The Pirate’s Guide To Sales: Learn and Steal from The Best

Ethan Beute, BombBomb, Chief Evangelist, The Customer Experience Podcast, Wall Street Journal bestseller, Human-Centered Communication, Rehumanize Your Business.

Ethan Beute

Former Chief Evangelist
The Pirate's Guide To Sales, Tyler Menke, customer experience

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The Pirate's Guide To Sales, Tyler Menke, customer experience

Listen to “59. The Pirate’s Guide To Sales: Learn and Steal from The Best w/ Tyler Menke” on Spreaker.

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Have you ever dreamed about “looting” insights from the top sales leaders, and “pirating” them in your own sales practice? Well, you might want to consider it.

Because when you learn from the best, you become the best. And, as Steve Jobs once said “It’s more fun to be a pirate than to join the navy.”

Acting like a pirate isn’t just fun to think about, it’s easy to do. In fact, sales leader Tyler Menke has been doing so for years. He interviewed dozens of high-level leaders and producers and turned what he learned into a book of lessons called “The Pirate’s Guide to Sales: A Seller’s Guide for Getting from Why to Buy.”

Tyler doesn’t just pirate the ideas, though. He puts them into play. Over the last decade, he has blown his sales quotas out of the water every year. Today, he serves as the Manager of Strategic Accounts at Myriad Genetics.

To find out what inspired Tyler’s “pirating” career and what he’s learned along the way, we asked him to join us on The Customer Experience Podcast to share his takeaways.

Join us as we dive deep into “The Pirate’s Guide to Sales” with Tyler. In this episode, we’ll cover:

 How a career built on learning can feel like a “pirate adventure”
 What the best salespeople have in common
 Why it’s important to be yourself in sales
 Tyler’s V.A.L.U.E process for adding value to customers
 Why every sales leader needs to learn from other departments
 Why you should take ownership of your customer’s KPIs

Listen to “59. The Pirate’s Guide To Sales: Learn and Steal from The Best w/ Tyler Menke” on Spreaker.

Subscribe, listen, and rate/review The Customer Experience Podcast on:

The Pirate’s Guide To Sales: Learn and Steal from The Best

Check out the top five video highlights from the entire conversation with Tyler on “The Pirate’s Guide to Sales”  below…

1. Origins of “The Pirates Guide To Sales”

2. Why You Need to Be Yourself in Sales

3. The Importance of “Why” As Sales Evolves

4. Ways to add V.A.L.U.E. as a Salesperson

5. Prioritizing Alignment For More Learning Opportunities

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The Pirate’s Guide To Sales: Full Conversation Transcript

Ethan Beute:

When you constantly learn from the best you become the best. That’s the thesis of our guest today on The Customer Experience Podcast. So today we’re going to learn from some of the best salespeople who know that the secret to improving customer experience is no secret at all. Our guest spent a few years as a Marketing Director, spent a few years as a Territory Manager for UPS selling supply chain solutions. For the past decade, he’s been blowing out his quotas in sales and account management roles and he currently serves as Manager of Strategic Accounts at Myriad Genetics, but the project we’ll spend most of our time talking about is “The Pirate’s Guide to Sales,” which is the result of interviewing top salespeople over five years and then organizing and publishing the most interesting innovations and best stories in a newly released book. Tyler Menke, welcome to The Customer Experience Podcast.

Tyler Menke:

Thanks for having me. I’m really excited to be here.

Ethan Beute:

Yeah, me too. I think the project that you undertook completely self initiated is really cool and interesting. I’m excited to get into it. But before we get going, let’s talk for a minute about your LinkedIn description. So, we all have that little description that goes with our names and a lot of people use it to mention their company or other things that they’re working on. Some people use it for keyword stuffing or self-promotion, but you’ve got a small piece of advice and inspiration. Next to your name all it says is start small, dream big. What’s the motivation there?

Tyler Menke:

It’s interesting you bring that up. I think it’s twofold. The first part of it is to remind myself I’m somebody who has a lot of ideas and that can be both a positive and a detriment. So when you’re in sales or those of us that have entrepreneurial spirits and think that way, we can all relate to times where we see the vision and all the different directions that things can go. But rarely do you get to the finish line without taking the proper steps. So my experience has been you have to start small and really hone your craft with a small subset of customers and sort of branch out from there and let those individuals sort of be your ground troops and your initial group and collection of customers that helps spread the word.

Ethan Beute:

So good. Let’s start in earnest where we always start, which is your thoughts or your characteristics or your definitions of customer experience. When I say customer experience, what does that mean to you?

Tyler Menke:
Well, I mean, I think when it comes to customer experience, it’s a challenging one because at times you’ve got things that the customer themselves don’t realize that they need. But then in other instances, those of us that have to pitch things or create things for customer experience, we’ll think they need something and they don’t actually need it. So I think there’s this juxtapose thing going on here where you have to really entrench yourself into the customer’s state of mind and find that happy medium between what is needed and what is wanted to create something of true value for the customer. So I think it’s a challenging thing, because like I said, at times they don’t know exactly what the next best thing would be. But then again, we don’t either. So you really have to entrench yourself to find that happy place where they truly have a valued experience.

Ethan Beute:

And I like this tension between wants and needs. One of the things that we’ve said around here at BombBomb for a while is sell them what they want, but give them what they need. I just really like that tension. I like the way you spoke to it. Let’s get to “The Pirate’s Guide to Sales” right off the top here. What was the spark for this project?

Tyler Menke:

Yeah. So, I had wanted to break into medical sales and those of your listeners that know anything about medical sales, it’s a tough field to break into and a lot of times you have to earn your way in. And so I had taken on this role at Hologic, which was called a Surgical Sales Specialist role. And basically what that was is you would go out and fill in open territories in and around the country. So if there was a maternity leave or if somebody had been let go, you would fill in until that replacement was brought. And so I remember interviewing for that and the guy who hired me, he’s now made it all the way up to COO at another large device company. He told me, “This will be the hardest year of your career. Are you willing to do This?”

Tyler Menke:

So, I liked the challenge, I took it on, but the beauty of that year is all of us in sales, we can be pretty hard on ourselves, right? And so when you’re given a territory that’s not yours and very little detail around it, you give yourself a little bit of grace or a little wiggle room to make mistakes and not beat yourself up. So I was like learning sales, medical sales by drinking from a fire hose. Every territory I took on, I had to relearn everything, new sets of doctors. I made so many mistakes in that year. I came out of it feeling really confident in my abilities. But I also realized, I learned so much from my mistakes, but I also learned so much from all the encounters because it was like a pirate’s guide adventure in and of itself. I was learning from all the best that were all around me in 10 different geographies around the country.

Tyler Menke:

So that’s sort of where my inspiration came from. I’m like, “I wonder if I can continue to accelerate this process by getting other top sellers on the phone and other business minded people on the phone and kind of pirating all the best ideas from them.”

Ethan Beute:

So when in that process, because a lot of us are doing, if we’re learning and growing and challenging ourselves, we’re getting involved in products and circumstances. Maybe not as crazy as yours being that fill in around the country. But we’re all learning and growing, but so few people actually take the time to document it. Were you documenting it as you were going?

Tyler Menke:

I had no intention really of getting to a published work until much more recently. But I’ve always been sort of a left brainer and I’ve always liked to write and play guitar and draw and sketch. And so, it’s just kind of a part of my daily routine to do that. And so I had a lot of notes and a lot of things that I’ve written about. I’ve written some articles on LinkedIn and I remember a few years back, the article that went the most viral on a smaller scale. It was one that was of that topic basically here’s a bunch of ideas and take what you want for yourself and your own selling system. So that was when I was like, “I wonder if there’s something here.” And most sales books that I’ve ever read, and I’m a big reader. I like a lot of stuff on behavioral psychology and even philosophy and some of the deeper subjects. But the sales books are typically written by researchers, not actual B2B salespeople. So I thought there might be a niche here.

Ethan Beute:

Nice. It sounds like, from a customer experience standpoint, that is one point of differentiation. The research is in primary research with people who are actually out there trying to solve customers’ problems. Right?

Tyler Menke:

Yeah. And I incorporate a lot of stuff from sales books I had read that I found a value and stuff from other business books, people like Ray Dalio and Daniel Kahneman and some real true thought leaders. There’s certain subject matter that I don’t feel like us in sales, even if you are a master, are going to be as good as Daniel Kahneman when it comes to decision making.

Ethan Beute:

Sure. Yeah. We leaned on his research in the book that we wrote here, “Rehumanize Your Business.” So you were obviously an accomplished salesperson as you were undertaking this, but I’ll bet you still learned a ton by talking with a bunch of other great sales people. Was there anything that surprised you in this journey like a real a-ha for you?

Tyler Menke:

Yeah, and you’re exactly right. I mean, I learned so much through this process and that’s why I hope others will see the value in what I wrote. But no, I would say the biggest surprise to me is that salespeople get pigeonholed. We like for years they’ll say, companies will be seeking or looking for a challenge or some sort of label. The best salespeople have almost nothing in common from a personality standpoint. Not that I could find. I remember my first sales job training with somebody and thinking, “Gosh, if this is how I have to be, I’m not sure I’m going to be able to pull this off. Like I don’t have near the energy that guy has. I don’t have near the suave appeal. And yet I slowly but surely found that it’s about your own system and there’s no personality. I’ve met introverts that are just tremendously great salespeople. So, that’s probably the biggest thing.

Ethan Beute:

Yeah. It’s really interesting. I obviously am working with a lot of people trying to get them to be more comfortable using video in their work, whether they’re in marketing, sales, customer success, leadership management. And it’s the same thing. A lot of people think they need to be this big, specific dynamic personality. But really all of us are succeeding every day on who we are. And so, having that confidence in there and some systematic approach and some discipline goes a long way. One of the phrases in the subtitle of “The Pirate’s Guide to Sales,” it’s interesting to me is this why to buy. Talk about that, like moving people from why to buy, like talk about that language and what’s behind it.

Tyler Menke:

I think in the evolution of sales, we’ve gone from back in the day when there was less competition, you would build a relationship with people. And then if you think about how our business and our economy has changed, we got to a place where there was a lot of problems because everything got much more automated and systematic. And so that’s when SPIN selling came out. And then we got to a place where there were so many people trying to fix and find problems, that it was those that could really shift perspective and walk that tension line that the challenge came about. I really think we move so fast paced today that you have to sort of take bits and pieces from everything and combine it into your own system. But nothing has changed. We all like to buy, we can all think of a time where we bought something and it was a great process. Like whether it be Chick-Fil-A for lunch or your new Apple iPhone, we can all think of something that we bought where the experience was great.

Tyler Menke:

And so really that comes down to the fact that that customer or that product is understanding why you’re there. The why is basically the motivation. So the thought of feature, advantage, benefit, I think Simon Sinek had it right in that when you can understand the why, you can cut a lot of the fat, and get to the core reason why somebody would have any interest prior to data dumping. So, that’s sort of the thought. But I think that in today’s world it’s far more challenging than ever to understand and just sell to the why. I think that’s the part from Simon Sinek’s works that I’ve read that is sort of missing. It’s a challenging endeavor to understand that.

Ethan Beute:

Yeah. And there’s a big behavioral economics conversation and problem to be solved there. One of the big pieces in there to me, in “The Pirate’s Guide to Sales,” is the V.A.L.U.E. acronym. Can you just speak to that a little bit? I think there are a lot of really important ideas there. And I’d love for you just to speak a little bit about that acronym of V.A.L.U.E.

Tyler Menke:

Yeah. So, if you read the book, you’ll see that there are some themes in there about Lean Six Sigma. I’ve got a Lean Six Sigma Certification, Bronze Certification. And when you go through that process or if you know anything about Lean Manufacturing, a lot of it is like they were the Simon Sineks before the Simon Sineks. They were trying to understand the why behind buy for customers and create something of value and something that ties directly to [that]. So I went ahead and just used the acronym of V.A.L.U.E., to sort of highlight some of the lesser thought places to look for adding value to the customer.

Tyler Menke:

So using the acronym, V stands for variability. So, if you think about it, anytime there’s variability of product or service, that’s going to be something that if your product can help with, it’s going to add value. Likewise, the A being automation. So if you can automate a manual process or automate something for a customer that’s going to immediately free up time and be of value. The L being for lower costs, there are a number of different ways to lower costs outside of just the price itself. And if you think about products like Apple or truly innovative products, anytime you can uniquely differentiate for your customer, if you can create something uniquely different for their brand, with your product or service, then you’re going to be seen as somebody that can add value.

Tyler Menke:

And then lastly, excess waste. We all get so busy we forget and become blind to the waste in front of us. So having somebody come in and be able to find that waste and rid the company or product of it is usually a good place to look.

Ethan Beute:

Yeah, there’s a lot in there. When I hear variability in product or service, I feel like those, when people experience that, that’s a shake of trust or confidence. It’s like this isn’t what I expected or this isn’t quite what I got last time. Like it shakes that up a little bit. I think automation speaks a little bit to the elimination of friction and just making things more seamless. Obviously eliminating waste and lowering costs throughout the supply chain and maybe passing those on to the customer as savings or as you said, like lowering costs might not actually be in the price at all. And then of course unique differentiation is really what brand experience and customer experience are about. I just really like what you’ve done there and it’s really useful. Last thing I’ll ask about specifically around the book is this idea of burning up the boats.

Ethan Beute:

Now it’s a phrase that a lot of people use intermittently, but it’s one that’s so fun and interesting and bold. Talk about the way you use it in this context. Obviously the boats lend themselves to the pirating theme, but talk about what’s really behind it.

Tyler Menke:

Yeah. So one of the things that I always appreciate when I’m reading a book is understanding a little bit about the author and their why. And I was really struggling to come up with something to conclude the book. And I had landed on that in my outline. The burn the boats thing. But I was scared because of the cliche. So as you read that, it’s a very heartfelt, I can’t read it without crying because I lost my dad a day after his 60th birthday, this past May. So it’s a conclusion that talks about one of the key learnings I had through that grieving process and how I never wanted to go back to the way of thinking that I had prior to this period of enlightenment. So, in a similar way in the book concludes with hopefully you’ve taken away things that you’ll carry with you and you’ll never look back.

Tyler Menke:

And so, the point not being your traditional burn the boats and that you’re going to throw out everything you’ve learned prior to reading this, but in essence that hopefully you’ve had some things that will challenge yourself to continue to grow and sell better and connect more appropriately.

Ethan Beute:

Beautiful. There are so many things that you offered there that remind me of my own journey in organizing thoughts and doing some writing, including the loss of a parent and struggling to figure out how to end a book. But we’ll save that maybe for a personal conversation. Fun Steve Jobs quote around the book and then we’ll move on is it’s more fun to be a pirate than to join the Navy. You’ve already mentioned Apple a couple of times. How much did that quote mean to you around this theme? Obviously “The Pirate’s Guide to Sales” is stealing, and begging and borrowing the best ideas from other sales people. But how much did that quote lend itself to the theme for you?

Tyler Menke:

It really, when I was trying to conjure up and to use what you just said, it’s exactly what you’re trying to do when you’ve got this framework of ideas is how are you going to organize it in a way that can be easy to follow, but also memorable? And that quote is what actually drove the whole thing. And so for me, when I heard that quote and I was trying to come up with the framework, I was like, “That’s it. That’s in essence what we’re doing here.” Is just what you said. We’re going out and taking the best ideas and learning from the best and pirating them. So, Apple is famous apparently for flying a pirate’s flag on top and employing their people to go learn from the best and innovate in that regard. So, I think that that was a big part of the title and also what lended itself to the framework.

Ethan Beute:

Cool. Congratulations again on just crushing quota after quota after quota. My motivation here on the show is to start having a clearer and better conversation across marketing, sales and customer success in particular, but throughout the organization about how to create better alignment toward a better customer experience. Because even in a healthy culture, we can find ourselves a little bit siloed. And so there are a couple of really interesting things about your career that I would love to ask you about to start drawing some of these connections. And the first one is when I look at your profile on LinkedIn, I feel like a couple of these roles, they’re sales roles, but they seem to be a blend maybe of account executive and account manager, which in a lot of organizations are two separate sides of the house. Talk a little bit about a traditional sales role versus an account management role. Do you see that yourself and is my observation even in the ballpark? And what do you think about that?

Tyler Menke:

Well, I think as it relates to the parallels and well hopefully the parallels between marketing, sales and customer experience, there’s a variety of different roles within companies and they all have sort of a cross pollination, so to speak. But I mean, I think for me personally working in a large corporation, there tend … in a purposeful way, there tends to be a silo and a segmentation of different roles even from inside sales to outside sales. But to answer your question, in strategic accounts I work closely with all sides of the table and so you really do find a lot of commonalities and I have to typically be the quarterback to create that sort of common thread or golden thread that we use through the customer messaging.

Tyler Menke:

It really is a challenge. I love what you’re doing because I think oftentimes there is a disconnect between marketing and sales and even between marketing, sales and customer. I really think we tend to always go to the same wells for information and that can lead you down a path that has you redoing a lot of things after the fact. I think the more observation you can do of the customer on the ground floor prior to launching or producing anything, the better off you’ll be.

Ethan Beute:

Absolutely. And then creating feedback loops because different people are experiencing and touching the customer at different points and in different ways. We all see the customer a little bit differently. Part of it’s the way we have our metrics set up. Metrics can create some alignment, but so you definitely see yourself as a salesperson rather than account manager.

Tyler Menke:

Absolutely. Yeah, and I mean I think I often will have to jump into different seats and I certainly enjoy all aspects of business, but traditionally I’ve been more in a sales role. But yeah. You touched on something there with the metrics that also kind of sticks in [my mind]. I think that metrics are super, super important. I think it’s the difference between a personal trainer and going on your venture this January 1st on yourself to lose weight. Somebody takes your body fat percentage, cholesterol, takes all your measurements when you step on the scale the end of February and haven’t lost any weight they can show you all the other places that you’ve had success.

Tyler Menke:

But in the book I talk about KPIs and I reversed … how Simon Sinek reverses it with the golden circle, I reverse it with KPIs because in reality the KPIs should be the customers’ measurement. Not the company’s. And I think so often we come up with the KPIs and the measurements and metrics and then we push them on the customer. And I think that’s where things go awry, because you’re not necessarily measuring the right things. If you can understand what’s important to the customer, and measure those things. Now you’ve got something of value.

Ethan Beute:

Right, and you start to understand the value that you’re actually providing even better. That’s a really, really great insight. So, you’re a Cincinnati guy.

Tyler Menke:

Yeah.

Ethan Beute:
You went to school at Xavier and you did an undergraduate degree and an MBA there.

Tyler Menke:

Yes.

Ethan Beute:

And your undergrad was in marketing and entrepreneurship and you spent your first few years of your career as a Marketing Director. How do you think that marketing study and marketing work earlier in your career set you up for a successful sales career?

Tyler Menke:

Well, I mean that was another fire hose experience. I was working for a entrepreneur and he had sort of grown pretty quickly and at the same time he lost his marketing director and I was just an intern still in college when they offered me the full time position. And all of a sudden was in … I was like, “I’ll take this on,” I’m Marketing Director and I have over a million dollar budget with franchisees and I would have to meet with all these business owners, these franchisees. And I was the guy that was in charge of their budget. For me it was all about understanding what I was going to be the common thing that would help the most entrepreneurs, not what I wanted to pitch or market.

Tyler Menke:

But I think, to answer your question, I think that role taught me so much just about the humility and the understanding of where people and business owners are coming from because there’s so much pressure and that 1% marketing budget in a franchise fee is a lot, because it’s coming right off the margin. And so, I think it made me feel super respectful and indebted to doing the best I possibly could with their money. And then as you grow and expand into roles where there’s more money in larger companies and stuff like that, creating that unique value from a marketing side and being laser focused and targeted and not using too much of a shotgun approach. That’s something I’ve never forgotten.

Ethan Beute:

Really good. Is there anything that you wish more salespeople understood about marketing or marketers or the marketing process?

Tyler Menke:

Well, I mean, I think that they’re different. I see frustration across both sides from time to time. And I think the more you understand, just like when you hear about a couple going through a divorce and you pick sides, there’s often two sides of the story. And until you understand both, it’s really hard for you to have an opinion, at least one that’s right. So I think for me, just understanding that they’re very different roles. Marketing is going to have to build a brand and branding is still relatively new to salespeople. They don’t necessarily understand the value. They want to drive something now. They’re not always this longterm revisionary and then likewise salespeople will at times see marketing push things that they know their customers aren’t going to respond to, because there wasn’t enough testing done on the ground level. So I think the biggest thing is just them working together because there’s a lot that can be learned by that happening.

Ethan Beute:

Completely agree. So is there anything that you remember or took away from your time at UPS? You had a very complex sale, it seems like, obviously a very large company you’re getting probably deep into your customers’ businesses. Is there anything, a decade removed that you remember from your time at UPS?

Tyler Menke:

Absolutely. And what was interesting about that job is as soon as you tell somebody worked or sold for UPS, they think of package world. Where it’s the postal service, FedEx and UPS. But I worked in the freight forwarding division, ocean and air freight. I’m sure people don’t realize this, but there’s thousands of those companies out there. You’re really a broker and a travel agent for larger shipments. And so UPS was by no means, and they’re probably still not, the largest player. I mean they were like 15 to 20 down the list. So they couldn’t, they didn’t have the purchasing power to be the lowest cost provider. But then at the same time everybody’s heard of UPS, so they expect them to have good prices.

Tyler Menke:

So for me, understanding the value and how complex it is to get something from point A to point B through customs, customs brokerage and how important that was. But then most importantly, the thing that UPS had that most above them on the competitor list didn’t was the technology. So, as soon as I started realizing how important it was for a customer to understand that their ocean shipment was 10 days out, nine days out, cleared customs, if they could see visibility of that, that could lend itself to the difference between a thousand dollars for a shipping container more. Because it’s no good, if it’s cheaper, but it shows up a week late and all your product goes out weekly. So, that was-

Ethan Beute:

And you didn’t see that delay coming five days out. Right. That visibility is such a huge value add. It’s really good. Now you had, this is something I picked up off your LinkedIn profile. You were invited to give a speech to new hires on best practices for your first year in sales at UPS. Do you remember, how did you get that invite and then do you remember any of the top takeaways for folks?

Tyler Menke:

Yeah, I wonder why they picked me now thinking back, by no means was I any sort of top seller at that point. So I remember when I went in there, the biggest thing that I set out to do is just start with a lot of questions. How were things going for the new hires? What challenges were they experiencing? What frustrations did they have? And I did very little planning. I would have done a lot more planning had I’d done that today. But that’s how I started. And then I just spoke to all the things that I had just gone through, that I had just experienced in my first year. And I had a guy recently that got brought on to Myriad and he talked about how when I came and talked to a new hire class, how he remembered some of the things I said, it’s funny, I don’t remember exactly.

Ethan Beute:

That’s funny. Well, curiosity goes a long way. I mean, I think starting with questions is always a great place to start. And I guess as we approach the close here, I got one more quick question for you. The MBA, what were your considerations, pros, cons, as you wondered if that was worth your investment of time and money, what were some of the factors that led you to pursue an MBA at Xavier after doing your undergrad?

Tyler Menke:

Yeah, so my dad had worked at Xavier and so first and foremost I’d had a financial benefit. I had gotten a substantial reduction in cost that would at some someday expire, or at least I thought so. I wanted to take advantage of that. But secondarily, I remember thinking at the time and hearing from other people, the connections you’ll make, but then just how much you learn from your classmates. And that’s something that I think if anyone has the opportunity to do an MBA or something like that, if you can get in, it’s much more challenging. Obviously if you can do it online, that’s great. But the interactions, the personal interactions, because at the time there wasn’t as many online classes. I think only a couple online. But I mean the interactions and what you learned from all your classmates was absolutely the most powerful. And then just a deeper dive, particularly in statistics. No, I think statistics is so important in business and you just really scratch the surface in your undergrad. So I remember thinking that all the statistics deep dive was well worth it.

Ethan Beute:

Yeah. I agree. I did my MBA in person predominantly, and it was to get that face to face time with all these other working professionals. Of course the folks that were leading the classes were also accomplished and valuable in their own way. And for me, definitely statistics but then also finance. That was kind of like the weeder course in my MBA program, it was like, that was the make or break. If you’re like a marketer or some of these other, even a sales based person. If you could grind your way through the finance class, then you knew you were going to make it.

Tyler Menke:

Yeah. And I’m sure you would agree with this too, just being able to understand and read financial reports. I remember not really fully understanding the line items coming out of undergrad and I think that that certainly helps a ton.

Ethan Beute:

Yeah. Relationships are our number one core value here at BombBomb. And so I like to give you the chance, before we say goodbye to think or mention someone who’s had a positive impact on your life or career and then separately give a shout out or a mention to a company or a brand that you really like and respect for the way that they deliver an experience for you as a customer.

Tyler Menke:

So I’ll have to forward this to her, because I’m sure she wouldn’t find it, but the first person that came to mind is my grandma. So my dad’s mom, she’s lost two kids this year, which has got to be tremendously hard, but she is somebody who … she has just the best. She’s in her 90s and she just has the best approach at life and she is just full of love and joy and she’s had a tremendous impact on my life in so many ways. She’s also always been very entrepreneurial. My grandpa ran a surgery practice and started it from scratch and she was very instrumental in helping with that. And so, she’s somebody who I still sit down with and we’ll have some very serious deep conversations with and I always learn from. So that’s the first person that comes to mind.

Ethan Beute:

Great. And how about a company?

Tyler Menke:

There’s a lot of companies that I traditionally have great experiences with. The first that comes to mind is TED Talks. I think that there have been so many TED Talks that I’ve listened to that have had impact on my life. And oftentimes when I’m having not the best day, I’ll try to find one to sort of reframe and shift my brain or my way of thinking. I love what they stand for and I love the messaging and the format and it’s had a tremendous impact on my life and it’s not something I really thought of until you asked the question.

Ethan Beute:

It’s really good. I love that answer. And yeah, I mean, what a challenge to take, a lot of these people are taking their current work or maybe even their life’s work and trying to get it into 18 minutes in a sensible way that’s interesting and easy to follow and so you get like these, it’s like the CliffsNotes of really, really rich and important bodies of work. It’s so good. And I love the way that you use it that it’s a go-to when you need it. Tyler, again, this has been great. I sincerely appreciate your time so much. You are doing great work. You’re surrounded by wonderful people it sounds like. And if someone wants to follow up with you, they want to learn more about “The Pirate’s Guide to Sales” or anything else, what are some places that you would send folks to connect with you or the work that you’re doing?

Tyler Menke:
Yeah, I would implore anyone to just reach out via LinkedIn. Just search Tyler Menke and I should pop up and send me a message or connect with me that way. I love talking to people and connecting to people. I cover five states, so I have a lot of windshield time. So I even try to get on the phone with people and learn a little bit about their story so that’s what I would say. “The Pirate’s Guide to Sales,” you can just find via Google, but it’s on Amazon, Kindle, it will soon be on Audible. So that’s what I would say. Just LinkedIn, you reach out to me that way.

Ethan Beute:

Awesome. Sounds really good. I’ll have all this stuff linked up in, we write up every one of these episodes. For those of you who are listening, if you’ve not visited bombbomb.com/podcast just bombbomb.com/podcast. We write all of these up. We put video clips in there. I link up things that the guests talk about. And so if you want to learn more about Tyler and some of the stuff that we talked about here, if you want to see him in video, it’s all happening at bombbomb.com/podcast. Tyler, thank you again for your time.

Tyler Menke:

Thank you so much. This has been great. I can tell you’re one of the authentic, true people that are out there trying to help sort of share all the messages and help out everybody get better. So this has been a pleasure.

Ethan Beute:

Awesome. Yeah, we share a philosophy that way. I love connecting with and learning from other people. And then to have a format where you can share it with other people makes it even more valuable because it creates that ongoing conversation. So, thank you again so much for being part of it and thank you for listening.

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The Pirate's Guide To Sales, Tyler Menke, KPI

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Ethan Beute

Former Chief Evangelist

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