MMS #122 - Humanizing Sales for Results: Building Relationships That Convert with Denise Murtha

[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.

[00:00:49] Okay, welcome back. Episode number 122, Mastering Modern Selling. At least I remember the name. That's good. That's a good story. After being gone for a few weeks here. Yeah, welcome back, Tom. Yeah, I know. I, I, I, like I said, I feel like I'm a little, you know, need the training wheels again. Yeah. Well, yeah, it'll all come back pretty quick. Yeah, yeah. Lights and power. That's a good start. So, hey, Brandon and Denise, Murtha Bachman. Welcome. Great to have you. Thank you. Glad to be here.

[00:01:19] We are going to talk today about humanizing sales in an AI world or maybe an up and coming AI world. Brandon, before we do that, do you have anything you'd like to say about our sponsor? I do. I do. And I'm going to laugh because I've been so horrible about it. And my team actually gave me a script. They're like, hey, write, read this. We're asking like, who is the show sponsored by?

[00:01:44] That's right. Yeah. So everybody, thanks. Thanks for joining us on episode 122 of Mastery Modern Selling. It's this episode is sponsored by Fistbump and Fistbump helps C-suite and leaders become more connected, more relevant and more influential in their industry. And they do it through managing and promoting LinkedIn live shows and podcasts, kind of like this one.

[00:02:06] So, yeah, we don't we don't only help companies create content like the live shows, but we also help them use the content from these live shows in a systematic playbook that we use for outreach. So it influences emails and calls and blogs and newsletters and all kinds of content.

[00:02:25] So if you need help, if the cold outreach, the cold emails, the cold calling is just not producing the pipeline you need, maybe Fistbump can help you. So if you're interested, check us out at GetFistBumps.com. And now I say, let's get on with the episode with Denise. Anthony gave you a fist bump, Brandon. I appreciate that. Thanks, Anthony. So he's a great he's a great attendee.

[00:02:55] He comes, he comments, he joins in. He does great stuff. That's awesome. Welcome. Mizra. Mersa. Welcome as well. Thank you. So, Denise, welcome again. Tell us a little bit about you, your background, and then we're going to get into some, I think, some pretty interesting conversation here. Awesome. Okay, well, I'll make it really short and sweet. I live here in Houston. I've been in sales for over 30 years.

[00:03:24] And then I realized probably about two years ago that there's this huge gap where we were introducing all these AI technologies into the sales process, but no one knew how to leverage them effectively. And we could go down a completely different conversation just about that in itself. But ultimately, I realized that I could couple my experience and my passion for AI with my experience and success with sales. And I launched Cellivator.

[00:03:51] So here I am today coaching, consulting, doing fractional leadership, working on with startups, primarily funded startups. So I've got a whole other program there. So it's super exciting where it's taking me and having lots of fun, especially with as many new AI tools that we are seeing introduced every day. Let me ask a question before we kind of jump into that.

[00:04:15] When you first noticed AI encroaching, if you will, into the sales world, how were you seeing people or sales organizations predominantly using it? And were these more tech sales organizations or other B2B? What were you seeing early on? And what are you seeing now, I guess, at a high level related to what people are thinking about related to AI? Yeah.

[00:04:38] So first, a little tidbit of info, a fun fact that the first AI, well, one could debate that it was even earlier than this. But around 1956, you had MIT, IBM, and I can't remember who the third were. They actually introduced AI, the concept of AI, and started generating technologies around that. So it's been around for a really long time. When we were first introduced to AI, it really wasn't AI. AI is the umbrella, and underneath it is automation.

[00:05:07] So we had our first introduction was really as it relates to automation. And so most organizations were leveraging workflow automation tools. And there were things behind the scenes within Salesforce or any other CRM, for that matter, that you could leverage, like introducing just sequences, right, that weren't even related.

[00:05:30] Like they weren't maybe sending out the emails, but they were most certainly creating sequences and reminders set and giving you tips and ideas as to how you might be able to engage. So we were starting to leverage it fairly early on.

[00:06:09] And I mean, we could have a whole conversation just about that. But that's kind of where the drive. I mean, now, if you're not leveraging AI, which is true, some of it is still automation solutions. Some of it is still based on automation solutions. But if you're not using AI in some form, you are going to be left behind. Interesting. And I think there's, I think a lot of people, you know, there's very various camps, right? There's the early adopters that went in pretty quickly.

[00:06:37] There's people that are lagging a little bit, taking a look at it. And I think just even what I found is just from the research side, you know, I can do in about 15 minutes research that used to take me several hours to do. And I know with a lot of teams, just being prepared for that next call, right? And who you're speaking with. It takes time. And we're all busy. We have all these things coming at us. And a lot of times that research just gets kicked to the background.

[00:07:05] And then we jump on a call and we're like, I'm not as prepared as I could have been. And that is one thing I have found that AI is just phenomenal with. And even if you're out there listening, you're nervous about AI, even if you just look at it from that standpoint, like going into GPT and start asking, hey, I've got a call with this person coming up. You know, tell GPT how to act. Hey, you are a expert in sales and sales research.

[00:07:33] I need you to help me with this and have it start sharing with you information about who you're going to speak with, about their company, about what's going on. I mean, those little things there, you don't even have to be experts in AI or make a big company, you know, initiative makes a big difference. It does everything from research like 10Ks to role played. It'll actually role play with you. If you give it a persona and you start engaging with it, it'll role play an entire sales conversation.

[00:08:03] So that you can figure out how best to, based on the persona or based on the problem or the solution, it will help you formulate how you should engage in a real live conversation. Super cool. Yeah. So I think, you know, those examples I consider to be like more enablement, right? We're enabling the salesperson to be more effective, add more value.

[00:08:26] And I know we want to get into the human part here, but are you also seeing where companies are trying to use AI to either replace or significantly augment what they would be doing with, you know, kind of a person-based sales organization? So I've seen organizations want to adopt that strategy to replace, at least from a BDR perspective, maybe even upwards to an SDR. But it's not really been too successful right now. We're still in the infancy stages.

[00:08:54] And I do believe that we still need engagement from a human. And what I see or what I have seen is that organizations will adopt this tool and they won't know how to leverage it effectively. So in essence, you have either the human just lets it run and then it totally like it causes negative brand awareness because now you have they've engaged with you and you haven't been engaging with it.

[00:09:19] You've let the automation run or it's that you've got them doing activity along with the AI or automation solution. And then you're really doing double duty. So you're not really making them any more proficient. You're just trying to tackle more people. And it's a numbers game, right? So they've been leveraging it effectively. So I don't think we're in a position yet, but I do believe it is going to happen.

[00:09:40] I mean, I'm a firm believer that we're going to see something like a universal basic income because they've replaced people, not just salespeople, but just people in place of whether that's, you know, 10, 20, 30 years. I don't really know. But I do believe we're going to be moving towards a basic universal basic income. You know, one thing you said, and I think this will help transition us into the humanized side as well, is you mentioned BDRs, using AI to replace BDR function.

[00:10:08] And I would argue that even the BDR functionality over the last 10 years has dehumanized the sales process. Even though there was a human doing it, it was very transactional. And a lot of BDRs, they were motivated. They were compensated to get an initial call and move someone through a discovery that was very much you've got to deliver the discovery. And they're not as conversational. They weren't as engaging or conversational.

[00:10:37] I mean, I know we were looking at some new tech and I went on three demos that not once did somebody ask me what we were looking to accomplish. They just went into their routine and they started throwing everything in the kitchen sink at us. And I'm sitting there like 15, 20 minutes into this going, I'm getting nothing out of this. And she said, okay, time out. I've got everything I need and moved on because it wasn't valuable for me.

[00:11:01] So if we take that BDR functionality like that and then turn it into AI, we're just going to make more bad user experiences or customer experiences at scale. Agreed. Yeah, that's what I was thinking. The same thing is the BDR process, even with humans, in most cases, is not very effective anyway. You add AI, boy, you can really make a mess on the thing there. I agree.

[00:11:26] So, Denise, you've transitioned into this people first sales strategy. Tell us a little bit about what that means and how it looks like. And are you seeing that this is really helping a company build better pipeline and be more predictable, create more predictable revenue? Yeah. So there were a lot of questions. I hope I'm going to answer them all.

[00:11:52] But maybe if I could start with, usually when we think about as a salesperson, I know, I mean, obviously, having been in sales for 30 years, you guys have been in sales for a long time. We have matured, right? So maybe not in the latter part of our sales career. But most salespeople early on, middle stage, they think about how are we going to get this client to buy? How are we going to get this buyer to purchase our solution?

[00:12:15] Instead, what we really have to do is shift our focus on how are we going to help this person, this client, this prospective buyer actually solve a problem? That's first and foremost. We have to make a mindset shift. When we do that and we start really focusing on solving their problem, it allows us to engage in a way that is beyond what normal salespeople do today, which is start to ask really good questions. You go in and have a conversation with them.

[00:12:45] And instead of just taking their surface level question as your response, you dive in with second and third and fourth level and the goal to get to probable root cause. When you do that, it does a couple of things. One, you really understand what the real problem is. Because by the way, most buyers think they know they're solving a problem. They'll have a project. They've got this problem and they've got to solve to it. You go in and have the conversation and when you get to third and fourth level questions, they uncover themselves that, oh my gosh, I have an aha moment.

[00:13:15] This is the real problem I'm having. This one that I came to you with is just a systemic problem, right? And if you can help them solve that main problem, man, you've just hung the moon, right? So it shows them that it helps them get to probable root cause, but it also shows them that you care about their business and what they're doing. So when you approach it in a way as though you're trying to help them solve a problem and then guide them together, you guys are on the journey together. So that by the time you get to negotiation and close, it's a done deal.

[00:13:44] You've already built a plan based on exactly what they need. You've done echo backs and confirmations. You've been transparent in what you need in order to consider a good business deal, a good deal. And they've as well agreed and you've taken them down this process.

[00:14:04] That is a relationship based that is more about helping them solve a problem where you're in the journey together and not you're pulling them through the journey or you're struggling with them because they want to drive the journey, right? It's working on it together. I think if you do that, you build more pipeline. You tend to as well build better clients and you can do a better job of upselling and cross-selling even then. So you have greater retention rates, better leads converting to deals, and better retention rates.

[00:14:32] Sorry, I don't know why I'm struggling with communicating today. You're doing great. Thanks. But, you know, the whole idea, and so Denise, I don't know, you know, I have a software company that sells sales and CRM software to manufacturers and wholesale distributors. And a lot of these companies have tens of thousands of products and thousands of customers, right?

[00:14:57] And so we talk a lot with them about problem solving, but it's so overwhelming for them to even know the product lines that they sell and all the different permutations of things. And what we're seeing is, and I want your take on this, what we're seeing on this is this is really where AI can be the differentiator because there's no way really in hell they would be able to learn all these products and all these combinations on their own.

[00:15:22] But by using AI, understanding the customer, rather than bringing them a box of donuts and saying, hey, let's go to lunch, they can actually come to a meeting and drive a lot of value. And I think especially in a tech company where you don't have thousands of products and you could really go deep, isn't this really where that AI starts to shine in helping you solve or identify and communicate those problems? Of course.

[00:15:45] I think most certainly, especially when you have too many tools, but I guess I would ask you, how are you guys leveraging AI to solve that problem? Well, we're building a lot of AI that's looking at the data from their ERP systems and their CRM systems to help that salesperson who has to have, you know, has 10,000 products that he's representing, how to hone in on identifying the right ones for the right situation. We're kind of calling it like a digital twin for that salesperson.

[00:16:16] And the goal is, again, to make them way more effective and add more value rather than coming and just being, because in our market, they've been 100% relationship almost. It's like, hey, let's go to lunch. Let's have, you know, here's some donuts. How are the kids doing? Let me know if I can help you, right? That's about as far as a lot of it went because it was just so overwhelming to actually take it to the next level. But again, I think that, I think people certainly want the human element, but they want the value of the human element.

[00:16:45] And so if AI can help add that value, that's really important. I wanted to hit Martin's question here. He says, always ask the next question, the one you are scared to ask. It is usually the one that matters the most. Do you see any, you know, what would your recommendation be about, or what do you see as you're coaching people afraid to ask that question?

[00:17:09] Or is there certain questions that they should be asking that maybe they would be maybe afraid to ask, but would be very important to ask? Yeah. So I think the root of the problem is most people are afraid to actually go in and just allow the conversation to flow. Most people will build this list of discovery questions that they need to get answered, and it's like one question after the other. And when they get those answered, then they feel like they've won the lottery and they're done and they can walk out, right?

[00:17:39] But it's usually those questions when you allow yourself to go in with flow. If you understand, you've done your homework, like you said, you've gotten the insights, you know the buyer persona, you've got a thousand products. We'll use your example. You've got a thousand products. You've now used AI. You've been able to understand what the buyer persona is, what type of projects they currently have, how much money they're spending, what their key issues are. Those are all things that you were talking about that AI can do by scraping data across the Internet, right? Brings you all this data. Now you're super prepared. So you have an idea of what you've got.

[00:18:09] As long as you have done your homework and you've researched them and you know all of that information, or at least a lot of that information, maybe not all, but a lot. And you have an idea of what the discovery questions are that you would like to get answered. When you go in and just allow the conversation to flow, then when you ask that first question, you're listening and then you think, oh gosh, what if, you know, if he says like, Brandon and I did this example the other day. Brandon, how are you doing today? What do you normally at? What do you normally say when someone asks you that?

[00:18:38] Or today in particular? Yeah. You should say, you know, fine, being productive because I don't like to say the word busy, you know, working towards being productive. And yeah, something I like to find. Well, what does productive mean to you? So now you're asking questions. Correct. And that is probably the simplistic of examples, but that's the reality of it. Like I probably have in my head as a sales rep, I'm going to do quick introductions, ask him how he's doing, and then I'm going to go on to this next question.

[00:19:08] But instead, if you just allow the conversation to flow and start asking those questions, what I may have uncovered is Brandon actually may be having a phenomenal day, but his response was fine. But he may actually be having a phenomenal day. And it took us to have this conversation for him to have that aha moment. Or it may be really terrible. And he's just masking it and he needs, you know, he'd like to talk about it a little and you help him uncover that, right? But that's the point in going in and leveraging these tools in a way that allows you to go in and allow conversation to flow.

[00:19:38] When you do that, asking those hard questions, they're not really hard then at that point because you're listening and you're asking the next logical question. And if you don't get them all answered, it's okay. You can always come back. The more touch points we have, the better it is anyway. So I have a question. First, I want to say, Martin, that was a thank you for that comment. And Mirza, we're seeing your comments there. Today's episode is about humanizing the sales process and not about finding new clients.

[00:20:05] So we have links to other episodes where we've talked about how to find clients that we can share with you later. But let's get back to the humanizing process here. Denise, what you're saying, it makes sense. And I think there's probably a lot of people shaking their head. It's also really hard. How do you approach training, coaching, teaching people to be more human, to ask better questions, especially under the pressure of quota?

[00:20:33] Yeah, well, first off, you have to have the conversations with leadership that says they're never going to make quota unless they actually start to have good, effective conversations. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Are you saying if they do it well, they'll actually sell more instead of just doing it? Yes, of course. Yes, of course. Novel concept, right? And I think it's interesting. And I know this with our audience on our show.

[00:20:59] So we have people watching from tech companies and we have people watching there from more traditional, what I call more traditional companies that in some ways, like, you know, we've always worked on this, but it's just harder to get that first conversation. And then we have over the kind of the tech movement, the startup movement over the last decade plus

[00:21:21] that adopted the BDR, adopted systems or strategies that are more transactional in nature. So how do we get back to properly training, coaching and equipping people? And I agree with you. It's got to start with leadership. But how does that look in an organization, especially with all this pressure to make revenue? Yeah.

[00:21:47] So first off, we have to get over this concept of just giving them a week of training and then letting them go on their own. 90% of a salesperson's knowledge that they gained in that one week, they lose over 90 days. So they're only retaining about 10% because we train them on one concept. And then the next quarter, we train them on something else. And then the next quarter on something else. By the time they start that new quarter, they've already forgotten everything. So it really boils down. Go ahead. I see you.

[00:22:14] And often I find that training is about features and functions and how it works. It's not even about the sales process. It's not even like, hey, these are the stages. These are where we want to flow. It's just, first of all, in a week, drink from a fire hose and understand who we are and then smack them on the backside and say, go get them, Tiger. And leave them out to hang to dry, right? Or hang them out to dry, right? Well, you know, where I think really where we have to start moving towards with everyone

[00:22:43] is we've got to start working on this coaching mentality. Not spending every hour or once a week, every hour focused on just, you know, selling motion and where you are in the deal process, but actually coaching them, having them role play, talking through and you asking them those questions that you expect them to be asking their buyers. And when we do that, we lead by example. And we also start to get them into this role playing that allows them to start becoming

[00:23:11] more comfortable with the process so that they can actually do that on their own as well. So I do think just in an entry level, when we're talking about how to ask better questions, it is about coaching. But again, we as leaders have to do a better job of that as well. And when we do that by leading by example, they learn that effectively. And then it's just making sure that our process aligns with their processes. So we tend to, as organizations, have a sales process.

[00:23:35] And we expect our salespeople to effectively navigate it exactly the way we subscribe as we prescribe it. They have to subscribe to what we prescribe, right? And really what we need to do is start to adapt to what our buyers' internal processes are. And we can still take what we've got that we've built. We just implement it in a fashion that feels comfortable to their buyers. And once you do that, those two things coupled,

[00:24:02] you will start to see more business closure and the success rates will be much higher. It seems, I feel like we're in a season right now of transition where we are moving. I think that the term buyer-centric has been used a lot over the last five plus years. But I think it's just been a conversation topic. A lot of conversations, oh yeah, yeah, we're very buyer-centric.

[00:24:28] But that means once they believe they're buyer-centric, but their process isn't really buyer-centric. I feel like we're in that transition time right now of getting, what I would say is getting back to being buyer-centric. I agree. I do agree. Are you finding that in your customer conversations? Are they engaging you and bringing you in to start talking about helping people be better people in those conversations?

[00:24:56] Well, they're not really asking me to do that. It isn't until they're made aware that it's almost like we're, if we go back to that, hi, how are you doing? And we go to that just simplistic conversation. We act that way as well in that we let you answer the question, Brandon, I'm doing fine. It's productive. And then we move on, right? That's kind of how we are as it relates to the buying process too. We do a step and we just move on, right?

[00:25:23] We get our customer to check off on this and then we move on to the next step. It's when we actually really take a step back and we recognize that there's a flaw or a problem with it, that the only way to do that is to get back to the human. But that doesn't just happen. Like someone doesn't just have an aha moment and think, oh gosh, I need to add the human back in. Because they're customized. They're trained. They're moving in this motion. Where they're doing the same thing every single day.

[00:25:48] So it actually really takes them a moment to realize that they've got to get back to the basics. And it's usually not on their own. It's usually they've seen a conversation or they've noticed that something doesn't feel right anymore and they're not closing deals. So now they're just looking for a way to solve. But once you have the conversation, once you go in and evaluate what the salespeople are doing, it usually always has to do with they're trying to solve to the wrong problem. And it's always about how I get them to buy my product versus how do I help them solve a problem?

[00:26:16] Those two things really are the core root problem of all of the issues that we have as it relates to sales. You know, I want to hit Keith's comment who commented here a minute ago. Like Keith. Before we do that, I think your example, we talked earlier about using AI for role playing. I think a really interesting opportunity for AI role playing is helping a sales rep go beyond that first question. Right.

[00:26:46] Have the AI force you or work with you to go that second, third, fourth question. So like you said, how are you doing? Right. You can work to do the role play to start going deeper along that way versus having you just stay along the surface among the other questions. I think that would be a great way for somebody to really get more fluent with that.

[00:27:08] I just think coaching in general, real quick before we get to Keith, I think coaching in general and the role playing and the training just over the last decade or so just lost its luster and it became fast and speed. And I think technology is partly to blame for that because we had tools that we could do things, spray and pray. And because we had the tools, we did it. We didn't think of should we do it.

[00:27:35] And I think it's just kind of what I see is it's caught up to us. When I talk to leaders that say, yeah, we looked at our BDR data over a two year period and they had a 99% loss rate. You start looking at the data going, well, maybe this isn't the right motion that we should be doing. But what's funny is that overnight, it almost seems if you reflect back prior to the pandemic and then post pandemic, right?

[00:27:59] When and you and I talked about this, Brandon, prior to the pandemic, everyone was going from meeting to meeting, getting out of their seat and actually having to go to a different room, whether that was an office or conference, sometimes even across campus. And so they didn't have time to study, learn, understand what you were trying to sell them, what their problems were that they were trying to solve. They just knew they had a problem and they had to solve it right now. They have more time. So the buyer journey has completely changed. We just have done a poor job at adapting to that.

[00:28:28] They've changed. They changed overnight because all of a sudden now when we went to that digital age, because it was technology that drove us there, right? They now they're sitting in front of their laptops. They're still going from meeting to meeting, but now they can just start to do their own homework, right? They can start researching and investigating. So they're actually really knowledgeable now. You don't have to teach them anything. So now it's really, you know, so they've changed almost overnight.

[00:28:51] And here we still are prior to the pandemic, still acting and engaging in a way that is so outdated. And now, you know, and it's, and we've demanded, the buyers have demanded because they were isolated. They felt alone. And, you know, now they want that personal touch. They want that human touch. And we just have done as a poorer job than I would like, I would say. I mean, there are lots of great people doing a great job, but there are a lot of people doing a very poor job.

[00:29:18] So what I heard is the buyer changed and the sales motion has not adapted to meet. And that's where the big loss is, the big disrespect. Yeah. I see Tom shaking his head. Yeah. Tom wants to get to Keith's question. No, I just, I wrote a book on the subject, Brandon, if you remember on the- I did. It's right here. On the changing buyer, right? So- It's right here. I always have it close. Oh, good.

[00:29:48] I want to see more stickies in there, you know, things like that sticking. I've got a lot of notes written in it. I don't use stickies. I write notes in the- Yeah. So, hey, going to Keith, if I can get this to show up here. He's saying that my challenge in sales, I always have a destination in mind, right? That I want to accomplish. In other relationships, like friendships, I don't have a destination in mind. And so much of this conversation in sales is around pressure, you know, to hit that destination, right?

[00:30:18] Hit that outcome that they're going for. Denise, you know, obviously, right, where a salesperson has a job, which is to make a sale. We get that. But I'm wondering, and again, this may go back to the coaching, should that destination be not- Because I do think it will come across, right? If I'm starting to ask you questions, but you can kind of tell that I just am doing that because somebody told me to do it and I'm really trying to get you to do the demo, right?

[00:30:45] Is I wonder if that destination needs to be really understanding the problem. Stop, right? Goal right there. First destination, really, can you coach that and can you have the organization reward that, right? Because if they will reward that, then you'll see that outcome actually occur. So how does that work so that it comes across sincere, I guess, and not as just something that, hey, I'm checking a box? Yeah. So that adage that it's not the destination, it's the journey.

[00:31:15] So instead of thinking about the destination, think about your overall intention. So if you look at customer ABC, right, that's the company that you're going after. You know your intention is to close a deal with them. And based on your research, it's for product A. That's what you want to sell them, right? But that's just at least what you're going to go in and start potentially having conversation. It may change, right? But you've got to be okay with that. So the destination can't be, I'm going to close, I'm going to sell them product A.

[00:31:42] The destination is, I want to partner with them and sell them something. I want to close business and build a long-term relationship with them. And how you get there may have to change. You may go in thinking, I'm going to sell them product A, but realize it's really not product A, or maybe it's a combination of product A and product B. Who really knows, but nonetheless, you've got to be able to be on a journey with them. And so what I tend to coach, what I do really well is before I have my overall intention, I'm going to close business. I want to sell.

[00:32:09] I'm going to, you know, whatever verbal, verbal, whatever terminology you want to use. But I always think about what's my intention for this particular meeting. What's my intention for this particular meeting? Your destination for that meeting, not your. Yeah. And not even a destination. It's just an intention, right? If I don't get anything else, I want to make sure that I've gotten to a point where I have a next step and we're going to schedule that next step on that call today, right? And maybe that's in the discovery.

[00:32:38] Maybe the next one is my intention for this meeting. I'm going to share. I'm going to re-summarize what I heard the challenges were and what I think I heard as it relates to the interests, right? I know that they need a subscription deal because they can't pay for the product or the solution all at one time. They need to pay monthly, right? Those are the types of things that I'm going to echo back. But my intention is to make sure that I get them to agree on this and then to get the next

[00:33:04] step in place, which could be, you know, depending on how the conversation goes, you have in mind what you think it might be. And so you leave yourself some room. So it's about the journey and not the destination. So setting the intention rather than setting the stipulation. I like that a lot. What I heard you say in my mind and the terminology I use is there's stages of the conversation. And often we go in with, this is our goal and it's usually give the demo or tell them what we are.

[00:33:33] But if you can slow it down and have stages, and Tom, I like the way you said that. If we can compensate that, compensate salespeople on solving that first stage or accomplishing the first stage. And it might be digging in and finding the real problem. And if you just do that on the first conversation, you're much more likely to get a second conversation than doing what we've done before. And then sending the, I'm just following up. Where are you? What happened? Well, you didn't meet their needs.

[00:34:02] That conversation was you centric instead of them centric. Why would they want to get on another call with you? And to your point, Denise, they can just go do the research they want. And then if you're the right tool, they can come back to you. But they're not going to get on more calls because their first experience was awful. Well, you remember, Brandon, we haven't talked about this with Carson in a while, but remember Carson talking about in his sales meetings, what he talks about is not what does your pipeline look like?

[00:34:31] He talks about how many new conversations have you created? This last week. What were the quality of those conversations? Love that. Right. When those are being at least acknowledged, if not rewarded, right, people want to come to that meeting and talk about, hey, look at all the great new conversations I created this week versus just talking about how many demos I had or. And you can quantify that, right? You can quantify that if you set that up as a stage of the process.

[00:34:57] But you've got to accomplish this stage because especially in that problem solving side and finding out what the real problem is, if you don't accomplish that stage, there's no stage two. Yeah. I couldn't agree more. I think, you know, a thought that I just had a second ago was in relation to compensation. What if we didn't have to compensate them for every stage?

[00:35:22] Because if they were doing each stage effectively, they would have a faster close than they would doing it the traditional way. So I don't even think you have to be compensated as a sales rep. I think you just have to be supported because you will close your success rate for closure is higher and you will close it faster. And a lot of times when you go through this process, you actually close larger deals because you've gotten to the real root of the problem and not just the systemic issue, right? Yeah.

[00:35:50] And what I said about Carson, they certainly weren't compensating at each stage, but they were making that an important part of the sales meeting. Yes. And, you know, rewarded at least personally for bringing that to the table, right? People get, you know, people will do what they're getting acknowledged for and they were getting acknowledged for those things and spotlighting them in the meetings. Yeah. I'm glad you guys clarified that because I misspoke by using the word compensate.

[00:36:18] It's more the acknowledge and make that part of the process. And when you celebrate that as a micro win, it's going to lead to more of the bigger wins. Yeah. I agree. So I want to, I saw a comment here from Anthony. He was talking about a thousand emails, 200 opens, 10 more prize, one meeting, zero opportunities, but we had a 20% open rate. You know, the vanity metrics that we get, especially in organizations where you kind of have marketing

[00:36:46] and sales separated and everyone's trying to show the value of what they're doing. We've talked a lot about this on the show about the importance of potentially as a modern selling strategy, if not combining sales and marketing, certainly having them working more tighter towards common goals. Is that something that you tend to get into as well? How do you work with the sales organization and bring in marketing and try and create a

[00:37:13] more harmonious situation and also remove some of these, you know, stupid vanity metrics that you see all the time that people use to try and justify, you know, their department? Okay. Now that's a lot of questions. Yeah. That was a lot, but I think it's an easy answer though, because ultimately it's primarily because I think as salespeople, we have to start taking, we have to start thinking in terms of marketing, right? And some of those metrics you're never going to get, or at least not in the short term, you're not going to get companies away from that.

[00:37:41] In fact, as I coach, because I coach that you don't leverage email blasts and that you don't send, that you don't pick up the phone and do cold calls because I don't read my emails. I don't appreciate a cold call. In fact, I don't ever pick up and I'm a salesperson, so I love a good sell, right? But I don't pick up cold calls either. So because of that, I coach them to not even do that, but most clients feel like they have to. So you're not probably in the short term going to get rid of those metrics. They're going to be there.

[00:38:07] You allow them to run the marketing campaign as they want and drive those metrics. That's fine. Or drive to those metrics, whatever. Instead, what we got to focus on though is letting the marketing still do their gig, but allowing marketing and sales to be aligned so much so that you'll support marketing when they want to do that. But marketing has to support you when you're not going to pick up the phone. Instead, you're going to leverage LinkedIn or maybe phone is successful for you. Maybe you have great clients that you can reach and they've got great phone numbers and they pick up the phone.

[00:38:37] I don't really know. But for the most part, you're going to find the social platform that you're going to leverage. And especially for those of us who use LinkedIn, when you're engaging with them in a way on LinkedIn that is more personalized, as long as they support that for you, you support marketing. Marketing supports sales in the way they want to. Let marketing do their gig. That's fine. And you focus on what works best for you. And you'll have to test it out. Maybe you're a phenomenal cold caller and that's the way to go for you. I mean, we've seen success rates as much as 8% and 10% for someone who's an amazing cold caller. It just doesn't always effectively work, right?

[00:39:07] But you've got to find whatever works for you and make sure that you've been transparent with marketing and they know what you're doing so that you guys can work in harmony versus working as opposite spectrums, right? As two different business units. Hope that made sense. Yeah. But when you see it, it does. And when you see that sort of marketing motion where they're giving MQLs, right? And they call them, you know, here's this big bucket of leads and quote unquote leads and follow up with those.

[00:39:36] And, you know, as we know, a lot of those are very unqualified to begin with and salespeople don't have a lot of credibility with them. Is there some ways that you can leverage? Because I mean, there's a lot of, obviously a lot of great resources in the organization. Is there some ways to leverage that so that overall you're getting better results? And I agree, you're not going to throw the baby out with the bathwater, but I assume there's some things that can be done to constantly improve that. Yeah. So, I mean, that's a whole marketing conversation.

[00:40:04] One side of that is a whole marketing conversation, which I'm not a marketing expert, so I won't even tackle all of that. But what I will say is this, I think as salespeople, when those leads come in that we know are crappy leads, then what we really need to do is focus, not focus on just doing the activity, but focus on works. When we are getting back to humanizing and doing some of these things that we've talked about, you're going to start generating and producing results. When you do that, the team, leadership team's not going to care that you still have 50 leads

[00:40:33] that you haven't touched, right? They're going to care more about the fact that you're actually generating opportunity and closing business. As long as you're doing that, then the leads can sit there for as long as they want. If you're still struggling with the organization that wants you to still be super productive, generate revenue, and still meet their metrics, then that's a conversation that we have to have at a leadership level, right? Which is, we can no longer map to that any longer. It's not been successful. I think he put it in there. I mean, it's less than a 1%.

[00:41:02] I think Anthony said it's less than a 1% success rate. I mean, that's a lot of effort to do that, right? And that's only if you get the email right, the email address, right? And then he said it doesn't even convert, which is true. I mean, how many of those 1%ers actually even converted to a real opportunity? Well, and then we're not even thinking about the fallout from that, right? I mean, how many people, because the message was, hey, we do this, here's my calendar link, you know, let's schedule time to talk, left a bad taste in the mouth of the person.

[00:41:31] And then it affects negatively the person, but it affects the brand as well. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. I like this comment, Tom. It says LinkedIn user, so I'm so sorry. I don't know who you are, but great question. Denise, for you, would you say that AI can make sales more human by automating what's transactional, allowing sellers to focus on deeper trust-based relationships? Yep. That's exactly what we've been talking about.

[00:41:57] I think you leverage AI to augment you, not replace you so that salespeople can, you know, allow AI automation to focus on the mundane tasks while we then as salespeople focus on the higher value activities. And those higher value activities are everything we've been talking about now, which is really understanding and solving to a problem versus trying to sell them a product or a service. Denise, I want to move you to those initial outbound messages. Trying to create that first conversation.

[00:42:27] And as we've talked about, there's, you know, whether marketing creates messages or sales teams create their own. The easy route is kind of what I just said. Hey, this is who we are. This is what we do. I'm sending you a message. I'm calling you. I'm leaving a voicemail, whatever, because I want to sell you something. I mean, that's basically what it says. How do you coach teams to maybe change that script? Say something different. How do you humanize that initial outreach? Yeah, fine.

[00:42:55] Well, first off, you got to make it all about them. I always say you got to give three things before you ask for one. So you've got to most certainly make it all about them. And when you do that, it's more like instead of saying, hi, my name is Denise and I'm with Cellivators and, you know, I'm a sales coaching and consulting company. It's more like, okay, here's what I've learned about you. You are, you love watching movies. I don't really know this is a really stupid example, but it's the first one that came to mind. This person really loves watching movies and they love rom-com movies.

[00:43:24] Hey, I just noticed that you love, I know that you love rom-com movies. I don't know, but have you seen this one? Because this is one of my favorite movies, right? It's finding something that, and that was, again, a stupid problem, much less intelligent way of describing how I would accomplish this, but it is at the core root. It's about finding something that makes, that helps foster this connection with them, that wants them to, that makes them want to engage back with you. When you offer something like that, when you engage in a way like that, they can either say,

[00:43:53] no, I'm not going to respond because I don't have time, but more times than not, they're going to actually respond back. Hey, I haven't seen that movie. I'd love to go see that movie. Bringing that humanity to the digital environment is a way I explained it. Because if we're in a face-to-face networking, we don't go talk to somebody and our first motion is, me, do you have time? Let's schedule a meeting. If we do that in face-to-face, people go, right? Where is he? Where is he? Yeah, we never hear from him again.

[00:44:21] You're that weird person at the networking event that ends up alone in the corner because your emotions are so forward, people back off. But it seems like over the years in digital, we've been like through all that out and went straight to the message. And I argue that initial rapport building, connecting, chit-chatting, the humanity side is so, so important. And if you don't have that, you don't get to the next stage. Yep.

[00:44:50] But Brandon, isn't that a lot of what you're doing on your LinkedIn actions and building the relationships on LinkedIn and the content and all of that? What is the term you use? I feel like I see you everywhere and I already know you. Yeah. Right? Doesn't that give you a big jumpstart on having those types of conversations where even if you did bring up, hey, did you see this movie? People want to talk about it? Yeah. I mean, I think it can.

[00:45:17] And I mean, we also know that 98% of people don't consistently publish content in LinkedIn. We go to like, oh, I don't have time for that. Well, I argue you don't have time not to do it because so much now, because there's so much noise, if you don't have a reputation, how are you going to get them to even start to engage it? Denise, you talked about not looking at email, not answering calls you don't know what it's from and we don't respond to emails who we don't know what it's from.

[00:45:45] I like asking this question a lot. I realized that I was doing this. I'm like, I bet more people are doing it. So I started asking this question. When you look at your email generally in the morning for the first time, how do you filter humanly filter your list from this many unread emails to this? And I mean, how do you guys do that? I mean, I just glance. And if it doesn't serve me, if it doesn't look like it's an opportunity or a follow up

[00:46:14] to a conversation, I just go on to the next one and I don't even open it up. Generally, I'm trying to make a point. Generally, how do you make that decision? Who I know? Do I know them? Do I have familiarity? I go through and I look at the names and if I don't know their names, I don't even care about subject lines anymore. Now, I may be an extreme, but as a founder of a company, I get a ton of cold email that I never asked for. And I just go through, if I don't know their name, I go click, click, click, click, click,

[00:46:45] And I go from here to here and I make it more manageable. And then I start responding to the ones that I want to address and deal with. And I think most people do that. And so, Tom, to your point, if we're using LinkedIn, and this is why what we found, like when we first started the show 122 episodes ago, we're like, hey, let's just start talking and hear what people are doing with social. But over time, what I realized is this show has created a lot of conversations for me.

[00:47:14] It's created a lot of relationships. And I talk about who's now a good friend of mine, Natalie Bourne. We were connected on LinkedIn, but we never talked. We both live in the Atlanta area, but we had never met. And I'm at the airport pounding away on my laptop before I board my plane, AirPods in, and I get a tap on my shoulder. And I look up and it's Natalie. And she goes, Brandon. And I went, hi, because I didn't know who she was. I hate saying that now. She's become a good friend.

[00:47:43] But at the time, I didn't really know who she was. But it was my consistency of LinkedIn. It was this show that she felt like she knew me a lot more than I felt like I knew her at the time. And I think that's where our reputation then, then if you're sending the email, you're doing the call, they know you, they've seen you, and it makes a much better difference. I mean, Chris Dunn has a great example where he sent an email to somebody and the guy responded

[00:48:12] with, oh, yeah, Chris, I totally feel like I already know you from LinkedIn. Let's get on a call. That's a good way for that cold outreach to actually have effect, positive effect. Yeah. And I think this is Anna from Ireland, but she agrees with you, Brandon. It's like your live business card. Really, I think a great analogy. Yeah. And that's why, I mean, like I said at the beginning about Fistbump and what we do, what

[00:48:39] Fistbump does came along after we started this show because we started to see the value of what the show, how we use the content. Using content from the show and cold outreach, Denise, there's a question in here, I think. But if the leaders are saying we can't give up the cold outreach because it feels like we're have control, even though we generally don't, and then maybe that cold outreach can become,

[00:49:06] hey, here's, you know, I want to share this clip from an episode we did on this topic because I thought it would be that we're giving. If three things before you ask for one. Yeah. I've been hearing more people referencing Gary Vaynerchuk's jab, jab, jab, jab, right hook book, which is 10 years old now, but he nailed it back then. It's like, you got to think of your buyers like a bank. You've got to put in enough deposits before you attempt to make withdrawal. Yep.

[00:49:36] Hey, in the time we have left, Denise, I would like to. Oh my gosh, it's 48 minutes already. I know. We've been having fun. I'd like to move down the funnel a little bit because we've been talking about, you know, how do we use, how do we be more human to create conversations? But let's face it, it's not, especially in B2B, it's not always easy to get that conversation to a close. How can we be more human?

[00:50:04] We've established the conversation. Maybe we've even built some rapport. We've added some value. We've done some initial sales actions. How do we carry that forward to help maybe move the sale to the close and not get a no decision and handle maybe any, some of the objections that, you know, we talk a lot about the fear of messing up, right? How do you help to use that to avoid that fear of messing up? Yeah. It's putting things in place. Like I know, call it what you want.

[00:50:30] I call it an interest tracker, but it's, and you don't, it doesn't have to be a spreadsheet. It can just be a slide deck, right? But it's really having them echo or at least tell you what they want and you echo that back. So first off, I think you have to have tools in place, interest tracker, a closed plan, whatever you want to call them individually. So tools like that. But you also have to have a process in place that teaches them how to continuously ask for engagement, continuously echo back and get confirmation, allow them to make sure that

[00:51:00] you're on the right path, allow them to agree and help build what the next step is going to look like, right? Having them be, again, as I mentioned way at the beginning, a part of the journey, working it together rather than you pulling them or them trying to pull you, having, building a journey together. When you have a process, like a journey in place and it maps to the way they buy and you've got tools like interest trackers and closed plans, it helps you get to, I mean,

[00:51:27] closed rates can be as high as even 90% closed rates when you do it in an effective way such as that when you've got the process and the right tools in place. Sounds like go slow to move fast, Tom. Go slow to move fast. I've heard that one before somewhere. I love that. All right. Well, Brandon, do you have any final questions or topics that you think we should hit? I think, you know, the point, if I were to summarize, right, we're hearing today, right?

[00:51:54] Obviously start to build that relationship if you can, even before you have that conversation using LinkedIn and social. Once you get to the conversation, you know, ask questions, provide value, do the three to one, right? Before you take anything there, get good at that, right? Not just use it as lip service, but get really good at it. And then as you use and you have that data, as you move down, down the funnel, you can continue to leverage that data to continue to add more value and so forth.

[00:52:24] You don't just quit, right? You don't just quit going into sales mode all the way through. I think, is that pretty much a good kind of summary of the key points that we hit today? I would say I would just add, because I love destination. I think that was Anthony that said that, right? Instead of making it a destination, again, go back to the journey. Set the intention before each. You can have a goal that you want to achieve at the very end, but set the intention for every

[00:52:50] meeting and really understand that when we're in it together, when you're helping them solve a problem and you're in the trenches with them, your success rate is higher. So if you keep that in mind, approach it as just as though you're a friend. I think someone had an example early on in the show where they said, you know, a friendship feels so very different, but it can be. You build it like a friendship and you will close business. Yes.

[00:53:18] Denise, I have another question and maybe we're not totally wrapping up then. How do you answer then the questions like, we don't have time for that or our buyers don't have time for that? That feels too light and fluffy. Yeah. Well, the buyers actually do have time. They actually demand it because when they don't interact anymore, it's because you've gone too fast. So they're demanding it. You just aren't listening. You can't, they're not, they're not jumping and shouting from the rooftops. That's they're showing by the way they engage.

[00:53:47] And so it is our job to slow down. And if you don't slow down, you're not going to close business. That's just the way it is. I mean, you, you have to take the time to slow down. If you don't, you're not going to hit the numbers that you have, whether it's on a rep level or at a company level, it's just not going to happen. And we're seeing that. I mean, only 25% of salespeople were expected to hit their quote. I don't know what the results were, but only 25% of salespeople were expected to hit their quote per Salesforce report in 2024. I mean, that's terrible. Yeah.

[00:54:17] And we talked, we talked about role-playing. We talked about more training with them. What, I know everybody's a little different, but generally what's, what's the prescription for that? Like how often should we be role-playing with sales reps? How often should we be coaching and training the conversational piece? Every single week. I mean, if, if at the beginning, if they're, if they're struggling, then it's two or three times a week, but at the minimum once a week, you should be engaging in coaching conversation

[00:54:46] that has, that has them dive into an opportunity that you can talk about the, what worked, what didn't work. I mean, with as many tools as we have to record conversations, that alone, you can use that as leverage to, to start reviewing and, and talking about what could have been done differently or what, what could you have done that, that would have been an improvement over, maybe not different, but maybe you could have worded it differently, right? Or the, the end result could have been different if you'd have guided it along this way. Those are all things that we could be doing on a weekly basis at a bare minimum.

[00:55:15] You know, you said one thing too, and I think it's a great litmus test as you work through your pipeline or you look at your, your, your prospects, ask yourself, are you, do you feel like you're in the trenches with them? And if you can say yes to yourself, you're probably at least heading in the right direction. If you feel like you're on the outside looking in, and I was just, as you said that I was quickly scanning through a number of prospects that I know we're working with. Some of them I could say, yeah, we're absolutely in the trenches.

[00:55:44] Others, I felt like we're definitely on the outside looking in. We're going through the motions. We're, we're telling them maybe what they want to hear, but we certainly are not in the trenches with them. And it's a very different relationship, right? And the ones that we are in the trenches with, I can forecast the other ones I can't forecast. Right. And it becomes just a hope, you know, type of thing. So I think that's really good. Denise, I have one final question. Maybe I might have more, who knows?

[00:56:12] But I like, I like to ask this question, especially because, you know, we're a LinkedIn live show. We publish to YouTube as well. Like turn it into the podcast. But how do you as a coach, how are you as a consultant, how are you leveraging LinkedIn to do the things that we talked about today? Yeah. So in a nutshell, sales is all about visibility and credibility.

[00:56:37] So I leverage LinkedIn for visibility, which means, although I took a little bit of a break, so don't go look at all my content. I did post today, but I had a regular cadence where I was posting often, but I was posting content that resonated because you could see with the impressions and the engagement in the comments. So that builds credibility. And, you know, attending podcasts like this or live streams like this, you know, generating

[00:57:03] newsletters, doing things that really establish your credibility and that get you out from a visibility perspective into different avenues. It may not just be a live stream. It may not just be posting. Sometimes it's got to be adding newsletters. Sometimes it's got to be jumping on podcasts. You know, there are other creative ways, but I do all of that on LinkedIn. And that success has been because I've thought about visibility and credibility. And once I do that, the conversations start to flow. And from conversations, opportunities flow.

[00:57:31] And then opportunities, when you do them right, turn into closed business. Do you have any examples how your LinkedIn activities have converted into a new customer for you? Oh, yeah. So I easily, the most recent one was they had been watching me for a while. They knew. And I had been engaging with them. Oh, they were watching? Okay. Excuse me, what? Did you know they were watching? No, I had no idea. I knew after, right? So this is one thing to always consider.

[00:58:00] There are a lot of people who are going to be your buyers who are probably not engaging with you on LinkedIn until you start to do that in the DMs. That's actually where the magic happens. But they're probably watching you. They're just not engaging. That's okay. You just got to continue to generate and not be so focused on the vanity metrics like the number of impressions or the number of comments. Look at the conversation. Because in the conversations, even those people who aren't conversing with you, they're reading those conversations. That's where the beauty is.

[00:58:29] And then the magic really happens in the DMs. So it's taking them off of the platform and into the DMs. So when people view my profile, I'll actually send them a DM. Hey, I saw that I didn't, I don't say that I saw that they viewed my profile. I'll say something like, hey, you know, Denise here, I'm guessing you wanted to connect because, you know, you saw that I have a lot of sales content. I've got a ton of it there. If you can't find what you're looking for, just simply ask a question. I'll be more than happy to answer. Otherwise, I look forward to seeing you in my feed. I mean, it's something as simple as that, right?

[00:58:58] Those are people that I have never had a conversation with, but I know it's a little bit of a warm one because they've at least viewed my profile or I saw that, you know, they were scoping around somewhere and then you'd be surprised at how many people are like, well, I'd love to ask this question or I don't have any questions yet, but I would like to come back to you if that's okay. Or I've been watching your content right now. It's awesome. You know, there's so many, and it starts a conversation flow, right? Yeah. Anyway, I don't know if I answered your question, but I was trying to tell you. That was a great answer.

[00:59:24] I mean, I had Mark Hunter as an advisor of mine and he and I had a call before today's episode and he was telling me that he just, he booked another speaking at an SKO and it was somebody that said, oh, I've been watching you for years. And he had no idea they were watching. I think that's really important around LinkedIn. It's, um, people tend to see it as a transactional, like, okay, we're going to do these things for a month and we're going to end up with this many POs and they don't magically fall out of

[00:59:53] the sky and they think, oh, LinkedIn doesn't work, but it's, it's part of that reputation building and, and also buyers, you know, they don't, they're not going to engage until they're ready. But as we know, Brandon, we can't control the buyer journey, but we can influence the buyer journey. Yeah. I've read that in a book somewhere. I can't remember which book I read that in, but yeah. It was probably pretty brilliant. That's all I, so Denise, if people want to learn more about you and what you do and

[01:00:22] your coaching, where can they go? What's the best place? LinkedIn. Okay. LinkedIn. That's where I reside. That's where my business grows. That's where I grow my visibility and credibility. Yeah. LinkedIn. All right. That's easy enough. Yeah. I'm there all the time. Well, I took a bit of a break again, but I am back working on getting back. We're all allowed to take breaks. It's self, self-care is a good thing, right? Much needed sometimes. Yeah, absolutely.

[01:00:49] Like a step back or go slow to, to move faster. That's right. Hey, if we're not, if we're not on our A game, then we don't, we don't produce at an A level. Exactly. Yeah. Well, Denise, thank you so much. And we, we had a wonderful call before the episode. I expected a great conversation. You totally surpassed my expectations on that. So thank you so much. Thank you. I'm glad. I'm glad it resonated with people. Absolutely. And thanks, Anthony and Martin. And it was Anna.

[01:01:19] Yeah. Anna Rooney. And yeah, I don't know why it came up as LinkedIn users, LinkedIn user, but everybody else that, that commented and joined us today. Thank you so much. Y'all in the comments really make our show. It really does make a big difference. Yeah. It's a huge difference and get you all involved in, and anyone listening, if you're on the podcast, you're, you're watching this live or you're watching the recording on YouTube

[01:01:43] or LinkedIn or anywhere, any topics that you want that you think we need or guests that you think we should have on the show, throw them in our comments, message me or Tom. You can message my team at Fistbump, but we want this show to be serving our audience. I think, especially now in early 2025, I think, you know, the, the end of the year is always a good refresh. And we looked up, we're like, AI is huge. What do we do with it? Cold outreach is dying.

[01:02:13] And it's hurting. We don't have pipelines. As Denise, you said, sales reps, 25% of salespeople are going to hit quota, which is an awful number. There's a lot going on. And if there are specific topics that you want, that you need, let us know. We'd, we'd be glad to go out and make that happen for you. We want to serve our audience well. And we have quite a good lineup, I think, coming up. So we do on our way to 150, where we'll have Daniel Disney come back at 150.

[01:02:43] That's right. Every 50. That's awesome. He's awesome. Every 50, he comes and joins us. That's awesome. And y'all are awesome. That's going to be an awesome show. Oh, thank you. Thank you. Tom, you want to wrap us up? No, just again, thank everybody. Have a good week and we'll see you back. And I don't even know Carson's final line. I feel completely out of practice. Brandon, do you remember? Oh, well, Carson says to everybody, thank you. Modern selling. Modern selling. There we go. Yeah.

[01:03:13] We got to come up with our own catchphrases for him. When he's missing, right? Right. We just don't know what to do with ourself at the end, especially when he's not here. Thanks, sir. I was waiting for Carson to show up at some point during the show, a minute before, five minutes after, but he had a good excuse today. We let him off. It's an excused absence for Carson. An excused absence. All right. Thanks again. We'll see everybody next week. Bye, everybody. Thanks, everyone.

[01:03:44] Thank you for joining us today on Mastering Modern Selling. If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe for more insights. Connect with us on social media and leave a review to help us improve. Stay tuned for our next episode where we will continue to uncover modern strategies shaping today's business landscape. Learn more about Fistbump in our concierge service at GetFistbumps.com. Mastering modern revenue creation with Fistbump, where relationships, social, and AI meet in the buyer-centric age.