Campus Series: James Fyles – How to Be Coachable
Success in your career doesn’t come from perfection, it comes from a willingness to admit to your imperfections. This is the type of self-awareness that many struggle to possess, so the sooner you can work on this the bigger advantage you’ll have.
In this episode of the Campus Series podcast, James Fyles, Executive ln Residence at Appalachian State University discusses the importance of coachability for career success, the different between coaching and teaching, and why your first job is your first experiment.
Guest-At-A-Glance
💡 Name: James Fyles
💡 What he does: He’s the Executive In Residence at Appalachian State University.
💡 Company: Appalachian State University
💡 Noteworthy: He spent more than twenty years building direct and channel sales teams. After “retiring” in 2017 to help develop a sales program at Stetson University, he started working at Appalachian State University, where he helped develop sales and sales leadership programs at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.
💡 Where to find James: LinkedIn
Key Insights
⚡ Being coachable is a huge advantage. Coachability is the most helpful skill for building a successful career. If you want to progress in life, accept that you’re not perfect, and be willing to learn. James explains why you need to be coachable to be successful, “If you have that coachability, that’s one of the keys — not just in sales, but to a lifetime of success. So, people who were athletes, musicians, dancers, performers, or who did anything where they had a coach, and they learned to listen to that coach, that’s their advantage.”
⚡ Coachability is a growth mindset. The concept of ‘a growth mindset’ is self-explanatory. If you want to grow, you need to be self-aware and willing to expand your horizons. Those who are coachable have a growth mindset. James says, “It’s a growth mindset. Coachability is really a growth mindset. Do you have the ability to get better? Do you have the desire to get better? And are you willing to actually get better? And if you’ve got those things, then you’re open to somebody who’s trying to help you.”
⚡ Your first job is your first experiment. Instead of looking at your first job as your career choice, why not try changing your perspective? Consider it your first experiment. James explains, “I would prefer if people looked at the first three to five years of their career as a series of three to four experiments because they need to give themselves some headspace to recognize that some of these aren’t going to work. So your first job is your first experiment, ‘I’m going to try X,’ and they’re going to have to recognize that no job is perfect. Every job is hard. Every job has hard moments.”
Episode Highlights
We can help young people become more successful earlier in their careers
“It took a couple of jobs before I actually started to act like a professional, and if there’s a key takeaway, it’s that if we can help inoculate young people to the concepts of what being professional is, we can help them be more successful much earlier in their career. And as a coach, as a teacher, or as someone who doesn’t have any children, if you want to help somebody else, that’s really the principal driver to help people understand how they can be more successful, faster.”
Accept that you’re not perfect and be willing to learn
“Coaches don’t just tell you what you did wrong, right? Coaches are trying to help you get better, and you don’t have a relationship with a coach unless you believe that the coach is actually trying to help you be more successful. So if the coach asks you a question about what you’re doing, and you say, ‘I was awesome,’ but you actually suck, now there’s a gap that cannot be bridged because you work under the impression that you already know everything.”
Being a problem-solver will give you more career opportunities
“The better you are able to actually solve other people’s problems, the more opportunities you are going to have. Your skills are going to determine the opportunities that you have available. So if you approach your first job — and there are no bad first jobs, there are only jobs that are done poorly. If you approach your first job as an opportunity to develop a set of skills that could be valuable to other people, you’re winning.”
Coaching vs. teaching
“There’s an enormous difference between coaching and teaching. There’s overlap, but there’s also a big difference. And the biggest thing that I had to get my own head around before I came to school — and even then, it still whacked me in the face like a rake that you stand on in the garden shed — is the fact that coaching means you’re taking somebody who already has skills and honing them, and teaching is introducing someone to that skill.”
Understanding how the sales force works is a competitive advantage
“How many people take an MBA, engineering, accounts, or finance — and they realize that if they really want to move into the senior echelons of leadership, they need to be able to at least speak the language of the sales force or potentially have an opportunity to live and work in the sales organization? So understanding how a sales process works and how selling works, both at a strategic and at a tactical level, I think is going to be a competitive advantage for someone.”
Transcript:
[00:00:00] James Fyles: How many people have taken MBA, who are engineers or accounts or finance and they realize that if they really wanna move into the senior echelons of leadership, they need to be able to at least speak the language of the sales force or potentially have an opportunity to live and work in the sales organization.
[00:00:53] Kristen Wisdorf: Welcome back, hustlers, to another episode of the Tech Sales is for Hustlers, Special Campus Series. I’m your host, Kristen Wisdorf, joined by Libby Galatis. Libby, welcome to the podcast again.
[00:01:05] Libby Galatis: Excited to be here, really excited for our conversation today.
[00:01:08] Kristen Wisdorf: And we’re super excited. We have James Fyles, who’s the Executive in Residence for the professional sales program at Appalachian State. Welcome to the podcast, James.
[00:01:19] James Fyles: Thanks. It’s always a pleasure to talk to somebody.
[00:01:21] Kristen Wisdorf: Yeah, well, you know, it’s so funny. I grew up in the Midwest, so I think I say Appalachian, Appalachian, I think I say it wrong. How do they say it in Boone?
[00:01:30] James Fyles: So, I actually got taught this, my very first time I was talking to people here, they say it, “Appalachian.” Like, if you’re saying it wrong, we’re gonna throw an apple at you.
[00:01:40] Kristen Wisdorf: Okay. I like it. All right. So, James, the Executive in Residence at Appalachian, I think I got it. I, you know, it’s taken too long, we have even some memoryBlue alumni who went to school there and were in the sales classes. So, I gotta get it right. We’re really excited to have you on the podcast today, James. We start all of our episodes the same way.
[00:01:59] We actually start our interviews with college students, which is, tell us about you. If you could take 60 seconds and hit us with your highlight reel, what would it be, James?
[00:02:09] James Fyles: Thanks. So, I am a recovering sales guy. I spent more than 25 years as a salesperson and then sales leader in a variety of different tech roles. And I retired, and I put that in air quotes, even though I dislike air quotes, in 2017 to become a full-time faculty member, to teach undergraduates and graduates how to be more successful professionally with a focus on sales and marketing.
[00:02:36] Kristen Wisdorf: That’s exciting. Twenty-five years of experience in the industry, in sales. Let’s go way back. I’m talking college. James, tell us where you went to school. What did you major in, and then how did you find your way into sales?
[00:02:52] James Fyles: So, I’m a Canadian, I’ll use the same phrase twice, I’m a recovering Canadian. I grew up on the West Coast of Canada. I went to the University of British Columbia. I could not have been less successful as an undergraduate if I’d actually tried at that if there was a way to make a mistake,
[00:03:09] deliberately or accidentally, I probably made it twice. I am not coming from the moral high ground for how you behave as an undergraduate. I actually did not graduate with my undergraduate degree. I am a professor and starting a doctoral program, but I don’t have an undergraduate degree ’cause I failed French 1, 10, 3 times and did not graduate.
[00:03:29] So, that’s probably a controversial thing to say. I left University in 1990. I had been a swim coach for years. So, that’s another theme that sort of goes through my career and also through my, my interest. I’m a coach, principally, first, last, and always and I was coaching swimming and got offered a job in sales.
[00:03:51] And so, my first job was the least high-tech of all things. I sold meat for a company called Schneiders in Canada. I went to grocery stores in the Greater Vancouver area and sold bacon and wieners and ham and shepherd’s pie and cheese and butter and was fired after a little over a year ’cause I didn’t fit in, and I wasn’t very good at it. ‘Cause I had the wrong mindset.
[00:04:16] And then, I started in tech sales. I worked for a, worked for an online information service that sold to lawyers. And then, I sold educational software for a little, tiny startup company. And then, about 1995, I got a job in the enterprise, selling to a business-to-business, selling a particular type of technology that doesn’t even exist anymore.
[00:04:37] And that was where things began to change, at the educational software company. I changed my mindset and the, the level of effort and the, the intensity with which I worked and then went to a, a tech company and then went to a startup company in the wireless space. I was actually a very, very early, like number five or six employees at the first push wireless company.
[00:04:59] We actually pitched a company in Waterloo that was about the same size as we were, that became Blackberry on push wireless email and did a bunch of stuff in that space. And then, that led to another opportunity. Another opportunity, did another startup that got acquired by Motorola at a 50 times revenue multiple.
[00:05:17] So, not just 50 times the, the profits of the company, but 50 times the gross sales of the company. And then, spent a decade at Motorola, had an opportunity to run lots of different businesses there and ended up running a, a group that did just under half a billion dollars a year, globally. Did one more startup after that and then retired to become a professor.
[00:05:39] Libby Galatis: What a story.
[00:05:40] What a journey that you’ve made. I, I’m so interested because I think, as a recruiter for memoryBlue, we’re hiring entry-level, and of course, this whole podcast is about recent graduates. Those that are venturing into their first year, post-graduation, undergrads, to not, actually, like achieve the undergraduate degree, but still, make so much of your career.
[00:06:01] I think that that is so incredible. So, I wanna kind of take a step back and talk a little bit more about how kind of sales entered your life. So, you had mentioned that you started off in meat sales. What, can you tell us more about what that was? And you mentioned that you had the wrong mindset. Can you expand a little on that?
[00:06:20] James Fyles: How many of us, when we’re young, work under the impression that we should do the minimum amount necessary to not get in trouble. Right? That, that we do what we need to do so that mom doesn’t yell at us, so that dad doesn’t pull us aside so that our social studies teacher doesn’t send a note home to our parents.
[00:06:40] Right? That’s a principal motivator. That’s why we should never do the, never do that what you have a passion for, right? Because eating salty snacks and binge-watching Netflix is a poor career choice. So, my first job I did, what I did as a kid, right? The only place I’d ever really tried to excel was in sports, and that’s ’cause, you know, I think com, I think everything is competitive.
[00:07:03] So, the mindset wasn’t competitive in terms of achievement in my job. Because I was an idiot, and I’m not trying to pretend otherwise. So, it took a couple of jobs before I actually started to act like a professional, and that, if there’s a, a key takeaway, it’s that if we can help inoculate young people to the concepts of what professionalism we can help them be so much more successful, so much earlier in their career.
[00:07:31] And as a coach, as a teacher, as someone who doesn’t have any children. So, you know, wants to help somebody else, that’s really the principal driver, to help people understand how they can be more successful, faster. And that’s why I do what I do now, for whatever, for good or ill, better or worse. That’s what I’m trying to spend this last section of my career doing.
[00:07:55] Libby Galatis: I think that’s incredible. So, you transitioned into coaching. I wanna take a step back, obviously. I mean, maybe not obviously, you were a swimmer. Was swimming something that you did growing up, did you have this competitive nature? Was it given to you? Can you walk us through a bit more about that?
[00:08:11] James Fyles: So, you know, obviously I don’t want to get, I don’t wanna feel like I’m on the psychiatrist couch ’cause I’m less interested in and, frankly, less, less comfortable talking about myself than I, I am talking about our students. But no, I, I, I did every sport known to man. I grew up at a time and a place that couldn’t have been a better place to grow up with a wonderful, loving family.
[00:08:30] And I got to play every sport known to man. I was a hockey player. I played lacrosse, underwater hockey, water polo. I swam, baseball, soccer, I, I don’t know, curling. I got to do a little of everything, but from the time I could walk, it was; everything was a race and competitive. Right? You know, I didn’t even think my, my sister needed to be there ’cause I was clearly the heir,
[00:08:51] she was despair, and she wasn’t necessary. So, you know, it didn’t matter what the sport was. It didn’t matter what it was. I was competitive there, but I had, didn’t have the linkage between that and school and that and work. Right? And that’s, that’s where coaching comes, to help people understand what they’re capable of doing.
[00:09:07] And I was really lucky. I had some coaches that were able to explain to a, you know, an idiot young boy that, “Hey, input in, effort in equals output, equals, you know, what you’re actually gonna be able to attain.” And so, I’m incredibly lucky that I had a few folks in my life who helped me do that.
[00:09:26] Kristen Wisdorf: That’s so exciting. I like that, you know, sports was such a big part of your life, to the point where you said you were really competitive and you became a coach. And I think there’s a, there’s a very, um, clear connection between athletes and sports and people who have, you know, played sports their whole life or possibly been coaches and sales.
[00:09:47] Were you, like, looking back on your career, were you surprised you ended up in sales? Having, you know, played sports your whole life or was it something you were just like, “Let me just go sling meet at these grocery stores.” And it just, you know, you’re like, “it just, it’s just the path that happened.” Or did it, does it kind of make sense now, looking back on it?
[00:10:05] James Fyles: It kind of makes sense now. That first job, I literally coached a wonderful kid named Janie Bin, and her dad was the gen, you know, was the regional manager of that particular company. And, and he hired me, and he fired me, but I got the opportunity because of swimming, because of coaching. But you’re absolutely right.
[00:10:24] And it’s not the competitive athletics, it’s the coachability factor. It’s the fact that, and it doesn’t matter whether you played in a marching band or whether you were in musicals or whether you did slam poetry, the fact that you are used to being told by somebody that you can get better and that you listen to that, that you don’t work under the impression that you arrive fully formed as a 14-year-old, knowing everything you’re going to need to learn.
[00:10:54] If you have that coachability, that’s one of the keys and not just in sales, but lifetime successful. Right? So, people who were athletes, who were musicians or were dancers or who were performers or who did anything that they had a coach and they learned to listen to that coach. That’s their, that’s their advantage.
[00:11:15] Libby Galatis: So, I wanna talk a little bit about this coachability versus being uncoachable. Can you tell us what does an uncoachable person look like, as a coach yourself?
[00:11:27] James Fyles: If you ask somebody and so, coaches don’t just tell you what you did wrong, right? Coaches are trying to help you get better, and you don’t have a relationship with a coach unless you believe the coach is actually trying to have you be more successful. So, if the coach asks you a question about what you’re doing and you say, “I was awesome.” But you actually suck.
[00:11:51] Now, there’s a gap that cannot be bridged because you work under the impression you already know everything. How many of us know anyone in our lives who works under the impression that everything they do is good enough and perfect. Well, Gosh, you know? I wasn’t good enough and perfect as a husband, let alone as an employee, let alone as a swimmer, let alone as a student.
[00:12:15] So, if you learn to actually try and get better and you have that desire to get better, that’s one, and a willingness to listen, that’s two. Those are the things that, that really impact coachability, from my perspective.
[00:12:26] Kristen Wisdorf: I like, you mentioned earlier that, you know, we’re not all fully formed. In order to be as successful as possible, we have to be coachable, and we have to be willing to, obviously, admit that we’re not perfect, we’re not fully formed. How do you use your, you know, your experience as a coach and, of course, your personal experience selling, now to be a sales coach? ‘Cause that’s what you are, right? You, uh, retired in 2017. You’ve worked for sales programs with universities and with students. How do you transition, you know, being a swim coach to being a sales coach now?
[00:13:00] James Fyles: Remarkably similar, actually. That you need to encourage and you need to show them that you’re actually caring about whether or not they’re going to be successful, that it’s not about you, it’s about them. Uh, that’s why I said earlier, I’m, I’m less interested in talking about me than I am in students because it is about them.
[00:13:17] I’m here to facilitate them, not the other way around. And you’re trying to give them information, hopefully, that has some resonance with them. You’re trying to show them something around them, whether it’s their own performance, whether it’s the way the world’s working, whether it’s the information that you’re trying to provide.
[00:13:36] You’re hoping that there’s that click there, that little moment in their head that says, “Hey, wait a minute.” Now, it’s, it’s absolutely true that it’s growth mindset, right? Coachability, what you called, you know, what we’ve been talking about in coachability is really a growth mindset, “Do you have the ability to get better?
[00:13:53] Do you have the desire to get better, and are you willing to actually get better?” And if you’ve got those things, then you’re open to somebody actually trying to help you. And so, I have to moderate how I do it. It’s not directive. It can’t be about, “You suck, do better.” Right? That might work if you’re yelling at someone on a football field, but it doesn’t really work with everyone.
[00:14:14] So, you gotta figure out how they hear. You gotta figure out what they’re trying to do. And then, you gotta try and figure out whether you can influence that mindset and teaching, coaching, leading, managing, there’s only three things that matter. And, and everything falls in these three buckets. It’s skillset, mindset and toolset. And we can teach someone skills
[00:14:37] And we have to expose them and teach them how to use the tools that are necessary to accomplish something. But if you don’t have the mindset, you know, the, the wonderful movie, Bull Durham, about baseball, said the guy with the $5 million arm and the 5 cent head. If you don’t have the mindset, all the skills in the world aren’t gonna allow you to be successful.
[00:14:57] So, I’m trying, for good or ill, success or failure, I’m trying to impact these folks from a skillset, a mindset, and a toolset perspective.
[00:15:07] I’m curious from the, I mean, you mentioned that you had quite a few odd jobs here and there, we talked, we started off in meet sales and here you are today. That’s, that’s literally more times I’ve talked about selling meat in the last five minutes than in the last 30 years.
[00:16:17] Libby Galatis: Honestly, it is the highlight of my entire week talking about this. This is like a key thing.
[00:16:20] James Fyles: Yes. My, my customer group were people with parts of fingers.
[00:16:24] Libby Galatis: So, we’re, we’re, you know, you’re moving through your career. What role did you have or, or maybe a leader in your life that you had that’s changed your mindset? ‘Cause you had mentioned when you had stepped into that initial sales role, you had the wrong mindset. What did it take for you to switch and, and what happened in that transition that allowed you to, you know, move into the roles that you, you ultimately found success in?
[00:16:50] James Fyles: I don’t want to sound like I’m being flip about it, but part of it’s just the growing up, part of it is just having a mindset and deciding that pieces of your life that were quite successful you now wanted to replicate into your career, et cetera. And so, I was ready to actually start a life. But so, you get hungry, and then you decide to take on more and you do things.
[00:17:14] And, and, you know, after the second job, I began to get better at it and really started focus on it and trying to develop the skills and thinking about the things I needed to do to get better. It was mindful as opposed to just responsive. And I, actually, that first enterprise job, I was working for a company called Attachmate, and I had a manager named A. Jourani, who was a director at, at, at what was one of the largest private software companies in the world at the time.
[00:17:40] And I learned more from him, to be fair, than I probably did anywhere else in my career, including even, you know, doing an MBA and things like that. I just learned a lot from the guy, and he focused on coaching and developing his people and he had a three-step escalation process, Ron and Jourani from Astoria Queens, who sounded exactly like that.
[00:18:00] Right. And he’d call you, if he didn’t think you were doing something right, he’d call and go, “So, I got some questions.” And that was the first step. Right. And if you didn’t answer that very well, “I’ve got some concerns.” And that let you know that you probably weren’t answering the question right. And then, finally, there was the full-on.
[00:18:19] So, I learned an awful lot from him over, over working with him, about professionalism and about what the skills were that were necessary and the mental models. And I’d always been interested in mental models anyways. Right? ‘Cause that’s the framework to analyze anything. Whether it’s an investment or whether you should date that girl or whatever it is.
[00:18:37] So, I just learned more from him than anyone else and, and having worked for him that was really the beginning of my launch. Shortly after that, I got to start leading teams, and that was when coaching began to become more a part of what I was doing then. First time you manage anyone, I was appallingly bad.
[00:18:53] Second time, I was only bad. By the third time, I began to get some skills at it, but you, you have to be mindful and learn how to do it, as well. And, you know, and at a certain point in your career, I began to fix teams. I was somebody who could get brought in, and I worked for a guy who gave me the opportunity.
[00:19:10] Every time he changed jobs, I got to fix one or two or three different teams, and that just led to more and more opportunities. So, I’m very, very lucky, and I got to work with some good people, and it’s as much luck and opportunity as anything else. And then, you work hard at your mindset and your skillset and your toolset so that you’re actually able to play at different levels.
[00:19:29] Eventually, you know, got to a reasonably high-low.
[00:19:32] Kristen Wisdorf: Yeah, I think you make such a good point about mindset, and you have to be, have that growth mindset, be willing to be coached and be coachable and kind of put the work in, but also what a great story about, you know, strong coaches, whether it’s a sales coach, a leader, a manager or a swim coach, can have a big impact on your life and your career.
[00:19:55] So, you worked for non-technical sales, you worked for technical sales, startups. You worked for a big, heavy hitter, like Motorola. You’ve probably, you’ve been the manager, you’ve seen a lot of managers and strong leaders and coaches. How do you work with your students now, and what advice would you give to people entering their first sales role, maybe outta college or changing a career, to identify who might be a good leader for them or what company to work for based on leadership?
[00:20:25] Is there any advice you’d give or signs you’d suggest to your students to pay attention to?
[00:20:31] James Fyles: That’s a really great question. And we spend a lot of time talking with the kids who are willing to have these conversations about what they should, what they should be looking for in a job. Right. And a lot of people have a tendency to think, “I want a job that I can do the least amount possible to make the most amount of money, as opposed to the place that I can go, where I can get challenged, where I can learn the most.”
[00:20:53] And we talk a lot about a concept called career capital. The better you are able to actually solve other people’s problems, the more opportunities you are going to have. Your skills are gonna determine the opportunities that you have available. So, if you approach your first job and there are no bad first jobs, there are only jobs that are done poorly,
[00:21:14] if you approach your first job as an opportunity to develop a set of skills that could be valuable to other people, you’re winning. I’m not a fan of, of the mindset that a lot of kids have. And this isn’t a criticism, I think it’s something we all have, you know, they, we’re, they’re looking for the first job and that first job they think of as the career, rather than the first job.
[00:21:38] I would prefer that people looked at the first three to five years of their career is a series of three to four experiments. ‘Cause they need to give themselves some head space to recognize that some of these aren’t gonna work. So, your first job is your first experiment, “I’m going to try X.” And they’re gonna have to recognize that no job is perfect.
[00:22:01] James Fyles: Every job is hard. Every job has hard moments, but if the mindset, again, I hate to overuse that phrase, but if the mindset is that, “I’m gonna go in and work really hard, for 12 to 18 months to develop these specific skills that I can learn, in this company, doing this role. If these are valuable and potentially valuable to other people, then that’s a win.
[00:22:25] And I don’t have to commit to it for the rest of my life. I’m working my butt off at it, for 12 to 18 months and then I’m gonna undertake my next experiment. It might be in a different direction. It could be the next step in that journey, but I’m giving myself room to look at the next experiment.” And I think that’s something that can be helpful.
[00:22:43] Libby Galatis: In sales, as an industry, in particular, there are so many things that you can take and learn from any sales experience, regardless of industry. And that’s partially why memoryBlue, I mean, it’s wholly why memoryBlue is structured the way it is. I mean, the max amount of time any sales rep, SDR entry-level, is expected to be in a role like this is 15 months, right?
[00:23:06] Smack dab between the 12 and 18 months, like you said, because people want, they’re eager, they wanna move out of it and move into different things. And the, the avenues all of our sales reps take, I mean, there’s so many different paths that you can pursue. So, what do you think are some of those key qualities or aspects in that experience, regardless of what you’re selling? Are, you know, these recent grads, they should be focused on gaining? Like, what kind of experience’s most important do you think in those first, maybe one or two jobs, as they graduate?
[00:23:38] James Fyles: Yeah, I, I think every job has different characteristics in every learning that can come out of it. So, if you’re identifying them up front and you know what they are, then you also have the things to focus on, right? SDR is a relatively new SDR, BDR, ADR, whatever we want to call it, right? Sales, development, market development, business development, account development, whatever that, that particular specialized entry-level sales role, which is an upper position, which is a dues-paying position, which is
[00:24:08] James Fyles: that they’re hard, right? Being an SDR is the least fun job in sales because it’s the entryway, and it’s the channel to get to something else. And that’s okay. And that’s what we have to be very honest with people about, as well, but it’s about being able to understand the buyer journey for a variety of different products.
[00:24:27] It’s about being able to understand the ideal customer, it’s about being able to, to formulate and develop the muscles necessary, again, skills, the skillset necessary to engage people and to be able to communicate value effectively. Now, that isn’t just an SDR skill, that’s the baseline skill for all selling, it’s for all influence, it’s for, if you’re an accountant, that’s for being able to find new
[00:24:52] accounts for the, the company, as well. It’s, if you’re an entrepreneur, that’s the difference between one entrepreneur and an entrepreneur, someone who can find and articulate value for potential customers. So, that’s one of the easier jobs to be able to say, “Here’s the specific skillset.” And the sales stack that comes with it, being the toolset and your mindset being that thing that’s going to have the resilience and the active opportunity to try and learn and get better at it.
[00:25:19] So, that’s sort of how I would try and position it to someone who’s starting an entry-level sales job, and then, they can find out do they want to join a channel sales, do they want to go to an account management, do they want to go into account exec, are they more interested in sales enablement, but they, they got an entire branch of potential
[00:25:38] careers that are in front of them, if they master that first step and have enough value so that they’re valuable to somebody else. ‘Cause companies don’t exist in order to facilitate your dreams. By the way, the only person who exists for that is probably your mom and your grandmother. Hell, your dog expects you to facilitate their dreams.
[00:25:58] James Fyles: They don’t facilitate your dreams. So, jobs exist because you have to be valuable enough so that you have opportunity, and the more valuable you are, the more career capital you have and the more opportunities you have. Does that make sense?
[00:26:11] Kristen Wisdorf: It absolutely does. And it fits kind of masterfully with every one of our new hires at memoryBlue, they get a copy of the book, the dip and everyone reads the dip. And the whole point is, and you even said it yourself, like, “Put yourself in that experience or experiment to create the most and develop the most valuable skills.” And that’s really our philosophy.
[00:26:34] We’re gonna have 15 months of this job so that you can become a scarce resource, right? ‘Cause these prospecting skills, these, this foundation and fundamental of being able to pick up the phone or write a really well-crafted email and prospect into accounts, whether you’re a commercial or a public sector SDR that’s, that’s making you into
[00:26:55] a scarce, valuable resource, which opens up opportunities for your career. So, I just love that ’cause it fits so perfectly.
[00:27:03] James Fyles: And let’s pretend this is improv, right, and while that’s a specific skill that has a specific job title attached to it, it’s also foundational for every other job that comes in the profession, this craft that is influenced in selling.
[00:27:21] Kristen Wisdorf: Agreed, completely.
[00:27:23] Libby Galatis: I’m curious, from your perspective, because the number of times I’ve heard from undergraduate students, “I want to sell something I’m passionate about. I want to sell. I want to sell something that I can get behind, that I truly believe in.” Do you think that should be of utmost importance? Should it be a number one, number two, first job?
[00:27:45] And how often are you seeing that, as a, as a professor?
[00:27:49] James Fyles: Yeah. So, I, I would, and I do ask folks when we’re having that conversation to phrase it a little differently, not because of the way that that is someone else hearing, I’m trying to get them to phrase it differently so the way their monkey brain is hearing it themselves, “Something I’m passionate about.” Yeah, that’s great.
[00:28:06] But how about something that adds value to someone else? Because no one grows up and says, “I’d like to be able, I grew up wanting to add a layer to stack capability, to TCPIP.” Or to, “I wanna be able to help someone, be able to monetize content.” Those aren’t phrases that we think of, but, “I like to help people.”
[00:28:34] Okay, that’s valid, “I like to help businesses survive and thrive.” That’s valid. “I’d like to be able to help other people be able to hire more people so that they can bring somebody up and give people opportunities.” Well, guess what? It doesn’t matter whether you’re selling an IT product or piece of medical equipment or whether you’re selling dog food, all of those things can add value to businesses and to people.
[00:29:00] So, think about how you can help people. And that way you’ve also got a screening thing that, hopefully, if the product doesn’t exist in a way that benefits anyone except the company, then you probably don’t want to be working there. But if the product actually adds value to their customers, let’s go back to an ideal customer profile or a buyer journey,
[00:29:20] if you actually add value to somebody else and you can help somebody else, isn’t that in and of itself enough so that you can have some, you know, extrinsic, some intrinsic reward that comes from actually being part of that organization?
[00:29:36] Kristen Wisdorf: You talk a lot about getting into sales and getting into coaching because you wanna help people, and you are doing that for students now. So, I wanna pivot and talk a little bit about your career and the programs you’ve worked at, and how you’re preparing your students to, as you mentioned, ramp up as fast as possible have a clear understanding of what sales is and what they’re getting into.
[00:29:59] What was that first year or two years like when you pivoted from being in sales and when you retired, and you transitioned to being an educator?
[00:30:07] James Fyles: There’s an enormous difference between coaching and teaching. There’s overlap, but there’s also a big difference. And my biggest thing that I had to get my own head around before I came to school, and even then, I, it still whacked me in the face, like a rake that you stand on in the garden shed, is the fact that coaching means you’re taking somebody who already has skills and honing them and teaching is introducing someone to that skill.
[00:30:35] So, when I started this, you have visions because, you know, when you’re in, when you’re in a, a leadership role, you spend 95% of your time putting out the fires and 5% of your time actually developing your people. And so, I was, you know, I had delusions of adequacy that said that I was going to do this and I was going to get to coach at a high level.
[00:30:55] And even as I was starting, I had to remind myself that if we’re using the swimming analogy, that I wasn’t gonna be taking Olympic athletes, I was gonna be teaching people how to glide and do bobs and blow out of their nose to start, right under water. So, as a teacher, you have to think about, “What’s the way I can explain and show and bring along folks to understand what the basic skills and concepts are?” Before you can start shaping and coaching.
[00:31:23] Libby Galatis: I think, uh, something that I have loved about working with educators within sales is the accessibility it provides. Like, I think, I think sales is an industry and a job that a lot of people have so many preconceived notions on. And so many, they’re, they’re coming in with all these understandings that are so surface level.
[00:31:43] When in reality, like you’ve mentioned multiple times, the skills that you build in these sales experiences apply, regardless of what, you know, you decide to venture into. What are some of those, like most fundamental, basic, foundational skills that you try to teach most in your classes that, regardless of what a student could be pursuing after they leave your course, is fundamentally important and that they should take away?
[00:32:09] James Fyles: You know, questions, questions. God gave us two ears and one mouth so that we use them in that proportion. The, the difference between the perception of sales being, you know, sales fingers, I wanna see you in a Kia and what it actually is, which is having enough understanding of business that you can ask good questions and help people understand not only so you can understand what’s going on, but help other people understand what’s actually going on in their business or their life if it’s B2B and B2C.
[00:32:40] So, it’s that, it’s the, sales is not about charisma. Sales is not about persuasion. Sales is not about manipulation in any way, shape, or form that the best salespeople have to be incredibly smart, incredibly focused, and they have to be both knowledgeable and incredibly strategic. And so, trying to get students to understand that this is actually
[00:33:05] the microcosm of all business, right? That finance exists and is incredibly valuable because finance helps companies figure out not only how much money they need but where they’re gonna go and what the trade-offs are to get it. Accountants are incredibly worthwhile because they show every business how they spent their money, and they call the balls and strikes.
[00:33:24] Marketing can talk about where the product is going to go. But sales is the one that has to talk to the customer. Sales has to be able to understand business and speak the language of business across all the domains in order to be successful. So, I, I’m kind of taking a long walk down a short path, in terms of the question, but explaining and showing and influencing students to understand that this is actually the micro cosmo business.
[00:33:51] Libby Galatis: So, I think the difference between influence and persuasion. Because there, there are two different ends of the spectrum. I took a persuasion course in college, and one of the books that we read was influenced by Robert Cialdini. And a lot of the messaging that you’ve shared today reminds me of the messaging of that book, where if, if you’re presenting the information if you’re providing what is necessary for those to understand and, and intrinsically kind of understand how this can impact them individually,
[00:34:24] on all levels. Like, that, that’s education, influence. It’s, it’s not about persuading somebody to pursue sales, it’s about influencing their understanding to allow them to take this information, use it to their advantage, and apply it to provide that success in the future. So, I wanna talk about this idea of success, as well.
[00:34:42] This was kind of the segue into that. Because success is different for everyone, it’s different in sales, it’s different in life and education, I guess. What do you think are some qualities of successful sales people or successful people or students in general? Like, what do you think success is defined as?
[00:35:00] James Fyles: So, I think that’s the individual journey that everyone has to take themselves. And that’s worthwhile thing to have conversations about, as well. What is success? ‘Cause when undergrads and even, you know, MBA students, when you’re talking to them, and you ask them, “What do you expect from success?” Most of the times, people are talking about the byproduct of success, not the success itself.
[00:35:22] You ask undergrads, so, you know, “Let’s fast forward, you know, pretend you, you’re 10 years into your future and, and you’re really successful. What are you doing?” And they don’t talk about what they’re doing. They talk about what they got. They talk about what the office is decorated like and what kind of shoes they have on and what the pen looks like and what kind of briefcase they carry and, and what they spend their weekends doing.
[00:35:44] But they don’t talk about what they’re doing. And so, having a, a first-level conversation, “Well, what is success? What are the things that you are, what, what are the things you see yourself doing or enabling, not just what you have, but what you’re doing and why?” And then, working from there. So, I’m, I’m a big proponent of that.
[00:36:02] And you know, parts of it are, parts of it are also really overt. So, you know, it goes to your earlier point about persuasion and influence, right? That they’re related, but not the same. Everyone sells, it doesn’t matter if you’re a salesperson, everyone sells. You’ve gotta, if you’re, if you’re a software engineer, you’ve gotta sell your manager and your team on developing in a particular way.
[00:36:24] James Fyles: If you’re an accountant, you’ve gotta sell people on your way of, of analyzing the data. If you want to get married, you’re gonna have to sell yourself to at least one other person, who’s gonna have to perceive you as having value. When you do get married, if you want a big-screen TV, you’re gonna have to do some selling to justify that expense to someone else.
[00:36:42] So, you know, what is success? Success is an ability to understand who you are and to have levers of control inside your own scope, not be subject to someone else. And if you have skills, then, again, it all comes back to the same thing, right? If you have skills and you have career capital, you have options.
[00:37:00] Therefore, you have more control over your future. Therefore you’re more successful. So, we tend to try and put it together in that process to explain, from a mindset perspective, that they want to develop these skills so that they have freedom and they have the opportunity for success and they have the opportunity to control their own destiny, in a way that other people might not.
[00:37:21] Kristen Wisdorf: I love it. Given your kind of comments about what skills in the foundation that they’re building and skillset, mindset, toolset, what do you think are the most impactful? Whether it’s courses, activities, exercises, projects, homework that you’re doing or that your team is doing at Appalachian State, to really hone those skills and prepare your students. What are some of the exciting things that you’re doing that gets them ready?
[00:37:49] James Fyles: Well, we’re trying to develop the program here. You know, we’ve got a couple of hundred students in the program today, but the program today is not where we want the program to be. Right? So, our program today has, you know, the three core courses that most sales programs have, right? An introduction to the sales process, sales management class and then advanced sales class.
[00:38:07] We’ve changed the advanced sales class here to be much more tactical and much more professional. So, our advanced sales class is having a lot more impact than it might have because it’s focusing on, “What do you need to do to do entry-level sales jobs.” So, skillset, mindset, toolset, right? So, we continue to hone and develop the skills necessary for understanding the sales process in a nonlinear way.
[00:38:29] James Fyles: But we also have units that, they actually have to use Salesforce and they have to use LinkedIn sales navigator and they have to actually undertake digital prospecting, and they have to write the emails and do the cold calls, necessary to, that they would have to actually implement if they started in entry-level sales job, regardless of whether that was being a channel rep who sells to Yarn Barnes or whether that’s in technology or whether that’s in med or whatever.
[00:38:52] So, we’re trying to add some of the elements that would give people both the confidence and have the skills to ramp up, again, to be more successful, faster in entry-level sales jobs. So, I’d say that we’re on the right track from that. We’re also trying to broaden the base at the bottom. So, I’m currently developing a course that we, hopefully, will offer in the next year or so.
[00:39:13] That will be a much broader, almost a sophomore-level course, which is an introduction to influence and persuasion, and Cialdini’s book Influence will be a part of that, as will the basic concepts of mindset and skillset and something that’s been on the, you know, 85 years, “How to win friends and influence people?”
[00:39:30] It’s not, it’s not the only thing, but it’s a good starting point, mostly to get people to understand that it’s not about you, it’s about someone else. So, we’re gonna try and develop a course that’s gonna be very broad, much bigger classes. None of the role-plays, things like that, that are going to teach the basics of influence, persuasion, and an introduction to what a sales process looks like.
[00:39:54] And then, at the top end, we’re looking to continue to develop courses that are much more about the strategy and the mindset and understanding less how they would behave. So, at, at my previous school, I had actually generated, we had a capstone course for our sales major. That was a sales strategy course that was not about teaching someone,
[00:40:13] who’s an undergrad, how to have success as a sales leader, but instead so that they would understand the mindset of their boss’s boss’s boss’s boss, so that they would know the forces and things that that person was trying to undertake from a sales strategy perspective so that they could understand how they could be more successful in their career.
[00:40:31] In terms of what they were doing, fitting into the overall focus of a sales force. So, here at App State, we’re looking to, to broaden the base with a, with a variety of courses, we’re looking to expand some of our, our opportunities, but we’re also developing an MBA program in sales leadership so that, that we can help non-salespeople to be successful as they…
[00:40:52] They transition into their careers and also add more value to the folks who are willing to engage, who are willing to take the steps with us while they’re still in undergrad, to create a group of commando students so that we have a broad base of people who have that ability to find an entry-level job, that sort of medium level people who can get good jobs
[00:41:13] and then, you know, the, the Delta force of, of folks who are able to drop from the sky and have huge value from day one and potentially act as sales leaders, earlier in their career.
[00:41:24] Kristen Wisdorf: Yeah. I think that’s great. The broad base kind, of course, you’re developing now, that more general influence, persuasion course. I think it’s such a smart idea because by creating a course like that, you’re ultimately educating, but you’re also selling students on a, a future in sales. Right? Um. And it gets ’em excited,
[00:41:42] it’s a good hook. So, it’s really smart. And then, also, as someone who’s been in leadership for a long time, my, I had a, great coaches and leaders in my own career, but learning about how to actually be a sales manager is such an underutilized course curriculum, et cetera. So, amazing. I love that.
[00:42:03] That’s the future of your program and specifically the MBA program because sales leadership is just kind of that next thing that I think colleges and universities across the country really need to hone in on.
[00:42:16] James Fyles: How many people have taken MBA, who are engineers or accounts or finance and they realize that if they really wanna move into the senior echelons of leadership, they need to be able to at least speak the language of the sales force or potentially have an opportunity to live and work in the sales organization. So, understanding how a sales process works, understanding how selling works at, both at a strategy and at a tactical level, I think is going to be a competitive advantage for someone.
[00:42:42] Libby Galatis: I think, I, one of my favorite parts about working with leaders within the collegiate sales programs is, it, I mean, you guys are the perfect blend of an educator and a coach. And you’ve defined, like, the differences between those two individual things. But as, you know, educators of the sales profession, you really have to identify, “What are the strengths
[00:43:03] of this individual, how can I harness them?” I mean, we have our SDRs, actually, published blog posts, and we have blog posts of very intrinsic, very, just introverted individuals that speak to, “Hey, you don’t have to be an extrovert to find success in sales. You have to define what your key strengths are, buy into it, and then build off of that.”
[00:43:24] So, I really appreciate, you know, everything that you’ve shared on this podcast today, and I really do connect a lot with, you know, your mission and the mission of other educators that we’ve had on here. I’ve been very lucky in my career, a number of times to, to either be the person who’s giving it or be involved with people who’ve had million-dollar commission checks. And every one of those people has actually been somewhere on the introverted scale. Because it’s not about the classic charismatic sales leader,
[00:43:51] James Fyles: it’s actually about the person who can listen but who has the analytical skills and the true understanding necessary being able to find, demonstrate and communicate value. That’s where the real money’s made.
[00:44:03] Libby Galatis: Absolutely. So, now here we are, we’re in the summer and we’re moving into the next semester and the next school year. Where do you see the future of the sales program within App State? Talk to us a bit about, you know, your vision for this program over the next few years.
[00:44:21] James Fyles: Well, I think I shared with you a little bit about where we’re going with it. The, the school here is also in the middle of a fundamental, we’re going to be changing the physical structure of the business school, where the, the state of North Carolina’s approved a 25 million expansion/renovation of the business school itself as a physical property.
[00:44:41] So, we’re looking to raise some funds so that we can build out the, the physical capacity of the, of the selling program here. I don’t run the sales program here. Dr. Bonnie Guy’s actually the director, but she is, within a couple of years of retiring, she’s been in academia a long, long time. So, we’re looking to, to raise some money, build the partnerships necessary to help kids have the opportunities that they can continue to grow at.
[00:45:05] We’re looking to add more faculty, we’re looking to add those kinds of courses to it. This program has grown incredibly over the last six or seven years. There’s more than 250, I believe, students who are already registered as part of the sales program. We’re gonna continue to grow that, if we can, both from a physical and from a faculty perspective.
[00:45:24] So, the right partners and the, the right resources and the right, the right facilities. Again, skillset, mindset, and toolset come to the program, as well. So, we’re trying to build out those things and, and that’s what I’m spending my time and energy trying to enable because success doesn’t come from me.
[00:45:42] I’ve never, I never worked harder in my life to take in 84% pay cut than when I went to try and talk. I worked at Stetson University, and I spent 10 grand of my own money flying back and forth to talk them into hiring me, when they started their sales program. And then took another pay cut to come to App State.
[00:45:59] James Fyles: So, this isn’t about me. This is about the students and having them have the skills, the mindset, and the toolset so they can be more successful, faster. That’s the whole purpose.
[00:46:11] Kristen Wisdorf: Spoken like a true coach. I love that. You and Dr. Guy, we’ve had her on the podcast, your students are very lucky. You both have incredible experience. You’re, you are practitioners, and now you’re taking that and you’re educating students. So, they’re super, super lucky to have you. Thank you so much for joining the podcast, James. It’s been an awesome story.
[00:46:32] We appreciate it.
[00:46:34] James Fyles: Thank you.