MMS #98 - Master the Complex Sale: Strategies for Sustainable Growth with Alice Heiman

[00:00:00] Hi there. Welcome to Mastering Modern Selling. This is Brandon Lee, one of the co-hosts and I'm also the founder of Fist Bump. And Fist Bump is the proud sponsor of this show. I want to welcome you to the episode today. We have Alice Heiman who is with us.

[00:00:15] And you know what? Today is just it is an excellent show. I want to encourage you to pay attention to three key things that Alice talks about.

[00:00:24] One, if you're in the leadership side, how to not be a sales preventer. Yeah, that's right. I know none of us really think we're a sales preventer,

[00:00:32] but she's got some really good insights into how you might be a sales preventer and not even realize it. We talk about quality over quantity. This is really important, especially when she gives insights about emails that our teams are sending out. And the third thing is referrals first.

[00:00:51] You're going to want to listen to that. It's a great way to accelerate sales in a very cost effective way.

[00:00:58] So welcome to Mastering Modern Selling. I hope you enjoy the show. And if you are listening on the podcast and you like what you hear, we'd really, really appreciate it.

[00:01:08] If you would give us a review, share it with a friend and let others know who might be benefiting from this, that we exist and invite them to listen to the show. So onwards, let's go into this show with Alice Eiman.

[00:01:26] Welcome to Mastering Modern Selling. Relationships, social and AI in the buyer centric age. 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.

[00:01:44] This is Mastering Modern Selling brought to you by Fistbump. OK, welcome back episode number 98 Mastering Modern Selling. I'm Tom Burton and I'm here with both of my co-hosts this week. I almost said co-founder. We got talked into this founder led stuff we were talking about here.

[00:02:11] I guess it is co-founders, co-founders and co-hosts of Mastering Modern Selling. Carson, great to see you back. Great to have everybody back. And glad, glad we got you back from the near death. Yeah, it was not doing so well. But and then two weeks in Florida.

[00:02:28] But I it rained every day. That's why I don't have any color. Well, you're looking lean and stealth. So drop 12 pounds. You know, all I had to do was get ill. I had I had hernia surgery a couple of weeks ago and I dropped five pounds from that.

[00:02:44] I just figure if I just keep doing that, you know, let's do it the healthy way. That is not sustainable. Yeah, it doesn't scale. It doesn't. So we have another great guest, Alice Hyman. Alice, welcome. Sorry, you have to put up with all of our pain.

[00:03:02] You know, we are going to talk about a subject today that I think permeates our previous 97 episodes. But we're going to talk about it. I think I'm very interested in this because this is the world I'm in. Is that complex B2B sale? How do we really operate?

[00:03:22] How do we do how do we master modern selling in a complex B2B sales environment? And why should we not do stupid crap and that, you know, we know doesn't work anymore, which has been sort of our theme of the show.

[00:03:36] So, Alice, welcome. Why don't you kick us off by telling us a little bit about yourself, your background? And then we can jump into it. Well, thank you. Thanks for having me on the show.

[00:03:46] I've been excited to do the show with all of you because I know this is going to be a voracious conversation. You know, my goal in life is to make sure that CEOs are not the sales prevention department at their company.

[00:03:58] That's really it. I mean, it's a simple goal. Everybody can get on board with it, right? CEOs should not be preventing sales. And I know they're all wondering like, what is she talking about? So we'll dive into that. But my background, I've been doing this a long time.

[00:04:12] I say 20 plus years, but you know, it's starting to be guys that I have to say 30 plus years, but I don't want to date myself, you know? So it's a long time that I've been working with CEOs and go-to-market strategies and complex sales.

[00:04:28] But I came from a background some of you may know, Miller Hyman. My dad is Steve Hyman. His partner Bob Miller started that company in the 70s. And so I've kind of been raised on the complex sale.

[00:04:40] It's ingrained in me, but I've been having my own business now since 1997. And just love waking up every day to work with my clients and help them with their go-to-market strategies and really help CEOs get the right mindset so they're not the sales prevention department at their company.

[00:04:58] And they can, you know, they can increase their sales and increase their valuation because they're having their teams do all the right things. And they know their role in sales. So it'd be a lot of fun to talk about all this.

[00:05:10] So let's start off by what are some of the most common, I guess, things that CEOs are doing that are creating that sales prevention department? Like what are the most common things you're seeing and running into today? Yes, unbeknownst to them, right?

[00:05:28] So of course no CEO is going to say, oh yeah, I sit around preventing sales all day. I do it on purpose. Yeah, no, no one does that right. But you know, some real easy examples are when you have a complex sale,

[00:05:43] you've got a team of sellers at your company. And, you know, when I say team of sellers, it's like your A.E., your account executive, you've got your subject matter expert, you probably have customer success involved. You have a senior leader involved because in these complex sales,

[00:06:00] you're selling to companies that either are a lot larger than you or even if they're your same size, they have a lot of complexities too, right? So they have a buying team made up of a lot of people. They have, you know, budget constraints, purchasing people.

[00:06:14] They have technology that things have to work together. You know, there's a lot of complexity, right? And so when we have to work at this complex level and do things like get a master's service agreement, of some sort, through the legal department, but legal's backed up two weeks.

[00:06:35] Now, I'm sorry if I got a selling team was interested in buying and now you want me as the A.E. to tell them that we can't get a contract through our legal department faster than two weeks. That is a sales prevention department.

[00:06:49] And that is the CEO's responsibility to unblock that logjam and make that move. So that's a simple one. But there are so many others, as you can imagine, even things like CEOs who 10 years ago, 20 years ago,

[00:07:03] they used to do the selling or they came from a sales background and they believe that selling today is exactly the same as when they were selling. And so they're forcing sales leaders and salespeople to do activities that simply don't work. That is preventing sales.

[00:07:21] I have one more question and then Brandon Kartsner, I'll let you jump in. But, you know, I see a lot, especially in the tech world, CEOs that prescribe to that predictable revenue model from 2011, 2012, that came out was Aaron Ross's book, came out from his days. That was 2009. Yeah, 2009.

[00:07:45] Alright. It was a long time ago. And they're still running that playbook and the SDRs and all of that kind of stuff. Do you see that also as sort of that one? Because to me, it is sales prevention and it may have worked 15 years ago. Oh, my gosh.

[00:08:00] It's sales prevention and you're bleeding money. You are bleeding money if you are following that model. OK, I know Aaron personally, I'm friends with him. He will even tell you the model doesn't work anymore. It worked great. It was phenomenal. It was over the top.

[00:08:18] It was like the best thing since sliced bread when it started. But people, things change, right? So don't double down on stuff that isn't working anymore. Just don't do it. And hiring more SDRs and, you know, pounding the phones and doing that predictable revenue model,

[00:08:35] it's just not going to work. You've got to do what works today. Yeah, 100 percent. I am with you. That is the sales prevention department when you're doing that. That's good to hear. Go ahead, Brandon.

[00:08:49] Liz, I mean, you teed up something because I know this is a question we get in various forums all the time. You just said you got to do something that works today. Right. What works today? Yeah. Well, so what works today, right?

[00:09:02] What works today is meeting the customer where they are now. That might be different, right? At a SaaS company than a manufacturer, then a technology company, then a med device company, right? Meeting the customer where they are.

[00:09:17] So what works today is the CEO leading sales in a way that is customer focused. Now, when I talk about CEOs leading sales, yes, you might have a CRO. You might have a VP of sales. You might have a lot of people, sales enablement, marketing.

[00:09:33] You might have a whole go-to-market department. I hope you do. I hope you're not just in this old sales marketing customer success silo. Like, I hope you're in this GTM place, right? Go to market. We all work together because the customer experience is the only thing anymore. Right?

[00:09:51] Now, when I say that, let me just preface that with this. You can't have great customer experience if you don't have great employee experience. So that is a given. You start there, right? Because grouchy, grumpy, angry, frustrated, resentful employees do not delight customers in any way whatsoever.

[00:10:12] And don't believe for one minute that they do. Right? Even just like, okay, employees don't delight customers. Delighted employees delight customers. So when you go back to customer experience and a CEO leading sales, right, then what you have to think about is what are the customers doing?

[00:10:32] What do the customers need? What are they thinking? So we've got to stay close to that. We've got to talk to our customers. CEOs have to talk to the other CEOs. Our marketing people have to talk to the other marketing people. Our salespeople talk to salespeople.

[00:10:45] We need to know what's going on in their minds. And we start with our own customers, right? They're already paying us. They're already buying from us. What are they thinking? What are they doing? How are they changing? They're right there. Go ask them. Right?

[00:10:57] And then you can think about now if they're doing that, what are our prospects doing? Is it similar? Right? Because it probably is.

[00:11:05] And so when you know what the customers are thinking and doing and feeling and how they want to buy, now you can map their journey and start to meet them where they are. And today with AI, it's going to get easier and easier to figure these things out.

[00:11:19] I mean, already I can go to Perplexity, put in Carson Hetty and figure out what he's all about. It's all right there for me. Super easy. Right? So any customer that the individual person or the whole company or the industry, there's so much information out there.

[00:11:35] We've got to be goblers of information. Use that to understand where the customer is and then help them move through their decision making to a place where they either buy from us or we all decide mutually that that's not the best idea for them to buy from us.

[00:11:51] And then let them move on to get what they need, their solution in another place. Yeah, I'll say this is brilliant.

[00:11:58] And I you know, I want to really underscore something that is the theme of what you just said is that, you know, look our audience, a lot of sellers, sales leaders, there's some C levels, VP levels. It's all over the board.

[00:12:10] But from everybody's different vantage point, unless there is a culture that enables and empowers successful sales, you're not going to have it because we could spend time with the individual contributors and help them understand that they're going to be successful.

[00:12:25] We could help them understand the value of adopting new tweaks to their process, but that's not going to change the entire system. So I know that's why you spend a lot of your time with the C level.

[00:12:37] I'd love to hear your thoughts from individual contributor perspective, maybe a sales leader perspective as well. How can these folks who want the culture to change? How can they influence the culture in a positive way?

[00:12:51] So really, it does have to come from the CEO, but there are ways to influence. But first I want to say this. If you have a giant corporation trying to get the culture to change, it's like turning one of those huge cargo ships that's in the bay, right?

[00:13:06] You better just get out of their way because you can't turn that ship, right? It's going to take a long time and some really courageous leadership from the CEO and the whole leadership team. So let me talk about where we can make an impact.

[00:13:20] I'm talking about mostly still privately held companies, from very young startups to 20 years old. And they're under the billion dollar mark, right?

[00:13:32] We can still have a great impact on culture at these companies because we have a CEO who's most likely the founder or who somebody who really cares. So that's where it starts. You got to have somebody who even cares, right?

[00:13:47] So if we have somebody who cares, we can start to shift the culture. But we have to have an idea that everybody sells. Everybody sells. I can't have anybody in my company that doesn't sell. So that's first.

[00:14:10] And then did you want to ask another question before I keep going? I mean, you could definitely go on this talk track. I think this actually feeds right into what you were just saying.

[00:14:19] And it's when I think about a complex sale and I have to say you're definitely speaking my language here because I work for a large company. And so you've got very robust extended teams that are a part of the selling process.

[00:14:34] And I will say that it's critical to maximize your process at each stage, you know, from the pipeline generation perspective to accelerating pipeline to bringing things to closure, but also making sure you're seeing around corners. You know that that legal process might be a hiccup.

[00:14:54] So you got to get way out ahead of that. When you think about that, it's funny too. Somebody asked me the other day like, you know, because we have a process around all of the sales cycle as well.

[00:15:04] Somebody was like, you know, whose responsibility is it to drive pipeline? And I always think about like what would my CEO say to this person? It's everybody's. It's everybody's responsibility to ultimately drive pipeline. Kirsten, of course it is. I mean, think about it.

[00:15:19] First of all, any time there is a person in your company that does something that impacts a customer. I mean, hello? Right. I mean, oh my gosh. So we have to think of that.

[00:15:33] So if you don't have a mindset that you're part of sales, it's broken because if I don't pack it properly and ship it properly, right, or if my marketing doesn't hit the mark or if I call them to collect the bill and I'm not going to do it,

[00:15:47] or I collect the bill and I'm not very nice to them or whatever you do that upsets the seller that then has to call the customer, everybody sells. So if we sell with the customer in mind, right, first, then we can get this part right.

[00:16:03] OK, we've got some comments. Do you want to go through those comments real quick before I keep going? Yeah, I want I do want to hit a couple of the comments here and and, you know, just starting with Lydia's comment here, right? We are talking about experience.

[00:16:17] Experience has always been a primary importance for converting and retaining customers. But I like the best is hashtag common sense. And sometimes it does seem like, and we'll talk more about this, Alice, as we go along.

[00:16:30] It seems like common sense from, you know, CEOs that are smart, really intelligent individuals tend to go out the window when we start dealing with sales and revenue and the pressures that go with that. So we'll we'll hit that in a second.

[00:16:45] And then Carl, who has also been a great guest on our show a couple of weeks back, he has a question. How do you turn the ship leadership from the top down attention to the right pro problem, intention to a possible solution commitment to a result and deadline?

[00:17:01] Right. Again, I think that comes back to some common sense. Right. What is the right problem? What is the right solution? And again, more thinking about the customer versus my sales process.

[00:17:13] Well, and let's get real tactical because like Carson just asked me a minute ago, it's like, OK, so how do we turn the ship if I'm not the leader, if I'm not the CEO, what can I do?

[00:17:21] Right. And I think that's really important because look, I'm a CEO. I've been one for a long time. Right. Tom, you are too. Right. So and and and Brandon, you know, I don't know for your company yet.

[00:17:35] Right. You're running things. So if you are the leader, even if you're a leader of a division like Carson or a department, if you are the leader, you have a lot of pressure on you.

[00:17:46] That's a number one. Right. And when you are under pressure, you act differently than when you are not under pressure. So first we have to understand what the pressures are of the leaders who can make a difference and change the culture.

[00:18:00] So if I have a lot of investors or stakeholders, shareholders, whatever they are at your company, you know, could just be a family owned company. And that's the pressure. Right. But whatever those pressures are, the leader has all of those pressures.

[00:18:15] And so sometimes they don't see things clearly to get a little in their tunnel. It's like I've got to make the company do this. Right.

[00:18:24] OK, so that's this is where it matters that you surround yourself with great people who are willing to speak up and willing to challenge you and willing to point things out.

[00:18:34] So if you are a leader that doesn't have I don't care what level you are as a leader, if you don't have great people around you who are willing to call you out on stuff and tell you what's what and and, you know, argue with you a little bit about it.

[00:18:48] Right. And get into it, have a little conflict, a lot of healthy conflict around it. We're going to be in trouble because we're just going to keep doing what we're doing. Right. So if as the CEO, I don't understand a customer focused culture, it's going to be hard.

[00:19:03] But what we can do as the leaders under the CEO is we can start to one, do some research, get some data, because most CEOs will respond to data. Right. But when you just tell them, I feel like I feel, you know, they're they're like, yeah, great.

[00:19:18] I have to run the numbers. So you feel this way doesn't help me out. So get some data on what's happening in your own customer base to prove to them that you need to make these changes.

[00:19:30] So retention rates and churn, you know, customer comments and P.S. scores, anything you can collect that's data that says they're not happy. You know, we've got to make a change. Right. If you're losing deals because you can't meet the customer you are, what's the data?

[00:19:49] Don't just tell me we're losing deals. Tell me at what point in the funnel or pipeline, where are we losing them? Why are we losing them? What's happening? What are we losing them to? Are they doing nothing? Are they going to somebody else?

[00:20:01] What, you know, give this all to me as data. Right. And then start to look at competitors that are doing it really well. So when you bring all this data to your senior team, you say, look, we don't have a customer focused culture right now.

[00:20:18] What we have is a sales focused culture. It's not even go to market culture. It's just sales focused and we're just pressuring and driving to sell, sell, sell. It's not working anymore. That culture doesn't work.

[00:20:31] Let's look at the data and then let's pick one thing we can do. Don't pick 12. Pick one thing to start moving it. Right. And then pick another and then another because it you do have to turn this ship and it may not turn quickly.

[00:20:47] But the first thing I would say is if we're not a customer focused culture, we're probably not an employee focused culture either. And we've got to go back to employee experience.

[00:20:58] What is that experience like? How can we make it better and how can we listen to our employees? Because a lot of them know what our customers are doing because they talk to them all the time. Right.

[00:21:09] So we got we got to use all this data and we got to think about what it is. And then what is one small thing we can do first to start to make that change?

[00:21:19] I always think it's funny when people who talk about a topic like sales talk about the same thing, but just have different ways of saying it. Like I have this here comes a really bad pop culture reference, but I have the song by Amy Grant.

[00:21:33] It takes a little time to turn the Titanic around. That's what I always think about when I think about this conundrum. I want to hit Lydia's comment. Lydia, you're on fire today. When is the customer not always top of mind? It's always all about the customer.

[00:21:48] If that isn't the number one rule, then you're out of business. And here's the challenge. It's not for reasons of malice, but a lot of times you get C levels, V.P. levels that they're not at the pulse of the customer. They're not in touch.

[00:22:00] And it's it's not because of lack of effort or desire. It's because they get pulled in different directions. They respond to the pressures in ways that are not bringing them closer to the customer.

[00:22:13] It's it's almost like they're reactive and they're trying to change process in ways that aren't actually going to benefit the customer and their team. They're focused internally instead of externally and trying to make operations work better and trying to do things.

[00:22:30] And I get it right. But let's I wish Lydia. Oh, my gosh. I wish CEOs were customer focused. I wish sales teams were customer focused sellers who have pressure on them are only focused on hitting their goal. That's all they're focused on.

[00:22:43] They can't focus on the customer because they've got so much pressure on them. They're worried about their livelihood. That's tragic. Right. So in order to let them be focused on the customer, things have to change.

[00:22:56] But there are so many companies that operate and are even profitable where they absolutely don't focus on the customer. Might I just mention the airlines? There are so many others. Might I mention big phone company whose name we know that doesn't care whether our service works or not?

[00:23:16] Might I just mention, you know, come on. There are and then then what happens is these smaller companies sort of adopt these same attitudes because a lot of people came from those bigger companies like, well, it's about operational excellence.

[00:23:30] I think operational excellence is a fine thing to have a goal for. But it's about operational excellence so that we can serve the customer, not so that we serve ourselves. And that's where I think it goes wrong. Yeah, I couldn't agree more.

[00:23:44] And I would say, too, I've seen some great sea levels that are in the trenches with me, with my team.

[00:23:51] Some of the best feedback I ever got as an individual contributor and how I developed internal influence and was able to actually influence up was because I was taking a different approach.

[00:24:03] And when I was talking to customers, I was hearing from them, you know, hey, we're already investing significantly with you. You guys only show up when it's time to, you know, collect your renewal or whatever it is. And we don't want to buy more from you.

[00:24:16] And so I took a counterintuitive approach and started showing up, acknowledging the significant investment that they were making and bringing resources and value that they were entitled to. They loved it. It formed a relationship.

[00:24:26] And because of that, I was able to listen to what my leaders were saying. The problems were solve those problems and then ultimately help other people solve those problems. And it developed this internal groundswell that leadership loved and enjoyed.

[00:24:42] So there are ways as an individual contributor and also as a leader that you can solve the problems that your leaders have with your own unique, innovative ways. But you've got the results are all that matter in a big organization like yours.

[00:24:56] One team can shine enough to make people go, oh, so as the leader of your unit, you can do things differently and you can show people that it can be done differently. But it's like, why is Carson's team doing so great? What's going on over there?

[00:25:11] Oh, all of a sudden somebody noticed. Well, here's what it is. We just started proactively talking to our customers, thanking them for their business and understanding what else they need from us. We don't wait until renewal time. Simple, common sense like somebody said earlier. Common sense people.

[00:25:27] But it isn't common enough. No, it is definitely not common. Lydia's been all over the common sense. She's been she's been awesome. Another comment said more companies might benefit from viewing their employees as their internal customers. Right. 100 percent.

[00:25:45] If you haven't read it, Tiffany Bova's The Experience Mindset highly recommended for every leader out there. It is absolutely written for leaders and CEOs. Anyone can read it, though, to get ideas for their company.

[00:25:58] But, you know, when you when I first saw the title of No Tiffany a long time and I I thought, oh, she's going to you know, this is great from her other book, The Growth Mindset. And she's going to now talk about, you know, customer experience.

[00:26:10] No, she's talking about employee experience and how employee experience E.X. and customer experience CX, how they intersect and how they impact each other. Right. And yes, Lydia, 100 percent look internally first. Look at your own employees as your customers. Are you delighting them?

[00:26:32] Because they're not going to delight your customers if you're not delighting them. That's so good. You know, we just in my team and I've been a CEO for 25 years like you, Alice.

[00:26:42] I'm so used to saying for about 20 years and now I'm realizing it's closer to 30 and I'm probably going to have to like suck it up and say there. But yeah, first first company was nineteen ninety nine. So I'm at twenty five years.

[00:26:54] But, you know, we just just to add to this, we had a training session with our team or a team meeting conversation. We're talking about how we care about how our customers feel.

[00:27:07] And we were talking about how we delight them, but we were really focused on how do we become aware of how they feel? But we did our own session with our leadership team two weeks ago about how do our employees feel on the job?

[00:27:23] What are we doing to help them feel included, to feel good?

[00:27:28] And all of that is like you're saying, I know that if we don't have employees that love their job, they're not going to love serving our clients and our clients aren't going to love paying bills to us. And all of that is so connected.

[00:27:40] Can I shift gears a little? You guys know me, bring it in the personal brand side, Alice. I just want to say one thing real quick about it. And here's the thing.

[00:27:48] If you ask me how I feel and you're my CEO or you're my leader, I might not tell you directly or even if I'm your customer. But if you ask me how others feel, I'm going to be.

[00:27:59] Oh, let me tell you what Carson's feeling because he just told me the other day. You know, I'm all happy to tell you what everyone else is feeling now.

[00:28:06] Not that you should always believe it 100 percent, but I'm saying if you do ask around enough, if people aren't willing to tell you how they feel, you feel like they're holding back a little bit. Tell me, how do you think others on your team are feeling? Yeah.

[00:28:18] And you will get a lot in the same with your customer. Well, tell me how are you know, maybe that that person you're talking to. But what about your team? How do you think they're feeling about working with us? They will tell you, I guarantee it.

[00:28:30] Yeah, that's a good nuance. Thanks for adding that for sure. So Alice is, you know, my role, my company and what I always bring to the show is around the personal brand side and the LinkedIn portion to this modern selling conversation.

[00:28:46] What are CEOs roles with their personal brand, with LinkedIn, with content? What do you what do you see is working best with the C-suite?

[00:28:57] So once again, I'm just going to be bold and say if you are not on LinkedIn doing your part, you are a sales prevention department as a CEO. Boom. Sorry. Yeah, right. I'm sorry. Because why?

[00:29:11] Well, in my opinion, my humble opinion, right, as the kids say, in my humble opinion, the CEO is the chief lead generator. Why? Why? Because the CEO has a wide, wide network because the CEO has the title CEO and founder sometimes. Right.

[00:29:30] They're both because they have some, you know, gravitas. Right. So because because because you should be out there being the chief lead generator. Why not? Why wouldn't you feel great as the CEO to hand leads over to your sales team repeatedly? You know why?

[00:29:51] It's their job to get leads. It's their job to close sales. It's not my job. Why should I have to get in there? Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. I'm like, oh, I'm sorry.

[00:29:59] So are we like winning this game together or are we like, you know, individual players and we're competing against each other? It is your job as a leader of a company to be a lead generator. Period.

[00:30:14] The best gift, the best feeling is when you can make an introduction to a salesperson, to someone who's going to buy because they have been following you. They feel like they know you. They love what content you're putting out. They want a piece of that. Right.

[00:30:32] Why wouldn't you do that? Now, that said, I know that there are a lot of people who don't still after all this time don't understand LinkedIn, don't know what to post, don't know how to interact, don't know what to do. Hey, hire somebody who does.

[00:30:46] OK, get on it. What's it going to cost you? Six, seven, eight, maybe ten grand a month. Do it. It's going to be the best lead generation. I mean, I have CEOs talking to me on LinkedIn every day. They listen to my podcast. They send me messages.

[00:31:01] It's just feeds me. Why would you not do that when you could help your entire team by simply being a presence, letting your brand through? You don't have to tell people what you ate for lunch unless you ate it with Carson.

[00:31:15] But you need to tell people what's going on in your industry. What great things are happening with your clients? What great things are happening with your employees? What have you done lately that makes the world a better place? You know, like that's your job.

[00:31:34] And it doesn't even take that much time. Come on. I had to look it up, Tom. That episode we did with MJ, episode 82, very similar talk track. Right. Organization that was getting the preponderance of their leads from the CEOs LinkedIn activity. Oh, yeah.

[00:31:52] I would take it one step further. Actually, Lydia, you just shared another comment that resonated with me. I worked for a small consultant firm where I went out and this is where I started social selling. And I got this wail of a lead.

[00:32:06] And come the Monday morning meeting, the senior leaders touted it as their lead. Yeah. Really omitted me from it. Still have a little bit of a pain point there. But I would take that one step further, Alice. Every leader within an organization can do this as well.

[00:32:23] Every leader. We have so many C levels, VP levels, and they're leveraging their LinkedIn, sharing what great customer stories, you know, things that are going to attract people to want to follow, to want to learn more, to want to know more. Everybody should be a lead generator.

[00:32:40] And it starts with the CEO. Founders say to me, oh, you know, I've been doing founder-led selling and I hired some salespeople and I outsell them every month. I'm like, right, right on. As well you should.

[00:32:52] As well you should because first of all, your title CEO, their title's account executive. I'm sorry. I'd rather talk to the CEO than the account executive. You know, that's just the way I am. So, you know, let's make sure that we're not again preventing sales.

[00:33:11] Yeah, you better be outselling your sellers at first. Right. But then it should start to shift where you've given them what they need. You're opening doors for them. And why not give those leads you've generated as the founder over to the salespeople?

[00:33:27] You stay with it, but now they take that burden off of you. They're following through. They're doing all the follow up. But you still get to be the shining star like, hello, what are you thinking?

[00:33:38] Why would you keep those deals for yourself once you start having salespeople working with you? Yeah. And you're even, we're kind of leaving out too for CEOs around the LinkedIn personal brand and them being more, have a more reputation and all that is we're talking sales right now.

[00:33:56] It also helps HR when they're recruiting. And they go, oh, I know of your CEO. Yes, let's talk or, you know, customer success on renewals. Hey, I've been listening to your CEO talk about these things. Can you tell me more about it? Operations with vendors, you name it.

[00:34:14] Everything gets easier. We had Carson Juan Pablo. You missed him last week. Then he commented the other day at one of my posts. He said, hey, we track all the data and every time our CEO gets any media play, every department in our company benefits from it.

[00:34:30] So we're constantly telling him, go get more media play. Well, here's the thing. Everybody can share it, right? So any post a CEO makes or a senior leader makes, anyone can share it. Anyone can comment on it.

[00:34:43] Anyone can send a private link to somebody who needs that information. It can be used and reused and repurposed and reused. Right? So all of that great stuff you're using, like you said, it's across the company. It doesn't just help sales. It helps retention.

[00:35:00] It helps acquisition of, you know, of customers, retention of customers, acquisition of employees, retention of employees. And it gives everyone else something to post on LinkedIn when they might not be knowing what to post. Right? But listen, this is super easy these days. Using LinkedIn is not hard.

[00:35:18] There's tons of people out there that will teach you how to do it. You can read up on it. You can follow people. It is super simple. You just have to get engaged. It's not just about posting. We don't want to be a billboard.

[00:35:29] We want to interact with people, comment, like, share their stuff, your own team and your customers' teams. Right? It's not hard. Get on it. Do it. So I have a question that we had Matt Dixon on what a few months back. He's the author of The Jolt Effect.

[00:35:50] And, you know, basically the premise of the book, right, is our buyers have a bigger fear of messing up than they do of missing out. Tom, that wasn't the word. That wasn't the word he used though. Wasn't it fear? I think he used Foku. But yeah, Fumu works.

[00:36:09] All right. Well, you know, we're a G-rated podcast. We are G-rated. But, Alice, how do you see... Sometimes Brandon toes the line with PG-13. Yeah. Okay. Well, he gets out of control. You get me on a soapbox like when Mike Langley and I did.

[00:36:30] And those are the best episodes. Yeah. So maybe for the next 100 episodes we got to be PG-13. Rebrand. We'll rebrand. Yeah. But I'm sorry, Tom. I interrupted. Tell your Matt Dixon. But the fear of messing up, right, is a real issue for especially in complex sale, right?

[00:36:49] Because the potential risk of screwing up, of effing up is pretty high. See, I'm already moving in that direction here that we need to. So how do you see some of the things that you teach Alice and go through really can help alleviate that fear of messing up?

[00:37:06] You know, that is mindset, right? That is all mindset. It's what you believe. Yeah. So how do you mess up on social media? Yeah, somebody rants about your company. Some one of your employees puts, you know, shares information they shouldn't says bad things. Yeah. Click delete.

[00:37:27] You know, I mean, what's the worst that can happen? Maybe a customer says bad stuff about you. Great. Good opportunity for me when customers say bad things about me to jump in and figure out what's wrong. So like how can you really mess up?

[00:37:39] What are you afraid of? If you don't if you're not a good person, you're not going to do that. You don't if you're not a good writer and you're worried about that, curate content instead of creating content.

[00:37:50] There's so much content out there that's good that you can feed to people that is curated versus created. So if you're not a creator, curate. Right. And some simple guidelines at your company can help people know what to do. Some basic training and some simple guidelines. Come on.

[00:38:12] HR has guidelines for when you're going on PTO, you know those guidelines. You have some training and then everybody knows how to do it. It's very similar. You have guidelines around social media and you have training around social media. And then do you monitor it? Sure.

[00:38:28] A little bit of each manager should monitor their own team. But look, if something's not right, delete it, you know, and so it's just not that big of a deal. But here's the thing. People have to feel comfortable to do something.

[00:38:42] If they feel awkward or they're not going to do it, right? So we have to get them comfortable. And that's why they can practice on each other in their own company. Go to your fellow employees posts and make a comment and get used to doing that.

[00:38:57] Share an employee, you know, look, if your marketing team is putting good content on your company page, there's tons of content. Click share, you know, like it start easy, right? And then, you know, if you feel you're going to mess up, you

[00:39:13] probably will mess up because you're afraid of messing up. So what is a mess up? Like talk about that at company. If it looks like we don't want that post, let's just hit delete. Not a big deal. Nobody's going to be mad at you. Just try, right?

[00:39:28] But, you know, I would say stay away from anything religious, controversial, political, and just post stuff that's happening in your industry and success stories. You can't go wrong if you're sharing success. Now people say, oh my gosh, if I share one client's success,

[00:39:44] don't I have to share all my clients' success? Well, if your clients are having that much success, why don't you share it all? I mean, just one a week keep sharing. Like what's the problem there anyway? But yeah, I would be sensitive to competitors for sure.

[00:39:59] And there are highly competitive situations where you don't want to post too much about one client or the other, but we can also whitewash these, right? And go, oh, a client in manufacturing that has about 100 employees had this success doing that. You don't have to name them.

[00:40:15] So there's a lot of ways to do it. Again, there are so many experts out there. Please, if you don't know how to do this by now, LinkedIn is a crucial part of business today. Even people who aren't posting or commenting are

[00:40:29] voyeurs and they are watching you, right? And so they're looking to see what you're posting. They're looking to see what your profile looks like. They're looking to see who you know and where you used to work. So you got to be there. It's part of business today.

[00:40:44] It's like going to a trade show and walking by and the booth is completely empty. No one's going to stop by to chat, right? Nothing going on. People are stopping by your LinkedIn profile and you could be having conversations with them, but you're not.

[00:41:00] That's who Bren Tillman calls the lurkers. Yeah, the lurkers. You're seeing a lot of old episodes today. I love this. Yeah, and just to add on to that, Alice, for training-wise, if it's something you wouldn't say in a boardroom presentation or in a one-on-one meeting,

[00:41:19] don't put it in social media. It's not that hard of what's social media appropriate and what's not. Well, I always used to say, you know, if your mom wouldn't like it, you probably shouldn't put it on social media. That's pretty simple. Again, let's talk about common sense.

[00:41:35] Common sense. Don't be controversial. I mean, I shouldn't say that. Be a little controversial on topics that you're an expert in. Yeah, because you want to get conversation started, but don't go into controversial, you know, religious or political or, you know,

[00:41:52] other things that are going on in the world that people are polarized around. Yeah, talk about business, success, happy stuff, and even then some of our failures. Like we tried this new campaign and it didn't work, and here's why, and we don't want you to make the same

[00:42:06] failure, so we are sharing it with you. I think the right, I mean, be provocative. You know, that's always the word that kind of resonates with me, and yeah, I think the biggest mistake you can make with social is not showing up at all.

[00:42:19] I work for a very large company. I've had to remove one thing in 11 years, and I post every single day. And so I just, you know, I always encourage people to leverage that amazing resource to connect, to educate, offer, and inform, and form meaningful relationships.

[00:42:37] Alice, I'd love to pick your brain. You know, given your work with C levels, you know, I often tell people, whether it's sellers or leaders, it's not often that you have to make a drastic overhaul to your process.

[00:42:50] A lot of times it's tweaks here and there in a process that really have an exponential impact on results and outcomes. Given your work with CEOs, what would be some practical advice you would give senior leaders today on things that they should consider

[00:43:06] or could do that might have very significant results to, you know, in the short term? Results in sales wise. Correct. Like, things that they could do right now that would be small tweaks to process but could have pretty significant impact.

[00:43:23] I'm just going to stay on LinkedIn for a second. First thing, get your sales team on LinkedIn. Get your sales leaders on LinkedIn. Get your subject matter experts on LinkedIn. Get yourself CEO on LinkedIn. Senior leaders, get on LinkedIn. Have a beautiful profile.

[00:43:37] You know, spend 15 minutes a day interacting with a few people, posting a little something. Get your marketing team behind this. Get an expert. Like, it will make a huge difference because you can be doing all your research there. You can be interacting with people

[00:43:54] before you ever pick up the phone and call them. You can be sharing content that makes people go, gosh, I want to talk to these people or work for these people. So just do it. Like, no more excuses. Be done with it, right? Okay. Now, next.

[00:44:08] So one of the things that we are doing is we are filling up the land all over the globe with data centers. Why? Because we send so much email. Those data centers have millions and millions and millions and millions and bazillions of emails.

[00:44:28] Think about how many emails we send. Now, with that many emails going out into the world and that being the primary method for selling today, right? Think about it. What are you doing? CEOs, when was the last time you read the cadences your sellers are sending out?

[00:44:46] Would you respond to any of those emails your sellers are sending? Or would you do an instant delete? I'm going to tell you right now, most of you would do an instant delete. So if you are not monitoring as the CEO,

[00:45:00] I'm not saying it's your job to fix it, change it. You just need to know what it is. What are your sellers sending out? So get a hold of that or get an email address and get it added to the list somehow, a Gmail address, secret address, whatever,

[00:45:16] secret boss, whatever that secret CEO guy is and find out what they're sending out. Reduce the amount of email and increase the quality of the email. So what we know from all the stats out there is that it's taking six, eight, 12 touches. Now that's not just email.

[00:45:37] That could be phone calls, voicemails, LinkedIn, other social media, but trade show touch. It could be a combination of things before someone is going to talk to you. And just because they're going to talk to you doesn't mean they need what you have right at this moment

[00:45:51] in time and are going to buy. We all know that, right? But just to get people interested because that's the first piece. We just have to have, first they have to be aware that we exist. Then they have to have some interest

[00:46:01] or we can't start to examine their needs and determine whether it's a fit, right? So we got to start there. So when you are sending out volumes and volumes and volumes of messages via email or if you're doing it on LinkedIn and you're spamming me, stop it.

[00:46:15] Okay? Just stop it. Don't double down on suck. Don't do it. Whoops, was that PG-13? Don't double down on suck. Don't do it. So what should you do instead? Okay? Can I throw out a name here? Am I allowed to mention someone without, I mean, yeah?

[00:46:34] As long as it's favorable. It's favorable. It's favorable. So Samantha McKenna, hashtag SamSales. Like she gives it away. People follow her and she'll teach you how to do everything. And then if you can't do it by just reading what she's got, then hire her team to help you.

[00:46:52] Hire Brandon. Hire somebody to help you. Stop sending terrible messages out into the data centers to fill up the land of our globe, right? Don't do it. So less is more. We're talking quality, not quantity. What do we do? So it takes time to do quality.

[00:47:13] We can't just rip it out, man. So we have to think about who is our target audience. What do they care about, right? What's happening in that industry? Who are the people within those companies that we have to talk to? What do they care about?

[00:47:27] And we have to write a message that's meaningful and engaging. And even when we do that, only a certain percent of the people are going to be interested at that moment in time. But let's reduce the quantity, increase the quality, and actually care about the people

[00:47:44] we're trying to sell to. Like make them know we care. As Samantha would say, show me you know me and what I'm worried about and what's happening in my world and my industry. So I'm like, yeah, that company might have something there.

[00:47:58] You know, I'll keep that in mind. Maybe I won't answer you this time, but after you've shown me you know me enough times, I might just have a call with you. Much more likely than when you spam me all about your company, your services,

[00:48:10] your products, and I just hit delete. There are two things. Two things to give you right away. Yeah, and I'd say to piggyback on Sam's show me you know me is turn that into the social content too. Like, love she talks about it. It's in the email.

[00:48:27] You're talking about all these multiple churches and to speak to like Tom's book on the on the revenue zone in the Yellow Brick Road. Any chance that we have to influence their research is good opportunity, but I really appreciate you saying that and reiterating it.

[00:48:43] We send to say go slow to move fast and you're saying take your time. Send fewer, but do them better. Do the research. Do your research. And I'm going to say one more thing. The best, best, best, best, best, best, best, best, best,

[00:48:59] easiest, easiest, easiest way is when someone introduces you. But I would say that 90% of the companies do not leverage that at all. They do not have a formal referral selling process. They do not proactively ask for introductions. They don't even know how their sellers

[00:49:20] don't even know how to do it right. So even if you're doing an account based approach with show me, you know me, and we're being real specific and all of that, I always tell you the very first thing you do

[00:49:32] before you send anything out or make any calls is you find out if there's someone who could introduce you. And then if you've exhausted that and you can't find any introductions, Carson, then you can start sending email and LinkedIn and doing your show me, you know me.

[00:49:46] But why wouldn't you go to your senior executives? Why wouldn't you go to your friends in the industry? Why wouldn't you look on LinkedIn? Hey, Carson, I see you know Tom. Do you happen to know him well enough to introduce me? Because here's what I want.

[00:50:01] I want to have a little minute with Tom to talk about X. And you'll be like, yeah, I know him or no, I don't. But did that hurt me? Did it take much time? No. But how many salespeople are doing that every single time before they cold call?

[00:50:14] Yeah, it's because we don't plug in. We don't plug into the opportunity and think about it strategically. A couple of years back, my team and I, we had an opportunity that was kind of stuck in mid-level management hell. And what ended up transpiring is we went out,

[00:50:29] we looked at this executive, the elusive executive that wouldn't talk to us. We saw just so happen to be connected to some colleagues. Reached out to those colleagues. They had worked with this person before. They gave us some intel. This person's very title conscious. So guess what?

[00:50:45] I rung up our president. Yes. Asked if she would meet with this person. She said yes. Reached out to this executive. And rather than the old, you know, hey, I would love to have a conversation, it was we take very seriously the investment that you make.

[00:51:01] Would love to get you in front of our president. Responded within 30 minutes. Made it happen. Within six months, we created a deal that sent everybody that touched it to President's Club. Right? I mean, come on. Who are they connected with? Like, how hard is that?

[00:51:18] And I've actually been working on a complex deal with a team where we couldn't get to someone. And I went to the CEO and I said, hey, you know, it looks like you went to school with this guy. Like, do you happen to?

[00:51:35] Oh yeah, I was his roommate. Did anyone on your team ask you if you knew him? No, not one single person asked the CEO. And it was right there on his LinkedIn that they had gone to the same school.

[00:51:46] Now, there was a chance that he would not have known him. Of course there was, but why wouldn't you ask? Why wouldn't you ask? I do see a question I want to answer about snail mail because I love snail mail.

[00:52:00] So if you have not ever read this book, I'm going to urge all of you read it. It's called How to Get a Meeting with Anyone. It is by Stu Heinick, my good friend. Okay, how to get a meeting with anyone is all about sending things, right?

[00:52:18] So it's contact marketing. And he is the father of contact marketing, right? So when you think about the ways that you can reach someone, the first one should be somebody introduce me because that's like a slam dunk, right? So get somebody to introduce me, right?

[00:52:34] I could cold call them, right? Or I could cold LinkedIn them or cold email them. Even if I do some research and just show me, you know me, I'm still not really, right? It's better to get an introduction.

[00:52:44] But if you use contact marketing or send things in the mail, you have a very high chance of... Gary Vaynerchuk, y'all know who he is, right? Tells great stories about this. Now, he had $10,000 to spend to get some CEOs' attentions

[00:53:01] by sending them signed baseball jerseys and stuff like that. But all it takes is something small, right? And for example, for CEOs, I often get an author to sign their books for me, and then I wrap them beautifully and I send them to the CEO

[00:53:18] and I might get a beautiful card that some artist made and I hand write a note inside of it and I say why I think they might like this book. And I usually put a bookmark in it and I even mark a few passages or something.

[00:53:31] Now that's highly customized, but do you think those CEOs will talk to me when they receive that book? It's like 100% or let's call it 99.9 because every once in a while somebody doesn't respond. But 99.9% of those people who receive that book will talk to me.

[00:53:48] I mean, come on. How much did that cost? Well, maybe the book was 15 bucks and the mailing was another 15. Oh, and my time to write a note? Okay, we're now into it $30 versus paying SDRs to dial for dollars and hit two out of 1,000.

[00:54:03] I'm sorry. I think it's cheaper to send a book. Okay, so there's lots of things you can do. But I'll tell you this, even in Stu's book, How to Get a Meeting with Anyone, the component to that, right, of sending stuff is being visible on LinkedIn

[00:54:19] so when they go to look up, who is this Alice Hyman that sent me this book? They're going to see that I'm a podcast host and that I interview CEOs and that I've been doing this a long time and that I have some actual thoughts in my head

[00:54:33] that I share that might help somebody. Come on, it's not that hard. Alice, I'm thinking of Stu in his book. Do you ever send copies of your book to anybody or do you keep it always someone else's book? Okay, so I personally do not have a published book.

[00:54:53] Okay. So I personally do not. But I might do that, but I think probably it's better to choose a book that's written by someone in their industry or that's going to be specific to something. Again, I've got to read up on these people.

[00:55:08] I've got to put it in perplexity or tattoo BT and ask them, I've got to know what's interesting. If they're in the auto industry, there's some great books written recently that I would probably send them, right? If they're in marketing, if they're in manufacturing, depends, right?

[00:55:25] So again, I'm trying to customize it to something I know this person. I did it with Stu's new book. It's not brand new anymore, but it's called How to Grow Your Business Like a Weed. He and I did a beautiful campaign. He signed all the books for me.

[00:55:41] He wrapped them in raffi and beautiful boxes, and he mailed them for me. I paid him to do this, of course, but they each got this beautiful like Apple open-the-box experience and a book that was how to grow your business like a weed.

[00:55:55] What CEO doesn't want to know that? I like a nuance of that. I did this a couple of times, and then we stopped for some reason, and this was in one of my previous companies before we sold it. With a big conference,

[00:56:11] you look at who the keynote are going to be, buy their book, and send it to your top 50 prospect CEOs and say, I know you're going to the show. Here's their book, da-da-da-da-da. And that's helped open up or create a lot of conversation.

[00:56:25] Love that. Love it, love it, love it. And that's another thing. So trade shows are phenomenal, right? You can set up appointments ahead of time and meet with so many people at a trade show and really start to make your mark on these people, and then continue nurturing.

[00:56:41] You can get on the phone with them, then you can send an email, then you can do a LinkedIn, and then you can meet them at the show, right? And if they also have a book in their hand, they can stand online and get their book signed.

[00:56:51] Wow, right? Like everything you can do in conjunction with trade shows, do it. And just a little side note, because I don't do this anymore, but I used to have a company called Trade Show Makeover because so many of my clients

[00:57:03] would use trade shows as their primary lead generator, and they were doing it so wrong. I don't have that company anymore because I started it right before COVID. Hmm, anyway, timing is everything. People say that there's a lot of other things that really matter in a startup,

[00:57:17] but timing is really a big one. And I did write an e-book that gives you step-by-step instructions of things that you should do to really make the most of a trade show, and I am happy to share it with anyone.

[00:57:29] So I can put it in the show notes. I'd love that. I'd love to get that book. Okay, okay. Yeah. And I think, look, to really underscore the theme too, it's what you say, Alice, not doubling down on suck. I always like to say,

[00:57:45] get away from the comfortable ways of mediocrity or failing. Sometimes doing that unorthodox thing that adds the personal touch makes all the difference in the world. I've got two very quick examples. Number one, I've talked before on this show about a seven-figure deal

[00:57:58] that came out of a LinkedIn meeting, but part of that was bringing in a book, and I loved what you said about highlighting passages that you know will resonate. I was able to say very specifically, hey, these passages from pages 88 through 92 speak to exactly where your organization is

[00:58:14] and where I believe we are going to be the right partner. They weren't even thinking about us. They were thinking about our competition, but that actually helped them understand how we were going to be the right partner for the commercialized model that they were going to do.

[00:58:24] And the other thing is how this can scale. If you're an individual contributor or a sales leader, explore with your leadership or with your marketing. How can you even run scale motions? I ran a scale motion a couple years back.

[00:58:36] I had a colleague that did a phenomenal job of, we always think of sellers, people buy things because we've just done this remarkable job, right? We've done the demo. We followed the process, but actually it was funny. We did this scale book campaign

[00:58:50] where we were giving out our vice chairs a book on cybersecurity. And we were asking this customer why they made this significant purchase of cybersecurity tools. And we were talking about what really led to this and let's kind of get a customer story.

[00:59:06] Oh, well, it was because we got this book and really dove in and let's kind of get a customer story. And really dove in and understood the impetus for how you got into this and why you'd be the right solution. You never know. There is no silver bullet

[00:59:22] in social selling, in personal brand. But if you can sometimes embrace these unorthodox ways and get away from the comfortable ways of mediocrity and failing, you can develop a personal touch that makes all the difference in the world. Yeah, I couldn't agree more.

[00:59:38] And I know there's a lot of companies out there that will send gifts as part of the sales process. I'm not going to name them because I love all of them and there's too many of them, but they're all great, right?

[00:59:48] But then be careful how you use that too, because is it going to feel awkward or odd that you sent me a water bottle with your logo on it? How about sending me a water bottle with my logo on it? Think before you send.

[01:00:02] I love sending stuff in the mail, but think before you send. What are you sending and what relevance does it have to them? When we say meet the buyer where they are on their journey, when you're going to send something,

[01:00:16] think about how is that going to help them move to the next step of where they need to be in their career, in their business, in their life. How are you helping better something? Just sending me something with a logo on it doesn't make me buy from you.

[01:00:31] But when you send me a book that had information about cybersecurity that my company needs, I'm like, wow, that was thoughtful, right? Yeah, we can all use this information. So be thoughtful in meeting the customer where they are with anything that you're going to send them.

[01:00:49] I love how you brought it full circle. Sorry, Tom. I love how you brought it all the way back to meet the customer where they are. And that's what I was going to touch on, Brandon, is as we wrap up here, right? To me, there are three main

[01:01:05] topics I was going through. I made notes as we went along here. And I think there's three main things that you've touched on or we've touched on even from some of the audience contribution that kind of can help squash the sales prevention approach.

[01:01:19] And those were three things that I saw. One, common sense, right? Common sense has got to trump a lot of these things. Two, quality over quantity, right? So think, I mean, just what you were just talking about with the book. In every way. In every way, right?

[01:01:33] And then the third, which I think is so obvious but so overlooked is referrals first, right? Look for referrals first. So if you use common sense, quality over quantity and referrals first, I think you can kind of sidestep the sales prevention trap that we're all talking about here.

[01:01:54] Yeah, I agree. I agree. Great, great stuff. Alice, you've raised our board you've raised our bar a bit and you're pushing with some of the best episodes we've had. Thank you so much. Absolutely. You're so welcome. What fun. Yeah, well, we have a big

[01:02:14] we're going to turn 100 here in a couple of weeks and then we've got to really start planning out our next 100. Yeah. So we'll have you back for sure. I would love to. Absolutely. So all right, Brandon, Carson, any final questions, thoughts before we wrap here?

[01:02:32] No, actually, I thought your summary your little summation statement at the end was really good and I look forward to going back and reviewing the episode. I always get so much out of these and Alice, thanks so much for not only bringing

[01:02:46] such a fresh perspective but for your candor. I don't think any of us benefit when we just keep doing the same old tried and true. Thank you for sharing your experiences and your learnings with this audience. My pleasure.

[01:03:01] All right, Carson, we've missed you the last couple of weeks. Wrap us up. Yeah, thank you everybody for joining. Alice, awesome episode. Thanks for everybody who listened and commented and until next time, happy modern selling. Thanks everyone.