Episode 81: Embracing Challenge, Overcoming Fear with Ben Niemeier

Ben Niemeier is a Senior Account Executive at Konrad Technologies, an organization that specializes in developing reliable customer-specific test solutions worldwide. In this capacity, Ben has been the number one top performer over the past three years. Ben is a passionate sales leader with over ten years of solution sales expertise in high tech and software. He prides himself on his outstanding business acumen, adept relationship-building skills, and his consultative sales approach.

In this episode, Ben chronicles his sales journey, highlighting the obstacles and challenges he has overcome along the way. Ben is a true believer in learning through failures and the more he has failed, the more he has learned and grown as a salesperson. Ben identifies three keys that he attributes to his success, including embracing challenge over comfort, cultivating an intense curiosity, and having tactical empathy. Ben places a tremendous amount of value on taking accountability and ownership as a salesperson. His sales philosophy is centered on the idea that sales is not something you do to someone but rather what you do for and with them.

Ben takes the audience through a typical day in the life, from his morning exercise routine to laying out his ‘mastery tracks’ where he lists topics he would like to level up in competency. Some items on his mastery tracks include learning more about biology, financial analysis, sales profession, music, French, German and even scuba diving! Ben maps out his entire week on Sunday evenings and dedicates three ninety-minute blocks each day to focus on three specific tasks. Ben talks about overcoming chaos during his early sales career, learning from mistakes, and utilizing his resourcefulness to solve problems. Finally, Ben shares his proudest accomplishment, which he reveals is his ability to live a life leaning into fears. His actionable challenges to the audience echoes this sentiment as he urges listeners to try something that they are afraid of in order to explore exciting new avenues in life.

What We Covered:

00:24 – Scott takes a moment to thank today’s sponsor, Outreach
00:38 – Scott Ingram welcomes today’s guest, Ben Niemeier
01:16 – The top three things Ben attributes to her sales success
01:25 – Number 1: Embracing challenge over comfort
02:45 – Numbers 2: Intense curiosity
04:35 – Numbers 3: Other orientation and tactical empathy
05:26 – The importance of finding balance
06:34 – Ben’s role at Konrad Technologies
07:59 – Scott takes a moment to promote his sponsor, Outreach, once more
08:49 – Ben quantifies his sales results
10:42 – Ben’s sales journey
13:55 – What Ben would do differently if given the chance
16:52 – How Ben overcame initial chaos in his sales career and turned it into success
21:21 – Books that helped Ben along his journey
23:30 – How Ben has developed and continued to refine his business acumen
25:25 – Ben shares his favorite sales story
27:18 – Ben’s proudest accomplishment
29:27 – What caused Ben’s shifting mindset
36:47 – Challenges Ben has faced throughout his career
39:02 – Ben speaks to how he was able to overcome adversity with a difficult manager
44:51 – Confrontation in the workplace
51:39 – Ben describes a typical day in the life
57:13 – Ben’s Sunday evening planning process
58:54 – Ben’s Mastery Tracks
1:00:16 – When Ben plans his 90-minute blocks
1:04:03 – Other podcasts and resources Ben consumes to feed his ever-growing curiosity
1:09:34 – Tools and apps that Ben uses on a daily basis
1:13:02 – The sales philosophy that Ben subscribes to
1:16:15 – Ben’s sales style
1:18:30 – What drives and motivates Ben
1:22:33 – An average sales rep’s belief that Ben believes is crazy
1:23:29 – One of Ben’s beliefs that the average salesperson would think is crazy
1:25:40 – Advice Ben would give to an upstart sales professional
1:28:38 – Advice Ben would give to a struggling middle-of-the-pack sales professional
1:32:12 – Ben’s actionable challenges to the audience

Tweetables:

“I think that getting out of your comfort zone is where growth happens. There’s a great quote from the CEO of IBM, Ginni Rometty, saying, ‘Growth and comfort do not co-exist.’” (01:55)
“I think being able to find out what someone cares about, and helping them achieve what they want to achieve is ultimately one of the core tenants of sales success that has helped me out along my career.” (05:14)
“Slowly you learn from your mistakes, and you try to avoid pitfalls that you are about to fall into hopefully by taking advice from the right people, reading the right books, and getting the right perspectives that allow you to essentially accelerate your path through that without having to make those failures to get there.” (20:53)
“Generally, I can say I’m 99 percent the same person I am on a Saturday at two o’clock that I am in the office on Monday morning.” (32:49)
“I think, generally, that most successful salespeople are rule-breakers because we are creative, and we’re independent, and we just work our own way.” (42:46)
“The type of people who can encapsulate themselves outside of the noise and concentrate and go deep about the things that need to be done and can focus, that’s where all the magic happens.” (1:02:11)
“Sales is not something you do to someone. It’s something you do for and with them.” (1:13:09)

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