Paul talks with the president and owner of Industrial Bolt & Supply, Michelle St. John, about her tactics for self-motivation and customer satisfaction during these ongoing tough times.
Show Notes
Make big, but realistic, promises. Don’t under-promise or you may end up living down to those low expectations.
If you are facing supply-chain issues, looking for alternative and creative solutions is critical.
“Giving your salespeople the tools to help them retain their prices is important.” Michelle St. John
“The better your plan, and then the better your commitment to your plan—your ability to commit to the plan and work the plan—the better your outcome.” Michelle St. John
“We know that we can’t possibly pitch a solution until we’ve garnered some trust.” Michelle St. John
“More communication is better. We want to empower our salespeople, and we feel like information is power.” Michelle St. John
Hope is in high demand in tough times. Be a merchant of hope for your peers and your customers.
Visit www.ToughTimer.com to get started on the 30-Day Tough-Timer Challenge!
Order your copy of Selling Through Tough Times from Amazon or Barnes & Noble!
Click here to purchase the latest edition of Value-Added Selling!
Find out more about Industrial Bolt & Supply.
Visit www.ToughTimer.com to get started on the 30-Day Tough-Timer Challenge!
Order your copy of Selling Through Tough Times from Amazon or Barnes & Noble!
Click here to purchase the latest edition of Value-Added Selling!
***
Thank you for tuning in. Our show is updated weekly with the questions you ask. So, please go to the home page to ask the question that you want answered.
Thank you to our production team at The Creative Impostor Studios.
Be sure to follow our show in your favorite podcast app and share this episode with a colleague or friend.
And most importantly…make it a big day.
How do I support customers and stay motivated in these tough times? with Michelle St. John
(Transcribed from podcast interview)
“And we would literally go in and have the sales pros and say, ‘Listen, I know the price is the price. However, here’s what I can do.’ So it’s not necessarily, ‘No, I can’t drop my price,’ but it’s, ‘This is my price, but here’s what else I could do.’” Michelle St. John
Paul: Hello friends, Paul Reilly here, and I am thrilled to welcome Michelle St. John to the podcast. Now, Michelle and I had a chance to sit down just a couple of weeks ago, and the focus of our conversation was selling in this current environment. Now, Michelle St. John is the president and owner of Industrial Bolt & Supply. Michelle’s going to talk a little bit more about her company and what they do, and also their founder, Jack Butcher, who is her father. And we talked a little bit about my dad also, as I took over as the second generation with the family business. So, really, an interesting conversation.
Now I’ve had the privilege of working with Industrial Bolt & Supply for a number of years. And one thing Michelle and I talk about towards the end of our interview is how to keep employees motivated during these uncertain times. And I’ll share a couple of examples of that. But, we really had a blast sitting down. I hope you enjoy our conversation about selling in this current environment.
Now, before we get into the interview, a quick reminder that Selling Through Tough Times is available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Chapters—wherever you get your books. In fact, Selling Through Tough Times hit the #1 new release designation. It shows the power of the message. Right now, salespeople need hope, and this book is filled with hope. It’s filled with techniques. This is your go-to guide for building profits and mental resilience during any downturn.
Without further ado, on to the interview.
Paul: Hello friends. Welcome back to another episode of the Q and A Sales Podcast. Well, I am absolutely thrilled to have Michelle St. John on this episode.
Michelle. Thanks for being here.
Michelle: My pleasure. Nice to be here. Thanks for having me.
Paul: I’ll tell you, it was great seeing you last month in—well, I guess it was still this month—but in Orlando at the STAFDA convention. It’s just wonderful to get back to face-to-face conventions, right?
Michelle: Oh man. It was, it was very, very good. (Paul: Awesome.) Felt like normal times.
Paul: It did. It did. Absolutely. Michelle is the president and owner of Industrial Bolt & Supply. To kick this off Michelle, I was hoping, would you maybe share with The Q and A Podcast community, just a little bit about your company and what you do?
Michelle: Sure. We are a second-generation business. My dad started our company in 1977, and he had a background in industrial distribution. He worked for companies like Curtis Industries, and who’s now actually MSC. So they were Bowman Barnes, and then, ultimately, were purchased over time and MSC is the company that, legendarily, my dad started working for.
He went to work for himself with a desire to provide a great place to work for people and to afford his family more opportunity for time off, which is a little bit of an interesting scenario, because, as you know, when you own your own business, it usually or often lends to even less time off. But he’s a dedicated person, and started this company on a value-added principle, not unlike what you teach. And, in fact, your dad’s original Value-Added Selling, and now your Value-Added Selling, are the tools that we use to train up our sales force.
We go to market a little bit differently than some. We are a direct sales force. We have 27 salespeople in nine western states only. We have one distribution center. And we’re selling consumable products in the MRO space to end users. So we’re calling on people like, well, maintenance facilities—anywhere you might find one, whether that’s a school district or a hotel or a hospital. But rolling stock and metal maintenance are our primary business channels.
We do some business in mining and agriculture as well, but anywhere people are turning a wrench and typically tearing up metal, that’s where we’re providing solutions. One thing that makes our company maybe a little bit unique is that we’re heavily invested in our own private branding and product devlopment.
Paul: Yeah. And that’s something exciting and unique about your company is that private branding, and also just the investment you make in your team to train and continue to develop them. I’m always impressed that with your company. And also, I will say—quick story. I remember—this is several years ago, I was speaking at your company event and your dad was there. And he said something. It was hilarious. It’s the first time I’ve ever heard it. (Michelle: Oh no.) When he was out selling, I forgot the exact context of the story, but he told a customer, “Hey, the products that I’m selling have nutritional value. If I don’t sell them, my kids don’t eat,” or something like that. (Chuckling)
Michelle: That’s exactly true. I think, and I’m sure that we have a generation of salespeople who still use that. It actually would work really well these days. (Laughing)
Paul: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
Michelle: You have a good memory.
Paul: Yeah. Oh, you don’t forget the one-liners like that. It’s interesting that you mentioned that, you know, having a little more time off a little more freedom, that’s so important as well.
So, let’s jump right into it. We communicated a little bit before today’s session, and one of the topics we wanted to spend a few minutes talking about was managing customer expectations given the current supply chain issues. So we’ll kick that off. I know that’s a topic that many of our listeners are curious about. They’re selling a product that is in high demand. So let’s go through that.
So, wanted to share a couple of ideas, get your thoughts as well, on what Industrial Bolt & Supply’s doing. One thing I’ve been telling salespeople, during these times, we’ve got to be transparent—we’ve got to be transparent, and we’ve got to be careful not to over-promise, which is so important. And I want to make a distinction between over-promising and making big promises. Because one of the things we focus on in the Value-Added Selling message is that you can’t just under-promise, right? We don’t want to under-promise, because when you under promise too often, you end up living down to those expectations.
Instead, you want to make realistic promises. You want to make big promises, but you want to be able to deliver on those promises. And the more we do that, we become the benchmark in the industry. So we want to be aware of that. Another thing is to envoke empathy. We know that your customers are facing the same type of shortages. I mean, they’re having to go back to their customers and saying, “Hey, you know, we’re a little short on product right now. We don’t have this coming in. I know that your company is experiencing the same thing.” And by invoking a little empathy and letting your customer know that, hey, this is not just an issue at our company. It’s an issue that everyone is experiencing, that can sometimes be helpful as well. So, envoking a little empathy, being transparent, and looking for alternative and creative solutions, that is absolutely critical.
There was a group we were training a few months ago, and this salesperson sells vending machines. And vending machines are in high demand as well, just like every other product. And in fact, they were out of stock of this one type of vending machine, but one of his customers really needed the machine. So here’s what the salesperson did. He looks through his orders and realized that one of his other customers just ordered like 10 of these vending machines and they have them in stock. So that salesperson actually reached out to his other customer, who was a competitor of the customer that needed the vending machines, and he was able to broker a deal between the two customers. And the customer who had the vending machines was willing to give a few to that other customer. And the only reason he was willing to do that is because the owner of the company said, “If I was in the other end, you’d be fighting just as hard for me.”
So I think salespeople can get creative in how they can manage these issues that we’re facing right now. Michelle, I’m curious, what are your thoughts and what are you guys doing over there at IBS to help?
Michelle: You know, transparency is a really important piece of our model. We’re so committed to mutually profitable relationships, we encourage our reps to really be business-minded. I mean, I think that it’s a relationship business, and sometimes it’s difficult for salespeople to maintain a friendship with their customers—because they do get pretty close—and then also maintain a professional relationship. But we provide tools, I think, that make it easy for them. We start the conversation about profitable business I think from the very beginning, because we are a value-added company. As an example, the nature of pricing these days, and the fact that prices continue to go up, we’re really committed to our margins. And so we provide our salespeople with tools to help offset that price increase.
We ask them to commit to their price, but then have a conversation with their customer about what else they can do to help their maintenance department profit. That might be something like, “Allow me to inventory your dead inventory and buy it off of you.” And we would literally go in and have the salesperson say, “Listen, I know the price is the price, however, here’s what I can do.” So it’s not necessarily, “No, I can’t drop my price,” but it’s, “This is my price, but here’s what else I could do.” So they would give them a credit on their account that they can work off over time. And so, it’s a real win-win because obviously that product that we’re buying off of them frees up space to right-size their inventory, takes a burden off of them, reduces their overhead, and then they get a little bit of a credit, but it’s at our cost, so it’s win-win. They’re getting full value, but the cost to us is smaller, and the implications for the salesperson are very strong because it creates loyalty. They’re going to continue to buy from us while they’re working off that credit as well.
Some other things I think, that help control the message is offering things like “How can we add additional services that would otherwise cost you money?” So, allow us to take over the organization of something, even if it’s a competitor’s bins. If the listeners are familiar with the pigeon-hole metal bins in a maintenance shop, that’s what we maintain. Trusting us to come in and be responsible for that might free up labor. So continually kind of reminding, I think, our customers of the additional ancillary services that we provide—our chemicals for example. We might say, “The price, yes, is going up.” If a customer says, “Can you cut your price?” We might say, “The price is what it is, but allow me show you what else I can do for you here. I can take over management of your SDS.” And our salespeople do this. They put a binder in. And they won’t manage just our material safety data sheets, or safety data sheets, they’ll manage the universe of safety data sheets for a customer. A service that they’ll provide that is, we believe, value added.
Paul: You know, what’s interesting is the willingness of your team just to make the customer’s life easier in certain ways, and to free up their time, to free up their resources. And doing all of that, by the way, helps them make more money. So it seems like it’s really about customers bringing up that pricing conversation, right? When price increases do happen, because that’s an inevitable part of what we’re experiencing right now, but being able to go back to them and saying, “Look, here’s what we can do to help you.” It’s not about saying no, it’s about sharing additional ways that you can support them and really help that customer make more profit.
Michelle: Psychologically, I think it’s hard for salespeople not to cut their price when they’re challenged. And so, giving them tools to help them retain their price, I think is important. But it cuts another way to Paul, and I just want to mention this briefly. When you spoke about transparency, I thought that really hit home for us, because this conversation that we have with our customers on the business side plays out at the end of the year or at the beginning of the year, because we offer voluntary business reviews for our customers. And part of that process involves exposing price stability. We literally will run pricing analysis and show that they repurchased products, sometimes for 10 years or more, at the same price. When prices do go up, however, we pass them along really readily. We can show them exactly why that price went up and when, so that their confidence is in us in terms of acting on/in their best behalf. We’re not coming in low-balling and then jacking our prices up, et cetera. But we go in and we basically give ourselves a scorecard. We evaluate what they’re getting for their spend, and one of those things that we think they should expect. And it helps us because we’re creating an expectation so that if they ever want to compare us to the competition, one of the things in their minds might be price stability. And we want to be able to prove that we’re here to help them save money. We’re here to reduce their cost of doing business, whether that’s through returning equipment to probably use faster through products that reduce downtime or whether that’s literally taking inventory off their floor or just providing them perspective on price stability.
Paul: And that, you know, speaking to that price stability piece. We’ve researched this extensively when it comes to discounting, pricing, customer’s perception of price and value. What customers want more than a cheap price, or more than just avoiding an increase, they do want stability. They want to know that they’re being treated fairly. (Michelle: Right.) Fairness is the #1 reason why buyers object to price is because they just don’t believe it’s fair. (Michelle: Right.)
The fact that you’re able to go back and show pricing records, or just that level of transparency that, hey, we’ve had stable pricing for this long, for this product, it gives them peace of mind, especially when we’re in an inflationary period like we’re in right now. And who knows where it’s going to go. But what’s also important to note is that it’s good business. When you are facing price increases, it’s good business to raise your own prices. You know, a lot of companies, I hear, they say, “Well, we’re going to try to eat it as long as we can.” Why would you do that? Because your business is going to suffer. The level of service you provide your customers is going to suffer because you’re effectively giving a discount if you’re eating the price increase and not passing it along.
Michelle: That’s true. We do incremental price increases all the time. I mean, right. These days it’s a full-time job. We used to roll them out sort of quarterly, but we haven’t taken an across-the-board price increase for almost two decades. And I think the reason for that is because we’ve been able to manage our costs by passing them along sooner. And then I think on small parts, small consumable parts, those increases are pretty minor versus what we’re getting these days, which are 10 and 20% increases that are really, really hard to absorb.
And we understand that our customers are in that same situation. And it’s a lot easier to absorb a ½% to a 2% price increase once or twice a year versus a 10% price increase every couple.
Paul: Absolutely. Little by little, right. (Michelle: I think so. I think so.) It’s like the old boiling-frog effect. (Laughing)
Michelle: Right. Right.
Paul: Well, let’s—. We’ll take a right turn here for a moment. When we were at STAFDA, when we ran into each other at the convention there, I was presenting some new findings we have on top-achieving salespeople. And that’s one of the things we were also going to talk about is, top achievers are in high demand, right? As a business leader, you’re always looking to hire the right type of top achiever. And so wanted to talk about some of the skills that we’ve revealed that top achievers have, that can be challenging for other salespeople. So let’s talk about those. And maybe this is something, too, you can share a couple of thoughts on top achievers within your own company. As you said, you have, I think you said 27 salespeople throughout. So when we look at the top two or three salespeople within your company, let’s use that as the factor when determining top achievers.
So, one thing we notice, and you can corroborate this with your own findings and in your own just observations, Top achievers, they plan more effectively than the general sales population. When we looked at top achievers, their planning habits, their ability to plan strategically—meaning they’re picking targets and they put together a plan of attack for those targets—that’s more obvious in top achievers. In fact, when we asked top achievers, “How often do you routinely plan your sales calls,” in this latest research, it was about 65 to 70% routinely plan every single sales call, which was higher, higher, much higher than the general sales population.
Michelle, is that something you’ve noticed with some of the top performers within your own company?
Michelle: You know, I’ve heard this statistic before and, I always sit in on your classes, Paul, because even if I hear the same message repeatedly, it always, I always have something to take away and it’s good to reinforce because it’s always practical information that our salespeople consistently can apply. So I appreciate the work that you do in this space. The planning piece is really interesting because I’m a big proponent of planning, because I think if you have a plan and work a plan, you can’t help but succeed. And one of the areas that we see this maybe most demonstrated is that when salespeople—. Because let’s assume, first of all, that we’re hiring people that have the skill. And I would say hands-down, our sales force is amazing. I’m so impressed with the ability that these salespeople have to build relationships and such. And even that, though, there are under-performers, there are people within our sales force who, like my dad would say, aren’t living up to their potential. And that’s exactly what it is. It’s the potential. They all have the ability, but what we see when they go out with a sales manager is that they plan. They prepare to be in the field and their results are amazing. Now I know that the manager has some influence over that potentially, but I also know that when I was in sales and I planned for a day, my results were always better.
So I think it does serve that the better your plan and then the better your commitment to the plan—your ability to commit to the plan and work the plan—the better your outcome. I also think that when you are working a plan, and I think our best sales reps do this, they have more success. And that success than obviously encourages and breeds future success. They learn quickly what’s working and what isn’t working. They’re able to adapt. And then they can celebrate those small wins and build off of them. So there’s some momentum that comes from working a plan and then finding success within that plan. I think that serves most successful reps very very well.
We encourage planning. I think often it’s more, what we get is more, just an idea of where I’m going and what I’m going to do, but I agree that the most successful people in our sales force definitely are people who are committed, they’re goal oriented, and they commit to working a plan.
Paul: That planning piece is key. And I—. You mentioned something that struck a chord with me and that’s, when salespeople are with their managers, or let’s say you’re out there doing a joint call, whatever, with you or Derek or another leadership member, Jeff even. There is a tendency, yes, some salespeople, maybe they plan just when that leader’s with them or that sales manager—they put on the dog-and-pony type show.
But, I remember one of my first experiences with this, you know, when I was selling in the construction industry. I had an executive that actually spent a day with me. And I mean, I planned out like the perfect day. I mean, I even typed up the call plans, and I’d hand it to the executive before every call deck, “Here’s what we’re going to see.” “Here’s the objective.” “Here’s the questions I’m going to ask.” “Here’s what we’re going to do at one point.” He’s like, “Do you do this for every call?” As far as he knows, yeah, I did, right? I was putting on a show for the leader that day, but what ended up happening is that, I planned my day to a T. And almost everything happened as the way I planned it. I went out and I executed. I was able to do demos. I was able to win over new business. And I reflected upon that day, and it was one of the best successful sales days that I’ve ever had. And I remember thinking to myself, “Why don’t I plan every day like this?” And that was like the epiphany for me. You know how you know you should do certain things, but until you can prove it to yourself, you just don’t take action? (Michelle: Right.) That was the one event. That’s what converted me to a planner. And that’s when I knew, I’m like, “You just got to do this.”
So, another thing we noticed about top achievers, they are relationship oriented. And that’s one of the things I think is very clear, and especially in the construction MRO maintenance industry is it’s a relationship-driven sales process. And in fact, the top achievers told us, they said 75% of their success is attributed to the relationships that they’ve built with their customers.
So, Michelle, from your perspective, when you are looking at your top achievers and those salespeople that are continuing to grow and get better, how would you describe their relationships with their customers?
Michelle: Intimate might not be the right word, but it’s certainly the word that comes to mind. When we’re recruiting, we have kind of this DNA of a salesperson, and we’ve used historical data to kind of analyze what those qualities are. Our problem is our list is way too long. What we think it takes for somebody to be successful is way too long. I mean, it’s a simple business, but it requires a high degree of relationship skills, communication skills, and a figure-it-out factor, frankly. And the relationship piece is paramount because—when we take people out in the field (I don’t know if you know this about our company. And I think a lot of people do this), but for a ride along, but we actually ask them, our candidates, to prove that they can sell. But not to prove that they can sell primarily. We want to see how they engage. Can they build common ground quickly? Can they relate easily with our customers? Because we understand the relationship between being relatable and getting an audience. And we know that we can’t possibly pitch a solution until we’ve garnered some trust. And the ability to do that in a short amount of time is a tremendous skill.
So we look for people who are skilled at building trust, engaging quickly and easily, because we know that that’s going to give them an audience. And the more audiences they get, the faster their rate of success.
Paul: That’s great. This is like, Sell Me This Pen on steroids (inaudible). (Laughing)
Michelle: Yeah, it really is. I mean, imagine, right? I feel intimidated by the process and I, you know, it’s my design, for goodness sake!
Paul: Yeah. But what a, what an opportunity though, to really see the candidate interact, engage with a real customer. Because the product side of it will, that will come with experience and come with the training that you provide. But I do believe that that’s a natural skill that some people possess, but you can also teach that skill.
Another recruitment piece. When we looked at top achievers, again, you know, some descriptors came up such as problem-solver, they’re relationship oriented, they follow through. We have a whole list of these characteristics. And one thing we encourage sales leaders to do is to ask candidates to share an example, share a story, of how they’ve demonstrated these qualities.
And what’s interesting, and another interview technique that I’ve seen is, you know, for example, if I say, “Hey, you know, Michelle, problem-solving has been shown to be one of the key characteristics to success. Can you share an example of when you solved the customer’s problem?” Then [they] share that example and then you say, “That’s great. Can you share another example?” So what that’s going to do is, is, you know, everyone probably has those canned responses, but then getting into (Michelle: Yes.)—digging a little deeper;
Michelle: Drilling down.
Paul: Yeah. Oh, fun—interviews. Gosh, I haven’t been on an interview in so long. I don’t even know what, I don’t even know what that would look like these days, man, oh, man.
There is one thing, as I mentioned before. You know, I’ve had the privilege of working with your company—a true value-added organization—over a number of years. And one thing that has always impressed me is your ability and Derek’s ability, and Jeff’s—your ability to energize your team and keep things positive. And given the current environment, it’s a challenging sales environment, there’s no doubt about that. What advice do you have for other leaders out there on what you’re doing to just keep things positive and lift your team up?
Michelle: I don’t know that we have a silver bullet. We’re fortunate because we have an engaged sales force. I think that, you know, maybe it starts with hiring. But it’s also an 80/20 world. I mean, I’m not going to lie and make it seem like every salesperson is really enthusiastic about everything they’re doing and the way that we are asking them to engage with us. But we do feel pretty strongly, and maybe COVID taught us this, that more communication is better. And so, we want to empower our salespeople. And we feel like information is power. And the more connected they are to our company, I mean, again, I’m going to use the word transparent, but we, we talk about our financials. We talk about the status of our company. We talk about the role that each person in our organization plays as it relates to our organizational goals and what that means for their futures and their success.
We’re also highly committed to our salespeople’s success. We care so deeply that they realize their career goals, that we’ve made communication a pillar of what we believe it takes to build a sales force. Before COVID even hit, we actually launched a program that was initially an accountability model. We realized that we needed to expand our base, and as such, developed a non-critical, nonjudgmental peer-group model—and I don’t know if you’ve heard about this. I think we talked to you about it because you’ve done some training for us in the last year—where our salespeople would meet in small groups each Friday to discuss activity.
We wanted to start measuring activity because we felt that activity drives results, you know, builds behavior. We were focusing on creating habits. And then COVID hit and the conversation changed a little bit, but what remained were these peer groups. And from that peer-group communication model, our reps are still, even now coming together every Friday and talking about wins. It gives us a space to celebrate small wins. It gives us a space to share ideas in a, again, a non-critical, nonjudgmental environment, but with a degree of accountability in that we get to see, week after week, how one rep’s success was then translated into three or four or eight or ten other reps’ success. They take that idea to the market the next day and they build on it.
But perhaps the biggest takeaway from a how-we-keep-our-salespeople-engaged perspective might be this really small element of those conversations. And this was something that you inspired. You, early on in the pandemic, did some training for us. And you talked to us about the merchant-of-hope concept. And that was a time where we needed to literally kind of, for lack of a better word I guess, pivot and approach our customers differently. And we wanted to be a support person. We wanted to come alongside them, partner with them, and better understand their needs, not from a product fulfillment perspective, but on a different kind of a relational level as it related to the new challenges they were facing. And that merchant-of-hope idea really stuck with us.
And what happened was, our sales leadership took that to heart. So not only did we ask our salespeople to go into the field and be merchants of hope, but our sales leadership said, “Okay, I am going to also be this person for our s sales force.” So they became merchants of hope. And what happened was, they started launching each of these peer group meetings—these calls every Friday, these little 20 minute calls—with what they call “a positive word.” And it was either a story about someone that had mentored them, a positive experience they had, a quote—whatever—something they’ve read in a book recently. We have salespeople now reading books because of a quote that came from a book that inspired someone to make a change that resulted in something positive. And each week it rotates. Salespeople volunteer to give a positive word, and every single one of these is opened with something encouraging.
I’ll tell you what Paul, I, wasn’t a believer to begin with. I thought this is nice and it’s fluffy and it’s sweet and it feels motivational and positive and encouraging, but will it really translate? Like how much value will it really have? And I’ll tell you what. We see, in subsequent weeks, people comment that they took that word to heart, that they read it and it changed either their attitude about something, their approach to something, and it motivated them to look at their situation differently or to make a positive change. And I’m just impressed by how it’s kind of continued to sustain itself all this time. And now it’s become kind of, I think a little bit of a cornerstone of what our salespeople lean on during, especially, uncertain times. You know, there’s so little that seems like it’s in our control these days, that the one thing we can control is our attitude, then this little element of our peer-group calls is definitely achieving that.
Paul: Wow! That’s wonderful. I mean, and the thing I think any leader out there can take away from what you just mentioned is being a merchant of hope for your team. If you’re going to expect your salespeople to go out there and be a merchant of hope, meaning spreading just goodwill and hope for their customers, giving them something of support, you’ve got to do the same thing for your team. And what you did with just having those peer groups, those positive moments, having that something positive, a win, whatever it may be, that’s that merchant-of-hope mentality, which is great. And that’s the thing, you know, it’s interesting about uncertain times, tough times. Those are the moments where hope matters the most, but there are also the moments where it’s the hardest to find. And hope is in high demand during tough times. And just like a lot of the products we’re trying to sell right now. It’s in high demand and it’s up to the salespeople to provide that hope. And I’ve got countless examples of how salespeople in different industries have been able to open up doors just because they’re that positive beacon of light to help their customers and provide hope.
Michelle: That’s true.
Paul: Well, Michelle, I must say it’s been an absolute pleasure having you here on The Q and A Sales Podcast. Want to thank you for being here. Really, best of luck to you as your team finishes the year, and continue to be a merchant of hope for your team.
Michelle: Thanks, Paul. My pleasure.
Paul: Make it a big day.
