Tech Sales is for Hustlers Podcast

Campus Series: Andrew Loring – Choosing the Right Path

Guest-At-A-Glance

Name: Andrew Loring

What he does: Andrew Loring is the Associate Director of the Reynolds and Reynolds Sales Leadership Institute at Texas A&M University. He is also a Senior Lecturer in marketing.

University: Texas A&M

Noteworthy: Andrew graduated with a degree in marketing back in 2009 but was unable to land a job due to the ongoing economic climate. He started working in the sales department with Verizon wireless, worked there for some time, and quit to go back to grad school. That was when Andrew fell in love with teaching.

Where to find Andrew: LinkedIn

Key Insights

⚡Find your true nature. Andrew is a naturally gifted speaker. He remembers professors and teachers telling him to consider doing it professionally. ”And I don’t want to say that it went to my head because, of course, it went to my head, but it got me in a mindset where I didn’t need to practice. I didn’t need to craft and hone in on my skills. ‘Cause, it came naturally to me. […] Gallup will say that just because you walk around with talent, it’s not a strength until you add knowledge, skills, and intent. The focus of 2021 is helping students understand what they are naturally good at right now, and how the Institute can help turn their talents into strengths.”

⚡Try to understand yourself. Andrew is lucky to have curious students. A part of his job is to help them find their professional path. ”But the other things really involve. The first of which is about being emotionally intelligent. In order to learn about where I need to develop, you’ve got to understand yourself. You’ve got to understand the talents you have and what do you bring to the table because we are all so unique.”

⚡ “We Believe That Sales Skills are Skills for Life.” It doesn’t matter who you are or what age you are; having sales skills could make your life easier on so many levels. “No matter what your interests are, where you want to be in life, whether you’re 95 years old, whether you’re five years old, sales skills are incredibly important. We firmly believe that. And that’s why we develop programs for colleges and majors all across campus.”

Episode Highlights

Find Your Talent DNA. Discover Your Strengths

“I don’t know if you’re familiar with Gallup and the Gallup polls, but I do a lot with the Gallup strengths. I’m actually a Gallup Certified Strengths coach now. And I got that certification back in 2015 because of the importance of personality when you’ve got sales, which is incredibly broad. At the time, everybody thought, ‘Well, sales is sales.’ And my head is spinning. It’s like, ‘Absolutely not.’ There are a million different types of sales roles. It’s incredibly important that our students are aligned to the right role that’s for them. And so I became a coach, and now everything that I do with the Institute is integrated with, now they call it, CliftonStrengths.”

Choosing the Right Path

“I enjoy sitting on the sideline and watching games instead of working those games. And that’s a big part of how I help students find their careers today because when we look for careers, we latch on to typically all of the wrong things. None of the things that students look for in careers have much to do with themselves personally. It’s external factors. So, a hobby is something that I would like, that I do in my free time. […] A lot of the time, it’s their parents. It’s a mentor. It’s parents who say, ‘I’m not going to pay for school unless you major in X, Y, Z company, or you take this job.’ All of those reasons are external to a lot of the students that I work with. I have to get in their head and help them turn around and think about why their personality matches with the job, no one else. It shouldn’t be up to anyone else in that career search.”

Role-Playing Is a Crucial Exercise for an Aspiring Salesperson

“The first role-play in the introductory Professional Selling course that I teach is an incredibly humbling experience for so many students. It’s especially interesting to see those students who have a chip on their shoulders ahead of time. They think that they’re naturally good at it. And they walk into their first role-play, and they bomb, or they don’t do as well as they thought they were going to do. They fumble over their words, and their face turns red, and they get embarrassed, and they don’t perform. And this is what is so important that so many students experience, at least in my class, because it’s a very safe environment. It is where you want to fail. You want to fail in the Professional Selling course because you learn so much about the reality of sales, and you learn about what you need to do to become better in the future.”

Competitive Students Versus Introvert Students 

”There are two types of students. Some want to go into more of the BDR roles. And then there’s more that want to start in an account management type position. It’s very important that they understand both of those types of roles. Everybody can fit somewhere in a world of sales, but you want to be very careful when you’re force-fitting yourself somewhere where you’re not a perfect fit. More competitive students would be a better fit for a BDR role because it’s very fast-paced; it’s very quick. You have these quick wins. But other students who are perhaps more introverted, like to build relationships with people over time, I would persuade them a little bit more towards account management roles.” 

The Most Rewarding Thing in Teaching

“When I’m in the classroom when students get it if something clicks, and it’s something as simple as looking at them, and they nod after I’ve said something because it means that they’ve internalized what I’ve said. And to me, that’s a win. Every single day I’m in the classroom, and I’m preaching on the world of professional selling, I’m trying to get students to that point of understanding and appreciating what I’m talking about, unfortunate because what I teach is applicable to everybody. So, unlike many classes taught in the college and the college setting, I can truly say that every single thing that comes out of my mouth will benefit everybody in the class no matter where they go in life. Of course, when they accept positions I know we’ve prepared them for, and I know it’s going to be a perfect fit for them, and that’s incredibly rewarding.”

The Pros and Cons of Working from Home

”One of the benefits is more control over your life. I think you get back a lot of commute time. You can spend time with your family, if you have a family, more often than ever before. But the downside is, you lose the human interaction. One thing that so many employees miss about being in the office is being able to just turn to your colleague real quick and just say, ‘Hey, how’s it going? Did you see that game last night? Did you hear about X, Y, or Z?’ And it’s just not the same when you hop on Microsoft teams or Skype or Slack.” 

Transcript:

[00:00:00] Andrew Loring: [00:00:00] Everybody can fit somewhere in a world of sales, but you want to be very careful when you’re force fitting yourself somewhere where you’re not a perfect fit.

[00:00:09] And so that’s where I really help my students to understand who they are. And subsequently where they’d fit in a role.

[00:00:16] Kristen Wisdorf: [00:00:16] All right. Welcome back Hustlers to another edition of the Tech Sales is for Hustlers Campus mini Series. I am Kristen Wisdorf. 

[00:00:25] Libby Galatis: [00:00:25] And I’m Libby Galatis. And today we are talking with Andrew Loring [00:00:30] from Texas A&M.  Welcome, Andrew.

[00:00:32] Andrew Loring: [00:00:32] Thank you for having me.

[00:00:35] Kristen Wisdorf: [00:00:35] Andrew, we are super excited because you are our first guest as a professor from the great state of Texas, which is actually where our second office was at memoryBlue.  So Andrew, we want to just hear a little bit about you, your background. We like to start with the, actually the question I ask, all campus series interviews that I have, which is “Take 60 seconds, and give me your highlight reel.” Just tell us in the listeners a little bit about yourself.

[00:01:03] Andrew Loring: [00:01:03] Sure. Again, my name is Andrew Loring and I guess my technical title is the Associate Director of the Reynolds and Reynolds Sales Leadership Institute. And I’m also a Senior Lecturer in marketing.

[00:01:15] I am, like a lot of the students that I have in my courses, in that I fell into sales completely unconventionally.

[00:01:24] I graduated with a degree in marketing back in 2009, undergrad [00:01:30] degree. And I couldn’t find a job because it was 2009. And like many of my students, even today, I wound up in a sales role with Verizon wireless and I was in the role for about a year and a [00:01:45] half and grew to hate it, and I quit. And then I went back to grad school and I fell in love with the teaching of sales side.

[00:01:58] And after finishing [00:02:00] grad school, I made the move 2200 miles from the Great State of Maine to the Great State of Texas, where I started at A&M and the rest is history.

[00:02:13] Kristen Wisdorf: [00:02:13] Okay. That sounds actually like my background. I also graduated during the Great Recession and with a marketing degree and started my career in sales. So I get it. What about that first sales job? Did you learn about yourself and why did you end up hating it?

[00:02:28] Andrew Loring: [00:02:28] Yeah, that’s a great  question. So all of this comes back full circle. At the time I took whatever job was open, whatever job that I could get. I cast a wide net. It was like, “Oh, you’re willing to hire me back in 2009.” And I was like, “Yeah, sign me up, cause [00:02:45] I need a paycheck.” Come to find out that there’s a lot of variety when it comes to sales roles.

[00:02:51] None of that variety I had thought about before I had accepted the job and based on my personality and my strengths, it did not [00:03:00] match up at all with the role that I had. And it was nothing against the company. It was a great company, great opportunity, but I realized very quickly that it just, it wasn’t for me, it wasn’t for me.

[00:03:11] And about five or six years later, [00:03:15] while I was at A&M, I realized the importance of understanding, your personality and how that relates to opportunities. And I used that all the time on a daily basis with my students, as they navigate finding great sales [00:03:30] careers.

[00:03:32] Libby Galatis: [00:03:32] I’m curious with that first role, it seems like you’ve learned a lot about yourself, a lot about sales as a profession, and it was, it seemed like you were it’s new territory. What were you, what was the challenge that you faced in initial [00:03:45] position?

[00:03:46] Andrew Loring: [00:03:46] So I am, that’s a great question, Libby. I was, I’m a very fast-paced guy. Okay. I like going as fast as I can and anybody who slows me down is very frustrating. [00:04:00] And in that role, I was slowed down by a lot of different things and I wasn’t allowed to go with the pace that I wanted to go at. And it ultimately became too [00:04:15] frustrating and I left.

[00:04:18] Libby Galatis: [00:04:18] That’s fair. No. I was going to say, I feel like a lot of sales students in general. They have this kind of fast paced nature to them as well. They’re go getters. They want to jump in, dive in, [00:04:30] get stuff done. On one of our previous podcasts that we did, we hosted Brian Collins and he was saying that he could close a million deer deals at once if he could, the the surroundings and other people that are involved in the process often are the ones that slowing things down.

[00:04:44] So that’s.

[00:04:44] Andrew Loring: [00:04:44] That, [00:04:45] so I’ll tell you real quick. That I, that is something I understand about it. I I deal with that every single day here at A&M in a, in a public university setting. At the time though, it was more so with the tasks that I was responsible for on a daily basis. [00:05:00] It was more about putting your time in and not so much your productivity during the day. So it was more so you have to sit here from eight to five, regardless of how much you get done. So if I got [00:05:15] everything I was supposed to get done in four hours, still had to sit there. And that ultimately became incredibly frustrating because I was more productive in a much faster pace than anybody else.

[00:05:28] So I’m sitting here [00:05:30] twiddling my thumbs, like hitting all my KPIs and that’s it.

[00:05:35] Kristen Wisdorf: [00:05:35] So that’s very interesting because I think a lot of students, until you’re in a job, you sometimes it’s hard to understand those personality traits about yourself. So how are [00:05:45] you guiding your students now to become kind of self-aware and pick the right opportunity right out of college?

[00:05:52] Andrew Loring: [00:05:52] Yeah. Great question. So when I started at A&M, I still hadn’t really connected the dots fully about, why I was so [00:06:00] unhappy in my first role and how I ultimately found my sweet spot personality wise in teaching. And it wasn’t until that was really two factors. So one factor was that just like all the other [00:06:15] sales programs and students that graduate and go into sales across the country, they really don’t know what they’re getting themselves into until they

[00:06:23] get through training and they start getting on the phones or sitting in front of customers. And it became very problematic because I [00:06:30] see them on LinkedIn and incredibly high turnover. And turnover in my world is incredibly bad, because it means I didn’t do my job of educating them correctly. So it was that was going on at the time, paired with, “I got involved with [00:06:45] Gallup.”

[00:06:45] And I don’t know if you’re familiar with Gallup and the Gallup polls, but I do a lot with the Gallup strengths. And so I’m actually a Gallup Certified Strengths coach now. And I got that certification back in 2015 because of the importance of [00:07:00] personality when you’ve got sales, which is so incredibly broad.

[00:07:03] And then you’ve got people who are unique and they’re so different. And at the time everybody thought sales is sales. And I’m like, my head is spinning. It’s absolutely [00:07:15] not. There’s a million different types of sales roles. And so it’s incredibly important that our students are aligned to the right role that’s for them.

[00:07:24] And so I became a coach and now everything that I do is with the Institute is [00:07:30] integrated with now they call it CliftonStrengths.

[00:07:35] Kristen Wisdorf: [00:07:35] Yeah, that’s amazing. I love strengths finder. I’ve remember going through it as well. I think it’s good that they’re, students now at colleges all across the country have [00:07:45] professors and programs that can help them figure that out before they have to just jump in and figure it out and sink or swim environment.

[00:07:53] Even when I graduated from school, there were I think a third of the sales programs that there are now. [00:08:00] So let’s talk a little bit about, your your time at A&M so far, what originally brought you to Texas? Did you go there originally to teach? Let’s talk a little bit about how your, the Andrew Loring evolution at A&M and in the sales program?

[00:08:15] [00:08:14] Andrew Loring: [00:08:14] Yeah. So I jumped to that conclusion earlier. I had never been to college station Texas before. I had been to Texas before, but at the time when I was finishing grad school I interestingly, I wanted to be an athletic [00:08:30] director. I don’t know why, it was a hobby of mine being a former student athlete.

[00:08:34] I wanted to stay in that realm of college athletics. And I came to A&M in the, and I got a job in the department of marketing with the intention [00:08:45] that there’s a possibility that I could get into athletics. But very quickly I realized when I got here that, just like the students that I still deal with today, athletics was a hobby of mine.

[00:08:56] It was always a hobby. I love sports. I grew up playing sports. I [00:09:00] still watch and play sports today and a hobby doesn’t always equate to a career. And in the marketing world, I deal with this on a daily basis. We have students that love sports. We have students that love fashion. We have students that love [00:09:15] cars.

[00:09:15] And they think that just because they have those passions and those hobbies, that they should go have a find a career in one of those fields. And especially in marketing, we see this all the time and I have to sit down with students and help them [00:09:30] think about whether they want to turn their hobby into a full-time job.

[00:09:36] And I quickly realized that, holy cow, working in athletic department at a big division one institution is not as [00:09:45] glamorous as a lot of people think. You’re not getting to watch the games on the weekend and at night, you’re working them. So your hobby quickly becomes your work. And I finally realized that, man I enjoy sitting on the sideline and [00:10:00] watching games instead of working those games.

[00:10:03] And that’s a big part of how I help students find their careers today because they latch on, when we look for careers, we latch on to, typically all of the wrong things. [00:10:15] None of the things that students look for in careers have much to do with themselves personally. It’s external factors. So hobbies, something that I think that I would like that I do in my free time.

[00:10:29] it’s pay. [00:10:30] Where can I go get a job, that’s going to pay me the most money? Where can I go work for a company that is the most prominent in the industry, so that people will turn around and say, “Ooh, look at this guy or gal. They just got a job with X, Y, Z company.” A lot of [00:10:45] time it’s their parents. It’s a mentor.

[00:10:47] It’s parents who say, “I’m not going to pay for school unless you go major in X, Y, Z company, or you go take this job.” And so all of those reasons are external to a lot of the students that I work with. And so I [00:11:00] have to get in their head and help them turn around and think about why their personality matches with the job,

[00:11:07] no one else. It shouldn’t be up to anyone else in that career search.

[00:11:13] Libby Galatis: [00:11:13] I love that. A huge [00:11:15] reason why the sales programs are going so quickly and to your point earlier, I think most students don’t realize that if they’re majoring in marketing, if they’re majoring in sports marketing, they’ll, likelihood of them beginning their careers in sales is very high. The percentage is what [00:11:30] 89, 90% of marketing grads end up in sales.

[00:11:33] So I think it’s great that the classes and programs are framing their, the profession to be a legitimate course. You can start off in sales and end up in those paths long-term but it’s a good [00:11:45] starting point. I want to take a step back and talk more about your experience within the A&M sales program.

[00:11:49] How many years have you been teaching so far and walk us through your involvement now being such a pivotal part of the program and its expansion over the last few [00:12:00] years?

[00:12:01] Andrew Loring: [00:12:01] Sure. So I started at A&M in 2012. I taught my first sales course in the spring of 2013. And I’ve been teaching sales ever since, so over the last seven, [00:12:15] seven years. And in 2015 was when we officially launched at the time we called it the “Professional Selling Initiative”, which was a shell of something that said, “Look, sales is important,

[00:12:29] and we [00:12:30] need to grab a megaphone and shout it to the masses that we’re doing something in the sales space.” And so we started the PSI, the Professional Selling Initiative in 2015, and it’s grown tremendously ever since. The spring [00:12:45] of 2019, I believe was when we formally became recognized as an Institute

[00:12:52] at Texas A&M. And for those that aren’t familiar with the difference between an initiative, a center and an Institute, a lot of it [00:13:00] has to do with the reach of the program. And so the word Institute, at least a Texas A&M means university-wide. Although we sit within the college of business, we develop programs for students in all colleges across [00:13:15] campus,

[00:13:16] so that’s that word Institute. And since 2015, we’ve grown. Now we interact with on an annual basis between 4 and 500 students from several different colleges and about probably 40 [00:13:30] different majors across campus at Texas A&M. So we’re we’re making a lot of strides, but we’ve still, as always, have a lot of work to do.

[00:13:40] Libby Galatis: [00:13:40] That’s amazing. How large is the program now? And what do you think [00:13:45] was one of the biggest challenges that you faced in expanding the program over the last seven years that you’ve been teaching?

[00:13:51] Andrew Loring: [00:13:51] That’s a very good question. I could spend a lot of time talking about that. So there’s, our program is unique in that we have we’re housed in the [00:14:00] department of marketing in the business school. And so we have our sales specific marketing students. And we’ve got about 120 or so of those students in the sales track, is what we call it.

[00:14:12] But then beyond the 120, we work with another [00:14:15] 350 or so outside of the department of marketing. Now that can be a finance student. It can be a health major, a biomedical engineer, a medical school student. So all of the above, all those [00:14:30] students who are not formally in the department of marketing as a sales track student, who are interested in, see value in sales related activities.

[00:14:39] This, and this is where I want to mention something. One of the big [00:14:45] goals that I have in 2021 is to really highlight the importance of being involved with the Institute. So we believe that sales skills are skills for life. No matter who you are, whatever your age [00:15:00] is, what your interests are, where you want to be in life,

[00:15:03] whether you’re 95 years old, whether you’re five years old, sales skills are incredibly important. So we firmly believe that. And that’s why we develop programs for colleges and majors all [00:15:15] across campus. However, we’ve got a deep bunk, a little myth, and naturally a lot of people think about, the negative misconceptions about sales, but we’re, we need to take it a step further,

[00:15:28] and that is, for the people who [00:15:30] believe positively about sales, there’s a little disconnect between people who can naturally communicate and those that are really good at sales. And I’ll unpack this a little further. [00:15:45] I was one of those people in high school, and in my undergrad, who I was just a naturally gifted speaker. Presentations came naturally to me.

[00:15:53] And after everyone, my professors, my teachers always mentioned, “Hey, you should, you should think about doing this [00:16:00] professionally. You’re really good at presenting.” And I don’t want to say that it went to my head because of course it went to my head, but it got me in a mindset where I didn’t need to practice.

[00:16:09] I didn’t need to craft and hone in on my skills, ’cause it came naturally to me. And this is a [00:16:15] lot of what we, what we’ve found on campus today is that just because people are extroverted and they’re good at speaking, and they enjoy talking to other people, they think, “Oh man, I’d be great at sales.”

[00:16:28] And I equate [00:16:30] this to what Gallup will tell you. And in the Gallup strengths world, there are 34 themes. And if you take the assessment, it’ll tell you what your top five themes are. But Gallup will say that just because you walk around with [00:16:45] talent, it’s not a strength until you add knowledge, skills and intent.

[00:16:51] So that’s going to be the focus of 2021, is helping students understand what are you naturally good at right now, but how can the [00:17:00] Institute help turn your talents into strengths?

[00:17:05] Kristen Wisdorf: [00:17:05] Wow. That is such a good point. I think about some times I’ll interview students and they ask “What makes a great SDR or an [00:17:15] extraordinary sales person at memoryBlue?” And I always tell this anecdote it’s, we interview a lot of extroverted people. Like you were saying, Andrew, people who are naturally gifted and talking to people and are good at it, and are money [00:17:30] motivated, but it’s not enough to just be those two things, because anybody can want a lot of money.

[00:17:34] Are you disciplined to work at it? And like you said, build and practice that craft every single day, because the extraordinary salespeople, [00:17:45] the elite ones, are the ones we’re constantly up in their game and never thinking that they just have it right.

[00:17:51] Andrew Loring: [00:17:51] That’s it? 

[00:17:52] Kristen Wisdorf: [00:17:52] Yeah.

[00:17:53] So what types of things are you doing in classes or at the Institute to,

[00:17:58] I guess, [00:18:00] enlighten students, whether they’re already in the marketing program or the sales program, or maybe they’re from a completely different college, but they want to add these sales skills, which is such an awesome thing that you open it up to people outside of the business school. How do [00:18:15] you teach them discipline and teach them that practice is not going to end and studying

[00:18:21] isn’t going to end when school is over and they’re in their jobs?

[00:18:25] Andrew Loring: [00:18:25] Sure. So there’s a couple of different things that we do. The first thing, I’ll start with the last thing you mentioned, [00:18:30] and that is being a lifelong learner. That’s actually one of the core values at Texas A&M and being a lifelong learner is pretty well integrated into a lot of our students just because they live and breathe the core values on a daily basis.

[00:18:43] And even post-graduation, [00:18:45] they think about those on a daily basis. So we, our students are genuinely curious, which is something that helps me as an educator because they want to continuously improve. But the other things really involve the first of which is about being [00:19:00] emotionally intelligent. In order to learn about where I need to develop,

[00:19:03] you’ve got to understand yourself. You’ve got to understand the talents that you have and what do you bring to the table because we are all so unique. Some people, and I was listening to my colleague, Brian [00:19:15] Collins on the last one, the last podcast, and he was mentioning that there’s some people who are introverted and there’s other people who are extroverted and both can fit in a world of tech sales, or other sales careers,

[00:19:28] and it’s as long as you figure [00:19:30] out how to manipulate your own personality. And so we can all leverage our talents in different ways, but we have to first understand what makes us tick. So we start at this point of being emotionally [00:19:45] intelligent, understanding, “These are the things that I enjoy doing on a regular basis, and this is what I need from the workplace.

[00:19:51] And then from here, I can work on really changing myself up to adapting to the situation.” And that’s what I realized about myself. So at the [00:20:00] time I don’t like being held back. I don’t like having specific guidelines, so to speak, about this is what you have to do to get your work done. And the example was a time, don’t tell me that I have to sit here [00:20:15] for four hours,

[00:20:16] just tell me that I have to hit these goals, and I am incredibly ambitious and driven to hit those goals. And I will achieve those goals. I don’t need you to tell me that I have to sit here, but what is so unique about that is other people need the [00:20:30] discipline that’s brought on by the organization.

[00:20:32] Because if you tell them that you don’t have to sit here for so many hours, then they’ll wind up on the couch watching Netflix all day. So I go back to the point of you have to be [00:20:45] introspective and you have to understand yourself. Where some people are very disciplined and driven and don’t need a lot of guidance other people do.

[00:20:52] And there’s nothing wrong with that. That’s what’s so important is I try to help my students understand it’s not, there’s no good or bad it’s it is what it [00:21:00] is. And what’s worse is when you try to fake it. So when you don’t, when you’re not a naturally disciplined person, but you walk into an outside sales environment with no direct supervisor who’s there every single day and you eventually quit or get [00:21:15] fired six months later because you realize you’re not hitting your KPIs because it wasn’t a good fit.

[00:21:21] These types of things are incredibly frustrating to me because students will take jobs, not knowing exactly what is [00:21:30] involved in the role. And if it doesn’t align to their strengths, it’s not gonna, it’s not gonna work out.

[00:21:38] Libby Galatis: [00:21:38] I love your story so much, Andrew, because it reminds me a lot of my own. I didn’t play collegiate sports, but being a [00:21:45] student athlete, being naturally competitive you mentioned earlier that, the assumption typically is that you could pick up sales pretty quickly. A lot of people think that sales is an easy craft.

[00:21:54] If you’re good at certain things will be good at sales, and that’s often not the case. And I found myself in a [00:22:00] similar position as a recent college grad stepping foot at memoryBlue. It’s a humbling experience to know that you’re not going to be good at it. And it’s a process to reframe your brain to understand that’s just part of, learning and growing.

[00:22:11] I’m curious. If you, or within your program, you guys have a [00:22:15] specific assignment that you think provides that sort of humbling experience to your students, or what do you think is one of those assignments that is most impactful that students get to experience when they’re taking your sales classes?

[00:22:27] Andrew Loring: [00:22:27] Yeah. And I think this is the answer to this question is something [00:22:30] that we all do as sales educators. And that is a version of what we call it, role-playing, or practicing, or a sales calling or whatever you want to call it. We do a lot of that. And the first role play in the introductory professional selling course that I [00:22:45] teach is an incredibly humbling experience for so many students.

[00:22:49] And it’s especially interesting to see those students who have a chip on their shoulder ahead of time and they think that they’re naturally good at it, and they walk into their first role-play [00:23:00] and they bomb, or they don’t do as well as they thought they were going to do. They fumble over their words and know, their face turns red and they get embarrassed, and they don’t perform.

[00:23:09] And this is what is so important that so many students [00:23:15] experience, at least in my class, because it’s a very safe environment. This is where you want to fail. You want to fail in the professional selling course because you learn so much about the reality of sales and you learn about what you need to do to become better in the future.

[00:23:30] [00:23:29] I, it’s the worst thing in the world when you fail in real life, because of a lack of preparation ahead of time. So I encourage my students to take risks and to fail, and to fall on their face in the class and the role-plays so they can learn about what not to do in the future. [00:23:45] So we do a lot of role-playing in all the courses that we teach.

[00:23:48] But it’s something that in again, in 2021, we’re looking to do even more of is role-playing across the board, so beyond the courses into our student organizations, into [00:24:00] our programs and initiatives, we want to really start tracking the number of role-plays and hours spent, industry’s dealt with different types of buyers, products so that students can develop a portfolio, so to [00:24:15] speak of role-play practice.

[00:24:16] Some other colleagues at other universities have already done this and are doing it really well. And they’re helping their students showcase the amount of role-play practice. I’ve noticed on LinkedIn that some students will say, “I have the amount of role-play [00:24:30] practice equivalent to a 25 year old sales person”, or they might say, “I have a hundred hours of role-play practice with 10 different products in four different industries.”

[00:24:40] And so what that signifies or what hope signifies to recruiters is that they’ve [00:24:45] tried it, they’ve tried it in different industries with different products. And at the end of the day, they’ve got to have some interest when it comes to, what did they enjoy the most? Did they enjoy the quick wins, those quick sales?

[00:24:56] Did they enjoy those that were more elongated, where they had to build a [00:25:00] relationship with multiple people? So all of those experiences I think help recruiters better identify talent that would fit with their organization and their role.

[00:25:09] Kristen Wisdorf: [00:25:09] Yeah, that’s such a good point. And that’s one of the reasons we love hiring from sales programs is because, like you said, they’re [00:25:15] used to it. They’re getting all this role-play practice, which the, anybody who starts at memoryBlue,  they’re gonna be doing a lots of role-plays from the first day when they’re in our bootcamp all the way through their last day with us.

[00:25:26] And also I think  a lot of universities, they, the [00:25:30] sales programs, they record the role-plays. Probably more so now, because things are virtual, but yeah. It’s a good skill and practice to have, to be able to watch or listen to yourself back, because it is uncomfortable. But if you can break down the game [00:25:45] film is, what we call it and you can listen to yourself,

[00:25:47] that’s just, that’s a skill in and of itself. That is great to be prepared for before you actually get into the role. Andrew, you mentioned that your know, your goal for 2021 is to have all sorts of different products [00:26:00] and industries, and essentially, so students can have a portfolio of role-play practice.

[00:26:04] What are you seeing are the industries that your students are really excited to go into after graduation, or are, maybe they’re industries that are growing more [00:26:15] now than they were when you started with the sales program, a couple of years ago?

[00:26:19] Andrew Loring: [00:26:19] Yeah, that’s a great question. So in college station, if you’re not familiar with where we’re located, we’re about we’re in the middle of what some people call the Texas triangle, and there’s actually [00:26:30] 14 million people that live within three hours of campus. So Houston, Austin, San Antonio, and Dallas. And with us being in that central location, we took a stance when we started the program back in 2015, that we weren’t going to go all into [00:26:45] one specific industry.

[00:26:46] It’s very easy for us to say  “Look, we’re going to, we’re going to invest into oil and gas because of our proximity to Houston.” But we have so many students that are interested in other industries that we said we weren’t going to do that. So we’re very open to all [00:27:00] industries that are out there. So answering your question today in 2021, we’re seeing tech obviously is a very big, hot space because of our proximity to Austin and a lot of tech firms over there.

[00:27:13] And then the other big field is [00:27:15] healthcare. Healthcare in general, students are incredibly excited about, and it’s not, it is not because of COVID. It’s bigger than that. So yeah those two industries are two of our biggest, but we don’t discriminate. We work with any industry that’s out there.

[00:27:28] Libby Galatis: [00:27:28] That’s great. I think what’s beautiful [00:27:30] about the sales classes and pursuing professional sales on a collegiate level is everything that you’re learning is so transferable, regardless of what industry you end up pursuing. I want to talk a little bit about, the drawbacks and the positives of pursuing sales.

[00:27:44] We talked a [00:27:45] bit about what type of person tends to thrive, key qualities of top performers. What would you say are some drawbacks to a sales career? And what would you say are some of the positives of operating in this industry as well?

[00:27:57] Andrew Loring: [00:27:57] Yeah. So obviously when [00:28:00] you start, it’s challenging and it’s really, it’s challenging, I think, in a lot of the roles that you start with in sales and a lot of it is due to low self-efficacy, so a student’s belief that they can truly do this well. [00:28:15] And it’s my goal that I’ve prepared them to the point where they feel confident

[00:28:20] in their ability to sell, but until they really get their hands on the product, they’ve done it multiple times, they’ve received training, they’ve talked [00:28:30] to a variety of customers their belief in themselves is not as high as they would like, and you would like as a trainer and a recruiter. And so that’s, it’s very hard to get over that hurdle.

[00:28:41] And in general, you can speak more to this than I [00:28:45] can, but I have a lot of students that will reach out usually about three to six months after they start. And they’ll say, “Professor Loring, this is harder than I thought. I don’t know if this is going to work out for me. I don’t know if I’m a good fit.

[00:28:58] “I didn’t realize [00:29:00] it was going to be this challenging. I didn’t realize, fill in the blank.” And I have to it’s the same conversation every single time. It’s, “I told you this was going to happen. It’s going to get harder before it gets better. But as long as you’re in the right place, you’re [00:29:15] working for the right company, it will get better.”

[00:29:18] And usually another couple months later, you start to see on LinkedIn that they’ve gotten that first promotion. They’ve hit that president’s club or whatever their KPIs are that they’re responsible for hitting. And that’s when [00:29:30] I connect the dots and I say, yes, you got over the hurdle and then everything starts to improve from there.

[00:29:34] So the biggest struggle is really that, that first three to six to nine months in the role. And then you asked about the benefit. The benefit is when [00:29:45] you, when your self efficacy rises and you finally become confident because you’ve talked to, you’ve gotten every single objection that you can possibly receive.

[00:29:54] And when you talk to customers, you know exactly what their problems are. And so it [00:30:00] makes the conversation with them so much easier because you can truly help them and anything that they bring up, how to solve, their problem. And that’s a, that’s an excellent feeling. It’s a fun feeling when you get there.

[00:30:12] And of course, when you’re being [00:30:15] financially rewarded for the success and hard work you’ve put in over those first six to nine months that’s also obviously very appealing.

[00:30:22] Libby Galatis: [00:30:22] Sales people love money, that’s for sure. So you mentioned earlier that with all of these challenges that are inevitable, especially within [00:30:30] your first role in sales, your first taste of it in the real world, you should be looking for the right place at the right company, and I think a lot of students struggle to define what that means for them.

[00:30:40] What would you say are some qualities or aspects of an [00:30:45] opportunity that students should really be looking for when they are weighing out their options and considering different roles?

[00:30:52] Andrew Loring: [00:30:52] Yeah, that’s a good question. I think it goes back to understanding yourself. I in general, if I had to, if I had to look at all of our [00:31:00] students, we basically have, we have two types of students and it gets more intricate from there. And I want to mention that the Chally assessment, through the sales education foundation is another assessment that I use that is incredibly helpful for [00:31:15] students who want to go into sales.

[00:31:16] So I usually pair the CliftonStrengths with the Chally assessment to help them further understand those roles. But if I had to say there was two types of students, there’s those that want to go into more of the BDR roles. And then there’s more that want to [00:31:30] start in an account management type position.

[00:31:33] And it’s very important that they understand both of those types of roles. And this is what Brian was talking about earlier about the introvert extrovert. Yes. everybody can fit somewhere in a [00:31:45] world of sales, but you want to be very careful when you’re force fitting yourself somewhere where you’re not a perfect fit.

[00:31:52] And so that’s where I really help my students to understand who they are. And subsequently where they’d fit in a role. So my more [00:32:00] competitive students, my students look, yeah. I would say like myself, back in my, back in 2009, I would have been a better fit for more of a BDR role because it’s very fast paced.

[00:32:09] It’s very quick. You have these quick wins. But other students who are perhaps more [00:32:15] introverted, like to build relationships with people over time, I would persuade them a little bit more towards account management roles, where that is their responsibility to keep customers, rather than just bring them on and really focus on that hunting aspect.

[00:32:30] [00:32:30] Kristen Wisdorf: [00:32:30] Yeah, I think the good thing is there so many options now there, even after how crazy 2020 was in the year that we had there, companies are clamoring to hire people right out of college. And it’s good. I think for students to know [00:32:45] that, there are options that will fit their personality and where there’ll be successful in what the light, which is great.

[00:32:51] A lot of what you’ve talked about today has been around understanding yourself and knowing where you’re going to be successful, where you’re going to be [00:33:00] happy, how you can use those strengths of yours and apply them. There are students who don’t have the I guess the benefit or the fortune of having a sales program at their college, or being able to take sales classes.

[00:33:13] What type of [00:33:15] advice would you give to people who can’t take a class with you or one of our other sales professors that we’re speaking with, to understand themselves a little bit more so that they can prepare for a role in sales or sales adjacent role?

[00:33:29] Andrew Loring: [00:33:29] Sure. [00:33:30] So everybody, it doesn’t matter who you are. You can take assessments and whether it’s Myers-Briggs or DISC or E -colors or the CliftonStrengths, anything like that will help you understand yourself. And from a recruiting perspective, [00:33:45] I can’t imagine. You know what it’s like hearing from candidate after candidate, who talks about the same things. I’m a hard working person.

[00:33:53] I’m responsible, it’s just, it’s you just Google, what are the right things you’re supposed to say in an interview. And I’d be willing to bet that a lot of [00:34:00] people just use those same words and they it’s stretching the truth. Cause it’s what recruiters want to hear. So anybody can take assessments and learn about themselves regardless of where you want to go.

[00:34:10] So it’s not, that’s not rocket science, but it’s something that people [00:34:15] should invest a little bit more time in is making sure that they’re in the right place and also where they want to be. And I understand a lot of our graduates, they don’t know where in five years they see themselves, necessarily, but it’s still [00:34:30] important that they consider the career trajectory, because the entry-level role is only an entry level role.

[00:34:37] And I try to help all my students realize that it’s look, “You’re in this BDR role, but it’s not going to be forever. You’re [00:34:45] not going to be making these hundred phone calls every single day for the next 20 years. So what’s going to come next? Where do you eventually want to be down the road?” So that’s a huge consideration while also considering your strengths and this, that career development.

[00:34:58] Kristen Wisdorf: [00:34:58] Oh, absolutely. The first job [00:35:00] is important, but I think even your personal experience, it’s not the most important what’s the most important is what do you want to do several years from now? And how are you going to use that first job to set yourself up for success, long-term? And your [00:35:15] point, earlier you said, give it six to nine months,

[00:35:17] you almost have to be patient to get past the hurdles and stick with it. And I think it’s hard to remember when you’re in your first sales job. It’s, it’s three months in, you’re getting either hung up on all day or told no it’s hard to [00:35:30] keep some perspective and remember, “Hey, I got to stick this thing through because it will get better, but it is so true.”

[00:35:36] How many students say,”I thought it was going to be easier. You told me it was going to be hard and it’s harder than I expected”, but give it time [00:35:45] and keep some perspective and look long-term is really important for people getting into sales. Andrew, what would you say is one of, or the most rewarding thing about teaching sales and teaching sales at A&M?

[00:35:58] Andrew Loring: [00:35:58] Yeah. And that’s a [00:36:00] great question. One of the most rewarding things is, on a daily basis, when I’m in the classroom when students get it if something clicks, and it’s something as simple as looking at them, and they nod after I’ve said something, because it means [00:36:15] that they’ve internalized what I’ve said.

[00:36:16] And to me, that’s a win. So, every single day that I’m in the classroom, and I’m preaching on the world of professional selling, I’m trying to get students to that point of understanding and appreciating what I’m talking about, [00:36:30] and unfortunate because what I teach is applicable to everybody.

[00:36:33] So, unlike a lot of classes that are taught in the college and the college setting, I can truly say that every single thing that I comes out of my mouth is going to benefit everybody in the class no matter where they go in [00:36:45] life. But it’s really that point. It’s that point. Of course, when they accept positions that I know that we’ve prepared them for, and I know it’s going to be a perfect fit for them,

[00:36:55] that is that’s incredibly rewarding. And then lastly, it’s seeing when they get their first [00:37:00] promotion. I mean on LinkedIn, I’ll get on there and I’ll see that they’ve gotten promoted and it’s yes, I know it they’re in the right place. They did all the right things. And this is, that’s a good feeling because it’s all the work that I am,

[00:37:10] and we, the, in the Institute we poured into these students, it’s really paying off.

[00:37:17] [00:37:15] Libby Galatis: [00:37:17] With that said, Andrew, do you think that every student should have to take a sales class or take a sales class at some point in their collegiate experience?

[00:37:27] Andrew Loring: [00:37:27] Absolutely. And in some programs around the [00:37:30] country have, and are doing this. So they have the professional selling course as a requirement. Sometimes students have the choice to either take public speaking or professional selling, I think at A&M  that would be a fantastic opportunity, is to have that [00:37:45] choice of whether you take

[00:37:45] public speaking or prep professional selling, but again, that’s yeah, absolutely.

[00:37:52] Kristen Wisdorf: [00:37:52] Yeah, you’re absolutely right. The skills, and the things that you’re teaching are lifelong skills and can be applied, whether you’re in a sales job or [00:38:00] not. But I think it’s so exciting when someone who is, not a business major, they’re a police major or an English major has that aha moment.

[00:38:08] And they end up being really good at sales and it ends up being a life-changer career changer for them. It’s really [00:38:15] exciting.

[00:38:15] Andrew Loring: [00:38:15] And that’s, so that’s something that we’re, we want to, once our students at Texas A&M  to really understand, is that just because you’re not a business major in marketing and the sales track does not mean that you can’t be [00:38:30] involved in what we do and go into a career of sales. We want you to get involved because that’s the truth is sometimes you chose a major for whatever reason, but then come junior year, maybe even senior year, you realize man, where I sales is really where [00:38:45] I’m meant to be.

[00:38:46] That’s where my future should be. And I want to improve my skills and abilities before I go into a sales career. And so all the time we’ll have majors, the students outside of the college of business, come to us with an interest in sales and we try to get them [00:39:00] involved and plugged in as much as we 

[00:39:01] can. We’re more than willing to have them.

[00:39:04] Kristen Wisdorf: [00:39:04] Yeah, that’s great. Have you found that the curriculum or some of the nuance in your class has changed over the last several years with what’s happening in the [00:39:15] industry or the roles that your students are going into?

[00:39:18] Andrew Loring: [00:39:18] So that’s a, that’s another really good question. And it’s one, that’s very interesting. So over the last five or so years we’ve seen an influx of sales enablement discussions. We’ve seen an [00:39:30] influx of social sellings using LinkedIn and Facebook and to to find prospects. And we’ve been very but tuned to everything that’s new. But we have our annual meetings with our [00:39:45] advisory board members and we ask them, we say, “Hey, look, what are you seeing in the industries?

[00:39:50] What should we be adding or changing to our curriculum?” And it’s fascinating that every single year it has less to do with the. The [00:40:00] new things that are in sales, and it’s more about their ability to communicate their ability to actively listen, to ask good questions, to build relationships, to be go getters, to be competitive.

[00:40:13] All of those [00:40:15] fundamental characteristics and skills. That’s not the new age, 2021. Hot book that’s on the shelf. And so it’s neat. So as we continue to think about our curriculum, we’re conflicted because there are so many [00:40:30] interesting topics with enablement and social selling and analytics and all this stuff, which is so important.

[00:40:36] But at the end of the day, our students have to be able to manage and understand the fundamentals of selling.

[00:40:43] Kristen Wisdorf: [00:40:43] Oh, that’s so true. And honestly, [00:40:45] that’s so we look for at the end of the day, cause obviously we’re in tech sales, but we support all sorts of different types of technology. And so we don’t expect students to come in and have any sort of technical ability and quite frankly, we’ll teach them [00:41:00] everything they need to know.

[00:41:01] The most important thing is, that those qualities, right? How hardworking are they? Can they back it up? Do they have the right stories? Are they super curious and are they willing to put in the time and be a [00:41:15] sponge and learn and all those things you had said? And so the fundamentals really at the end of the day are what’s most important.

[00:41:20] And I think be good for students longterm in their career, because if they happen to change industries, they don’t want to be a kind of a one trick pony. They want to have that [00:41:30] baseline so that they have more options, which is great. So Andrew, we want to hop into some some more fun, quick hitter questions.

[00:41:37] So do you have a favorite book that you yourself think is like the best book or that you suggest to your [00:41:45] students?

[00:41:45] Andrew Loring: [00:41:45] So I have two that I recommend quite often the first is “To Sell Is Human”, very classic book. And the second one is “Challenger Selling.” And both of those, “To Sell is Human” [00:42:00] is fundamental because, everybody’s in sales and that’s a kind of a no brainer. I use “Challenger Selling” a lot because it’s a unique way of understanding customers.

[00:42:10] And it’s something that we use as a differentiator to show students that there’s not [00:42:15] just one way to sell.

[00:42:16] Kristen Wisdorf: [00:42:16] Yeah, absolutely. That’s great.  Now this is more prevalent and appropriate than ever, but what do you think are the pros and cons of working from home?

[00:42:27] Andrew Loring: [00:42:27] Yeah, the one of the [00:42:30] benefits is more control over your life. I think you get back a lot of commute time. You can spend time with your family, If you have a family more often than ever before. But the downsides is really, you [00:42:45] lose the human interaction and I’ve been doing a couple of research studies on engagement, employee engagement and,

[00:42:52] one thing that so many employees miss about being in the office is being able to just turn to your colleague real quick and just say, “Hey, how’s it going? [00:43:00] Did you see that game last night? Did you hear about X, Y, or Z?” And it’s just not the same when you hop on Microsoft teams or Skype or Slack and you, I am them quick and have that discussion.

[00:43:10] it’s much more impactful. And I think meaningful from a standpoint of human [00:43:15] interaction, when you’re, when you see someone face to face. So that’s what we’re really missing from working from home.

[00:43:21] Libby Galatis: [00:43:21] I definitely agree. There’s pros and cons. I think, being able to work virtually and having the students become proficient in using things like Zoom and [00:43:30] stuff like that will definitely them from a real-world job perspective. But there are challenges that come along with that as well.

[00:43:36] My question for you, you mentioned earlier when you were talking about your progression in your career and how you were able to define what makes, what makes you [00:43:45] individual and defining that stylistic approach for yourself. I’m curious, what are you world-class at?

[00:43:50] What would you say is your super power.

[00:43:52] Andrew Loring: [00:43:52] Yeah. So my super power is understanding that everybody is unique. So I, I take great pride [00:44:00] in really customizing every single thing that I do to every single person that I’m around and so much so that it can be a fault. Because I spend so much time figuring out who are you as a student and where should you be in your career?

[00:44:15] [00:44:15] That it takes up a lot of time. And I deal with hundreds of students. And as much as I’d like to dedicate, hours each week to helping them figure out who they are. I can’t. So it kills me inside when I can’t spend and [00:44:30] dedicate as much time as I want to all students. But that’s my, that’s my superpower is just

[00:44:35] understanding that there’s no one size fits all approach to teaching sales or a career in sales.

[00:44:44] Kristen Wisdorf: [00:44:44] That’s great. [00:44:45] And that is that you’re right. Absolutely. It does take a lot of time to be that kind of specific and cater to each person. But if it’s your super power, you want to double down on it. Who is the most influential person in your life?

[00:45:02] [00:45:00] Andrew Loring: [00:45:02] I don’t know, I’d probably say, this is gonna sound cliche, but my dad is pretty influential and he’s influential because he’s not a sales guy at all, but he is someone who [00:45:15] is always open to listening to me no matter what. And he may not have any expertise in what I’m talking about, but he is my soundboard.

[00:45:25] I’m the kind of guy who loves to bounce ideas off someone else in order to think [00:45:30] strategically. And I’ll call them up at any point in time and I’ll do just that. And he’ll always answer. And he’ll always be receptive to what I’m talking about, regardless of whether it’s something that he knows nothing about.

[00:45:45] [00:45:44] And so he really demonstrates the fact that active listening is so important and as salespeople and I even I’m guilty of this too, when we become so focused on our end goal, we sometimes lose sight of [00:46:00] the person who’s across the table from us. And we jumped to conclusions and we make recommendations before we’ve really vetted the situation.

[00:46:08] And my dad’s a constant reminder that you can always ask more questions. You can always get to know someone more to make [00:46:15] sure that what you’re recommending is really the right thing. And so he talked to him a lot.

[00:46:21] Kristen Wisdorf: [00:46:21] That’s great. That’s just even more proof that even if you’re not in sales, you can embody and use those sales skills every single day. So [00:46:30] that’s great, Andrew. We appreciate your time today. I’m really excited about what you’re doing at A&M. I know we, we hire Aggies at our Texas, our Austin location, and we’re really excited about you building the program and spending some time with us 

[00:46:45] [00:46:45] Andrew Loring: [00:46:45] Yep. 

[00:46:45] Kristen Wisdorf: [00:46:45] you so much.

[00:46:46] Andrew Loring: [00:46:46] you for having me.