MMS #90 - Sales Success with Mindset, Mental Models, and More Meaning with Bernadette McClelland

[00:00:00] . Welcome to Mastering Modern Selling, relationships, social and AI in the buyer-centric age. Join host Brandon Lee, founder of Fist Bump, alongside Microsoft's number one social seller, Carson V Heady, and Tom Burton, author of The Revenue Zone and co-founder of Lead Smart, as we explore the strategies

[00:00:20] and stories behind successful executives and sales professionals. 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,

[00:00:40] brought to you by Fistbump. Everyone welcome to episode nine zero, 90. Only 10 more to the big 100. Mastering Modern Selling, I'm Tom Burton and I'm here with, I don't know who this other guy is on the right. World traveler. Yeah, I remember seeing you on a couple of times before,

[00:01:10] but- I always like to say I'm the longest running like cameo guest host. You just never know when I'm gonna be here or when I'm gonna be on the road, but today I'm back home in St. Louis and ecstatic to finally be on the episode with Bernadette.

[00:01:23] We've been trying to make this happen forever, so. Well, it's good to have you back Carson and welcome Bernadette McClellan. Thank you, it's good to be here. Yeah, so we have some fun stuff to talk about from her book today.

[00:01:38] We actually will have, I think Brandon showing up here at some point today, he's stuck in an airport again. So he'll be here momentarily as well. And then we'll have actually all three of us here at the same time, which I don't think has happened

[00:01:49] for like two months or something. That's true. Well, Bernadette welcome again. Tell us a little bit about yourself, your book, your background. That sounds like there's quite a bit there. Yeah, so Bernadette McClellan and I am an Australian. As you can tell, I speak a little different

[00:02:09] and I am living here in Denver, Colorado. Been here for a couple of years now. One of the fortunate ones, I scored myself a green card, myself and my husband. So that was the biggest deal I ever got. I sold, I put a proposal into the Department

[00:02:25] of Immigration and they signed the deal. And yeah, I scored a green card. So two years I've been here now. My background is corporate Australia. So Xerox, Kodak and Computer Associates. And I've also had a stint at a small business.

[00:02:46] My husband and I had a bricks and mortar business, retail, wholesale and importing business. And then 10 years ago, I went out on my own as a sales consultant, had a sales and training business, consultancy and now I am down the track of keynote speaking.

[00:03:04] So this book, the Shift and Disrupt, Stop Selling Widgets, Start Selling Wisdom is my sixth book. And yes, this is wrapping up, I guess. I was just saying to Tom before, this is wrapping up. I guess a journey that I've been on

[00:03:21] where I have taken all that experience, which is, you know, a period of that time I was actually with my coaching journey, Anthony Robbins coach for Asia Pacific for a couple of years. So it's taking that personal leadership, the sales leadership from corporate

[00:03:42] and thought leadership where I was working alongside Matt Church, who was the founder and CEO of Thought Leaders Global and wrapping and putting it all together with wrapping all of that together with this book. So this book is a conglomeration of all of that.

[00:03:59] It's different, it's bringing mental models meaning and mindset together and it's addressing the gaps that our buyers are wanting. So our buyers out there are saying, you know what? We are wanting salespeople to help us, help us address the solutions we don't know that we need.

[00:04:27] We want salespeople to help us in discovery. We want you to ask us the questions to help us dig deep ourselves and it's just not happening. And so how can we have those conversations with you when you're on our side of the table?

[00:04:47] Help us think differently, help us feel differently. And so that's what this book does. So, hey, related to that before we dig in there, I'm interested in kind of what you're saying there. Are you suggesting that from a sales perspective

[00:05:02] what customers are asking for is for the sales team or a sales person to be more proactive, not just wait for somebody to be looking to buy something but be more proactive and really help them understand maybe their own business better,

[00:05:15] the opportunity is better, what's out there better, almost act as more of a consultant even prior to the deal being on the table? Yeah, well you just need to look at the research whether it's Forrester, the Rain Group, whoever it may be. I mean, 64% of buyers are saying,

[00:05:31] share with us new perspectives where 44% of salespeople just are not delivering. 71% of buyers are saying help us in the discovery part by helping us with more valuable questions, 26% of salespeople just are not delivering in the delivery stage. 68% of buyers are saying help us solve our business problems

[00:05:58] and one in four salespeople just aren't even listening. So what is happening there? What is the root cause of all of that? And how much money is being left on the table? So what would just 1% increase in each of those areas

[00:06:16] mean to a business let alone the buyer? So yeah. Well, the reason I ask, right, and we've talked a lot about this Carson on the show about people don't wanting to deal with salespeople, they wanna do things on their own self-serve, maybe that's not the full story.

[00:06:33] Maybe it's they don't wanna deal with salespeople that are not going to bring them value earlier in the cycle and are just looking to do a demo and a close. Bingo, they don't wanna deal with salespeople that show up acting like what they think salespeople are.

[00:06:49] The best conversations that I'm getting right now with client executives is not showing up like a salesperson at all. I don't mention a product, I don't mention a widget. I mean, that's very much entrenched here and it's all about making sure we're paying attention.

[00:07:05] I mean, we live in an era now where we have so much data at our fingertips. I mean, shame on us if we're not arming ourselves with enough intelligence from their website or their LinkedIn profile to know what is going to matter to them

[00:07:18] and how we can best align. And something that really struck me, first off, I love this book because it's unique in how it's structured. It's very comprehensive, it's very easy to read. There's a lot of diagrams and methodology behind how buyers think.

[00:07:36] But at the heart of it, Bernadette, is the buyer is the hero. And now more than ever, if you show up trying to make your buyer heroes and you replicate that over and over and over again, you're gonna have a lot more success.

[00:07:49] What are your thoughts on how sellers today can better make their buyer the hero? So I think there's a couple of different things that I've put in here. Number one is we have to inspire change. And so if you look at the World Economic Forum

[00:08:14] or jobs of the future, and these statistics have been out for a little while or this data has been out for a little while because I've been quoting it for a little while. And that is the three fundamental things that we've got to get in our heads

[00:08:28] is moving forward, the skill sets that are needed is that we need to look at creativity as being a skill set. We need to look at complex problem solving and we need to look at critical thinking. So they are three key skill sets that we need.

[00:08:45] And then if we overlay that with the fact that this is what our buyers are wanting based on the research that we've just shown, then how can we augment that across any one of the methodologies that are being taught out there, nothing wrong with the methodologies.

[00:09:06] How can we augment these additional learnings over and above that? So we are all selling change out there today. And so we need to understand that our buyers, we need to inspire change. So how do we breathe life into our sales conversation? So that's number one.

[00:09:28] Number two is we need to understand that whatever it is that we're teaching our salespeople, that's not enough because something fundamental is stopping that from happening. So what is the root cause of what's preventing the learnings from being executed? So what's the root cause?

[00:09:56] And so we hear that over and over and over again. So we can look at that as well. And so this is where the story selling model comes into play. And this is what I sat down and I looked at this and I thought, okay, we can,

[00:10:14] there's no rocket science to this. And I kind of sat down and I thought with all of us, we can sit down and we can look at the fundamental problems of the sales team and sales leadership, the sales team or any one of our buyers out there.

[00:10:35] What are the fundamental problems? And that is that salespeople are struggling to connect with the right level of buyer. Yes. The second fundamental challenge is when they get in front of the right level of buyer, they're struggling to have the right conversations.

[00:11:03] And then the third challenge is that they're struggling to accelerate conversions. And so that's not rocket science. And so this was my beta blueprint. I kind of drew that, had a cup of coffee, drew that as a Venn diagram.

[00:11:22] And I thought, okay, what's the root cause of that? And what happens is typically you can then diagram that till the cows come home, but you'll just keep throwing stuff at that. Okay, let's bring someone in and let's teach them,

[00:11:38] social selling, let's teach them how to do a pitch. Let's teach them, but it's not addressing the root cause. And like anything, you can do your five whys, but what's the root cause? And this is where I thought with stories. And it's not stories about the hero's journey.

[00:12:00] It's what's at the intersections of each of these? And so I thought, well, if the intersection has to be internal stories, what are the stories that the salespeople are telling themselves about the buyer or the deal or the price or the comp plan or whatever it may be?

[00:12:23] What's the internal stories? And then at the intersection, the next intersection or what's the conversation? So how can they, it's not just how do they, what are the conversations they need to have? How can they deepen the conversations? Rather than just playing in the shallows,

[00:12:44] how can they deepen those conversations? And so what's the root cause? What's preventing that from happening? And so I thought, well, it's the external stories. What are the stories that they need to tell the buyer? Can you give an example, like just, let's say there's a sales rep,

[00:13:06] what would be an example of maybe an internal story that they have going through their head and how would that contrast with an external story? Well, let me come back to that. Let me just finish the third one. And then the conversions is what's the story,

[00:13:23] what's at the intersection there? And this one is the one that's so often forgotten, the essential stories. And it's the stories that they need to to let the buyer know they're not listening. And so then I broke it out again.

[00:13:44] And then I thought, okay, what are the internal stories? What are the external stories and what are the essential stories? So Tom, coming back to your question, let's kind of dig a little deeper into those. And the nine stories around those three

[00:14:04] now form the nine chapters of the book. Okay, and so this is where I dig in deeper. So if we pull apart those three internal stories, they are identity, authority and money. Okay, so when we talk about identity, it's about being enough. It's about salespeople not wanting

[00:14:35] to be seen as salespeople. It's showing up and being proud of who they are and being congruent. Because when you are really comfortable and congruent with your role as a salesperson, your impact is a lot stronger. So what you're basically saying there

[00:15:05] is get your internal mindset together first, right? As the foundation, if you do that, then you can do the other two. If you don't get that one together first, the other two are going to be difficult or if not impossible.

[00:15:21] Yeah, so if you, I mean, it's like anything, isn't it? If you are enough, if you are really comfortable in your skin, then that's an energy that shows up. And then you are then able, better able to demonstrate your expertise

[00:15:38] in front of anybody because the next part of this is so many salespeople are once again uncomfortable in front of C-level, the C-level. And the research that I did there is based on, is based on 20, no, 25% of people have a fear of authority.

[00:16:02] You know what I find fascinating about this? So there's so much to unpack here. There is so much to unpack. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. And it leads me to some philosophical questions, right? Because here's the thing, like I think about when and how I developed an acumen

[00:16:19] and a confidence to be able to talk to C-levels. And it didn't happen because some manager along the way taught me how to do it. It was because I came to an impasse where I realized, hey, if I just take the leads that I'm getting

[00:16:33] from marketing or if I just take inbound calls, I'm gonna starve. So I've got to do something unique and outside the box. And so I embraced cold calling, I embraced calling things that I could go out and get these meetings. Now, those first meetings, they weren't great.

[00:16:48] They weren't perfect. But I tell sellers all the time, you've got to make this decision that I'm gonna risk it. I'm gonna go outside the box. I'm gonna go out and get these meetings in these relationships. And I'm gonna develop that acumen by just having these conversations.

[00:17:03] These people put their pants on one leg at a time too. Like they're human beings, they're people. And back to the earlier conversation, they wanna be the hero. And if you can help them be the hero, that's the key element.

[00:17:15] Now you've got this other concept that I love in here that's from saboteur to sage. And what spoke to me there is so often we get in our own way because we show up and throw up. We start talking about how great we think our product is.

[00:17:30] We start talking about widgets and that's not going to solve the problem or plug the gap or make your customer the hero. How can we more effectively, especially when we don't have anybody showing us how to do it, how can we more effectively develop that C-level acumen,

[00:17:46] earn the right to be the trusted advisor and go from saboteur to sage? And I know the model in the book, it's on page 132 in the book. And it is this identity, influence and impact index that I've built out. And it does, it's a model

[00:18:05] and it starts, if you walk into a room with a decision maker and you have not yet made the decision, so the influence level, if you can think of a ladder going up, you have to start by making a decision. And it's in here.

[00:18:24] You have to make a decision that you are gonna step up because if you don't, you are gonna sabotage every level of your deal. And the energy I was talking about before, your buyer is going to be so skeptical of you. And so on the model, you'll see,

[00:18:46] one part of it is the seller and the other part's the buyer and it will be saboteur and skeptic until you make a decision. Once you make that decision, you will rise up and the next decision that you make is your value.

[00:19:02] Once you own your value, your energy level rises again. They then will become a spectator. They'll sit back and watch you a little bit and they'll see you striving. Okay, they'll see you trying, they'll see you striving. This will still be incremental growth

[00:19:20] and you'll still be pushing, but they'll be watching. They'll be spectating. They'll see you owning your value a little. Once you do that, your activity level rises. As your activity level rises, you make that decision to raise your activity, guess what happens? They'll start to select you.

[00:19:40] They'll start to choose you. When they select you, then guess what? You start to be that superstar. You start to win some business, but you're not there yet. There's a dotted line. You think you might be winning, but uh uh uh, you gotta go again.

[00:19:56] You've now gotta start showing relevance out there in the marketplace. Once you show your relevance, you then get your buyer starts to really support you. Then you show up as a strategist. Once that happens, you start becoming a little bit more, when you bring wisdom to the table.

[00:20:18] That's when you show up as a sage. When you show up as a sage, they become your super fan. That model starts off with a tiny little dollar note, ends up with a huge dollar note. That happens because of your identity and your impact rises.

[00:20:39] That's my index that I've created. That's kind of like a journey that you'll go on. That's my journey that I've gone on. Yeah, what I love about this, Bernadette, when I look at sales and when I look at the sales process and each step of the process,

[00:20:57] the thing is like every step has different probabilities. And all you can really do is make actions that up your probability in the individual area. Like you mentioned before, sellers struggle with connecting with the right buyer. Sellers struggle with having the right level

[00:21:14] of conversation with the right buyer. And I'll be very transparent. I've been doing this a long time. I still get nervous sometimes when I talk to C-levels. I'm gonna make sure I say the right thing. Nerves just mean you care.

[00:21:25] I still get nervous sometimes when I talk to my wife because I wanna make sure I knew her every single day. But I think the key element is throwing yourself into the mix, knowing what the right step is, knowing what the right action is.

[00:21:39] Like for instance, when you reach out to someone thinking about what is going to earn me this conversation or this meeting? Once you're in the meeting, do your homework. Know what is going to matter to this buyer. It's so easy to do research right now

[00:21:54] on what matters to them, what they talk about on LinkedIn, what their company report says, what their website says. And just having one thing, like you said it so perfectly before, knowing your unique value. I realized a long time ago,

[00:22:09] my unique value is often that I can demystify resources that I can bring to bear. I have a lot of industry-based knowledge that I can bring. And I'm often an orchestrator of relationships. I can create something and then get the heck

[00:22:23] out of the way and let the magic happen. And I've realized that and I've made a career off of it. And I challenge salespeople today to really look at how can they best go out and impact each level of the process

[00:22:36] in a way that increases their probability of success? Yeah. You know, it's interesting, Carson, both Bernadette and I shared a short period of time at Computer Associates. I was there in the late, mid 90s, I guess, late to mid to late 90s.

[00:22:55] And I should have a little bit earlier than that. And- It's like you were in grade school, Tom? Yeah, I was like, I was six, seven years old. Yeah. You know, hey. Well thanks, Tom. That says a lot about me. Well, you were- You were in kindergarten, right?

[00:23:09] Yeah, we were both. But I remember, and I remember we went to a meeting at Bank of New York. It was in New York City, Bank of New York with a bunch of C-level executives. That, you know, a nice boardroom up on the 80th floor

[00:23:24] or whatever it was, like big deal. And I was very nervous because I hadn't done a lot of stuff with C-level people in there. And Carson, you said it, I got in the meeting and, you know, I had all this coaching, you know, from my manager.

[00:23:37] You can't do this, make sure you do that. Do, you know, you had brief cases at that time and suits and ties and stuff like that. And I remember that something happened and I got up on the whiteboard and I whiteboarded out something in there.

[00:23:53] And it was like all of a sudden the dynamic of the whole room changed from like sales and our vendor and customer to like, it was a collaborative partnership. I remember it very clearly just when you were going through that there. And at that point,

[00:24:08] it was no longer a sales process anymore. It was a partnership and they actually respected the expertise that I was bringing to the table, right? They were, and we got asked back but all it took was getting up on the whiteboard

[00:24:22] and showing and demonstrating that in the room there. And I think that's a lot of what you're talking. And then all of a sudden, my confidence of dealing with C-level it's like you said, Carson, they put their pants on the same way. They're just people, right?

[00:24:35] Trying to do the best job that they can in the position they have. Yeah, and I think, you know, you just touched on something there too and that is grabbing a pen on a whiteboard. You know, we've all heard the cliche,

[00:24:48] you do a deal on the back of a napkin. Yeah. And the second part, I know we're talking about mindset here and we're talking about the internal stories. I'd love to just pivot for a minute to the external stories because this is what makes this book

[00:25:03] slightly different as well. And this is, we hear all the time and there's nothing wrong with this about bringing value to the table. And I really wanna touch on this because this is what our buyers are wanting. They're wanting something different and they're wanting salespeople

[00:25:21] to bring new perspectives. And it's got to be more than white papers. And, you know, it's gotta be more than just links in an email or, you know, I'm sending you a video in an email or the back of a,

[00:25:37] you know, a LinkedIn thing or something like that. What can we bring to the table where we're sitting on the same side of the table and we can get some form of real collaboration where there is no right or wrong. Yes. And so, you know,

[00:25:59] the second part of this Venn diagram where I say, you know, the first part is, you know, the internal stories, the stories they're telling themselves about the buyer. The second part is what are the stories that they're telling the buyer. And so, when we talk about storytelling,

[00:26:18] who's doing the talking? The seller or the buyer? The seller is still doing all the talking. Yeah. So how can we get the buyer to do the talking? And so when you think about communication, 83% of our communication is visual. 11% is auditory. So when we think about visual storytelling

[00:26:51] and we think about when we're kids, the first things we learn to draw are stick people. Circles. That's still all I can do. Where? Same here. You know, triangles. And we think about when we draw, we actually draw people in and drawings release endorphins.

[00:27:17] So why wouldn't we pick up a pen and draw shapes? So where I'm going here is we've all heard of Maslow's hierarchy. We've all heard of a two by two matrix and we've just been talking about a Venn diagram. So each of those models,

[00:27:41] we're talking mental models here have a purpose. So triangles or the one I just talked about before, that identity influence and impact index is our aspirational ladder. That is always a why, has a purpose of why change must happen. Maslow's hierarchy always gets to, you know,

[00:28:08] personal where we wanna get to. A two by two thing, guys, and how a matrix, kiyosaki is always what, what needs to change. And a Venn diagram is always how we are going to change. So if we can get very clear on building out our own IP

[00:28:38] and we can sit down with a buyer on the back of a napkin or on a whiteboard, and we can articulate our own IP that we've baked earlier in the oven and pull it out. We can then sit with a buyer. And one of the tenets of coaching

[00:28:59] is there is no right or wrong. And we can then discuss something and we can be wrong. I love that you said that, Bernadette. And I wanna hit on Bob's comment here. You know, when it comes to storytelling, here's the trick, tell a story, then shut up.

[00:29:17] The other person will fill the silence with a story of their own, which is where the gold is so true. You want to be able to bridge gaps in your storytelling of, you know, hey, this is how we have added value in the past in similar situations.

[00:29:31] Get a feel for, you know, where there are some of these underlying objections too that the customer isn't necessarily forthcoming with. So often they've had a similar scenario with a seller or with an organization like yours and they have a negative experience. They're not necessarily going to be

[00:29:47] overly forthcoming with that, but until you unearth that and overcome that and instill confidence, help them understand what change management will look like and why things will be different, they won't pledge their support to you. They won't make the decision to make the change.

[00:30:00] And you know, another thing that I really love about your approach, Bernadette, it's got a lot of similarities to what I've realized over time and what I call my moneyball approach, where I map out pretty much every stage of the sales process

[00:30:13] from how I prospect, who I'm reaching out to, what I'm saying, how many people I'm reaching out to. So being able to focus on the quality of messaging and the quantity of outreaches so that I can pretty much get any meeting that I want.

[00:30:25] If I don't get the exact buyer I want, I can still swarm their influencers and eventually I'll earn my way there. The next piece is how you have that quality conversation. And the best meetings that I ever have are the ones where I'm able to show up

[00:30:40] and I'm able to get them to talk far more than I do, but I can draw a parallel being very outcome focused. You've got to have a clear outcome or outcomes in mind of what am I looking to achieve out of this meeting?

[00:30:52] You can't just show up, have a conversation, pat yourself on the back and move on and then try to follow up. You've got to make sure that there's some tangible next step, tangible outcome. Now what I love about this is

[00:31:03] some of the best customer relationships I've ever had, even in the more digital era have been where we've had some type of diagram, we've had some type of constructed living breathing document between our two organizations. We're able to prioritize, deprioritize, meet and discuss and it's collaborative.

[00:31:24] That's where the magic happens and it's not deal focused. I tell my team all the time, don't ever go in thinking about a deal or licensing or a purchase or a transaction. That stuff happens because you earn the right to be the trusted advisor.

[00:31:37] In fact, if you go in thinking about a deal or being transactional, you might sell a very short-sighted deal. I've seen deals that have gone from, that have gone 10X because we started here with a certain subset of individuals but when we elevated the conversation

[00:31:54] to the board and the C level and we started looking at the totality of what we could do together, it went 10X and it sent everybody in the whole team to president's club. That's the kind of mentality you've got to have.

[00:32:06] Yeah, and it is, it's the long game and sometimes it can take you by surprise. You just kind of like to go, oh, okay, this is going, oh, I did not know it was gonna go this direction and it's a real nice surprise

[00:32:18] but it is, it's the long game today and we really need to come to the table with a mindset, with a strategic mindset that says, you know what? We've got to leverage this, our higher thinking capabilities and be able to kind of integrate a bigger picture

[00:32:43] or just kind of think outside the square with our questions, with our intentions, with our decisions. Just think differently today because our buyers are. But you know what drives me nuts and I'd love to get your take on this Bernadette, people won't do it.

[00:33:03] I feel like we do this training, we show them how and why they should do things differently but they choose not to because it's hard or because it's uncomfortable and I feel like people need to come to this impasse where they realize that look,

[00:33:18] I'm not going to have the type of results that I claim to want unless I make a change and it doesn't even have to be a drastic change. It just has to be an acknowledgement of a different way of doing things and it will be uncomfortable at first.

[00:33:30] Look, you know, I am a huge believer and this is probably a personal thing because I having gone down, coming out of corporate, come out of enterprise sales, gone down the coaching path and when I say coaching, this is sales coaching, this is business coaching,

[00:33:53] this is executive coaching, life coaching, all the whole gamut. I'm like, oh my gosh, I wished I had these tools when I was in corporate because and this is why the essential stories, that latter part which is based on expansion, how do you sell to the C level

[00:34:17] because the C level is here, the operational level is here, the user level is here. You have to go from contextual conversations, conceptual conversations, content conversations. How do you, how do you go up and down, because the person who can do that will own the conversation,

[00:34:39] will own the business and the minute you can do that, they're different conversations and I'm like, holy doodly, if I had this when I was back in corporate, I would have won so many more deals. So I call that backend, it's expansion, it's perspective, it's decision,

[00:35:01] get the business, it's identify criteria and it's build flexibility into those conversations. They're the essential stories. That is how you elicit the buyer's stories and the problem is leaders are not, the leaders are not holding the teams accountable to that level of sales behavior.

[00:35:32] They are letting the tail wag the dock and I'm sorry. Because they don't know how to do it either. I'm sorry. They don't know how to do it either. That's where it all begins is a lot of times sales leaders fail to set the culture and the tone.

[00:35:44] They show up with almost like a culture of inspection and it's let me go in and I'll listen to your call and you need to do this and this and this and this. But the reality is there's a humanity to it.

[00:35:58] It's really helping your team to feel empowered and enabled to go in there and be a steward of your organization. Going out and seeking a genuine relationship, that's where these things happen where there's trust, transparency, collaboration and communication. Those are the foundations for success.

[00:36:14] I feel the same way as you. I mean, if I went back to being an account executive right now with the tools that exist, with AI the way it is, yeah, I'd be unstoppable. Oh, look, I tell you what, I've worked with actually,

[00:36:26] I've just helped a sales and digital marketing company here in Colorado and they've created a model. They're helping their clients out there. KLA group, Kendra Lee, I don't know if you know Kendra Lee, she, it's absolutely helped their clients. And when you start to incorporate AI

[00:36:51] with the mental model side of things, the clarity with the clients and you can go to market with messages because what it does and I mean, you know who is it Charlie Munger, he says when you can capture your ideas on a framework of mental models,

[00:37:06] it absolutely helps decision making. It simplifies the complex. You can have these sales conversations that cut through the clutter and the noise and it just makes things so simple. And so you start bringing AI into it and you start to have,

[00:37:23] we're in a cognitive economy now as well and it's like things need to shift. And so sales leaders I believe just need to get a little bit more braver and you just need to say, okay, open it up to your sales team

[00:37:36] to say, okay, I got to learn too, be vulnerable with your leaders above and say, hey, you know what? We're entering a new era now. I need to upskill, let me do it. Sorry, I'm just on a tangent there because it's caveat end doors gone now,

[00:37:49] it's caveat vendido. It's no longer let the buyer be where it's, let the seller be where and it's like, my rent. You're on mute Tom. How about now? Can you hear me now? I got it carried away and I whacked my microphone thing out.

[00:38:10] Carson, I don't know about you but I don't know, I would say that when I'm working with salespeople, 99% of the time if they have a meeting and I ask them how was their meeting, they're gonna go, oh, it was a great meeting. Very seldom do you say,

[00:38:24] oh man, that was a crappy meeting and I wish I, 99% they say it's a great meeting. But if you start to peel the onion on that, the reason they think it's a good meeting or a great meeting is because the buyer was polite,

[00:38:37] they were nice, they handled themselves well and it turns out to be not a very productive meeting. And so then it doesn't go anywhere, they get ghosted, nothing follows up, all of that kind of stuff that we see all the time. I mean, is that common?

[00:38:53] Do you see that as well? And how do we start to coach as leaders of our salespeople to get them to look at the interaction from more of a productivity outcome based approach versus, hey, it was a polite and they were nice and they didn't,

[00:39:12] because again, that's what I tend to find is that the basis of a great meeting is either they sounded a little excited or they were polite or whatever the case may be. Yeah, look, I'll make a brief comment and then I wanna definitely parlay that into

[00:39:26] Bernadette's thoughts on how we take this forward because I think there's a few layers to this that are really important to touch on Tom. Like number one, from a sales leadership perspective, if you're a sales leader and you're not rolling up your sleeves

[00:39:38] and getting out in the field and observing what sales is like today, that's part of the problem. You've gotta make sure that we're leading from the front and don't get me wrong, I don't purport to always do it right.

[00:39:49] I find sometimes when I go out in the field, I see things happening a certain way and I almost jump in and take over and that's not what you wanna do. In fact, I was really happy this week because I was unable to make a trip

[00:40:03] and so my team was out in the field and I was listening remotely and they did so well. I was so proud. But to be able to critique and offer advice, you wanna, we have a philosophy where I work and it's called model coach care as leaders.

[00:40:18] You wanna model the behavior that you wanna see from your team. So, as a leader, you need to reach out and you need to be able to show them how to have these outcome focused meetings with customers. If you don't get any pushback in the meeting,

[00:40:30] you're probably not trying too hard. You need to get pushback on something or you didn't hit your- It's not productive, right? It's not productive. Yeah, or you didn't hit your barriers. You wanna understand like, where's the pain? Where's the angst? Where's the hurt?

[00:40:41] Where's the, maybe the past negative experience that would keep them from wanting to do something with us today. But the other element is there's gotta be clear outcomes that we're going into the meeting with. These are the things that we'd like to come out with,

[00:40:54] maybe a regular cadence with this customer, maybe some additional warm customer executive meetings that we can meet with. There's things that we wanna achieve and as we're having that meeting and as a sales leader and as a seller, we wanna make sure that we are,

[00:41:09] we've got something meaningful that we wanna do next, whether it's bringing in another member of our extended team. Bob, you made a great comment in the chat about again, we need to get Bob on the show, about how many decision makers it takes now in a complex deal.

[00:41:23] It's around 14 these days. The probability of one person resonating with all 14 is near zero. That's why team selling works today. I spent a lot of my time having a great intro meeting with an executive and then I'll pass the baton and I'll bring in other folks

[00:41:37] and then I'll rinse and repeat and keep an eagle eye view, a balcony view of what's transpiring as a leader, but making sure that I'm holding the team accountable to, hey, what's the next meeting? What's the next milestone? What are the desired outcomes?

[00:41:51] And Bernadette, you hit on this so eloquently earlier that we've gotta make sure we have a very outcome focused meeting. How can we as leaders better set a foundation for success and hold our team accountable to being outcome driven, outcome focused and accelerating the relationships? Yeah, good.

[00:42:14] I mean, it's such a big, big, big question. I did a keynote in Florida a couple of weeks ago to a senior leadership team for a financial, big, big financial institution. And it was pretty much based around this. Having a purpose for a meeting and an outcome.

[00:42:36] So they're two different things. So what is the purpose for the sales call and what is the outcome? And so at the end of the call, there has to be an outcome. Now that outcome doesn't need to be a deal, but it's gotta be something on the calendar.

[00:42:57] I'm also a coach for the Harvard MBA, sales entrepreneur program. And this is a huge part of one of their modules. And we've gotta mark them on. They've gotta have that next outcome. And so from a sales, my husband's a sales leader,

[00:43:15] by the way, can you imagine being married to me? Like seriously. And so this is a big thing. He's going out tomorrow. He's heading down from Denver here to Colorado Springs. He's out all day with one of his reps. They're cold calling. They are going doing prospecting.

[00:43:32] He's in out in the field with her. And so this is a big thing. It's like, be out in the field with your people. You've gotta have eyes. You've gotta be with them. And so letting them not driving the sale, sitting back, doing your intros,

[00:43:53] like being part of it, not sitting back like the micromanager, but being part of it. But letting them run the call, letting them bring you in when they want you to, but letting them fall over and doing a pre-call. So what's the outcome?

[00:44:11] Okay, if he's not there and someone else is, what's our strategy? What's our fallback? If someone else is there, how are we gonna run it? What's our contingency plan? And then after it, how are we gonna debrief? What's the debrief? What did you learn?

[00:44:28] And so really kind of like, but then holding them accountable as well. And this accountability piece is crucial. Feedback, always give feedback, but feedback is not just you've done something wrong, catch them doing things right. Yeah. So this is all part of it.

[00:44:50] So sales leadership, it's a big responsibility. And as part of leadership, you've also got to be working on yourself. Sales leadership is really a critical role right now. And don't get me wrong, sometimes it can be intimidating because if you're out of quote unquote,

[00:45:10] the game for a little bit, you may not be as much at the pulse of what's transpiring. You need your team to give you relevant feedback. And sometimes like, again, the biggest element of becoming a sales leader is you're definitely not the hero.

[00:45:26] I mean, we talked earlier about the customers, the hero, but from a sales leader perspective, like your reps are your heroes too. And you've got to put them in a position to win. Right, wrong or different, they've earned the right to be in the role they're in.

[00:45:40] And they've earned the right to do it the way they wanna do it unless they continue to fall down and refuse to make shifts to their process. But even if you are not capable of giving the best advice in a certain situation,

[00:45:54] like even helping them find great mentors. One thing I'm always looking for is who's the best? Who's out there doing it better, hitting the metric that my team can't hit or I can't hit or whatever it is. I need to go find this person.

[00:46:07] I need to learn from them. I need to assimilate what she or he are doing into my arsenal and then make us more complete and package. And there's no shame as a sales leader if you can't do it as well as your rep

[00:46:20] or whatever the case may be, everybody's got their unique skills and superpowers and strengths. And great leader is gonna pull that together. They're gonna shine a positive light, like you said, on the ones that are doing great. And I always try to start my feedback

[00:46:33] and coaching sessions the same way because it earns credibility. If I can call out what they're doing well, if I can also show a bridge to, hey, this is the trajectory that we're on. I know you wanna get promoted or I know you wanna maximize your paycheck.

[00:46:47] This is the path to doing it. This is where we were, this is where we are, this is where we're going and this is what I recommend we do a little bit different. Those are the types of things that really show that you understand your people.

[00:46:58] It doesn't always have to be because I'm better than them. In fact, I don't wanna be. I want them to be the shining star. It's kinda why I was so glad that I didn't have to make the trip to LA this week for the meetings to be successful.

[00:47:10] They might've been more successful because I wasn't there. It was a great experience for the team to get in front of C levels without using me as a crutch. Yeah, true. And always ask permission before you do give feedback. Yes. You know, Carson, as you were talking,

[00:47:27] this reminds me a lot, I think it was Mike Weinberg, right? We spent a lot of time talking about sales leadership. A lot of what Bernadette, you're talking about, we're talking, dovetails very nicely into what we talked a lot about about that show

[00:47:40] and his most recent book of sales leadership. So man, we're kinda running out of time here and there's so many different places we could go. Bernadette, if there's one thing that you would recommend to a sales leader but a sales professional, not just a leader but a professional,

[00:48:02] for them to really be thinking about or maybe focus on in your book, what would be the one thing that you would say start here and as far as kind of building on and building that skillset. You know, and this is the direction I'm now going in

[00:48:18] because of this, just my experience in working with salespeople and sales leaders and just the coaching that's come out of it is the conviction that you need to go to market today. It is that level of courage and it is that level of conviction

[00:48:47] and it is the choices that you need to make that will determine the level of success that you will or will not have. And this is the message that's come out of the book for me personally as a result of feedback that's resonating the most

[00:49:12] and that is why that's now the message I'm taking to market in my keynotes and for my sales kickoffs as well is as a result of this book. So that's where I would say has jumped out for me and will probably jump out for you

[00:49:31] if you buy the book or when you buy the book. No, great point. Kind of the, if you can start there, right? Everything else gets easier. Absolutely, totally. Carson, any final questions we should touch on here before we wrap up? No, I like the practical application piece

[00:49:48] and I think Bernadette, I guess my only other question would be around just advice for sales leaders, where to get started. Again, I think that role, it's gone through so many changes and a lot of times sales leadership gets caught

[00:50:02] in the middle because you might be caught up or swept up in an ineffective sales culture and you might be the one as a sales leader being micromanaged and maybe you wanna coach your team in a better way but you're being micromanaged

[00:50:15] and it almost changes your way of doing things. Now I think a lot of times people make decisions because of comfortable ways of mediocrity or comfortable ways of failure and I believe strongly that to your point to really find success in any role,

[00:50:29] you have to make a very conscious decision to do it right in every area and a lot of times people don't do it and it's not always laziness or lack of skill or will. A lot of times it's because it's so uncomfortable

[00:50:42] or because the environment makes it challenging for them to stick with it. I'm a testament to, I took an outside the box approach a long time ago, even when it was painful, even when I had a manager that didn't like my approach,

[00:50:55] I just stuck with it and it paid off in huge dividends and droves but that's a 10 plus year story. Yeah, yeah. What would you tell sales managers today who are struggling to really take it to the next level and better develop a system for success?

[00:51:16] It's called the Minto pyramid. Start with the end in mind and so I would suggest that you take yourself away, sit in a quiet place somewhere and really start to think, start with the end in mind. Like what is the ideal outcome? We're talking about outcomes here.

[00:51:39] Just let yourself go and what is the ideal outcome? Because too often things can be one of two ways. There can just be a whole heap of like a mess of little things all here and it's just a whole mishmash

[00:51:52] and we just don't know what to make of that mess. Or it can be just this huge ball of whatever but I would suggest that if you just start with the end in mind and then from there, just pull it apart,

[00:52:04] just break it apart so you've got a pyramid and then you've just kind of got these things coming off the pyramid. Just pull it all apart bit by bit by bit until things are a little bit more clearer and you've just kind of got steps

[00:52:18] but you do have to start. It's a little bit like what we're talking about before. What is the ultimate outcome? And just the one thing and that's a book that you could get as well. I bought five books over from Australia with me when I moved.

[00:52:32] We came with six suitcases, two wheel lawns and two backpacks. That's insane. Didn't you sell everything? That's it. We sold everything and came over with that two years ago. And I bought five books and Jonathan Livingston Seagull was one. The one thing was the other.

[00:52:50] What to do when it's your turn by Seth Godin and it's always your turn. So the one thing, what is the one thing and work it from there. So that would be a great book for you to get. And here's a great comment I think to summarize

[00:53:06] what we've been talking about from Hector. He says, courage and conviction are the twin engines propelling sales success. As those who fearlessly pursue their goals with an unwavering belief in their product or service inevitably triumph in the dynamic realm of sales. Wow. Very well stated, wow.

[00:53:23] Thank you Hector, I'm on the right track. You're on the right track. So Bernadette if somebody would like to learn more about you and your speaking and obviously I see your books are on Amazon and all the usual places but where can they find out more?

[00:53:37] Yeah, BernadetteMcLullan.com. That's it now. Okay. That's easy enough, simple. That's it. New book coming out soon called Deliberate Disruption. All right, we'll have you come back and we'll talk more. This was great. We could have easily gone another hour. We're not gonna wait another 90 episodes.

[00:53:54] Another 90 episodes, that's right. To be in ASAP. That's right. Bernadette this was great, thank you so much. My pleasure, thanks guys, appreciate it. Thank you to everybody who's watching, appreciate it. Carson wrap us up. Yeah, until next time. Happy modern selling everyone. Thanks everyone.

[00:54:16] 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

[00:54:31] shaping today's business landscape. Learn more about Fistbump and our concierge service at getfistbumps.com. Mastering modern revenue creation with Fistbump where relationships, social and AI meet in the buyer centric age.