The Secrets To Driving Sales Success For Your Company

The Secrets To Driving Sales Success For Your Company

Tim Fitzpatrick
Without marketing and sales creating leads that turn into customers, your business is bound to be the best kept secret out there, which is no good. So today I have a sales expert with me to help us understand how to drive sales success and the secrets to helping your salespeople thrive. Hi, I am Tim Fitzpatrick with Rialto Marketing, where we believe you must remove your revenue roadblocks to accelerate growth and marketing shouldn't be difficult. Thank you so much for taking the time to tune in. I am super excited to have Jim Honiotes, who is a sales acceleration advisor based out of Denver, with me today. Jim, thanks for taking the time to be here.

Jim Honiotes
I'm grateful for the opportunity to talk with you, Tim.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yes, I'm excited to dig into this. I am not a sales expert. Obviously, I am on the marketing side, but you are on the sales side, so you're going to help me today. Before we jump into that, I have some rapid fire questions to help us get to know you a little bit. Are you ready to jump in with both feet?

Jim Honiotes
Let's make it happen.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Okay. Awesome. So when you're not working, Jim, how do you like to spend your time?

Jim Honiotes
I actually have too... Well, my wife might tell you I have too many hobbies, but hobbies that I spend my most time with this time of year. I actually play in an over 60 baseball League, so I play hardball. Most people are like, Oh, softball? I'm like, No, it's actual crazy man baseball. And it's a lot of fun. It's the camaraderie that if you've ever been on a team of any kind, you just love to be around people and hang out and laugh and joke and make fun of each other. When you're over 60, you know you're not going to the big leagues on Monday. So you can have fun on the weekend. And then actually, one of my other hobbies, I do a little community theater around town. So I like to describe myself as an actor who can sing as opposed to a singer who might be able to act. I'll never make a living at it, but it's just a lot of fun for me. So that's what I do.

Tim Fitzpatrick
What's your hidden talent?

Jim Honiotes
I am a great motivational speaker.

Tim Fitzpatrick
What's the best piece of advice you've ever been given?

Jim Honiotes
I would say be true to yourself.

Tim Fitzpatrick
What's one thing about you that surprises people other than you're involved in community theater?

Jim Honiotes
I think that's the most surprising. People are like, Really? You do that? Yeah, that's the most surprising thing.

Tim Fitzpatrick
What does success mean to you?

Jim Honiotes
I love that question, Tim. I think success means that in your life, we only have one life to live. We only have this particular opportunity to give and that you can give and receive love in equal amounts. That to me is success.

Tim Fitzpatrick
I have never had anybody answer it that way. Kudos to you for something different. Where's your happy place?

Jim Honiotes
I'm happiest at the beach.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Any beach in particular?

Jim Honiotes
As long as it's got water and sand, I'm solid. Actually, I will qualify that by saying I don't want to go where the water is cold. I have been to the beach, for example, up in Portland, up in Portland or the Oregon Coast. It's fantastic and beautiful and gorgeous. But you can't get in the water. It's like on the hottest day in the middle of summer, the water is 55 degrees. It's not pleasant to me. But anywhere else, I'm good.

Tim Fitzpatrick
How did you end up in a landlocked state?

Jim Honiotes
I started in a landlocked state. I started in the Midwest. I grew up in the Chicago area, and then I transferred out here for an opportunity in the cable television industry, which is you may or may not know cable TV was a huge thing in Denver. At one point in time, there were 10 national companies that were headquartered in Denver, plus a whole bunch of other satellite companies, if you will, programmers and whatnot that actually because there's some cable company was cable was such an important part of the industry here that there were all kinds of other offices. So I was here because this is where the work was. Actually, I lived here because the climate is so fantastic. I don't have to tell you or anyone else that lives here or has been here. Summertime in Colorado is the best. It's really the best. Unfortunately, we don't have a beach. But yeah.

Tim Fitzpatrick
So what qualities do you value in the people you spend time with?

Jim Honiotes
I only want to be around people that are positive and are interested in creating a positive influence on other people. I don't really thrive very well when I'm around negative people or people that are always looking to find fault with other people or other things. Those are not my folks.

Tim Fitzpatrick
I can't blame you for that. So tell us a little bit more about what you're doing with Sales Xceleration.

Jim Honiotes
Sales Xceleration is a national company and it's a national brand. And there are 180 ish sales advisors around the country, and we actually are not bound by any geography in any way. We can do this work wherever we do it. And I think if you talk to any one of the 180 Sales Xceleration advisors, they would tell you roughly the same story. And we are people that will work with small to medium companies for anywhere from a million dollars to $50 million in gross annual revenue to help them maximize their sales efforts. In companies of that size, they typically have a sales team and a sales leader, but a lot of them don't have the sales infrastructure, don't really understand how to run a sales team. For example, there are a lot of companies that have been bootstrapped up by their owner. They had a great idea, they've created it, they've turned into a $15, $20 million dollar business, and the owner functions as the sales leader. And as often as now when you talk to that owner, you say, How do you like that? I really don't like it because it takes me away from operating my business. I really want to run my business and I can't really run the sales team effectively. So what a Sales Xceleration advisor and what I do, we'll work with that owner to create the sales infrastructure so that either they can be a better sales leader as they are, or they create the structure where they can bring in a new sales leader and help them propel their company forward. Typically, the companies we engage with are folks who have flat or declining revenue, or they're at a level and they go, I'm here. I've done really well. I don't know how to take to the next level. And you know, on the marketing side, it's exactly the same story. It's people that get to a level and they're like, Okay, I'm amazed that I've done this well. How do I jump up to the next level? So in order to have that firepower and understand how people really want to work and can work and do work well, you have to have that sales engine really revved up.

The Top 3 Things That Drive Sales Success

Tim Fitzpatrick
So let's jump into it, Jim. Let's talk sales. What are the top two or three things that drive sales success for an organization? What do we need to be focused on?

Jim Honiotes
I think that's a great place to start because I really think the thing that most companies lack, and the research proves this isn't just me saying this, but sales acceleration every year does a really good job of understanding the state of sales across all industries, across all products, B2C, B2B, you name it. And the number one thing that falls down is that they don't have any detailed sales plan. My favorite saying, Tim, I probably said this to you when we first met. If you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there. And it can lead that road that you get on may lead to a dead end. And if you don't have a detailed sales plan, you're very likely not to be successful. And when I talk about sales plan, I'm talking about everything from how many calls I need my salespeople need to make this week to make a sale. How many times do I have to contact that person to get them to connect and decide to buy my product? What does it take this week, this month, this quarter, this six months, this in order to meet my goals? Almost everybody that's bootstrapped or has come up, they just say, I'll take what I can get and I'll send my salespeople out whatever I get. If they don't have a plan and they don't have a strategy and they don't have quotas and they don't have number of calls and they know... I mean, you name the detail, if you don't have it, you're not likely to succeed. So that's absolutely positively number one thing. I'd say this next thing that people really... You would be surprised how many companies' compensation plans for their salespeople don't match up to what they really want to achieve. I always say this too, and this is true, and I'll tell you a story about this. Salespeople will do exactly what you pay them to do, even if it's wrong. My very, very first sales job was a long, long time ago when the dinosaurs were roaming the Earth and I was a door to door salesman for a local cable TV company in my hometown in Northern Illinois. And they created a compensation plan that we were going to be selling this product. It was actually HBO. They said, We're launching HBO. There was a time, Tim, when HBO was a new thing, just to tell you. Anyway, so they said, We want you to go out and sell to new customers. Tell them basic cable and all the great features and benefits that are available on basic cable. But knock on the doors of our current customers and give them an opportunity to try HBO because it's brand new and they might really love it. And they paid us the same for selling HBO as they paid us to sell new customers, create a brand new customer. So it was the same compensation schedule. Now, I would ask you, what's easier selling something extra to an existing customer or taking somebody that has said, I don't want what you have and try to get them to buy it. Well, it's obvious, right? Going to that customer and going, Hey, here's HBO. Try it. So they were incenting us to do the wrong thing. And I sold the heck out of that HBO. That was fantastic. I thought I was going to be a millionaire. I thought, This is going to be fantastic because it was so easy to tell people, hey, you have what you want, try this. If you don't like it, you can disconnect it and we won't charge you for it. It's an opportunity for you to try the service. So as we were selling, me and the rest of the sales team, selling HBO, getting paid on the sale, two weeks later, the customer would disconnect. The company never got any money, but they paid me. Very bad. So the point being that we did what they paid us to do. They specifically said, go do this, boy. We did it like crazy. And then they realized it's not working. And so setting up that compensation program to really be in exact alignment with what it is you want to accomplish, how you want to sell what you're selling, what that means. And the bottom line to the business is of critical, critical importance. And then the third thing, really, that most companies that we know for sure is a driver is that sales process, that step by step, each and every day. And I will tell you a little bit later about what you do with new salespeople. But when you have a documented sales process and everybody on the team knows this is what it's going to take for me to make a sale, then there's a playbook. It's super easy to hand it to somebody and say, Here's what you need to do to be successful and make sure you follow this process. And if you do that, then we'll get done. And what's the best part of that is when things aren't going well, the manager can go back in and check in that process, where are you in that line? What's broken down? What didn't happen? What should you have done that you didn't get done? That thing. It's really a huge thing. That sales process, and again, I will tell you that somewhere in the neighborhood of 85 % of every company that sales acceleration advisors work with don't have a sales process. Those are my top three.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Those are extremely good. I want to touch on a couple of things here. With the sales plan, we see the same thing on the marketing side. And when you don't have a plan, it almost becomes like random acts of marketing or random acts of sales. It's very haphazard.

Jim Honiotes
I love that.

Tim Fitzpatrick
I think one of the things that holds people back on the marketing side is just thinking like, Man, I need to have this perfect plan. And the reality is there is no perfect plan. You've got to start put a plan together, just start taking action. And as we take action, we learn and we can adjust and make course corrections along the way. I love the fact that you started with the plan. And as you were going through into number two, I'm thinking, Gosh, I wonder if he's going to talk about sales process. And sure enough, number three is the sales process. Do you feel like with the sales process, and this happens, I see this a lot with your sales calls, whether it's a discovery call or an initial consultation, whatever that sales conversation, whatever you call it. Do you feel like those need to be fairly well outlined and not necessarily scripted, but that you have an idea of what the flow of those conversations are going to be as part of the sales process?

Jim Honiotes
I would say that the very best salespeople have an idea of what an effective sales call is going to be in general, but there's not going to be a script because the especially initial call, maybe even the second call that you do with somebody that you actually are making, it's a conversation. And if you as the salesperson talk as much or more than the prospect, it's a failure. So this in a great sales call, if I know I've done really, really well when that call is over, I've spoken maybe 20 % of the time. I have to ask that question of that... Let me put it this way. The first time you go to a brand new physician, you're going for a checkup. If the physician sat there and told you how fantastic he was at all the things that he or she did and how great doctor they were, you would leave there and say, Well, my back still hurts. And they didn't even ask me any questions about that. That's what typical salespeople... We're so excited about what we do, what we sell, what we've got. But what I really want to know is, what's your problem? What's the background? I just need to understand. And in some cases, I don't have what will work for you. Any salespeople that thinks the product I have is good for every single living human being on the planet or every business is just kidding themselves because there are things they just don't need. So it's a discovery process. Talking to that customer or that prospect like you're the surgeon and getting them to understand, getting you to understand exactly what it is you're trying to accomplish, and maybe I have what can help you or not.

Tim Fitzpatrick
So it's important to have an outline for the call and know where the call is going to go. Have an idea of the questions that you're going to ask, but allow that conversation to naturally flow through the process.

Jim Honiotes
I think it has to be pretty organic because a good salespeople has a natural curiosity. So when you say to me, Well, yeah, this is my problem. And I go, Tell me more about that. Where is it falling down? How is it not working for me? When you have had success, how can you attribute that to give me more information? So if you're doing something really well, as you know in marketing, if something's happening really good, you want to keep that going. But if something has not worked or isn't working, you either need to tweak it, dump it, or find a different way to do it. But you have to be naturally curious. Yeah, but I think there's an outline for every call, but it has to be very organic and natural.

The Key to Ensure Your Sales People are Successful

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, got it. So if we're looking at hiring, just starting, whether it's our first time or our 15 time. I think this is a hurdle for a lot of people. How can a company best assure that as I'm hiring new salespeople that we're doing everything we can to help them be successful.

Jim Honiotes
Well, first of all, let's presume that you have a really good hiring process, you know how to bring people on that have the skill set. We'll just as you know what you're doing. The very best thing you can do is hire somebody, don't train them, just throw them to the wolves and hope like crazy they figure it out. Obviously, I'm kidding. But you might be shocked to learn how many people say, Let's see, well, I brought the salesperson in, I showed them where the restroom was, I told her how to log into their computer. I gave them an idea of what their goals should be. So hopefully by Friday they'll have their first sale. And that's really where they fall down. The onboarding process for a brand new salesperson, in to my way of thinking, should be six months in length, not six days or six weeks, six months. And there is a process that goes on from the very first minute that person walks through the door, six months from now, exactly what they've done and how they've done it and where the checkpoints are and how often you find out what they're doing, that is the number one way to be successful. Make sure your onboarding and your regular check in process and your goal setting and your sales meetings and all those things that you have to have with a salesperson are set up for the long run. It's happened to me. I remember I used to... Again, I'll go back to when the dinosaurs were on when I first became a sales manager, I would do training. I would do three days of training, and I would teach people how to be a door to door sales rep. And if they had some sales experience in the past, it's great. And I'd bring them up. I was 24 years old, so literally, I didn't know anything. But somehow somebody entrusted me with this job. Not sure how or why. I'm lucky they did. So you get three days of this intense training on the product and how it is and how to work and what to say when you knock on the door and all that, and then I just turn them loose. I go out and then they talk to you Friday night, see how you did this week. It was so dumb. And I went through so many people who found that frustration so difficult. It was foolish. And then I realized the way to do this was to create that process of, yeah, train them for three days, let them go out and knock on some doors, then bring them all back and say, Okay, what was it like for you? How did that work? What went wrong? What went right? How did it feel? Were you scared? And you can imagine in the 80s knocking on doors as a job. It's no different than today. Some people did not greet you with great warmth. Let me just put it that way. I heard every possible curse word there was in a way to get off someone's porch. People didn't appreciate it. But I learned. And now I apply that to my clients and I tell them, look, I don't care what we go through to the screening process and all the tools we might use to hire a person that we really believe is going to be successful. If you fall down on the getting that person on board appropriately and you don't follow up in that step by step by step process and everybody's not on board, then it's a crap shoot. Someone can succeed despite your inability to onboard them. That's possible, but it's not likely.

Tim Fitzpatrick
As you're talking about this, I'm thinking about it, it's almost like giving somebody a bike who has no idea how to ride a bike and you're just like, Here you go. Go ride it. We need to make sure that we're giving them the tool belt, we're giving them the tools, and we're showing them how to use each one of those tools when it's most appropriate. When do I use the hammer? When do I need to use the saw? I had this conversation in an interview that I did last week, actually, with somebody talking about the sales... We were talking about business development, but I think it's probably pretty similar on the sales side where when you bring somebody in, they have to understand your company, right? What you're all about and what your methodologies are from a sales perspective and why to really be successful. Do you agree with that?

Jim Honiotes
No, I 100 % agree. I think there is very often a disconnect between the culture that the company wishes they had and the culture that they actually have. Especially in small businesses, the owner doesn't typically give a lot of thought to what's our culture, what are our values, what really means a lot to us, and what we want to communicate with our every word, indeed, and action to our clients and our customers, because that's what you take away. And when there's no connection between what you are versus what you think you are, then it can really be a problem. And I think that's part of that onboarding that we were talking about. Let's just put it this way. You know there are companies out there that don't value honesty and integrity. They just want you to sell. Just sell my stuff. I don't care. And if that's you, well, first of all, I would never work for a company like that. And most people that I know don't want to work for a company like that. But if you're a salesperson that have found yourself in a company that is like, sell every... We're all about selling, we don't care, lie, cheat, steal, whatever. Do whatever you have to do, just make a sale. Well, that's a culture. That's a way to be. But if you don't want that, if you're the opposite, how is that person supposed to know unless somebody tells them? Look, we value honesty, we value integrity. We want people to stand up and take responsibility for their mistakes. You're not going to get fired by being overly aggressive if it's honest and you're giving the customer value. The worst that can happen to you is we might have to sit down and say, Look, that's just not how we do business here. But make sure we're in alignment. Being in alignment with your goals and your culture is part of that onboarding. That's why it takes so long because if I sit down with you tomorrow and say, Hey, Tim, this is what Prosonta Associates sales acceleration is all about. This is who I am. This is why if you're going to work for me, this is who you're going to be. You're going to be like, Okay, great. Now, which guy do I call first? It's not going to be a one time conversation, and it's going to be reinforced, and it's going to be reinforced how you and I interact. If I say, Tim, I value honesty, integrity, and then tomorrow I lie to you, I don't tell you the truth, I won't give you the information you need to be successful. You're going to say, Well, you say one thing and you do another. And you immediately lose that credibility. And it doesn't matter how fantastic the product is. If I don't believe in it and believe in what it is we're doing, I'm not going to be very successful as a sales rep.

Tim Fitzpatrick
It's interesting, Jim, you talk about the onboarding process being at least six months. Super similar on the marketing side where so many of us just are thinking short term. We're not thinking long term. It's how can I generate leads tomorrow? How can I generate sales tomorrow? I'm sure taking that long term approach, one, it takes pressure off the salesperson to be like, Oh, my God. I've got to make a sale tomorrow and I just started this job. It's just you're saying to them, Hey, we realize this is a process and we're going to help walk you through this so that you can be confident in what you're doing day in, day out. Again, you're giving them the bike with the training wheels and helping them rather than just giving them bike and going, Hey, figure it out. Learn how to ride.

Jim Honiotes
You've seen this on TV. You could probably do this.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah.

Jim Honiotes
Here's a bike. Good luck.

Two Big Mistakes Companies Make Most Frequently with Their Sales Efforts

Tim Fitzpatrick
You can figure it out. Man, I love that. You've already touched on some of these mistakes, but I know what are other mistakes that companies are making most frequently with salespeople?

Jim Honiotes
I can tell you, I have a client that I'm helping now. One of the biggest things that they don't do is have the right sales metrics identified and communicated. And so when I say metrics, I mean the things like, what are the key indicators that I'm being successful beyond the actual sale? There's more to it than closing the deal and getting somebody to sign the contract. I know in my business that I have to talk to 20 people to get one person to really listen to my presentation. And then out of every five of those, one of those might buy my product. So what those metrics are and have that held up to that sales rep and saying, Look, for you to be successful, these are the number of calls you have to make. This is the number of followups you have to do. These are the number of emails you have to send, whatever it is. Whatever that metric is, whatever you're measuring, if you don't have that, that's really where the mistakes are. And people did just... They don't do it because, again, it was like anything. They're just like, Hey, it's especially.. I'm just going to give an example, and I don't want to call out my client. I want to think about this for a second. This person knows exactly what to do to be successful because they've been doing it in their business for 20 years. And I say he can fall out of bed knowing what to do he needs to do today. He doesn't even think twice about it. He knows exactly what he needs to do. He brought in a salesperson that has not been successful, and he has a difficult time communicating to him what he needs to do because he doesn't have to think about it. He falls out of bed and doing it. So when I'm working, I worked with him and said, Let's identify. Let's make sure your sales guy knows exactly what he needs to do. And if I need to, I'll drag it out of my client and say, You don't have to think about this, but I'm a dummy. Teach me. How many calls do I have to make? How many people do I have to invite? How many presentations do I have to make? How many callbacks are there going to be? How many meetings for every client prospect? Is it going to take for me to close them? Because if I know what it takes, then I can go do that. And then I got that from him and gave it to the sales guy and he was like, Oh, this is what it's going to take? Now I get it. I know it's giving you a lot of detail around this, but I think the example really shows you what it takes. I think the other thing is people don't use the tools that they have. So everybody, not everybody, almost everybody has a customer relations management tool. And there are 65 dozen of them, I think, out there. Hubspot and Pipedrive and Salesforce and Dynamics. There's big, giant, super powerful engines for company with 5,000 salespeople. And there's one, ClaritySoft that I use that's just me. I don't have anybody else in my CRM. It's just me. It's my little tool, and I can send out my monthly newsletter and super simple. But if you don't use the tools you have to measure all the things that you know need to be measured, then you're going to struggle. If you don't have the data, as a marketing guy, you know this, right? It doesn't matter the campaign that I've created, it doesn't matter the tools and the tactics I put in place. If I don't measure the output, the outcome at the end, how do I know if it worked? Because sales is only one element of success. Yes, it's the ultimate element for sure. And you need to know there's so many things that go into a marketing plan, so many things that go into a sales plan. I need to be able to say, all these things happened when I didn't still didn't make a sale. Let's figure out why. All these things happened and I didn't create any leads. I didn't generate the business that I needed on the marketing plan. It doesn't mean the marketing plan is crap. It just means that there's something that didn't go as we thought it should go, and we got to figure that out. And so that tools that you have in place to measure that activity, measure the results, that's the most important thing.

Tim Fitzpatrick
I love it. So we need to identify the right numbers and we need to track them. I love, too, that you're not focusing on things that are beyond your control. You're focused on... A lot of people refer to the leading indicators. What are the activities that I can take ahead of a sale that are going to predict how many sales I'm actually going to make? So from a sales standpoint, you're focusing on those things. How many calls do I need to make? How many emails? How many sales conversations do I need to have to then get to a sale? We've got to track those things so that we can understand those numbers. But once you know those numbers, super powerful, right? Right. Oh, my gosh. I can control those things. It's up to me to do those particular activities. I'm not reliant on anybody else to do those. As long as I do those and I do them well with the sales process that the company has provided me with the onboarding experience that I've had where I've got the tool belt and I know when to use each tool, as long as I do those activities and I'm tracking it, I know that I'm going to get to these sales numbers that I need to hit.

Jim Honiotes
Right. One of the all time most famous movies about sales is Glengarry Glen Ross. And Alec Baldwin is the mean mean guy comes in and he says, The salespeople, this is not uncommon at all. The leads are weak. And then the sales manager is like, It's not the leads that are weak. You're weak. You suck at your job. And no, no, no, no, no. Now that's sad to say. I've actually known sales managers like that. But to say, just to say to them, the leads aren't weak, you're weak. You need to do your job. He never once said, and that means, Clarence, you need to call 73 people tonight, and you need to get 15 of them to talk to you about this. And then those 15, you need to understand that six of them are not going to be qualified, so get them off the phone. He didn't give them the specifics. He didn't tell them how to be successful. He just threatened them and said, Do your job better or you're fired. Cadillac El Dorado, set of stake dives, or you're fired. There's three possible outcomes. If that's your approach, and I would say without being mean or rude or nasty like that, it's often people's approach. I don't know, they're just not doing their job. Do they know how to do their job? Did you train them how to do their job? Well, I hired them. They had five years experience or 10 years. They've been selling things their whole life. Well, that doesn't mean they can sell what you have. Do they understand all the things we talked about before? Do they know what the metrics are? Do they have the tools? Where you bring them on board? Do they understand the culture? Do they understand what it is we provide that's intrinsic to the product, not necessarily the physical attributes, but the things that it does for you. Almost everything someone buys does something for them. Makes my life easier, simpler, more fun, makes me more money. My life is more whatever it might be. It doesn't matter. I don't care if it's in business or marijuana, whatever. There's some reason why people are buying it.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Well, I love this because all of these things that you've shared with us today, Jim, these are not complicated. This is really pretty simple stuff, but they're fundamentals. These things have to be in place because they lay the foundation for us to build the rest of our saleshouse from.

Jim Honiotes
And I would say, Tim, I got to tell you that if you think about the things that we've talked about, you could keep taking up another... It's true for your whole business. Everything I said about the sales process is true for the whole business. And it's true for the marketing side, and it's true for PR, and it's true for government affairs. And it's true. If you don't have this infrastructure for every aspect of your business, you're never for sure what you're going to get.

Conclusion: The Secrets To Driving Sales Success For Your Company

Tim Fitzpatrick
This has been fantastic, Jim. Any last minute thoughts you want to leave us with today?

Jim Honiotes
You can see this thing behind me right here?

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yes.

Jim Honiotes
Sometimes you win, sometimes you learn. I think this is a great business and sales philosophy. It's a great philosophy in general. I think if you understand that you're not going to win them all, and if you don't win, you take that opportunity to figure out, what can I learn from this? I hate to talk about winning in terms of a personal relationship, but the person that's most important to you in your life that you're connected to. I'm not talking about winning an argument by any means, but when you have an interaction with your partner and that didn't come out very well and you want to stop and think, I need to learn from this. It can make our life better. And take that philosophy and keep moving it up to the people that you're associated with in your hobbies, or the people you're associated with in your company, or the people you're associated with in your industry, or whatever it might be, sometimes you win, sometimes you just have to learn. And to me, that's why I have it on my wall. I love it as a saying it's a great reminder. We have a lot to be grateful for in this life. I live a very blessed, very lucky life. I have a one total of fantastic spouse, five amazing kids, some great kids in law, a fantastic, amazing grandkid. I'm just the luckiest. Honest to goodness, I will tell you this, and I say this all the time to people, and I know it sounds like a bunch of BS, but it's true. You will never meet a luckier person in your life than me. There might be somebody as lucky, but nobody luckier than me. I'm tremendously grateful for the opportunity to do the things that I do and help people in the sales world fix their things and let them enjoy their life a little bit more.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Jim, I appreciate connecting with you. This is, I don't know, second or third time we've connected, and I always enjoy chatting with you. And I appreciate you taking the time to share your sales experience with me and our audience. Where can people learn more about you?

Jim Honiotes
I think the best, the easiest places on my LinkedIn profile. If you go to my LinkedIn, it tells you about my 40 plus years experience in the business, in the sales world. And I've been really lucky in my career. I've had marketing jobs, I've had communications jobs. But truly deep down, I'm a sales guy through and through. From the time I was a little kid working in my dad's grocery store, I was a sales guy. And that's who I am. And that's what I love to share the most. And so go to my LinkedIn profile, you'll see me there. And the other thing I would say is any other time you might meet out for all your audience out there. If there's anybody else you've ever met or you do meet whose last name is Honiotes, I promise you I'm related. So if you know that person, you know one of my cousins. There are a lot of us.

Tim Fitzpatrick
That is so funny you say that, Jim, because I was like, we'll make sure that the link to your profile is in the show notes. But I was just going to say go to LinkedIn and search Jim, and then it's Honiotes, H O N I O T E S. I don't, I may be wrong, but I don't think there's a gazillion of you. There are.

Jim Honiotes
Two Jim Honiotes. The other is my other first cousin, and he lives in Indiana, so I live in Colorado. So if you find the other Jim Honiotes, and you find him, there's only two of us, I promise.

Tim Fitzpatrick
So search Jim Honiotes, you will find him. He's the one with sales acceleration, but we'll put in the show notes. Jim, thank you so much for taking the time in. I really appreciate it. I have enjoyed the conversation. I was feverishly taking notes. For those of you that are watching, listening, I appreciate you as well. You know that I believe that you got to remove your roadblocks to accelerate growth. If you want to figure out which of the nine revenue roadblocks are slowing down your growth, you can do that over at revenueroadblockscorecard.com. You can also always connect with us over our website, rialtomarketing.com, rialtomarketing.com. I would be happy to chat with you. You can always set up a discovery call and I hope you push through those marketing roadblocks that you have. Thank you again, Jim, appreciate it. Those of you watching, listening, thank you. Until next time, take care.