Announcer: Welcome to behind the mic presented in part by CAPS, the Canadian Association of Professional Speakers. This podcast is dedicated to recognizing excellence in speaking through fascinating stories and interesting conversations with the people who make the speaking world come alive. Now please welcome your behind the mic hosts, Roxanne Derhodge and Carl Richards.

Roxanne Derhodge: Everyone, it's Roxanne Derhodge. Thanks for hanging out with us again for the Behind the Mic podcast. We have a special guest that is joining us today. And of course, I have my lovely cohost, Carl Richards, and that's gonna tell you a little bit more about Jackie Reinforth, who is a hot in high performance sales and training. So Carl, tell us a little bit more about Jackie.

Carl Richards: I appreciate that, Roxanne, how lovely and co host goes together with how you introduce me. It makes me feel so good. Yes, our guest is phenomenal. Jackie Rainforth is a force to be reckoned with in business growth and high performance sales. A global award winning sales leadership and business growth strategist, she has earned recognition as a LinkedIn top 500 influencer and top voice thought leader.

Carl Richards: Named the Rainmaker by her peers, Jackie has delivered nonstop record breaking performance in every role she's ever had. With decades of award winning success in sales, leadership, and business growth, she has transformed teams, skyrocketed revenue, and built a reputation as one of the most powerful and results driven sales strategists in the industry. She helps businesses boost productivity, build high performance teams, and drive real measurable results. She's a member of CAPS. That's why she's here and we're so glad she's joining us today from Calgary.

Jackie Rainforth: You bet. You bet.

Carl Richards: Awesome. Jackie, welcome to Behind the Mic.

Jackie Rainforth: Well, thank you. Thanks for having me. I'm so excited. Love CAPS. Love CAPS.

Carl Richards: Loving CAPS is good. We love CAPS too.

Roxanne Derhodge: Yes, we do. Yes, we do.

Carl Richards: I'm excited to dive into this conversation.

Roxanne Derhodge: So tell us, now that we're talking about CAPS, let's jump into and you've been your business is how old now, Jackie?

Jackie Rainforth: Like, how old? How old? I'm old.

Roxanne Derhodge: Now how old are you? How old is the how long have you been a That was

Jackie Rainforth: I started I started as a Fast Track member actually back in I think it was gosh 02/2024 before COVID. Anyway, that's when I joined. But I went through the program and it was phenomenal when it was still live and it was phenomenal. I enjoyed absolutely every minute of it.

Roxanne Derhodge: So, yeah. So, you know, you've done so much starting off and obviously I'm going to say, you know, your name of your book is

Jackie Rainforth: A Guide to Superstar Selling.

Roxanne Derhodge: Superstar Selling. So like, how does one decide that they're going to grow up and be a badass at selling? What path did you take to kind of start into selling?

Jackie Rainforth: Well, you know, it was that old adage that, oh, you've got a great personality. You should be in sales. I had a boss that said that to me. Unfortunately. Yeah, I had a great personality, but I wasn't so good in sales.

Jackie Rainforth: And I went out there knocking on doors and I was horrible. I just admitted that to him just this year, but was actually, I was going out knocking on doors and, and I really wasn't very good. And it, my self esteem started to crater. Everything was really bad. And I ended up just hiding out at my house every day, going and watching TV.

Jackie Rainforth: And I realized, and I ended up quitting the job in shame actually. And I realized very quickly that I needed training because you can't wing it. You just, you really do need training. So I took one of the big courses and you learn the scripts and if you say this, they can, they'll say that. And then you say this and they'll say that.

Jackie Rainforth: I get back out there and I have a speech called the sharks and the guppy. The sharks ate the guppy and that was me. And I realized that scripts don't work either. So what I did was I created really simple processes for myself, like really simple things that I, that were easy to remember, retain and implement out in the field when you are so nervous in front of that client because you are. And it's the left brain, right brain.

Jackie Rainforth: I use neuroscience and psychology and all those things when I'm selling. And what happened was I realized that they were really effective. And for years, I was like top performer at every company I ever worked at because these processes were so simple. They were repeatable and I could just follow them in my head as I was moving along. And over the, when I owned my own sales agency years later, I used those processes for training staff and they too were super successful.

Jackie Rainforth: And that's when I knew I had something really great. And that's my Selling Me Simple system.

Carl Richards: Yeah. It certainly sounds like something phenomenal. When I was coming up as a broadcaster, I had a mentor who said everything is sales, absolutely everything, which didn't make me feel good because I just wanted to be on the radio and be a talking head. But I've learned over the years that it is about sales, is it or that everything is sales rather and if you're married you're a real good salesperson because you've convinced someone to live with you for their entire life. So that's very cool.

Jackie Rainforth: You were a brilliant man. Yes, yes, brilliant.

Roxanne Derhodge: On Valentine's At

Carl Richards: the recording of this, yes, February 14 among two ladies. I have to charm them both. But let me ask you this question. Is it people have a, is it the block that people have with sales? Because I've also discovered that when I go into sales conversations now, I don't even call them that.

Carl Richards: I call them service conversations. I'm here to serve, I'm here to be of service, I'm not here to sell you something. Do we get caught up here with the sales or the selling mentality?

Jackie Rainforth: Yeah, absolutely. It's all mindset. It's well, and it depends upon who the person is, where they're coming from, but yeah, most people you say sales and people just shake in their boots, right? Yeah. Fear.

Jackie Rainforth: And here's why. Because we've all had that bad sales experience. We've all had someone, right? We've all been in the furniture store. Oh, hey, may I help you today?

Jackie Rainforth: No, talk to the hand. I don't need help, right? And we've all had that experience and nobody wants that. You say sales and people, their backs go up. Or the other thing is that I've met professionals who have gone from job to job to job because they fear cold calling because they've never been taught how to do it well or to overcome fear.

Jackie Rainforth: And part of the program that I do is I work with people to overcome their fear first because it's so important. And one of the other things I do is I deal with emotional intelligence. And that's another thing. How do you build those really strong relationships? How do you that again, another thing that I that I do a little bit differently and part of the neuroscience, the brain.

Jackie Rainforth: And you know how the brain works? If you know that you go to right brain and that is your motion brain and if you're sitting in and you're thinking, oh my gosh, I just said that I did the wrong thing and oh my gosh and you're giving away the bank and you're like in absolute crazy zone or if you can see in that left frame where you're on call and selective and you can just remember those simple processes. It's like okay. Sometimes it's recognizing knowing those things. Make all the difference in the world.

Jackie Rainforth: That's how you perceive it. You're right. Servicing. I'm not selling. And I try to do it so

Carl Richards: that people

Jackie Rainforth: know they're not selling. They're just offering. And if it's a fit, it works. If it isn't a fit, it's great. It was great speaking and hopefully I can help you somewhere else down the road.

Roxanne Derhodge: So you leverage these qualities into doing a lot more work other than sales. You work with now within corporations and we were chatting before we got online, and you talk a lot about some of the work that you're doing within corporations. And I when I think of I think it's the word selling that makes everybody cringey. Right? But because really, when I think about it and when I'm meeting someone new, when I was younger, it was like and I started off in real estate, by the way, so I should give context when I was 21.

Roxanne Derhodge: And I grew up in a sales family. But what I realized was and then you go into these structured you got to do this and this the objection, and then you and I'm like, oh, my head would want it to blow up. And then I would think back, and I would think it was just about just laying back and this like, out what is Jackie really about? She's bubbly, and she talks a lot, and uses her hands like I do or whatever. And then once I lean back, then I start to realize, well, I'm not trying to sell somebody a house.

Roxanne Derhodge: I'm trying to sell them the experience of what it might be like if they could put their family in that home. And then that, even though I was young, I started to realize that relatively quickly. So I'm just thinking about you kind of then using your skill and your ability and then you start to work in corporations. Tell us how you transcended and moved those skills over into working with leaders and their teams.

Jackie Rainforth: Well, thank you. And you're right. It is exactly what you were talking about, Roxanne. It's It's really about getting to know the person and finding out more about them. Right?

Jackie Rainforth: And that's exactly what it is. What happened was as I've moved along, people have asked for more because they've realized that I don't just come from selling. I've run my own company, a very successful company in the construction industry, and I've been a director of sales and marketing and I have all these skills. And they're like, can you do a little more? I've always looked at things from if I'm having a problem with it or if I'm experiencing that, the people must be as well.

Jackie Rainforth: And again, that's where the same thing came up with the selling. And what I've found and what I'm seeing out there is that there's a huge shift towards entrepreneurism within corporations and companies where silos are being presented, where they're seeing that this it's just rigid, the old rigid hierarchies are existing. And people are coming and saying, Hey, Jackie, we want more entrepreneurial culture within our companies. We're seeing too many silos. Need more team building.

Jackie Rainforth: We need more communication. We need more of that innovative disruption happening. Help us with that. Can you bring more of that? Just some of that entrepreneurial principles to our organization.

Jackie Rainforth: And because there's a they need that for companies to stay. And this is where the sixth part comes in. Companies to remain leaders for them to be. Leaders in their industry to be the go to companies to be innovators, they have to stay creative, they have to stay innovative, and they have to stay on top. And in order to do that, they need that creativity.

Jackie Rainforth: And creativity comes from their people and it comes from their clients. If you don't have great communication and collaboration and all those touch points that you were talking about, Coral, where because every single touch point within your organization is a sales touch point, but it's also that opportunity for innovation and creativity. And if that is rigid and not open with that entrepreneurial mindset that we're talking about, you're not going to get that. And companies are going to be a Boltbuster's and BlackBerry's and, know, Kiosk and Sears. That's what's going to happen because they're not going to be adaptable and flexible at that job.

Carl Richards: Do you find that I'm glad we're talking about this because do you find that those rigid silos are coming down? That they are, you know, making way for that innovation, for that entrepreneurship? Or is there some resistance? We've been a company for forty, fifty, sixty years. This is the way we've done things.

Carl Richards: We've been successful. We don't want to upset the apple cart. Yeah. Okay. There's some things we're going to do differently because it's 2020 at the recording of this.

Carl Richards: It's 2025. Are those silos coming down or is there still some resistance to that?

Jackie Rainforth: There's always resistance. Always resistance. There's always. If an employee has been at a company longer than ten years, you're going to get resistance. It's not why should we change?

Jackie Rainforth: It's always been this way. But more than that, bigger the ship, harder it is to change course. But what you're seeing is the real visionary leaders. And this is, I'm doing this more and more and more. I do a True Colors, I'm an advanced facilitator for True Colors, but I've adapted the program.

Jackie Rainforth: I've expanded it. And what I'm seeing is, emotional intelligence, communication, team building, servant leadership, all of those things, people are starting with that and then they're expanding because they're trying to get their leadership to see that it needs to be an open collaborative team. It needs to be open collaborative communication and where those silos are breaking down, but it's starting at the grassroots level. Yeah, it depends on and I see some pretty cool companies where I like I I was dealing with one and it was like magical and I know that sounds crazy. Like magical is kind of a weird word to use for this big corporate company.

Jackie Rainforth: It was because you could all the things that you hear about that you read about from modern leadership. It was bad. And it is. I was just like, oh, it was great. So it is happening.

Jackie Rainforth: It is happening.

Roxanne Derhodge: And I think when I listen to you, really, what we're hearing is we could start off as, like you said, it's about people buying in to who you are and what you're about in reference to the vision, the mission and all those things. And if people are disconnected and siloed, which is really what we're talking about, right? Kind of the corporate structure with the top down kind of bit, which says, just do it this way, and then you have your EVP, and then your director gives you direction from there, and then you're and everybody's supposed to flow. But, really, what you're talking about is in desiloing, you're creating servant leadership, which is I'm gonna I'm gonna lead with you. I may be your frontline, you know, marketing sales coordinator, but I'm gonna be, you know, kind of rubbing shoulders with the EVP of marketing, and we could work together to create something that's gonna be beneficial for the customer.

Roxanne Derhodge: So I hear what you're saying that it's magical when you see it happen. But if you do have someone that is stuck, kind of deconstructing that for them is sometimes difficult. Yeah.

Jackie Rainforth: And it's about the leaders of the company have to have the vision and truly believe in it to create it. And it's then about creating that psychological safety within the company so that people do feel safe to share their ideas and creativity and do feel safe to, to work together and come together. And I, this company that was so cool, they brought in 25 leaders, did not know each other. And usually I start a training program and people are pretty quiet. They're not, they're not like opening up and it's, it takes a bit for people to start opening up in a training session and these guys, they didn't know each other and they were like, cocking away and and vulnerable.

Jackie Rainforth: Vulnerable. Right from the get go. And I thought why is the word magical? But it was pretty impressive. I was blown away.

Jackie Rainforth: It was they were were doing it. They were doing

Roxanne Derhodge: Yeah. So you said you're doing some work in Paris soon. Tell us a little bit about kind of the roles that you're playing. Obviously, you're getting down and dirty and with those teams, but you're also doing different things in that you're doing consulting, but you're also speaking and training. So tell us a little bit about kind of the array of services that you offer out onto the marketplace.

Jackie Rainforth: Well, basically, there's seven steps and everything from building my performance sales teams all the way and helping them find the right people, select the right people, maybe fix it the wrong people, all the way through to for some companies it's bringing on digital transformation in terms of social selling. Do they know how to do that? A lot of companies don't have that. They don't know how to brand or market or bring, expose themselves in terms of the social. Like social is a whole other beast.

Jackie Rainforth: It's like, for a lot of companies, it's like, AI, what's AI? How do you do that? Like, what's social? How do you do that? Facebook?

Jackie Rainforth: LinkedIn? Right? Like, it's a whole other business and time. Oh my gosh. Right?

Jackie Rainforth: You know what's happening? There are some companies that are going to be hiring and this is a movement. LinkedIn has said that there is going to be happening in the future. Where they're going to be hiring influencers as full time sales people or like full time people within their organizations? Like that's how that's where social is moving.

Jackie Rainforth: And even though we've all had a zillion of those emails coming in where they're constantly at you and you're like going delete, delete, delete, delete. That is still working really well. And again, how do you shift from doing organic going out and making all those cold calls to doing it digitally where people are going delete, delete, delete, delete. Right? How do you make those work?

Jackie Rainforth: That kind of stuff all the way through to customer service and all those touch points that you're talking about. Mean, just, yeah, there's a ton of services there that I do. And through to leadership development, how do we create the team building, the emotional intelligence, all of the business growth areas that we can touch on. There's a whole ton of them. Thank you

Carl Richards: for It's funny how I mentioned that the social aspect too because, and I know we don't necessarily want to go down a rabbit hole about this, but that must change the sales process like you say because it, I mean is it cold calling? In a way, but there's a process and if you skirt too far from it, not to make everything a process, but if you skirt too far from it, you're just going to get that delete, delete, delete, delete like you said. And then there's a, I think we're at this time where people want that, they at least want to know that you know their name, they want that personal hey Jackie, found you on LinkedIn as opposed to just hey person number x3. Want that connection before they can do before they even consider doing business with you regardless what it is.

Roxanne Derhodge: Isn't that so true, though, Carl? Right? I mean, you you slow down. I'll give you an example. Jackie, you're a LinkedIn expert, so you you can relate to this.

Roxanne Derhodge: I had somebody reach out to me once, and they in my profile on my website, as a child, they called me Chatterbox. You imagine that, Jackie, right? Like, they called me Chatterbox. Can you believe that? So anyway, the person read my entire thing, which is a little bit lengthy.

Roxanne Derhodge: And in the header, in the first introduction, they mentioned something about being a chatterbox and what would that must have been fun, kind of. And immediately, guess what? I was like, I'm back to that little chatterbox at four years old returning the email saying, oh my god, yeah, blah, blah, that engagement. Right? So we do want to still be noticed and going back again to that whole element, like you said.

Roxanne Derhodge: Right? We want to be seen. We don't want to be in that big fray of the bulk emails or whatever. We need to stand out. Tell us a little bit about maybe that part that you've done with LinkedIn and that will probably give people a kind of a well rounded sense of what you're doing out there.

Jackie Rainforth: Yeah. Personalization is huge on every single step of the way. Personalization is huge. And people need that interaction. They're tired of being pitched right out of the gate.

Jackie Rainforth: They, you know, people are done. Can tell when it's just an AI message. And you're being vetted. Now here's the thing. People want to see really in-depth value coming from you.

Jackie Rainforth: So if you have something, so it's not just the interaction on LinkedIn, but they want to see what you're putting out there. They're vetting you before they buy from you. They want to see the type of stuff that you're putting online. They want to see the stuff that you're giving away as either an opt in or what you've got for blogs, what you've the information that you have on your website. 70% of the sales purchase is done.

Jackie Rainforth: They've researched you, right? They're no they've done it. And so they're vetting you now before they before you even interact with them. But if you are just doing cold calling per se through LinkedIn, yes, you do want to personalize it. You do want to find something.

Jackie Rainforth: You do want to find something. You want to find a connection you want. Hopefully you can get someone to introduce you or you can find an industry thing or some sort of commonality. Like you said, at least reading your profile is important. How many people say, I just know a plumbing company.

Jackie Rainforth: Do know how many people are pitching me on? Would you want to carry this line of kitchen sinks? And I'm like, oh my gosh. Hello. Haven't done that in ten years but okay.

Jackie Rainforth: Yeah. I know. It's like. Selling has certainly changed and personalization is one of those factors.

Carl Richards: The other thing that I find very interesting too, and I've experienced this and this might change the sales game or certainly our response to it as this continues to evolve is, I didn't realize this, people are using AI as a search tool. I had somebody actually reach out to me when I asked her, how did you find me? Because I had no idea how she found my business. How did you find me? She said, I found you through ChatGPT and I thought, what?

Carl Richards: So people are using those tools available to them to do research, that's going to make some changes or certainly rethink how we're playing the sales game too. People are leveraging AI even differently than we were even five years ago.

Jackie Rainforth: Okay. So Carl, now you brought up something. So, right now, I'm so great. Okay. So, this SEO, right?

Jackie Rainforth: And. Yeah. How do you use your keywords to get into the Google search? It's not Google search anymore. How do you, I'm investigating.

Jackie Rainforth: How do you get into the chat GPTs and the Geminis and that's where I'm looking right now. I'm like, oh, that's how I thought. That's what I got me all going.

Roxanne Derhodge: I know. No. Jackie's gonna go home and write a whole book on this thing now. I can see it.

Jackie Rainforth: I I could write books like crazy and I feel bad because I have all these books started and I haven't finished them because I keep I'm so busy. But yeah that's the thing how do you get on to chat GPT's link now. So now chat has this new thing where you can actually create like PDFs and those PDFs you can share and those shares you can actually start using those shares to get now float on to chat and get. Oh yeah, that's our big thing. So I don't know if you know about the chat, but you have the paid and unpaid and you can get answers in my voice now.

Jackie Rainforth: We've got it trained. So if we use the vocal, it'll answer back in Jackie's voice and it does it all. Everything. Love it. I started using it when it was a prototype before it was even on the market because I had a great coach for its sakes down in The US and he started me on it but anyway, yeah, love love all this stuff and it's more than that, Carl.

Jackie Rainforth: Okay. So this is what this is how it's working. And this is why you are getting bombarded. So navigator and catch EPT and there are other things. There are other different search engines, But they're all and your CRM.

Jackie Rainforth: They are all being piggyback together. So there's probably probably use four or five to do lead gen together. Software programs together. To do that, to send out all those threads. That's how much they're all being piggyback together because here's the thing, LinkedIn limits how many how many invites you can send out or how many of those you can send out a day.

Jackie Rainforth: It's maximum 30 usually or depending. So you have to be careful, but they use multiple.

Roxanne Derhodge: Wow. It's showing you the rapidity at which the environment is changing because of technology and really, to some degree, I think you have to keep up so that you are keeping current. But, again, speaking to the element that you can't get lost in your in who you are by that frontward facing space that you're putting out to the world. Right? You have to make sure that you're constantly in line with the brand and you're using these things as enhancements versus it taking over and just, oh, Roxanne went to the beach and she just hit a switch kind of thing and it's all going to get done for you, which is the other part that some people think that they can do.

Roxanne Derhodge: And we know in fact that's not the case. Yeah.

Jackie Rainforth: And I see a lot of small to medium, small enterprise anyway. And they think, oh, it's okay. It's not a big deal. And I don't need to do that stuff or I don't need to know or Yeah, you do. It's happening.

Jackie Rainforth: It's changing so quickly. You do need to keep up. You do need to. And I know it's, I mean, hey, I am. School with my TV clickers, like still my kids still laugh at me because I'm like, Oh brother, Netflix goes down and I'm like, Ah, which one do I use?

Jackie Rainforth: But it's a learning process. It's still something you have to kind of force yourself to do. And yeah, and that's why things like CAPS are so great because you can go and you can learn and taking those courses and picking those webinars and learning. And again, that's part of that entrepreneurial mindset. You just can't go to work, forget about it and think, oh, I'm happy in my job.

Jackie Rainforth: Things are fine. Companies are looking for that entrepreneurial learning, that continual growth, that continual learning mindset. And that's where things are changing.

Carl Richards: I love it. Jackie, sorry, go ahead Roxanne.

Roxanne Derhodge: So Carl, what I wanted to reflect on, and then I'd like you to wrap up is that clearly, if you think of Jackie, who has been with us now since 2016, the exposure, you get to hang out with amazing people like us, like the Jackies of the world when you join or consider CAPS. So I just think that this has been an amazing process just to listen to your path and kind of where your passion of sales has brought you to. And I'd like Carl to kind of wrap up and tell everyone where they can come hang out with us anytime they want in any province. So Carl, why don't you wrap up and then we'll talk to everybody at another time.

Carl Richards: Yeah, absolutely. Just before I do that, Jackie, how can people reach out to you? What's the best way for them to connect with you?

Jackie Rainforth: Oh, LinkedIn, JackieRainforce. There you go. Worksor rainmakersgroup. Ca, but it's rainmakerswith an S group. Ca, JackieRrainmakersgroup.

Jackie Rainforth: Ca. Thank you.

Carl Richards: I love it. Thank you so much, Jackie Rainforest. It's been an amazing conversation today. So much insight there. Might have to have a conversation with you Deb about how that person found me through chat GPT because it still blows my mind that they did.

Carl Richards: Anyways, another day, another time virtual coffee. CAPS is a phenomenal organization. That's how we're all connected is through CAPS, the Canadian Association of Professional Speakers. If anything you've heard today has tweaked you or inspired you to take a dive or figure out what's the next step for you in your speaking journey, your leadership journey, whatever it is, CAPS has ample opportunities for that. Canadianspeakers dot org Roxanne, did I get it right?

Roxanne Derhodge: You did, I love it.

Carl Richards: Canadianspeakers.org, we have chapters all across Canada. We have national conventions every year. We have events happening every month right across the country. It's a phenomenal organization. Check us out and if you'd like to find out if this is for you, visit the chapter that's closest to you.

Roxanne Derhodge: Canadian Take care, everyone. Jackie, amazing meeting you virtually, and hopefully, we'll see you in Halifax at our Euron event. Take care, everyone, and we will chat with you

Jackie Rainforth: soon. Bye bye.

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