All sales start with a conversation, whether that happens over the phone, in person, or through email or direct mail. When it’s your job to start the conversation that will lead to a sale, you definitely want to begin with the right words. Today’s guest knows a lot about which words will best help you approach those conversations.

Phil M. Jones is a professional sales coach and speaker. He’s also an author whose books Exactly What to Say and Exactly How to Sell provide the phrases and frameworks that can help demystify the sales process and increase confidence and sales success. Listen to the episode to hear what Phil has to say about the importance of word choice, the steps between a conversation and a sale, and the best kind of framework for a cold call.

Episode Highlights:

• The worst time to think about what you’re going to say
• The importance of word choice
• How Phil came up with the phrases in his book Exactly What to Say
• How the phrases from Phil’s book can be applied in both spoken and written conversations
• The steps between a conversation and a sale
• Sales scenarios where Phil’s phrases and formulas can be applied
• Why you should avoid asking if now is a good time to talk when calling prospects
• How to get to the heart of the conversation right from the start
• Why it helps to have a framework for sales conversations
• Why you should schedule a next action before you hang up the phone
• The framework that works best for a cold call
• Why it’s important to practice these conversational frameworks

Resources:

Phil M. Jones

Phil’s Website

Exactly What to Say

Exactly How to Sell

Phil’s You Tube Channel

Transcript:

Marylou: Hey everybody, it’s Marylou Tyler. This week’s guest, I have been following Phil forever! I’m so excited that he’s on the show. He’s just so wonderful in all things sales. I really didn’t know where to pick.

With his permission, we’re going to talk about two of his books. He has two great books out there. You guys need to go to Amazon right now and pick them up. First one is Exactly What to Say and the second one is Exactly How to Sell. Those are two of many books that he’s done. He is just an incredible speaker, he’s delivered 2000 presentation in 50 countries across five continents. He is just amazing.

Lots of videos out of YouTube to give you really actionable advice. The list goes on. I’ll put his information in the show notes, but for right now, let’s get to business. Welcome Phil to the podcast!

Phil: Thank you for having me. An introduction like that, you’re making me blush already. It’s lucky, this isn’t on camera.

Marylou: As I told you when we were offline, I grabbed your Magic Words ebook, that’s out on the internet, so you folks go find that. I’ll put it in the show notes too so you can sign up for his newsletter. But we started testing some of the magic phrases that you put in the Magic Words ebook in our cold stream and in some cases Phil, we had tripled our response rates. I’m beyond excited to be able to talk to you today.

Phil: That’s what we like, right? All for the purpose of the success and change and making things making things easier for people.

Marylou: Definitely. Let’s get started by talking about my audience which is top of funnel. We are sales executives, we’re also marketers and business developers who’s really chartered with trying to get that foot in the door, get a cold conversation started, get to the first meeting, and also to follow up on people who’ve come in bound or through referral sources where we’re doing those follow on conversations.

I’d like you to help our audience understand what challenges that they can overcome? How they go about doing that? I think the Exactly What To Say book is the one that we should focus on for this podcast. Could you start by telling us what caused you to write that book and what do you still see in today and how do we fix it for our folks?

Phil: I think one of the biggest things that we must first think is when is the worst time to think about the thing you’re going to say? Right here right now in the moment. What often happens is in particular when we’re finding ourselves needing to make an outbound call in the form of follow up or in response to some form of inquiry, we think, “I’ve got a call,” and we jump into that call and we don’t really know where to start, we don’t really know where we’re looking to go, we don’t really have a planned call track, people will fall back on the scripts or they find themselves just cobbling something together, which is typically the norm.

I said a second ago, the worst time to think about the thing you’re going to say is in the moment when you’re saying it. The reason I say that to be true is that what I’ve learned from training over two million professionals around the world, is often the difference between you and people like you, isn’t your skill, your endeavor, your pricing, your products, or any of those key factors that people put so much emphasis on. It is when the rubber hits the road, then you know exactly what to say, when to say, and how to make it count.

It’s word choices that are remarkably important. Yet, there are conversations we find ourselves in the world of business are remarkably repetitive. I’ve learned that actually, there are certain trigger words, there are certain sequences of words that talk straight to the subconscious mind that allow us to have more control in our conversations. That’s what we’re looking to try and achieve. Through exactly what to say is to give people the power, the principles and the philosophies behind why certain words work so that we can do something that feels like us but drives through results.

Marylou: You came up with a number of different phrases. Is this all through trial and error? Because you said you worked with a million something like that people?
Phil: Over two million people I have trained in one…

Marylou: Two million people, you have a really good data set and really good probably scientific— this really works people and this is where we use it. Is that what happened? You started working these phrases and testing them with your clients to develop the list or is it just said as you start having conversations, you recognize or a certain phrases that you said are repeatable?

Phil: Yup.

Marylou: This book is just incredible, by the way. What made this book actually stand out with those phrases? How did we come up with those phrases?

Phil: There’s a lot that goes into this. To produce the book that you can cover to cover in 60 minutes is crammed with so much content. There isn’t one viable source. I’ve been in business for over 20 years, I’ve been involved in the art of negotiation for that same time period. I found myself in literally millions of conversations, toe to toe with other people, looking to influence the outcome in one way or another.

The commonality I found in both the conversations I was having personally and the conversations that was happening in the people I was witnessing, coaching, training, supporting and leading was words really did matter. This made me super pedantic about this because what I was being asked to do in some of my early careers was how can I influence the outcome of success for the world of sales.

What everybody else was doing was saying, “Try harder. Speak to more people.” I was thinking instead of counting conversations, wouldn’t it make more sense that we could make more of our conversations count because we do all get to a point where there is a finite amount of resource. Let’s look to see what we can do to have more influence over those conversations.

I would reverse engineer both the success of my own conversations and the success of those that I was seeing and I would find the commonalities and the traits in language that would allow us to have both more competence and more confidence in each of those conversations and those two things combined would lead to more success.

Marylou: Now this is something, as I mentioned earlier, we took some of the phrases from your document and applied them in email setting. This perfectly works in all types of conversation whether it’s direct mail postcards, which is on the uptick now for us for response rates, whether you’re doing a voicemail, leaving a voicemail or having a physical conversation remotely or face to face, correct?

Phil: It does. Much of the premise of where the book came from is learning from the art of conversation. I think we’re all looking to be more conversational. We can be conversational in all of those mediums that you played out.

I think, something that everybody should also consider those—what we’re looking to do is to steer or control a conversation. The person who’s in control of every conversation is the person who’s asking the questions, not the person who’s giving the answers.

What also is true is that a question will lead to a conversation. Conversation leads to a relationship, a relationship creates an opportunity, and only the opportunity creates a sale.
People are often looking to be able to get straight from the beginning of that queue to the of that queue. What we can’t do though is we can’t skip any steps. We have to know that questions create conversations, conversations build relationships, relationship creates opportunities, and opportunities lead to sales.

The words and exactly what to say are designed with the purpose of saying, “How do we open more doors? How do we then look to better explore what those possibilities are? How do we then look to better say we can assist people through their decision making process and what do we do when people say maybe?

There really is that simplicity attached to it. I think when we breakdown what we’re looking to try and achieve, I think about what the outcome is from what we’re speaking about first, we can have more influence in those conversations.

Let’s bring it back to how we go through in a follow up phone call. People have to find themselves thinking, “What am I trying to achieve here?” Give me some scenarios or some setups as to what might be normal in your world? Somebody receives an inquiry through a web form. What are they looking to try and achieve from that outbound conversation knocking from there?

Marylou: We have two scenarios there. One is they have come inbound. Let’s pretend we’re doing a service. A lot of my clients are selling services. Products is another area. But let’s do services.

So they fill out a form, their interested in the service, the contact us form, they tell them what they want, and it’s very minimal. We basically have the name and the company, the person who filled out the form, they gave us a high level of what they’re interested in and then it goes into our queues for us to follow up in a prescribed amount of time depending on the size of clients. We look to see what the account tier looks like. Is it a complex sale or is it a transactional sale?
Let’s pretend it’s a complex sale that came inbound and now my job is to follow up, to find out whether or not they’d be a good fit for us with the goal of getting to a discovery call so that we can see if it’s worth our time, their time to take it to opportunity.

Phil: Goal is typically a discovery call if the fit is right. What I’d like to better do is certainly from my point of view is to ban the words ‘follow up’ just for the purpose of the next part of this conversation. It suggest somewhat there is—this is finite activity with a start point and an endpoint. What we’re looking to have is a continuous conversation.

For the purpose of right now, let’s think about what we need to do, we need to respond. What they’ve done is they’ve started a conversation, our responsibility here is to respond in some way. Our goal is to control the conversation to the purpose of discovering if there is a genuine opportunity and if so, can we move it to words and more purposeful conversation? Did I get that part right?

Marylou: That’s exactly right.

Phil: Let’s first lift the formula that comes to my book of Exactly How To Sell to be able to give us an application into anyone of these types of phone calls. A simple formula is an opening formula to start any conversation quickly and precisely how to maintain control and it’s to start with a polite opening, followed with the mutually agreeable fact, and the follow that with a question, so three-part formula—opening, a fact, and a question.

The opening would run something like, “Hi, it’s Phil calling. From–insert name of company.” The fact may well be, “You were on our website just yesterday and I see that you have some interest in.”

That’s the mutually agreeable fact that creates the evidence first again to make a recommendation on. We now need a question that can then follow that and that gets us into the purpose of, “What was it that prompted you to think that we might be the right kind of people to help you with this?”

We straight into the meet of the meeting. It’s not, “Is now a good time to talk?” Which is the stupidest thing anybody can ever say in 2018 and onwards, because if it’s not a good time to talk, what do we do in today’s day and age?

Marylou: We just basically don’t respond, don’t answer, don’t know anything, swipe left.
Phil: Right, because we known that now. Is now a good time to talk? It is a prehistoric set of words that when people had house phones and they didn’t know who was calling or people had office phones and didn’t know who was calling and when the phone rang, it was because it was an impending emergency or something super important.

We are trained differently right now. The question should never be, “Is now a good time to talk?” Or what we might like to have is an opening fact question that gets us straight into the heart of the conversation.

It may well be that if somebody has downloaded a white paper, or a report, or a PDF from your website, opening could be, “Hi, it’s Phil calling from *insert company*.” Fact could be, “I could see that you were on our website just yesterday looking to download an ebook on, a paper on, a report on. I just wanted to check, did it download okay?” “Yeah, yeah, downloaded fine.” “Now I am guessing you didn’t get around to reading it properly,” “Yeah.” “But it was one ring, what was it that brought you to our website in the first place?” Zip it.

Now, we’re into a meaningful conversation while the other person does all the work. Instead what often happens is we respond to these calls and then we vomit our features and benefits all over the other person, hoping they are going to like what we have to say.

What we must first understand is that selling really is. Selling is earning the right to make a recommendation. I repeat, earning is the right to make a recommendation. What that means is that we should never ever invite somebody to buy, step, move forward, with any of our recommendations unless we can say these facts first. We should be able to say it’s because of the fact that you said X,Y, and Z for those reasons, what I recommend is A, B, and C.

Now, in a scenario like this, we might be saying for example, it’s because of the fact that you said, that you’re serious about making a lasting change with your people, and that you’re committed to be able to work with a trusted provider and that you want to be able to get on with this in the next couple of months, it’s for those reasons what I recommend isn’t the best place we start is with the 90-minute discovery call where we can uncover the heart of the issue and to show that the recommendations that we make are solid, purposeful, and meaningful.
Marylou: It sounds so fluid. I love it.

Phil: But why does it sounds so fluid? Because what we have is we have anchors and we have structures. We know that the worst time to think about the thing you’re going to say is in the moment of saying it, and we know that what is going to happen here is that more of our conversations are repetitive than they are different.

In the written word, almost every individual in business has dozens of Word documents or copy paste versions of things that they rely on regularly. All they do is they customize as required on a per client or per account basis.

Marylou: We call those swipe files.

Phil: We don’t have so many swipe files in our spoken word, yet we should do. People are scared of them, you see because I think they’re scripts. People are scared of scripts because they think they’re going to sound canned or they’re going to sound like somebody else.

Marylou: I love scripts. I love them because we start with words that we practice, practice, practice and then it goes to bullets, and the it goes to our DNA. I am a big fan of starting with mapping out the conversation and what you’ve given us is a framework to do that. This is in Exactly How to Sell, correct?

Phil: That framework there is in Exactly How to Sell, and what Exactly What to Say is subtle nuances of words that can lead us into more powerful conversations. We could actually lift some words from Exactly What to Say that will allow us to have more meaningful conversations leading to what is this discovery call. Now, how open minded would you be to spending 90 minutes on the phone for us to discover further? How we might be able to work together?

Marylou: Or would it be okay if—we tried that phrase and it was just gold for us. It really was. It’s so funny that you said that about, did I catch you at a bad time, because in my previous book, in Predictable Revenue, we talked about doing that, but that was 2011. This is now 2018. It worked then, but not now. You have to continually optimize and upgrade the nuances of conversation as we move further and further into more technology, that’s for sure.

Phil: The principle doesn’t change though. The principle is permission. That’s what we’re looking to get a lean towards is, are we okay to have the next part of this conversation? The quicker you can get to a position of permission and being on the same page, the more productive a conversation you can have. That requires a framework.

Is now a good time to talk—used to be a successful framework that led toward permission. It’s now a lazy route. What we should rather do is to say, “I get you.” That’s what happens here if you use opening a fact question, is very quickly, you can set up the framework here with permission, it gets the other person to say, “Yeah. That’s me. You know me? You know what this is about?” This is now not pushy. This is a purposeful conversation about something I register as interesting.

Marylou: Just like the follow up phrase is banned, another phrase that we should ban is just “checking in.”

Phil: I hate it. Even if a friends says it to you, what do you say back to that? “You know, I’m fine. I’m good. Thanks for asking.” It’s a waste of words. We shouldn’t even talk about it. Just checking in.

Marylou: I always wanted to build a list of words that you should never, ever, ever use and that’s definitely high up of that list. I see it all the time still in emails.

Phil: Here’s how we can stop ourselves needing to have like, “I’m just checking in a phone call.” It’s never hanging up a phone call without having a scheduled next action.

If we know what we are waiting for, what we can do is then we can call them and ask them about the thing that we were waiting on. Somebody says for example, “I’m really interested what you’re about and I think that we’d be able to work together, but I have this crazy project going on right now that’s taking most of my time and attention that I’m really excited about getting finished and we should have done it in June.”

You say, “Would it be okay if I dropped you a call towards the end of June? Finding how things are going and seeing what we might be able to do next?” And I say, “Yes, sure.” And you say, “ Is there a day that we could work best for?” They may say, “Thursday is good for me.” And you say, “Morning or afternoon, when is good.” They say, “ Mornings are probably better.” So I say, “If I call you maybe 8:30AM on the last Monday of June will that work for you?” And they say, “That sounds great.”

What I can now do is I can start that phone call differently, I can start it with the words, not, “Is now good time to talk.” I can start it with the words, “I’m just phoning as promised.” In which they now cannot only say, thank you back, when they say, “Thank you,” back it means they feel indebted, which is a great way to start a phone call when you might want something with somebody.

I’m just going to run this through further is what now happens is, we could start with, “I’m just calling as promised.” We can get, “Thank you,” as a check back in terms of permission and I can then now ask the question directly as, “How did things work out with the project?” Then I can shut up and listen.

What I can then do is again use that fact to the question. “Last time we spoke in April, we talked about the fact that when we get to the end of June and that project is out of the way, that we might be ready to get started and work together. Is that still the case?”

Marylou: Fabulous. If we go back to that opening formula that you gave us of a polite open, a fact, and a question, let’s look at now in our remaining minutes, how we would open a call for someone who did not sign up of our website, who did not request that we contact them, but would be delighted to hear from us because we have something great to share with them?
How would we open up that call. I hate to the word “call” but it’s that kind of conversation where it’s the first time.

Phil: You said, “They would be delighted.” Let’s rephrase that to, “They may be delighted.” Let’s understand that that could be true, but you’re making a phone call to a stranger.
First thing, what I understand in that is what can I do to make this person feel less like a stranger? In my book Exactly How to Sell, we talk about how to build a prospect list utilizing your FRIENDS. An acronym out the word FRIENDS.

It might create a way that we can create an opening into just about any type of person with the purpose to that phone call that isn’t, “I’d like to sell you my thing.” Which is a step in the door and think about how that plays out in our real world, whenever you’ve said to somebody maybe is a potential future partner in the dating world and you said, “Let’s meet for coffee.” It wasn’t the coffee you’re interested in.

The same thing is true often when we’re opening a phone call to a cold prospect. We have to get a place to start, that’s how we win […] with coffee with that individual that then allows us to be able to uncover whether there is truly a fit.

We’re going to still use an opening of fact and a question. The opening is probably going to be the same opening. Can you give me an example of what the type of company is that we might be looking to make a phone call towards and I’ll give a precise or an exact routine.

Marylou: Let’s do that. Mostly, I know that most of my audience are probably technical sales. Let’s do that we’re calling into the technical director of a company and he doesn’t know who we are and doesn’t know what we do, and where our goal is to be able to build the awareness, introduce this thing that he may want to consider at some point. But he’s probably in that underwear state and he doesn’t even necessarily know he has a problem, but it’s that technical interface that we’re trying to get into have that “are we fit” meeting.

Phil: What I will be looking to be able to do is firstly, polite opening, “Hi, my name is Phil.” The fact may well be, “My understanding is that you are one of the senior leaders at this organization responsible for X, Y, and Z.” That’s my fact. “What I was hoping is I was hoping that I might be able to bounce a couple of ideas off you because I would really value your opinion.”

Marylou: That’s very good. A little bit of flattery in there about valuing opinions.

Phil: I’ve also said I know you, right? I’ve also said I know what you’re about. I could also play this out another way. I could say, “Hi, my name is Phil. We’ve been having a lot of success within the technical sales arena. Helping companies like boom, boom, boom, to achieve boom, boom, boom. I just wanted to check in with you today to see if…” this is an example where I might use check in, “…to see if you had any levels of interest in improving boom, boom, boom.”

Marylou: Working on your value prop and getting just the results out there so that they can start thinking, “Okay, wait a minute. This sounds kind of interesting. Something I might want to do.”

Phil: The difference here, the difference is posture. What I am doing is I’m approaching this from the get-go with curiosity laced for everything I’m putting out there. I’m not saying, “Hi this is us with a company. I want to tell you about a fact that we’re so awesome and that our product has been able to be able to do this, this, this, and this, and you really need to take advantage of it because I know that we can do massive things within your company, yadah, yadah, yadah.” What I’m saying is this is me, this is what I know about you, is this true?

Marylou: Yup, love it.

Phil: What we now get is a position of permission. They might say, “Oh, no, as it happens, we’re not interested in growth right now and our existing systems were built by one of our lead architects who was in fact one of the founders of the company and we have no considerations of working with any external providers.” You go, “Okay.”

Marylou: You know the result of that call, you’re able to file it properly because you’ve learned something new, it’s a meaningful conversation. Those count in our world.

Phil: Right. We all live with posture. Here’s an image that I want everybody to just picture in their mind of what you never want to be. You never want to be that turtle, lay on their back, with all four limbs up in the air, wiggling around. That’s what I hear when I listen to lots of sales call when I work within organizations and I help them develop their phraseology and help them develop other questions, is when I listen back to calls, I hear this desperate begging plea saying, “Please pick me, please pick me, please pick me.” They say, “No thank you.” They say, “Please, pretty, pretty please.” It’s always awful to be on the receiving end of—it’s even worse to try and do the reviews and analysis.

Marylou: I think a lot of it stems from the fact that we don’t really practice and hone in and just get out there and study this stuff so that we have a fluid delivery. A lot of it is knee jerk reaction, no planning, and hoping—that word hope—sprinkles throughout that someone will just say yes so that you can just do the next step without having to do any type of rhythmic approach with them.

Phil: Practice this stuff in a safe environment. This would be my challenge to everybody. Don’t wait until it’s the most important phone call for you to make. When you’re dialing “0” at a hotel because what you is you want something to be delivered to your room. Use opening fact questions, see how it plays out.

When you’ve got a situation to call a service provider in your life, and what you’re looking to be able to do is to get somebody to help you with your internet, or that you’re looking to make a restaurant reservation. Use opening fact questions to able to lean in to that call.
When you’re looking to be at a shop around for multiple quotes because of the fact that you’re looking for some home improvement. Use opening fact questions to get you into the conversation quickly and easier.

You can practice these things in so many different areas of life as an opening that gets you into more meaningful conversations that is delivered with more permission. Just spend more time making more of your conversations count.

Marylou: Wonderful. Phil you’ve been so generous with us and you’ve also been generous with our audience. For those of you who want to follow Phil, philmjones is his website. I’ll put everything in the show notes, as I said. But you also have a YouTube channel. My students, as homework, I had them look at all your YouTube videos where you take each of these constructs, break them down, and teach people how to use them. Then there’s the books, what else can we tell the audience of how they can get a hold of you?

Phil: They’ll be able to find more from building up my website, there’s a couple of other thing is that I do have an app with some podcasts on it that people can plug into with some simple bite size lessons in it.

More than that, come and join the conversation. If there’s something you like about the thing that we talked about today, or you picked up my book or you listened to our audio book and you’ve tried something that’s worked and you want to let me know, then come find me on social media, come shoot me a note on LinkedIn, come talk to me on Twitter, any of those platforms that are most preferable to you and know that I know that questions leads to conversations, conversations build relationships, relationships create opportunities, and opportunities lead to sales. We might be able to do some business together someday.

Marylou: That framework again. Let me see if I can repeat it. Questions leads to conversations, conversations lead to relationships, relationships lead to opportunities, and opportunities lead to sales.

Phil: There we go. Nicely done.

Marylou: Thanks again, Phil. I really enjoyed our time together.

Phil: Thank you so much for having me and thank you for listening.

 

In sales, perfecting your process can be the key to making more sales. But how do you find the right process? When do you know that you’ve hit on a process that works, and what do you need to do to customize it or improve on it for your situation?

Today’s guest is Scott Leese. Scott is the Senior Vice President of Sales at Qualia, a settlement platform for real estate professionals. Scott has also written a book about the sales process. Scott has an interesting background even before he got into sales, and this helps inform his success in the field and interest in process. Listen to the episode to hear Scott describe his history and talk about how he settled on a sales process, why he believes in the importance of delegating, and how to handle stress and pressure in a sales leadership role.

Episode Highlights:

• Scott’s background and how he got into sales
• How Scott settled on a process that worked for him
• Why it’s important to educate a prospect on the problem before selling them on a solution
• Why Scott thinks it’s important to get good at delegating
• How to handle pressure and stress when you’re in a sales leadership role
• Scott’s upcoming conference in Costa Rica
• The top challenges that startups face
• Scott’s thoughts on outsourcing the startup phase of a company or part of the sales funnel
• The Addiction Model Framework

Resources:

Scott Leese

Qualia

Addicted to the Process

The 2018 Surf and Sales Summit

Transcript:

Marylou: Hi everybody, it’s Marylou Tyler. I’m coming to you from San Diego. If the quality of this recording is not perfect, I apologize. I’m in a hotel.

Scott Leese is with me, he’s a trooper for doing this interview with me in this less than stellar condition. Scott is the SVP of a company called Qualia in the real estate side of the house. He’s got extremely vast amount of knowledge in building and scaling companies, and that’s why I really want him to talk about his experiences, the good, the bad, of building companies and what he continually learns. I’m going to pass the baton to him. Scott, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Scott: Thanks for having me, Marylou. I’m excited to be here.

Marylou: Tell us. Start at the beginning. When we were talking offline, you’ve done a lot of different things, you’re continually doing a lot of different things, from advising, to actually building, to implementing. How did you get started and tell us your story of the path that you’ve been taking?

Scott: I got started in sales a little less than 15 years ago or so now. I never really had a job, to be honest with you that didn’t involve playing or coaching sports until I was 27 years old.

I studied Psychology and Religion as an undergrad, I played two sports in college, soccer and tennis for four years. I played some professional soccer. I went to grad school at Arizona State and got a Master’s Degree in Learning Theory, and then I got super sick and proceeded to spend the better part of the next four years in and out of various hospitals fighting for my life.

I had all sorts of nasty problems. I’ve had nine total surgeries, two life saving surgeries. Needless to say, I’ve been through the rear, that all process got me hooked on opioids, pain medicine and had to kick off that.

There I was at 27 years old, trying to figure out what I want to do with my life and the only thing that I could think of, as a competitor that I was, was sales that would allow me to make up for lost time and get rewarded by how hard I worked and how well that I did. That’s how I got into sales. I picked a startup because I thought that I can make a move up faster and learn more in a shorter amount of time. I’ve been building and scaling sales organizations ever since all around the country. That’s how I got into sales.

Marylou: Wow, that’s quite a background. To pick a profession like sales that is typically filled with a lot of rejection or not necessarily part of this professional being. Depending on what field you’re in, it could go from this used car salesman type of profile, all the way up to this knowledge engine which it sounds like from where you came from, you’re now into that knowledge engine side of things, which is great.

You got through a painful experience, you started working in organizations, helping them build their revenue streams, what lessons did you learn along the way that you can share with the audience as you transitioned from an individual who was not as healthy as the rest of us, maybe, and also struggling with personal demons, and then working through that to put that aside and start building and teaching others how to do so.

Scott: There’s so many lessons to cover. But one of the things that I think I got really good at was finding a process that worked and sticking to it and not tinkering around constantly and changing things.

I know everybody nowadays loves to test and test and test before they actually do anything, and I was sort of a jump out the airplane and assemble parachute on the way down kind of a guy. I made a few mistakes along the way, but nothing too dramatic.

It allowed me to very quickly find a process that worked to sell a product, to hire, and grow, and scale organizations, and to build a sales ops engine, and all these kind of things. Just getting started, finding something that works, and then sticking to it and just rinse, wash, repeat rather than tinkering around all over the place.

Marylou: That’s a great advice. Let’s stop there for a second. I want to make sure the audience understands this. Because process is getting a bad name as well these days about what you just, we do something, run a couple of records through it, move on to the next one.

When you were working through defining your process that worked for you, what was the statistical relevance or the relevance that caused you to say, “Okay, this is one now that I’m going to mold into something better and continually pour records into it or pour process into it so that it can become a rinse and repeat.” What did that looked like to you?

Scott: For me, it was actually just personal experience. As somebody that was dealing with health struggles, I realized that I had to admit that I had a problem, I had to understand why it was important to solve that problem and why it was important to do so quickly, and then and only then, was I interested in hearing about a solution.

I just applied my own life experience and experience I had dealing with other people with addiction issues, I applied that to sales. I realized that it was the wrong move to just pick up the phone or approach somebody and say, “Hi Marylou, this is Scott. I’m with the company called Qualia. This is what we do.” And just start talking about their solution.

It was a wrong move to call somebody up and say, “Hey, you have this particular problem.” That doesn’t work. What works is, me having a conversation with you, asking a lot of questions and listening and getting you to tell me what your problem is, getting you to admit your pain to me.

Then I spend time educating somebody on why solving that particular problem might be important, then I try to create a story around why it’s important to solve that problem quickly, and then and only then, is somebody interested in hearing about the solution.

For my own trial and error, as I began my early career of selling, and through my own experience, I slowly over the years created this model for selling, I call the Addiction Model. It’s find pain, build value, create urgency, then discuss solution. I don’t deviate from that process and I’ve been teaching that process and using it in my own organizations ever since.

Marylou: Thank you for clarifying that. Because I think a lot of people think in a process, but as you said, it’s the ingredients and how they’re ordered within the process that really make a process fail or make a process shine. I wanted to make sure you clarified that and I appreciate you doing that. What was next? You started to talk about the next thing.

Scott: The next thing is I got really good at delegating. I understand certain things that I’m good at and certain things that I’m not good at. One of the things that I’m not that great at is the whole operations, sales operations side. I don’t enjoy spending my time buried in sales force and building out reports and work flows and all these kind of stuff, and working with sales enablement tools. I know I need all these things, but I don’t want to be the one hands-on building them all.

Whenever I go into a sales organization, my very first hire that I try to lobby for is somebody to help you with sales ops. I invest very heavily in sales operations right from the beginning with scale already in mind. I can’t tell you how many people I talked to, who have fairly large sales organizations, who’ve spent almost no time doing this and their head of sales is the one trying to not only recruit, and coach, and manage the personalities of the team, but they’re also heads down in salesforce building reports out.

That’s one piece of advice that I would give any sales leader is get really good at delegating, figure out what pieces of the puzzle are maybe not your strong suits and find somebody and align yourself with somebody who’s really good at those things to complement you accordingly.

Marylou: That’s great advice as well. I know that I agree with you that we sometimes put the reporting and dashboarding pieces in as an afterthought. Whereas if we’re trying to really improve on that process we just talked about and streamlining it, and making it more effective, we need some type of data to tell us the direction or at least point the direction of where things are plugged up, what’s running smoothly, where we can improve our communication canvass, whatever it may be.

That’s great. We’ve got the process, we’ve got delegation of certain elements of the job function itself to people who are going to excel at that so that you can excel at the things that you do. What else have you discovered?

Scott: One thing that doesn’t get talked about enough is the pressure and stress that comes along with the role and the mental health, somebody in a sales leadership role. I don’t know that anybody will really understand it other than somebody else who’s building and doing the exact same thing. It can be very isolating, very lonely.

I think it’s really important to find another practitioner in the field to talk to, who’s going through it right now, who’s been through it before. You just have somebody to unload on and share these things with.

It’s different talking to somebody who’s maybe a full time sales consultant, or who’s been out of the field for a long time. I think it’s really important for people to find somebody that is in the trenches still, building, and selling, and doing all these things, so you can vent, too.

That’s something that I don’t think is talked about enough. People in roles like mine, you’ve got to find time to take care of yourself because you’re spending so much time and energy worrying about everybody underneath you, everybody alongside you, trying to make their jobs easier, you forget about yourself sometime. It’s really hard to take a break in sales. You take a vacation, you lose pipeline. You’ve got to find ways to release some of the stuff before it eats you up.

Marylou: Release and unplug.

Scott: There you go.

Marylou: Tell us about this event you have coming up, speaking of releasing and unplugging. I really was interested when you started talking about an event that’s coming up in Costa Rica.

Scott: I went to Costa Rica with a friend of mine, and his family, and my family over thanksgiving last year. My friend Richard Harris is a sales trainer and goes to all these conferences all the time and meets clients all over the place. I made a remark about how to me going to another conference at the Marriott in Omaha, Nebraska, it doesn’t do it for me.

There’s thousands of people running around, Dreamforce or more in San Francisco and you make all these superficial connections, that is just not my thing. Later that day, I was surfing in Costa Rica and I was just looking around and I thought, how come nobody builds a conference here? Why does it have to be hundreds if not thousands of people? Why can’t it be like a dozen or two dozen people who are passionate about sales, about leadership, about management, about career growth, anything you can think of, entrepreneurship? Why don’t I just try to get this little mastermind group together and combine it with a vacation? It’s like half work, half play.

I thought about it and I floated the idea across my network on LinkedIn—I said, “Heck, I’m going to go for it.” I booked three houses right on the water, I hired caterers, I hired transportation, I hired surf instructors to come every day. We’ve got yoga instructor coming. We’re going to spend the morning playing, the middle part of the day giving talks about sales, sales leadership, scaling advice, social selling, all these different kind of things, and then the afternoon, we’ll play again, and go surfing, and do all these fun stuff.

It’s the first time I ever tried anything like this and it’s May 28-24. I’ll leave in just a couple of weeks. I’m pretty excited.

Marylou: What a great way to learn and be with your peers and like you said, this more intimate type of gatherings allow you to open up a little more, talk about your challenges, perhaps helping mentor someone else who’s there. It’s a great way to share your expertise, but also come home learning about what others are going through so you don’t feel so alone. That’s great. Sounds like fun.

Scott: It’s going to be a lot of fun.

Marylou: That’s wonderful.

Scott: I hope it goes well and I hope it does. I’m thinking about turning it into an annual thing. Fingers crossed.

Marylou: Keep us posted on that for sure. You said you’re an adviser now to a lot of startup companies, what are you seeing are the top still challenges or mistakes, some big, and some not that these smaller companies, startups are going through that you wish like, if I could wave a magic wand over these companies, these people running these companies, what are the three or five things that they’re all doing incorrectly that you’re trying to correct?

Scott: The first one, I already sort of talked about it. It involves how they’re trying to sell it. At least 75%-80% of the companies are going to, in my opinion, are selling things the wrong way. Their approach is off, they’re focused on their solution, very heavily featured on paying and that kind of thing. I work with them to reshape how they’re thinking about the sale.

Secondly, I think startups today still really, really struggle with recruiting. In particular being networked well enough to find people to be their VP or head of sales. One of the ways that I’ve positioned myself is I’m really well connected on LinkedIn in particular with other sales leaders all across the country. These are VPs of sales, sales manager, sales operations people, sales recruiters, account executives.

One of the ways that I’m able to add value is I connect people. If I advise for some company in Iowa where you’re from, odds are I know somebody out there who might be looking to explore new opportunities.

A lot of the entrepreneurs, maybe they come from an engineering background or a finance background, or product background, and they really don’t know anything about sales, let alone how to scale sales orientation.

They’re not really selling at the right way and they don’t know where to begin in terms of recruiting. Those are the two consistent flaws that I see with the early stage companies that I work with in particular.

Marylou: I’m curious about that. What are your thoughts on the concept of putting together this dream team of people who you know, can come in, they can get things started, start building momentum, start building velocity, and then they pass the baton over to more of an operations type of leader which there seems to be more of those floating around than there are the visionary conceptual getting market started type of people.

Have you ever seen that model working where you bringing an intern team to get the ball rolling and then they segue to your team after they’ve reached a certain revenue milestone.

Scott: That doesn’t mean it doesn’t work. The first thing that comes to my mind is this old Jeremy Piven movie called The Goods. He’s the fancy car salesman and he has a team of other car salesman that goes and rejuvenate dying car lots. That’s what I’m thinking as you describe that. I’m sure that model can work, I haven’t seen it.

For me, I would have a problem with that, just sort of philosophically. I consider myself a teacher and a coach, and trying to be a mentor and whatnot. I would feel strange helping some organization grow a few weeks or a few months or whatever and just leaving and letting them deal with everything else.

Marylou: The aftermath.

Scott: I would much rather help somebody get their leader employees and help that leader for a while and then I can hand the baton off when everything is well under control. That’s just me, that’s just how I think about stuff.

Marylou: The reason I’m curious of that is because I think that method is similar to what startups want to do when they want to outsource their lead generation. I think it’s crazy that they outsource from the get go that piece of the funnel. It’s all the points that you just mentioned, it’s really understanding your unique value proposition. You’re basically saying, “I’m going to outsource this to others to do that for me.” I think that’s just as ludicrous.

Scott: I couldn’t agree more. I’ve never done that, I never will do that.

Marylou: But it’s a common thing.

Scott: I think it comes from founders and people inside the company who don’t know anything about sales. They’re afraid to or don’t know how to hire a sales team or a sales leader. They just try to offload it and they think, “Oh, here is this company in the Philippines,” or some place, they can do all these lead gen or STR kind of work for us and maybe they can even sell. I don’t buy it either. I’m on your side with that.

Marylou: I gave you an example of an extreme case that we all know—would be to bring a team in and get them up and running and then leave. But that’s essentially what startups are doing when they say, “Let’s outsource this whole sales prospecting function because there are people who have a better habit of getting the first appointments for us, and we’ll just be closers.” I just shake my head when I hear that.

I try to convince them that you know what, let’s get internally our messaging down so that we can give these outsourcers a playbook to follow step by step like you were talking about at the initial part of our call, about understanding the process and getting a process that’s rinse and repeat. When you got it to that point, then by all means bring in more outsource bodies to help execute that process. But to define the process and to create the process so that you have the ability to rinse and repeat, that should be done internally, in my opinion.

Scott: I don’t disagree with that all, don’t disagree at all.

Marylou: I’ve worked with so many outsourcers and it seems to be the same in a lot of cases is that the leads that come through remind me of marketing qualified leads, you get the menos, you get the whales, you get the sharks, you’re casting this wide net, rates suffer and the revenue suffers, and the forecast is all off because you haven’t taken the time to work through the core principle of why people should change, why now, and why you. It’s universal, we’ve got to solve that problem internally as a company, articulate why that matters.

Scott: I think we should co-author our next book. We are on the same page with this. We can start a movement.

Marylou: Right on my soapbox. In fact I’m teaching a class today on Prospect Persona Development. The UVP, the Unique Value Proposition is a huge part of that. We can’t start conversations if we don’t start them properly. I love your framework. Say that framework one more time for everybody.

Scott: The Addiction Model Framework is find pain, build value, create urgency, discuss solution. It’s a four-step process and we have to go in that order and you can’t skip around. You’ve got to get somebody to admit that they have a problem, and you have to educate them, and help them understand why this problem matters, and you have to get them to understand that it’s important to solve this problem as fast as possible and then and only then are they going to be open to hearing about the solution. You can’t just walk up to an addict and say, “Hey Marylou, I think you have a problem and I’ve got this amazing rehab facility called Passages down in Malibu and I think you should go.” It doesn’t work like that.

The person’s going to look at you like you’re absolutely crazy and say, “I don’t have a problem.” Find pain, get them to admit that they have a problem there. It’s pain, value, urgency, solution. Those four steps in that order.

Marylou: In that order and learn how to create and practice those question, so that the prospect or whoever you’re speaking with will admit to and recognize and become aware of acutely their pain, as opposed to you telling them what their pain is.

Scott: Very different when you’re telling somebody than them admitting it.

Marylou: Scott, how do we get a hold of you and if we wanted to download the framework or get some more information on the framework, what’s the best way for us to do that?

Scott: The best way to read about the framework is to get on Amazon and check out my book, it’s called Addicted to the Process. It’s on Amazon, on Kindle and paperback.

You can get a hold of me via LinkedIn. I have a really active presence on LinkedIn, I’m maxed out on connections. If you try to add me, I won’t be able to connect with you, but you can click the follow button and send me LinkedIn emails over there. I’m really responsive to that stuff. I love to help anybody out and talk to anybody who needs some advice.

Marylou: And for those of you who are thinking Costa Rica or some exotic vacation/working session, definitely put your information out there for that. I think that’s a great way to learn.

Scott: Check out the website, it’s called surfandsales.com.

Marylou: surfandsales.com. I’ll put all this in your show notes on your page so people who are listening could just go to that page, get all these great information and links for Scott. It’s incredible being maxed out on LinkedIn, it’s quite an incredible feat in itself, congratulations on that.

Scott: Thanks.

Marylou: We will be in touch. I want the audience to know that this a framework that definitely will get you more first meetings, more follow up meetings, will advance the sale, will get you more qualified prospects that will close at a higher rate.

It all starts with that initial conversation and how that’s framed out. A great framework that’s been proven, he has been working how long now in this environment now? You said 20 years plus?

Scott: About 15 years now. Not quite 20. Don’t hate me.

Marylou: Lots of accounts. I see, I’m just assuming you are as old as I am, which is not necessarily the case. But he definitely is a person to contact if you really want to hone your message and hone the reasons why the people should continue that conversation with you.

Scott, thank you so much for your time, I appreciate it. I’m sorry about the crazy connection today here in San Diego.

Scott: It’s fine. Enjoy San Diego. I had a good time talking to you.

It’s easy to be suspicious or hesitant about the rapid advances in technology, especially in the field of artificial intelligence. Many people worry about being replaced in their jobs by some type of technology, and for prospectors, the idea of artificial intelligence can seem like a direct threat to their jobs. But it turns out, AI is not the threat to prospecting jobs that it might seem. In fact, AI can actually be used to improve prospectors chances of getting great leads and closing deals.

Today’s guest is Robert Käll, the CEO and cofounder of a company called Cien. Cien produces an AI-powered sales productivity app. Far from taking opportunities away from prospectors, Robert explains how Cien can be used to empower prospectors and help them increase their opportunities and ability to close deals. Listen to the episode to hear what Robert has to say about AI and how it figures into the future of prospecting.

Episode Highlights:

• Robert’s company, Cien, and how it got its name
• Why advanced AI technology doesn’t mean the end of prospecting
• How AI can affect pipeline quality
• How AI can be applied to the problem of incomplete or low-quality data
• The implications of using AI to help differentiate between good leads and bad leads
• How AI can help underperforming reps increase their sales
• The importance of routing tasks to people based on who can make the most out of that particular task
• Why it’s important to understand why some deals close and others don’t
• Why you shouldn’t assume that there’s a one-size-fits-all formula for closing deals
• How Robert’s app works with Salesforce

Resources:

Robert Käll

Robert Käll on Twitter

Cien

Unlock Your Sales Productivity Resource

Transcript:

Marylou: Hi everyone, it’s Marylou Tyler. This week’s guest is going to be just a huge level of awareness for you. Why? Because if you have been reading the news about AI—Artificial Intelligence—the first thing we think about is, “Oh my gosh. My prospecting job is no longer.” I’m here to tell you that that is the farthest thing. Today’s guest, Robert Kall. His last name is K-A-L-L with two things over the A but is pronounced “shell.” He’s the CEO and co-founder of a company called Cien. I am excited about having him on the show today because his view with his take on artificial intelligence is all about human relationships and having you guys flourish in closing opportunities, closing deals. We’re probably going to focus more top-of-funnel today because that’s what I know but he can take it all the way through. If you want to know more information, I will put all of his contact information after we have our conversation so you can learn more about what they’re doing.

Welcome to the podcast.

Robert: Thank you so much, Marylou. Pleasure to be here. I’m a huge fan, read your book.

Marylou: Why did you use the word Cien as the name of your company?

Robert: Cien means 100. Many things good are 100. Getting 100 on your test, giving 100% effort, reaching $100 million revenue—all of those things are the things that you strive for in life and business. We also called it Cien because we wanted to have a global company. I’m calling today from Barcelona where we have our R&D center. We also have an office in Dallas and one in Miami. I really wanted to create a company that was a hundred times better than the previous companies we worked on before which were more in the SaaS business. This is what we called an AI first company.

Marylou: You heard my opener, those of us who studied this and love the top-of-funnel like I do. AI is looming thing over the horizon that it’s looked at in some ways as being negative for sales executives who develop business. You’re saying that that is the first thing from what you’re discovering and what you’re working on. Can you share some of the initiatives that your company is working on and why that’s important for us at top-of-funnel?

Robert: Sure, absolutely. Again, who wants to buy something for $100,000 from a robot? That’s just not going to happen. But at the same time, you want to—as a sales leader, as a sales executive, as a sales development rep, whatever your title is—have the most amount of information at your disposal as you can possibly can. You want to understand what really drives success for you as an individual and for the company as a whole. That’s the type of stuff that you can actually get with AI.

We have a very simple view of the world when it comes to sales. There are three components to it and those three components are you lead in pipeline quality, your rep attributes, how your reps are behaving, and then you have your macro factors. I can go in a little bit more detail on each one of those if you like.

Marylou: Yeah, that’d be great. Let’s start with the pipeline quality.

Robert: Everybody knows that there are good leads and bad leads. People have not until now spent a lot of time to determine exactly what causes good and bad leads. We’re drilling down—there’s a myriad of factors here. We’re drilling into two key concepts: one we call fit and one we call interest.

Fit is the stuff that are attributable to leading but tend to be not able to change. For example where they are located, what industry they’re in, the type of contact person you have, the title and so forth. If you have a bad fit lead, it’s very hard to turn it into a great deal.

On the other hand, the interest. Everybody knows that a warm referral is much easier than calling someone from a list. That is what interest really measures. Your level of awareness and expressed interest from a prospect. In some cases, leads come in warm with high interests and some cases, they come in cold.

The thing that is new about AI is that we can actually measure that and we can measure how it changes over time. Because a great sales development rep for example can bring up the interest a lot by providing an effective value proposition and meaningful engagements. Whereas of course if you’re not applying any effort, the interest is more likely going to stay very low, or if you have a high interest and you fail to follow up. These are types of things that in the past it was really hard to measure but with AI and the statistical methods that we’re using, we can actually get a very accurate measurement of this on a lead by lead basis.

Marylou: Let’s stop there for a second. One of the biggest issues that I also see is we may be able to collect the data in a rudimentary way, by no means is systematic or mechanized, but we don’t necessarily apply what we’ve learned into a repeatable process. Is AI designed to not only diagnose or find descriptively where we are, but is it making recommendations how we organize our sales conversation canvas, if you will, for a lack of a better term, in the next iteration of our conversation?

Robert: Yeah, absolutely. If you don’t mind, we’ll get into that in a second because I wanted to talk about the two outer […] and you see how they all fit together to create this—what you call—the canvas.

There are two other aspects that they are equally important. One, the rep factors. There, you have things like work ethic, a measurement of the applied meaningful activity that a rep is doing on a day by day basis. It varies a lot from rep to rep, it’s not just about calling 100 times. It’s about meaningful activities. We measure a lot of those things by looking at exactly what’s going on with CRM activities and so forth.

Another factor is product knowledge or industry knowledge. A buyer always wants to talk to someone that’s knowledgeable and has a lot of insights. Many times, especially when you’re ramping up a sales team, your sales team does not have those skills. That’s a really big factor.

A third thing we look at is things like closing ability. The ability to not just get a deal up to an opportunity stage but actually close the deal and moving it past the final hurdles.

The last thing that we looked at, we look at more data on an aggregate on an individual person is what we call team mood. There is the overall engagement to the company and the things that are attractors and boosters in terms of the things. Many organizations are […] one of two things. They may have a terrible commission system that no one understands. They may have a product launch that failed and so forth. We’re measuring all of that stuff for various services and so forth. We can actually plan that into the models that we’re creating about how your sales is working.

That was the people factor. Again, it sounds like how can we know all of those things? It’s actually possible to extract a lot of that from data that you already have in your CRM. It’s also possible to get some of that proof by asking people. People will answer that unless it takes two hours to answer the survey. Our service takes 10 seconds. Very, very easy question to answer.

The last thing that people can’t forget, I told everybody that I called from Barcelona and this is a story from my previous life. I had built up a high velocity sales team and we’re doing an acquisition and we had a large team here in Barcelona that we brought on and made our plans. We were doing fine in May, June, July, and then August came. We basically hit a big fat zero on our sales results. We had just not built in the things like seasonality intermodals and that is something that some cases are really affecting your ability to get to your number.

Another factor would be competition where your competition all of a sudden changes drastically. We are able to measure that in ways that you may not have been able to do before.

Again, those three things, your lead and pipeline factors, your people, attributes, and macro factors, they together make that environment. We call it the 360 Sales Environment. When you understand all three of those things, you can get to what you asked about before which is start modelling, what’s going to happen next. Then we could do the whole thing around what can you do differently to get better results? Because once you have it in an AI engine, you can test a million different combinations and it takes fractions of a second to test each one. You can find where what we call the low hanging fruit is. A lot of times, the low hanging fruit is around giving the right leads to the right people.

Marylou: Wow. Of course, next question is going to be more about the data itself. Everyone admits their databases are pretty dirty or they’re not necessarily enhanced with conversational data because of the burden it puts on reps to do what they think of as data entry. Is there a process that you like to see or does it not matter at all what the data is currently in a current situation? Or is this also an opportunity for companies to start collecting the meaningful data going forward?

Robert: The listener that listens right now says, “While I can’t use this type of stuff because my data is too bad.” I don’t know if you remember this song by Michael Jackson. I’m not going to sing it but it goes like, “You are not alone.” That’s exactly what’s going on. We have never encountered a company that has been proud of the data quality that they have in their CRM system. It’s just doesn’t happen.

The reason for it is very easy. For the most part, there’s not a lot of incentives for sales rep to put in 100% of their data in there. We don’t have to go into that now. It’s just a fact.

What we’re doing is we are applying AI to that problem too, kind of like when we started. We have some services around that. It allows you to understand what the true state of your data is because there are patterns. AI is essentially a pattern recognition machine. There are patterns to your inconsistency on your “crappy data” as well. We are applying those patterns and then we can compensate for a lot of things. We know that people are, for example, skipping opportunity stages because it takes too long to enter. They want to either sand bag or show more in a pipeline and so forth.

Marylou: Gaming the system is what I call it.

Robert: Here’s the thing, if you’re gaming the system in a consistent way, we will be able to […]. Same thing with things when people are putting in all their activities in a Friday afternoon, there are patterns to it. Same thing when people are missing a lot of information.

The last thing which is very common in most large enterprises is that you change methodology in your Salesforce or whatever CRM you’re using several times during the course of things. The data that you compared to a year ago is not apples to apples. You used to prospect using the lead module, now you’re prospecting using the accounts model because you moved to account-based marketing or whatever. Those are super common things and that’s where you can apply AI so you’re really getting apples to apples true sense of what’s in your database. That’s really a super  important step that we spent so much time working through and finding solutions to. Once you have that, that’s when you can start making these types of predictions. Now, you have much greater confidence today than you had before.

Marylou: The other too, is, let’s face it, there are so many tasks out there in the world. We used to kid ourselves saying death by task. There’s so many tasks out there we think that would feed into an AI system really nicely to see exactly what’s being done and what’s not being done, what’s being followed up on and what’s not. There’s a plethora of records that are generated automatically by systems for activities that never get done.

Robert: There are so many tasks out there. Today, many companies are using automated solutions to record a lot of things. What we’re finding is there’s a bunch of problems in CRM data but there’s also a bunch of signals as we call it in the data science world. In other words, information that we can use like predictions.

Marylou: Right. All of you sitting in the audience, you are not off the hook with your dirty data when it comes to AI.

Robert: No, obviously, bad data is better. There’s no doubt about that but if we were saying, “Okay, only people with perfect data need to apply to use […].” We would have absolutely zero customers.

Marylou: It would be bird chirping in your waiting room, there wouldn’t be much going on.

Robert: Again, these are the types of things that are prerequisites. We spent a lot of time building technology and services around.

I want to talk a little bit about one thing that I think is really interesting and that is the value of a lead. I don’t know if you spend any time thinking about that. What is a good lead, what is a bad lead? How should you evaluate when you’re giving it to a sales development rep? How much do you value an opportunity when you’re handing it over to an account executive?

Marylou: Yeah, we think about that all the time. Even in Predictable Revenue back in 2011. There’s a chapter on the seven fatal sins, and of the CEO or c-suite director level, that was one of them. They don’t understand the value of a lead. That’s why Aaron, in the book in the intro, said he had a $5 million loan or VC funding for a company that went under because he did not know the value of a lead.

Robert: I remember that story. That was on the “aggregate” or “average” level. To some degree, getting that information is just standard record keeping and making sure that you understand how your […]. What our company is trying to do now is to bring it down to individual record levels.

Marylou: That’s great.

Robert: Of course, you can’t get an exact value for every single lead with limited data. But what you can do is to create a statistical value where you can significantly differentiate the value between a lead that is very cold and bad fit. It’s extremely unlikely to turn into a deal, and one that’s just warm, for example, a friend referral or something like that in a perfect company.

The difference in value between those is not a factor. It’s not double the value or something like that. It’s a factor of 10, or in some cases 100. There’s a huge difference in valuing those. The thing that oftentimes tricks up and causes a lot of discord in sales team is often people sensed about it but they have no way of measuring it.

That’s, again, where we are developing something we called Cien Value Chain. We are actually using AI to measure the true value of each and every lead, and each and every opportunity. That’s obviously not the value of the final deal, it’s a fraction of it, since only certain deals, certain leads become things.

The story I tend to tell is about Bob and Sue. This is how you can very easily improve yourselves partly if you think about it. You have Bob and Sue, both are pretty good sales people according to the thing. Bob sold $100,000 last quarter, Sue sold for $80,000. The only way of looking at it would’ve been that Bob is a better salesperson. But if you dig in and see the true value of the leads and opportunities that they’ve received, you can see that Bob received $50,000 worth of leads and opportunities and Sue received $20,000. She was able to add a lot more value for her time in the last quarter than Bob was.

If you want to, in your organization, maximize your overall self-productivity, instead of having that big discrepancy about the value given, even it out. That alone can give you 10%-15% increase in self-productivity. In most companies that we work with, getting self-productivity up just a few percentage points is a fantastic thing because it concentrates to the bottom line because they sell high gross marketing software products that progress, or something like that.

Marylou: Right. We spend a lot of time manually, a lot of guesswork, trying to maximize the return on effort. This is like, “Turn the switch on.” And it does it for you. To me, this is transformational to the operations of the sales team. For everyone to become more productive, even the skill levels, you’ve got the outliers and you’ve got the people who are in the bell curve. This would help even that out so you’ll have a more predictable pipeline and a better forecast, I would think.

Robert: Absolutely. Both a better forecast. Then, you can also start […]. What’s causing these “underperformers” to do it if they just started yesterday, it’s very easy. They don’t have their product skills. They probably don’t have a lot of leads received. They’ve been in the company for a year and a half and they are still not adding a lot value compared to their peers.

It’s about looking at work ethic, looking at the training that you provided them. Are they missing their coaching skills which would translate into being able to articulate things. Are they able to navigate? If you’re selling a B2B product oftentimes, it’s a big skill to be able to navigate the hierarchy.

One of the things we do a lot for our customers is to look at the stakeholders in each deal. Who have been brought in? Understanding their true seniority, their true job functions, and so forth. Then, we can many times find that the approach the company has taken up to now has actually been detrimental because they’re talking to the wrong people. We find that if they’re avoiding talking to certain people, at least avoiding talking to them until the last part of the deal, they are having much better success. It’s a freebie.

Avoid talking to the IT department if you’re selling a technology solution to a non-IT department. Stay colder until you absolutely have to. That is just the pattern that repeats itself over and over again. Because IT departments by their nature are risk-averse. For them, just every new solution that you’re bringing into the table is more risk, more headache. Whereas if you’re selling a marketing solution for example, the marketing leader is looking for it to solve his problem or her problem. Stuff like that would be things that you’re seeing over and over again.

Again, in each case, each company is unique and we do this analysis. When we create an AI first company, the whole idea is to provide that top of analysis within the box of the software as opposed to have to rely on super expensive analysts and so forth.

Marylou: Can you tell us a couple of stories that eventually wow-ed you when you started implementing some of it to clients? What was that wow factor when you went in and worked on a client, “fixed” them, and got them up and running?

Robert: Again, I may have used the term before, the low-hanging fruit. That basically comes to a very simple concept: don’t send great leads to bad reps because we call those reps the productivity traps. They, for whatever reason, lack that ability to turn them into good opportunities.

Again, it could be a myriad of reasons but many times it’s a combination of one or two factors. When you do that, you’re destroying value for your sales organization. At the same time, you may have what you call the anti-potential reps. When you have some great reps, that because of the territory they’ve been assigned to for example, they’ve been assigned to this terrible territory that just has way fewer opportunities and leads are much less valuable than […], they are hard workers. They have the ability to close deals and they’re doing great for their stuff. They’re receiving so little that they are essentially underperforming just by that factor. Just spending a little bit of time evening that out. You don’t do it with leads that you have or opportunities you have in the pipeline. You just do the new stuff as it comes in. That immediately can give you 3%, 4%, 5% productivity increase.

Marylou: That’s a lot.

Robert: That is a lot for these types of companies that sell high gross margin software or technology services.

Marylou: It’s like an intelligent routing versus a round-robin. What they do now is round-robin is more of an intelligent routing to the appropriate person who can handle the opportunity at a faster clip or with more finesse or whatever the requirements are to get that opportunity to close. I love that.

Robert: Thank you. Again, this is something that we can do in a very short period of time. All you need to do is start the day you realize that this is occurring and change your behavior a little bit. You don’t have to change anything else except this distribution that you have. Then you see that thing, then you go back and look at these people who are underperforming.

You do a deeper analysis on what’s going on with them, and in many cases, it’s just one or two factors that are not clicking with them. They kind of know it but now you can measure it and you can see it over there. You can make progress on it. If it is a training issue for example, “Let’s go back to school with those guys and figure out what is it they’re missing.” If it’s a work ethic thing, then it’s more around activity management and making sure that someone is checking in with them every single day, right?

Marylou: Right. Tell us a little bit about the playbook portion. I remember reading on your website that the playbook can be enhanced so that you know why deals closed. You may get role-based guidance on the activities that lead to revenues. That’s a big one for me. What is the perfect route or perfect path or the perfect map to get to close?

Robert: I’m going to start with just an observation and then maybe some people in the audience does not agree with me but this is just my observation. I’ve had the privilege to work with some really awesome sales leaders over the last 10-15 years. Every single time that I’ve done that, they have presented their playbook to me. One guy with a very big on training. One guy was very big on activity management. The third person, she was more concerned about the overall team culture, mood, and so forth. Each one of them had really good points. They knew how to effect that and they have plans in place.

The thing is when they come into a company, all three of them cannot be correct that one of them is the most important. In each company, in each situation, you have unique factors that if you just apply the playbook what you were successful in your last company, you might be missing some huge opportunities. That’s where we are coming in. We can tell you all […] things and many more factors, then we can tell you right now in this company, this thing is the most important thing.

You need to work on team mood, culture, and so forth because people are the solution and the motivator. In another company, it’s all about the product. The product is not doing what it needs to do yet so you have to kind of go back and ensure that that piece is more competitive.

The whole point here is there is not a one size fits all playbook for sales leaders to come and do. That’s the temptation that many people have that they are just going to apply like last time.

Marylou: Yeah, that’s great. We’re going to wrap-up here pretty quickly but I wanted to make sure that the audience understood that this is a solution that spans across the sales organizations. Sales leaders will benefit. Of course, account execs, developers, operations, and even marketing. We didn’t talk a lot about marketing because I don’t have that piece of the pie in my audience but I can imagine that lead generation would be something that would benefit from this type of system if put into place.

Robert: Just to talk two seconds about how marketing uses a system like us. Marketing and sales many times have different views of what has happened. I sat through so many business review meetings where marketing comes in and says they had a great month, they generated 1,000 leads, blah, blah, and sales come in and says, “We had a terrible month, our leads did not work at all.”

Marylou: The leads are crap.

Robert: Exactly, yeah. With a system like this, you can basically, in a more objective way, measure how these leads that you got in the last month are the same, or better, or worse, than the leads you had before, the quantity, and the aggregate value on them. That could really move a lot of disputes and objective things that causes conflicts between different departments and so forth. Just say, “Okay, here’s the facts. These types of leads, we have great success with these. These types of leads, we should look at why are we generating them? What are the sources of them? And perhaps do less of that. Then we can focus on other things.

We are not trying to solve everything. There’s a ton of great tools out there for marketers using AI software. We’re trying to help settle that little dispute that you many times see in businesses. When these leads that marketing has generated gets to sales, this is what happens. If you just change the mix a little bit there, you’re more likely to have success.

Marylou: Yeah. I think it takes that argument out of the picture, that sentiment of, “I believe it’s this way,” is emotion-based. We’re flipping that on its side saying, “Yup, here’s the facts of this particular lead and why it should have been successful.” That opens up a whole new conversation about, “Alright, what do we need to do to make it better so that we are talking those leads from marketing and processing them in a way that yields the results that we should be getting?” It changes the whole conversation from pointing fingers to one of more of working together, which is what we want, ultimately.

Robert: Absolutely.

Marylou: This is so exciting, I love it. This is something that attaches. Is it an app that attaches to common CRMs? How was it rendered out in the world?

Robert: We are an app that right now works with Salesforce. Other CRM systems will be added later. It allows you to, on your phone, think about it like a Fitbit if you are familiar with the Fitbit app.

Marylou: Of course, I’ve got mine on right now.

Robert: Yeah, me too. Every morning I check my Fitbit to see what’s going on with my sleep, how many calories I burned yesterday, stuff like that. Same thing. When you wake up in the morning and check the Cien app, you can see what’s going on with my pipeline, what’s my end of month prediction, what’s my end of quarter. What are the key takeaways that I should do today? That’s different obviously if you’re a sales executive, if you’re a manager, or if you’re an individual rep. It gives you that stuff just on your phone in real time. It’s not some kind of business intelligence—super complicated thing. You have to go to three months of training to understand. It’s just right there in your app and you can take actions.

The cool thing about AI is that everytime it gets a piece of feedback, for example, sometimes we provide advice that does not make sense to the particular individual for a reason. All you need to do just like in the Pandora, for example, if you hear a bad song, you do the thumbs down. You do the same thing here, the AI learns from that and understands that, “Hey, whatever advice we provided here does not make sense to this person. It could be for whatever reason.” Then we can tailor that and build that in so that the algorithm continues to learn. That’s the big difference between the traditional way of programming and the AI way. New data makes the algorithm smarter and they continue to learn.

Marylou: Yeah, they continue to get stronger and stronger as it moves along in life because it’s collecting more data points and it’s with instructions in some cases. It’s outputting basically the behavior that you’re trying to achieve. I love this. This is great.

How do we get ahold of you? So cien.ai is the name of the website. How do we connect with you on LinkedIn? Are you on LinkedIn?

Robert: Yes, I am. I am always accepting inbound requests from sales professionals. My LinkedIn is https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertkall/.

Marylou: Robert Kall, everybody.

Robert: It’s okay if you don’t pronounce it correctly, I know it’s a weird thing. I’m there and I’m also on Twitter with the same name, @robertkall. Please connect with me. I love to have conversations. I’m calling right now today from Barcelona but we also have an office in Dallas. We’ve been spending a lot of time there in the Metropolitan Area in United States. If you’re interested in meeting up, just connect with me.

Marylou: Wonderful. I’ll be sharing all the contact information in the show notes for those of you who are driving and listening to this podcast. I really appreciate your time. For a data geek like I am, this is great stuff, I just love it. I really try to band-aid all of what you’re talking about and it just doesn’t come out the way you want it to. To have an app like this that helps get that kind of baseline started so we can focus on what we’re supposed to be doing which is having better conversations in any way, it makes our jobs so much more easier.

Thank you much for your time, Robert. I really enjoyed this a lot.

Robert: Me too. Thanks a lot, Marylou. Again, thank you so much for the books that you’ve written. They’ve been super helpful for me, personally.

Marylou: Oh wonderful. I’m so happy to hear that. Take care!

Robert: Bye.

What skills and attributes make for a good prospector? When companies are looking to hire prospectors, what traits are they looking for? Today’s guest has a good idea, and has had great success in hiring and training for his business.

Phill Keene is the Director of Sales at Costello. Over the course of his career, he’s had the opportunity to get familiar with every part of the pipeline. Listen to the episode to hear Phill talk about the importance of self-learning, how pattern recognition relates to business, and the hiring process that Phill uses to bring on new prospectors at his own company.

Episode Highlights:

• How Costello got its name
• How to get people to put time into mastering prospecting techniques
• The importance of being a motivated self-learner in prospecting
• The skills that a good prospector needs to have
• How pattern recognition can help in prospecting
• Phill’s success rate for hiring prospectors
• Phill’s hiring process
• How Phill determines which person gets hired for which role
• Phill’s process for onboarding

Resources:

Phill Keene

Costello

Phill’s Email: phill@ncostello.com

Transcript: 

Marylou: Hi everybody, it’s Marylou Tyler. This week’s guest is one of those rare breeds that could cover the entire funnel and beyond. Phill has been pretty much in every position of the pipeline you could think of, or even haven’t thought of yet. I’m gonna try to get him to focus today on prospecting, since that’s what I know. But he is the man to go to to discuss things, even in marketing, probably sales ops.

Phill Keene is the director of sales at Costello. Welcome to the podcast, Phill.

Phil: Thanks for having me. I’m excited to be on today.

Marylou: When I first heard the word or the phrase Costello, I immediately thought of Abbott and Costello. Is there any correlation with your company name to that fabulous team? I remember when I was a kid, I was getting my stitches. I had an appendectomy and I had just come out of the O.R. with stitches. Abbott and Costello was on, of course I was cracking up so much that I burst my stitches and had to go back in and get restitched up. Tell us about the company.

Phill: That’s a great story. We’ll have to go down that route, maybe a different conversation one day. But, yes. Thinking about our websites and Costello, it definitely is alluding to the Abbott and Costello comedy duo from many years passed. Reason why we went down that path is we originally recalled a couple of different names as we were prelaunch. Originally, it was like navigate a call, navigate a deal, what’s the software.

Then our customers kept referring to us as like a copilot, or a sales assistant, or this thing that sits shotgun on calls to remind me to do the things I need to do while on a call. Everybody kept referring to us as a person. They try to give a person a name and not the lead person, but like the secondary person. It was Abbott and Costello. It’s actually really interesting.

When you become a client or start working with us, your URL that you log into is usually your company name and Costello. We want to be there as that copilot, or that sales assistant when you’re on calls.

Marylou: That’s great. I like when there’s levity involved in this whole thing. As you know, the prospector job could be pretty daunting and repetitive, and it could get to you after a while. Which is why, when you and I were talking offline, my latest rant is about the fact that I have been putting out this online class. I do a free one every year. The statistics remain constant in who signs up, who actually looks at the material, who does the homework, who attends the sessions, and it’s a sliding scale of less and less people as we […].

How do we resolve this? You’re a director of sales now, how have you been successful in getting these folks to put the time into mastering prospecting?

Phill: I think you hire for it. It’s easier said than done. I think in the interview, I think that’s type of topics that you have conversations about. A lot of times, what I’ll do with candidates, and it takes a little bit longer than the sales process, but I’ll throw something at them before we get on a call and see if they use it while we’re in the conversation.

I’ll say something like, “Hey, at the end of the call, can you just recap what we had a conversation about at the end? This is what the structure should look like.” I’ll see if they do it while they’re in an interview with me. Or I’ll say things like, “Hey you know what’s next? You’re gonna meet with Frank Dale, our CEO. But when you meet with him, can you do three points of research on him just to know a little bit about him and have talking points about him? I want you to ask this question specifically.” I’ll see if they do it naturally. If they do, typically that’s something that comes second nature to them. They just do it anyways.

I also ask questions around what’s in the book that’s you’re currently reading? What are you learning from those books? What’s the last book you read and what did you learn from that book? You could see if that person has a commitment to learning and self learning. I always laugh, if you can’t teach yourself something, there’s no way you’re ever going to let me teach you something. I always make sure they’re self learners in the interview process.

Marylou: I love that. I can relate to that and I told my students just the other day. I taught an MBA class, same material, these folks aren’t responsible for revenue yet. There is an executive MBA class but some of them are working as apprentices, or interns. They don’t necessarily have the need to generate revenue, or get commission, or payments. But, they had the gene of learning.

I had 18 students in the class, something like that. Everybody completed their homework. Everybody did their prospect persona definition, even if they didn’t have a real one, they invented one. They were so beefy and complete, I was amazed.

Then I have sales professionals who are responsible for revenue, who are responsible for making quota, not do the homework. I thought, okay, I take that personally because I think, “Alright. I’m a shitty teacher.” There might be some truth to that so I have to fail forward and make a lot of mistakes to become a really good teacher.

But of all the people who did do the homework, say there’s 20% of those people actually started using what they created in the homework. One of them, or two of them closed $300,000 deals. Some of my folks are all roles, but it just really supported, although not statistically relevant. It really supported the fact that if you do the work, and you consistently learn, you are going to get better, you are going to meet your goals, you are going to excel at this thing called prospecting.

Phill: Yeah, absolutely. It’s a role that when you dedicate time to do it well, it’s a differentiator, especially if you have phone skills. I always am interested in SDRs that are great “prospectors” but they don’t pick the phone up so a lot of their prospecting comes through emails. But then I’ve seen those types of people that usually follow their faith when it comes to I want to be an account executive, I want to start selling, I want to start talking to prospects. Some of these are just not putting together the skills that they need to have good, qualifying dialogue with prospects a little bit later down the funnel.

There’s something to spending some time in that seat and learning the role and being good at it. I think there’s different aspects that you really need to understand. I think you need to have, one, good conversational skills, I think that’s probably core. I think you need to be able to write really well. There’s even things like going to an english class, or going online and doing a quick class just to refresh you on basic grammar rules. Having your friends proofread emails and teach you why you’re doing it wrong, like going to people that’s having this stuff. That’s how you differentiate yourself. Learning about social media and following what it is you’re doing and and doing well, it does differentiate you.

I’ve never been a fan of what they call “social selling” where you’re actively trying to sell on social. But I think there’s something to building your brand over an 18 to 36 months process. It takes time to really build your brand out and build your network. It’s a time and seat type of thing where you have to learn certain amount of skills.

Once you learn how to master that top of the funnel, to your point, you taught a class in prospecting and it creates a $300,000 pipeline that closed for people. They have to learn how to open up deals that wouldn’t have existed before on their own. There’s just different tactics on how to do that.

Marylou: Right. I think you hit the nail on the head. There’s also different levers, there’s also different channels. I have a lot of clients whose prospectors are not used to the phone, they don’t like it. They say, “We can get our AWAF calls”—the are we a fit calls—“we can get those by doing text, by doing social, by doing email. We don’t need to know the phone.” But then when they get to the AWAF call call, or heaven forbid, a scoping call where they’re disqualifying and aligning their value proposition to what the buyer needs, or the buyer’s telling them how to create the plan for the next working session that they do together, that requires telephone skills, it requires studying psychology of the buyer.

It’s a very multifaceted role and top of funnel, 40% or 48% of people who were recently surveyed said prospecting is the hardest thing they have to do in the funnel. That may or may not be true but it’s a perception.

Phill: Right.

Marylou: Why not take the time? Have we not designated the roadmap properly, do you think, Phill? Because you’re saying this is what I do. Are you best practice, or are you Phill practice? Is this trial and error, or is this things that you’ve learned along the way that you’re actually benchmarking against other professionals like you?

Phill: Yeah. I have some benchmarks. A lot of these things that I’ve built over time just from managing so many different SDRs that have gone through these types of scenarios. But also, at the same time, I’ve made tens of thousands of cold calls in my life to get on the phone and learn how to qualify somebody out.

I think that sales is all about pattern recognition for the most part. If you can understand what happens next and what’s the common occurrence once you have something happen to you, really all businesses are pattern recognition. When you say something, there’s a certain response that typically goes back in response to make you understand, or help you understand. When you set a qualified meeting, there’s typically a next step that has to happen. It’s just understanding what’s the right next step that has to happen.

That’s what time and seat gets you. It gets you that pattern recognition to know I can do this again, I can do it again, and I can do it again. I really think why people think prospecting, they really think about what you just said, prospecting is the hardest part of the funnel, because fear just reaching out the unknown. I think that’s the hardest, that’s the gut wrenching point. Do they even want to have a conversation with me at this point? Cold calling is just really, really difficult because of that. Or even just pure prospecting because your percentage of being told no is much greater than most anywhere else in the sales funnel.

Marylou: You were saying that you have a process in place for hiring people. I don’t know if you can answer this. I’m curious more than anything else, because I know my percentages. When I go and work with clients that already have prospectors in place, we lose sometimes two out of three over the course of getting this thing up and running.

It could be a bad hiring decision, it could be they came in with one frame of mind and all of a sudden we’re turning them on their head by saying, “No, we’re doing it this way.” What is your success rate relative to the industry in hiring the right person and having them moving through that AE role, or maybe they say in marketing and do inbound leads? What percentage of people, when you bring them on board, hang out with you for longer than the 18 months, or 12 months, or whatever the life cycle is nowadays.

Phill: Yeah, absolutely. My number is always 18 months. I think that’s the right number for SDRs. I’ve done statistical analysis of the organization I’ve been at. Typically the 9-12 month mark is where you’re at mastery and you’re starting to figure out the role. As a master, you have to start doing the job very well and producing real pipeline that we can go close. For me, it’s thinking about from the 9 to 18 month mark is where we start to get payback off of a hire.

Let’s say early on in my career, it’s probably about a 50% success rate because I didn’t know what I looked for and I didn’t know as a manager what was my strengths from people that would report to me. That was probably my biggest gap. Over time now, it’s probably close to the 70% to 80% range, we’ll stay on at that length. But it takes time to understand what makes you successful or not.

Marylou: Do you actually go out to a recruiter to get people, or are you doing this hiring internally, or through your network? What do you find works better for you?

Phill: Yeah. I usually, internally will own it. I have a process to how I recruit, specifically SDRs. Like today, I run a local group peer for sales. I usually stay in contact with people that I meet that are SDRs. For me, I’m constantly, probably once every other week at least, I’m getting a coffee with an SDR that I either met in the past, or that is at a different organization I was recommended to speak to. I’m looking for A players. I want to know people that are performing well, because what I’ll start to see is characteristics of people that are in my local area that are high performing SDRs.

Typically when there’s an A player, they know other A players as well. Whenever I go to hire, I usually have a giant step forward because I’ll get a bunch of people that will make recommendations to come work for me. I build out a brand as somebody that’ll be good to work for. That does matter.

In my previous company when I open up a position, we had two roles open and I had 156 resumes in the first week for an SDR role. But it takes time to build out that network. I literally have a Google Sheet that has names of people that I’m meeting with. I set my quota basically every month to people I need to meet with.

Marylou: That’s great. Like always be closing, always be interviewing, and always be hiring, or what is your motto there? You spend a good portion of your time connecting with potential candidates, whether or not you have positions open, is that true?

Phill: Yeah, absolutely. I think there’s a lot that happens there. For me, it’s building up my network. Because I’m not the only person that runs a sales team here in Indianapolis, or even in the Midwest. I know people in Chicago, in Columbus, in Detroit, in Nashville that might also be looking for SDRs. I have a good friend in St. Louis that might be looking for SDRs.

Sometimes, it’s purely just me filtering SDRs to other people, building out my name and my network as well, and helping them find good quality candidates. That does matter. I do believe in the laws of reciprocity, that it will come back eventually. For me, it’s just building out my network, and knowing what a good A player looks like, and knowing what a hiring profile in my community looks like, and understanding what they care about as a candidate. That stuff does matter. Then you start to learn a lot more about the types of questions you should be asking the interview to relate to these types of people.

Marylou: That brings another question to mind. Once again, my students and my class, we have multiple buying scenarios. We have top of funnel, SDR business developers, some take it to the first meeting, some take it to a qualification, some actually develop almost to the point of a letter of intent. They find all the stakeholders, they make sure they’re serving up with the value prop so that once the AE becomes involved all the right people are sitting around the table, the virtual table in this case. How do you know which type of SDR goes to which role, or do you shop for the person who can get further into the funnel?

Phill: I typically like to hire someone less experienced.

Marylou: Okay.

Phil: And hire and train them. There’s different reasons behind that. I think some of it is you don’t have bad habits. I think their expectation for promotion is usually more aligned with what my expectations for promotions are. I think from a costing point, they’re typically more affordable when it comes to a candidate. I usually pay at market value anyways.

I don’t want to pay over market value for somebody that might produce a little bit more. I have never seen really a better result of having somebody that’s a lot more experienced. Most people that I hire, I don’t see a fit most times with people that want to be a career SDR person. That’s more my personal hiring profile. I just don’t align with them usually at my values and my management style.

For me, I’m very open and honest about what the timeline looks like for their promotion, but also trying to guide them and get them the skills along the way to be successful for their next role. It’s really understanding your own hiring profile, what works for you for a management perspective that does matter.

Marylou: That and how much time you’re able, willing to put in. Because the former model of getting a less experienced business developer in place means that product knowledge, even role playing, the conversations, there’s a lot more emphasis on the training aspect that the habitual role play, the understanding. You’re going to look maybe from a script right now but you’re going to memorize it like an actor would, so you sound natural.

Phill: Right. Exactly, 100%. When you think about where they go in the funnel and how far they go, I think there is some skill set things. You will get people that are SDRs that enjoy the role that will stay in the role. It doesn’t happen often but when you do, sometimes those people can take a little bit more.

There’s also things I’ve seen for micro promotions. Maybe your first six months you’re basically just finding out are they slightly past, do they have a pulse, and not quite to the place for it’s fully qualify. I have three or four […] to get you passed off. It’s like this person is alive and there is some kind of need and they have some kind of authority. That’s all I really care about from a very early perspective. They might stay that way even up to a year.

Once I get to that year mark, maybe that’s where you start to ask them to do a little bit more. Maybe that’s where you get into the play where they’re getting you. Are they aligned with budget, do they have any authority to sign, and I know for sure the signer is on the first call. I’ll even run maybe the first initial discovery, then I’ll hand it off to you. You give them additional tasks to help them build their tool trust to you guys over that time frame.

I’ve even created roles like Enterprise BDR roles where they’re essentially riding shotgun on large deals the whole time with the AE really helping almost the sales assistant capacity. Where they’re even going a little further in the funnel.

We could talk about them like a LOI type standpoint. Where it’s like this is something we definitely want to move forward with. Then they’re passing up to an AE, where the AE that works really more of like the MSA. There’s different ways I’ve seen of doing it. It just depends on what’s the best makeup for your organization and the size of the deal that you’re working.

Marylou: A lot of times I’ve seen, I was in this role when I first met Aaron way back in 2008. From Predictable Revenue, I was in the BDR role, business development role, where I served three account executives. Based on the account executive was how far I took it into the funnel. I had one that wanted a complete band, he just wanted to sit at the table and be an order taker. I had another one who could find money anywhere in the company. Even if there’s no budget, it was still a good opportunity for her to work.

I worked with the nuances of the account executives and called them in at appropriate points in the pipeline, but we mapped that whole thing out. That talk track was completely mapped out. It was mapped out by vertical even in some cases, some verticals converted faster. There’s a lot of nimbleness one needs if you’re going to be a corporate or an enterprise type sales business developer. But I see people in those roles for a longer period of time. They love dating, they don’t necessarily want to get married and get to the close.

I think it also depends on the corporate culture, where you are relative to the type of product you sell. In this case, that product was sold in three different ways. One is project based, fast and furious. The other one was like a medium size, where maybe one or two departments would want the thing because they were replacing old legacy equipment for example. The third one was a strategic initiative where it was a long term, required a lot of people, a lot of players. Depending on the way the product was sold, the band change. There was just a lot of those nuances that the business developer had to juggle and understand. Not that they can’t do it all, but it was a fun job because you never knew what was coming at you.

Phill: Yeah. I’ve seen quite a few career SDRs that are out there that do that and love it. I’ve had conversation with them because I’m just curious of why do you stay in this role? Obviously, you have the skill set to do something else, or do something different. Some of them even like team leads for the team and they just don’t want to do that anymore. They like the ability to come in, they make good money because they’re sourcing large deals, and they enjoy the role, they enjoy prospecting, and they enjoy the puzzle piece of how an enterprise organization works, or how a large mid market company works. They like that, they like the pace, they like the velocity, they like going home at 5:00 PM and having to be able to shut their computer and not to worry about it.

There’s a lot to that. I think it’s funny that the right mix, the right fit, and for that type of role, you have to find somebody that’s looking for a very specific type of job and type of role that has a very specific skill set. But there are also people that you’re probably not going to pay an entry level wage at the same time.

Marylou: Right. But like you said before, there are fundamentals that this role needs to have. It sounds like you’ve got a fabulous blueprint for uncovering the way they talk, the conversation canvas, what that looks like, how they have write. I’m a big stickler for writing, especially now that we’re all crazy about hyper personalization and stopping the credence to actually create and craft a one off email if you will, or template email that we are customizing.

But it’s a certain type of writing, it’s not like my daughter’s type of writing where she does thesis, and has a beginning, middle, end. This is persuasive copywriting. It’s fast, it’s emotional, it’s triggered, it’s not necessarily in the right order but it gets people to lean in. They have to have some knowledge of that. I love the fact that you’re making them do a writing assignment just to see where they are. Do they have the the quil, quiver behind their ear, that kind of writer, or they’re like a street writer.

Phill: Right. Either way, it’s fine. My templates are typically conversational. I believe prospecting should feel like, merely if you and I were shooting an email back and forth, actually for the last couple of weeks we shot emails back and forth to each other and they’re pretty conversational. They’re not just long drawn out like four and a half paragraph emails. I don’t know how you communicate as a person.

I try to teach them that type of skill. How do you write a conversational email that’s written like a salesperson to somebody that would be on the other end to receive that? It should be like an internal email, or an email they would get from a friend.

What I would say from an on onboarding perspective, as you started going out the path, I had a very, very clean documented process to how I onboard. The first 21 days, in fact, I know exactly what they’re doing that day in the first 21 days. Then after that, every week, I know what they’re doing what their goals are for that week. For me, I start at the very top. Just tell me  stories about how customers use the product. That’s all I care about.

We’ll start the first three days as really just tell me stories. Just remember every story possible. At the end of the day, you usually have to tell me two or three stories. At the end of the day they got to be able to say it without a piece of paper in front of them. Then by the end of the three days they have like nine different stories they can tell you about how customers used the product. The number one thing I used to hear from SDRs back before I used to do that from a process was I don’t know any customer stories, I don’t know how customers use it. I just forced that into the process and make it the first thing you learn.

Then we started, now we have a conversation. How do you open a dialogue, how do you have a conversation. Then I do an exercise, [00:25:30] out of New York where it is a day in the life of a prospect where basically you pick four to five businesses, or three to five businesses, and you make them learn how they make money, how they spend money, like what rules they have in terms of who you’re selling to, like how many layers of the organizations, who reads their company news, what are their priorities. You really learn about three to five business so they can start to recognize trends for the business. Then they read their profiles, or priority sheets for that role that you sell into. They start to really think about I’m trying to get my mind of the prospect.

Then I force them to demo a product to me. Day five or day six, you demo the product, you force yourself into getting really uncomfortable and show me the product which will get them some product knowledge, and then force them to really think about what that looks like. Then I teach them how to make questions on day seven. From there, day eight, you finished the day at day eight, you’re making at least 12 calls. It’s not a big number, it’s actually a very small number but I want to make 12 phone calls which is our number to get one conversation.

I basically want to get them in there and just see what happens. It’s usually enough to shake the nerves a little bit. In fact the last hiring class, one of the guys that we hired, the first time he picked the phone up, the first time he dialled, somebody answered the phone.

Marylou: Of course.

Phil: It’s funny, he called out our sales methodology, he’s like, “I’m working on it.” He’s like, “This the first day I’m calling.” He’s like, “In fact this is the first dial that I’ve ever made.” He opened up but he had enough stories to get the guy interested.

Marylou: That’s great. What a great story, I love it.

Phil: That’s my biggest recommendation. Get on the phone very quickly because it’ll shake the nerves really quickly.

Marylou: This has been great. I’m sure that sales managers, leaders listening to this phone call are like, “Oh my gosh, I would love to get my hands on some of what he’s doing.” How can people get a hold of you if they want to pick your brain, or have a conversation around your successes. What’s the best way to do that?

Phill: Add me on LinkedIn. I’m on that pretty frequently. It’s Phill with two Ls, Keene, or you can shoot me an email, it’s phill@ncostello.com. I’ll have you set up a call and I’ll walk you through my sales demo onboarding program, and how that looks, and what that looks like, and even share with you what mine looks like. We can go from there and have a good conversation. I’m happy to share all sorts of stuff that I have for resources.

Marylou: I appreciate that. I’ll also put all that into the show notes on your page. This will be transcribed. If there are bits and pieces you guys wanted to pick out of our conversation, we could probably put together a very simple little blueprint for you from the show notes. We’ll be happy to do that.

Thank you so much for your time. I think this has been a great eye opener for some of those sales leaders who are still beating their head against the wall as to how to hire the right person, and what that means, and what kind of knowledge they need to start up with, and how they can essentially grow into the role in some cases which is what you’ve had great success with. Having them grow into the role, sitting in that seat, learning more every day.

Thanks again, Phill.

Phill: Thank you.

The sales machine is constantly changing, which means that sales professionals need to be constantly learning to keep up with the changing environment, especially at the top of the funnel. Today’s guest is an authority on sales training with some interesting insights on the education side of selling.

David Priemer is the Founder and Chief Sales Scientist of the sales training company Cerebral Selling. Listen to the episode to hear what David has to say about what he calls the “sea of sameness” and how sales professionals can differentiate themselves in that sea.

Episode Highlights:

• The state of selling on the education side of things, and the difficulty of differentiating useful information when so much information is available
• David’s advice for people who are looking for useful ways to differentiate information
• How to demonstrate overt benefit
• How the exclusionary principle can be applied at the top of the funnel
• The importance of understanding human behavior in sales
• Why messaging and delivery mechanism are two of the most important things for sales professionals to understand
• How to mobilize authentic voices in the sales cycle
• How to showcase value in a delivery mechanism
• The importance of engaging customers in your messaging synthesis

Resources:

David Priemer

Cerebral Selling

Transcript:

Marylou: Hi everyone, it’s Marylou Tyler. This week I have a guest who I actually found David on the internet, he wrote an article. John Barrows, who’s a colleague of mine, stuck it up on LinkedIn, that’s how I got to know David Priemer. He is the founder of Cerebral Selling out of Canada. He is an amazing person, I don’t say that just because he’s an engineer like I am but when I read his article, I realized, “Wow, there’s someone out there who really has thought about this whole state of selling, where we are.”

I asked him to come on the show today. He has a ton of topics he could talk about because he specializes in the entire pipeline but we really wanna focus today on the education pieces of top of funnel. He’s gonna share with us his views on where things are going and how we can really better our knowledge, our profession, and get away from this sea of sameness as he calls it. David, welcome to the podcast.

David: Thanks so much, Marylou. It’s great to be here. It was a great intro, wow.

Marylou: Well, you’re a great guy.

David: My goodness, thank you so much.

Marylou: We chatted offline about the topic, you’re spot on. We really wanna talk about where we are with the current state of selling, the education pieces. I have this conversation with my kids all the time because one of them asked, “Why do we need to go to college, mom, when everything is out there for us to learn?” Yes, everything is out there to learn but the problem is there’s so much information there that people are really getting way overwhelmed at what’s there.

Can you share with us your views on what the state of selling is in terms of the education side of things? Point us in a direction of where we should be looking so that we can get out of this sea of sameness.

David: There’s a lot of nuance to the current state of sales. Part of the challenge in a way is we’re so plugged in, we’re in the sea of information, and yet we are also stuck in the sea of sameness. As we plug in, very little out there becomes differentiated to us anymore. It used to be there were only a few vendors in every age or functional area and now there are literally thousands that are, let’s say to some extent, differentiate from one another but everyone says the same thing.

If I were to go and give a talk and say, “Here’s a bunch of value propositions, we reduce cycle times, we improve efficiency, we conversion rates, we improve customer satisfaction, and we reduce churn.” How many of our vendors does that cover? The answer would be most, right? We all tend to say the same thing and yet tension spans are very, very short.

The game has changed, now we have to device different tactics. What tends to happen is that companies tend to come back with, “The stuff that I was doing before to be successful isn’t working.” They’re looking for that new approach. That’s one of the biggest things that changed on the environment side. You asked about why the education front, I know it’s a big focus for you.

Marylou: Big, big focus. What you mentioned upfront about the value prop, I have been spending the last month trying to figure out almost like a puzzle, putting together a game of how to create a value prop that’s differentiated. It’s really hard to find a set of tools and get the students in a mindset so that they know which variables to pull from the plethora of marketing collateral that’s out there in their company or competitor landscapes or website research to be able to pull in areas where they think they can be distinctive and unique and different. What advice do you have for people who are swimming in that sea? What’s step one of trying to figure out where they should look for differentiation?

David: I do a lot of reading, as I’m sure you do, one of my favorite books is Dan Pink’s book To Sell Is Human. In that book, he talks about a concept called clarity, which I found exists in all of these well-differentiated areas of sales and marketing. Clarity is all about helping your target customer understand what it is that you do in the value that you can add very quickly. Often times, in our typical pitches, we start talking about how we’ve added more RAM and more ROM and we’re made of aluminum and these kinds of things. We just sound the same as everyone else.

Where I like to start with is that point of clarity, what is the specific problem you solve? If you were to meet someone at a party and they were to say, “Marylou, what is it that you do?” We’re asking that question half not caring what the other person has to say. Get really good at answering that question. Dan Pink is a real master at this, Simon Sinek has a ton of content on this. I try as much as I can to stand on the shoulder of these giants and post some content to my site as well about how to really get to the core of the problem that you solve, there are lots of ways.

There’s starting with the core value proposition, the business tangible value that you add because that’s what really people care about, they don’t care about how you do it as much. They care about, later on, how, they start with the why and they start with what’s the value. Starting with that point of clarity can really, really help cut through the noise for people.

Marylou: The other thing that I remember reading somewhere, like you, I read a lot, I read something about a research project where they were looking to find what item separated one vendor from another. The number one thing they came up with was something called overt benefit which is what’s in it for the customer or the client and it’s not feature based, you have to find this direct path of the overwhelming benefit that you provide that no one else has articulated or articulated in a way that the client of the customer can differentiate you in his head.

They always give us consumer examples. When they talk about minty fresh toothpaste versus whitening toothpaste, there’s an adjective that seems to describe the differences. Have you found that there are building blocks where people can start looking like over benefit being one? Are there other things that they can look at to be able to start to synthesize what these blocks are for differentiation?

David: Absolutely. One of my most favorite, I should say maybe even guilty pleasures, is the infomercials. I love infomercials, not that I buy a lot of stuff of infomercials but I love the pitch, I love watching the shopping channel, I love to hear how people string together these pitches. One of the things that these programs do in order to differentiate themselves in a very early stage in their conversation with the buyer is they cut them, I can pull that through for a second.

The idea is if you’re gonna sell someone a band aid, there are three ways to sell a band aid. You can look for people who have cuts and sell them a band aid, you can look for people who are afraid of getting cuts and sell them a band aid, or you can cut people and you can sell them a band aid. I’m not suggesting we go out and intentionally harm anyone, but the idea is you’re watching these infomercials.

Let’s say for example there’s one for those knives that can cut through shoe leather. How do they start off? You know what I’m talking about? You know how those infomercials start off? How do they start off?

Marylou: I don’t remember, I’m not a TV watcher. I think the last infomercial I watched is probably in the 80s.

David: These infomercials are timeless. I’m gonna show you this sharp set of knives, I can cut through anything. In the start there’s some black and white grainy footage of someone trying to cut a tomato with a horrible knife that’s dull, the tomato splatters all over everything, that’s an example. You may be watching that show not even thinking to yourself, “I need a really sharp set of knives.” All of a sudden you’re watching this and they’ve done a great job of creating some pain, they have cut you that you’re thinking, “Yes, that is me. My goodness.” Tell me what is your solution, knife Gods?

I’m not, again, suggesting to go and intentionally cut anyone. But often times, in our business and in our personal lives, we walk around with this layer of protection around us. We need that layer of protection and insolation, otherwise all the messages of the world would inundate us and we’ll be completely overwhelmed.

Every now and then, if you can go out with a message that is piercing that talks about a specific pain that resonates with people, you cut them a little bit first, then you’re gonna be in great shape. I’ll give you a very, very simple example. For many years, Yesware, they do email tracking, have this logo on their website, I don’t know if they have it anymore.

The thing on their website said, “Do you wanna know what happens after you click send?” That’s a good example of cutting someone like, “Oh my gosh. You know what, I haven’t thought about what happens after I click send. I do wanna know but I don’t. Yes, we’re Gods, tell me. What is it that you can help me with?” I love this idea of “cutting people.”

Marylou: When I’m teaching clients and students how to write emails, we’re looking for what I call triggers. What you just mentioned was a curiosity trigger because you’re like, “I’m curious, I’ve never thought about it. I wonder what the result is.” This whole thing about contrasting, before and after, old world to new world, those are the elements, I think, from an emotional standpoint that we need to grab attention from people at top of funnel, especially, in order to get them to at least stop what they’re doing and notice us. That’s an art in itself.

There are certain triggers that work with certain audiences. The other thing that I had to really learn in a hard way is that our ideas don’t have to really hit the entire market, we need to segment down to a size of accounts and industries where these messages would resonate more. Once we built that momentum, then we can use social proof of others who have come before our prospects who have been successful by using our product or service to get the results they want.

It has to start somewhere where, like you said, you’re really looking to give them an idea that they hadn’t thought of before or twisted in some fashion so it takes on a new life of its own. Boy, having put that pressure on sales people to come up with what those things are is really tough.

David: There are definitely, I’d say, layers of degree, if I’m gonna use an Olympic diving term like degrees of difficulty. I’m putting together those kinds of pitches. Sometimes coming up with a really good pain laced introductory statement can be challenging. But I think what you just mentioned, this idea of the exclusionary principle, is actually quite powerful. It’s something that not only do I teach but I have used a lot in my own personal experience as a sales leader.

Imagine people think about having on their website, “It’s an accounting package for people who don’t know anything about accounting.” There’s been an exclusionary principle there but also in your sales collateral. We used to have a bunch of our companies, and I’ve done four startups, we used to have slides in our collateral that used to say, “This isn’t for everybody.” People would lean in like, “You’re in sales, what do you mean you’re not for everybody?”

That exclusionary principle, it’s amazing because it helps customers self-select. It also puts you as a seller in what I call the ultimate mindset to do discovery which is eliminative, it’s that of a healthy skeptic which helps you eliminate the content of bias that we have. It’s like if I’m going out on a dream date with Marylou and I’m thinking to myself, “She could be the one, Marylou could be the one.” I get all excited.

When I’m on my date with Marylou, I start looking for evidence that she’s the one rather than going and saying, “I hope this date goes really well. She’s probably not the one but I’m gonna keep an open mind.” The two are very different. That’s actually very easy when you think about top of the funnel, what can you do? Think about the two points, think about who you’re for, the exclusionary. This isn’t for everyone.

Marylou: One of my most successful emails of late, I borrowed from a gentleman at UK, Phil M Jones is name. He wrote a book about what to say, Exactly What To Say, I think it is. He had a phrase in there that said, “I’m not sure if it’s for you, but…” I tried that in some of our cold emails and it’s that exclusionary thing. I don’t think it’s for you but if it is, or but, there may be a way that we can help you solve a problem.

It got a lot of interest because people are naturally wanting to be included in the group. They need to know what’s not for them, what is it that we think is not for them.

David: There’s a nuance to what you said as well, it’s partially being exclusionary but then partially, saying, “I don’t know yet, you might be a good fit. I don’t know, we need to have a conversation first.” You’re intriguing them with the possibility of them being a good fit. Now they’re willing to spend the time.

Marylou: And then asking their permission, when will be a good time for you to take a proper look at this? All those little things like that is twisting those words and understanding human behavior. I think it’s all coming down to, David, is that sales people today have really got to not only know their products and features inside and out. If you get shook at three in the morning, you could tell all the benefits of potential feature and the results that people are gonna get.

That has to be engrained in your DNA. Also, now, we’re really seeing that differentiation is really a good understanding, a working understanding of human behavior.

David: It’s never been more important. Dan Pink, not to, again, stand in the shoulders of giants, this is part of my ego for starting Cerebral Selling, is that sales has become, if it wasn’t before, a thinking person’s profession. It’s really drilling down which is why I think we have two engineers here on the phone talking about this but it’s really about understanding the why, why do people buy things? How do they respond? Why do they hate sales people so much? There’s all these nuance. We have to be always curious about why people do things and teach it, which we don’t do as often as we should.

Marylou: Getting back to the teaching thing, where do we start with this? It just seems like it’s so overwhelming as even we’re talking. Where do we start as teachers, where do we start as students if we wanna really begin the understanding? It’s really awareness, awareness of what areas of behavior—I’m focusing on top of funnel—should we really start understanding as sales professional? How do we apply that to our sales conversation canvas based on the role of the person we’re trying to sell to?

Another thing I teach is we have multiple people that we meet at relative positions in the pipeline. Some let us in the door, some are the actual decision maker, some are going to be influencing the decision maker. Our talk tracks to each of those are different, our language is different, and presumably, the behavior of each of those is different.

As an instructor like you are with Cerebral Selling, if I came to you and said, “I’m throwing in the towel, I realized I’ve gotta get this behavior understood so I could use it to my advantage.” Where do we being, David?

David: For me, there are two things that I would prescribe as the doctor here. Number one is a crash course on messaging or making sure that your message is crisp and targeted, and you can articulate in the right way. There’s a lot of nuance, I get that. But messaging is really, really important so you don’t get stuck in the sea of sameness.

The other thing, which is just as important, is the delivery mechanism. You could have the best email in the world, the best outreach in the world, the best message, but if no one cares to hear it and you’re not able to get that message heard and through, then it’s gonna be useless. The question is how do you get that message across? Often times, I’m sending these amazing emails and the emails have all of this value and they have all of these great buzz words and there’s this, there’s that. But often times, we don’t read emails.

Thinking about creative things, it’s funny, handwritten notes are making a comeback, video is huge now in terms of open rates, just wacky things. I’ve seen tons of these wacky ABM campaigns where people will send everything from little mini barbeques to little teenie tiny piñatas. There are all sorts of tactics that we can use that are different, that we can use as a vehicle to get our message across.

I think one of the reasons why video has been so successful is because people like to be entertained, we all find ourselves sitting on our phones doing nothing in the time that we should actually be working like looking through our Instagram, Twitter, or Youtube or what have you. That could as easily be watching a vendor deliver their pitch.

I probably wouldn’t open a whole bunch of emails, a whole bunch of pitches but man, I’d open an email from Marylou with a video in it and see her falling her face for 90 seconds and see what that’s like. But the whole thing is I would focus on two things, which is what I do and teach, is the messaging and number two is the delivery mechanism.

It’s not just the delivery mechanism trying to make it engaging, but also piggy backing on some very well understood psychological principles like reciprocity, adding value first before making an ask. Those are the things that I think a lot about.

Marylou: I think especially now that we have automated follow up tools, sequencing, whatever you wanna call it, we’re able to line up what I call lego blocks and messages from message one through message eight and create a talk track or a playlist from that that allows us to have a conversation with the prospect. What we’re seeing now, what you validated, is the use of video does increase the response rate, postcards inserted into the stream where you stop the sequence, mail the postcard, and maybe follow up on the postcard or like you said a thank you card where there is a soft close.

There’s not really a call to action on that, you’re just being grateful. All those things help to mix it up and keep the prospect engaged and entertained, in some cases. But I think the responsibility that this is putting on the sales rep now to come up with what these things are, and also, if you’re in an organization where your sequences are dictated to you and you’re just trying to follow up on the order in which someone else is set for you makes it a little bit difficult.

David: There’s definitely a lot of room for improvisation and for reps to do the things that work for them. Every rep is different, for some reps getting on a video and doing some of these things are very second nature, others not so much. It also depends to your point of view or who you’re selling into, not just the role but sometimes even the geography.

I used to manage teams in New York, in Toronto, in Atlanta, with customers all along the East Coast. The way that we interacted with each of those customers was very different, the tactics could be different. The one thing I actually do advocate for is this idea of never falling in love with your tactics, this idea that you try this thing, it works, we’re just gonna keep spanning the crap out of that tactic until it stops working, that’s not the way to go.

I’ll tell you a story, I was at a conference in London in the fall. A fellow was telling me a story about how one of his reps tried to get a deal closed at the end of the month by facetiming the customer while they were on vacation. You might have a visceral reaction, it sounds like you do to that particular tactic. I don’t know what the relationship was between the client and the seller in this case, if that made sense. I do know that once you can get on a texting relationship with a client, that’s fantastic, people pay attention. Text is a lot better, but the Facetime on vacation…

On one hand, I have this usually negative visceral reaction to what would I like? Will I like the seller to be pinging me? On the other hand, I applaud the seller for trying something different, whether you think it’s overly aggressive or not. Maybe they did have a great relation, maybe it was completely appropriate. But this idea that we always have to be trying new things because as soon as we follow up with something, it’s gonna stop working. That’s the challenge we all find ourselves in.

Marylou: I came up in the direct mail era, we had telephone, we had direct mail, period, that were most of the ways, and face to face, belly to belly as I called it. Direct mail worked really well and then it didn’t, now all of a sudden direct mail is coming back. Another thing to add on to what you’re saying, David, is that it may not work today but bring it back in a couple years because it may work again.

People get used to following the wagon and doing the bell curve, everybody jumps on the bell curve and does some video for over a year from now maybe not the way to go. You have to be very agile and nimble in the way that you communicate. Luckily, the tools we have out there give us that ability to move things around and it’ll remember for us what we did 8, 10, 12 months ago and what worked, what didn’t as long as you’re tracking properly.

I think what I would really focus on, of the two things you mentioned, is the messaging piece first so that you’re really understanding what these playlists look like, what these talk track looks like. Also, the other thing that I teach is relative position in the pipeline. If we’re doing targeted outreach, which is what I teach, then we have to worry about five levels of awareness that are prospects.

They may not be aware of who we are, they’re at this unaware state of, “I don’t know you, I don’t have a problem, what is it that you’re trying to talk to me about?” We go from there to problem aware where they know there’s a problem but they don’t necessarily know a solution to the problem, all the way up to level five which is, “I’m very aware, I’m most aware, I know you and I’m willing to start the dialogue with you.”

Our messaging even has to take into account the buyer’s head is in one of those five states. We have to really understand how to language our conversation to not only hit them where they’re at, determine where they’re at, but get them to move to that next level.

David: I have a little technique on my website, it’s actually a video, it’s an article called Target Your Message with this Amazingly Simple Technique which describes exactly what you just said which is, think about your message as concentric rings. As you get closer to the center, you get more to the tangible visceral, here’s the business impact that you can see. Outer rings, it’s more like the how.

It’s not that one is better than the other, you can chain these messages together but depending on who you’re talking to, you might choose one versus the other as a starting point.

Marylou: That’s another thing, is you can’t be enamored with, “Are you gonna help me? Can I talk to you? Can I get 15 minutes of your time?” You have to really go in with I’m not sure where we’re at here so I’m gonna provide you with a lot of helpful information until you tell me and signal me where you’re at. I’m gonna make some assumptions about where you’re at but I’m not gonna overwhelm you with where I think you should be, which is the biggest mistake I’m seeing now in a lot of these sequences.

I’ve been tracking a sequence of late from a vendor, I love the vendor, but their email sequences are horrid. I wrote to the marketing guy, I’m like, “Have you seen your email messages that are coming out?” It’s all about, “Can you help me? Can I get to see you? Can I take 10 minutes of your time?” With no value as to why I should even do that.

David: I’ll give you another tip. We haven’t talked about it yet but it ties in nicely with what you’re mentioning before about what’s old is new again. When we used to book travel, we used to book travel with travel agents and then travel agents went away because the internet happened, “We have all these travel option, what do we need travel agents anymore?”

But what’s happening now is that travel agents are making a comeback because there’s too much choice. You guys have the Trivago guy, you guys have the Trivago guy in the states, it’s a fear-based pitch, “How do you know you’re getting the best rate on the hotel? You can trust us, we’ll aggregate it for you.” The data shows the thing that people trust more than anything else is someone like themselves. The question is how can we mobilize the authentic voice of people like ourselves in the sales cycle?

It’s funny, when I watched my website and I needed a logo, I went to my buddy who had a logo design for his website and I said, “Who did you use?” He told me and I just did that because I don’t have time to look around. Imagine, you’re reaching out to your prospects now and you’re trying to figure out what’s the best wording and what’s the best medium because you’re trying to breakthrough as a stranger.

We try to avoid the cold calls, we wanna do the research and have all the contacts we can but I guarantee, there is someone that that person is willing to listen more than you, aka someone like them, that you could probably mobilize to deliver that message on your behalf. That’s why we’re seeing the rise of these review sites like G2 Crowd, TrustRadius, and Capterra, and so on.

That’s just one of the ways that we can promote advocacy. All of the data says that because I listened to someone that’s like me, I think companies should focus more and more on mobilizing those authentic voices as a tactic. You don’t see as much as you would expect to see these days and keeping how effective it is.

Marylou: Referral systems are one of the areas that I look in first to see if the client has a good customer base with a high, what we call NPS score, Net Promoter Score. There’s a loyal client base in there activating a referral system that works on the loyal promoter. For example, if they were to move jobs from company A to company B, then trigger those alerts that they move because they are the best people to say, “Now that you’re over at XYZ Company and you remember how great the job we did for you at ABC Company, let’s have a conversation when you’re settled in about what it is that they’re doing there and whether they can use our help.” That whole conversation track, it doesn’t exist in so many companies, it’s just mind boggling to me.

David: Here’s a great story, I think it ties a lot of that together. There was a fellow who has a company who had a solution that did exactly what you described which was, “David, wouldn’t you like to know, one of your top customers leaves their company, goes to somewhere else, they can get you planted there, wouldn’t you like to know when that happens?” At first I was thinking, “Doesn’t LinkedIn tell me this? Can’t I figure it out?”

He was saying, “It’s not really proactive in terms of telling you that. You can run reports and all of these kinds of things.” I said, “This sounds interesting but call me back later, I’ve got more important things.” This is the ultimate, he was great, he would periodically get back to me. Instead of saying, “David, is it time yet? Does it makes sense to chat?” He would find examples of my customers that have moved from company to company, he would bring them to me as gifts, “David, I found Marylou. She just left her company and went to this other company, I thought you’d like to know.”

It’s awesome because it’s reciprocity, he’s adding value, he’s showcasing the value of his solution. Back to the idea of advocacy, it’s a play for me, a huge value for me. I love that.

Marylou: That fits in line with your delivery mechanism, it’s not only what you’re delivering, where you’re delivering, but the context around what you’re delivering. I think the two combination to the messaging, also looking at the lead mix, are you referral? Are you outreach specifically? Are you follow up on inbound? What is this conversation track that you’re putting together?

Once you tie all that together, it’s not very difficult, but once you tie it all together, you’ll have a really good system that you can start pushing records through so you’ll have statistically relevant sample of what those conversation tracks did, how they performed, then you can move things around later on. As you said, always be testing. We’re all about get your ego on your pocket, don’t fall in love with your code, make sure that it’s performing, and then try to iterate, make it better with every statistically relevant of data that comes back to you. Sales is kind of the same way.

David: That’s the only way to do it. The way I think about messaging so often is it’s like clothes, you’re getting ready to go out, you’re standing in front of the mirror, you’re all dressed, ready to go, you look at yourself and you say to yourself I look good. I’m ready to go out and I go out to where I’m going, going to the party or going to work. I realize that I’m dressed completely inappropriately for whatever it is I’m going to but I thought it looked good when I was in the mirror.

Often times, that’s the way I feel about our messaging. We do it in the lab environment and it sounds good but either it falls flat or you go out to your existing customers and you say, “Here’s what I believed are the value of our solution was, what value are you seeing?” Often times, they’ll find that there’s a nuance in the value that they see that you don’t see in using those words, the words that your customers use, is very, very powerful, not just the actual words themselves which are powerful themselves but even just articulating the fact that this is the value that our customers get.

Our customers tell us that A, B, and C. When I hired Marylou to train my sales team, here’s the impact that they tell me they see, not that what I thought. Engaging your customers in that messaging synthesis is really, really important.

Marylou: I remember working with an accounting firm one time who insisted that they were back office accountants. That’s how they defined themselves, describe themselves, their behavior, their whole outlook, all their memos, everything talked about, we’re back office accountants. I said, “Let’s do this whole study, let’s have a very short interview with some of your clients. I’ll ask them two questions, first one is how do you describe ABC Accounting Firm?”

Not one person said, “They’re back office accountants.” The overall gist of how they described this firm was, “They are an extension of our team, they are business growth managers, we would be lost without them.” That’s a very different message. We started changing all of our conversation tracks to include the extension of the team, the business manager growth, wow, it made a big difference.

That’s because they saw themselves in the certain light and we’re very rigid about it where their clients had a whole different view of who they were, how they served, what they meant to their progress as a company to grow. It painted a very different picture in the mind.

David: Not only does that provide the clarity, like we talked about earlier, but there’s an emotional connection that that creates. If you said, “David, what is it that you do?” I didn’t talked about, “I work on messaging and negotiation, objection, handling all that kind of stuff.” In the why I said, “What I do, I train sales teams but typically, people come to me when they’ve tried all of the best and current sales methodologies out there and they found that none of them work, none of them really speaks to them or suit their business, then they come to me.”

I just made that on the spot here, just for fun. The idea is I can imagine this cohort of sad salespeople who are just lamenting with that but nothing is working anymore. “David, please, come help us.” There’s that emotion. Invoking emotion is very, very powerful as well in the introduction, as we negotiate, as we handle objections. We’d like to think that we’re all very logical beings but we are much more governed by our emotions.

Being able to invoke those emotions and everything we do in selling, in an authentic way, I’m not saying playing tricks on people but invoking the appropriate amount of emotion can be very, very powerful.

Marylou: We’re running close to end of time. The big message I got today was our love of learning and that the sales machine is one that is constantly changing, that the constant in sales is change, and that there are really two ways for us to start tackling how to have more authentic conversations, top of funnel, is where I’m talking.

David obviously covers the whole thing but it’s looking at how we structure our messaging and how we deliver that messaging to prospects so that the end result is that we’re getting more opportunities or having more authentic conversation. We’re really learning about the value our prospects sees in us and clients. David, how do people get a hold of you to continue this love of learning and really work on improving their messaging? How should we reach you?

David: The two best ways, first of all, check out the website cerebralselling.com. I give everything away for free there, all of my articles, content, podcast, videos, the whole thing. By all means, avail yourself of that. You can certainly get in touch with me through the website and you can also hit me up on LinkedIn, very accessible there as well.

Marylou: I’ll be sure, as everyone knows, to put on your page all these links. I’ll also make sure that I steer them towards that definition you had about the levels of awareness. When we’re offline, go ahead and send me that link to that one particular blog post because I really hit that a lot, of how to craft your messaging so that you’re not making assumptions as to where people are in their head but you’re more trying to breadcrumb them to a place where they’ll wanna have a conversation with you.

Forward that link over to me and I’ll be sure to get it on the website. Other than that, thank you so much for your time. This was a great conversation. I’m hoping that some of our folks here really take advantage and look you up and start a dialogue with you.

David: My pleasure, Marylou. Thank you so much for having me, this was fantastic.