Earlier this week, I spent a couple of days walking the floor at the IMTS show in Chicago.

It was like a fire hose of manufacturing technology aimed right at me. People were wearing everything from blue suits to ball caps and work boots. Humanoid robots right across the aisle from 8-foot drill bits, machines that make robots that make machines.

While walking the floor, I ran into a sales rep who invited me to her booth. After explaining that I wasn't her target market, we got to talking. She had recently switched companies and had gone from selling a tangible product to software. She said the transition was a tough one. She was used to selling something she could see and touch. Software doesn’t give you that. One of the most frustrating things for her was trying to develop a system where her inputs would consistently lead to outputs.

You don’t quite get the same feeling of pride from selling software. You can’t see it, can’t touch it, can’t show it off. It’s not that software isn’t valuable; it’s the backbone of just about everything we do anymore, but there’s just something indelible about selling something you can point at. You see it move and change hands. When you don’t have that, all you have left are numbers.

Spend any time on Sales LinkedIn, and it's easy to be convinced that selling is just a formula we're this close to solving. It’s a science we’ve narrowed down to the right words, delivered to the right person at the right time.

This week in Chicago, I was reminded of the opposite. It’s so much more than that. We make stuff, and the overwhelming majority of salespeople out there toiling away every day sell something tangible.

For most sellers, their success rides on judgment in real time more than email subject lines. Showing up in person with a firm handshake while making eye contact matters. Those intangible elements that have always built trust between humans still move the needle, and I believe it always will.

For all of the press we give to the tech companies, the frontier AI labs, and the other firms laying thousands of people off in the name of efficiency, it's easy to forget that the backbone of our economy is made up of companies that make and sell things they're incredibly proud of. So proud, in fact, that their reps spend multiple decades in their roles. I’ve got several clients (Drury Hotels, AM Leonard, Innovative Foodservice Group, and more) with sellers who have been with those companies for 20, 30, or even 40 years.

Sometimes they’re still there because it’s just too good to leave, but you’re not staying anywhere near that long unless you’re immensely proud of the product you sell and the difference you make.

That rep in Chicago is still looking for a system. These reps have built their own, out in the field, over decades. From the outside, it looks like instinct, a bloodhound picking up a scent and knowing which ones are worth following. But it’s not instinct. It's thousands of sales calls worth of knowing exactly who ends up better off because of what they sell, compressed into something that moves fast enough to feel like a hunch.

The impact of what they sell is hard to put into words without real effort, and nobody ever asks them to. Wall Street doesn't ask. Nobody inside the building asks either, because as long as it’s working, why would you? So when that rep retires, that “instinct,” along with that pride, leaves with them.

That pride is what drives the behavior that drives success. I ask every client I work with a series of questions that get at their “why.”

The answers to the first four questions will stoke a fire in your belly. When’s the last time you answered them for yourself?

The last one’s a trick question because 95% of you haven’t ever asked your customers directly. The answers you get when you finally do will change the arc of your career (and your commission check).

After I got home from Chicago, I got to tour the facility of an industrial manufacturer here in Michigan. The time I spent with that sales leader inspired me, and there’s more to come on that later…

I was on The Art & Science of Complex Sales podcast this week. I talked about my sales origin story, the overwhelming amount of gratitude that exists in our profession, how salespeople don't like it when a stranger tells them they're not good at something, and a lot more.

Check it out here: Spotify | Apple | YouTube

Mark Hunter picks up the phone. He’s an expert at the art of High Profit Prospecting, and he's got the stage presence to match (his actual height doesn't hurt). But what most of you won't see is what he does behind the scenes. The dude's a workhorse, and generosity is what drives the machine.

You don't expect that from someone who travels the world between big stages. He's always looking to help, and when I'm working on something, he's happy to hear me out and always gives it to me straight.

Mark's one of the guys I'm grateful to for taking my calls.

It’s starting to feel like fall around here this weekend. A chill in the air, football on TV, and me spending the weekend cooking. I hope your weekend is as delicious as mine.

Cheers,
JB