Episode 159: Don’t Create Noise, Break Through the Noise with Gong’s JC Pollard

JC Pollard was the top commercial Account Executive at Gong last year and was a top-performing SDR before that. Gong enables revenue teams to realize their fullest potential by unveiling their customer reality. Prior to being elevated to AE, JC was a top Sales Development Representative (SDR). JC is a closer that believes in leading with genuine curiosity, and a desire to help solve complex problems for his prospects and customers. JC is passionate about sales, sales enablement, coaching, and onboarding. He absolutely loves working at Gong, so much so that he’s posted a message about it warning potential recruiters not to waste their energy.

Today, JC joins the show to talk about discovery, mindset, and breaking through the noise. JC provides his thoughts on what makes a great sales culture and why he loves working at Gong for that very reason. JC share his sales origin story, one that started with a passion for sports agency and eventually led him to his current role. JC expounds on his role at Gong, reflects on his favorite failure and his favorite sales success, and discusses the impact of great sales coaching.

JC takes the audience through a typical day in the life, from the thirty to forty minutes of solitude he takes every morning, to winning his morning battles. JC is all about stacking as many wins as possible in order to set up his day for success. From there, he dives into all-day calls and meetings. Wherever possible, he tries to get in some solid cold calling and prospecting. Then, he shuts it down completely at 5 pm. JC has learned that, in order to optimize his own performance, he needs to balance everything and that includes balancing the time he spends on work.

Finally, JC issues an actionable challenge to the audience. He challenges listeners to perform a personal audit. Write down the things you are proud of and the things that make you feel inadequate. What are the root causes of both? Make a list and tackle those items. By doing a true diagnostic and pinpointing one or two things to focus on, you can have a candid conversation with yourself and improve on those inadequacies.

What We Covered:

00:24 – Scott introduces today’s guest, JC Pollard
00:42 – The top three things JC attributes to his success
00:52 – Number One: Having an ‘Abundance Mindset’
02:12 – Number Two: Mastering discovery and demo in a customer-centric way
07:43 – Number Three: Asking hard questions and proactively seeking risk in deals
10:32 – Patience Score, Explained
12:42 – JC expounds on his role at Gong and quantifies his sales results
15:12 – How JC found his stride in Sales
16:19 – A change in mindset
19:52 – The type of story JC tries to tell in his demo process
21:29 – JC’s sales origin story
24:40 – The Impact of Sales Coaching
26:04 – What makes a great Sales culture
27:40 – Planking and prospecting and JC’s key components to prospecting
31:24 – Why JC wouldn’t change anything if given the chance
32:20 – JC’s favorite failure and his favorite success story
34:44 – Managing through a loss to get to a win
38:30 – Artificial Intelligence and its impending impact on Sales
42:03 – JC’s tech stack
47:55 – JC takes the audience through a typical day in the life
50:14 – The concept of ‘stacking wins’
54:15 – The discipline JC has achieved in balancing his work and personal life
1:03:10 – What motivates and drives JC
1:05:49 – One of JC’s beliefs that the average sales professional would think is crazy
1:06:30 – An average sales professional’s belief that JC thinks is crazy
1:09:12 – Advice JC would give to former SDRs who are starting in their first role as AEs
1:10:36 – What JC wants to know about other top sellers
1:11:06 – JC asks Scott about what he’s noticed about the best sales leaders
1:16:10 – JC issues an actionable challenge to the audience

Tweetables:

“I really try to keep my calls customer-centric. My number one goal is I want them to meet with me again. Obviously, I want to do discovery, but that doesn’t have to all happen in that first twenty minutes of your first call.” (03:27)

“What I found was, by being patient and leaving space, the customer will fill the void. And it’s actually in those moments of silence where the new customer starts talking more that you get the real gold and the real value.” (11:06)

“Number one is just the understanding that if you’re not breaking through the noise, you are creating it. So, everything I do from a prospecting perspective has that mind. I recognize that I have to stand out somehow.” (28:55)

“I think it’s really easy to get scared and think the world is ending as AI is getting so powerful. I’m trying to look at it like, ‘Ok, this is going to change things for sure. And the world will probably look a lot different than it does now because of this, but that will produce new opportunities.’” (41:29)

“Even the most disciplined salespeople and sellers that are actively trying to listen, it’s really easy to think about what you’re gonna say next. It just happens. It’s kind of unavoidable and it leads to missing some important stuff.” (47:40)

“The level of performance you’ll see at 95% effort versus the level of performance you’ll see at 120% effort, the difference is negligible. You’ll be a top performer either way. Maybe you’ll squeeze a little bit more out of the 120% effort, but you’ll be way more miserable doing it. I did that and what I found is that my performance has actually gotten better.” (55:05)

“I believe that if you’re a really good seller, your prospect is ready to hire you as a consultant for their business by the end of the sales cycle.” (1:06:11)

Books Mentioned:

The Obstacle is the Way
Atomic Habits

What We Covered:

Tweetables:

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Books Mentioned: