Tech Sales is for Hustlers Podcast

Campus Series: Barry Erickson – Life is Unpredictable

Guest-At-A-Glance

Name: Barry Erickson

What he does: He’s the Director of the Professional Sales Program and an Assistant Teaching Professor at the University of Washington.

Company: University of Washington – Michael G. Foster School of Business

Noteworthy: Barry’s student program is focused on offering students a rewarding complement to an undergraduate degree and providing partnering employers with talented student graduates and interns skilled in sales fundamentals.

Where to find Barry: LinkedIn

Key Insights

⚡ Pick a company that puts quality first. Barry suggests going for companies with quality products when choosing an organization to work for. Having to apologize for quality issues constantly is a pain, and it doesn’t allow you to make sales effectively. “My takeaway from a sales standpoint and my advice is to pick a company that has quality first. If your product is made with quality, it’s a great job. And if your product cuts corners and you’re constantly having to apologize for quality issues, and you don’t take care of the customer, sales could be a tough road. I was fortunate. I had a fantastic company I was able to support [and did] not have to negotiate on price because the quality of the product justified it.”

⚡ Learn to be more flexible because life is unpredictable. Barry says that one of the most vital lessons he’d like his students to learn is flexibility. Life is full of ups and downs. You never know what to expect, so you have to be comfortable with change if you want to succeed. “Some students, I noticed, really freak out about that [change]. And I try to tell them that’s the way your life is going to be. You’re going to have a sales call with your customer on a Tuesday, and all of a sudden, they don’t show up to work. Well, get ready for it and get used to it. So I guess my observation is to become adaptable and flexible, because it’s not about you, a college student; it’s about your customer.”

⚡ Don’t chase immediate gratification. Some salespeople move from company to company looking for a bigger paycheck or different products to sell. Barry suggests otherwise. Allow yourself to grow as a salesperson rather than chase instant gratification. “For 90% of us in sales, at the end of our careers, it wasn’t about the money. It was about something else. So, Madisson, to your point, I guess I’d be a little more skeptical about just going after the dollar because if I had to go after the dollar and then represent a lesser quality product, I’d hate my job, [it] couldn’t pay me enough. I’d rather get paid less and not have to apologize for my product.” 

Episode Highlights

The Importance of Quality, Customer Relationships, and Integrity 

“First of all, represent with quality and don’t negotiate on price. That’s one big takeaway I had. The second one is — this is not novel, but it’s very clear — take care of your existing customers. Do not ever take them for granted because, obviously, replacing them is extremely painful. So if you take care of your existing customers, they will be your partners for life. So my second takeaway is relationships. […] And number three, all you have is your reputation and your integrity. So act with integrity because, at the end of the day, you will get hired based on your reputation.”

You Don’t Need to Be a Business Major to Go into Sales.

“Communications school majors are a great source for sales skills. Great salespeople. You can imagine that because they know how to write. They know how to communicate. They know how to read nonverbal cues. They know how to follow up. They know how to publicly speak. So, communication majors are kind of a classic case. Then we have engineers. We have biotech students. We have chemistry students. We have construction management students, international studies’ [students]. We have drama majors. Drama majors make great salespeople. So we have a myriad of 20 different majors represented in our program, and we teach them the prerequisites and the business acumen, and then they get into the sales side.”

Sometimes, the Best Deal Is the One You Don’t Close.

“We didn’t lose money on the deal, but we discounted it so much that we basically just broke even, and it wasn’t a good experience. We then had to start looking at how much it was costing us to get done, and I had to go back to the customer and ask for some more financial support because we were losing [money] on the deal, and it was ugly all the way round. We didn’t make money. We had to go back to the customer and ask them for some additional funds. The schedule didn’t turn out great. My lesson there, and I’ve said this to the students, sometimes the best deal is the one you don’t sign. And I experienced that, and I won’t make that mistake again.”

Transcript:

[00:01:26] Madisson DeLisle: Hi there.

[00:01:27] Kristen Wisdorf: And, we’re pumped because today we have Barry Erickson joining us from the University of Washington in Seattle. Welcome to the podcast, Barry.

[00:01:38] Happy to be here. 

[00:01:39] Kristen Wisdorf: Well, Barry, we are very excited to work with you. I know Madisson’s been working with you over the last year. Now that we have an office in Seattle and we’re growing our presence out there, you are the man to be connected with, but so that all of our listeners can learn a little bit more about you,

[00:01:55] if you’ve been here before, you know we start all of our episodes the same way. I like to start my interviews, which is, Barry, why don’t you take 60 seconds and just give us your highlight reel. Tell us about you.

[00:02:09] Barry Erickson: Born and bred Seattle, went to the University of Washington, ironically, took a job in Seattle, but got to travel the United States, then transferred, after 15 years of selling there, to another company in Seattle and actually got to travel the world. So, while home-based here, and I’m a bit of a homer for Seattle, I have been able to see the world, worked another 15 years at that company and then had a midlife crisis if you will,

[00:02:41] and my wife and I took our children on a 12-month sabbatical and traveled to 25 countries. Why? Because we were able to do it and I highly recommend it for anyone else, if they can, at some point, financially, you can make it work. And then it changed my life in the sense that I read a book that prescribed two different career sets, whether that be

[00:03:07] corporate to nonprofit, to mission work, to teaching, to government work, and I had done the corporate thing and I moved to teaching as a result of that, a sabbatical, and I’ve been in the education business, teaching sales and what I did for 30 years from a adjunct perspective, and that’s how I got here. 

[00:03:31] Kristen Wisdorf: Okay. That’s super exciting. We have a lot to break down. So, you have been many places. You traveled to 25 countries with your family, and obviously, before that, you were traveling for work. We’ve got to break this down. What have been some of your most surprising places you’ve been, your favorite places?

[00:03:52] Talk to us a little bit more about your travel and kind of what you learned throughout that travel.

[00:03:57] Barry Erickson: Well, certainly have, I would probably start with, obviously the different cultural scenarios in each country, in each region comes down to the personal. I have fairly, extroverted, gregarious personality that fits well in certain regions and doesn’t fit well in others. So, I learned that having sales partners and sales agents who are local and who have the local-personality type and the local trust is critical in some areas,

[00:04:27] yet in others, I was welcome because my personality type fit those regions. So, that’s one thing that I would certainly say is, while we still have a lot of cultural diversity and thank goodness we do, because it shows that you can have all sorts of personalities to sell, not just the stereotypical used car-salesman personality that I try to fight that myth every day in class.

[00:04:54] That’s certainly one takeaway. Another takeaway certainly was the different values we have in different cultures. It certainly helped me realize that customers have different values as well, and it’s not always the dollar. I think I learned that emphatically that the dollar doesn’t come first when we sell. The whoever-buys-cheapest stereotype is not true.

[00:05:22] They buy for their needs, their own desires and all around the world I learned that we all have, put a different value on the dollar. In the United States we put a high value on it. 

[00:05:33] Kristen Wisdorf: Yeah. Yeah. That’s so interesting. And now, as the Director of the Sales Program at UW, I’m sure you’re working with students all the time thinking about obviously what they’re going to do after college, and I imagine students that you work with, they identify travel as something they might want to do, or it’s important to them to be able to have the option to travel in maybe their first job, or they want to work toward that.

[00:05:59] How do you work with students and advise them when it comes to getting into a career like sales, which might be new for them, but then you add on travel? What lessons have you learned that you can give to your current students now about a traveling role?

[00:06:14] Barry Erickson: Great. Great question, because I get the question all the time. The typical question I get, for example, a senior who is looking to enter the workforce is, “Hey, I want to go do the youth-hostel thing for three months. I want to do the youth hostel thing for six months, for a year. Am I diminishing my chances of getting good work when I come back? And my advice is no, I think there’s probably various other advisors some people would give, but my advice is no, I don’t think you’re going to diminish your chance. I think an employer, hopefully, would look at that as a strength and a positive from twofold. One, because if you have this deep yearning, this deep-down desire to travel, get it out of the way first,

[00:07:02] so you’re not going to take a job and then in a year figure, “Oh, I got to fly the coop.” So, if you get it out of your way first, they might see you as more stable. And then, secondly, you just have those world experiences to bring to the table. I think you’re going to be a much more valuable employee. So the, my first advice is, do the travel right out of college

[00:07:20] if you care to. However, the economy plays into factor there too. Right now, the economy for job take is terrific. So boy, who knows what we’re going to be in a year. The conservative side of me says, “Boy, when you can get a job offer today as readily available and they seem to be, you might want to take that as well.” That’s kind of my first piece. Second piece is, if you don’t, if you can’t afford to travel early on, we all understand that, it’s not too late to do it on the back-in. Now I did it on the way back-in because we wanted to travel with our children, but I would also tell somebody, as long as you still got an energy to gaffer in the morning and walk, which we need to do internationally, not so much here, but you can make it work, financially

[00:08:10] you can make it work. I know it can be done.

[00:08:13] Madisson DeLisle: That’s great. I would love to flip that question almost on its head. There are going to be those students that they’ve lived in, we’ll just say Washington state because that’s where we’re at, they’ve lived in Washington state their whole life, went to college there, they’re not looking to travel,

[00:08:27] they’re scared to leave the state. We see those students. What would your advice be for the students that maybe haven’t seen very much outside of where they grew up?

[00:08:36] Barry Erickson: Certainly with today, this is nothing not, and this is not a rocket Science. you’ll appreciate that, but with today’s technology and what the pandemic has done to us, even if you’re out of your home town, you’re a heck of a lot closer than you used to be, and, certainly, we all learned even happy hours on Fridays had people from all over the

[00:08:55] world, right,

[00:08:56] on those calls. So, you can still keep in touch with your peeps away from town. So, I don’t think it’s just dramatic as it used to be. Certainly cheap airfare, which also isn’t, is nothing novel, but cheap airfare will get you back to a major city, at least like in our case, Seattle, very easily. So, my advice is open up your mind to different regions and work it for a few years,

[00:09:20] show that you’re willing to relocate and you’ll be a stronger employee as, as I view it anyways. And I think our numbers are showing that. We’ll have well over, 30%, 35% of our students who grew up in Seattle are taking jobs outside of Seattle. That is a good trend going up, and we certainly have many students that come from all over the country to the University of Washington,

[00:09:47] and, of course, they will tend to go back as well. And so, we’re fortunate that we have such strong demand, that we do see a lot of students from all over and they returned to their home states as well. 

[00:09:59] Kristen Wisdorf: That’s exciting, and they can always come back to Seattle too, if they do leave, which is, I think, sometimes students get in their head about where their first job after college is going to be, but nothing is forever, so, let’s kind of take it way back, pre-Barry as the Director of the Sales Program. And, before you got into education, let’s talk a little bit about your personal sales journey.

[00:10:22] So, I think you said, your first job out of college, you were there for 15 years, is that right?

[00:10:29] Barry Erickson: Yeah. So I, took job with a really, really fun job, really unique, the product. Took a job with a company who, I won’t mention the name just for safety, say, but it was a, an FAA, a Federal Aviation Authority authorized repair station, servicing Boeing and, at the time, McDonnell Douglas jets, for those of you that are of my ilk, and we would do inspections and repairs on McDonnell Douglas jets and all the components they’re in,

[00:10:59] and I was able to call on customers such as Delta Airlines, American Airlines, United Airlines, Alaska Airlines, Southwest, and so, I was able to travel the United States quite extensively, calling on these various customers that company’s up in Everett, it’s still exists under a different name now, but really a fun, unique product,

[00:11:21] and my takeaway from a sales standpoint, and my advice is to folks, pick a company that has quality-first. If your product is made with quality, it’s a great job, and if your product cuts corners and you’re constantly having to apologize for quality issues and you don’t take care of the customer, sales could be a tough road. But, I was fortunate.

[00:11:49] I had a fantastic company, I was able to support, not have to negotiate on price because the quality of the product justified such. Did that for 15 years. The company got purchased as obviously, during the merger era, there were larger companies gobbling up smaller companies and our company got purchased, grew more, stayed with them, then was able to get some international exposure with international customers because of the size of the corporation

[00:12:17] and the brand of the name was more robust, so, kind of, I guess, experienced a merger, some goods and some bads to that, mostly goods, and the one thing that was a challenge is, I was asked to consider transferring or getting promoted outside of Seattle and based on my family situation, we weren’t gonna leave Seattle,

[00:12:39] so I moved to trucking from there, moved to a major truck manufacturer. Those of you from Seattle will probably know who I’m talking about and I was able to stay in Seattle, working for that company, also then doing travel, but then moving from airplanes to trucks, nuts and bolts guy, I guess, you could say. 

[00:12:58] Madisson DeLisle: That’s great. I know 15 years is a long time to take only a few takeaways from, but if you could sum up maybe the three largest takeaways that you got from that first initial sales role and your time with that first company, what would you say those would be?

[00:13:14] Barry Erickson: Sure. First of all, as I said, represent with quality and don’t negotiate on price. That’s one big takeaway I had. Second one is, this is not novel, but it’s very clear. Take care of your existing customers. Do not take them ever for granted because, obviously, replacing them is extremely painful. So, if you take care of your existing customers, they will be your partners for life. So, my second takeaway is, relationships for life, don’t burn any bridges and just bend over backwards for that existing customers, even if it’s at the sacrifice of getting new business, those existing customers are precious and need to be taken care of, for sure.

[00:13:54] And number three, all you have is your reputation and your integrity. So, act with integrity because, at the end of the day, you will get hired based on your reputation, and over the years, this isn’t an ego boost, but over the years I got many calls from competitors or even people that aren’t even competitors, just in a different industry who said, who offered me positions,

[00:14:20] and I kind of asked, ” Now, why me?” And they said, “Well, your reputation is pristine.” So, if you’ve maintained that reputation, it’s a small world and people know you and they know what you’re about. So, those would be my three takeaways.

[00:14:33] Kristen Wisdorf: So, back when you got into your first job and even sales in generals and sales education has changed a lot in the last 10+ years, back when you got into your first job, sales role, specifically, what training did you get? Was there any training? Was it product training, like, walk a little, us a little bit through how you learn how to meet with Delta and Southwest and these big companies.

[00:15:00] Barry Erickson: Great question, and had the luxury of working for a small company that, I’ll say, had informal training. It was still very robust training, but it was informal and it was on-the-job training. It wasn’t formal classroom training. It wasn’t a decentralized training. It was on-the-job training,

[00:15:19] and my boss took me on the road with him, and we went to four or five companies in the same week, and all that informal training of getting in and out of hotels, getting in and out of rental cars, driving, even he and I breakfast, lunch and dinner together for a week and I was just a sponge, and then I could watch him in action at the customers, watch how he did it,

[00:15:43] great role play, and then he even role-played with me on our travels. So, my training was absolutely on the job. The product training came along with observing in the meetings. So, I know what kinds of questions to ask the customers, and I would know what kind of questions customers added in, so big proponent of that for any sales boss or any sales manager.

[00:16:08] If a sales manager hires a sales rep, the best thing I could advise them to do is go on the road with them for a week. All that informal training is invaluable and it only took a week, honestly. I was, on the road for a week with my boss. I was ready to go in week two. I don’t think you could do 

[00:16:25] Kristen Wisdorf: that. 

[00:16:26] You’re probably itching to go. 

[00:16:27] Barry Erickson: Probably. So, yeah, it was terrific. I will also say this. I think probably by design, he chose some customers that had been longtime customers that really liked our product, so, I think he diabolically probably didn’t want to put himself also into any sort of straight, cold-calling role, but rather with some existing accounts so I could learn,

[00:16:50] and there was a lot of substance in the meetings.

[00:16:54] Kristen Wisdorf: Yeah, that’s really interesting, and I want to dig into this. Madisson and I, we both got started in sales with the same company doing outside sales, and that’s also how we learned, right? It, we call it “ride-alongs”, right? With your manager and you learn from watching your manager shadowing them, then modeling it for you, jumping in, et cetera.

[00:17:12] So that in-person, on-the-job training, we’re obviously proponents of personally, but I know, nowadays, we hire hundreds of students every year right out of college, it can be a challenge to transition or to learn that way. Their whole life, middle school, high school, college, they’ve had this classroom-style training and sometimes

[00:17:34] it’s a challenge or it’s harder to look at on-the-job training as training. What advice do you give your students if they’re set to enter a role or a company where they’re going to get that hands-on training, but it’s very different than what they’ve experienced their entire life? Like, how do you prepare your students for that? 

[00:17:54] Barry Erickson: Yeah. I think, one thing, I can’t generalize across the board, but just one, one observation I have is, that transition from college into the real, real world, many students haven’t needed to become flexible, and haven’t needed to adjust to changes and haven’t needed to create their own agenda,

[00:18:20] and I think that could be a very hard lesson, that you don’t in sales get a to-do list of 10 things to do, starting in the morning and you check the boxes and by the time you get to 10, your day is done, because, by the way, four is going to shift to five, five is going to drop off completely, and then a new one’s going to come on in and your customer’s came and your, what your customer needs and dictates is what your schedule is.

[00:18:44] So, I have found that even little things like students want a syllabus, they want to know exactly what you’re doing every day of the quarter, and if you make a change, it gets very disruptive for them, and what I try to tell them is, “Hey, there’s going to be changes to the syllabus.” The guest speaker I have on November the 18th,

[00:19:09] now can’t come to the 21st. Some students, I noticed, really freaked out about that, and I try to tell them, “That’s the way your life is going to be. You’re going to have a sales call with your customer on a Tuesday, and all of a sudden they don’t show up to work. Well, get ready for it, and get used to it.” So, my, I guess, my observation is, become adaptable, flexible, because it’s not about you, college student,

[00:19:38] it’s about your customer. That is the number one thing. I think, and again, I’m not being critical, I love the students, but I think the students, world has revolved around themselves up to this point, through their parents, through the way certain high school teachers have taught them. We’re afraid of students in college, but we’re afraid of students, we’ve catered to them,

[00:20:01] I turned the table. It’s time for them to cather others. 

[00:20:04] Kristen Wisdorf: Yeah, I get it. And we see the same thing, right? I think it’s really, you know, your whole life, the next step, ” I leave junior year and go to senior year, I graduate and then I go to college and then I do this and then I get a job”, and then, once you hit the real world, the plan, quote unquote, is, it’s different for everyone,

[00:20:22] and I think it’s, yeah, like, teaching people, particularly students how to, especially in sales, how to get comfortable being uncomfortable or get comfortable with change because there’s no such thing as a typical day in sales, that’s for sure. 

[00:20:39] Barry Erickson: True statement. 

[00:20:40] Kristen Wisdorf: Yeah. Well, let’s talk a little bit more about your programs.

[00:20:43] So, you work with students after your year-long sabbatical with your family, which sounds incredible, you got into education. Walk us through that transition from selling to being an educator and how you’ve built the program at UW.

[00:20:59] Barry Erickson: Very good. I won’t make this an ego play. I’ll just kind of tell this story. After the trip around the world, I actually talked my way in, I guess, say, sold my way into a high school business teacher’s job ’cause I knew I wanted to get into this education thing. High school business teacher’s job, not certified,

[00:22:16] not necessarily in the union, which is probably unheard of, but I taught high school business, typical high school business class. Small business management, advertising, marketing. I advise the, advise the yearbook staff, that sort of thing. And, a long-time, a long-time colleague acquaintance named Jack Rhodes who had started this sales program 20 years ago at the University of Washington,

[00:22:42] and he had heard that I had gotten into education and wanted to have a cup of coffee, maybe it was lunch, maybe it was dinner, and he described his situation and that he was thinking about to bring somebody else, ultimately who could maybe take over for him if he ever decided to retire. And, when we go back to my Alma mater, the stuff I’ve been teaching in high school, while it was good for high schoolers, was better for collegiate level.

[00:23:08] I was probably a little more interested in the collegiate level because high schoolers can kind of understand that general marketing concepts, but then when it comes to the difference between sales and marketing, they kind of didn’t get it. So, the sales thing kind of made sense. So I, accepted that offer and moved from high school after just three years, I think, to the collegiate level, had this great tool agender, this founder of this program who had started at

[00:23:33] 20 years ago and inherited this great business model. Credit to him.

[00:23:39] Great business model, and I just haven’t been able to inherit that, and then, I now have partner, I’ve kind of partnered with him for a few years and now there’s a woman named Karen Bailey, who’s my partner now, teaches half the classes. I teach half the classes, and it’s a good model to move forward with the model in general, mixes, finding students that want to get into selling,

[00:24:02] which is not necessarily easy, a lot of people think, “Oh, used-car salesman,” and we fight that mocker, but we convince students that professional B2B selling is an honorable profession, matter of fact, it’s the best profession. So, find the students, get them prerequisite with business acumen, then teach them the core principles of selling and roleplay.

[00:24:25] Along the way, network with the corporate community, and we have partners and sponsors much like memoryBlue that interact with our students, provide internships to our students, are interested from a recruiting standpoint, a career-fair standpoint, so we have this great marriage and merger and the end result is pretty fantastic placement rates.

[00:24:48] Again, not an ego boost. We see a desire, we see students that want to go into sales, we see companies looking for sales talent, and we could act as basically a placement agency without being advertised as a placement agency. 

[00:25:03] Madisson DeLisle: That’s great. And I know that when we’ve spoken, previously you’ve mentioned that a large percentage of your students in the program are not actually business majors, they’re coming from other programs and schools within the university and wanting to get that, either take sales courses or get that additional sales certificate,

[00:25:23] what do you think is causing non-business school students to want to suddenly break into that sales program?

[00:25:30] Barry Erickson: Yeah, great question. One would typically, and I’ll kind of give you a little description, communications school majors, great source for sales skills. Great salespeople. You can imagine, they know how to write, they know how to communicate, they know how to read nonverbal cues, they know how to follow up,

[00:25:48] they know how to publicly speak. So, communication majors is kind of a classic case. Then we have engineers, we have bio, biotech students, we have chemistry students, we have construction management students, international studies. We have drama majors. Drama majors make great salespeople. So, we have a myriad, 20 different majors representing in our program.

[00:26:10] We teach them the prerequisites again, the business acumen, and then they get into that, the sales side. Now, what, brings them to us? A couple of things. The chemistry majors, the biology majors, maybe they realize, “G, by my junior year, do I really want to take 12 years of medical school? Do I really want to become a doctor?

[00:26:30] Do I really want to become a nurse?” They find out about us and they say, “Wow, I could stay in pharmaceuticals, I can stay in medical devices, I could stay in surgical supplies, but not go to 12 years of medical school.” So, they come to us, learn sales skills and then go out and get these wonderful high-paying jobs in pharmaceutical sales or medical-device sales, et cetera.

[00:26:54] So, that’s one source, is students that want to practice what they have, but mix it with business, as we all know salespeople do quite well financially. So, that’s an attraction for them. Communications majors were a natural fit, because they typically would maybe go into public relations, maybe a bit of marketing, but because they’re so verbal, because they’re so extroverted by nature, we are a great, great natural fit for them,

[00:27:20] and we also have some wonderful advisors over in that communications department that sends students to us, ’cause they know they’d be a good fit. The head of the advisory department, when she’s talking to a student who is really verbally well-suited, she knows they’d be good fit. She sends them over to us.

[00:27:38] That’s true too. Then, the third reason, I don’t like to lean on this because I don’t want it to appear as though we’re a placement agency but I’m also honest with myself. We have great placement. So, if you’re a history major who has an app for sales,

[00:27:56] you can probably get a job through the sales program,

[00:27:59] and so, they might come over too because history is a harder vocation to get a job with. So, that’s another piece too, but we’re very careful not to let a student into our program who’s simply using us for a job because we interviewed them before they come in anyway, and if we ask the question, “Why do you want to get into the sales program?”

[00:28:17] And they might respond, “Well because I can get a good job.” Well, we don’t welcome them in then.

[00:28:23] Madisson DeLisle: That’s great. As you and I have discussed, memoryBlue is really open to all backgrounds when it comes to majors too, so we love seeing the sales programs that aren’t only focused on those business students, but helping other students that have that interest. What would you say, or what advice would you give to a non-business student that might be considering changing up the route in which they’re studying, but maybe isn’t totally sure about the sales route?

[00:28:49] Barry Erickson: Right, I get that. Certainly, take one of our classes first. Probably one of our best selling tools is a student who’s in our class, who just signed up for it to take it, to meet an elective requirement. They tend to be one of our best sources for applicants because the classes are fun, they’re active, they’re not academic in nature,

[00:29:10] they’re role-play in nature. They are dose-reality in nature, and so, the first thing is, take one of our classes, I would suggest. See if you like it. If you like it, come get more of it, number one. Number two, it’s not a extremely rigorous schedule. It can be for students, for example, who has a very, very rigorous schedule to get done in four years, it might be hard to fit our courses in, but many of our students will graduate a quarter later, two quarters later, to be able to take our classes.

[00:29:45] So, if you can afford a little more time in college before you have to go hit the working scene, come to our class, take our program. And then, also, there’s many majors that don’t require a full four years to get done, and those students can get our program done within a year. Normally, our program takes about a year and a half, but you can get it done in a year

[00:30:11] if you are not heavily-weighted with your other major elements. So, I think an extra year or an extra quarter or two in college to get a sales certificate will pay off handsomely in the first five years of employment versus what you would make without being a sales person.

[00:30:29] Madisson DeLisle: Definitely the case, and we’re seeing a lot more students are searing away from that car-salesman mentality, which I think is why so many of these sales programs are popping up all over the United States. Obviously, you came into an already-developed program, which was amazing, and it seems like you’ve done quite a bit in the few years

[00:30:49] you’ve been with the program already. What are your plans for next steps, expanding the program as you continue to get so much student interest?

[00:30:58] Barry Erickson: Yeah, that’s great question. We’ve been on a controlled growth, I call it a “controlled growth”. Every year I think we’ve had, we’ve ticked up 10% to 15% over the last three to four years, but it’s also very controlled because we need to get students to the classroom. We don’t have a large staff who’s teaching,

[00:31:17] so we are also controlled by the resources for teaching the students, but the controlled growth can continue, but we really have to look at our resources. Something I, I look at very carefully too is, the size of the class is manageable right now, we have 175 students, that is a manageable size.

[00:31:37] When you get up over 200, 250 students, does the quality perhaps of the fit go down and can we stay as intimate with our students is another thing to consider. Now, there are great sales programs all over the United States that have 3, 400 people. I get that. They have very large, they have more staff than we do to manage it.

[00:32:00] Do I want to get there some point? I certainly think so, but I also would say, bigger is not necessarily better always. So, we’re kind of careful to look at that. Now, what you just said, where do we want to be? I think we can teach in the entrepreneurship school. I think there’s great sales needs there.

[00:32:19] We have an article leadership program, we teach and teach there. We have an MBA program. I believe that MBAs would benefit greatly by our program. We’re starting to teach there. We have an executive education program at University of Washington that teaches seasoned veterans, and why not teach them sales?

[00:32:38] We have taught in there as well. So, I think there’s different applications for different sectors. I often get calls from individuals who are out in the marketplace saying, “Can I come to your class?” And my answer is, “Yeah.

[00:32:50] you can come sit in on a class or two, but I can’t enroll you in my classes.

[00:32:54] You have to be an undergraduate at the University.” So, that’s a different direction to go, but strictly from a size standpoint, I guess I would tell you this, we certainly have the customer demand, I should say, we have the employer demand. We have more employers now that we can really satisfy, so we’re very careful, though, who we engage with because we don’t want to set

[00:33:17] companies up for disappointment that they’d love to get some of our sales interns, but we need to be realistic about how many we can fill. 

[00:33:25] Kristen Wisdorf: Yeah. 

[00:33:26] Barry Erickson: We are looking at it. We’re looking very carefully at it. 

[00:33:28] Kristen Wisdorf: Well, that’s really exciting, and it’s exciting what you’ve been able to do with the program thus far. You were mentioning earlier how, you know, these non-business students or even business students, they really enjoy the sales classes because they’re very real-life in nature. There’s role-plays. Sales is experiential and sales classes are experiential,

[00:33:49] and I imagine a lot of your students get to learn from your personal experience in your career as well. So, we want to chat a little bit about your best deals and maybe worst deals. So, when you’re talking with your students and you’re running them through maybe your own personal sales lows and sales highs,

[00:34:10] do you have any strong memories of maybe your best deal ever? Your best sales deal or your biggest win? And, on the flip side, do you have your worst deal or your worst, I guess, loss, your biggest loss that you can remember? 

[00:34:25] Barry Erickson: One thing comes to mind very particularly when I was in the aviation industry. There was a customer that was loyal to one of our competitors for life. I mean, it was a lifelong deal, loyal for life, and I believe that how the story goes is, that competitor started to take them for a little bit of granted,

[00:34:45] and I had been calling on this customer for years, like, five years. Kept going back, kept going back, kept going back, never came home with a purchase order, my boss was very supportive. So, I, I credit my boss. My boss was like, ” It’ll come. You just keep going back there.” So, in one sense, it was uncomfortable to go to a sales call when you never really have anything to talk about.

[00:35:10] You’re just showing up, saying “We’re here.” I keep telling them about our other customers, keep telling them about our services, we add new enhancements to our product, tell them about that. And, one day, the competitor either couldn’t take an airplane or the competitor maybe treated the customer a little bit for granted,

[00:35:32] and I got my shot and we, of course, bent over backwards for them and got the business. Moved it over. So, probably the best, that was probably the most rewarding sales calls, is, working on a customer for five years and then you finally get that first PO and then you can bring them over.

[00:35:50] That was the. 

[00:35:51] Kristen Wisdorf: That’s the lesson in persistence, for sure. 

[00:35:54] Barry Erickson: Yeah, I think so. I think so. I think, I’ve certainly learned this. You’re not going to close the deal on the first call. If you are, you’re probably leaving money on the table or something, which leads me to my next scenario. What I’m probably least proud of is taking an order when we shouldn’t have. Giving a discount to the point that it was almost just a loss. We didn’t lose money on the deal, but we discounted it so much that we basically just broke even, and it wasn’t a good experience. We then had to start looking at how much it was costing us to get done, and I had to go back to the customer and ask for some more financial support because we were kind of losing on the deal and it was ugly all the way around.

[00:36:38] We didn’t make money. We had to go back to the customer and ask them for some additional funds. Schedule didn’t turn out great. My lesson there, and I’ve said this to the students, sometimes the best deal is the one you don’t sign up, and I experienced that and I won’t make that mistake 

[00:36:55] again. 

[00:36:56] Kristen Wisdorf: Yeah, 

[00:36:57] really good advice. 

[00:36:58] Barry Erickson: I’ve had that in this current job. We’ve come to the point where we’ve had some sponsors who want to register with us and get involved with our program, and I’ve had to be honest to say, “You know, I’d love to have you, but I just don’t have enough students to feed the marketplace’s needs right now,

[00:37:16] so I can’t really bring you on as a sponsor.” That was a good, that’s a good

[00:37:20] message ’cause, by the way, they’ll come back. They’ll come back. 

[00:37:24] Kristen Wisdorf: And it’s better than making fitting it in, square peg into a round hole and the experience is then poor, right? So, I think that’s good, and I think it’s really good reminder and advice for people early in their sales career. Okay. We love unpopular opinions about sales. So, Barry, do you have any

[00:37:45] unpopular opinions about sales, or do you think there are very common misconceptions that your students have about sales until they start working with you and in your class? 

[00:37:57] Barry Erickson: Oh, certainly. I mean, the classic stereotype, as I’ve said three times now, the used-car salesman and, by the way, nothing against used-cars salesman, it’s just a stereotype that people would tend to think of when you’re in sales, they go, “Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. That person’s in sales. Gifted gabber, maybe a little bit slickster, maybe a little bit slimy.”

[00:38:17] No, we’re not, and we don’t keep our jobs and we don’t continue to cut deals if we’re slimy. So, but that’s a con, that is a bit of a constant battle. I mean, I’m a talker and sometimes that’s maybe a stereotypical scenario and I guess I am how I am, but I’m not slimy and I don’t cut corners, and I win deals with service and support, not with slick talk. That’s kind of one unpopular opinion-style scenario. Something that I would say about salespeople though, I have tended to see of recent salespeople moving around from company to company a little bit more. 

[00:39:00] Kristen Wisdorf: Especially in the last, like, probably year, two years. That’s very popular.

[00:39:05] Barry Erickson: Now, maybe I need to become a little more progressive in today’s generation and maybe that’s just the way it’s going to be. I get that, but sometimes I feel like it would be better for salespeople if they were more loyal to their product and not move to a competitor. That would be nice to see.

[00:39:23] It happens in some regard and maybe I’m too old school, but I kinda sold for two companies and kind of 15 years of peace and different industries, different products, not competing. I’m very loyal to those companies, and not that people are bouncing around dramatically, but that’s one thing that I, I guess if you’re asking me what I kind of wish my change, that might be something I’d like to see, is people a little more loyal to their company

[00:39:49] perhaps. 

[00:39:50] Madisson DeLisle: Yeah, definitely. And another thing that we’ve seen kind of trending is people chasing the immediate gratification of a higher pay, whether it’s base or different structure and leaving companies and bouncing around because the immediate outcome is slightly more money at the forefront. What would you say to people that are kind of chasing that

[00:40:11] immediate gratification versus building up that longer-term customer base, product loyalty, loyalty to company versus immediate gratification versus long-term results of staying with something?

[00:40:25] Barry Erickson: Yeah, I know. It’s an interesting question. Well, you know, my first instinct is, we’re all different. We all have a different value on that almighty dollar versus other things. I’ve always felt, the value for me is having an identity. What I mean by that is, I liked to have the identity of being the advocate for the customer, and if somebody ever had an idea about a product enhancement or a new customer that could come to me, and I felt really good about being, having that identity of being the customer advocate. Always has been important to me from a career standpoint. But, back to the question about money, hard for me to generalize because everybody feels so differently about money.

[00:41:05] For me, it wasn’t about the money. It was never about the money. I did well, and I was good at it, so I got paid well, but it wasn’t about the commission for getting the deal done. Depending on the industry you choose, you need to choose the industry wisely to base, based on if the money is important to you or not.

[00:41:25] And then, the last thing I’ll say, now sounds a little melodramatic, sounds a little melodramatic, while there are some movie kings and queens that would say it’s always about the money, will always be about the money, and if it’s not about the money for you, you’re obviously unsuccessful at it,

[00:41:43] therefore you don’t prioritize the money, but once you have it, it is the most important thing. That’s what some will tell you. But for most of us, for most of us in sales, 90% of us, at the end of our careers, it wasn’t about the money. It was about something else. So, Madisson, to your point, I guess I’d be a little more skeptical about just going after the dollar, because if I had to go after the dollar and they represented a lesser-quality product, I’d hate my job. Couldn’t pay me enough. I’d rather get paid less and not have to apologize for my product. 

[00:42:24] Kristen Wisdorf: That’s great. All right. So, we want to play little game. We like to call it “Fast Facts”. So, don’t overthink it. This will be a mixture of personal and business, but just the answer with the first thing that comes to your mind. Okay, what is the most recent thing you learned? 

[00:42:44] Barry Erickson: God, that’s a great question. I’m an advocate. I’m going to reference, just an observation I’ve made about the Dean of our Business School, and this isn’t a suck-up moment, but what I learned from him, he was a human being, when he was younger he was a human being while he was getting promoted through the Business School,

[00:43:00] he was a human being when he was a Department Head. He’s now the Business School Dean and he’s still the same humble human being as he ever was before. You don’t have to lose that when you promote up. That’s what I learned most recently.

[00:43:14] Kristen Wisdorf: I love it. What, if you had to pick one and you do, that’s the game, favorite country you visited during your family sabbatical?

[00:43:24] Barry Erickson: Great question. I’ve had this one a lot. Prague. 

[00:43:28] Kristen Wisdorf: Prague, oh, good.

[00:43:29] Barry Erickson: Absolutely loved Prague for many reasons. Stockholm is close second and in Australia, the one thing called the “Great Ocean Road”, it’s the Southern tip of Australia or Southern border of Australia. Those are the three places that probably stick out the most. 

[00:43:47] Madisson DeLisle: That’s amazing. I don’t think I’ve been to any of those places. So, eventually I’ll have to check them out. I love traveling. What would you say, on average, ’cause I’m sure there’s different things depending on how wound-up you are, but what do you typically do to unwind after a long day, whether it was now teaching or previously when you’d have a long sales day?

[00:44:08] Barry Erickson: I grade my papers on the treadmill. I don’t run. I don’t envision me running hard and I, I’ve never factually fallen off it. I think my kids are waiting for a YouTube moment, but I get on the treadmill and I grade papers and that’s the way I can concentrate. I use my phone to dictate comments and then I transfer those comments to the feedback fields,

[00:44:32] and I would much rather do that than sit and read them. So, that’s my. 

[00:44:39] Kristen Wisdorf: Sales guy, answer right 

[00:44:40] there. 

[00:44:41] Barry Erickson: Yeah, I think, you know, it works for me. It works for me. I can’t imagine anybody else who does it this way, but I have an old director’s podium that I put my laptop up on and I could just watch my screen and set the treadmill and literally hour and a half later,

[00:44:58] I’m still going and I don’t feel the pain. Although, some people will look at my body type, they go, “You don’t look like you’re on the treadmill for an hour and a half.” That’s a different story. 

[00:45:09] Kristen Wisdorf: Oh. Okay, what do you think is your proudest accomplishment so far? 

[00:45:14] Barry Erickson: Feedback I get from students, 3, 4, 5 years out of school who say, “You made a difference.” 

[00:45:19] Kristen Wisdorf: That’s really what it’s all about. 

[00:45:21] Barry Erickson: Those little cards. There’s no big moment. There’s no big coronation moment. There’s no big award. It’s a little handwritten note from a student who said, “You made a difference.” 

[00:45:34] Kristen Wisdorf: Well, that’s great. As a company that partners with you and your university, we know how much your students love you. So, thank you, Barry, for joining us. We really appreciate all of your insights and your stories and love what you’re doing at University of Washington. So, thanks. 

[00:45:54] Barry Erickson: Thank you guys. Much appreciated.