Episode 76: Stepping Outside Your Comfort Zone with Jay Small

Jay Small is a top-performing sales director at Cinch IT, an organization that provides highly customized, state of the art technology solutions that meet the business needs of their clients. Jay is an expert in connecting and networking with forward thinkers and business leaders in his community. As a Senior Account Manager for Cinch IT, Jay consistently delivered consulting, engineering and IT solutions. Now, he has taken on an exciting new role as a recent franchise owner. In this leadership capacity, Jay aims to provide enterprise-level IT support at an affordable price to his clients.

In this episode, Jay talks about his transition into this new sales leadership role. He identifies three keys he attributes to his success. First, he credits his mentors for helping to guide him on his career path. Second, he highlights the importance of personal development, which he has demonstrated repeatedly throughout his career. Finally, Jay shares his belief that consistency, motivation and drive have been key factors in attaining credibility within his sales roles. Jay takes the audience through a typical day in the life of a salesperson, from an early morning reading articles and other news in the trades to catching up on email and attending networking events.

Jay is somewhat of a versatile salesperson with the mentality that the market is constantly evolving and, thus, he needs to evolve and become an agile seller along with these changing landscapes. That is why he does not subscribe to a specific sales philosophy or ideal. Finally, Jay provides actionable challenges to the audience. He urges them to get out of their comfort zone, follow their gut, and eliminate the excuses that become roadblocks to success.

What We Covered:

00:24 – Scott takes a moment to thank today’s sponsor, Vidyard Go Video
00:34 – Scott Ingram welcomes back to the podcast, Jay Small
02:21 – The top three things Jay attributes to his success as a sales leader
02:39 – Number 1: Jay’s mentors
04:13 – Number 2: Personal development
05:55 – Number 3: Consistency and drive
06:57 – Jay’s role at Cinch IT
08:53 – Jay quantifies his sales results
12:17 – Scott takes a moment to thank his sponsor, Vidyard Go Video, once more
13:06 – The 2-4-6-8 Approach
15:24 – The target numbers Jay adopted in order to over-index
16:44 – Jay speaks to his comfortability selling over the phone
17:52 – Jay’s approach on a typical cold call
20:57 – The decision to enter a career in sales
23:18 – Transitioning from banking into IT
26:02 – Jay discusses his decision to purchase a franchise
29:24 – Purchasing territory
30:34 – Additional responsibilities of becoming a franchise owner
33:18 – How Jay structures his workweek
38:05 – Jay describes a typical day in the life of a seller
41:47 – Jay’s approach to networking
44:08 – Why LinkedIn is such an invaluable tool for Jay
45:39 – Tools and apps that Jay uses on a daily basis
46:45 – Podcasts Jay listens to
49:03 – The sales philosophy that Jay subscribes to
50:35 – Jay’s sales style
51:35 – What it means to be authentic
53:43 – How Jay maintains his drive
56:05 – One of Jay’s beliefs that the average salesperson thinks is crazy
57:44 – An average sales rep’s belief that Jay believes is crazy
1:01:14 – The most important decisions Jay has made throughout his career
1:02:17 – Advice Jay would give to an upstart sales professional
1:03:02 – Scott takes a moment to promote the upcoming Sales Success Summit
1:04:28 – Advice Jay would give to his younger self
1:06:39 – Jay shares what he hopes to get out of the Sales Success Summit
1:07:50 – Specific topics Jay hopes to cover in the Sales Success Summit
1:10:09 – The most successful salesperson Jay knows personally
1:11:39 – Jay’s actionable challenge to the audience

Tweetables:

“People have more of their guard up, I feel like, when they see ‘sales’ on the business card.” (36:07)

“I feel like you’ve really gotta be authentic when you’re networking with people. And you’ve really gotta show interest in who somebody is and what they’re doing, and what their goals are.” (41:57)

“At the end of the day, sales is a very human thing. And, when you try to make it too structured and too methodical, and too by the book, I think that you start to miss some of that human element.” (49:41)

“I feel like that’s one of the best ways to be authentic is to work with people that you know and want to work with by just being yourself.” (52:03)

“Every single day I’m trying to push the needle forward and be better and better.” (54:02)

“If you’re not passionate about what you’re doing, maybe you do need to reevaluate what you’re doing and see if there’s a different opportunity out there for you.” (1:05:16)

Links Mentioned:

[email protected]
Sales Success Stories Podcast
2019 Sales Success Summit
Jack Wilson on Sales Success Stories Interview
Jay Small on LinkedIn
Article on getting 1% Better Every Day

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