MMS #117 - The Power of Being More Human in Sales with Andy Paul

[00:00:01] Welcome to Mastering Modern Selling, relationships, social and AI in the buyer-centric age. Join host Brandon Lee, founder of Fistbump, alongside Microsoft's number one social seller Carson V Heady, and Tom Burton, author of The Revenue Zone and co-founder of LeadSmart, as we explore the strategies and stories behind successful executives and sales professionals.

[00:00:24] Dive into business growth, personal development, and the pursuit of excellence with industry leaders. Whether you're a seasoned executive or an aspiring leader, this podcast is your backstage pass to today's business landscape. This is Mastering Modern Selling, brought to you by Fistbump.

[00:00:46] That's a lot. All right. Happy Wednesday, everybody. It's 3.30 Eastern and welcome to episode 117 of Mastering Modern Selling.

[00:00:57] And then, of course, 117 doesn't seem all that impressive now. Andy just said he's done like 1,300. So, but I'm just infants.

[00:01:05] Andy's asleep right now because he can do these in his sleep. He's just...

[00:01:09] No, it's fun to be on the other side. So, yeah, but I started 10 years ago, so...

[00:01:15] That's right. I've been following Andy for a long time. It's been a couple years since we last chatted. Andy, great to see you again. Thanks for being here.

[00:01:22] And excited to jump into not only your most recent book, but also just kind of what you're seeing in today's interesting selling landscape.

[00:01:32] Sure. Yeah, I love that.

[00:01:33] Andy, tell us a little bit about it. You're a sales strategist. You've got several books. Your most recent is Sell Without Selling Out.

[00:01:42] Your focus is helping sellers master their craft and achieve their personal and professional goals.

[00:01:48] So, not only welcome to the show, but yeah, tell us a little bit more about you before we get started.

[00:01:53] Yeah, well, I've been in sales forever. Literally, I think it's long enough now. It counts as forever.

[00:01:59] And yeah, I've sold through every tech revolution in the last 50 years, basically.

[00:02:05] And yeah, it's sort of interesting to see what's happening today with AI and sort of project where that may go.

[00:02:12] But yeah, I spent 20, 25 years working primarily for startups and tech. Not entirely, but worked at Apple in the very early days of Apple before getting sort of in the startup venture world.

[00:02:25] And then since the year 2000, I've had my own company working primarily with small, mid-sized companies.

[00:02:33] They're not exclusively, but primarily with sort of $100 million type companies that have sort of hit a plateau and sort of lost the recipe and want to know what they need to do next.

[00:02:47] And especially with CEOs, entrepreneurs that are looking to exit.

[00:02:53] So, did that very successfully.

[00:02:55] And then, yeah, sort of got into this whole thought leadership thing about a little over 10 years ago.

[00:03:00] Published my first book about this.

[00:03:02] Sort of like most consultants who write a book think it's a calling card.

[00:03:05] And then one book turned into three and started a podcast.

[00:03:09] And, yeah, we're several sort of rebrands.

[00:03:12] That podcast was acquired in the year 2020.

[00:03:16] But in total to about 1,200 episodes there.

[00:03:19] And then my latest podcast, yeah, we're up over, I guess it's getting close to 100 episodes.

[00:03:24] Amazing.

[00:03:25] Yeah.

[00:03:26] Andy has life goals for guys like me.

[00:03:29] So, Andy's living it.

[00:03:30] So, I think what I'm really interested in hearing too, Andy, is just some of the commonalities that you're seeing.

[00:03:37] You know, when you plug in with these organizations.

[00:03:39] I think a lot of times on this show we talk about the importance of the fundamentals.

[00:03:43] But also that criticality of pivoting, you know, amidst a tech revolution like we're seeing right now.

[00:03:49] So, what would you say are some of the common themes that you see of why these guys are losing the recipe.

[00:03:54] You're losing that love and feeling.

[00:03:56] Yeah.

[00:03:57] I think it's because they frame selling the wrong way.

[00:04:01] So, I'll go on record and say I think, you know, the tech revolution in sales has been sort of largely a bust.

[00:04:08] And, you know, we've had tens of billions of dollars invested in sales technology.

[00:04:13] And the best data points we have is that average win rates have fallen during that period.

[00:04:19] Wow.

[00:04:19] And sorry, the dog's shaking right here.

[00:04:25] Didn't like the data.

[00:04:27] Yeah.

[00:04:28] Well, but it's data that, you know, everybody loves data until they get data points they don't like.

[00:04:33] We just ignore those.

[00:04:35] That's right.

[00:04:35] So, you know, let's just take SAS as an example.

[00:04:38] And data that came out earlier this year is that average win rates across five different ACV segments from low to high.

[00:04:45] Average 16 to 20%.

[00:04:46] So, I don't know, Carson Easter came out of industrial selling like I did.

[00:04:52] Big, big stuff.

[00:04:53] I mean, if I had had a 20% win rate, I would have been out of the business ages ago.

[00:05:00] And yet we have people in SAS falling all over themselves to justify why that's the case.

[00:05:05] Right?

[00:05:05] And it's all nonsense.

[00:05:07] And so, getting back to this idea of framing, the problem is that the goal of all the technology has been to turn every sale into a transactional sale.

[00:05:18] Right?

[00:05:18] It's a formulaic, linear, sequential sales process.

[00:05:23] And if we do A, the customer is going to B.

[00:05:25] And then we do C, they're going to D.

[00:05:27] And it's like, hey, it doesn't work that way.

[00:05:30] And so, all this technology, virtually all of it, I don't say all of it, virtually all the technology that's been brought to market has been about how do we help sellers do more shit.

[00:05:45] Right?

[00:05:46] And what's missing is that's not what the buyers need.

[00:05:51] What the buyers need is the buyers need help making decisions to make a change in their business.

[00:05:57] And so, if we're going to take all the exciting things that are happening with AI and we're going to apply it in the same frame that all that we've done with all the sales technology to date, which is do more stuff in a transactional form, it's not going to help sellers help buyers.

[00:06:17] Now, sure, we'll send more emails.

[00:06:19] We'll make more calls.

[00:06:20] You know, the sort of illusion of productivity.

[00:06:24] Because we talk about productivity in sales and I posted last year about how productivity in sales is way down and people went nonlinear and saying, well, look, I can send 100 emails a day.

[00:06:33] I couldn't do that 10 years ago.

[00:06:34] It's like, yeah, but, you know, if you only get two responses out of 100, what's your productivity per hour?

[00:06:41] If you can send 100 emails an hour and you get two responses, what's your productivity per hour?

[00:06:44] Is it 100 emails an hour or two emails an hour?

[00:06:47] Right.

[00:06:48] And no one keeps it.

[00:06:50] Your productivity sucks.

[00:06:52] Right?

[00:06:52] So rather than...

[00:06:53] Wrong data again.

[00:06:54] Right.

[00:06:55] They don't like the data.

[00:06:56] So instead of doing that, learn how to send 10 emails to get two responses.

[00:07:03] Yeah.

[00:07:03] I mean, look, we talk about that on this show a lot.

[00:07:06] There is an importance to the metric of quality of outreach, touches, et cetera.

[00:07:14] But the quality of it is so critical.

[00:07:18] You know, you have to make sure you've got the right message going out 100 times.

[00:07:21] You know, and if you can up that ante, you know, I've spent a lot of time studying this over the years.

[00:07:27] You know, the tinkering with my messaging, going out and leveraging LinkedIn as an example to connect with potential buyers.

[00:07:33] Are we connected at the right level?

[00:07:35] You know, are we talking to the board or the C-level?

[00:07:37] Or are we talking to the, you know, the procurement, the IT director?

[00:07:42] You know, you're obviously, you got to talk to the people that can get the juice, you know, they have the juice to get the deal done.

[00:07:46] But you've also got to make sure that you're landing the right message with the target of doing exactly what you said, Andy.

[00:07:53] And that's the most important thing you set up to this point is what buyers are actually looking for help making these decisions, not an email blast telling them everything great about you or your product.

[00:08:05] Yeah.

[00:08:06] So, yeah, I sort of frame it as, you know, the transactional selling is pitch, push, persuade.

[00:08:12] And what the buyer needs is just help making a change, a decision to make a change.

[00:08:18] And so I was presenting to a portfolio of companies of a private equity firm a couple weeks ago.

[00:08:24] And I, you know, put up side by side.

[00:08:26] I said, okay, this is typical SaaS.

[00:08:30] And I pulled it off from several examples.

[00:08:31] I had, you know, SaaS stages of their sales process, initial contact, you know, discovery call, present product,

[00:08:41] demonstration, you know.

[00:08:43] And I said, how does any of these steps help you help the buyer make a decision?

[00:08:50] And I said, for me, well, I don't want to discover stuff.

[00:08:54] I want to help the buyer define what the problem is.

[00:08:57] I want to help them define what the business opportunities that are that come from solving and resolving the problem.

[00:09:03] I want to help them define the outcomes.

[00:09:05] Because if I can help them define that, then I've been able to influence their thinking about what it is they're trying to do.

[00:09:13] In the absence of that influence, it's just a price competition.

[00:09:17] Yeah.

[00:09:17] So sellers have to change the frame of how they're thinking about sales.

[00:09:23] It's not about pitch, push, persuade.

[00:09:26] It's about how do I help the buyer define the problem, define the opportunity, define the outcomes,

[00:09:31] and then help them make that decision to change.

[00:09:35] And what you're talking about, Andy, is really a cultural shift.

[00:09:37] Because when you come into some of these organizations, I find often, you know,

[00:09:41] especially if I'm coming into an organization that's been doing things a certain way,

[00:09:45] and then I'm having to create and nurture a true selling culture,

[00:09:53] sometimes it's completely new muscle for these folks.

[00:09:56] You know, some of them may not be capable.

[00:09:58] It's a skill versus will thing.

[00:10:00] It could also be, you know, they're taking on these new motions.

[00:10:05] They're not able or they don't have, you know, they don't have the ability to prospect.

[00:10:08] They don't have the ability to have the C-level acumen.

[00:10:11] You're almost like with some of these folks, you're building from scratch.

[00:10:14] How do you, what do you think are the most impactful things that you do when you walk into situations like these

[00:10:21] with organizations where you're trying to instill a culture of selling?

[00:10:26] Well, I want to instill a culture of winning.

[00:10:30] I love that.

[00:10:32] And so, you know, I had the CRO on my podcast earlier this year,

[00:10:37] a well-known software company, and their average win rate, I think, was like 23%.

[00:10:43] And so I said, so what's your culture, sales culture?

[00:10:48] With that sort of win rate, what's the sales culture in your company?

[00:10:52] He goes, well, what do you mean?

[00:10:53] I said, well, you have a culture of losing, right?

[00:10:56] What are you doing most frequently in your organization?

[00:10:58] You are losing.

[00:11:02] He's like, oh, my God, I never thought about that.

[00:11:05] I mean, we were working with a client a year ago, and I was talking to their regional vice presidents.

[00:11:11] Again, another pretty well-known SaaS company.

[00:11:13] And I said, so when you get a new lead, and their average win rates across the board were 18%.

[00:11:20] I said, so when you get a new lead, do you expect to win?

[00:11:25] Not a new lead, but a qualified opportunity.

[00:11:28] Do you expect to win it with an 18% win rate?

[00:11:32] Or are you just there hoping you're going to win it?

[00:11:35] They have no expectation of winning.

[00:11:37] How can you when you're losing one of every, only winning one of every five?

[00:11:40] Right.

[00:11:41] So for me, one of the biggest things we want to do is help sellers develop the confidence that they can make good choices, A, about who they're going to sell to, where they're going to invest their time, and then execute the deal in such a way that they have a, you know, for me, the goal is for every seller is you should win more than you lose.

[00:12:03] Full stop.

[00:12:04] That's your goal.

[00:12:05] As an individual seller, I win more than I lose.

[00:12:07] So I want to help sellers get to that point.

[00:12:10] And again, a lot of it's about the choices they make, and also about how they execute on a call.

[00:12:17] Yeah.

[00:12:18] So Andy, Andy, do you find now, so it sounds to me, I'm going to kind of summarize a little bit of what we said, get my brain around this.

[00:12:26] So we've got all this technology, and I'll say the last 15 years, and so say 2010, we're almost 2025.

[00:12:32] We have all this technology, and it seems like the sales culture shifted to quantity versus quality.

[00:12:39] And, you know, predictive selling.

[00:12:42] I'd say transactional versus complex, we'll call it.

[00:12:47] There's more than this, but complex is, you know, not as complex as you think.

[00:12:52] But it's the transactional versus, let's say, the complexer.

[00:12:55] Or the way I like to talk about it is the tactical versus strategic.

[00:12:59] Got it.

[00:13:01] So that's been, that's really permeated in so many companies over the last 15 years.

[00:13:06] It's quantity of emails out, quantity of calls made.

[00:13:09] It's, you know, do A, they do B.

[00:13:11] We do C, they do D, like you were saying earlier.

[00:13:14] I believe now, and I'm hearing more, that companies are hitting that wall where they're starting to, maybe it's, they're talking to people like you and realize, oh my gosh, we're losing 88% of the time.

[00:13:25] Stop celebrating at 22% win rate.

[00:13:27] How are you helping companies shift that?

[00:13:30] Because that's a pretty big culture shift over a 15-year history where they were happy losing most of their deals because they just focused on quantity versus quality.

[00:13:43] Well, change starts at the top, right?

[00:13:47] And as Carson can attest to, is you have to get the leadership to buy into the fact that this is a problem.

[00:13:56] And it's very difficult in some, you know, well-called personal or SaaS companies that, irrespective of the size, is because their frame of reference of leadership has always been in this environment.

[00:14:09] Yeah, they didn't have experience selling prior to this.

[00:14:13] So I, yeah, I had exchange on LinkedIn last year with a CEO, earlier this year, actually, a CEO, multi-time CEO founder.

[00:14:21] And he was sort of trying to debate me about this whole idea of win rates.

[00:14:25] And he said, look, I'm suspicious of high win rates.

[00:14:29] I said, what do you mean?

[00:14:30] What's high?

[00:14:31] You know, 25%.

[00:14:32] I said, well, why would you be suspicious of that?

[00:14:35] Well, because that means my seller is not having enough conversations.

[00:14:38] I said, well, what do you mean?

[00:14:40] Not having enough conversations.

[00:14:42] Well, they need to be talking to people and they get all these opportunities.

[00:14:44] I said, whoa, whoa, whoa, hang on a second.

[00:14:47] Do you have a well-defined ICP?

[00:14:50] Well, yeah.

[00:14:52] So I don't want my sellers having a lot of conversations because that means they're talking to people outside the ICP.

[00:14:56] Until we dominate the ICP, if you're talking to people that don't fit that, what are you doing?

[00:15:02] Right?

[00:15:03] And so if you're focused on your ICP and you know exactly what it is about what you have to do to be able to win the deal,

[00:15:10] which I think most companies don't understand, you don't want to have a lot of conversations.

[00:15:15] You should have a high win rate because you understand, yeah, what it is you need to do to win the deal.

[00:15:22] You understand what it is the help the buyer needs to be able to make a decision.

[00:15:27] And, you know, one of the real problems that exists in this world is, you know,

[00:15:30] people think that our buyers are overwhelmed by too much choice, right?

[00:15:35] In conversational intelligence is always the one I talk about.

[00:15:38] That segment, there's over 150 companies offering products right now.

[00:15:42] Okay.

[00:15:44] All the products are the same.

[00:15:46] Yeah.

[00:15:47] It's stay the course or change.

[00:15:48] There's two choices.

[00:15:49] But all the products are the same.

[00:15:51] Yeah.

[00:15:51] Right?

[00:15:52] So they cost the same.

[00:15:53] They all do largely the same thing.

[00:15:55] So the problem for our buyers is not that they have too much choice.

[00:15:58] It's that they have no choice because no one stands out.

[00:16:03] You know, surveys done that from a book that was done four or five years ago saying that in the B2B world that

[00:16:12] basically the buyers say that half of the sales people, virtually half is like 48% or something,

[00:16:17] of sales people are indistinguishable from one another.

[00:16:21] So the products are all the same.

[00:16:22] They all do the same thing.

[00:16:23] They're all priced the same.

[00:16:24] The sellers are all perceived to be vanilla doing the same stuff.

[00:16:30] That's utterly tragic, Andy.

[00:16:33] But I think, you know, what's funny about all this is like I look at so about a little over a year ago,

[00:16:40] I stepped into a new role and it was for that very thing.

[00:16:43] It was to, in essence, create a sales culture for a team that had had a lot of inconsistency over the last several years

[00:16:50] and had been very transactional up to that point, almost out of necessity because of the way that they managed their business.

[00:16:57] So, you know, coming in, looking at the data, but looking at it in a way to diagnose,

[00:17:01] like where might there be gaps in process or need to create process where process didn't exist?

[00:17:07] You've got to have systems.

[00:17:08] You've got to make sure that the outreach that we're doing is actually going to either educate buyers

[00:17:15] or entice them to have a conversation about something that's unique and new.

[00:17:20] And when I look at my career, especially my time the last 10 years with one organization,

[00:17:25] it very much fit the mold of what you just said.

[00:17:28] I didn't have the predisposition of having worked in technology or SaaS before coming here.

[00:17:32] So I wasn't looking at it from that lens, right?

[00:17:35] I was looking at it from the, wow, I've got a lead.

[00:17:38] I'm going to go after that, leave no stone unturned, and I'm going to go down swinging every single time.

[00:17:43] And if I don't get that deal closed, I'll know exactly why.

[00:17:46] And I will know I've done everything within my power and resources to get it done.

[00:17:50] And I can live with that.

[00:17:51] And if you take that approach and you do that consistently over time,

[00:17:55] you don't have the preconceived notion and you show up differently than everybody else,

[00:17:58] like with the buyer at the middle of everything you're doing, you almost can't help but win.

[00:18:04] More, right.

[00:18:05] And let's talk about it right at the beginning.

[00:18:07] Because, yeah, I don't focus much on what I do with companies on outreach because we're the deal execution.

[00:18:13] But even talking to that, I've had a lot of conversations with sellers about this.

[00:18:18] It's like what the message is, right?

[00:18:21] And trying to attract the attention.

[00:18:24] And even in their first interaction with them, maybe on a Zoom call or whatever.

[00:18:29] And so I write about in my book, you know, six categories of questions you need to go master.

[00:18:33] And one of them I call the insight question, which is you're going to ask the buyer something about their business that they should reasonably be expected to know the answer to, but probably don't.

[00:18:45] Because one of those, oh, that's interesting.

[00:18:49] Yeah.

[00:18:50] Huh.

[00:18:50] Why do you know that?

[00:18:51] Should I know that?

[00:18:53] But people are like, well, how do I find that out?

[00:18:57] I thought it's really simple.

[00:18:58] Yeah.

[00:18:59] You go to your success people and say, look, my experience has been is that, again, I've only been doing this for close to 50 years, is that every customer that I talked to, that I sold to, they end up finding a unique use case for the product that they didn't contemplate when they were purchasing it.

[00:19:22] Almost full stop across the board.

[00:19:24] And I think it's a specific one software.

[00:19:27] So you have to go, how are you using the product in a way you didn't anticipate?

[00:19:31] Wow.

[00:19:33] And everybody has one.

[00:19:35] Virtually everybody.

[00:19:36] I mean, sure.

[00:19:37] It's a good one.

[00:19:38] And it's like, get those.

[00:19:40] And you turn those into those questions.

[00:19:42] You go back to ask the buyers.

[00:19:45] Wow.

[00:19:46] Oh, well, okay.

[00:19:48] Yeah.

[00:19:48] Well, I hadn't thought about that.

[00:19:49] But it's transformational if you can do that.

[00:19:54] But it just takes a little internal discipline to arm your salespeople with these types of questions I can use to kick off conversations instead of the usual pablum that they're trying to do or, you know, defaulting into let's do a med pic discovery call.

[00:20:08] Yeah, we've got to get away from all the cookie cutter.

[00:20:11] It isn't one size fits all.

[00:20:14] It's not a you have to follow these exact processes to a T because the buyers are all unique.

[00:20:20] Sellers should be unique.

[00:20:22] And that's how the challenge.

[00:20:23] Yeah, that's how the challenge.

[00:20:24] The pitfall that we fall into is following each process to a T.

[00:20:29] You know, and don't get me wrong.

[00:20:30] You need processes sometimes to minimize the chaos.

[00:20:34] There's always going to be chaos, but it's more controlled if you have process.

[00:20:37] Process is important.

[00:20:38] However, you can't get so rigid in process that, you know, sometimes I'll see a lot of times where you've got a seller and you've got an extended team.

[00:20:46] And it's all this.

[00:20:47] It's this game of hot potato.

[00:20:48] It's like it's not me pointing fingers.

[00:20:51] You know, who wants to reach out to this person?

[00:20:53] Who owns this exact step in the process?

[00:20:56] It's like, look, we all share these customers.

[00:20:58] Like nobody owns this customer.

[00:20:59] We get paid, God willing, every year I get paid to go out and grow a very specific territory.

[00:21:06] And if that changes drastically come January 1, thank God I still get paid to do what I love doing.

[00:21:11] You know, that's the mentality we've got to have.

[00:21:13] And I just feel like it's so critical that we have ownership, but we don't get so rigid and lost in process that the buyer and our individuality and our authenticity get lost.

[00:21:24] Well, I think it has.

[00:21:25] And I think this is, again, another major issue, which I talk about, I've talked about many times.

[00:21:30] Yeah, one post I posted a link this year that went extremely viral was about a coaching client of mine who had been put on a pip and fired for not setting enough meetings.

[00:21:41] Now, he was President's Club.

[00:21:44] When he was put on a pip in early 2024, he had almost closed out 2024.

[00:21:51] When he was fired in April, he had finished all of 2024.

[00:21:56] This is a senior enterprise seller.

[00:21:58] Oh, my gosh.

[00:21:59] You weren't setting enough meetings.

[00:22:00] And so I posted it.

[00:22:01] I got this huge response.

[00:22:03] And, you know, the predictable response from, like, the usual cadre of folks was, oh, that can't be the case.

[00:22:11] That would never happen.

[00:22:11] I mean, literally within days, I had 48 stories in my LinkedIn inbox from similar things that happened to people.

[00:22:20] And I couldn't vouch for all of them.

[00:22:21] I could vouch for my client because I know who he was.

[00:22:24] Yeah, I've been working with him for years.

[00:22:27] And he wasn't the only one.

[00:22:28] I was like, come on.

[00:22:30] That's, you know, we don't pay people for their activity.

[00:22:35] We pay them for producing outcomes.

[00:22:38] Yes.

[00:22:38] And that's it.

[00:22:40] And if you're so hung up, yes, they have to be doing a certain amount of work.

[00:22:45] But to your point, Carson, just as every customer is unique, so is every salesperson.

[00:22:50] And, yeah, that was the subtitle of my most recent book, Sell Without Selling Out, A Guide to Success on Your Own Terms.

[00:22:56] Because, yeah, I went to my first sales training class eons ago.

[00:23:02] And the content just made my skin crawl.

[00:23:05] And I said, look, if I have to act that way, this is going to be the shortest career in sales ever.

[00:23:11] And so I said, look, but this was sort of fun.

[00:23:13] So I sort of figured my own way.

[00:23:16] You know, I mirrored what other people are doing and I thought was effective, things I thought would play to my strengths.

[00:23:25] And, yeah, I talk about in the book, you know, various points in my career.

[00:23:29] I run into a manager who said, won't you just ever say yes to something I say to you?

[00:23:36] And I was like, no, because this is my career.

[00:23:39] Right?

[00:23:39] I'm going to think about what you're talking about.

[00:23:41] And if I think it makes sense, then, you know, I'll do it.

[00:23:46] But, you know, I could follow your advice and it goes badly.

[00:23:48] And who gets fired?

[00:23:49] Me or you?

[00:23:50] Me.

[00:23:52] Right?

[00:23:52] So as sellers, you have to take ownership of your career.

[00:23:57] And if that means pushing back on some of the idiocy and stupidity that you're subjected to, you've got to do it.

[00:24:02] And if that means leaving the company you're at to find a situation, because not all managers are that way.

[00:24:07] Right.

[00:24:07] Find a better fit because your success as a seller is purely situational.

[00:24:13] You can have all the talent in the world.

[00:24:15] You get a bad situation.

[00:24:16] You're not going to succeed.

[00:24:17] And you look at these people that are on LinkedIn writing about their seven-figure incomes and so on.

[00:24:22] Some of them I've coached.

[00:24:24] Yeah.

[00:24:26] It's they're in the right situation to be able to do that.

[00:24:29] Correct.

[00:24:30] And a lot of them have had PIP scenarios or have been terminated, but then came into the right situation with the right leader, the right, you know, planet alignment.

[00:24:40] Yep.

[00:24:40] And took it to the next level.

[00:24:41] You know, I've talked a few times on this show how I had a leader several years ago who, for whatever reason, did not like me.

[00:24:48] We did not get along.

[00:24:50] They went after me, put me on a plan.

[00:24:52] I was one foot out the door.

[00:24:53] Something changed.

[00:24:54] They went elsewhere.

[00:24:55] I got a new leadership chain, won the biggest company award two years in a row, got promoted six times since then.

[00:25:01] It was, you know, it's just you've got to find the right ingredients.

[00:25:04] But any great seller can encounter a block, a roadblock that can paralyze them.

[00:25:14] Oh, yeah.

[00:25:14] Yeah.

[00:25:15] It can prevent you from succeeding.

[00:25:16] That's fine.

[00:25:16] So I tell sellers, you know, when you're looking for a job, think about it this way, you know, because I think the way you frame things is so important.

[00:25:24] You're hiring a boss.

[00:25:26] Yes.

[00:25:27] They're not hiring you.

[00:25:28] You're hiring a boss because that's going to be the most important person in terms of your ability to succeed in that situation.

[00:25:36] Andy, I want to move this along a little bit.

[00:25:39] We talked in our agenda and stuff.

[00:25:42] We were talking about LinkedIn.

[00:25:43] We're talking about digital.

[00:25:44] We're talking about content.

[00:25:45] How do sellers, how do sales leaders, how do they translate what you're talking about into this digital realm that they deal with now every day?

[00:25:56] How much time do we have?

[00:26:00] That's a big question, right?

[00:26:02] So it really depends.

[00:26:05] You know, it's a question we get asked all the time, right?

[00:26:07] Because people, I mean, I just, I spoke to a printing company, you know, very traditional.

[00:26:14] And their comment was, our sellers are all retiring and dying.

[00:26:19] We know we can't hire people and put them into the same sales process that they did.

[00:26:25] Because at this point in their career, they've all got the relationships, their renewal selling and all that.

[00:26:30] We got to bring in new sellers.

[00:26:32] But we know if we have them do the same activities that the older guys did, they're not going to succeed.

[00:26:39] We know we need to do digital, but we have no idea what we're doing.

[00:26:45] There are people you can hire for that.

[00:26:49] Yeah, I mean, so it works on several levels.

[00:26:50] One, you know, first of all, as, depending on the type of company, right?

[00:26:54] So, again, let's sort of say in SaaS and tech for a while.

[00:26:57] There's some CEOs and founders that are doing a good job of building brands, building an identity for their company through LinkedIn,

[00:27:10] generating pipeline for their company through their LinkedIn content.

[00:27:14] And I know this because the foremost expert in the world at doing that is actually my son, who works with companies you guys probably know, in his business.

[00:27:25] And that's, you know, that's sort of a cultural thing, right?

[00:27:28] Because as a founder CEO, you have to commit to this idea of content as a driver of your business.

[00:27:35] You know, as individual sellers, I'm a huge proponent of that.

[00:27:40] I mean, I think that the margins, the difference between, you know, salespeople is pretty small for the most part.

[00:27:48] And how are you trying to distinguish yourself from other people?

[00:27:52] You know, do you have something interesting to say?

[00:27:53] Because, you know, your buyers have a choice about who they want to spend their time with.

[00:27:58] And they're looking you up.

[00:28:00] And we know from data that virtually 100%, the number is high 90% of buyers are going to look somebody up on LinkedIn before they talk to them on a Zoom call or phone call or whatever.

[00:28:10] What are they seeing when they go?

[00:28:12] Are you just, you know, sort of reposting company propaganda?

[00:28:15] Or do you actually have a point of view yourself about what you're doing?

[00:28:18] And, you know, the things you've done for customers and the value they found through working with you and so on.

[00:28:23] And the sellers that are able to commit to that and getting those stories out there and that content out there create an advantage for themselves.

[00:28:32] And then you've seen, you know, companies like Gong, an example, who used LinkedIn incredibly well to build a brand for the organization.

[00:28:39] You know, that's, you know, in the early days, this was, you know, free marketing to some degree, right?

[00:28:46] And they were just, they had the entire company enlisted in creating, basically entire content, creating content about what they were doing and their customers and benefits of using conversational intelligence and so on.

[00:28:58] And they weren't trying to, you know, control every bit of content that went out.

[00:29:04] You know, they weren't workshopping posts from the CEO or from the VP of marketing.

[00:29:10] No, they were just, they had guidelines, but people within the guidelines were just doing it.

[00:29:17] And, you know, I've seen examples of companies where they said, oh, yeah, we want to do that.

[00:29:20] But then, you know, every time the CEO wanted to put a post on LinkedIn, marketing had to review it and PR had to review it.

[00:29:27] It's like, you can't do that.

[00:29:30] So LinkedIn is, you know, sort of an authentic business version of yourself.

[00:29:36] And, yeah, you create a persona for yourself, a brand, if you will.

[00:29:42] People do it very successfully.

[00:29:43] And it's, again, I think for individual sellers, it's these marginal incremental differences that help you in some respect.

[00:29:50] They don't necessarily win you deals.

[00:29:51] But, you know, I ask salespeople all the time.

[00:29:55] So tell me, how much did you win your last deal by?

[00:30:00] And they're like, well, what do you mean?

[00:30:01] So what was your margin of victory?

[00:30:04] Well, we were 10% cheaper.

[00:30:05] No, no, not price.

[00:30:06] What was your margin of victory?

[00:30:07] Were you 1% better than the competition?

[00:30:10] Were you 10% better?

[00:30:12] Well, there's no way of knowing, right?

[00:30:14] So you have to presume that the margins are really small.

[00:30:17] And every little thing you do makes a difference.

[00:30:21] You mentioned about CEOs and their brand.

[00:30:27] What should CEOs be seeking to accomplish through their LinkedIn activity for their company?

[00:30:33] Well, yeah, again, pitch my son's activities is companies that you guys know is they're building pipeline.

[00:30:45] I mean, they're using the CEO.

[00:30:48] Through the CEO's LinkedIn inbox.

[00:30:52] And how are they doing that?

[00:30:54] Publishing great content that give people an opportunity to respond to it.

[00:30:59] And then they have a system on the back end to sort of nurture that and get it to the right salesperson to work on.

[00:31:04] I mean, it's, it's, but it starts with, you know, the CEO having a point of view and a willingness to commit to creating, you know, interesting content.

[00:31:14] That's original, that has value to the audience they're talking to.

[00:31:20] And what's the key?

[00:31:21] Because I love everything you're saying is very valuable for a lot of the people we talk to around the show.

[00:31:26] You said CEO needs to create great content.

[00:31:30] You said they had to have a point of view.

[00:31:32] Explain that a little bit more.

[00:31:33] Go into a bit more detail of what that looks like.

[00:31:36] Well, it starts with a, it starts with getting rid of the fear, right?

[00:31:43] I think that's the big thing that holds people back from posting on LinkedIn is the fear that people are going to judge them for what they post.

[00:31:49] And you have to get over it.

[00:31:52] And the only way to get over it is to post.

[00:31:54] And if everybody's going to have an opinion, some will express it, some won't.

[00:32:00] That's great.

[00:32:01] That's what you want.

[00:32:01] You want that level of engagement.

[00:32:03] You don't want everybody to agree with you.

[00:32:07] And, you know, then as I said, it's a point of view about your business and what you're accomplishing for the buyers and your customers.

[00:32:15] And just be steadfast and creative and just, as I said, commit to doing it.

[00:32:21] And find the people who are building these audiences with high levels of engagement are posting every single day or at least five days a week, let's say, during the work week, if not more often.

[00:32:32] And, yeah, it takes some time.

[00:32:35] But who better than the founder or CEO that came up with the idea for the company and has the vision of what it is they're trying to do that they can express more clearly than any of the salespeople?

[00:32:45] Who better than that person to undertake that?

[00:32:51] Andy, I'm curious.

[00:32:53] Andy, I'm curious.

[00:32:53] Given everything that is transpiring today in sales, what should – and you talked about the margins of winning.

[00:33:01] You've talked about the win rates.

[00:33:02] What are some of the things that sellers and sales leaders right now should really be paying attention to?

[00:33:08] And what's just noise?

[00:33:11] So I think – yeah, I think the biggest thing, most important thing that sellers and sales leaders should focus on is what are we doing in every interaction to help the buyer make progress to making the decision?

[00:33:25] I like that.

[00:33:26] So I believe that a sales leader should be able to go through a pipeline, and every qualified opportunity in the pipeline should be able to ask and get the answers to four questions.

[00:33:38] And if the sellers can't do it, then they need to go back and spend more time and be coached about how to get this information.

[00:33:43] So first question is, what help does the buyer expect from us at this moment to help them make progress toward making a decision?

[00:33:51] Yeah.

[00:33:54] First question, what form is that help going to take?

[00:33:56] That's the second question.

[00:33:59] Third question is, how is it actually going to help the buyer?

[00:34:03] And four, how is it going to – excuse me, what actions will the buyers take in response to receiving this help?

[00:34:12] Not what are they going to do in exchange, because that's most sellers is always, you know, quid pro quo.

[00:34:16] No.

[00:34:16] What are they going to do in response to getting this?

[00:34:19] So what help do they need from us?

[00:34:20] What form is the help going to take?

[00:34:22] How is it actually going to help them?

[00:34:24] And what will they do in response to receiving this help?

[00:34:27] And if a seller can answer that question, those four questions about every opportunity, that means they're going to be prepared to learn to help the buyer make progress.

[00:34:39] Because in my mind, you know, if you talk about value in sales, I'm not talking about the value of the product.

[00:34:47] I'm not talking about the value of the buyers receiving as they go through the process.

[00:34:50] It's all based on progress.

[00:34:52] Did you help me make progress in this interaction?

[00:34:55] If I invested my time in you, what did you do to help me make progress?

[00:35:01] If you didn't help me make progress, why am I investing my time in you?

[00:35:04] I love that you went directly into the buyer-centric mode, but also fundamentals.

[00:35:14] You didn't talk about tech.

[00:35:15] You didn't talk about AI.

[00:35:17] You didn't talk about any of these, like, fancy, shiny toys.

[00:35:20] And that's what a lot of sellers are talking about right now, which tells me, get away from the noise.

[00:35:25] Cut the fluff.

[00:35:26] Get to know your buyer better.

[00:35:28] Help understand.

[00:35:29] Like, figure out what does progress look like to them.

[00:35:32] And you're going the right path.

[00:35:34] That's where I think we're getting lost right now.

[00:35:37] Oh, absolutely.

[00:35:38] And it's like, this is just, this is execution, right?

[00:35:41] So you have to think about it.

[00:35:43] You, you've struck a bargain with the buyer.

[00:35:47] They're going to invest some time in you.

[00:35:49] What are they going to get in return for that time?

[00:35:50] Right.

[00:35:51] And it has to be something that helps them make progress, start.

[00:35:56] And so getting back to something I was talking about before is, is, you know, we talked about these, you know, I think one of the great disservices done to sales is the institutionalization of sales stages and CRMs.

[00:36:07] Yeah.

[00:36:08] Because they've locked sellers into this, this methodology and it's, it has nothing to do with the buyer.

[00:36:13] Right?

[00:36:13] Yeah.

[00:36:14] They don't, they don't know what to do with themselves.

[00:36:15] Right.

[00:36:16] So I think sellers, again, talking earlier about reframing selling is buyers, let me take a second.

[00:36:24] Humans, when humans make decisions, we go through three steps.

[00:36:29] We've tried to find what the problem is and what we want the change to be by fixing the problem.

[00:36:35] We then get second step is we decide how we want to make that change.

[00:36:41] And the third step is who do I make that change with, right?

[00:36:44] Who's going to help us.

[00:36:46] And it's no more complicated than that.

[00:36:49] As I speak of someone who sold seven, eight, nine figure deals.

[00:36:52] It's no more complicated than that.

[00:36:54] No matter how big the deal is, this is the three tasks buyers have to complete in order to make a decision.

[00:36:59] So our job is as sellers in the first task is help them define what the challenges they face.

[00:37:08] What is the business opportunity that's presented by resolving the challenge and what are the business outcomes they want to achieve by seizing those opportunities.

[00:37:15] That's what the second stage is step is task is how, right?

[00:37:21] So now that we've helped them define what the target is, we're going to go find the bow and arrows to be able to hit the target.

[00:37:29] So we should have a huge built-in advantage.

[00:37:32] If we've helped the buyer define their sort of vision of success, then we have the built-in advantage.

[00:37:38] We go in and say, well, how do we connect solutions to what you're trying to achieve?

[00:37:43] And what's happening throughout the entire process where they're evaluating their what and how is they're evaluating you, the who, right?

[00:37:51] And so when we think about things as being so sequential, actually, everything's not really sequential.

[00:37:57] Everything sort of happens all at once concurrently.

[00:38:00] It's just the buyer's going to devote more of their time and attention to the what task at one time, the how task at another time, and the who task toward another time.

[00:38:08] But they're making their, I wouldn't say the decisions, but they're forming distinct preferences early, very early in the process, right?

[00:38:17] First impressions are huge.

[00:38:20] And if I can connect with a high-level person with a great insight question that gets them thinking, I've become the preferred vendor.

[00:38:28] They haven't made a decision.

[00:38:30] But as we move further into the process, they've already formed a preference for me.

[00:38:34] Yeah.

[00:38:35] Andy, I find, I don't know if you find this, but I found like years and time in sales almost provides a wisdom and clarity that really helps with discipline.

[00:38:47] You know, being able to take a step back, look at the balcony view of the situation.

[00:38:51] I think sellers today really need to seize the fact that we have been given this great gift that while buyers have a lot of information at their fingertips, there's still a lot of ambiguity.

[00:39:01] And because there is so much noise, you've got this amazing opportunity to be that beacon of actual service and value amidst all this craziness.

[00:39:13] And if you're communicative, responsive, and transparent with your customer, and you actually stay at the pulse of what legitimately matters to them, and you help them de-risk their decision, I mean, you can't, like, you can conquer the world of sales right now.

[00:39:27] It's just, it's unbelievable because the more noise there is, the more value behind that one authentic noble knight of the selling game.

[00:39:35] Yeah.

[00:39:35] And there's a lot of parties that want to try to get rid of sellers altogether, right?

[00:39:41] And you hear all the noise on LinkedIn about, even from some buyers.

[00:39:45] Look, it's ironic because it's like, you know, CEO of a SaaS company selling into the sales world, gets on LinkedIn and says, I don't want to talk to salespeople.

[00:39:54] And I was like, okay, that's interesting here because you've got a sales team that's outselling.

[00:39:57] He says, I know exactly what I want, you know?

[00:39:59] And it's like, really?

[00:40:01] Do you?

[00:40:02] And so for me, as a seller today, if I ran across somebody like that, I'd say, well, fine.

[00:40:07] You're not my prospect.

[00:40:09] Right?

[00:40:10] Right.

[00:40:10] I'm not going to spend time because you're just going to make it a price competition.

[00:40:14] That's not my, I'm not interested in that.

[00:40:16] Right?

[00:40:17] So, yeah, here's our PLG motion, you know, buy from there.

[00:40:21] But I believe that, you know, you sort of look at the world on a spectrum.

[00:40:25] On one end is what I call tactical and the other end is strategic.

[00:40:29] And this is every product in the world fits on the spectrum between tactical and strategic.

[00:40:33] Tactical is paperclips.

[00:40:36] Right?

[00:40:36] You don't need a salesperson to sell your paperclips.

[00:40:39] On the other end could be, you know, enterprise-wide ERP system.

[00:40:43] Right?

[00:40:44] Something very strategic that has impact on the operations of the business.

[00:40:47] Well, yeah, we've seen more and more tactical products that we purchase without the intercession

[00:40:54] of a salesperson.

[00:40:55] That's fine.

[00:40:55] That's been going on for 30 years.

[00:40:57] That's great.

[00:40:58] But there's still a huge cohort of products where the buyers need help to be able to make

[00:41:05] confident decisions.

[00:41:06] And they need help from sellers who are focused on helping the buyer as opposed to just pitching,

[00:41:11] pushing, and persuading.

[00:41:13] Yeah.

[00:41:14] And I think a lot of, you know, the buyer side, I can say this is a buyer side.

[00:41:20] I shy away from sellers sometimes because I don't expect them to be able to actually help me.

[00:41:26] I'm expecting them just to pitch me.

[00:41:29] Yeah.

[00:41:29] Well, that is problematic, right?

[00:41:31] And that's, I think to Carson's point, that's the opportunity that exists for sellers who

[00:41:34] aren't that way.

[00:41:35] Right.

[00:41:36] Is to reframe how you're selling.

[00:41:39] And I mean, I just look at my own experience and, you know, I graduated college, went into

[00:41:43] sales.

[00:41:44] You have no discernible job skills.

[00:41:46] I went into sales, right?

[00:41:47] And what I had, though.

[00:41:52] I can relate to that.

[00:41:53] Yeah.

[00:41:54] What I had was, yeah, voracious reader, voraciously curious individual.

[00:42:00] Yeah, I was 21.

[00:42:02] I looked 16, if that, right?

[00:42:04] And I was selling to the construction industry, selling on-premise computer equipment for accounting

[00:42:09] systems construction.

[00:42:12] But I had no problem getting time from CEOs because, I mean, sure, I had a little bit of

[00:42:18] a learning curve.

[00:42:19] But when I got into it, I was like, because I just showed up as interested in them.

[00:42:24] And it showed that I cared and that I was sincere about learning.

[00:42:28] And for me, this was like an incredible MBA.

[00:42:30] I got my first two years in sales because I was spending all my days talking to founders

[00:42:35] and entrepreneurs.

[00:42:36] They're telling me, you know, how they grew their business, how they wanted to continue to

[00:42:39] grow their business.

[00:42:40] How could I help them do that?

[00:42:41] And if I just showed up interested and curious, I would get almost all the time I wanted.

[00:42:47] What a concept.

[00:42:49] Yeah.

[00:42:50] And it was...

[00:42:51] That sounds too simple.

[00:42:53] But that's what it is.

[00:42:55] I read that the other day.

[00:42:56] It was somebody...

[00:42:57] I was on a podcast with Donald Kelly, and he made that comment.

[00:43:00] He goes, sales is simple, but we make it too complex.

[00:43:06] Yeah.

[00:43:06] Yeah.

[00:43:07] Well, my first boss told me, you know, sales is very simple.

[00:43:10] Not easy, but simple.

[00:43:13] That's it.

[00:43:13] And it is.

[00:43:16] Yeah.

[00:43:16] What it was...

[00:43:17] I had posted about this and, you know, it's a sign of the times where I post about this.

[00:43:20] Yeah.

[00:43:21] People...

[00:43:22] Story about my first boss.

[00:43:23] People said, what a jerk.

[00:43:24] But yeah, I had lost...

[00:43:27] I was...

[00:43:27] I went in relatively early in the whole process and he was a great manager.

[00:43:32] And I was just complaining about, you know, knowing one to buy what I was selling.

[00:43:36] Yeah.

[00:43:37] He said, well, go find someone who will.

[00:43:41] And I was like, oh, yeah.

[00:43:43] Okay.

[00:43:43] That makes sense.

[00:43:44] Why didn't I think that?

[00:43:45] Why did I think that?

[00:43:46] Because, yeah, I've sort of formed that in my own theory.

[00:43:50] I call it the big world theory, which is...

[00:43:52] It's a big world out there.

[00:43:53] There are people that want what you want, where you're selling.

[00:43:56] And that's what people fail to look at is the addressable market.

[00:44:01] You know, I think a lot of times we look at hitting the quota, hitting the goal.

[00:44:04] It's like, I don't even think about the number.

[00:44:06] I think about the addressable market.

[00:44:08] Am I going out there?

[00:44:09] Am I reaching out to the addressable market in a quality way, going out and not going

[00:44:14] for deals, going for conversations that lead to relationships?

[00:44:18] And ultimately, that's what happens.

[00:44:20] Andy, I want to give you some time.

[00:44:22] Tell us about your books, but also, assuming that you're still a voracious reader, what's

[00:44:27] on Andy Paul's reading list?

[00:44:30] Oh, good question.

[00:44:32] Pulp Fiction?

[00:44:34] Okay.

[00:44:35] Yeah.

[00:44:35] I mean, for...

[00:44:38] Yeah.

[00:44:39] Especially since I stopped doing an interview podcast where I was interviewing a lot of

[00:44:42] authors, guys where I was reading 50, 60, 70 sales books a year.

[00:44:46] It's like, eh, I'm not doing that anymore.

[00:44:49] Because, yeah, most of them weren't very good.

[00:44:53] Yeah.

[00:44:54] That's just a tough thing.

[00:44:56] There are some good ones out there, but then there's some that, like salespeople, are a

[00:45:00] lot alike.

[00:45:02] Yeah.

[00:45:02] Yeah.

[00:45:03] Well, that's...

[00:45:03] Yes.

[00:45:04] A lot of similarities.

[00:45:05] Yeah.

[00:45:05] Very little original thought.

[00:45:07] Though there were exceptions people that had exceptional books that I enjoyed and had

[00:45:11] them back on the show multiple times.

[00:45:13] So, yeah.

[00:45:14] So, I read a lot of...

[00:45:17] A lot of sort of espionage spy thrillers.

[00:45:19] I love it.

[00:45:20] I love it.

[00:45:21] James Bond and Tom Clancy reader.

[00:45:24] Yeah.

[00:45:25] And I've read all those, but there's...

[00:45:27] In the last, you know, five plus years, there's been this whole generation of writers who are

[00:45:32] writing purely for Kindle Unlimited.

[00:45:36] Yeah.

[00:45:38] And these people are selling millions of copies of these books.

[00:45:41] You think, oh, it's free.

[00:45:42] They're on Kindle Unlimited.

[00:45:43] No, they get paid.

[00:45:44] Yeah.

[00:45:45] But...

[00:45:45] There's royalties for every page read.

[00:45:47] Yeah.

[00:45:48] And, you know, some of these books, I was reading this one guy.

[00:45:52] It's like, I'd never heard of him.

[00:45:53] But I got into it.

[00:45:54] I thought, it's not like the highest quality books in the world, but they're entertaining,

[00:45:57] which is what you want.

[00:45:59] Yeah.

[00:45:59] One of his books had a quarter million reviews on Amazon.

[00:46:02] That's insane.

[00:46:04] How many people have read that book to get a quarter million reviews?

[00:46:07] Seriously.

[00:46:07] That's insane.

[00:46:07] Over a book about a paid assassin.

[00:46:12] So...

[00:46:13] Well, you know what's funny?

[00:46:14] So we could do a whole segue on what type of escapism good salespeople enjoy.

[00:46:22] Like, I like reading.

[00:46:23] I like reading.

[00:46:24] I usually have a lot of books going at once.

[00:46:26] I might have one self-help, one sports or like sports coaching type of book.

[00:46:32] But a lot of times I'll have some kind of escapist novel or some historical nonfiction book.

[00:46:38] Because it's like, you want to learn from these, you know, historical themes or like a paid assassin.

[00:46:44] Hey, sometimes salespeople, great salespeople are like paid mercenaries.

[00:46:48] I'm getting paid to go out and sell that.

[00:46:50] Yeah.

[00:46:51] Well, there's this...

[00:46:51] God, I can't remember the name.

[00:46:52] There's this great podcast I started listening to put out with two English guys about history.

[00:46:56] Okay.

[00:46:58] I have to turn my phone back on to get it.

[00:47:00] But, yeah.

[00:47:03] I mean, when I'm out on my walks with a dog or out on a run or something, I'm...

[00:47:07] Yeah, the world of history.

[00:47:08] Learning about history.

[00:47:09] I was a history major in college.

[00:47:11] So I, you know, like that.

[00:47:12] But, yeah.

[00:47:14] What was the other question besides reading?

[00:47:15] Just tell us about your book.

[00:47:17] What was the impetus and, you know, just the themes of each?

[00:47:21] Yeah.

[00:47:22] Well, I sort of got the bug to write a book, you know, back in 2012, 2011, 2012.

[00:47:29] As I said before, sort of a calling card for a consulting business.

[00:47:34] And then it sort of found an audience.

[00:47:35] And I didn't really know what to do with it.

[00:47:37] And so I hadn't really even started building a LinkedIn audience.

[00:47:41] At that point, I don't even think I'd post it on LinkedIn prior to that.

[00:47:43] But, and then, yeah.

[00:47:47] It sort of got me the bug to write a second book and then a third book.

[00:47:51] And then start, excuse me, start the podcast in 2015.

[00:47:55] Which, you know, what a great learning experience.

[00:47:59] I mean, I've talked to, so that's like Seth, called a thousand people.

[00:48:03] Yeah.

[00:48:04] How can you not learn, right?

[00:48:06] It's, you know, preparing my questions.

[00:48:09] And, you know, people always sort of went, oh, what are we going to talk about?

[00:48:11] And I never share my questions ahead of time because I want people to respond spontaneously.

[00:48:16] And if I was talking to an author, I read their books.

[00:48:20] And so I was prepared.

[00:48:22] And, yeah.

[00:48:24] It just, you sort of get into that thing.

[00:48:26] So zero-time selling was really focused on the idea of responsiveness.

[00:48:31] Is, I had a client that I'd started work with that, that smaller company, tech company.

[00:48:40] And they were doing okay.

[00:48:42] But he was unsatisfied with the growth.

[00:48:44] And it brought me in to look at what they were doing.

[00:48:47] And I said, oh, God, you're doing an incredible job generating leads.

[00:48:51] But your team isn't following up on them.

[00:48:54] You know, A, not following up on all of them.

[00:48:56] B, not following them very quickly.

[00:48:59] And he said, well, how do we fix that?

[00:49:01] I said, well, I'll fix part of it today.

[00:49:03] I said, this could be the shortest consulting thing in the world.

[00:49:06] He said, what do you mean?

[00:49:07] I said, so what you're going to do is you're going to log into Salesforce, you yourself, Mr. CEO, at 5 o'clock every afternoon and make sure all the leads are followed up.

[00:49:14] They came in that day.

[00:49:16] So, on day one, we changed that problem immediately.

[00:49:18] They all got followed up.

[00:49:19] 100% of the leads got followed up.

[00:49:21] I bet they did.

[00:49:21] Then we changed the process and said, look, this is a combination of hardware, software, product.

[00:49:27] And I said, what we're going to do is we're going to ensure that every lead gets followed up within 30 minutes.

[00:49:33] And so, what I did is I basically changed their sales team internally and got rid of the sales people and brought people in from engineering to be inside sellers.

[00:49:43] People had written the code and designed the hardware.

[00:49:46] So, when people are making inquiries about the product, they were going to call back from somebody who knew it inside and out.

[00:49:53] Wow.

[00:49:54] We trained them with the right questions to ask and sort of insight questions to get people thinking.

[00:50:01] And invariably, within the first 20 minutes, if the call even went that long, sometimes people want to move faster.

[00:50:10] They'd say, hey, can I get a demo?

[00:50:12] And then I thought, this is my master's.

[00:50:14] So, it is we, when the customer asked to schedule a demo, we trained the sellers to say no.

[00:50:21] But we can do one right now.

[00:50:25] So, and never went to a second call, did the demo right there.

[00:50:29] And because they're all engineers, they knew how to do the demo.

[00:50:32] There's no problem.

[00:50:33] And so, this company, without introducing a new product, doubled sales within like two and a half years.

[00:50:40] All in the strength of how they followed up in zero time with the prospects.

[00:50:47] And we did extensive surveys of buyers and the buying experience.

[00:50:52] And we had an over 90% favorable rating of our sellers, the buying experience on part of the buyers, which I think is unprecedented.

[00:51:01] And then, so.

[00:51:04] Go ahead.

[00:51:05] And Andy, it sounds like what you did, obviously, follow up on the leads, do something with the leads.

[00:51:10] But then those insightful questions, just being curious and asking them like what the problem, what it means to them, why is it important.

[00:51:19] Those types of insight questions just blossom.

[00:51:23] Because we took insights from what the buyers are using the product I talked about before.

[00:51:27] What were the use cases that seemed a little unusual?

[00:51:31] And typically, they, you know, if you ask, turn that around, packages a question, ask it back to a new prospect.

[00:51:39] Yeah, it's something that sort of either hadn't thought about, but once you said it, that's like, oh, man, should we be doing that?

[00:51:44] Or should I know that?

[00:51:45] So, like, in my consulting practice over the years, we're working on sales productivity and effectiveness.

[00:51:52] Yeah, I'll ask a CEO, first sales call.

[00:51:55] So, tell me, how many sales hours do you invest to get an opportunity for an initial point of contact to a close?

[00:52:05] None of them know it.

[00:52:07] They should, because your total capacity as a sales organization is based on the amount of time you spend on a deal.

[00:52:16] And you can do the math.

[00:52:17] You know, if I get, it takes me, you know, 200 hours, man hours to win a million dollar deal, how many deals can I do this year?

[00:52:26] And, but people never think about that way.

[00:52:28] When you get them thinking about it, it's like, oh, yeah, we could be way more effective.

[00:52:32] You had a client that, you know, celebrating their first big six-figure deal.

[00:52:36] Actually, it was a little bigger.

[00:52:37] It was multiple six-figure deal.

[00:52:39] So, and they did a great job to their crowd documenting every meeting, every email, you know, the number of interactions I had with the buyer.

[00:52:48] And I went to the CEO.

[00:52:49] I said, yeah, A, congratulations on this deal.

[00:52:53] He said, oh, great.

[00:52:54] Thanks.

[00:52:54] I said, but you won't be able to do another one this year.

[00:53:00] I said, it just took too much time.

[00:53:04] You can't spend this much time on a deal this size.

[00:53:08] And so there are things that we can look at to say, how do we become more effective, as I talk about these four questions and these interactions with buyers?

[00:53:14] So one, what should be one interaction doesn't stretch out to four.

[00:53:20] And, or if we're, you know, not talking to the right person, I want to make sure we're having these meetings with the right person.

[00:53:25] So it does help them make progress.

[00:53:27] It's just, you know, sort of detailed execution stuff.

[00:53:30] Are there any modern technological advances or AI variables that you do enjoy, that you've seen used maybe in a unique way, that help empower and enable sellers to get more in touch with buyers?

[00:53:49] Not yet.

[00:53:51] Okay.

[00:53:51] I've seen tons of them.

[00:53:53] I know.

[00:53:54] That's fair.

[00:53:56] But not yet.

[00:53:58] I mean, they're interesting.

[00:54:00] So I, I, here's one thing, one of the problems that exist, and I think it's an opportunity for people is that, you know, let's say, yeah, you've got a AI sales assistant that's, you know, going to be trained based on all of your data and so on and so forth.

[00:54:18] Well, can it ever be any smarter than your low win rate?

[00:54:23] You know, if you have a 20% win rate, can it ever help you be better than a 20% win rate?

[00:54:26] Because it's learning based on your stuff.

[00:54:30] Possibly, right?

[00:54:31] But it's not clear that it can.

[00:54:33] I mean, as people talk now about agents, it's possibly agents might be able to learn from more sources and so on.

[00:54:38] But I think that's still a potential cap is that, yeah, we're training these assistants on what we're doing.

[00:54:45] And, hey, we think these are best practices.

[00:54:47] And I'm like, well, if it's 20% win rate, I don't call that best practice.

[00:54:51] It's maybe good practice, but it's not best practice.

[00:54:56] So I think there's opportunities out there to say, yeah, how do we help our AI assistants become smarter to be able to help our sellers?

[00:55:06] I think that exists.

[00:55:07] But I think that that's perhaps one of the limitations.

[00:55:10] Now, take it outside of your process, though.

[00:55:12] I think as an individual seller, if you're saying, look, well, I really want to gain some real insights into my buyer.

[00:55:19] We do our research.

[00:55:20] The research you can do these days is, you know, incomparable compared to just doing a Google search, you know, using, you know, whatever engine, chat GPT or perplexity or clot or whatever.

[00:55:32] But then, yeah, asking it to iterate and go deeper and try to come up with some of these unique questions that you could ask somebody that really causes them to stop and think.

[00:55:42] And I think, yeah, you can iterate on your prompts to be able to develop question types that will help you.

[00:55:50] And I encourage sellers to think about this is try to add one new question a week to your discovery script.

[00:56:01] Now, we all have a list of questions.

[00:56:02] So whether it's, you know, whether you're reading them off or you know them and this is, hey, this is the ones I ask.

[00:56:07] Great.

[00:56:08] Everybody does it.

[00:56:09] Add one new question a week because then in 10 weeks you've got a whole new script and you're asking a whole different set of questions that's different and unique and probably more effective than what you're doing before.

[00:56:21] I like that.

[00:56:22] I like that a lot.

[00:56:24] Well, Andy, we are over time, which means we've had a great conversation.

[00:56:30] We appreciate it.

[00:56:31] Yeah.

[00:56:32] Andy, where can, thank you so much.

[00:56:35] And where can all of our listeners best find you?

[00:56:38] And I'm assuming the books are best to be found on Amazon, but where would you like to direct anybody?

[00:56:44] Yeah.

[00:56:45] I mean, first pass, just connect with me on LinkedIn if we're not already connected and follow me there.

[00:56:50] Still pretty active on LinkedIn.

[00:56:54] Sort of depends on the season, what my travel schedule is, but I try to post five times a week, but also subscribe to my newsletter.

[00:57:02] Got about 60,000 subscribers to my weekly newsletter.

[00:57:07] Talk, yeah, win rates and sales execution.

[00:57:11] All right.

[00:57:12] Well, Carson, another good episode.

[00:57:15] Yeah.

[00:57:15] No, this was great.

[00:57:17] Andy, you made a point earlier that resonated with me.

[00:57:20] Like when you get to do these podcasts, I feel like I'm learning every time.

[00:57:24] I feel like the Andy Paul fanboy here on this conversation.

[00:57:27] So thank you for indulging me.

[00:57:30] Lots of goodness on this episode.

[00:57:33] So thank you so much.

[00:57:35] Anything else that you wanted to hit on that we didn't get to today?

[00:57:39] No, I mean, pick up.

[00:57:43] The difference in sales between winning and losing is you as a human, more than often than not.

[00:57:49] And the data, if you're at all skeptical of that, stop.

[00:57:57] Because not only if people like Gartner and studies, they came up with one a year ago in the spring,

[00:58:02] that the nine most important factors influencing a B2B buyer selection of a vendor,

[00:58:09] number one, trustworthiness.

[00:58:12] And of the nine items on this, product and price really weren't on there.

[00:58:16] And similarly, a gentleman named Kian McLaughlin, who runs a company called Trinity Perspectives,

[00:58:23] I don't know if you know Kian, based in Australia.

[00:58:26] For over 15 years now, they've been doing win-loss interviews with buyers at large enterprises around the world.

[00:58:36] And he summarized, a couple years ago, he summarized their findings from these thousands of interviews into two slides.

[00:58:42] First one, nine reasons why you win big deals, nine reasons why you lose big deals.

[00:58:48] Not once is product or price mentioned.

[00:58:52] It has nothing to do with it.

[00:58:53] It is all about you and the way that you as a human are interacting, connecting, and helping the buyer.

[00:59:02] And, yeah, I mean, I like to label like sort of seven of the nine reasons on both sides really come down to what I call human competencies.

[00:59:10] But what I mean by that is, do we show up and care?

[00:59:13] You know, how are we able to connect with other human beings and show up as interested?

[00:59:18] How do we use our curiosity and give, you know, free reign to our curiosity?

[00:59:24] And not just be stuck within the, you know, the boundaries of a script.

[00:59:27] But, you know, if you're curious about learning something else, ask something else, right?

[00:59:31] Right. And yeah, I got in this yesterday with Keenan online, who was talking about

[00:59:39] the best sellers are those who collect the most data, period. I said, well, Keenan, that's not

[00:59:44] true at all. It's the ones who understand the data the best and how they can help the buyers.

[00:59:50] That's who wins. It's not who has the most data, it's who understands the data the best

[00:59:55] and the way it can help the buyer. So understanding as a human competence, you know,

[00:59:59] it's not enough just to know things. To me, it's the real sort of danger of relying on things like

[01:00:04] Medic and MedPic, which are these checkbox, you know, data collection and data extraction

[01:00:09] methodologies is, yeah, you know something, but what do you understand about the buyer? You don't,

[01:00:14] there's a gap between knowing and understanding. You have to cross that and it requires even greater

[01:00:19] in-depth of questioning and so on. And then last, yeah, for me, the most, I write about these human

[01:00:25] competencies in my book, Sell Without Selling. The fourth one is generosity, right? Are you prepared

[01:00:30] to help the buyer without the expectation of getting something in return, right? If it's all just a quid pro

[01:00:37] quo, then to your point, you're making a four brand and it's like fences go up, right? I'm a little

[01:00:43] skeptical. I'm suspicious. You're trying to persuade me. You know, a great book written by, called The

[01:00:48] Catalyst by Jonah Berger out of Wharton. A few years ago, research shows 100% of human beings

[01:00:57] react negatively to being persuaded. Naturally, we make that the focus of our sales training is let's

[01:01:05] make people more persuasive. No, we don't want people to be more persuasive. I want them to be

[01:01:09] more helpful.

[01:01:11] More curious.

[01:01:12] And more curious because that will speak for itself.

[01:01:16] And people want to do business with you at that point. So yeah, just these human competencies.

[01:01:22] And if you have them, if you, if you, and again, you can read them on the book is, is if you have

[01:01:27] the ability to connect, that leads, opens the door to building your credibility and trust.

[01:01:32] You get the credibility and trust that opens the door to be able to ask questions and get the answers

[01:01:37] that they won't necessarily give to every other seller, right? So you earn the right to ask and get

[01:01:42] answers those questions. Well, when you get those ask and answer those questions, that leads to your

[01:01:47] ability to better understand the buyer. And I don't know what you do, but for me, there have been

[01:01:52] multiple times in my career where I've won deals, you know, I was working for startups,

[01:01:56] winning big deals that thought we had no business winning. And invariably, the answer as to why we won

[01:02:01] was, well, you made us feel like you understood us better than anybody else.

[01:02:06] Emotion, feel.

[01:02:07] Right. And so we made them feel heard and understood. So, you know, the third competency in my four core

[01:02:15] competencies, you know, understanding the fourth is generosity, right? We're responsive, we're attentive,

[01:02:21] we're focused on helping them do what they wanted to do, which is make a decision to make a change.

[01:02:28] I love it. What a master class.

[01:02:31] Yeah, you know, Carson, I feel like, you know, I'm a big soccer fan and I feel like in good soccer

[01:02:36] games, yeah, good soccer games, it's the last five minutes of the game and extra time where the best

[01:02:42] stuff happens. And our show today was just like that. The best stuff happened in extra time.

[01:02:49] Brandon, you just gain momentum. You're like, you started out as this like good sized snowball and you

[01:02:54] just became an avalanche of goodness. That's it. Andy, who's your soccer fan, Brandon? Just before

[01:03:00] we go, two weeks ago, I was at Anfield when they beat Man City, Liverpool beat Man City.

[01:03:05] Very nice. Are you a Liverpool fan?

[01:03:08] I'm a big Liverpool fan, yeah. My son was referred to here on the show. Well, his birthday present to me

[01:03:15] this year was take me to Anfield to see Liverpool play Man City.

[01:03:18] Nice. Yeah. Very cool. Very cool. One of my favorite memories is I've seen Manchester United play twice.

[01:03:27] Once at Wembley, Old Wembley, and then once at Old Trafford. And both times they beat Arsenal 2-0.

[01:03:34] So Manchester United should actually just pay me to come to every Arsenal match.

[01:03:38] Especially these days, yeah.

[01:03:40] Yeah. They need all they can get these days.

[01:03:43] Anyway. Yeah. No, guys, thank you. It's been a lot of fun.

[01:03:46] Good stuff.

[01:03:47] Hopefully we can do it again.

[01:03:48] Thank you.

[01:03:48] Yeah, that was excellent. Andy, thank you so much. For everybody,

[01:03:51] thank you for joining us again on Mastering Modern Selling, episode 117. Carson, close us out.

[01:03:57] Until next time, everyone. Andy, thank you so much. And until next time, everyone,

[01:04:02] happy modern selling.

[01:04:04] Bye, everybody.

[01:04:05] Thank you for joining us today on Mastering Modern Selling. If you enjoyed this episode,

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