Sales Mindset and The Power of Failure with Klyn Elsbury
Watch/Listen here or on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcasts“I believe as the leadership team goes, so goes the rest of the company. So if you don't have that consistent and significant sustainable growth, you've got some work to do.” — Mike Goldman
Klyn Elsbury, a renowned sales strategist with over 15 years of experience, has been hailed as The Best Professional Millennial Sales Trainer in America and is a two-time international bestselling author featured in Success Magazine, Forbes, and NBC Nightly News. In this episode, we explore her inspiring journey and how embracing failure can drive success in sales and leadership.
Klyn’s Inspirational Journey: From Hospital Bed to Sales Trainer
Klyn was born with cystic fibrosis, a rare genetic disorder affecting her lungs and pancreas.
Life expectancy at birth was only seven years old.
Despite 1,075 hospitalizations (spending over 13 years in the hospital), she became one of the oldest and fittest individuals with the condition.
She built a successful leadership sales training company while being hospitalized.
Developed a passion for sales early as her father, a salesperson, read Selling Power Magazine to her instead of bedtime stories.
Redefining Success: A Mindset Shift
Success isn’t about big leaps but about making progress inch by inch.
Facing a terminal diagnosis, she focused on getting through small, immediate goals rather than a long-term vision.
Anxiety stems from believing in an uncertain future; she learned to focus on the present.
The Power of Failure in Sales and Leadership
Failure is essential for growth in sales and leadership.
Great leaders and salespeople are not afraid to make mistakes but learn from them.
Fear of failure leads to stagnation, while embracing it leads to rapid learning and improvement.
How to Cultivate a Winning Sales Mindset
Sales is not just a numbers game; it’s a relationship game.
Success comes from helping customers make decisions—not just closing deals.
Salespeople must be coachable and adaptable, embracing feedback to improve.
Celebrate failures as part of the learning process.
Common Leadership Mistakes That Hurt Sales Teams
Educational Whiplash: Leaders introduce too many new strategies without letting previous ones take effect.
Lack of Process Stability: Not allowing enough time for a sales cycle to produce measurable results.
Fear of Failure: Leaders discourage risk-taking, stifling innovation and growth.
Effective Leadership Strategies for Driving Sales Success
Leaders should provide structure and stability while allowing creative problem-solving.
Sales success is built on systems and processes, not just motivation.
The best companies mind-map the strategies of their top producers and train their teams accordingly.
Process-driven leadership is key—results stem from structured, repeatable actions.
Sales Hiring and Retention Challenges
The average tenure of a salesperson is only 18 months.
87% of salespeople are fired due to failure to meet targets—often linked to lack of coachability.
Sales hiring mistakes occur because great interviewees don’t always make great salespeople.
Traits of top-performing salespeople:
Men: Backgrounds in baseball or hockey (handling failure and quick adaptability).
Women: Experience in theater or debate (emotional regulation and persuasion skills).
The Three Sales Personality Types
Bunnies: Outgoing, great at maintaining existing accounts but not cold calling.
Dogs: Loyal, consistent producers who maintain their book of business but don’t actively seek new clients.
Tigers: Aggressive, independent, and excellent at cold calling but difficult to manage.
Understanding these types helps leaders place salespeople in the right roles for success.
How to Test Coachability in Sales Interviews
Give candidates real-time coaching during the interview.
See how they react to feedback—if they resist or embrace it.
Ask them to overcome a common objection on the spot and provide suggestions to see how they adjust.
How Klyn Helps Companies Scale Their Sales Teams
Works with purpose-driven businesses looking to improve their sales processes.
Runs one-day mind-mapping script workshops to create custom sales strategies.
Helps businesses build scalable, repeatable systems that increase conversion rates.
Final Thoughts
Sales is evolving into a leadership-driven discipline where persuasion and strategy matter more than brute force tactics.
Leaders need to cultivate an environment where failure is embraced as part of the growth process.
A great sales team starts with the right hiring, training, and leadership approach.
Thanks for listening!
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[00:00:00]
Mike Goldman:
Klyn Elsbury has an over 15 year track record building sales systems and processes with an emphasis on recruiting salespeople, writing sales playbooks and helping revenue producers improve their persuasion techniques called the best professional millennial sales trainer in America.
She's a two time international bestselling author and has been featured in success magazine, Forbes and NBC nightly news. With Lester Holt, today we're going to talk to Klyn about, sales, but she's also got a pretty incredible story that leads into it. So we're going to start there, but, Klyn, welcome to the show.
Klyn Elsbury: Yeah, glad to be here, Mike. Can't wait for it.
Mike Goldman: and we met, I have, I seem to have a lot of guests that are also Vistage speakers. We met because we're both Vistage speakers. So, some applause to Vistage, which I think has been very good to both of [00:01:00] us. but let's dive in and we are going to. dive into Klyn's story because it's so powerful, but you all know the first question I always ask is from all of your experience, what do you believe is the number one most important characteristic of a great leadership team?
Klyn Elsbury: Oh, great. First question, Mike. you know, it's interesting. The more I analyze different companies, different organizations, the one thing that stands out is if a leadership team can come together for a common goal. And then here's the thing, they can't be afraid to fail as they achieve it. So I think at some point, if you stop just trying new things and being creative at the risk of playing it safe. Then you're not going to grow as fast, not only emotionally, but also with the team and from a revenue standpoint. So don't be afraid to fail, keep working towards that common goal.
Mike Goldman: Somehow I think that,that theme of not being afraid to fail is something we're going to hit again in this interview, knowing [00:02:00] what I know about where we're going. So thanks for that.
So I want to start out with your story. And when I was kind of doing some research on you and poking around your website and some of your videos, the thing that jumped out to me was this idea that you founded.
A leadership sales training company from your hospital bed. So there's a whole lot behind that that gets the story. But tell us what that's all about.
Klyn Elsbury: Yeah. Yeah. wild. So I have a condition known as cystic fibrosis, out of curiosity, Mike, have you ever heard of this condition?
Mike Goldman: Yeah, I know very little about it, but I have heard of it. Sure.
Klyn Elsbury: Cool. I always like to ask because there's only 70, 000 people in the world with it, and it's a rare genetic disorder. So I got it from my mama, and essentially my lungs fill with a very sticky, thick infected mucus. So I'm easily prone to different types of infections day to day. I was born in the [00:03:00] 1980s, the life expectancy was actually only seven years old.
So the doctors were very clear in telling my mom and dad, hey, listen, there's not a lot of time. things you can do for this kid. I mean, they had something called chest percussion therapy, where the logic is, the more you beat your child's lungs, the more likely it is that mucus in her lungs will loosen and she can cough it up and out. But the biggest thing that they told my parents when I was born is it's probably easier if you just have a backup child because this one's not gonna live. And so
Mike Goldman: A backup child. Oh my God.
Klyn Elsbury: Yeah. Backup child. you know, they started warning about the fact that my pancreas won't digest food. my lungs are going to get a ton of these infections and I could do, my parents could do everything right from a treatment standpoint, but it's only a matter of time until I suffocate from the inside out. And so my brother was born 13 months after I was just because it was such a dire time.
I had had 13 surgeries, two blood [00:04:00] transfusions, and my parents at the time were very proud small business owners. Their entire goal was to run their business and create a family business. But, Mike, the reality is, is in the United States, healthcare is not cheap. And so my family wound up losing their small business just to pay for my medical bills. so my life became a series of negotiations after negotiations. Number one, to have afford the treatment. Number two, my mom talking to medical billing specialists every day when I would come home from school to try to figure out if they had enough money left over. they would have to negotiate with anybody that they rented a place from just simply because. There wasn't money left over after my medical bills. so my family, not knowing how to solve this problem, got involved. And they both, both my mom and dad took a sales profession. And so rather than reading princess stories and Cinderella at night, my papa would actually come to the hospital wards and read me selling power magazine. [00:05:00] So once you get that sales bug, it doesn't matter where it comes from. but you love it and fast forward to then 75 hospitalizations, in total it's, we added it up once it's around 13 years of my life has been spent living inside of wards, to date. I'm 1 of the oldest and fittest 1 of not the, 1 of the oldest and fittest people in the world with this condition. And you look back in my career, I was around 24 years old when the doctors officially. diagnosed me end stage, meaning there's no more treatments available. being bored in the hospital, I found out a couple of things. found out that year, number one, I'd be hospitalized around 168 days. And number two, I found out that if you're hospitalized for 168 days, you can only watch HGTV so many days in a row.
for me, it was five. And then, I got bored. And part of my career path at that time was executive recruiting. So I started writing sales playbooks [00:06:00] for recruiters and how is it that a recruiter can not only work with a client company and get that sale, if you will, but also help the candidates find their dream careers. And so I started leadership sales training ad hoc in the hospital just to give me something to keep my mind busy.
Mike Goldman: Wow. Wow. That's and what, and I know, you know, you've got a book that you wrote all about the story and it's called, I am the untold story of success. But what do you think so many people let way lesser things. There you go. There's the book. If you're watching this on YouTube, there's the book there.
We, I've come across so many people. Who let lesser things get in the way of moving forward? What was it that kept you going? And is there a secret for, you know, for, from a health standpoint of man, you need a backup child because she's probably not going to go past seven [00:07:00] to obviously lasting way longer than that.
And so what was the secret there? What did you learn that helped you? Keep going and keep going in such a powerful way.
Klyn Elsbury: Yeah, you know, it's funny. I don't ever really talk about that secret, but in the last couple of weeks, it's been evidently clear to me what it was and it was this. When to quote the famous Leonardo DiCaprio in Titanic, when you've got nothing, you've got nothing to lose. And at some point, whether you're in sales or leadership, or you're just trying to get by and you're nine to five, at some point, the game doesn't become about big swings.
It becomes a game of inches. So as I was end stage going through these hospitalizations, four out of the five drugs, antibiotic resistance, I was legally disabled. So I was genetically handicapped, legally disabled. So thank you all for your tax dollars. you paid for my way for a few years. The goal wasn't to live a healthy, vibrant, long life.
Like [00:08:00] that had already been eradicated. Like that wasn't a possibility. So if I would sit there and I would say, you know, one day I want to get married and have a family and that white picket fence with the cute little doggie, when you are end stage and dying, that's not reality. And to realize that you don't get your reality becomes depressing.
And a lot of us know that anxiety doesn't come from the day to day moments. Anxiety comes. From believing in a future self that you don't know is possible. so for me in that stage of my life, the game was more about like, Hey, can I make it through another month? Can I live another month? Can I try to get this drug?
There's a pharmaceutical drug coming out that would halt the progression. So it became a game of inches rather than a big BHAG or your seven year theory. And so I think a lot of times when we come to terms with failure and we start thinking about what's happening, we get so excited about that big vision.
Yeah. That it becomes impossible. I can get through next month. I can get through tomorrow's treatments. I can get through [00:09:00] when they stick the scope up your nose and dig you out, right? Like I can get through that, but I can't get through seven years of a dream unless I can get through the inches in front of me.
Mike Goldman: So to some degree it's about read, redefining success
Klyn Elsbury: Yeah. Yeah. Put it very simply. Yeah. And many times I think that if we have the ability to sit down and say, okay, what does success mean for me? and we changed the length of duration of the goal. We start to see more power in it.
Mike Goldman: related to that.
I know in your book and some of you speaking, you talk about the power of failure and we don't often think of failure as a power. We often think of it as the opposite. But what does that mean? The power of failure
Klyn Elsbury: I mean, I love that you asked this because failure to me is everything. So let me give a, for instance, if you will. I have a member on my team and they're not necessarily the most technical [00:10:00] human, but they've got all the right stuff, right? They're bright, they can figure it out, they can problem solve. And I put them on a really difficult task, one that frankly, I don't think I could pull off, and they made a mistake, right? So they come to me and they're like, I'm really sorry. I made this massive mistake and believe it or not, your website's completely down and gone. And I'm like, what? Okay. Yep.
that's a pretty big mistake. however, did you try? And they're like, yeah. And I'm like, do you think you can fix it? And they said, I don't know how much time it'll take me, but like, I wish I never would have made this mistake. I think being afraid to make a mistake says that you're going to stay small.
The thing they don't tell you about growth is growth freaking sucks, Mike. Like it's hard, but if you don't fail and you don't try and you don't have a strategy for how often you can fail. Then you stay the same. And to me, staying the same is the biggest failure of all of it.
Mike Goldman: And it relates so well. To [00:11:00] sales, right? Because sales, you know, on, you know, more, I'd say I'm like, not unlike, but much more so than most, any other career I could think of is to be successful at sales. You need to fail over and over. Again, like if you look at being an entrepreneur as an example, yes, you need to fail before you succeed, but you may fail at two, three or four ventures and then you succeed at a venture.
And of course there's many successes and failures along the way, but man sales, you could fail 13 times before lunch.
Klyn Elsbury: And you should. Yeah, I completely agree with you. And I think, gosh, like, when I look at, you know, the incoming generation and working, I feel like, you know, life hasn't been necessarily easy for our Gen Zers and our Millennials in many ways. Right. But also, I think [00:12:00] we're getting into the point where, We have to encourage that failure and that growth rather than playing it safe. And that's what scares me the most as I look ahead is I'm worried that people in general, they're not going to understand that. Like it's okay to fail. It's not okay to fail just for the sake of failure. Like, Oh, I tried something and failed. Ha ha ha. That was fun. But did you try something and fail in pursuit of excellence? That's a different conversation because you're right in a sales career. The reason understanding this reward you handsomely financially is because you're not afraid to fail. And I think most people get in their head and fail your socks. Yeah. But then they stop trying and then they live the same life over and over for years and they can't. And if they're happy. That's really the success to follow, but it's never going to be a path for myself or most entrepreneurs and salespeople.
Mike Goldman: so how do you jumping and we may jump back and forth between your story and sales and they're so interconnected that we can't help but do that anyway. But. [00:13:00] Sticking with that idea of failing at sales and, or re reframing what failing means is, you know, how should, and by the way, I did mention your other book, Klyn has a book called, unstuck yourself for 30 day proven sales playbook.
That uses, what is it that uses neuroscience to improve your sales career. So she's got a book on sales and a lot of the work Klyn does is all about sales, but sticking with that power of failure. and, Hey, I love using. These interviews as coaching calls for me. So I'll do that. I'll get some, maybe get some free advice.
So
Klyn Elsbury: I love
Mike Goldman: I've gotten, I was mentioning this to you, right before we, we hit record on the podcast, you know, I have got a, my assistant is now. Doing sales for me to go out and get me more keynotes, more speaking gigs. And it's her first foray into sales. And what do you know what the first outbound call she made, she got hung [00:14:00] up on and said, you know, she got a stomachache from that, but then made 17 more calls that I was so proud of.
And she's listening to this cause she added to these podcasts. So, Xime thank you for your hard work there, but when, you know, again, in, in this. process where you could fail 15, 20 times before lunch. how do you keep that Positive, productive mindset as a salesperson when you're dealing with so much of that, you know, people not wanting to talk to you or just the way people view salespeople.
I was going to say these days, but the way people view salespeople period, it's been a long time. how do you keep a strong mindset as a salesperson given all of that going on?
Klyn Elsbury: Well, I love that you bring that up because sales, interestingly enough in North America right now, sales is actually the second most hated profession. Salesforce released a report last year that [00:15:00] also said that most salespeople most only 24.3% of salespeople right now hit quota, meaning most salespeople aren't even hitting their quotas. So we have an industry where we're hated and we don't produce. So that tells us a couple of things. Like. If I'm putting myself in your assistant's shoes, like getting that first hang up on, like, that's gotta be celebrated, not tolerated. and that's really simple because if we can work through the mindset of like, Oh yeah, you got hung up on that must've hurt. Well, then we're going to assume that the next call is going to hurt. And that's not the attitude. I think we, any leader should take into that. So, you know, Hey, I got hung up on. All right, let's figure this out. Number one, did you get hung up on? Because. You didn't lead with a humbling opener. You know, something that was like, Hey, do you understand?
Maybe I saw your information and I read your recent report on Y, Z. Would you happen to have a couple minutes so I can ask you some questions about this report, right? So you've got to sound confident, but you have to also [00:16:00] sound like you're humble. to enough to ask them for help on some specific research you read. So is it that she got hung up on because she stuttered through her words and didn't practice and she didn't know what she was saying, or did she get hung up on because that guy's just a jerk? And let's be honest, there's a couple of jerks out there in the world, right? Like, so if we
Mike Goldman: Just a couple. Absolutely.
Klyn Elsbury: What it was that specifically happened well the leading indicators is how she's coming to these phone calls, the conversation she's having and the value, the lagging indicators, the actual revenue that she produces from it. so I can't say one way or another what happened, but like, you got a girl who will actually pick up the phone and try. That is light years above anybody else. And that should be celebrated.
Mike Goldman: Absolutely. And it, you know, when you always see it, I want to run this by you. Cause I hear this so often that, you know, sometimes these cliches, very often something's a cliche because it's true and other times [00:17:00] something becomes a cliche, but it's like, no, that's just doesn't make sense anymore. And they would say sales is a numbers game.
And you know, and so, so if you fail, that's okay. Pick up the phone again. Cause sales is just a numbers game. Is that true? Is that something you believe?
Klyn Elsbury: I don't, I really genuinely don't because I think we're about to enter a new era of sales, where we're not going to rely on traditional sales teams. We're going to rely on the assistants who also make phone calls to grow a book of business. The accountants, the CPA is the interior designers, the construction workers, the brokers, you know?
So like, I don't know. I don't believe that sales necessarily is a numbers game because the entire dynamic of the industry is changing. But what I do believe is sales is now a relationship game. And in many ways, sure, it always has been, but the only reason somebody, a prospect would want to talk to a salesperson traditional or not is because they need help in making a decision. So the power of the relationship comes from the ability that they trust in you to help them make the decision. [00:18:00] With your company, with your competitors or with another solution. And so acting more from an advisory standpoint of like in similar to finance, you know, fiduciary acting almost like a fiduciary in that environment helps your closing percentages increase. And then it's not about numbers because numbers are constantly evolving and changing as long as the metrics you're tracking are making sense. I don't think you need to spray and pray and have 500 cold calls just to say you're a great salesperson. You can create the same revenue with two.
Mike Goldman: And by the way, before I move on, I've got to ask if sales was the number two hated profession. What was number one?
Klyn Elsbury: I would like you to guess Mike.
Mike Goldman: Oh, I, a politician.
Klyn Elsbury: Yes. Oh my
Mike Goldman: Look at that. And I'm guessing number three after sales is serial killer.
Klyn Elsbury: No,
Mike Goldman: Although that's probably not a [00:19:00] profession.
Klyn Elsbury: absolutely
Mike Goldman: It's probably not a profession. I mean, I don't know, but that would be cool if you can go back out there and say, you know, people hate salespeople even more than serial killers.
that would be something, but it's probably not true.
Klyn Elsbury: no idea on the data behind that, but that will be coming to a workshop near you.
Mike Goldman: so how should You know, as opposed to digging real deep on, on the sales mindset, and we will dig a little bit on that, or maybe I should say in addition to digging deep, because our audience are CEOs, leadership teams, what have you seen leaders and leadership teams do that?
That actually holds back sales or hurts this. I want to start with kind of the negative because I know I've seen a lot of it. What is it that leaders and leadership teams do [00:20:00] that actually hold their sales people back from a mindset standpoint, a process standpoint, anything that makes sense.
Klyn Elsbury: Educational whiplash. So you think of the typical entrepreneur or CEO, they're growth minded. They're reading the books. They're listening to the podcast. They're in some kind of a peer advisory group, EO, Vistage, YPO, Tiger 21, C12. matter. And what's interesting is they go to their meetings, they get all fired up.
And because usually, did you know that 30 percent of CEOs have a background in sales?like so their career started in some kind of a commission plus based salary opportunity, and to be fair, that taught them a lot about how to persuade and how to lead and how to get buy in amongst a team. And so they fast forward and because that was their childhood or where they were rooted and how they grew up. They will naturally have a passion for that part of the business, whether they have a traditional sales team or not. So they go to their peer advisory groups. They listen to the podcast. They stay up to date on sales methodologies, or at least persuasion methodologies or [00:21:00] communication methodologies, and then because they get all fired up about an idea, they decide it's time to now teach. Their team, by the time they teach their team, they're 24 more ideas in. And it's like, at some point the team's just going to look at each other and be like, okay, that's just Jeff. He's back with yet another idea. And then the team's not going to buy in or listen anymore.
So like there is an avenue of staying in your lane.
If the year focus. Is, you know, Hey, we want to learn how to ask the right questions where we ascertain someone's problems and their dreams, not just their problems, then let's learn and train on that until it's done. And then when it's done and we have success, now we can build upon it. But this educational whiplash that entrepreneurs and CEOs have been doing to their teams.it's starting to backfire pretty quickly.
Mike Goldman: Yeah, it's interesting.
You say that I've seen that so often and it doesn't only hit sales, but to be specific on sales, cause it hits them pretty strongly is there's a sales cycle. And very often what I've [00:22:00] seen is leaders don't let that sales cycle happen before they make 27 changes and you never really get a sense of what's going to work.
And a lot of it doesn't work cause you're not doing it long enough to let it work. Okay.
Klyn Elsbury: Yeah. and when you don't see results right away, our natural disposition is okay. If we're not seeing results, let's improve it. Let's change it. Let's figure out why it's not having results.
So as long as we know maybe where the results are lacking or why we're not having them, then we can change. Like change for change sake is negative.
It creates poor performance, but strategic change, because we know the KPI we're tracking and we're not hitting it. That's relevant. So change for change's sake is It's a difficult model that creates that lack of buy in, and I can relate it entirely to what you say.
we do this one day mind mapping script where we talk to the CEO and we figure out or whoever their top producer is and we figure out, okay, what are they saying at each stage in the sales cycle?
And then we create a one [00:23:00] page strategic guide. So we jokingly say like, if you accidentally hired an idiot. And they memorized it and they had freedom within the framework. They could still sell similar to the revenue that top producer does. it gets interesting is the majority of clients. If they're entrepreneurs, they will edit that document 10 times before they show their team. CEOs are like, okay, let's run with it. And then let's check it. So I think that's an interesting correlation to your point.
Mike Goldman: So how, so if that, that educational whiplash is one of the, one of the things that, that hurts sales teams, what have you seen great leaders do that really, you know, motivates a sales team that, that drives success, what's something that the best. Leaders. And I'm not even necessarily just talking about sales leaders.
It may be anybody on the leadership team. what have you seen folks do well, that really drives success.
Klyn Elsbury: Yeah, the ones that [00:24:00] so many stories of like a company trying ideas and failing, trying and failing, and then one year they just get that hockey stick growth or if we were to quote, James and atomic habits, the interesting thing is like, you've got your ice in your cup and then the ice cube at 32 degrees.
It's an ice cube. And then at 31 degrees, it's still pretty much an ice cube. And then at 30 degrees, it's water. And so like, That type of understanding that at any point you could have that hockey stick or your ice cube to water ratio happen, I think comes from strategically being able to analyze every part of the process. I don't think our lives anymore are going to be about, Oh, I have this goal. Let me achieve it. I think our lives are essentially becoming what I have this process in the system. What can this process and system get me? relation to that goal. So I think great leaders understand that it's not about having a goal. It's about having the system and the process behind it to achieve that hockey stick growth or that ice [00:25:00] cube melting.
Mike Goldman: I love that. And I'm going to get this quote wrong, but I saw, I think it's a Navy. I know it's a Navy seal quote, and I don't know exactly who said it, but it's something like, you know, great leaders, or maybe it was great Navy SEALS don't rise to the level of their motivation or something like that.
they fall back to the level of their training and their process. It's like, it's not because motivation doesn't last. There are times you're not motivated, but you've got to do it anyway. So I love what you said about, you know, it's about the process. It's about following that process. And that's where the educational whiplash could.
Throw that up in the air.
Klyn Elsbury: Yeah.
Mike Goldman: How?
Klyn Elsbury: Lord knows I've made a lot of mistakes. but once I kind of got the, like, it's about the process or in our personal terms, it's about our habits. Once I realized that, you know, it's really about we fall to the level of our systems and processes. Yeah, I love that. I don't know who said it either, but as [00:26:00] you're saying it, it really resonates.
Mike Goldman: I don't know if there's data on this and if there is, and you know it, you may tell me I'm wrong, but when I work with my clients, it feels to me like the sales team has the most difficult time. Hiring the right people. And part of it may be because if you're even a decent salesperson, you probably interview very well and you made it may or may not be right for the job, but I find it's the sales organization where there is the most hiring mistakes.
And very often in these two are probably correlated. It's the sales organization where there, there tends to be some really large retention. Problems. Now, yeah, I'm separating that from if you've got this big customer service call center, normally retention's pretty tough [00:27:00] there, but, do you find the same thing that, that there are a lot of hiring mistakes and retention issues within sales organization may, what's organizations may be more than other parts of an organization.
Klyn Elsbury: Yeah. Allow me to give you some of the data behind your processes on this because you're exactly right. So interestingly enough, in North America, the average tenure for salespeople, traditional salespeople, is only 18 months. to the bridge group, it takes on average 10 weeks to train a salesperson. Now check this out. Do you know why 87 percent of salespeople are fired? Mike, take a guess.
Mike Goldman: I assume it's because they're not hitting their numbers consistently.
Klyn Elsbury: Yep. And then what do you as a leader do when you have someone not hitting their numbers?
Mike Goldman: I would hope the leader would coach and develop and mentor and train that person and try and do what they can [00:28:00] to help them figure out ways to hit those numbers.
Klyn Elsbury: Absolutely. So 87 percent of salespeople are fired right now because when the leader who cares tries to coach and help and develop salesperson themselves lacks two things, temperament the ability to be coached. So if we're on a call right now and I'm analyzing your call and I'm like, Mike, I love how you'd lead with that, but maybe try to slow down when you ask a question and you go, Oh no, I know how to ask questions. Eventually you're going to get fired because you're not taking feedback and you become defensive and you don't have the opportunity to truly look in the mirror and say, you know what? I could slow down. Thank you for that feedback. They take it personally. And any leader who's great knows how difficult it is to coach and mentor someone. And it'll make it easier actually on the leader. If you have a team that's open to coaching, it's, and you'd look at it from a professional sports standpoint. no football player shows up to practice and it's like, it's okay, coach. I don't have to practice. Like, just [00:29:00] put me in the big game on Friday.
Like, that's not a thing. with salespeople, somehow we've got this story that because we're the greatest at selling, we don't need help in practice. we got to stop practicing on game day. Like it doesn't, these two truths. Make it make sense, Mike. so I think that becomes interesting from a hiring standpoint.
There are certain tools and methodologies I've used in helping find that right talent, if you will.
to date we've advised on hiring of over 1,800 salespeople, whether it's a traditional role or, you know, your CPA who also has to build their book of business a couple of traits stand out if you'd like me to share a couple of them.
Mike Goldman: Yeah, let's do it. Dive in
Klyn Elsbury: Okay. So interestingly enough, and this is the data, this is not Klyn science. they found that men tend to outproduce women. If it is a B2B sales environment or transactional, if it's consulting, or if it is a relational type [00:30:00] sale, women tend to outperform men.the interesting thing is there are two sports actually on a man's resume. that could indicate top producer status. Have any guesses?
Mike Goldman: to sports. I would assume. Well, it's interesting. I would, my, my head jumped to, I would assume it's a team sport because when I think in terms of teams, but being a great salesperson sometimes is a little less of a team sport than other. Wow. two, how about, I don't know, track and field,
Klyn Elsbury: Nope. The first one I'll give you is baseball.
Mike Goldman: baseball. Okay. Team sport. Okay. Okay.
Klyn Elsbury: yep. and then the second one is actually hockey.
Mike Goldman: Why do you think that's the case?
Klyn Elsbury: I think hockey requires a faster connection time. just simply if you look at the speed of the game, for some reason, hockey players tend to be faster and quicker on their [00:31:00] feet. baseball, it's because it is a game of failure, right? Like you're stepping up to bat and you know that you might not hit a home run every single time. And so just to be able to deal with that mindset hurdle. for women though, I don't want to exclude my ladies. there are two things on a resume usually indicative of top producer status. Take a guess what their two extracurriculars are.
Mike Goldman: Huh, I would assume it could be sports as well. That's a no,she's shaking no. Two extracurriculars, I don't know.
Klyn Elsbury: So the one is a theater because theater teaches something called equanimity, which is the ability to suspend your emotions to get something done. then the second one is debate club. Now, obviously these are just some basic examples of what to look for on a resume or how to. Put the right type of sales people in the right slot. but then there's three main personality types in sales. And the biggest thing is to make sure that you have to put that personality type within your [00:32:00] organization, for that sales model. So if we've got the time, I can elaborate on those three pretty quickly, but I think of them as animals in the animal kingdom.
So it's three fuzzy little animals. And once you see this pattern, you can't unsee it, which makes it kind of funny.
Mike Goldman: Yeah, take us through it.
Klyn Elsbury: Yeah. Okay.
So we've got bunnies, we got dogs and we got tigers, and here's how to think of a bunny. So if your sales system or process requires you to have somebody super outgoing and check in on a bunch of accounts and maybe tell those accounts about new products or service lines or new pricing structures. That's a bunny. So you can't have a bunny go out and make cold calls. Bunnies don't make cold calls, but they talk to the existing book of business and, oh, fireworks, and they make it so much fun that anybody will take a call with a bunny. We all know bunnies. They probably came from med device sales, pharma, biotech, you know, if there was a ADP could be a bunny. So you can get the idea for a bunny. You can't put a bunny in a cold calling world. other one is [00:33:00] dogs, and there's nothing wrong with saying you're a dog. It doesn't mean like, Oh, this is negative. It just means if you have a team of dogs, they probably don't learn a lot. They're not really that motivated to get up in the morning and do something, but. They have a book of business and they work their own book of business. They might not talk about upsells or cross sells, but they do. But the customers just kind of give them more business over the years because they do a great job and they're loyal. These are also usually industry experts. So they know a ton about their field. Usually dogs are in anything with finance or insurance. If you look at a, you know, a prudential team, for example, you'll find that the majority of the staff is 50, 60 years old, and they've been there for 20, 30 years. They're not going to cold call. But they have their book of business. They're on residuals and they're happy as can be.
You pet it, you tell it you did a good job, and you let the dog just do dog things. And then the last group is tigers. Tigers are your worst freaking enemy because they don't follow the rules. They do what they want and they could [00:34:00] have just eaten a meal and they're laying on their savannah. And something kind of walks across their camp and a tiger will get up and just kill it for sport. These are great at cold callers. These are great at opening new books of business. The difficulty with tigers is they're impossible to manage and they need a cleanup crew. But the reason business owners and leaders love tigers is because they produce them. A lot of the results a lot of times in untapped marketplaces. just recognizing those three animals, as well as some of the statistics and trends behind top producers helps get rid of some of the mysticism between hiring salespeople.
Mike Goldman: I want to go back to, you talked about temperament and coachability when we were talking about why folks don't last and the mishires for someone that might be in the process of hiring, you know, interviewing and hiring a salesperson or not in the process. Now they will be at [00:35:00] some point.
how can you determine During an interview process, how could you determine whether someone's got the right temperament and they are coachable, especially when they're going to be on their best behavior in an interview, they're at least going to try to say all the right things. How could you best figure that out?
Klyn Elsbury: Yeah. So, I mean, the way I do it and the way I advise my clients too, is once you've got them in, I run them through a very fast training and it's not designed to be all inclusive, but I'll run them through a super fast training. It's four days long and we've got it all bulleted out where we teach them basically the basics and we walk them through example scripting. Now the thing about a script is you have to have freedom within the framework. So it's not like I give you a script, Mike, follow it word for word. Like that's not what we're saying. Okay. But you have to have some overarching idea of what this person will say when talking to the potential client.and then, After a couple of days of practicing the script and just understanding the [00:36:00] basics about the market, I'll do an audition and nobody passes the audition the first time.
Like that's fine. don't worry about that. And if you can't coach them or they don't come to the audition, knowing what to say or why it is, we say certain things after a few days. Well, then you coach them and you run them back through that training as best as you can. But if they get defensive on it and they start coming up with excuses, well, four days in, I know that I can't coach them.
They lack temperament and that's okay. because at that point, they'll probably either quit right away because they, they feel like they failed right away. or you'll see the people really dig deep and learn these lessons and go back through the training to figure it out.
Mike Goldman: So, so that assumes you're kind of maybe failing fast after you've hired someone and determining whether they're coachable, is there a way, or how can you, before you hire them in the interview process, is there something, line of questioning or a way of looking at their resume or something in that interview [00:37:00] process that might tell you, you know, Yes, they're coachable and they've got the right template temperament or the opposite.
Klyn Elsbury: Yeah. this doesn't come from me. This came from the late Chet Holmes, but he had some advice in his book, the ultimate sales machine. That's always stuck with me now. Thing is before I say this, sure that your body language is on point when you do this in the interview. but in the interview, let's just say hypothetically my biggest objection in the business from my prospects is time, right?
Mike Goldman: Oh, I don't have the time to implement it. So I would ask right in the interview, okay, how would you overcome the time objection based on what you know about leadership sales training? And whatever that person says, I might say, have you considered maybe wording it like this? And I'll actually coach them in the interview. And if they respond defensive, you know, no, but that's just how I've always done it. Oh, but I didn't read enough. You know, if they're like, oh, wow, I can totally see how you would say it like that. I like that. Let me try it again. [00:38:00] Then I'm like, yep, I need this person.love that.
Klyn Elsbury: like coach him in the interview.
Like, cause, cause you can't follow, you can't hire salespeople off resumes y'all, because I've never met a salesperson who was honest on their resume. Like every resume is 140 percent to quota, like give me a break. so it's just, you have to behaviorally check them as it's happening in real time.
Mike Goldman: Beautiful
. Klyn, tell me, tell us a little bit more about what you do as a company, what kinds of clients do you work with and specifically what is it you do to help organizations
Klyn Elsbury: Yeah, I love that. the clients I work with are purpose driven. I think sales is an industry where. Naturally, we all think salespeople are pushy, sleazy, spammy, scammy. So I want to only work with companies that have a deeper purpose, a deeper mission, and it doesn't matter the industry. I think we've worked in 110 industries at this point, construction, [00:39:00] healthcare, call centers, insurance, real estate. really it's just like, they have to have a good story of why they're in business and what they do. And that's what gets me excited. And, the first thing we really do is we go in and we talk to those top producers and we mind map what the top producers are saying and doing through each of the six steps in the sales phases. And we teach that to the entire team. And we might improve upon it based on what we know about sales and negotiation persuasion. But really once, once you mind map what the excellent people are already doing in your organization, well, then it comes down to how do we build those KPIs? How do we recruit a bigger team? How do we maximize those conversations with our customers? But first and foremost, is if you don't know what's in the mindsets of your top producers through each of the six steps, you're not going to scale that's not a hockey stick type business model. so that's first and foremost, what we always do,
Mike Goldman: and your business model, you go in [00:40:00] and you call it coaching or training or.
Klyn Elsbury: you know, I've called it both. I don't necessarily, you know, that, that vernacular isn't as relevant, but the really, the first step of anything is, what we call the one day mind mapping script writing workshop. And so we literally roll up our sleeves and in one day you leave with a tailored script directly for your industry. We've seen people improve their closing percentages as much as 275%. And that wasn't even in a sales role that was for trauma therapists and a healthcare company. So getting them to understand how they can help those patients get the resources that they need through that clinic and to sign up for like, whether it's a membership or some kind of a supplemental program to get the help they get after their trauma therapy sessions. and so it's beautiful to see it. Work through like that, but it all starts with that one day mind mapping script writing workshop where it's all written out within that day.
Mike Goldman: [00:41:00] Great. And what is, where should people go if they, and this will all be in the show notes, but where should people go if they want to find out more? And is there something specific they should do if they want to get started and find out more?
Klyn Elsbury: Yeah, so we're releasing and it hasn't been released yet, but a free two hour online master class on the six step methodology that leadership sales training uses, which is called the impact methodology. So it's how do we Create the right types of environments where we can make an impact for the end user. And we're giving away that two free hour masterclass. I believe it starts February 27th.
Mike Goldman: Well, there you go. So, so when people are listening to this, it'll be out there. So do you have a link for that yet? You could share, or is that come later and we'll put it in the show notes.
Klyn Elsbury: yeah, it'll come from leadershipsalestraining.com
and then I believe the backslash, it should be masterclass enrollment. So
[00:42:00] leadershipsalestraining.com/masterclassenrollment
but I will provide you an updated link. Cause I, if I got that wrong, it's going to backfire pretty quickly.
Mike Goldman: Well, we'll make sure to get it right. and if we get it wrong, the website again, cause I'm assuming if they go to the web, your website, they'll find it somehow, and that's not going to change to tell us your website again,
Klyn Elsbury: Yep. Just
Mike Goldman: and what before I was just about to sign off, but I realized, you don't normally hear people say leadership, sales training. why the word leadership in there?
Klyn Elsbury: because I believe we're in a new era of sales. I believe now that technical experts who have to persuade as part of their day job is the future and traditional sales teams are slow, slowly dwindling. And leadership 101 is communication and also persuading others,in the right, not only ethically, but in the right of their organization.
So I believe that sales is a leadership thing.
Mike Goldman: Love it. Love it. Well, Hey, I always say if you want a great company, you need a great [00:43:00] leadership team. Klyn. Thanks so much for helping us get there today.
Klyn Elsbury: Thank you for having me on today, Mike. This has been fun.
Mike Goldman: Same here.