Marylou:        Brad understands what it takes to qualify and move prospects all the way down to close one, or close lost. Advancing the sales process from lead gen until close is full of potential hiccups and nuances that many reps struggle to master.    Today, our guest has been doing that for over 30 years in the tech industry. Brad is the president of Doextra CRM Solutions, a Sales Force partner company that helps businesses implement technology while improving the sales cycle. In this podcast, Brad reveals the book that heavily influenced Brad and face it, Marylou too, why CRM won’t help you without a sales system in place or process, and tips for reorganizing and recognizing dead opportunities in your pipeline. Hey everybody, it’s Marylou Tyler, Predictable Prospecting. Today’s guest is a gentleman who I’ve met probably within the first week or two of moving from San Francisco to a little town in the Midwest called Des Moines which in fairness my husband and I had to kind of look it up on the map to find out where it was since we’re coast to coast people and not necessarily Midwest. I met Brad Williams who is the President of Doextra CRM Solutions. They’re a salesforce.com implementation partner and specialize in getting people and the process and all the technology figured out so that you can advance sales quickly. I’ve asked Brad to come on the show today because I think he has unique insights into what it takes to move records or accounts or context all the way from the top of the pipeline where I specialize which is cold contact through qualified opportunity but he also specializes in getting it from opportunity to close. Without further ado, Brad, welcome. Thank you so much for joining us today. Brad:               Hi Marylou, great to talk to you. Marylou:    You are the president of Doextra CRM Solutions and as you mentioned, you cover pretty much everything East to the Rock East would that be, is that kind of your territory and where you work? Brad:               Sure that’s right, we are based in Des Moines and out of Des Moines we cover the greater Midwest which is essentially Iowa and all the states that touch Iowa. We also have an office in Washington, DC so out of that office we cover the mid Atlantic territory. Places like Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey and that area. That being said, we have clients all over the world so we’re not limited in any way to any territory. Marylou:          You and I connected when I first came into town promoting Predictable Revenue which is way back in 2011. What really got me interested in what you had to say was your ability to encapsulate in a venn diagram sort of way the people, process, and technology. Specifically, you mentioned a book that I think we all read back in the 70’s or 80’s, maybe the 80’s, called Getting to Closed. That book revolutionized the way that we actually brought opportunities to close. Tell us a little bit about your involvement with that process and how Doextra actually works with clients in helping them advance sales from opportunity to close. Brad:               Sure. I have effectively been selling high end technology solutions for 30 plus years. Over the years, I’ve used just about every sales process or methodology, read every book. Miller Heiman to Challenge Your Sale, Consultative Sale, Solutions Selling, all of those. It wasn’t really until about 2005 or 2006 that I got introduced to the book called Getting to Closed, the author Stephan Schiffman which actually as you mentioned a late 70’s, early 80’s book. It’s been around quite a while but it’s a very simple process. The concept of Getting to Closed takes a qualified prospect which is again kind of where you end is where a getting to close process begins. Once you have an opportunity identified or a transaction that you’re trying to close and you’re starting to move it through the various stages or selling cycle from the stage one all the way to getting closed, from discovery to gathering information to proposal and negotiation. That process using the getting to closed methodology essentially is a date driven process that says, “If you don’t have a date and time for the next step, you’re not going to move it forward. If you don’t have a date and time for the next step, you are either stalled and we are going to move that opportunity off the boulevard if you will down into the parking lot until such a time that you have a date and time for your next step.” By using a very objective date and time approach or analysis, you take all the subjectivity out of the selling process. We all know that there are only two types of sales reps. There’s the overly optimistic and the overly pessimistic. By just saying if you don’t have a date and time for whatever the next step is in your selling cycle, then I don’t care, you’re not going to move that opportunity forward. That’s a great way to take all of that subjectivity out of the process and fundamentally stop people from chasing ghosts or opportunities that really aren’t qualified and never will close. Marylou:          In addition, I don’t know if you remember the Predictable Revenue formula on page 42 of the book, but we talked about the funnel and the average deal size but also this thing called time that factored into predictability and creating a consistent pipeline that you could scale and in this case forecast properly. It sounds like the getting to closed option eliminates that lag dependency or reps saying, “Anytime now,” or, “Let’s move to 10%, let’s move to 15% then 20%.” This auto percentage thing is a time date thing which is for me more substantial and you can get your arms around that. Brad:               Right, exactly. Time stamps every movement through the selling stages and helps you then determine the average selling cycle and what you can do to increase the velocity from the first stage all the way to completion. Marylou:          Your team then, are they helping clients implement the process or how does that work when you actually work with the client and you see that they’re struggling in getting from opportunity to close? Brad:               It’s really interesting. We are a technology partner. I mean we’re a system integrated for salesforce.com. A vice president of sales would call Doextra and say, “Hey, I’ve got a problem with my sales organization.” Whatever the situation is, they are not forecasting accurately, they’re not closing enough deals, they’re not generating enough growth in their revenue or their pipeline or they have some sort of dysfunction in the sales organization. They call us under the notion that you know Sales Force or CRM in general is a tool that they can apply that of course is going to solve all their problems. Wow, I’m a huge believer in salesforce.com, I’ve bet my business on it. I’m also pretty sure that technology alone is not going to make the world save the democracy. Fundamentally, a process needs to be applied. What we try to do is we try to say to our clients, “Look, we can help you implement salesforce.com and help you automate the process but let’s be sure that we have an underlying sales system if you will underneath that process.” That’s when we introduce the getting to close concept and walk them through that methodology. It’s very complimentary than to what we do with CRM which ultimately the software institutionalizes the process that we teach them. Marylou:          Are there apps or how does one actually visually implement this process? Brad:               That’s a great question. Actually, salesforce.com just last fall, in the fall of 2015, introduced their new user interface. They call it the lightning experience if you’re familiar with salesforce.com. They have their old user interface which has been around a while. They call that of course now the classic interface so they have the lightning experience. Within the lightning experience, they have what they call the Kanban board and it is a very visual column driven click and paste kind of an opportunity movement user interface where you can simply take opportunities, describe the stages from start to finish, put opportunities in each stage to find the probability associated with those stages, analyze the amount of revenue in each stage and then move opportunities if you will from left to right or from start to finish very visually in this Kanban board. Sales Force has “gotten on board” with the board concept by introducing app as part of their user interface. Marylou:          Okay, so it sounds like the app is there. What about the methodology or as you said you know it’s great having tools and technology but in your opinion, do they have the process pieces so that one can understand the why behind utilizing the Kanban board? Brad:               No, that’s the missing link if you ask me. I’d like to believe that we have a pretty good understanding of it and interestingly enough I don’t see a lot of other implementers that do. Again, we get called mostly because they think that we’re going to implement salesforce.com and it’s a technology play but in reality if you bring to them the underlying process, you’re really becoming more of a trusted adviser. The information is out there. To answer your question specifically, you can go to Amazon and buy Getting to Closed by Stephan Schiffman. It’s readily available and you can read the book in about an hour and a half and all the methodologies right there are self explanatory and then of course you could hire somebody like Doextra to come in and help you implement if you so desire. Marylou:          Okay. Brad:               Just a little shameless plug there. Marylou:          That’s okay. That’s fine. The Kanban board sounds like it’s a representation of the getting to closed board. When I was in sales back in the dark ages it seems like now, we utilize that type of methodology because of the fact that it did hold the reps accountable for more accurate forecasting. Can you share with the audience since you’ve been running around visiting a lot of different types of clients and different verticals, what are some of the experiences that you’ve seen, if you could give our audience like where you’ve seen things fall short and what are the common mistakes that are being made out there that you’re called in to help fix? Brad:               Well, I’m giving my own personal experience. Again, right up until 2006, I’ve probably been in sales for 25 or more years and really had never been introduced to a date driven methodology as defined in Getting To Closed. At that time, I was literally chasing 80 or so opportunities. I was my own worst enemy. I kept hanging onto opportunities, “Whoa, those are someday going to close,” and not fundamentally getting rid of them. When I applied the discipline was, I read the book and applied the discipline, I took those 80 down to three. Literally I took 80 opportunities down to three. Marylou:          You’re making people cry right now. Brad:               Because none of them really qualified. I was chasing ghosts and that’s the biggest problem a lot of us have. I’m working with a client right now in financial services in Des Moines, Iowa. Same problem, in this case you’ve got a new vice president of sales who’s been brought into an organization that’s really never had what I would call growth mindset or revenue mindset because they’ve been very successful. But you have an new VP of sales who’d come in and is trying to drive change in the organization. There really is no process around the selling approach and no discipline around it. Again, he’s got a pipeline of opportunities, most of which have been dead for a long time. It’s kind of like the Bruce Willis movie, The Sixth Sense, they’re dead, they just don’t know it yet. For me and for clients like this, the chance to come in and take opportunities that really aren’t moving forward, drop them off of your board if you will or put them down in the parking lot until there is a momentum is a great way to clarify and go from 80 opportunities down to three is a very clarifying moment for any sales professional. Marylou:          Yeah, if they’re willing to embrace that. I think that sounds really scary, Brad, to go from 80 to three. When you said that, even me who understands the logic behind it, it’s a scary thing to let go. Brad:               Yeah, it is, especially if you’ve been telling your manager that your pipeline looks a lot bigger or if you’re a small businessman and you’ve got to feed 15 families or so. It can be very scary but what’s even scarier as you know is the lack of predictability. That’s probably why you chose that term in Predictable Prospecting. The lack of predictability. If you’re a Fortune 500 company, it means you’re going to miss your guidance and your shareholders are going to be disappointed and your stocks are going to go down. If you’re a small business owner like myself, you’re going to miss payroll. If you’re an individual sales rep, you’re not going to make the incoming commission that you’re expecting. Adding this level of predictability to the process I think is fundamental. Even though it is scary at the moment, you’re much better off for it in the long way. Marylou:          I have another colleague who calls it spinning plates. When you go to the fair and you see people spinning plates and they get up to plate number 10, by the time they get back to number one it stopped spinning again. You really can’t manage a whole heck of a lot of accounts especially as you’re working through opportunity to close. That is not my area of expertise but I remember how hard it was to juggle multiple accounts, multiple contacts, multiple buyers. If you get down to something meaningful that is highly forecastable, then I’m with you on doing that. Now that we have technology, when you say park it, we can park it into a cue of nurture content that’s relevant for whatever the pain point is because we’re smarter now so we should be able to create a content stream for the people who are parked that bubble up that sense of urgency or whatever triggers, we’ll get them to come back into the opportunity pipeline but ready for conversation. In the olden days, we didn’t have all that. Brad:               That’s exactly it. You’re exactly right and the technology allows you to, as you say, park it and I think the biggest… Marylou:          Intelligently park it. Brad:               Intelligently park it and then nurturing it as you say. For me, the biggest a-huh is just the realization that not now doesn’t necessarily mean not ever. Even today, I’m still guilty and well if I lose a deal, shame on them, they weren’t smart enough to buy from me. I’m never going to talk to them again. The answer is six months from now, they may have a new situation or new leader or executive change or whatever and they may be an opportunity to come back at. Not now doesn’t mean not ever. Let’s park those that you either lose or that have lost momentum as we’re going through the sales cycle. Let’s apply good nurture marketing techniques and ongoing communication program and sooner or later they’ll probably bubble back up to the top. Marylou:          Leverage technology. We’ve covered process, we’ve covered technology, you also specialize in the people side. Can you elaborate for the folks a little bit on that area and what specifically are the lessons learned in the people side of the house? Brad:               What I have found, and it’s really a hard lesson to learn, and a lot of people may not agree with it. Especially when you go into let’s say an executive sales professional or someone who has been selling for a long time, change is hard. One of two things has to be in the environment for a person to change. They either have to be intrinsically motivated, they’re just personalities, they’re driven to want to improve, or something externally is changing that forces them to have to make a change in their approach to selling. If one of those two things is not present, and ideally somebody who is intrinsically motivated to grow and learn and change and leverage this new technologies, you’re fighting a losing battle. I had one CEO look at me and say, and they were going to invest a significant amount of money in salesforce.com, but they had a senior sales agent who literally was 80 years old but was also a top seller. The CEO of the company looked at me and said Brad, “I don’t care if the guy uses salesforce.com or not. I don’t care if he uses an abacus. I’m not going to get in his way.” That’s the situation where they’re clearly not going to take advantage of the technology that’s there. Fine, maybe they don’t have to because if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. I understand that mentality. Those are the kinds of people that are not going to be motivated to try to change and grow. What happens when that 80 years old guy finally does retire, is there a system in place behind him, is there a setup disciplines that that person use to take and hand down. Those are the kinds of things we have to achieve using a CRM system and the right people. Marylou:          One of the things that on the people side for me, now everyone knows that I’m a process person but the process does amplify and accentuate problems with sales skills even though once again that’s not necessarily my area but I know enough to know when there’s a red flag when it comes to sales skills. On the people side, the biggest red flag in the top of pipeline is habit. Continually getting people to role play, to practice reading scripts. I get these rolling eyes from the young folks when it comes to, “Look, here’s a script. You don’t have to say it word for word but I want you to get the essence of it and the tonality and figure out when you’re going to accentuate certain words or not.” For me, the people side is can I get these folks into a habit so that they will continually want to eek out a percent improvement in the delivery of the sales conversation and their ability to do research the night before they go home so that when they’re in their block time, they’re not spending time researching. These little things on the people side really make a difference. When you’re looking at opportunity to close, are there techniques that you found that sales reps who are consistently good at closing business, are there certain techniques that they use on the people side in order to be able to move through the board for example from step to step to step? Brad:               The technology today makes it so easy to do your homework using things like LinkedIn and all of the databases that are out there so that it doesn’t take long. 30 minutes in advance of a meeting, I can generally look at the person that I’m meeting with. Look at their profile, look at the company information, check the current news and events, see if there’s anything that’s happening in their environment or in their industry that might make a difference to what I’m trying to say. Have that information so the idea that I can know a lot or know more about the client than I have been able to as a sales professional, that’s a big deal, but then talk less. Know more, talk less, and listen a lot. Marylou:          Active listening. Brad:               Ask good questions, and active listening. It really is key. It’s a little bit cliché but tell me about you, it’s usually the first thing that I’d say. I usually don’t just come in and say that, I usually say, “Hey, I looked at your LinkedIn. Looks like we know so and so together or we have some common interests, or I understand you’re in this role at this company, but tell me more. Tell me about you, how long have you been here?” Just keep them talking. It’s amazing if you have good listening skills and then you can ask good pointed questions where that will lead you. I think those soft skills are just so important. You’ll only learn those through the role playing examples that you’re talking about. And Marylou, what kills me, you and I went through the trainings where the IBM’s and the Xerox of the world and HP’s, they did that for years and years and years and you had to go for a three or four or five or six weeks of training. If you failed the test, you went home. They don’t do that anymore so you being able to provide that to you audiences I think is a wonderful benefit because nobody else is doing it anymore. Marylou:          Yeah. Sales is still a two way conversation and I think we tend to forget that. I really enforce it with the top of funnel work that I do in the sense of role play. One of my colleagues had a brilliant and I’m like, “Why didn’t I think of that?” What he does is when they’re getting ready to block time, they take the first 15 minutes in role play. That’s warming up everybody and role playing, they may do a writing exercise, they may do different things, but they have it on the schedule because we do block time probably everyday because we’re trying to get to those meaningful conversations. But if you practice upfront, you’re nice and warmed up ready to go, it just makes the calling experience so much better. I am all about in the old school of practice makes perfect. You’re right, I remember the Xerox training, if you didn’t pass that section you were not going into sales, period. Brad:               That’s right, they’d send you home. Marylou:          That’s very humbling. Well Brad, thank you so much for taking the time. I would like people to know how to get a hold of you so if you wouldn’t mind in giving us some idea if people like what they’re listening to and want to talk to you more about what it is that you do and how you can help them, what’s the best way to get a hold of you? Brad:               Sure. It’s been a pleasure Marylou as always. Again, my name is Brad Williams. My email is bwilliams@doextra.com or you can go visit us at www.doextra.com. Marylou:          I will put in the show notes for those of you driving down the freeway not being able to write. I’ll have all of Brad’s contacting information. I’ll also put the Getting to Closed book. I suggest you guys read that, it’s a really great book even though it was written a long time ago it still applies. The lightning experience section on the Kanban board, I’ll put that in there as well so you can take a look at that. That is probably one of the better moves on Sales Forces’ part in terms of helping people get to opportunity to close forecasting, that would be more accurate. The more accurate the forecast, the more predictable the sales, and then that way we can take those analytics and figure out how many emails to send, how many phone calls to make in order to generate how many opportunities that you guys need to close. Brad, thanks again for your time. I really appreciate it. We’ll talk soon. Brad:               My pleasure, Marylou. Take care.