can do that” save your money. Save your money, don’t hire them.

Dennis Collins: Come on, that sounds appealing. That sounds appealing to me, Leah. I don’t know.

Paul Boomer: There’s one more thing I think they need to ask, and it’s not about the trainer well, it is for the trainer. It’s, “What do I, as the business owner, need to do to help this stick?” What things do I need to do…

Leah Bumphrey: To prepare the ground?

Paul Boomer: Information doesn’t change behavior by itself, but the environment around that information does.

Leah Bumphrey: Yeah, yeah.

Dennis Collins: Yep. So let me summarize what I’m hearing you guys say, because this is really important, I think, to this topic. And I may be the only one here who’s actually spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on sales training. Yes, hundreds of thousands of dollars. And before I figured it out, I was missing something that was critical that I didn’t ask them to do, okay? And I paid the price for that. Anybody guess what that was? Paul knows what that is. What didn’t I ask them to do?

Paul Boomer: I’m sorry, ask that again I was distracted… Drinking.

Dennis Collins: Oh, I’m sorry.

Paul Boomer: Drinking water. I should have whiskey in my hand, but… Sorry.

Dennis Collins: What did I not ask my sales trainers to do that made those experiences so painful for me? There’s a missing ingredient that I learned later in my career, and I now teach and am a total advocate of this. What is that missing ingredient? You said it earlier: delivery.

Paul Boomer: Integration. How are you going to help integrate this into our business?

Dennis Collins: And what do I need to do? You said it a minute ago two questions. How are you, the trainer, going to integrate this into my business, i.e., install it? I always compare it to a piece of software for your computer. Nowadays we don’t use floppy disks and all that crap, but remember in the day we would buy a disk and install a program on our computer? What if you went out and bought the disk and never installed it? “Well, I bought the disk, I did what I was told to do, I bought the disk.” Well, did you install it? “Oh, no, no, I just didn’t get around to it.”

That’s sales training that doesn’t work. And that’s I hate to say it, I love you all out there who do sales training, it’s tough work but for me, as a buyer of sales training, you better show me how you’re going to integrate it. It better be installed, or I’m not interested.

That, to me, is the missing ingredient. Thoughts?

Leah Bumphrey: Well, you have to look at it as a tool, right? This is a tool to help you get where you’re going. You need to know what you’re using the tool for, you need to know how to use the tool, and then you actually have to use it.

Dennis Collins: Yeah, and that’s the installation part, right? That’s the integration part.

Leah Bumphrey: You know what kind of sales training I hate? Yes, yes, we are doing this. No I love sales training. I absolutely love sales training. I actually applied for sales positions back a hundred years ago. I applied for sales training jobs, and I was told that I just didn’t have the experience, which is… That’s a whole other story. But I hate sales training that is hype. I hate sales training that.

Dennis Collins: Hype? What is hype? Okay, now you gotta define your terms here. Come on.

Leah Bumphrey: Because it’s not about just motivating the team. “Let’s go! We work for the best vacuum cleaner manufacturer in the world! We’re gonna hit those doors! We’re going door to door, and we’re gonna do it! And after we do it, man, we are gonna just shine sing it with me!” I hate that.

Dennis Collins: Do you know who Zig Ziglar is?

Leah Bumphrey: Oh, absolutely, that guy’s classic absolutely classic.

Dennis Collins: Is he the classic of that breed that you’re talking about?

Leah Bumphrey: You know what, though? He backed it up with tangible things, because I do think that energy matters, self-talk matters what we say to ourselves these things all matter, but they cannot exist in a vacuum.

Dennis Collins: So, Leah, let me ask you this question. You know a lot about sales. Tell me a training program that you have been subjected to or I shouldn’t say subjected to, participated in that actually changed your behavior. Can you name one that actually allowed you to change your behavior to a different way of doing things, that was a better way?

Leah Bumphrey: Well, I can’t think of one where it didn’t, if I implemented specifics. I think of Brian Tracy okay, you’ll remember Brian Tracy, right? Think of Tony Robbins.

Dennis Collins: He’s my father, Brian Tracy.

Leah Bumphrey: Yeah, I love Brian Tracy. Look at Tony Robbins he went away for a long time, and then he came back. That’s an.

Dennis Collins: All these books back here, and all these I had every video, every tape, every book that Brian Tracy ever wrote.

Leah Bumphrey: Oh, absolutely. I took multiple courses, and fabulous.

Dennis Collins: But what behavioral change did you see as a result of those trainings?

Leah Bumphrey: Okay, we’ve talked about the word accountability, right a way to frame personal accountability. Because when it comes down to it, when you are early in your sales career, if you’re not accountable to yourself, if you don’t have the personal desire to implement tools and you’re sitting in training I mean, there’s the “don’t be a conference goer, be a conference doer.”

Dennis Collins: Yeah.

Leah Bumphrey: You have to make that decision, right? It’s not a wish, it’s a decision. So when I was able to listen to a Brian Tracy book on cassette and push into it, and then get certified in his methods and actually do it that was impressive change.

Dennis Collins: So you actually did the things that Brian Tracy taught?

Leah Bumphrey: Oh, yeah, absolutely. There is another one that…

Dennis Collins: What caused you to do that? Why did you do that?

Leah Bumphrey: Because nobody else was doing it for me.

Dennis Collins: Okay.

Leah Bumphrey: Right? And I knew.

Dennis Collins: Did you believe that he would lead you that he was leading you in the right direction?

Leah Bumphrey: Someone… And again, someone that I trusted recommended him to me.

Paul Boomer: So hold on for a second. Did you seek out this training, or did this training come to you?

Leah Bumphrey: No, I sought it out.

Paul Boomer: Okay.

Leah Bumphrey: And I paid for it.

Paul Boomer: Okay, so I’ve done the same thing.

Dennis Collins: Me too I sought it out and paid for it.

Paul Boomer: Here’s the difference in this conversation and in this confession.

Dennis Collins: That’s right, excellent, Paul.

Paul Boomer: It’s you wanting to go out and you wanting to seek it out and do the thing. What about if you’re in your office and you’re being told, “Hey, you need to do this training”? What then?

Dennis Collins: Interesting point.

Leah Bumphrey: I want to know what it’s going to do, right?

Dennis Collins: Well, say it’s Brian Tracy. Let’s say whoever you were working for said, “We’re gonna all go to this Brian Tracy seminar” he’s a good Canadian boy “We’re gonna make you all go to this seminar,” okay?

Leah Bumphrey: Yeah. Well.

Dennis Collins: How would you feel about that?

Leah Bumphrey: Again.

Dennis Collins: It’s not your choice.

Leah Bumphrey: Depends on who’s telling you. If you really trust the organization you’re working for and the…

Paul Boomer: Man, is that word again trust.

Leah Bumphrey: Yeah, and understand why they’re sending you. Have you guys ever heard he’s a Canadian author The Wealthy Barber?

Paul Boomer: No.

Leah Bumphrey: Chilton, David Chilton, I think is his name I could have the first name wrong. Brilliant, brilliant. I would have been early 20s, I’d never seen someone speak on personal finance before, and I was sent by the group that I worked for to see him. And he was part of a… There was a group, a whole group of trainers, and he was the keynote address. I had no idea who he was, I hadn’t read his book. I was mesmerized by him. I’ve given away more of his books to people getting married and to people graduating from high school than I can count, because he took concepts and made it really simple and a how-to.

Now, I wouldn’t have ever been sitting in front of him except someone told me I had to. Wasn’t a bad thing. Now, a lot of people sneered at it, maybe because they already knew this stuff. For me, at 22, I didn’t know any of this stuff I didn’t even know it was possible to do half this stuff.

Dennis Collins: Right, right. But I think it’s an interesting distinction between stuff that we chose personally to do on our own, and stuff we were forced to do. You’re giving an example of where it worked out. But I’m gonna postulate that most people who are forced to go to a training fifty-fifty. I don’t know, Paul, what do you have?

Paul Boomer: Yeah, I don’t know either, I can’t even put a number to it. But my question for this person who’s confessing is, “Do I spend money?” because I haven’t seen it help in any way. So do I continue to go down this path, and why or why not? And it really does, for me, come down to you have to, the word again, have clear expectations, clarity of what you want from this, and communicate that not only to this trainer or organization or whatever, but also to your staff. What are you hoping that they get out of it?

Dennis Collins: Interesting.

Paul Boomer: And therefore…

Dennis Collins: Set the expectation.

Paul Boomer: Exactly for everybody. And only then… And if the instructor or trainer comes back and goes, “Well, I don’t know how to do that,” or gives you vague answers, then they’re not gonna be the one, and you should move on.

Dennis Collins: Yeah, I think sometimes I’ve noticed some business owners want to check the box training, check, okay and there’s no real deep dive into the credentials. And again, my new… Without fail, my new requirement is: if you’re not going to help me install this training, we’re not going to do it. It has to become a skill set for my team.

Leah Bumphrey: And there’s a big difference between lip service and actually doing that, Dennis. We’re sponsored by WizardAcademy.org. I was introduced to Wizard Academy by… Decades ago, three decades ago, by a company I was working with and for. And they did a brilliant job taking training and actually sending people for training and incorporating it. But I’ve also seen companies that were just as invested, that stopped doing that. Right? Why? Well, how do you leave your people feeling?

They started gung ho, then they pulled back because well, it’s expensive, well, we can do this internally, well, we don’t need to. And what it sounds like to people is you don’t need to invest. And then there’s a mixed message, because you’re saying that this is a really good process, but now you’re no longer wanting to formally train people on it. So it can be done differently, but salespeople aren’t stupid, staff isn’t stupid they’re gonna believe what you do, not what you say about the training you pick.

Dennis Collins: That’s true. And again, there’s also a factor here that some people do not have a growth mindset they have a fixed mindset, and they don’t respond well to training because they think they know everything: “I don’t need any training, I already know what I need to know.” That’s a whole ‘nother topic, confession, that we can maybe deal with someday. But, so, what’s our bottom line on this? Let’s summarize what we’ve talked about. What advice, what thoughts do we want to share with our listeners?

Paul Boomer: First, I want our listeners to pause right here literally hit the pause button right now.

Dennis Collins: Pause. Hit the pause.

Paul Boomer: Wait, hold on not yet, hold on. Let me explain it first, then pause.

Dennis Collins: Okay.

Paul Boomer: Go to the platform that you’re listening to us on, and in the comments, write your thoughts down on this. Or if you need something, or need some help, or whatever it may be “Hey, I have this, I’m thinking about this trainer, I don’t know what to do, I don’t know what questions” put those in the comments and we’ll be glad to have that conversation.

But make sure you add your comments to this podcast. In addition, if you want something also tangible that you can take with you, in the show notes of this podcast and all the other podcasts of Connect and Convert go to connectandconvertpodcast.com, and in the show notes you’ll find a form that you can download, the Small Business Owner Sales Trust Playbook, which will help you guide through some of these things that we’re talking about today.

Dennis Collins: Absolutely.

Paul Boomer: Now hit the pause button, go add your comment, go download the thing. Now. Okay, once…

Dennis Collins: You come back… Okay, you’re back.

Paul Boomer: Okay, now they’re back. Now let’s go ahead and recap.

Dennis Collins: Leah, what did you hear of our discussion? What comes out?

Leah Bumphrey: People want a return on investment in anything you do, right? If I buy a new truck, if I’m buying cell phones and laptops for my staff, if we’re changing the carpet and the desk we want a return on investment. We want to be able to capitalize that. So when you are doing training, if you’re not getting the return on investment, stop doing that. Stop doing what you’re doing, and look at what your long-term thoughts are, what your people needing, and who can do that. If you’re not sure who, there’s ways of figuring that out, and there’s many people and organizations you can talk to, including us.

But always it comes down to communication, because you don’t want to throw money away, and you don’t want something that is sugar you don’t want the syrup, you want a ribeye. Are you guys with me? Like, when I’m hungry, I want a ribeye I want to dig in there, maybe a glass of nice red wine. If you are content with pulling in a fast-food bit of french fries and a pop, that’s what you’re gonna get.

Dennis Collins: So, we’ve done a series of these confession podcasts, and I hear a theme. There are a couple words that we use a lot: clarity, define your terms. Leah started this whole series weeks ago, months ago: define your terms. And isn’t that really right for all this? What is it you expect from a sales trainer? Okay. And in no uncertain terms, I’m a big guy on making agreements, not expectations. What used to be an expectation for me, I turn into an agreement so we agree that this sales training is going to do the five following things: A, B, C, D, E. Right? We agree on that, agree on that up front. Okay? No expectations are for losers, agreements are for winners. Agree on what it is going to deliver up front, and hold your trainer accountable to that.

I would say that the fault of faulty training, of flawed training, is not so much on the trainer as it is on the person who hired the trainer. What criteria did you use to hire them? What agreements did you make with them? Okay. And I think that’s the step that’s missing a lot. So, yeah, do training, for sure, do training. But understand very clearly what you expect, what you agree with the trainer to do, and hold them accountable to deliver on the agreement.

Paul Boomer: I’m gonna leave this here: transformation requires design.

Dennis Collins: Boy, Paul, you gotta write a book of Boomerisms those are good. Transformation requires design.

Leah Bumphrey: Meaning, without design, you cannot transform.

Dennis Collins: No, you can’t. And we expect training to do transformation, don’t we? When you purchase training at least unless you’re just checking the box when you purchase training, you’re expecting transformation. What is the transformation? Define that in the agreement: here’s the transformation I’m expecting with this training, this is what I need to have done. How are we going to do that? And if you can’t do that, then you’re probably not the right trainer for me. Make sense?

Leah Bumphrey: Yes.

Dennis Collins: Okay, guys, I think we have exhausted another episode of Connect and Convert.

Leah Bumphrey: Oh, oh, one more thing I want to say oh, I want to say, sorry, I want to say, if you’ve had crappy training, go to the trainer, tell them. Tell them that you’re not getting what you paid for, and see their reaction. They may not know that…

Dennis Collins: That’s a good point.

Leah Bumphrey: What they’re offering you is crap they may not recognize it. They may go, “Oh, I thought you wanted this.” Again, communication. Tell them. When you’re at a restaurant and the food is crappy, let them know so they can fix it. You’re not doing anything if you just stay quiet.

Dennis Collins: I’ll bet you let them know.

Leah Bumphrey: Sometimes my kids go, “Mom, just never mind.”

Dennis Collins: Mom, just… Yeah, I have family members who embarrass me in restaurants. But anyway, it’s okay that’s who you are.

Leah Bumphrey: Okay, I had to say that.

Dennis Collins: We love it when you are you. You be you, okay? Okay, guys. Well, again, I’m glad you joined us on this episode of Connect and Convert. I am Dennis, the lovely one there is Ms. Leah, and the smart one is Mr. Paul Boomer. We are Connect and Convert. We’ve spent decades listening to the confessions of small business owners, and we bring you those discussions right here.

We connect you to the thoughts that founders and owners have but they don’t say out loud. And we convert you to honest information we name it so that you can make better decisions, have more clarity, clarity, and add momentum to your business. We’ll see you next time on Connect and Convert. Remember this: most founders don’t need more advice, they need a place to be heard. This is Connect and Convert. This is where you will be heard. We’ll see you next time on Connect and Convert.

Latest posts by Connect and Convert (see all)