IAM1514- Coach Helps Sales Marketers Create Repeatable Patterns of Success

Ryan Dohrn is a 30-year global sales and marketing advisor to over 200 companies in 15 industries. He holds a Psychology of Leadership Certification from Cornell, has trained over 30,000 salespeople, and has been featured in USA Today, on CNN, and, on Forbes.com. Ryan is a multiple best-selling business book author, and Emmy winner, and his sales strategy ideas have impacted over half a BILLION dollars in sales. He is a proud military Dad and has been married for 26 years. Ryan loves good coffee, 80’s rock music, and seeing others succeed.

• CEO Story: Ryan was raised as a farm kid where he learned a good work ethic. He started in the media and marketing business. Got his entrepreneurial blood from his parents but his entrepreneurial spirit was really out of necessity. With his partner and wife behind his back, Ryan found his sweet spot and that is to help salespeople, marketers, and sales marketers. Not just to grow but also to retain customers.
• Business Service: Coaching. Sales and marketing advisor. Focusing on laying out the plan, creating repeatable patterns of success, and paying attention to things.
• Secret Sauce: Actively selling and running a business. Because some of the best advice comes from people who are actively selling on the streets right now.
• CEO Hack: Emails without proper timing, without subject lines and structure, are going to fail. Send it at the perfect time.
• CEO Nugget: Identify things that are absolutely random, and figure out whether to accentuate or eliminate them. Goals with mini-goals are just dreams.
• CEO Defined: Helping your team get to places that they only dream were possible.

Website: RyanDohrn.com

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00:24 – Intro

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkness values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO podcast.

00:51 – Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Ryan Dorn of ryandorn.com. Ryan, super excited to have you on the show.

01:00 – Ryan Dohrn

Hey, thanks for having me. Love to fulfill my mission of helping people take their entrepreneurship dreams to places they only dream possible.

01:08 – Gresham Harkless

Nice. I absolutely love that mission. And I know we were talking a little bit about how much you love entrepreneurship and some of the awesome things that you're doing. So before we jump in and do that, I want to read a little bit more about Ryan so you can hear about some of those awesome things. Ryan is a 30-year global sales and marketing advisor to over 200 companies in 15 industries.

He holds a psychology of leadership certification from Cornell and has trained over 30, 000 salespeople. Ryan has been featured in USA Today on CNN and on Forbes.com. He is a multiple best-selling book author, and Emmy winner, and his sales strategy ideas have impacted over half a billion dollars in sales. He's a proud military dad and has been married for 26 years. Ryan loves good coffee, 80s rock music, and seeing others succeed. So Ryan, super excited to have you on the show. Are you ready to rock and roll?

01:55 – Ryan Dohrn

Yeah, absolutely. We got to send this recording to my mom. That's like the best-read bio ever, Gresh. So you're gonna get props for that.

02:03 – Gresham Harkless

Hey, it's easy, it's easier to read. It's probably a lot harder to do all the awesome things you're doing. So I definitely appreciate you for doing it and making it You bet. Awesome. Awesome. Kick everything off. I want the clock here a little bit to get started. What I call so my story really began, I was an Iowa farm kid and I grew up on the farm.

02:18 – Ryan Dohrn

And so growing up on an Iowa farm, especially where you're raising pigs and corn and soybeans and all that. I established and was able to see a good work ethic from my mother and my father for quite some time. And then, interestingly enough, my dad went into the ministry and became a pastor. And so I was able to see my dad not only show me hard work but then also how to present to people and be in front of people. And so we'll pass a little virtual offering plate later to pay for the bills.

02:49 – Gresham Harkless

I'm just kidding.

02:49 – Ryan Dohrn

And yeah, that's exactly right. But I actually started really in the media and marketing business. And that's where I won the Miami award, which was very proud of, and some other awards in that regard and went from Iowa to Chicago and big Chicago guy and also a fan of blue, which I can say you're a fan of blue as well. And, so where my entrepreneurial spirit really came in, my parents were always doing entrepreneurial types of things. But where my spirit of entrepreneurship really came from was a lot of it out of necessity. I had a lot of bad bosses. I had some good ones, but some bad bosses along the way.

And someone once said to me, why are you working for somebody else? Why are you not running your own company? I thought, Oh, no, that's not me. I really can't do that. And so I took the leap of faith and I'm fortunate crash to have a wonderful partner in crime, my wife of 26 years. And she was always behind me saying, just go ahead, try it, give it a try, give it a try. And then it wasn't but 5 years ago, she came to me with an entrepreneurial idea. She said this is what I want to try. And who am I to deny that? I said, hey, why don't you give it a try? Why don't you give it a try?

So the biggest thing she and I do together is keep each other focused because I'm probably like you, Gresh. I got like a thousand ideas. I can barely sleep at night to hold them all in. But where I really found my sweet spot is helping salespeople, helping marketers, and sales marketers. And that really has been my sweet spot over the course of the last 15, 20 years, 30 years in the business. But I love what I do. I'm blessed to be busy. And I'm really thrilled today to be able to share with some of your folks how we can grow these customers of ours to spend more money with us. But more importantly, retain these customers for a lifetime. You can sell them all day long, but if you don't retain them for a lifetime, friends out there, I'm telling you, you're missing out. Retention really is the key to success in any business.

04:34 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. And I love hearing your story and everything that has led you to kind of get started. I imagine that you've seen and been on the, I almost feel like a lot of times with sales and building relationships, It's a lot of times like farming. So I imagine you actually having that hands-on approach probably helped out a lot as far as perspective. But I imagine too, just understanding that, the sales from probably sometimes the journey, even the relationships, they don't come overnight. Just like if you plant a seed, it takes the farming of it, the taking of it to actually see it, you know, blossom into the awesome things it could be.

05:06 – Ryan Dohrn

Yeah, for sure. You know, the nurturing of a client, of a prospect, of a potential mate, nurturing of your children, all of that is really important. Now, during COVID, and the major, you know, the flux of the pandemic or the middle of the pandemic did lead me through to a little bit of understanding, which is kind of why I wrote my new book. And that is why some things changed. And what really changed is that a lot of people became accustomed to not seeing us face to face, yet they were still buying.

The other thing, though, that I noticed is how emotional people got. It used to be that logical people were everywhere, and if you told them 2 and 2 is 4, They're like, great. Now you tell them 2 and 2 is 4. They're like, really? Prove that to me. Who else has said that it's 4? So I think there was some things that changed in the business world during the pandemic that are important to talk about because the sales business has changed a little bit. There was a time, when you might be too young, Gresh, to remember this.

There was a time before the Internet when people only had salespeople to talk to, to learn about products and services. Now people are coming to us. They're 70% of the way down the road. They actually, you know, there was a study done not that long ago. I think it was SAP. 89 percent of people out there, buyers would rather go to the dentist than talk to a salesperson. I don't mind the dentist, but I'd rather talk to a salesperson than get my teeth drilled. So I think a lot of things have changed out there. You do need to nurture, but the speed of sales has actually picked up with the advent of technology.

And I think there's some old school sales reps that just don't want to get on board with that. They keep wanting to do it the old farmer way. We need to be a hunter by nature and have some farmer instincts as well. Otherwise, we might get left behind and that's a little scary.

06:57 – Gresham Harkless

Nice. I absolutely love that hunter by nature and with some farmer instincts. So I absolutely love that, you know, a lot of what you're doing is helping to empower these people to make the impact that is ultimately trying to create the solution to get into the hands of the people that can actually use that. So I wanted to drill down a little bit more, hear a little bit more about your book, and also hear a little bit more about how you work with clients. How do you make that impact for them to help them to be a little bit more hunters with a little bit of farming mentality?

07:24 – Ryan Dohrn

Yeah, for sure. I think some of the things that we have to do together when I'm working with a client, I'm working with you, whatever the circumstances are, is we have to set some things that we feel are natural aside based upon the facts or the field that we're playing on. A wise man once said to me, you're nobody unless you got at least 10 to 20 haters. Right. So I think I've got 30 now, so I'm good. But what I try to do is challenge the status quo because I do want to nurture.

I do want to be a farmer. But when I sit down with clients and we lay out their plans, what is your sales and marketing plan? Millennials have made me not only a better salesperson but a better manager and a better leader. Why? Because they're so transparent with everything. They don't want, don't hide Ryan, don't hide behind I'll call you in 24 hours. Give me what I want. Be transparent in my pricing. Some things you can work really hard at, but if you're doing the wrong thing, no matter how hard you work at it, it's just not going to work out for you.

So my biggest focus with clients is laying out a plan, creating repeatable patterns of success, paying attention to things, and just recognizing that what's in a book, my book or anybody's book, may not apply to your business and know when to find a different coach or find a different mentor. I think that's important.

08:46 – Gresham Harkless

Nice, I truly appreciate you breaking that down and how you kind of work through it and coach the clients that you have. And so would you consider that? I think that I feel like you have an ability to be able to kind of dist principles of these things kind of take them and get Do you feel like that's p sauce and something that makes you unique?

09:06 – Ryan Dohrn

Well, it really sets me across as all the time and I still actively run businesses. Now I'm not hating on the people that I've listened to numerous of your podcasts, by the way. And I'm not hating on people who are out of the business and still giving advice. I'm not hating on them because I think they bring good things to the table. But how do I train and teach and coach people about how to survive the pandemic or our current level of economic uncertainty in the country if you actually aren't going through it right now? You know, it's sort of like people to teach. You need to ask the 10 tall questions on every sales call.

Well, what if the 10 tall questions don't apply now that someone has lost a loved one to COVID, lost their business to COVID, or has had their business severely suffer because of COVID-19? People who can't find employees during this time of economic uncertainty, can't feel the gas in their car without their wallets being empty. You kinda gotta be in it. So I feel like my differentiating factor is I'm in it every day and I'm going to stay in it until I retire.

And then when I retire, I'm going to do something else because I believe the best advice, not all advice, but then some of the best advice comes from people that are actively on the street selling right now. And that's why as much as writing books, it's tough. I mean, it's it's hard after like 4 editors. I still find spelling errors, you know, it makes you crazy. But it's important to be active and involved if you're going to give really good advice, in my opinion.

10:31 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, I absolutely love that. Would you consider that to be what I like to call a CEO nugget, which is a little bit more of a word of wisdom or a little bit more of a hack or nugget or something that you feel makes you more effective and efficient? Do you think it's going back to that core and being able to kind of figure out where that is and kind of lean more into that?

10:48 – Ryan Dohrn

Well, it is, but it's also recognizing patterns that work and repeating them, but then also looking and recognizing patterns that don't work and stopping people from repeating them. The nature of the human, because we've been taught since birth, 2 big things, work hard, you can achieve anything, and don't talk to strangers, right? Okay, so I hope you were taught that, let's do those things. Is that a little CEO nugget would be, to identify those things that are absolutely random and figure out what you can do to either accentuate them or eliminate those things?

But we do not do a good job of repeating things that work. And we've got to identify those things. Email subject lines that work, rinse, repeat, things said on a sales call that work, rinse, and repeat. Success stories that make a client go, wow, rinse and repeat. But when you tell a success story and nothing happens, like when you tell the joke and you have to end the joke by saying, you know, you had to be there. OK, then that's a bad joke. You shouldn't say that. Right. So for me, a real CEO nugget is just to keep your eyes open and look for things you can repeat, look for things that are not working, and get rid of or make a plan to get rid of those things. But the other thing is goals without many goals are just dreams.

And every CEO needs to need goals in place for themselves, and their employees, but you've got to have 810 mini goals below that big goal because big goals, quite honestly, without a plan, without mini goals, they're just dreams. And we're in the business of turning dreams into realities. And so we've got to always be kind of thinking about that.

12:18 – Gresham Harkless

Absolutely. I love that. And I wanted to ask you now one of my favorite questions, which actually is around what we kind of touched on, the CO hack. But I actually wanted to hear if there was something maybe potentially from your book that you feel might be something that, you know, is a really good walk away, something that we can all kind of take into account to leave us more effective and efficient.

12:38 – Ryan Dohrn

Yeah, timing and emails are everything. Emails without proper timing, without proper subject lines and structure are gonna fail. I call it the rule of 3 and 3. Maybe we could call it Uncle Ryan's rule of 3 and 3. 3 words in the subject line, 3 sentences max in that email. And then send it at the perfect time. If you're a 5 a.m. Person, don't be sending emails to people at 5 a.m. You send it later and send it at the most appropriate time. I have found 11 15 a.m. And 3:15 p.m. Typically gets me a better result, on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, there is not a lot of selling on Mondays and Fridays. And so for me, I try to focus on the 3 and 3 formats and then send those emails at the perfect time. Knowing your email technology is super important. And it's something that there's a lot of plugins and tools that you can attach to it that can help you be a lot more efficient.

13:29 – Gresham Harkless

Nice, I absolutely love that. And so I want to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. We're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on this show. So, Ryan, what does being a CEO mean to you?

13:40 – Ryan Dohrn

To me, it is all about helping your team get to places personally and professionally that they only dreamed were possible. And, you know, you can be a visionary and that's one of the strongest leadership types is being a visionary. If you actually know what it is, you can't be a visionary and then, then be worried about how it is that somebody paints that wall when you say, I just need that wall painted visionaries or people that have the guts to say I need that wall painted and trusting their team to get it done correctly. People that I partner with or that I've led over the years, they'd at least go to the ledge with me and say, okay, Ryan, now why are we here? I truly believe if I jumped, there are many that would say, he jumps, so must be okay.

And they would go too. But at least I got them to walk to the edge with me. And I'll briefly share this with you. I used to take a Post-it note and I'd write little nice things to people after a long day. Hey, great job on that proposal. Thanks for being there for me on this and that. And I would leave those Post-it notes on people's desks or monitors. And a woman who, unfortunately, had to retire from some medical issues. She came to me on the last day of her exit interview and she opened up a folder that had all those Post-it notes. And I can't talk about it in too much detail because I get really emotional about it.

She still calls me boss to this day when I see her. She says, hey boss, how are you doing? And I think that that's a real ultimate sign of respect in a professional relationship when someone, even after they're gone, never asked her to call me boss. She just calls me boss because that's a level of respect that she had for me and how I impacted her life.

15:16 – Gresham Harkless

Ryan, truly appreciate that definition. And of course, I appreciate your time even more. So what I want to do now is pass you the mic so to speak just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know and of course, how best people can get a hold of you to get a copy of your book find about all the awesome things that you're working on.

15:31 – Ryan Dohrn

So if you're buying the book on Amazon Audible or Barnes and Noble or whatever, just know that it's not going into my pocket. It's going to feed those other families. The one I really love to do is speak at sales meetings and sales conferences. I love management conferences and leadership conferences. Reach out to me, Ryan Dorn, D-O-H-R-N, RyanDorn.com. I love that kind of thing because when I can motivate a group and get up there the way that my daddy did and really motivate a group to do great things, I feel like I'm accomplishing the mission of why I was put here on this great earth. And I really thank you, Gresh, for what you're doing. The content's amazing. The nation you're building is amazing. And if we all stick in it together, I think we'll get through it together.

16:10 – Gresham Harkless

Yes, absolutely. And I love that you mentioned that. We, of course, will have your links and information in the show notes. And I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

16:17 – Ryan Dohrn

Thanks. Thanks so much for having me. Appreciate you very

16:19 – Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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