Tech Sales is for Hustlers Podcast

Campus Series: Brent Baker – The “Aha” Moment

Guest-At-A-Glance

Name: Brent Baker

What he does: Dr. Brent Baker is a sales professor at the Florida Gulf Coast University

Company/Institution: Florida Gulf Coast University

Noteworthy: Brent Baker has a Ph.D. in marketing. He also went into the military for five years and worked in corporate finance. Today, he teaches sales at the Florida Gulf Coast University.

Where to find Brent: LinkedIn

Key Insights

⚡ The work is work. There is a reason why we call it that way. Dr. Baker believes in hard work and job-related duties and responsibilities one must fulfill. “I’m not a big believer in the ‘find something you love doing, and you’ll never work a day in your life.’ […] I don’t like to use the word suffer, but spin your wheels a little bit. Learn the ambiguity, learn how to manage that ambiguity instead of waiting for someone else to build the path toward your goal for you.”

⚡ Teaching sales is a metaphor for life in general. Dr. Brent Baker compares sales to life, explaining that “it is teaching people things that they should already know, but for some reason, somewhere along the way we all forgot.” According to Dr. Baker, people are what connects sales and life principles – “If you think about what a salesperson does, it’s listening to people, figuring out what their problem is, and then doing what they can to solve that problem.”

⚡ Sales are a good thing for the world. Dr. Baker claims that even though not all salespeople are great salespeople, sales are still a good thing for the world. “Maybe there are bad people who do sales, or there are people who do sales in a bad way. But sales themselves are very much needed and a good thing for the world. You have to have somebody to go out and communicate the value of your products and your services in exchange for payment. But then, those products and services go on to enrich the lives of other people.”

Episode Highlights

Dr. Brent Baker – Running Away from Corporate World to the University

“I studied finance thinking that finance was the way to financial sales, becoming a financial planner and all that. What I didn’t know is that’s not true. So, when I graduated, I took a job in corporate finance as a financial analyst, and I wanted to go into sales, but […] it didn’t seem like something safe for me to do.

I knew I could not stay where I was. It wasn’t the company so much. It was the atmosphere. It was the environment. It was what I was doing. There were no dynamics. There were no people there. I just knew I wanted to be a professor. I wanted to be a business professor on the side of people. I didn’t want to study numbers anymore. I was burnt on numbers. The next thing I knew, I was signed up to teach sales, and I’ve been doing it ever since.”

Dr. Brent Baker’s Career is An Amalgam of the Military, Marketing, Sales, and Education

“I was very lucky to be in the right places at the right time to be able to take advantage of these opportunities. But your ability to be successful in anything is how well you can talk to people. How well can you communicate? How well can you bond and develop relationships?

It was the same thing in the military as when I was working in a cube, as it is now a professor. Can you read people? Can you give them what they need in exchange? Because they want to give you what you need.”

The “Aha” Moment When I Realized I Could Make a Big Difference

“I remember about halfway through the semester, and I was teaching about the value and how it’s not about selling products. It’s about the result of your product. And that’s what people buy. They don’t care about your product or service.

And there’s this old stereotypical mindset in sales that says that somebody is such a great salesperson that they could sell an icebox to an Eskimo. I remember this one student who’s sitting in the back, just smiling. Like, ‘Oh, now I get it.’

It was just one of those moments. Like, ‘Wow, I just did something.’ I explained it like I never did in international marketing when I taught that, or basic marketing when I taught that, or any of the other classes that I’ve taught. But I’ve had that in teaching sales. And how do you walk away from that? How do you not want to teach that when you have that? And you can make that kind of difference.”

The Role-Play Should Prepare Students for Real-Life Situations

“The role-playing is very uncomfortable for students. They do it in the advanced sales class, and they do it several times. In the first semester of selling, the first one is usually an elevator speech. And it’s 30 seconds, and they’re not talking. No one else is talking to them. There are no objections. And it should be the easiest one.

But these students aren’t normally put in the hot seat that way. And they’re not normally asked to manage and carry themselves on the spot right then and there while somebody is evaluating and judging them. They normally have the opportunity to spend much time preparing and getting ready. And they know what to expect.

But I don’t want them to use a script or read it. I want you to give me your speech at the moment. I don’t think we, as educators, do a good job of preparing them for the world that’s going to be.”

Students Have Grown Up Experiencing Other People Through Screens

“When I first started teaching, in 2005, smartphones were around, but they weren’t as ubiquitous, and students didn’t rely on them so much. Young people are coming out of school without learning how to talk to people; be in an environment where strangers learn how to conduct and manage themselves around a group of people that maybe they don’t know that well.

And I remember when I first was in college. On the first day of school, you’d go in, and you’d sit down, and it’d be a classroom full of students, and it would be so loud. Now, they don’t do that. They come in, they sit down, and they pull out their phone and start texting.”

Work for a Bad Company, but a Good Boss

“Have a great boss, but a not-so-great company. That’s not even a debate in my mind. So much of your ability to get up and go to work and enjoy your job and enjoy your company comes down to how well you get along with your boss.”

Transcript:

[00:00:05] Kristen Wisdorf: [00:00:05] Welcome back, hustlers, to another episode of the Tech Sales is for Hustlers, special Campus Series. I’m Kristen Wisdorf.

[00:00:13] Libby Galatis: [00:00:13] I am Libby Galatis. 

[00:00:14] Kristen Wisdorf: [00:00:14] We are super excited today. Joining us, we have Brent Baker, who is the sales professor at Florida Gulf Coast University. Welcome to the podcast, Brent.

[00:00:25] Brent Baker: [00:00:25] Thank you very much. I appreciate you guys having me.

[00:00:27] Kristen Wisdorf: [00:00:27] Yeah, we’re super excited to chat with you. In fact, our fellow memoryBlue elephant and a podcast producer, Caroline, is actually from Florida, so it’s nice to have a Florida local joining us on the podcast. We also have a few alumni from your University working for us already, across different offices at memoryBlue.

[00:00:47] So very excited. Brent, we’d like to start our podcast the exact same way we start our interviews with students on campus, which is take 60 seconds, give or take, and tell us a little bit about you, Brent, give us your highlight reel.

[00:01:02] Brent Baker: [00:01:02] Oh gosh, it looks like I’ve been around a little longer than both of you, so I don’t know if I could pick out. Probably the ones that are just the most relevant are, I am Brent Baker, as we’ve mentioned. I got my PhD in Marketing from the University of South Florida in 2009. From there, I went to the University of North Dakota where I taught sales and negotiations and all things relationship, business-relationship related.

[00:01:24] From there, I went to the University of Louisiana for about three years, where I was the director of the sales program there, coaching the teams, managing the curriculum and that stuff. But then, an opportunity to come home to Florida opened up at Florida Gulf Coast or from the Tampa St.

[00:01:37] Pete area. And we’re only a couple of hours away from our home, but what we call, my wife and I both call home, is the Tampa St. Pete area. One thing you never meet in Florida is a true Floridian. And my wife and I are not exceptions to that. We both lived here most of our lives, but aren’t really technically from here. But, we do call it home,

[00:01:52] so we took this opportunity to get back to the heat and humidity, ’cause North Dakota was a little colder than what we were used to.

[00:01:58] Kristen Wisdorf: [00:01:58] The opposite of that. That’s exciting. So, you have a very unique background. You’ve lived a lot of places, which is really exciting. So, I guess, what made you decide  to get your MBA and then your PhD? I think you did all of your schooling at University of South Florida, right?

[00:02:15] Brent Baker: [00:02:15] That’s true. That is true.  I had done sales actually, let me back up a little bit.  After high school, I went into the military for five years.  And then I got out, and when I got out, I actually did sales. That’s where most of my sales career, for lack of a better word, make sales experience actually exist was when I was in college, selling various things.

[00:02:32] Some of it was door to door, some of it was more of the interpersonal relationship kind of thing, what we’ve come to know as consultative sales and that kind of thing. And I was actually pretty good at it, but I really, I wasn’t sure it was for me, it didn’t feel like it was for me.  I never said it was something I wanted to do, which is strange, given where I’m at now.

[00:02:48] And so, when I was in the military, I actually got really into investing, and because  I was enlisted, but a lot of the officers kept saying, “I wish I had invested when I was your age.” So, I was in my early twenties, and they’re like, so many of the officers 

[00:03:01] would come to us and say, “If I had only done it when I was your age,” and I got to thinking about that, I’m like, “If all of these fairly intelligent people, who have a few more years on them are saying this, maybe that’s something I should really consider.” And so, I got really interested in it.

[00:03:13] And so, when I went and got out of the Navy and went to college, I actually studied finance, thinking that finance was the way to financial sales, becoming a financial planner and all that. What I really didn’t know is- that’s not true. That’s when you go and you get a corporate or when you go and you get

[00:03:27] a degree in finance, what you’re really studying is how major corporations fund projects and how they manage their money. And it really has very little to do with actual investing and personal finance and all that. When I graduated, I took a job in corporate finance as a financial analyst, and I wanted to go into sales, but I just couldn’t, the idea of going into a all-commission, a hundred-percent-commission, with no book of business right out of the gate, just didn’t seem

[00:03:51] like something that was really safe for me to do, it was like,  “I’m not all that.” Unlike a lot of my other students, where, you know, are graduating into debt and  I was the same way, and I just needed something a little bit more secure, something a little bit more

[00:04:03] predictable, for lack of a better word. So that’s what I ended up doing. But, it didn’t take too long in the corporate world, and I realized this is not for me. I worked in cube city, and I have this conversation with my students all the time, about how it is so important to find something you really like, and that you can be passionate about.

[00:04:18] I’m not a big believer in the, “Find something you love doing and you’ll never work a day in your life.” I don’t believe that, I think work is work, there’s reasons we call it that. But if you can feel a sense of meaning, if you feel like you’re doing something that matters, the work’s not so bad, because at the end of the day, you can look back and see and say that you made a difference.

[00:04:36] And in the corporate world, living in a cube, I just didn’t. I was generating these reports that nobody read, it took me months to put them together, they were hundreds of pages long, and it got to the point where the people who I was emailing them to, the decision makers, would basically just say, “Bottom line it for us.

[00:04:52] We don’t have time to sit there and read all these reports for you.” At that time, I was getting my MBA just because where I happened to work, it was a benefit, they would pay for your MBA if you wanted to go get it. So, I’m like, “Yeah, I’m going to take advantage of that.”

[00:05:04] So,  I’d work during the day, and then at night, you’d go to school. Typical story, all of us on their dime, so it was a really great thing. But I knew when I graduated with my MBA, I knew I had to leave corporate finance. I just was going insane. It got to the point where on Monday morning, I was looking forward to Friday afternoon, and that’s not a good place to be.

[00:05:22] It’s just that life’s too short, in my opinion, to hate Monday mornings that much, or to need Friday afternoons that much, to recover from an existence that you’re just dreading. So I knew I could not stay where I was.  It wasn’t the company so much, it was just the atmosphere, it was the environment,

[00:05:39] it was what I was doing. There was no dynamics,  there were no people. I worked in a cube all day by myself, all day, every day. Normally,  the brief interruptions was usually from somebody just calling me to tell me they needed something from me. It just didn’t feel right. And again, like I said, the work I was doing didn’t even really look or see, or you couldn’t perceive any sort of meaningful  value in it.

[00:06:01] So, “What am I doing?” And then, about that time, I started getting not really close, but I started to get to know a lot of my professors a lot better. And I started asking them about their job, because even in my undergraduate years, I always looked up to my professors. I was one of those people that sat in the front of the room. 

[00:06:18] Now I know a little bit more about being that guy, now that I have the other perspective, when you’re  in front of the room and  you get your certain kinds of students. I had no idea the types of things that were going on behind me, when I was that student, but I really enjoyed just learning and I enjoyed being around the atmosphere of learning.

[00:06:34] So, about that time, I started asking them what it was like to be a professor, how hard is it to become a professor? And that’s when they said, “You really need to get your PhD if you want to be a professor.” And I said, “Okay then, sign me up.” And so I applied for all of these programs, but the University of South Florida was where I had gotten my first two

[00:06:52] degrees, and they invited me to get my PhD in marketing. And at the time, I didn’t know what area of marketing I even wanted to go into. I just knew I wanted to be a professor, I wanted to be a business professor on the side of people. I didn’t want to study numbers anymore. I was really burnt on numbers.

[00:07:07] And so, management and marketing are the-people-side of business. And so, that’s really where I was looking into. I’m probably taking a long way around here, but it wasn’t until  I didn’t answer an email. ‘Cause at the time, teaching sales was like taboo. Nobody wanted it.

[00:07:21] Running away from teaching sales. And so, I did not answer an email. When the department had said, “Hey, send me an email and let us know what class you want to teach,” and I just never did. This is a lesson here, it’s that you gotta be careful, you’ve got to read your emails.

[00:07:35] And I didn’t answer it. The next thing I knew, I was signed up to teach sales and I’ve been doing it ever since, really.

[00:07:41] Kristen Wisdorf: [00:07:41] Okay. Wow.  There’s a lot to break down here. You’ve got such a unique background and story that got you where, I guess you would consider you are today. The first thing I want to touch on is, so you are well-educated and now you’re an educator.  You were in the military, have a finance background and a sales and marketing background.

[00:08:00] If you just look at those things on paper, they seem very different and different than one another. Looking back on  your career so far, what are similarities between finance and sales, and teaching and running a sales program and being in the military. Are there similar  things you’ve learned in the military that you took with you into your next role, that you took into being a professor?

[00:08:25] How do they all connect, or do they?

[00:08:27] Brent Baker: [00:08:27] Oh, wow. Gosh, I’ve never been asked that before. That’s a really interesting question. Yeah, you’re right. There are fairly disparate types of areas, and I’m very lucky to say that I’ve had a fairly, at least to this point,  a very full life in the sense that I think.

[00:08:39] And being in the Navy, you get to go to a lot of different places.  I was a crew member on board of tactical aircraft when I was in the Navy. So,  even though I was enlisted, I got paid to go on and off aircraft carriers, all the time. So yeah, I was very lucky.

[00:08:50] I was very lucky to be in the right places at the right time,  to be able to take advantage of these opportunities. I wish I could say it was just because I’m that special, but I’m not, I just happened to be really lucky and fortunate to be right, in the right place, when people needed people to go do these really neat things.

[00:09:05] There’s an old saying that, “From those who are given much, much as expected.” So, I had to work really hard in order to get to where I could take advantage of those opportunities. Just as I’m thinking it out loud, they’re so different, in so many different ways, but there’s always gotta be some kind of threat.

[00:09:21] And I guess  the one thing is that it’s people, it’s your ability to be successful in anything. It really is how well can you navigate sort of the human animal, right? How well can you talk to these people? How well can you communicate? How well can you bond and develop relationships?

[00:09:38] It was the same thing in the military, as it was when I was working in a cube, as it is now as a professor.  Can you read people? Can you give them what they need? In exchange, they want to give you what you need, but you have to be willing to be that person that extends  yourself to them first,

[00:09:55] if that makes sense. I would say that would be one of the things. And the other thing I would say, especially from the military, going in out of high school, I was fairly young, but I was also fairly immature. I had a lot of growing up to do, and that was a great place to do it.

[00:10:08] One of the things that they did not do,  in hindsight, at the time it was like, “Ah, why do they treat us like this?” et cetera, et cetera. But in hindsight, one of the things I really appreciate about my experience in the military is how much responsibility they push to the lowest possible levels.

[00:10:23] They don’t really hold your hand and they don’t cuddle you, at least they did not when I was there, they really expected you when you assumed this position to perform at a high level, and a high level was the floor. And when you think about it, when you think about some of the things that you’re doing in the military, very dangerous types of things where  near perfection is needed.

[00:10:43] They’re interesting, these 18 year old kids from nowhere, Nebraska to manage very dangerous, sophisticated technical types of work. And I always thought that was really neat. The way the military trusts younger people  to do things that really required a high level of responsibility, where the consequences for not performing well could be devastating.

[00:11:06] So,  I always liked that, and I don’t know, I didn’t pull that into the private or to the corporate world or anything like that. Okay, I have a job to do, now I’m going to go do it. And  I remember when I got out of the military, and I went to college and I was so scared I wasn’t going to be smart enough.

[00:11:20] I thought I was going to fail out, I thought college was for smart kids and then I went into the military because I wasn’t a smart kid.  And of course, when I got out,  I was lucky to serve with a lot of  Annapolis grads, ’cause they were pilots and they were pretty special people anyway,

[00:11:33] and I just remember them talking about how hard the professors were going to be in college, because they knew I was getting out to go to school and it’s going to be so much harder, and they don’t really treat you, and  I got into college and I was like, “Wow, this isn’t as hard as they said it was going to be.”

[00:11:46] Kristen Wisdorf: [00:11:46] Yeah.

[00:11:47]Brent Baker: [00:11:47] In looking back and I think that’s  one of the things from the military that I really appreciate a lot, is that I got good grades when I was in college, but again, it wasn’t because I was this brilliant person, not by any stretch of imagination. I just think that time in the military taught me, “If you have a job to do, you do it,”

[00:12:04] and there’s no complaining, there’s no whining, there’s no trying to get out of it. That wasn’t an option. If you had a job, you just went and did it. So, when I went through college, it was the same thing.  It was okay  If I want to do well, I have to spend so many hours studying.

[00:12:16] And if I’m spending so many hours studying, that must mean I’m not doing other things that could potentially be more fun, but that, to me, it never even entered my mind that I could maybe get out or I could survive on a C or I could do that.  Those things were never really options to me.  I want to do well,

[00:12:31] and in order to do well, you have to do this. So that’s what I’m going to do. And then you just never even thought about it anymore. We just did the work. And that’s the one thing, that’s another one of the unifying thread, I would say.

[00:12:42] Kristen Wisdorf: [00:12:42] That is such an interesting perspective, and I love that you said “when you have a job to do, you just do it,” and I feel like your experience in the military, then you bring it with you into college, now you can push that down to your students and the people you’re developing, because it is so true. I guess just idea, I never thought about how much responsibility such young people are given in the military and we trust them.

[00:13:08] And we rely on that responsibility that they’re given. So, it’s just such an interesting perspective. It also makes me think of something you said a little bit ago, about, “Work is work,” and at the end of the day, that whole adage, “If you find something you love, you’ll never have to work a day.”

[00:13:23] I do think that’s harmful for people, because by saying that or hearing that, they think, “If I love it, that it won’t be challenging or hard or frustrating,” but that’s not the reality about jobs and work and especially sales. Even if you love it, and you’re selling something you’re passionate about,

[00:13:40] it will still get frustrating. It will still be challenging. It will still get hard. It’s still work. So, how do you take your experience in your life and teach that to this next generation of students getting into their first sales job, and maybe they haven’t done something like, gone through the military,

[00:13:56] they  haven’t been put to the test in the same way quite yet.

[00:14:00] Brent Baker: [00:14:00] Obviously you try to test them to the extent that you can, but it’s really focused on meeting the objectives of the class or whatever class I happened to be teaching. I do know I do frustrate a lot of students. A number of them, they’re always like, “Where’s the rubric, where’s the rubric?”

[00:14:14] And one of the things that I do tell them, and  if that’s you, you’re going to be frustrated with me because I’m very anti-rubric. No, your boss isn’t going to hand you a rubric. Your life doesn’t do that. And I feel like part of my job is to help get you ready for the environment that you’re going to go into.

[00:14:31] And to be fair to the students, a lot of them are very conditioned and I have this conversation with them at the beginning of the semester, is that you’re institutionalized in a way. And that you’ve been brought up to believe that everything’s going to be handed to you. Not that you’re not going to have to perform or do the work, but it’s like, “Here’s step one,

[00:14:48] here’s step two, here’s step three. And at each step, your work should look like this, here’s an example of the finished product,”  et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And never in my life, in any job I’ve ever had, I guess that’s another sort of unifying theme, is my boss has never looked at me and said, “Here’s an example of what I need you to do.”

[00:15:05] Normally it’s, “I got a problem. Can you help me solve it?” And there are no directions, there’s no examples, there’s none of that stuff. And  not all of them, most of the students too, to be fair to them, they hear that and they’re like, “Yeah, that’s better.”

[00:15:16] But throughout the course of the semester, when they’re struggling and they feel like they’re spinning their wheels, because I gave them maybe a, “Here’s the directions of the assignment,” but I didn’t rubric it out and I didn’t tell them at each step. And then, that’s one of the things I tell them.

[00:15:28] It’s, “If you can do, if I just give you a set of directions, and you just follow the directions, I’m programming a computer, right? I’m not helping you learn how to think.”  And to me, that’s harmful.  People like you don’t want to hire my students simply because they can follow directions.

[00:15:43] People like you want to hire my students because they’re creative thinkers who, when you hand them a problem, can figure out how to solve it. And so, that’s a lot of what I try to instill in them, is figuring out your process for figuring it out. And I’m really lucky in what I teach. Now,  I didn’t want to teach sales 16 years ago, at this point, my God,

[00:16:04] but now I would never teach anything else. I’d never want to teach anything else, just because so much of selling and  what you teach is really, I use it as a myth. This is going to sound a little, maybe a little hokey, but I really feel like sales and teaching sales is almost a metaphor just for life in general.

[00:16:22] And it really is teaching people things that they should already know, but for some reason, somewhere along the way we forgot. And it’s still not a horribly popular topic to teach, you’re right, within the college. Of course, with other sales professors we’re like, “We got it.

[00:16:40] We’re in on it. So let’s just keep it a secret, because we don’t want anybody else  coming and taking our classes, because they are so much fun to teach. They’re very rewarding classes to teach.” Because of what we’re talking about, you get to put students in these positions, where all of a sudden, they’re doing things they’ve never done before, and they’re having to figure things out on the fly, and they don’t have their own script and they don’t have their own model or their own example to tell them exactly how to do something.

[00:17:05] They actually have to figure it out on their own. And  I do tell them that a lot, is that, “Even if you don’t want to go into sales, be open-minded when you come through the next 16 weeks with me, and see where maybe you’re going to learn something that you can apply to other areas of your life,

[00:17:22] if you’re willing to keep an open mind and you can see how to do that.” Working  out a problem as your boss hands it to you, instead of sitting back and waiting for somebody to come and pull you along or say, “Here’s the directions,” or “Here’s the example,” try to do it.

[00:17:37] I don’t like to use the word “suffer”, but spin your wheels a little bit. Learn, willing of that ambiguity, learn how to manage that ambiguity, instead of waiting for everything, someone else to build the path toward your goal for you. Sometimes I think that’s the biggest lesson in college.

[00:17:54] It’s not the facts and the figures and the numbers. It’s really teaching students how to build their own road to that end goal that they want to achieve. Does that make sense?

[00:18:02] Kristen Wisdorf: [00:18:02] Yeah, yes. A hundred percent. That struggle is where the development happens and the learning happens. And, you touched on, in a way, students all along, they’re institutionalized to every step, the rubric is laid out for them. And we experienced that with our SDR’s too, our sales reps, because part of coming to memoryBlue is, we’re training you and we’re teaching you and getting you ready for a time when you’re not at memoryBlue anymore.

[00:18:28] That’s our business model, is to get you ready for the next thing. And I think that, students’ whole lives, myself included, that you go to elementary school and then you go to middle school and then you go to high school, then you go to college, you graduate from college, you get a job.

[00:18:39] And then, all of a sudden, you’re like, “Now what? That next step isn’t laid out for me, my job after memoryBlue, or after my first sales role, isn’t necessarily on paper, there’s no rubric.” And so, there gets this point, especially in people a year or two out of college into their first job, where they’re like, “What is next?”

[00:18:57] And so, you’re preparing them for what happens next after college, and we’re trying to prepare them for them struggling to figure out what’s next after memoryBlue. So, I see it, exactly what you’re saying, I see it all the time. But that’s also what makes sales in life fun, is when things aren’t laid out for you,

[00:19:15] the next thing on paper.

[00:19:18] Brent Baker: [00:19:18] Yeah. It’s interesting to me how many students will come into my class, and they’re the “C’s get degrees” kind of students. And they’re just floating through, maybe they took my class as an elective, because maybe they heard something about it, and then the next thing you know, they’re getting A’s

[00:19:31] and they’re killing it. And they’re far beyond that four-o student, who’s so programmed to go to the light. You can’t do that in my class, because you have to show me how to sell stuff. You can’t really go to the library, and you can learn it and you can understand it, but I want to see you do it.

[00:19:44] And so, that time, the library certainly isn’t going to help with that. And then, those students, it’s like that light bulb goes on. And then, all of a sudden, “I can do this. Here I’m floating through college just because the world says, “That’s what you do after high school,” I don’t really know what I want to do,

[00:19:57] I’m not really interested in anything, but I can do this. I can talk to people.”  And I’ve seen that happen a lot, too. And that’s really rewarding. And it’s really fulfilling when you see that student who maybe is a little discouraged about their time in school, because they’re not that programmed individual who’s used to being able 

[00:20:14] to just tote that sort of educational line, that’s what college and school has become. And there are a little bit more free thinking, and maybe they are having a hard time fitting in with the expectations and the norms, and they get to come to a room where it’s, “Okay, now  show me something, show me what you can do.”

[00:20:29] And they’re actually quick thinkers, and they’re really intelligent, and  their personality just isn’t really cut out for maybe some of the other curriculums that they’re following. That is always a lot of  fun to see, as well as that the ones where, all of a sudden, it’s like a whole new world, right?

[00:20:43] It’s, “Wow,  everything is opening up for me.” And you’re saying,  “I’m good at this.” You’re saying, “I can go have a career doing this.  I can make a lot of money doing this,” and that’s how it works, yeah. I love that, just going back to your approach to teaching and educating, it’s very realistic. It’s cut to BS, we’re not going to fluff anything up. Life is about, and if your career is going to be about figuring out your way to figure things out. And in my experience, collaborating with other professionals and my friends that have grown their careers, since we graduated back in 2015, nobody knows what they’re doing,

[00:21:10] Libby Galatis: [00:21:10] we’re all figuring it out as we go. It’s just incredible feedback, and it’s very realistic. I want to take a step back, ’cause I know that  when you walked us through your story, you had mentioned that when you first were exploring sales and you’d been in those initial sales positions, that it was never something that you decided was for you, sales wasn’t for you.

[00:21:26] You mentioned it a couple of times, even when you taught your first sales class, it seemed like that was something that just happened by missing that email. So I was curious, when did your perspective shift to you deciding that sales is for you, that sales was for you? What was that experience or moment or class that you taught, that sort of, shifted your perspective and made sales more intentional?

[00:21:47] Brent Baker: [00:21:47] I never really thought about that either, but, you know what,  this is going to be a weird answer. It was that international marketing class that I taught. After I had taught sales for a couple of semesters, and I had started reading all the sales textbooks,

[00:21:59] ’cause you know, you want to prepare and you want to be able to get in front of the room and manage yourself. So, I got okay at teaching sales and I started to really embrace it. And  those first couple of semesters I started reading about it, ’cause my own experience in sales was really, my first sales manager was a used car salesman and it was all about,

[00:22:15] “how can I get somebody to buy something they wouldn’t otherwise buy, or is exactly what we don’t want.” And it was the stereotype, and it was one of those things. But then I started reading, “Wow,  selling is actually about helping people, right? It’s actually about making someone’s life better or somebody’s company better and about providing value.” And sales isn’t bad,  it’s maybe there are bad people who do sales, or there are people who do sales in a bad way or a motivator, right?

[00:22:37] But sales itself actually, it’s very much a needed good thing for the world. You have to have somebody to go out and communicate value of your products and your services in exchange for payment. But then those products and services go on to enrich the lives of other people.

[00:22:51] I never even thought about it that way, but at the time I was thinking maybe the whole international business, I had traveled a lot and maybe  I was so remarkably bored teaching international marketing. I just was like, “I can’t do this. I have no desire to teach this stuff.” 

[00:23:06] And God bless those that do, because there’s a lot of professors that really enjoy it, and they make their classes way more enjoyable than if I’m going to stand up there and teach it. And I found myself going, “I want to go back and teach sales. Now I just like it more. I like the message more.”

[00:23:22] It’s just that it’s more dynamic, and you get to show students how it’s not. This was back a while ago, right? This was in 2005, in 2006. And one of the more defining moments in the classroom for me, that I looked upon because  it was that first semester, my first semester ever teaching and boy, that was hard.

[00:23:40] I didn’t realize how, ’cause my professors, I always looked up to them, because they were so good at it, and they’ve been teaching forever. I didn’t realize it’s actually really hard to get up in front of a classroom, at least in the beginning. And I just remembered, my students that first semester were very understanding, remarkably understanding.

[00:23:55] I was surprised, but I remember about halfway through the semester, I was teaching them about value and how it’s not about selling products, it’s about the result of your product, and that’s really what people buy. They don’t really care about your product or service.

[00:24:08] They care about what your product or service does for them and et cetera, et cetera. And there’s this old cliche  in sales, that’s really stems from more of a transactional kind of stereotypical mindset that says,  “Somebody is such a great sales person, they could sell an icebox to an Eskimo.”

[00:24:22] It’s not really the kind of philosophy we want to embrace, but I remember getting up in front of the class  and talking to them like, “How would we do that? If this idea of value selling and solving people’s problems, if it’s true, maybe there’s a way to do that.”

[00:24:36] And I went through an example of how  using consultative selling, and value selling and solution selling and all that, even the problem solving selling went through an example. This sort of contrived, like I said, an example of how exactly, if you are an icebox salesperson, how would you go and sell?

[00:24:53] How would you sell it to the Inuits, given the stereotype of them living in an igloo and all that sort of the image that gets conjured up? And I just remember we walked through it, and we talked about how there’s wildlife, it could be after their fish, ’cause  they’re fishing sails or fishing community.

[00:25:08] Maybe they don’t need to have it even plugged in, preserving it, keeping the smells away, maybe that could be valuable to them. And we also know they’re very communal, and they don’t want to spend all their time out fishing. You give them that icebox, that means more time with the family, because we know that’s really what, you know, so forth and so on.

[00:25:23] And I just remember this one student who’s sitting in the back, I remember like it was yesterday. It’s kinda weird, sitting in the back row, just smiling. Oh, now I get, I just remember looking at it. I’m like, “Does that make sense?” He just kinda nodded his head, and it was just one of those moments,

[00:25:39] it’s, “Wow, I just did something.”  He gets it now, because of the way I explained it, and I never had anything like that in international marketing when I taught that, or basic marketing when I taught that, or any of the other classes that I’ve taught, but I’ve had that a lot teaching sales and that, it’s, how do you walk away from that?

[00:25:56] How do you not want to teach that when you have that, and you can make that kind of a difference on somebody? 

[00:26:02] Libby Galatis: [00:26:02] And I’m curious because this is very realistic perspective of the world and understanding of where sales plays a role in your career in life, in general, are you seeing that your students are pursuing sales roles after your courses? Or are they taking these skills that you’re teaching them in the classes, to move into other industries and apply

[00:26:22] what they’re learning in those different spaces. 

[00:26:24] Brent Baker: [00:26:24] Yes, both, a number, as you might imagine, a number of the students do go into sales just because they’re marketing majors, a lot of them are management majors, and that’s what’s available to them. There’s not a lot of call for first-year-out-of-college, we need a marketing strategist.

[00:26:38] You normally have to grow  into those types of jobs. Sales is a great place as a professional to cut your teeth. And so, I do have a lot of my students going into sales. But a lot of them, they do graduate eventually,  graduate  out of sales, either into management or they’ll become  maybe a buyer or just some other area within the marketing department.

[00:26:54] I’ve seen that happen a lot, too. I got a pretty good example. I do now that I’m thinking about it. Just this last semester, one of my students at the University of Louisiana called me and says, “Hey, can we have a conversation? I’m having a hard time closing sales,” or no, Shannon said,  “I’m having a hard time closing.”

[00:27:09] And this particular student, she took me for everything that I taught. But she always said, “I don’t want to go into sales. I have no interest in being in sales at all, but I just, I like these classes, I feel like I’m going to be able to use these later,” I’m like, “Okay. that’s fine.”

[00:27:20] And so, sure enough, I get on the call with her thinking that maybe she went into sales, she said she’s, “just having a hard time closing,” what she meant was, “she was having a hard time getting people within her work to do the things that she needed to do.” She had become a project manager and then, about being a project manager is that, you have all the responsibility, but none of the authority.

[00:27:38] So she has to, she’s trying to figure out, “How do I  warm up to these people. And how can they push back every time I need to do something, and I got these deadlines and I’m waiting on them, but their boss won’t support me,” asking, “I just don’t know what to do.” And it’s flat obvious, it’s extremely flattering that the person she thinks to help her with this was her sales professor.

[00:27:55] But if you think about it, it also makes a lot of sense.   Like I was saying earlier, it’s these same skills. When I tell this to my students all the time, these same skills, that help you be a good salesperson, they can help you be a better spouse, they can help you be a better worker,

[00:28:08] they can help you be a better friend, they can help you just be a better citizen, really. And it sounds,  to the uninitiated, that’s going to sound so ridiculous and so hokey, but it really is true. ‘Cause if you think about what a sales person does, it’s listening to people figuring out what their problem is, and then doing what they can to solve that problem.

[00:28:26] It’s really all it is, if you think about it. And so we just had this nice conversation about  why are these people, why do they treat her the way she’s being treated? And it all went right back into the things that she learned in sales, which are the same things that she learned in kindergarten, but somewhere along the way she forgot.

[00:28:44] Kristen Wisdorf: [00:28:44] Wow. Yeah. And I love that. Even when she asked for help, she used the word “closing”, because she recognized  she needed help in the area, but she recognized what it was. It was still closing. It just wasn’t a product, necessarily.

[00:28:58] Brent Baker: [00:28:58] Yeah.

[00:29:00] I told her the same things that she learned in class. It’s no different.  What reminded me of that story is that,  after we got off of that, she started talking to me about her job, and how much she actually really appreciated the sales class, because now she’s doing  copywriting,

[00:29:13] she’s working for kind of a small company. So,  she’s wearing a lot of hats. There’s a lot of copywriting and copy editing for the social media and for the printed brochures and the catalogs. And one of the things she says,  “You can tell who’s had a sales class and who hasn’t, because when I read the copy, I’m like, where’s the benefit, right?

[00:29:30] Why would somebody buy this? I don’t see any reason or why I’m going to be better off for buying this product. But then you see others, they really emphasize the benefits, then you ask them, “Have you ever been in sales,” and  sure enough, they’re like, “Yeah, I was either in sales or I took sales in college or something like that.”

[00:29:44] So yeah. The ability to transfer the skills is, you’ll take that time in the Salesforce, and easily be able to be a value in the organization, in other areas of the organization. If that’s what you want to do.

[00:29:58] Kristen Wisdorf: [00:29:58] Yeah, sales skills and techniques and fundamentals touch every area of our lives. And you even mentioned earlier, you’re essentially teaching people or you learned in your career how to navigate the human animal and read people, and I think that’s so unique and it’s so true, because it literally touches every facet.

[00:30:18] Do you find that students don’t realize that, until they take your sales class and then they’re the guy sitting in the back of the classroom with the “aha” moment, or are they  students starting to recognize the need for it, earlier and proactively taking your classes, perhaps it’s a mixture of both.

[00:30:35] Brent Baker: [00:30:35] It’s a mixture. It is absolutely a mixture. Some students, right now at FCCU, it’s a required course, so they’re taking it. Some students already know, maybe their parents or somebody they know are in sales and doing well. And they already know that this is the area that they want to go.

[00:30:48] But  there are those that have the “aha” moments as well. And that’s the thing, it’s like, when you’re teaching students, especially when it’s a required course, you’re probably teaching a fair amount of students who would rather not be there. And so, you really got to work to figure out, “How can I make this relevant to them?

[00:31:00] And again, when you’re teaching sales, I’m very fortunate and that it’s easy, I think, to make it relevant because it is such a every-day, just human-interaction kind of class. It’s just, we call it sales. But then, I have had other students who have taken it because they wanted, they do recognize what it can do for them.

[00:31:17] Just another anecdote, when I was in Louisiana, I had a student who had social anxiety issues. And I didn’t know, she never mentioned it to me. And  I remember her name every time we did the role-plays, at that particular university, we had a lab where breakout rooms, where  the students would just take turns, go in and do the role-play and then come out and I’d say, “Okay, bye, I’ll see you next class.

[00:31:37] I’ll watch the video,  and give you feedback” or whatever. She was always one of the last ones to go. And I didn’t really think much of it, because  whenever she went, she normally did a pretty good job. And so she would always, she’d be one of the students who was telling me that “Dr.

[00:31:50] Baker, I’m really nervous,  I feel sick.”  But I never really gave it much thought, because when I watched her video, she did really well. And so I’m suggesting, “Okay, you’re just buying, you’re managing expectations,” kind of thing.

[00:32:02] “You’re just saying that, maybe just in case you just haven’t had an off day, but I know you don’t really mean that,” at least that’s what I’m thinking in my head. And so, one day she was the absolute last one to go, and she was sitting in the back of the room in tears and I was like, “What’s going on,” she’s just,  “I just, I hate doing this stuff.

[00:32:18] I’m just so nervous. I get so nervous doing this.” And I’m like, “Oh my God, I had no idea,” and I was apologizing profusely, “I am so sorry. I didn’t realize, I just thought you were saying those things.” And it’s just so admirable, this girl, this young woman, but it was just the gumption to sit there saying,  “I hate this about me.

[00:32:36] I know this shouldn’t bother me, and I know your class is the one that’s going to make me get better at it.” And so, it was really a powerful thing for me to see a student to be so strong, to recognize that there’s this thing about her, but she’s going to take the steps to actually try to fix it.

[00:32:54] The happy ending to that story is not only did she finish up my class, she took the advanced sales class and while she was in the advanced sales class, she made it to our sales team and actually went and competed at the National Collegiate Sales Competition. And she didn’t get out of the first round,

[00:33:08] I think she came in like third place, she’s like one spot away from making it to the next round, but there are no tears.  She was nervous, of course,  anybody would be, but she came out of there just such a different person. It was such a story, such an amazing, and this sort of goes back to teaching sales.

[00:33:23] I know you don’t get those kinds of stories teaching anything else. I don’t think. 

[00:33:30] Libby Galatis: [00:33:30] I love that story so much, because those “light bulb” moments, those “aha” moments, and being able to see tangibly, the impact that you’re having on these students is incredible. I’m curious because most sales professors, especially speaking of your experience, beginning your career teaching sales, having to build the curriculum yourself, you have to be really creative to do that.

[00:33:50] How do you push the students out of their comfort zone? So, I’m curious if there are any specific assignments that you can think of, that are particularly uncomfortable for students to do, or maybe as their first taste of discomfort that would help them in the same way that the student develop that skill set as well. 

[00:34:06] Brent Baker: [00:34:06] All of the role-playing is very uncomfortable for them, as you might imagine. In the advanced sales class, they do it several times, each class period, but by the time they get to the advanced sales class, they could become acclimated to it. In the inter, in the first semester of selling, usually the first one is an elevator speech,

[00:34:22] and it’s 30 seconds, and  they’re not talking, no one else is talking to them, there’s no objections or there’s nothing. It should be the easiest one. If you think about it on paper uniformly, they all come back and say that at the end of the semester, when they do their first 20 minute long sales presentation with objections, the needs identification, figuring out how to align the needs and the presentation,

[00:34:46] and then they all tell me that is easier for them, than that first elevator speech.  I didn’t expect that.  I put in an elevator speeches because I thought they should have one, It’s a sales class and sales people have to know how to do that. So, I’m really glad I keep that in, but when you think about it a little bit more, it starts to make little bit more sense, right? Going back to what we’re saying earlier, these students aren’t normally put in the hot seat that way. And they’re not normally asked to manage and carry themselves on the spot, right then and there, while somebody is evaluating and judging them. They normally have the opportunity to spend however long  time preparing, and getting ready and they know what to expect,

[00:35:21] they know what the right answers are going to be, and if they just spend the time studying, they can walk in and give the right answer. Now, I don’t want them use a script. I don’t let them read it. And I tell them, I don’t want to even hear it. I don’t want it to sound memorized. I want you to just give me your speech in the moment.

[00:35:34] It’s 30 seconds, it should be easy.  It’s neat to see by the end of the semester, how many of them have come back and said, “Wow, this has gotten so much easier.” And one of the things I think too, to see if I do get on my high horse a little bit is, I don’t think us as educators do a good job of preparing them for the world that’s actually going to be, right?

[00:35:54] And that’s one of the things going back to sales, as I have the opportunity, just a little bit, to maybe try to do that. So yeah, I would say it’s definitely the role-playing,  in something else, it’s just a sign of the times, it’s actually a little bit different now.

[00:36:06] Some things, I think, are actually getting worse from when I first started teaching in 2005, is that now I have students who grown up their whole life, experiencing the world and relating to the other people through screens. When

[00:36:19] Kristen Wisdorf: [00:36:19] wow.

[00:36:19] Brent Baker: [00:36:19] I first started teaching it wasn’t, of course, smartphones were around in 2005, but it wasn’t as ubiquitous, and they didn’t rely on them so much.

[00:36:27] And I’ve been doing a lot of reading lately, and what’s happening to these young people, it’s scary  for one, but more importantly, you are recognizing the change in the way young people are coming out of school now, without having learned how to just talk to people, and be in an environment where there’s strangers, learning how to conduct and manage yourself around a group of people that maybe you don’t know all that well.

[00:36:51] And I remember when I first was in college, on the first day of school, and the first day of class, rather, you’d go in and you’d sit down, it’d be a classroom full of students and it would be so loud, because you’d sit, “Oh, who are you?” And the next thing, you’ve got a network around you, and then the professor would come in and it’d be hard for them just to get the class started because the whole class is talking to everybody. Now

[00:37:14] they don’t do that. They come in, they sit down and they pull out their phone and they just start texting on their phone.  And the whole time I’m thinking, there’s a person sitting, not even a foot away from you, and you don’t even know their name. And sometimes I’ll do it, I’ll just stand there and watch because I’m in such awe of what’s happening in the way that these people are coming

[00:37:32] and it’s just experiencing everything through that screen, that they don’t even have, not everybody, but a lot, a surprisingly large number don’t have the ability, or it’s not they don’t have the ability, it’s like they don’t even think to do it.

[00:37:46] Kristen Wisdorf: [00:37:46] They’re not used to it anymore. Yeah.

[00:37:49] Brent Baker: [00:37:49] They don’t just sit there and turn on and say, “Hi, what’s your name?

[00:37:51] What have you heard about this professor? How’s it going? What else? What are you majoring in?” It doesn’t happen. And so then, I come in and I drop them in these scenarios and in these situations where that are so, I think, I don’t have the evidence to back this up, but I’m pretty sure I’m dropping them into situations that are so much more foreign to them than the students

[00:38:11] I had 15 years ago, that they do struggle a little bit more with  that anxiety as well. We know that anxiety is higher in college students. Just the mental health is not where it probably  should be and  there’s a too lot of social science that goes into it, and explains all that. But as a sales professor, I see it manifest.

[00:38:33] When I put these students in these positions to carry themselves as a CA, it’s one thing to say carry themselves as a salesperson, but can you break the ice with this person? And you sit down and talk to this person about how you can provide value to them. And to me, a strikingly large number of them are so horrified and just so nervous and so scared that,

[00:38:55] at first, when I start putting them in these situations, anybody would be, because you’re being evaluated, and I understand that, but at the same time, it looks to me to be turned up a little bit, in terms of that discomfort and just the fear of it all. So does that make sense?

[00:39:11] Kristen Wisdorf: [00:39:11] Yeah. And I think, maybe one of the reasons that first elevator pitch is so uncomfortable, is because of all the things you just said right there. It’s not normal for students anymore, for people in general rather. And you’re teaching them to think on their feet and be confident and articulate and be concise. And also kudos to FTCU for making it your sales class a required course, for business students like that.

[00:39:37] It really is a metaphor for life and it’ll impact jobs beyond sales. So that’s great. We want to hit you with a couple of our  fast, fun answer-first-thing-that-comes-to you questions. So, I’m curious, Dr. Baker, do you think it is better for a student to work for an awesome company with a not-so-great boss, or for a not-so-great boss at a really awesome company.

[00:40:02] Which one would you say?

[00:40:03] Brent Baker: [00:40:03] Have a great boss, but a not-so-great-company easily. That’s not even  a debate in my mind. So much of your ability to get up and go to work, and enjoy your job and enjoy your company comes down to how well you get along with your boss. It  really just ends up. 

[00:40:22] Libby Galatis: [00:40:22] I’m curious for the students that you’re preparing to transition into their first full-time job, the nine to five, what is one piece of advice that you think every student should have in the back of their brain, as they’re searching for that first opportunity? 

[00:40:35] Brent Baker: [00:40:35] Have a plan. Have an idea of what it is you’re trying to do, and then do what we taught you about how to execute and pursue those goals. That’s probably  it.

[00:40:46] Kristen Wisdorf: [00:40:46] Our last one for you. If you could have a billboard anywhere in the world, what would it say and where would it be?

[00:40:55] Brent Baker: [00:40:55] Oh, wow. I think,  off the top of my head, I’d probably say it’d be a billboard of a fireplace and it would say, “Man, it’s hot here,” and I’d put it on the North Pole. Personality, it’s good. I teach sales, right? Nobody else wants to teach sales and all this other stuff. I think just  something kind of, tongue in cheek, and weird, and silly  like that. It’s just consistent with my personality.

[00:41:20] Kristen Wisdorf: [00:41:20] Yes, I love it. We appreciate you joining us today. Dr. Baker, you have some awesome stories, some great life advice. Your students are very lucky to be able to have those “aha-light-bulb” moments with you. So thank you for joining us.

[00:41:35] Brent Baker: [00:41:35] All right. Thank you. I really appreciate it. It’s been a lot of fun.