Andy:                    Hello! Welcome to Accelerate. I am really excited to talk with my guest today, joining me as Marylou Tyler. She’s the founder and CEO of Strategic Pipeline and co-author of the classic sales book Predictable Revenue which she co-wrote with Aaron Ross. She’s the co-author of a brand new book called Predictable Prospecting: How to Radically Increase your B2B Sales Pipeline. Marylou Tyler, welcome to Accelerate.Marylou:              Thank you so much for having me. Great to be here. Andy:                    Take a minute, fill up that bare bones introduction I gave for yourself. You may tell us how you got started in sales and how you ended up where you are today. Marylou:              The classic story is I’m an engineer by trade and I was working for a very long time for firms in Silicon Valley who sold very disruptive technologies, usually telephone-base trying to get asynchronous communications into synchronous communications which you all enjoy now as digital. Andy:                    Can you give us an example of who you work for? Marylou:              I worked for a little company called David Systems that took— Andy:                    I remember David. Marylou:              Their claim to fame was to take the whole AT&T key sets that were 25 pairs of cable, they weighed seemingly 50 pounds per phone. It wasn’t that heavy but they had 25 pair cable going into the back of the phone and they will take one pair of that cable and create 32 ethernet and digital voice channel over the one pair of wire. We ended up, because we had buildings in Los Angeles, we were able to take an analog system and create a digital wonder world out of it. Andy:                    Very cool. I forgot all about David but yeah. Marylou:              Yeah. I was involved as a systems engineer because I kept getting pulled into the marketing sales area because I could discuss the needs of the clients and translate it for the programmers even though I’m trained as an operating system programmer. It’s what I did before at Xerox. One day, we came into the office and we were told that the season sales reps were no longer and the systems engineers were now sales reps. Andy:                    Cool, I love it. Marylou:              That’s how I got into sales. Andy:                    Bravo! Actually, I’ve done that for my first clients in the past. Marylou:              There you go. Andy:                    Yeah, that same roof. Marylou:              I was faced with—as we talked before, I had no sales skills. I have sales process background because I am process expert but I had no idea how to apply my process knowledge to actually start conversations with people. I didn’t know at that time, and I try to get them to move forward me through the sales process. Andy:                    How did you end up then teaming up with Aaron Ross to write Predictable Revenue? Marylou:              Well, what happened was I really started getting interested in this whole thing about how do we start conversations with people we don’t know. I got very, very good at understanding how to use the telephone for that purpose and I ended up having a large call centre in Los Angeles area. We generated appointments for the healthcare industry at risk basis. I’ve got quite a representation of knowing how to do that using the phone so I was doing some consulting at a firm up in Seattle contract with me and say, “I heard about you in the telephony side of things. We want you to do this for this internet.” I sort of said, “Internet? What do you mean?” Andy:                    Or you said, “That’s never going to last.” Marylou:              They said, “Well, we want you to do what you to do on the phone for our email. We want to figure out how to do that with email because we’re thinking that that’s going to be the next way of communication for people we don’t know to start conversation.” Being a good consultant that I am, I scoured the internet looking for somebody out there that knew anything about complex sales, emails, leveraging technology and I found the guy by the name of Bryan Carroll who wrote a book called Lead Generation for The Complex Sale, right up my alley. He was having a webinar and he had a guest and his guest was Aaron Ross. When I heard Aaron talk about what he was working on with Sales Force which at the time was a really dinky, tiny, little company. We all thought Sales Force outsource sales reps. That was their branding for us. But when I heard him talk, I realized that, “Wow, this is sounding like what I need to do. I chased that man around for a very long time to try to get him to talk to me about how he implemented that, how the phone fits in and we ended up, long story short, collaborating and produced Predictable Revenue in 2011. Andy:                    Which has sort of become a bible of sorts for SAAS companies in the Valley. Marylou:              It’s really been an eye opener but as you know and as we talked about, the SAAS companies are really focused on fast transactions so the ability to leverage people, process and technology was paramount to them so this process fit really nicely in with the way that they sell. Andy:                    Let me ask you a question. Are the promises—I mean we are here only five years early on from when you wrote the book, are the premises still valid? Marylou:              There are some. The separation of roles, as we’ve talked before, because the fact that the different sales roles do have different strengths and weaknesses depending on the person, that concept I think is brilliant and still applies. Maybe we blend a little bit of inbound and outbound where in the book it was strictly outbound only, inbound only, sometimes that’s a little grey but the hand off. Andy:                    Sure, based on the organization. Marylou:              Right but I think that’s a very important concept. Also, the concept of recognizing that there are stages in top of funnel and even the Sales Force software isn’t written for stages on top of funnel. That’s another concept that’s invaluable because the Predictable Revenue formula which is on page 42 of that book is the thesis for this new book that I wrote. It’s based on how to get predictability in the pipeline which is looking at those stages, it’s looking at the lag, it’s looking at the ideal customer size, if the ideal account profiles are still valid, things like that are still good to use in this day and age but there’s some other things that we glossed over like it was an email only engine that is definitely, it doesn’t work for all companies. The blending of the telephone is very important and there’s also immersion and intraday calling which is a call centre methodology that I still use with clients who are not fearful of the phone. Andy:                    Explain to me intraday call. Marylou:              What we do is when we’re in a client, in a prospect, we look at the people that are either direct or indirect influencers of our target. An intraday calling means we’re calling in and around that bull’s eye to try to find the right person to start conversation. You’re actually making not one phone call to the person but you’re making multiple phone calls in and around, mapping in and around that particular targeted buyer. Andy:                    In an effort to establish contact. Marylou:              Yeah, establish contact, maybe verify that the person you think is the target is the right person. One of the things that makes me smile is when people say, “We should know who the contacts are because we have all these tools.” But there’s so many different roles that do so many different things. I was working with a client that had 15 persona roles for a marketing person because people do different things within marketing. We still use the phone to verify and validate that we found the right person. Some clients, we use this intraday calling technique, but you cannot be faint in heart in order to use the phone for that. A lot of the newer clients in the newer companies, SAAS companies, still rely on email way too heavily. Andy:                    Because that’s one of generational thing about Marylou:              I think so. Andy:    We’ve got generation of people that just didn’t grow up spending all the time on the phone like we did as teenagers and college students. It’s text based communication. Marylou:              Exactly. But not all companies are set up that way so we need to meet our targeted buyer where he’s at and she’s at in her head. Having multiple ways of reaching them is a value. Predictable Revenue didn’t really talk about that too much. Andy:                    Well, your new book, Predictable Prospecting, I sort of hesitate asking the question but it’s why this topic? I think it’s the number one topic for new sales books in the past 12 months. Seems like everybody has written a prospecting book. I find this very curious, that on top of what we see happening in the valley where there’s introduction of those Predictable Revenue model which is heavy on the prospecting. Almost as a reaction to it, it seems like there’s more books written about prospecting. First of all, why is that so many books are written about prospecting and then talk about what motivates you to write yours and what’s different initially about yours. Marylou:              Okay. The why prospecting is that people are still finding it very difficult to engage. They’re not getting the number of conversations that are quality in nature that they want. They want to be able to master the art and the science of getting people to have a conversation with you whether it’s an initial conversation or it’s a follow-up conversation because they filled out a form on your website. I still think prospecting and the fear factor of starting these conversations with people we don’t know will always be a topic that people are interested in because once they get to know you and once you start building rapport, the mindset in your head is that, “Okay, it’s easier to get them to do what I want them to do.” But until you get them into that first conversation, you’re navigating unchartered waters. Andy:                    Is part of the issue that—the way that we specialize roles within the sales function that we have served our least experienced, least qualified people frontline, having those initial conversations? Marylou:              You know, that could be one thing and that’s another, when we’re talking about the book. The book really didn’t do a disservice there either and a lot of my newer clients—that role is more of a professional role. It is someone who is more tenured. Andy:                    Okay. You’re saying is the SDR role in some of the clients that you’re dealing with, it’s less those entry level, we’re going to burn them out in 12 to 18 months role through focused on the metrics to being a role sort of quality over quantity professional role. Marylou:              Correct. It is a role that people may choose to stay in. I have some clients that the SDR role has been filled by the same person for years and years. They don’t have the desire to be an account executive or a field rep or an account manager. Andy:                    How do they manage them differently to not burn them out? Marylou:              Because we’re leveraging the technology now and the process in order to be able to serve up more quality conversations for them. They’re not dialing for dollars like we used to do in the olden days. Andy:                    Or even today. Marylou:              Yeah. We’re basically leveraging our ability to write good content, our ability to have the right assets at the right time for the right person, in place so that the SDR role is one of a consultant role where they’re taking that conversation further, they’re helping them. Andy:    Before the hand off? Marylou:              Yes, before the hand off. Andy:                    Where is that hand off then take place now in those clients you’re talking about? Marylou:              We still are looking at qualification as the hand off point, how in depth the qualification is varies by client. Andy:                    But qualification to buy or qualification to get a demo? Marylou:              It depends on the client. Andy:                    Okay. Marylou:              But some are more involved. I mean, if you want—people hate the word bent but— Andy:                    Yeah, I believe that too. I sort of fall into that category. Marylou:              But if you’re thinking bent, some clients are going to want authority in need and they’re done, that’s when it gets handed off. Some are going to want some understanding of whether there’s money, whether they can find money, whether they can get money, whether money is not an option. They want to know some relative level of where the money is and some are concerned about timing. Is it something six months out, is it something three months out, because all that is factored into the pipeline formulas that we work on. Andy:                    Do you see this as potentially a trend? It seems like to me, when I talk to SAAS companies, CEOs, sales leaders, SDRs themselves, to me it seems like making that role more professional, having them extend a little further into the selling process is the right route to follow. I mean both for the buyer as well as for the seller because then that first initial conversation perhaps with the vendor is more substance. Marylou:              It’s funny you say that because when I was in my days of searching as a consultant for some method of doing this, I was the SDR as a consultant for my client up in Seattle. I’m a highly paid professional who’s doing that role. Most of my clients are like me. Now, I can’t speak for the small to medium businesses or even SAAS companies because my specialty is more up market. In the up market accounts, what we’re talking about now is that role. Andy:                    That’s fascinating. Marylou:              Somewhere there there’s a difference between the lower end guys and I think some of that has to do with the way that Predictable Revenue laid out that map. It’s not the right way, it’s just a way. Andy:    A way. Marylou:              Right. Andy:                    That’s fascinating.  When you think about it because I hadn’t really thought about that before. In that role, for instance, could you make a case that you get what you pay for? Marylou:              Yes. Andy:                    So that if you continued to, I don’t want to say bottom feed, but use an entry level position as oppose to you said trying to professionalize it. You are going to be in the scenario where you’re trying through tons of names in order to dig up opportunities and then you have ultimately modest close in all of those. Marylou:              When we put process in, we’re looking for a 40% close rate. I think the average is 20% close rate. Andy:                    20% to 23% on SAAS. Marylou:              Right, there you go. By definition of the fact that we’re targeting accounts instead of casting the wide net, getting minnows and whales, we’re going after the whales and we are training our SDRs as professionals who can take it to a point where the account executives are going to accept that opportunity 90% to 95% of the time with no issue. We are talking a different type of person in that role but they still need to have that habit. Andy:                    Yes, they can make calls or outreach. Marylou:              They’re not going to be—I can’t only say, when I was first getting into sales that the reps dressed impeccably they wore Rolex watches, they have this beautiful suits, Italian shoes. That kind of rep where you’re finessing the sale from opportunity to close. These guys may dress that part but they are coming in, and I have a story about a friend who did this SDR role. She put her coat on at 5:30PM. She would not leave the office until she got one more appointment. That is the kind of person I’m talking about. That’s 22 more appointments a month. Andy:                    A month, right. This is a—I don’t know if you know Mark Hunter. Marylou:              Yes, I’m actually going to interview him for my podcast in a couple of weeks. Andy:                    Oh, excellent. He’s got a system. He calls five after five. Make five calls after five o’clock. I love these ideas. Probably, the reason that somebody professionalize in this role is going to have west call. This is greater conviction and the value that they can provide for the buyer. To me, that’s always been that correlation. Call reluctance is based on your anxiety and security about the value you offer. Marylou:              There’s a lot of discussion about that, there’s a lot of discussion about compensation. I think really when you look at the end of the day, you’re going to want professionals in all those roles because starting conversations and getting—because we are targeting. I keep reminding people, these are the accounts that we want. We went through all this work to try and figure out what these accounts look like, who these people are. We want every single one of them because we’re targeting them. Andy:                    You call us an ideal account profile, ideal client profile. Marylou:              Yes. Andy:                    A couple criteria, one is you talk about targeting accounts with the fastest velocity and the highest lifetime value. Let’s start with the fastest velocity. How are you judging that in advance when you’re targeting companies? Find out what the final velocity is just so people understand but then how do you identify that they have it? Marylou:              First of all, velocity for us is lag, reduction of lag. I’m sure if you’ve looked at or talked to clients, the water gets muddy when you’re trying to ask them, “Well, how long did it take to go from this stage to this stage to this stage to this stage and finally get to close?” The days in funnel is really that velocity. We want people to close quickly, which means when you go back to that bent process, if we’re hearing that the timing is out till initiatives for 2019 or 2018, they’re not going to be accounts we want to take time with right now. We want to put them into a nurture sequence. We’re kind of disqualification engines when we’re on top of funnel because we’re only going to put through those people with whom we’ve heard all the right things. It’s not even checking the boxes, we got the gist and again, this is where season reps come in. Through our questioning, through our listening, we got the gist of whether or not they’re behavior is such that they’re going to want to go those next steps with us. We’re going to reduce the lag by virtue of the fact that we know pretty much that they’re going to be going through the pipeline a lot quicker. That’s the first thing. Andy:    By pipeline, you mean not just the top of funnel pipeline but the entire pipeline to close? Marylou:              We take the entire pipeline. Andy:                    Okay. Marylou:              I’m not an expert in opportunity close but we do take the math from the entire pipeline in order to determine that. Andy:                    Okay. Marylou:              We also, as part of the ideal account profile and prospect personas, have a 15 step sort of analysis that we go through to try to figure out who these accounts are, What they look like and how we get more of them. Andy:                    That’s 15 step analysis on the account, not on the persona? Marylou:              It can be both the people that we encounter through the pipeline and the account itself, yes, both. We do external and internal audits in order to tend to craft this ideal account profile. Andy:                    Audits of? Marylou:              We talk to everyone in the company who touches the customer, the prospect. Again, I’m up market where that’s a lot of people. That’s product marketing, that’s product development, customer service, support, and the list goes on. We also look at external factors, whether it’s going to be industry, information, surveys that we’ve done, NPS scores, Net Promoter scores for the industries, things like that. We take all of that data, bring it all in, and then create analysis of that. Qualitative and quantitative analysis to determine these are the right clients, these are the right accounts, and this particular geography or this particular vertical, whatever it is, that we’re going to now target for this outreach campaign for predictable prospecting. Andy:                    Within that, and we talk about the ideal prospect persona which you described in the book and the process of identifying that. I was allowed to talk about consensual decision making these days and more stakeholders involved in the process, I heard today that CEB is upping their involvement factor from 5.2 people to 6.7 people. How do you accommodate that or do you even worry about that in your development of the personas? Marylou:              Yes, we worry about that but we worry about it from three stages of the pipeline. The cold stage, the working stage, and the qualifying stage. We’d look at people in and around those stages. We don’t worry about opportunity to close which the CEB, I’m sure is taking the entire pipeline into account. Our little guys, we’re looking at three maybe that are going to ebb and flow. Again, there’s the target, there’s the indirect, and there’s the direct influencers. We want to find those people who on average are going to give us the time of day to have an initial conversation and follow up conversations to get them to opportunity. Andy:                    Do you prioritize within that direct influencers or indirect influencers initially when people have prioritized how they spend their time, how are you that they prioritize in terms of which of those three? Marylou:              If we’re doing immersion intraday type calling, they’re calling all three of those people on the same day. Within their block time, they’re prioritized which means they’re only maybe talking to 20 accounts in a two-hour block time. But because they have five days a week to do that, they can conceivably hit all of their accounts that they’re going after in a week’s time. Andy:                    This process you’ve laid out seems like sort of an ultimate personification of account-based sales development. Marylou:              It does, doesn’t it? Andy:                    Yeah. Marylou:              It does but it also works for—I have a couple of clients who are SAAS companies who are using the process but I really am stickler about multiple people in the account because I think that’s another issue. The difference between Predictable Revenue is there was never really any talk about the people, it’s more of the account. Now, we’re talking about the people within the account that can actually help you get in for that initial conversation or help you create the follow-up conversations that you need in order to start working towards that opportunity. The other thing that I also—I love this topic about personas because the sales people roll their eyes when I start talking about personas. Andy:                    I’m sure they do. I can hear it now. Marylou:              They say, “Our marketing department does that for us.” And I say, “No, they don’t. Let’s think about this, begin with the end in mind. The marketing department is trying to get you a marketing qualified lead. You are trying to get to a sales qualified opportunity. Those are two different types of end results. Therefore, their personas are great for a baseline starting point but you, sales, have to build on that because the pains that you’re going to encounter along the way plus the people you’re going to encounter along the way may be different.” Andy:                    I would extend that to what you also talk about in the book about how to craft the right message, is that you’re crafting a sales message, not a marketing message. Marylou:              Exactly. Andy:                    Which is something that people have a hard time distinguishing. People think if you perfectly align sales and marketing then sales is never going to modify the marketing message. It’s like, “Oh yeah, they’re always going to. It’s always going to happen.” Marylou:              We also have five levels of awareness we have to worry about because marketing theoretically is looking at awareness of some sort because they filled out a form or some action was taken on behalf of the buyer. They’re either aware that the vendor’s there or they’re interested or they’re evaluating. We have three other levels we have to worry about which is they’re unaware because we may be reaching out to clients who have never heard of us, they may be basically problem aware, it’s like going to the fridge at night, you open it up you’re hungry but you don’t know what you want. We have that level too that we have to worry about. Then, there’s the other level of, you go to the fridge, you see the chocolate cake, it looks great but you don’t really an idea of who made the chocolate cake. The fact that people are— Andy:                    I’m not sure that it matters for most of people. Marylou:              This is true. Although for me, if it’s a Duncan Hines chocolate cake, I’m very happy. The basic difference here is that if I’m filling out a form on a website, chances are I’m going to know I’m filling a form on your website so I know the vendor. Andy:                    Right. Marylou:              If we’re doing an outreach program to targeted accounts that we want to penetrate, they may not know us. Sales has got to own this prospect persona for sales. They have to, like you said, craft the message that involves more pain at different levels of awareness which means by definition that those personas have to be done by sales. Andy:                    Who within sales does those? Marylou:              In my world, it’s my people. The director of sales, the director of sales ops in the SDR teams and the AEs, we all work together on creating and crafting the— Andy:                    Is the outline of the process in the book? Marylou:              Yes. There is a process in the book. For those people who bought the book, I actually did a powerpoint presentation of showing a completed prospect persona that’s graphically represented so they can see it, including the bull’s eye that I was talking about in the immersion calling of how to fill that out. Andy:                    Okay, used in the past tense. It’s still available for purchase? Marylou:              Yes, yes. Andy:                    It just came out. Marylou:              I’m sorry. Andy:                    For those people who buy the book, make sure you buy the book. Marylou:              Those who buy the book and send, let me know that they did. I don’t need a receipt but if they just send word to me to the website then I will give them the keys to the kingdom of the swag URL that has all the different stuff in there. Andy:                    Alright. One last point on the book and then we’ll move to the last segment of the show, is you had mentioned that you sort of varying the methods of the outreach beyond what you talk about in Predictable Revenue. Explain what you mean by that. What’s in the cadence that you use. Marylou:              I think just the fact that we have sequences and we have cadences and we have different types of sequences and different types of cadences, depending on the company and their level of comfort in using the phone, none of that existed in Predictable Revenue. Those are all part of our actual samples in the book of the cadences that we use. We also have a lot about the tools that we’re using now. We go very in depth into this habit of the SDR because much of the success of a team depends on choosing the right person for the role that they’re going to be working on. We did a lot of work there as well. Andy:    Now, we move to the last segment of the show. I got some questions I ask all my guests and the first one is a hypothetical scenario in which you, Marylou Tyler, you’re just probably like serving up a softball right across the plate for you. You’ve been hired as VP of sales by a company whose sales stalled out and the CEO and the board are anxious to get things turned around back on track. What two things would you do to your first week on the job that can have the biggest impact? Marylou:              I would first get a status quo of where we’re at and so I would utilize my method of collecting data from the various people within the organization to find out where we are today. From the standpoint of analytics, what does today look like in this company? I would get a good handle on that then I would— Andy:    Beyond just sales. Everything. Marylou:    Yeah, pretty much everything because Andy, where the prospecting client goes is where I want to focus my effort in understanding what status quo looks like. Andy:    Okay. Marylou:    So that would be the first thing and the next thing I would do once I got the lay of the land and a status quo is I would then get an understanding of where we want to go. Predictably, where we want to be and then how long we want to be there. The third thing I would look at is realistically, given our team is what we have in place, can we get there, how do we get there, and what do we need to give up or add in order to get that goal. Andy:    Okay. What a great answer, great answer. You even got the word predictive in there too. The branding is consistent, I love that. Now, just some record for our questions, you can give me one word answers if you want or elaborate. The first one is when you, Marylou Tyler, are outselling your services, what’s your most powerful sales attribute? Marylou:    Hm. I’m pleasantly persistent. Andy:    Okay. Two, who’s your sales role model? Marylou:    Oh my gosh, SPIN Selling. Neil is like my—I love him. Andy:    Got it. Okay. Besides your own books, what’s one book every sales professional should read? Marylou:    Well, I’m going to go back to—there’s two. Can I say two? Andy:    Sure. Marylou:    There’s SPIN Selling and there’s Getting to Closed Stephan Schiffman. Andy:    Stephan Schiffman, Getting to Closed. Okay, good choices. Last question. Perhaps the most difficult one for many guests is what’s music is on your playlist these days? Marylou:    I’m stuck in the 80s, people. Def Leppard, Cheap Trick, Heart, Joan Jett. Andy:    Any ACDC in there? Marylou:    I think one. Andy:    One? Okay. Marylou:    Yeah. Andy:    Yeah, ACDC has never been a favorite so far in the hundreds of interviews that we’ve done. Marylou:              Yeah. I’m definitely an 80s fan. My kids constantly tease me about that. Andy:                Rolling their eyes, right? Well, good. Marylou, it was great to talk to you. Great conversation. Tell folks how they can find more about you and the book and get in contact with you? Marylou:              Sure. The best way to get a hold of me is maryloutyler.com is my website. The book actually is predictableprospecting.com so those are two ways you can pop in and download a free chapter from the book to see if it’s right for you. My Twitter handle is @maryloutyler, my LinkedIn is Marylou Tyler. Pretty straightforward. Andy:                    Marylou Tyler. Thank you again for being on the show. Marylou:              Thank you so much for it. I enjoyed myself. Andy:                    And remember friends, make it a part of your day, everyday to deliberately learn something new to help you accelerate your success and one easy way to do that is to make this podcast Accelerate, a part of your daily routine whether you listen in the gym or make it a part of your sales meeting, that way you won’t miss any of my conversations with top business experts like my guest today Marylou Tyler who shared her expertise on how to accelerate the growth of your business. So thank for joining me, until next time. This is Andy Paul. Good selling everyone!