Speaker 1:

Hi, and welcome to The Insiders by durhamlane, where we get perspectives from industry thought leaders about strategies that are unifying marketing and sales cycles to help accelerate growth inside your world.

Richard Lane:

Welcome to The Insiders by durhamlane, an industry podcast that connects the worlds of marketing and sales, one guest at a time. I’m your host, Richard Lane. I’m co-founder and chief commercial officer of durhamlane. We’re a revenue acceleration agency helping enterprise customers create always on channels of meaningful and well-qualified sales opportunities. Today, I’m really thrilled to be joined by Mark Ash. Mark is the CRO of Konica Minolta Business Solutions UK, an industry leader in managed print technology service and solutions, and a comprehensive IT and consultancy services provider. We should know, because they’ve been a long-term durhamlane customer. I thought I’ll get that out early on. But Mark, really great to have you on the show and thank you so much for being with us.

Mark Ash:

Thanks, Richard. If you could put some more enthusiasm in your voice so you do actually sound delighted to be with me. I’m conversely delighted to be here. Always a pleasure to spend time with you and your team.

Richard Lane:

Great. Thank you, Mark. Well, I’m going to try and hype up the excitement. We did our pre-call a few weeks ago and I think got pretty excited about today’s episode. It’s close to both of our hearts to the topics that we’re going to talk through. But before we get started, Mark, perhaps you could just introduce yourself to our listeners so they can get a feel for who you are.

Mark Ash:

Rather scarily now, I’ve spent over two and a half decades in the tech industry. When I say tech industry, it’s not really the tech industry. I’ll say that to sound vaguely cool. Reality is, I’ve done 25 years mainly in and around print. I’ve worked for four manufacturers, one reseller, and one distributor, in pretty much every single role you can think of. I’m famous for being the most accident-prone man in every single one of those companies. A dubious honor, but one that I cling to and I’m proud of.

Richard Lane:

Excellent. I shouldn’t really be laughing, I think, but we’ll get into some of that later on as we go because there are some incredible stories in there. Mark, today, we’ve agreed to touch on a subject that’s really close to both of our hearts I know, which is around sales as a profession to be proud of something that I think has been as a career both hugely influential to both of us in terms of where we’ve spent our time in the world of work. Before we get to that idea around the professionalism of the world of selling to first talk about mindset and resilience and the importance of that and career development. So just sort of thinking and perhaps going from your little teaser there about being accident-prone, how has mental resilience shaped you in the world of work?

Mark Ash:

Mental resilience is one of the key bedrocks of who I am as an individual and absolutely what I look for in those people that I work with. Because you cannot control the situation, all you can control is your reaction to it and your perception of reality really determines it. Winston Churchill said, “When you are going through hell, keep going.” And he also talked about success isn’t final, failure isn’t fatal, it’s the courage to continue that counts. I mean, far more eloquently put than anything I could say, but I truly believe that resilience is how you cope with adversity, how you get up and you keep going because the world isn’t perfect and nice things don’t happen to you every day.

Even if we look outside of Winston Churchill and we look at the Royal Marines, they talk about performing at your best when things are at the worst. And I think that’s really, really appropriate. Today, we look at the last few years, Richard, and we’ve seen global supply chain interruption, we’ve seen COVID, we’ve seen problems in the Suez Canal, even with the rebels attacking boats in the last few days. There will always be something out there to test us, that’s not going to change. How we respond to it is the determining factor.

Richard Lane:

Yeah, 100%. I’d be interested to know where that resilience comes from in you, Mark. Is it something that you feel like you were born with? Is it something that you’ve had to develop? Is it something that you’ve had to really fight strongly to achieve? How does that work for you?

Mark Ash:

I think that’s a great question. I can’t tell you where it comes from. I can tell you where it didn’t come from. I 100% wasn’t born with it. I was born into a loving family, but a family that really had a negative and pessimistic view of the world. And their view is if you expect the worst, you won’t be disappointed.

Richard Lane:

Right.

Mark Ash:

And therefore, I was told, “Don’t touch it. You’ll break it. Don’t try it, you’ll fail at it.” And for me, I think it was not until I was probably 26 that I had a sense of self-worth. But one of the things that I did pick up from my family was a tireless work ethic. And that is that you can control how hard you work. You can’t control things around you, but you can get up and you can keep going and you can do it every day.

And I think for me, to continue to do that and then really actually invest in yourself, and I’m fortunate enough, I’ve worked with some great companies over the years that invested in me as well. And actually, what I learned is nature and nurture, how you finish your life is not how you start your life. You can affect it on the way and you can do that through people developing you, but you can also invest in self-development. And I think that’s one of the things that I’ve been fortunate enough to realize and understand that you can change your circumstances by changing yourself, because the only given constant in any situation is you.

Richard Lane:

Yeah, I mentioned we’ll come to sales profession later. But one thing I discovered really early on, and I always say it’s the happy trip up club when I tripped up into the world of selling, was that you have such ability to shape your own future, which I think exists everywhere as you were saying, but I’m not sure it exists quite as much on steroids as it does when in a selling environment where you basically run your own P&L, you treat it as your own company, you know what you need to do, and you can persevere and push through to make it possible.

Mark Ash:

I agree, and I have this discussion at home quite a lot that my wife still doesn’t see sales as a profession that you should aspire to be in. And I have a violent disagreement with that because it’s been incredibly good to me. And if I take today as an example, I’m going to the House of Parliament this afternoon and I’ve been there multiple times and it doesn’t hold any great excitement for me because I’ve done it. But I am privileged to do this. And when I think and reflect about where sales has taken me, not just to the locations, but I’ve been all around the world with sales. I’ve been into the most secure establishments in the UK in aerospace and military. I’ve been in some of the world’s largest companies. I’ve been in the world’s tallest buildings. So I think sales can give you an incredible amount of experiences and life experiences that you wouldn’t get in any other role.

Richard Lane:

Yeah, absolutely. And many of our listeners, Mark, are at the beginning of their sales journey. So are there any examples you can share with them about how you’ve overcome adversity through resilience and how you’ve become successful in certain areas that perhaps you’d never thought you might be?

Mark Ash:

Yeah, absolutely. And I was only talking about this yesterday afternoon, Richard, with our CFO, who was sharing some things in confidence with me and I was encouraging her to share them publicly and to share them with the company because too many people see where you are now at the stage of your life. They don’t see the journey that you’ve taken to get there, and therefore they often think you are born with the knowledge and the skills that you have now. What is often a surprise to many people, particularly the salespeople that I work with, is that I was incredibly shy as a child, massively insecure. I was often too nervous to even introduce myself. So I’d go on a training course and I started in operations and service delivery, not in sales, like you said, tripped into that. But they’d go around the room and say, “Who are you? Where you come from?” I couldn’t even open my mouth to say my name.

And then, the fear of being asked that question meant that I would have all the classic symptoms of anxiety. I’d start to sweat, I’d start to stammer, I could feel my heart rate elevated and it was generally terrifying. And then over time, as I progressed, that was a constant throughout my sales career. But I had a couple of life-changing moments when I was on a few different courses and sales courses that I’m sure we’ll touch on later. And they really talked about how you can reframe and change your things. And I was introduced to the concept of neurolinguistic programming, a bit of a mouthful known as NLP. And NLP now has kind of evolved, really. And we talk about mindfulness and gratitudes and reframing, but effectively it talked about living in your head and how often the fear of something is actually worth in the reality, and therefore you could just simply reprogram it and change it.

And I distinctly remember sitting in a car outside an independent reseller’s building, terrified to go in, reading this book, and it gave me the tools and the techniques to use. And I walked in and had to stand up in front of probably 20 people in their sales force and I delivered on it and I didn’t panic and I didn’t bolt, and I kept my heart rate under control and I felt utterly elated because I’d read some text in a book and I changed who I was. And that for me was really a springboard for growth.

And then, the second point is that growth’s not linear. You don’t then deliver that at the start of your career and you have this nice upwards trajectory and arrow and you keep going all the way through to the top. Absolutely not. It’s more like a rollercoaster. At times, you’ll be on the way up and at times you’ll be coming down with great velocity and that can be terrifying. But the key thing is to keep on moving forwards and progression. If you take no action, that’s action in itself. It’s a choice to do nothing. So keep moving forwards and then embrace the pain, embrace the challenge because that’s what makes you learn and develop, being comfortable and sedentary isn’t.

Richard Lane:

Great story there. And I’m a big fan of NLP. I remember the moment I discovered it as well and similar situations. But I think that idea that not taking action is a decision in itself, I think sometimes gets lost. And I think the people coming into the workplace today, it’s so helpful when they realize that they have choice, they can make choices, they can take action, and that it’s lifelong learning is really the key to success. And like you say, it’s the ups and the downs. I always coach people that you can’t have the ups without the downs because otherwise it would just be. So you’ve got to understand it, put it into context. One of our mantras is 24 hours to celebrate or wallow in misery. And that was coming out of that really in terms of whether it’s yes or a no, crack on because the process will serve you in the end and will help you to be successful.

Mark Ash:

It will do. But also if you don’t have the lows to juxtapose against the highs, it almost reframes the highs and they become normal. So I had the good fortune to work for an incredibly affluent company, stay in the best hotels in the world, eating some of the finest restaurants in the world. When you’re doing it five to seven days a week, it gets tedious. And if I’d said that to the younger version of me that grew up very humble in a council house on a council estate, I would’ve been mind blown. But once you’ve had steak 10 times in one week, you crave for a bowl of cereal or a baked potato or something plain.

And actually, when you’ve had that life of opulence, it’s really interesting then because it then makes you reframe it and say, “Well, actually, I’d rather have good company and I’d rather go and spend some time with people and maybe not have any of those trappings of success because it really makes you focus on what your values are.” However, I don’t think I would’ve came to that conclusion unless I’ve been exposed to that. I think I would’ve still continued, most people do, to look out for those things. Whereas now, like the majority of people, I typically look for those things on special occasions or customer events, but it’s not something that I surround myself with on a daily basis now because I think that if you have the highs too often, they just become normal and then where’d you get your next high from?

Richard Lane:

Yeah. And we could delve into a whole load of pop psychology around that, couldn’t we? So one thing I always think from my life is, and I don’t think my wife listens to the insiders, just as a heads up. So Laura, my wife is a professional social worker. She’s now a trained family therapist. The similarities between what she does and what we do in terms of questioning and making people feel comfortable and identifying challenges and helping them think through to come to conclusion sector is so similar. But actually when I think about some of what I’ve been rewarded with in the world of sales versus people in the world of social work and family therapy and the value, it just is such a grounding moment to have people doing such hugely valuable work without those trappings. And it’s just always been a great grounder for me.

Mark Ash:

To build on what you’ve just said there about your wife, Richard, I tripped into sales. I was actually going in the police force on an advanced accelerated entry scheme. The process took so long that I needed to get a job, and I tripped into a telesales role, which I found incredibly challenging, incredibly hard, I would say arguably one of the most challenging roles I’ve had, but equally the most formative role I’ve ever had in sales where I learned more than I ever thought was possible.

The interesting thing was being in that role for six months, I then started to earn more than I would’ve done with the role that I aspired to get into police. Within 12 months, I was earning more than I would’ve been doing for 2 years. After the first year, I would’ve been earning the same salary as someone who had been in the police force for five years. And then, I’m pleased to say that trajectory did carry onwards and upwards and my life’s immeasurably changed now as a result of it. So hence why I’m saying sales is very good, I don’t argue that it’s fair and that I’m sure for your wife and others in similar circumstances, they absolutely deserve to get paid more. But one of the things that you can’t argue with is sales will reward you well if you invest the time and the effort into it and you treat it as a profession rather than a vacation.

Richard Lane:

Yeah, absolutely. And so, let’s move on to sales as a profession and one to be proud of, because, well, obviously durhamlane is a sales and marketing agency, so we’ve helped hundreds of people come into the world of sales and been trained in our Selling at Higher Level Methodology, and I hope given many, many people a really great insight into the possibilities. Whether they stay in sales or not, they’ve learned skills that will serve them forever.

Many though don’t see sales as a profession and absolutely not one to be proud of. And that comes from, I think some self-inflicted wounds in terms of how the industry presents itself. I think it comes from poor practice, et cetera, but it’s also out there and something that’s very difficult to change. I was part of a cross parliamentary group a few years back around selling and trying to get it to be on the list. Insanely, when you leave university, if you get a job in sales, it doesn’t count as a graduate job. So there is no real incentive to signpost it as a career. So that’s a frustration. But do you have those examples in your world of people looking at going sales?

Mark Ash:

Yeah, absolutely. I think I’ve realized why, and that is because there are zero barriers to entry in sales. You can be any age, any sex, color, creed with any academic background and you can, as you said, trip into sales and you can build your career in sales and your velocity is pretty much up to you, and it is the most inclusive community I’ve ever worked in. But conversely, if I look at my senior medical friends and they’re at the top of their profession, they prize academia, and in academia there are defined levels and you level up. I mentioned the police force, there’s levels, you level up and they’re published. So absolutely, yes, you can do some private work, you can do some consultancy, and you can be tax efficient to boost your earnings, but it’s a clear methodology about how you move through the levels.

In sales, that’s not there. And I think because of that, it gets a bad rep. But the reality is sales at its top level can be incredibly important because as you’ve just talked about, if you look at what Barack Obama and some of the greatest leaders that have graced our planet do, what are they doing? They’re understanding what people’s goals, drivers, needs, requirements are. They’re prioritizing them, they’re also prioritizing their time, and then they’re working out effective strategies to deliver on what they need and what the people they’re talking to need. That’s sales. Sales is really the art of understanding and uncovering opportunities. And typically you do that by finding problems, so finding solutions to fix problems.

That is very, very similar to I would say what doctors and other people do, but clearly they have to have a greater degree of knowledge. And I think, Richard, this is going to change. As we look at AI, the preserve of knowledge is going to disappear very rapidly because you can ask AI and AI will tell you what people have spent many, many years learning. And I think once people realize that knowledge is available 24/7 on tap instantaneously, the preserve of knowledge won’t be as important. It will be then what skills do you have?

Richard Lane:

Skills and experience, do you think?

Mark Ash:

Yeah, I think experience typically enables you to apply the skills quicker with a lower failure rate.

Richard Lane:

Yeah, I mean AI is a huge topic, isn’t it? Because we look at the world of sales. I always say to people, it’s changing, but technology’s clearly coming through and there are some huge gains with technology. I think there are some huge hindrances with technology as well if you look at CRM systems and the sales prevention unit that people often talk about. But I think there’s the blend though, and we are starting to see this at durhamlane with our investment in Salesloft, which is a outreach platform and AI-enabled, helping our people work smarter, giving them time back for the personalization, which is the key piece. So it’s that tech plus human endeavor.

So I think my view personally is that the role of the sales professional will always be required because people need help to make the right choice to feel like they’re making the right choice, to be guided and to be supported in making what are important business decisions. I think the barrier to entry though in terms of where you start, what you do is probably going to change, like you say with AI becoming this knowledge on tap, then as long as you can harness it correctly plus the endeavor that we talked about and the resilience and the effort, then who knows where it can go.

Mark Ash:

I have two dinner companions at the event recently, and it was the CEO of Computacenter, which is a multi-billion pound corporate reseller, one of the largest if not the largest in the world. And then, there was Sir Clive Woodward who coached the England rugby team to success. And I was talking to them about what they’d seen and what changes they’d seen over the decades that they had been in the industry because Sir Clive actually worked for a former employer of mine in this industry. And they said very little because the human being is still a human being and the brain hasn’t evolved at the pace of technology. And there’s only four things that you really measure a sales person on, their activity. Now that can be the number of calls they make to the number of appointments, Team, Zoom, face-to-face, call it what you will. It’s the skills that they have and how they can imply them. As you said, experience plays a big part there, their knowledge, and their attitude. And I think those four things haven’t changed.

What probably has changed is the focus and the emphasis that we put on them, because you could take somebody who’s incredibly skilled, doesn’t have the knowledge, and they could ask a series of open-end questions, get the answers. They might not know what to do with those answers, but they can take them back. They could use generative AI. They could take it to a specialist in their business. But if they’ve got the skills to uncover and the questioning techniques, they can take that information away. I think the piece for me is the entry point into sales I’ll come back to is your activity. You can control that.

Someone used to say to me when I was in field sales, “What are you doing in the office?” I said, “I’m doing my admin.” “Well, there’s no one in this office going to buy anything from you, so you need to be out there.” Now clearly, that adage doesn’t work now because of Team and Zooms and how we are working now, but absolutely the amount of effort that you put in is ultimately a numbers game at the beginning, and that helps you refine your skills. The fear of rejection, once you’ve been rejected 1,000 times diminishes, you then start to understand patterns. Technology can help you to do that. Tools like Salesloft can look at it. You can have sentiment analysis. But ultimately I think having a human being there that understands the psyche of the person that you’re trying to work with the customer, that will enable you to progress far faster than you would do just working by yourself or looking at a YouTube video.

Richard Lane:

So I think another, again, tech-enabled, getting up to speed onboarding is such a key part of our business. We’re typically employing people in their first second jobs. That’s changing as well. But that’s often where people come to us. So how do we get them in a very short space of time to that conscious competence piece? And part of a solution for us using the Allego platform is being able to practice in a safe environment over and over and over again. I talk about the first 100 calls. It’s like once you’ve done your first 100 calls, you sort of feel okay about stuff. It becomes part of you and it doesn’t sound like you are reading off or trying to remember something. The really important thing about getting to that comfortable place is that you’re not spending your time thinking about what you’re saying,. You’re spending your time listening to what the other person is saying, and that’s when you have a fundamental change and shift in your practice and your craft, I think. So technology can really help that upskill piece as well, I think.

Mark Ash:

But what you’ve just said there, the four stages of learning, and when you move into conscious competence, you are effectively doing dot-to-dot. You’ve learned the tools, the techniques, but you have to constantly refer to them. The difference between that becoming a skill is practice. And once you practice it, you reaffirm it becomes a behavior. And I’ve worked with some incredibly talented people over the years and I’ve thought that they are absolutely awesome at certain things such as presenting on stage. And then, you go on a training course and they distill it down into the core components and they codify it and you think, “Oh, my goodness, I can absolutely learn how to do that.”

And at first, it’s incredibly painful and clunky and you practice and practice and practice. And again, back to the opening part of this conversation about resilience, too many people shy away from discomfort, and it’s only in those areas of discomfort that you will grow because the emotional resonance it has from being uncomfortable makes you want to move away from that with speed. And the sooner that you practice it and it becomes a skill and then a behavior, I think that is the piece that takes you away from it being uncomfortable.

Richard Lane:

Absolutely. And if I look back at my career, where have I learned the fastest? It’s when I’ve been under severe pressure, probably an unhappy customer or an expectant customer, and you are working hard you’ve ever worked before trying to think through how do you resolve this situation or create a new solution or do something different, and you come out stronger for it. So not pleasant at the time. I can remember a guy in procurement way back when I was just on my way up and I still remember his name and I remember how I felt when I heard his name, and I still have that feeling inside me. But I definitely learned from that process.

Mark Ash:

And I can still, one of my favorite stories from telesales is this absolute over of a man that made my life a misery. And my sales manager was relentless and he would not let me give up. And it’s one of the biggest accounts I could win in the industry. And I called this guy again and again and again, I tried every tactic. And after about 18 months, I got through and I got an appointment. And at the time, I was hitting the gym a lot. I was a big guy, 16, 17 stone. I was 6’2″, and I turned up expecting this man mountain to walk out like Jack Reacher, and he was the Tom Cruise version. He was a tiny little quiet guy, incredibly shy, and in my mind, I built him up to be an act wielding murderer. And he was just a nice, quiet, friendly guy that just because I hadn’t delivered a value to him, had no hesitation to put the phone down on me.

Again, living inside your head, not the best place to be. Practicing and reaffirming it gives you evidence. And then, once you have a bank of evidence, your brain is tricked because it says, “Well, hold on. The last time I did that I was successful, therefore I don’t need to fear it anymore.”

Richard Lane:

Yeah, absolutely. And just relive those successful moments and go again. You’re leading this nicely for me. But we’re going to go and talk a little bit now about professional persistence and the art of selling. So one thing we talk about looking for in people new to sales that come and join durhamlane is effort, attitude, and aptitude. And you’ve talked about activity, skills, knowledge, attitude, similar things there you’ve just mentioned really about persistence. And I think professional persistence is such an important piece and something I believe has always come naturally to me, but I don’t think it comes naturally to lots of people. It’s people think rightly or wrongly. Again, it’s in your head, but why would they want to take my call? I called them last week, why would I call them again?

And our first mantra is business fit, business value, developing long-term relationships. And I’ve always said, if you’ve got a reason as to why you’re calling and you believe you can add more value to their business, then they’re going to spend with you, why wouldn’t they want to speak to you? So that was just, again, a bit of a mindset shift for me and one that we train at durhamlane. So how have you seen that professional persistence and I appreciate links back into resilience as well some ways?

Mark Ash:

Well, firstly, I agree with you and I think I’ll give you two actionable insights here, Richard, a bog off, buy one, get one free, so to speak. My grandfather often said to me, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. And he was right. Now, he spent a lifetime in the military all the way around the world and some of the most hostile environments, and his life story was fascinating. Now, you don’t need to spend that time in the military to understand that. What you just talked about there is that challenge and adversity, they are our best teachers. You have to be brave. You have to seek it out. And if it scares you, you’re on the right track. If it’s comfortable and it’s easy and you are not teaching someone because teaching helps us to master it, if it’s a new skill for you and it’s comfortable and easy, it’s probably not developing you.

And what I learned from my first ever sales force, and this is one of the most powerful sentences I’ve ever been taught, if it’s to be, it’s up to me. Take responsibility for your actions. Don’t blame others. And when someone doesn’t make the decision that you want them to, don’t blame them. Think, what could I have done differently? And I’ve been that person that blamed others. I’ve been on a presentation skills workshop where I’ve said it was a load of rubbish and it was nonsensical and theoretical, and I’ve walked out. Why did I do that? Why did I act like a petulant spoiled brat? I did it because I was scared. I did it because I was petrified of standing up. And yet, the whole purpose of me being there was to improve the skill that I was fighting against.

What I still do to this day, and it doesn’t matter irrespective of level, some of the people that I work with and coach and mentor are directors is what could you have done differently. I call it holding the mirror up. If you look in the mirror and say you didn’t get the answer that you want, what could you have done differently? So for a salesperson, that person didn’t take my call. What time of day did you call them? Could they have been busy? Had you planned time in advance? Did you have a strong reason for the call? Did you have a gain led statement? Was there some benefit in there for them? And if you just distill it down and break it into each separate component, I think then you have the chance of success. But saying I failed is finite.

And back to what I mentioned about Winston Churchill, keep going, keep going until you deliver it. And then once you’ve found that format, you can repeat it. But look, we like talking and I like talking about a Japanese principle called kaizen or continuous improvement. Once you’ve got it, how can you make it better? And you used a football analogy at the start of the call. People like Roy Keane are famous. They win a trophy, they win the Premier League. They don’t go out and celebrate. Why? Because they’ve got the FA Cup. They win the FA Cup. They don’t go and celebrate. Why? Because they’ve got the European Cup.

And that can be unhealthy if you are continually having delayed gratification and you never celebrate your successes, but it’s good to actually say, “Okay, I’ve done something. Well, I’ll have, I think you said, 24 hours of celebration.” And then you set yourself another level, another level, and another level, and you get the marginal gains that take you forward. And there’s no accident that the person that coined that term, Dave Brailsford, is now in Manchester United, and he’s looking at the one percenters that give you those marginal gains to help restore that club to its formal glory.

Richard Lane:

To be honest, he’s probably looking for more than one percenters.

Mark Ash:

Touche.

Richard Lane:

I think he’s got his work cut out. But no, I think Dave Brailsford, I mean, I think that was such a clever move from Jim Ratcliffe. Bringing someone like Dave Brailsford in shows the intent behind getting this team back and this club back to where it should be, 100%. So some great actionable insight there. I love the idea, and there are so many metaphors for not giving up, light at the end of the tunnel, all of that sort of thing. And it’s why they’re there? Well, because they’re truisms as well in the fact that if you keep going one step at a time, what’s the next thing? What can I do? What happens next?

And I love the way you brought continual improvement into your craft because you keep going. You get something right, you do it again, but you’re not satisfied with that. It’s about what could I do differently and how could I make this more effective? So that’s really excellent learnings for our listeners. I’m going to lead us to the ask the expert moment, Mark. So we go out to our communities prior to any podcast that we record here on The Insiders. And we’ve got a question from Lucy, which I’ll just read out to you and be great to get your thoughts. But Lucy asks, “Looking back to when you were growing up, do you see any parallels between your role in sales now compared to back then?”

Mark Ash:

Great question, Lucy. Do I see parallels? Yes, I did. I had, as I said, a very humble upbringing. And if I wanted anything, then typically I had to find a way to get it myself unless it was was Christmas. And that really instilled a strong work ethic in me culminating and actually working three jobs per day at one stage whilst I was in the school holidays. And that enabled me to achieve what I wanted financially, i.e. a car, motorbike, pay for uni without debt. But actually, if I look at sales, then you can work hard. You don’t have to be good at what you do. But if you become a student of it and you look at it just as we’ve talked about there, if you understand, not just linear progression, how can I think about the problem? And I’ll give you a sporting analogy to help illustrate this point.

I’m an aspiring triathlete, swim, bike, run. I’m not great at running. I went to see a former Commonwealth Games champion, one of the best young runners of the world before she got injured. She gave me a lot of advice on running. None of it is running. So a run coach who was a run specialist gave me very expensive, privileged running advice. None of it was running to make me better at running. That’s my point about being a student of the art and looking around it. It doesn’t just mean, okay, well, I want to sell. I’m going to continually try and sell things more. However, your work ethic is really, really important. And you have to understand that things will go wrong and don’t over rotate on it. It serves no purpose. You have to pick yourself up and go again. That’s true in life as well as sales.

And understand everything happens for a reason, even if you don’t know what that reason is. So if you fail, what is the lesson from failure? And I am not an idiot, or hopefully not an idiot. My wife would say I am. But actually, if you look at it, it’s horrible to fail. Nobody wants to fail. I still dislike it. But then when you reflect on it, what has it taught me? And I think actually the last thing I’d say in response to Lucy’s question is, one thing I did learn with my upbringing, one of the things that it taught me is your attitude costs nothing and yet delivers everything.

The New Zealand All Blacks, they have the highest win rate of any professional sporting team in the world. They have two things in their mantra and their culture. One of them is sweep the sheds. It talks about being humble, treating others as you want to be treated. Don’t be afraid to do things yourself. And they have a no (beep) rule, which basically says, enjoy your time in the sun, but don’t get burnt. And I think actually for me, that’s the same in life as it is in sales. And that is what I learned from my upbringing.

Richard Lane:

Awesome. Well, what a great way to close out the episode there, Mark. Thank you so much. I’ve really enjoyed this. This is sort of my pet topic, right? So I love mindset, motivation, sales as a profession to be proud of, and I’m hoping that we’ve got some people inspired who are listening into The Insiders today. And then about professional persistence, because actually you don’t need to be the best, but you can become the best. No one starts off as-

Mark Ash:

Oh, I like that.

Richard Lane:

Just made that up. No one starts off as being the best at anything. You’ve got people with different levels of talent, but it’s the practice and the effort that goes into it that helps you to become the best. So loads of great insight. You’ve peppered the episode with actual insight and it’s been a real pleasure, Mark. So thank you. Thank you so much. We have one last task before we finish the episode, and that is to help us build out our Insider Spotify playlist. So we ask every guest to just pick a song. It doesn’t have to be work-related, it might just make you feel good, could be whatever. If there’s a story, then great. But have you had the chance to think about a track you’d like us to add to the what is becoming a very eclectic playlist?

Mark Ash:

Yeah. This for me was the biggest responsibility of the whole podcast. I’m mad keen on music and trying to find something that will please everyone isn’t going to happen. So I’ve been selfish. The tune that I’d add to the playlist is Kid Cudi, Pursuit Of Happiness, the Steve Aoki remix. Very important that you get the remix version. If you’ve got any young children, turn down the bit with swearing. But again, very, very apt from what we’ve been talking about today, Richard, and I think it sums it up nicely.

Richard Lane:

Brilliant. Okay, well look, we’ll get that added, Mark, and that’s going to add to the eclectic nature of that playlist for sure. So look, once again, on behalf of myself and our listeners, thanks so much for joining me on The Insiders.

Mark Ash:

And thanks very much for the invite and also a big shout-out to the team at durhamlane. You continue to impress, you continue to make a difference, so hats off to you all.

Richard Lane:

Oh, that’s brilliant. They’re going to have to listen to this episode now, Mark. And to you. Thanks as always for tuning into The Insiders. Please subscribe on your preferred podcasting site to ensure you’re notified of all new episodes as and when they’re published. And if you’d like to learn more about durhamlane and our unique method of selling at a higher level, the team that Mark has just shouted out as well, then please visit durhamlane.com for more information. Thanks again for listening. We’ll catch you in the next episode.

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