Welcome to another Market Dominance Guys episode, and today we're trying something completely different. What happens when you spend four hours in a studio recording sales training content, and then someone creates an AI version of you? Well, you're about to find out.

Our Chris Beall recently worked with Alex Kutsishin from myfuel.io to create AI-powered training experiences. The result? An AI Chris that sounds remarkably like the real thing – maybe a younger version – and knows everything Chris teaches about cold calling, market dominance, and the psychology of trust.

In this experimental episode, the real Chris interviews his AI counterpart, diving into First to Converse principles, list-building strategies, and how to master the emotional journey of cold calling. It's enlightening, it's creative, and yes, it's a little weird hearing Chris talk to himself. But it showcases an efficient new way for sales teams and enterprises to access expert training 24/7.

Let's listen in as human meets algorithm in the pursuit of sales excellence.

Alex Kutsishin, Chief Executive Officer

Alex Kutsishin is co-founder and CEO of FUEL !nc, the world's first Performance-as-a-Service platform for sales teams and leadership designed to redefine business education and performance standards. With an entrepreneurial spirit evident since his youth, he has co-founded ten companies — from pioneering medical offices in Washington, D.C. to introducing the first American-based low-code, no-code platform for custom mobile websites. Kutsishin has won numerous awards, including EY Entrepreneur of the Year.

We'd signed off. Thanked everyone. Sam Daish was probably ready to start his day in Auckland, and we were wrapping up what had already been a dense conversation about AI in sales. But then Chris started talking about something he calls "micro pivoting" - those split-second adjustments that separate elite salespeople from everyone else - and none of us wanted to hang up.

What followed was Chris dissecting the athletic nature of top sales performance, using Cherryl Turner's cold calling mastery as a case study. The insight about how elite reps make tiny voice and timing adjustments that most of us would never notice, and how those microscopic moments determine whether a conversation continues or dies. This wasn't planned content - it was pure discovery happening in real time, the kind of conversation that makes you realize the real secrets are hiding in plain sight.

Sometimes the best episodes happen when you think you're done recording.

Today they welcome Helen Fanucci, author of "Love Your Team" and CEO/Co-Founder of Pipeline Power, for a candid look at why sales coaching fails - and how to fix it.

The stats are startling: only 0.01% of recorded sales conversations are ever reviewed, and 83% of sales managers have never received formal training. Through their discussion, the trio reveals practical solutions, including Helen's upcoming AI-powered coaching platform allowing sales managers to practice difficult conversations in a safe environment.

From Branch 49's "finishing school for future CEOs" approach to why cultural transformation must precede digital transformation, this conversation challenges conventional wisdom about sales leadership. Whether you're a seasoned CSO or a newly minted sales manager, you'll gain fresh perspectives on building and nurturing high-performing sales teams through systematic coaching.

Link to Free Chatbot tied to Chapter 11 of "Love Your Team." https://chatgpt.com/g/g-67539b3c0c2081918142398d78ac3de9-love-your-team-managing-underperformers

A company’s leadership – the lead singer, picks up the pieces and fills in the holes in a performance. Their drummers keep the rhythm of the deal moving forward so everyone can stay in time. But what about the sale professional making the calls – the lyricist? The correct tone of a single syllable can make or break a conversation before it starts. Corey and Chris continue their conversation with Paula S. White of Side B Consulting. They compare the ways different cultures start a cold call. We have more in common with all of our varying cultures than you may think when we start the call admitting we are an interruption and that we have never met the prospect on the other end. Paula takes us through the skill of being an unexpected listener and where that is valuable in every business encounter. The good news is it can be learned, like a memorable piece of music or a favorite song that takes us back to a favorite memory. Join these sales musicians in this episode, “Join the Band – How Sales Professionals Are like Lyricists.”

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About Our Guest Paula S. White is the Leadership DJ of Side B Consulting in New Albany, Ohio. Side B Consulting helps leaders combine their business-minded skills with their relationship-based people skills to more effectively lead their teams.

Full Transcript here:

A company’s leadership – the lead singer, picks up the pieces and fills in the holes in a performance. Their drummers keep the rhythm of the deal moving forward so everyone can stay in time. But what about the sale professional making the calls – the lyricist? The correct tone of a single syllable can make or break a conversation before it starts. Corey and Chris continue their conversation with Paula S. White of Side B Consulting. They compare the ways different cultures start a cold call. We have more in common with all of our varying cultures than you may think when we start the call admitting we are an interruption and that we have never met the prospect on the other end. Paula takes us through the skill of being an unexpected listener and where that is valuable in every business encounter. The good news is, it can be learned, like a memorable piece of music or a favorite song that takes us back to a favorite memory. Join these sales musicians in this episode, “Join the Band – How Sales Professionals Are like Lyricists.”

Corey Frank(00:00):

So what are these challenges that you see in companies? Cuz I would bet that there are folks maybe at the C level who wanna be more in touch with side B to communicate, to retain talent, to inspire more creativity. And you probably have folks who say, Hey listen, I didn't sign on for this. I thought you hired me for my resume. I thought you hired me for my experience. How do you help workshop that out? So they do sing the same song. 

Paula White (00:29):

So interestingly enough, it again all comes down to culture and you're gonna see resumes changing very, very shortly where some of those things, those side B traits are starting to show up on resumes. They're looking for cultures of accountability, they're looking for cultures that are going to give back. They're looking for cultures who believe in their people. So how do you take what you have now and ensure that everyone is singing on the same page? I think it's just getting in the studio. We have to get all ideas out on the paper or the whiteboard and start coming together as a band and making sure each instrument is represented for their own strengths. 

Corey Frank(01:28):

How is that facilitated? Do you expect that the leaders will drive that facilitation? I know certainly that's what your practice is all about, but when the conductor leaves the building such as you and your team, how am I empowered or instilled with this sheet music to make sure that hey, drummer plays this, bass player plays this, et cetera? 

Paula White (01:53):

That's a great question because after most workshops, people do tend to forget, right? Facilitating something really takes time. And there is a monthly plan that I do connect with the CEO or the leader that put the workshop together to ensure these things are still happening within the organization. But the most important part is really taking the survey for each person to understand what their intentionality and what they are on the inside is brought out. And if that is known by everybody, then we can hold each other accountable to being open-minded creative, to being experimental, to being laser logical. If we have a person who is laser logical, let's use that and let's create it together so that everyone knows what their skill sets are. Yes, it sounds great in a workshop and it can facilitate afterwards. And I tend to take the next six months and we take the next six months to ensure that that continues to go through the organization. 

Corey Frank(03:08):

, . No, that's great. I think I keep coming back to this element of having the courage to do it. Yeah, because we read, right Chris, we read a lot of books, we listen to a lot of podcasts, we adhere to the philosophies of a lot of speakers where it's about technique and not necessarily the connection. And certainly what Helen talks about and certainly Paula, what I hear from I understand from what your practice does is really we try to have that catalyst, that spark of that connection. And that's what certain people are better at it than others. How do I develop that connection, that intentionality that you spoke about earlier? 

Paula White (03:54):

Well first you gotta really understand what that connection is within you. And we talked about that a little bit. It may not be vulnerability. Your connection may be that you are helpful or that you like to experiment with ideas. So understanding yourself first gets to the point of seeing yourself what hasn't been seen before in this survey . And we take those three essential traits and three desirable traits and then we kind of pie fit them. What resonates with you? How are we to get you to be more open-minded because that is what is in you. So how do we get that to connect with your people? And we have different questionnaires and different things that people can do to become more open-minded, right? There's different lessons in all of that. And I think what you're asking mostly is one of the part of the workshops that I absolutely love is understanding how to become an unexpected listener. 

Corey Frank(05:07):

Unexpected listener. 

Paula White (05:10):

There are levels of listening. So the first phase of listening is listening. You go in ready to defend your ideas and all you're listening for is an opening. Next level is active listening. You're gonna actively listen to somebody, show them that you care. But you still have that little ticker tape going down at the bottom of the screen that is in your back of your mind, but you're listening to them cuz they're up on top of the screen . And then the unexpected listener actually reacts on what their people are saying takes the time to do, takes the time to react and do what is being asked of or listening to what they need. 

Chris Beall (06:04):

I always have this question about anything where there's change. So when you're working with a leader, are you working with individual leaders or you working with the whole team? 

Paula White (06:13):

So interestingly, if I do both, I look work with individual leaders, but for the most part my workshops are with high potential emerging leaders throughout organizations. 

Chris Beall (06:25):

So within an organization they'll bring together the high potential is their idea who's high potential, 

Paula White (06:32):

And that's a whole nother topic. 

Chris Beall (06:35):

, yes. I always say there's, if you wanna find out what's going on, look at the filter first before you look at the processing. 

Chris Beall (06:45):

So you have these folks together, you're working with them, you are listening to them hopefully in an unexpected way, but you're finding out that you've brought whatever you brought to the party that day. Also you're just another human being. There's got to be in a pattern to what happens in cuz there's always patterns to what happens and somewhere in a pattern. I always look for that thing that I call the first unit of change. . It is what actually is something that changes, that's concrete that you can say, okay, that actually changed. I could validate it, I could test it, I could be concerned that it's going to change back. That's one of the ways that I can tell that the unit of change is a real unit of change is when it bothers me a little after it happens that I'm concerned it'll flip back whether it's in myself or somebody else. What is it that you are looking for listening for? Probably listening more than looking in a group. Say you've got seven emerging leaders that together you're at the end of the first whatever it is, hour, two hours or sometime when you're hoping that there will be a change of a kind, what is that unit of change? What's the thing you're looking for listening for that you would be worried or concerned later? I hope that doesn't flip back over to side A. 

Paula White (08:10):

So I'm always listening for diversity of thought. Do I have seven drummers in there or do I have a full complete band? Do I have two vocalists that are dominating the whole session? and I really listen for what does their band or what does their group consist of? What is their talent? And then how can we cohesively work together to bring out everybody's talent to add loyalty and creativity and innovation, right? Because that's really the meat of emerging leaders are that's where you're going to get your creativity, your innovation, your next level thinking for the company to move forward in five to 10 years. The people who are in the seats now are already thinking five to 10 years out. So now we need the next group to start thinking five to 10 years beyond that. 

Chris Beall (09:25):

Which is interesting given the way the world works now, right? Because five to 10 years far exceeds most people's anticipated employment with any given company. 

Paula White (09:34):

I mean exactly. 

Chris Beall (09:36):

We're running a funny operation here at ConnectAndSell where the average tenure company's 15 years old and the average tenure is 17 years. So we flipped, I dunno how we did, 

Paula White (09:47):

But think about everything. Think about if you could actually, cuz I've been with four companies throughout my entire 30 years, my career. And if you could retain that type of loyalty, that type of belief, that type of innovation for the long haul, what that would do for a company, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and people, the bands that weren't one hit wonders, they have a legacy and we need to leave a legacy for the people that we serve. And so as we continue to grow that the only way that you're gonna do that is by hoping more people stay loyal and not leave the company and have that type of culture. 

Corey Frank(10:54):

Interesting. I wonder if Paula, in your practice to that point, if you have I'm sure you've seen CEOs that were more the drummers or maybe the CFO was more of the lead singer which is counterintuitive to I think how most people think, right? Chris, when you have those roles and what have you learned from those type of dynamics that it doesn't necessarily match up with the archetype of the org chart and they're not right outta central casting as you had thought. Marketing isn't the drummer rather it's a financial person. Maybe it's not a good thing to have the drummer be the CFO, but I dunno, maybe it is 

Paula White (11:37):

Actually the way that I did this and I worked with a neuroscientist, a psychologist, a musician, and myself. The four of us worked together. So we took the position of the drummer because we've been talking about the drummer and we asked ourselves, what is the primary role of the drummer? The primary role of the drummer in a band is to keep the beat, to keep everything moving forward, to keep the song moving forward. So what would be the side a side A is usually the visionary, the forward thinker, the person that is always ready to move and keep moving . So what their side B would be is curiosity, because they need to understand as a visionary what's happening in the market, what's happening with their people, what's happening with their customers. They're always curious to move forward and innovate. So we did this really so methodically that I think it would be interesting to see if it's not based on title necessarily, but what their skill set is. So the lead guitarist, 

Corey Frank(12:54):

, 

Paula White (12:56):

When you think of a lead guitarist, what do you think of? What is their primary role? 

Corey Frank(13:03):

Getting the groupies in the drugs. 

Paula White (13:05):

They  

Corey Frank(13:07):

You talking during, you're talking when they're on stage, not after. I thought we were talking about 

Paula White (13:12):

They're pretty close though. 

Corey Frank(13:15):

Probably 

Paula White (13:15):

Guitar riffs, right? Yeah. 

Corey Frank(13:17):

The riffs that have the unique sound that is the band. You think about The Edge, you two has a unique sound. Led Zeppelin had a unique sound because of the lead drummer. Right? Exactly. That's the 

Paula White (13:30):

Lead guitarist. So you've got that lead guitarist and they are so passionate about it. , . So passion is the side B trait. 

Corey Frank(13:41):

You can't be a tourist in a band and be the lead guitarist, right? You don't just show up. I mean you are committed, 

Paula White (13:51):

You are 100% committed and you take initiative and you're enthusiastic. And you're even authoritative. , right? 

Chris Beall (14:02):

. And you're most likely to be pissed off if somebody else blows it. 

Paula White (14:07):

Exactly. 

Chris Beall (14:08):

Explicitly guitarist. That's the most pissed off. 

Corey Frank(14:10):

Yeah. 

Paula White (14:13):

And for the optimist or the vocalist, think about the vocalist for a moment. What is their primary role? 

Corey Frank(14:25):

What is the primary role of a vocalist? I suppose mean if we've all been parts of bands or watching bands at bars where the musicians are incredible, but the lead singer is horrible. And also where the lead singer is incredible and maybe the band isn't up to tune. So I would say it's, it's really the face of the band. It's the identity of the band. Everybody knows Bono up front or Axle Rose up front, right? Or Mick Jagger front I. So I would think it's really more the branding but I don't know. What do you think Chris? 

Chris Beall (15:01):

As a singer myself, and this is something I actually even think I react to when I'm here at home. I've got my piano right over there and I play and sing most evenings. And I think as the vocalist, I feel as the vocalist, what I'm doing is I'm telling the story, I'm helping the audiences emotions move with the whole song. Cuz the song includes the lyrics, it includes the tone as the vocalist. I have a bigger range than any of the other instruments in terms of subtlety. I can do more things with my instrument than they can do with theirs. 

Paula White (15:42):

That is why their side B is advanced business acumen because they do the whole thing when they're on tour, they're providing direction, they're providing clarity, they're getting people set up. They know when the song ends. They analyze the pit balls in the audience. I mean, I've been in a concert recently where the vocalists literally stopped the concert because he saw someone pass out in the mosh pit and get help and get them. So it's that type of brain. 

Chris Beall (16:24):

Yeah, that's interesting. It's a funny thing. I mean it's also a big power position. I mean the drummer can drive the thing like an engine, but somebody is gonna decide when they're gonna slam on the brakes, when they're gonna make a hard turn. And there's a lot of power in that. And that always comes from the vocalist. The vocalist also ends up catching and basically gluing things together when it didn't quite work. One of the problems with pure instrumental music is when it doesn't work, when it's a little off. And this is especially true when you're listening to jazz, jazz trios, when it's a little bit off, it's really bad. It falls apart and there's almost no way to catch it. It's like, who's gonna catch it? What are they gonna do? And what you do is you simplify down to something that continues to work. That is you actually lower the qualities so to speak. And jazz, the quality comes not just from the execution but also from the imagination. You reduce the imagination, lower the temperature and let the music come back together. But if you add a vocalist to that trio, when it starts to fall apart, they can actually pull it together with their voice 

Chris Beall (17:39):

, and then everybody can get back together with the vocalist without having to abandon their imagination or tone it down. I mean I really like, this is some interesting stuff, so I kinda know Paula, so everybody feels differently about music as a consumer of it, but more similarly to each other than the fact they might like some genres more than others. I didn't know that I loved rap until I went to a play yesterday, I think it was day before yesterday called. It was the Christmas Carol done as the Q Brothers Christmas Carol. And I realized what, that's what I really like about that music. Even though I don't like the music now, I really like it because it was funny and it told a great story and so forth. As consumers of music were all similar in that we all know how to consume the music that we like 

Chris Beall (18:34):

As producers of music. Whether it's just your voice when you're speaking or whether it's actually making music by yourself or with others. I think we diverge a lot. I think that there's a lot of issues around performance anxiety when it comes to music, especially . You were raised giving piano recitals at the age of four. There were, it's like, how scary is that? It's not that scary cuz you just don't know anything. But for some people it's okay to perform musically. For some people it's not. And yet when you're bringing out your side B in a sense, you have to be okay. You have to learn to be okay performing, so to speak, from this other side of yourself. How do you help people do that? Cuz that's a wide divergence of capabilities that are built in and then hammered in through childhood. That's just hammered in it's some people are way over there and they'll say, I could never sing or I could never play. I could never do whatever. And some people will walk into a room having a tune the like or break out into Broadway show music, a regular basis, diovan, . 

Paula White (20:02):

It really is getting people to see really. So I am not a vocalist. I am a lyricist. I've written six songs for my book and produced those with great musicians. But it's really seeing the unseen and once somebody sees that they can be what they are truly within themselves, bringing their whole self to work, it's easier because that's what they're used to. For example, I was a competitive swimmer. I naturally leaned into music because I didn't hear anything or rhythm really. Keeping my strokes in rhythm, keeping my beat going, breathing at the right time. I would make up songs in my own head. So when we're doing that, those songs in your own head are just these voices of chatter. We're just trying to change that language to your side. B 

Chris Beall (21:13):

, . I love that you used a rhythm of, was this going on in your head, the songs? It 

Paula White (21:19):

Was absolutely going on My head actually in seventh grade, I'm gonna give you a little tip here. Seventh grade, I wrote a whole play Broadway play for Billy Joel's album. The Stranger. What I did with it, I don't know, but I wrote it about the Italian restaurant, the red wine, the white wine, the Brenda and Eddie. And I had the whole scene mapped out in my head. , I know because I love music 

Chris Beall (21:56):

By the way. I played from that play which somebody stole from you and put on Broadway. I was just playing from it the other night. . Yeah, it was very songs. I didn't know you wrote that stuff. That's fast. 

Paula White (22:08):

Oh no, no. I wrote it in my own. Oh, I wrote it. I never gave it to anybody, but I wrote one when I was in seventh grade. 

Chris Beall (22:19):

I think probably the early, well by the way, the power of rhythm I think is really quite astonishing when it comes to stabilizing performance. So as some unfortunate to among our eight listeners, I do barefoot endurance running for fun. And some people think that's oxymoron. How could that be fun? It's actually kind of a gentle relaxing activity for at least the first few hours. And I recall once because I always have a song in my head and it's always challenging to find a song that will help you, that really will go along and help you. And I did a 50 K once in the almond and Quick Silver Mountains behind my house two weeks after running the big serve marathon. So this was not a good idea. And these mountains are really up and down and up and down. And I did it on a whim and I ate the wrong thing beforehand. 

Chris Beall (23:15):

And so I had these sort of stomach cramps for the first two, two and a half hours. And this thing took nine hours to run. And what I found helped me for especially about the last five hours, oddly enough, was the odd rhythm of take five. And the reason was it kept my mind occupied because at the end of ever measure, you were on the other foot. Really? That sounds ridiculously stupid, but it never got boring because when you you're doing a run like that, it's hard to keep your focus. Some things are going on in your body and your mind. But there was just something about going, I wonder which foot it's gonna because I'd forget. Right. 

Corey Frank(23:58):

Well what is that? Let's see, Breck, I mean four is all kind. I don't know what the time is 

Chris Beall (24:04):

But Well it's got five beats. It's five four, so it's quarter, it's quarter notes, but there's five of them in a measure. And so it's got this extra beat and that extra beat I kept falling into. That's what I felt like is I can always fall into that fifth beat and then the next measure starts. I did that for the last five hours or so and then I finished the run and had a nice piece of peach pie and went home . I'll never forget that. The power of the music and I don't listen to music when I run. I don't let it come in through my ears. It's always inside of me. But I'm a big believer in that I actually think that music runs inside of us in a way to maintain our sanity. 

Corey Frank(24:49):

Wow. 

Paula White (24:50):

Wow. I would agree with you because music also is the only form that allows us to use both sides of our brain simultaneously. 

Chris Beall (25:01):

And we remember it differently. I mean otherwise why would there be named that tomb? We talk on the cold calling technique world of market dominance guys, which is all about paving the market with trust by effectively, by singing to somebody in seven seconds, you have seven seconds to get your voice to do something magical inside of that person. And when you're thinking about like, well what's really going on there, , if somebody were to say, well what's really happening there? What's happening is the words, we have a thing, we had a whole episode on this. The words are a surfboard and the voice is the surfer, the artist. And somebody has to shape the words. We probably shouldn't be shaping our own words when we're out in the world of repetitive performance because that's right. The words, unless there's a whole bunch of 'em, we're probably not gonna get it quite right. 

Chris Beall (25:59):

But we can incorporate the words as poetry and then sing them. And it's like name that tune. Why could name that tune ever be a show. Think about it. It's crazy, right? Oh, right now that tune in one or two seconds and yet if you walk around in the world and you hear the beginning of a song, it make a mistake. You might think it's one of three, but you'll, you'll not think it's one of a hundred. It's very, very quick. We can't remember our children's name. Well, I have a problem remembering names after 3 27 in the afternoon. I have real issue with that. But the ability to remember that this is that song, even if you can't name it, you can continue it. Sure. That is deep. Deep memory stuff. And when you think about relationships we have with people, what we're essentially doing is we're building memories with them. And it's those memories that are the glue of the relationship. It's like when we are remembering before the show here being on at this conference and then going onto this little podcast that was happening, we were actually reinforcing our relationship by remembering something together. , . And that is the essence of how we build businesses, is we create what we call culture is actually a matrix of shared memories that are interpreted in a common framework 

Chris Beall (27:26):

That's deep. 

Corey Frank(27:28):

It's funny, Chris, I just had a client of ours came and pay us a visit and she is of Japanese heritage and we were talking about the phone here and the phone that I was keeping the back. And now when we pick up the phone, we always say hello. And we were talking about this very thing about the surfboard and tonality and the musicality that you have to have the right. It's like if a lyricist as Paula, sometimes you just looking for the right word to hit the right beat if it's too short. We all know those songs that it could use another word or syllable here, . And in Italy, when you pick up the phone, you say Poto, right? And she's saying in Japan, cuz I was talking about cold calling in different cultures and the musicality of what we try to do here in the US and would it translate well to Italian when it translate to Japanese. 

Corey Frank(28:25):   

hajime-mashite

And she said a beautiful thing. She said, the Japanese, when you answer the phone from a business to business, not mushy, mushy when it's more informal, but that a traditional first encounter and the word actually means, the phrase actually means greetings with a first encounter. It's Hajimemashite! Which means nice to meet you first encounter. It's almost like now I would never do it. So the first time we meet Paula, let's say Hajimemashite!, right? Corey Frank, right? Nice to meet you. First encounter Corey Frank. And it was just something Chris that was, I thought was just very beautiful about our profession. That the person on the other end of the line, instead of saying, listen, this is a cold call, you can hang up if you want Chris Vos stuff. Or it's really a variance of the 27 seconds. I know I'm an interruption. Yes. Labels you as the monster. You as the invisible stranger. When you say that Hajimemashite!, like this is the first time we've spoken and had she was speaking in Japanese, she just had such a musicality of it that I thought was such a beautiful tradition to connote. I'm the stranger. You're being vulnerable here right now by picking up the phone. I want you to know that we've never met before. 

Paula White (29:46):

Wow. I love that. Wow. 

Corey Frank(29:49):

Yeah. And talk about that vulnerability that you have to have in business. We talk about it. Paula, here as we wrap up about the vulnerability you have to have to explore your side B, right? The person I have talked for years now about the vulnerability that you have to show, the courage you have to show because of this highly athletic act of cool calling here that we do here, . But I tell you what, Paul, I love to learn a little bit more. I think there is so much to be learned from these things about ourselves and the synergies and the opportunities to talk with you and Helen together. Chris, that would make a wonderful episode to have the love your team and the side B consulting here, experts in action. So Paula, we would go to paula s white.com if we wanna learn a little bit more. And side B consulting, are you on the Twitter verse everywhere else? And 

Paula White (30:44):

Connect me on LinkedIn. Paula S White, Instagram side B, and YouTube side B. What's your legacy? 

Corey Frank(30:54):

What about, 

Paula White (30:56):

I am not on TikTok. I still believe that there's more to say than 15 seconds. 

Chris Beall (31:05):

Is that what TikTok is? 15 seconds. I was unaware. Thank you for that 

Corey Frank(31:09):

Education. I don't think that would work for us then. Chris. 27 seconds is all we need. That's 

Chris Beall (31:14):

Gotta have 27, 27 

Paula White (31:17):

Seconds. 

Corey Frank(31:17):

Well Paul, it's been a pleasure. We look forward to hearing from you again on future episodes of the Market Dominance guys. And for Chris, be the sage of sales, the profit of profit, the Hawking of Hawking. This is Corey Frank. Until next time, 

Paula White (31:29):

Thank you so much.

What helps make someone an effective leader? According to our guest, Paula White, the Leadership DJ of Side B Consulting, it’s all about employing a leader’s human side along with their business side when they connect with their team. Using music and musician metaphors, Paula helps leaders discover the aspects of their flip side — Side B — which define their humanity, and how they can combine their Side B aspects with their business side to become intentionally connected with their team members. Our hosts, Corey Frank and Chris Beall, bring their own experiences as team leaders to this topic, discussing with Paula how an imbalance of power can often impede an honest exchange between a leader and his team members, and how the application of a leader’s Side B traits can diminish this. Curious to discover your own Side B? Get some insights from today’s Market Dominance Guys’ episode, “Your ‘Side B’ Is a Leadership Tool.”

About Our Guest Paula S. White is the Leadership DJ of Side B Consulting in New Albany, Ohio. Side B Consulting helps leaders combine their business-minded skills with their relationship-based people skills to more effectively lead their teams.

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Full episode transcript below:

Corey Frank (01:20):

We're back, post-Thanksgiving version of the Market Dominance Guys. Welcome to another episode of the Market Dominance Guys with Corey Frank, and, as always, the sage of sales, the prophet of profit, my personal favorite, the Stephen Hawking of hawking, right, Chris Beall. And here we have another incredible special guest. We have Miss Paula White from the Leadership DJ, raise your leadership style, and always, Chris, because generally you sit with the most interesting people at either trade shows or on a plane, or you're introduced to some of the most interesting people in sales and sales leadership today, so I can't wait to hear how you met Paula. But first, Chris, how was your Thanksgiving, good time all around?

Chris Beall (02:05):

It was grand, it was grand. And, Paula, it's fabulous to have you here. Paula, we can try to remember how we met. Paula's the only person who's ever succeeded in getting me to jump on a plane and go to Columbus, Ohio, just to have breakfast

Corey Frank (02:20):

Really? On purpose? Wow. No coercion, nothing.

Paula White (02:24):

No coercion, just maybe the Ohio State Buckeyes. Yeah.

Corey Frank (02:31):

Perfect. And so this breakfast was what a breakfast it was.

Chris Beall (02:35):

And a graduate from the Ohio State University, who has a PhD in clinical psychology, cooked our Thanksgiving turkey. There's a connection right there, Paula.

Paula White (02:48):

There it is, right there. That person cooked your Thanksgiving turkey and, unfortunately, the Buckeyes did not win and lost to Michigan, the state up north.

Chris Beall (03:01):

Well, that's actually fortunate for me because Sean McLaren, our executive chairman, is a Michigan guy, so I have to deal with him on more occasions than Paula. Paula, I'm so sorry-

Paula White (03:16):

Well-

Chris Beall (03:16):

... but out of self-interest. Paula and I met recently at the OutBound Conference, which is a tremendous conference that Jeb Blount and Anthony Iannarino, it used to be Mike Weinberg, anyway, but the Sales Hunter, Mark Hunter is there. And we met and just were having a bunch of conversations about something that's near and dear to my heart, which I'll call it the other side of sales, and she calls it Side B, and Paula's an aspiring DJ or a practicing DJ. I don't know what you are-

Paula White (03:46):

Yeah, yeah, right now, I'm aspiring.

Chris Beall (03:53):

... just as good a DJ as I am a piano player. We were just talking about a whole bunch of stuff, and it also came together in my mind in part with what Helen is doing with her book, Love Your Team: A Survival Guide for Sales Managers in a Hybrid World, Amazon bestseller in multiple categories, and so it was like, "Hey, why not get on Market Dominance Guys?" Because we talk all the time about what I'll call technique, right, but, when we had Helen on, we talked about this other side, which is the human side. We do a lot of the human side on Market Dominance Guys about what's going on in that person's mind and their gut in the first seven seconds of a conversation? Paula is helping folks discover their own human side so they can bring it into the arena, so to speak, and be a whole person and still be a fantastic performer. I think that that just led to this. Here we are. Paula, welcome.

Paula White (04:47):

Well, thank you. What an amazing, amazing introduction there. Although I will say, Chris, that our very, very, very first meeting was seven years ago at the AAISP Leadership Summit.

Chris Beall (05:04):

Was it the leadership summit or the executive retreat?

Paula White (05:07):

Oh, the executive retreat. You're right. Right.

Chris Beall (05:09):

We were sitting at the same table-

Paula White (05:11):

Same table.

Chris Beall (05:12):

... when we were being challenged to solve some problem of the world that I can't remember. Yes, that was exactly right. And we were, from the speaker's vantage point, in the back on the left table, you and I [inaudible 00:05:29].

Paula White (05:28):

Pretty close.

Chris Beall (05:29):

I was to your right and you were two seats over and then we started talking. And, Corey, that is what's wrong with me, right there?

Corey Frank (05:37):

There, there. It all came back in a flourish, right? You just had to unlock the right little [inaudible 00:05:42] cube in there, the brain, and now it all comes forth. When you say become a rockstar leader, and I really like this phrase, I want to learn more about it, called you intentionally connect to people.

Paula White (05:56):

That is correct.

Corey Frank (05:57):

What does that mean versus just a bumbling fool like me who accidentally connects with people, or what do you mean intentionally connected to people?

Paula White (06:06):

First, let me describe, if I may, if you remember these old 45s or old 45 records that had one song on it on Side A and, Side B, they recorded it, but unpublicized it, right? You had a Side A, Side B in these 45 records, and RCA started that about 1942. I decided I would think of your leadership as a Side A, because, as you know, many, many, many great hits came from Side B recordings. Your Side A is your resume building skills, all those things that you do with negotiating and budget planning and sales growth and all the things that you would put on a resume. Side B, I call your hidden hits. That's your humanity, your relationship-based, your people skills, and that's where you really start to intentionally connect with your people. And, when I say intentionally connect, it truly means understanding what your gift is as a leader, because all people are not, and I hate to ruin this or say something out there, but not all people are empathetic or vulnerable.

(07:32):

There are other Side B traits that we could tap into without making people feel that they have to be empathetic and vulnerable. There's curiosity, there's courageous, trustworthy, passionate, and once you understand what you are internally, this comes up from how you were raised, then you can intentionally connect with your people. If you are the drummer and of curious behavior, you're naturally going to be open-minded, experimenting, and communicative. What do you do? You ask a lot of questions. That's what curious people do. They ask a lot of questions of their teams, of their people, of their environment, and that's how you intentionally connect as the drummer. If you are the vocalist, then you are optimistic. You intentionally connect people with sheer optimism. That's what I mean by intentionally connect. It's really finding out what your Side B trait is.

Corey Frank (08:41):

A guy like me, with no discernible talent whatsoever, I just play the tambourine, do I have a [inaudible 00:08:47] on the side?

Paula White (08:48):

You do. It's an assessment that I have that I worked with the Harrison Group on. But we take 175 traits and we narrow them down to what your traits are specifically. You may be a drummer, even though you only play the tambourine.

Corey Frank (09:06):

Yeah. What about Chris? Now that you've spend some time with Chris, what position of the band ... is it the roadie? Is there a roadie or there's a-

Paula White (09:12):

There's a roadie? No, not a roadie this time. But, if I were to really take Chris into everything that he is, I would look at Chris as being very gracious, right, and so being gracious is just one of those skill sets that is so hard to come by. But I want to get my list here, as I'm talking to you about this, because it's so amazing. Being gracious is one of those things that we come by and he is always thinking how he can help other people. Wouldn't you agree?

Chris Beall (09:54):

No, I'm not allowed to agree with this.

Paula White (09:59):

You're not allowed to agree?

Corey Frank (10:01):

I would [inaudible 00:10:02].

Chris Beall (10:04):

It is true that, when I get up in the morning, that is my number one concern actually. I'll never forget my mom saying to me, when I was about four and I was being a little pisser, she said something that really stuck with me, she said, "Chris, there are," and I believe, at the time, it was true, "there are three billion other people in the world. There's only one of you. Do the math."

Corey Frank (10:27):

That's right.

Chris Beall (10:28):

It is true that we have a lot more opportunities to help other people than we do to help ourselves and that's a steadying thing. It's like you don't have to worry, "Gosh, I wonder if there's anybody I could be helpful to." It's like, "Eh, probably run across somebody soon enough."

Paula White (10:47):

You will. And here's the beautiful thing is the graciousness, or as I call the saxophonist because, if you think of a saxophone, it's rich and deep in tone, those essential traits that Chris taps into is open and reflective, warmth, and I'm going to say it and, Corey, I'm ready for you to come back at me, diplomatic, right? He really likes to develop and is open to a lot of different things. There are traits to avoid in these as well, and I don't see him as defensive or self-critical.

Corey Frank (11:30):

No, very, very curious, and, if you're a regular listener, which all eight of our listeners are, I think, over the years, right, you'll understand that that level of curiosity that Chris has has helped him be very successful in multiple professions and avocation as well, from mountain climbing to selling bug spray to selling Fuller Brush door to door and waiting tables. We could go on. We should do a show, as we've always threatened, one of these days, just to do dirty jobs of all the jobs that Chris has had over the years.

(12:00):

With this, Paula, my first instinct, in this hardened world of ours or so, is this, these are really, really soft, small S soft. Does that make me a weaker leader? Do I cry with my people? Because I still have this stigma where I've got to be ... we were talking about somebody, before the recording here, I don't know what role they would play in the band, Chris, it would probably be more like the one-man band. They try to do it all and they don't believe in this stuff at all. What do you say to that? Can I succeed in business or is it I have to have my B Side and my A Side to succeed in business today?

Paula White (12:37):

Well, I'm so glad you asked that question because I would love to answer that. I get that question a lot. And that's why I say you have to be both business savvy and intentionally connected because you really have to be both, taking the both/and approach to business to be successful today. Employees are looking to be valued and respected. That doesn't mean that, if their dog goes missing, that you shut down the office and go help them, but you can add a level of accountability with kindness at the same time.

(13:19):

If you were all Side A and all resume, I'm going to say, most of the time, your employees are going to think of you as very blunt, very rigid, and really not want to work with you. If you're Side B all the time, you may be seen as weak and soft and really not respected because they can get one over on you, right? The balance of both, and having that accountability with kindness or that discipline with graciousness, is really the effect of taking it to the next level where you're going to get loyalty, you're going to get productivity, you're going to get retention, which, in business, all leads to the bottom line, profitability. If we don't have that, people are starting to churn. Employees want to be respected. They want to be connected to their leaders.

Corey Frank (14:26):

Chris, I think it's so interesting. I'd love to have Paula and Miss Fanucci on a podcast too. I remember, from Helen's book, and I think I have a product placement as well, Love Your Team-

Paula White (14:40):

Nicely done.

Corey Frank (14:42):

... [inaudible 00:14:41], but she talks about the categories ... Paula, I don't know if you've had a chance to tackle Helen's book yet, but there's 17 different conversation chapters and they're broken down really succinctly into five categories, and the first category mirrors a lot with what you're talking about. It's called Conversations of Connection. And because the first thing, right, as Helen talks about, is that a manager, a leader, needs to do when they take on a new team, for instance, is make sure that they're connecting with that team, and you can't do that with just A Side type of content, I'm hearing you say

Paula White (15:15):

No, you cannot, and I usually call that, the first 30 days, a new leader needs to listen, learn, and observe, right? They need to listen to their people. They need to observe and learn, right, and get connected with them, learn about what's going to drive them. Because I'll tell you what, money doesn't drive everybody, but if I know one of my employees is looking to buy a new house or is looking to go on a vacation, I am now going to motivate that person with that connection, right, because that's where they want. If you hit your number early, my goodness, what if we gave you an extra day vacation for that vacation.

Corey Frank (16:01):

Yeah. Chris, I think Paula's on to something here too, certainly, I know Helen is too, with this concept of loving your team and focusing on the leadership style of a DJ with A Side and B Side, right? Helen talks about the two ways a new leader should talk to someone, right, when you're talking about what a traditional sales manager would do and then what a love your sales manager would do. You obviously talk ... love your team and had a conversation with Paula about this. You see a lot of the similarities there, that I think maybe this is prime for business today.

Chris Beall (16:35):

Well, I think there's two things that are interestingly similar. One is that, while we have conversations with a lot of people, a lot of the conversations we have are with the people we work with every day. In a leadership position, I think there's a fundamental deep, deep issue with those conversations, and those of us who end up with the no good deed goes unpunished, we get made CEOs or it comes to a head, so to speak, which is what I call the Lonely Minds Club problem. When you're in a leadership position, your conversations are fundamentally asymmetric and you're a little bit stuck with that, right? If somebody wants to ask me, "What's the problem with being a CEO?" and it's like you have nobody to tell you the truth. You just don't, right? And you're not obliged to tell anybody the truth, but how can you be helpful leading people if nobody's going to tell you the truth?

(17:25):

And I don't mean they never do. I just mean that, at the margin, folks are obliged to protect themselves and their careers and you hold an excess of power as a leader, which is inevitable. It's just built into the position. You can't pretend the power is not there, but you have to figure out what do I do with this asymmetry? And there's a lot of how-to in that. We'll teach you how to read P&L, right, a profit and loss statement, in business school, or we'll teach you how to even something like go to market, right? There might be step, step, step.

(17:59):

But what's the how-to that allows you to bring out the side of yourself that allows folks at the margin to tell you the truth and to allow you to help them without them being suspicious of your motives, because that's actually how you take teams to the next level. That's where the magic is is you can't abandon the position. The position is fundamentally corrupt. The position of leader is fundamentally corrupt because you have access to power that other people don't have and, therefore, at the margin, you're always tempted to use it. Now you can't deny that position, but what do you do with it?

(18:38):

And something that Paula is suggesting, I think, in a strong way, and something Helen talks about, is counter that problem that you have of being the leader with a solution that includes who you really are, and that's a different approach. Helen's approach is very much ... it's a cookbook, "Here is the step-by-step," remember, she's a mechanical engineer, Here's the step-by-step to handle this kind of conversation, this kind, this kind. This is when you do it and this is how you do it and this is how you know if they happen," right? She doesn't talk much about what's inside of you, other than to say, "If it's not there, don't do the job, right? If it's not there, self-select and do something else for a living," right?

(19:20):

Paula is actually going about it from the other side and saying, "Well, know what's inside of you so you can consciously and intentionally bring it out in connecting with other people," knowing that the connecting with other people, the building of relationships, the ability to work together honestly, which is the hardest part of business. How do you work together honestly, when you have too much power with somebody that has less power than you? It's always a runaway train. It's the boulder that wants to go down the hill. You know where it's going to go, right? How do you do that? And she's suggesting, "Well, flip the record over and play the other side, not your greatest hits, how you got here, but who you are, which is still in there somewhere."

Chris Beall (20:45):

I think. Right, Paula? Is it something along those lines?

Paula White (20:50):

Exactly. You are speaking my language, exactly. I say Side B as a metaphor, but also as a tool, because I think sometimes we need to understand who we are on the inside, and not just by words, but by feelings. And what's the best way to feel, it's to listen to music, and music because it is the universal language. Now some people like to paint, some people like to do other things, but music is around us every day.

(21:23):

When you're grocery shopping, intentionally listen to the music that they put on their sound system, when you're in a restaurant. Those are specifically there to set a mood, right? When you're getting ready to go into a big meeting, let's say, with your boss, with your people, I talk about taking that one song of yours that's going to get you in that mood so that you can enter that room from a place that's authentically you, bringing your whole self in, and not ready to defend your position, but to listen, right?

Corey Frank (22:03):

It takes a little bit of courage though, doesn't it? If I'm not around necessarily, somebody's got to go first. From a cultural perspective, there could be a lot of risk inherent to that. How do I bypass that? How do I find that cheat code to just ... it's okay to be my authentic self on the Side B?

Paula White (22:20):

First thing to do is put together your leadership playlist, right? Write down the moods that you select or that you're fully aware of while you're at work. Would it be that you're disrupted, that you get angry, that you're joyful? What are those specific moods that you have? You're stressed, you're overwhelmed. And find one song that's going to get you out of that for each one of those moods and create a leadership playlist. It should not be longer than 10 songs because the last thing we want to do is go down a rabbit hole, right? Start that way. Another way is to play your favorite playlist on your way to work to get yourself prepped for that. Then, on the way home, play a playlist that's going to get you prepped for home. Those are the ways that we can use music as a tool.

(23:15):

But, as a metaphor, I'm not sure we're going to be able to change the culture as it is right this minute, but we can start with our emerging leaders, the ones who want that respect, who want that value, who want to be seen, and we start coaching them on their Side B skills and their Side B traits and how to understand that those can be used and, actually, when they are used, they're very powerful. If I'm talking to a CEO today, the first thing I'm talking about is bottom line, profitability, productivity, retention. They're having trouble keeping people. Why is that? Well, people don't like to work. People want to be flexible. People don't want to come back to the office. That's not necessarily true. People want to be seen and valued.

(24:16):

Again, it's not that you're going to go out and hunt for the dog, but you're going to care about that dog when that person comes in, right? And, yes, some people will strike the iron saying, "You're weak. You're motherly," I don't know how many times I've been told I was motherly, "You're nurturing." That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying you've got to use both. You've got to use both your business savvy skills and your intentionally connected skills, and you're going to get the retention, you're going to get the profitability, and your P&L is going to look a lot better.

Corey Frank (24:57):

Well, Chris, you come from the venture world, private equity world, entrepreneur-in-residence, hired gun as a CEO. You probably had to turn around many cultures that you've been a part of, or asked to participate in, either as a board observer or member or an investor. What do you say to that? How do you get that sense where a culture is just missing the Side B and that usually is maybe one of the largest constraints that they have in that system?

Chris Beall (25:27):

Here's a test that I tended to do. It's like let's look at the problem that we're solving. And somebody just told me, "Draw the circle on the whiteboard and have no name in it. This is us, right? This is what we do. A little arrow comes out of it and there's a little stick figure. Who is that person that we help? What is that thing that we provide? How much money do they make or lose when that little arrow ships something to them, so to speak?" I'm not really asking the question. Usually, it's a pretty obvious answer. What I want to know is, can we talk about it together? It's like making music together. Can we talk about it harmoniously? Can we enjoy the conversation? Can we agree and disagree? Can we be confused? Can we do all the things that it takes in order to start to work together within a conversation?

(26:20):

I'm much more focused on the mood. Are we being honest with each other? Is it fun? Can we poke fun at each other? Do people know each other's little foibles and, without being mean, can they point them out in the way that people who are really on a team can do? Everybody thinks somebody else is funny in a particular way, right? I just think that that's the essence of making teams work. Teams work when teams can work together. And, most of the time, when things aren't going well, folks retreat into their own corners and then they can't work together on the hard stuff. They can only work on their own job. But, until you can work together, you can't really work on the hard stuff, and the hard stuff is always out there. It's always there. It's either something competitive, or you've run into the limits of your ability to make the system that you've built build, or you've got a scale issue, or you've got a quality issue or whatever it happens to be. How do you work together on it?

(27:18):

You got to learn to sing together. And I actually think the song that I listen for, in a group like that, is honest laughter. When you come right down to it, if you're not having fun, you're not taking it seriously enough. And getting to the point where you can have fun together is the essence of making teams actually work. There's no such thing as a grim team working effectively together, right, "I hate you, you hate me, but we're going to get this done," kind of thing, right, or big boss is hitting us with the whip and making us go in the same direction. Well, at some point, we're going to cut the traces and we're going to go somewhere else.

(28:02):

But I love this idea of Paula's about the music, by the way. As you know, Corey, I'm an occasional musician, right? As I asked Helen on the podcast the other day, I said, "You got married this summer, didn't you?" And she said, "Yes, and it was so nice of you to show up and play the piano." [inaudible 00:28:19]. I'm not a very good musician, but I'm a big believer in the power of music to get inside of us without us having to invite it in.

(28:32):

And it's something we talk about on Market Dominance Guys with regard to the nature of the cold call and information. When we speak with somebody, the music of our voice goes directly into their mid-brain at 20,000 bits a second. That's four emails a second that are going into that person. It's mostly in the song and very little of it's in the lyrics. That is the words we put in the script are a very small part of what we communicate to somebody with a purpose, and the purpose is to help them trust us enough that we can explore helping them with their business problem. Step one is trust. Act zero is ambush. We go from between ambush and trust. Well, we sing to them.

(29:20):

I remember being in a board meeting once at a company that I was asked to come in and help, and this is a company that I wasn't allowed to know who it was. I was given an address to go to. And so I went to this address and the person who opened the door expected me and they put me in a room and I sat in the room for half an hour and then some people came in and I listened to what they had to say. And, when it came time to ask me and a couple other people what they thought, they got to me and I said, "Well, your problem is your product is a fake, right? It's completely fake. It's just a bunch of fancy slides and there's a fake."

(29:59):

They hired me and stuff like that, and I went to the first board meeting and came out and this brilliant guy I worked with said, "What did you just do to those people?" I said, "What do you mean?", a venture board, he says, "You changed your voice and you sang a song to them that caused them to decide not to shut us down." And I think that, to me ... music done by professional musicians is especially compelling, that's why they're professional musicians, but when it comes to actually interacting with people and helping them along the way of working with us, it's actually the music of our voice that is going to carry the burden. We can't actually go to the professional musician, say, "In the meeting today, what we're going to do is we're going to listen to Stairway to Heaven and the P&L is going to go crazy." But we do sing to each other all the time and we feel different and can act differently and can actually be a little bit different when somebody helps us out with the way they use their voice with us.

Paula White (31:15):

I agree with that 100% because it's like being in the recording studio. Everyone that comes in needs to check their ego at the door and whatever comes out is the best idea and that is really where it comes to. If you were to go into a boardroom and ask them, "Name a song that describes your company right now," they would be all over the place, but, by the end of the meeting, you want them all singing that same song and that song being the same.

When you’re nearing the end of the quarter, especially the fourth quarter, do you tend to panic and offer a discount in order to close any deals hanging fire? Oren Klaff, New York Times bestselling author of Pitch Anything and Flip The Script, discusses the downside of this neediness on today’s Market Dominance Guys podcast. Our two hosts, Chris Beall and Corey Frank, explore with Oren what happens to the status you have so carefully built with your prospective customer if you blatantly display just how needy and desperate you are to close the deal. Does showing your soft underbelly increase your chance of closing the deal? Or does your neediness kill the deal altogether? Oren’s advice is to stick to the sales process — and HOLD, no matter what. Join these three sales analysts as they caution the sales reps of the world about the pitfalls of a needy mindset when a sales deadline is looming on today’s Market Dominance Guys’ episode, “Hold Everything!”

----more----

More Marketet Dominance Guys episodes with Oren Klaff here:

https://marketdominanceguys.com/category/guest-oren-klaff 

About Our Guest

Oren Klaff is one of the world's leading experts on sales, raising capital, and negotiation. He is the New York Times bestselling author of two sales-related books, Flip The Script and Pitch Anything: An Innovative Method for Presenting, Persuading, and Winning the Deal. Employing his securities markets experience in capital-raising advisory leadership, Oren is Managing Director of Capital Markets at the investment bank Intersection Capital, where he manages its capital-raising platform. Since 2005, Oren has grown the firm to approximately $2 billion in aggregate trade volume across a diversified portfolio of companies and transactions.

Full episode transcript below:

Announcer (00:05):

Welcome to another session with the Market Dominance Guys. A program exploring all the high stake speed bumps and off-ramps of driving to the top of your market with our host Chris Beall from ConnectAndSell and Corey Frank from Branch49.

(00:21):

When you're nearing the end of the quarter, especially the fourth quarter, you tend to panic and offer a discount in order to close any deals hanging fire or in clap. New York Times bestselling author of Pitch Anything and Flip the Script discusses the downside of this neediness on today's Market Dominance Guys Podcast. Our two hosts, Chris Beal and Corey Frank, explore with Oren what happens to the status you have so carefully built with your prospective customer if you blatantly display just how needy and desperate you are to close the deal.

(00:51):

Does showing your soft underbelly increase your chance of closing the deal? Or does your neediness kill the deal altogether? Oren's advice is to stick to the sales process and hold no matter what. Join these three sales analysts as they caution the sales reps of the world about the pitfalls of a needy mindset when the sales deadline is looming, on today's Market Dominance Guys episode Hold Everything.

Corey Frank (01:20):

And here we are. Welcome to another episode of the Market Dominance Guys with Corey Frank and the sage of sales, the prophet of profits, the hawking of Hawking, does that make sense? And we have, Oren, I'm sorry I don't have any nicknames I've rehearsed in my shower for the last few weeks for you, we have Oren Klaff, best-selling author of Pitch Anything, Flip the Script, and Sales Connoisseur. I don't know, that's all I got. So welcome, Chris, we got to a great special guest in the hotseat today and what brings the three of us together? What could possibly top the last podcast we did? Oh I don't know, a short six, eight months ago or so. We probably have something to announce, do we not, Oren, Chris, that we could talk to a little later in the podcast?

Chris Beall (02:07):

I think we do. For one thing, let me just point out, I recommend some sales books but I don't force any of them down anybody's throat except for Flip the Script. And the reason I do is Flip the Script says, "Don't force this book down somebody's throat," and I just love the delicious irony of utterly failing to apply every single principle in this book while pushing this book on people. I don't know, the dynamic tension in that just works for me.

Corey Frank (02:36):

It's like don't push this button [inaudible 00:02:39].

Chris Beall (02:39):

Yeah, it's like peeps, look, if you have only two books you can read in this coming year and for some of you that is a stretch, read Flip the Script and learn how to do simple things like get a little status alignment going and learn how to flash roll. I'm still trying to teach our people how to flash roll. They tend to want to drift into teaching at that point. Learn how to flash roll. And then when you're done with all that and you realize that you're not going to do all this, that you're a manager and your people are going to do it, pick up Helen Fanucci's Love Your Team and go and read that, and you put those two together, and I don't know, I'm not going to be responsible for you failing, I'm just not going to be responsible.

Oren Klaff (03:18):

In the military, those super sauced up guys, so calm guys, they have these banana clips they put in the clip, and then they shoot the 28 bullets or where the 30 bullets are that clip, and then they flip it right around, and then they shove the next clip in because it's already attached. I feel like Flip the Script and then Love Your Team, you shove that in, you shoot all those 30 bullets, you're out, then flip it over, and then Love Your Team flips in.

Corey Frank (03:42):

I love it. That's right. Well, hey, I thought getting you two fine gentlemen together, here we are coming up on the end of another quarter and the end of another year coming up in Q4, and Oren, we always talk about no neediness, right? I think what you've hit me over the head for the years we've known each other. Chris, certainly that's what you talk about on this podcast many, many times.

(04:04):

But here we are coming up at the end of the year and so I wanted to grab you two gentlemen and talk, certainly maybe about a pending event that we have coming up, but also what do you do so we don't just drop the price and create all these insulting kind of promotions to finish the year strong but still have a little pipeline left going into Q1. So, from a neediness perspective or what are you going to think to that?

Oren Klaff (04:28):

I like to think in visuals. There was this movie, The Perfect Storm, towards the end they're like going up this wave and however, they shot this wave is like a thousand times bigger than the boat, and they're going straight up it. The captain's telling the kid at the wheel to hold because he wants to turn it, and he's going, "Hold!" And they're climbing up this wave and it's just terrifying. He wants to turn, "Hold, hold, hold." That's what I think is like [inaudible 00:04:52], is you want to turn the boat, you want to turn around, you want to run to safety, and you need Corey, or me, or Chris get saying, "Hold, don't turn the wheel, just hold." Right? And you get yourself in this impossible situation in which there's no possible way to get out. But you have somebody who's been in that situation saying, "Hold, don't be needy, don't turn the wheel." And then it becomes, "Now! Turn the wheel."

(05:23):

But you have to be able to hold through that period where most other people would cave, collapse, run away scared, start discounting. So, if you could remember, hold your position. If you built the position but then you're afraid of the position you built and back away from it, you haven't done any good. You cannot be needy. I don't care if this is the last account on earth for you, because the other side of being needy is it definitely will not close. You have to hold strong, hold. Get a tattoo on your forearm. I mean, I'm not advocating that you get a tattoo, but go ahead and get a tattoo that says hold, based on this podcast and Corey will sign it for you. I don't want my name on it because I don't know who you're married to, but you know.

Corey Frank (06:15):

All right. Chris, from your perspective, you have obviously ConnectAndSell. You have a weapon that brings more prospects to your doorstep, more than they can even handle. So, what do you tell your clients, your fellow CEOs, your fellow CROs, CEOs, VPs of sales, when they come to this time of the year that, "Hey, I can bring you the prospects, I can bring the conversations to you, but be careful you don't do x."

Chris Beall (06:42):

Well, one of the things is there's a mathematical thing, right? It's like driving on a one-lane road. You have a problem. And that is if anybody's slow in front of you, then you got to decide to either be as slow as they are or go off-road. And sometimes you got to go off-road, and sometimes you got to go up the wave, and sometimes you got to hold and hold and hold. A really good idea, and it's getting a little late, but a good idea is to just, if you widen a little, you widen a lot. That is, if your portfolio is a little bit bigger, it's a lot bigger. And that's just the way it is. With risk management, we all think, "Oh, if I add one more opportunity to my one opportunity, I've reduced the risk by something." You don't know what it is.

(07:29):

You've cut it in half, my friend. But you add a third one and you actually cut it two less than a third. Now, you've cut it to one over three to the third. Ooh, you've cut it to by 26, 27th. Life gets a lot better because you only need one lane to go down. Now, do you need it or not need it? Well, you might need it but you better not act like you need it because it's like Oren drives the best cars. And when Oren shooting a gap between two cars or he's making a decision to pass in someplace that's a little tiny bit marginal or whatever, once he makes that decision, he's got to actually hold that line. He can't kind of half unmake the decision part way into whatever it is that that maneuver is, right?

(08:19):

There's just a rule in all, I'll call them ballistic acts. A ballistic act is where the performance outcome, the thing you want, depends on what came before, therefore what came before, therefore what came before. It starts somewhere and once you commit to it you're really screwed unless you go through with it. I used to be, Corey, and Oren keeps trying to forget, I used to be a very serious rock climber mountaineer, and there's a word used in climbing and there's a word that's used as an adjective and it's used as a noun. As an adjective, the word committed. That's a really committed route means once you start you better finish it or you're toast. You start that move, you got to finish the move. That's like the same thing. It's like look, once you're here and you're in a committed situation, you have to ignore all outcomes and you simply have to go; that's just a truth of the world.

Oren Klaff (09:16):

And so I think what happens is ultimately we tell people run the process. And so if they go, "I forgot the process," or, "What process?" Then there's a problem. But if you have a process and you just go, yeah, outcome independent, don't be needy, run the process, trust the process, and then if you don't like still the nervousness that brings with it, then have Chris bring you lots of other pipelines. So, we run that process in a very high stakes, high tension situation where there's a couple of leads, we got to close two out of four. And it's very challenging.

(09:54):

That's where we learned this never be needy, but if we know Chris is going to bring us another 18, then we're flipping. We come to meetings in T-shirts, we say things we wouldn't, we take risks we otherwise wouldn't take. We come late, we come early, we do what we want because we're like, "Yeah, that didn't work out. Let's not do that again. But still, Hey Chris, bring that wheel barrel over here. Jumps some more leads off." We just figured out a couple of things that are not going to work, so the great thing is if you have a process you can run it, that allows you to hold and stay the course. But if you can run a process and you've got pipeline, there's a name for that.

(10:29):

I'm not sure how it's pronounced in German, or Swiss, or whatever you speak, Chris, but in English we call it a business. Where you have prospects, you have a process, you've got a technique in which you can close them, and then you also have new leads coming in case something goes wrong, you don't close the lead that you wanted to. That's called a business.

Corey Frank (10:51):

Oren, talk a little bit about with neediness, we've had a number of conversations about this, you need some status with that neediness. And I think that if you built up a good status in your previous conversations with this prospect, with this company, with this executive team, you're expecting that status is going to hold, right? But as you've always talked and you've written about, it's temporary, and so you need to establish it throughout. And it seems like a lot of sales reps will abandon all that status they've worked to hold and maintain at the last month of the year, the last few weeks of the year to try to get a deal.

Oren Klaff (11:29):

Yeah, I think there's one way to address this. Okay, yes, we're having an event... Sorry, what was your question?

(11:42):

Let me try to run this down. So, Chris, Corey, and I said let's have an event and it was in June and it became July and then it became August. Back then in August, August we could've had any event, like Chris and Corey debate politics and crypto, and that would've been a good event. Then it became September, end of the year, busy. We didn't do the event. So finally we got serious. We said it's now.

(12:06):

All right, December and we're still having an event. And then Corey pointed out, it better be really good if we're going to have an event in December. So yes, we're having a really good event in December. Actually, it's too good because when you hear about it. The event's too good when I don't want to speak at it, I just want to go to it and benefit from the event. Because like hey, my business can use the event, but I'm actually in the event and part of it, but I'm too busy to do what I'm doing at the event for our own business. So, this thing is amazing and I really want to be there. So status.

Oren Klaff (13:32):

I think what happens is salespeople very carefully and intuitively curate their status going in. And so they appoint themselves well, they give a good presentation, but now you're sort of a move out of your domain into their domain and people come out of nowhere that know more than you. It's like a video game. You're going up higher levels and bigger bosses come out. My favorite analogy, as you know, is you think you're fighting the boss to win the level and this giant foot comes out of nowhere and crushes the boss you're fighting, right? The big boss cares so little about... He just crushes his own team, and what's going on here? And that's where salespeople lose their status is where somebody who has much stronger frame, much more expertise, much more knowledge, and actually controls the contract comes out of nowhere. And that's where status goes to die.

(14:29):

And I think it's not a status event, but we're definitely covering how to hold your status not at the beginning, because there's like no teaching about status that you need at the beginning, right? Yeah, I dress good. I talk politely. I have a presentation. Everybody can hold it together at the beginning until the stress comes on. And then the things we're talking about, never be needy, hold your status together, make sure you've got pipeline, widen your lane, stuff that Chris and Corey know how to do really come together once you're later in the deal and there's real stressors.

(15:05):

And if you think about it, last thing then I'll turn back over to you, you're at the beginning of a deal all the time, right? There's a lot more first downs than there are fourth downs, I think. I'm not sure. We'll have to check that. But anyway, you're at the beginning of deals all the time and so you're good at the beginning. Chris and I had a call with Andreson, one of the big venture firms today, which is great, but how often are you on a call with Andreson Horowitz versus on a call with somebody about something? So, you're good at beginnings, but how good are you at controlling those later stages when status falls apart, you fall apart?

Chris Beall (15:41):

[inaudible 00:15:41]. That remind me of a story by the way.

Corey Frank (15:42):

Go ahead, Chris.

Chris Beall (15:43):

There's a story [foreign language 00:15:44].

Oren Klaff (15:44):

A story about our event?

Chris Beall (15:46):

Yeah, this is a story [inaudible 00:15:49]. This is the kind of thing you learn at this event is to do what's in the story. So, first of all, this event is so important, I might actually show up. I might not because I have a very dear family member who's having surgery the day before and might need my care, and I'll be approximately 1400 miles away, but I could be there. The story is sometimes you have to be somewhere else in New York. You find yourself at the end, you don't even know it's going to be the end. So this particular story, I was called by the general counsel of the General Electric Company who told me, "I need to talk to you and I need to talk to you tomorrow."

(16:23):

And so it was a Sunday. I went and did my usual thing. I was living in Denver, went down to the airport, asked them at the red carpet club where I was going. They told me. I got on an airplane, I got off, I went into a building up there in Connecticut. And the general counsel of General Electric put me in a room, a big boardroom, the one right under the CEO's office, right under Jack Law's office. And he sat down and he dressed like Mr. Rogers, which I think was one of his best tricks. And he literally pounded the table, which I thought was hilarious.

(16:54):

I almost laughed out loud, but I held it. "You are destroying the General Electric Company." Now, that's a case where you're kind of at the end because this had to do with a huge renewal opportunity for 11 out of the 12 general electric companies. Now, what are you going to do there? You must have something wired into you that allows you to hold your status. And I have a fondness for humor. I just said, "Well, there must be some amount of money you'd like to pay me to get me to stop destroying the General Electric Company." It's an example.

Oren Klaff (17:29):

That's where he pressed the button underneath this desk, and security came in, escorted you out the building.

Chris Beall (17:34):

No, no. He started laughing. And you know what? We ended up doing the deal I wanted to do.

Oren Klaff (17:39):

Oh, I have a great story about the other call that I have to be on right now [inaudible 00:17:48]. The good news, well, so the bad news is it's not a good story. The good news, it's a very short one. Corey, can you run down the dates of the event and a little bit of information for people and then I will call both of you in a while.

Corey Frank (18:00):

Yes. We are going to do this on December 7th and December 8th coming up here in a very short period of time. And what we're going to do is we're going to put you and your existing sales process through the ringer. We're going to take and rip up your sales script, turn it into a screenplay, and start from scratch building up a brand new December Q4 sales machine for you with a screenplay that's tailored to your business. And Chris's team, Oren's team, our team, the Branch 49 team, we're going to walk you through step by step through this Pitch Anything formula, through the best practices and how we create a screenplay, and apply it to the industry and business. So the best part, Chris, right, Oren, as you know, is we're going to perfect your pitch and you're going to practice it.

(18:45):

If this is your first time at Fight Club, you will fight. If it's your first time dialing with ConnectAndSell, you will dial and we're going to jump right on the phones right alongside you. And by the end of the event, you're going to have a brand new pitch process. You're going to have a brand new screenplay that drives qualified leads back to you that are ready to buy. And we are going to guarantee that you're going to close enough meetings to at least equal the cost of the event, or Chris's team, orange team, our team, we're going to work with you until you do. That's a pretty good guarantee, would you say, Chris?

Chris Beall (19:20):

That's crazy. Corey, has anybody ever in the history of, I don't know, life on Earth, have they ever actually done this particular kind of event? This exact thing.

Corey Frank (19:32):

I recall when you visited our sales team at my previous company, you swooped in with the jump boots and one or two of your cohorts, and you walked us through a mini version of this. I think this was one of the origins, I know you've had others, of the flight school because as soon as we started utilizing the weapon of ConnectAndSell, and I think it was the first monosyllabic construction we put together, you said, "Stop. What are you saying? Stop. Don't ever say that again."

(20:00):

And you completely deconstructed and then built up our screenplay to an effective breakthrough screenplay that changed the trajectory of our business. And hence, since many thousands of folks in flight school later, many thousands of folks at our Pitch Anything events later, many thousands of events or phone calls that we've made here at Branch 49, I think we're pretty dialed in on how to do cold outreach.

Chris Beall (20:27):

And it's fascinating to me because some people don't like that word, cold outreach. They think it implies, well, I don't know, it's December and it's cold or something like that. Or maybe you don't like people, you're so cold when you're reaching out. Of course, it's technical. It's a term of art. It means outreach to people you haven't spoken with before. And if you have half a brain in your head, these are people that you would like to speak with. You have a hypothesis and that is a conversation with anybody on that list of people, anybody in that target set has a reasonable shot of moving forward to something better than where you are than talking to a random person. That's not a big hypothesis. That's an important one. What's so interesting to me, and this is what this event is going to be about, is it doesn't have anything specifically to do with what you're selling.

(21:15):

It has to do with one universal truth, which is you're speaking to a human being and that is bedrock. That's the thing I always come back to and somebody goes, "Well, does it work in this industry? That industry?" We don't want to come to this thing like that because what we do is we sell something so high value, customized, so bespoke, so thought through, that nothing that you guys could teach us or that we could practice in an event like this could possibly fit us.

(21:46):

But you know what? It's kind of like a pair of gloves. As long as I know you have fingers, even if you're missing one or say, you have an extra one because well, maybe you do. Maybe somebody killed your father and they should prepare to die, but you still have got something that pretty much looks like a hand, it's going to fit pretty much in a glove and you're about to go pretty much out into 20 below and you're better off with gloves than with no gloves. You're going into a world where it's better to have something on your hands. And that's really where we're taking it, that's what's cold, is that world you're going into. I think it's going to be quite a fascinating experience for folks. I dearly do hope I can physically show up. It's extremely inconvenient.

Corey Frank (22:32):

Well, it's your weapon. It is your weapon and probably a member or two of your team. So, ConnectAndSell will be represented fully in spirit and in practice. And you're mentioning cold outreach, Chris, I think maybe we could finish with this concept because we've talked about it a lot. I know the esteemed Jerry Hale posted something on LinkedIn several months ago about this concept of survivorship bias and particularly how germane that is probably to Q4. Listen, we've always done a discount at the end of Q4. We've always extended our contracts for another month to allow our folks to make it easier to jump on board. So, maybe just talk a little bit about not just cold outreach in the approach, but how survivorship bias really kind of diminishes your opportunity to grow as a sales organization because of that's how we've always done it this way.

Chris Beall (23:25):

Survivorship bias is funny because everybody I think, I hope they know the story. It was invented as a concept looking at the damage done to bombers that were flying over Germany in World War II. And the ones that came back that where they had the holes in them, what they were doing is basically saying, "Well, this is where they got hit. We should put armor there." And that's incorrect. This is where they got hit and they made it back. So, those places don't need armor. Put more armor in the places where they got hit and didn't make it back.

(24:00):

Now, it's a little actually more challenging to figure out what that really means, but anything's better than putting armor in a place that you didn't need it, because we know it always adds weight. So, when we come to the end of a quarter or a year and we're looking at last year and we're going, "Well this worked last year." What worked is like a plane coming back, it "worked."

(24:26):

Do we really know which part of the plane went down? Or the ones that didn't work and are maybe it was one of those that would've made it? Did we even select correctly which deals to focus on and where to put our armor, so to speak? Survivorship bias is the most insidious, I think, of the intellectual failings that we embrace in groups. So, groupthink is bad, but groupthink is amplified by survivorship bias because we can all see the same thing and seeing as believing. We reason in very simple ways about these situations and the simplest way is let's do what we did last year.

Corey Frank (25:06):

Yeah, absolutely. Well, we've talked about false positive versus false negatives and how most organizations... I think we talked about this with Jeb when we were on the phone, is that how most organizations look at false positives and they should be, similar to survivorship bias, looking at the false negatives, correct?

Chris Beall (25:22):

Yeah, false negatives kill businesses. False positive, they cost you a little something, you have to do some work that you throw away. Dying is not as attractive, frankly, as doing some work you throw away. Now, the fact of the matter is management of ignorance is what it's all about. And it's really interesting. If you want to hold, you want to do it what Oren said, which is hold, one of the things you oddly have to do to be so committed is you have to embrace your ignorance. You have to admit you don't actually know based on the information you're getting right now, what your reaction should be.

(25:58):

And since you don't know, your best course action is probably to be proactive, to run your process. P-R-O, as the beginning of both of those words because your lack of knowledge is actually your savior, in this case. It's like, "I don't know, so I may as well do what we decided to do, whatever that happens to be." And it is that change of course. It's like, "well, what if we offer them a discount right now?" I have a couple of them right now. I've got a couple of deals that are... One of them, one of my very best customers will expire at the end of the day. I'm sitting here talking to you.

Corey Frank (26:38):

That's right. That's right. Well, I'm sure the rep on the deal is...

Chris Beall (26:42):

I am the rep.

Corey Frank (26:43):

Oh, you're the rep, too. Even better.

Chris Beall (26:44):

Well, we have another principle here, and I think a lot of people practice it, but we're pretty hard over here at ConnectAndSell. We all sell from the front lines and we don't sell the special deals. We just sell deals. And in fact, I sell the most experimental deals. The ones that are the weirdest. People turn their nose up at and go, "Why'd you do that?" Because I can endure the most reputational damage without being damaged. Being the CEO, as long as you hold and people make fun of you like, "Oh, that's a stupid deal. That was idiotic." It's like, yeah, well, it's part of my job is to explore the possible on behalf of all of us. Som I get to go to the top of some mountain that turns out there was nothing over on the other side that was worthwhile, but I'm kind of a sunk cost, right? As the CEO, you kind of a sunk cost.

(27:30):

So, we sell from the front lines, but one of the reasons we do it is that there's a hidden set of signals that go on in a company that cause reps to waiver. And it's this thing that says, "Hey, do the right thing in the deal. Go do the right thing." We all know what that is. Oh, and by the way, make the number no matter what. It's like those are a little bit at odds with you there and that's fine. I mean, dynamic tension is the essence of good stories, but at some point you have to decide what are we going to do as a company? What's our real goal? Was it to make this number?

(28:07):

It's very rare, by the way, that making a specific number on a specific date makes all the difference. I'll never forget my eldest, and I think I told this story once in a previous episode, we were in a meeting and everybody's talking about it, making this number on this date and all these numbers, numbers, numbers, numbers. And we came out and my eldest kid, Serenity, at the time said, "So, dad, I have a question." I said, "what's the question?" She said, "Well, do they think by talking about the numbers, they're going to change them?"

(28:43):

And I said, "Yes, they do." And she thought for a while said, "That's really sad," and walked off and led me over to Starbucks for hot chocolate. Talking about the stuff is actually a bad habit. Talking about what's going to close, talking about when it's going to close, talk, talk, talk, talks a bad habit. Go run the process and take your spare time and fill up with other opportunities because they'll make you stronger.

Corey Frank (29:09):

One of my good friends, our good friends, Robert Vera always talks about you can't out exercise your fork. So, as much as you want to do a lot of activity, you got to make sure that the biggest constraint in your system is tackled and it takes... You're a mathematician and a physician. It takes 3,500 calories to burn every pound of fat. These are the laws of thermodynamics. The same for celestial mathematics and the laws of physics. And those exist in client acquisition and revenue. And you have to eliminate that biggest constraint in your system, as we've said time and again. And for most folks, it's establishing that trust-based conversation game at scale and no conversations, no product-market fit, no conversations, no core Q4 achievement, no ticket, no laundry, right? And so if you're not doing five to six pitches in your tam, as you said many times, guess what? Somebody else is.

Chris Beall (30:05):

And those are the good ones.

Corey Frank (30:05):

[inaudible 00:30:07].

Chris Beall (30:07):

Most are the good ones. It's prima facie evidence that they're good. They're actually happening. [inaudible 00:30:16]. And it's so fascinating when folks talk about the quality versus quantity thing, and there's all these sort of notions that people have like, "Oh, if I just think harder about the quality, then there'll be better meetings." Embrace your ignorance. Your ignorance is your friend. Freedom is your friend. Just go in knowing nothing and have a conversation.

(30:38):

I mean, you know one thing. You have a range of capabilities, you have a range of things that you could bring to bear. You're representing your company, that's why you're called a rep. You're representing what your company's capable of doing. Now, you know what that range of capabilities are, but you really don't know where the problems for the other person or the challenges, the gaps where they are. Okay, your ignorance is your friend. That's what enables you to be curious and ask those curiosity-based questions. And when you're needy, you want to see where neediness shows up first. Neediness kills more deals in discovery, then it kills at the end of a year by a lot. Not a little.

Corey Frank (31:23):

There you go. Absolutely. Well, I think we also need to mention the event one more time since Oren's not on here, right?

Chris Beall (31:31):

Yeah, when is it?

Corey Frank (31:33):

December 7th and December 8th at the Top Gun Studios in Carlsbad, California.

Chris Beall (31:37):

Wow.

Corey Frank (31:38):

Yes. Sunny, sunny California, right on the beach. You've had many events over the years there, Chris, you've been there many times. We'll try to maybe take a few of the cars out for a spin, maybe a couple of Ducati's since Oren's not on here, we can guarantee that. We'll have a blast. We're limiting it. If you would like some more information, please reach out to me at corey@branch49.com. Go to orenklaff.com, go to chris.beal@connectandsell.com. christ.beall, correct?

Chris Beall (32:06):

Yeah, chris.beall.

Corey Frank (32:09):

[inaudible 00:32:09]. Okay, great. And with that, Chris, I think we're going to put together another episode in the can here, since we do have our own Q4. Of course, you're not sitting around, you're waiting for the prospects to come to you. So, if he buys, he buys. It's only your number one client. We'll wait to hear how that story ends in the next episode. So for Chris Beall, this is Corey Frank with the Market Dominance Guys. Until next time.

Chris Beall (32:34):

All right, thanks, Corey.

“It costs five times more to get a new client than to keep one you already have.” Today, Rick Elmore, Founder and CEO of Simply Noted, elaborates on his commitment to customer retention and to his company’s practice of over-delivery with our Market Dominance Guys’ host, Chris Beall. Rick believes that building relationships with clients is vital to any company’s success, so he begins by onboarding each new customer himself, answering all the frequently asked questions, and personally checking back to make sure the customer’s initial experience with Simply Noted’s products and services is a happy one. “When you’re truly on your client’s side, they’ll hear it in your voice,” Rick explains. Listen to this podcast, and you too will hear the commitment to customer retention in Rick’s voice in today’s Market Dominance Guys’ episode, “Focus on Over-Delivery.”

About Our Guest

Rick Elmore is founder and CEO of Simply Noted in Tempe, Arizona, a company that utilizes software and robotic technology to create personalized handwritten notes for its 300,000 monthly users.

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Full episode transcript below:

Announcer (00:06):

Welcome to another session with the Market Dominance Guys. A program exploring all the high-stakes speed bumps and off ramps of driving to the top of your market, with our host Chris Beall from ConnectAndSell and Corey Frank from Branch 49.

(00:23):

It costs five times more to get a new client than to keep one you already have. Today, Rick Elmore, Founder and CEO of Simply Noted elaborates on his commitment to customer retention and to his company's practice of over-delivery with our Market Dominance Guys' host, Chris Beall. Rick believes that building relationships with clients is vital to any company's success, so he begins by onboarding each new customer himself, answering all the frequently asked questions and personally checking back to make sure the customer's initial experience with Simply Noted's products and services is a happy one. "When you're truly on your client's side, they'll hear it in your voice." Rick explains. Listen to this podcast, and you too will hear the commitment to customer retention in Rick's voice in today's Market Dominance Guys' episode, Focus on Over-Delivery.

Chris Beall (01:20):

Pretty fascinating. Here's a modern problem. So we have this massive work from home thing that showed up in 2020. We actually got to watch it, the day everybody went home in our customer base. We knew what day it was. It was like everything still worked, which was pretty cool. We thought that was amazing. Our people who navigate these phone calls all went home too. That shocked me that that worked. We dodged more than a bullet that particular day, because at 200,000 plus dials navigated a day by human beings. You got to have people who can navigate those styles and suddenly there are centers they were working at. We didn't know that had happened. But now I'm kind of looking at it going, okay, everybody's going to work from home. My wife's book, Love Your Team, A Survival Guide for sales managers in a hybrid world, in a hybrid world means a bunch of people are working from home.

(02:06):

How do you solve that problem of knowing how to get to them working from home? People send stuff to me in my office in Los Gatos and I will go there, something on the order of twice this year maybe. Partially because when you set foot in California, they tax you for that day of work, but for some other reasons too. What do you do there? How do I get my customers or even my team? So my innocent team right, there they are, I got 10 SDRs and I got 10 AEs and they're talking to say 85,000 people a year. How do they get that physical note to the right person?

Rick Elmore (02:43):

Yeah.

Chris Beall (02:43):

How do they get the address part to happen?

Rick Elmore (02:45):

So most of our clients have addresses already. Work with tons of nonprofits, political affiliation, political action committees, real estate, mortgage, insurance. All these people usually have those addresses, but there are a lot of creative ways you can find people's address. What we've seen people do, we don't do it, is they'll find a list of people they want to contact, at least the city they live in, and then they'll hire VAs to scrape list off of Reference USA match names and addresses or Data Axle or PropertyRate. I mean there's tons of ways to find someone's address, but I would say majority of our clients already have this information. But if there is a need to find it, you can get creative and find it. It's just a little extra work but [inaudible 00:03:30] off of Upwork or Fiverr, give them a list, tell them here's the three web addresses to use to scrape and match names in cities, and they do it. They do a good job.

Chris Beall (03:39):

Interesting, interesting. So in the B2B world, we live in B2B right. We have a couple of customers use ConnectAndSell for B2C. We're not hugely enthusiastic about it, even though it works great because the regulatory surround on phone is non-trivial, right? And on business call somebody. So B2B is kind of funny because getting their work address is probably easy, getting it to their desk is probably easy. Are they ever at their desk is probably an unknown. Now I suppose we could ask them, but what do you see in B2B? I want to get it to their home probably, I think. Who's doing B2B and how are they doing it?

Rick Elmore (04:15):

B2B is a lot of medical software, corporate gifting. A lot of those types of companies, they usually have addresses and they're sending straight to the buildings. But if they want to get addresses, we just point them in the direction of how to do that. I'm trying to think of a good case study of somebody going B2B. Yeah, we had this CRM company for veterinarians and what they did is they just sent a handwritten note to every veterinarian office and just said, dear office manager, dear doctor, whoever was registered at that address. But if you have a more specific question on B2B, what type of industry, I can probably pull up an example of some client we've worked with over the last four or five years.

Chris Beall (04:53):

Sure. We can always be pioneers.

Rick Elmore (04:54):

Yeah.

Chris Beall (04:55):

I mean in this space we may as well try yours, right? No reason not to. I think it's fascinating actually. I mean we're all about this human touch element and breaking through the noise with the human touch. So this what you're doing, we're doing it with the human voice, which goes straight into somebody's mid brain.

Rick Elmore (05:10):

Yeah.

Chris Beall (05:11):

I mean you can't turn off a voice once it's coming in your ear and now it's down to your skill. It's down to your tone of voice. It's down to you. Do you have a message that works? Do you know the psychology of the first seven seconds of the cold call? All that kind of stuff.

Rick Elmore (05:24):

Yes. The psychology behind a handwritten note is a hundred times more impactful than you believe. People appreciate it. You stop them in their tracks for seven to 10 seconds, right? You're engaging them on a level that they're not being engaged by anyone else. You're competing somewhere, no one else is competing. But it's super impactful when you put something down that's tangible that they can hold in their hands and that's shelf life too.

(05:46):

So we're going into the holidays right now. We're sending out tens of thousands. I think we're going to do somewhere near half a million holiday cards in the next six weeks. These have six to eight week shelf lives. What piece of material can you get in front of your customer's hands that's going to sit on their fridge, their counter, their mantle for eight weeks. Where they walk by and they're going to constantly see that and be reminded of you. Like that's real estate you can't buy in any other type of marketing form. And it's personal, it's impactful, and it can be measurable if you get creative with the QR codes and call tracking and driving traffic to landing pages and stuff like that.

Chris Beall (06:20):

That's fascinating. It's fascinating. I really like it. Gosh, you got my little tiny wheels and my little tiny brain turning here. As you look into the future, you're doing pretty big numbers already. How big is this? You're attempting to bootstrap your way into what looks like a billion dollar TAM. Is that, am I getting that right?

Rick Elmore (06:40):

So we've been completely bootstrapped so far. We should make that aim 5,000 this year pending a couple orders. But the purpose of never getting funding was for a few reasons is one, how big can this be? I didn't want to give up too much too early. I knew that this was something that could be special if it was built right. And we've laid the platform for getting the engagement, the footprint. We have the largest web traffic of anybody in our niche going to our website every single month, plus the technology. But my goal is to get it to somewhere close to eight figures in yearly revenue before we go get funding. But in order to go from eight to nine figures in revenue, we're going to have to have a much more advanced platform and have more product offerings outside of just handwritten notes. A little bit maybe more gifts or something more digital. Something that's more built out as an engagement platform where the handwritten notes is one of the tools that we offer.

(07:33):

But yeah, I mean we're 11 full-time employees. We're small but mighty and I think we've only had one employee leave our company in the last three years. So everybody's really committed. It's a really strong family atmosphere here. Everybody looks out for each other. We use tons of VAs. I have this method, trying to remember who it was, but they taught me basically like you mind dump all your information you need done about a job, you wait 30 minutes, you come back, you reorganize it, you build systems and processes and just scale your work that way versus trying to come on and try to hand teach everybody. So Michael E. Gerber Built To Sell really impacted me work on your business versus working in your business.

(08:09):

So yeah, we're just excited. We're way too early to think about funding because we're just getting done with a huge project of building our machines into manufacturing now 30, 40, $50,000 checks I was cutting for engineering. Now we can put that into operating expenses, growth capital, PPC. My PPC budget's been only $800 a month for the first four years. Literally nothing. We have people who spend $50,000 a month. So we're excited. We're just scratching the surface of our potential for sure.

Chris Beall (08:40):

Well fantastic. By the way, our PPC budget is zero, so.

Rick Elmore (08:43):

Oh really?

Chris Beall (08:46):

Yeah. I remember we met with Google once, we were once called over to Google and they wanted to talk to us about something we'd done for them and something we'd done for them actually helped them shut a business down. So they prevented themselves from going too far down the road. Because when you talk to people, you get quick intelligence as to whether a business makes sense. And they finally decided not to compete in that particular space as a money loser. So they wanted to tell us, this is Google's idea of an award. They wanted just have us come over and say, "Hey, you're our vendor of the year." What do we get for that? Well, nothing we just wanted to tell you.

Rick Elmore (09:21):

That's what you get yeah. [inaudible 00:09:23]

Chris Beall (09:25):

Yeah. It was funny because during that conversation their very, very, very, very senior guy who was there said, "Do you realize you're the only Silicon Valley company that we're aware of that doesn't pay Google one penny?"

Rick Elmore (09:37):

Wow.

Chris Beall (09:37):

And I said, "Yes and we intend to keep it-"

Rick Elmore (09:39):

I had a mentor once, tell me Google is God. There's a lot of power there, but a lot of scary power. They have the power to take away a lot of traffic. I remember two years ago we signed up an SEO company, just organic stuff and they were doing some shady backlinking and we actually got dinged and they literally tank you. And it's just overnight we are getting all this traffic and it goes down to 90% less. It scares you.

Chris Beall (09:39):

Oh yeah.

Rick Elmore (10:01):

And Google did it. They just stop indexing your stuff. They take it off, they push you down rankings and it's just like, oh my gosh so yeah.

Chris Beall (10:08):

Yeah, it's tricky and then there's an element of independence that you want to keep from that but you need it anyway. We've avoided it because the nature of our, we just call people.

Rick Elmore (10:17):

Yeah, relationships. Yeah, that's the thing. You got to get people to believe in you. Buy into you.

Chris Beall (10:22):

Yeah.

Rick Elmore (10:22):

And that's the thing, we're really lucky... we don't have a... you do have people that are price shoppers, but my background was building relationships. I obsess when we bring on business accounts, I call them, I onboard them personally and it's probably not the right thing to do, but I have to make sure everything goes good and call them after the order. What did you like? What didn't you like? Obsessed to make sure everybody's happy.

Chris Beall (10:43):

Well to me, you're doing it right. It's obvious I've been doing this stuff for three quarters of a million years and I still am involved at that level in the business. Somebody the other day was saying, "We kind of like CEOs that put their feet up and look out the window and think big thoughts." I'm going, well when I put my feet up and look out the window, I have a blank mind. But when I engage with something like why is this person getting hung up on? I had one yesterday. Guys getting hung up on. Mind you 200 and something thousand dollars a day, there was a lot going on. But there was something about this one that I just thought, this is not a tech problem. There's a subtle problem hiding in there and I won't learn it unless I jump in and have a look.

(11:23):

So I went in and had a look, listened to his conversations. It turned out, on his follow up calls he was getting hung up on the easy calls. Why? Because he was so confident on the easy calls. He was talking for eight to nine seconds before he let the other person say anything and he was getting hung up on. Is he aware of it? Of course not. So I made a little coaching email for him, showed him the wave forms. This is where you're talking. By the way, when you're on a cold call, you let him talk in three quarters of a second, actually it's about a second half. But on these follow up calls, the easy ones, you're going too far. I learned something, which is now I've got one of my data engineers looking through all the data for a particular pattern of short call, long call, but nothing in between. And we'll go find those and then we'll be able to proactively help those customers. I don't think you learn anything in business by having somebody else do something and tell you how it went.

Rick Elmore (12:15):

You got to get your hands dirty right. You got to have that experience. So when you talk about it, you can talk confidently about it. So you talk from an understanding, not from just memorization or somebody else telling you what to say.

Chris Beall (12:26):

Yeah. When people put together presentations for you, you know the purpose of the presentation right? And it's not to move the business forward. So that's all there is to it. I mean you'd love if it were true, but what's in it for them? Well, you're the boss. As I say, we belong to the lonely minds club here in the CEO biz. At the lonely minds club means people think we have no hearts. We do, but we don't dare to let them simply rule. Bring them out, but you can't let them rule. And second is, it's lonely because everybody who works for you, regardless how close they are to you personally or professionally, is obliged to lie to you at the margins in ways that do not feel like lying. They're obliged to because you have this concentration of power that's fundamentally corrupt and there's nothing they can do about it except adapt for their own safety.

Rick Elmore (13:14):

Yeah.

Chris Beall (13:15):

It's a problem. It's a problem.

Rick Elmore (13:16):

It is. I like that lonely mind club. I like that analogy.

Chris Beall (13:21):

That's what we're in.

Rick Elmore (13:22):

From being on the other side to not being on this side. I totally understand what you're saying.

Chris Beall (13:26):

Yeah, well some of us can't kind of handle that thing where we're reporting to somebody, whatever that means. I always thought that was a funny term anyway. What am I reporting to?

Rick Elmore (13:35):

Yeah.

Chris Beall (13:35):

What am I supposed to not know it myself? As you look at the next stage of this, you mentioned adding products, that's one kind of thing. Do you operate truly globally now? Do you feel like people are writing notes in French and everything else under the sun? Is all that happening?

Rick Elmore (13:51):

Yeah, we can. I would say 99% of our business is here in North America. But yeah, we definitely would have to expand globally to reach the ambitions that I have for this company. But to do that we would need to expand globally as well. So we would need a production facility in the UK, Australia, China, just so these are not having national stamps on them. So if you ship from the US to Australia, it has a ginormous international stamp right and that's a problem because it's be like, why did this handwritten note from John who lives a mile from me be shipped from the states and it took three weeks to get there, but then it takes three weeks and it has a big international stamp on. It doesn't make sense. So in order to expand globally, revenue's going to have to be a lot higher. We're going to have to have some channel partners spread out throughout the globe to make sure that happens. But yeah, that's definitely a vision.

Chris Beall (14:41):

Yeah, it's always so tricky to get to that unit of expansion. When you're expanding globally, it's suddenly you're carving out part of the overhead of the core business. You're adding a lump of pure overhead because it's always going to take a while to get going. And then you're also adding the risk of unfamiliarity. The things you don't know that you will find out. How you'll know if you don't know them.

Rick Elmore (15:02):

And that's the thing, I think we would expand through acquisition because there are some smaller little mom and pop companies trying to do this across the globe, but they're using really outdated technology. And what we would do is basically come in and basically give them a business in a box and say, "Hey, here's our technology, here's our systems, here's our software. This is how we have built an eight figure business." More like a franchise and say, "Hey, we'll start feeding you business, but we're going to acquire you in your business but we're going to make your business a lot better with our technology and our platform." So yeah, I mean that's definitely the pie in the sky where we want to go. But there's just so much business just here in the US. I mean there's like 60 or 70 billion with a B, pieces of first class mail sent here in the US and that's not including marketing mail. So if we get to 50 million pieces a year, it's a fraction of a fraction of possibilities.

Chris Beall (15:02):

Yeah.

Rick Elmore (15:53):

Yeah and we're excited about it and plus it's a new tool. That's why I always tell our clients, your clients put food on your table. We always try to tell them to work on the relationship, right? Because it costs five times more to acquire a new client. If you have good customer appreciation, you make them feel appreciated. They're going to make repeat purchases, they're going to tell their friends, they're easy to upsell. It's easy to sell a new offering to a current client who feels appreciated. And then if they don't, they just... They'll go price shopping and go somewhere else. So yeah, we think we have a cool tool to build relationships and build loyalty and trust for sure.

Chris Beall (16:25):

Yeah. Yeah. Might not even be a tool, might be a weapon. Never know.

Rick Elmore (16:28):

Yeah.

Chris Beall (16:28):

That's what we're into.

Rick Elmore (16:33):

Yeah.

Chris Beall (16:33):

Tools, that's for gardening. We use weapons to dominate markets, right?

Rick Elmore (16:36):

Yeah.

Chris Beall (16:37):

That's where it's at.

Chris Beall (17:18):

So I have a question about the thing that came up last night. So I was talking to somebody who was here having dinner and for her own privacy, I won't say who it is, and she said that's such a cool idea. I once got a job based on one and only one thing, which is I wrote a handwritten note and nobody else did back to the person I interviewed with, but I wanted it delivered that day. So I couldn't get that to happen easily. So what I did is I hand wrote the note and then I took a picture of it in my hand and I sent it to the person and said, Hey, I would send you this but it's going to take too long to get there. And I just wanted express my appreciation for the interview that we did today and for the thoughtful questions you have and blah blah blah. It was something intelligently handwritten.

(18:01):

So it struck me as the most unusual hybrid. It's in a way it's guaranteed to have been personal because she's holding it in her hand and taking a picture of it and yet the delivery was instantaneous and it was a B2B thing even though she was... She's a business so to speak. Does anybody do that kind of crazy stuff?

Rick Elmore (18:22):

So that's what I'm talking about expanding our platform is having a digital aspect, engaging them through text or email or socially. I mean there's a lot of cool tools out there now that we can leverage APIs to scrape information and pull it into our platform to engage them with a personalized email somehow with some type of creative copy or message or picture, send a text message, hit them up on LinkedIn or their social account. So I think that's a really creative thing to do. Write the note, take a picture, send it, right? It's kind of witty and personal at the same time. But that's what I'm talking about expanding our platform is doing something like that where you can have type in your message, our system would create the note, impose it on a mock up image for you where it looks like it was just handwritten and then you can send a text message. So yeah, that platform idea is definitely the future of expanding and growing this to a much bigger business. But yeah, that's just a really cool way that that person stood out for sure.

Chris Beall (19:12):

I can think of some twists and turns around this. For instance, a book in Kindle, like when my wife Helen's book comes out on the first right, I'll buy a Kindle edition for 99 cents because that's what you can do for up to the end of the week. And they have the ability to make a little poster. So the Kindle app, I use mine on my iPhone and I can highlight a sentence or whatever and then go share it and they'll make a little poster and post it on LinkedIn and it comes with the citation of the book and a link to the book so you can buy the book. So it's kind of a full viral loop. The posters cool, but the poster is just whatever font they have and whatever. If the poster were handwritten, if it were actually handwritten and it were a picture and it went up on LinkedIn, that would be cooler, I think. Obviously you're doing runs of a few, I mean literally can you do a run of one where it's completely unique?

Rick Elmore (20:05):

Yeah, so we help you send one, send hundreds, thousands or automated. So our website's more like an eCommerce platform. Go on there, pick card, type your message, check out. That's really not a big part of our business. We make some money on that, but it's not really the money makers. Really why we do that is to allow people to try us out, send one or two, see how you like it before you really kind of dive in with two feet. It just gives them the ability to get a good feel. Yeah, I would say the majority of the people we work with are businesses. I would say it's like the high 80% of our clients are businesses. We're working on projects with them, they're automating it, seasonal like things, holidays, anniversaries. Yeah, we definitely allow anybody to use our platform as of right now.

Chris Beall (20:45):

Got it. Do you follow or know Stu Heinecke? Okay, so Stu has written a couple books. He wrote a book called How to Get a Meeting With Anyone. He wrote another book, just wrote it called How to Grow Your Business Like a Weed. I think you'll really like this book and I think you'll like Stu. Stu is the guy who will send you a foam board with a cartoon that he's drawn on it. That's funny and it's about you and he'll send that to a senior executive to get a meeting, that kind of stuff. He's a genius about this. He's a Wall Street Journal cartoonist. He's one of the nicest human beings on earth, by the way. Highly recommend. Just reach out to Stu and tell him that-

Rick Elmore (21:20):

I have to write his name down. I can we get them with this. Yeah, I'll get that from you.

Chris Beall (21:25):

Stu Heinecke. And just seems like a lot of what you're doing fits in with the Stu Heinecke way of looking at the world. Plus you've done your business his way. His point is look, weeds figure out how to grow in the middle of cracks and freeways. Get over it.

Rick Elmore (21:39):

You know what, I always look at that when I'm on runs, you'll see those and it's actually to me really inspiring. There's a will, there's a way. We've fought through a lot of challenges over the last four years, but I've always felt that way and when I see that, that is a nature's example of exactly what I'm going through right now, there's a will, there's a way and that hits home for sure.

Chris Beall (21:58):

Yeah. Checked out his business, his book and check him out. He lives up on Whitby Island up in part of the Olympic Peninsula off the Olympics and the San Juan's. Brilliant, brilliant guy, nice person, and you're doing it, which is what's so interesting but you're also enabling him. I mean it's an example of kind of a seed pod strategy. Stu is a guy who would talk about your business and that's an awesome thing and he would talk about it in the right way too, because he's got a huge audience. So I highly recommend reaching out to him and kind of seed podding up so Simply Noted become something that he use an example. Because when Stu uses an example of how to grow your business like a weed and it's you, people are going to go after it and he's kind of speaking to your audience. Those businesses that have a lot of outreach to do in order to get things to happen. So highly recommend.

Rick Elmore (22:49):

Nice. Awesome.

Chris Beall (22:51):

But I want to come by some time and watch the robots do their thing just down the road in Tucson so we'll do that.

Rick Elmore (22:57):

Great. They're a little pen wielding army. It's a little army of robots you'll love it. It's really fascinating for sure.

Chris Beall (23:03):

That'll be cool. And then someday we should do a little test drive. You said you'd do a little cold calling before we got on?

Rick Elmore (23:09):

Yeah that's one of the major ways that we started this business was just getting on the phone. I mean I went through the BNI, the Chamber of Commerce, some of the EO stuff for networking, but really it's... we've used our product, a lot of social, email and cold calling. If we have nothing to do, we're on the phone smiling and dialing. I need to talk to you about what you guys are doing because it's definitely something that is a major cornerstone in our business for growing.

Chris Beall (23:34):

Yeah, I mean what we do is so simple. We can talk about it, but it literally is you push a button, talk to somebody in your list in a couple minutes and while that's going on, you don't have to do anything. You can do something else.

Rick Elmore (23:44):

Yeah, I mean we have a dialer. I mean you can make a hundred calls an hour, but there's a way to make it even more efficient.

Chris Beall (23:49):

Oh yeah. A hundred calls an hour. That's crawling. We don't talk about little numbers like that. That's too weak. Plus you got to pay attention when it goes to a voicemail or whatever. You got to be paying attention.

Rick Elmore (23:49):

Yeah.

Chris Beall (24:01):

You pay it no attention. You just hit the button. I was on with small business up in Canada today. We do this thing called an intensive test drive and it's basically you get it for a full day of production and it's live. We don't do demos, we don't do any of that stuff. It's live, it's your list, it's your people or you or whatever. And one of the principles I asked him, "Did you hate it?" And he said, "I didn't hate it but it scared me pretty bad and I'm still sweating." Yeah.

Rick Elmore (24:30):

Sounds intense.

Chris Beall (24:31):

Yeah. We call it the intensive test drive for a reason. Now you'd really like it with your approach to things. You'll have a blast with it and the fact is, that sincerity you talked about, being on their side, it comes through in the voice and it is the one thing when you kind of look at it, people don't make buying decisions based on the facts. They make buying decisions based on one thing, which is they grow to trust you more than they trust themselves with this decision. Anthony Iannarino opened his latest book, it's called Elite Sales Strategies and he actually quoted me without telling me which shocked me. So the opener of the book is a quote from me that says, "People buy from people they trust to make a decision they don't trust themselves to make."

Rick Elmore (25:13):

Yeah.

Chris Beall (25:13):

That's why they buy. And we know that trust is a subtle psychological thing. It's not, it's such a big deal. It's so dangerous to trust somebody that we're wired to not do it, but we're also wired to do it when it's done right. And just listening to you and thinking about how you truly are on their side and they'll hear it in your voice. I mean your successful career in sales, a lot of it's got to be predicated on that. That first conversation. When they're done, they're gone. Hey Rick Elmore knows what he's talking about and he's on my side, he's an expert and he's on my side. I trust him more than I trust myself right so that's what our whole thing is about.

Rick Elmore (25:55):

Yeah, I just focused on over-delivering. I'm going to make it right no matter what. Make sure you have a good experience. I remember when I first got into sales, my first manager at Striker, he sent me to a Dale Carnegie sales training thing and I learned a lot there. Like you were just saying, people will listen to people they like, but they'll buy from people they trust. I remember that's something they taught me. But yeah, that's definitely a 100% true in sales. Anything in business people are going to buy from people they trust for sure.

Chris Beall (26:19):

Right and how much they trust them. This is something I'm convinced that we've kind of figured out. Everybody always said, you got to be trusted more than your competitor. Your competitor is always do nothing. So how do you be trusted more than do nothing? That's really interesting.

Rick Elmore (26:33):

For me. I invest a lot in social proof. So it's getting good reviews, getting out there and having people seeing us. People talk about us that aren't us. So even if I'm telling you something, go out and search it and see what else somebody else is saying about us. That's another good thing. When I was a rep it wasn't really as that important, but when you own a business, you got to make sure other people are doing nice things about you outside of your own walls, inside your building.

Chris Beall (26:58):

Inside the echo chamber.

Rick Elmore (26:59):

Yeah.

Chris Beall (27:01):

Well Rick, thanks so much for coming on to Market Dominance Guys. Corey didn't join us. He must have business he's doing, he's always off there hustling too. Us old guys continue to hustle. There's no age limit to it. When you come right down to it, you don't build these things to sell them, you build it because frankly we don't know what else to do ourselves. So we just do it. And I'm super excited about your business and gosh, you don't need my good wishes, but I'll wish you all the best anyway because I think you're just going to blow it all away.

Rick Elmore (27:29):

I appreciate it, Chris. It was an honor to be on your show and share this with you guys, so thank you so much.

Chris Beall (27:35):

All right, well until next time, and we have no idea what episode this is. Might be two, might be three of them. This is Chris Beall for Rick Elmore. Thanks for being on and the absent but brilliant, Corey Frank, and I'm sure we'll see him again someday.

Who would have guessed that hand writing a note to 500 prospects would be a highly successful marketing campaign? Our guest, Rick Elmore, did! Founder and CEO of Simply Noted, Rick joins our host, Chris Beall, today to discuss his career path from college, to professional NFL football player, to a job in medical device sales and marketing, to a startup company now in its fourth year. It was the success of his handwritten-notes campaign that encouraged Rick to found his own business, offering this same service — now automated — to help individuals and companies utilize the personal touch of what looks like a handwritten note to reach out to their customers. Rick and Chris talk about the open rate of these notes versus the open rate of cold — or even warm — emails. You’ll want to hear it with your own ears on this Market Dominance Guys’ episode, “Duly and Simply Noted.”

About Our Guest

Rick Elmore is the founder and CEO of Simply Noted in Tempe, Arizona. Simply Noted is a company that utilizes software and robotic technology to create personalized handwritten notes for its 300,000 monthly users.

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Full episode transcript below:

Chris Beall (01:20):

Okay everybody, this is Chris Beall. This is yet another episode of Market Dominance Guys. You'll note that at the moment, I am not here with Corey Frank, and those of you who are used to Market Dominance Guys at this point, know what we talk about. We talk about the practical world of dominating markets using the human voice, but today we have with us Rick Elmore, Founder and CEO of Simply Noted, and it's actually analogous, I believe. I'm going to have Rick talk about it, but we're into the human voice. We believe you have conversations, you create trust, and you can pave markets with trust and harvest that trust at your leisure while your competitors try to get in where they can't go anymore because the market trusts you. Rick's actually got a very similar business. Rick, thank you so much for jumping on Market Dominance Guys today. I am really, really excited to hear what you have to say.

Rick Elmore (02:14):

Thanks so much, Chris, for having me here. This is great.

Chris Beall (02:16):

Cool. We run a pretty informal show here, so here's the informal show part. I know you have a very, very interesting background. We both went to school at the same place. You for real, and me, did it for three years and then went off and became a professional blackjack player for a while. Your background is unusual, I think for anybody, much less in business. It's something people want to hear about, but then, I also am dying of curiosity, as a guy who bought probably the second or third HP 7470A sweet lips pen plotter in the world, back in 1981 or two, I believe. I am fascinated with the use you have found for using a pen plotter to create artifacts efficiently that generate trust and more, so tell me the story.

Rick Elmore (03:07):

Yeah, well thanks for the intro. I appreciate it. My background's actually in athletics. I went to the University of Arizona and played football for Mike Stoops back in the early 2000s. Lucky enough to have a good career, went to the NFL and played three years in the NFL, had the typical journeymen struggle to survive. Just super competitive there, but was fortunate enough to stay and thrive and play for three years, but then when I got done, like most competitive athletes, they're looking for that competitive environment still, so reached out to some people who made that transition. Got into medical device sales, was rookie of the year my first year. Then I was top 1% or number one rep for the next five years. And then, just felt like there was something more. Saw that chip in my shoulder. I wanted to do something big.

(03:54):

So in 2017, went back to Eller, that's University of Arizona's Business School, got my MBA, and I was in a marketing class and a marketing professor was going over just all the success rates in marketing. Everything was super nominal or marginal, super low from cold calling, knocking doors, print mail, email. Everything was either single digits or low double digits, and being in sales myself at the time, I was trying to figure out what the competitive edge is and waiting for him to kind of drop the truth bomb and hallelujah moment, but at the end of the lecture, he said half jokingly, "Hey guys, you know what still works nowadays, even more now than ever, is a nice handwritten note. It has a 99% open rate," and I was just like, that is a no brainer. Why aren't we doing that now? It's obvious, because nobody has the time, but I was like, why isn't there a business out there doing this?

(04:46):

I got to researching. There was a company at the time named Bond, but they were focusing on the worst segment. They were funded with a million dollars and they were focusing on the wedding industry. I was just like, you're dealing with Bridezillas. Why would you focus only on weddings? I've been married, tons of people have been married. Everything changes all the time, last second, delayed. This needs to be a business tool. Again, my background's in sales and marketing. It's not in software. It's not in robotics. We actually tried using a plotter at first. Nice little AxiDraw plotter, holds a pen, does what you want it to do. Our technology's much more advanced than that, but we worked with the mail house here locally, talked to them just about what we can do, our ideas, how can we get it done.

(05:28):

We sourced product from all over the world, south America, China. Worked with some Autopen companies, but over the last four and a half years, we've grown our platform to over 300,000 users a month. Going to make the Inc. 5,000 this year. We've developed our own technology, our own robotic technology from the ground up. We're going to have six patents on it. We're really excited about it. I'm really proud of it as well because we've done this with no funding, no investors. The product has always paid for the company, been cash flow positive since month one, leveraged my sales and marketing background. And then, I've really launched a pretty cool little business here in the last four years.

Chris Beall (06:05):

Well, it sounds like it might not be so little. 300,000 monthly users is actually a pretty big number. When you say monthly user, what is a monthly user?

Rick Elmore (06:12):

Just somebody who comes to our site and uses our site for whatever they needed to do. We've invested a lot in SEO over the last 18 months and we just drive a lot of organic traffic. Our conversion rate is anywhere from a half a percent to one and a half percent. It really just depends on the month and where the traffic is coming from, but we're driving a lot of interest. People who are searching for products that we are selling, they're coming to our page. We're not closing every one of them. They're not all making purchases, but they're coming to our platform, signing up, requesting samples, sending one card. They're just actively engaging with our website every month.

Chris Beall (06:46):

Got it, got it. Well, I've been to the site and it's a thousand times better than ours, so I admire it.

Rick Elmore (06:51):

I appreciate it. Actually, the bane of my existence is building websites. It's just so frustrating. Little things get tweaked all the time that cause problems.

Chris Beall (07:00):

It doesn't take much. Well, you know what we say about networking, which is bad enough. It's two bits away from not working. I think there's a corollary over there on websites.

Rick Elmore (07:09):

Absolutely.

Chris Beall (07:09):

I don't have a good little poem for it or something, but we need an aphorism for website development and it's like Murphy's Law on steroids.

Rick Elmore (07:17):

Oh my gosh. Anything in software, Murphy's Law for sure. What can go wrong will definitely go wrong.

Chris Beall (07:24):

Well, software is funny in that sense. It's fundamentally brittle and I've been building it since 1968, so to give you a sense of how the first time I ever put my fingers on a keyboard and wrote a line of code was in '68.

Rick Elmore (07:37):

Wow. That's cool.

Chris Beall (07:38):

That goes back a little ways. Some people probably think-

Rick Elmore (07:41):

That's fine. I'm fine.

Chris Beall (07:42):

You aren't dead yet?

Rick Elmore (07:44):

I'm actually going through a Harvard CS50s class right now, a little computer science introductory course and a Python course, just so I can get really well versed in this type of stuff, just so I can communicate and work with my developers better. There's just so many opportunities within software and what you can get it to do in automation and APIs and machine learning, and all this stuff applies to our business, which fascinates me even more.

Chris Beall (08:08):

Well, it's funny. You're doing the right thing. In my opinion, most people who are founder CEOs don't bother to learn what's under the covers and it's what's really-

Rick Elmore (08:08):

Ignorance costs a lot of money.

Chris Beall (08:19):

Well, what's funny about it is, you nailed it. The communication with developers is communication with anybody, which is that once you have a common language, now you're down to how many iterations are you going to have to do in order to get to a finished product? Until you get to a common language, it doesn't matter how many iterations you do, you never get to a finished product. Most founder CEOs, I believe, end up in what I call the world of the flying car. That is, they don't know how the stuff is made, so they keep asking for flying cars and then after they get told over and over and over, "Sorry boss, you can't have a flying car." Then they stop asking for anything and the engineers take over and then you get an engineering run company, which is-

Rick Elmore (09:00):

That's a good thing, that's not the case for us because I literally understand... I've done everything with this company from building our websites, being engaged with the software team, the handwriting engine team, the robotics team, the sales and marketing, building out all of our case studies, all of our marketing materials, working... I guess that it is a bad thing if you don't understand the depths of your business for sure.

Chris Beall (09:21):

When folks talk about software eating the world, they don't actually consider the possibility that the senior executives who are running things are further divorced from how things run than they've ever been in history, and it's a problem because I don't know, you can give orders, you can tell people what to do, but if you don't know what underlies it, you're just [inaudible 00:09:41]. That's all there is to it. You just got to fucking do it. By the way, I'm a huge Python fan. I taught myself Python on a Saturday morning in 2006, I believe it was. Yeah, 2006, when I just got off at my own developers at a company that I joined in Silicon Valley because I wanted a visualization of this graph network thing that I thought of, and none of them would write the damn thing. So I said, "Ah man, I don't write much code anymore, but I'm going to do this," and I went and found a package to help that was done in Python and I thought, I'm going to hate Python because it likes white spaces and it's white space sensitive, which I used to teach programming languages to people, and here I am taking something I hate, which is why [inaudible 00:10:26], but why does it care about white space? I fell in love and about 10 minutes. I think it's one of the best languages ever.

Rick Elmore (10:31):

No, we can have a whole podcast talking about just the challenges of working with developers and why it's important to understand this and Python so far... I'm taking a course through Michigan right now in Python, so I'm only three weeks in, but I'm excited. I'm like the worst person to compete with because when there's a challenge, I just run through walls until I figure it out, so I feel bad for my competitors because there's no give up in me. If I need to know something, I'm going to figure out a way to understand it, even if it's at the expense of my time.

Chris Beall (10:57):

Well, I don't care about your competitors. I want to be crushed by you.

Rick Elmore (11:01):

I appreciate that.

Chris Beall (11:03):

That's what this whole podcast is about is dominating markets. Our [inaudible 00:11:06] is really simple, which is either you dominate or you're in peril. That's it. And then, you trump the markets you dominate and the more markets you dominate by count, the less peril you're in. It's just because after that, it's portfolio theory. It's like each one, if I have five markets, I dominate, all five have got to go away before I lose the ability to adapt the simplest way, which is to reduce overhead to match gross profit flow, which is the key to everything in businesses. You got to make your overhead just barely below, or well below, your gross profit flow and then grow. That's kind of it. There's not much more to it.

(11:44):

If they have all those business courses, it's like, guys, you get money from folks. There's your cost of goods, there's your gross profit, it flows into business. You have to reduce your overhead to being below that. Your final unit of overhead is your own salary. Figure that out. It's not that hard. Figure it out. It sounds like you've done that. Month one, month two, month three, there you were putting this thing together. You say, "Let's go." What did you do in month one in order to become cash flow positive? That's hard. That means you have to collect money from human beings for something they didn't pay for before, and human beings hate to buy stuff they didn't pay for before. They like doing today what they did yesterday.

Rick Elmore (12:27):

My background's in sales and marketing. I'm extremely competitive, extremely driven, but we started researching this in 2017 when I was going to school, and in 2018, we really started messing around with product, different machines, Autopens, the axidraw plotters, and getting samples. I was talking to my current clients, current business executives that I respected. My wife works in fundraising development, so she works with a lot of businesses, so we're really well connected here in the Phoenix market with people who run their own businesses, but prior to ever getting started, I probably had over 50 conversations with people that I respected, friends, family and business leaders, and when we finally got kicked off, I was just really excited about the product and people can see how excited I was about the product. I believed it down to my core, and I believe if your clients can see that in you, they get excited about it with you.

(13:16):

And then I was just obsessed with making sure those first clients that we had were successful. Even if it was at our expense, I wanted to make sure that they had a good experience because those first few clients that you have can make and break your business. You got to make sure they're fans about your business. They're lighthouse customers. They'll refer their friends. They'll keep buying from you if they know that you have their best interest in mind. So those first few months, looking back now compared to what we have now, it was a crappier product, but people just believed in it, and I talked to them about the problem that we were solving, connecting them with their clients in a personal way, in an automated way, in a more efficient way because if you think about it, everybody now is competing digitally for everybody's attention. It's all social, it's all SMS or MMS or LinkedIn or Slack or Twitter.

(14:05):

Nobody's competing in the mailbox, and with that high of an open rate and with how rare it is to receive a handwritten note and how expensive it is to require a new client versus just keeping a current client happy, it was actually a pretty easy sell to somebody who would listen, but now we have a much more complete platform. We have tools that automate it. We have better robots, we have higher capacity, we run our own printing press in house. That means faster, same day order deliveries. We have capital equipment that allows us to push out 10, 15,000 notes a day. We're just a lot more mature, but early on it's getting peoples excited about your journey, your product, your passion, your vision, get them to buy into you because they're not going to buy into a product they know nothing about. You really got to hard sell them on why they need to do it.

Chris Beall (14:52):

Yeah, you do. What was the point, before you actually launched somewhere in there, you went from, hm, interesting to, I'm going to go do this.

Chris Beall (15:48):

My experience is, that's what I call a mousetrap. It snaps. You don't grade into it and go, Oh, I think I'll do it. Maybe it's like, at some point you go, okay, I'm doing this. What drove you to that point? What was that like?

Rick Elmore (16:00):

I call it the entrepreneurial seizure. When you had that aha moment where you're literally, your whole body gets rushed with hormones where you just feel so good at, you had that moment, but when we were still testing this out in 2018, we were using plotters back in the day, and it took me forever. It took me weeks, I think it was four or five weeks to write 500 handwritten notes, but I was in medical sales at the time. I had a large territory across Arizona and Nevada. Again, I was in my class, my professor said a 99% open rate, and I was like, man, if I can get in front of my client 99% of the time, that is going to make me more successful. I wrote out 500 handwritten notes, basically pitching a product to doctors who never bought anything from me and really was really clear and concise who I was, how I can help them, can I buy them lunch and tell them more about it?

(16:48):

From those 500, I had over 30 people respond, which to me was new. I was just like, holy crap. People are calling me about a product and are about wanting to learn more. I always had to knock on doors and get people to sit down. And then from those 30 people, I sold $280,000 in equipment and it was $20,000 in commission from literally, from 500 handwritten notes. Literally, for that four or five, six weeks, my quota of monthly was $39,000, so when they saw $280,000 come across in six weeks, my whole company went crazy. My VP of sales were like, "Rick, what are you doing? It's working. We got to get everybody doing this," and I shared with them what I was doing, and really from that moment on, my business went on autopilot until January 2019 where I jumped in two feet with this.

(17:35):

But I saw it work firsthand and it was an idea that was kind of incubated during an MBA where we put a lot of work into just finding stuff that make it work, a lot of tinkering, and then weeks of getting this product together, and then I saw results and I was like, man, if we're seeing results now, let's solve a problem, build a platform, build the best technology, and we're going to have a really good company down the line that we can sell. That's really been my vision for this company, is to solve a problem, make it easy to use, build a robot, which we just did, and then scale it and sell it. We're really excited. We're only four years into this, but the next four years are going to be amazing.

Chris Beall (18:11):

Is it fun to watch the robots do their thing?

Rick Elmore (18:13):

I am obsessed with it. I was on a different call earlier today. I'm in here sometimes 11 o'clock at night, and I'm just still amazed seeing these little pen wielding robots. We build our own pens. There's a lot of technology in this company. We build our own pen inserts, we design the pen insert. It has 300% more ink so it writes longer. Also, you can control the quality of the ink. This is how geeky we got into this.

Chris Beall (18:13):

Love it.

Rick Elmore (18:38):

We've really thought of everything. The viscosity, viscosity's like how wet it is and how much it'll smear, so we have full control of it.

Chris Beall (18:47):

Remember, I have a physics degree from the University of Arizona.

Rick Elmore (18:51):

We've gone everywhere from the pen to the robots to the software, to the handwriting engine, to the website. Everything's been built from the ground up, which I'm extremely proud of.

Chris Beall (19:00):

That's so cool. Do you show videos of the robots doing their thing?

Rick Elmore (19:03):

Yeah, there's tons of them on my LinkedIn. I have them pinned up on the top. If you go to our LinkedIn, you'll see them. The website that we have now is actually being rebuilt. It's a two year old website. We're actually rebuilding the web app and then just the front facing design. We'll have a lot more of our technology highlighted on our website soon.

Chris Beall (19:21):

How personalized is the handwriting to me? I have a use case in mind right now. My team talks to 85,000 VPs of sales a year. I want them to follow up on every single one of those conversations with something-

Rick Elmore (19:34):

Automated.

Chris Beall (19:35):

Because once you talk to somebody, you may as well do something. We can actually get people even to open email, which we don't like very much, but when you talk to somebody, you send them an email, 10 minutes later, five minutes later, three minutes later, it's an email from somebody you just talked with, so we have the ability to scale the conversation side, but our follow up is, in my opinion, relatively weak. It's email and then we have a follow up conversation mechanism for people we want to talk to more than once, blah, blah. All that's built out. We put like, $55 million into this thing over time, so it does a lot of tricks, but it doesn't do your trick, so if I want to do your trick, how do I do it so that it feels like it's me writing that note, so I'm comfortable with it having come from me?

Rick Elmore (20:21):

Everything we do is custom to you guys. From your campaign, we'll completely set up custom, but the magic is automating it. Depending on what software you use, what CRM you use, we actually think our automation's a perfect follow up sequence. Say you had a call today and you book it and you want to set up an automation so once that trigger happens within your CRM, you would be notified same day either through an API integration or a Zapier integration, and we ship most orders same day, but it takes three to five days for them to be delivered. We actually think from that call to that landing in their mailbox within a week, five, six days, is actually a perfect follow up sequence for sales. Again, my background's in sales, so I'm always thinking about ways to engage prospects to get them on board. Even though we try to sell this as a tool for appreciation and thank you because again, cost of acquisition is five times more than just keeping your current clients happy. We just automate it through a Zapier integration. Super simple to set up. Just create an account on our website, we give you an API token, you log into the Zapier app, set up the automation, you never think about it again. It's pretty awesome.

Chris Beall (21:26):

Cool. We use Salesforce, so we know what's going on and then we pull it out of there. I'm sure you have that pre-wired, right?

Rick Elmore (21:31):

Yeah, Salesforce is one of the most flexible integrations we have.

Chris Beall (21:35):

Absolutely. Well, that's really interesting. How about on the handwriting side? It's me. How much is it me or is it a choice? It's like choosing a voice narrator for an audio book.

Rick Elmore (21:46):

This is a geeking out again, but the reason we had to build our own handwriting machines is these Axidraws or Autopens, they just have patterns when they write. It's impossible. They don't have super strong handwriting engines. They were built in the 80s and 90s, but can use your handwriting if you want. We can give you a handwriting conversion form, but what's powerful about ours is, not only do we have the ability to build you an unlimited sized handwriting style, so if you want to give us 100 As, 100 Bs, 100 Cs, we can create a very custom handwriting style to you, but we go well beyond that. We go into ligature style, so how your T connects to an H, what two T's look like together. What's an E at the end of a word versus an E at the beginning of a word look like.

(22:28):

It takes about five days for one of our graphic designers to convert your handwriting style and create your handwriting style, but there's a lot that goes into it, but everything about your campaign is completely custom, especially on our enterprise level accounts, stationary design, custom inserts, shift cards, business cards, bags of seeds, lumpy mill. You get really creative of what goes in an envelope, but we set up your custom campaigns. Really, when people come to us, they tell us about the project they have in mind and we show them the path of least resistance to get it done.

Chris Beall (22:58):

Got it. Well, it's very interesting. Our customers pay, they'll say an extraordinary amount of money to talk to people and follow up is everything, as you and I both know. I'm new to sales. I've only been at it for maybe 60 years, but as far as I can tell, I've learned very little and one of the main [inaudible 00:23:16] I've learned is follow-up is everything.

Rick Elmore (22:58):

Oh it is.

Chris Beall (23:18):

If you don't follow up, nothing ever happens in this world, and there's another thing which is courses for courses. We're calling people on the phone, not that you use a phone when you use ConnectAndSell. You push a button, you talk to somebody on your list, but to them it's a phone call. Then the question is, well, did you get everybody? You can get, roughly speaking, initially, you can get about 35% of the market on the phone right away. They're phone answering people, and it's not all about their mobile. It's actually all about what they actually answer on, and we do 60 million dials a year, so we know what everybody answers on, so we've got all of that information, but on the other side, what about the people, not just following up with the ones you talk to, but what about the people you can't reach? What about that note? That's still 60% of the market, roughly. You're saying to my customers right, and I have a fair amount of them that pay attention to this podcast, that if they want to reach the other 60%, that I don't know what the open rate will be. At a 99% open rate, is that still the case or whatever it happens to be?

Rick Elmore (24:27):

Yeah, there's tons of studies published online. We actually verified this. We took six different types of envelopes. One of them was handwritten, the other ones were print, different colors, different sizes. What we did is, we put a $10 check inside and told them what we're doing. "Hey, just scan this QR code. We're testing an open rate case study, but here's a $10 check," so we confirmed it by checks being cashed and then QR codes being scanned, and over 99%. We verified it, but there's tons of case studies out there as well showing the open rate is 99% as well.

Most sales reps think discovery isn’t sexy: Closing the deal is. But “Deals are won or lost in discovery,” cautions Sales Gravy CEO Jeb Blount, today’s podcast guest. This successful author of 15 sales-related books advises that “80% of your time in the sales process should be in discovery,” especially during a recession, when the discovery call becomes even more important. In this second of two interviews with Jeb, our Market Dominance Guys’ hosts, Corey Frank and Chris Beall, share sales-success nuggets taken from Jeb’s most recent book, Selling in a Crisis: 55 Ways to Stay Motivated and Increase Sales in Volatile Times. You’ll want to listen closely as these three like-minded sales gurus explain their own discovery-call practices for establishing trust and how they get prospects to open up to them. All of this and so much more in today’s Market Dominance Guys’ episode, “Discover the Power of Discovery.” ----more----

Listen to the first half of this interview here:

About Our Guest

Jeb Blount is CEO at Sales Gravy, Inc., which is a global leader in sales acceleration and customer experience enablement solutions. He is the author of 15 sales-related books, including his most recent release, Selling in a Crisis: 55 Ways to Stay Motivated and Increase Sales in Volatile Times. Jeb is also the host of the Sales Gravy Podcast, the world’s most downloaded sales podcast.

Full episode transcript below:

Corey Frank (01:19):

Getting to discovery is one of the things that we certainly do here at Branch 49 and Chris's insistence all those years ago is we're not just a revenue ops agency, top of funnel, but we also do discovery as a service. And Chris has identified that years ago as one of the key frontline bottlenecks in organizations discovery. So I was pleased buttress by the fact Jeb, that you dive quite deeply into this as well, is that if you say that deals are one and lost in discovery, not in a presentation or the closes or even the negotiation, but in you have to learn to increase sales to do discovery better. And so let's talk a little bit about that, Chris. I know you have some opinions on that too, but what do you mean by we have to learn to discover better and to do discovery calls a little bit better than we're doing today?

Jeb Blount (02:10):

Well, let's start with the reason why we don't do them. Discovery is the weakest link in most sales processes because it's not sexy, it's boring, Sexy is closed the deal. Sexy is do the presentation. Walk into any room of salespeople and ask them what would you like to know? And they'll what to say. They want to know what words should come out of their mouth that are going to suddenly woo everybody and wow everybody into saying yes to them or complying with a request. But the truth is that in sales a question you ask is more important than anything that you will ever say. But that's boring. It doesn't make us feel good to ask questions and listen. So discovery has a tendency to get put on the back burner even though 80% of your time that you spend in sales conversations and inside the sales process should be on discovery because what you said, Corey is true. Deals are won and lost based on the questions you ask and the information that you get.

(03:12):

It's really no different than if you think about attorneys, lawyers going to court. If you've ever been in a case, you know that you went into depositions and there was a ton of discovery that was done up front. Pretty much cases are won and lost during that period of time, not in some spark of inspiration in the middle of a courtroom. That happens on TV, it just doesn't happen in real life. In sales there's typically not this magical plays where like in a movie scene, you push the pen over to the buyer and say, "Sign here", and you've delivered some amazing message to them and they just comply, sign it and you go out and you celebrate. It doesn't really work like that.

(03:53):

Typically, the deal is closed somewhere in discovery because you ask a question that provokes their awareness that they need to change and then as you're listening to them, you're making them feel important. You're learning their story. And so as you build your business case, you begin to build these value bridges. You're connecting the dots between what you learn in discovery about their aspirations, about their pain, about the problems that they have to solve and you're connecting it to what you can do for them, but you're using their language. That's the point where they begin to feel like you get them and they begin to trust you and you begin to close more deals. Now as we move into recessionary period, discovery becomes even more important and it becomes more important because, as we're in an economic downturn, buyers begin to change their buying behaviors. The most important change that they're going to make is it going to be much more risk averse.

(04:48):

They're always risk averse, but in an economic downturn, in a crisis, in a time where they've got to be very careful about the decisions that they make because it could impact their job or impact their company, you've got to build a much better business case in order to mitigate that risk, in order to lower their fears and show them the value of doing business with you. The only way that you can build that business case, a business case by the way that is laced with math to show them the outcomes that they're going to get from your business proposition, the only way you do that is through discovery.

(05:24):

So it's always important, far more important in an economic downturn than in any other time because that business case truly matters. They are not going to give you their money unless they feel like the risk of giving you their money is low relative to the gains that they'll get from giving you their money and the return on the investment for doing business with you. But otherwise you're dead in the water and you're not going to be able to talk your way out of that. There's not a close or an objection turnaround that's going to talk a buyer off the cliff if you haven't demonstrated that the value or the outcomes that they're going to gain from doing business with you, they're going to derive from doing business with you, are a lower risk than spending their money with you in an economic downturn. Six months ago, they're throwing money at you. Today, not going to happen.

Corey Frank (06:18):

Yeah. Chris, we've spoken about that several times where a half wounded Jeb, what do you think about this theory, that a half wounded prospect, when they have a poor discovery interview thrust upon them and maybe that sales rep trips over one or two compelling questions that makes that prospect think or two, but then there's no follow up, there's no elegance. That prospect is at risk of being taken off that chess board for three years, average life cycle of a SAS deal, 36 months. And so to do poor discovery, does it mean there is a zero sum game there? You lost that opportunity to convert that prospect. Chances are that pain still exists, that prospect is going to get zapped up by somebody who's much more confident. Did I say that correctly, Chris, from some of the things we've been talking about?

Chris Beall (07:10):

Yeah, I mean there's a reason that some years ago I gently suggested that you put together an agency that would go all the way through discovery because it's clear to me, has been for quite a while, that discovery actually doesn't have a lot to do with your product and therefore it can be done generically. Somebody who is great at discovery, could do discovery for anything that any of us sell and do it with very, very little preparation around what that thing is, how it works and blah blah blah. Except they need to know basically what are the classes of problems that it solves, what are the knobs that get turned and what are the outcomes that might happen as a result? And then they should stay away from all of that except to ask the questions that might clue them in as to how this works.

And I think, I love what Jeb said and what language they use in order to talk about their world so that you can talk about your potential to be helpful to them in the language that they know how to reason it. Something that there's been a lot of research done on how language changes, how we think. I was just talking to somebody the other day who spent some time in part of Africa where in that particular place, people didn't talk about left or right. They didn't have words for left or right but they had very, very good words for north, southeast, west, northeast and so forth and so on. So you wouldn't say, you would get a snake that's right off your right foot. You'd say you'd have a snake that's right off your north foot. It changes how your brain works when you use language in a certain way and you have the big problem in sales. If you want to succeed, you have to be able to adapt to somebody else's language so that your brain works like their brain works.

(09:00):

And the way to do that is to ask questions and get into not just what they say but how they say it, what's behind it, where they get confused by the question. All that stuff is of huge value to you and is the differentiator between them being willing to part with their risk. I mean, Jeb says their money, but actually I think unless you're talking to a business owner, you're never talking about their money, you're talking about somebody else's money, but you're always talking about their risk and their risk is so much higher than the owners. It's easy to sell value to owners. You cannot sell value to agents, to functionaries. You must sell risk reduction to them.

Jeb Blount (09:40):

And that's a good point because when people are asking a simple question, "Do you get me"? So there's five questions that people are asking of you in discovery, "Do I like you? Do you listen to me? Do you make me feel important? Do you get me and my problems when trust and believe you"? And Chris is right, in most cases when you're in sales, you're selling to someone who is using someone else's money to solve their problems. So when we are giving a business case, there's really three outcomes that we want to be able to demonstrate. There are personal outcomes. So for that individual stakeholder, what do they get from that? What is important to them that's going to help them and their life be better, their job be better? There are emotional outcomes. That's things like peace of mind or less stress. What does that look like?

(10:22):

We talk about pain a lot. I'm not a really big fan of pain in sales. I know it's a Sandler thing and I know that everybody likes to get ahold of it because it's an emotional thing. But pain is not the only reason why people buy. It's sometimes a reason people buy. And then there are measurable business outcomes. That's the math. We have to talk about all three of those things. So what discovery does is it helps me understand, it helps me get that person. This is very, very important. And let's just take the context that Chris said. When you're dealing with a business owner, it's one thing. When you're dealing with people who are typically buying, which is most of the time you're not dealing with a business owner, you're dealing with someone else who is using the business owner's money to solve problems.

(11:06):

This idea of get matters greatly. Think about it like this. The most important, the most valuable relationships you have in your life, you describe like this. This person gets me. Those mean more than anything else. So what Chris was saying about language, which is just brilliant, is that language is a way to demonstrate get. You'll never have that level, like the level of get that I have with my wife, you're I'm not going to have that with someone I'm doing business with. But the same psychological blueprint is in play. Does the person feel like I get them or at least that I'm trying to get them? So Corey, let me back you up real quickly. You are a salesperson and you ask a good question, but you're so focused on the next question that you ask, using your words, Corey, I'm not being eloquent about it.

(11:55):

So rather than ask a follow up probing question that demonstrates that what I just noticed was important to that person and allow them to talk more, which makes them feel important and significant because I'm trying to get them, I just move onto the next question that's on my list. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt and the tattoo. I was 24 years old, I was just reading questions off of a list. So I don't demonstrate that. But if I do the follow up question, if I probe, if I listen deeply to what's being said behind the words and I'm get all that together and I start repeating it back to them, it's amazing sometimes when I say something back to someone in their words, they just look at me and they go, "Wow, you're the only person that's really listening to me".

(12:37):

And I'm like, I just literally took the words out of your mouth and gave it back to you. And you feel that I get you. Yeah. What you're doing with language is you're saying, and when I say outcomes, pain is one of the outcomes, aspiration is an outcome. The chance to capture an opportunity is an outcome. An opportunity to, if you're a business owner, I want be at the same level as my competitors.

(13:02):

That's not a pain, that's an aspiration. It's something that I want to accomplish. So if I start repeating back to you, we can help you do these things. You told me, Corey, that when you were in this situation, it made you feel this way and that was awful. I can't even imagine what that was like. What I can do for you in this particular situation is if we deploy these three solutions, it'll solve that problem for you and it'll reduce the chance that you're going to feel that way again. How do you feel about that?

(13:35):

How people respond to that is extraordinary because all I did was use their language. Language matters. It connects us as groups and it taps into the human similarity bias that is always in play. No matter how hard we want it not to be in play, it is in play. We trust in people who are more like us, but because we sell in a diverse economy to people who are not like us, the easiest, fastest way to tap into that is by speaking their language. And their language is their language of their company, their language of their jargon, their language of their team, their language of their aspirations and their pain.

(14:15):

The only way you get there is through great questions in discovery that compel them to tell you things that get them to the point where they stop thinking about hiding stuff from you because you're the salesperson and they begin opening up and allowing you to get below the surface where they teach you their language and then you bring that back. You don't get that if you're doing shallow discovery or you're so caught up in what you're going to say next, you only get that organically when you're in the moment and when they begin to lean into you. And that takes, I love the word eloquence, it takes eloquence, it takes nuance. But the real key to doing it is essentially just being a good human being and stop selling and start just really listening to them and allowing them to express themselves and then coming back with how you're going to help them achieve their desired outcomes.

Corey Frank (15:09):

Love that. I mean that's a book right there. What you say, Chris? That's number 16 right there, we get it. Forget 60 days, you just did it in six minutes.

Corey Frank (16:01):

But Chris, a lot of things that Jeb's talking about, we're in a different world than maybe five, 10 years ago where I jump on a plane and I go see a client. Right now a lot of clients don't even turn their Zoom on because they're afraid that the Zoom gods will steer their soul or something like that. But they don't turn their camera on or we have the cold call. Chris, how do we, and Jeb, how do we deal with that extrasensory perception that we have to have on the pauses or listening for the typing in the background. What do we do to awaken that empathy, that great amount of empathy that you talk about? And Chris you've talked about for years.

Chris Beall (16:35):

I do discovery in a funny way. That's all I got to say, because to me everything in sales is always about the other person's emotional journey. And my favorite book of Jeb is Sales EQ. And Sales EQ has to do with, it's not so much our emotions, it's their emotions. And it's the same. Jeb works with animals, he works with horses. I grew up in a world of all animals. It was, I didn't have any people, I just had animals. And when you're working with animals, especially animals bigger than you are, you realize the only thing that counts as their emotions, that's it. They have their capabilities which tend to be substantial and multidimensional in ways we don't understand and every once in a while they surprise you. I didn't know that one could bite so hard, for instance is a good one.

(17:24):

But when you come right down to it, it's the emotions. The emotions move fast when they move. They tend to be stable islands. And then when they move, they move fast. To me, what Jeff just said is you want somebody in discovery. Your only goal, in my opinion, is you get to the point where they start opening up to you. That's it. If there were another goal in discovery, I think I would've found it by now. The goal is, and we have a whole episode on this somewhere in the archives called The Confessional is now open. You want to get into the confessional, you want them to tell you their truth. And what I've found is oddly easy. It's just like cold calling. Cold calling's very easy in one way because you know where they start emotionally. They're afraid of you. You've got to build trust. You got seven seconds to do it. Great. There's a lot of ways to do it, but you better do it otherwise the emotional journey towards curiosity and commitment just ain't going to happen right, until they trust you that little bit.

(18:20):

I think the emotional journey and discovery starts with apprehension. They're apprehensive. They're pretty sure you're going to try to sell them something. They're pretty sure you're an expert, may aren't. And they're pretty sure that they don't want to have you have the better of them. So they're apprehensive. They don't want to go into the room, they don't want to go into the confessional. How do you get them out of apprehension? You have to replace it with another emotion. I mean emotions are always there. So the question is, well what's the replacement emotion? The one I choose is pride. Because everybody, if you think about it, it's impossible to be apprehensive and proud at the same time.

(18:54):

It's actually like they're incompatible emotions. You can't have both. So it's very easy to provoke pride in somebody in a very innocent question. Mine sounds funny. People think like Anthony and Arena would laugh at me for this and think I'm a total idiot. But when you see the results, you might think otherwise. I just ask a simple question. So Corey, it always helps me to know where somebody is in the physical world. Where are you right now on the face of our blue whirling planet? And I ask it exactly like that. And then I wait and I can go 25 minutes listening to your answer and I'm happy because you're in a place of pride of place. And pride of place is a universal for human beings. Every human being has pride of place. I don't care where you live, you're proud of it. And then I want to go from pride of place to pride of mission.

(19:48):

Because until I know why they're doing their job, why they get up every day and go and do that job, I really am going to have a hard time getting underneath all of that to the confessional. Why are they even doing this? It can't be for the money. Nobody does anything for money very long. They give it up. I don't want to deal with them anyway, so then I ask this other question which is, "Hey, when everything goes great and it goes great, it's fantastic, product is right, timing is right, the budget is there, everything's great. Your people do what they have to do, other guy does what they have to do. How does your product change that person's life"? And then I sit back and wait.

(20:24):

A lot of people think that's two stupid discovery questions, right? Oh Chris, you're trying to get empathy, blah blah blah blah blah. The fact is, most of the time after that second question, somebody after they've confessed their mission, pride of mission is there, they will start to talk about what's in the way of them accomplishing that mission. And that's where you want to be because that's where you want to be. You don't know is it economic, is it emotional, is it strategic? It's something, because everybody is frustrated that they can't do their job as well as they hold themselves accountable for.

Corey Frank (20:58):

That's beautiful. Can you teach that curiosity, Jeb? Can you teach that or is it what you had said earlier about prospecting that the way to do it is just to do it and to say the questions and eventually you'll start meaning the questions. Or is there another bio life hack that you'd suggest to engender that level of curiosity and empathy?

Jeb Blount (21:22):

Yeah, you can teach it. I mean there are people who shouldn't be in sales. Let me get clear about that. There are people who should not be in sales, but people who have a core set of talent, you can teach that. The problem for younger salespeople is they haven't developed the emotional intelligence yet to have the patience that Chris does to allow the answer to begin to build. They step on it. You can teach people how to control their emotions. A lot of cases what'll happen is the person's in the middle of telling you where they live, are telling you what's important to them. And you blurt out what's important to you too. Because when you're talking, it makes you feel important. And when you're not talking, it makes you feel unimportant. So with salespeople, you can teach that. You can teach the patients. I learned it. I learned it from masters like Chris who taught me these things and sometimes through a kick in the rear end. But I learned it.

(22:11):

You learn it through trial and error, but you mostly learn it by just learning human skills. One of the ways I teach people this is just through science. So Chris did two things there in those questions. One is he recognized something called the negativity bias, which is when people start telling you about something that's good, they'll almost always tell you what something is bad. So if I say, "Tell me what you love about your competitor", they'll go blah, blah, blah blah blah, but they don't do these things. I know it's going to happen every single time. I don't got to worry about it. It's always a pattern. He also stumbled into the self-disclosure loop. And this is pure science. When a person is talking, they are getting a dopamine hit to the pleasure centers of the brain. It makes them feel good. Some people, it's harder to get them into that state than others, but you can get every single person to that state because it's science.

(23:02):

They talk about themselves and they get the dopamine hit. They talk about themselves, they get a dopamine hit. So what I teach young salespeople is if you will learn to have the patience to pause, to allow them the space to talk, in most cases they'll continue talking, continue talking, continue talking until they cross over what I call the TMI zone. But they move into this place and Chris describe this, where they begin pouring out their soul. And even when their brain consciously says, you shouldn't be saying all these things, they can't help themselves, but because they're so hopped up on brain crack that it's like they're almost uninhibited. And so when you get them doing that, they start telling you all these things. And then Chris left out one little part of this, which is pre-framing or framing. When he initiated the conversation, where on this great blue planet world are you?

(23:58):

They knew why he was there. They made the meeting with them. They know he is from ConnectAndSell. They know it's a conversation about their salespeople. They know it's a conversation about software. So Chris is right, I don't have to talk about any of that stuff. They'll do the work for me. All I got to do is ask them an open-ended easy question that they have pride in, like they enjoy answering. And I get out of the way because they are pre-frame to talk about ConnectAndSell, talk about more meetings, talk about prospecting, talk about their sales results. If he just waits long enough, they'll bring it full circle and start telling him all the reasons why they need him and their business. So it's almost a game. And Chris, I don't know if you play this game, but the game that I play is how few questions can I ask to get the most information from a prospect?

(24:48):

And it's like a symphony plan. When I see it happening, I see them starting to roll downhill, sometimes on a virtual call where in situations where I can do it, I just look at my salesperson and go. "It's coming, you can see it's happening". And so the art of doing this, and this is really is an art. There's science in it, but it is an art to be organic in the moment. You can absolutely, totally teach salespeople that. And by the way, you asked about virtual selling. I did write an entire book on this on how do you leverage empathy in a virtual call. It's the same thing. Once everybody gets over, "I'm on a camera", look at us, we're all having a conversation. I'm not even thinking, gosh, I'm on a camera. Once we get over that process and we start paying attention to those emotional cues and all the probing questions we ask around those cues, it gets brutally simple because science does all the work for us.

Chris Beall (25:45):

Yeah, it's like a boulder rolling down a hill. All you have to do is get it started. You don't have to figure out which ones it's going to hit if something's going to happen and you're going to get to the bottom of the hill.

Jeb Blount (25:56):

And that's what we call a self-disclosure loop. Because then that boulder's rolling down the hill, the only thing is going to stop it is you throw yourself in front of it.

Chris Beall (26:02):

Right.

Corey Frank (26:04):

Well yeah. Was it Uncle Zieg? I think Ziegler said, "Feed your family or feed your ego. You can't do both in sales". And I think as your point, Jeb, as a lot of us as young pops coming up, we want to, "Hey, my managers gave me all this stuff. I got to say my marketing people gave me all these decks and I want to showcase how much I know about the industry even though I'm a 23 and a half year old person and I step in the way of the prospect way too much and I can't build that trust or that empathy", it sounds like. So man, great tips galore. Got to ask, of the 55, I think we only went over one right? One tip so far. But of the 55, two, there's got to be one that has a greater atomic weight than the others. I mean, we love all our children as parents certainly and certainly all 15 of your books. But of the 55 ways to stay motivated and increase sales in a time of crisis, what's the favorite?

Jeb Blount (26:59):

Let's ask Chris that first because he's read the book twice.

Chris Beall (27:05):

Here's my favorite. It's the opening chapter of part two. "The pipe is life. Talk with people". And here's why it's my favorite. In a crisis, we tend to clam up, we tend to clam up, we tend to go internal, we tend to, companies, to have internal conversations in a crisis instead of external conversations. You only have so many hours in the day. You only have so much emotional juice you. You've got to actually deal with a lot more stuff in a crisis. One thing we didn't really talk about is everybody goes home to something that wasn't as good as before the crisis. And so they gave it the office, but they got to give it a home too. It's going to be challenging. So I love that the simplicity of chapter 14, the opening, I think it's 14 if I remember correctly, the opening of this entire section, and by the way, "The Pipe is Life" is a mathematical statement actually.

(27:58):

It basically is a statement that everybody who's an investor understands. You have two things you can do as an investor and all you're doing when in sales or businesses you're investing. You're investing time in order to hope to get some sort of a return. As an investor, everybody knows when risk is high, portfolios must be broad. That's just a truth of every market back until the beginning of life. I mean, way before there are humans investing, if you are in a high risk situation, high fundamental risk, high external objective risk, you must have a broad portfolio because you don't control outcomes and you don't control timing. But you need outcomes within the amount of time you have available to cover your overhead so you don't starve to death.

(28:50):

That equation's running at all times. And so in really great times, you can sometimes narrow your portfolio and go for some big thing, whatever it happens to be that you really believe in. But in tough times you got to talk to people because that's step 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 million to broadening your portfolio and otherwise you are living in fantasy land. You're going to walk into that risk buzz saw and observe your parts all over the place and look at the blood on the floor and then realize, maybe I should have been talking to more people.

Corey Frank (29:25):

If there was only a weapon out there on the market that allowed you to talk to more people, Chris maybe should-

Chris Beall (29:32):

If only. I wouldn't use it. Sounds like shocking to me. Sounds like [inaudible 00:29:39]-

Corey Frank (29:38):

Like grouch marks, you would never belong to a club that would accept yourself as a member. [inaudible 00:29:42]

Jeb Blount (29:42):

But what Chris does at ConnectAndSell is he facilitates conversations. The more people you have conversations with, the more you were going to sell. It is just that simple. It truly is a mathematical equation. My favorite chapter, by the way, following up from that is "Be the squirrel". I think that in a downturn in a crisis, I'd look in my own pecan trees in my backyard and look at the squirrels in the trees. They're relentless, they're unstoppable, nothing holds them back. They fall on the ground, they hit their back, they get back up, they do it again. They 24/7, 24/7, all they think about is prospecting for nuts and seeds and stacking them up for winter. And the great sales people during a crisis are going to be focused 24/7, dialed in. They're going to broaden their pipe, they're going to fill it up and they're going to be relentless, unstoppable prospectors because when all is said and done, no matter what we say, all of the noise around sales, in sales, persistence always, always finds a way to win.

Chris Beall (30:46):

Yes. And creativity. When I read that chapter at Jeb, I was beyond smiling. So here's a blog that I wrote in on May 16th, 2017. Here it is.

Jeb Blount (30:57):

Oh really? Look, there's [inaudible 00:30:59]-

Chris Beall (31:00):

Go nuts. Think like a squirrel. And it came about from watching squirrels get to our bird feeders in the backyard. And I would devise extremely diabolical means to keep them from doing it. Now, I have unfair advantages. I have a degree in physics. I know some stuff other people don't know, but guess what? I don't know anything a squirrel doesn't know. They can get by everything,

Jeb Blount (31:24):

Anything. And that's wonderful, wonderful videos on YouTube of like you said, diabolical ways of keeping them out. The problem is that you would think about the way and then you would go to work, and you were thinking about something else. The squirrels, the only thing they thought of all day long, all night long is how am I going to get past this thing that Chris erected to keep me out of the bird seed? And that's how they beat you because they just figured out a way around it and they would work at it until they would. And that's the problem for a lot of salespeople right now is that they have been living large, they've been doing so well. We always talk about how hard sales is. I mean, every time somebody says to me that selling now was harder than it's ever been before. I just laugh at them. I'm like, "You got to be kidding me".

(32:14):

For the last 18 months, if you showed up at work and you could fog a mirror, you were probably going to make your quota. You were probably going to be able to survive. Right now, that is not going to happen because folks, nobody is going to call you and the sales people who have been living in that fantasy land of everything is good, suddenly they're going to start hitting those obstacles. If they pack up and go home, if they complain about it, if they whine about it, they're going to fail.

(:

But if they become the squirrel and they say, "Okay, I hit that obstacle, I got to figure out a way around it, under it, through it over it, or I'm going to tear it up. Well I'm getting to the other side of this obstacle". Those are the folks that are going to make it rain during this terrible time that we are moving into and we're going to go through. They're going to win. And by the way, if you're a salesperson and you're listening to this, look around you on your sales floor. Half of the people that are there with you right now aren't going to make it because they're not squirrels.

Corey Frank (33:13):

So instead of Sales Gravy, I think it should be Squirrel Gravy for the next 1824 years. Squirrel. Gravy, I think [inaudible 00:33:21]-

Jeb Blount (33:20):

Well, I'm from the south Corey, so let's just be careful. I've actually had Squirrel and Gravy. It's one of my favorite things, like with some homemade biscuits in the middle of it. Down here where I'm from, we call them tree chickens.

Corey Frank (33:34):

I love it. Well, beautiful. Listen Jeb-

Chris Beall (33:37):

We got a... You got a title now for this episode?

Corey Frank (33:41):

Yeah, I do. [inaudible 00:33:42]

Chris Beall (33:42):

Be a Tree Chicken.

Jeb Blount (33:42):

That's right. Be a tree chicken.

Corey Frank (33:44):

Be a tree chicken. Right. We'll give that to Austin when you hear it. We'll give it, Be a tree chicken. I love it. Jeb, it's an absolute pleasure to finally get you on the podcast here with Market Dominance Crew here. I think we got to have you back and talk about the other 51, 52 we didn't talk about yet.

Jeb Blount (34:03):

That's right.

Corey Frank (34:04):

But by then you'll probably be ready for your book number 16. So for all that want to get ahold of Jeb, obviously best selling author, Fanatical Prospecting, in Sales EQ, Objection Selling in a Crisis, and 10 others. So go to salesgravy.com, jebblount.com. For the esteemed Chris Beall, this is Corey Frank from Branch 49. Until next time.

What changes should you make when you’re selling in an economic-downturn period? Today’s podcast guest, Jeb Blount, is CEO of Sales Gravy and a successful author and podcaster. With 15 books to his name, including his latest, Selling in a Crisis: 55 Ways to Stay Motivated and Increase Sales in Volatile Times, it’s obvious that Jeb knows what he’s talking about when discussing sales techniques during these troubled times. His suggestion? You’ve got to pay close attention to patterns, as well as the signals you’re getting from prospects and customers. In this first of two interviews with our Market Dominance Guys’ hosts, Corey Frank and Chris Beall, Jeb shares his advice about selling a price increase to customers, and about honing and re-honing your message as fears about the current economy’s impact are revealed in your prospects’ objections. Jeb’s also a firm believer in selling alongside his sales team and listening to his reps’ calls to provide just-in-time coaching. Get ready to take notes as this master of selling practices lets you in on what works and what doesn’t in today’s Market Dominance Guys’ episode, “How to Dominate Your Market in a Crisis.”

About Our Guest

Jeb Blount is CEO at Sales Gravy, Inc., which is a global leader in sales acceleration and customer experience enablement solutions. He is the author of 15 sales-related books, including his most recent release, Selling in a Crisis: 55 Ways to Stay Motivated and Increase Sales in Volatile Times. Jeb is also the host of the Sales Gravy Podcast, the world’s most downloaded sales podcast.

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Full episode transcript below:

Corey Frank (01:38):

Great. Good afternoon, good morning, good evening everybody. This is Corey Frank on behalf of Chris Beall and the Market Dominance Guys. We are once again with you for another exciting episode of what it takes to succeed in your market. And not just succeed, but to dominate your market.

(01:55):

And as always with me in the virtual studio is the sage of sales, the prophet of profit, the Stephen Hawking of hawking, Chris Beall. So Chris, good to see you once again. So I don't know if he owed you money in a poker game or what, but we were able to wrangle Jeb Blount, CEO of Sales Gravy, founder, author of 72 sales books... No, 13 sales books. Best selling-

Jeb Blount (02:22):

13? 15. 15.

Corey Frank (02:22):

1. 15.

Jeb Blount (02:24):

I worked hard to get that number.

Corey Frank (02:26):

I'm misinformed.

Chris Beall (02:26):

[inaudible 00:02:29]

Corey Frank (02:28):

I'm misinformed. Yes, I will tell our producer that the data that I have is old, including the new one. So welcome, Jeb. Chris, how did we were able to lasso the esteemed Jeb Blount and his Sales Gravy team to our little podcast?

Chris Beall (02:45):

Well, so Jeb, it's so exciting to have you here. I haven't seen you for a couple of weeks. And it's like, I miss you, man.

(02:56):

So I was sitting down by the fire with Helen over here, we're down here in the desert, and I had been fortunate enough to go online at Amazon and buy a copy... Oops, a copy of Selling in a Crisis. And I love the title.

(03:09):

I was reading it, and it's a very easy read. It's 55 chunks that you can do something with each individual one, which I really like. My only complaint about it is, I prefer the number 108, as you know Corey. But Jeb got a little tired after 55, and figured that's enough and cut it off.

(03:27):

So I went out to review Selling in a Crisis, and just say how fabulous I thought it was, and Amazon wouldn't let me review it. So I sent Jeb a text. And it was fairly late at night, Jeb, right? It was like, I don't know, 11:00 something your time or whatever.

Jeb Blount (03:42):

Yeah, I was in bed.

Chris Beall (03:43):

You were in bed. [inaudible 00:03:45]

Corey Frank (03:44):

He's working on the 16th book, that's what he's doing. Number 16.

Chris Beall (03:48):

And he gives me this answer immediately, and basically says, "Well, there's kind of an issue with Amazon." And he explained it, and I didn't understand it. But I realized I just have to settle down and try again every day until I can finally review it.

(04:00):

But he said something interesting to me too, which is that, "I'm glad you liked the book. I wasn't 100% sure if people were going to like it." I think that's what you said, Jeb. Something like that, right?

Jeb Blount (04:09):

Yeah. Yes.

Corey Frank (04:12):

Well, I know it's tough enough, Jeb, and we can probably start with this as we turn the attention over to you, and as we have pen in hand as you spew all this wonderful wisdom for these 15 books, and all the wonderful seminars. Including the number one sales podcast in the world, I believe right now, right?

Jeb Blount (04:28):

Yeah.

Corey Frank (04:28):

With the Sales Gravy? But selling is tough enough. Now you're going to tell us, I got to learn a whole bunch of new things to sell in a crisis? So maybe we can talk about what was kind of the impetus and the rationale.

(04:40):

Because you have the pulse, you and your team have a pulse on what's happening in the sales world, the outreach world, et cetera. What were some of the little reverberation, seismic things that are happening beneath the surface saying, "Okay, we've got to gird our loins, and we've got to adjust for this Winter is Coming type of moment."

Jeb Blount (05:01):

Well, all you got to do is be a good observer of the world. I read the Wall Street Journal every single day, and you start seeing patterns. So if you read every day, and you look at legitimate business news sources every day, you begin to see the patterns stack up.

(05:14):

It's no different than when, it was right before Christmas, and I was seeing all of these clients coming in asking us to teach them how to go out and get price increases, that I was like, "This is tipping. We know that the inflation is there, but to get this many people coming in..." And I wrote Selling the Price Increase.

(05:32):

And then, as soon as that book was coming out, you began to see that you've got some recessionary issues that are coming into play. Maybe not in every single economy. And by the way, not even in every single state in the United States. It's just a pattern that you see emerging.

(05:46):

And when you start seeing a pattern emerging, the question is, are you going to be behind the curve or ahead of the curve? So by paying attention to what's happening, you start thinking, "Well, there's something there."

(05:57):

This wasn't a aha moment, I need to do this book. It was much more of a, I'm seeing things happening. I had just finished Selling the Price Increase, which was an intense book. It's a detailed textbook on how to go get price increases. Really, really, really detailed. Probably one of the most detailed, wonky books I've ever written.

(06:20):

I'm not thinking I want to write another book. I'm thinking I want to go sleep for about a year. Because I pulled that book off in about 60 days, and it's the longest book I've written in terms of pages.

(06:31):

So I'm sitting down, this third week in June in New York City. I was up there doing a gig, and met with my publisher, Wiley. And we're just having a conversation batting around ideas, and they're like, "What have you been thinking about?"

(06:43):

I said, "Well, I've got this content I've been working on for a while, and I don't know if this is the right time, but it's called Selling in a Crisis. And as soon as I said it, the antennas went up, and they're like, "Oh, that. How soon?"

(07:00):

I had the summer blocked to write the follow-up to Fanatical Prospecting, called the Fanatical Prospecting Playbook, which is out on Amazon, but there isn't a book yet. And they said, "Send me this stuff." So I left there, send them my ideas, and had a contract the next day, and said, "This is what we're going to do."

(07:18):

So that was really the impetus. And I had the time set aside, so I was able to get the book done. The way the book turned out though was kind of weird. I didn't start at this point with the book being the way it is. I'm really happy the way it is, but it wasn't my point.

(07:33):

But that's how it came about. But Corey, I think that the way that I've written books over the last few years, when you look at Virtual Selling, Virtual Training, Selling the Price Increase, and now Selling in a Crisis. It's really the way that good sales professionals should be looking at their marketplace and looking at their world, is you got to be paying attention to patterns.

(07:54):

Because if you can get ahead of the curve on the activity, on the messaging, on how you're changing. Even changing markets. Part of this book is, you've got to go where the money is. So if you're shifting into a different market because you know that that market's going to go there, there's Chris with the book.

(08:10):

So most people in the world are reacting. You don't have to be. You can be proactive. You have to pay attention to what's happening around you.

Corey Frank (08:18):

So with that, Chris and I talk in our Market Dominance podcast certainly, a lot about the signals we get from prospects. The pauses, the not-pauses. The signals they give you by not responding to emails, ghosting, et cetera.

(08:33):

When you look at particularly selling in a crisis, what are some of these... We talk about 55 ways, but what are some of these ways? You said to pay attention to the patterns. What are some of those patterns that you're talking about?

Jeb Blount (08:45):

Well, when you think about prospects teaching you. That's the way I look at it. A prospect teaches you what's happening in their world. Those lessons come in a couple of ways.

(08:53):

If you're brand new... So for example, if you're running ConnectAndSell, and you're having lots of conversations, probably the easiest way to learn how to have a conversation with a prospect is to have lots of conversations with prospects. Pretty soon you kind of figure out, this is the things they're interested in. These are the things they're not interested in. Especially if you're going down a market vertical.

(09:11):

That's everyday work. If you're in a crisis, or in a disruptive period, economic downturn. It could be energy crisis. It could be any of the things that are impacting companies today. You've got to pay attention to what questions your prospects are asking you. You've got to pay attention to how slow they're moving, or how fast they're moving.

(09:32):

So for example, in selling in a crisis, one of the things that we know to be true is that, when you're in a situation where people feel stressed or overwhelmed, or they feel like making a decision to do business with you is super risky, time is not on your side. You don't have six months to work a deal. You've got to advance that deal micro-step by micro-step by micro-step.

(09:56):

And if they're not willing to match your effort and move along with you, it's a pretty clear signal that you may not have a deal there. The most expensive thing that you can do during a crisis period, during a recession, is to invest a lot of time in the wrong prospect.

(10:11):

So the signals that you get from prospects along the way are, "Hey, am I really in this with you? Am I really interested in working with you?" Along the way, you've got to pay attention to the people that you are dealing with. Because, as we start moving into an economic downturn, as winter starts coming on, decision-making authority begins to shift and move inside organizations.

(10:33):

Right now, it's typically at a middle level to a low level. As the crisis heats up, as the recession comes on, it'll begin moving up higher in the organization, and you're not going to know when that's going to happen. So you have to start paying attention to when you ask those prospects to do something, what do they do? How do they do it? How do they respond to you?

(10:55):

You have to pay attention to cognitive dissonance. You have to pay attention to their body language. All of those things matter. And a good salesperson, a good sales professional, lives in the land of awareness. Because they understand that you cannot be delusional and successful at the same time. And if we ignore those patterns, we begin to live inside of delusion.

Corey Frank (11:16):

So Chris, you, as the CEO of ConnectAndSell, you see several million phone calls a year. If you look at, we're talking about flight school, IFR and VFR type of ratings, right?You not only have the visual flight, by being on the ground with your clients, Chris, and seeing kind of the residue and the body language over the last few months. But you have the IFR, the instrument ratings as well, to see what's that residue that shows up in all the ConnectAndSell reports from the data. So with what Jeb is talking about, are you seeing many of the same things?

Chris Beall (11:51):

Well, one of the ones we have seen... Yeah, we do see some things. One of the ones we've seen is, we get a signal back that says people have left their job, and it's called person left remove in our world. And that signal has gone from a 2018 level of about 3.3% per month, and it went up during this whole great reshuffle, et cetera, et cetera, up to about 5.2% per month.

(12:15):

And we can look at it by how senior the people are. As Jeb said, the decision-making authority is likely to move up in organizations, and it moves up very, very fast. The reason it moves up is somebody has a meeting and says, "Okay, CFO's got a lot of power."

(12:31):

During a crisis, CFOs have a huge amount of power in organizations. In fact, you can generally say that the power shifts from the CEO to the CFO in a crisis. That's what really happens. And the CEO's left trying to figure out what to do with the resources they're allowed to have.

(12:47):

I know a lot of people think CEOs are like big powerful beasts that do everything. Actually, kind of they're both reporting to the board, the CFO and the CEO effectively. Unless the organization's put together kind of funny. And you get these power shifts that are going on.

(13:02):

And they tend to be represented in reality by, suddenly somebody who could spend $50,000 has got to go get approval for $10,000. Or for anything. That's a fairly common one.

(13:15):

What we don't normally see in sales, and we have to learn to adapt to in a crisis, is not just continuous change and staying on top of stuff, it's discontinuous change. So there's continuous change going on like, "Hey, now if my deal takes three months, I have a 15% chance the person I'm working with is gone before the end of the deal."

(13:36):

Think about that. So you're better off doing a deal that can be done earlier, and then cementing it as best you can to somebody who's likely to still be there and start delivering value, than to see if you can do a better deal in three months, which you might have been [inaudible 00:13:51]

Corey Frank (13:52):

So are you saying [inaudible 00:13:53] take a smaller price deal? Is that what I hear you saying? Potentially [inaudible 00:13:56]

Chris Beall (13:56):

I always make the distinction between price and chunk size. So price is price. Your unit price is your unit price. Whatever it is, you're probably not going to move off of that. Chunk size has a lot to do with what you can get done in a amount of time you have with the people that you're working with.

(14:12):

And chunk size, in a crisis, it's often wise... It feels funny, but it's often wise to actually come down in chunk size, spread your portfolio, and take market share. The best thing you can do in a crisis is while everybody else is trying to keep the lights on, you take the market.

(14:29):

And they wake up when it's all [inaudible 00:14:33] "What happened?" And it's like, "Well, I took the market." Then that's what our show's all about, is market dominance. "I took the market while you were worried about the deal."

Jeb Blount (15:33):

Yup. By the way, that's exactly what we did at Sales Gravy during the last downturn. It wasn't a very long downturn, but we put pedal to the metal, and we sucked up market share and quadrupled the size of our company by not being afraid to lean into it.

(15:48):

And a lot of it was exactly what Chris is saying. Really wise words. We just broke the chunks up into smaller pieces. And it turned out that when we were delivering value, they said we want more of those chunks.

(15:59):

So one way of looking at this, and Chris, I don't want to put words in your mouth, is, when things start hitting the fan, you've got to make it really easy for people to do business with you with a lower risk to them, so that they don't feel like they need to hold off on something. Because time is not on your side.

(16:19):

If you think time's on your side, you are dead wrong. It is not. It will slay you. I love the stat, 15% of the people are leaving within three months. And that's real.

Chris Beall (16:30):

Yeah, and a buying committee, it's even worse. Because say you've got a buying committee of four folks, right? You're almost at a 100% chance that one of the four will leave. And as soon as they leave, that committee goes into paralysis.

(16:42):

It's instantaneous paralysis, because their buying mechanism was the vote among those people. And there is power games being played inside of there. You can never see them perfectly. You're an outsider, they're insiders. All that power is flowing around inside. But something broke down power-wise, because that person left.

(17:00):

And it's not always that they're fired. Sometimes they're the smart ones. The powerful person who says, "I'm getting out of here, I'm going to where the grass is going to be greener, or at least the sprinklers are still going to be turned on tomorrow."

(17:11):

So I think speed becomes a huge, huge issue. Getting cycle times down, and friction out. Those are hard things to do, because we cling to the big deals, the one that's going to make everything happen. And we cling to our friction elements, because we think they provide us with proof of progress. And yet, we have to let go of that stuff if we really want to dominate in a crisis

Corey Frank (17:34):

Yeah, for sure. You know, one of the things, Jeb, you talk about certainly in a lot of your books, is activity is everything. Especially in a crisis, Chris, certainly you have a powerful weapon like ConnectAndSell that helps you amplify, and certainly modulate, upscale your activities is everything.

(17:52):

But Jeb, with that in mind, in these 55 ways, is there such a thing as, do I have to prospect smarter? Or is it, do I have to prospect more? Or do I have to prospect differently? When you talk about, again that broad axiom of activity is everything, how can we frame that in towards the crisis mentality here?

Jeb Blount (18:13):

All of the above. You have to get more prospecting done, in less time, with greater outcomes. And so you have to prospect faster, and you have to get more done. Which is why ConnectAndSell's such a great product.

(18:27):

You have to have more conversations with people. And you have to do it, and you have to compress the time. Because you've got to get much more prospecting done during a crisis period, because there are going to be fewer buyers. It's just necessary to sift through all of the soil to find the gold.

(18:46):

But you also have to do some things different. I mean, you have to maybe change your message a little bit. That's going to be important. You're going to face a little bit different prospecting objections. Most of it's going to be deferment objections. "We're not buying right now, we're not doing anything right now."

(19:02):

You're going to have to get through those. And you're going to have to pay attention to Willie Sutton. Willie Sutton is the namesake of Sutton's Law. Sutton's Law simply describes, you have to go where the money is.

(19:13):

So you're going to have to begin shifting what you consider your ideal qualified prospect as we move into a down market. And that just simply means the money's going to be moving someplace. It may not be moving in the market you've been calling in, so go find another market.

(19:28):

And then you've got to be prepared multiple times to shift. Because sometimes that money will move into one segment, and then move to another segment. It might move into a certain size company, away from other size companies.

(19:40):

This goes back to knowing your market, knowing your business, knowing your customer base. Knowing what's happening at the macro level and at the micro level. It means studying, being an expert.

(19:52):

But you have to do all of those things. You have to prospect more, you have to be more efficient. And sometimes you have to be different. Different messaging, different ways of dealing with objections, and into different markets.

Corey Frank (20:06):

And Chris, in your world, when you look at, again, the weapon of ConnectAndSell. Dial-to-connect rates, conversation / conversion rates. Dial-to-meeting rates. What kind of residue and signals are you seeing?

(20:19):

Much like what you talked about earlier with the folks who are no longer employed. You saw a little bit of blip a few months ago, that was a leading indicator. What are you seeing from dial-to-connect, dial-to-meeting rates that kind of buttresses what Jeb's talking about?

Chris Beall (20:34):

Well, I always look at the most calibrated reps, right? So you look at, over time, who produces certain number of meetings per prospecting hour. Because that's really what the number is. Time is not your friend. Time goes tick, tick, tick. You've got a prospecting hour, what do you produce?

(20:48):

A fabulous number is, well, we know some folks who can go two and a half, three meetings per hour that they can produce like clockwork. Most really good, top-of-funnel folks who other people would say are good, they're going to be at about 0.6.

(21:05):

But if you take that top person, and you see that meetings per rep hour go down, all things being equal, you have got to move. And if you don't have a calibrated person, you're kind of screwed. Because now the question is, "Well what's really going on?" And what's probably going on is actually what Jeb talks about in chapter 44.

(21:23):

Chapter 44 is Control Your Emotions. "Selling in a crisis can push you to the edges of emotional extremes. These emotional extremes become your Achilles heel. Unmanaged, they betray you, make you weak, cause you to lose self-control, and make it impossible for you to effectively influence buyers who are likely being impacted by similar emotions."

(21:44):

The death spiral in sales is when your emotions start to be affected by their responses. When they're affected negatively, you become less effective. And the place you become less effective is at the opener of your cold call.

(21:59):

That's where you go to crap. That's where you go to hell in a hand basket. Your voice tightens up, you're a little bit off, and everybody wants to hang up on you. So that's what I always look for, is that first hint.

(22:12):

It's a very athletic business. Think of how you do it with athletes, right? If it's a wide receiver, you're looking for the guy who's breaking a little bit late and gets hit in the side of the helmet by the ball. It's like, "Why weren't you looking back for that?" Because he's tight. That's why. Because he's tight. And as soon as you're tight you can't execute.

(22:33):

So I look for that tightness in that number. Which is a discontinuous, or rather quick change in meetings per rep hour from a highly calibrated top performer. And then you kind of go, "That's the market." Go down in the organization, you're going to see it from their own emotions. Now you've got a coaching thing that you've got to work on.

Corey Frank (22:54):

You bring up a great point. We have to do a plug to our friend Brad Ferguson and then Dave Kurlan from OMG. Because the OMG sales assessment tool, they have a metric in there, a measurable aspect, that says your ability to stay in the moment. And can you take a punch or not, right, Jeb?

(23:12):

I'm sure that you see this in... It's tough enough in cold calling, when you're doing prospecting. You talk a lot about it, I know, in the discovery, which we're going to talk about a little bit later here. But how do you coach that, from your perspective?

(23:26):

From your team at Sales Gravy, they go out, and I'm somebody that, I'm going to get turned off my focus here. Because the prospect is maybe a little bit more antsy, a little bit more animated, a little bit more agitated. How can you coach me to stay in the moment, om, Spock-like, keep the game going?

Jeb Blount (23:45):

It's more of a pattern of things. It's not going to be one call. So it's going to be multiple calls that are going to start pushing salespeople to change their pattern, and the way that they approach prospects on a cold call, because they become emotional.

(23:59):

In other words, they begin anticipating that they're going to get hit in the head, essentially is what happens. They get tight. They're like, "I'm going to get punched in the face." So they come off more insecure, they lose their confidence.

(24:10):

And in a cold-call situation, because you're moving so fast. I mean, essentially it's verbal judo at 100 miles an hour. If you're tight, you're going to get nailed. So the downward spiral becomes, they get hit in the head, it hurts, then they flinch again, and then they get hit in the head again. Then it hurts. And then it just gets worse and worse and worse in the way that they're approaching them.

(24:31):

So if you're a sales leader, first of all, what Chris said is exactly right. Go watch your salespeople. Calibrate. Look at your top salespeople, look at the people in the middle. Pay attention to what's happening to them. Listen to their calls. Be present. Pay attention to them.

(24:46):

You can't lead this from sitting behind a desk looking at your email. You need to be there and listen to calls. In my case, I'll go get on calls with them. So I'll go make calls with the salesperson, have the same conversations, see what they're experiencing, and then sit back and say, "Okay, we're getting this objection from a customer or from our prospects. How are we going to handle that?"

(25:10):

And then we're going to coach the messaging, build the messaging, replay the messaging, role-play the messaging, and then we're going to go get back on the telephones again. Because all they really need is just to know how they're going to handle that moment. And how are they going to handle their emotions when they get punched in the face.

(25:26):

But sometimes you forget. If you get hit enough times, you just forget. A really good way of looking at this. And Chris, this is kind of a connection to what you're saying.

(25:36):

Most people know I'm just big into horses. It's my thing. And I had a horse last spring that refused a jump on me really dirty, real bad, and it broke my foot. Then I get on another horse, and I get on another horse, and suddenly I feel fear because I think those horses are going to do the same thing.

(25:57):

Now this is all happening at the subconscious level, and I'm tight. Well, if I'm tight, what I do is I change the horse's behavior because of my behavior.

(26:07):

What my coach did for me was say, "Hey Jeb, guess what? Let me show you a picture of what's happening. Here's a video. This is you on that horse going over the jump. See how far forward you are? See what you're doing?"

(26:20):

So if you're a coach, you have to sit with your salespeople, and then you have to help them become aware of the way they've changed their behavior. Because usually when they start changing those behaviors, they don't know it. It's just one little thing at a time.

(26:33):

And then you have to sometimes get on the calls with them and show them it's going to be okay. But more than anything, you want to help them with their messaging. You want to listen to what they're doing, and you want to get them back in track.

(26:45):

It's no different than the coach with the wide receiver that's cutting just a little bit early. You're going to show them some game film. You're going to say, "Here's what you're doing, now let's go out and practice it."And that's how you get them better. It's not like the person's talent took a hit, it's their emotions that took a hit. As the coach, that's what your job is, is to fill and close that gap.

Corey Frank (27:03):

I think an example that you talked about, I believe it was on your blog recently or one of your podcasts, you talked about your son conducting one of the seminars. And a gentleman in the audience raised his hand and says, "Hey, this whole fanatical prospecting thing, is it even relevant today? Does that stuff even work?"

(27:21):

Now talk about getting a signal that there's some fear there, right Chris? And I'll let you tell the rest of the story if you recall. How did your speaker, how did your son, handle that particular question?

Jeb Blount (27:30):

He just pulls out his list and picks up the phone. He just rips off 20 outbound prospecting calls, he sets a few appointments. And he just looks at him and says, "Is it relevant?" That was it. That's the truth.

(27:43):

So he covered that gap by showing them that what they were fearing was all the wrong thing. I mean, all they really wanted him to do was to let them off the hook. And Chris, you'll love this, that the phone didn't work anymore.

(27:56):

I mean, it wasn't about whether fanatical prospecting was good or not. It was whether or not they should be talking with people in real time, in synchronous conversations, on the telephone. Or should they just sit around in their sales enablement platform and spam people with a bunch of crappy emails. And he just shut the whole thing down, just in that moment.

(28:16):

And my kid, by the way, looking at patterns. When he was in high school, I used to make him come in, and I would give him a list of people to call and we would practice messaging. I'd have it on speaker phone and all I wanted him to do was get objections.

(28:31):

So I wanted to hear all the objections that he got. Then we would change the messaging, and he would come in and we would do it again the next day. And we would change the messaging until we would hone it, and we would start getting fewer objections than we were getting conversations.

(28:47):

You're always going to get objections. But if I can improve the probability that I get a conversation and reduce the probability I get an objection, I'm going to get more meetings. If I get more meetings, I'm going to sell more.

(28:55):

So it's the same thing that Chris was talking about. As a leader, you've got to listen. Pay attention to what's happening around you, what your patterns are. You cannot hide in the sand.

(29:05):

And Chris, I'd love to get your opinion on this, but I've got to tell you, I think a lot of leaders are frightened to death of coaching prospecting activity. I think it scares them. I don't think that they like it. I think that they will do anything to stay away from it. I think it makes them feel uncomfortable.

(29:22):

And I can tell you that, if you're a leader and you will go sit down next to your rep, and you'll make dials with them, you'll be the greatest hero in the world. They'll tell everybody what you did. Because most leaders are afraid to do that, because they're afraid that they'll get rejected. They're afraid that they'll fail. They're afraid that their reps will see them fail.

(29:41):

I do it all the time, Corey. I make egregious mistakes. Every once in a while I'll sell something. I mean crazy as it sounds, I'll get a deal. I'll get somebody on the hook. But usually I'm crashing and burning right next to it.

(29:52):

They don't even notice. I'm the guy that wrote Fanatical Prospecting, and I'm messing everything up. All they see is that I'm sitting there on the phone on a list.

Corey Frank (30:01):

Yup, yup.

Chris Beall (30:02):

Yeah, I've got an example of this that's quite illuminating. So Scott Webb over at HUB International, chief sales officer of the Central Region there. He's figured out two things I think that everybody should think about a little bit when it comes to this question of the emotions and prospecting.

(30:18):

One is, he doesn't let anybody prospect using our weapon unless it's in a group setting. And the group setting is all Zoom, but it's a group setting. And it's like, you come to this, you come, we start on the second. It's at 9:00:00 it starts. And it ends at 9:59:59, and whatever's left, and it's over.

(30:44):

And you've got to earn your way in. You've got to earn your way in by converting it greater than 10% conversation to meetings. And you have four sessions in which to do it, after which, "Sorry, you're out."

(30:55):

But he does another thing, which is he leads from the front. And he leads from the front, he's on every one of those. He's calling with them. He has somebody else who's paying attention and coaching. We provide that person.

(31:06):

And as a result, it's sort of like a no excuses world. You really don't expect the head coach to go out there and run that pattern better than the wide receiver, better than that first round draft pick. But he does it.

(31:18):

He converts, by the way, at 100%. And he does it using techniques I've never seen before [inaudible 00:31:24]

Corey Frank (31:24):

100%. Come on.

Chris Beall (31:27):

It's what Cherryl Turner has adopted called the insistence close. It's quite fascinating, and it takes care of a lot of emotions. But the big emotional thing is, look, we don't like to talk about it, but we're kind of herd animals.

(31:40):

A lot of salespeople think they're not. They think, "Oh, I'm [inaudible 00:31:44] I'm this independent, I'm lone wolf, blah, blah blah." Fact of matter is, people are braver in groups than they are individually. And once you get that sort of herd thing going, now you can coach to first failure very easily.

(31:57):

And we're big advocates of coach to first failure. Never coach the second thing, because it's the first thing that screwed up the second thing. Just coach the first thing. Push the damn button, have another conversation. See how you do.

(32:09):

But I mean, I've coached a lot of stuff. You know, Corey, I used to teach people rock climbing. The second failure tends to be really bad when you're climbing. It's the one that starts with the word falling ends with the fall. It's the failure before that, that causes the fall. It's not the one on the move, it's the one that was going to set up the move.

(32:28):

And that's true in sales too. It's the previous thing that you didn't quite get that left you in an awkward position, left you out of balance, left you too far forward on the horse. Whatever it happens to be. It's that first failure you've got to coach to. But you've got to do it under pressure. Because when they're not under pressure, they all perform.

Corey Frank (32:46):

Mm-hmm.

Most people look at a potential job from the standpoint of “What am I going to earn?” Austin Finch, Funnel Media Group’s podcast editor and today’s guest on Market Dominance Guys, talks with our host, Chris Beall, about an additional and very important way of looking at any new employment you’re considering. They suggest asking yourself the question, “What am I going to learn?” Austin cautions job hunters that even a high-paying job can be a dead-end job. When you’re looking at a new job — whether it’s in sales or another field —  Austin suggests that “If you can gain experience, and move on to gain more, then there’s no reason to hold yourself back.” Listen to the whole podcast for more words of career wisdom from Chris and Austin in today’s insightful and helpful Market Dominance Guys’ episode, “What Am I Going to Learn?”

----more----

About Our Guest

Austin Finch is an in-demand podcast editor for Funnel Media Group. He is currently a senior at Beaverton High School in Beaverton, Oregon.

Chris Beall (01:16):

It's really interesting. Helen is always really thoughtful about whether the job she has or a job if she thinks about taking one, like moving from one position to another in Microsoft, her number one thing is always, what am I going to learn? It's really interesting. And Helen is younger than I am, but not by five decades. And that attitude, that the main thing about a job is what are you gonna learn while you're doing it? I think that is refreshing. It's something to be intentional about for people who can. I know a lot of people it's like, "What am I gonna earn? But even a really high-paying job can be a dead-end job. And so, I love your view on that.

(01:59):

There's another thing you are getting out of this that you may or may not be aware of, you probably are 'cause here we are sitting here doing this. People go off to really expensive colleges, not hoping to get a great education 'cause they're pretty sure when they're 18, 19, 20, 21 years old the limiting factor in their actual education, their academic education is the fact that they're at a really bad age to get an academic education. I mean, it's just like you couldn't pick a worse age range to imbue yourself in the deep knowledge that's been gathered over the centuries, or whatever the leading stuff is that's coming out of laboratories, or whatever it happens to be than between 18 and 22 when, for not everybody but for a lot of people, there's a lot of, we'll call it, biologically amplified social interest. I think that's what I should call it, BASI, I could put a C on the end, that'd be pretty cool. Biologically amplified social interest .

(02:59):

But they do know they're getting one thing. Why do they spend a bazillion dollars to go to, you name it Ivy League School? And the answer is the network. It's why I didn't do it by the way. Now, I'm not saying I could have gotten into one of those places, but some people thought I could because they were recruiting me. But I didn't want that network interestingly enough. I don't know why, it's a freaking nature of my personality and I was wrong. Not that I should have gone to one of the schools, but if you know 10 people who are well placed in the world of whatever it is, and in the case of like Corey, and myself, and Helen, and all of our guests, you think about it, every single one of our guests would take your call. Every single one of our guests would take your call.

(03:47):

Now, think about who those guests are. That network, that's a bazillion dollar network. That's worth a Harvard education right there in terms of network. I mean you even know somebody who runs a really cool set of hotels up in Canada, the CEO of that company. You could call her up and go, "Hey, this is Austin Finch, I'm the editor of the podcast Market Dominance podcast you were on blah blah blah and I just wanted to tell you how much I really, I went back and listened to it and tell you how much I really enjoyed what you had to say there, especially X, Y or Z." You have an entry point throughout. Do you think young people think about that network-building effect while they're working in their first job, second job, third job?

Austin Finch (04:29):

I think in the first job it usually gets overlooked, unfortunately. But I think by the second it starts to really hit you. Because I have a lot of friends that quit their first job because the hours were bad or the pay was bad, whatever it is, the usual surface-level reasons. And then, when they were looking for their second job, they had a lot more in mind in terms of who that manager is and what companies that's connected to. Because, like you said, I mean if you can build a gazillion dollar network, why wouldn't you try to? Just the guests I've heard speak on this show alone are in so many different business sectors that any field I could have someone to talk to about it.

Chris Beall (05:15):

Yeah, you can talk to Oren Klaff, one of the most brilliant minds and practitioners in the world of how we should sell, who's now in the business of helping companies raise capital.

(05:25):

In fact, I'm working with him right now, literally today, on raising capital for our company. And the world of investment banking, and how all of that works is so cipher to most of us. And he's a phone call away for you. Also he is the only guy in the show who's ever had the good graces to argue with me, which I thought was just fantastic.

Austin Finch (05:46):

It was memorable.

Chris Beall (05:48):

It wasn't good. It's the kind of thing that people who don't like that sort of stuff would go, "Ooh." We had a lot of fun on that show. That was really fun. So that's fascinating.

(05:58):

So where do you go from here? What are you gonna do? You don't have to divulge it all to the audience, but do you have kind of an idea, direction? You gonna run companies? You seem rather entrepreneurial to me or is that like, "No, that's crazy stuff. People go broke doing that." Or what are your inclinations?

Austin Finch (06:17):

I look a lot at my mom's career and how it's evolved several times and I think my priority one is to choose a good entry point. And the second priority would be to not be afraid to change 'cause she's changed complete directions of her business several times just since I've been old enough to notice and talk to her about it. And every time she gets something new out of it, whether it's knowledge, or a new career opportunity, every time it's new contacts and that's building that network as well. So I don't want to be blind to the possibility of changing, or get locked in one career forever.

Chris Beall (07:37):

I love it. I love it. I think a lot of people think that they should get on some sort of a treadmill 'cause my mom always thought I should do that. I remember, I went through a big change in 1988 where on a Friday I went to the guy who was running the project that I was working on, title was director of engineering, or product, or something like that at the software company. But, in fact, I built the product and I'd sold the source code. It was Sun Microsystems, they were gonna use it as a foundation for building these automated distribution centers. And I went through a big change between a Friday and a Sunday. I went to the top guy and I said, "I'm gonna quit my job on Sunday at midnight. Do you want me here, Monday morning?" I was living in Boulder and working in California.

(08:24):

And I'll never forget my mom's response to that. I went from making $62,000 a year to making $260,000 a year over a weekend. So it was a big deal. And I was out on my own. I was suddenly an entrepreneur in the tech space, tech services effectively. And I'll never forget, my mom's reaction was, "You left that good job?" 'Cause her view and many people of her generation, their view is, "My job is a lifeline and you get one and keep it forever." Your view appears to be do stuff that's useful, be good at it if you can and learn a bunch and be open to change. And I think that's a much more robust way of looking at not just career but life 'cause they're pretty intertwined, I believe.

(09:11):

And your mom is a great example. And I'll never forget the lunch we had when she had just acquired Funnel Media and that was a scary move. That is not a trivial thing to do. You have to have a certain amount of activity to keep the lights on, and make things happen and how do you grow the business? She was so brave in the way she did it. And I thought really, really creative. So that's a great example for you. But I think your attitude is just dead on. It's just absolutely dead on. And I suspect it's more widespread than most people my age think among folks like your friends. I mean, would you say that it's more the norm among your circle of friends that they have this attitude, rather than, "I got to latch myself onto some job that's gonna take me to retirement and then I can sit around on my butt the rest of my life?"

Austin Finch (10:02):

I think it's kind of hard to tell because especially since all of us still live with our parents, you have so much influence from sometimes much older generations that are attached to that idea of if you find a good job, there's no reason to ever switch. If it ain't broke, don't fix it, that whole kind of thing.

(10:19):

And there's also that whole sense of loyalty to a company and to an organization where it's not that I don't feel any sense of loyalty, but it's if you can gain experience and move on to gain more, there's no reason to hold yourself back. And like you were saying, even a high-paying job can be a dead-end job. And I don't think a lot of people realize that.

Chris Beall (10:39):

That's interesting. Yeah, it's a big part of what Helen does in the Love Your Team system is to help people move on, not move out of a group, or something like that. After all, the idea of it is to form high performing teams and have the best performers want to stay and work with you and really produce wonderful things. But she does it by paying attention to people's aspirations to their lives, to where they really want to go. And help them along on their own journey rather than demanding some sort of loyalty to this abstract company. And I think that's a big deal.

(11:14):

I think that the notion of loyalty to a company is a little bit odd when you think about it. The company is a bit of an abstraction. Loyalty to a bunch of people you work with while you're working with them, and friendship with them afterward, and maybe good feelings about what you did and all that, yeah, those all make sense. But I don't know, I think it goes back to when the idea was, hey, you had the local whatever they were, the duke, the king, the Lord of the castle. They're keeping you from the other bad guys coming in and doing bad things to you, and therefore, you need to be loyal to them and just shut your eyes and do that. I think that's a bad idea in modern business.

(11:51):

You need to be loyal to the truth. That's sort of a different matter. But maybe not so much to a given company. And I don't think anybody's gonna refuse to bring you on board because you're not pretending like you're a slave to their organization for the rest of your life. So I love the attitude.

(12:08):

Do you find, as you're interacting with the school you go to the teachers and all that, what do you think about their awareness of this particular dynamic of here you are at your age, you're working at something, you're going off ultimately away from the school to do other things. Does the school get it? Do the teachers get it? Do you feel like they're looking out for you in that sense? And I don't mean all of them, but even some of them. What's your experience around that part of society? The [inaudible 00:12:38], the education part.

Austin Finch (12:39):

Well, I heard a lot about high school before I got there from my older sister, so that was kind of the background knowledge. But I feel like the focus has shifted a lot in recent years towards really gearing us up for a career and for college. I mean, for a while it seemed like the focus was mainly just work as hard as you can in high school, graduate with the highest GPA you can, and then we'll see you never. And good luck with your career. And now, I definitely have a fair amount of teachers and staff members that when I talk to them about the classes I'm taking, or the plans I have, they genuinely want to help any way they can to help you succeed on whatever journey you want to pursue.

Chris Beall (13:25):

That's hopeful and fantastic.

(13:26):

And, on that note, I think we should wrap this up. That's like the most hopeful, coolest thing I've heard in quite a while, Austin. I'm gonna feel good about the world for a little bit here because of what you just said.

(13:37):

And I want to thank you so much for coming on the show. And I know you're gonna do a fantastic job editing it. God knows what sort of things I threw in there that you can go pluck something else out. And I think you're gonna have some fun listening to your own voice. You have a fantastic voice, by the way. And the thoughtful nature of your speech, of how you talk, and it's clear how you're thinking from how you speak, I think is a wonderful thing. It's an inspiration to me. I'll try to be more thoughtful in the future.

(14:05):

Thanks so much for being on and have fun editing this show.

Austin Finch (14:08):

Thanks for having me on it.

Chris Beall (14:10):

All right, fantastic.

(14:11):

And for Market Dominance Guys. Corey Frank, not here. Chris Beall with Austin Finch. Hey, 'til next time.

Who’s behind the curtain making the Market Dominance Guys the great podcast that it is? It’s Austin Finch, an editor at Funnel Media Group, which produces Market Dominance Guys. In listening to this conversation between Austin and our host, Chris Beall, you would never know that Austin is the youngest guest ever interviewed for this podcast. Currently 17 years old, he has edited Market Dominance Guys for several years and has recently added Helen Fanucci’s “Love Your Team” podcast to his editing responsibilities. In talking with this intelligent, thoughtful, and insightful young man, Chris asks about the challenges of podcast editing, including the pruning and grafting necessary to increase a podcast audience’s understanding and to decrease the distractibility caused by any audio glitches or guests’ faux pas. Austin loves his job and sees his editing work as that of a translator for the hosts’ and guests’ messages, and his goal as “Helping to Get the Message Across,” which just happens to be the title of today’s Market Dominance Guys’ episode.

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About Our Guest

Austin Finch is an in-demand podcast editor for Funnel Media Group. He is currently a senior at Beaverton High School in Beaverton, Oregon.

Full episode transcript below:

Chris Beall (01:22):

All right, so here we are with another episode of Market Dominance Guys and this is Chris Beall flying solo on my side today without my wingman that I normally am with, although we've flown solo a couple times each direction. Corey Frank is off gallivanting around in Greek Islands, or God knows what. I get a video from him every once in a while and wonder why he's there and I'm not there, but that's just the way it is.

(01:48):

And I'm here today with a very, very special guest, Austin Finch. And none of you know Austin probably, unless he's secretly more famous than he lets on. But Austin has actually been I think the most important member of the Market Dominance Guys team, because he's worked, not behind the camera, but in this business on the other side of the screen turning whatever junk Corey and I spew out of our mouths into those episodes that people have been saying nice things about. So Austin, welcome to Market Dominance Guys, funny thing to say to the guy who actually causes it to go from a bunch of raw stuff to finished production material.

Austin Finch (02:30):

Thank you for having me on the show.

Chris Beall (02:31):

Spectacular, what fun. We in the form of I, came up with this idea at lunch the other day in Portland. I got to ask a preliminary question though because the audience is going to be all over this question which is, Austin, so we have a bunch of grizzled business people on, and then we have some lovely business people on, and then we have even some fairly young business people like Tom Yang has been on so that's been interesting. But I have a feeling that you might be the youngest guest we've had in terms of chronological age, although I think in terms of perhaps wisdom and maturity, you got Corey and me both beat. I don't want to ask you your name unless you're comfortable spitting it out, but are you roughly speaking 50 years younger than me?

Austin Finch (03:15):

I don't know quite how old you are, but I'm sitting at 17 right now.

Chris Beall (03:20):

50 years it is. I got five decades on you. The audience can be stunned that I've learned so little in five decades, or you've learned so much in 1.7. But just an opening question, I've told people for a long time that you're the guy who makes our show real. Susan, your mom, says, "Cut it here, cut it there," and then you go and go way beyond cut it here, cut it there and turn it into something. When did you get started, because we're going to talk podcasting here for a while, a subject about which more than I. When did you get started editing podcasts?

Austin Finch (03:57):

In the summer of 2019, I had just bought a computer for the first time, a desktop computer and I was looking for jobs I could do at that age, which are pretty limited around here, almost everything wants you to be at least 16. And for years, since I was old enough to understand what she did, I'd always talked to my mom about what she did for work, or she'd asked me questions about, "Should I make this choice, or this choice?" And she goes up to me one day and she goes, "Well, do you have any interest in editing podcasts, that's the way a lot of people are getting interested in the business right now?" "Sure, I'll give it a shot." And she asked me what I'd want to do in terms of content and this one sounded interesting, because she said you guys were very knowledgeable and that your topic was cool and I'd have to agree. So it's been a little over three years.

Chris Beall (04:46):

Well, lucky three years for Corey of me, and for everybody in the audience who's been enjoying these podcasts. What was it like? That sounds like, "Hey Austin, here's a diving board and down there, somewhere, we're calling that a swimming pool. There's no water in it yet, but if you dive off we'll get some in before you hit." What was it like? Was it like, "Oh my God," or was it like, "Oh yeah I could do this while doing three other things?"

Austin Finch (05:10):

Well there's always that safety net of my boss being my mom, so she's not going to just fire me for no reason. So that's one plus. And then the other nice thing was that she would teach me all the tips and tricks as I was going along. So I was learning more about it. It wasn't just hopping into a software I'd never used, because the Adobe Suite is not exactly self-explanatory.

Chris Beall (05:34):

I will tell the folks at Adobe that. I have tried to learn a couple of Adobe products in my life and I have concluded that I'm a no-hoper when it comes to that stuff. I mean even the simple ones, they're just entirely beyond me. They seem to have a mental model that conflicts with my view of the world. Was that part challenging for you, or did you pick up the mental model of the... And what are you using? You're using the Adobe Creative Suite, is that what it's called?

Austin Finch (05:58):

Yeah, the Creative Cloud. I'm using Adobe Audition for all these.

Chris Beall (06:02):

I showed my age there.

Austin Finch (06:05):

I'm still learning something new every once in a while, but I feel like I've got most of the things I need for podcasts down.

Chris Beall (06:12):

So what's the routine part? So we get done with the podcast, like we're recording right now. I record it in Zoom into the cloud. Susan, your mom, read me the Riot Act 2, 3, 4 times about how I should set up the recording correctly so that the fidelity is good, and the sound is decent. I don't have a fancy setup here. I don't even have headphones. I probably do, but I think they're sitting on the window sill behind the piano in the Seattle house and we're down here in the Arizona house so you can only have so many of everything.

(06:42):

And I just talked to this here, Microsoft Surface Pro and I don't know, it seems to do an okay job with those array microphones it has on them. Maybe it's because it's got a couple of them and they got some distance between them. I don't know why it works so well, but I just record and then when I'm done there is a link that shows up and I send it off to Susan and copy a couple of people including Corey and my sister Shelly so that they can have it for some reason.

(07:08):

Then what happens in your shop?

Austin Finch (07:11):

Between Shelly and my mom, Susan, they read the transcript and Shelly makes an intro and then one of them gives me somewhere to break it, into two episodes or three, depending on how long it is. Sometimes only one. And beyond that it's pretty much just make their message clear and don't let them cough into the mic.

Chris Beall (07:34):

So what do you do about that? It sounds like there's an easy part with just, "Okay it goes from here to there." But then there's another part which is, "Okay, but it's got to be right," because Corey and I, God knows what we do. Whether they're drinking whiskey and doing all manner of things. So is there a part of it that's that's really challenging where it's like, "Oh my God guys did you have to do that?" And then you've got to figure out what to do.

Austin Finch (08:00):

The hardest part is to probably audio glitches and when two people are talking over each other and one says something that you really don't want to in the other one says something that if you take it out the sentence makes no sense. And what usually happens there is I have to take words from other parts of the file and piece them together by copy and pasting them, which you have to choose from the right area. So you end up with a completely different pitch or volume and it just sounds like you slammed a bunch of pieces together instead of repurpose them well.

Chris Beall (08:29):

I had no idea you did that. That's fascinating. So we should just spit out a bunch of words said in a sort reasonable way just in case. We should make a word library for you. Have you ever gone so far as to choose a word from a different podcast like something Corey or I said and go steal it from another episode entirely?

Austin Finch (08:49):

I've never had to do that, but maybe I should have a file of you guys reading the entire dictionary and I can just go grab him catalog perfectly when I need to.

Chris Beall (08:58):

The Oxford English dictionary. We might get Corey to do that. Corey has beautiful elocution. I think he speaks much better than I do. So I love listening to him and it's one of the reasons that I do this. Fascinating. So I didn't know you did that. That's really interesting. Do you do audio wave form trickery to go, "Oh well this was a little quieter and I don't like the way it sounds. I'm going to take it from here to there," and I'm here everybody who's not watching this on video and I'm going to turn a knob, it's a figurative knob, maybe it's an actual knob, I doubt it, and make it match up. Are you using your ear in order to blend stuff together?

Austin Finch (09:39):

Yeah, sometimes I'll pull up the graph of the frequency. So the normal one it just shows volume and then I'll also pull up the pitch under that. So I'll take out the low notes or something, to make it sound more like it was part of this sentence. Or maybe take out the high notes because someone got a notification on their computer. So it's a lot of that. And then sometimes I have to close my eyes, or turn my head away from the computer so I can't see the audio in front of me so I can only hear how it would hear to the audience.

Chris Beall (10:08):

Wow. Okay so hello does it take to do one of those, because they tend to drop the next day. We're always stunned. It's like your mom is going, "Come on Chris, get the recording to me, get the recording," because for those who don't know me, I tend to do things, Oh shall we say, when the opportunity arises. And so that's the polite way of saying it at the last minute. And so she would rather have a schedule that, or they're dropping on a regular basis, because audiences are used to that and so forth. You seem to turn these things quite quickly. How much time goes into making a 20, 25-minute episode from us yapping to something ready to go out the door with the bumper music on it, mom's intro and the commercials in it and all that good stuff.

Austin Finch (10:52):

Well I tend to edit when the opportunity arises as well. So I get where you're coming from. And it really depends a lot on what the subject matter is and who the guest is, because oftentimes a guest who have never been on a podcast before, or they have very little experience. So every once in a while you'll get a guest that's been on radio for 20 years and they speak perfectly and eloquently and sometimes you'll have a guest that's never had their voice recorded with you can't expect them to be doing perfectly. And the other thing is if it's a three-part episode, the first part will be worse than the second, which will be worse than the third, because you guys warm up to each other and you get more in the groove of that back and forth, especially getting past technological issues.

Chris Beall (11:34):

Oh that's really interesting. I hadn't thought about that, so that's really interesting. So as we get going we become more regular conversationalists and less the stilted scared bunnies that we are as we began episode 142 or whatever. But it is interesting, because the guests do need to get in the groove. I think Corey and I might start in a groove, but I'm not sure, maybe we don't, you would know, because how can we be objective about this? That is really, really interesting. So do you know anybody else's podcast? Your mom runs a podcasting company, so are you like the guy?

Austin Finch (12:12):

I'm not quite the guy but I have my two shows that I manage yours and the lovely Helen Fanucci.

Chris Beall (12:19):

Ooh yeah, lucky me. Lucky you too. We'll see what goes on with Helen's. Helen is not quite as enthusiastic a podcaster as I am. For me this comes completely naturally and while it shows that I never prepare, it turns out to be okay, I guess. She I think is more of a craftsman. She works at what she does, which is why she's so much more successful than I am, I think. Plus she's smarter and better looking and a whole bunch of other things. But I didn't know you did her show also, so that's pretty cool. Without saying anything too bad about Corey and me, just be gentle with us. But what do you see as of the differences between the two shows that you work on?

Austin Finch (12:59):

Well I thought it was really interesting to see when you had her as a guest here on Market Dominance Guys. It highlighted where hers is mainly an internal conversation and yours is a whole lot of external output things, in regard to business and sales. And hers is a lot more... It's called Love Your Team. It's a lot more about internal teams and how you manage those and it comes through in how you guys talk about other topics too, that hers is more focused on that aspect of it.

Chris Beall (13:28):

Yeah, it's really interesting. The distinction with regard to direction was one that I hadn't actually thought of until I ambushed her the other day and asked her to be a guest, because quite frankly your mom was putting a lot of pressure on me to get the show out and I said, "Hey Helen, want to be my guest?" She goes, "Yeah, sure." And so we just set up and did it and we do it from opposite ends of the house so we can't hear each other, which I think is pretty important, because as she says, I am really, really loud no matter how non-loud I try to be. And I just thought of that first question, second questions. We got past the bit where I asked whether it was true that she had something big happen in the summer. And for those of you who don't know, Helen Fanucci and I got married on July 2nd and then promptly went off on a long trip, a working trip, mostly working only nine weeks.

(14:15):

So I suddenly realize, my goodness, we've been talking about talking to customers and prospects for 140 whatever episodes and here's somebody who's coming and trumping all of that and saying, "Yeah, that's all nice. But a really important conversations are the ones you have with your team." And so here you are, somebody who's listened to in detail 60 hours, or something, taking you, you didn't answer the question of how long it takes, but I'm going to guess it takes an hour to put out 20 minutes, but maybe it takes two hours. I don't know.

Chris Beall (15:40):

You have like 150 to 200 hours of interacting with our material, which is all about out talking to customers, talking to customers, and suddenly here's this person who comes along saying she's not saying that's not where it's at. She's saying your team takes care of that. You need to take care of your team. Was that a surprise to you? I bet to a lot of people it would be. That would be a big difference. How'd you feel about that?

Austin Finch (16:04):

Well a lot of what I've learned about business, because I haven't really been in that scene at all, has been from you and Corey and all your esteemed guests. So then when I started editing Love Your Team, because that was so much newer, I hadn't even thought of it that way. It was a completely new perspective and I thought it was really interesting at how well you guys obviously get along with extremely different approaches to a similar topic.

Chris Beall (16:32):

It's interesting isn't it? That's good. Well I think that happens a lot in relationships. Our economic strategy is similar, we call it a dumbbell strategy. It's got a lot of weight [inaudible 00:16:42] not a lot in between. So she's a very successful executive who her earnings are commensurate with her responsibilities and I'm an entrepreneur who's basically hanging out on the edge looking for the big wins. And so I guess that can happen a lot. It's interesting to see that in the context of as you pointed out in business and in relationships.

(17:03):

So as you think about either one of those podcasts and you think about, okay, so you're, roughly speaking, 17. You've done well in your career already. You've got real work, you do real stuff, people esteem your work, in fact worship it. You've accumulated enough capital, I've heard, to get a two wheeled form of transportation that would scare the living daylights out of me, which I love the way you described it.

(17:28):

You can drive a car with one finger, but once you're on a motorcycle, you're on an animal, on a wild animal and you got at tame it. As I look at it, I think about our audience. I think our audience tends to be people who are probably kind of well along in their careers, not everybody, but kind of. But you seem to have benefited from listening to this stuff. But maybe you haven't, maybe it was like I'm stuck listening to junk, but would you think that, should we try to expand our audience to people in your demographic, or would they just go, "Yeah, I'm not. Austin, screw you guys, this stuff's not interesting." TikTok me up maybe.

Austin Finch (18:03):

I think as much as people want to easily lump a certain age group into that category, I think the vast majority of people I'm friends with and talk to would want something like this marketed towards them where they can actually learn about entering the workforce the right way. Not just going into a job that you don't care how it progresses your career. Because like you said, a lot of the people that listen to the podcasts and come on and share their thoughts are far into their careers and have done a lot of development. But it's also interesting to see the side of it of how did they get there? And not just in like, "I worked hard," in all that sense, but also what were the stumbles and the missteps on the way.

Chris Beall (18:48):

Well that's really interesting. I think you make me think about what Corey is doing down at Branch 49 from where I am up at Branch 49, I'm now down south of Tucson. So that's going on in Phoenix, where they actually do listen to Market Dominance Guys, it's part of the curriculum. I think it is at this part of Grand Canyon University, Branch 49, where they're learning by doing. But also there's classroom learning and there're books that they're reading and all that kind of stuff. I've given an impromptu guest lecture up there, which just means somebody got me in a room with people and didn't tell me to stop talking and seemed to me, and these people are just a little bit older than you. There may be two years, three years, four years older. It seems to me that among those people there's a great hunger and appetite to get real but also get underneath what's real, really know what's going on.

(19:38):

Not just do a job, because you're told to do it, but to understand it and not just progress like, "Oh I'm being promoted," but progress like, "Yeah, I get what's going on and I could go do this in another setting. I could go start my own business," that kind of thing. Is it just that old people, like people my age just don't remember, do you think? Or is it that they always are trying to figure out how to put younger people in a box so they can feel better about themselves? What do you think is going on there?

Austin Finch (20:05):

I think a lot of younger people, as soon as they're coming out of high school, like you said, they're looking for something more real. They've done years and years of, here's a textbook way to do this. And I'm not saying textbooks aren't valuable, but you need the hands on with it, because with that pair then you have real experience. And after you do years of textbook learning and reading about what other people have done, you want to get your hands dirty and really see what your capabilities are and what you're interested in, because it's hard to tell if you're just reading about other people doing it.

Chris Beall (20:39):

Yeah, man do I believe that. And somebody wants to ask me one evening in Des Moines, he was a guy that we were considering to be CEO of one of our branches at this company. It's called Finish Line Floors that I started with a couple of ladies in Des Moines, Iowa. And this wonderful guy, Rich Emery funded it out of his business. And here we are coming along and I'm in an interview with this guy that we think of hiring and he says, "Would you take me through your entire resume?" I looked at my watch, it's like, "Dude, it's 9:00, this bar shuts in two hours. I don't think we're going to pull this off." And when we got finished and it did take the full two hours, he said, "Why did you do all that stuff?" And I answered the exactly what you just said, which is, "How do you know what you're really going to love until you just try a whole bunch of things?" Because there's always positive surprises and negative surprises.

(21:34):

Like in this whole podcast editing thing, what's the biggest negative surprise? Do you sometimes just go, "Oh geez, do I have to do this? I'd rather do X, Y or Z." Or is there a piece of it that you've grown to hate over time, or do you just like it. You seem very adaptable to me. You make a point out of liking what you're doing, if I'm guessing correctly. How does that go in your world?

Austin Finch (21:55):

I don't know if I agree about always make it a point of liking what I'm doing. I'd say I'm pretty close-minded at things I don't enjoy. But I do genuinely like doing the podcast, because I feel like it's a type of media I rarely consume and I feel like I'm skilled at interpreting what people are saying even if they're not wording it in the form of a speech, or something super formal and presentable. So I really like being able to get their message across to anyone who would listen, whether they have that skill or not. So I think that's the cool part to me, is almost being a translator for a message.

Chris Beall (22:31):

I love it. I love it. And a message with ideas in it. I never would've described your job like that. So anybody's listening to this, I think it's often the case by the way, when somebody really is doing something that they've learned to do, that they know how to do, and that they love doing, it's often surprising what the actual job is if they were to describe it. I love that as a description of the podcast editing job as you're helping people who are just having a conversation, maybe they're nervous, maybe they're not used to this kind of speaking, they're a guest for the first time or whatever, but helping them get their message across.

(23:08):

I told people when they're a guest on Market Dominance Guys, before we hit record, I say, "Look, just relax. Austin's going to make us sound great." And I mean it, because it's hard to relax when you're being recorded. You want to make somebody sound horrible, just tell them they're being recorded and immediately they'll go into robot mode and sing-songy or God knows what. And so that's really interesting. So your job really isn't just cut it up and make it work, technically, so to speak. It's actually to listen and to have the finished product get the message across that you are hearing. So it's funny, the podcast is going in through your ears and coming out through your hands in a way.

Austin Finch (23:51):

Essentially, yeah. So I guess if I'm interpreting what you guys are saying wrong, it could go a completely different direction than what you had in mind.

Chris Beall (24:01):

I'm you blaming from now. "Oh, I'm not a total idiot. That's Austin's fault. He didn't get it. What I meant was..." No, I don't think that's going to happen. Well that's pretty interesting. Would you recommend this, or have you recommended this kind of thing, editing recorded media to anybody that is in your circle of friends? Does anybody else do it?

Austin Finch (24:23):

I don't know anyone else who does it. I don't know if it's for everyone, honestly. I think if I was editing podcasts of a subject I didn't find interesting, or people I didn't find interesting, I wouldn't really enjoy it. But I like you and Corey, and I like Helen, and I like all the guests you guys pick out. So it makes it a whole different story, because you're there in the conversation when you're able to hear the tone and all the different pauses and everything. It's totally different from reading the transcript, or a book of someone trying to summarize all their thoughts, because you hear all the little nuances of how you speak to other people that convey way more than just the words you're saying.

Chris Beall (25:03):

But that's interesting too. I really appreciate that, because all of Market Dominance Guys is actually about how to use the human voice, not the words so much. The words are part of the game, but the human voice in order to pave markets with trust and then harvest that trust at your leisure and completely dominate markets as a result. Only we hesitated to use that dominate word.

(25:24):

But the fact is it's a zero-sum game out there in business, especially when you have innovation that you're bringing to market. It's going to be you or somebody else. And now it's a race, who's going to be first to the finish line And the question is, "Well what's the magic?" And the magic is that point where somebody trusts you. And then what's the magic behind that? People ask me what's Market Dominance Guys about? I was just asked this the other day, I said, "It's about how we can dominate markets with the magic of the human voice." And what you've just said is, it is about the voices. It's about not just the words, it's not the beef jerky, it's the dripping stake with the blood still coming out of it.

Austin Finch (26:07):

I think that's another thing that I've learned throughout the few years I've been editing the podcast, is not only the importance of the way you speak. When I first started I didn't quite understand that some pauses needed to be long and some need to be short. I would just try and make it concise. And I've learned since then, because through listening to it and the experience of editing it, I feel like I've learned a lot about that language that's separate, completely from what you're actually saying.

Chris Beall (26:37):

They talk about that in music. That's really interesting. And when I was growing up, I had an opportunity to learn to play the piano. It was called, I took piano lessons because I had to, but I was very, very young. I was four and change when I started playing the piano. And what my second piano teacher really emphasized was the white space, was the pauses. And I've never gotten good at it, by the way. I think there's something very juvenile in my playing. But hey, and you heard me play for the wedding as far as I go. When I think about it though, with regard to holding conversations with people, the pauses, the hesitations, that moment when somebody's thinking before they speak, that thing that we do when we're not speaking ballistically, we're speaking thoughtfully. I think that conveys a lot. And I think a lot of people sort of don't get that.

(27:29):

They think you can squish it all down. And I object to, myself personally, I know some people love to do it. To listening to podcasts at one and a half or two times speed. To me it loses the feel of the thing better to me to spend the time and let your own mind and your own feelings flow along with the conversation, because if it took that long to say it, maybe it's okay if it takes that long to listen to it. In your case it probably takes twice as long, or more, because you have to do a bunch of stuff with it. But that's a really, really good point. So I got to ask, obviously you're not on camera doing this. Have you had any friends hang out with you while you were editing?

Austin Finch (28:09):

No, the extent of my audience has been, when I first started, my mom emails me the file for a episode and comes in and sits and watches me edit it. She goes, "I think you'll do all right." And that was a pretty quick trial. So for the last two and a half years, there hasn't been anybody keeping me in check, I guess.

Chris Beall (28:32):

Well you've been doing great. Where does this sort of thing lead? I'm not saying you should predict the future of your life, but I'm a huge believer in working real jobs when you're in your teens. And for me, a big part of my life was having a real job with real responsibility when I was 14. And the responsibility was taking care of a bunch of animals. It was a small, medium and large animals, if count horses as being large, and I thought they were. It was a display of all things. It was a marketing piece at Hall Craft Home in North Scottsdale. They set up these two model homes and said to my sister Cresta now, Cindy at the time, and I, "Would you like to take care of these animals?" And we're looking out and going, "Well what animals?" And they said, "Oh well you'll go and buy them and you'll get all the pens built," and you guys are experts this stuff, because you have so many animals, because we had horses and goats and this, that, and the other thing in a million dogs.

(29:29):

And I look back on that as the most important part of my career. That responsibility, and we were thrown into it just like you were. We were thrown into it. We weren't allowed to go and drive to all the way to wherever it was. It was actually south of Mesa in order to pick up a goat, because she was 15 and I was 16. You couldn't drive by yourself until you were 16. But the rest of it was just ours. And I still think of a long entrepreneurial career. Sometimes an executive at a real company, every once in a while I try to avoid, that it came back to that first job. And it's something that happens I think in your teens when you're working and it's real. Do you experience it that, because you're really responsible for this Market Dominance Guy's show. All we do is yap. You turn it into an actual finished media product that is out there now. If you Google it up, it's like everywhere, these things spread like crazy. What has it done for you, or to you, if anything, to take on this responsibility?

Austin Finch (30:36):

It definitely makes me consider more where a job will lead me than just what it is in the moment, because this one, I feel like I'm gaining a lot of experience both in the actual technical part of it and the computer software and all that. And of course the conversational knowledge and the business knowledge. But it makes me want to avoid any job that isn't going to give me a skill. And I understand that skills can be really different from what it seems like they're applicable for. But I don't want to do something that I worked the job for a year, go off to college and forget about it. It never impacts my career again.

Chris Beall (31:16):

Yeah, that makes sense. That really makes sense.

Retaining your top talent and delivering results is a challenge for all sales leaders when your top talent can walk out the door without taking a single step.

The hybrid work revolution has made sales management the most pivotal role in the innovation economy—and simultaneously the most challenging. Our guest today is Helen Fanucci, Transformational Sales Leader at Microsoft, with 25 years managing hybrid teams and has an in-depth understanding of the problems facing sales managers today. Our Market Dominance Guys’ host, Chris Beall, conducts this second interview in his two-part conversation with Helen about her new book, Love Your Team: A Survival Guide for Sales Managers in a Hybrid World. In this podcast and in Helen’s book are details on not only what sales managers must be doing to thrive, but how to do them. It’s definitely a quintessential guide — with all the steps you need to know. But it’s even more than that as the title of today’s Market Dominance Guys episode states, it’s “A Blueprint for Success.”  

About Our Guest

Helen Fanucci, Transformational Sales Leader at Microsoft is the author of Love Your Team: A Survival Guide for Sales Managers in a Hybrid World, available November 1, 2022.

Full episode transcript below:

(00:21):

Retaining your top talent and delivering results is a challenge for all sales leaders, when your top talent can walk out the door without taking a single step. The hybrid work revolution has made sales management the most pivotal role in today's innovation economy, and simultaneously the most challenging. Our guest today is Helen Fanucci, transformational sales leader at Microsoft, and has 25 years managing hybrid teams and an in-depth understanding of the problems facing sales managers today. Our Market Dominance Guys host, Chris Beall, conducts this second interview in his two-part conversation with Helen about her new book, Love Your Team: A Survival Guide for Sales Managers in a Hybrid World. In this podcast and in Helen's book are details on not only what sales managers must be doing to thrive, but how to do them. It's definitely a quintessential guide with all the steps you need to know, but it's even more than that. As the title of today's Market Dominance Guys episode states, it's a blueprint for success.

Chris Beall (01:25):

You have a team this big, you're going to have this much time spent on these one-on-ones, this much on these. These are the ones that have a fixed agenda. These are the ones that are event-driven, but they're probably going to flow at about this rate. Here's the blah, blah, blah. It's on and on. I mean, it's like an engineering breakdown. And folks, by the way, when you read this book, what you're going to get is love as both an emotional concept but also as an engineering concept. Love your team is something you do, not something you just feel. It's mostly something you do through these one-on-one conversations. There must have been a time in your career where you were going through the evolution of all this and you have all the pressures of regular sales managers, report this, blah, blah, blah, all this stuff, right?

Helen Fanucci (02:13):

Sure. Yeah.

Chris Beall (02:14):

Did you have to go through a transition or were you just like, "No, I'm always going to do it like this. Screw all you people"? Because I think for most people in the audience who want to do this, what they're going to do is they're going to read the book, then they're going to try to apply, say, some of the conversations of connection. I believe they'll probably start there because they're early and they'll notice that they didn't do one to introduce themselves to the team. And you have a great story about somebody quitting because she went to a group and never got engaged with by the audience. But you do have to go through a process of, "Gosh, I got to figure out this time management thing because that's the real constraint." Or is it just like, "I'm Helen Fanucci. I made my way through MIT. I must be able to manage my time"?

Helen Fanucci (02:58):

I had to think about time constraint, for sure. So, I used to do hour-long one-on-ones with my team. This was years ago. And somehow I thought that that's what was needed and maybe at the time that's what was needed. But I do a half-hour, actually 25 minutes now, and this is a new thing since COVID in the last 18 months is going from a half-hour conversation to 25 minutes. Because everybody's back to back and everybody needs at least a five minute break between a 30 minute or 25 minute conversation. So, I do that. Now, the other thing is I'm available on IM. So, one of the things that I talk about actually in the book in the first getting to know your team is how to communicate with me. People IM me or they'll text me, and so I'm also available for drive-by connection points in between our biweekly one-on-one.

(04:01):

So, I do biweekly one-on-ones with direct reports. And so my last team was 12 direct reports. I now have two managers that work for me and then about 30 people in my organization currently. And so I will do quarterly connections or things like that and sometimes more frequently with some of my skip level reports, people who report to the managers that report to me. And then of course, and separate from the one-on-ones, are the formal pipeline reviews. It depends on what is going on. So, it will happen twice a month if there's a hot deal happening and there's a lot of different moving parts or actions needed. It will for sure happen at least once a month. So, there are different requirements for forecasting in different organizations. So, I definitely pay attention to that and do the forecast reviews with my team so that I can be prepared when I need to report out and up to my management.

(05:10):

And one of the things I really emphasize, speaking of forecasting, is delivering three to 5% of the forecast. I don't value diving catches and last-minute deals in a way that maybe traditional sales managers might. Like, "Rah-rah, that is fantastic." Well, what that meant is it's a missed opportunity for us to get additional investments in our business if we didn't forecast that revenue. Because our investments in our business are directly tied to the anticipated and forecasted revenue. So, if we're under-forecasting all the time, we are missing out on a whole bunch of opportunity to actually increase our value to our customers and get more headcount and investments for our team.

Chris Beall (05:58):

I remember reading that in the book and going, "Oh yeah, that's right." As the guy who's on the other side making those investments, if the forecast is sandbagged, it's off, it's short, it's light just to look good, then it's like, "Well, how much are we going to put as a company into achieving that number?" If you take the thought experiment, you tell me you're going to make nothing, what am I going to invest in you? Well, nothing. I got to find somebody else to do the job. I want to switch up a little bit to you experiencing... You didn't just write a book, you actually do it. I've watched you do it now for, I guess, three years. And I've always been kind of surprised.

(06:38):

It's like sales management to me, when I've seen a lot of it, is, "Yeah, I put somebody in a territory, try to get a good rep, put them in a territory, hope they work out, tell them war stories about how great you were back in the day. Fire them if it doesn't work out and they go to club if it does." It's kind of like that's sales management. You have this very systematic step-by-step process or repeatable cycles within the process with these 17 conversations. My guess is that of the 17 conversations, one kind of conversation is the favorite, the one you look forward to it. If it's the first on the calendar in the morning, you get up a little bit earlier and are hyped up for it and ready to go, and you don't want any distractions and away you go.

(07:25):

And then there's always one kind of thing that you know you got to do, but it's not your fave. It's just it's there and you got to make sure you do it and do it well. But it's not the one that you... And I know you. You're going to do both of them. But what is your favorite? The one that really gets you jazzed. You've looked back on it, maybe you want to talk about it over dinner and wine in the evening. And then what's the, you got to do it, it's really important, but I don't love it that much?

Helen Fanucci (07:54):

Okay. So, I'll start with the second first. I don't love performance improvement, performance management conversations. What's so critical to any role, but particularly when your employees are remote, is you set clear performance-based expectations, outcome-based expectations, not activity expectations. And so what that means is obviously there's quota achievement required, but also for my team it is building stronger, deeper relationships with customers. So, I do a whole list of, if you will, hard expectations, hard numbers that are quantifiable, 3x pipelines, things like that, and then soft, like building a stronger relationship with your customer and increasing the executive engagement with a customer and things like that. So, when my team members, if they're falling short of performance expectations, I address that head on, I talk to them, and then they're on a performance improvement plan of some sort. I don't love that at all. So, that's my least favorite.

(09:15):

So, now that we have that out of the way, let me go to my most favorite, and that is account strategy and ideation and sales strategy. And I love talking with my team about that, brainstorming the next action. So, they'll bring to me a situation, it could be a customer situation, maybe a customer executive left and they're trying to figure out how to get in to see somebody else or the replacement, and so we talk about, "Okay, who knows who and how do we navigate and do we need to bring in one of our executives as bait in the bucket to get this executive to come and meet with us?" So, I love account strategy ideation. That's my favorite part. And a lot of it is asking questions to really understand what's going on and what is needed so that I can be helpful.

(10:16):

Because sometimes what's presented to me, it sounds like we need to have a discount or an investment, but as you get into it it could be that there could be a miscommunication with the customer. It could be that there are things that we need to do to make sure we really understand their business sufficiently that we can present the best solution for them. And maybe it gets redirected to a different offering or a different tactic, if you will, to keep the business moving forward, deal at hand moving forward. So, I love the strategy part of it the most.

Chris Beall (11:01):

Sounds like fun for me too. I really think that that part of business is always fun. When you're ideating, you're brainstorming, you're trying to figure it out. And also it's got to be fun when those action plans are put together and they're progressing to have those one-on-ones that determine, "So, how's it going? And are we achieving what we... We took a guess. We did a thing. Now what?" That's got to be fun too.

Helen Fanucci (12:06):

Yeah, it is, for sure. Yep. You bet.

Chris Beall (12:12):

Yeah. So, Love Your Team is directed at an audience of sales managers. It says so right in the subtitle. A Survival Guide for Sales Managers. Now, I suspect that your way of looking at the world and the techniques and that structure of having these important conversations probably is applicable to all management. But you're not going to go crazy and just say that's it. So, let's think of your audience as sales managers for a moment. As you think about that audience and you think back on writing the book, were there any of those conversations you thought, "This ain't the 100 level course, this ain't the 200 level course. This is where your skills are really going to be challenged"? There's a lot on the line. You have a whole section on skills, on conversational skills, which I've never seen before in a book like this, that says, "These are the skills you need to hold these conversations."

(13:03):

So, there's the skills. We're all lacking in different skills and we all have strong in different skills. And then there's the conversations. And we've never talked about this before. I'm just curious. Did you ever get to the point of thinking, "Oh man, this is like 400-level course stuff that somebody is going to try it, but it's going to be hard for them to do it because the skills required are going to be in short supply"? Or did that not ever come up? Maybe it's like, "Yeah, yeah, everybody can do this."

Helen Fanucci (13:35):

Well, it never came up because what I intended to do with this book is reflect on what I think is needed for sales managers to be successful. And I will say, this is B2B enterprise sales. And so that's my world, and so it won't be applicable to everybody. And I'm not trying to convert people who don't want to be converted, but if folks think that they have a challenge retaining talent or they want some new ideas, I'm hopeful that the book is helpful for them. To be honest with you, I probably am not the best observer of myself. So, while these conversations may seem obvious to me and straightforward and I broke them down and intended to make them accessible and straightforward, I really don't know what the audience of sales managers reading the book, I really don't know where the struggle might be. And I'd be super curious to know that and how I could be more helpful. But I'm kind of blind there, to be honest with you. I don't know.

Chris Beall (14:49):

Yeah. It was probably smart to be blind there because it would be easy to overcook some of these sections if you think that they're too difficult or whatever. I found in my reading of the book, and for the audience, just so you know, in its various forms I've probably now read it nine times, maybe 10 times, not always deeply, but this is a confession. Normally I don't read any book twice. I'm a very fast reader. I love to read. I don't read twice. I get something out of Love Your Team every time I read it. And that's on top of a very, very long career. So, I think that there's a lot of depth and subtlety in your description of these conversations.

(15:32):

As I think them through, I think this way of looking at the world and then putting it into action of having these conversations as a means of getting action, a means of getting results, some of which are, I'll call it action results like deals, revenue, et cetera, but some of which are really, we'll call them valuation results, that as companies are worth more now when they have great talent on board. You lose talent and you lose value. You lose your future as a company. You lose the option value of being able to do things with great people that you can't really do with either not great people or while you're trying to find people.

(16:12):

So, I've read it a bunch of times, but I kept coming back to, "Gosh, I wonder whether people are going to be able to do this or not." And I've come to the conclusion they will be able to do it. I think you've broken it down to the point... Give an example out of, say, the first of the conversations of connection. What is an example of a level of detail that you've provided that somebody might think, "Why is she telling me to do this? Of course, I'm going to do that," but in fact you probably suspect without the detail they aren't going to do that or we aren't going to do that?

Helen Fanucci (16:46):

Introducing yourself to your team. I have three PowerPoint slides that I show. I talk about, the first slide is about me, what's my career background, my family situation. And in fact, I did this introduction to new team members this summer, and I put our wedding picture on it because that was current and timely and that was on that slide. And then a little bit about me. And also, what are my favorite things? Like what's my favorite thing to eat or drink? And so my favorite thing to eat is anything somebody else cooks. So, I'm lucky that Chris likes to cook, and every meal that he cooks is my favorite meal. And then what I like to drink and things like that. So, just fun facts or things I like to do, hobbies or skiing or things like that. So, that's the first slide.

(17:44):

The second slide is my leadership approach and philosophy. I list out the things that are on that slide, like culture first and people first, results-oriented, clarity of results and expectations, no surprises, if there's bad news, communicate it early, things like that. And then the last slide is what's next? So, I make it clear that I'm going to set up one-on-ones with each of them and they don't need to come prepared. It's really just to get to know them. And I also talk about how to communicate with me. So, as I mentioned, IM and texting works great. And so that's what I put on the three slides. So, it's really short and sweet. And for my last team of 12 people, I had each of them introduce theirselves briefly and tell me a fun fact of themselves, like where they like to travel or something like that.

(18:49):

My current team of 30, I did not have everyone introduce themselves but I followed up in over a two or three week period. I met with each of them, all 30 of them, even those that report to my managers. I met each of them for 30 minutes, had a one-on-one with each of them. So, that's the level of specificity and detail in why I do it. And it may or may not work for the reader to be that specific, or maybe they haven't reflected on what their leadership approach or style is and what they care about. So, it's an opportunity for them to reflect on that. So, getting back to your last question as you were then talking, I thought about what might be tough for the reader. And I think what might be tough is the orientation to think about their team first, if that's not how they've been doing their role to date.

(19:50):

So, for example, I think about servant leadership. How can I amplify my team's success? And so when my team members are presenting to the deal review board to try to get a discount or investment or resources for their customer, I ask them, "Would it be useful if I take notes in the background so you can stay present in the conversation and your presentation?" And they all take me up on it. So, I will be off camera. I will take notes and including actions, and then I send it to them after the meeting and the call. And I think it might be tempting for sales leaders to be the ones that are doing the presentation in front of the top ranking executive in the company and the finance team and having that visibility.

(20:49):

Many sales leaders want that for themselves. I want to amplify my team and I want to help my team learn and grow. So, I'm in the background. And that might seem weird to some of the folks who are listening to this podcast or reading the book. And so it might not be everyone's cup of tea, but I'm authentically telling them how I do it for their consideration.

Chris Beall (21:17):

I love that thing where you take notes, and it's not so you can keep tabs on them or whatever. It's so the person who's reporting to you or reporting to the person reporting to you can focus on what they're doing and their internal presentation, say as the example you gave, and do a great job and be exposed. I really like the fact that... This one, I think everybody should think about. If you really love your team, you're going to help them get positive exposure for what they're doing, not just in the number, but in every day or as life is going on to the senior executives. And it might result in somebody wanting to pluck them out of your team and put them somewhere else. And that's okay. If that's what they want to do, if that's good for them, that's your job to help them and support them in that. I think that is the hardest reorientation for folks probably is, even if it means that that exposure or that help, that support, whatever you're giving them is going to let them go get another job, so to speak, that's still your job.

Helen Fanucci (22:23):

Yeah, for sure. I do have explicit career conversations with team members and my recommendations. That happens at least twice a year. Sometimes if there's a lot going on we'll talk more frequently. But my team that I just referenced, a team of 12 sellers, three of them now have management roles within Microsoft. So, the three of them I was involved in coaching. They shadowed me in some cases. And so I absolutely think it's a win and it's a success. If your team's not learning and growing, they're going to leave. And actually the data supports that as well. It's fundamental to what folks care about is that they learn and grow. And so I support that. And yes, it means I have to backfill them and hopefully they stay at my current company, which is Microsoft. And if for whatever reason they decide that Microsoft isn't serving their career anymore, well okay, that's okay too. But it's really success on their terms, not my terms that I aim to support.

Chris Beall (23:43):

I think that's such a big, big message and a big change between the Love Your Team approach and the standard approach. If we were just to boil it down to the one thing, it's their north star becomes your north star. And it's individual. It's one-on-one. And I think that's a radical big idea that to some people might sound soft or it might sound dangerous, like, "Oh my God." But your view is it's actually the safe route in a sense, right? It may sound different, but you're reliant on them anyway. You're already in the boat with them.

Helen Fanucci (24:17):

Here's the thing is, I need to model the behavior I want to see in them. So, I expect my team to work well across the organization with their peers and building trust and building relationships is foundational for me with my team, but it's also foundational for them with their customers. And so understanding what constitutes success for customers on their terms is critical for us to be able to deliver value and make sure that whatever we're selling actually meets their needs so they get to say so. So, it kind of goes downhill, so to speak, or it's a virtuous cycle where we all win if the customers are successful in getting what they want in return. And so it's, I'm modeling the behavior I expect to see in my sellers as well.

Chris Beall (25:16):

Well, on that note, I guess we've finally come full circle all the way around to what the other 140-something episodes are about, which is having trust-based conversations with customers, which in the Love Your Team system actually happens more easily and more naturally because what's happening on the inside is then happening on the outside. Helen, you and I have run out of time for this podcast. Thank God we haven't run out of time for each other. And on that, I'm going to say, Corey, we miss you. We love you. But Helen and I had a really good time making this one today.

(25:52):

I am so pleased that you could be on today, Helen. Your book again, Love Your Team: A Survival Guide for Sales Managers in a Hybrid World. It's out November 1st. This podcast will drop a little sooner than that. Everybody who's watching this, listening to it, doing whatever you're doing with it, mark it in your calendar November 1st, and if you're really smart, reach out to Helen and see God knows what, LinkedIn or whatever. She might actually do something special for you in the book department. I really don't know, but it's going to be an incredible experience for you. Thank you so much, Helen.

Helen Fanucci (26:28):

Thank you, Chris.

Last time, we peeled back the layers on spotting sales superstars with the Glider.ai crew. Now, in Episode 248, we're rolling our sleeves up and getting our hands dirty with the nuts and bolts of their process. Chris, Corey, Aron, and Anand aren't pulling any punches as they dissect Glider.ai's assessment approach. They're asking the hard-hitting questions: Can we really stamp out hiring bias? Where's the sweet spot between tech and human intuition in sales? And what's next in the evolution of building sales dream teams? Get ready for a no-nonsense deep dive that might just flip your hiring playbook on its head and supercharge your path to market dominance. Listen to this episode EP248: "Crafting Unbeatable Sales Teams: The Competitive Edge in B2B."

Catch the first part of this conversation here.

In this scary new world of employment, where top sales talent has the power to stay with your team or leave you in the lurch, how do you hold onto that top talent? Helen Fanucci, Transformational Sales Leader at Microsoft and our guest on Market Dominance Guys, knows the answer to this question — and that answer has 17 parts. Helen has taken her 25 years of experience managing remote teams and turned that knowledge into a ground-breaking book titled, Love Your Team: A Survival Guide for Sales Managers in a Hybrid World (available on Amazon Nov. 1, 2022). In it, Helen details the 17 conversations that sales leaders must master with their team to successfully attract and retain top talent. Our podcast host, Chris Beall, questions Helen about her tried-and-true theories on why putting your sales team members first will get you the results you’re expecting. Get ready to take notes about this brave new approach to managing sales teams in today’s Market Dominance Guys’ episode, “17 Conversations That Matter.”

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About Our Guest

Helen Fanucci is a Transformational Sales Leader at Microsoft and the author of Love Your Team: A Survival Guide for Sales Managers in a Hybrid World, available November 1, 2022.

Full episode transcript below:

(00:17):

In this scary new world of employment where top sales talent has the power to stay with your team, or leave you in the lurch, how do you hold onto that top talent? Helen Fanucci, transformational sales leader at Microsoft and our guest on Market Dominance Guys knows the answer to this question and that answer is 17 parts. Helen has taken her 25 years of experience managing remote teams and turned that knowledge into a groundbreaking book titled Love Your Team: A Survival Guide for Sales Managers in a Hybrid World. In it, Helen details is 17 conversations that sales leaders must master with their team in order for the company to successfully attract and retain top talent. Our podcast host, Chris Beall, questions Helen about her tried and true theories on way putting your sales team members first will get you the results you're expecting. Get ready to take notes about this brave new approach to managing sales teams in today's Market Dominance Guys episode, 17 Conversations That Matter.

Chris Beall (01:24):

Hey, everybody, Chris Beall. I am sitting in right now for Corey Frank, who I know on Market Dominance Guys, we're all used to hearing. His intros are fantastic. I have a little advantage in this intro because today I would like to introduce the audience again to Helen Fanucci. Helen has been a guest on the podcast before, but since the last time she was on Market Dominance Guys, Helen has been through a couple of, I would say, transitions. You never say transformation, she still looks a lot the same to me, although she has a certain glow. She got married and maybe she'll tell us a little bit about that and then also Helen has written a book and her book is I'll give you the title and then she can tell you about it. The book is called Love Your Team: A Survival Guide for Sales Managers in a Hybrid World. It's coming out on November 1st everywhere that you buy books. It'll be out in Kindle and you can buy hardbacks and paperbacks.

(02:24):

What we'd like to do today is first welcome Helen to the show, and then secondly, we're going to talk a little bit about this book and how it relates to market dominance, so Helen, welcome to Market Dominance Guys.

Helen Fanucci (02:37):

Thank you. Thanks, Chris. It is great to be back.

Chris Beall (02:41):

Well, it's great to have you back. Just briefly, you do have that certain glow, rumor has it that you actually got married in July of this year of 2022. Anything you want to share with the audience that does not have much to do with market dominance?

Helen Fanucci (02:56):

Oh, you are so funny, so yes indeed, I did get married, and you know what? It was so great to have you at my wedding. That was amazing, too, and to have you play the piano as I walked down the aisle was truly, truly amazing. Okay, and for the listeners who don't know, Chris and I got married in July. Well, does it have anything to do with market dominance? I don't know. I realized when we started dating or seeing each other that I was in trouble because you're probably the best sales guy on the planet, but the product is really great, so I have no regrets.

Chris Beall (03:39):

Fantastic. Well, I love being the product, and for those who wonder about the piano playing, I'm here all week, and tell jokes, too, so we'll do fun. Yes, I'm the lucky guy and Helen and I went off on a nine-week honeymoon and during the honeymoon one of the things that we paid some attention to, I would say a lot of attention to was the, I'll say, putting the final touches on Helen's new book. Her book, as I said is called Love Your Team. I'll tell you, audience, when Helen says a survival guide for sales managers in a hybrid world, this is not like some soft side or hype or whatever, this is literal, she means it, a survival guide.

(04:28):

Helen, first of all, why did you write a book? I mean, this podcast is supposed to be a book, and it turned into a podcast, which was definitely the path of least resistance, just doing 140-something episodes of a podcast. You went down the book route and the book is how to lift. There is no doubt about it. I mean you got to get yourself some leverage and some balloons and strong shoulders in all manner of things. Why did you take on the awesome task? It's not like you have nothing else to do. You do carry a couple billion of quota for Microsoft, so why'd you add a book to the list?

Helen Fanucci (05:04):

Well, it's an interesting question, for sure, so about a year and a half ago, July of 2021, I was at a conference doing a keynote talking about sales leadership in a hybrid world and what it means for sales leaders, and with the talent shortage and the great reshuffle or the great resignation, it was top of mind, how do we retain talent? When I was putting together the presentation and I got to the slide about retaining talent, I kind of struggled with what to put: care for your team, support your team, appreciate your team?

(05:50):

As I reflected, what was really true to me was love your team. That was a sentiment that sales leaders must have in order to retain their talent, and so I put it on the slide and then when I got to the conference, I was nervous using the L word, "love," in a business setting, and so I explained to the audience what that meant, and why loving their team was so important to retaining talent.

(06:23):

I got to tell you, it was such an amazing response I got from the audience, and I got a lot of people coming up to me afterwards and asking me, Well what do you really do to retain your talent and how does that work? And as I reflected on it, thought I've got to put this into a book. And I don't know, maybe naively, but I decided to put it into a book and write it down because I thought I had something unique to say, and also the time was right for this kind of a book because the tables have shifted, and now, top talent has the power, and so every company and every manager is struggling with retaining talent, attracting talent, and so I felt like it was timely, and so that's how I came about writing the book.

Chris Beall (07:20):

Fascinating. Essentially, there was an audience reaction to something that you said in a talk that you were a little bit scared of saying, you weren't sure about, and that audience reaction and a nudged you in the direction of taking on this awesome responsibility, so a little bit of an aside, because obviously I have not written a book as we all know, right? This whole podcast Market Dominance Guys started as Corey Frank trying to basically see if he could drag a book out of me by interviewing me every morning and every Thursday morning for an hour and a half, and so far, Corey has failed.

(08:00):

As you know, Helen, I'm a pretty frisky writer. I like to write words, come out of my fingers, but still no book, so here, you took it on. But my experience of it as an observer is you didn't just go, "Oh, I'm going to write a book," and then you started typing every morning at whatever, or well into the night when you were finally working on the book and we were in Edinboro, it was 1:30 in the morning and we were going to leave at 4:00 in the morning, and you're still working the book. You weren't doing that. You broke it down into some pieces and said to yourself, "Hey, I'm going to need some help with some stuff." How did you do it? Just in case anybody in the audience going, "I want to write a book." Well, here's Helen, she's written a book. How did you do this thing?

Helen Fanucci (08:45):

Yeah, it's a really good question. I hired a book coach. I hired a company that specializes in helping authors write books and the company is called Scribe Media and that was super helpful. They have different kinds of support system, so if you want to write a book and you want to get trained, or learn coached how to write the book, you can do that, take classes, and then go off and write the book. But I wanted more of an interactive experience, and so I worked with a book coach who asked me great questions, we talked through my ideas and concepts and she really helped me crystallize and formulate the content of the book, and in fact, when I first started writing the book, she helped me get clear on, "Okay, who's the audience for this book?"

(09:43):

But when I first started writing the book, I thought it was the book with a bunch of chapters that people would read, but actually, what the book is, it's about the conversations, in fact, the 17 conversations that sales leaders must master with their team in order to be successful, and so that's the bulk of the book. The book is 21 chapters, so there's some context-setting in the first part of the book, and then there's the conversation chapters, and then there's a summary and conclusion and some of the skills that are relevant to having those conversations.

(10:27):

But I started to also reflect on what do I actually do as a sales manager and what are the conversations I'm having with my team? I think I came up with 25 conversations initially and I realized that there was redundancy and I was looking to consolidate and really pursue or talk about the vital few, which are 17 conversations, so the book coach helped keep me on track and then the publishing manager that was assigned to me also helped keep me on track. They both gave me the confidence that I could complete the project. They walked me through every step along the way.

(11:15):

One of the reasons I was up to 1:30 in the morning in Edinboro was I wanted to make sure that I got the edits back to the publisher so that they could do their next revision of edits to keep the train moving forward, so to speak, because I'm committed, and they're committed with me to a November 1st launch date, and so there were definite milestones along the way that had to be met.

Chris Beall (11:43):

It's fascinating. You were doing all this while doing your job at Microsoft, while changing the job from one to another different group, you were planning a wedding. I'd love to say that I planned a lot of the wedding, but I was the piano player, so we sat me over to the side, and a honeymoon that went on, so clearly, there was a lot to be done. There was a lot to be learned along the way, too, I assume on the books.

(12:12):

This is a hard question, and if you don't have a great answer to it, just blow it off, but what did you learn from the process of writing the book that surprised you, but it's kind of like, "Oh, I didn't know that, I didn't realize that," and now, maybe as a result you'll either write another book or you'll never write another book or you'll make sure that your grandchildren never write books because that would be, or whatever it is. What did you learn that was kind of like, "Huh, that's really interesting. I didn't expect that to be part of this whole book-writing thing"?

Announcer (12:48):

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Helen Fanucci (13:36):

Well, I would say that what I learned is it's possible, and I can do it, and it really helped crystallize conversations or ideas I had into a whole what I think is a coherent work product, if you will. Sometimes I think, "Oh, well, I just do this. Isn't this obvious? Everyone does it." What I realized in working with a book coach and reflecting and also frankly talking with you is that not everybody sees the world the same way I do and that it does...

(14:18):

My trajectory of my career over the past 25 years had certain themes and consistencies in them and I actually developed some of the ideas that are in the book through my 25-year career managing people, so I started years ago managing remote teams, and I know for some managers, that's kind of a big deal, like, "Oh, my gosh. If I can't see my team. How do I know that they're working?", and so I started reflecting on what I do to manage remote teams and deliver results, and so I would say the coherency of the book from how the world is changing and why talent matters to how I actually manage teams remotely and deliver results and have teams that stay with me and people who used to work for me that want to come back and work for me.

(15:23):

I thought, "The time is right," so in a certain sense, too, I feel validated that the approach that I've been using is successful and it's now absolutely necessary in the world. I am absolutely convicted that if you don't put your people first, your team first, you can't deliver the results expected, and so I guess I hadn't really thought about it so clearly until I wrote the book, and went through the process, but I think I have something unique to say and I think it could really help people who might be struggling on how to retain talent, and attract talent, and think differently about how they manage their team.

Chris Beall (16:13):

Well, I tell you, it's already made a difference for me. I don't manage the sales team, literally, I have a CEO and I have a VP who manages a sales team, but I do interact with sellers a lot, and you going through the book-writing process, and then me participating as a reader, and I read and provided some feedback, and some editing, what struck me as I thought about it in a market dominance context is you and I come after market dominance, in a sense, in exactly opposite directions. We both believe that conversations matter and we apply that in what we do. I've got this podcast with Corey and everything that I've been doing for the last 11 years or so has been focused around the human voice and the impact the human voice can have in opening up people's minds, so to speak, involuntarily, by going from stranger to trusted partner using the voice, but then going on from there. I'll call that the "outbound voice," the voice that's going out.

(17:20):

What you've done is taking the conversations matter part to scale and saying, "But the voice needs to be used also, and the heart, and the mind, and discipline, and process, and structure in another set of conversations." It's impressive to me that here on Market Dominance Guys, we have probably laid down in voice, I don't know, a million words, right, some big number of words, and not one of those sentences before this episode has been about the conversations that you as a sales manager, and I have a feeling we have a lot of sales managers in the audience, those conversations that you need to master mostly one-on-one, so we focus on the conversations that somebody might have with a prospect, or with a customer, or all of this kind of stuff.

(18:11):

Your point is, "Look, that's nice and all." I mean, I'm going to caricature it a little bit, but that's nice and all, but the real leverage is in your top talent who if you do the thought experiment, and say, "Well, one, if they perform, you're going to do well as a manager because they're top talent, and they're proven, two, if they leave, you're kind of toast." If your top performer, your top seller walks out on the first day of the fiscal year, you have this in the book, it's like the least of the bad things that happen is how much money you're going to have to make up, and most of the bad things that happen are way worse than that.

(18:49):

It's interesting to me that Corey and I totally missed along with all of our guests for all of this time, this other set of key conversations, which are so understandable, and you can break them down. You're an engineer by training that you can break them down into 17 detailed categories with a handbook, so to speak, for recipe book for each category. You don't have to say, "Yeah, you're a bunch of idiots," but do you find that? I mean, I find it kind of odd that here we both believe conversations matter. We both have long careers. I've focused almost entirely on external conversations, and your claim, which I now believe more than my own claim, is that internal conversations one-on-one with your team members, your sellers, is actually where both the leverage is and the action is. I think it's quite fascinating. When we first met and you saw what I was doing, did you just think, "Nice guy, but misdirected," or what?

Helen Fanucci (19:53):

No, I didn't think that. You're too compelling and convincing and convicted about what you do that I thought it was interesting for sure, and I wish you all the success in the world, but I wouldn't want your job, frankly.

(20:09):

Anyway, getting back to me and what your point is, it's not baffling to me how it gets missed. A lot of the sales managers focus on the business and quota and pipeline and the customer and external things, and where I believe the action is, as you put it, is with the sales team because they amplify impact and success. I'm one person, they're 10 people, 30 people, a hundred people, whatever they are, they amplify success, and so I focus my time on helping them be successful on terms that matter to them, and this, I think, is maybe a new idea for many people who have been in sales a long time.

(21:01):

What I do in each of the conversation chapters is I talk about, I start each chapter with, "This is how traditional sales managers will do it, this is how love your team sales managers will do what the chapter topic is, and then each chapter has six different sections. It has its purpose, the purpose of the conversation that I'm talking about, the intended outcome. How do you know if this conversation is needed? How to do the conversation and how do you know if it's effective? Then things to consider, so considerations.

(21:43):

The 17 chapters are broken into five sections. The first section is called Conversations of Connection because if you don't make a strong connection and build trust in a relationship with your team members, you're also toast, and so typically when I take on a new team, I don't know any of them, I didn't hire any of them, so the first chapter of the Conversations of Connection section is introducing yourself to your team, "Why do you do that? How do you do that? Here's what I do," and that might not even be something that some sales managers might think about it. That's important.

(22:28):

Being on the receiving end of having new sales leaders, I can tell you it's foundationally important because you make an assessment right away about that leader, and if they're all about themselves, if they care about the team, where their orientation is, and you make an assessment, and I would submit that my team makes an ASEs an assessment of me, can they thrive under my leadership? Do I care about them? Will I support them? Will I help remove roadblocks? Those kinds of things matter to them. In a large enterprise company like Microsoft, there also are a lot of time in spent and conversations getting internal alignment across the organization, so my focus is with my team to help amplify their success, and support them.

(23:25):

The book is not about sales techniques, it's not about how to close deals, or communication skills, or what have you. It's literally about the conversations you have with your team, and most of those conversations are one-on-one. I've also heard managers say, "Gosh, I don't have enough time to have conversations one-on-one," so I've broken down the math. If you have a team of 10 people, how much of your time in a month is spent talking to your team, reviewing pipeline, all that? I've broken down the math, so it's very doable, but I would wonder, what are other sales managers spending their time on, if not the team?

Chris Beall (24:15):

That's so interesting that you bring up that the constraint, which is your time, right? You're one person, you only have so many hours of the day, and so many days in the week, and so forth. When I was at the OutBound Conference last week, this question, first of all, this topic was probably 60% of the mastermind session, and I'd never heard the topic spoken of before at OutBound, so it was quite surprising that this question of, how do we work with teams? In particular, how do we get the top talent to stay? How do we get new talent that we train not to immediately take the training and leverage that up to get a job somewhere else, stuff like that?

(24:58):

When the question was asked about time, literally none of the experts had an answer other than, "Yeah, it's tough. Figure it out," and you break it down, "You have a team this big, you're going to have this much time spent in these one-on-ones, this much in these are the ones that have a fixed agenda. These are the ones that are event-driven, but they're probably going to flow at about this rate. Here's blah, blah." It's on and on. I mean, it's like an engineering breakdown.

(25:26):

Folks, by the way, when you read this book, what you're going to get is love as both an emotional concept but also as an engineering concept. This is like love your team is something you do, not something you just feel. It's mostly something you do through these one-on-one conversations.

What’s your Big Idea? And does your Big Idea solve your prospect’s Big Problem? Exploring this important aspect of a discovery call today are Chris Beall and Corey Frank. As Chris explains it, at the beginning of a discovery call, you don’t really know what problem your prospect is facing. And because prospects are generally reluctant to confess their companies’ issues and concerns to strangers, it’s often tough for you to determine whether this is a call that will lead to the next step in the sales process — or will lead nowhere. You can nudge a prospect toward the confessional with a few probing questions, but you can’t necessarily get them to sit down in the booth and open up. So, how do you find out if your product or service is a good match for their needs or wants? Listen in as Corey and Chris teach you how to subtly and expertly steer your prospect away from their initial apprehension of talking to a stranger all the way to the moment when they finally feel safe enough to divulge the information you’re seeking. Then, and only then, will you know if your product will truly solve their problem.  As always, our two sales experts offer lots of helpful advice on today’s Market Dominance Guys’ episode, “Is Your Product the Answer?”

Full episode transcript below:

(00:22):

What's your big idea and does your big idea solve your prospect's big problem? Exploring this important aspect of a Discovery call today are Chris Beal and Corey Frank. As Chris explains it at the beginning of a Discovery call, you don't really know what problem your prospect is facing. And because prospects are generally reluctant to confess their company's issues and concerns to strangers, it's often tough for you to determine whether this is a call that will lead to the next step in the sales process, or will it lead nowhere. You can nudge your prospect toward the confessional with a few probing questions, but you can't necessarily get them to sit down in the booth and open up. So, how do you find out if your product or service is a good match for their needs or wants? Listen in as Corey and Chris teach you how to subtly and expertly steer your prospect away from their initial apprehension of talking to a stranger all the way to the moment when they finally feel safe enough to divulge the information you are seeking.

(01:20):

Then, and only then, will you know if your product will truly solve their problem. As always, our two sales experts offer lots of helpful advice on today's Market Dominance Guys episode, is your product the answer?

Corey (01:37):

How do we unplug? I think we started this conversation, is it possible to rewire the brain from the way that we do Discovery and our good friend, Oren Klaff, talks about the way that we learn things chronologically from our bad bosses, from bad behaviors, from trying to wing it, is the way that we run them or that we talk about. And so I think you and I earlier were talking about the alphabet, ABCDEFG. If I asked you to go to K and then tell me the alphabet backwards, well, maybe you could, but most people couldn't do it because you didn't learn the information that way. And so usually folks, again, are learning about Discovery from who's sitting next to them, maybe their own persona, maybe how they were pitched themself on a product. And so they need to gravitate to the right way of understanding the emotional state, from what I hear you're saying, to help us rewire.

(02:42):

And we rewire this natural, what we think is a natural order of doing things, otherwise, we're going to constantly keep fighting this inclination to do it the wrong way all the time. And in the process, I think that what I hear you saying, Chris, is that what we're trying to reconstruct is how the buyer really cares about things, how the buyer really sees things. They don't care about how we learn about it. They don't care how we think about it. They don't care what our quota is. They don't care how we do our business. They don't care how we get our business. They only care about the information that they need to know in the order that they need to know it.

Chris (03:23):

And they need to be motivated to learn, which is hard, right? Folks are motivated to learn about stuff that might solve a problem that they have right now. And this actually is similar to the cold calling, how do you get trust? Well, you show the other person that you see the world through their eyes, tactical empathy, and then you demonstrate to them that you're competent to solve a problem they have right now. The problem in discovery is we don't know what their problem is that they have right now. So how are we going to allow them or get them to be comfortable exposing it? Nobody likes to talk about the big problem that they have right now. That's vulnerability just like, here doctor, before we get started, I'd like to cut my chest open and show you this. It's like, no, I'm not there. So this rewiring is really hard and it's hard for emotional reasons on both sides. You have urgency on the part of the sales rep, you have apprehension on the part of the potential buyer or the prospect.

(04:25):

How do you get from there to a place where you're actually discussing the nature of their problem? The beauty is once you get there, you are an expert as the seller and the other party will get more and more comfortable telling you the details, the constraints, the importance of their problem as they realize that you are asking questions that are the questions they've been asking themselves about it. And as soon as that happens, then you're in this magic land. You're in the confessional. And you're both just mutually exploring the possibility that this is worth exploring further, because by the way, the POC ain't going to come out of that Discovery call, come on. There has to be some subsequent thinking and consideration that goes on. Even at ConnectAndSell, all we're seeking is a next step of let's just do something together. This test drive thing, let's have an experience together, but we're not having it in hopes of buying connect.

(05:25):

And so we're just having it because, frankly, our product's incomprehensible without having the experience, you may as well have the experience. We got there eight years ago and decided that that was an okay thing to be shooting for. It's a further discussion with action. It's like, oh, so you think that my approach to the golf swing might hold some promise. Well, would you like to go out and spend an hour and see what it's like? I'll take your left hand off the club, if you're right handed, and you're going to swing with so much weakness that you'll start producing good golf shots to your own surprise. It's that kind of thing. Is it worth that? You're not going to, mind you, I'm not a golf teacher. That's like being a lawyer without a license or something, but I have a theory. Well, if you like my theory, maybe you'd come out and experience it.

(06:11):

So it's such an interesting process because in the cold call we never really have a breakthrough. We have an agreement. We have a breakthrough we're bringing, but we have an agreement, a commitment that comes out in the end, but there's no breakthrough. In a Discovery call, we must have a breakthrough. And the breakthrough is into the confessional. And once we're in the confessional, as long as we are not trying to manipulate the situation, and this is the hardest part of sales. You really believe that you have a solution in certain circumstances that would really help somebody and would be worth their while to go down the road and spend somebody else's money. Remember, it's always somebody else's money. It's B2B. So they're spending their company's money or whatever it happens to be. So we really believe in this, but if we push for it and therefore our product is always the answer, we can't possibly be honestly exploring whether our product's the answer. It just doesn't make any sense. You have to be open to not being the answer in order to honestly explore whether you are the answer.

Corey (07:23):

Yeah, sure. I like that. I think that after that emotional state is accepted, validated and transitioned from that apprehension to pride. And, again, back to our friend, Orin, here on the concept of the big idea, or even with our friend, Brad at Sandler, the big idea from the Sandler Sales Training is they both say. Orin talks about this big idea is we have to then get the prospect to see that there's a raising of the stakes, there's consequences and outcomes. There's a fear of missing out. There's an opportunity, something is being taken away.

(08:05):

But that first step of raising the stakes to get them to open up a little bit in the confessional, because if there's no raising of the stakes, there's nothing to talk about. And if they see the stakes are perhaps being raised, then they may feel a little bit more open to say, okay, well, it sounds like you're an expert and maybe we can talk about this problem that I have to create this little intrigue. What do you think about that kind of concept of the next step after moving them to a point of pride and less off of the apprehension?

Chris (08:38):

I think it's huge. Oren talks about winter is coming as a way of framing something in the world as it is right now, this bad thing could be happening and cybersecurity where you guys do a lot of work, it's not very hard to imagine winter is coming. Winter is everywhere, but-

Corey (08:56):

It's nerdy and it's always here. Winter is always here.

Chris (08:58):

Exactly. So we've got to get to the point. In fact, you can look at it this way, you need to get to the point where you're comfortable enough with each other, that you can raise the stakes. Because if you raise the stakes too early, what you're going to get is just run away. They're just going to run away. It's like, so are you an expert? Are you on my side? Are you an expert and are you on my side? Well, it's easy to be an expert, and Orin teaches some great stuff about that. There were some things that happened on our honeymoon, by the way, doing our whiskey tastings in Ila where the flash roll that the [inaudible 00:09:35] talks about was so expertly done by this one young man, he was 19 years old and yet he's walking us to-

Corey (09:43):

And he just nailed it?

Chris (09:45):

And it was the pace, the comfort, the this is so routine for me and I'm thinking, wow, this is wild that they do this crazy stuff to make this crazy stuff. But if you drink it at 11 o'clock in the morning, you better be ready to, so the flash roll, great, establish you as an expert. It's a great thing to learn how to do. I think everybody should have a flash roll. And at ConnectAndSell we teach our reps that a very specific flash roll, they bring up our team today right now live, so you're seeing them live so there's some risk. There's no heightened tension because you're watching on the screen. You're seeing calls and the meetings being set and nobody knows what's going to happen. So a little uncertainty goes a long way right then. And then there's a description of how one of the reps on our team is doing today. Well, here's Steve and so far today he's used ConnectAndSell for two hours, 51 minutes and 17 seconds. And during that time, he's had 631 dials done for him.

(10:52):

And he's had 37 conversations. And he set four meetings and his goal today is 2.7 meetings. So he's probably feeling pretty good right about now. And it's like bah bah bah, only an expert would talk like that. It's not about teaching, it's about establishing yourself as an expert. And that's one of the main things I've taken away from Warren's work and put into my own repertoire is, remember you owe the other person a flash roll because they need to accept you as an expert. And the flash roll is not an attempt to teach them something, it's just to describe something in your world that you would not describe so casually, unless you were an expert.

Speaker 1 (11:34):

We'll be back in a moment, after a quick break. ConnectAndSell, welcome to the end of dialing as you know it. ConnectAndSell's patented technology loads your best sales folks up with eight to 10 times more live, qualified conversations every day. And when we say qualified, we're talking about really qualified like knowing what kind of cheese they like on their impossible Whopper kind of qualified. Learn more at connectandsell.com. And we're back with Corey and Chris.

Chris (12:15):

It's almost like a quick mathematical proof of your expertise in a way. This couldn't have happened. I can't have juggled four balls casually while talking to and taking my hand out and I don't know, petting a cat or something like that, unless I knew something about juggling. So that part is, I think you establish yourself as an expert and experts know things about the world. You go to the dermatologist when they're looking at your body top to bottom, as they will do with us, the older we get and the more we grow up in Arizona, and they're going barnacle, barnacle, barnacle hmm. That hmm you accept. Then the dermatologist says, Hmm, that's like, whoa, my ear's perfect, what do you mean hmm doctor? And I think we might need to biopsy this or two whatever, and we accept it because it's an expert who's on our side.

Corey (13:16):

We certainly are wired to accept experts perspective. And tonality has a lot to do with that. Listening has a lot to do with that. Certainly empathy, as you've talked a lot about, has a lot to do with that. The big idea is attractive enough and it's compelling enough, it's intriguing enough. If it's building enough tension, it elicits the emotion and the prospect that, oh, I'm in the hands of an expert. I should probably sit back and listen to them, examine all the different moles that I have on my body.

Chris (13:54):

Is that a barnacle or is it something more interesting?

Corey (13:59):

And we could finish it. We could talk all day about Discovery. I love picking your brain on this is that runner think it was, is two modes of narrative. You have narrative, straight narrative and then you have paradigmatic. Orin calls them hot cognition and cold cognition. And the paradigmatic mode is the mode of science and it's concerned with logically categorizing the world analysis, cold stuff. The narrative is about building meaning and describing human experiences through those stories. And these stories are human-like or intention with action, like the flash roll at the 19 year old in Edinborough, or the story with the ferry that you told me in Iceland before this, they capture people's explanations about what they want to do and how they'll go about achieving it, painting the picture of the future.

(14:47):

And so I think we have to be on guard of if we put people too much, because we're so happy about our product, in the paradigmatic mode, in logical, mathematical, analytical modes, they eventually grind on us. Bruner's argument was that if we stay too long in paradigmatic cold cognition world, they're going to constantly be testing the things we're saying for truth and falsehood and mathematical correctness. And they won't become interested in us as real characters and believe that we're honest and truthful and aspiring, and we're on the other side of this big swirling blue orb and they'll constantly be questioning and trying to trip us up. So what are your thoughts about that? Because we both sell very technical products and we work with clients that sell very technical products. And sometimes in the Discovery process, we can go a little bit too one way on the cold speeds feeds paradigmatic mode and that pushes us away from their trust in a lot of ways.

Chris (15:54):

I think that's a big deal. It's very tempting to go for the paradigmatic stuff because it's ballistic. I say this, I say this, I say this, I say this. I say this. It is like reciting the alphabet. And I might think that I'm still flash rolling but at that point, I'm not. I'm not establishing myself as an expert. I'm establishing myself as a boring pedant who has got to be ignored sometime soon. And I'm also establishing myself as somebody who is tiresome to listen to. It's very difficult for most of us to do analytic work, analytic work is physically exhausting and some people can do more of it than others. And so take an example, I don't know if a puzzle, like a Sudoku puzzle, when you first approach it, it seems easy. And then you get this stuck feeling, and what that is is you've actually run out of analytic juice and if you put it away and come back, after two hours or whatever, you'll immediately be able to make the next-

Corey (17:00):

You've run out of analytical juice. That's one for the ages, Chris, I love that.

Chris (17:07):

And I'm an analyst by nature. I have people who have worked with me in these other ways know that I am annoyingly analytical. I spent two hours this morning buried in some spreadsheet in which I was trying to predict how much ARR would come out of a new product, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I'm pretty comfortable with that but I recognize there's a point where I'm no longer too tired of that kind of thinking. When it's coming out of me, I have a lot more juice. When it's coming into me, somebody's asking me to go along with their analysis, then I have this other problem. And the other problem is I have to keep up with the analysis and defend myself against conclusions that might not be in my interest and that's exhausting. So the questioning that goes on in that the description that goes on paradigmatic description that goes on in a lot of Discovery calls is physically exhausting for the listener often. And if that happens, they don't tell you that they've turned off, but they're no longer hearing you.

(18:18):

It's that cartoon where the dog is just hearing their name, blah, blah, blah, blah, Ginger, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Very famous cartoon. We're like that. And it doesn't matter how good we are at analysis, we're like that. We have more juice when we're analyzing something where there's nothing at stake other than say getting to an outcome. I used to teach something, the audience probably isn't aware of this, but I developed the Unix and the C curriculum for bell laboratories back in the early 1980s. And I taught it to establish that the curriculum was usable. I taught it to admins, to secretaries. I taught them how to program in the C programming language for those of you who, but it is still being used today, actually oddly enough, and how to use the Unix operating system, because that's what they had. That was the desktop at the time for very advanced companies.

(19:21):

And what I learned very quickly was in the best case in a one hour session, they could learn three things. And those three things had to be taught in three 15 minute pieces with a break in between them to recover, doing something else that had nothing to do with the physical exhaustion of trying to learn how a pointer works or whatever it happens to be. We had huge success, but I had no success when I went to four. So I couldn't teach four things in an hour, but I could easily teach three in an hour, but that doesn't mean three close to each other. And the key was always to get the affect of the class, the emotions of the class together at the same moment. So the hard bit, there's always a sticking point in understanding anything, there's an aha hiding in there somewhere, could be something that most of the class had experience and then it would give them something to talk about and we'd do a little exercise later.

Corey (20:19):

So that's the analytical juice running out as well as the example you gave of the Sudoku puzzle as well. Very interesting.

Chris (20:27):

We don't sell a great deal of analytical juice, trust me. It's really funny. Our brains were evolved to move our bodies and they were not evolved to think about stuff.

Corey (20:43):

So that's why an ideal Discovery is probably in that 20 to 25 minutes max range or so before you've got to do use both a favor and pull up stakes and continue the conversation another time.

Chris (20:59):

Exactly. And that's why I like starting them slow. No urgency. If this turns out to be important, it will turn out to have been worthwhile, to have started in a way that took a little bit more time. If it turns out to be unimportant, then nothing was at stake. So why are we worried? You could have had no meeting at all.

Corey (21:21):

Well, Chris, this is great here. See all that pent up wisdom from all that scotch that you consumed in the Shortlands, and Ed and Earl, et cetera, does have a purpose. We transferred all that to energy that will help all of us on the Discovery call. I'd like to do this again. As we had talked earlier, we need to bring in a guest expert for Discovery so we can run us a couple of things and folks who are doing it in the wild and we can chat about them. But until next time, Chris, any final thoughts on Discovery here?

Chris (21:53):

Well, it's one of those rare things where the name of that holds the key. We go out seeking to discover, we're curious and open minded. And if we can maintain that mindset and then learn how to help somebody else along so that they can afford to be curious. We come in curious, we have to help somebody else afford to be curious. Make it safe for them to be curious then we can discover amazing things. And that's, in my experience, where the big deals come from. I've got in my deep past, a little bit of big deal history, the hundred million deal. And those deals when I go back and deconstruct them and reconstruct them, they had these characteristics. So the slow at the beginning, the patience. I was telling somebody a story about a particular company where I went and sat in their lunchroom for two hours each day for two months and just listened and talked to people. And that led to a deal that had a lot of zeros and commas and stuff like that.

(23:01):

And yet when it finally happened and I went back and thought, did I waste my time sitting there talking to people? The answer was, no. It took that slowness in order to get to that certainty where we could actually explore together.

Corey (23:14):

Yeah. Oh, for sure. Yeah. We have to hear about the hundred million sale, a dollar sale one of these days too. So it's great to have you back, Chris, the post honeymoon edition of the Market Dominance Guys for Chris Beal, this is Corey Frank.

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What are the best practices for conducting a successful discovery conversation? And how do those practices differ from having a successful cold call? On today’s Market Dominance Guys’ podcast, our hosts, Corey Frank and Chris Beall, share their insights into these two distinctly different types of sales conversations. They talk about tone, about call length, and about the practiced performance of a cold call, which has the goal of setting an appointment, versus the slower-paced, getting-to-know-you interchange of information, which has the goal of answering the question, “Does it make sense — to both parties — to proceed further?” Stay tuned to hear the advice and cautions of these two sales experts on today’s Market Dominance Guys’ episode, “Doing Discovery the Right Way.”

----more----

Full episode transcript below:

Announcer (00:05):

Welcome to another session with the Market Dominance Guys, a program exploring all the high stakes speed bumps and off ramps of driving to the top of your market. With our host, Chris Beall from ConnectAndSell and Corey Frank from Branch 49.

(00:21):

What are the best practices for conducting a successful discovery conversation? And how do those practices differ from having a successful cold call? On today's Market Dominance Guys Podcast, our host Corey Frank and Chris Beall share their insights into these two distinctly different types of sales conversations.

(00:39):

They talk about tone, about call length and about the practice performance of a cold call, which has the goal of setting an appointment versus the slower paced. Getting to know you interchange of information, which has the goal of answering the question, "Does it make sense to both parties, to proceed further?"

(00:58):

Stay tuned to hear the advice and cautions of these two sales experts on today's Market Dominance Guys episode, Doing Discovery the Right Way.

Chris Beall (01:11):

We do something cool here.

Corey Frank (01:13):

Well, you've always had a great tone and we've had many episodes talking about this, how does the tone in a cold call? Because we've talked about that with the surfboard, the surfer and the wave, with the screenplay and the performance. How does the tone differ? What are some of the best practices for that tone in a discovery, that you see different than a traditional cold call?

Chris Beall (01:37):

Well, for one it's softer. So the cold call is a relatively fast precision operation. In 30 seconds, you're going to go from fear to trust. You're going to go from trust to curiosity, curiosity to commitment. And hopefully when they attend the meeting, that's the next step, which is action, right? Well, that happens in 30 seconds.

(02:04):

A discovery call might be 15 minutes to 30 minutes, 15 minutes is what we always say on the calendar, you know a discovery call has gone well when it goes for 30 minutes. It's one of the reasons to set it short, because if it's going nowhere, well, time is valuable to everybody. If it's gone somewhere, who really puts 15 minutes on their calendar and then puts a meeting right after 15 minutes? So you have a little free buffer to express that this is going somewhere, let's explore further, right?

(02:31):

So in fact, that's a big threshold across it's like, "I see we've gone past 15 minutes, that's worth talking about it." They say, "Yes. You've gone a long way into the confessional. You're really talking about stuff then." So it's a slower kind of thing, I mean, I ask those first two questions, I have all the time in the world. That's my view of a discovery type call, I have all the time in the world. Whereas in a cold call, I don't have all the time in the world, it's a pretty clipped operation. On the cold call, you're managing the tone, kind of millisecond, mega millisecond, it's a practiced ballistic act. It has to be. It's a sincere performance but a performance done the less.

(03:18):

Discovery call is more kind of a dance, a slower dance, you might spend five or 10 minutes just getting into it. Now, some people don't have that personality and they're going to cut you off and say, "Okay, so what's this all about?" That's fine. They want to break into the confessional, like the shining knight and can come in with the ax, here's Johnny.

Corey Frank (03:41):

Right.

Chris Beall (03:42):

Whatever, that's okay, clearly you're not too apprehensive or maybe they're just being aggressive in order to cover their apprehension. But to me, the real key to discovery calls is, curiosity takes time to be allowed to do its job, to be allowed to unfold. And it requires being in an emotional state where you can afford to be curious, because being curious is incredibly vulnerable.

(04:06):

When you were being curious, so what did I say about some cat, right? You're offering yourself up to see if you have another life, right? Because bad things could happen to curious people, so it's slower. And I like asking for help because it takes a while for somebody to decide to give you some help. And the help is, where are you in the face of our blue whirling planet? And then when everything goes great, how does your thing help that person? How does it change?

Corey Frank (04:36):

We have so many wraps in a lot of our clients, right? I'm sure in the clients that you work with as well. They like to just wing it, they like to just jump right into the questions, try to validate the banter as quickly as possible to get to that heralded POC and next steps. And they lose the romance and they lose all the authenticity that can come from that lack of resistance, that trust that you've built up, that it's a continuity from the cold call to the discovery.

(05:10):

And it sounds like, right, there's a lot of folks reps that don't understand if you have a BDR setting calls for you, when they show up, it's your responsibility to take that baton of trust and have it grow, have it foster. And what I hear you saying, Chris, or even acknowledge it, that there is some trust built up.

Chris Beall (05:33):

Right.

Corey Frank (05:33):

Don't water it down or piss it away in the first couple of minutes by, like you said, doing something stupid, like actually trying to sell them so overtly.

Announcer (05:42):

We'll be back in a moment after a quick break.

(05:45):

Selling a big idea to a skeptical customer, investor or partner is one of the hardest jobs in business. So when it's time to really go big, you need to use an uncommon methodology to gain attention, frame your thoughts and employee successful sequencing that is fresh enough to convince others that your ideas will truly change their world.

(06:04):

From crafting just the right cold call screenplay, to curating and mapping the ideal call list for your entire team, Branch 49's modern and innovative sales toolbox offers a guiding hand to ambitious organizations in their quest to reach market dominance. Learn more at branchfortynine.com

(06:24):

And we're back with Corey and Chris.

Chris Beall (06:33):

Urgency is the enemy of a good discovery call. If you have urgency, I would compare it to two things, I don't know whether port's analogies or athletic analogies are all always kind of, don't they're not dangerous. But not everybody appreciates them but I'm going to use two of them.

(06:50):

They're two things that, one of which I do reasonably well, the other which I do reasonably poorly, is that they have very similar qualities to them and one is a golf swing and the other is skiing bumps. So in both cases, in a golf swing, you have to have good posture. You've got to have a lot of things that are in the right place. But you have to be very soft in two things at your grip and how your risks work. Otherwise, you can't release the club and the club wants to be released and it'll fight you pretty hard, if you grip it too tight and have tight wrists, right?

(07:21):

You have to be easy and patient on the golf swing, being quick is the number one reason that golf swings go awry and that's why golf is a hard sport. Competitively, because when you're under competitive pressure, you get tight and tightness results into rigidity. And rigidity and quickness in turning the swing around too fast, not letting it go through its entire motion is not effective in golf, as I am reminded on a regular basis but actually, I hate to say it, have a pretty effective golf swing.

(07:57):

Skiing bumps is very similar but what has to be soft is your knees. As you get rigid, which it feels like you should, because when you go off that bump and you're going down to the next one, it's like, "I got to get ready for this." And you tighten up but you have to do is soften up. And you've got to accept that it's going to happen. And it may feel fast but the slower it feels like tapening as you're going down the slope. And kind of maintaining your posture but being soft in the knees, the better.

(08:25):

It's very similar and it's a different kind of athletic activity. The cold call is one kind of athletic activity, this is more like, Hey, if you're going to ski an entire bump around, it's not going to happen in, well, maybe it'll happen in 27 seconds. But it's going to feel a lot longer than that, right?

Corey Frank (08:41):

Sure.

Chris Beall (08:42):

And staying there, staying present, knowing where you're looking, what you're trying to do, being in charge, so to speak but being soft, is really important in a discovery call. And when you're urgent, you're not soft and the other person's going to respond to the urgency. But backing up, you're coming forward with your urgent questions, they're backing up into a safe place called, "I'm going to answer your questions but I'm not getting answer the big question, which is what's my big problem?"

Corey Frank (09:12):

So let's get into this, because we're going to prognosticate a little bit. But again, with the hundreds of thousands of phone calls, I think between us and certainly the millions from ConnectAndSell archives. When you have a rep who says the lead that I got from my BDR is no good. At what percentage do you think that the lead is no good? Because they only validate or they only come to that decision, usually after they've tried to run a process, tried to run a discovery on that prospect.

(09:48):

So what I'm getting at is, the salvageable quotient if you will, by Doing Discovery the Right Way, by looking at from your experience, how many leads that come over from a BDR, a frontier or an SDR team. That go to a typical rep who runs discovery, are really maybe the fault of the discoverer and not necessarily the fault of the BDR and the qualification of that lead.

Chris Beall (10:19):

Well, I'll answer that in two ways. One is in my view, BDR should never qualify. Ambush conversations are really bad places to get the truth out of somebody, qualification requires the truth. The discovery meeting is where qualification and take place.

(10:33):

So, I'll call it the technical qualification, the proforma qualification needs to happen in the creation of the list. The list is, as far as we know, qualified in advance. What are they qualified for? They're qualified to be worth 15 minutes to explore the question of whether it makes sense to do anything further. That's all we do in sales, is we only make one decision, does it make any sense mutually to do anything next, right? That's called next steps all over the place for the most part and that part of sales is probably pretty solid.

(11:06):

So to me, anybody who comes to a discovery meeting is qualified to participate in that discovery meeting, which is the only question that's on the table at that point. It's not like you're sacrificing your firstborn, it's 15 minutes, maybe you were going to do something awesome during those 15 minutes. But I've watched a lot of people work in my life and it's pretty much not going to be something awesome you're going to do in the next 15 minutes.

Corey Frank (11:31):

They're in your TAM, they're in your ICP and they accepted the meeting. In a market dominant theme, if anything we've done in these three years and couple hundred episodes, it's hopefully to get people to understand the basic tenants of market dominance.

Chris Beall (11:47):

Exactly. And then a whole bunch of good things could happen from a conversation. One is, they might understand what it is that you and your company offer. And know somebody else who has the problem that they don't have. Or has the timing that they don't have or whatever it happens to be.

(12:02):

You may discover that there's a timing opportunity, I had somebody reach out to me today and welcome me back from the honeymoon. Because they kept track of the timing issue because last time, they wanted to talk to me, I was headed on a honeymoon. Brilliant. Are they going to sell something to me or not? I don't know. But it was pretty smart to talk to me the first time, so that they knew enough about my situation that they could say, "Hey, welcome back from your honeymoon. I hope it was great."

(12:28):

And then they actually said something specific from the previous conversation and this was in a digital medium but it made the digital medium effective enough, they'll probably actually get a medium with me, so. I don't think I'll buy anything by the way but that's because I know what's wrong with their product. But what if I'm wrong?

(12:47):

There's a lot of good things that can come out of conversations, there's no bad things that can come out of them, other than the worst cases, you spend 15 minutes of your life talking to somebody and not making a deal. Well, you're going to spend a lot of your life doing a lot of things and not making deals, there's nothing magical about this thing, it's kind of like part of the job, right? Does it take you 15 minutes to even get to your home office and get set up? That's part of the job, there's a lot of things that are part of the job.

(13:14):

Sales reps often get that coming home feeling like, "I'm almost there, compared to somebody who looks at the lottery numbers and says, "That, it ended in a one and I have the one that in a two, see, I was almost there."

(13:28):

Like two is closer to one and a lottery ticket, it's not, trust me. Those of you who know a little bit about me know that I have a background in mathematics. And I will assure you, the ink that's on that lottery ticket doesn't know whether it's a one or a two. And then they're not close to each other in some weird way, it's just in your head. But reps, get that like, "I'm almost there." And it's a tragedy if this doesn't lead to a commission check for me.

(13:55):

Well, it's actually just part of the job, part of the job is to hold really great discovery conversations that lead to new insights on both parties.

Announcer (14:10):

ConnectAndSell. Welcome to the end of dialing as you know it. Give your fingers rest with ConnectAndSell patented technology. You'll load your best sales folks up with eight to 10 times more live qualified conversations every day.

(14:22):

And when we say qualified, we're talking about really qualified, like knowing how many tears they shed while watching the end of Toy Story, kind of qualified. Learn more at connectandsell.com

"Every discovery call begins with apprehension,” says Chris Beall, our Market Dominance Guys’ co-host, who is back behind the microphone after a two-month absence. Chris goes on to say that you need to be aware that starting a discovery call by interrogating your prospect only increases their apprehension. If you’re going to have a meaningful, successful conversation, you need to use a kinder, gentler approach. Chris talks with his co-host, Corey Frank, about a couple of ways he knows to take a prospect from that feeling of apprehension and fear to a feeling of pride and openness. Then, and only then, will the atmosphere of the call be right for you to ease the conversation into one of mutual discovery, where you and your prospect can learn whether their company is a fit for your product. As the title of today’s Market Dominance Guys’ podcast states, this can only happen once you’ve succeeded in “Calming Your Prospect’s Apprehension."

----more----

Full episode transcript below:

Announcer (00:06):

Welcome to another session with the Market Dominance Guy, a program exploring all the high-stakes speed bumps and offramps of driving to the top of your market. With our hosts, Chris Beall from ConnectAndSell and Corey Frank from Branch 49.

(00:18):

"Every discovery call begins with apprehension," says Chris Beall, our Market Dominance Guys co-host who's back behind the microphone after a two-month absence. Chris says that you need to be aware that starting a discovery call by interrogating your prospect only increases their apprehension. If you're going to have a meaningful, successful conversation, you need to use a kinder, gentler approach. Chris talks with his co-host Corey Frank about a couple of ways he knows to take a prospect from that feeling of apprehension and fear to a feeling of pride and openness. Then and only then will the atmosphere of the call be right for you to ease the conversation into one of mutual discovery, where you and your prospect can learn whether their company is a fit for your product. As the title of today's Market Dominance Guys podcast states, this can only happen once you've succeeded in calming your prospect's apprehension.

Corey Frank (01:27):

Here we are. Welcome to another episode of the Market Dominance Guys with Corey Frank, and with me post-wedding honeymoon holiday bliss, the sage of sales, the prophet of profit, the Hawking of hawking, Chris Beall.

Chris Beall (01:43):

The Hawking of hawking.

Corey Frank (01:44):

So, welcome back from all points across the pond, Chris. Good to have this marital glow about yourself here and good to have you back in the co-host seat where you belong.

Chris Beall (01:56):

Thanks, Corey. I've really missed this part of the professional world. And we were having such a good time, Helen and I were, in, well, Iceland and Copenhagen and Norway and by the Russian border and eating crabs that would've preferred to eat something else themselves.

Corey Frank (02:12):

You missed this part when you talked about that part.

Chris Beall (02:15):

Yeah. I missed this part. We fell into this thing unintentionally some years ago now actually, in 2019. I've been watching them. You did a few while I was gone. Anyway, it's great to be back and hopefully I'll bring something because God knows if I got anything left.

Corey Frank (02:34):

Oh, well. Listen, I think you got a 911 call from Susan, our producer, saying, "You must come back quickly. Corey cannot do these by himself at all, and he needs you in the seat." So, I thought we'd jumped right into it, Chris. This had no easy topics that we're going to venture into on your first episode back. We want to get into the meaty stuff. And one of the things that's been on our mind, certainly here at the Branch 49 team working with some clients, is the discovery call, right? Seen a lot of stuff. The esteemed and prolific writer, commenter Gerry Hill of ConnectAndSell fame, right? I've seen so many postings for him on this topic. You talk about the cold call and we've done a number of episodes, right, Chris?

(03:16):

And if we've learned anything from you and your rantings and writings, it's that the natural state, the primordial state of a prospect when they receive a cold call is that of fear. I think we all know and all the listeners understand that. But when you set up a discovery... I set up a call for you as a prospect to meet with Gerry Hill next Tuesday at 10:00 AM. And here it is Tuesday at 9:58 and you are thinking about this. Should I make it, not make it? And you show up. If the state of a cold call is fear, what is the state, the insight into the prospect's mind on the discovery call, would you say?

Chris Beall (03:55):

Apprehension.

Corey Frank (03:57):

Apprehension.

Chris Beall (03:58):

Apprehension. It's not anxiety.

Corey Frank (03:59):

Not, "What did I just do?"

Chris Beall (04:00):

Anxiety is a little bit too strong, but apprehension. After all, when you show up for a discovery call, you're pretty sure that you're really showing up to be sold to. And if we go back to the cold call, the number one purpose, the purpose of the cold call, is to build trust. And as we've been instructed by people who are our betters, that trust will last forever as long as we don't blow it. And the best way to blow it is to sell to somebody. So, now they're going to show up at this discovery call expecting not to participate in discovery, but to be discovered, right? To be discovered at. They're going to have something done to them. And we don't like going into situations where somebody's going to do something to us. And it actually creates an opportunity to screw up whatever trust you managed to build in the cold call just by how you handle the beginning of a discovery call. So, just like the cold call, you've got to know the purpose and you have to have an underlying belief that supports that purpose.

(05:04):

And that underlying belief is in the potential value of this meeting you're offering, for this human being you're speaking with, in the case where you're never going to do business together. And it's those three conditions have to obtain inside of you in order to be able to sincerely execute on a trust-based cold call that starts an ambush that starts with the other party in a state of fear. So, now here you are. You've gotten past that very difficult situation and you're in a new situation and the strong temptation is to interrogate. And so the party, the other person, shows up. We'll call them the prospect, but that's not really the right way to think about them, in a state of apprehension that you're going to interrogate them in order to trick them into making a bad decision, a decision that's bad for them. Because you're the expert and they're not, and therefore you can lead them by the nose down to some bad decision and they have to resist.

(06:03):

You got a bridle on the horse and now you're going to tug them or you're going to offer them a little carrot, or you're going to say, "If I could show you how this hay over here is three times as nutritious as this hay, would it make you want to buy hay from me for the rest of your life?" Whatever is going to happen to you. And it's happened to all of us. And so apprehension is that base state. And we've talked a little bit about this, that as professionals we have an obligation first to not faint at the sight of blood, right? If we're going to be surgeons, we can't faint the sight of blood. But we have a bigger obligation now that we've controlled our own emotions sufficient to execute, which is we've got to get in there before we start making any changes. Heart surgery doesn't start with the heart. You got to get in there.

(06:51):

Now, maybe it's some modern technique where you thread something up their toe or something like that and jam it up an artery and go, but it could be that we're going to cut down there and we're going to crack the chest open and there's going to be noise. And that's part of the job too. And it's a big part of the job. And in discovery, we have that job ahead of us. And just like when we go to the doctor, we're apprehensive. When that prospect comes to us in a discovery call, they're apprehensive that we're going to do them.

Corey Frank (07:19):

So, how do we screw that up? Between you and I, certainly you more on the ledger side than I, we've listened to hundreds of thousands of phone calls and recordings in our career. So, what are some of those patterns that me as a rep, that I'm going to screw it up right from the beginning?

Chris Beall (07:35):

Yeah. Well, you start off making the assumption that the other person is ready to confess and you start asking questions in which, if they're going to answer them honestly, that they've got to trust you a lot more than they trust you already. And even worse, even more so, you don't treat their emotional state as the most important element of the conversation. In any conversation, the other person's emotional state, if you are a professional, their emotional state is your responsibility, not theirs. You're the one who put them in a position where, in this case, they're apprehensive.

(08:11):

You need to take them as best you can or help them go someplace that's more useful to both of you emotionally. And I think that ignoring the emotions and starting right in on, "So, Corey, how big's your sales team? How many reps do you got?" Right? "How much calling do you do? What's your budget?" Oh my God. You go in for that stuff. And then of course somebody's going, "Ask open-ended questions." Those are open-ended. How big's your calling team? I mean, it's open-ended. The answer could be zero, 300 or, "I don't really feel like telling you that quite yet." And it's in fact, no matter what they say, it's, "I don't feel like telling you that. Not yet anyway."

Corey Frank (08:48):

But they showed up for the call. They showed up for this. The premises are incongruent. "I thought I was going to get X. And you, as the salesperson, are trying to feed me Y," right?

Chris Beall (09:02):

Yeah. Right. I came out of curiosity. If it was a good cold call, it was only curiosity that got me here. So, I'm curious. What am I curious about? Well, I'm not quite sure. I mean, that's what curiosity is about. If we knew the answer, we wouldn't be curious, right? So, I'm curious enough to show up and I'm hopeful that I might learn something that's of value to me. But I'm apprehensive. And it's very hard for two emotions to be inside of a person working at the same time. In fact, that's the nature of emotions. Emotions, they dominate one after another after another. They don't coexist. We can't be apprehensive and excited or joyous at the same time. We can't do that.

Chris Beall (10:33):

Emotions are funny like that, right? We can see two colors more or less at the same time, but we can't experience two emotions at the same time. So, it's fascinating to me. So, And I think there's some simple ideas and actual techniques, very similar to... You know how people got fixated on the 27 seconds thing? It's like, "Oh, it's about the opener in 27 seconds." It never been about the opener in 27 seconds. It's just anything that one could say in order to handle the second part of somebody being afraid of us and getting to that next stage.

(11:34):

And the next stage is emotional. In the cold call, we try to take somebody from fear, they're afraid of us, to trust immediately. That's the shock. The shocking thing is we can go from fear to trust like that. More fear sets us up for more trust, so to speak, because there's more fear to relieve. And there are ways to do that. In the discovery call, there are ways to do it also and they work on the same principle. The principle is emotional substitution. You as a professional are going to help this other person, help them substitute a more useful emotion. So, it can't be idiosyncratic. It's got to be a fairly universal emotion. Well, here's the universal emotion. Pride. It's totally antithetical to apprehension. It's almost the opposite of apprehension. When we're apprehensive, we pull back. And when we're proud, we come forward. And so the prospect is in a pulling back emotion when we start the conversation with them.

(12:38):

So, what can we do to get them to express pride? Well, there's a funny thing that people have as almost a universal source of pride, oddly enough, and it's where they live. And it's because they chose to live there. So, one thing you can do, and I know people will fixate on this and go, "Oh no, it's those words exactly." It's not those words exactly. But here's what I do. I just ask a simple question. First, I want to make it clear that I'm looking for help. I'm not in charge here. I'm not running the show. I'm not making things happen to somebody else. Because they're apprehensive that I'm doing that. So, I say, "Corey, it just helps me a lot to know where somebody is when I'm talking to them. I don't know. It's just a peculiarity of mine. Where are you right now on the face of our blue whirling planet?"

(13:35):

And the reason I say blue whirling planet is actually to give us a sense of togetherness. There's a classic picture that was taken from the moon of Earth, that the Earth is this blue marble hanging in space. And we all know it's spinning except for certain people who think that it's flat or something like that. But they still use GPS. They still use GPS. Why not? Believe the Earth is flat and use GPS. It's a miracle. But anyway. So, that gives us a sense of togetherness. But what I really want to do is then, I've asked for help. It wasn't an interrogation question. It was a please help me question, because this is something I need in order to be able to have a good conversation with somebody. And I want this to be a good conversation. So, I just ask that question. And then it's like, "Where are you?" And it's very different from, "So, where do you live?"

Corey Frank (14:29):

For sure.

Chris Beall (14:30):

It's very different. So, where are you right now? Now, most of the time they're in their home. Some of the time they're on the road. That could be. But in any case, they're probably where they want to be unless you're having discovery calls with people in prison or something like that. And I think that's unusual. There's not a lot of buy-side activity in the B2B world going on. [inaudible 00:14:53]-

Corey Frank (14:53):

Not a lot of TAM. Not a big TAM there.

Chris Beall (14:56):

No. So, sadly there is a big Tam. But anyway, let's leave that Tam alone. But what you get is an opportunity, a very low-cost opportunity, for the other person to replace their apprehension with pride of place. And pride of place has a wonderful quality. And that is, it's not personal, but it is about the person. It's associated with the person. But none of us actually created the city that we're living in or the place we're living in or created our neighborhood unless we have big real estate development chops or something like that. So, most of us, we have various feelings about where we live, but when we're talking to a stranger, the feeling that comes out as pride. And I'll let somebody talk out of a 30-minute meeting for 27 minutes about where they live.

Corey Frank (15:54):

Right, right. So, that's the key, is to acknowledge, understand that their state is apprehension, and making them feel at ease as much as possible. Because if I want the deep confessions, the ones that will drive my traditional discovery, my BANT, if you will, to determine if they're part of a POC or is there any there there, I need to address that. And if I don't, what happens typically?

Chris Beall (16:24):

If I don't, I get a very confusing conversation, which is oppositional. I ask questions and they try to avoid answering them. And they might answer them in a halfway kind of fashion. The answers to my questions are irrelevant. That is, I'm an expert at what I offer. They're the expert of their problem. Whatever their problem is, is deeply theirs. It's peculiar, to use my mother's favorite word. It's peculiar to their situation. It's about things they know about that I don't know about. And until they're ready to share those other things that they know about that I don't know about, we actually can't explore. I mean, I'll call this real B2B. So, say you're selling coffee beans or whatever. Maybe it's easier. I don't know. I've never sold stuff like that. I've sold complicated products like Fuller Brush, spider spray, you know how it goes, right? So, we have to accept their world is deep and rich and not about us, right?

(17:25):

It's deep. It has all sorts of things going on. There's all sorts of constraints, situations. There's timing. There's how are they already solving the problem that you would like to help them solve in a different way. All that stuff's at play. And if we just skip this emotional transition to something else, and I like pride of place, and then I go from pride to place, by the way, my next question is to pride of mission. Because then we're at the heart of it. Because everything they're doing in their job has to do with the mission of their company. They don't think about it like that, but why do they keep that job instead of going to some other job? You don't talk to a lot of people who are basically iron shackles got to work at company X, Y, Z. They're making a daily choice, especially now.

(18:14):

I mean, now as Helen Fanucci's new book coming out, Love Your Team, says, "Your top talent can walk out the door without taking a single step." So, it's a different world now. You're dealing with somebody who's there because they want to be there. So, what's that attachment to mission? And there's a personal element. You don't make it personal. It's like, "What do you do that's so great?" But what I like to ask is the simple question. And again, it's a help me out question. So, I always try to understand somebody's business as best I can before talking with them, because it seems like a good thing to do. I go to the website and I read and I think, and then I always get it wrong. Always. 100% of the time. I like to ask this question, which is, "When everything goes right, when everything's fantastic..." Remember, we're trying to get to problems, right? So, I don't want to go anywhere near the problems quite yet because the problems are live wires. You could get hurt down there, right?

Corey Frank (19:18):

Sure.

Chris Beall (19:18):

So, I want to stay in a safe zone for the moment, which is to remind somebody, why do we all do what we do? Deming said, "We work for pride of workmanship." Who do we work with and where do we work? We work to do good. I mean, that's kind of it. If we thought it was bad, we probably wouldn't do it. If it was evil, maybe some people are like that and we sometimes run into them. But in general, most people are in tune with what their company does. They think it's a good thing.

(19:45):

So, I just ask, "When everything goes right, when everything goes right, when the customer's the right customer and the solution's the right solution, the budget is there, the timing is right, all of the support people and people on both sides do the right things, everything clicks, how does your company or your product change your customer's life?" And I'm really specific. It's changed your customer's life. That other person's life. It's not, "Did it make a buck? Did it add shareholder value? Did it blah, blah, blah, blah, blah?" It's about somebody's life. And there's a little reminder there that I've never had somebody fail to answer that question. Ever. They always answer. It's almost like, "Huh. Wow. Yeah, we do something cool here."

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In this episode of the Market Dominance Guys, Corey and Chris agree on the importance of building trust before anything else can happen. They are joined by Transformational Coach Jennifer Standish, Henry Wojdyla, Founder and Principal at RealSource Group, Matt McCorkle, Manager of Branch Operations at Kaiser Compressors, and hosts Ty Crandall on the Business Credit and Finance Show, Jeff Lerner from Ep 150 of Millionaire Secrets, and David Dulaney on the Sales Development Podcast. The full episodes to the ones included here are listed below:

EP91: Borrowing from the Best

EP109: Being There for Your Customers

EP123: Hire Yourself a Grandma

The Business Credit and Financing Show

Sales Development Podcast https://www.spreaker.com/user/9196584/episode-164-done

MILLIONAIRE SECRET #150 Unlock Your Potential with Jeff Lerner

----more----

Full episode transcript below:

Announcer (00:05):

Welcome to another session with the Market Dominance Guys, a program exploring all the high stakes speed bumps and off ramps of driving to the top of your market. With our host, Chris Beall from ConnectAndSell and Corey Frank from Branch 49. In this episode of Market Dominance Guys, Corey and Chris gather consensus on the importance of building trust before anything else can happen. They're joined by transformational coach, Jennifer Standish, Henry Wodjdyla, founder and principal at Real Source Group, Matt McCorkle manager of branch operations at Kaeser Compressors, and host Ty Crandall on the Business Credit and Finance show, Jeff Lerner from Millionaire Secrets and David Delaney on the Sales Development podcast. We hope you enjoy this episode of Market Dominance Guys. Building trust needs to be step one.

David Dulaney (01:00):

It seems the trends, in just society in general, is more digital typing, texting, sending snaps or whatever. It's much more digital, but that human connection, especially now during, this time period is so important. So where do you see the gap in the sales development world right now, between folks focusing on just that typing and texting and stuff like that versus actually having conversations with people?

Chris Beall (01:30):

Well, it's a chasm. It's huge. The challenge is this, the human voice carries about 20,000 bits of information per second. And an email, a whole email has about 5,000 bits. So it takes four emails to be the equivalent of one second of a conversation with regard to information. And it takes information, lots of it, before we trust somebody, because we're smart.

David Dulaney (01:55):

Right.

Chris Beall (01:55):

We're not going to just trust somebody on what's in an email, we got to get more. And it turns out it takes about seven seconds of a conversation, which is the equivalent of seven times four, 28 emails to get somebody to begin to trust you. So who's going to read 28 emails? I mean, really? I don't think anybody does that. So when you look at the problem of sales development, not as, I made you answer my email, but you look at it instead as, among all the competitive offerings, especially do nothing, which is the big winner in business as the status quo. How do I become the most trusted and how do I do it before my competitor does?

If you see that as the problem, if that is what sales development needs to do, then the gap's pretty simple, sales development reps aren't talking to enough people. And when they do talk to them, they're talking to them incorrectly. They're not talking to them with an intention of building trust. They're talking to them with an intention to get them to take a meeting. Or worse, they're talking to them about a product, which is if you want to do the worst thing you can do in sales development, call somebody up and tell them that you have a solution to a problem that they have. You have a product that solves the problem they have. Because you've just insulted them. You just called somebody up, who's supposedly competent and diligent, and said, did you realize you were waiting for a salesperson to tell you how to do your job?

David Dulaney (03:27):

Okay. So that's one of the big misses. Yeah.

Chris Beall (03:31):

It's a big one, right?

David Dulaney (03:32):

Not having enough conversations. And then finally, when you do get a conversation, not leading with the trust, just going to your script, basically.

Announcer (03:46):

Jennifer Standish joins our Market Dominance Guys in this episode 123 where they're talking about hiring grandmas. I know, I know what you're thinking. What are you talking about? Hiring grandmas. Listen to this and you will understand the importance of building trust, tonality, and how women of a certain age have this skill as well as thick skin. Join us for this segment.

Chris Beall (04:09):

Certain voices cause people to act in a positive way, even if they don't take the meeting. So you're actually conditioning the market for all your future communications, that thank you that comes after every conversation. Thank you for our conversation today. The only email in the world of B2B that always gets opened. The only subject line that works, everybody talks subject lines all day long. There is only one subject line that works in B2B. Thank you for our conversation today. Now the only way that it's honest is if you just had a conversation. Now you're down to how do they feel about it? And that feeling determines what happens to four out of every five of the pipeline dollars that will come out of calling. Because four out of five of the pipeline dollars that come out of calling do not come from the meeting that was set in the cold call. They come in the communication that happened afterwards that's been conditioned by the trust that was built in the cold call.

Jennifer Standish (05:08):

I trained a grandmother last year and she was phenomenal to the point where the owner had to give her a week vacation because he couldn't keep up with all the appointments she was setting.

Chris Beall (05:21):

I love that.

Jennifer Standish (05:21):

It blew everybody away except for me. And I was like, this woman is going to be phenomenal. So yeah, so maybe we really, really, really need to change how we're hiring. And these women love it. They feel useful. They are proud of what they're doing. They have a really thick skin because they've lived a long life and they've seen things. And there's just something about their energy and you just trust them immediately. So I don't know, Chris, we should come up with something on to use this talent.

Chris Beall (05:56):

Well, we should, I'm down here right now in Quail Creek, Arizona. And this community, I think we have 3000 houses or so. And I would say of those 3000 houses, 2,937 of them have somebody of grandmotherly age of the female persuasion who's living there. And they arrange everything here. They make everything happen. I actually think every once in a while that it's just the company that needs to be started. No one has ever made an appointment setting company that operates reliably at pay sent scale. And the reason is that the inverted S curve around hiring eventually kills them.

So it's hard to find the marginal talent to add to that group. And then Corey, you've done it within the companies and you know how hard it is. That thrash at the edge, I call it, the thrash at the margin that occurs where the hiring, where the in and the outer happening at about the same rate.

Corey Frank (06:53):

Absolutely.

Chris Beall (06:54):

Its like your drop of water can only get so big before it's boiling as fast as you're adding to it. And then all of your time is going there. And then the quality deteriorates at the center. It's just the way these things happen. And you're taking on customers that are less sincere and less interesting and less worthwhile and blah, blah, blah.

Corey Frank (07:11):

Very true.

Chris Beall (07:12):

But I do believe that it could be that grandmas hold the key to making the world's first scalable appointment setting company that can grow without bound, without losing quality.

Corey Frank (07:26):

See that should have been your patent, not the other thing.

Chris Beall (07:29):

Well, she didn't say what it is and we're not convinced yet.

Corey Frank (07:32):

Oh, okay. All right.

Chris Beall (07:33):

That's not all about grandmas.

Corey Frank (07:34):

Just checking it in. Grandmas are the untapped labor pool market that this country needs right now today.

Chris Beall (07:44):

Yeah. The innovation economy...

Corey Frank (07:46):

Innovation economy.

Chris Beall (07:47):

... Will not fulfill its potential for humanity unless grandmas step up.

Corey Frank (07:51):

You cannot move forward without looking back. That's what I hear you saying.

Jennifer Standish (07:56):

They're hard workers. They're really hard workers.

Corey Frank (08:00):

Yeah. Absolutely.

Chris Beall (08:00):

Yeah. And they're self managing.

Jennifer Standish (08:03):

Yeah.

Chris Beall (08:04):

They've been managing themselves for quite a while. And managing someone else too most of the time.

Corey Frank (08:08):

Sure.

Announcer (08:16):

Henry Wodjdyla joins our Market Dominance Guys with so much grace and respect for some of them that have come before him that he's learning from regularly, including Matt Forbes and Cheryl Turner from the episode, Borrowing From the Best

Speaker 6 (08:16):

Henry Wojdyla (08:30):

That concept of building trust. We've had a lot of episodes, probably more than half of our episodes. I'd say, Chris, it comes up one form or another. And you referenced Warren and we had him on a few times and talking about that, certainly. And Chris has had many great episodes and riffs where we talked about tonality and in the Sandler world, nurturing. And Matt Forbes is exceptional at that. Mark, you're from ConnectAndSell is exceptional at that. Cheryl is, as you write the one of the masters of our craft at that.

Do you find that talking now being aware, because you can't unsee it, you can't unknow it now, is that when you talking to other asset managers or property owners or investors, that the tonality, the pacing, has changed as well as your approach? And has that made an impact? And I'm asking this under the guise, Henry, of there's a lot of folks in our sales profession who say you can't cold call. It doesn't work. Right. Chris and I, we love engaging in discussions with people like that. And for our competitors, you're right, it doesn't work. So don't use it. It's a waste of your time. But for those that are open, how much of what you do is this nurturing tonality, pacing, and what kind of difference have you seen by employing that more trust based approach with your voice as well?

Henry Wojdyla (10:04):

It's an all the above answer it. And speaking of feedback loops, here's another one maybe in the micro on the framework of a 27 second cold call, hopefully, maybe even less. It's the idea that... Another thing you guys have talked about by the way is belief, the power of belief. And I would say if the power of belief is there, it frankly takes care of the rest. And if you believe, not just in the power of the discovery meeting, but the fact that you can offer something ultimately of value, but the pathway is trust, it almost really, it takes care of the rest. And I don't mean that to be either a glib or partial answer to your question, but it all comes together, I think, in that essence.

Announcer (10:48):

We'll be back in a moment after a quick break.

Selling a big idea to a skeptical customer, investor or partner is one of the hardest jobs in business. So when it's time to really go big, you need to use an uncommon methodology to gain attention, frame your thoughts and employee successful sequencing that is fresh enough to convince others that your ideas will truly change their world. From crafting just the right cold call screenplay, to curating and mapping the ideal call list for your entire tam, Branch 49's modern and innovative sales toolbox offers a guiding hand to ambitious organizations in their quest to reach market dominance, learn more at branchfortynine.com. And we're back with Corey and Chris.

In episode 150 of Millionaire Secrets, Jeff Lerner and Chris Beall visit about the innovation economy. Chris says, so the innovation economy is bottleneck somewhere. I happen to believe I know where it's bottleneck, which is in the failure to create a trust relationship with somebody who might avail themselves of that innovation. Three years from now, three years in advance waiting. It's not really the way to allow the innovation economy to achieve its potential. It's creating trust relationships. Chris goes on to say, it's creating trust relationships, where somebody gets to the point where they trust somebody with an innovation more than they trust themselves because they're the expert. They've got to trust them more than they trust themselves.

So that's why we're doing what we're doing at ConnectAndSell because we have this bottleneck of the entire innovation economy, which we all depend on for our future. We all depend on these innovations going to market, and yet business leaders, business executives, people who've managed them who run them, invest in them, don't see what we see, which is the bottleneck, which is the flow rate of discovery meetings with potentially relevant people as early as you can get. And the foundation for making that flow rate consistent is building trust capital across the whole potential market well in advance of them, even wanting to hold a meeting. If you can do those two things, your innovation will go to market. Now you only need the goods and the will.

That blew Jeff away. He was saying because he struggles. One of his infinite game struggles is finding ways to explain to people what sales really is and why it's not only so essential, but it's actually one of the most beautiful human activities. And just as Chris explained it better than he ever could, even the name of his company ConnectAndSell.

Let's go on to the next segment.

 On the Business Credit and Finance show hosted by Ty Crandall, Chris was telling us everybody's got a value proposition. Those things flow around the internet like water at this point. They're on LinkedIn, they're here, they're there, everywhere you go somebody is saying, "I've got this great value proposition. I've got this reason you should do business with me." But why aren't you doing business with them? The answer is you don't trust them.

Chris says that the B2B buyer is super cautious by their very nature. They've got to trust you, the seller, more than they trust themselves with regard to this purchase. Because you are the expert. You've got to trust the expert. It'd be stupid to trust a non-expert, oneself, more than the expert. So they're in a quandary. The only way that quandary ever gets resolved is through personal trust. If you can establish trust reliably very early in the relationship, then you can build on that to get the value.

From episode 109, Matt McCorkle manager of branch operations at Kaeser Compressors talks about legacy. He and Corey talk about the importance of preserving that legacy. And the only way to do that is through trust. Listen to this segment from that episode.

Corey Frank (14:52):

And Matt, I think that you can't have a company Kaeser that's been around for over a hundred years, and certainly you have technical competence, the company does. You have industry competence. But I think probably the leadership that continues to come generation after generation continues to engender that trust. Kaeser is a name that I can pick up the phone at three in the morning if I have a problem with, if I have a problem, I know that Kaeser's going to try to figure out or manufacturer solution to help me. Sometimes it's a little tougher to get when it's pure software and there's no touch. When it's, e-commerce alone you miss out on certainly some conversations like this at an enterprise level or at a more intimate level. And you have just the brand promise the website, the commercials to somehow sometimes drive that. And it'll be interesting to see if those companies end up being as durable as certainly ConnectAndSell or Kaeser.

Matt McCorkle (15:49):

Chris and I were actually talking about that as it relates to ConnectAndSell building trust, getting meetings with folks, because as I was calling with Cheryl, we're trying to set up some virtual meetings, phone meetings. It's not common in our industry. And it's because of exactly what you put your finger on there, Cor, this is a hard product. It's a piece of machinery in somebody's plant, and they want to know that they can believe that you have the absolute best machinery ever. It's just amazing. It's reliable, it's efficient, it's just incredible piece of machinery. But if you can't support it, they don't want it anywhere near their plant. And so that support piece, that you're going to have somebody here at three in the morning, they're going to know how to put it back together if something catastrophic happens, that's really critical in our industry.

So then when it comes to ConnectAndSell, a lot of times, you're pushing for that face to face meeting. And then the way, certainly, we use the sales process after that is to demonstrate that not only do we have business outcomes, but we also have the infrastructure to support these business outcomes in terms of technicians and parts, support and things like that. That is definitely a piece that comes into play. I feel that it is more difficult to sell, remotely that you need a little bit of that face to face touch. Now, certainly we're not giving up on doing things from a virtual perspective because it's such a powerful time savings, but at some point in that process, you've got to make that connection.

Corey Frank (17:17):

Well, when I commend you, Matt, you think about the stewardship that you are responsible for this 120 year, 119 year old company. Is that what it is?

Matt McCorkle (17:26):

Yes.

Corey Frank (17:27):

So the stewardship that you're responsible for that company, the leap of faith of trust that you had to have to say, I want to take this approach, not only from selling, but also from certainly the technology benefit of a ConnectAndSell. We can't underestimate that. And I think that there's going to be a reciprocal effect as you continue to see the market dominance effects occur. You're number three in the US, hey, I'm sure when you're on the episode, when the show maybe next year, maybe be number two, and maybe that'll be a take away. But the math says three years. Right Chris? So we got another year to cram it in. So we'll see how it works.

But I imagine that it'll be fun as you look at the legacy is the reciprocal effect of Matt McCorkle inside company like Kaeser, going to be affecting the results five years from now, 10 years from now, 15 years from now. And if you probably have clients that have been with that organization for five years, for 10 years, for 15 years, and they continue to be fans of Kaeser. So those are some of the larger ramifications of focusing on market dominance and the strategy, and really is the residue of that or the DNA level of that is that you build trust and you're building trust, certainly with your team, with your board, with your leadership team by this is the way we are taking these mantles in planting them here by this is how we're going to sell.

These sales experts agree, that there is more than one approach to a successful sales campaign. We're sure Chris Beall has some dark childhood story about alternate ways of skinning a cat, although he's never done it, of course. These discussions include modifications and redirections in the buying cycle, even though the basics are still there: awareness, consideration and decision. Join Corey and Chris in this episode of snippets from episodes about the buying cycle. This features Oren Klaff, Jason Beck, Gerhard Gschwandtner, Susan Finch, Dan McClain, Brad Ferguson, and our own Chris Beall and Corey Frank. To hear the entire episodes features, visit this collection:

https://marketdominanceguys.com/category/buying-cycle/

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Full episode transcript below:

Our Market Dominance Guys Chris Beall and Corey Frank have proven there is more ways than one to skin a cat. And I bet Chris Beall probably has some dark childhood story to support that information, but we all can agree on that. There's more than one solution to just about everything including the buying cycle. Now, the basics we know are awareness, consideration, decision. Those are the three basic steps, but let's hear what some of the best experts that we know that we've had on our show say about this. Including of course our own Chris and Corey. So among our guests that we're going to feature in these quick snippets, and you can listen to the whole playlist if you click on the post, we have Oren Klaff, Jason Beck, Garheart Gastraughtner, Dan McClain, Brad Ferguson, and your own yours truly Susan Finch. We hope you enjoy this playlist and learn a little bit more about the many approaches to the buying cycle.

Speaker 2 (01:19):

Yeah, so the nature of business products, the nature of all products to some degree is recency of purchase has a radical effect on desire for another unit, especially from someone else. I buy a car, I'm not in the market for a car tomorrow. I'm a little bit more in the market for a car the next day, even though you can't notice it. And once I get out there about three years, I'm actually looking for a car. That's just the way it is. Most products, it's not the product life cycle, it's the replacement cycle for most products is around three years. Your mileage might vary. Your product, it might be four years or five years. If your product happens to be a power plant, maybe it's 20 years. But most products that we sell that we bother to have a sales force around, it's about three years.

And when you think about what needs to happen in those three years, your goal within market is to become the trusted go to person for everything about that problem. Not about your product, but about that problem. So as this individual company that they bought something and now we're in quarter two, after that quarter three and quarter four. You need to be interacting with them, not heavily, but interacting with them. Bringing them new stuff, bringing them new information. Not for the purpose of making them smart about your product, but just to use the asymmetry of information. You're the expert. You're the vendor. Vendors always know more than buyers about a problem because you're immersed in that world and they're busy doing their own stuff. So that information and the renewal of trust, you know how trust works? You only have to be gone from somebody for a day to have the trust, start to decay for this weird reason, which is nothing more than lack of interaction.

You're not quite sure who that person is because they might have changed. So your deepest best friends, when you get back together after 20 years, 10 years, five years, there's always this surprise, it's like we were never apart. If the trust factor didn't change, that wouldn't be a surprise. When we rediscover that person as the person that they became in our head, we're delighted and we go right back up to where we were trust wise. But it actually shows us the trust decay and the [inaudible 00:03:47] very subtly. Well, these are strangers for crying out loud.

Speaker 3 (03:51):

Yeah. So the trust has a half life dependent on each person then?

Speaker 2 (03:57):

Exactly and its cycle. And then you have another problem. The person you're dealing with, they themselves have a half life.

Speaker 4 (04:11):

If you could wave a magic wand today and say, "Oren, go make this happen." What is it we should do?

Speaker 2 (04:20):

I think I used to actually bring a magic wand by the way that I made into our big customer meetings, where we bring all the customers together and then have the elite group advise us. And I would make a magic wand each year out of three plants in my yard and tie it together with the right color thread and hand it around and say, "You got the magic wand. You could-"

Speaker 5 (04:45):

Did you have a [inaudible 00:04:46] as well, to go with it?

Speaker 2 (04:45):

I did not. That would've been special. Something that I found pretty consistently in discovery that's I think a big challenge that I see with our reps having is instead of wanting to find out, they want to get the other person to do what they want them to do. And it's a challenge. There's an implicit assumption, which is I want you to buy my stuff whether you are right to buy it or not. Whether it makes sense for you to buy it or not. I just went through this with one of my reps the other day he said, "So I'm trying to apply your techniques for selling and it's working really well, but it's really, really hard because I find myself over and over wanting to jump ahead an extra step because your process it requires patience." And my process, I operationalize the relationship at the end of discovery and stop selling entirely.

If you want to learn more, we do an intensive test drive. It's free. It takes you some time and a day of your people doing it. You will either produce results or not. Sometimes people get amazing results. Usually they just have a bunch of conversations and find out they suck. But even that can be worthwhile and it's a learning experience and I highly recommend you do it. And if you want to do it, I'll introduce you to my VP of customer success and boom, I'm gone. I'm gone. There's no selling that's going to happen from then on, ever, until the very end where they've had all the experience. And then the question is, so now that you've got the experience, do you see anything here that's worth doing?

I see one thing, which is I think your people aren't very good. And I think maybe doing some small sort of engagement to get them better might be a worthwhile activity. What do you say? Give them a little, that's my one variable because that's always the variable, the people always suck. Everybody sucks. So I got it easy. All the houses we're going to sell have the same problem. They all face north and everybody wants a west facing exposure. But unfortunately in this neighborhood, all the houses face north. So you're not going to be able to watch the sunset.

I'm pretty good at what you do. Give me something new. I'll take it up to the point where now it's running, it's functioning and somebody else will do a better job than I do at taking that to the next level of big. Now, when you look at enterprise health, the issue with the enterprise is always that you have two things to conquer. You have markets to conquer with your current innovation and you have the natural next innovations, which are never obvious, to turn into something worth conquering markets with. And if you don't do both of those, you just go out of business. We have a whole podcast episode called All Dead Companies Are Equally Uninteresting and it describes the process by which companies become dead companies by failing on one of these two fronts. So I think these are two different kind of horses, but I think the main difference is what is the cycle time that you're comfortable with going from strategy to execution.

So for me, strategy to execution cycle time is about a day because I can't imagine working on strategy for more than part of the day. You exhaust the possibilities. It gets uninteresting. I'm going to cross the river. I'm going to go this stone, this stone, this stone, this stone or maybe this one, this one, this one. Oh, they look about the same. I'll pick this one. Okay. Now let's go give it a go. Oh, wait a second. That one rocks, my foot got wet, I almost fell in. Let's come back now. What? Okay, let's try this one. That to me is natural. But for some people it's not. So I think it's a big part of it has to with your natural cycle time for running through that.

Speaker 6 (08:49):

We set out here at Grand Canyon to create that. And we've had an interesting AB experiment. We've had students and grads from the university. So fresh, they didn't know anything. And then we had, let's call them killers, who had the thousand yard stare who worked with other technology companies, cyber security companies sold in the past and they came together. You would think then that this island of Dr. Morrow would happen where you have these two or these Lord of the Flies where you have these two cultures where the vets would teach the younger folks. But what's interesting is what happened is we taught everybody the same way, this is the books you read. We use the Sandler and Oren Klaff Pitch Anything methodology. You're going to journal every day. You're going to dress the part. We're going to teach you public speaking.

We're going to teach you how to read a financial statement. We're going to teach breathing exercises so when you speak, you speak properly. Zoom backgrounds, all that stuff. And you found that the killers, the ones who had experience, they really globbed onto this at a rate that was equivalent to what the new folks did. Because, and as you interviewed these folks after months and their performance went up, they realized that no one really taught them that before. When they started a new organization, it was all about product training and sales training was just a small piece of it. And they said, "Oh, you guys figure it out." And...

Speaker 7 (10:19):

Here's a list.

Speaker 6 (10:20):

Here's a list. And so they had to really unlearn a lot of the basic cliche type of techniques. Well, I just like to wing it. I just like to have my personality shine through in the interview. Right Susan?

Well, what's the strongest part of your sales process before they come on? And I'd write it down, rapport building, relationship building. And of course they would say, "Well, probably my ability to build rapport and relationships." I showed it to them. I was like, "How did I know that?" It's because most folks have this mindset to have supplicative behavior that is needy, that I want to be liked, that I want to be included. I want to be part of the tribe. And I think we had Oren on, what about six months ago? I think it was? Oren Klaff? Pitch Anything. And he talks about, you need four key elements in every sales. Humor, you need intrigue, you need curiosity, but most importantly you need tension. And doesn't mean you're over the top and you're aggressive or you're jerk. It just means that ability where I'm going to come off as equal status and not supplicative or hat in hand.

And if I come off as equal status or at least professional, knowing my world, you know your world, the success is going to increase. And so that's been one of the things that a lot of folks had to unlearn. So from a success story perspective, that's really neat to see is that people crave a process or regimen, a structure, more than anything else. We tell a story, oldie but a goodie. I'd give credit if I knew where this came from. But there's a guy walks past a construction site and he sees five people laying brick, Susan. And he goes to the first guy and says, "Hey, what are you doing?" He's like, "Building a wall." Goes to the second guy, "What are you doing?" He's like, "Making 12 bucks an hour." Goes to the third guy and say, "What are you doing?" He's like, "Laying brick." And goes to the fourth guy and says, "What are you doing?"

He says, ""I'm building a cathedral. Then finally goes to the fifth and says, "What are you doing?" He says, "I'm saving men's souls." Now they're all doing the same thing. They're all laying brick, making 12 bucks an hour, building a wall. But it's the latter two who see building the cathedral and saving men's souls as the ones that probably are paying a little bit more close attention to detail, spelling in their notes, picking up a piece of paper in the corner of the office, refilling the soda machine if it needs it.

Not taking the last bagel in the morning. Those are the folks that really make the culture sing. And then you find a lot of the folks who weren't taught that way. They have five years experience, they say. But they really have one year, five times or six months, 20 times. So you'd assume that the veterans would be the leaders, but it's actually the newer folks, the grads and the current students who this is brand new, who are so enamored with the shiny object of why, finally. Four years of school and I finally figured out what I want to do. Versus probably people like you and I who drifted, fell into sales because we're liberal arts folks. And that's just, I guess what we do. We have a good personality and it's either drive a cab, tend bar, or jump into sales.

Example two, similar to that is, Susan, we all show up, we're waiting for Chris. It's 11:03, 11:04 and I say, "Listen, I'll tell you what, it's 11:04 let's go ahead and get started." And you may say, "Well, can we give Chris another minute or two? He's coming." And I would say, as opposed to, "Oh sure, no problem." And then you talk small talk waiting. Instead say, "I'll tell you what, Chris seems like a smart guy. He can play catch up. Let's get started." Now I say it with a smile, but immediately my status goes up like hey, listen, this isn't a vendor. This is somebody who has something critical to say. So those are two ways to introduce subtle tension into the sales presentation.

Speaker 1 (14:25):

But I do appreciate that the other thing that you did with that, the 11:04 meeting, you've said, "I was on time. I'm just the same level you are. You are no high and mighty extra busy person.

Speaker 6 (14:38):

That's right.

Speaker 1 (14:40):

Because I'm equal with you, I can poke you a little bit. And we can play a little bit, because then I don't have to be afraid of you.

Speaker 6 (14:46):

That's right.

Speaker 1 (14:47):

Because I am no less than you. And that's like what Cheryl Turner does.

Speaker 6 (14:51):

Oh, she's amazing. Yeah. I mean, I think Chris gives her the crown of the best cool caller in the world. And I would really put the onus on anybody to try to take that title away from her because it is just that. Right Susan? It is that her status in the Pitch Anything world, I have true status alignment. And that is something that is also worked on here. We're better at it today than we were yesterday. And we'll be better at it tomorrow than we are today at coaching on it because you have a lot of stuff that goes on in the life of a younger grad, certainly. Besides what's on the mindset of a CEO for hitting P and L and numbers and finances and raising money, et cetera. And so tone changes daily based off of what happened in their life.

Did they lose that Call of Duty? Did their dog crap on their carpet? Did they get their first student loan payment? Are they anxious about their roommate? Whatever it is, did their Bitcoin kind of plummet? And so they may read the same screenplay, but they may not perform it at an academy award level every single day. And I think that's one thing that Cheryl does is she's the modern day equivalent of the Iceman. Remember from Top Gun?

Speaker 1 (16:07):

Yes.

Speaker 6 (16:08):

And Val Kilmer, his name was the Iceman because he waited for the other person to make a mistake. He flew ice cold. Cheryl certainly has a great personality, out sized personality, but she does not make mistakes in the pieces that normally cost other people conversions. It's consistent. It's amazing.

Speaker 8 (16:36):

Towards the tail end of college, a friend of mine had a sister who married an entrepreneur that ran a company called Skyline Displays, they make trade show exhibits. And he saw how I was doing and he thought, I'd like to hire this guy and send him off to California to do what they called R and D sales. Because what they used to do is they'd come up with something new, they'd release it to the field before it was ready and then it was very expensive to make a change because it was on such a grand scale. So they thought, why don't we just have one person go try to sell some new stuff. And I just fell into it. I moved out to California pretty much the day after I graduated from college. And that was a very interesting move. December 5th, 1995, very cold Minnesota day. I drove out to Newport beach and it was one of the happiest days of my life.

Speaker 7 (17:23):

That's what they call a selling point.

Speaker 8 (17:29):

Absolutely. And when I went out there on the recruiting trip, they were very smart. They flew me into the Orange County airport. And when you walk out of the Orange County airport, you see green grass and palm trees. So I told myself, I hope it's a good job because I'm taking it. And I think like most people in sales, I was young, started off, struggled and it took me a while to hit my stride to figure out what I wanted to do. And then I had a roommate who was a recruiter. He goes, "Hey you're in sales, but you're kind of struggling. I got this customer that's looking for sales and they're a software company. Do you know anything about software?" I said, "No." But it paid more money, so I took that job. And then I was in software for 10, 15 years and then my company did a ConnectAndSell test drive.

I was one of the test subjects using the weapon and it was interesting. I didn't know what I was getting into. And when you use ConnectAndSell, turn it on, you hit that green go button. Well, when it was time to hit that green go button, president of the company standing here, the VP of sales is standing here. These are big verbose gentlemen. They're like, "Turn it on." All of a sudden, my hands started shaking. My brain went blank and I hit the go button. And the first conversation came fast, 30, 40 seconds. I don't know what I said. It wasn't intelligent or legible. The person hung up. They yelled, "Do it again." Did it again. Then the second conversation came fast and it was, Hey. Yeah, call me next week. I think I want to talk to you. And the third one, guy picks up the phone. I schedule a demo, a meeting, boss and the president leave me alone the rest of the day. I think I scheduled two more meetings on my very first day and it was awesome.

Speaker 3 (19:21):

True or false? The bottom line of professional selling is helping people get what they want and need. True or false?

Speaker 6 (19:29):

True.

Speaker 3 (19:30):

False. The bottom line of professional selling is to go to the bank. This is a neat profession to make some money. Yes, we want to take care of our clients and yes, we want to serve them properly. But if we're trying to get our emotional needs met in this profession, it's going to take us off because we will not ask tough, timely, effective questions that differentiate us from the competition because we're busy being nice. And if I say something that might get them a little concerned or upset, they might not like me. If they don't like me, they don't buy it from me. So I'm going to be Mr. Nice.

Speaker 6 (20:04):

Give us, the audience, maybe an example of a few questions that... Because I want to be a nice guy. I want to be respected. I don't want to be a jerk because I have a high need for approval. My mother told me be nice to this stranger, maybe people will like me. So I got issues, probably like a lot of sales people. I got a lot of baggage coming in to that entry level sales job, but maybe old school to new school. If for instance, when I came up, I learned Dale Carnegie. As is, should be barrier payout questions. What's the one we always talk about? How's it go? If I can show you a way-

Speaker 3 (20:40):

Buy today, if I, will you?

Speaker 6 (20:42):

What's wrong with those questions? That sounds fairly logical for a lot of our audience. They're going to say, if I can show you a way, would you? What's wrong with that? And how does Sandler improve upon that?

Speaker 3 (20:52):

If I can show you a way, would you do business with me today? It's like you got a snare and you want somebody to step in it so you can catch them. And you're giving them, there's no alternative. And the Sandler methodology it's based on the prospect's right to choose. If I, will you? Is we're all moving and trying to get to the yes and that's not how it works. But if you go back to old sales training, they told you, nod your head a lot and smile and get the people to say yes. And this is teaching you how to be a clown. I mean, who wants to be a clown? Prospects write to choose.

Corey, I have an offer for you I think will probably work. It matches up with what you told me you need, with what you're willing to spend and how you go about choosing somebody. If this fits for you, we can get started. If it's not acceptable, say "No thanks, not going to do it." Either one's fine. The prospects right to choose. When was the last time a salesperson told you it is perfectly okay and acceptable to tell me no thanks, we're going to pass.

Speaker 2 (21:58):

Not since I bought sales training from you. That's the last time. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (22:04):

It completely takes the pressure away.

Speaker 2 (22:08):

It does.

Speaker 3 (22:08):

They have a ton of power and the ability to say no, let your prospect feel like they're in control. But if I deliver exactly what we've outlined together and we've co built that solution for them, I didn't know what's going. In the Sandler methodology, when you deliver a solution to a prospect and you've uncovered compelling reasons, found out what it's costing them, found out what they're willing to spend and how they hire people. If you have all that stuff available, only you can screw this up. They just told you their criteria. Now you just complete what they told you they require to purchase. They're not being sold and the salesperson is not convincing. The salesperson is discovering, which is different than convincing.

Sales methodologies are the practical, how-to “guides” that support a sales process. These actions serve as a bridge between each step of the sales cycle by keeping both the buyer's and prospect's demands in mind. In our recent episodes with Brad Ferguson, Corey and Brad discussed the Sandler method vs. Oren Klaff's Pitch method. In this quick comparison segment, Corey explains the difference between the two methods, and when one fits better than the other. What is your method to determine which sales methodology fits your company? Have you bothered to determine which to use, or are you even using one method? That's a great place to start. Corey Frank is an expert at taking companies through this process - he's done it dozens of times. Welcome to this episode of Market Dominance Guys, "SaaS Sales Methodologies - which one best fits your needs?"

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Full episode transcript below:

Susan Finch: Welcome to another session with the Market Dominance Guys, a program exploring all the high stakes speed bumps and off ramps of driving to the top of your market. With our host, Chris Beall from Connect and Sell, and Corey Frank from Branch 49.

Sales methodologies are the practical how-to guides that support a sales process. [00:00:30] These actions serve as a bridge between each step of the sales cycle, by keeping both the buyer and prospects demands in mind. In our recent episodes with Brad Ferguson, Corey and Brad talked about the Sandler method versus Oren Klaff's pitch method. In this quick comparison segment, Corey explains the difference between the two methods, and which one fits better over the other.

Welcome to the Market Dominance Guys. I'm Susan Finch, your commentator today, sitting in for Corey and Chris, but it doesn't mean they're not going to be here in spirit [00:01:00] or maybe with a few clips.

Corey Frank: Sandler is always more frontal. Sandler, meaning, it's trying to flush out a decision, almost like choose your own adventure. There's a lot of buyer autonomy in Sandler. And Pitch is more, the principles of people want what they can't have, people chase what moves away from them. And people only place value on that which is difficult to obtain. And so, you find there's no formal close in the pitch [00:01:30] methodology.

Chris Beall: Right.

Corey Frank: The pitch methodology is, you had said earlier in this discussion that if we can get to the prospect to talk about 70% of the time, that's a good thing. He'll settle with 50/50, but oftentimes it doesn't do that. The pitch methodology is different than sales, because a pitch is one shot, one kill, you lick the bullet. You better not screw it up, otherwise, as Oran says, you're going to get a to go cup for that coffee. There's no coming back. Like, oh, one more thing. No, you're [00:02:00] out. So the stakes are a little higher.

And so Sandler, if I'm going to establish a territory, I'm new in my copier sales, I'm new in my software, and I got Northern California to throughout Oregon. I'm going to use Sandler. If I'm stockbroker, If I'm a one shot, one kill, I'm going to use, probably, Pitch. But I really believe, I don't think you can pitch anything without an understanding of a formal [00:02:30] sales methodology like Sandler. That's why we do it the way we do. People have to go through Sandler, they have to go through the foundations, and then you want to add to your achievements, like your little video game character, he's an elf level four, he knows how to throw stars, or this one's got nun chucks. Great. That's where you're going to fill it in.

Here's an example. This is right from Oren, the other master's mouth. It's, we're trying to set an appointment. Hey, do you have a few minutes on your calendar? I'd like to set up about a 15 minutes [00:03:00] call with Brad, and you guys should talk a little bit deeper about your solution. The pitch anything methodology is more after you create a little bit of value in the intro. It's, listen, Brad. We don't have a lot of time to play footsy going back and forth and trying to get dates and times on the calendar. So let's just settle on Thursday afternoon. Are you a morning person or an afternoon person? Set it on Thursday at 2:00. Let's lock it in.

I like you guys on paper, but [00:03:30] we really need to talk with you. And we've realized that an ambush sales call like this is no place to really get into the nitty gritty details, pricing speeds, and feeds. So let's get it going. And that's more, you're doing most of the talking, and people are chasing you. So there's not a lot of qualification out of the gate.

Susan Finch: Trevor Hatfield, managing general partner at Interact Capital, has a wonderful post we'll link in this episode post. Seven [00:04:00] sales methodologies for SAS, and how to pick the one for your business, which explains of various sales methodologies, or at least his favorite seven for SAS. He also says the easiest way to choose which methodology is ideal for your company is to figure out what you need.

Here's a quick summary of each, and when he feels you need each one of the top methods he covers. Here we go. Who needs spin selling? All those organizations where the prospect may not have identified their issue or issues, [00:04:30] or completely comprehended its ramifications. They need spin selling. Meddic, M-E-D-D-I-C, is beneficial for all those SAS marketing agents working in B2B complex environments, where they need to be highly knowledgeable of the right people who can help them drive sales.

In a dynamic B2B sales environment, challenge your sales methodology is especially beneficial when sales representatives need to take charge of the discussion by bringing out their unique [00:05:00] selling features. Solution selling applies when working in companies or organizations with highly personalized products or services.

We already covered Sandler, but Trevor says this sales tactic is particularly good at building strong customer ties. However, there are no drawbacks to employing this process, because it works in various sales situations. Well, let's talk about one of my personal favorites, snap selling. This is useful when your clients have a [00:05:30] busy work schedule, and you need to communicate with them to make the buying process go smoothly.

Jill Conrad, the creator and author of Snap Selling, reminds us that sales is an outcome, not a goal. In her book, there's a letter from your customer, brutal as it is, her fictional customer says, and I don't think it's so fictional, "In your well-intentioned, but misguided attempts to turn me into a customer, you fail woefully to capture and keep my attention. I don't care about your product [00:06:00] service or solution."

In a previous Market Dominance Guys episode with Oren Klaff, Oren and Chris agree that shifting the conversation to allow someone to share something they love or passionate about changes everything. Listen to an excerpt from episode 60.

Corey Frank: We have one of the titans of... Don't step on my lines here. One of the titans of sales thought leadership. Author of two bestselling books, How to Pitch Anything, which is one of the top five sales [00:06:30] books of all time. He is a consummate craftsman, constant alchemist of our profession, and has done more to advance the boundaries, I think, of sales thought leadership than almost anyone in the field today. We have the one, the only, Oren Klaff, to go along with the sage of sales here on the Market Dominance podcast today, Chris Beall.

Chris Beall: Tell me about this. When everything goes great in your world, in your business, when it's the perfect customer, it's [00:07:00] the perfect situation, their budget's in place, their need exactly matches your product, your customer success people don't mess it up, engineering doesn't do anything bad about it. The whole thing works perfectly. How does your product change that person's life? And they will hold forth, and they will hold forth sometimes for 15 minutes.

Oren Klaff: Yeah.

Chris Beall: A lot of discoveries happen. And I haven't had to ask any rhetorical questions, because frankly, I don't know the answer to either one of those questions. And frankly, I don't [00:07:30] kind of care about the answer, but I do care about the psychological process, which is speaking with pride as an equal, and then speaking with pride about their mission, without using the stupid word mission and getting into mission statements, what their company says its doing. It's like, why are you doing this? Why are you taking the precious moments of your life and spending them doing what you are doing? Because you must believe it's good for somebody.

Oren Klaff: Giving my take on it, I was called in to a pretty high volume motorcycle [00:08:00] parts, sort of a Bike Bandit, Revzilla kind of company. And so the thing about motorcycle parts that's so challenging is, they're, compared to cars, relatively low volume, but there's so much variation in parts. So even a correct part number can be a half year. So Bike Bandit can send out what they believe is a correct part based on the numbers and the catalog number, which [00:08:30] is very complicated. The user gets it, goes to put it on his bike, and it doesn't fit.

It can be on the guy, doesn't know what bike he has. He believes he has a 2004 Kawasaki KR 1000, and it's a 2004 Kawasaki K 1000 R. I don't know how the motorcycle industry works, but they make minor model derivations in the same year. So they may have [00:09:00] three of the same model. Motorcycles are very intelligent, specific. Anyway, the part comes, it doesn't fit. And Bike Bandit hasn't been malicious or malevolent, but the guys call, and their bike is down. And people are very passionate about it.

And they're screaming and yelling and frustrated and threatening, and all kinds of stuff is going on. And so I came in there, not in the city, I was doing sales stuff, but on the other end, I saw this going on. And I go, "Just ask the guy what [00:09:30] kind of bike he has." Just tell him, "Hey, can you tell me about your bike? It looks like a GSXR 600. How do you have it set up? Tell me about the bike." Well, the problem became the other way, where the guy would just exactly, like you're saying, he'd want to talk about his bike for 45 minutes.

And I thought about this just the other day, because behind me, I have all my bikes, and I was talking to a guy who was selling me, trying to get him on me on his membership program, and we were doing a video call, and I walked by. He's like, "Oh hey, are those your [00:10:00] motorcycles?" And I go, "Oh, yeah." He goes, "Tell me about them. I'm really into that." And then I went on for 40 minutes. And then I realized, and I know the guy, Ken, he doesn't care. He doesn't care at all, but he used this, and I'm familiar with it.

So I'm a million percent agreement. If you can get someone to talk about their motorcycle, they're completely off of the pain they're feeling as they're describing the thing that they love. So when [00:10:30] you could get somebody describing the thing that they love, it's for discovery, or any other sales or customer service process, it just creates magic.

Susan Finch: So what is your method to determine which sales methodology fits your company? Have you bothered to determine which to use, or even using one method? That's a great place to start. Corey Frank is an expert at taking companies through this process. He's done it dozens of times.

[00:11:00] I want to thank you all. This has been Susan Finch, your commentator on this episode of Market Dominance Guys. SAS sales methodologies, which one best fits your needs?

Selling a big idea to a skeptical customer, investor or partner is one of the hardest jobs in business. So when it's time to really go big, you need to use an uncommon methodology to gain attention, frame your thoughts, and employ successful sequencing that is fresh enough to convince others that your ideas will truly change their world.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• SNAP Selling by Jill Konrath https://www.amazon.com/SNAP-Selling-Business-Frazzled-Customers/ 
• Trevor Hatfield's article https://www.custify.com/blog/sales-methodologies-for-saas/ 
• Pitch Anything by Oren Klaff https://www.amazon.com/Pitch-Anything-Innovative-Presenting-Persuading 
• Episodes with Oren Klaff https://marketdominanceguys.com/category/guest-oren-klaff 

Getting fired from a sales job is never a surprise. If you’re not producing, you already know it. Brad Ferguson, the managing member of Scottsdale Sales Training, has been with Sandler Training for more than 27 years, and today he shares his sales hiring, onboarding, training, and coaching expertise with our podcast host, Corey Frank. Brad believes that before you let someone go from a sales job, you need to determine whether this person can sell, and you need to consider your company’s financial investment in that individual. This includes training, coaching, and certifying, as well as their salary and benefits. Brad cautions our listeners, “Don’t let the good people you have go. Spend the time getting them up to a higher level.” If they are worth keeping, make the effort to diagnose their problems and then provide the needed training, because, as the title of this Market Dominance Guys’ episode reminds us, “A Good Salesperson Is Hard to Replace.”

About Our Guest Brad Ferguson is the CEO of Best Sales Force, Inc., an Arizona-based sales development firm. He is the Senior Sandler Training Franchisee with over 25 years of experience in the Sandler Network.

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Full episode transcript below:

Getting fired from her sales job is never a surprise. If you're not producing, you already know it. Brad Ferguson managing member of Scottsdale sales training has been with Sandler training for more than 27 years. And today he shares his sales hiring, onboarding, training, and coaching expertise with our podcast host Cory Frank, Brad believes that before you let someone go from a sales job, you need to determine whether this person can sell and you need to consider your company's financial investment in that individual. This includes training, coaching, and certifying as well as their salary and benefits. Brad cautions our listeners. Don't let the good people you have go, spend the time getting them up to a higher level. If they're worth keeping, make the effort to diagnose their problems and then provide the needed training. Because, as the title of this Market Dominance Guy's episode reminds us a good salesperson is hard to replace.

Corey Frank (01:21):

That's great stuff. Certainly what we saw at StormWind and be even at Branch49, we set up shop here right now, right? It is no comparison before foundations and after foundations, it's not called president's club anymore. Right? The post foundations, what's the Sandler world? What do they... What do they talk?

Brad Ferguson (01:38):

Universally, we said, this has got to be sales mastery. And if there's sales mastery, there should be different levels and there should be global certification levels. So there's a broad sales mastery, a silver sales mastery, and a gold. Broad sales mastery, you understand the concepts. Silver sales mastery, you understand how to deliver and implement. Gold sales mastery, you can deliver it to others.

Corey Frank (02:03):

So if I don't have a system, if I'm a sales manager and I have really good producing reps, I mean their president's club every year they're doing well, but I don't know if it necessarily want my new people sitting with that top rep because I don't want them selling that way because it's not duplicatable. And that seems to be a common issue with a lot of sales leaders. What'd you say?

Brad Ferguson (02:25):

When I was in my earlier career before Sandler, Jerry Underwood was the guy, the leader. He was magic, top salesperson. Andy, can I ride with you? I think I begged Andy for three years to ride with him. Finally, he says, you can ride with me and commonly under one condition, you open your mouth, I'll break both your legs. You sit there and you shut up.

So we go to this place up in Chicago, I think it's called Peppers. And it's a furniture store and I'm sitting back watching Jerry. And he says, and she says, and I'm like, well, this is over. And Underwood turned that around and he said, the need has come back. And she says, fine let's do it, two truckloads. We get out the car. And I said, Jerry, right here, I wrote this down. What tape did you listen to? What cassette did you listen to? What book did you read to have a comeback like that? And Underwood said, I would never say that to a woman. Jerry, I was there. You said it, non-transferable skills, those strong people. They don't even know that they said that themselves. So how am I going to identify it and share it with somebody else?

Corey Frank (03:38):

Yeah. The unconscious competence, right? I-

Brad Ferguson (03:41):

You go.

Corey Frank (03:42):

... I think I have a system, but it's germane just to me, that's certainly a challenge for a lot of businesses today is those non-replicable skills, particularly, because I want to scale. But now we have a lot of organizations as we let off this chat that are lean off a lot of folks, right? They're going to prevent defense mode for whatever reason they and their investors think that's right. I think you and I and our friend Oren Klaff and certainly Chris Beall, we have a different philosophy. But what do you say to the folks that are laying folks off that a possible ways to still to generate some revenue?

Brad Ferguson (04:15):

One thing we know for a fact just from being in this career, getting fired from a sales job is never a surprise. You know that you're not working up to the acceptable level and it's just sometime, and I hope it's not. And they're dependent on, they're not generating enough revenue, but somebody is holding their income at a good enough place that they can get by. They're not producing. And this is where salary and base comes into play. Somebody else took the risk to hold you for a while, while you learn it. And they believe more in the salesperson than this salesperson does. Problem with today's economy is we know there are two positions available for every single salesperson that's out there in this career.

Corey Frank (05:02):

Wow.

Brad Ferguson (05:02):

And those successful ones are looking, some are unemployed and still looking. So we insist that our clients evaluate the talent coming in the door to prove that they'll succeed before they hire them.

Corey Frank (05:19):

How do you evaluate the talent?

Brad Ferguson (05:21):

Yeah, the good people who have on board, don't let them go. They will be very difficult to duplicate and bring back because the hiring ratios now are, when we do evaluate talent, before we make an offer, 65% of the applicants aren't even worthy of consideration, let alone will they be strong. So if you've got somebody performing it at an acceptable level, spend the time to get them up a little stronger. Don't let them go and risk bringing in a dud. That's really going to impact the bottom line.

Corey Frank (05:57):

There's a system that you've used that you've recommended. That changed the way, that we at StormWind, which was a top employer for Glassdoor for many years. Certainly the way that we bring in folks at Branch49, that also came through a lot of your contacts in a lot of your expertise over the years. Would you mind talking about-

Brad Ferguson (06:54):

Yeah, my business is set up with two different aspects. The training and development, which is the treatment division. But prior to that, we need the diagnostics. X-rays before treatment. And I use a company out of Boston called Objective Management Group. Objective Management Group has already evaluated 2.2 million salespeople. So largest database on the planet for sales. It is also top sales world's gold medal standard for evaluating salespeople. And the tools used are not a personality test, not a behavioral styles test, not an aptitude test, not a personality test.

It's, can this candidate sell successfully after they're hired in our world to our customers over our sales cycle, asking for our dollar amount at the level that we need to be speaking at? And know that person will succeed before you even make them an offer, to the point of validation being at 95%, which for non-statistical people, 95% of the candidates that are recommended through this onboarding process succeed and are still employed a year later working at a satisfactory level. Now there's another number that comes in too. 76% of the candidates that we say, don't hire, that get selected are gone in six months. No means no...

Corey Frank (08:27):

But I hired them anyway, because I like their personality, Brad, this... I love the school they went to it. So thank you Brad, for your recommendation, but I'm going to go ahead and hire them anyway. And you said-

Brad Ferguson (08:38):

But their brother was so successful. Why wouldn't they be? He was a referral. I had no choice. It was a friend of a friend and I had to bring him on board.

Cost is crazy. The cost of a mis-hire in today's world is eight times annual salary. Cause you're figuring in, training, coaching, benefits, all the other people that touched that person that turned into nothing and lost revenue that person we expected them to produce. And they didn't. I have a client in an industry that requires certification and it takes about eight to 12 months to be certified. Yet, these people are on board, working in a selling environment, learning the trade opportunities in front of them. They cannot sell yet, because they're not certified. And eight or nine months later, they turn out that they should never should have hired them. Four or $5,000 a month out the door. Just for that person's salary gone. Doesn't count the training time, the investments of other people, the lost opportunities. Absolutely crazy. When we can predict ahead of time within 5%, whether or not that salesperson's going to succeed before they hire them.

Corey Frank (09:58):

So as a sales leader, I can spend a lot of money on tools to make my folks email better. I can focus a lot on my data being clean. I can focus a lot on ConnectAndSell as a sponsor of this podcast to dial faster. Branch49 to dial more. And it seems like from our just discussion... brief discussion today, sometimes some of the bigger numbers, the bigger rocks to address are in the sales process. And even prior to that, the hiring process. The rest are mere basis points, smaller numbers to achieve. But if I can hire the right folks and I can put them into a system that gets them to overcome their fear of being liked, the supplicative behavior. Overcome that no, embrace that no. I'm probably going to weather this storm pretty well. Sounds like.

Brad Ferguson (10:53):

The talent is a big key. Sales ghosts, as we call them. I don't know the statistics for this. They got to be the top three expenses for a sales organization, bringing the wrong people on board and the money that's spent with them. And we expect them to come on and generate revenue. No, they cost us revenue versus bringing it in. That's a big expense and startup companies who said, it's time to take the owner away from doing all the work themselves and let's bring on some sales talent. They can bring in two or three people, all three fall in their face. Not going to touch that again. And it acts prevented that company from ever growing because they invested in sales ghosts. It cost them too much money. They either go back to the single producer doing everything or they close because of what they invested in it. And now it's gone.

Corey Frank (11:47):

Sales ghosts. I love that. That's a great term. Lastly, Brad, before we started recording, you were giving me advice on my business on Branch49. Some advice on what we should do when you look at our price book, that was a little antithetical to what a lot of folks may think is something to do when business constricts a little bit, maybe you can talk a little bit about that.

Brad Ferguson (12:12):

I hear people saying we're not as profitable as we would. We needed to adjust pricing for this market, the competitor offshoring, we've got internet competition. And I simply said, raise your prices. How could we do that? Number one, to get paid what you're worth and number two to make your company profitable. But we can't do that. We've heard feedback from our sales people already that were too high. No, your sales people believe that you're too high. And the number one reason is they themselves don't know how to sell value probably because they don't buy value. So let me pose a real quick scenario to you in Scottsdale, Arizona. Corey's going out for a job interview and on the way over, oh shoot this shirt alone's not going to make it. I got to get a tie. You got to get a tie for this appointment. So you're going across cactus and you get Tatum and you got two choices, go to the mall to Dillard's or Southwest corner or Southeast corner. Let's hop into Walmart. Where are you buying that tie Corey? Walmart or Dillard's?

Corey Frank (13:28):

I think I'm going to go to Dillard's.

Brad Ferguson (13:30):

Okay. What we just find out about Corey? A little bit of value, little more higher end perception. I'll probably use this again and it'll have some value to me long term. The Walmart guy says, well, I only need it for this one time. So let's get as cheap as I can and make it fast. And in and out the door, the parking lot's 20 feet away from the front door versus walking through the mall.

Corey Frank (13:56):

Got it. Raising the prices. Well, that's beautiful. Well, listen, Brad, you've been a wealth of information and certainly made me a lot of money over the years in all the businesses that you've lent a hand. You're a great sales mentor and a wealth of knowledge. How do people get a hold of a Sandler training expert? Or more importantly, how do they get a hold of you?

Brad Ferguson (14:15):

Yeah, I would like to be that focal point to disseminate any contacts, I've been in this network for 25 years. I know who does what. There's a lot of strong Sandler people out there. There's some that are just not coming outward. I know who's stronger than who right now. I just assumed connect our contacts with those who are in capacity right now to help them. Email address is simple. Brad Ferguson, brad@sandler, I got in to get my email address before they made you add your last name. That came kind of soon. And the local number is fairly easy. It's 480-481-5000.

Corey Frank (14:57):

Beautiful. And I know you're a big supporter of Chris Beall. Who's also known for a long time and the ConnectAndSell dial weapons. [inaudible 00:15:04] That's also to know that we all keep it in the family here. For Chris Beall, the sage of sales, the profit of profit, who is still on the honeymoon, this why this is the honeymoon edition of the Market Dominant Guys until next time, this is Corey Frank.

In this continued “honeymoon” edition of the Market Dominance Guys, ​our host, ​Corey​ Frank,​ sits down with Brad Ferguson of Sandler​ Training, one of the most highly rated sales trainers on the planet. Brad, being a top franchisee of Sandler for years, personally learned his incredible questioning techniques and prospect approaches from the founder of Sandler himself, David Sandler, more than 30 years ago.

On several of the Market Dominance Guys​'​ podcasts over the years, Chris​ Beall​ and Corey have discussed many of the modern and fresh sales methodologies being used by successful sales professionals all over the world. From Oren Klaff’s “Pitch Anything” to Andy Paul’s “Sell Without Selling Out” to Chris Voss’ “Never Split The Difference,” there are many different flavors of sales methodologies that can be used to generate trust that result in more consistent sales success. 

If you’re a pilot, you file a solid flight plan and know where you are going before you start the engines. You may change course due to bumpy weather, but you still know your final destination. If you are an architect, you know what type of building you are constructing. You have a blueprint. But if you are in ​s​ales today and you are still “winging it” and letting your personality alone dictate how your sales conversations progress, you fall into the trap of being labeled a “mere tourist” and continuing to wander inconsistently in this profession. As Uncle Zig once said, “Selling is the highest-paid hard work and the lowest-paid easy work there is.” Using a sales methodology makes the hard work easier. 

In this episode, have your pen and pad ready as Brad shares several tactical and specific use cases where the Sandler methodology can be employed on your calls today. He discusses many traditional “mental hang-ups” and speed bumps that impede success from an emotional point of view. From being uncomfortable about money to having a high need for approval and an aversion to the word “no,” Brad shares just some of the powerful Sandler techniques that have generated hundreds of millions of dollars in closed deals. This is the Market Dominance Guys' nearly indispensable podcast, and today’s episode is entitled, “If I ​Could ​S​how ​You a ​W​ay.”

About Our Guest Brad Ferguson is the CEO of Best Sales Force, Inc., an Arizona-based sales development firm. He is the Senior Sandler Training Franchisee with over 25 years of experience in the Sandler Network.

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Full episode transcript below:

Announcer (00:05):

Welcome to another session with the Market Dominance Guys, a program exploring all the high stakes, speed bumps and off ramps of driving to the top of your market. With our host, Chris Beall from ConnectAndSell, and Corey Frank from Branch49.

Announcer (00:17):

In this continued honeymoon edition of the Market Dominance Guys, Corey sits down with Brad Ferguson of Sandler, one of the most highly rated sales trainers on the planet. Brad, being a top franchisee of Sandler for years, personally learned his incredible questioning techniques and prospect approaches from the founder of Sandler himself, David Sandler, more than 30 years ago. On several of the Market Dominance Guys podcasts over the years, Chris and Corey have discussed many of the modern and fresh sales methodologies that are being used by successful sales professionals all over the world. From Oren Klaff's Pitch Anything to Andy Paul's Sell without Selling Out to Chris Voss's Never Split the Difference, there are many different flavors of sales methodologies that can be used to generate trust that result in more consistent sales success.

Announcer (01:08):

If you're a pilot, you file a solid flight plan and know where you're going before you start the engines. You may change course due to bumpy weather, but you still know your final destination. If you're an architect, you know what type of building you're constructing. You have a blueprint. But if you are in sales today and you're still winging it, and letting your personality alone dictate how your sales conversations progress, you fall into the trap of being labeled as a mere tourist and continuing to wander inconsistently in this profession. As Uncle Zig once said, "Selling is the highest paid hard work and the lowest paid easy work there is." Using a sales methodology makes the hard work easier. In this episode, have your pen and pad ready, as Brad shared several tactical and specific use cases where the Sandler methodology can be employed on your calls today.

Announcer (01:58):

He discusses many of the traditional mental hangups, the speed bumps that impede our success from an emotional point of view, from being uncomfortable about money to having a high need for approval and an aversion to the word no. Brad shares just some of the powerful Sandler techniques that have generated hundreds of millions of dollars in closed deals. This is the Market Dominance Guys, nearly indispensable podcast, and today's episode is titled, If I Could Show You a Way.

Corey Frank (02:38):

Welcome to another episode of the Market Dominance Guys. This is Corey Frank, and once again, I am without my profit of profit and my sage of sales, Chris Beall, who is somewhere over the Atlantic, Iceland, Scotland, et cetera, who will be reporting very soon on some of his adventures. So, it's me solo today, but I wanted to bring in a particularly timely guest for today. His name is Brad Ferguson from Sandler Training, here in Phoenix, Arizona. And particularly why I wanted to bring you on, Brad, we've known each other for a lot of years, but we've been hit by a lot of layoffs it seems.

Corey Frank (03:17):

There's a lot of news on LinkedIn and a lot of VC funded companies, private equity funded companies, they're laying a lot of sales folks off. And so I figured it'd be helpful to kind of get your perspective, as a sales trainer who has done this a long time with a great brand like Sandler, just to talk about trends in sales, how sales manager, sales leaders, CROs are dealing or should deal with maybe some of these layoffs, some business strategies to boost sales when a lot of folks are battening down the hatches, and just overall just get an idea of what we can do in our day to day business to maybe boost some revenue. So welcome, Brad. I appreciate the time jumping on.

Brad Ferguson (03:57):

Thanks for the invitation, Corey.

Corey Frank (03:58):

So, first off for those, Brad, that aren't familiar with Sandler, Sandler's a name in sales training that... You guys are what? Two, three years old? I forget. Oh no, no. Wait, no, it's 1967 by Mr. David Sandler. And so I'd love to hear, because I understand you learned at the feet of this master of our profession, but talk a little bit about, for those who aren't familiar, what makes Sandler Training different? How did you learn? How did you fall into it? And let's start with that story.

Brad Ferguson (04:26):

David himself came from the cookie cracker and potato chip business. And he was a proxy vote, he got ousted, and now he's on the streets in Baltimore, Maryland trying to get a job. Basement waterproof [inaudible 00:04:41] fairly big and the World Book People had just come to town, but he didn't like going to people's houses and pulling on a guilt trip, and he figured sales training. Maybe if I can learn how to do that, I'll learn how to sell myself along the way as a side benefit. And David went out, pedaling his wares to sell sales training, and he set a record for his company. He went 0 for 83. Nobody had ever been that bad before. And there was one gentleman named Charlie Beseech on Friday afternoon. He said, "I'll take it. I pile this stuff. I really need it." And David said, "You promise not to change your mind?" He says, "Yes, but it's too late in the day. You'll have to come back on Monday and get it checked, and leave your records behind."

Brad Ferguson (05:28):

Because back then, there were not cassettes, certainly weren't CDs. There were 78s. And those are the ones that if you drop them, they broke. So, David went home, unlike a lot of sales people, spent his commission over the weekend, even though he hadn't collected it yet, went back on Monday up to the office, "Oh, you didn't hear? Over the weekend, Charlie, massive heart attack. He's gone." And David said, "Well, what about my [inaudible 00:05:55]? You got a PO?" "Well, no, it was [inaudible 00:05:57], I'm sorry." So, Sandler walked down the stairs, took his record player and his books and threw in a trashcan, made some bag lady really happy. And then he went back to every one of those people that he missed, and he said, "Why? What was it?" And he found out a way to sell his way.

Brad Ferguson (06:17):

He told him, "First, I'm going to find out if you get any pain. In other words, compelling reasons to do business with me. Then I'm going to find out what it would be worth to you if you could turn this around. Then I'll find out if you getting any money to spend. And if it's enough, I'll sell you what I provide. Then I'm going to find out I go about choosing whether or not to do business with somebody. And if we can put those things together, I'll give you a presentation on how I can present this to you and help you, if you promise to pick only yes or no at the end." He sold 78 out of the 83 going back and doing it his way.

Corey Frank (06:49):

So, he tripped over a sales methodology based off of the no in backing into the pain.

Brad Ferguson (06:55):

And continuously went further no and drove it. Probably most sales people is, most calls end up want to think it over. When we were kids, we played tag, and there was one place that they couldn't touch you. Remember what that was called?

Corey Frank (07:12):

Was a goal, or-

Brad Ferguson (07:15):

You were home free.

Corey Frank (07:15):

Yeah. Home free. Yeah, right.

Brad Ferguson (07:16):

Home base, home free. Well, I want to think it over is like home base for prospects. They don't buy, but they don't say no, and they leave you out hoping, which creates the most addictive drug on the planet, but that drug only afflicts sales people. It's called hopium, and they're all addicted to it. They didn't get a yes or didn't get a no. And most people know that selling starts with a no. Can you get through that thing? Well, turn that no into a yes, and eliminate the darn think it overs. And Sandler was my coach when I first got into this business. I was lucky enough that the master was my guy initially. The sad part is David passed away the same year that I got started in this business back in 1995.

Corey Frank (08:02):

Of all the sales methodologies... You come from a sales background, I know too. You're very modest about your background, but you were very successful in sales before you started into the sales training world with David. But what was it about the Sandler methodology that was little fresh, different, attractive than a lot of the traditional, Dale Carnegie, for instance?

Brad Ferguson (08:24):

David [inaudible 00:08:26], our current CEO, came to Scottsdale in December of 1994 for opportunity day to explain the Sandler concept. And he and I spoke, I told what I was doing, and I was very successful. The last two companies I was with, I was the top salesperson in the business. And he says, "Dude, you're doing it all wrong. You been doing all wrong. You sell through a process that really gets boiled down into three components, qualify, ask questions, find out what their issues are, present a solution, present, and then close, usually followed by overcome objections, trial close, overcome objections, close. And by the time you're done, both parties are out of breath." And he says, "You got the words right, but they're mixed up." He said, "Why don't you qualify people, and then close them, and then present your solution." I said, "That won't work."

Brad Ferguson (09:20):

I said, "How would they know how to buy if I don't make a presentation." He said, "Why don't you give them the presentation they want, not the one that you want to give them." He said, "When you walk into a restaurant, they don't bring you your dinner. They find out what you want, and then bring you what you just bought. And they get it right all the time. And if they don't, you say, 'Wait a minute out of the lobster, not the prime rib,' but the prospect knew what he wanted before you presented your solution." And it turned a closing percentage into the nineties from the thirties, 90% closure.

Corey Frank (09:53):

But going for the no, right is a challenge for a lot of folks. A lot of folks have, "I don't want to hear the no," or "I'm going to avoid the no. It's why I have such a large pipeline. Right? Because I don't want to necessarily ask the direct question to a lot of my prospects. I'm afraid of the answer." What is that? In the Sandler world? What do you call that? How do you overcome that? Is it something that's teachable?

Brad Ferguson (10:15):

If a salesperson... Again, I'm going to go really extreme in this thing and say, if we've got a salesperson who closes at 10%, they're bad. And when they close a $20,000 deal, 5%, they make themselves a grant, and they like that, but they also got nine people that said no. And nine to one is the really crappy ratio. So, if we turn the thing around, and let's just say that if a yes is worth a thousand dollars, I'm going to take the nine and round it up to 10 numbers, nos. So, I'm going to get 10 no's that are worth... Well, if a yes is worth 1,000, 10 nos is worth 100, I would rather win 10 times at a hundred than one time at 1000, because it's the feeling of success that you get every time when you go for this thing. So, at the end of the week, we set up a contest for the week for me, and we're going to go have dinner at some high end restaurant with my [inaudible 00:11:20].

Brad Ferguson (11:19):

If I can get 20 nos in a week, then we're going to have dinner. And it's Thursday and I've already got 19 nos. I just need one more for dinner at this high end restaurant. And somebody says yes, and gives me money and screws up the whole contest.

Corey Frank (11:38):

Sure, sure.

Brad Ferguson (11:39):

They're afraid of the no, because it has no value. And if we continue that on, let's just say it took me a hundred dials to get to those 10 offers. If those hundred dials netted me that thousand dollars one win, those hundred dials into the thousand, gave me a $10 reward every time I picked up the phone. If every time you picked up the phone, you made 10 bucks, I couldn't stop you from picking up the phone.

Announcer (12:14):

We'll be back in a moment after a quick break. Selling a big idea to a skeptical customer, investor, or partner is one of the hardest jobs in business. So, when it's time to really go big, you need to use an uncommon methodology to gain attention, frame your thoughts, and employ successful sequencing that is fresh enough to convince others that your ideas will truly change their world. From crafting just the right cold call screenplays to curating and mapping the ideal call list for your entire [inaudible 00:12:42] Branch49's modern and innovative sales toolbox offers a guiding hand to ambitious organizations in their quest to reach market dominance. Learn more at branchfortynine.com. And we're back with Corey and Chris.

Corey Frank (13:09):

So, I have to train my behavior. I have to train my mindset. [inaudible 00:13:13] what's the most common impediment to doing that? Why am I that anxious? When it comes to potentially getting to no? What do you-

Brad Ferguson (13:22):

We get emotionally involved in banking on the outcome. We are focused on trying to make the outcome happen. So let [inaudible 00:13:31] through a real simple exercise, and then I'll explain what we're doing. I know you're a competitive guy and you like to win. Okay? So, make a fist with your right hand.

Corey Frank (13:43):

Okay.

Brad Ferguson (13:43):

Put it as high in the air as you can.

Corey Frank (13:44):

All right.

Brad Ferguson (13:47):

I got to go quick and it's got to go quick, as fast as you can. Put it as high as you can. Put a little bit higher.

Corey Frank (13:52):

Yeah.

Brad Ferguson (13:52):

And do that the first time. As fast as you can, put it against your chin. Go. Your chin.

Corey Frank (13:57):

Got it. Got it.

Brad Ferguson (14:02):

I said chin and you copied me.

Corey Frank (14:04):

Yeah.

Brad Ferguson (14:05):

When sales people get emotionally involved in an outcome. They don't think. They react. And they get [inaudible 00:14:13] with what's going to happen next, and they think about where we're going to go next, and they get too many thoughts in their head as opposed to focusing on what's happening with the prospect.

Corey Frank (14:20):

Yeah.

Brad Ferguson (14:21):

And they react and not respond. And I can't give you a better example than what you and I just did.

Corey Frank (14:27):

Yeah, no, that's great. So, there's a high need for approval. There's a... I shun away from that. I'm used to getting the seventh place participation trophies and the ribbons. And then I get into the real world, selling for Brad, selling cybersecurity for sub solution. Brad's my manager. And wait a minute, I thought I get credit for trying a little bit. Why can't I overcome this? And it sounds like there's just a higher need for approval with some folks more than others.

Brad Ferguson (14:55):

[inaudible 00:14:55] key point. It's probably one of the most difficult weaknesses to overcome. Need for approval is the need to be liked, in extreme cases, loved. And most people are out there because it's a relationship business, which means I got to make friends. There are no friends in sales. And if you depend on friendships in sales, it's going to deceive you long term. If you are in sales to get your emotional needs met, you're going to get in trouble.

Corey Frank (15:23):

Sure.

Brad Ferguson (15:24):

True or false? The bottom line of professional selling is helping people get what they want and need? True or false?

Corey Frank (15:31):

True.

Brad Ferguson (15:32):

False. The bottom line of professional selling is to go to the bank. This is a neat profession to make some money. Yes, we want to take care of our clients, and yes, we want to serve them properly. But if we're trying to get our emotional needs met in this profession, it's going to take us off because we will not ask tough, timely, effective questions that differentiate us from the competition because we're busy being nice. And if I say something that might get them a little concerned or upset, they might not like me. If they don't like me, they don't buy for me, so I'm going to be Mr. Nice.

Corey Frank (16:06):

Yeah.

Brad Ferguson (16:06):

And it doesn't succeed. I'm not after anybody being nasty. I don't want to be mean. We have really strong salespeople that don't have need for approval that deliver exactly what the prospect wants. And when they do wishy washy semi commitment stuff, they say, "Wait a minute. It's okay to tell me you don't want to do this. It's okay to tell me you do. Please pick one of the two. Either one's fine."

Corey Frank (16:31):

Well, let's talk about that. I was going to ask you, give the audience maybe an example of a few questions, because I want to be a nice guy. I want to be respected. I don't want to be a jerk, because I have a high need for approval. My mother told me be nice to this stranger. Maybe people will like me. So, I got issues, right? Probably like a lot of sales people, I got a lot of baggage coming into that sales job, that entry level sales job. And you know me for a long time, Brad. Right? You know I have issues. So, but how... Maybe old school to new school. If, for instance, when I came up, I learned Dale Carnegie, as is should be barrier payout questions. What's the one we always talk about? How does it go? If I can show you-

Brad Ferguson (17:14):

[inaudible 00:17:14] today. If I, will you?

Corey Frank (17:15):

What's wrong with those questions? That sounds fairly logical. For a lot of our audience, they're going to say, "If I can show you away, would you?" What's wrong with that? And how does Sandler improve upon that?

Brad Ferguson (17:25):

If I can show you a way, would you do business with me today? It's kind of like you got to snare and you want somebody to step in it so you can catch them. And you're given an... There is no alternative. In the Sandler methodology, it's based on the prospect's right to choose. "If I, will you?" is we're all moving to try to get to the yes, and that's not how it was. But if you go back to old sales training, they told you, "Nod your head a lot and smile, and get the people to say yes." And this is teaching you how to be a clown. I mean, who wants to be a clown?

Brad Ferguson (18:02):

Prospect's right to choose. Corey, I have an offer for you I think will probably work. It matches up with what you told me you need, what you're willing to spend, and how you go about choosing somebody. If this fits for you, we can get started. If it's not acceptable, say, "No, thanks. Not going to do it." Either one's fine. The prospect's right to choose. When was the last time a salesperson told you, "It is perfectly okay and acceptable to tell me 'No thanks. We're going to pass.'"

Corey Frank (18:31):

Not since I bought sales training from you. That's the last time.

Brad Ferguson (18:37):

It completely takes the pressure away.

Corey Frank (18:40):

It does.

Brad Ferguson (18:40):

That ton of power and the ability to say no lets your prospect feel like they're in a control.

Corey Frank (18:48):

Yeah.

Brad Ferguson (18:48):

But if I deliver exactly what we've outlined together and we've co-built that solution for them, I don't know what to go with. In the Sandler methodology, when you deliver a solution to a prospect and you've uncovered compelling reasons, found out what has costing them, found out what they're willing to spend and how they hire people, if you have all that stuff available only you can screw this up. They just told you their criteria. Now, you just complete what they told you they require to purchase. They're not being sold. And the salesperson is not convincing. The salesperson is discovering, which is different than convincing. [inaudible 00:19:33] The Dale Carnegie piece, the Tommy Hopkins, verbal led questions, can, does, should, would, they take you to [inaudible 00:19:44] places. Verbal led questions end up with yeses and nos. I want the prospect to respond in a sentence. A conversation isn't yep and Nope.

Corey Frank (19:53):

Yeah.

Brad Ferguson (19:53):

How would this provide something beneficial? How do you go about, what would happen if, how do you know for sure? You can't answer yep and nope to those things. You've got to provide me with a sentence, which now we go back into the screwy percentage of communication in the selling world. We firmly believe the prospect is doing 70% of the talking. We're just facilitating it, doing 30%. I'll tell you I'd love salespeople to get to 50/50. Here's my problem. What do they saying to themselves? During the 50% of that time, they should be listening to the prospect, but we can deal with that at another time.

Corey Frank (20:36):

Sure, sure. Of course. So, but it is a methodology. It's taught. I think all of our folks at our last couple of companies, right? The Sandler Foundation has been famous for a long, long time. But what do you say to the folks that, "You know, Brad, I just like to wing it. I just, I build rapport really easily. People seem to like me. I just kind of go with where the conversation goes"? Right?

Brad Ferguson (21:01):

Got it. Yeah. Yeah. 15th of April, call the government and say, "I just decided to wing it. I had some papers I put together in a spreadsheet. We put it in Excel, and I just sent it in because it works for me." Well, there are some salespeople that approach sales the same way. They have some components and some pieces they put together. We tend to call that the sausage method of selling. A lot of good components that looks pretty good, guaranteed not prime components, and it kind of tastes all right, but the next batch is never the same. What I want throughout a company is multipliable duplicatable, transferable, consistent results. It's so much simpler for a sales manager to debrief their people following a consistent system. And it's easier for sales people to duplicate successes other people have achieved because we're going down the same path.

Corey Frank (22:00):

Sure.

Brad Ferguson (22:00):

Which allows us to sit back and debrief a call by working backwards in the system. The prospect said, "They really couldn't afford what I offered." Oh, okay. So, that goes back budget step. When you ask them what they'd be willing to spend to solve a $250,000 problem, what'd they tell you? Well, I really didn't ask them that question. Where'd the number come from? Well, I told them what I thought it was probably worth. You told them what they should pay for their problem? I think I'm missing something here.

In this special “Honeymoon” edition episode of the Market Dominance Guys, Corey grabs some time with Robert Vera, the founding Director of the Canyon Ventures Center for Innovation & Entrepreneurship at Grand Canyon University. Robert is an incredibly well-respected innovation and start-up business expert as well as a member of the faculty of the top-rated Jerry Colangelo School of Business at Grand Canyon University. Robert breaks down his involvement in training and working with the Navy Seals over the years and how sales organizations should look to adopt some of the more “unorthodox” training processes similar to what special forces and their medics implement. Robert also chats about his first-hand experiences with the unique revenue generation practice and talent development mission of the Branch49 team and how businesses should view Top of Funnel and Discovery.

This is the Market Dominance Guys' nearly indispensable podcast and today’s episode is entitled, “Save the Goat!”

About Our Guest

Robert Vera is a bestselling author and the founding director of Canyon Ventures Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Grand Canyon University in Phoenix, Arizona.

----more----

Full episode transcript below:

Announcer (00:06):

Welcome to another session with the Market Dominance Guys, a program exploring all the high stake speed bumps and off ramps of driving to the top of your market. With our hosts, Chris Beall from ConnectAndSell, and Corey Frank from Branch 49.

In this special honeymoon edition episode of the Market Dominance Guys, Corey grabbed some  time with Robert Vera, the founding director of the Canyon Ventures Center For Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Grand Canyon University. Robert is an incredibly well respected innovation and startup business expert, as well as a member of the faculty of the top rated Jerry Colangelo School of Business at Grand Canyon University. Robert breaks down his involvement, training and working with the Navy Seals over the year, and how sales organizations should look to adopt some of the more unorthodox training processes, similar to what special forces and their medics implement.

Robert also chats about his first hand experiences, on the unique revenue generation practice and talent development mission of the Branch 49 team, and how businesses should view top of funnel and discovery. This is the Market Dominance Guys' nearly indispensable podcast and today's episode is entitled, Save the Goat.

Corey Frank (01:25):

Okay. Welcome to another episode of the Market Dominance Guys. This is the honeymoon edition, since Chris Beall and the fetching Miss Fanucci are now hitched and somewhere on the way to Iceland, or Scotland, or somewhere. So, Chris is away. I have the guest panel in my control now. So one of the first ones lined up, and he's been with us a few prior episodes, is Robert Vera. So Robert, good to have you. Give you a little bit of an intro here since some of the folks know you, had been creeping on your LinkedIn profile. But we're here in Phoenix at Grand Canyon University, where Robert is the founding director of the Canyon Venture Center For Innovation and Entrepreneurship. It's a former CIO and a med tech startup that was acquired. Proud Boston College alumni, former Senate staffer to Edward M. Kennedy back in the day, and New York Times bestselling author.

I'm sure I missed a few things there, but overall, just a great guest here for the Market Dominance Guys, as we continue our discussion in this series, 200 episodes strong, of talking about the pitfalls and the cookbooks that a lot of organizations, especially with these pending doom and gloom recession prognosticators are out there. Talk a little bit about what we can do to get to market dominance in spite of the forces.

So anyway, Robert, that is a mammoth introduction. So, welcome to the Market Dominance Guy, sans the Sage of Sales, sans the Prophet of Profit, Chris Beall, but we'll maybe airbrush him in later. So welcome, Robert.

Robert Vera (02:54):

Thanks for having me. I'm sorry, I'm hopefully, I'm a good pitch hitter for Chris. So thanks for having me, but it's great to back on, and I'm really excited to talk to the audience about some ideas that I have, to help them dominate their market and expose some of the things that you are doing that has really proven that. So, I think that it's no longer theory. We could show you how to do that.

Corey Frank (03:11):

Well, hey, I'm a shameless promoter of my own business. So, I'm happy to have you wax eloquently about our experience of working together here at Branch 49. So, how about for the audience, a little bit about what we do at Grand Canyon, and what this center for innovation and entrepreneurship, what it was in the vision that you and President Mueller set up all those years ago, and how's it going?

Robert Vera (03:33):

Yeah, in 2019, I came here as the founding director of Grand Canyon University's Center For Innovation And Entrepreneurship. The idea is that, hey, we need to transform and innovate higher education. And how are we going to do that? We're not a research organization. I like to think that we're more do tank than think tank. We do, do research, but the idea is we want to create valuable leaders for the marketplace, for the workplace. So we thought about, okay, what would be the most valuable thing we could do? And we thought that, well, if we give our students professional experience, real professional, paid professional experience, and a professional network prior to the graduation, they go into the marketplace as strong leaders, and we give them what I call an unfair advantage. We don't want them to fight fair.

So, you're no longer entry level. You've worked for two or three years now at Canyon Ventures. By the way, 35 companies reside here. Their only condition for being here is that they one, they grow their company, they'd be successful, and they hire our GCU students. All of them are 1099s. They work their own schedule, but they get this professional experience and professional network. So when they leave here, they're adding real currency, real value into the marketplace. We're starting to see that come back. I have calls all the time for students that leave here, and go into the marketplace. And I get calls from those employers who say, "Hey, can you send more of them?" And I think what them means, is that students that are coachable, or graduates that are coachable, that have professional experience. They can add value day one, when they lead in the area that they go in to be employed.

So, that's what we do. I'd like to think it's a success. We've got over a hundred students working here. We've got more coming in. It's a great recruiting tool. Now, we have students choosing Grand Canyon University because of this center, and the places and the people, the organizations that they can work for here. So it does that, and it answers three questions that I think parents and students have, every family has when their students want to go to college. And, Corey, I know you have a few kids going to college, I've got one heading out. And they ask these three questions. "Will my son or daughter be safe? Can they work on campus? And, does this piece of paper from GCU or ASU, or whatever U have any currency? Will they get a job with that?" And I think that we answer all three of those questions for parents. So, that's why it's been successful, and I think we'll continue to grow that. And Branch 49 is a big part of that.

Corey Frank (05:54):

Well, thank you. We certainly love being here. And, it is a competitive advantage that we see very early on. How many students will they have on campus next semester, roughly?

Robert Vera (06:01):

We have roughly 25,000 on campus right now, soon to be 40,000. We just built several new dorms. Our on campus presence is really growing. So, we'll soon be 40,000. I think we'll cap out about 50,000. Our 400 acres can't support more than that. We have a city within the city here, so we can't support more than about 50,000. But, 80,000 total or close to a hundred thousand students if you combine their online students. But, 25,000 on campus and growing to potentially 40,000 here in the next year. So, it's a pretty big community.

Corey Frank (06:30):

That's something. Yeah, it's a great community here in the west side of Phoenix, too. Certainly untapped. Great people, great labor pool, and really a desperate need for businesses that emanate from this Center For Innovation, the 30 plus, let's say, and a lot of charitable and heart driven work, as well. So these aren't just single-minded capitalists that this university is graduating, correct?

Robert Vera (06:54):

Our endeavor is to put out strong Christian business leaders into the marketplace. Housed with us here, we call it CityServe. We were thinking about poverty and we asked these big questions here. We have these meetings weekly, and we asked these big few questions about how we solve. We took on poverty, and poverty in our state of Arizona. And we decided that, first we got to distill it down, and we asked the question, "Well, what is poverty?" And we decided that it was a logistics problem, versus a resource or a needs problem. So, we created CityServe. CityServe is a part of a national organization. We became the Arizona chapter of CityServe.

It's a hub, really. We bring in discontinued goods from across the state. If Amazon can't resell the goods that can returned to them, Costco, all of them, they can't resell. So we take all their discontinued and returned goods. They're all in perfectly good condition. I was over there. Beautiful leather couches, all this other stuff. I guess people return them because of the wrong color, but they still can't resell them. So, that's our hub. And then we have PODs, points of distribution, which are, they know the needs on the ground, like churches and schools and nonprofits. So they know what their needs are. They have people after school, coming to them, saying, "I need this." Those PODs, signing up to be part of our hub community, and we give them all the goods that come in from those big box stores. We pushed on over $2 million worth of goods to our community.

A resource, I'll give you a great example of one that just happened. So, one day I was over there and there was a refugee group, nonprofit that's they're bringing in African refugees, mostly from Afghanistan. So their housing here in Phoenix, we have quite a number of them. And they got them housing, but they didn't have anything. I mean, literally they left with the shirts in their back. They literally left. I don't know, if you remember the couple, little airport evacuation, these were the people. And just pull up C130s, just stacked on top of each other. They got here with nothing. So, we've been resourcing those community here and our West Phoenix area. Their houses, and then giving couches and the like.

And then one of the directors, the nonprofit director was standing in CityServe, and he just said to me, "Hey, you don't happen to have any mannequins?" I thought what a weird request, because the day before I saw a stack of mannequins. I'm like, "What are we going to do with those?" And then I asked why, and he said, "Because many of the folks that they serve are seamsters, they do sewing." And we have three organizations here, four now, organizations here that needed seamsters. Noggin Boss, which one in Shark Tank, needs people to sew the logos onto hats. We've got a new scrub company. They make medical scrubs. Another kid who makes t-shirts and sells a special sewing onto it. And then we have another girl who is expert and makes custom bikinis for her monthly subscription program. They all need seamsters.

Well, those refugees are now working here because of the connection with our community. Are working here, getting paid to do seam work for several of our ventures here. So it's been a great community. I think, to lift our community up like that is really powerful, and just a short period of time to be able to do that. So, really proud of the work that everyone's doing here. And that's just one of many stories that sort of come out of this place over the last three years. Just really great to invest in our community.

Corey Frank (09:51):

A lot of my previous organizations, whenever I would go on a hiring spree, I always knew if I got a good Enterprise Rent-A-Car alumni, because they had such a great training program. I mean, if you're washing cars in the 90-degree heat in a suit and you could upsell folks on the rental fees and everything else. So, they were top, top shelf, that program. And, I can tell you, and I can attest to the audience here. Certainly you've heard a lot about it from Chris, who we call it a finishing school for future CEOs, in a lot of the sales training, the goal setting training. But they already come in with a lot of the raw materials already. So, we kind of finished the last few yards of that, but the university does a great job.

And, one other accolade I forgot to mention to the audience here certainly is, Robert, you just won the Career Advisor of the Year here at Grand Canyon University. And, I know that also speaks to not only what you do, but all the faculty here and the deans and even President Mueller himself, of kind of the proper care and feeding of the whole person, the whole student here. When they graduate, that they're prepared for the real world.

Robert Vera (10:58):

Yeah. Thanks for that. It's great to be recognized that, and a few of my other colleagues have been recognized as well. Really, it's student centric, so we want to make sure that we get them employed. And it's a great honor to be able to call a company and say, "I've got a graduate's that's going to be great for you." And they'd call back and say, "You're right."

Corey Frank (11:12):

And IBM, right? I mean, you get calls daily here, it seems from a lot of these folks.

Robert Vera (11:16):

Yeah. I mean, you've pushed people out to Ramsey Solutions and Nashville, and others, Tesla. I mean, we've got kids working all over the place. We've got kids that are graduating here with an undergraduate degree in biomedical engineering, biology, going on and being brain surgeons. I mean, it's just literally, we've got some great kids that are coming out of GCU.

Corey Frank (11:35):

Let's change gears from the student centric, to now, the business centric and the 30 plus companies that are here. And certainly with your background as a CEO, your background in venture capital, obviously you're uniquely suited to help a lot of these organizations, all of these organizations as almost an unpaid board member. I've seen you, observed you for the last couple of years. That's kind of what you do. Not for the faint of heart, right? You shoot them straight, which I certainly appreciate for my wheel alignments on our business here. But what are some of the things that you've seen that are maybe some old ways of doing thinking? Old ways of thinking, of doing business, of doing market dominance, that when you see the businesses today, that much like you set the students on the right path, that are some of the things that businesses need to be set on the right path, that you've observed here and guided your portfolio companies accordingly?

Robert Vera (12:24):

Yeah. It's a great question. I want to talk about Branch 49 for a minute, because it's really important to me. And I think that when you say, "We're all innovators." By the way, everybody, all entrepreneurs, we're all entrepreneurs. Is when you arrive on this world, you're an entrepreneur. You got to carve your way out. It's you. You're unique. You got to figure out what value you add in this world. And that's what entrepreneurs do. They create companies to add value to the world, to solve problems. That's what you do. But one of the innovations I really love is Branch 49. And people, when you look at it, people say, "Oh, it looks like a call center," or this, I call it a revenue generation consulting firm. And it's perhaps one of the most sophisticated ones I've seen.

The reason why it's an innovation to me, and it's a disruptive innovation is because preparing for this, I've been scrolling LinkedIn. And just looking at profiles of people want to hire SDRs and sales reps saying, they don't want a sales representative. They want a forecaster. They want an economist. They want a marketing expert. They want a writer, an author. They want somebody who is, it sells, right? They want all these things. And here's the problem with that. You need to drive sales now. Now. You've got to drive sales now. So the problem that I have with that idea of, yeah, this is this idea. So this is one, I'll just share with you. This is from a 50 or 70 billion dollar company. And what they're looking for is a B2B salesperson. So you want that, and it says, "Understand competitive environment of the wireless business solution, how to position the product or solution to drive results."

So, you want a salesperson and an industry strategist? These are the things they want. They want all these things to people to be. The problem is like the last one, you travel to customer events and participate as needed, typically during non-elective, kind of. So you want a salesperson in a roadshow speaker. That's what you want, right? Or, you want to, here's another one. "Be fully responsible for drafting, negotiating a deal sheet. Terms approved by internal expert process." So you want a salesperson and an attorney? This is what you want? So here's the problem that I have with all this. This bogs down the revenue generation process. Now remember, we as a C-level responsibility to our investors, to our shareholders, to our customers, to our employees, to make sure we're driving profitable revenues. Right? So the fact is, you need to have a process that allows a rep to identify opportunities and close those opportunities.

So, all those things that you're looking for, in my opinion, that's wrong. The reason why I love Branch 49 is really twofold. One, they have a structure they've revolutionized. I say, "Innovated the sales process." There's a three part structure. First of all, I believe structure precedes the right outcome. If you have the right structure, typically you get the right outcome. So, Branch 49 has perfected the structure of three part sales structure or revenue generation structure and close. And if it doesn't close, it either goes back to the top of funnel or you take it off the list. It's very efficient, very quick. Now, what I love about what you do, sit with you guys for about an hour a day. And I try to sit with everybody. I learned more from you than I think anybody else.

But we broke down a call. It was Bo, who's a new kid. Now, Bo has never been in this business before. But he has a structure. He has a structure, right? So this flies in the face of the thing you just pulled up. Flies in the face of the greater man theory, or the greatest salesman theory. Branch 49 says, "We have a structure to make you great. We're not looking for the greatest person. We have a structure, that'll make you great." We broke down a call that Bo did. Now, Bo was only on the phone for maybe ... He started out, do you have 27 seconds or 30 seconds for me to tell you? The phone call probably went maybe two minutes. First five or 10 seconds, or 15 seconds, I sat there and wrote in my notes later, it was like a golf swing. We literally went through everything.

That's what I love about this. You've become experts at building trust over the phone with a stranger in seven seconds or less, to get the meeting, to give it to that salesperson. Now, we're hoping that salesperson has the same professional attitude and is willing, has the objective measured in a system to actually break down his process, because that's what professionals do. We break down the process. In every part of it, we try to get better all the time.

Corey Frank (16:51):

The medical profession, Med Tech CEO, SaaS business. And you mentioned something to me a few weeks ago that I really liked, and maybe you can riff on a little bit. Is in the medical profession, if I have a problem with my eye, ears, nose and throat, I go to a specialist, a podiatrist, right? A urologist, a heart doctor, et cetera. Talk a little about that, because I really like that concept and how the sales profession really hasn't adopted what the medical profession, and what you came from here, from a specialty perspective.

Announcer (17:23):

We'll be back in a moment after a quick break.

ConnectAndSell. Welcome to the end of dialing as you know it. ConnectAndSell's patented technology loads your best sales folks up with eight to 10 times more live qualified conversations every day. And when we say qualified, we're talking about really qualified, like knowing what kind of cheese they like on their Impossible Whopper, kind of qualified. Learn more at connectandsell.com.

And, we're back with Corey and Chris.

Robert Vera (18:04):

If you think about it, the sales process, the sales profession, the greatest innovation we've had in the sales innovation was a CRM. We used to use, remember that? Literally, when Salesforce came along, we didn't have anything. We kept it on an Excel, a notebook. We didn't have that. So we went from that. But your sales, all it really is a filing cabinet. But, now we're saying about, what's the next innovation in revenue generation and selling? It's really a structure and expertise within the structure. Physicians, it's so specialized and they understand every nuance of their specialty.

I'm 50, so you have to go in for a colonoscopy, right? That's all they do all day, by the way, you know what I mean? What a job. Right? But that's all they do. And some of them, they're like, "No, no, no. I only treat the first inch of the colon. That's that's not my area. Right? You got to go. You want the whole colon, that's somebody else." But they become experts in that. And what we've seen is that in other professions, they've really divided their organization. Let me go back, because we talked about this a little bit, is that you said something to me, is that in some cases you're better off being seen by a veterinarian if you got a major wound, because they'll probably be able to save your life. Because if you show up at the emergency room and there's a podiatrist there, you're out.

But the idea is that, if you can break or when you decide that you're going to dominate your market, because remember, we're doing this because we need to drive sales fast. We need to close fast. We cannot have an 18 month sales cycle. We need to have weeks sales cycle. So when you say, "This part of the team, they're the breachers. It's the hardest thing. They're going to go and find." Now, I get it. We're going to send emails, and look, there are not my statistics. So, Rank Corporation says that 80% of cold emails go unanswered. Here's a problem with emails, and I don't want to get too into this, is that I don't like emails and I'll tell you why. When I listen to your students and the professionals calling, I hear what they're getting. They know if it's too expensive. They know if it's not the right fit. They get exhaust from those phone calls, you can't get with an email. So they can adjust fire, or help the client adjust fire. Right? So this is what you get from that.

But the point is that you've got specialties. I've got a top of funnel expert. That guy, what he's become expert in the best ... I said this to your team the other day. They are without question, I've been around. I'm the founder of this thing, got 35 companies here. I talk to startups almost every day. I talk to BCs all the time. By far, without question, your team is the world's best. World's best B2B cold calling team on the planet. There's nobody better. I will put your team up against an internal sales team any day of the week, and they will beat them. It's not because they're the greatest sales people. It's because they've got a structure, they got a process to improve incrementally every day, and it shows. Your growth shows. So it's really exciting for me to see this innovation, and the customers or the clients that you bring on, who say, "You're right. We want to dominate our market, which means we need a new structure to do that, because we don't have it internally. So we need to make sure we're getting opportunities fed to us."

Corey Frank (21:15):

Well, this is not a paid advertisement for Branch 49, although I appreciate those sentiments, Robert, in showing. And I really like those examples about the specialists and that Chris and I have talked many, many episodes about this, about the power of building trust in seven seconds or less. Certainly. And you have a lot of experience in the military community, particularly the Navy Seals. You do a lot of charity work. You're a bestselling author in many of those topics or so. And you mentioned to me this concept of a special forces medic, that I really liked too. So, as the audience knows well between Chris, and Oren Klaff, and Jerry Hill, and Ryan Reisert, and now, Robert, I have no original ideas of my own. I just get all my content from experts like you. But would you mind sharing with the audience, because I really thought that's a great analogy for sales specialists.

Robert Vera (21:58):

Yeah. So Jonny Kim is good friend. Jonny's an 18 Delta. You guys will know Jonny Kim, if you've ever seen some of the memes going on with Facebook and others. He's the Navy Seal, Harvard trained physician and astronaut Jonny Kim. Johnny's a good friend. So Johnny, if you look behind me, you'll see that Warrior's Faith. If you've seen the movie or read the book, American Sniper, you'll know that my friend Ryan Job was the guy who was shot on the roof. He was shot in the face or the round hit the upper receiver, his weapon fragged into his face. Jonny was the medic that came up on the roof.

Me and Jonny talked a lot about sort of what that day and his training. And I remember him telling me, I asked about it, what 18 Delta, what was it like? And one of the things that I learned afterwards is that on 18 Delta, I think they still do it, is that they know a special forces medic is probably going to be in a firefight. So it's probably going to be bullets flying, people dying. And your mission there is to really get an airway, stop the bleeding and get them to hire medical facilities as quickly as possible. To give you training, they shoot a goat. It's in the middle of the night, raining. It's cold. And you got to keep the goat alive. You got to find the wound or wounds. You've got to patch them you got to get airway. You've got to administer. You got to IV.

And it's really an interesting process. Often, I think they euthanize the goat afterwards, but it's real world. And that's how medics train. That's how any 18 Deltas listening will probably, "Yeah, they probably had to save the goat." I think if you don't save the goat, you don't pass. But it's really interesting to see how that situation, the stress of it, how it prepares those medics for real world battle situations, and real world situations, and how calm they are under pressure to do it. But it's that type of training, that specialty, that focus detail, that real life simulation that prepares our war fighters and their medics to be able to operate under very stressful conditions, stop the bleeding, get an airway and get people to higher medical as quickly as possible. So, it's really interesting to see that most of them are going on to be physicians or physicians assistants, and they continue on that process.

Corey Frank (24:01):

So, in our smaller, much, much lower stakes world, you could argue that to save the goat is, can you save that three minute cold call? Can you do what you need to do to keep the trust alive, to move the ball down field and to keep, if you will, the patient or the opportunity alive enough. And that's where that specialty comes in of being immersed into a cold call, an ambush-like conversation, and doing all the skills that we do from sales methodologies, and pitch anything in sampler, and the voice training, and the inflections, and the pregnant pauses. And putting that all into the screenplay, to do what our equivalent is of save the goat.

Robert Vera (24:41):

Yeah. And, in the structure, I think all that combined, first of all, there's a structure at Branch 49, for people who can't see it, they sit in the open with each other and they have these ad hoc conversations about improvement. And then they have these process meetings afterwards, where they talk about what they did well, where they didn't do well, where they define it. And everybody gives input. It's a continuous improvement process. And that type of structure is really, really healthy. And that's why Branch 49 is winning in the startup world. It's winning and it's winning for its customers. The innovation, in my opinion is, that three part structure. That top of funnel, you are the top of funnel experts, soon to be. I mean, there's a horizon group. That'll be discovery group. You'll be experts in all three of those, but that's why you're winning.

Companies come to Branch 49, not because they want to grow slowly. It's because they needed a better process to grow fast. Now, one of the things that happened when I got here is that, I know the tendency for founders of startups is that the fatal flaw is, and as an investor, I know this as well. The fatal flaw is that you'll talk to investors and they want to work in the business, which means they want to build. They want to put more features, more colors, more, all these things because they believe. They believe that's going to get someone to buy. The truth is, is that when your customers are referring their friends to your product or service, that's part of it. But the truth is, is that doesn't really work in most cases.

What investors want to see is a company, is a CEO and a team who's selling their product, because we want to make sure that we're investing in something that's viable in the marketplace. So, the tendency for people in our ecosystem here, is that they want to build. And I know that everyone's got to get out here at some point, right? It's an accelerator. We're going to get you out. That I know, that I may be subsidizing your failure, and I know who you are, and I know why I'm subsidizing your failure. I've been through this. So I would refuse to subsidize your failure. So I said, "You'll see me walk people over to Branch 49, because I could tell you how to create a three phase structure of top of funnel, discovery. I could tell you how to do these things, the nuances of the golf swing. I could tell you that, or I could walk you over and I could stand there with you while the bell rings. While you hear, I can show you."

And what I do with all these companies, as I show them, this is what I expect you to do. This is how to be successful. This is what, this is how you will get your product to market. Now, the reason why you want to heed this is because, if you're looking to raise money and justify evaluation, there's nothing better than revenues, or at least some revenues, some product market fit to justify that. What I don't believe a lot of founders understand is that as investors, we have options. A lot of options. The day you pitch to me, I'm going to have four other people asking me for money, right? Guess who I'm going to choose? The one who's got revenues. That's the one I'm going to choose. Why? Because you have said to me, "Robert, I'm going to de-risk your investment. I've got revenues coming in, which means I think I've got product market fit."

Now, if I've got five that come to me that day and I've got one, only one who says to me, "I've got product market fit. I can prove it. I get valuation. I can prove it. I'm working on these things. I've convinced these customers that I can add value to them and they're willing to pay for it." Who do you think I'm going to invest in? The one with revenues. That's it, that's the one. What the founders don't do is, they don't see that. They're myopic. They only see their own business. They only see themselves. They think that, that fit.

So that's why Branch 49 is really important, is because you give startups and other companies the opportunity to prove that they can de-risk an investment. Prove that they're valuable, prove they have found product market fit. So, rather than telling people, I can just show them. It's beautiful. I walk them right over and say, "Here it is. You want to know how to do it. Here's how you be successful. By the way, they're the fastest growing startup we have in this organization. Maybe adopt that. And they don't have a product. They have themselves."

Corey Frank (28:48):

Yeah, we do see that quite often, don't we? Not just the firms, some of the firms here that are still working through it, but are companies from all over the world. And we have hundred million dollar clients, as you know, that we've shared with, that suffer from the same challenges that a $30,000 ARR company here is challenged with. So, that's very, very, very true.

One of the other topics that I wanted to chat with you about since it's so close here, and you're part of the university, is this aspect of mentoring and remote. I think it was the New York Times back in April, I think I have an article on this. That before COVID, 4% of full-time workers worked regularly from home. New workers, veteran workers, doesn't matter. All industries. And, now the number is like a staggering 65%, I think it said.

So, as a new sales rep or as a veteran sales rep, it doesn't matter, again, in our guys and especially trying to start a market-dominant organization, it's a zero-sum game. I succeed when I take market share from my competitors. There's no other way around it. How do you square that circle around, for me growing up, probably like you as an intern at Merrill, or young investment banker coming out of BC, you yearn for the lunches and the impromptu mentoring sessions and such. Is that overrated? Or how do you square that circle about, with a lot of the organizations today trying to have these remote only cultures and come in the office when it's optional, versus kind of a more effective mix?

Robert Vera (30:20):

Yeah. Look, it's, you're missing out experience. Here's an interesting fact. So I think that social networks are both influential and sympathetic, right? So when you, and this is not me saying it, this is the New England Journal of Medicine. So when you put people together, right, they influence each other. You want to rise to a standard that everyone else is at. It's hard to see that from your home, right? It's hard to report and someone's at the top. We have classes. The students want to be together. That's where the magic happens. That's where, in the company, that's where the magic happens. The ideas get shared. They get built on. You can't build on ideas really efficiently in a remote situation.

There's the value. I can't understate this. The value, that together creates, is a multiplier. We build on each other's ideas. And what happens is that people get better when they're together. And, the reason why I brought up the New England Journal of Medicine statistic is that, it proves that you are influenced both positively and negatively from your peer group, from your surroundings. And it had to do with obesity in the year, in the media, as an epidemic. And how could that be true? How do you catch fat?

Corey Frank (31:39):

Yeah, and so turn my camera off since I'm a poster child for that, right?

Robert Vera (31:43):

But, yeah.

Corey Frank (31:43):

I'm the before picture, you're the after picture.

Robert Vera (31:46):

The idea though, is that they found that, they did, there was a longitudinal study with the Framingham Heart Study. And they found that folks that were obese, their social network was also obese. They were influenced, because social networks are sympathetic and influential. Now, apply that to the workplace. If you get one superstar in the workplace or a couple of people, or you have a process where people love communicating and love meeting together, they get better. It's hard to do. In the classroom, it's so ... People are disengaged online. They're distracted, they're disengaged, but you bring them into the classroom and you have them engage with each other, teach each other. The value of that, we spend a lot of money on training. We're hoping that some of that rubs off, right? We're hoping. And what we hope is that you will teach somebody else, but you can't really do that remotely. It doesn't, it's not as efficient.

Well, people say, "Well, it's convenient. I've got kids, I've got all this stuff." I agree with all of that. My point is this. If you really want to get better as an organization, you got to have a culture that brings people together, allows them to learn from each other, sets standards. If Corey is always having to set the standard and crack the whip, that sucks. No one wants that. But if the standard is, "Hey, Bo did 13 today or so," now that becomes the new standard. Right? And it's infectious that, because guess what? That network that you've created there is both sympathetic and influential. So, the idea is that to be in that organization, to be there, there's just something about it. You can't replace that online.

Corey Frank (33:26):

Oh, for sure. I think it was Dan Peña. I was watching one of his podcasts the other day, that billionaire and says, "You are the average of the five people that you hang out with the most." And if they're driven in goal setting and collaborative, et cetera, then certainly you will. And, I just find a little old school, and this is where I disagree with Chris. Chris's company ConnectAndSell has been virtual for a long time. And, I met many of them for the first time at the wedding in Seattle last week. And it's great to see Jerry and James, and the team, certainly such a powerful team. And I would say as a new person on that team, certainly I can get a lot from Zoom sessions, but I also get a lot from the impromptu popping by your office, popping by your desk. "Hey, you want to grab a beer after work?"

And I just want to, I think you and I are on the same page. We want to caution folks that are graduating, or been in the workforce for a year or two, or only been in the workforce since COVID. And that, in this job market that is so rich with opportunities, there's still many more opportunities than there are qualified people to fail, especially in our profession, that I wouldn't discount an organization, simply because they want to encourage folks to come in three, four days a week.

Robert Vera (34:38):

Yeah. You don't get the how. You don't get the how. You can't see how someone does things. You just have to observe. I mean, that's a scientific method, right? We have to observe first. And I think sometimes Zoom is, we're hoping that everything gets communicated well in Zoom, and in email and all these other electronic communications. I think Sam Francis said, is that, "I preach the gospel every day, and sometimes actually use words."

Corey Frank (35:03):

That's exactly right.

Robert Vera (35:04):

Because, it's the examples. It's the how, right. People will, they'll see what you do. They'll want to mimic that. Those impromptu conversations of, "I walk around and check in. And I want, whoever comes after me, I want them to walk around and check in because you have to observe. I hear things or I don't hear things. And I know they're the problem. When I don't hear things, it's a problem." So, you can't pick those nuance things up by just, and I know your team pretty well. And, I know when someone's not having a good day. I know because they're different. And so, you can't tell that from Zoom, right. People can shut off their cameras. They can.

So these are the things, but it's important. I think that, I think it's super important to have people together, to learn from each other, to set a standard. It's really important to do that. A lot of organizations say, "Whoa, we've done better without it." Maybe, but you'll never know, because if you brought them together a little bit more, would they do better? I still think, you still have to have a structure. You still have to have all those things. You still have to have people adhere to it, but there's these impromptu, nuanced gains you can make, and relationships you can build, and problems that you can avoid by just observing and being there with people.

Corey Frank (36:16):

Absolutely. Without a doubt. Well, and you certainly set the standard on that, Robert, juggling the 35 companies that are in this Innovation Center, plus all the other board positions and investments that you manage outside of this. Oh, and also being a university professor. So, we certainly appreciate you as our landlord. The rent's a little steep. No, actually being here, the rent is, everything's covered. So, we have a competitive advantage certainly, here at Branch 49, from a cost perspective because of the opportunities that you and President Mueller have afforded us to be here. So we thank you for that.

So this was long overdue, to have a detailed conversation, certainly about the university, the type of students that you graduate here. We certainly appreciate the kind words and all the support from Branch 49. Thank you for the time today. I know looking back at some of the words I said, I probably hit a little too close to home when I said, "Shoot the goat or save the goat." You're a Boston guy. You're a Pat's fan. You probably immediately go to, "Save Brady." So I'll apologize if that was a little bit more emotional than need be for you, so.

Robert Vera (37:12):

Not at all, but thanks for all you guys do. I hope that people understand that innovation that you've created, that three part structure of sales and why it's been so effective for you and your clients. And, why I believe that one day, very slowly it'll happen. And the proof that it's not happening now is all the LinkedIn sales positions I see. Look for one that just said, "Top of funnel expert." There's not many.

And so, but I do think that your organization, I do think at one point it will become precision. It'll become structured, not this mishmash, but a very organized structure that drives value, drives growth on a daily basis. So, get your product in front of the right people, either close it and add value and move on, and do that for as many customers as you can. I believe that three part structure of top of funnel, discovery, and then close or back to top of funnel, out the door. I believe that, that will be a structure that I think more and more companies, especially now, if we hit a downturn in the economy, they're going to have to figure that out that they need. They don't need a new person. And this is the problem. They hire. They want to hire a new sales person. They need a new structure.

Corey Frank (38:15):

Yes, absolutely. Yeah. You certainly struck a nerve there, Robert, about the fact that being top of funnel does not necessarily mean and correlate that it's your newest, most inexperienced folks, either. We have folks on our team as you well know, you interact with them every day, that in my previous life have closed two, three, $4 million a year in business. And they are on the top of funnel for some of our clients.

Robert Vera (38:39):

You want the most experienced people at the top of funnel, in my opinion. That's the hardest conversation to have. They have to be the most skilled to do it. They have to have that tenacity to keep calling, to get hung up on. Basically what your folks do, is they hand a warm prospect to a salesperson. At that point, "Hey, just don't screw this up. Come on, we've got somebody here that's willing to listen to you. They have a need. We've done that." So at that point, what I'd love to see is at some point that, I listen to a lot of pitch decks. And I hope people don't take this the wrong way. If you can't communicate the value of your organization to me in five minutes or less, you don't know what you're doing. You don't. You don't. If you can't do that, Corey's value, five minutes or less. It is a three part structure that helps drive revenues for your company. Would you like to learn more? Great. How about five minutes, and I'll show you a page deck or something like that.

So, but thanks for having me. I mean, I really love what you're doing. I hope this innovation catches on. I hope it helps to add value to companies. And so, their families can send their kids to colleges, and things like that.

Corey Frank (39:47):

Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, tell you what, you keep spewing out the fire and the heat on some of the nuggets you have. I got two pages of notes here. Put Chris, run for money. Chris, I think I'm going to go to the Market Dominance Guys, part two, here with Robert. And now, well we got to have Chris on you and on here, with some of our other guests. So, I really appreciate all the time, Robert, and thanks for the support.

Robert Vera (40:05):

Thanks, Corey.

Corey Frank (40:05):

So, this is Corey Frank, sitting in for the Prophet of Profit, the Sage of Sales, Chris Beall, who is somewhere over the Atlantic, until next time.

Aron Placencia and Anand Karasi from Glider.ai join Chris Beall and Corey Frank to tackle the perennial challenge of talent acquisition in sales. They're not just talking about finding "good" people – they're on the hunt for true "A players." How do you spot them? What makes them tick? And how can you build a team full of them? From the pitfalls of traditional hiring to the power of curiosity in sales, this conversation pulls no punches. Tune in as they break down Glider.ai's fresh approach to assessing and hiring top talent, and why it matters in today's cutthroat sales landscape. Listen to this episode, EP247: "Uncovering A-Players: The New Science of Sales Talent Acquisition."

About Glider.ai

Glider AI goes back to our CEO's humble beginnings in India. Dedication, work ethic, and a strong family network enabled Satish to find success. But he saw many others like him, equally capable, struggle and continue to struggle. This catapulted the idea of Glider into flight to create a platform helping hiring teams build their dream team and candidates land their dream job. Visit https://glider.ai.

How many cold-call opportunities have you wasted by pushing hard and fast to sell your company’s product? Today’s podcast guest, Bruce Lewolt, Founder of both JoyAI and Blast Learning, talks about a more caring and effective approach to selling. It starts with switching the goal of that initial call from selling your company’s product to offering prospects a helping hand with a problem or goal they have. Imagine for a moment you’re the prospect, and you’ve just been ambushed by a cold call: Who would you be willing to set an appointment with for a discovery meeting? A person blatantly trying to make a sale? Or a caring professional who understands your business’ needs and wants? In this episode, our three well-reasoned and insightful sales professionals share many insights with our listeners about making a successful cold call, but the one you don’t want to miss is this “aha!” moment. Your job is not selling your company’s product: Your job is selling a discovery meeting. That should make the title of this week’s Market Dominance Guys’ podcast very clear: You’re still selling something, but “Your Product Is the Meeting.”

Listen to Bruce Lewolt's previous episodes in this series:

More episodes on the topic of Believing in the Meeting are here.

About Our Guest

Bruce Lewolt is Founder of Blast Learning, a service that uses Alexa or Google Assistant as an intelligent personal study assistant, resulting in a state-of-the-art study method that is not just effective but makes learning enjoyable. (See BlastLearning.com and BlastStudy.com) He is also the Founder of JOYai, the first emotionally intelligent and sales-savvy artificial intelligence system for salespeople, bringing intelligent automation to prospecting and selling.

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Full episode transcript below:

Announcer (00:17):

How many cold-call opportunities have you wasted by pushing hard and fast to sell your company's product? Today's podcast guest, Bruce Lewolt, founder of both JOYai and Blast Learning, talks about a more caring and effective approach to selling. It starts with switching the goal of that initial call from selling your company's product to offering prospects a helping hand with a problem or goal they have. Imagine for a moment you're the prospect, and you've just been ambushed by a cold-call. Who would you be willing to set an appointment with for a discovery meeting?

Announcer (00:55):

A person blatantly trying to make a sale? Or a caring professional who understands your business' needs and wants? In this episode, our three insightful sales professionals share many insights with our listeners about making a successful cold-call. But the one you don't want to miss is this a-ha moment: your job is not selling your company's product, your job is selling a discovery meeting. That should make the title of this week's Market Dominance Guys podcast very clear. You're still selling something, but your product is the meeting.

Bruce Lewolt (01:36):

There's another thing in my mind too though, is it gives me the first marker that I can put in there as soon as possible to judge this person's emotions. Really I should back up, their personality, because I'm going to mold to their personality, right? I live in their world, not mine. I mold to their personality, rather than expecting them to mold to mine so I could communicate.

Bruce Lewolt (02:01):

And can I have 30 seconds? Okay, there's nothing really to react to there, other than yes or no. But 27 seconds gives a world of different options. They can laugh at it, okay. They can figure it's a challenge, "Okay, yeah. 27 seconds, go." That's a different personality than the, "Sure. Go ahead." The empathetic. "Sure, you go ahead." It's a different person. And the sooner you can get a handle on that person's personality, to go back to Corey's point, the sooner you can have an authentic relationship with that person about their needs in their world, because you're selling in their world and you interrupted them. It's your responsibility to be in their world. And that's how you start to figure it out.

Corey Frank (02:44):

Yeah. Chris, what do you call this, the playful curious, right? The, "Can Bruce come out and play?" type of tonality?

Corey Frank (02:53):

Is that what I'm after? Is that the best way to describe it?

Chris Beall (02:56):

Yeah that voice is the, "Can you come out and play?" voice. It's funny too, because at the same time, you're very seriously offering a solution to their problem, which is you. It's actually funny that you are the problem and that you recognize it. Almost all great comedians have something early in their shtick that lets us both laugh at them and with them at the same moment, at themselves. Laughing with somebody at themselves is one of the most collegial, embracing, we're together things you can do with somebody. It's acknowledging that the situation's a little funny, right? It is a little funny, I know I'm an interruption, but that's got to be hard and flat because I got to throw myself under the bus and then that playful, curious voice. And Bruce, what you did is so interesting is that there's at the very end, when you said "students", you went slightly down in the intonation, very slightly down.

Chris Beall (03:55):

It was playful and it was curious and then it was a quarter second of a deadly serious, "I mean this. This is something I mean." And had your voice gone up at that very last moment, it would've sounded like you were asking for permission, but what you were doing was making a recommendation and that recommendation is about something really important. And to me, that's where this game is played. It's played in those quarter seconds or so and we listen to Cheryl Turner sometimes around here for fun. My fiance Helen and I were listening to her once, because Helen was thinking of calling... I think it was all of the VPs of HR of Honeywell, using ConnectAndSell, there's 100 of them.

Chris Beall (04:45):

We made a list and came up with a script, didn't know if it was going to work or not. It was really fun though, because she hadn't been through it. I said, "Before we do this, let's listen to somebody who's a true master." So we're listening and listening and I asked her, "What do you think?" After about 20 conversations, and she said, "I get it. The secret is in the micro pivots, the emotional micro pivots." In which she picks up on something and changes just a little bit to be a little bit more with that person. And it's that little chuckle or that little pause or that little agreement or that whatever it is, and they happen fast. And I call this the sword fight in a dark room. It's pretty dark in there, you got to hear where the steel is hitting the steel in order to know what to do next. And then it starts to get a little lighter and you start to have more of a chance to fight on an equal footing so to speak, not opposing the person.

Chris Beall (05:38):

My point is, it's not languid, it is not slow, it's you may be speaking slowly, you may be speaking quickly, but what you're going to hear and react to you don't have a lot of time to do that. It's what makes cold come... Cold-calling is such an athletic business. I think it's so fascinating how athletic it is. Bruce is a true master and athlete. And when he's adapting to them, he's adapting to them like Sugar Ray Leonard adapted to people in his fights. It was very clear when you watched him, that's what he was doing. And Bruce does that because he's a practiced expert with a theory too, that goes with it and it's tested in lots and lots of science.

Bruce Lewolt (06:23):

Yeah. Thanks for that. There is a component to that though, that also has the real... So there's the athletic, the endurance, the taking the brunt of rejection and still coming back strong. There is also, to Corey's point of the sincerity, I really care about helping students. If you're a corporation, I really care about helping salespeople reach their full potential and do well. I care about helping your business do well, so that comes through to me. But when I train salespeople, I recognize if they work for a big electronics company, they may or may not care as deeply as I do about their customer doing things.

Bruce Lewolt (07:07):

So my daughter was a successful actress when she was young in Hollywood, she was on a lot of national shows and did a lot of acting training and they use framing. What's my frame here? How am I looking at the world? So for the salesperson, before they start, they need to do the same exercises that a salesperson, that an actor does before and to get themselves in the right frame, seeing things in the right frame, so they are coming across as caring. They are coming across if need be as very confident or they are coming across as, "I'm struggling a little here, could you help me?" The broken wing script if that's what they're doing.

Chris Beall (07:45):

Well, one of the beauties of B2B is that B2B tends to run through a meeting. You're going to have a meeting in the meeting as a meeting in which both people are going to voluntarily show up. And the fear that's expressed as annoyance is going to be replaced by apprehension, that you can replace with some other emotion. And it's a lot easier to work with apprehension on a volunteer than it is to work with fear on somebody you've ambushed. It's an easier emotional game to play when we're dealing with that more awkward conversation, the cold conversation, one of the beauties is the only thing you have to believe in deeply and sincerely, is the potential value of the meeting, for the human being you're talking to. In the case where you're never going to do business with them.

Chris Beall (08:34):

This is the only time in business there's such a thing as a universal framing, you can deeply believe no matter what you're selling, you can deeply believe my company are experts at this because we're specialists. And this other person is a generalist and can learn from us, and what strikes me as especially odd is the product training that goes on for salespeople, even those who are setting meetings, is not about the product that they're selling, which is the meeting. So they never learn about that product, which is the only product that they have to sell and be sincerely... to have that sincere belief and it's value.

Chris Beall (09:13):

And it's so odd, I have yet to see one time across all of B2B, that I've run into and you guys know, I see a little bit of it. I've never had a yes answer to this. So can you break down the discovery meeting for me that this person's going to have, who says yes. In terms of the value that they're likely to receive from attending that meeting, what value are they likely to get from the meeting, not from your product later. Cause that's all that's on offer and I've not had one person ever say, yeah. We've actually gone into our discovery meetings and listened to them carefully for that moment when the prospect goes, "Oh yeah!" and they've learned something. Because the value's always going to mean learning. "We've codified that, we schematized it, we know the value points of the meeting out of the product that make it worth attending no matter what." I've never heard anybody say that, isn't it odd?

Corey Frank (10:18):

Do you guys give cold calls, Bruce, do you and Chris, do you receive cold calls in your roles or too often more than you used to less than you used to?

Bruce Lewolt (10:28):

Certainly far less than I used to, which mystifies me and almost no good cold-calls, professional cold-calls. I always... Listen, most of them are the ones for selling some scheme thing but it's not, but I don't get them from professional companies as much as I used to. And they're generally making mistakes that we've known about for 20 years, that we know don't work. It amazes me that the industry doesn't learn, which oddly enough comes back to this drift that you were talking about, Chris, that salespeople think, "Oh gosh, everybody has heard the 27 seconds." I've said it a million times, everybody must have heard it a million times, that's not true. The person you have heard it... First of all, maybe they heard it a week ago. And how many of you remember what you had for lunch a week? I studied memory for a living and I can tell you, they do not remember the last time they [inaudible 00:11:27]

Corey Frank (11:27):

Bruce, let me give you an example on that. As you know, at Branch49, we're an agency business. We do top-of-funnel, full-stack discovery. And the majority of our clients are cyber security clients. So in a Venn diagram, there's a lot of overlap between cyber security solutions. So for the most part, our data team, top shelf, trained at the feet of the Chris Beall method, and Zoom Discover, Apollo. We have them all and we've had them all, and we have our own brokers. So this is not an indictment on them by any means, but we have two people who are sitting next to each other, work in two different cybersecurity campaigns for whatever reason, it happens in data. The same record happened to be in both of their campaigns, which is generally a no-no that you just don't do, but it was.

Corey Frank (12:13):

Once you know it, and we see every demo that comes in, in the slack channel every day is that, one rep, Catherine, got a gentleman from this particular organization, senior level gentleman for a cyber security product that we're representing in the morning, see the name, very recognizable name, not Tom Smith. In the afternoon, Brent, who sits right next to her, with pretty much the same screenplay, 27 seconds gets the same gentleman for another cybersecurity product. Now, at no time and you listen to the phone calls, at no time, did the person tip off, give away that, "Wait a minute, I've heard this 27 second thing." It's part when it's delivered, it's invisible or Clef always talks about, "Make sure you can deliver your screenplay, your pitch to the point where it is invisible. It is conversational to your point about, I don't remember what I had lunch last week, but clearly I didn't miss lunch last week," right?

Corey Frank (13:15):

I think that's indicative of the performance matters because it just becomes part of, "Wait, there's curiosity here, there's really [inaudible 00:13:22] and I need something. I don't remember how I walked into the restaurant, did I have my jacket on and off? Did I have it? I just remember I turned around, oh, somebody walked into the restaurant before they saddle up next to me at the bar," right?

Bruce Lewolt (13:34):

Yeah, that makes total sense. To come full circle then, from that back to what Chris was talking about, Chris, when you're talking about the value that they get, as you're wrapping up that call, so you're doing the ask now, right? The ask is, "Can I get 15 minutes on your calendar for our founder to share this breakthrough with you? Then if you like what you hear, you can schedule a demonstration." Whatever that thing is, "the ask" how then, are you getting what's core value to them into that ask?

Chris Beall (14:07):

Yeah, so it's interesting. This is, again, I'm going to go over to Cheryl's approach. If you really believe, that you have something special that's worth 15 minutes for them to spend with you learning, interactively learning, in a conversation, then you want to jealously guard that, guard its mystery and let it stay out there in that 15 minutes in the future, because that is the value. The value is that you're going to get to interact with an expert. This is a rare thing. This is somebody who really knows their stuff. If we want to come back to ask, "Well, what's going to happen?", and it's going to be the sharing of the breakthrough. We're just going to repeat that. So my very favorite, by the way, my favorite objection to talk to about or talk with people about, is what I call the Venus fly trap objection. So Bruce, tell me more. Right? So Bruce, the sucker says, "Oh, well what we have..." And then goes on about it, right? And it's like, "Well, that sounds like this other thing thanks."

Bruce Lewolt (15:12):

Right. Then we've ended curiosity.

Chris Beall (15:14):

No curiosity left, right? By the way, men have a harder time with this than women.

Chris Beall (16:16):

I think it's something that makes sense. Women are smarter about a lot of things than men, and this is one of them that they're vastly smarter about. Don't just spit it all out right now, hold it for the date, for the meeting, that's where we're going to actually do something. I love to say to people, somebody ask me that. I just say, and you have to say it very wistfully, we've learned the hard way that an ambushed conversation like this, isn't a fair setting to talk about something this important. Tell you what, I'm a morning person, how's your Thursday. And that little thing that ends with something about me, I'm a morning person, how is your Thursday? So now it's about them, empathetically. Do we mesh, just about a simple thing, which is when. Let's stop wasting our time talking about what, or if. Those are not the subject of the moment, the real question is when and when? I'm a morning person, how's your Thursday?

Bruce Lewolt (17:22):

Alexis, one of Corey's people that are doing calls for me, had this exact situation and she was very competent in saying I'm not the expert at that, which no one would expect her to be. But Bruce, the founder is, and I know he can answer that question. The key to that is she wasn't defensive nor was she trying to make something up and [inaudible 00:17:49] into the value because obviously this is important to this person, right? They're not there, so she did a masterful job of doing that.

Chris Beall (17:55):

What she's selling is you, the expert, the time to get to spend with an expert on something important on an important topic and she is free to say something good about you. And actually I think I recommend reps say is, and say it like this. I'm thinking back, I can't remember one conversation I had with Bruce where I didn't learn something and something that I still remember.

Bruce Lewolt (18:19):

Yeah.

Chris Beall (18:19):

And it's just such a simple way to put it.

Bruce Lewolt (18:22):

So I did training for a large government law enforcement agency and I trained undercover agents. They would build... have somebody always build their credibility instead of building their credibility themselves. So someone would say, "This guy is really smart at this or this guy is really good at this", rather than the person themselves. And then when they would come in and actually after somebody was brought in for interrogation, they were always in teams and one guy would excuse himself, and the other guy would sit there [inaudible 00:18:55] coming along, and the guy that was still in the room said, "Bob, gosh, he's a really nice guy, you're really going to like him, but he is a human lie detector, whatever you do, just don't lie to, cause he'll know it, he'll know it right away." And invariably, that wouldn't make the people... Absolutely of course believe it.

Bruce Lewolt (19:13):

Now he actually was pretty good at this, but he would understand when they're becoming uncomfortable and just lean in a little bit, the guy would go, "Oh my gosh, you're right. He is a human lie detector." So what somebody else says about is my point, I'm totally agreeing with what you just said here, is that there's this real propensity that you really believe in what they say. So by the same token, you better make sure what you're saying about that person is true. You need to believe that it's right, don't be making enough stuff.

Chris Beall (19:42):

Yeah, if I were going to do the real lie detector thing, I might even add something that's personal. In fact, last week I told him that I had to take my kid to this piano lesson and damned if he didn't know I was heading over to the bar. It's that kind of thing, right? It's that... The little micro story you can throw in about your own experience, that reinforces what you're saying, because then they come over and go, "Well, it's happened to me too, right?" Everybody's been caught in a little something and now you're together, you have this natural thing and well, "Bruce, the lie detector comes back in ha ha, he got you." But I'm not even going to try him.

Bruce Lewolt (20:28):

We've been going around back and forth to training on tonality and training on character. Those guys, the training from them, for sales people or for management training, okay. You blow it, you blow it. Those guys, it was real life and death to get out of character, to blow a conversation, to appear to be more competent, because you're really competently trying to get information, but to appear that way, was a real problem.

Chris Beall (20:59):

I sold 20 year jail sentences.

Chris Beall (21:05):

You think your product stops.

Bruce Lewolt (21:07):

Yeah, right. Goodness gracious. Well, this has been a delight.

Chris Beall (21:13):

It has been awfully fun. Well, I think it's so cool that you guys have hooked up on this super important mission. What Blast Learning is doing, it's not just going to be for nursing men, it's ridiculous for me to say just because if you could wave a magic wand and fix the nursing shortage problem, you've fixed about the next... Well it depends on how fit we are each, but then lucky 30, 35, 40 years in my case, somewhere, according to my fortune teller between a hundred and 150 years of needed services, and it's a true universal, nursing is the true universal and it's just wonderful that not only are you guys working together on that, but it's also helping to mold and train and create those future CEOs that come out of Branch49. This is a... Now there's no evidence we need more CEOs, but we can use them. Maybe some of them will hire some nurses or something, I don't know.

Bruce Lewolt (22:15):

When you think about the skill that CEOs really need, they need to be masters of the one-on-one conversation with their managers, with employees, with the board, this conversation, his ability to have this conversation is critical life skills. So, and Corey, those of you who don't know, he brings his students in from the college there and then trained them to have effective one-on-one conversations. They build confidence, they build verbal skills, they understand how to communicate emotions as opposed to just words, it's phenomenal program in what he's doing there.

Corey Frank (22:52):

Well, Chris is to blame from the [inaudible 00:22:55] is another byproduct of the podcast from three-plus years ago is, it started off from... there's plenty of folks do top of funnel and, but who does a really good discovery call and who can I really turn to, to trust enough with pipeline to actually do full stack sales? That's where this idea started from and certainly with the good folks at ConnectAndSell, helping seed this.

Corey Frank (23:18):

But been a conversation with Steve Richard the other day, our good friend Steve, at execution about that and indispensable tool, certainly to have in an organization. I don't know if you have a disparate, at home, fractured workforce that is doing cold-calls and you don't have a tool like exec vision. I don't know how you can compete or certainly unless you're using ConnectAndSell where you can actually listen to the calls, but something to listen to the calls, to do the coaching. But here at Grand Canyon University, right, Chris, nudged us in the direction of saying, "What is our biggest asset here at Grand Canyon University?" It's the 45,000 students we have on campus. And there are plenty of organizations that are struggling to find top sales talent.

Corey Frank (24:04):

And as a father of eight children, I used to always say, as a sales manager, sales VP, is, "It's tough to find good sales talent, so I'm going to make my own." and that's what I did with eight children or at least trying to. This finishing school for future CEOs that we talk about because Robert Vera, who's been our guest on this show, as Chris knows, has said many times that the goal of this university should be really threefold and certainly coming out of Branch49, it's to be able to speak clearly, to write clearly, and to convey a quasi-controversial or novel idea with persuasion. And I have those three skill sets, if I can graduate, I'm going to be okay to be on certainly on your staff, Chris, as a junior training exec or on your staff, Bruce, as I come up in about working with Blast on this project has been a blast and-

Bruce Lewolt (25:03):

Blast learning is a blast to use.

Corey Frank (25:05):

Yeah, absolutely. We appreciate that powered by ConnectAndSell of course, which we weren't able to do what we were able to do without that beautiful weapon. So enough of the commercials of the product placements here-

Bruce Lewolt (25:18):

Before you jump there, back to this original thing we started with was why founders should cold-call. I never could have done what I've done and learned what I done in a timely manner without using ConnectAndSell. I got two months of conversations done in a week of learning and trying and changing, and I couldn't do it more than an hour here and an hour there, but I could get on it and learn all kinds of things that were really valuable that you could never do if you couldn't just essentially, if Chris couldn't deliver me a whole bunch of conversations.

Chris Beall (25:54):

The cycle time around that learning, well, you're the learning expert, but there's some things that are really much harder to learn if between one experience and the next experience you go too long. And I don't know what those decay curves look like, but I'm sure an hour is too long.

Corey Frank (26:11):

If you're doing what Bruce wants to do, which is validate product-market fit and validate your Tam, you want to do it as quickly as possible, certainly right? Because it is a zero-sum game, and we always believe that a half-wounded prospect with no follow-up is left wandering aimlessly, the fields of the marketplace, waiting just ripe for your competitor to say, "Come here, come to my van, do you want some candy?" and take them off the chessboard for three years. And so you need that critical follow-up, the way you do critical follow-up at scale is certainly a weapon like ConnectAndSell. And so whether you're looking for, how do I know what dormant leads do I have that should be reconnected with or reheated or new validation of product-market fit, certainly ConnectAndSell, and what we do at Branch49, right through Bruce's help to train the team we think is key.

Chris Beall (27:07):

I love that, half wounded, leaving a blood trail for your competitor.

Corey Frank (27:14):

You always have to use that word blood that gets everybody frozen. Just got us in the headlights, right? For was it seven seconds? Is that the science?

Chris Beall (27:21):

We get eight seconds out of blood, blood is the magic and you get eight full seconds out of blood and a fiance if you play it right.

Corey Frank (27:31):

We shall see on July the second, that's correct. Well, for three old sales dogs, this is a blast. Bruce, we got to have you back over and over again, we always say that Henry is the honorary third market dominance guys, but I think Bruce is putting in his bid to be on that Mount Rushmore of market dominance as well, so we thank you.

Corey Frank (27:54):

Thank you very much, Bruce.

Corey Frank (27:57):

Chris Beall, the profit of profit, sage of sales. And again, the Hawking of Hawking. I'm going to keep testing that one here I'd like that, so until next time.

Training and coaching are essential for the rookie cold caller, and that’s an important part of the life work of today’s guest, Bruce Lewolt, Founder of both JoyAI and Blast Learning. But, as our hosts, Chris Beall and Corey Frank, remind our podcast listeners, even the most experienced and successful cold callers also need coaching from time to time. They can suffer from an inadvertent tendency to drift away from the prescribed plan — the script, tonality, and emotion that they’ve been trained to use — one that generally elicits a prospect’s response of “Sure! Tell me why you’re calling.” Bruce agrees and says that sales directors need to listen to calls and give feedback and coaching to all salespeople on a consistent basis, because it’s human nature to drift away from what you’re taught to say and start doing what feels easier or more comfortable, or putting your own cool, personal stamp on it because that’s the way you roll. It’s not your call to make, so note the caution in today’s Market Dominance Guys’ title and “Don’t Get Lost in Your Rock ‘n’ Roll” and drift away.

About Our Guest

Bruce Lewolt is Founder of Blast Learning, a service that uses Alexa or Google Assistant as an intelligent personal study assistant, resulting in a state-of-the-art study method that is not just effective but makes learning enjoyable. (See BlastLearning.com and BlastStudy.com) He is also the Founder of JOYai, the first emotionally intelligent and sales-savvy artificial intelligence system for salespeople, bringing intelligent automation to prospecting and selling.

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Full episode transcript below:

Training and coaching are essential for the rookie cold caller, and that's an important part of the life work of today's guest, Bruce Lewolt, founder of both JOYai and Blast Learning. But as our host Chris Beall and Corey Frank remind our podcast listeners, even the most experienced and successful cold callers also need coaching from time to time. They can suffer from an inadvertent tendency to drift away from the prescribed plan, the script, tonality, and emotion that they've been trained to use, one that generally elicits a prospect's response of "Sure, tell me why you're calling." Bruce agrees and says that sales directors need to listen to calls and give feedback and coaching to all sales people on a consistent basis because it's human nature to drift away from what you're taught to say and start doing what feels easier or more comfortable or put in your own cool personal stamp on it because that's the way you roll. It's not your call to make. So note the caution in today's Market Dominance Guys title, and don't get lost in your rock and roll and drift away.

Corey Frank (01:31):

Would you mind saying your opening in character again all the way through Bruce, because I really like that. We certainly have used that here about the Blast Learning, because I think in character hearing your intonation and your modulation I think really helps convey that message.

Bruce Lewolt (01:46):

Sure. So Corey, you all have the list I've categorized by what you are. So I know that you're a dean...

Corey Frank (01:46):

I said I'm a nursing and administrator for a...

Bruce Lewolt (01:46):

Yeah, a dean of a nursing school.

Corey Frank (01:46):

...one of the medical schools. Yeah.

Bruce Lewolt (01:58):

Yep. So Corey, I know my call's an interruption. Can I have just 27 seconds to share how we could help your students? So with that there I'm getting the vast majority of the time. Sure, okay, go ahead. And I'm listening then for what kind of reaction that is really carefully there. I'm listening for the real emotive, I'm listening for the fun. Go ahead. Yeah, sure. Go ahead. And then I'm matching that. Then it depends. The words that I'm saying are somewhat [inaudible 00:02:31] on that, but the key is that I'm matching the emotion of that, right? So the [inaudible 00:02:36] is to do the one that's emotive. We've discovered a breakthrough here that solves the problem of retention for nursing schools and when other nursing colleges have worked with us, they've seen dropouts decrease by 92%. So in that part, I'm getting at the thing that after a while I discovered that is the biggest pain point for anybody that's a dean.

And by the way, if it's not a pain point, then they're not a prospect for me. Then I don't care. If no, it's Harvard and we graduate a hundred percent, I don't care. Okay, fine. Tell me no that, but virtually everybody else is really concerned about student retention, and then I'll go into a value proposition when they give me of course the 27 seconds, right? They've given me time to now talk. Basically what we do is we turn a student's cell phone into a digital tutor that follows them around and every single day figures out what they should do and how they should study so literally they can be in the car and say, "Alexa, open Study Blast," and it'll start quizzing them in the way that builds durable, long term memories.

Corey Frank (03:40):

But I love your tonality. I love your emotion, the verbal dis fluency, just enough of a stammer for endearment, and it doesn't sound like the 153rd dial of the day.

Bruce Lewolt (03:50):

Right. Right. I'm never...

Corey Frank (03:50):

It sounds like...

Bruce Lewolt (03:51):

I'm never completely competent in this role. There are other salespeople I have trained. It is sharp and to the point, okay? So I trained people for a big company that has three letters in their name. Everybody expects them to be very competent and the authority in there, therefore I needed people to step up emotionally...

Corey Frank (04:12):

Don't most companies have three letters in their name?

Bruce Lewolt (04:14):

Yeah. There you go. Okay.

Chris Beall (04:16):

Well it's like this. Did you know that most people have more than the average number of legs. That's just math though.

Bruce Lewolt (04:26):

That's just math.

Chris Beall (04:29):

Sorry Bruce, go ahead.

Bruce Lewolt (04:30):

Very good, Chris. Yeah. So Corey, I think the interesting thing there, and just kind of transitioning a bit, so you've learned all these things, you've figured out tonality, you've figured out the words that work, you've figured out the emotions that work, then how do you take that and transfer it into a sales team? And what I did here is I didn't hire salespeople first because I didn't know for sure the characteristics of the salespeople I needed to hire. Do I really need somebody that's very, very self coming into this? There are certain roles where I really do need that, a lot of self-confidence really resistant to rejection, but the more self-confident coming into it, in many ways the less trainable they are, right? Cause at the other side of that coin is I really know what I'm doing and I want to stick with it.

And you know this better than I do. What I did is I came to you and I said, "Look, I've figured this out now that works for me, now I've got to figure out how to make it duplicatable and how to train it." So you were with your people, then we took it and we trained it. Well, your people all come with experience. If I was somebody who had never done this myself before, I would've had no credibility, but I had credibility. I knew what worked. I knew what didn't work and could come through and train it, and even that my words of training come across differently. People hear things from their own perspective. Everybody's got a frame, the glasses that they look through, they have different colors in them, right? And so whatever I say, they see in a different way. But if I hadn't had that background of doing myself, I couldn't work with them and really train them well to be able to duplicate it and understand that they can't be clones of me [inaudible 00:06:18] you have to call in for me is doing a phenomenal job.

She doesn't sound like me but was able to communicate to her and coach her on taking the emotions and adapt it to her voice print. And that's what's working really great. By the way, haven't told you this. So she set an appointment last week, we did the first presentation and today was the second presentation and they need it badly, and we've closed the deal on it based on one of the cold calls made, and this is someone who has only been calling for us for two weeks. So it can happen very, very quickly.

Chris Beall (06:57):

So I got a question. So Bruce, you're going through the training of her. When we're doing anything, there's always a bottleneck and a process, there's always a sticking point in the training, the place where you kind of get a little nervous. I've taught a lot of people to swing a golf club, and there's always a point in that process where I think "Are they ever really just going to let go of their risks and let the club head accelerator, or are they just going to hang on until they're hanging onto the side of their casket?"

There's a feeling in me when I'm training people that makes me a little bit uncertain. I borders on anxiety. Is this going to work? Because it's not like cutting up an apple, right? I get up in the morning, I go get an apple, I got a sharp knife. I am a hundred percent sure that that knife's going through that apple. But when I'm training somebody, they're not an apple, I'm not quite a hundred percent sure. I might run into something inside of them that they're unaware of and I'm unaware of that gets us stuck. Did you run into that kind of thing at all, or did you just cut the apple?

Bruce Lewolt (07:55):

I guess I didn't have the expectation that I would cut the apple to start with. So I knew that they were going to take it from their framework, interpret it, and it's only through coaching once they started that I could actually mold it into what works because they hear me, they think they hear me, they interpret it, they think it'll work this way, but it's like, what's the thing, nobody ever survives a sock in the nose, whatever the saying is, right? So, but until they get out there and do it, they don't really experience the feedback. The thing you were talking about, your Zen thing. So the number one thing when you start a new salesperson is you have to listen to their calls on a consistent basis. I can't tell you how many times hundreds of sales managers I've worked with, they never listen to calls. It's insanity.

Because the salespeople will get off by a little bit. So one person was doing really well and I was listening to calls and then they stop doing really well. And it was imperceptible. It was a few words that they'd changed and a tonality that they had dropped in the middle that was really important, and to them, they didn't understand those words, what those words really meant to a dean of a nursing school.

These words were really ... but would you understand them? We also offer next-generation questions. That would just go right over your head unless you're a dean of a nursing school and you know that the licensing exam is going to be filled with those and you're freaked out because your nursing students don't know how to handle these critical thinking type of questions that, by the way, if you're in any other profession, this is where all professional examinations are going from this [inaudible 00:09:34] multiple-choice to how do you think in the profession. And that's one of the things we train on. So, didn't make sense to her, but as soon as I picked it up, I was listening. I said, "Oh, you've dropped these words, add them back in and we'll all be good." So listening and coaching is incredibly important.

Chris Beall (10:35):

I love that. By the way, we have a name for that at ConnectAndSell, we call it drift, and drift is the one universal that we find in cold calling, and I had an opportunity once to talk to Dan McLean. He was actually on the show with us talking about this and I was driving across the Sierras on my, I don't know, 7,000th trip trying to get stuff over to Reno, and I'm listening to Dan and I'm thinking, "Is this Dan?" None of this stuff was on script, none of the tonality was right, and none of the understanding was there, and I just dropped what I was doing called him up and I said, "Dan, I'm listening to a conversation of yours from three days ago, it said 3:22, go listen to it. You've drifted into outer space, man."

And he said, "No, I never drift. I never drift. I never drift. I am exact right on." So three minutes later he calls me back and says, "Chris, I have no idea who that was. It didn't even sound like me." Right? And that's somebody who's an expert who's doing this 25, 30 times a day, who sells the stuff, and he drifts. We have another guy whose drift is this, he adds one word. It's like, I used to have a horse that would always start to turn its head toward home. Even when we were three miles away, if we were going oblique down a wash, it was like it had to pull me. I was out by your place Corey. You know those big washes out there where they don't exactly parallel the road and horses [inaudible 00:12:00] he would pull, well this guy works for us, I'll let him remain nameless, to add the word "a bit" to soften up the beginning of his opener because he is awkward feeling, being the problem.

To embrace being the problem was just too much for him. He's kind of a rough tough guy who believes that it's okay to be the problem, but he actually inside doesn't think it's okay to be the problem. And so he says, "I know I'm a bit of an interruption" and boom, hang up.

Bruce Lewolt (12:30):

Yeah.

Corey Frank (12:30):

But we hear that so often don't we Chris, on the 27 second and information-based opener, they're going to put it in all in one bucket, all their curmudgeons and cynics will put it all in one bucket, and I'm a big ... and I think all three of us are here, on the performance of it, the musicality, the authenticity of it, and so that little word "a bit," we have folks that they'll learn the screenplay and they'll say change it from 27 seconds to half a minute, or 30 seconds. And they'll say, "Well, what's the harm that's done?" So Chris, you're the expert, this all emanated right, [inaudible 00:13:07]. So what is the harm that is done from that novelty perspective by just changing that one little bit of the intro to, can I take about a half a minute versus can I take 27 seconds?

Chris Beall (13:21):

How about a quick minute. There's one that's...

Corey Frank (13:23):

A quick minute. [inaudible 00:13:25].

Chris Beall (13:24):

Just opens with a lie. Go ahead, lie right off the bat. You don't sound like a salesperson. It's multifold. I mean, for one thing, you've given up something that is really valuable, which is a precise number that gets somebody curious, and it's like, well, why 27 seconds? Well, there's curiosity just built right into that thing. It makes them, not pay attention like look up kind of pay attention, but kind of cock their head go "Yeah, 27 seconds, right?" So you've given that up. You've just thrown that away and you've become uninteresting. For another thing, when you say 27 seconds you sound like you mean it, like you're making a real deal with somebody. It's real. You're going to stick to it. When you say "kind of a half a minute," they know you're lying.

You can't hold somebody to kind of half a minute, but you can certainly hold them ... In fact, you can come back and say "No, but I'll give you 17" and you got to know what to do when they say that, which is fantastic. Tell you why. And then you just go there, right? You thank them and you go, because they don't have time for anything else. It's funny. Chris Voss talks about this, that odd numbers are important, odd being not odd and even, but odd being different because if you mean it, what are the odds that the right amount of time to do something is also a round number? They're almost zero.

Bruce Lewolt (14:43):

There's another thing in my mind too though, is it gives me the first marker that I can put in there as soon as possible to judge the this person's emotions. Or, so really I should back up, their personality. Because I'm going to mold to their personality, right? I live in their world, not mine. I mold to their personality and rather than expecting them to mold mine so I could communicate. And can I have a 30 seconds? Okay. There's nothing really to react to there other than yes or no, but 27 seconds gives a world of different options.

They can laugh at it. Okay. They can figure it's a challenge. Okay. Yeah. 27 seconds, go. That's a different personality than the "Sure, go ahead." The empathetic. Sure, you can go ahead. It's a different person, and the more, the sooner you can get a handle on that person's personality to go back to Corey's point, the sooner you can have an authentic relationship with that person about their needs in their world, because you're selling in their world and you interrupted them, it's your responsibility to be in their world. And that's how you start to figure it out.

Corey Frank (15:50):

Yeah. Chris, what do you call this? The "playful curious," right? The "Can Bruce come out and play" type of tonality, is that what I'm after? Is that the best way to describe it?

Chris Beall (16:00):

Yeah. That voice I think is a can you come out and play voice. It's kind of funny too, because at the same time you're very seriously offering a solution to their problem, which is you. It's actually kind of funny that you are their problem and that you recognize it. Almost all great comedians have something early in their shtick that lets us both laugh at them and with them at the same moment at themselves. Laughing with somebody at themselves is one of the most collegial embracing "we're together" things you can do with somebody. Acknowledging that the situation's a little funny, right? It is a little funny. I know I'm an interruption, but that's got to be hard and flat because I got to throw myself under the bus, and then that playful, curious voice, and Bruce, what you did that is so interesting is there is at the very end, when you said students, you went slightly down in the intonation, very slightly down.

So it was playful, and it was curious, and then it was a quarter second of deadly serious like "I mean this, this is something I mean." And had your voice gone up at that very last moment, it would've sounded like you were asking for permission, but what you were doing was making a recommendation, and that recommendation is about something really important. And to me, that's where this game is played. It's played in those quarter seconds or so. And we listen to Cheryl Turner sometimes around here for fun, and my fiance Helen and I were listening to her once because Helen was thinking of calling. I think it was all of the VPs of HR of Honeywell, right? Using ConnectAndSell. There's like a hundred of them. And we made a list and came up with script, didn't know if it was going to work or not.

It was really fun though, because she hadn't been through it. And I said, "But before we do this, let's listen to somebody who's a true master." So we're listening and listening and I asked her, "What do you think" after about 20 conversations, and she said, "I get it." The secret is in the micro pivots, the emotional micro pivots in which she picks up on something and changes just a little bit to be a little bit more with that person, and it's that little chuckle or that little pause or that little agreement or that ... whatever it is, and they happen fast.

And I call this the sword fight in a dark room. It's pretty dark in there. You got to hear where the steel is hitting the steel in order to know what to do next, and then it starts to get a little lighter and you start to have more of a chance to kind of fight on an equal footing so to speak. Not opposing the person, I just think that my point is, it's not languid. It is not slow. It's you may be speaking slowly, you may be speaking quickly, but what you're going to hear and react to you don't have a lot of time to do that, and it's what makes ... Cold calling is such an athletic business.

How do you produce the emotional reaction that you want in those you are cold calling? Bruce Lewolt, Founder of both JoyAI and Blast Learning, has devoted himself to discovering the answer to this question. Bruce joins our Market Dominance Guys, Corey Frank and Chris Beall, to explain how even the most carefully worded message and well-meaning tone and pacing don’t always have the emotional significance to your prospect that you had hoped they would. “When your prospect is only half-listening, what do they hear?” Bruce asks. Ah, that’s the question! These three experienced and dynamic cold callers each share their well-thought-out theories on how to communicate authenticity, spark curiosity, and offer intrinsic value that will elicit the kind of response from your prospect that will lead to setting a meeting. Here at Market Dominance Guys, we are devoted to helping you answer the tough sales questions, like this one: “What Do Your Prospects Really Hear?”

About Our Guest

Bruce Lewolt is Founder of Blast Learning, a service that uses Alexa or Google Assistant as an intelligent personal study assistant, resulting in a state-of-the-art study method that is not just effective but makes learning enjoyable. (See BlastLearning.com and BlastStudy.com) He is also the Founder of JOYai, the first emotionally intelligent and sales-savvy artificial intelligence system for salespeople, bringing intelligent automation to prospecting and selling.

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Full episode transcript below:

Corey Frank (01:23):

Welcome to another episode of the Market Dominance Guys. This is Corey Frank, with Chris Beall, the prophet of profit, the sage of sales. And I got a new one, Chris, the Hawking of hawking. How about that, right? No? Nothing? This on? Is this on? All right. The Hawking of hawking. And in the hot seat today, we have a very special guest, one who's well overdue but keeps rebuffing our advances to be on the Market Dominance Guys for the last three years, Bruce Lewolt, the CEO of Blast Learning and overall connoisseur of the craft of inside sales. So welcome Bruce.

Bruce Lewolt (01:59):

Nice to be with you guys, finally.

Corey Frank (02:02):

Finally.

Chris Beall (02:02):

Really-

Corey Frank (02:02):

Finally.

Chris Beall (02:03):

I mean, I'm telling you, I don't know. I remember standing with you on a boat out off of Chicago one day talking about some crazy stuff, and we didn't even have a podcast, but if we would, you would've had to been a guest like that night or something.

Bruce Lewolt (02:18):

Yeah, we had this fascinating conversation about using the latest research on emotion and personality to craft cold call messages. That was fun.

Chris Beall (02:28):

That was fun. And we drank enough to make it clear.

Bruce Lewolt (02:31):

It was clear to both of us before we got off the boat, I think.

Chris Beall (02:34):

Very clear.

Bruce Lewolt (02:35):

I'm pretty sure you were clearer than I was, but anyway.

Corey Frank (02:40):

Bruce, you've tasted the same dirt certainly as Chris in the trenches here of the cold calling world, AISP, and been CEO of many company. But, your expertise and your focus seems to be more on the AI side, the neuroscience, the...

Bruce Lewolt (02:54):

That's it.

Corey Frank (02:54):

... the trust side.

Bruce Lewolt (02:56):

Right. The real science side of this. And I come to it from training. You can't train unless you really understand why something works in the background. And so I built for salespeople at IBM training programs for, you mentioned the AISP training programs for them, lots and lots of different companies. And before I went off then and started this new company in the middle of the pandemic to solve a huge problem that I saw coming. And we'll get to that. But the thing that's interesting about this, that with all of this stuff that I've learned along the way training, oh, goodness thousands. Well, actually hundreds of thousands because we trained to hundred thousand salespeople in China alone in one go. So that put us in the hundreds.

But even with all that, as a founder of a new company, when I said, "Look, I'm not going to get startup funding. I'm going to fund this thing myself by doing what I've trained other people to do." And that is get initial sales using cold calling. And I'm glad I did that because I discovered a depth that I never would've discovered before. And we'll talk about those things. So this really will help startup founders. You don't have to sell your soul to the startup funding club. You can, if you want, but you can do it another way. But also to sales leaders, real new level of insight into what works and how to get salespeople to do what they need to do on a consistent basis.

Chris Beall (04:22):

That's so interesting too when you talk about startups and how they get funded, there's a couple of things that I've deeply believed for the last 11 years it's coming to ConnectAndSell. And one of them is that conversations are the competition for venture capital and vice versa. And targeted conversations actually are a form of capital that folks don't get. And so they think they need money, but when you break it down, you just say, "Well, what if I could give you 200 targeted conversations? What would that do?" It's like, oh, I don't need quite so much money, but they don't think like that.

Bruce Lewolt (04:58):

Yeah. And you have said that to me for three years, and I understood the surface level of why that was. So because I like the sales that come from it. I want the money that comes from it. But when I did it myself, I discovered that there's an underlying factor there that's like the iceberg below there. And that's this; when you go into a startup venture, so just the nickel tour. So it's the pandemic. I am education researcher. I know that if a student has a single bad year in school, they never make it up. They never catch up. And now we have students, through no fault of their own, that had not one but many cases, two solid bad years in school. They're never going to make it up. Well, when they get to college, they're going to crash and burn at astronomical rates. And particularly for majors that are more difficult.

And so I built this new eLearning system for majors that require to take certification exams. And I started with nursing because we need a lot of nurses. I'm getting older. I really want there to be enough nurses around. And there isn't going to be, unless we solve the nurse dropout problem, which is astronomical. But any majors where students have to remember what they learned for future certification exams, engineering, all that. So I had that down. I went to build it. Didn't want to go through spending tons of time getting the startup capital thing going. And I'm not sure if anybody would invest in me at my age anyway. But the fact of the matter was I did it out of desperation and found out what I was talking about this under the iceberg thing. And here it is; there is a language to your value propositions that no matter how long you have been in your industry, you don't understand.

You understand the words you say, you understand what those words mean to you. But what you don't understand is in a cold call situation when somebody's kind of half-listening, what do those words mean to them? And how do you recraft those words so that they have the emotional significance that's really important to them. And that's why I think every founder should cold call, right? For the vet, before they launch a product, because now you really, really figure it out. And we can dive more into that. I don't want to dominate talking here, but that's the below-the-surface part of iceberg.

Chris Beall (07:29):

That is fascinating. And you've always said about cold calling, there's these two pieces of it, right? One piece is this, I'll call it the outward stroke. I'll be like Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, right? Talk about the outward stroke and the inward stroke. So I think Corey always knew that I'd turn into him, but I can't grow the beard and the hair and all that or sit cross-legged. No. But I'm going to do the rest of it. So the outward stroke has an impact on the world, right? And we're looking to have that impact. But what I believe is so important is the inward stroke where we learn. And when we learn that turns it into some kind of flywheel.

Bruce Lewolt (08:03):

Yes, that's right. And that's exactly what happened. And this is sad. But when I started doing cold calls, my first calls, I crashed and burned. And had I not done it myself being the proud writer of scripts and trainer of cold callers, I would've just blamed it on my salespeople. Yeah, they're just not the right thing. If only they would do it in the right way, the right tonality, whatever. But the fact was these really clever, really cool words that I said, that meant one thing to me, meant something to others. But, when I listened to the reaction and then molded the reaction and listened for the emotion of the reaction, I learned things that marketing could never tell me. Marketing could A B test messages. They could tell you incrementally, but they cannot listen for the emotion. And they don't have the intelligence on the other side, in the background on the other side to really interpret the emotion to say, "Oh, I get it. So what I'm saying is really producing this reaction, which is not the reaction I wanted. How do I actually produce the reaction I want in them?" And so that worked.

Now, many of you that are listening to this podcast aren't startup founders. But, I encourage you, if you're a sales leader, if you're a sales VP, bite the bullet. You don't have to let anybody listen to you. Do the cold calling yourself. You don't have to do it for long. You just have to do it till you're really confident that you understand the language. And by the way, when we start talking about the second step of this, how you then take what you learn and transfer it to other people in a way that they do it consistently, the credibility of the fact that you did it yourself really goes a long way with that.

Corey Frank (09:50):

Yeah, Chris, I think we've had our share of cold calling topics here on this podcast, as far as the share of what kind of quality ingredients for the most nutritional value that you need in there. But specifically for founders, I think we did a couple of episodes. I think you live it Chris, right? Certainly, you and Sean McLaren over at ConnectAndSell, make your fair share of demos and cold calls. And what does that do to your organization, knowing that you're walking the virtual calls doing the same thing that a lot of the folks on the team are doing?

Chris Beall (10:19):

Well, it's hard for me to tell because I'm not one of them, right? So I'm kind of stuck where I am. But I think one of the things about our company it's kind of magical is somebody called it a cold call cult, and they were trying to be negative about it out on Glassdoor. And we read it and we smiled and went, "Yeah, cool." Right? And the cult element of it is that cold calling is something that's difficult to believe in properly, to know what it's for, unless you do it. And when you do it, it actually changes you. It's not like changes you as a person. Maybe it does. Maybe it makes you different in terms of your confidence. That's why we call it in finishing school for future CEOs, when you learn how to talk to strangers in the most awkward circumstances, you can certainly talk to them in less awkward circumstances, have good conversations.

And that's the hallmark of a CEO that has a shot of leading somewhere with almost anyone anywhere, anytime, and you slap them awake and there they are. They're talking sense to you if you got any luck, right? But it's not that actually. It's exactly what Bruce is talking about. It's the nuances of meaning and how the words go with what it is that you're trying to convey, that you learn from the reaction that other people have, not just the data, but the reaction. It's that 20,000 bits a second that you are processing. So we always talk about how they're processing. The prospect is processing 20,000 bits a second while you're speaking, but you are processing 20,000 bits a second coming back. You can't see them. You hear how they're reacting at a level that changes you and you find yourself adapting. And we're all really, really good at it, but we can't do it without a closed-loop. And so I think it does make a difference for the employees to know.

One of the hardest things to do in a company is to regularize the language, to get everybody using the special words exactly the same way. As you know, I used to be a systems designer. And when I'd go to design a system, architect designer of these big software systems, I just get everybody in the room and we would decide all exactly what the words meant. We would define each word that we were going to use three different ways. We'd write them on the whiteboard. We'd make a dictionary. And if you misused a word, that was a sin in that organization. So if we were going to use a specific or common word in a specific way, then it always meant that specific thing. You weren't allowed to use it generically.

And I think we teach ourselves that by getting so to speak in that room, but with our prospects one after another. And they teach us exactly what the words are and what they mean to them. Because when we get it wrong, they tell us. Maybe not always in words, but they tell us. And we got to be pretty dense not to be able to take that in. You just have to be human. The other thing I think is funny is people often think about this topic like, oh you got to be salesperson. That's meaningless.

Announcer (13:32):

We'll be back in a moment after a quick break. Selling a big idea to a skeptical customer, investor or partner is one of the hardest jobs in business. So when it's time to really go big, you need to use an uncommon methodology to gain attention, frame your thoughts, an employee successful sequencing that is fresh enough to convince others that your ideas will truly change their world. From crafting just the right cold call screenplays, to curating and mapping the ideal call list for your entire team, Branch49's modern and innovative sales toolbox offers a guiding hand to ambitious organizations in their quest to reach market dominance. Learn more at branch49.com. And we're back with Corey and Chris.

Chris Beall (14:23):

As meaning-

Bruce Lewolt (14:23):

The more you sound like a salesperson, people have automatic scripts in their brains, right? If you strike at me, I flinch away walk. I see a stake in the thing, I back up. This automatic reactions. Well, people have programmed their brain with an automatic reaction to something that sells like a salesperson on a call because we get so many annoying sales calls, right? So we react negatively as soon as that. So the kiss of death is to sound like what people think a salesperson should sound like.

Corey Frank (14:56):

It's funny Bruce, because certainly we've worked together on many campaigns as Chris and I. And one of the analogies that I really like that somebody came up with here, one of our leaders, was this example of when we're talking, we call them screenplay here at Branch49, right? And in the screenplay, as Chris knows from being a devout 27 seconds kind of swore, and we adapt much of that 27 seconds thought, right? There's a lot, it seems right, Chris, on LinkedIn, just in the last week or two, about to 27 seconds to use a permission-based opener or not. And well they don't work anymore. I think somebody even posted permission, "Based openers do not work. Don't use them." And I said, "Well, do you want to look at our data?" No, because no one told us, no one told you I=

Bruce Lewolt (15:40):

Bad permission-based ones don't work.

Corey Frank (15:42):

Bad permission-

Bruce Lewolt (15:43):

That's right.

Chris Beall (15:43):

Just so you guys know, I'm looking right now at a screen that's our leaderboard for today. And Becky Benson, who's been working for us for, I don't know, three weeks, doing cold calls, set 0.94 meetings per hour of prospecting today. And I don't know, if it's not working, that's a pretty good format not working when you get a meeting per hour.

Corey Frank (16:05):

Yeah. Exactly. And so I agree with that. And permission-based absolutely do work with the performance, right Bruce? And the screenplay, which is there's certain pieces of it that should be performed like Mozart and you don't improvise Mozart. It just is. And then there's other pieces that we allow them to have more like jazz, where as long as you're following the routines on the reservation, you're fine. But here's the point that this particular leader made, was that when you deliver a great screenplay performance to build that trust, Chris, that we've talked about so many times, it's taking you to a place as a prospect where I'm beginning a period of endearment with this person. I'm beginning a period of, I trust them more and more. Now I'm becoming more curious about where they're taking me. And as soon as I screw it up a little bit by doing something stupid, like sounded like a salesperson, it's as if we watch a movie and we see the cable holding up Superman, or we see the boom mic in the frame of the camera and you're like, wait a minute. The illusion goes away. This is not real. And everything, like inception, comes tumbling down. And I really like that analogy about the importance of authenticity to build that trust.

Bruce Lewolt (17:28):

You said two words there. So when we say to people, I tell salespeople, you tell your salespeople, you got to be authentic. What does that really mean to them though? What are those words? How do you actually do it? And you used a word that I like a lot in cold calling, and that is curiosity. So when companies call and they're very specific, as opposed to creating curiosity, they sound salesy. So when I called originally, I said, "I'm Bruce Lewolt from Blast Learning. Well in the industry I'm calling from, everybody's heard from 10,000 LMS systems, learning management systems, think, "Oh learning management system. I know what that is already. I'm onto my script to get off the yard. I don't need this." Right? No curiosity there, because I gave them enough information to decide exactly what I am, and I sounded like a salesperson.

So alls I did is I just started this, "This is Bruce Lewolt from Blast." Okay, there's curiosity there. So what are those guys? So if you're a cybersecurity company, AB Cybersecurity, "I'm Bruce Lewolt from AB," not "AB Cybersecurity, you're home for better security worldwide in the rain and in the snow. Whatever you need, we know what to do." No. don't give that much information because it takes away the curiosity. On the other side of that, of the authenticity, is somehow getting into their world. That's what really drives that. You know them, you're in their world. Without being salesy again, means that you're not being super-specific. So to the 27 seconds name, can I have 27 seconds for what? To tell you why I called works in many situations. But what I found works even better is if I did something that really resonated with their pain or need, in my case, it was to share how we can help their students.

That last thing for certain people, especially people that are caring people, if you're calling caring personality types, should be something that they cannot say no to. They can't say, "No, I don't want to hear about how somebody can help my students. I don't want to hear about a learning management system." And we're not one, by the way, we're a study system. After somebody's learned something, we increase their memory of that and their ability to use that, so they become a high-performance individual. But they're going to jump to these conclusions if I give them too much information. Or, how I can help your students is replaced with your value proposition. Can I tell you something about our mission to... value statements. Startups don't need value statements. They need to understand their customers. So I love what you say. The curiosity and the authenticity. Curiosity at the beginning, ending with authenticity by being in their world.

Chris Beall (20:25):

Yeah. We're pretty sure that basic journey from the prospect, the person that you interrupted, the person you ambushed, from whatever their first emotional state is, which is something negative, probably fear. Fear is expressed as annoyance or something like that. We're pretty confident that they have a goal, which is to get off this call with their self-image intact. Even my mother, I tell this story often, my mother was famous for handling both cold telephone calls and cold knocks on the door. And she always did exactly the same thing. And she'd listen to them until they stopped talking. And then she would say, "No, thank you." And slam the phone down or slam the door. Now, why did my mother say thank you? It wasn't for the other person. It was for herself. She kept herself image intact by saying, no thank you, because my mother was a very polite person. She was a very proper person. And she was slamming the door in your face after you said what you said.

And that knowledge, that's what that other person has in their desire set, lets you go to curiosity easily and makes it a disaster to go to value. Because as soon as you go to value, you've offered them a way to get out of the conversation, get off the phone with their self-image in tact. That's perfectly obvious. All they have to say is, "Thanks Bruce. You know what? We're set." And now then there's no answer for that. There's no answer for, "We're set," other than, "Well, Bruce, no, you're not." Right? Now we're on the third-grade playground and nobody ever made a deal on the third-grade playground. You may get your knees scuffed out there, stuffing around in the dirt. But you can't make even the simplest deal like, you want to have a meeting? You can't even do that.

So I think this is the missed element of cold calling. We tell people to go with value and we tell them a lot. It's like, no, you got to get to value. You got to get to value. Value opens the back door for them to comfortably exit the call to achieve their number one goal at this moment, to get off this call with their self-image intact.

Bruce Lewolt (22:39):

Yeah. True. So just so we're clear with the audience, when we're talking about the value that lets them get off the phone, it's the value to you. It's, are you interested in LMS? Are you interested in calling system? Are you interested in training? Are you interested in all those things? If you present a value that is intrinsic, that they cannot say no to because nobody could say no to, "I'm not interested in learning more about how I can help my students, how I can do help students do whatever it is," or I'm trying to put it in somebody else's words or world, but something that's really that they cannot say no to, but it's not specific. Because, if I know that it's a learning management system, I know it's a sales training system, then I know I'm good in that. I can say "No, we're good at that. We got it. Yeah. We just bought one yesterday." Need a new copier? Just bought it, whatever that is. And it takes some trial and error to craft that in a way that's really in their world that makes some sense. And it has to be paired with curiosity. Got to be a little curious about it.

What’s the reason customers bought from you and will buy from you again? Don’t know? Look to the end of your buyer’s journey — to the team that helps customers successfully use their purchase. That’s the advice of Ed Porter, fractional Chief Revenue Officer of Blue Chip CRO and today’s Market Dominance Guys’ guest. In this third of three conversations with our podcast’s hosts, Corey Frank and Chris Beall, Ed suggests that you find out what’s working for customers, then take that information back to marketing to finetune the value description of your product so that it matches what customers are reporting. That’s the way to successfully sell your product: Start with the end in mind and work backward to inform marketing strategies and sales messaging. If you didn’t think that customer success had anything to do with selling, it’s time to reconsider, as today’s Market Dominance Guys’ episode’s title says, “What Customer Success Can Do for You.”

Listen to the previous two episodes with Ed Porter.

About Our Guest

Ed Porter is a fractional Chief Revenue Officer for Blue Chip CRO, providing coaching and strategy planning services for executives and startups, and helping them rethink and refocus revenue strategies to accelerate growth. He assists his clients in aligning their revenue teams — marketing, sales, enablement, and customer success — to build accountability at every step of their organization, leading to accelerated and sustainable growth. Ed is also an investor and advisor to startups in the Columbus area.

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Full episode transcript below:

Announcer (00:22):

What's the reason customers bought from you and will buy from you again, don't know? Look to the end of your buyer's journey to the team that helps customers successfully use their purchase. That's the advice of Ed Porter, fractional chief revenue officer of blue chip CRO and today's Market Dominance Guy's guest. In this third of three conversations with our podcast host, Corey Frank and Chris Beall, and suggests that you find out what's working for customers. Then take that information back to marketing to fine tune the value description of your product, so that it matches what customers are reporting. That's the way to successfully sell your product. Start with the end in mind and work backwards to inform marketing strategies and sales messaging. If you didn't think that customer success had anything to do with selling, it's time to reconsider as today's Market Dominance Guy's episode title says, 'What customer success can do for you.'

Chris Beall (01:20):

Funny thing about sales commissions as a way of paying people, funny thing to me anyway, is that they have this peculiar quality of being tied to the market for sales talent. But not being tied in any way that can be measured as far as I can figure out, to the performance of that talent within a given sales organization or mission. It's kind of a math problem. There's nothing to compare them to, that is you hire top talent, they make the big commission dollars because you have accelerators in your commissions, you have asymmetries that are built into them, and the top people who would be top people with or without a commission are in the big commissions, and we use that as a feedback loop to say that commissions are working.

Chris Beall (02:05):

If you love to break away from it, you can't because you want the top sales people who are themselves comfortable with that, whether it is myth or truth. There's self-interest in it too, and there should be. Could be paid more than the CEO in most places. But as a salesperson, if you arrange it all correctly, you can be. I mean, our two top salespeople at ConnectAndSell who produce the most total bookings per year are not commissioned. In fact, our three top salespeople are not commissioned.

Corey Frank (02:36):

That's right.

Chris Beall (02:36):

There's no commission whatsoever for those three people. We're a peculiar company though. We're a bootstrap company that literally uses the output that bookings output, which turns very quickly into cash as a means for financing the company as an efficient, economically efficient alternative to venture capital or anything else. Right? But we're old people who can think through stuff like that all the way and we have a confidence that we can make the least likely event in the world to predict, which is the next deal in a portfolio basis, we can make it so likely that we sleep at night, right?

Chris Beall (03:13):

We never sweat a deal. We never think about a deal, actually, you just do what's right for the customer. You let the chips fall and you know, we have something pretty good and it works. But none of us are driven by commission and nor by the way, are we driven by the stock options that we hold or the stock that we hold. We are classic normal, I'll call them normal, Deming described folks. Deming told us people work for pride to workmanship. I guarantee you everybody in this company who produces anything works for pride to workmanship. But we try to reward folks fairly based on what they're contributing, which is never an easy thing to figure out.

Chris Beall (03:54):

And so in sales, since the market screams commissions and we like top salespeople, we adapt to the commission world. And we don't know if we believe in it or not. We might, we might not. It's irrelevant. It's like living in Kansas City and trying to decide if you believe in ribs, what do you mean? It isn't whether you believe in ribs, it's what kind of barbecue sauce is on them and how are you going about cooking?

Corey Frank (04:18):

Yeah. Are you grilling them for two hours or 18 hours? There's a difference.

Chris Beall (04:22):

It's a foolish thing to say, you should move otherwise, you should move from the world of sales. Which you can do by starting a company from scratch, trying, being your own first rep, all that kind of stuff. And there's a lot of ways to do it if you want to go without commissions, but it turns out the reason we love incentives, I believe is for the same reason we love email. It's identical. It's something we feel like we can control the inputs and we can look at them in a, I'll say almost a pornographic kind of way. We're drawn back to them over and over. Ooh, look at the numbers on how my emails are doing out there. And we can say that's work. Look, what are you doing tonight, honey? Oh, I got a lot of work to do, you know, you go on without me to the party.

Chris Beall (05:09):

I have numbers to look at concerning our email response rates for campaign A versus campaign B. I've said it before on Market Dominance Guys, if you think you're AB testing, you are either a charlatan or a fool. You're a charlatan, you're selling somebody that you're A/B testing. Here's a A/B testing, I throw a big monkey and a little monkey into a room with knives in their hands and a patient on the table. And we see which one causes the patient to die less fast. I'm trying to do a heart surgery. I can't A/B test my way to heart surgery. It doesn't matter whether I pair the monkeys up or throw them in all at once. As long as I put knives in their hands, I can't A/B test in any reasonable way. And A/B testing, when I say people are fools, I'm not saying that as a pejorative, I'm just saying mathematically they're fooling themselves.

Chris Beall (06:02):

There are way, way, way more dimensions on this vector that you think you're A/B testing than your A/B testing. You think you're testing A versus B. You have no idea what you're testing, none whatsoever. There's selection bias. There's survivorship bias. There's application of resource differential bias. There's timing bias. If you think you have control over all that stuff, you are simply a dreamer. Go get yourself a nice John Lennon song, sing it end to end and imagine that there was no variables. Well, I'm sorry, there's a lot of variables and you aren't controlling for all of them. I come out of the sciences personally, this is my background. I'm a physicist mathematician by training. The mathematics teaches you how to do the physics. The physics teaches you that simple things are so hard that you still got to go in the lab, for real. I remember being in the lab once trying to measure the speed of light in the room, the size that I'm in right now. Light's really fast by the way, right?

Chris Beall (07:04):

So how are you going to get clocks at other opposite ends of the room synchronized? It's really hard. Can you synchronize a clock with itself, maybe how fine grained? These are hard questions. To get the speed of light plus or minus 7% took me four months of hard work, four hours every single day. You think you're going to A/B test your way to something more complex than something as simple as how fast did that light beam get down to that mirror and back, and you're going to find some hidden truth. It's not going to happen. It's not going to happen. You have to start with what works and what works. Here's the beauty of Ed's business. Ed's pioneering a new way of looking at business, that is in my opinion, a 100% reliable. It's not 99% reliable. It's a 100% reliable and it starts here. Find out what's working for customers by talking about customer success.

Chris Beall (08:02):

Step one. Step two is thread back from that and find out where the value description change doesn't match that anymore. And step three is once you figure out a value description that is compatible with the psychological fact of an ambush call, insert into ambush call techniques sufficiently to find more such people who will engage with you.

Chris Beall (09:14):

This is the Market Dominance program that we've been talking about for 133 episodes, except it's more sophisticated. We always said, start with your hypothesis that says your hypothesis is sitting right out there in the real world, unless you're starting a brand new offer.

Corey Frank (09:31):

Yeah, exactly. Launching a new product, launching a new company. Absolutely. Other than that, you've got data.

Chris Beall (09:37):

There's Tim Ferris talks, he's a big chess player. And he talks about the move called, I'm going to butcher it for those chess grandmasters who are on here, and I like chess, but a Zugzwang. Are you familiar with this Chris or Ed?

Ed Porter (09:51):

You know, my book started on move one. My book ends on move five and I never could memorize anything past that. Yeah. I can fork with the best of them. But when I say I'm doing that, people get upset.

Corey Frank (10:07):

Oh yeah there's the Bohemian Gambit. Now the Zugzwang, in essence, and it sounds very much like your model Ed, a Zugzwang, as far as I understand for those who are chest masters, is that it's a situation that you find yourself in chess where any move an opponent makes derives their position. Meaning in a business scenario, it sounds like we're often so compelled to do something. There's this compulsion to move and do something, anything, as opposed to take an assessment on wait a minute, Ed, that works right?

Corey Frank (10:47):

And oh okay, so don't mess with that. That sounds like it's working. And so too often, as we started off this discussion about what are these things that a lot of CROs come from, who I have to always look for the extra basis points that I got to get this tech stack and I got to get this new shiny object and sales 3.0, I got to get to this exhibition hall first because I want to get all the business cards on all the new cool, shiny tech that has just been VC minted. And as opposed to, there's pride and if you've built a good bone structure, you don't have to mess with that because there's other variables in the system that probably need a little bit more attention. But that's when it sounds like a little bit what you're describing Ed's business, Chris, right?

Chris Beall (11:28):

When I am, yeah, I like that particular description. Somebody once said, start with the end in mind. The end is already out there to be found, you don't have to invent it. It's Ed's point.

Ed Porter (11:39):

It's a great work backwards. It's already there work backwards. It's the same thing with the math of sales. At some point you're starting with a goal and like walk, work backwards to get to it. Start with the activities. Now you need to, and then look at, as everything moves. And again, I think the other part too is start with what you got, but that doesn't necessarily mean that's your end all be all. If there is Velocify I think, I don't know if they're still around or if they got acquired, but they put a report out maybe four years ago, five years ago or so, that kind of talked about different stages of a business. And when you get to this point where, when you're starting, you're selling to customers that are within close proximity, close reach to you. Often those are maybe smaller customers that you're trying to get proof of concept.

Ed Porter (12:25):

You're trying to get some validation. You're trying to get up and going, and then you're going to go up market. So there's that natural progression. So just because you're serving, let's call it small customers today, doesn't mean you have to serve small customers forever. But start somewhere and start to figure out reasons why people buy from you. Why did they buy a second time from you? Understand that whole onboarding process. Like these are things that are irrelevant to the size of the business. And it has everything to do with what you're doing and understanding their buying triggers, understanding how you onboarded them, how you supported them. And then do we know why they've bought from us? Renewed one year, two years? Do we know why? Do we know that we're having these team meetings and getting entrenched into the customer's business and the customer success rep knows a different amount of people.

Ed Porter (13:17):

These are great things to go talk about on the buying side, when you're starting to have conversations with people about this is what it looks like being a customer of ours. This is how we run onboarding. This is how we run post onboarding. This is how we run training. This is how we look at adoption. This is how we interact with you. I mean, if you're painting that picture now, it's not a matter of whether you're an SMB or you're an enterprise client. So that's where I think you start with what you got and put a process together of the lather, rinse, repeat, and start getting proficient there and start the engine moving and now go make tweaks. Now go upmarket. Now go to a different buyer persona. Bring in another product, great. Now you got another product that you can add to your arsenal. So I think that's a starting point for sure.

Corey Frank (14:05):

Well, it sounds like with the markets that we see today, certainly clients that Chris and I work with every day, I don't see how your services aren't going to be fairly busy here, in the foreseeable future Ed. So it's been great having you on the Market Dominance Guys. I know, where can we learn a little bit more about what you do at Blue Chip Ed?

Ed Porter (14:23):

Yes, my website bluechipcro.com, but I am also all over LinkedIn. So look me up Ed Porter or the company Blue Chip CRO. Very vocal about things, sometimes highly debated topics, as well as some conventional thinking, but I put it all out there and it's something that I'm trying to get more from brain to paper, brain to paper. Because there's a lot of things going around again with Chris's book, hopefully that comes out a 3000 page book would be wonderful to just put Chris's brain dump on paper. But that's what I try and do. So I'm on LinkedIn and if you hear this podcast and you haven't heard of me before then connect with me, but let me know where you, where you found me. So let me know you've heard me on the Market Dominance Guys podcast that I like to know where people see me and then even some of the value. And I'm also a very big advocate on being social on social platforms. So don't just give things a like, give a comment. So I like engaging in conversation. So that's where you can find me, LinkedIn and website.

Chris Beall (15:21):

Fantastic. And if you're ever in Columbus, make sure that you send Ed a text because otherwise you're on the shit list forever.

Ed Porter (15:28):

Yes, exactly. You will be buying dinner next time.

Chris Beall (15:32):

At the very least.

Ed Porter (15:33):

That's the penalty.

Chris Beall (15:34):

That's all right though. You've got some good places there I haven't sampled yet. So by the way, I love the fact that you're Blue Chip and you're wearing blue on brand, all the market people get into that.

Ed Porter (15:44):

Yeah, very much so.

Chris Beall (15:46):

Ed chose to be on a show here that if anybody's getting in on video, I got a blue bay behind me with a blue ship. So blue chip blue ship, you know me, I reason from the sounds of words, because the meanings are too hard to understand. Ed, I think it's fascinating what you're doing. It is a non-trivial recasting of the entire situation by bringing in customer success.

Ed Porter (16:21):

Yeah. Yeah. It's a really interesting world. But yeah, thank you so much for the time. Yeah, I appreciate it.

Whether you’re new to sales or a seasoned cold caller, you no doubt have a go-to way of starting a phone conversation with a prospect. Excellent! But how’s that working for you? Ed Porter, the fractional Chief Revenue Officer of Blue Chip CRO is our Market Dominance Guys' guest. He talks today about scripts, pattern-interrupts, and the art of conversation with our hosts, Chris Beall and Corey Frank. As Chris points out, that first conversation is an ambush call, and nobody likes to be ambushed, especially by an invisible stranger. Ed totally agrees and adds that “Fear prevents us from picking up the phone” — which is true whether you’re the salesperson or the prospect. So, what can generally get both the caller and the prospect past that fear? A well-constructed cold-calling script, but not necessarily one that a salesperson makes up on their own. Ed says it’s got to be architected from a sound plan that includes expertise and advice from both the marketing and customer success teams, which is why we’ve titled today’s Market Dominance Guys’ episode, “The Architecture of a First Conversation.”

Listen to his previous episode: EP134 - Is sales the real problem?

About Our Guest

Ed Porter is a fractional Chief Revenue Officer for Blue Chip CRO, providing coaching and strategy planning services for executives and startups, and helping them rethink and refocus revenue strategies to accelerate growth. He assists his clients in aligning their revenue teams — marketing, sales, enablement, and customer success — to build accountability at every step of their organization, leading to accelerated and sustainable growth. Ed is also an investor and advisor to startups in the Columbus area.

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Full episode transcript below:

Announcer (00:22):

Whether you're new to sales or a seasoned cold caller, you no doubt have a go-to way of starting a phone conversation with a prospect. Excellent. But how's that working for you? Ed Porter, The Fractional Chief Revenue Officer of Blue Chip CRO, and Our Market Dominance Guy's guest, talks today about scripts, pattern interrupts, and the art of conversation with our hosts, Chris Beall and Corey Frank. As Chris points out, that first conversation is an ambush call, and nobody likes to be ambushed, especially by an invisible stranger. Ed totally agrees, and adds that, fear prevents us from picking up the phone, which is true, whether you're the salesperson or the prospect. So what can generally get both the caller and the prospect past that fear? A well constructed cold calling script, but not necessarily one that a salesperson makes up on their own. Ed says, "It's got to be architect from a sound plan that includes expertise and advice from both the marketing and customer success teams, which is why we've titled today's Market Dominance Guys episode, The Architecture of a First Conversation."

Corey Frank (01:36):

So Ed, this is the Market Dominance Guys, and we talk about all things sales and marketing and how to dominate your marketing. We believe, certainly both of our organizations Branch49 and ConnectAndSell. And certainly think you believe the same thing, that conversation first strategy has to be at the core of what you're doing to dominate your market. So when you coach your clients and talk to your groups, your teams that you invest in about go to market, what are some of your thoughts on conversation first, and how you do it well and how they're doing it today? And I'm sure you've seen your share of poorly designed scripts in the world. And you've probably heard your share of cringe-worthy cold calls that they're still hanging on from, you can't pry from their cold dead fingers because, every once in a while it does work, but just overall your thoughts on cool calling today.

Ed Porter (02:31):

Again, something I love talking about and something that I think one of the reasons why Chris and I always have familiar ground to speak from, is that architecting a first conversation is in practice, very simple, but conceptually very difficult. You don't have a whole lot of time on a first conversation. I think in most of the markets that we're in, and I do want to talk a little bit about PLG because I think there's a big overlap that is being missed right now with PLG. PLG doesn't mean if you build it, they will come again. We kind of use that same thing. There's still an intervention of a human being in a conversation that needs to happen to move the needle along. So I will always firmly believe in, and I'll say in most B2B, I think there are some very highly transactional products that can very well, if you architect the messaging and the cadence properly, it can work, but purely transactional lower value.

Ed Porter (03:30):

But beyond that, taking all of those butts aside is, architecting the conversation, and the conversation is starting point and not the end point. A lot of times, I think I was on a podcast a few years back talking about this word vomit, is sales people because if you're talking this 88.723% of you're losing against status quo, not to mention the other percentage points you're losing literally other competitors. You know your win rates are very small, but you start looking further back into the funnel and say, your connection rates are very small. So when you do get a connection, you get excited and everything in your brain says, "I got like two minutes to tell Chris everything or else I lose him." So we get into this tangent of, "Oh, you picked up the phone. What do I say?"

Ed Porter (04:20):

And then second is, now that we're having a conversation, where do I go? And I just need to get all of this stuff off of me because, it's either in my playbook or I need to prequalify before something. And I'm driven by other things other than what really the buyer's saying, except I'm really excited that I'm talking to them. So that whole emotional battle is really important. So having a training to default to, to be able to understand how you're going to carry a conversation from stranger to some familiarity with me, and then some familiarity with me to somehow getting more time on a calendar or a next step going. It's simple in practice or at least in time, it's probably a minute and a half, maybe two minutes at most. But when you start thinking about all of the angles, it can go, how do you get somebody when somebody picks up the phone, what are the chances that they're actually listening to you and not looking at an email on their screen and just kind of half listening.

Ed Porter (05:18):

So how do you get their attention? And we talk a lot about pattern interrupts. You talk a lot about how do you not be the same old, same old. So when it comes down to scripting, I'll say I'm a huge fan of scripts. And I think there's a difference between word-for-word scripts throughout every single conversation, and word-for-word scripts to try and build your next step. And there's a big difference to that. I don't think you can script out a whole sales process. I just don't think it's there, but you can script out certain things to say precisely to get a conversation open or to close for a next step. There are some things that can be scripted out. The very least for everything else is that it's all a plan. So I do go into these to any engagement. Once I get past the whole customer success marketing thing, and we actually start diving into sales, then we start saying, is it a true cold call where they have no idea, or are you calling from a lead?

Ed Porter (06:14):

And if the lead what's happened, so we got to start scripting it at that point. But if we're going to pick up the phone, and we're going to try and get somebody on the phone, and they're not expecting our call, I don't care if they ask us to contact us. And maybe it's five minutes, maybe it's 15 minutes. Whatever that gap in time is, they're still not expecting our call, when we call. We have to understand that. And again, this is something Chris talked about in our meeting. Geez, Chris, I think this was five years ago, maybe six years ago. It's this realization of, when you're calling someone, you are the problem. So you have to de arm them a little bit to try and say, how do you lower that defense mechanism to try and at least get to the next step. You got like seven or eight seconds before somebody makes a decision to click or to keep listening or to inject and say something else.

Ed Porter (07:04):

So when you start thinking about this, you have to build your chess game in these seven or eight second increments. And then how do you ask the question? How do you listen for that? And then how do you pivot? And if you get a Chatty Cathy on the line, great, keep having conversations, but also know you got to be real clear about that next step. You got to be clear to close. And that's where these conversations, I think the art of conversation, maybe this is the book you got to write, Chris is, the Art of Conversation, and parallel that to the art of war, and make this the real understanding of thinking about when people talk to each other and have a conversation. What's the information exchange look like? How do you ask and tell? And how do you walk up to a stranger?

Ed Porter (07:49):

You just got done eating dinner at the short north and you're walking up the street and you're going up to somebody and saying, "I like what you're drinking. How do I get that?" That's still that you have to architect that conversation. And it's tough. And we can talk about fear all day long too. And that prevents us from doing a lot of things. It prevents us from picking up the phone. It prevents us, it rationalizes so that we can find other reasons not to pick up the phone. And it also prevents us from moving on to the next step. So there's my word vomit on that topic because I absolutely love talking about it. There are plenty of people who say, "Oh, I never pick up a cold call." Great. I'm not going to convince you otherwise, but I'm going to say there are plenty of other people, not like you, and I'm not just selling to you.

Ed Porter (08:35):

So why wouldn't I want to make sure that I'm everything to everybody where I can be. So I don't believe that's a reason not to do something. So this is something that involves a lot of thought, a lot of psychology, and the ones who architect it right and properly are seeing huge gains in better connection rates, better conversation rates, better conversation to meeting rates. And you see that whole top end of that funnel really get optimized. Now it's up to the sales people. You really got to know your stuff now because I'm teeing you up a lot of good leads, don't fumble them. That's my thought and alignment on cold calling on scripting on messaging and really understanding the architecture of a first conversation.

Chris Beall (09:17):

I love it. It ties into what you were talking about earlier in a subtle way that I think people often miss, which is, you had mentioned before we got on here, that customer success and the alignment between customer success and marketing is key. And that's where you want to start. Because you're hearing truly the voice of the customer, not at random, but about the problem they're trying to solve and about how you're offering helps them. And you can actually just start there. You can ignore all of the customer complaints. You can actually say, the voice of the customer only consists of the good stuff. Bruce Lee Walt, said this to me the other day. I said, some of our agents get a lot much higher transfer rate than others. He said, "Send me the recordings of two of them that are the best." I said, "What about the worst?"

Chris Beall (10:03):

He said, "You don't learn anything from that." And I thought that was a really good point. You don't actually learn anything from the worst, because there are millions of ways to fail. And there are millions of points in time when you can fail. And if you multiply millions times millions, you get really big numbers. And so what you want to know is not, where are all the places that you can fish out there in Puget sound on this particular bait and not catch any fish, you want to know? Is there a spot out there in the Strait of Juan de Fuca, where it gets a little bit shallow when there's sand and you can put a sand dab down there and catch yourself a big hell of it. That's what you want to know. And by the way you want the guy to bring the hell of it.

Chris Beall (10:44):

If the lady to bring the hell of it over to your house, because well, I can tell you from experience, it's great when they do. So that, starting with the successful experience of the product and then narrowing the focus down in the marketing communication side to, okay, let's talk about how people are finding it something that helps them today. So the math is really interesting, right? My Tesla could do a million things. Whatever the million things are, it could be a door stop. I could hide behind it while people over here are having their Friday night shootouts, whatever it happens to be. But there's something that I am finding is the good bit about my Tesla. I don't have a Tesla by the way. I always have to say this. I use it. I don't have one, I use it as an analogy. Jonty has one, Hitech has one. I don't have a Tesla. Okay. Everybody. I wish I had a Tesla, but the CEO gig, it just actually doesn't pay that much.

Speaker 5 (11:40):

And this portion of the Market Dominance Guys is brought to you by Tesla. Go ahead Chris.

Chris Beall (11:44):

You almost personally asked me to put this stuff on, but if we talked to somebody about it, we talked to 10 folks about their Tesla. What do you love about it? We're going to find a convergence that occurs mathematically among the things they love. Some things will be mentioned a lot of times, some few, if we make our marketing communication, do nothing, no creativity. Just say let's take the number, one thing that people love. And let's go talk about that. Well, who's going to do the talking? [inaudible 00:12:12] Aha. Salespeople. In what context? Well, you can't have a second conversation before you have a first one.

Chris Beall (12:19):

So let's start with the big problem. The first conversation. Okay. Now, within the psychological constraints of the first conversation, which is of the form of an ambush of one human being by another, who is scared of them. So nobody answers the phone going. I sure hope it's Ed, unless they see that it's otherwise.

Ed Porter (12:37):

Well, I can't wait for a cold call.

Chris Beall (12:40):

You cannot. Yeah. I was busy right now, but I was about to go into this meeting and, so when they answer, we know their psychological states. So now what you've done is you've stitched together the two ends of the market perfectly.

Chris Beall (13:49):

One end is constrained by value already being received, codified into what do most of them say they like, not like the most, but what do most of them say they like, what a second, because markets are numerical beasts in that sense. So we're not going to seek the one thing, "Oh, I love my Tesla because every once in a while it has some weird glitch and it does some strange thing I think is really pretty." I love that most, who cares, right? Nobody else mentioned it. Get rid of that crap. And then the other end where the constraint is psychological. So you have a numerical constraint on one side, which is who mentions something the most that they like, you have a psychological constraint on the other side, which is the ambush somebody, and you are now the problem. And if you can make those work together, you will always dominate the market for that thing that is mentioned the most, which happens to be tied to a thing that you're selling, called your product.

Chris Beall (14:46):

That formula is powerful and you are bringing that formula in a practical way as you call it a fractional CRO, but it's actually a revenue system designer starting from the two. In my opinion, your business is starting from the two big constraints. One of them is a numerical constraint, and one of them is a psychological constraint and you are causing those to come together in a place that, a hundred monkeys given scalpels in the room are not going to accidentally discover heart surgery, right? They're just, it's got to be a bloody mess.

Chris Beall (15:22):

So you're going to come in and go, no, first we got to put the patient to sleep. So they don't move quite so much. Then, by the way, did you know, there are hearts in this part of their body? Now here's what we're going to do, right? You're going to start there. You're going to calm it down and start way over here on the customer's side. But I don't know anybody else who ties it all the way back to the true hard, you cannot escape it. I don't care how much you want to psychological constraint of the ambush that is required to have a first conversation. And I think that's fascinating. Does that resonate with you? Or am I just saying that Columbus is a great place?

Ed Porter (16:04):

No, it definitely does. And I think that's going on, a lot of these analogies really show, everybody who's done it knows that, selling is hard. And it's hard because sometimes we make it harder on ourselves. Sometimes the company makes it harder on us, sometimes the customers, prospects, whatever. It's hard, it's a numbers game, like you said, and part psychological. So the part that really resonates here is when you start thinking through this. And a lot of it just starts with thought and brainstorming and starting to understand why people do things that they do. So this now you're morphing into the psychological part, and the ones who understand it. There's a lot of psychology and marketing, where there's a lot of psychology in sales too. There's a ton of psychology in customer support. Now, whether or not you actually do anything with that is a second debate, but there's psychology in talking to humans.

Ed Porter (16:57):

And that's exactly what is here, there. And when you start getting into this form of figuring out emotions and defense mechanisms, and how do you break through it? Are we just going to accept it, and just accept that every 100 calls we make, we're only going to talk to maybe a half a person, and are we just going to accept it, and just now it's a numbers game and we do a math formula and say, we need a hundred salespeople to go generate $2 million a year. So you start figuring out that to say, it's either accepted or we're going to improve. And if others are doing it, now, you've got, well, how are you able to do it? Now we get down this path of, oh, you're not manually picking up a handset and dialing nine one, blah, blah. Oh, you're using this clickable app?

Ed Porter (17:44):

And so now that's a step towards making a little bit more efficiency. And now we've got the technology again, Corey, to this point of, we've got this technology that allows us to go faster. But if I got this technology that allows me to go faster, and have eight to 10 conversations in an hour. If I don't know what the heck I'm going to say, then all I'm doing is accelerating suck. So all I'm doing is having eight to 10 conversations an hour with people who I'm offending upsetting, and I'm not coming from the point of them being the problem. And how do I have a good successful conversation? And how do I really invest in the follow-up? That's where the money is, right? It's all in the follow-up. So that's this whole architecting of a conversation to say, technology, doesn't matter how fast you can go. If you're not saying the right things that are resonating with the people that you're talking to, then all you're doing is just whether it's a marketing spend or whether it's a sales spend, either way it's money out the window.

Corey Frank (18:38):

Yeah. Amplify suck. Chris has saved me several times, not soon enough. I must tell you in the audience here, but several times I have had a large inside sales organization. I say, Chris, let's just ramp it up. Let's everybody, like the scene from the professional, bring everyone to the forefront of ConnectAndSell, all 150 of them. And Chris is like, "Well, I'm not sure." You stay out of this. You have the technology, everyone. Well, let's just say about five figures a day for several weeks, Chris is sitting at the corner saying, no, I told you, so you got to have the right bone structure first, otherwise, again, I epitomized several times. I don't learn them but degenerate gambler, the amplify suck comment, I think was meant for me. So Ed, when you think about some of the, Chris talks about deep truths and no sales ambush call, right?

Corey Frank (19:32):

No one's going to reveal a deep truth in a sales ambush call. So stop trying to make it something that it wasn't designed to be, the Tesla's not designed to be a doorstop, at an intro cold outreach call is not designed to be a deep truth discovery call. So stop trying to make it what it is. But when you look at your practice, the years of experience that you had, the companies that you advised and guided, what are some of the controversial truths that are maybe a little bit counter-cultural, that you present to your clients, to your VPs of sales, to your sales managers, that you advise that at first they're a little bit like, 'Hey, burn the witch." All right? Or they're, "We can't do that here." Or, "We've tried that." Do you have a few of them that come to mind?

Chris Beall (20:19):

Saying in Columbus we barbecue the witch, by the way we don't. [inaudible 00:20:23] We're good. We barbecue the witch.

Corey Frank (20:26):

Yeah. It's called impossible witch. They also have impossible [inaudible 00:20:30]

Ed Porter (20:29):

Yeah. Right.

Corey Frank (20:33):

Tastes just like [inaudible 00:20:35]

Ed Porter (20:34):

There's certainly a few. I think a lot of the deer and headlights reactions are when I start talking about cold outreach. And it's more about, well, we try to warm it up a little bit. We try to make somebody not completely cold. And then we start having the conversation about, well, even if somebody knows who your company is, they don't know who you are. And they certainly aren't ready to have a conversation with you at the time that you want to have a conversation. And let's not just look at this on the phone. Let's look at the same thing on email. I may know, obviously, I know Nike as a brand. If I get an email from Nike, because I know the brand, is that going to make me more likely or less likely to read the email?

Ed Porter (21:16):

There's a couple schools of thought there one is, it's just another newsletter I'm just done with this stuff and delete. So I see something from a Nike, delete. So that's one school of thought. The other school of thought is, yeah, of course it's Nike. I'm going to listen. So there's still that unpredictability, but at some point you're relying, you're resting your laurels on, let's build a brand, and then once our brand is known, we're going to have a lot easier time having conversations.

Ed Porter (21:43):

And that just doesn't happen. And it's a fallacy. And a lot of people that when I start talking about that is less about your brand and more about that interaction, then my follow up question is, do you know how many calls it takes to get a conversation right now? I don't care where the source of the lead comes from. I don't care if it's responding to some kind of contact me. I don't care what it is, but do you know what the rough ratio is? And it's shocking that most don't, and it's like, okay, well let's start looking and let's see how much activity is happening in order to [inaudible 00:22:16]

Corey Frank (22:16):

And you're talking about their math of sales, a lot of sales leaderships today, aren't sure of their top of funnel ratios for their math of sales. That's what right.

Ed Porter (22:27):

Yeah, exactly. Making those steps. They probably have a good idea on conversion rates, more than likely of, yeah opportunities closed one. We get that. And maybe there's an understanding of MQLS and SQLS, but even we go into the path of, your MQLS, probably aren't all treated equal either. So yes. Now we're getting into the real top of funnel of activities to net outcomes of conversations, or we can go email reply rates, but let's stick to the phone. So calls to conversations, conversations to meetings. And what that meeting is another, what is that first meeting? So you have a conversation and somebody's booking time on a calendar. What is that? What is that next? Is that a true discovery call or is it not going that deep? Is it an hour-long call, or is it a 15-minute call? What are you trying to get and is understanding why do you do it that way?

Ed Porter (23:17):

If you're trying to call somebody cold, and book time on a calendar for an hour discovery call, how did you pick that as the time limit? And those are the things where we start getting into a lot more questions that are being raised. When then I go back to kind of proving my point of, we need to architect the cold outreach so that you're highly optimized on the front end. And that's going to involve a certain amount of outbound activity. Most importantly, in this is you're going to have to know what to say. And then in that know what to say, is what's your next step? And how do you understand that hill? And then come right back down, and however sharp it is, great, but you got to be able to do that. And when we start getting into this philosophical discussion about what your sales team say, when somebody picks up the phone, what's their opening. And some people know Sandler, and some people go with the pattern interrupt, and that's fine.

Ed Porter (24:13):

At least you have something. Others are just like, what we're trying to get the decision-maker. And then we're trying to ask them who you're using for their payroll system. Okay. That, Hey, it's a way, but let's start getting better there. But when we start talking cold outreach, that becomes a little bit more of the eyebrow-raising as we're trying not to do that, or we don't really know the success rate. And I tend to go a little deeper into that arena, and then parlay that right into, who's making those calls? Is it a full cycle sales rep? You have a dedicated BDR SDR team. How are they comped? And that's a whole other thing that we can debate about, because I start talking about comp plans and unrelated to closed deals. And sometimes that's, oh, we would never do that. Why would we comp somebody if a deal doesn't close?

Ed Porter (24:58):

Well, who's working on what? And that's where you, do you comp marketing when deals close or do you comp marketing on their NQO rate? And now we get into this whole, what's the objective of these particular sales team members? How responsible are they in the whole sales cycle? And if they're not responsible or partaking or owning a certain cycle, then don't rest the laurels on the comp there. So we start getting that into net and then compensation becomes a little bit more of an eyebrow raise. And there's actually a lot of discussion out there, which I'm really interested in learning more about. I've got probably very infant knowledge on no sales commissions being offered, and kind of looking at the behaviors that instill as a result of sales conversations. There's a demoing philosophy on, no sales commissions. And then a couple people I've heard talk about no sales commissions, one being Erol Toker, founder of Truly. Heard him on a podcast, not too long ago, that he doesn't believe in sales commissions and does more harm than good.

Ed Porter (26:07):

And I think these are again, schools of thought, but where I start to think about this is, ultimately it says, what are you compensated for? And how are you measuring success? So going through the analogy Chris used about, don't tell me the 70, 80% of the ocean that doesn't work for fishing. Tell me the parts that do work, and let me go there. I don't want to listen to the bad calls. I don't care about dissecting all of the things that are bad. Again, it's in the spirit of trying to fix it, but let's look at the good ones. Let's figure out what works, and then go replicate that. Give me two good ones. That's easy to consume instead of 15 bad ones. I don't want to listen to 15 bad calls, especially if they're hour-long discovery calls. I'm not have to listen to 15 of those. I'd rather listen to two, and start marking what works.

Ed Porter (26:52):

What's starting to fuel good conversations. So there's a lot of theories there, but that compensation part is, how is your sales team aligned? What are they really responsible for? Do they have goals that can be tracked back to even daily goals, and are those goals or inputs what their compensation plan is based off of, or are they only compensated on the output? So those are two areas when we start talking with clients about understanding our cold outreach, kind of diffusing the whole, if you build it, they will come and really standing behind. You got to have a good message. You got to understand the time that you're reaching out to somebody and how you're garnering that next step. And then we go into understanding the outputs, but then also building the inputs and how that relates to sales compensation.

Ed Porter (27:39):

Those tend to be some things that raise some eyebrows, at least initially, as we start to have conversations and start to work through it. Beyond that, I would say a third thing that, we kind of talked about earlier is, and I just had a client last year. That was this way, they were very set on, they have a sales problem, their salespeople need to be better at architecting discovery. And then their next step in the conversation was a needs analysis. And then they went to a demo and maybe it went into a second or third or fourth demo. So they needed to lock down this process. And again, it wound up being when we started to dive into, it is who are the customers you're serving? What problems are they experiencing? How are you able to solve them? Have you figured this out?

Ed Porter (28:26):

And then it's like, "Well, we don't really have that documented somewhere." Well, okay, well let's go document it. So then I went over to customer success that we wanted. So again, somebody who had a real finite problem, we couldn't solve for that because we didn't get the other layers deeper. So I had to go into customer success and spend a lot of time there. And then I had to look at marketing and say, what is marketing talking about? And then how are we using marketing messaging in the sales process to better architect, the first conversation, the first meeting, the first discovery call, the first demo, let's architect these key milestones. And the only way I can know how to architect those, is if I understand this question journey that I want to be able to take the prospect through to be able to understand, does it even make sense for us to talk now?

Ed Porter (29:13):

Or do you have a problem big enough, that you're even willing to solve. There may be a problem that they have, that I got to figure out. I got employees leaving left and right, I got to figure out how to retain them. What have you done to change that? Well, nothing. Okay. Well maybe it's not big enough to want to solve, so maybe I can't help you. So that becomes kind of the third thing is, when clients have the sales problem and it's often not, and it's often you need to go get some information on customer success, take it back to marketing, and then make sure that everybody's singing the same tune. And that's usually a little bit more of uphill battle when they want me fixated on one thing.

If a company isn’t experiencing success, the finger of blame is usually pointed at the sales department. Ed Porter, the fractional Chief Revenue Officer of Blue Chip CRO, is here to say that it ain’t necessarily so. Ed joins our Market Dominance Guys, Chris Beall and Corey Frank, on today’s podcast to talk about his experience in helping companies ferret out the real culprits — and it’s not always the sales reps. In exploring the problem with his own customers, Ed has discovered that marketing and customer success are often the departments that need some repair or fine-tuning. He wholeheartedly agrees with one of Chris’ maxims: In a cold call, “technology amplifies ‘suck’,” which is what you’ll see if there’s a technology-provided increase in your cold-calling speed but there’s no company alignment of messaging, training, coaching, and follow-up. So, take Ed’s advice for business trouble-shooting and ask yourself the question posed by today’s Market Dominance Guys’ title, “Is Sales the Real Problem?”

About Our Guest

Ed Porter is a fractional Chief Revenue Officer for Blue Chip CRO, providing coaching and strategy planning services for executives and startups, and helping them rethink and refocus revenue strategies to accelerate growth. He assists his clients in aligning their revenue teams — marketing, sales, enablement, and customer success — to build accountability at every step of their organization, leading to accelerated and sustainable growth. Ed is also an investor and advisor to startups in the Columbus area. 

Connect with Ed Porter on LinkedIn

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Full episode transcript below:

Corey Frank (01:26):

Welcome to another episode of the Market Dominance Guys. This is Corey Frank with the sage of sales and the princely profit of profit, Chris Beall. Chris, how are you?

Chris Beall (01:39):

Fantastic Corey. If I were any better, I would swim out to that cruise ship and wave hello to everybody.

Corey Frank (01:45):

We had a great guest with us today, Chris, from the AA-ISP world, the esteemed AA-ISP world, right? We have Mr. Ed Porter. Sir. Ed, welcome. Welcome to the crucible. Welcome to the octagon.

Ed Porter (01:57):

Yeah. You got to call it something. You got to get it something profane and something relevant and something that people are going to go, "What the heck is that?"

Corey Frank (02:05):

The thunder dome. Welcome to the sales thunder dome with Chris Beall.

Ed Porter (02:09):

Yeah. Thanks guys. Appreciate it. The world is very big. But of course, as we all know, the world is also very small. And so, I first met Chris through AA-ISP, which is a association that he's been a supporter of for a long time. I've been a member of, I've run the Columbus chapter. And I somehow suckered him into flying to Columbus from the West Coast to do a meeting really early in the morning. So, he came from West Coast time to Eastern Standard Time and still agreed to a 7:30 AM meeting. So, it was a great meeting. One of the most well attended meetings because it was the benefit. There was no PowerPoint deck. I loved it. There was no presentation. It was conversation. And that's exactly what you talk about.

So, it was very conversational. It was a great interactive meeting. And it talked about that first phone call. And I think that's the trepidation that a lot of people have is, how do you make the first call? What do you say? How do I not word vomit? And I think that context really resonated with a lot of people. Fast forward, then as Chris mentioned, I was a customer of ConnectAndSell and really wanted to understand just the different value in these dialers and what a dialer is and how it can work. And the difference now what Chris is doing in agent assisted dialing and how that really turns the needle into acceleration and what that really means. And we were building a sales development team and it was a lot of we're going to try and see what works. And we did a... What do you call it now? The flight, the pilot?

Chris Beall (03:42):

You did an intensive test drive [inaudible 00:03:44]-

Ed Porter (03:44):

Intensive test drive. There it is. Yeah. So, that was the first. And just the data we got from that was... I remember having a conversation with my boss and I said, "I'm looking for you to poke holes in it but I just don't see that there's a bad decision here. I think we have to go forward with it unless you can see anything else?" He's like, "No. Doesn't seem like it." So, financially we were able to scale that team. We would've hired about 26, 27 SDRs. And we did it before. And we covered the whole country with it. So, again, that solidified our relationship. And then, since then we've kept in touch. Although Chris just came to Columbus and didn't shoot me a text. So, I was really disappointed. And then I had to give him crap for that.

Corey Frank (04:27):

He would've just-

Chris Beall (04:27):

My reasoning around that, Ed is simple. I was there with Helen for the Elton John concert and my fiance, Helen Fanucci has deep connections in Columbus. And so, everything was booked and you have to be around Helen sometime to really get this. Always asks what I want to do. And she always does and never pushes anything on me. However, she's faster than I am, a lot faster than I am at putting stuff together. So, I end up in the position quite happily of going, "Okay." And we were-

Ed Porter (04:59):

So, you're riding shotgun.

Chris Beall (05:01):

I was riding shotgun. However, I also have another certainty, which is it... We're never going to go to Columbus again because we both really, really like Columbus. And I'm going to make a pitch here for Columbus, for anybody who has not spent time in Columbus. Columbus is in my estimation in the top two or 3% of cities in America of any substance in size for simply being delightful to be there. And I can tell you, we were standing in the Short North, walk out the door, you walk down the street, you see people that are having a good time. It's pleasant, they're pleasant.

There's a lot of things to do. So many places are either all jazzed up or they're just boring as hell. Columbus walks that middle but it's not a tight middle, it's a broad middle. And you're very comfortable when you're there. And the food at places like Barcelona and the Guild and Martinis, if you had not been there to do these things, you owe yourself. Fly out, ask whether you can do a breakfast meeting for the AA-ISP, that's how I do it. And then maybe Ed will put you on and you can talk about something. Preferably not first conversations, whoever the hell you [inaudible 00:06:13].

Corey Frank (06:13):

Okay. So, this segment of the Market Dominance Guys is brought to you by the Columbus Chamber Of Commerce. Thank you.

Ed Porter (06:20):

There we go. There we go.

Chris Beall (06:23):

It was not [inaudible 00:06:24]. I just fell in love with Columbus again.

Corey Frank (06:26):

Yeah. I love Columbus. I spent a week there one day, so-

Ed Porter (06:30):

Oh, nice. Yeah. Again, it used to be a flyover town or a cow town. There's actually... I don't know if you saw this at the airport. There were shirts in the gift shops that talk about cow tipping. And it's like the funny humorous shirts but this used to be a cow town. And that I think was 30, 40 years ago. But now it's developing into a lot more. And the Short North downtown area has really been revitalized. Of course the Ohio State University is right next, that campus is right next to the Short North downtown. So, that's been... Yeah. Probably one of those...

Corey Frank (07:04):

[inaudible 00:07:04].

Ed Porter (07:04):

Yeah. Probably one of those-

Corey Frank (07:04):

I got to check into that. I didn't know they still...

Ed Porter (07:09):

Yeah. They have a pretty decent rugby team and maybe you maybe have heard of them.

Chris Beall (07:14):

I've heard their golf team's coming up.

Ed Porter (07:16):

Yeah. So, yeah. There's a lot of good things going on in Columbus.

Corey Frank (07:20):

And blue chip CRO is one of them. So, how about we hear a little bit about that, Ed. But particularly all the experience that you've had as an investor, somebody who's been on the front row, the front seat of a lot of origin stories in the sales marketing tech stack, certainly as Chris has as both a board member or investor entrepreneur and residents and CEO, what do you see from a CRO perspective that has maybe changed over the last year or so that keeps the phone over by you ringing off the hook?

Ed Porter (07:54):

Yeah. I think the one biggest thing is this advent or this morph of sales and the marketing and the customer success. And the more you start having conversations, especially with these types of leaders, the more tightly interwoven these teams need to become but are becoming. So, the farther away they get or the more siloed they become, that's usually when I get the call of, "Hey, I got a sales problem." And every client I've had, I go into the engagement and it's never a sales problem. It's ultimately results in that being a problem but it's usually marketing or customer success. And the reason is you either haven't defined your ICP, which is fine but it needs to be defined a little bit.

You need to look at the customers you're serving the successes that you're having, what their time to value is on your product or service and understand a lot of those things. And then say, "Go find me customers like that." And then take that into marketing and have marketing create the messaging that really resonates with those types of customers and then get sales team using it. I mean, that's the other part is the reason why sales teams don't use the marketing stuff is because it's not good. And it's often everyone's in their own silo trying to recreate the wheels. I go into this with clients and we really start like, "Hey. I need to talk to your customer success leader. I need to bring your marketing leader in. I need to line these two."

No. We'll worry about sales in a little bit. Let's figure these things out. And the ones that start realizing that and start having these discussions start seeing a lot of results. And then it ultimately morphs over to the sales team which is a beautiful, beautiful harmonious relationship when all three of those teams are singing the same tune and operations is right there helping enable all of them to be successful. Everybody wants the same things. It's just going at it. Yeah. Is really tough to get to. So, that's really what I do and what keeps my phone ringing is people continuously having either sales problems or sales opportunities or simply something's not working in our company and we need to figure it out. So, those are the things that keep my phone ringing unfortunately.

Corey Frank (09:59):

Well, it's funny you bring that up, Ed. Chris, I think this is interesting that the discussion you and I had as we often do off camera here about marketing spend in your friends from serious decisions. And what Ed was saying about where bags of money go to die where the marketing dollars go to die because either the sales reps, you had some thoughts on that. I think last week that I think are germane to this. Maybe you can share.

Chris Beall (10:24):

It's always been interesting to me. You know me, I'm a physics math guy, who's into process, right? And built manufacturing processes and actual manufacturing plants where we made things, believe it or not. Things provide you with an astonishing discipline because you can't pretend you made them if you didn't and you can't pretend they work if they don't, that's how it is in the world of things. So, I'm into process and I know the main thing we look for in any process is the big distinction is an open loop or close loop. Open loop processes where there's no feedback mechanism from what is delivered back to what you're trying to produce how you're trying to produce it, what the inputs are and so forth are inevitably going to fail.

And the reason is, they're a guess. You're saying, "I'm going to guess that if I do X, Y or Z, then some value will be produced somewhere else," right? And you get lucky every once in a while. And then everybody celebrates the lucky ones and says, "Hey. Look, it's all a matter of being a genius." If you're just a genius, you can take a really good guess but processes that really work for companies and our whole market dominance thing that we talk about here is a closed loop process or what Ed's talking about, they actually make sure that the primary thing to pay attention to is, well, at the end you deliver something. Okay. Were you making the right thing? Is it the right thing? Does it work for the purpose, right?

If I keep delivering Teslas and people keep using them as doorstops, I probably need to know that so I can make cheaper Teslas because, "Hey, they're just being used as doorstops." And if I'm making skateboards and people are trying... They're not even electric, Corey, there's electric skateboards are right there in your building and they're the most awesome thing that's made in that building. But if I'm making electric skateboards and they're being used to ride on the freeway, I need to close loop that also and find out, well, what's the deal, right? What is going on with regard to value delivery? And that is customer success is business.

Announcer (12:31):

We'll be back in a moment after a quick break. ConnectAndSell, welcome to the end of dialing as you know it. ConnectAndSell's patented technology loads your best sales folks up with eight to 10 times more live qualified conversations every day. And when we say qualified, we're talking about really qualified, like knowing what kind of cheese they like on their impossible Whopper kind of qualified. Learn more at connectandsell.com. And we're back with Corey and Chris.

Chris Beall (13:11):

And you mentioned SiriusDecisions. I once asked John Neeson, one of the co-founders SiriusDecisions. It's a simple question. First, I prefaced it with an aggressive move. I said, "John, I pay you guys an immense amount of money and I never get any value. So, I want to get some value. So, I'm going to ask you a question and I bet you don't know the answer but if you do it so immense value to me." He says, "What's the question?" I said, "What percentage of inbounds generated by marketing ever get a conversation? What's the highest number you've ever seen?" He said, "9%."

I said, "Oh, does that mean that since no one talks to the other 91% at random, is it a random?" "Oh yeah. Completely a random. Just has to do with whether they're easy to reach." So, 91% of all of marketing's output in the form of inbound leads is never even sampled. It's just thrown away unopened. It's as though, a hundred boxes that said potentially gold showed up on your doorstep and it random you threw away 91 of them and then poked around in the other nine, maybe in a cursory way. It's crazy, right?

So, to me, that's what I call the leakage problem between sales and marketing and marketing and sales. And what Ed's referring to is another problem which is I'll call it the alignment problem not between marketing and sales but between the value that customer could be getting, might be getting, is getting, who knows and what it is you actually make because there's another element to this such as what's your product but also how do you talk about it? How do you describe the value in a way that somebody who is getting that value could say, "Yeah. I got that," right? And I'll go back to Geoffrey Moore and you know how I worship Jeff, right? If I could crawl through broken glass for 16 days in order to touch the hem of his dress, I would. But sadly he takes my call.

So, Geoffrey Moore told us a long time ago, "You're either on one side of the chasm or the other." And until folks are getting success with your product and referring it to their peers, to folks like them, probably in their industry, you're a pre-chasm company and everything about you is unpredictable. And as soon as that other thing starts to happen, you can help make it happen by getting your marketing communications to line up with the value that they're actually receiving. And by getting your sales to rely on those references. And I think this is familiar territory but very, very rarely executed, very rarely executed. So, Ed, I don't know what your thoughts are about that tribe, but.

Ed Porter (15:59):

Yeah. Exactly what he said is that there's two thoughts that I have on that. If somebody's using your product or serve service and they're getting value out of it, why wouldn't they tell somebody? Why would you have to nudge somebody to say, "Hey, do you know anybody that might be able to use it?" Well, if they're inherently using it and they're getting value out of it, if things are working, then that becomes pretty low tolerance to be able to do that. I talk to a lot of people. I'm sure everybody talks to a lot of people and sure we can go to the day is done and talk about all the problems we have with different things. But at some point somebody's going to say, "Hey, can you recommend a X solution?"

And then me as a friend, "Yeah. We've been using this and it's been working." So, I think that's a great separation to understand if you're able to turn people like that into your champions, that should be a minimum threshold. But if that's not like you need to have tons of money and tons of resources going to the customer to just barrage them to say, "Hey, do you love us? Let's take the survey. Let me give you an awesome thumbs up." And those are great but those don't ultimately net that. So, I think that's one comment. The other comment is, when you start thinking about the product being used, the Tesla or the door stop and there, I think all of us can probably at some point say, "Yeah. I bought some product and only used a certain percentage of it."

I was literally just talking to my wife yesterday. Her company... She's an HR manager. At her company they use Workday and she was talking about how much they spend on it. And she's like, "We're using a fraction of it, of what it can do." We can do so much with this tool. And it's a huge enterprise tool that can do tons of things. And it's not through fault of anybody. It's you start to get into this routine of like, "We need to solve for this one problem. And then, let's go buy a robust solution. And then, we forget about steps two through 10." So, we get the one step done and we forget about everything else.

So, to that point is maybe somebody bought a Tesla because they're like, "Yeah. I don't want to have to pay to power it," or, "I want to pay less to power it." And then it just sits in a room and doesn't get used. So, why don't I build a product that has less bells and whistles and costs 98%, 99% cheaper and it's got a different use case? So, I think those are two things that you said that really hit. And that makes a lot of sense. And there's a lot of people out there that probably do the same thing.

Corey Frank (18:26):

Well, in addition to marketing spend, which we talked about, I'd love to get your opinion on CROs just in general, the ones that you work with in your practice. I find that te And then you have the other school of folks which is, listen, it's all about the basics, right? The target and the list and the message and the rep and the tonality and build those core building blocks first, right? That John Wooden put your socks on the right way, tie your shoes the right way. What do you see and maybe what's your philosophy and what do you see that the trend is moving in one direction or another?

Ed Porter (19:24):

So, I'm going to sample from Chris because many things that he said have stuck with me but this is a big one, is technology accelerates suck. And that's absolutely what technology can do is if you don't have the basics done, technology is just going to expose that. It's just going to make you suck that much more. If you're trying to call people and you're picking up the phone and manually dialing and you don't know what to say on the call and you don't know how to close it for the next step, then it doesn't matter if you're making 10 calls a day or a thousand calls a day, ultimately you're just killing your market.

So, there is a belief that I have that, again, I learned from Chris, which is technology isn't the problem solver, it's got to be there to enable and you got to figure out maybe a couple layers deeper before. Now. There's also a school of thought to say, technology, because it can go faster, can allow you to AB test a heck of a lot quicker. So, I do see that to say, not everybody knows the best way to do that. So, the perfect marriage between the 101 or the basics versus the tech stack has to do with understanding the process to Chris' point as he is a process guy.

So, understanding the process or understanding that we're going to try and figure out the process and then figuring out from there how to add some fuel to that fire and make it really grow. So, I don't like technology just for the sake of technology. I don't like technology just for the sake of, "Oh, we're going to save a couple clicks." Yes, that's a benefit but that's not really a problem that's happening. I like using technology that inherently solves a problem. And if I can use one piece of technology that solves multiple problems, wonderful.

That's I think where some companies and some people get in trouble is, at some point you're buying 18 pieces of technology or you got a MarTech stack that has seven or eight components to it. Maybe four of them are talking to your CRM and maybe the others are just like, "'We're just doing a couple things here and then we're getting the data in there manually." And then it's yes, okay. You can function. But it just becomes a lot harder if you're really looking at scale. And that's another thing is scale and growth are completely different. And in order to scale, you got to have those things working because scaling isn't just adding more tech and adding more people and adding more revenue, it's got to be at the exponential value of it.

So, I don't know if this is really answering your question as much as it's going into more of a thought about the fine line between having a great tech stack but also having the problems figured out to understand, is technology really enabling it and allowing you to do more with less. And if it's in that spirit, then measure it. Is it better to go forward with product A or product B? And I think when you get in the marketing side is there's several different tools that you can start looking at, not alone competitors in the same industry but complimentary technologies. So, it's looking at each of those avenues and the stage that you're in and where you want to go and figuring out, what do you want the system to do and then how do you build it so that it works that way? Instead of just saying, "It's an out of the box solution." And all of a sudden, if you build it, they will come and then it hits and it never does.

Chris Beall (22:40):

Okay. If you build it, they will suck. I mean, that...

Ed Porter (22:45):

There you go.

Chris Beall (22:46):

It is fascinating to me as a technologist. I've been building technology for other people to use for a while, probably 42 years and maybe a little longer, in fact. And-

Ed Porter (22:57):

And you have the patents to prove it.

Chris Beall (22:59):

I do have one or two of those little devils. And I've been called into situations. I remember one, many, many years ago at Sun Microsystems where they've been working for two years on this technology to automate the testing of their computers. And they were getting desperate. The system was not coming together and the computers were coming off the line and it'd be really good if they could be tested automated by. And so, I remember walking into the room and listening for a while. And then, finally somebody said, "Okay. We got this guy here that we brought in," blah, blah, blah. Nobody ever likes that guy, by the way, if you ever that guy.

Ed Porter (23:32):

If you ever that guy, you're not liked.

Chris Beall (23:34):

Nobody likes that guy. So, I'm pretty used to it. So, it's one of the cues in sales, right? You have to be okay being the person who is the problem in order to be in a position to help somebody. It's like being a surgeon. You have to be okay being the problem. I'm going to cut into you with a knife in order to be able to help you. And if I faint at the sight of blood, well, I can't do my job very well. So, you have to get good with it. So, finally somebody said, "Well, what do you think? Oh, snooty, woody expert who's been shoved down our throat." And I said, "Well, I don't understand any of this. Could you help me out here?" "So, can I have the whiteboard?" "Well, sure." So, I draw a big circle on the whiteboard."

And I said, "So, if this is what we're trying to build..." And then I draw an arrow coming out of the right side of it. I don't know which side it is to you. People in the Zoom plant decide toward the bow of the ship but that's probably the wrong way. And so, if this is the output and we don't know what it is and I'd be a little stick figure there and say, "Here's a human being. We're going to actually find one and name them, when our thing we're going to build produces one unit of this output..." And I put a dollar sign up above the arrow. "How many dollars does this person or that they're responsible for? How much do they save or do they make?" And there was stunned silence.

It took four intense days of discussion to name the circle, name the arrow, identify the person and put a number on the dollars. Until you do that, you don't know anything. You don't know anything. I mean, you are just... It's like talk among yourselves. And as my mother used to say, if something is not worth doing, it is certainly not worth doing well and it's not worth spending a bunch of money to do, right? So, you got to know, is it worth doing? And the answer to that doesn't lie inside the geniuses, it lies out there among those who are trying to take advantage of it, who are trying to use your thing. And that means you have to understand their business. What job are you doing in their business?

There's another bizarre conceit that I hear all the time. I was just, well, what we're bringing is something entirely new. It's like, if they're not already having that job done, they're not going to buy your new thing to do that job. Got it? They're already doing it. You always have a competitor called the status quo.

Ed Porter (25:53):

The status quo-

Chris Beall (25:54):

The competitor almost always wins. 88.723% of the time, the status quo wins all B2B pursuits. There's... I mean, let's... How it is. And it is funny because the people who dream up products are geniuses and they're so convinced in their genius that they would really rather not have that inconvenient truth come back to them and it says, "They can't ever charge the Tesla but apparently it's really heavy makes a great doorstop."

How often do salespeople need to be trained? Most people would say, “Once during onboarding should do it.” “Not so,” says Dan McClain, Sales Director at ConnectAndSell. As today’s guest on Market Dominance Guys, Dan talks with our host, Chris Beall, about the importance of periodically sharpening sales reps’ skills. In this second of their two-part conversation, these two sales guys, both amateur chefs, agree that knives work better when they’ve recently been sharpened — and sales reps work better when their selling skills have recently been sharpened. Dan reminds our podcast audience that, over time, all sales reps drift from their company’s established message, their pace may become rushed, or their tone lackluster. For these very reasons, ConnectAndSell’s own reps go through a periodic blitz-and-coach cold-calling session, an essential tool of ConnectAndSell’s Flight School, because, as Dan says, “We all need to get better.” And because this essential advice bears repeating, that’s what we’ve named today’s Market Dominance Guys’ episode: “We All Need to Get Better.”

About Our Guest Dan McClain is Sales Director at ConnectAndSell. His life-long dedication to sales has led him to his current goal: helping sales leaders, teams, and individuals connect with their targets at a velocity of 10X by using ConnectAndSell Lightning. Dan is based in the San Diego area and is active in his local chapter of AA-ISP.

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Full episode transcript below:

Dan McClain (01:30):

It's really easy to go hire someone. It's really hard to go buy, ConnectAndSell. Even when you put a mathematical equation in front of them saying, "We could double the output of what you're doing and actually you'll spend less money." It's still hard.

Chris Beall (01:45):

Yeah.

Dan McClain (01:45):

It seems like a no brainer. It seems like this would be such an easy job.

Chris Beall (01:50):

Well, part of it also is this program is a little bit funny, because Cory Frank came to me and said he wanted to get a book out on the [inaudible 00:01:58] market dominance. Well, a book on market dominance is fundamentally only interesting to owners of different kinds. Whether an owner is an investor in a business or the owner is the owner or the owner is a CEO. CEOs are often pretty... I can tell you from experience pretty aligned with their company. There's a problem called the agency problem, right? You have somebody else doing something for you, but they've got to look out for themselves. And so the question is-

Dan McClain (02:24):

Why wouldn't you include a VP of sales in that grouping of people that would be interested in market domination?

Chris Beall (02:29):

Well, because here's the thing, a VP of sales, like our VP of sales, Jonti McLaren, highly aligned, right? He's a big cash investor in the company. And so it's easy. And he owns enough of the company that he's naturally aligned. And this is true in certain kinds of startups where they're still in startup mode, so to speak, where maybe the VP of sales is with the founder.

Chris Beall (02:52):

They're a founder of themselves and they got that ownership mentality. But I think we have a little bit of a vicious cycle going on where folks don't know quite how to drive organic growth. They're guessing, "Should we do ABM? Should we do this? Should we prospecting hard on social media? Is it a prospecting problem or a closing problem?" It's hard to tell, right? It's not obvious what you're going to do. And then how fast is it going to kick in?

Chris Beall (03:18):

Right. If I say I got a seven month sales cycle, eight month sales cycle. So I've got 17 months of average tenure. So wait a minute. If I'm past month four, I'm down to the point where I got to start to see results somebody else cares about three months before I'm likely to get kicked out of here because I didn't produce the numbers. There's kind of a short term attitude on the part of ownership often.

Chris Beall (03:43):

I'll call it ownership, regarding the sales function, where they treat sales as an externality. Like sales is something you graphed onto the company. And I've said it on this show, sales traditionally was used to dispose of inventory. The factories created, dispose of it as sufficient profit to keep the lights on and maybe give you a net profit that you can use in order to grow the business, right? That's how capitalism works.

Chris Beall (04:06):

You put capital in to buy plant and equipment. You make stuff, the widgets are being made. Well, the widgets must be sold. And what was the tradition? Put a rep in a territory, give them a quota, give them a fair amount of autonomy. There wasn't much management required. And then it's great, they get to keep the territory and maybe get a better territory.

Chris Beall (04:32):

If it doesn't work out, you put another rep in. And meanwhile you're telling more stories about how great you were back in the day, so you have something to do management wise. So I think that role doesn't make sense in the world of at least software. And the world is becoming software, because you don't have widgets anymore. How many units of ConnectAndSell software... And we even have people in the loop, get turned out yesterday that you and your team have got to dispose of at a profit.

Chris Beall (05:02):

None. There's no units, right? We didn't make a bunch of widgets that are piled up in a warehouse somewhere. So I think sales was treated as an externality because it worked as an externality. Now we're asking sales to do a strategic job, which is to take us into markets like your first job. And the question is, "Well, is the alignment right?" Is the long term relationship there going into markets doesn't happen overnight. So I think we have some issues around kind of how the sales function is conceived of. And then we say, "Hey, you do your job with head count. Marketing, do their job with money and imagination." And I don't think that's right anymore either. That's my feel anyway. I think sales is one who needs the money and the imagination.

Dan McClain (05:51):

Yeah. That's true. Interesting.

Chris Beall (05:55):

Yeah. I it's the stuff that we think about it a lot. Right? Because we're sort of on this spear tip of what we believe, which is the conversations first move the business. But I want to go to a success story that you and I experienced a little bit together and see what your thoughts are about it. There's an Israeli cybersecurity company selling the hospitals. And they have three SDRs and some people think SDRs are great. Some people think SDRs are like, "What do they do with SDRs?" By the way, you probably enjoy the meetings that are SDR set for you. Right?

Dan McClain (06:27):

Oh I love them.

Chris Beall (06:28):

And they're pretty good. You get good reviews. Because people tell you, "Hey that Sal or Crystal or whoever..."

Dan McClain (06:36):

Yeah. Quite often, Hey, the reason I took this meeting is they were persistent. They were professional. They just really handled the conversation nicely. Often that's a big part of it.

Chris Beall (06:48):

So you get meetings there, but you're your own SDR. Right? And you're a student of the game, you're student in the craft, I've been known to call you and mention that you may have drifted a little bit on a conversation and you take it with curiosity right after you [inaudible 00:07:02].

Dan McClain (07:02):

I'll never forget that call. I was standing right out there in my backyard, right by the Palm tree. When you called me and said that. I said, "No, I'm not drifting. I've got this. I'm not drifting." You told me to go listen to a call. I went and listened to a call and I was like, "Ah, he was right." Called you back, "Chris. You're right."

Chris Beall (07:23):

I thought that was an interesting conversation. I was driving across the Sierras with a load of stuff from my house. I was moving to Reno and I'm listening to this conversation I'm going, "Is that Dan? That doesn't... That doesn't... That sounds like somebody else. What is he saying? Why is he saying it?" It was pretty interesting. Let's talk about that for a moment though. Because it's really interesting this whole, so here's this company that you were working with and they had unusual SDR team. Right? Their minimum age was, I don't know, 50 something.

Dan McClain (07:55):

They looked like me.

Chris Beall (07:56):

Just like, yeah. I'm older than you are. The oldest one was I think in the maybe pushing seventies, maybe.

Dan McClain (08:03):

Maybe low seventies. Yeah.

Chris Beall (08:05):

Low seventies. And they went to Flight School. Now, these are highly experienced people. I knew you were in the deal. I wasn't in the deal. I knew somebody at the company. So I was kind of peripherally associated with it. First of all, why would somebody with all that experience in your mind go to Flight School? Why'd they do that? I mean, I know it's what we offered them but they could have said, "Nah, let's not do that." And do you remember, just walk us through that? You've got these folks, they were good. Right? They were converting it-

Dan McClain (08:34):

Yeah, [inaudible 00:08:35]. They converted highly even on the test drive. And it was interesting because in that negotiation, that we were looking at, "Okay, how are we going to use this?" We thought "It looks like they were going to buy big." And then interestingly enough, they actually came back and they bought really small. But buying small, just allowed us to come in and go through this flight school motion and show them the art of the possibility. And we took them from really good to great. And that's one of those customers where every week when I just log in and peek on what they're doing, puts a smile on my face.

Chris Beall (09:17):

Yeah. And it's such a non-obvious play. We had somebody on the other day on the show, Jennifer Standish and Jennifer makes the claim that we should be hiring grandmas to be SDRs, because they've got the voice and they know how to tell people what to do in a way that makes them do it, but not feel bad. That's kind of interesting when you think about that insistence close, right? The Cheryl Turner insistence close, it kind of has to do with telling somebody what to do and having to feel good about it. Right?

Dan McClain (09:48):

Yeah. So interesting. I've been leaning on you with some help, some different customers and you keep telling that story. And then it got in my head and I kept thinking about it and then I was doing some prospecting and it was a really interesting call because I got the guy at the right time because he said, "I'm currently looking for sales amplification." is what he said. We got that. That's what we do. And he goes, "Can you just send me something? So because I'm looking at all kinds, just send me something," I said, "Tell you what, I send you half a page.

Dan McClain (10:22):

And then also just I'll go ahead and send you the calendar invite for Thursday and we'll move it if we have to." That's the Cheryl Turner insistence close. And the guy said, "Perfect, I'll give you 15 minutes." I said, "Great. That's all I need." And then after that call, I hung up the phone. I called you to tell you about that experience. And then based on your recommendation, I called and I was talking to Cheryl about it. And then I went off and listened to some of her calls. And some of the stuff that she does, it's so subtle, but just there's so much genius in what she's doing.

Chris Beall (11:03):

Yeah. I think this is funny. I have an analogy. Corey and I have used on this. You're probably the only guy other than Corey who can speak to it actually, because you actually can't get me up even on a standup paddle board. My back is tight and it's hard to do. You surf. You're like a real surfer. Right? But my claim is I used to watch a lot of surfing and you know, I'm a physicist by background.

Chris Beall (11:23):

So I kind of, I don't know, picture maybe a little bit of what's going on and that interaction between the water, the board and the person. Where they are, what they're doing, how they're moving and all that kind of stuff. And my claim is, and this is a hard claim, not a soft claim. I don't think this is a fluffy analogy. The best analogy I've been able to come up with is this. In that ambush call, that one and only.

Chris Beall (11:49):

The only time you're ever going to talk to somebody for the first time. That script is like a surfboard and your voice is the surfer. Your voice is where the artistry comes from. And what you feel when... And you can speak to this. And I want you to actually speak to it. Tell us a little something about what it's like to surf and what it's like to surf, big stuff, scary stuff, hard stuff, whatever it is you've done. But when you're doing something like surfing, you're feeling the world that you're in and you're feeling it millisecond by millisecond and you're adjusting to it.

Chris Beall (12:27):

And you're adjusting to it with a combination of balance and positioning. But it's things you know you're doing, but you don't quite know exactly how you're doing them, but you know, you learn to do them kind of thing. Right? And I think that Cheryl Turner dance that she does with people where the words are the same, the surfboard's the same surfboard, but the conversation is always unique. It always has for a voice in it.

Dan McClain (12:53):

That the conversation is always unique, because there's another thing that you have to bring into this analogy used and that's the wave or the water itself.

Dan McClain (13:53):

It's always changing. Even if you surf the exact same place every day and it's dictated by the sand underneath the water, because that's always moving. That's fluid. So every single day, the shape of the wave's going to be different. The speed is going to be different based on maybe some storm in Australia or Japan. So even at the same exact place, every single day, that's different.

Dan McClain (14:17):

So just like the conversation or the person you're talking to is going to be different and you have to adjust. And then there are some things that are on autopilot, as you're paddling into the wave where you put your hands on your board and you pop up. I don't think about that anymore. My body just does that. But what I'm doing is, I have to decide what angle I'm paddling into the wave based on the speed of it, the size of it and the shape of it. And that's always different. And I know that I have to only look forward at what the wave's doing, because if you look behind you, it looks too big and scary.

Chris Beall (14:54):

Oh interesting.

Dan McClain (14:55):

Then you'll pedal backwards and get out of it. But when you're charging into there's so many factors that are constantly changing. So it's not like skiing or snowboarding. I mean the movements might be the same, but that medium, that you're on, you can look ahead and you know what it is.

Chris Beall (15:16):

Yeah.

Dan McClain (15:17):

And it's only vast experience to know, to be able to look ahead and know what it's going to do. And what's interesting is it's different every day.

Chris Beall (15:27):

Yeah. And you're a little different every day too. So one of the points of that, and I remember talking to Corey about it, I was trotting around and it was actually the day I saw that boat that I got behind me. I was trotting around in Sydney, Australia. And I was on the phone with Corey and we're talking about this surfboard, surfer analogy, which now you've added the wave to. And one of my points is, look, if you're learning to surf, nobody throws you like an old door and says, make yourself a surfboard. Right? I mean, it's the shaping of boards is an art and science that's come to us through what's 70, 80, 90 years of people having experience with the shapes, the materials, the thinning, all that kind of stuff. You'd [inaudible 00:16:16].

Dan McClain (16:15):

Yeah. And it's still evolving to this day.

Chris Beall (16:18):

Yeah. And you'd be an idiot as a young surfer to think you're going to reinvent making surfboards before you even know how to surf. And yet, we ask young SDRs to make their own scripts.

Dan McClain (16:31):

Yeah.

Chris Beall (16:31):

And I think that's crazy. I mean, do you think that's crazy?

Dan McClain (16:37):

I think that's crazy town. Why would you put the tip of this spear, the message that's going out about the company, into someone's hands that's probably only been there X number of months. It's that simple.

Chris Beall (16:54):

Yeah. Well just, I mean, I am willing to bet there are people who shape boards who are really good at shaping boards, making a surfboard that really works well, who are not themselves, the greatest surfers in the world.

Dan McClain (17:07):

True. They probably look like you or I.

Chris Beall (17:11):

Yeah. Well more like you, because we get to me and we're off the surfing category and we're into the can't stand up at the paddle board category. But I think it's quite fascinating if this analogy... I think this is a legit analogy. I think this analogy maps, as they say in the world of math, one to one and onto. Every part of it maps to the other part is supposed to map to, and you can reason from it. Right? And if you believe it, you would say, "Well, I would never have a rep make up their own script."

Chris Beall (17:42):

I wouldn't do it, because what are the odds they're going to make one based on 50, 60 years of experience across not themselves, but I think of that board shaper, they're not just taking their own experience, they're taking the experience of everybody who's ever made a surfboard. And they're putting it into the next one. Whereas when you get on that board on a wave, you're taking your experience, you're making it more subtle, more effective in time. You're a little quicker to do the thing that needs to be done to be the place you want to be to get the thing done, than you want to do than you were a year ago, two years ago, 15 years ago, whatever it happens to be.

Dan McClain (18:20):

They should not even be in that loop of communication. They should have it given to them. Then they should be trained on it.

Chris Beall (18:26):

Yeah. I agree. If you wanted me to surf you better give me a board.

Dan McClain (18:30):

What's so interesting is go on LinkedIn and look at this subject there will be hundreds of different opinions.

Chris Beall (18:40):

Yeah. Oh yeah. Oh you mean the subject of should reps make up their own script? I know what the argument is for it. Well, they got to be comfortable and you know what-

Dan McClain (18:50):

I don't people think that, but really they don't. No one cares about that they shouldn't or people do. Should you really care about their comfort or the comfort and experience of that person that they're talking to? That's what's important.

Chris Beall (19:03):

Yeah. I mean, I've said it before, if you're an SDR... And by the way, if you're an account executive and you're calling for yourself, like Dan does, you're an SDR at that point. [inaudible 00:19:13]. You're not magically skilled in first conversations just because you're capable of closing multimillion dollar deals. That doesn't translate. It's like the fact that I can do all sorts of... I can load the car up. You can get all the gear in it. I can drive it to the beach. Look at all my skills. Well, at some point you're going to have to get on that damn board, right?

Dan McClain (19:36):

Yeah. Absolutely. And that's uncomfortable. So is having a script just put in your hand and told that what you're going to say. That's uncomfortable. I do things every day that to me feel uncomfortable, but I may be old enough to know it's not about me. And we always joke about this. Nobody cares about my feelings.

Chris Beall (19:58):

You always say that about me, that I don't care about your feelings. I don't, but I care about your wellbeing.

Dan McClain (20:04):

There we go. Yeah. And I get it and it's awesome.

Chris Beall (20:07):

It's, it's a funny thing. Well, for folks that are managing teams out there and that's who you're mostly working with, is people who are managing teams and you see there are struggles, even once they have ConnectAndSell in the hands of the team. And you have resources you can draw on. You can draw on Donny Crawford and his team. There are conversation optimization folks and they'll come in. I think we just did something today, right? Didn't we do something with a flight school session with a-

Dan McClain (20:36):

We did. Actually had two going on today. One that Gavin was running and then one with the transportation company that you've been helping me with. It was me and a newer to them director of business development and he runs the team. And it was such an exciting day, because we had made some tweaks to the messaging that simplified and that the reps actually felt good about. They felt good about, I felt good about it. We ran it. And in a very short amount of time, we had two meetings on the books.

Dan McClain (21:09):

And what was even more exciting was I saw that sales leader turn the corner on. This was the first time he was critiquing the reps, telling them what to do. And it was one of those calls where I was actually dreading it, because I didn't think it was going to go well. And four or five times during that call, I got the chills. The hair on my arm was standing up, because it was exciting. And he and I were in there together figuring things out and everyone on that team I think left excited about what we were all doing together.

Chris Beall (21:49):

That's fantastic.

Dan McClain (21:50):

This quest of market domination. It was awesome.

Chris Beall (21:54):

Well, I know that those guys are very serious about market dominance. They really are. And that's, as we say, we curate dominance here. ConnectAndSell is such a delight. I mean, how many people get to say this in a sales job that you're doing something. whereas part of the job, every once in a while, you know the hair does stand up on your arms, you get those chills. I was talking to Elena Hesse the other day and she was on the show.

Chris Beall (22:18):

And she said to me, first time we talked, she said, "I have tears in my eyes." I said, "I do too." We're two grown people out here listening to these reps, move forward in a way that's so exciting. They're having so much fun and they're doing so much business. And it's right here in front of us. There is something about watching the world evolve at full speed right in front of your eyes. It's just kind of professionally unusual I guess I'll put it. It's like who gets to have this kind of fun?

Dan McClain (22:49):

Yeah, no, it's true. It was such a great day. And it was just one of those things that just invigorated me that will probably last a month. So I'm going to need another one of those sometime within the next month. It was just awesome.

Chris Beall (23:03):

More flight schools. Well, I have to say you've been here a long time. What are your thoughts? Some people kind of thought flight school was crazy. We're not in the training business, plenty of people out there to train reps. I always thought the ecosystem would take care of it. There's these incredibly strong trainers out there.

Chris Beall (23:21):

What is it you think in looking at connect and self flight school, which for those of you who don't know what it is, it's a four session blitzing coach experience for a group of reps and their manager live fire, talking to real prospects where they're under pressure as a result. And yet the coaching is not of the whole conversation. I think the first two hours we coached just the first seven seconds. And the second two hours we coach just what we call the 27 seconds, the value part.

Chris Beall (23:51):

And then the third two hours we coach just what we call turbulence. That's why it's called flight school. Take off flying somewhere. Plane goes like this, the objections that you only get in a cold call. And then the fourth sessions, how to get the meeting. How do you ask for the meeting. Landing the airplane, all we beforehand, we have this messaging workshop and a little kind of an icebreaker session.

Chris Beall (24:12):

So, that's what it is. I never thought we should have such a thing, even though I'm the guy who came up with it, sort of working with Janie Wall and James Townsend down in San Antonio at a customer... Is it a big deal to you or is it just another training thing or did you think it was a good idea when you first saw it? Or did you think like I did? It's like I came up with it, but I was still pretty skeptical about it.

Dan McClain (24:35):

Yeah. Well, like a lot of things... At first, I was uncomfortable with it til I kind of have experienced it. And then eventually we put our team through it and guess what happened? We all got better. We all learned stuff.

Chris Beall (24:47):

Wait, you guys, I remember this, we do this regularly. Like you went through flight school, but you guys have like five, six years, seven years of experience using ConnectAndSell. Why would you need to go through flight school? What did it help you do different?

Dan McClain (25:00):

No matter how good we are, A we drift, like we talked about, but you can always get better. It's about keeping that spear sharp. If we stop doing our blitz code sessions on Monday and Friday, it would be easier for me, but you know what? Would I get that coaching? Would I get a chat with Gavin or Donny or Nate? "Hey, you're doing this, try this." "Hey, I heard something."

Chris Beall (25:25):

Yeah. So you and I both cook a little bit, maybe even a lot, right? We're having wild board tonight just for you.

Dan McClain (25:31):

Oh fantastic. We're having pizzas. This has been a frustration for me. I can cook. I'm not a baker and I have one of those pizza ovens. And I've been buying the crust at the store and I'm having a problem getting the temperature of this pizza oven correctly. Because, what's happening is the top of the pizza's burning before the crust is fixed. So actually a friend of mine is a restaurateur and they're actually sitting out there having some beers. And when I'm done, we're going to go cook some pizzas together.

Chris Beall (26:03):

All right. Well I hope it works out well. I'm going to make a point, a sharp edge point, which is we both spend a fair amount of time on occasion the kitchen. I think I'm a pretty good hand with a knife taught by an ex Navy chef. Worked an aircraft carrier and you know a typical Navy chef. He didn't put up with any crap in the kitchen right? Down to, you're going to hold the knife, thumb and forefinger on the blade to stabilize the knife. You've [inaudible 00:26:28] just holding it by the handle like you're whipping a baseball bat around all that kind of stuff. He taught me everything about that stuff. And yet still to this day, I'll take a knife out of the drawer and I will lazily continue to use it when I know it's not sharp. [inaudible 00:26:49].

Dan McClain (26:48):

My friend in Texas, he has a knife sharpening business. Anytime, like if we're going on a week vacation, I send him my knives.

Chris Beall (26:55):

Oh, that's good stuff. So to me it's like that. It's like a knife can look sharp without being sharp. And it's when you go to make that cut and a ripe tomato is probably the most telling cut. Right? Because if your knife is sharp, you feel it and you feel it in that first little motion. Right? Because the knife is curved to allow you to move straight forward, but still be cutting down and you'll feel that little tug. And you go now the question's, what are you going to do? And I think that the way you guys get tuned up in flight school is a lot like that. You feel that little tug and it's easy to be lazy and not sharpen the knife.

Dan McClain (27:37):

Yeah. And it's so interesting, because if you're not sharp, a lot of meetings will slip through your fingers. Yeah. Why that happen all the time? I'm like, "I think I could have got a meeting with that person." That meeting that I got this week using the Cheryl Turner insistent close, I will be honest part of it was just right person, right time. But part of it was the way I executed something-

Chris Beall (27:58):

That has to be a lot of it. Cheryl runs 30%.

Dan McClain (28:00):

Yeah. I'm not running 30%. I'm trying to get better.

Chris Beall (28:05):

Listen to on those industrial air compressors in those medical office buildings, [inaudible 00:28:09] crazy stuff.

Dan McClain (28:10):

It is.

Chris Beall ():

But it does show it's an art form. Helen and I listened to Cheryl one day. We listened to a whole bunch of conversations. And Helen was thinking about actually cold calling the hundred VPs of one of her big monster companies that was part of her account base. Hundred VPs of HR. And she asked me, "What is this cold calling really about?" And I said, "Well, let's listen to Cheryl."

Chris Beall (28:32):

And so we were listening to Cheryl, listening to a bunch of conversations and Helen, who's a cute observer of these things, she says, those micro pivots, same words, but that little pause, that little laugh, that moment of expressed empathy that I'm with you, that expression of being a peer, always never being put back, but never pushing back either.

Chris Beall (28:58):

She said, "That stuff is amazing." She said, "I didn't realize what you guys work with is an artistic medium. And it's truly an art form." And I actually think this is something I have to say, if I could ask folks who are watching this thinking or, or listening, thinking about it, we call the use of ConnectAndSell, learning how to cold call. We call it finishing school for future CEOs.

Chris Beall (29:26):

Because the one thing you've got to be able to do to be good in the CEO job, is hold conversations without a lot of prep with strangers that go better than they would've for somebody else who might not be able to make those little moves, have that feel. That the feel for the situation and be able to help somebody see something in a new way, which is kind of your main job as CEO.

Chris Beall (29:49):

It's the main job as a salesperson. They're very similar jobs. Before you joined ConnectAndSell or no, before you used it for the first time, would you have said that you thought that cold calling or cold conversation was an art form or would you have said yes, just something you do or what would you have thought about it or did, did you not think about it?

Dan McClain (30:09):

I think at that time, knowing what I knew then, it would've been very easy to hop on the cold calling is dead bandwagon because then I wouldn't have to do it. And I could feel good about not doing it. Even, though if it's like exercise. You know you should.

Chris Beall (30:27):

Yeah.

Dan McClain (30:27):

It's hard to take that first step. But if you do not good things just might happen.

Chris Beall (30:33):

What is funny too? Because it's like exercise and that you're doing it for yourself. And yet folks will act like they're being told to do it for somebody else. You're really doing it for yourself. I mean, you really are doing it for yourself. I've looked at the numbers, our numbers break down today. This quarter, the bulk of the dollars and the bulk of the deals have come from you guys.

Chris Beall (30:54):

You account executives being your own SDRs and that's even though you have a world class SDR team armed to the teeth with a high performance weapon using it all day long setting meetings for y'all. But I have a funny feeling that when you set a meeting for yourself, that there's some subtlety in there somewhere that allows you to be a little bit better in that meeting. That you killed that boar and now you're cooking it. And I think you're going to cook it a little bit better.

Dan McClain (31:25):

Absolutely. In fact, when I schedule the meeting myself, when I send it out, I put a little asterisks in a certain spot in the invitation. So I know that's one that I scheduled and yeah, I do. I come to it, I think with a little more of everything, little more excitement, a little more aggressiveness. I'm going to be sharper, clearer because I know that this one I got.

Chris Beall (31:49):

Yeah. It's a funny thing. I think it's the most subtle thing. Let's wrap this up. Our audience is... We have people all up and down. We got SDRs who listen to Market Dominance Guys, because I guess they want to be CEOs and owners of businesses someday or chief revenue officers God what they're going to be. And then we got people kind of like, you're Henry Washala who took his whole business part, put it back together after binge listening to the show for four days.

Chris Beall (32:17):

We got a lot of folks. I know you're not a big advice giver. You probably don't give advice to people for a whole bunch of good reasons. Most of which is you're kind of too humble to think what you're going to say is going to make a difference. But I want you to get out of that humble posture for a second and just give folks listening, just one piece of advice from your career. And it has something to do with what we've been talking about. What would you tell somebody if you just had to tell them and then you got to go away.

Dan McClain (32:45):

I would say, kind of back to this whole notion of should the SDR say what's comfortable versus should you give them a script? Find out who's the most intelligent person in the room and listen to them. Usually that's someone with a C in their title, usually.

Chris Beall (33:02):

Yep. That's interesting. On that. We're going to wrap this up. Dan McClain, you have been a marvelous guest on Market Dominance Guys. I think we're going on in episode 130 something at this point. Proud to have you on. Proud to be on your team and excited looking forward to what we're all going to do together. And I just think about those companies, those people you're helping pulling the cork out of the innovation economy, letting value flow. And that's what makes a hair stand up on my arm. So thank you so much for being on the show and for being you.

Dan McClain (33:31):

Yeah. Thanks for having me. I was a little nervous. This is my first podcast. I didn't know what I was getting into. I'd love to come back anytime.

You’re no doubt familiar with the buyer’s journey, but what do you know about the seller’s journey? Dan McClain, Sales Director at ConnectAndSell and today’s guest on Market Dominance Guys, shares his personal journey as a salesperson with our host Chris Beall in this first of a two-part conversation. Starting at the beginning of his career, Dan tells the story of how he got into sales straight out of college, what his early selling experiences were like, and how he cold-called his way to where he is today. Most memorable for him was his first experience using ConnectAndSell Lightning, the cold-calling tool that boosts the number of conversations a salesperson can have with prospects. Pushing that “Go” button and being served one conversation after another changed his life and led to his current job selling Lightning at ConnectAndSell. Helping other salespeople discover this tool is now Dan’s mission. Listen in as Dan and Chris remember the details of their first meeting in today’s Market Dominance Guys’ episode, “The Seller Has a Journey Too.”

About Our Guest

Dan McClain is Sales Director at ConnectAndSell. His life-long dedication to sales has led him to his current goal: helping sales leaders, teams, and individuals connect with their targets at a velocity of 10X by using ConnectAndSell Lightning. Dan is based in the San Diego area and is active in his local chapter of AA-ISP.

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Full episode transcript below:

Chris Beall (01:24):

Hey Market Dominance folks, it's Chris Beall and I'm here without Corey Frank, which is a bit of a shock because I lean on Corey pretty hard. He always comes up with the cool questions and he's got the literary references and he's got a tie on, which is nice.

Dan McClain (01:42):

Oh.

Chris Beall (01:42):

You don't see one on me. I know Dan.

Dan McClain (01:44):

You could have worn a tie. [inaudible 00:01:46]

Chris Beall (01:46):

And instead I'm here today, not instead but normally we'd have Corey, but now I'm all by myself as a host except I've got Dan McClain. Dan McClain, among many other things that he does including things involving surfboards and riding vehicles across sandy terrain that doesn't look safe at all to me.

Dan McClain (02:06):

Absolutely.

Chris Beall (02:07):

And shooting the occasional wild boar and eating them. And growing tomatoes in a way that I've never seen another human being grow tomatoes, including naming his tomato plants appropriately.

Dan McClain (02:17):

True.

Chris Beall (02:18):

So Dan is also somebody who works for ConnectAndSell. He sells for ConnectAndSell. I don't know if he properly sells, he'll describe what it's actually like I'm sure. But Dan, welcome to Market Dominance Guys.

Dan McClain (02:30):

Thanks for having me. This is my very first podcast.

Chris Beall (02:34):

Oh my God. I'm excited. No wonder you're wearing white, you're a podcast virgin.

Dan McClain (02:39):

That's right. Absolutely. [inaudible 00:02:41] And my hair too.

Chris Beall (02:42):

Fantastic. And notice that Dan has a Flight School shirt on, I got a Flight School shirt on. We are as twinsy as can be right now. So Dan, just a little background. How did you fall into the world of sales, and especially sales that involved anything resembling software? Is this like your dream when you were a child? Is it something that you got hit in the head once? I know you surf and sometimes you could hit your head surfing I bet.

Dan McClain (03:11):

It's true.

Chris Beall (03:12):

What happened?

Dan McClain (03:13):

Well, growing up I always knew I was going to be in sales. My father was in sales but, it was different back then. He was in industrial sales and he covered Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, kind of the Midwest belt, and he would drive his car around and he had an expense account and that seemed kind of cool.

Chris Beall (03:34):

Interesting.

Dan McClain (03:34):

And I'd hear him on the phone every once in a while. And I thought, "That's what I want to do".

Chris Beall (03:38):

Wow.

Dan McClain (03:38):

Well actually then college, I had to put myself through. And I learned very quickly that the traditional jobs that one can get when you're in college aren't enough to pay for college, even way back in the late '80s, early '90s. And so I had to be creative, and I actually started a couple of my own small little companies. A volleyball business, where we taught leagues and lessons and ran tournaments. And also a valet car parking business at a very cool restaurant in Minneapolis called J.D. Hoyt's. And doing that I kind of learned some entrepreneurial things.

Dan McClain (04:16):

And then towards the tail end of college, a friend of mine had a sister who married an entrepreneur that ran a company called Skyline Displays, they make trade show exhibits. And he saw what I was doing and he thought, "I'd like to hire this guy and send him off to California" to do what they called "R&D sales". Because what they used to do is they'd come up with something new, they'd release it to the field before it was ready, and then it was very expensive to make a change because it was on such a grand scale. So they thought, "Why don't we just have one person go try to sell some new stuff". And I just kind of fell into it. I moved out to California pretty much the day after I graduated from college. And that was a very interesting move. December 5th, 1995, very cold Minnesota day. I drove out to Newport Beach and it was one of the happiest days of my life.

Chris Beall (05:04):

That's what they call a selling point.

Dan McClain (05:10):

Absolutely. And when I went out there on the recruiting trip, they were very smart. They flew me into the Orange County Airport, and when you walk out of the Orange County Airport you see green grass and Palm trees. So I told myself, "I hope it's a good job because I'm taking it". And I think like most people in sales I was young, started off, struggled, and it took me a while to hit my stride to kind of figure out what I wanted to do. And then I had a roommate who was a recruiter. He goes, "Hey you're in sales, but you're kind of struggling. I got this customer that's looking for [inaudible 00:05:43] and they're a software company. Do you know anything about software"? I said, "No", but it paid more money so I took that job.

Dan McClain (05:50):

And then I was in software for 10, 15 years. And then my company did a ConnectAndSell test drive. I was one of the test subjects using the weapon and it was interesting. I didn't know what I was getting into. And when you use ConnectAndSell, turn it on, you hit that green go button. Well when it was time to hit that green go button, president of the company standing here, the VP of sales is standing here, these are big verbose gentlemen. They're like, "Turn it on"! All of a sudden my hands started shaking, my brain went blank, and I hit the go button. And the first conversation came fast, 30, 40 seconds. I don't know what I said. It wasn't intelligent or legible. The person hung up. And they yelled, "Do it again"! Did it again. Then the second conversation came fast, and it was, "Hey, yeah call me next week. I think I want to talk to you". And the third guy picks up the phone, I schedule a demo, a meeting, boss and the president leave me alone rest of the day. I think I scheduled two more meetings on my very first day and it was awesome.

Dan McClain (06:53):

And then I used almost every day. This was back in the days when people traveled, I was covering 10 states. And I was Account Executive, didn't do a whole bunch of prospecting, but I used it very specifically to call my [inaudible 00:07:07] task list and sales force. And it worked so incredibly well for me because I was calling the CIO or the VP of IT of a billion dollar company that ran SAP. And I was selling very expensive software to bolt onto that to make it run better, faster, stronger. And used it for two or three years and got to the point where every time I'd turn it on a little voice inside my head would tell me, "Dan, you should go sell ConnectAndSell". So I got to know you, called up you. I think I sent you some referrals, tried to get in somehow. I told you I wanted to join the team, we had a couple conversations over a couple months and you introduced me to Jonti McLaren, our SVP of sales. Went up and met him and been a happy member of the team now for five, almost six years. That might be more information than you're asking for, but that's how I got into sales from then up until now.

Chris Beall (07:57):

Wow. That's really good. Thank you. That was really tight. Yeah, I remember talking to you. I remember that call when you called me. I was walking down Santa Cruz Avenue, Los Gatos, California. I was just about to go to the Great Bear Coffee shop and get myself I think it was an early afternoon latte. And I think we talked for quite a while. I think we talked for quite a while actually, and I was impressed that you would call me and that you actually used ConnectAndSell. And so I was pretty sure that you were going to do something here one way or another. You know it is kind of funny how many of our really, really top people in the company are former ConnectAndSell customers and users. And so James Townsend used to use ConnectAndSell, and he also ran part of a company called Halogen and did right things there. Donny Crawford, I was just talking to Donny as our Chief Flight Instructor. He used to go in and do job interviews when he was a rep. And he'd take them all the way through and they'd make him an offer and he'd go, "Oh by the way, I'm not working for you unless you get me ConnectAndSell. That was his thing. And you know Donny pretty well, it's kind of hard to imagine him doing something like that.

Dan McClain (09:03):

Yeah. It's interesting.

Chris Beall (09:05):

He was consistent on it. It's true. A lot of people. Jonti McLaren was our SVP of Sales and Marketing. Everybody thinks that Jonti joined the company because his dad is the Exec Chairman, was the CEO back in the day. But in fact that's not why at all. Jonti built his first company on top of ConnectAndSell and he sold it and did pretty well, right? His Tesla looks better than our Subaru I guess [inaudible 00:09:28]

Dan McClain (09:28):

Yeah. And wasn't his use case a little bit different? Was he the CEO of the company or the Chief something, and he was using it to find business but also to gauge the market interest in what he had?

Chris Beall (09:40):

Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting to me, you said your first sales job where you had a real sales job was like, "Go do it", was actually a market exploration job. And that's a pretty unusual sales job, especially for somebody whose kind of new to it. Think about it. It's like, "Why am I going to trust this new guy to go off and bring me a signal back from the market"? Somebody had a lot of faith in you. This job right now is kind of like that though, right? There's something about ConnectAndSell, you always feel like you're selling something new. Do you have any idea why that is? I mean it's kind of funny, right? Because I can describe it. I was talking to a potential investor today, and I can describe it in like two sentences and they get it. It's really hard to get business people on the phone in order to explore business to business. Right? It's just hard. ConnectAndSell lets you do that by pushing a button and waiting a few minutes, talking to somebody. That's it. That's what it does. And yet.

Dan McClain (10:28):

[inaudible 00:10:28].

Chris Beall (10:28):

And yet. It's what is the factor that you see? Because this is about market dominance, right? So we're always talking about, okay you can use a human voice to dominate a market. You go right into somebody's midbrain, right in through their ear. Email gets blocked by all sorts of things. It doesn't get to you in spam. It sits there and annoys you. If you open it, you don't read it very much but it's only got 500 bits information in it or 5,000 bits to start with. Here you are inside of somebody's head. You know when you sit at a restaurant and it's quiet and you're trying to focus on something, I don't know you're reading your email or whatever. And the person next to you is chewing in a way that's just horrible. It's just obnoxious, right? You can't turn that off.

Chris Beall (12:00):

You can't make yourself not hear it. You're stuck, right? So when you cold call somebody, cold conversation them, you're inside their brain just like that chewing, but you better be doing a better job of whatever.

Dan McClain (12:11):

Yeah.

Chris Beall (12:12):

Some people get it, some people don't. What is it that you see that divides the sheep from the goats? Or as we say, the pigs from the weasels?

Dan McClain (12:20):

That's interesting. And I was on a very interesting blitz and coach session with a customer today. And we were listening. I think the one really huge thing is just the confidence in the voice. Am I talking to someone right out of college that's reading whatever they're saying off this piece of paper? Or do they sound like a peer that I may want to engage with? We had one of the reps and we said, "Hey, it sounds like you're reading off the script. And you have to stress the word I believe and sound like an expert". Very next call, we're listening. He goes, "I believe". He really stressed it, like overstressed it, and you could tell he got the person's attention. And he wasn't smooth, but he at least had added confidence to his pitch. Scheduled a meeting.

Chris Beall (13:10):

That's fascinating. So how did that happen with you? I mean the first time you pushed the button, you got a president standing over one shoulder, you got a vice president standing over the other, they're yelling at you. It's like having big Matt Forbes yell at and tell you to hit the button. Which [inaudible 00:13:25] used to do [inaudible 00:13:26]

Dan McClain (13:25):

Yeah. These were intimidating guys.

Chris Beall (13:30):

So you hit the button and it was confusing at first. When in that process, you got a couple meetings that day, did you get comfortable on the first day of ambushing people?

Dan McClain (13:39):

Absolutely. I got comfortable actually after the second conversation where the guy said, "Hey, busy. Call me next week". Because I knew he was interested. I knew he actually wanted to talk to me. The challenge was it was the CIO of a billion-dollar company. And it was that moment where internally I think I switched gears. And then when I had that third conversation, I didn't feel nervous anymore. I felt confident. And then it was just a natural conversation where I didn't sound like some young person that doesn't know what they're doing so they have to read something off a piece of paper. I sounded like a peer that maybe he actually wanted to engage with. And he had also expressed interest in what we did. Company was Suncor Energy, it was the CIO and they had said, "Yeah. We want to put Redwood Software", the company I worked for, "We want to put them as a line item on a 300 million process improvement project". So in the SAP space, we were on the bill of materials. We were one line item.

Chris Beall (14:43):

Wow.

Dan McClain (14:43):

Yeah. And after that third call, I actually put my feet up on the desk and I realized that ConnectAndSell was doing the worst part of my day. Sales Force, dial, voicemail, reschedule. Sales Force, dial, talk to that mean gatekeeper, voicemail. It did all that for me.

Chris Beall (15:02):

Yeah.

Dan McClain (15:03):

[Inaudible 00:15:03].

Chris Beall (15:03):

It's interesting. So you got it like that, and now you sell it. So you get to watch people getting it or not getting it. And so you pointed out somebody sounds like they're reading because they are reading, or they haven't been coached to use their voice appropriately and they can get a little bit stuck. Do you have a point of view about the order in which things ought to happen? Like what we do today is we'll hold a test drive. And a test drive for those of you listen to this don't know what it is, it's a full day of production with ConnectAndSell.

Chris Beall (15:37):

Tony Safoian who was CEO over at SADA, I was on his podcast and I asked him, "Didn't you guys make some money during that test drive at ConnectAndSell?" And he laughed. And Billy Franz, whose his VP of Inside Sales at the time, said something along the lines of "Chris, we made tens of millions dollars pipeline that day". And that was in three hours, right? So you would kind of think, "Well, okay. No brainer. No brainer". But that's how we sell, and it works pretty well but sometimes people they won't even listen to you to take a test drive. Right?

Dan McClain (16:13):

That's true.

Chris Beall (16:13):

Have you broken that down in your mind as to why? I shouldn't say it's irrational, but we offer test drives for free. The test drive is always educational. It's always fun. I've never had one that wasn't fun. I've been associated with God knows how many of these things. 1800 of them or something like that. They're always fun. So you got something that's fun, your reps are going to like it, it's educational, it's going to reveal the truth about what they're saying.

Dan McClain (16:40):

Mm-hmm.

Chris Beall (16:40):

Oh my God. That'll be interesting. And yet folks often go, "Yeah, I don't know about that. I don't want to take that test drive". What do you think is going on inside those people? What do you do about it? If anything?

Dan McClain (16:53):

This is something that has baffled me that I've been pondering for years. I have no idea. And it's such an interesting thought, because when I came and joined the ConnectAndSell team I really thought it would be as easy as, "Hey, you're a VP of Sales? You want your people talking to 10 times more people? Let's do a free test drive. Free". I really thought it was that easy. And then when I flew up and met with you and with Jonti, we went out for sushi. It was big Matt Forbes and Sean McLaren. Sean McLaren left, and then it was just me and Matt Forbes and he goes, "Hey, listen. Hey, listen buddy. This job is not easy. It's really hard". And I thought, "Nah". He really impressed upon me how hard it would be. And then actually a day before my official start date, I came up to that... There was an AA-ISP trade show in Dallas. And I'm thinking to myself, "I know how to use ConnectAndSell. I don't really understand this whole breakthrough framework we have". But I had it printed out and I'm thinking, "I better show Chris and Jonti that I'm not afraid and I better get on and use. And I better do it in front of them". That was a little bit scary. But I think I've kind of veered from your question. I don't know the answer to that question.

Chris Beall (18:13):

I don't either. I don't either. I always think it's like somebody says, "Okay, so here's the deal. Now mind you, it's only going to be one day but we're going to fly you and the kids to Disney World. And you're going to get to spend a whole day at Disney world and you're going to get to have nice meals at the restaurants and it's going to all be nice. Unfortunately, the sad part is it's only one day and you're going to have to fly home, but at least you'll know what Disney World's like. You'll know whether you and the kids like it". Right?

Dan McClain (18:40):

Yeah.

Chris Beall (18:41):

And I bet if you made that offer to some folks they'd go, "Ah, I don't know about that. That doesn't sound quite right to me". I don't know what it is though, but it's a very similar offer I think. There's got to be something hiding in there that neither you and nor I have figured out yet.

Chris Beall (18:56):

I have a bit of a thesis. It's got two parts. One is the too good to be true thing. That's too good to be true. Well in a way, rationally, what does it matter? But I don't want to waste my time. But I think the other thing is it kind of sounds like something that could be a bit of exposure for you if you're a sales leader.

Dan McClain (19:19):

Yeah. True.

Chris Beall (19:20):

And a little bit of exposure can go a long ways if you're not comfortable with it, and a long ways in a negative direction. And that may well be. That kind of speaks to market dominance. We talk about on this show, the only safe position to be in a market is a dominant position. Otherwise, someone else by definition is in the dominant position. And if they're in the dominant position, then you're working at their discretion. They can choose whether you live or die. The dominant player can always come undercut you on price, overspend you on whatever, out raise you on capital, attract better talent, have a snowball effect from better customers who then are willing to reference other customers. You name it. There's a book called The Gorilla Game that's about this very thing.

Dan McClain (20:08):

Mm.

Chris Beall (20:09):

As Geoffrey Moore wrote it back after he wrote Crossing the Chasm. And The Gorilla Game basically says this: In innovation anyway, and tech especially, all the chips go to the dominant player. The dominant player rakes in 90 plus percent of all the profits that will ever be achieved in that category. They take them all. And everybody else kind of serves them, whether they know it or not. They can think they're competing, but they don't know.

Chris Beall (20:34):

Sometimes I wonder whether folks... I don't say want it or not, but whether it's an uncomfortable idea trying to go after that dominant position rather than, "Well, at least this is the devil I know. And I'm kind of getting along. Why rock the boat, right? Why throw the grenade? Roll it down the hall and see what happens"? Do you ever feel that, or am I just kind of in a crazy place here?

Dan McClain (21:01):

Well I always try to look at things in the most simple manner. And when I think about that, I think what is the average tenure now of a VP of Sales? Is it 11 months? Is that still?

Chris Beall (21:16):

Well it's 17 months end to end. So if you're selling to him, you're catching them eight and a half months from their departure on average.

Dan McClain (21:25):

Yeah. I think if you catch them right in the middle, they're in a good spot. But if they're too new, they're too new. They're over their head swimming. Or if they've been there and they know they're on their way out, maybe there's apathy or maybe they're concentrating on where they're going to land next. It's certainly interesting. And it's also interesting the VP of Sales today is certainly not the VP of Sales even four or five years ago.

Chris Beall (21:51):

Hmm. How's that?

Dan McClain (21:53):

From what I see, they're not in control of as much budget. Or they just don't have as much decision-making authority. I'm seeing marketing departments have more, or just the CEO being more involved in those decisions.

Chris Beall (22:07):

Got it. Well we've always said, I've always said here, one of the challenges... And this is a market dominance challenge people got to think about is, marketing has budget for money, sales has budget for heads.

Dan McClain (22:18):

Yeah.

Chris Beall (22:19):

That's the tradition. And so sales leaders, their first order of execution is to make sure they got enough heads for next year. That's your number one job, right? It's your capital source.

Dan McClain (22:30):

Yeah.

Chris Beall (22:31):

So if you're an entrepreneur, you raise money in order to have enough capital to go to market and spend what you've got to spend to get the market you want and then also have a buffer against the unknown. And I think the way a VP of Sales might think about things is, "Hey, so it's November. My big problem is making sure I don't have 62 people, but that I've got 73 people. Because that's going to be my buffer". And now when we're assigning quota and we assign straight up, when some things happen say my top person walks out on day one of the fiscal, and now I'm going to face it. Because I don't think everybody really knows this, but you're going to pay about one times quota to replace your top rep if they walk out on the first day of the fiscal. If you do the math, it's going to be about their whole quota. Million-dollar rep is going to cost you a million dollars.

Dan McClain (23:23):

Wow. That's interesting.

Chris Beall (23:24):

Helen and I were talking about it. She was talking about a hundred-million-dollar rep. Imagine them leaving on the first day of the fiscal.

Dan McClain (23:31):

Wow.

Chris Beall (23:32):

That happens, right? I mean these are big, big numbers that are crawling around here.

Dan McClain (23:35):

That can be devastating. And I can't tell you how many times in the last six months I've heard it's really easy to go hire someone, it's really hard to go buy ConnectAndSell.

“When you share your life nuggets, you don’t know when it’s going to matter to someone,” observes Elena Hesse, our Market Dominance Guys’ guest and the Vice President of Operations of Thomson Reuters’ tax and accounting professionals in this third of three podcast episodes with our hosts, Chris Beall and Corey Frank. For the past four years, Elena has led the “NoTimeToRead Book Club” for #GirlsClub, an organization dedicated to changing the face of sales leadership by empowering more women to earn roles in management. Corey starts off the conversation by asking Elena to describe what happens in a book club that doesn’t require reading the book. “A book is just a vehicle for a conversation. You never know when something is going to resonate,” she says, as she explains how the subject matter generates ideas and experiences that club members share with each other. And just like the book club participants, Corey, Chris, and Elena share ideas and personal insights of their own, which cover everything from the sales benefits of a live conversation over an emailed message to the trust-creating habit of asking for clarification when you don’t understand something. As Chris says, “The essence of curiosity is embracing our ignorance.” So, get ready to open your mind and heart to embrace what these three experienced salespeople share with each other — and with you — about the essence of this week’s Market Dominance Guys podcast, “Why Conversations Matter.”

About Our Guest

Elena T. Hesse, Vice President, Operations – Tax & Accounting Professionals at Thomson Reuters, has been with this firm for more than 30 years. Elena is also a thought leader for #GirlsClub, leading the book club discussions to support #GirlsClub and its continuing work of changing the face of sales leadership by empowering more women to earn roles in management.

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Full episode transcript below:

Corey Frank (01:46):

Elena, one last question for you, maybe a good plug for what we were talking about here towards the end about empowering women leadership, particularly in sales and tech, which you're at the heart of certainly at Thomson. You have a book club, The No Time to Read Book Club. Maybe you can end this with a little plug for the book club, and what you do, and maybe some of the learnings over the years leading that?

Elena Hesse (02:05):

Absolutely. One, the reason that the book club even exists, in a way, is because of Chris Beall. Because Chris, you told Lauren Bailey about me, and she reached out to me for Girls Club, so that all happened.

Elena Hesse (02:22):

So, in the Girls Club organization, which I'm a part of as a thought leader, Lauren and Angela, there's so many great people there, we have this book club. We do it for each cohort. I think this is our third or fourth year. What I really love about the book club is that it's really a time for women. Sometimes there are men too, so this is not just a one gender conversation.

Elena Hesse (02:49):

The first book I pick, the next two, they pick. It tells you where their heads are. Where are they looking for help? Where do they want some insights? And we just talk. We read the book. Sometimes they don't read the book. I'll be honest with you, there's a reason for the title. It's hard to squeeze in book reading sometimes.

Elena Hesse (03:08):

A lot of the women in Girls Club, if I were making a general statement, I would say are women with families. A lot of times you got young kids. Time's precious, so we don't use that as a filter, if you will. So, we have a book club in which reading the book is not necessarily needed, because I always read the book.

Elena Hesse (03:26):

There's always some people that read the book, and we just go through the highlights, and share our personal stories as they relate to the books. I don't know if it's any more magical than that, Corey. It's really people coming together to say, "Never thought about that," or "This how I reacted to it." When you're sharing your life nuggets, you don't know when it's going to matter to somebody.

Elena Hesse (03:48):

I will make a point to our conversation and how it all started, Chris. You flatter me and humble me with remembering a statement that I made many years ago, frankly that I would never have been able to repeat back to you if you asked me, do you remember what you said? I would not have been able to, right?

Elena Hesse (04:07):

You never know when the teacher arrives. The student has to be ready. I'm not saying you're a student in that respect, but you never know when something's going to resonate. You never know. So, anytime you can bring people together with some level of continuity to the conversation, a book, that's just a vehicle for a conversation.

Elena Hesse (04:28):

A good book club, that is just the muse. You could go in lots of different directions and learn about each other, and walk away with something that no one would've thought that one little something would've mattered.

Elena Hesse (04:41):

So, I like to have spontaneous interesting conversations because I never know what I'm going to learn something. God knows I never could have repeated back that quote you told me. I'm very happy that I gave you something that meant something, obviously. I bet you we all have things that resonated with us and the person who delivered it had no idea what they were delivered to you.

Corey Frank (05:01):

Well, Elena, we have almost 200 episodes of this podcast stemming from my purely selfish desire to get inside the head of Chris Beall, so welcome to the club. I think that's a beautiful way to end this episode, especially since you're almost going to make Chris cry again.

Chris Beall (05:16):

It's working, it's working.

Elena Hesse (05:18):

You are not crying, don't tell me that. Are you?

Chris Beall (05:23):

I am, but I won't even hide it very well. Yes, Corey knows me well. The fact is, we all have so much to learn from each other. The essence of curiosity is embracing our ignorance.

Elena Hesse (05:35):

Yes, yes.

Chris Beall (05:36):

Really being enthusiastic about our ignorance. I love being ignorant. It's my favorite thing in the world. Whenever I think I know something, it makes me nervous.

Elena Hesse (05:46):

Yeah. Like, do you really know it? You've got to be vulnerable to that. I'll be in conversations, and if someone says a word that I don't know, I will say, "Stop, please. Can you tell me that means? Because I don't know what you're saying right now." I'm sure I've looked really ridiculous, but I don't care.

Corey Frank (06:03):

No, just the opposite, Elena. I think that's endearing. I think that for somebody who understands the courage it takes, especially at a manager or director, vice president C-level, to stop and ask a question like that? Hey, an acronym you'd use. Especially in sales, we throw around these all the time.

Elena Hesse (06:19):

Gosh, yeah.

Corey Frank (06:20):

I think, to me, there's got to be some Chris Voss, Candyland shortcut, that really engenders trust very, very quickly, like a shortcut if you say, "Stop, what does that mean? I don't understand that". We could you feel the burden on you and the trust part just catalyzes from there.

Elena Hesse (06:40):

Because typically people are saying things that are important, and you want to have the same vocabulary or knowledge so you can move faster, kind of back to our original statements.

Chris Beall (06:49):

Yeah. Well, everybody's an expert on thousands, millions of things, in fact. We just don't know what they are until we have a conversation. We have a little tagline at ConnectAndSell, and I've had branding people talk to me about, "Why don't you change that and make it fresher?" Conversations matter.

Chris Beall (07:06):

It's not that they matter for selling, they just matter. We just can't figure stuff out on our own, because our own experiences take us inside our own experiences. We need to be inside of other people's experiences in order to be able to gain access to what they're an expert at.

Chris Beall (07:28):

Everybody's an expert at millions of things. It's not limited. You think of how long a life is, think about all the years. Years? Try milliseconds. We learn stuff hundreds of times a second. We can't really share it with anybody unless we have a conversation. You have to have that high velocity, 20,000 bits a second, right into the mid brain. Then we have a shot.

Elena Hesse (07:53):

Yeah, and let's absorb it, and be brave enough to maybe change a position if you hear something that makes sense. Don't get too buried in your own belief. Pick your values. But what I believe in, because I'm using those very differently, it could change a little bit because your experience has showed me something I never saw before.

Elena Hesse (08:15):

Now, that's why I think ... I'm not going to get political, I promise. But just generally ... both sides of the aisle, once you pick a position, you got to stay consistent or else you're not considered credible. I want a leader who takes it all in, and makes decisions that are right, not just following a pattern of an echo chamber. So, it's okay to say you're wrong.

Corey Frank (08:41):

Oftentimes.

Chris Beall (08:42):

Well, Corey's wrong all the time, so.

Corey Frank (08:44):

Yeah, just ask my wife. Right, exactly.

Chris Beall (08:48):

... Into little diamonds.

Elena Hesse (08:52):

Sure.

Chris Beall (08:52):

This was the best conversation I've had in a long, long time.

Corey Frank (08:54):

Oh yeah.

Elena Hesse (08:54):

You're sweet. You guys are very flattering. I don't know if you do this for everybody else, but you make people feel good to participate. I was very happy to do so. I've learned things. I've jotted down books and movies.

Corey Frank (09:09):

Yeah.

Chris Beall (09:09):

I keep thinking of Little China. Go watch that one, that's a good movie.

Corey Frank (09:12):

Yeah. My wife knows there's no such thing as a quick conversation with Chris because it's so tangential. You talk about a lot, about a lot of things.

Corey Frank (09:22):

I've known Chris for a long time. I've never heard the primates example, but this is a guy that reads scientific journals for fun all the time. It's the Jiro thing. Jiro the movie, he dreams of sushi because he's such a craftsman that is so entrenched. As they say, "By the work, they shall know the workman."

Elena Hesse (09:45):

Yeah.

Corey Frank (09:45):

So, he's dreaming of sushi. You're like, "Come on, it's just fish. It's a meal. Can't you go drive through somewhere, or go to one of those things in Japan where they go around and grab the sushi?"

Corey Frank (09:54):

It's like, no, you're missing the point. "Well, can't I dial and talk to people? Can't I just email? Isn't it the same." It's going to take a little bit longer, but come on. You're missing the art, and the honor, and the dignity of the profession.

Elena Hesse (10:06):

Yeah, I love those last few things you just said, the art, and the honor, and the dignity of our profession.

Chris Beall (10:14):

I think we would do well to spend more time with our sales teams on these topics.

Elena Hesse (10:23):

Yeah.

Chris Beall (10:24):

People will say, "Well, sales is an honorable profession," all that kind of stuff. I don't think most people selling in the innovation economy even get what they're doing, why they're so important.

Chris Beall (11:29):

We tend to, I think sadly, by leaving the coin operated comp plans in place, we actually insult our salespeople by saying ... This is a Japanese thing. I spent a lot of time in Japan at one point in my life doing a big joint venture with Mitsui, so dealing with board level people there. They're very happy to let you be yourself, but if you're open, they're happy to teach you about what it's like to be them, which is really kind of interesting.

Chris Beall (12:02):

The thing that characterized Japanese society more than anything else was that it's insulting to tip somebody, and yet we pay our sales people by tipping them. The commission is a tip, right? The implication in Japan, the thing that's so insulting, is you're saying to them, "I don't believe you would've done your job with excellence unless I gave you this additional financial incentive."

Chris Beall (12:30):

That's an absolute insult to a Japanese person to say, "You did it for the money." You went the extra mile not because of who you are and your commitment to the excellence of what you're doing and the joy of serving somebody. You did it because you're trying to get 20% instead of 18%. It's the deepest insult.

Chris Beall (12:53):

I think that we have a hangover in our society from sales at the crossroads where a commission would make sense. Because basically I trick you into buying and I should be rewarded for it. That's kind of what it was.

Chris Beall (13:08):

Now, here we are, we're actually in partnership with people we have not yet met. That's the essence of the modern sales person, is your tribe includes people you have not yet met that you're going to help, that you're going to be curious about, and you're going to help. Yet we base our compensation schemes on the notion that you wouldn't really do it unless there was something in it for you.

Elena Hesse (13:31):

So, I'm curious. I will say this, when I first started in sales and probably the reason that I was willing to go into a sales position, because I'm a CPA, so that part of my brain was like, "What? commissions?" I don't want to put anything at risk.

Elena Hesse (13:47):

But when I started at Creative Solutions, they did not have commissions. It was straight salary, there was no anything. But kind of to your point, we looked at reports all the time to see who was selling the most. That was driving behavior, but it wasn't paying based on that behavior.

Elena Hesse (14:07):

So, my question to you Chris, since you've had a lot of exposure here, how do the Japanese companies pay their sales reps? Is it strictly a salary? Is there no differentiation for excellence? They just don't use money for that? What do you see?

Chris Beall (14:22):

Well, in their sales world, God knows what they do. I never got into that. That was not part of what I was ... It's funny, I never felt in these long relationships that we were putting together that anybody was working me for a commission. I never felt that, not even for a minute.

Chris Beall (14:40):

I never also felt, I have no instances to counter this, that a handshake wasn't as good as a contract. Never, not once. There was no like, "Here's a word here. We could do this," or whatever. You didn't do deals other than on an achievement of mutual understanding of what you were going to do next. That was the deal itself. There was no other deal. I don't know if I recognize these people-

Elena Hesse (15:06):

A lot of trust.

Chris Beall (15:07):

... but I do know that every time I would go to leave Narita Airport in Tokyo, there's a yellow line that you cross and you're no longer in Japan when you cross that line. I would stop at that line.

Elena Hesse (15:27):

And like have [inaudible 00:15:29]?

Chris Beall (15:29):

I would stop, because I felt like I was leaving civilization. We have examples there. We don't need to have this corrupting system, where I have to grease your palm a little bit before you'll carry my suitcase. We don't have that everywhere. We have salaried positions. We trust our engineers to work without tipping them for a line of code, or giving a commission.

Chris Beall (15:52):

Can you imagine? "You wrote 26 lines of code today, $55, yay." No, we would actually be concerned, like "Oh my God, this stuff's got to work. That could be sloppy." I want it to be right. What do they get? They get their stock options, and they get their opportunity for promotion, and they get their career, which is actually worth more than all that put together.

Chris Beall (16:13):

You get your reputation, you get your career, you get the fact that you can walk out the door without taking a single step. You get all of that. I think we still have got a cultural hangover. We got untrapped from the office, and we can now choose to use the office. But we've never gotten untrapped from the coin-operated notion of a salesperson.

Elena Hesse (16:36):

It's a very distracting part of the business, because if you don't have the coin-operated machine well oiled, highly tuned, with all the variations, it's like a pinball machine, as I pull it back, I'm trying to hit as many things as I possibly can. If I hit them and didn't get paid, now my focus as a salesperson is, "System's not working. How much do I need to get paid?" I'm in the back of my mind, at the very least. That's distracting me from my relationships.

Corey Frank (17:10):

Well, the social contract, they're going to feel is broken.

Elena Hesse (17:14):

Exactly.

Corey Frank (17:15):

"You hired me, and you're going to spend all this money on all these MarTech back tools. I follow your playbook, I should have six figures, and I should hit my quota." When I don't, it's tough to look introspectively, I've got to look at probably the leads, my boss, my manager, my comp plan, my commute, whatever it is that's natural.

Corey Frank (17:37):

Actually, in the movie, in Jiro they talk about that other concept we've heard, Kaizen, that continuous improvement, that main kind of principle. But the piece that they talk about in Jiro, [foreign language 00:17:48], a incredible book from the 17th Century about the Samurai way and the Japanese. They call it ikigai. It's finding one's central satisfaction and meaning in life. It's the reason for being.

Elena Hesse (18:02):

For your personal reason for being?

Corey Frank (18:05):

Your own personal reason for being. That's one of the Japanese philosophies that they have, is that it describes your value and your own worth, to you. It's your life, and your purpose. When you, like Chris, you go around Tokyo, the cabs are impeccably cleaned. They're like 1986 Maximas. The cab drivers are impeccably dressed and they wear white gloves.

Elena Hesse (18:29):

Wow.

Corey Frank (18:31):

They're beautiful.

Chris Beall (18:31):

And they smell good, the cabs smell good, they smell great. They all smell the same, they all smell great.

Corey Frank (18:37):

I think that pride starts at home. That pride of ... If I cared about my title, I'd be a banker. But if I'm a salesperson, the only thing I have to show, I can't have really my title, I got to have my stuff, my currency, which is [inaudible 00:18:52].

Elena Hesse (18:51):

Yeah. I never thought about it that way, but yeah.

Corey Frank (18:54):

Other currency, which is learning, curiosity, being supportive, group, et cetera. But anyway.

Chris Beall (19:00):

I think the lock-in comes from the market. We pay our salespeople commission because the lock-in comes from the market. The lock-in to the office came from the market, and then the market blew up because it turned out it was better to work from home than to die. But that's what it took. It actually took-

Elena Hesse (19:18):

A pandemic.

Chris Beall (19:19):

"Otherwise we're going to die." The fact that we commuted for an insane amount of ... Truly, if you just think about it, we did an episode on this, the hundreds of billions of dollars in the hours spent just commuting makes no sense, once you figured out how to do something remotely.

Chris Beall (19:39):

You can't go back and find them and go, "We were so good when we were together, that it was worth two things." One is all the commuting, and two is having our entire talent pool be within 50 miles of us instead of everybody on earth. Those things were incredibly valuable. They weren't incredibly valuable, they were locked in.

Elena Hesse (19:56):

So, I have a point. I know you got to leave in a minute and I'm going to respect that. But I will say this onto return to work. I believe in everything you just said. There's a lot of was in commuting. However, I can't accidentally bump into anyone on a video call. I can't do it.

Elena Hesse (20:16):

My learnings come from accidentally bumping into the world I live in. If I'm not at least coming into a central place where other people that I want to bump into are there periodically, I'm talking about hybrid, like two days a week, then I lose. The company loses. But it's a really hard message to get across to people who are so used to now working from home all the time. Because it's hard to argue your productivity comment. I am probably more productive-

Chris Beall (20:43):

Or the rest of your life. It's like, who are you working for? Are you working for the man, so to speak? By the way, my one minute may come here.

Chris Beall (20:53):

I think what we're going to see on this topic is we're going to see the market play out. The market is now for top talent. The top talent is simply, they're going to call the game. The rest of us who hire top talent, we're in the thrall of those people. They are our customers, and that's it.

Chris Beall (21:16):

It's not a very subtle game at this point. It's simply, what do they want? If they want to bump into people, well, maybe they'll bump into people. Here's where I think they'll end up going. Corey knows I'm a mathematician by background, and that I've never lost that hideous nature. The math says that we should get together, but less frequently and more intensely.

Chris Beall (21:38):

So, where the conferences used to be to meet customers, we will start having conferences to be with each other, and to actually take that time truly away from other things, and not just bump into each other, but bump into each other with a little intentionality, but still bump into each other.

Chris Beall (21:58):

The other flip is, when you do that, it's like opening a digital relationship with a conversation. When you get together, immediately, and I do mean immediately and I've charted this stuff, you start interacting differently with the people you were just with physically when you're texting them, so it's a catalyst for that future.

Chris Beall (22:21):

But two days a week, I think, might be a little much. But two days a month all getting together, maybe not at the office but somewhere else where ... Because the flights are cheap. The hotel venues or whatever, conference venues, are cheap. When people get away, they focus with each other, and you can have fun. Fun is the other thing. People got to have fun together.

Elena Hesse (22:48):

Yeah. I think your point is right on, and I think that's one of the reasons that we successfully lifted and shifted in COVID, is because we already had the tapestry of trust within physical contact with my team. Then we were able to go and continue that.

Elena Hesse (23:05):

The problem is, as we were hiring people remotely, we don't have that physical connection, that meeting up with each other. I don't know the 100% remote people as well. I just don't. We got to create situations. We can talk all day.

Chris Beall (23:21):

I'll make one more point. You have a 20,000-bit-per-second channel into somebody's mid-brain in a conversation, and I don't think we pick up the phone enough. I talked for 42 minutes this morning with one of my reps, that I had no reason whatsoever to speak with when I woke up this morning.

Chris Beall (23:38):

Mark and I now have got this 42 minutes. That's 42 minutes, times 60 seconds a minute, times 20,000 bits of emotion-laden information even though we don't think of it that way. What were we talking about? Friction in our sales process. We were getting down into the nuances of, "If you do it in this order, there's friction. But this order, there's no friction. So, are you willing to try it in this order instead of the traditional order?"

Chris Beall (24:07):

It was bumping into each other. Why? Because there was a conversation, that somebody who sets meetings for me, had with somebody that Mark's going to do a test drive with. I wanted those two to talk in a debriefed sense. So, I sent a text to both of them. Then mark said, "You sent me a text," and he called me, and we bumped into each other.

Elena Hesse (24:28):

That's great.

Chris Beall (24:29):

The key, I think, is to get away from the damned email and thinking that you're communicating when you're sending email, because you aren't.

Elena Hesse (24:39):

Yeah. That's one of the reasons I like Teams Chat. It's the closest thing to bumping into somebody I can do, because I can spontaneously say, "Do you got two minutes, because I need to pick your brain."

Chris Beall (24:53):

Yeah. Well, Helen sells that stuff, so I'll tell you how much value. That's Teams Chat.

Chris Beall (24:59):

By the way, I've been listening conversations at Microsoft about what they want their customers to do, because she's now customer success. The only word I heard yesterday, and I heard it over and over, is phone, which is really, really interesting.

Chris Beall (25:14):

She has people working for her in customer success who actually are spontaneously asking, "Can we do some cold calling? I want to talk to people outside of the IT people we're talking with."

Elena Hesse (25:25):

That's awesome.

Chris Beall (25:26):

Customer success is the new sales, and thank God we don't pay them commissions. That's where I'm going to end this. Elena, I tell you what, next chance we have, let's get together somewhere.

Elena Hesse (25:39):

Yes.

Chris Beall (25:41):

This was a great get together though.

Elena Hesse (25:43):

Yeah, this was awesome. I very much appreciate it. Nice to meet you Corey, and nice to get to know you more, Chris Beall. Congratulations on your upcoming wedding.

Chris Beall (25:51):

Thank you.

Elena Hesse (25:52):

Helen sounds fantastic, if she could have captured the heart and the mind of Chris.

Chris Beall (25:58):

She wins. No, I win. I'm the lucky one.

Elena Hesse (26:01):

Oh, you're sweet.

Chris Beall (26:02):

I'm just a lucky old beast. Corey calls himself a big dumb farm animal. I'm just a lucky beast that wandered into the right corral.

Corey Frank (26:09):

Well, Elena, it's been a absolute pleasure. Thank you for finally saying yes to this, which I'm sure was Chris's frequent torments to you to "Come on the show, come on the show." So, thank you for finally saying yes.

Corey Frank (26:21):

So, another episode in the books, Chris, with one of the best yet, with one of the brightest yet. So, with Cory Frank coming in for our Chris Beall, the Sage of Sales, the profit of profit. Elena, you're now the Curator of Curiosity, how about that?

Elena Hesse (26:34):

I'll take it.

Corey Frank (26:36):

We [inaudible 00:26:37] in the title, it looks great.

Chris Beall (26:37):

I love it.

Corey Frank (26:38):

Until next time, this is the Market Dominance Guys.

“When you go to a doctor, do you want that doctor to be excellent — or okay?” Elena Hesse, our Market Dominance Guys’ guest and the Vice President of Operations of Thomson Reuters’ tax and accounting professionals, poses this question to our podcast hosts, Corey Frank and Chris Beall. Their answer — and yours too, no doubt — is that they want doctors who love their job and do it extremely well. Elena, Chris, and Corey talk about how this equates to the role of the salesperson. In the old days, sales was generally a “hit and run” affair. You’d probably never see your customers again once the sale was made, so there was little reason to provide true value in a product or to develop and maintain a relationship with a customer. But in the modern world, most of us want to sell our customers an upgrade or an add-on or a renewal. So, product value and excellent customer relations are essential. In other words, if you want to be successful in sales today, our three sales experts say that it’s crucial to have skin in the game. Oh, yeh. It’s self-examination time. Evaluate your personal investment in your job as you listen to today’s Market Dominance Guys’ episode. “Do You Have Skin in the Game?”

About Our Guest

Elena T. Hesse, Vice President, Operations – Tax & Accounting Professionals at Thomson Reuters, has been with this firm for more than 13 years. Elena is also a thought leader for #GirlsClub, leading the book club discussions to support #GirlsClub and its continuing work of changing the face of sales leadership by empowering more women to earn roles in management.

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Full episode transcript below:

Corey Frank (01:46):

Elena, one last question for you, maybe a good plug for what we were talking about here towards the end about empowering women leadership, particularly in sales and tech, which you're at the heart of certainly at Thomson. You have a book club, The No Time to Read Book Club. Maybe you can end this with a little plug for the book club, and what you do, and maybe some of the learnings over the years leading that?

Elena Hesse (02:05):

Absolutely. One, the reason that the book club even exists, in a way, is because of Chris Beall. Because Chris, you told Lauren Bailey about me, and she reached out to me for Girls Club, so that all happened.

Elena Hesse (02:22):

So, in the Girls Club organization, which I'm a part of as a thought leader, Lauren and Angela, there's so many great people there, we have this book club. We do it for each cohort. I think this is our third or fourth year. What I really love about the book club is that it's really a time for women. Sometimes there are men too, so this is not just a one gender conversation.

Elena Hesse (02:49):

The first book I pick, the next two, they pick. It tells you where their heads are. Where are they looking for help? Where do they want some insights? And we just talk. We read the book. Sometimes they don't read the book. I'll be honest with you, there's a reason for the title. It's hard to squeeze in book reading sometimes.

Elena Hesse (03:08):

A lot of the women in Girls Club, if I were making a general statement, I would say are women with families. A lot of times you got young kids. Time's precious, so we don't use that as a filter, if you will. So, we have a book club in which reading the book is not necessarily needed, because I always read the book.

Elena Hesse (03:26):

There's always some people that read the book, and we just go through the highlights, and share our personal stories as they relate to the books. I don't know if it's any more magical than that, Corey. It's really people coming together to say, "Never thought about that," or "This how I reacted to it." When you're sharing your life nuggets, you don't know when it's going to matter to somebody.

Elena Hesse (03:48):

I will make a point to our conversation and how it all started, Chris. You flatter me and humble me with remembering a statement that I made many years ago, frankly that I would never have been able to repeat back to you if you asked me, do you remember what you said? I would not have been able to, right?

Elena Hesse (04:07):

You never know when the teacher arrives. The student has to be ready. I'm not saying you're a student in that respect, but you never know when something's going to resonate. You never know. So, anytime you can bring people together with some level of continuity to the conversation, a book, that's just a vehicle for a conversation.

Elena Hesse (04:28):

A good book club, that is just the muse. You could go in lots of different directions and learn about each other, and walk away with something that no one would've thought that one little something would've mattered.

Elena Hesse (04:41):

So, I like to have spontaneous interesting conversations because I never know what I'm going to learn something. God knows I never could have repeated back that quote you told me. I'm very happy that I gave you something that meant something, obviously. I bet you we all have things that resonated with us and the person who delivered it had no idea what they were delivered to you.

Corey Frank (05:01):

Well, Elena, we have almost 200 episodes of this podcast stemming from my purely selfish desire to get inside the head of Chris Beall, so welcome to the club. I think that's a beautiful way to end this episode, especially since you're almost going to make Chris cry again.

Chris Beall (05:16):

It's working, it's working.

Elena Hesse (05:18):

You are not crying, don't tell me that. Are you?

Chris Beall (05:23):

I am, but I won't even hide it very well. Yes, Corey knows me well. The fact is, we all have so much to learn from each other. The essence of curiosity is embracing our ignorance.

Elena Hesse (05:35):

Yes, yes.

Chris Beall (05:36):

Really being enthusiastic about our ignorance. I love being ignorant. It's my favorite thing in the world. Whenever I think I know something, it makes me nervous.

Elena Hesse (05:46):

Yeah. Like, do you really know it? You've got to be vulnerable to that. I'll be in conversations, and if someone says a word that I don't know, I will say, "Stop, please. Can you tell me that means? Because I don't know what you're saying right now." I'm sure I've looked really ridiculous, but I don't care.

Corey Frank (06:03):

No, just the opposite, Elena. I think that's endearing. I think that for somebody who understands the courage it takes, especially at a manager or director, vice president C-level, to stop and ask a question like that? Hey, an acronym you'd use. Especially in sales, we throw around these all the time.

Elena Hesse (06:19):

Gosh, yeah.

Corey Frank (06:20):

I think, to me, there's got to be some Chris Voss, Candyland shortcut, that really engenders trust very, very quickly, like a shortcut if you say, "Stop, what does that mean? I don't understand that". We could you feel the burden on you and the trust part just catalyzes from there.

Elena Hesse (06:40):

Because typically people are saying things that are important, and you want to have the same vocabulary or knowledge so you can move faster, kind of back to our original statements.

Chris Beall (06:49):

Yeah. Well, everybody's an expert on thousands, millions of things, in fact. We just don't know what they are until we have a conversation. We have a little tagline at ConnectAndSell, and I've had branding people talk to me about, "Why don't you change that and make it fresher?" Conversations matter.

Chris Beall (07:06):

It's not that they matter for selling, they just matter. We just can't figure stuff out on our own, because our own experiences take us inside our own experiences. We need to be inside of other people's experiences in order to be able to gain access to what they're an expert at.

Chris Beall (07:28):

Everybody's an expert at millions of things. It's not limited. You think of how long a life is, think about all the years. Years? Try milliseconds. We learn stuff hundreds of times a second. We can't really share it with anybody unless we have a conversation. You have to have that high velocity, 20,000 bits a second, right into the mid brain. Then we have a shot.

Elena Hesse (07:53):

Yeah, and let's absorb it, and be brave enough to maybe change a position if you hear something that makes sense. Don't get too buried in your own belief. Pick your values. But what I believe in, because I'm using those very differently, it could change a little bit because your experience has showed me something I never saw before.

Elena Hesse (08:15):

Now, that's why I think ... I'm not going to get political, I promise. But just generally ... both sides of the aisle, once you pick a position, you got to stay consistent or else you're not considered credible. I want a leader who takes it all in, and makes decisions that are right, not just following a pattern of an echo chamber. So, it's okay to say you're wrong.

Corey Frank (08:41):

Oftentimes.

Chris Beall (08:42):

Well, Corey's wrong all the time, so.

Corey Frank (08:44):

Yeah, just ask my wife. Right, exactly.

Chris Beall (08:48):

... Into little diamonds.

Elena Hesse (08:52):

Sure.

Chris Beall (08:52):

This was the best conversation I've had in a long, long time.

Corey Frank (08:54):

Oh yeah.

Elena Hesse (08:54):

You're sweet. You guys are very flattering. I don't know if you do this for everybody else, but you make people feel good to participate. I was very happy to do so. I've learned things. I've jotted down books and movies.

Corey Frank (09:09):

Yeah.

Chris Beall (09:09):

I keep thinking of Little China. Go watch that one, that's a good movie.

Corey Frank (09:12):

Yeah. My wife knows there's no such thing as a quick conversation with Chris because it's so tangential. You talk about a lot, about a lot of things.

Corey Frank (09:22):

I've known Chris for a long time. I've never heard the primates example, but this is a guy that reads scientific journals for fun all the time. It's the Jiro thing. Jiro the movie, he dreams of sushi because he's such a craftsman that is so entrenched. As they say, "By the work, they shall know the workman."

Elena Hesse (09:45):

Yeah.

Corey Frank (09:45):

So, he's dreaming of sushi. You're like, "Come on, it's just fish. It's a meal. Can't you go drive through somewhere, or go to one of those things in Japan where they go around and grab the sushi?"

Corey Frank (09:54):

It's like, no, you're missing the point. "Well, can't I dial and talk to people? Can't I just email? Isn't it the same." It's going to take a little bit longer, but come on. You're missing the art, and the honor, and the dignity of the profession.

Elena Hesse (10:06):

Yeah, I love those last few things you just said, the art, and the honor, and the dignity of our profession.

Chris Beall (10:14):

I think we would do well to spend more time with our sales teams on these topics.

Elena Hesse (10:23):

Yeah.

Chris Beall (10:24):

People will say, "Well, sales is an honorable profession," all that kind of stuff. I don't think most people selling in the innovation economy even get what they're doing, why they're so important.

Chris Beall (11:29):

We tend to, I think sadly, by leaving the coin operated comp plans in place, we actually insult our salespeople by saying ... This is a Japanese thing. I spent a lot of time in Japan at one point in my life doing a big joint venture with Mitsui, so dealing with board level people there. They're very happy to let you be yourself, but if you're open, they're happy to teach you about what it's like to be them, which is really kind of interesting.

Chris Beall (12:02):

The thing that characterized Japanese society more than anything else was that it's insulting to tip somebody, and yet we pay our sales people by tipping them. The commission is a tip, right? The implication in Japan, the thing that's so insulting, is you're saying to them, "I don't believe you would've done your job with excellence unless I gave you this additional financial incentive."

Chris Beall (12:30):

That's an absolute insult to a Japanese person to say, "You did it for the money." You went the extra mile not because of who you are and your commitment to the excellence of what you're doing and the joy of serving somebody. You did it because you're trying to get 20% instead of 18%. It's the deepest insult.

Chris Beall (12:53):

I think that we have a hangover in our society from sales at the crossroads where a commission would make sense. Because basically I trick you into buying and I should be rewarded for it. That's kind of what it was.

Chris Beall (13:08):

Now, here we are, we're actually in partnership with people we have not yet met. That's the essence of the modern sales person, is your tribe includes people you have not yet met that you're going to help, that you're going to be curious about, and you're going to help. Yet we base our compensation schemes on the notion that you wouldn't really do it unless there was something in it for you.

Elena Hesse (13:31):

So, I'm curious. I will say this, when I first started in sales and probably the reason that I was willing to go into a sales position, because I'm a CPA, so that part of my brain was like, "What? commissions?" I don't want to put anything at risk.

Elena Hesse (13:47):

But when I started at Creative Solutions, they did not have commissions. It was straight salary, there was no anything. But kind of to your point, we looked at reports all the time to see who was selling the most. That was driving behavior, but it wasn't paying based on that behavior.

Elena Hesse (14:07):

So, my question to you Chris, since you've had a lot of exposure here, how do the Japanese companies pay their sales reps? Is it strictly a salary? Is there no differentiation for excellence? They just don't use money for that? What do you see?

Chris Beall (14:22):

Well, in their sales world, God knows what they do. I never got into that. That was not part of what I was ... It's funny, I never felt in these long relationships that we were putting together that anybody was working me for a commission. I never felt that, not even for a minute.

Chris Beall (14:40):

I never also felt, I have no instances to counter this, that a handshake wasn't as good as a contract. Never, not once. There was no like, "Here's a word here. We could do this," or whatever. You didn't do deals other than on an achievement of mutual understanding of what you were going to do next. That was the deal itself. There was no other deal. I don't know if I recognize these people-

Elena Hesse (15:06):

A lot of trust.

Chris Beall (15:07):

... but I do know that every time I would go to leave Narita Airport in Tokyo, there's a yellow line that you cross and you're no longer in Japan when you cross that line. I would stop at that line.

Elena Hesse (15:27):

And like have [inaudible 00:15:29]?

Chris Beall (15:29):

I would stop, because I felt like I was leaving civilization. We have examples there. We don't need to have this corrupting system, where I have to grease your palm a little bit before you'll carry my suitcase. We don't have that everywhere. We have salaried positions. We trust our engineers to work without tipping them for a line of code, or giving a commission.

Chris Beall (15:52):

Can you imagine? "You wrote 26 lines of code today, $55, yay." No, we would actually be concerned, like "Oh my God, this stuff's got to work. That could be sloppy." I want it to be right. What do they get? They get their stock options, and they get their opportunity for promotion, and they get their career, which is actually worth more than all that put together.

Chris Beall (16:13):

You get your reputation, you get your career, you get the fact that you can walk out the door without taking a single step. You get all of that. I think we still have got a cultural hangover. We got untrapped from the office, and we can now choose to use the office. But we've never gotten untrapped from the coin-operated notion of a salesperson.

Elena Hesse (16:36):

It's a very distracting part of the business, because if you don't have the coin-operated machine well oiled, highly tuned, with all the variations, it's like a pinball machine, as I pull it back, I'm trying to hit as many things as I possibly can. If I hit them and didn't get paid, now my focus as a salesperson is, "System's not working. How much do I need to get paid?" I'm in the back of my mind, at the very least. That's distracting me from my relationships.

Corey Frank (17:10):

Well, the social contract, they're going to feel is broken.

Elena Hesse (17:14):

Exactly.

Corey Frank (17:15):

"You hired me, and you're going to spend all this money on all these MarTech back tools. I follow your playbook, I should have six figures, and I should hit my quota." When I don't, it's tough to look introspectively, I've got to look at probably the leads, my boss, my manager, my comp plan, my commute, whatever it is that's natural.

Corey Frank (17:37):

Actually, in the movie, in Jiro they talk about that other concept we've heard, Kaizen, that continuous improvement, that main kind of principle. But the piece that they talk about in Jiro, [foreign language 00:17:48], a incredible book from the 17th Century about the Samurai way and the Japanese. They call it ikigai. It's finding one's central satisfaction and meaning in life. It's the reason for being.

Elena Hesse (18:02):

For your personal reason for being?

Corey Frank (18:05):

Your own personal reason for being. That's one of the Japanese philosophies that they have, is that it describes your value and your own worth, to you. It's your life, and your purpose. When you, like Chris, you go around Tokyo, the cabs are impeccably cleaned. They're like 1986 Maximas. The cab drivers are impeccably dressed and they wear white gloves.

Elena Hesse (18:29):

Wow.

Corey Frank (18:31):

They're beautiful.

Chris Beall (18:31):

And they smell good, the cabs smell good, they smell great. They all smell the same, they all smell great.

Corey Frank (18:37):

I think that pride starts at home. That pride of ... If I cared about my title, I'd be a banker. But if I'm a salesperson, the only thing I have to show, I can't have really my title, I got to have my stuff, my currency, which is [inaudible 00:18:52].

Elena Hesse (18:51):

Yeah. I never thought about it that way, but yeah.

Corey Frank (18:54):

Other currency, which is learning, curiosity, being supportive, group, et cetera. But anyway.

Chris Beall (19:00):

I think the lock-in comes from the market. We pay our salespeople commission because the lock-in comes from the market. The lock-in to the office came from the market, and then the market blew up because it turned out it was better to work from home than to die. But that's what it took. It actually took-

Elena Hesse (19:18):

A pandemic.

Chris Beall (19:19):

"Otherwise we're going to die." The fact that we commuted for an insane amount of ... Truly, if you just think about it, we did an episode on this, the hundreds of billions of dollars in the hours spent just commuting makes no sense, once you figured out how to do something remotely.

Chris Beall (19:39):

You can't go back and find them and go, "We were so good when we were together, that it was worth two things." One is all the commuting, and two is having our entire talent pool be within 50 miles of us instead of everybody on earth. Those things were incredibly valuable. They weren't incredibly valuable, they were locked in.

Elena Hesse (19:56):

So, I have a point. I know you got to leave in a minute and I'm going to respect that. But I will say this onto return to work. I believe in everything you just said. There's a lot of was in commuting. However, I can't accidentally bump into anyone on a video call. I can't do it.

Elena Hesse (20:16):

My learnings come from accidentally bumping into the world I live in. If I'm not at least coming into a central place where other people that I want to bump into are there periodically, I'm talking about hybrid, like two days a week, then I lose. The company loses. But it's a really hard message to get across to people who are so used to now working from home all the time. Because it's hard to argue your productivity comment. I am probably more productive-

Chris Beall (20:43):

Or the rest of your life. It's like, who are you working for? Are you working for the man, so to speak? By the way, my one minute may come here.

Chris Beall (20:53):

I think what we're going to see on this topic is we're going to see the market play out. The market is now for top talent. The top talent is simply, they're going to call the game. The rest of us who hire top talent, we're in the thrall of those people. They are our customers, and that's it.

Chris Beall (21:16):

It's not a very subtle game at this point. It's simply, what do they want? If they want to bump into people, well, maybe they'll bump into people. Here's where I think they'll end up going. Corey knows I'm a mathematician by background, and that I've never lost that hideous nature. The math says that we should get together, but less frequently and more intensely.

Chris Beall (21:38):

So, where the conferences used to be to meet customers, we will start having conferences to be with each other, and to actually take that time truly away from other things, and not just bump into each other, but bump into each other with a little intentionality, but still bump into each other.

Chris Beall (21:58):

The other flip is, when you do that, it's like opening a digital relationship with a conversation. When you get together, immediately, and I do mean immediately and I've charted this stuff, you start interacting differently with the people you were just with physically when you're texting them, so it's a catalyst for that future.

Chris Beall (22:21):

But two days a week, I think, might be a little much. But two days a month all getting together, maybe not at the office but somewhere else where ... Because the flights are cheap. The hotel venues or whatever, conference venues, are cheap. When people get away, they focus with each other, and you can have fun. Fun is the other thing. People got to have fun together.

Elena Hesse (22:48):

Yeah. I think your point is right on, and I think that's one of the reasons that we successfully lifted and shifted in COVID, is because we already had the tapestry of trust within physical contact with my team. Then we were able to go and continue that.

Elena Hesse (23:05):

The problem is, as we were hiring people remotely, we don't have that physical connection, that meeting up with each other. I don't know the 100% remote people as well. I just don't. We got to create situations. We can talk all day.

Chris Beall (23:21):

I'll make one more point. You have a 20,000-bit-per-second channel into somebody's mid-brain in a conversation, and I don't think we pick up the phone enough. I talked for 42 minutes this morning with one of my reps, that I had no reason whatsoever to speak with when I woke up this morning.

Chris Beall (23:38):

Mark and I now have got this 42 minutes. That's 42 minutes, times 60 seconds a minute, times 20,000 bits of emotion-laden information even though we don't think of it that way. What were we talking about? Friction in our sales process. We were getting down into the nuances of, "If you do it in this order, there's friction. But this order, there's no friction. So, are you willing to try it in this order instead of the traditional order?"

Chris Beall (24:07):

It was bumping into each other. Why? Because there was a conversation, that somebody who sets meetings for me, had with somebody that Mark's going to do a test drive with. I wanted those two to talk in a debriefed sense. So, I sent a text to both of them. Then mark said, "You sent me a text," and he called me, and we bumped into each other.

Elena Hesse (24:28):

That's great.

Chris Beall (24:29):

The key, I think, is to get away from the damned email and thinking that you're communicating when you're sending email, because you aren't.

Elena Hesse (24:39):

Yeah. That's one of the reasons I like Teams Chat. It's the closest thing to bumping into somebody I can do, because I can spontaneously say, "Do you got two minutes, because I need to pick your brain."

Chris Beall (24:53):

Yeah. Well, Helen sells that stuff, so I'll tell you how much value. That's Teams Chat.

Chris Beall (24:59):

By the way, I've been listening conversations at Microsoft about what they want their customers to do, because she's now customer success. The only word I heard yesterday, and I heard it over and over, is phone, which is really, really interesting.

Chris Beall (25:14):

She has people working for her in customer success who actually are spontaneously asking, "Can we do some cold calling? I want to talk to people outside of the IT people we're talking with."

Elena Hesse (25:25):

That's awesome.

Chris Beall (25:26):

Customer success is the new sales, and thank God we don't pay them commissions. That's where I'm going to end this. Elena, I tell you what, next chance we have, let's get together somewhere.

Elena Hesse (25:39):

Yes.

Chris Beall (25:41):

This was a great get together though.

Elena Hesse (25:43):

Yeah, this was awesome. I very much appreciate it. Nice to meet you Corey, and nice to get to know you more, Chris Beall. Congratulations on your upcoming wedding.

Chris Beall (25:51):

Thank you.

Elena Hesse (25:52):

Helen sounds fantastic, if she could have captured the heart and the mind of Chris.

Chris Beall (25:58):

She wins. No, I win. I'm the lucky one.

Elena Hesse (26:01):

Oh, you're sweet.

Chris Beall (26:02):

I'm just a lucky old beast. Corey calls himself a big dumb farm animal. I'm just a lucky beast that wandered into the right corral.

Corey Frank (26:09):

Well, Elena, it's been a absolute pleasure. Thank you for finally saying yes to this, which I'm sure was Chris's frequent torments to you to "Come on the show, come on the show." So, thank you for finally saying yes.

Corey Frank (26:21):

So, another episode in the books, Chris, with one of the best yet, with one of the brightest yet. So, with Cory Frank coming in for our Chris Beall, the Sage of Sales, the profit of profit. Elena, you're now the Curator of Curiosity, how about that?

Elena Hesse (26:34):

I'll take it.

Corey Frank (26:36):

We [inaudible 00:26:37] in the title, it looks great.

Chris Beall (26:37):

I love it.

Corey Frank (26:38):

Until next time, this is the Market Dominance Guys.

Helen Fanucci, CEO and Founder of Pipeline Power, continues her role as host in this illuminating conversation with Chris Beall. We're picking up where we left off, unraveling the mysteries of dormant leads and exploring their untapped potential. This episode delves into what Chris calls "Lazarus leads" - those seemingly dead opportunities that can be resurrected for massive value. As Helen astutely observes, "It's not 16 billion of value. It's 16 billion of wasted ad spend piling up." Get ready for eye-opening insights and innovative strategies that could revolutionize your approach to inbound leads, potentially doubling your Return on Ad Spend. This conversation is packed with game-changing ideas for sales leaders, CSOs, and CEOs looking to transform their sales strategy.

Listen to the first half of this conversation here.

Listen to all episodes featuring Helen Fanucci here.

“If you’re not curious, you’re not going to be a good sales rep.” That’s the well-considered opinion of our Market Dominance Guys’ guest, Elena Hesse, Vice President of Operations of Thomson Reuters’ tax and accounting professionals. As a naturally curious person herself, Elena has observed that “You can’t be speaking more than you’re listening” if you’re going to learn what you need to know about your prospects and their businesses. You have to ask those insight-seeking questions and then truly pay attention to their answers in order to discover whether your product or service is a good fit for their needs. Our two podcast hosts, Corey Frank and Chris Beall, totally agree with Elena that the best way to establish a good relationship with your sales prospect is with an inquiring mind — not a sales pitch. Curious about what else these three have to say? Listen to today’s Market Dominance Guys’ episode, “Do You Have an Inquiring Mind?”

About Our Guest

Elena T. Hesse, Vice President, Operations – Tax & Accounting Professionals at Thomson Reuters, has been with this firm for more than 13 years. Elena is also a thought leader for #GirlsClub, leading the book club discussions to support #GirlsClub and its continued work in changing the face of sales leadership by empowering more women to earn roles in management.

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Full episode transcript below:

Corey Frank (01:17):

And we are here again, Chris, the Market Dominance Guys podcast is on the air. Welcome to our fabulous guest that we have in the seat today, Elena Hesse who's the Vice President of Operations over at Thomson Reuters. The behemoth that is, the worldwide force that is Thomson Reuters, and Elena hails from somewhere on the hand in the... Not the upper Michigan, but somewhere over there.

Elena Hesse (01:42):

Right there. [crosstalk 00:01:42] That's right.

Corey Frank (01:43):

Absolutely. Well, pleased to have you as always, my name is Corey Frank and we have the duke of dials, the profit of profit. We have the CEO of ConnectAndSell, my pal, Chris Beall. So Chris, welcome once again to the Market Dominance Guys, another great reporting with an incredible guest here that we've lined up for today.

Chris Beall (02:00):

The guest who has the best quote I have heard in my entire business career, so...

Elena Hesse (02:09):

What is that, Chris?

Chris Beall (02:09):

And you know, I've heard a lot of stuff and I said a lot of stuff and I don't forget very many things.

Corey Frank (02:13):

Okay. All right. Pen in hand. What's the quote?

Chris Beall (02:15):

Pen in hand. Well, we'll tell you the quote later, but hey, we missed you on the episode with James Townsend. I was going solo, but some people say it's acceptable, but now we're in the real deal. So, Elena, this is just beyond thrilling to be here with you. This is-

Elena Hesse (02:31):

[crosstalk 00:02:31] Your expectations are kind of low.

Corey Frank (02:35):

No, no, no, no, not at all. Thomson Reuters again is just a beat-in industry. It's been there for a while. Looks like you've had quite a stellar career over there, but I have to ask what kind of rundown gin joint did you stumble into to meet a guy like Chris Beall, for him to lasso you as a guest on the Market Dominance Guys?

Elena Hesse (02:54):

Well, I wish I had a fancy story. I will say that I was walking the aisles of our sales team when Chris was in the office to get us started on ConnectAndSell and got introduced to him there. We just started chatting up, which I love people and Chris is easy to love because he's got a lot of stories to tell.

Elena Hesse (03:13):

I was fascinated with ConnectAndSell and just the whole concept. So one of my good things, bad things, I don't know, I'm super curious and probably asked a million questions is probably my MO is I always like to know how things work. And he explained a lot of that to me, so that's how it all began. We need a gin joint, Chris to meet up.

Chris Beall (03:37):

Well, here's my version of the story. Who is the person running the show that day for us? April, right?

Elena Hesse (03:42):

April. Yeah.

Chris Beall (03:43):

Yeah, so...

Elena Hesse (03:43):

April Welliver.

Chris Beall (03:44):

So we're in the hands of April, who's just incredible, wonderfully organized. This is one of the cleanest test drives and we do these test drives, right? The full production, full-day, crazy things happen in them. In fact, the biggest one we ever did was actually a Thomson Reuters down in Texas, the day after Christmas, once we did 108 people in a test drive.

Elena Hesse (04:05):

Wow.

Chris Beall (04:05):

And it was just fly on Christmas day and go down there and have... And it was more fun than is right to have. But this one, here we are, I hide in the conference room because I don't want to disturb the action on the floor. So my people are doing that, I only had one people at that at moment. And so I'm hanging out in the conference room and I'm just doing things, making calls and sending emails and doing whatever and April walks in and says, "Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey," I go, "What?"

Chris Beall (04:29):

She said, "You got to meet Elena. She's the boss! She's the budget holder." I said, "Ah, budget holder. Got it." So I go walk out on the floor and you got to picture this. There are reps on the right or left, kind of depends on how you see in Zoom... And both sides, right, and there's an aisle straight down the middle. So she's walking to me, I'm walking toward her and it's loud. It's like your floor. It's like Branch49. It's loud.

Chris Beall (04:56):

And I'm looking at the numbers and there are 26 meetings that have been set in one hour and 55 minutes. So stuff is happening. So I walk up to Elena and we get about 12 feet apart. And I say, "So Elena, what are your thoughts? And she says, and this is the best quote in the history of business, from my experience, she says, and I have this word for word. I did not forget a word. "Chris, I have no thoughts. I have tears of joy in my eyes. You have turned my silent library into a sales floor."

Corey Frank (05:34):

That is the famous Elena. Okay. You've mentioned that quote several times over the years. Now, I can actually put a name and a face with that quote. Yes. The library, the famous library quote. Yes.

Chris Beall (05:47):

Yes, and I cried.

Chris Beall (05:51):

And I do again... It really... Because we're on this, as you know, this market dominance mission, right? And we're always just doing these test drives, hoping to resonate with a team and a leader that really want to dominate and do it right. I don't mean dominate in a mean way. I mean, what I mean is trust-based, high-velocity, trust-based market dominance. And it was like, holy moly, what she just said was a better way of stating our mission and what we understood we were doing than we had ever said. And that's... We've been at this for years. It's not like we just started, this isn't easy stuff. So I still... Elena I hold that quote in my heart.

Elena Hesse (06:37):

Well, you're very sweet. I appreciate it. I wish I could have told you what I said.

Chris Beall (06:42):

That's my job to remember.

Elena Hesse (06:45):

But unfortunately, I just say a lot of things.

Chris Beall (06:48):

But it's so poetic and it's such a thing. It's like you turned my... It was yours. I loved the proprietary nature of it. You turned my silent library into a sales floor. And I [crosstalk 00:07:03]-

Elena Hesse (07:02):

Well, I mean at the end of the day, right, if we're not talking, if we're not communicating, we're not selling. I will say this, that may be controversial, I have no idea. Right now what we're seeing all over the industry, including Thomson Reuters, and there's positive intent here and there are good things here, but it's the move to digital and trying to get as many eyeballs as possible out on the websites and draw them in and digitally satisfy a buyer or a prospect's needs.

Elena Hesse (07:33):

My personal opinion is that's great, but at the end of the day, I don't think I'm any different than most of the buyers and prospects. I want to talk to a person when I want to figure out the nuances of what's going on and that matters. In a world that's going heavy digital, I want us to have really quality conversations and if people are responding to the tool sets that you have, certainly that gets them in the door. Then I think sales reps, really good ones, get it done. So thank you, because I know we still use... That was a few years ago and ConnectAndSell is still being used today, so that's a big testament to you guys.

Corey Frank (08:15):

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Chris Beall (08:16):

But you went through a lot of changes. You guys have [reorged 00:08:18] a lot of ways. There has been a lot that has gone on. Robert Beaty once said to me when he was taking me to the airport somewhere in San Diego. And he said, "Do you realize our COO's office has a whiteboard?" We're doing this big reorg and the only words on the whiteboard are "intelligent cross-sell using ConnectAndSell". And he said those words have sat there for months and months and months.

Chris Beall (08:40):

Because to me, what was so exciting about your organization, in particular, was it was the classic cross-sell opportunity because you're coming in with my pay, and here's something that could be sold a lot of different ways. You could go sell it direct, you could do all manner of things, but you also have this big tax and accounting organization and the idea of channelizing through those customers and doing that as an upsell... And it's a very modern upsell because ultimately it comes down to the usage.

Chris Beall (09:15):

It's not just here's a transaction, now we got your money. Right?

Corey Frank (09:18):

Right. Right.

Chris Beall (09:19):

It's very, very modern. It's like what my fiance Helen does. She runs customer success for those Microsoft products that you think are Microsoft products, right? And including the power apps and stuff like that. Ultimately, customer success is all about helping folks succeed and the economics come through the usage. And this cross-sell play, post-MNA, nobody cross-sells.

Chris Beall (09:42):

They say they're going to, it's in the docs, right? It's like, why did we buy this company? Why did we merge? Wow, we're going to do this cross-sell. And I was hard over on that at Thomson Reuters, because I saw this company that had done a divestiture and after a divestiture you always have, I'll call them... There are organizational stresses that occur after a divestiture and you can never get rid of the overhead as fast as you got rid of the revenue. That's the main [crosstalk 00:10:07].

Elena Hesse (10:07):

True, true.

Chris Beall (10:09):

Right? So you loosed a wolf in your house. So then it's like, "Oh, do I have to feed you?" This is interesting. And so I thought, "Wow, this is the best I've ever seen." Because it's also a really, really cleanly run company to promote the idea of cross-sell without cross-training.

Chris Beall (10:26):

Where you disaggregate the first conversation from the expertise and then put them back together in order to get the customer to be able to trust and move forward. And so it's still my number one example of all time of modern, conversation-enabled... Cross-sell still goes on every day I look every day at the numbers and listen to conversations and it's my entertainment. As I said, there's no work to be done. I'm a CEO, right. It's like, what do you do?

Elena Hesse (10:52):

Yeah, for sure.

Chris Beall (10:53):

We have a delightful relationship. It took five years to create, I don't know if you ever heard the story Elena of how it went down, but I was at a conference and every year I would ask the executive retreat, AA-ISP, and every year I'd ask Rob, I'd go by him on the way to something at the end of the conference and say, "Can you make your next year's number without ConnectAndSell?" And every year he would say yes. And then in 2017, I think it was... Or '18. I said, can you make... I think it was '17. I said, "Can you make 2018 without ConnectAndSell?" I'm on my way to the dessert bar. And he says, "Nope." And I said, "Okay, test drive next Tuesday." And he said, "Got it."

Elena Hesse (11:31):

That's awesome.

Chris Beall (11:32):

And it took five years.

Elena Hesse (11:34):

Yeah. Yeah. It's always funny when people ask how long is the sales cycle? Like it all depends on any product, on anything it's so hard to do that.

Corey Frank (11:44):

Well, the sales cycle is, to your point, Elena, the sales cycle is digital. It may take a little bit longer than conversations... You had just said a few minutes ago, right, that this trend in the digital world away from conversation, certainly, right. Chris and I have talked a lot about that over the years. And we still see that. I mean, there are great tools out there, the outreaches of the world that have nurtured. But Chris, you were on a podcast just recently and somebody aired this infographic from the residue of your brain and do you want to talk about this because Elena, I don't know if you've heard Chris' dissertation on the math of why conversations matter more so than just digital.

Elena Hesse (12:27):

No, I have not. Is there a summary you can share with me?

Chris Beall (12:31):

Well, this is... The summary is pretty simple and it's what you said as a buyer, you need to talk to a human being to get through the nuances and I'll make a claim. You also need to talk to them to de-risk the situation. That is if you were to go do the research all by yourself, you're taking the risk that you're not an expert and somebody else is, right. The seller is always the expert. You're always the generalist as the buyer. There's career risk, right? You're a very, very... You're a deeply embedded player at Thomson Reuters, but even you, if you screwed up and bought the wrong thing and it hurt the company, it would hurt your career.

Elena Hesse (13:09):

Yeah.

Chris Beall (13:09):

Simple.

Elena Hesse (13:10):

And 1 So you're collecting that information to offer up to a final decision-maker. You're right on the career more so... If I'm an owner and I'm doing that to myself, well then I'm doing that to myself. But many people are serving that up to their bosses, right. To make a recommendation. And that is a reflection. And really right before this conversation, I was in need of a chat with a colleague just as an example.

Elena Hesse (13:43):

There were emails that went back and forth that I wanted to have a conversation about because I knew that if we continued the emails or the teams chat, that one, we'd be doing it forever. And two, you lose really the background intangibles as to what we needed to discuss that you can't always capture in a word, especially without facial expression and body language. I think that's super important still to this day. But I will say this, there's a place for digital, absolutely. I think we were in a world that was all sales rep, personal touch, if I didn't dial you didn't know about me. And now we're trying to get to this digital play where you can buy without talking to someone. Neither one of those is the answer.

Elena Hesse (15:30):

It's here. It's here somewhere here in the science and the art of where that pendulum that needs to swing is something we are still figuring out. And the good news is we're trying to figure it out, right?

Chris Beall (15:43):

I agree deeply.

Elena Hesse (15:44):

[crosstalk 00:15:44] be perfect.

Chris Beall (15:44):

So what this is about, by the way, Elena is super simple, which is the trust piece of the relationship-building is something that requires a huge amount of information. That's not the information about the product. The first-order question is, do I trust you enough that I would put my career in your hands?

Elena Hesse (16:02):

Right.

Chris Beall (16:03):

That's the real question, right? When we're buying for ourselves, I always make this comparison. If I buy a Tesla and I spend $70,000 on a Tesla, because I want a good one, right? It's like a mid-range Tesla. I buy it and I bring it home and I discover after driving it for a couple of days that unbeknownst to me, no doctors ever told me this, I'm allergic to electricity, and being close to electricity gives me hives. It's like, oh my God, right? So I got to dump this Tesla and I got to get it out of my life.

Chris Beall (16:34):

And so I dump the Tesla and I'm out $10,000. So now I'm out $10,000, and as you said, but I'm the owner of my own life, right? So I bought the Tesla for me. Now I buy that same Tesla for the company and it's going to fulfill a very important mission in our, say supply chain. So our company... I don't know we do something with eggs and we got to have a vehicle to transport eggs. Then I get this Tesla and it electrocutes the eggs and makes them unusable. The Tesla salesperson, I never talked to them, right? I just went online and I went click, click, click. I didn't realize, oh, there was something the salesperson could have told me which is, don't use this thing to transport eggs. By the way, folks, I just made that up.

Chris Beall (17:19):

Teslas are fine for transporting eggs and you cannot get hives from them. Elon, I'm sorry I said all of that, but you're a funny dude too so I can say stuff and get away with it. I will not tweet any of that. I guarantee you. So anyway, the point is we need to get trust as the seller and trust... And this is what Chris Vos taught me. So Mr. Never Split the Difference, I asked him one night, "How long do we have to get trust in a cold call?" And he said, "Seven seconds." And I said, "Seven seconds. Wow."

Chris Beall (17:53):

Our research says eight seconds. And he said, "Your research is wrong. It's seven seconds." Oh, got it. Okay. So what do we have to do in those seven seconds? He says, "Oh that's easy. All we have to do is show the other party we see the world through their eyes. We call it tactical empathy and demonstrate to them we are competent to solve a problem they have right now." And I said, "Well, isn't the problem they have right now, me?" And he said, "Bingo, that's why you're in control. You own the cold call because you are the problem. And therefore you can offer to solve the problem. And if you say the right things in the right tone, you'll get trust."

Chris Beall (18:30):

And I asked him, "How long will that trust last?" And he said, "A lifetime, as long as you don't blow it." And when you think about the problem of B2B, the top of the top of the top of the top of the top of the top of the funnel is that seven seconds to get trust and I asked him what happens after eight seconds. He says, "No chance, you're done." We have to replace you as the seller. You fail to get trust. You will never be trusted. So when you think about it from that perspective, which is what this 130-episode podcast is about. This is the book Corey wanted me to write and it's like, wow. So digital is great then as long as we have trust. So how many bits of information does it take to get trust? Well, it takes about 600,000 bits of information to really get trust. To get-

Elena Hesse (19:15):

To get trust without a person? Is that what you're saying?

Chris Beall (19:15):

To get trust at all, right? Your brain has to consume a huge amount of information before you go, "You know, I think we're going to let these Vikings into the village," right? It's like you got to know a lot about them Vikings before you're going to do it or you got to meet a Viking that you trust, right? One or the other. I mean, that's how it works. So it's like, "Hmm, I have an issue if I try to go digital first because oddly it doesn't have enough information."

Chris Beall (19:44):

So an email contains a few thousand bits, right? 5,000 bits in an email. So I've got to get you to read 120 emails in a focused way to get to 600,000 bits, which is a 32nd human conversation. That to me is the core of the problem is our brains are wired for involuntary trust and it takes a huge amount of information and we don't have enough time in digital land to do it. Who's going to read 120 emails? I mean, it's not going to happen, but a lot of people will listen to seven seconds of a conversation and then let you go ahead with the next 27 seconds. And then you have a relationship, now send them the email.

Elena Hesse (20:24):

Right. Great point. Great point. I mean, I read a book once called The Speed of Trust. Are you familiar with that?

Chris Beall (20:31):

I love that book. Oh my...

Elena Hesse (20:32):

Yeah. I love it too. And I think it's the essence of how good business is done. I can get a lot farther, faster when I trust who I'm dealing with and in a world of over-information, misguided information on every aspect, not just buying something, but the news, everything.

Elena Hesse (20:53):

When you know that we're in a space where trusting data is not guaranteed because even the source is at question. I want to be able to trust that information and that's based on the person that I can look straight in the eye and say, "Hey, I'm listening. I believe in what you're saying, tell me the truth. And then if you do boom, we can go," right? So yeah, I think it's more important today than it was 10 years ago.

Chris Beall (21:21):

I think it's everything. And I think that folks don't get it because I call it Gresham's love of business communications. So Gresham's law of money says bad money or counterfeit money drives out good money. Because when the bad money is in circulation, well the good money goes and hides because you can use the bad money, right?

Elena Hesse (21:36):

Right. Right. Right.

Chris Beall (21:39):

Bad digital communication because it's cheap, it's counterfeit in a fundamental way, which is with money, with coin back in the day. What was interesting about counterfeits was the cost of goods was low. You made them out of cheap metal and then you passed them off as the good stuff. Well, digital is always cheap. It's not cheap to design. It's cheap to disseminate so you can flood the market. If I can send you one email, I can send you two.

Chris Beall (22:05):

If I can send you one, I can send you and Corey the same one. If I can have a bot that goes in and says Elena and Corey, I can pretend I'm personalizing. If I can have that bot look up on LinkedIn something and say, "Hey, I see that someone,"... I got one yesterday. "I love your volunteer work at Live Earth Farm." It's like, what? Now, I don't trust you. You were there when you [crosstalk 00:22:29] the sheep. I don't trust you.

Elena Hesse (22:30):

Yeah. Yeah. It's a deal. It's real. And it goes beyond [crosstalk 00:22:36] selling. And I know this is about selling, but I think that comment just goes beyond selling. Unfortunately, for salespeople or organizations, we suffer at the hands of the larger digital play being untrustworthy because already salespeople, let's face it have to overcome, you're just trying to sell me something, right? Communication is powerful. It's powerful. And how we use it is how we're going to get something out of it. Be careful for what you use and how you use it, right.

Chris Beall (23:07):

Well, and I think sequence really counts. It's ironic that these cadence and sequence tools actually promote something that is called a sequence or a cadence, which is true, it is do this, then do this, then do this, wait this long, blah, blah, blah. But there's a funny thing about it, which is that the sequence of operations in the sequence, the easier one is start with an email. But the only one that's known to work is start with a conversation. And none of the sequence tools have built into them, start with a conversation.

Chris Beall (23:36):

They have start with a dial. But a dial is like a breeze blowing through the woods. It means nothing. A dial is like I walk by... Say I was interested in Helen back in the day, right. I'm still very interested in her and we plan to get married and stuff. But you know, say that was my goal, right. I know a bar that she frequents and she likes to drink Manhattans. But instead of going in and talking to her, I just walk by. That's like a dial. I walk by on the outside. I didn't talk to her, but I go, oh, activity it was that touch. That's what we call the irony of the whole digital thing is we send something to somebody that they ignore and we call it a touch. Right? And it's...

Elena Hesse (24:16):

That doesn't make any sense.

Chris Beall (24:16):

It doesn't make sense, but it's the core of the entire sequencing revolution. We teach people something that when they do it, they go, oh my digital is 14 times better. And what really is 14 times better which is just start with a conversation. Pretty easy, right? Except, of course, you got to get conversations, it's our business. But start with a conversation of voila that here's the magic subject line that changes everything about email. Thank you for our conversation today.

Elena Hesse (24:45):

Right.

Chris Beall (24:46):

Boom.

Elena Hesse (24:47):

Right. I agree with you. I don't think any one particular digital play is bad. It's just how we are... Let's figure out the best way to use them. You know? I mean a hammer looks stupid when you have a screw. So, I mean [crosstalk 00:25:04]-

Corey Frank (25:04):

All you have is a hammer.

Chris Beall (25:05):

Yeah, or trying to drink a cup of coffee out of a hammer too. It really works better, just drip, drip, drip, all over the place. Elena, you have thoughts. What are your thoughts?

Corey Frank (25:15):

You know, I'm curious, you've been at Thomson for a long time, right? Thomson is known as... It's a top-shelf sales organization, has been for years, right. Recruits the best talent and acquired all these companies over the years. You've probably had a front-row seat to see ridiculous amounts of talent, particularly in the inside sales teams, all the different divisions from the Thomson learning to the taxation and the other great subsidies.

Corey Frank (25:41):

What do you see makes an uncommonly great salesperson that maybe they don't have the pedigree or the LinkedIn, but a fisherman knows another fisherman. You know that this person... Because you're a mentor over there at Thomson, right? Certainly in the leadership role that you play. So what are those that residue, maybe unseen by the common person that you know this person is going to ascend to higher ranks? What are those traits that you look for, the inside sales, specifically?

Elena Hesse (26:12):

Sure. This is going to sound like I've been prepared for this question. I did not know you were going to ask me this question, but I actually have an acronym that I've used for years. And if you'd like, I'm happy to share it and I've tweaked it a little bit over the years, but I honestly believe this acronym is true for a salesperson. It's true for any professional, but I will focus on sales, if I could. So I call it the ACE sales rep, A-C-E. So it's an acronym and there are two words for each letter. So if you would, don't mind me going here. I know acronyms can get old, but it helps me. So for A, I think a great salesperson has a wonderful attitude, not an attitude that's only good when I'm winning, but an attitude that's there when I'm losing and knowing I have to bounce back.

Elena Hesse (27:03):

So actually what I'm going to do is I'll list out the names of the things. And then I'll come back to how I look at it. So attitude is one. Accountability is the second A. Okay, I'm going to skip over C and go to E, effort, effectiveness. And I consider those rotating on the axis of the C in two ways, consistency and curiosity. So when I say that, back to my attitude and accountability, if you're not consistently having a more positive attitude than not, then you're going to fail because we hear nos more than we hear yeses. You've got to be self-regulated to understand that both things are going to happen and stay steady. Okay. Accountability is simple. If you're going to say it, do it. It's on you. Your quote is yours. Yes, someone gives you the quota, but it's done with reasonableness like 95% of the time. You'd need to be able to own that, right?

Elena Hesse (28:07):

Let's go to effort in regards to consistency. In the world that I came from... In the beginning of my life, I started as a sales rep at Thomson Reuters. It used to be called Creative Solutions. The same thing that holds true, then that holds true today in effort, for us, it was all about dialing, right. Making the calls, making the calls, but effort is seen in lots of things. It's how much are you there? Are you leaning in? Are you being here now? Are you showing effort in what you're doing? Or are you coming up with excuses? And then effectiveness, so that ties to effort in a way, because we would have people that would say, "I made 50 dials," right? But if you're making 50 dials and you're not selling, then you're not effective. So how are you figuring out how to make that effort pay off?

Elena Hesse (28:53):

All of those things are on this access of consistency. At the end of the day, if I had to pick one of those as my number one, it would be curiosity. If you are not curious, you're not going to be a good sales rep. Sorry, you need to be curious enough to know what someone else's problems are and to figure out if you can solve it. You can't be speaking more than you're listening. You have to be a discovery person and you have to be uniquely and authentically interested. I think I'm very curious. And certainly, when I was a sales rep, I had my successes, but I think curiosity has helped me through all of my different phases in life, personally and professionally. So yeah, if I meet somebody that I'll make a statement and if they don't ask me why, what, how, they don't want to know more, then why are you going to do that with a sales opportunity? Probably a long-winded answer...

Chris Beall (29:48):

Gosh, that was a good answer.

The triumphs, rewards, and prosperity of the customers he serves is at the heart of everything today’s Market Dominance Guys’ guest does. Meet James Townsend, Vice President of Customer Success and Growth at ConnectAndSell, as he discusses with our host, ConnectAndSell CEO Chris Beall, the different ways that sales has changed in the 10 years since James joined the company. They compare acquiring data on prospects, targeting the right insertion points (aka company insiders), the importance of cold call training, and selling vs. serving customers’ needs. You’ll want to stay tuned to the very end when they talk about what they see as “the next frontier,” on today’s Market Dominance Guys’ episode, “Getting to the Right Insider.”

About Our Guest

James Townsend is Vice President of Customer Success and Growth at ConnectAndSell, a company that pioneered the service of getting prospects on the phone for its customers’ cold callers to talk to. As one of his LinkedIn followers states, “James is a consummate professional with a deep desire to see his clients succeed.”

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Full episode transcript below:

Chris Beall (01:09):

Hey everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Market Dominance Guys. I am not Corey Frank, and I apologize for that. Corey is not available today. But gosh, I think we got something even better. I mean, Corey, you know a thing or two, but we're here with James Townsend. James is ConnectAndSell's Vice President Of Customer Success, master of intensive test drives, guy who makes a bunch of weird stuff work with a bunch of other weird stuff, including human beings. And he's been around this company and this whole business of talking to people in order to move business forward. Really the original market dominance play longer than I have. So welcome James to Market Dominance Guys.

James Townsend (01:52):

Thank you, Chris. Hi everybody.

Chris Beall (01:54):

Wow. You sound good, James. So where are you on the face of our blue whirling planet?

James Townsend (02:01):

I'm in snowy Ottawa, Ontario, Canada right now.

Chris Beall (02:06):

[inaudible 00:02:06]. That doesn't sound very good. This is April 19th. Is April truly the cruelest month?

James Townsend (02:12):

It is. It was this morning, I'll tell you that much.

Chris Beall (02:14):

Wow. Wow. Well, James, you've been around the world of conversation first everything in a bunch of different ways. Could you give us a little background, first of all, just overall career-wise? And then how did you get your leg caught in the bear trap that we call ConnectAndSell? What have you learned along the way that's just kind of obvious to you now that wasn't so obvious back when you first touched this thing? The bear trap we call ConnectAndSell. Well, I got my upbringing in the BPO world, a call-center company called Cytel, which was then bought by Client Logic. And so the boot camp of running massive amounts of inbound sales and customer calls for Dell, our client back in the day. Made the jump to BPL Consulting and then ran into a guy at a grocery store and said, "Hey, we're hiring for an outbound telemarketing manager."Before it was cool to run a sales development team that used to call it outbound telemarketing, back in the day.

I jumped on board at Halogen. About a year into my tenure at Halogen, I was lucky enough to cross paths with this sales trainer out of Long Island, who, as we were going through the goal call approach said to me, "You got to check out this product ConnectAndSell. It's like shooting fish in a barrel," he said. And I said, "Well, all right, Uncle Pete, I'll check out this product ConnectAndSell." And the rest is history. We used it very successfully as a customer. I think I was customer number 14 back in the day, back in 2007, 2008. To this day, I still come across folks that we were competitive with back in the day. And they say, "How did that little Canadian company get in every deal?" And there we go. We were this small team of 10 top-of-the-funnel sales development folks covering a whole lot of ground conversationally.

About three years in, I was so enamored with ConnectAndSell, I joined the company, I joined the mission. I joined the cause back in October 19th, of 2010, I remembered the day vividly. From there, it's been a fascinating journey helping companies and sales practitioners embrace the power of a conversation-first focus. And along the way, we've learned some stuff about how to make those conversations great. And I think you said it right, Chris, when you said, "If we're going to provide a mechanism to allow sellers to have lots of conversations, we may as well make those good Conversations." And there are things that go into that around how do you target and who do you speak to and cadence and frequencies and targeting and all sorts of fun stuff that play into how do you attack your market in the most fiscally efficient way possible.

So I'm in the bear trap on the mission and loving every minute of it. Because, there aren't many products in the market that fundamentally solve a problem. And from everyone I come across in the last 10 years having a sales team that speaks to enough decision-makers on regular basis, like I saw with my team at Halogen. Number one complaint in our town halls was, "I'm just not talking to enough DMs." Number one complaint, month over month at ConnectAndSell was able to in future town halls, after implementation of ConnectAndSell that no longer became a complaint. It was now, how do I make good on all these conversations that I'm having and make them great conversations to generate opportunities for the business? So it's been a fun ride and it continues on. We still learn things every day about how to enable companies and teams around this revolutionary technology.

James Townsend (05:41):

Well, that's interesting. So you've been with the company since October of 2010.

Chris Beall (05:41):

2010.

James Townsend (05:44):

2010.

Chris Beall (05:46):

1. I joined up in 2011. It's been so long, it's kind of hard to keep track. So you've been much more on the front lines. When I joined up, I was the head of products and there was a lot to do with the technology. There was kind of bringing it to the web. There was making it horizontally scalable. There was performance stuff, efficiency, bringing down some of the internal costs associated with having those hundreds of agents actually navigating phone calls and all that. But you were focused on another end of the problem, which is how to take this obvious increase in firepower and help customers apply it to a business problem. Early on, did you see the problem the way you see it today or what's changed? What's the single biggest thing as you've engaged with the customers who are trying to have more conversations, use those conversations, drive their business forward, and dealing with all the realities of sales at the top of the funnel, which is you bring on reps, it's hard to get them on board. It's hard to get them trained. It's hard to keep them. Targeting is always challenging, all that kinds of stuff. But what's the biggest change between year one and where you are right now? Because now you're helping some of the most dynamic companies in the world really go out and dominate their markets.

We do Market Dominance Guys here stuff, right? We talk about it, but you actually go out and kind of, I would say, make it happen with those folks who want to go that route. What's changed that you would say, if you had time traveled forward 10 years and somebody said, "Hey, it's going to be like this." "I don't think so," right? It's "This is going to stay the same." So what's been the biggest change?

James Townsend (07:31):

Oh gosh. I think the biggest change that I've seen is, I think back to when I was a practitioner using ConnectAndSell with a team, the challenge that our CEO at the time charged us with, this is kind of pre-ConnectAndSell, it's about a year before ConnectAndSell, he said, "Go find me the old fashioned way," right? Calling a switchboard and asking for who the HR director was or who the VP of HR was. Data as a accessibility to data now is much more readily available with data plays out there, we know the big ones. But then it wasn't as readily available. So I think what's changed now is because data is so readily available, and whether we empower a revenue operations team or marketing operations team or a team of sellers to profile a set of companies and profile the people in those companies. I think what we saw ourselves back early the year prior to ConnectAndSell was taking a very pragmatic approach to identifying decision-makers by calling switchboards and asking produced a what at the time we called a master state list of super high-quality targets.

Now, fast forward 10 years, do we place that same level of focus and diligence when we're building a query in Zoom info or Apollo or any other or LinkedIn navigator? I would say no. So the big thing that I've seen change is companies needing to rely on inspection and more precisely targeting the people inside of their addressable market, because you can have the best message in the world there. I was talking to a head of sales last week, unnamed company, very large sales training and coaching organization, well known. So he said to me, "James, I just don't understand why my team is not setting as many meetings as they used to." And I said, "Well, messaging aside, because that's a very important piece of the equation, let's look at who they're speaking to." When we took that same approach that we did it back at Halogen, which is inspect at a very precise level, the job titles of the individuals that we intended to reach out to, when we ran that exact exercise with this head of sales, it turned out that 50% or more of who his team had sourced themselves were nowhere in the realm of those that would be even modestly interested in sales training and coaching, period.

So I think we've evolved to a place in the market where, because data's so readily available, because search technologies and artificial intelligence and community-driven sourcing and all sorts of different mechanisms and big companies that are providing access to data is at our fingertips today, we've lost sight of the necessity to be very precise about who we intend to sell to. That's to me, the number one biggest. The second biggest change is, I think as companies, we focus too heavily on product training and not enough on problem training, in terms of what our solution is going to provide to the individual that we intend to speak to. And I'm seeing a movement out there with other practitioners and certainly we share that the world of what's in it for them. And Sean McLaren's been telling us that for years, right? "It's not about who you are or what you do or how it works. It's about," and Mike Bosworth said it last week and I go to market games, right? It's about curiosity. It's about the problem. It's not about the product.

So, the second thing I've seen out there in the market is a much larger reliance on product, and part of it's because we have divisions called product marketers and we have product trainers and we put our team through intake and onboarding. Not our team at ConnectAndSell, but out in the market. And we train them on the offering. And therefore the first thing that a seller, he or she will talk about is the offering. So those two things, how we build very focus sets of target data and look at our market in a very precise way, and then how we message to that market, I've seen a big amount of drift in those two areas, Chris.

Chris Beall (12:12):

Well, that's interesting. It's kind of like Gresham's law where bad money drives out good, right? Counterfeit money causes good money to stay in people's pockets, so to speak. We don't think about that much anymore because counterfeiting's not the deal that it used to be. But in a way, so much of the data that we can get so easily now is kind of counterfeit. It's so easy to get, we just load it up. And maybe we're part of the problem with ConnectAndSell in the sense that you load it up and then you can talk to a ton of people, and well, it feels like progress. It's kind of like sending emails, right? Sending emails always feels like progress, right? Because you can look at the numbers and you can get into them. I call it digital business porn, where you're staring at the numbers all the time and feeling good in some way.

It's like, wow, look at this. We sent out this and we got this response rate and tweaked this and did this. And it feels like progress. And then you look at the results at the end and they tend to be more haphazard. There is an element of that. And I guess we contribute to it in a sense because we bring an abundance of conversations and so it's kind of easy to go, "Well, I'll just push the button, talk to somebody else and they'll get better." One of the things that I've noted is that we have tended to believe over the lifetime of the company that using ConnectAndSell and talking to a ton of people will cause reps to get better. That is at bets will lead to improved performance. And you and I are both golfers, right? You're a little bit more better of a golfer than I am.

But if we both hit a lot of golf balls in our life and hit a fair number of them in competition, and we both know that just going around a golf course over and over standing at a range and beating balls all by ourselves, probably isn't going to make us better. In fact, there's a famous well-known phrase in golf, which is grooving a bad swing. And once you've grooved a bad swing, you actually are using repetition to create variety of outcomes. It's kind of funny when you think about it, right? I repeated that so often that now it's unreliable. It's a thing that can happen in the world of golf. I think we used to think that.

We're both wearing these Flight School shirts right now, for anybody who's seeing this on video. And if you're just listening, we're both wearing these white shirts that have a logo on them that shows a airplane kind of coming at you, a military plane. And it's because we have invented something called Flight School here in response to the fact that we noticed that folks don't get better just by talking to a ton of people. It's actually a precision process to make people better in terms of their competence and confidence. So what I'm wondering is, how do these two go together? Like if you were to make the ultimate, let's say you wanted to make account-based that's focused on companies that you want to have as customers sales happen at pace and scale, so you can dominate a market, because that's what Market Dominance Guys is about. It's all account-based, always starts with the list. The list is always intentional. The list is ultimately of people, but it starts as being a list of companies. And then what? Then you need a message that's going to be sufficiently intriguing to cause somebody on curiosity to take a meeting so that you're in a psychological space where they can confess.

And when they confess what their truth is about their problems, their challenges, and you figure out there's a reason to move forward, now you're, I'll call it down funnel. You're in the process and kind of, we let go of it at that point. When you think all that coming together, what are the pieces that you think are most often missing? Is it one, the belief that you can't do account-based sales at pace and scale? You have to go like, you get five accounts, James, that's all you can handle. Whereas you know that you might need to 50 accounts with 20 entry points each in a week in order to be able to kind of make sense of that market. So what do you think needs to come together? And what frustrates you when you're working with customers? Because you're really a consultant on their sales business process. What frustrates you, where they just kind of like, they don't get it? Either they don't get what they can do or they don't get what they need to do. And that's a big question, but you wrestle in this mud every day.

James Townsend (16:37):

Well you just said it, Chris, the list is your strategy. And more often than not the most important piece of the people in the company, I think businesses out there do a pretty darn good job at the companies they're looking to target from a firmagraphic perspective, from an industry sector perspective, from a size number of employees. Now, could there be different ways to look at a set of companies to target based on recent growth, based on hiring signals, based on is that company contracting, is there acquisition? For sure, right? But I think from a, who do we sell to perspective, I would give the customers we work with a B plus, let's say, in terms of targeting the businesses.

You just said it in terms of insertion points is when we get to the people. And our tendency is in a world driven traditionally through omnichannel, right? You have a social strategy on one side, you have an email strategy on the other side. You have conversations are still important. A lot of our joint clients that are using technology like Outreach or high-Velocity Sales or Sales Loft, or any of the kind of orchestration plays, because narrowing exposure from how many emails am I sending to a particular enterprise, that there tends to be a tendency to narrow the focus to only one insertion point, maybe two, maybe and a half, maybe two and a half. If you look at a, your question is around, how do you scale an account-based strategy? It's identifying those insertion points very pragmatically, understanding the cold spots, right? And what companies do I need to look for adjunct insertion points.

And then the meta-point, Chris, is asking a junior, senior, mid-level irrespective of tenure, but asking a human being, a perfectly rational human being to conceptualize the world in terms of adjunct insertion points and direct insertion points, and taking the time to inspect a set of accounts against those insertion points, it's just not tenable. So that you can certainly scale a strategy providing that the initial groundwork, back to our Flight School, when you're in doing the courses and the ground training, and you understand how to maneuver the airplane around the airport before you're even in the air, that's what we need to be focusing more tightly on is getting really good at the groundworks, so we can and take off on the correct runway. And we are up in the air. We can have some level of precision in terms of getting back to that runway.

So you hit a couple of important points, which is number one, the message is for sure important, but doing that groundwork to identify those insertion points, then building a message that is unique to those people, not the company. And that tends to be where we focus a lot of our time and energy, which is how do we as a product improve something for that company. It's not about that company. It's about the insertion points, the people that we've identified to reach out to. And a lot of times we have cold spots in terms of our overall strategy, if we look at it holistically in term, are we're selling ourselves short by targeting too few individuals in that company and oftentimes two senior individuals, right? If we're in at enterprise play, I've seen this recently within the last 12 months where SDR Bob, let's call him, was targeting Apple. And Bob had one supply chain leader at Apple, just one. One lonely supply chain, probably the right person at Apple, very high up in the pecking order. But when you look at Apple holistically, in terms of insertion points, there are hundreds of supply chain leaders, right?

So, did somebody do the groundwork to understand how to penetrate Apple from a strategic perspective, from a strategy perspective? No, it was provided to the hands of an individual that said, "This is who my AE really needs to sell to, therefore I'm going to go and talk to that person and that person only." So one lesson to take away from that is, companies get a B plus at targeting the organizations, the accounts, the companies, the entities that they're looking to sell to, I would give a D plus to a D minus on targeting the right insertion points in order to penetrate properly. And learn things about that company about how they sell by having enough conversations and getting signals back that frankly, we're not going to get back from email and social at a rate that we need to in order to map out how that company might buy or who I really need to end up going to speak to. Because, you can't always rely on publicly available information to give you that information that you need in order to sell.

Chris Beall (22:18):

Well, in fact, I'd say you never can rely on it. You might get lucky. But it's incredibly rare, especially when selling to larger companies to find exactly the right person, especially when you take account timing, right? Everybody's got different projects they're working on, different focus areas. So they're delegated stuff. There's things that are being worked on by committee. There's all sorts of circumstances. I would say companies have become more transparent with regard to who works there and more opaque with regard to what's actually going on inside over the last 10 years. But because what's going on inside these companies is much more, it's more complex. There are more people involved when we're selling systems, especially we're always selling something that ultimately has to integrate into their business, right? This always been true of a all B2B products. But, it's like the difference between selling somebody an electric vehicle that they're going to use in order to say, drive around the parking lot, a golf cart, and an electric vehicle they're going to use to deliver their products to the marketplace. They're very, very different. They might seem kind of similar, but at the job that you're doing for them is very different and different people will be involved in even deciding to take a look.

And I love what you said about the conversations with these insertion points. And I think for those who don't kind of get it, an insertion point is just a potential way to get in/ to go from being an outsider, to being an insider, which is the crucial transition that we make, I think not just with companies, but kind of with anybody, right? You got to get in a trust relationship before you're going to start to hear the truth. And we always point out at Market Dominance Guys, the only reliable way to make that happen is to get scheduled conversations. Because in a scheduled conversation, the psychology is such that it's okay for both parties to kind of get real. You have enough time, you've come together voluntarily. Whereas in an ambush call, it's ridiculous to expect the ambushed party to get real. Their reality is pretty obvious. They want to get off this call with their self-image intact. Whereas when they voluntarily show up for a meeting, they'll be a little apprehensive about whether you're going to sell to them or not, but you can dispel that apprehension by your behavior. And then you can get down to the truth.

And I think, if I hear you correctly, you're saying that in a sense, the big issue is companies, which being sales leaders will choose for what seems like efficiency, to focus on the buyer, rather than having conversations with, scheduled conversations with enough people to learn what's really going on inside that company. And ultimately to be trusted sufficiently to be led voluntarily, probably to relevant people. It's like when I was working with SAP way back in the day, I just went and hung out in Palo Alto for months and talked to different people. And finally somebody said, "You know what? You need to talk to this guy, Kamal." And next thing I know I'm in a room with the guy who has the problem that we're trying to solve, right? It took a long time, many conversations before somebody said, "Oh, I get it. I get what you really do. And I know this other person is kind of the right person for you to talk to."

So when you try to help folks with this, and I know you're not a sales consultant per se, but there's something about being in this conversation business that sort of makes you into a sales consultant, right? Especially with regard to engagement, the sales engagement process, where you're going from utter ignorance, other than data, to at some point into a relationship with somebody where you're working mutually to solve a problem. When you are doing that, what is it that you do? Or is it even anything I know it's not really your job, right? What do you say or do or demonstrate to somebody to help them open their mind, to not reaching out to just one person, but reaching out to 10 or 20 or 30, as their way of succeeding in engagement? Is there a speech you give him or is there like a, you make a list and you try, what do you do to make that happen?

James Townsend (26:38):

I tell them about Mike, and I won't expose his last name, but Mike, a real gentleman, you just retired from sales. 30-year sales veteran. We're in Vegas, running an intensive test drive of ConnectAndSell and we're eating pizzas over lunch. And I say, "Mike, what do you think?" He goes, "Ah, it was wonderful," he said. I said, "Well, why was it wonderful?" He goes, "I now know how Huntsman buys," he says. I said, "Well, what do you mean?" He goes, well, "I've had the account for four years." He goes, "But I had 22 conversations this morning." So your analogy or your experience, Chris, with SAP and walking around the campus and talking to various folks, Mike accomplished in a morning, right? Because he had 22 conversations.

Your question around, how do we get folks to focus on it? We look at the data, right? We look at a parade of, first, we ask the question in a messaging experience around who do you sell to, right? And there's often this debate within senior leadership in this messaging experience, workshop, whatever we want to call it, where they're like, "Oh, well we sell to senior marketers. Well, we actually sell to digital transformation." Okay. Who do you sell to?" And they're having this internal struggle within themselves as to who they actually target? I said, "Well, let's pick one." Right? Maybe it's the VP of digital transformation. We go through this experience of this journey of helping them pull out the poetry of what do you say to this person, right? In terms of what's in it for them. If you were sitting at a bar and you walk into the bar in the back of their jacket, you taught me this, I do a customer profile and they're frustrated about things that you solve for them, yada, yada, yada. You latch onto one of those things and say, "Ooh, I can solve that for you. I believe we discovered a breakthrough with that."

We go through this evolution of identifying the top one, two and three individuals that, from a strategy perspective, senior leadership, look at it and say, this is our strategy, right? And when it comes to the mechanics of building the list, we can very easily parade out, okay, well, based on what we've already talked about in the messaging where you, as senior leaders have said, "Yes, this is who we sell to and how we will speak to them. And here's the what's in it for them component. And here's the economic, emotional, and strategic angle about what's in it for them." The whole poetry meets brain surgery, as a wise man once said. We can then connect the dots around, "Okay, well, you said you sell to VPs of digital transformation of those in the digital transformation realm. I'm not seeing those job titles in searching points, job titles represented in what we're intending to put into motion for your salespeople to speak to." So, it's this world of like disconnect, reconnect, right?

What you were saying earlier, Chris was interesting, because it's about off-topic a bit, but it's the whole public and private information. What you were finding in SAP was the private information, which wasn't available in public. What Mike found with Huntsman was the private information. And then we say, if you're looking to understand private information about what is happening inside this company, one person or two people may not be providing you coverage or an opportunity to harvest private information signals that are abundant. You may be selling yourself short by running this particular strategy, which is either A, the people you're looking to target have no allegiances to what we about in the messaging exchange, right? So there's a huge disconnect. Or, if there is some familiarity between the strategy and what's being intended to be executed, is that strategy deep enough where you're going to get those conversation signals, right?

And again, a lot of times we have traditionally narrowed our focus because you don't want to be that company, not ConnectAndSell, just in general, I'm speaking in general terms, that for lack of a better term carpet bombs six or eight or 12 different decision-makers with email and social inside of a particular enterprise. So we've got this mental model, which is, I will email only one, therefore I should only call one. But the reality is I can still email only one, but why should I not converse with others inside of that potential account, which I need to learn from?

Chris Beall (30:51):

Well, that's fascinating, because when you think about that, it's like what you said, which I deeply believe is true and overlooked is, your number one job is to learn as an insider, to go inside somehow and get that private information. And you're very unlikely to get that from guessing at who's going to give it to you. I'll go back to my SAP analogy. The person that led me over to my friend Kamal, became a very good friend over time, was not the person who was going to have anything to do with electronic cataloging for B2B e-procurement, which was my business. But they knew from having conversations internally that somebody was bothered by that and was being tasked with it. And wasn't comfortable with the solutions at hand. And now I was a convenient person to make that introduction. That's one kind of private information was the, I'll call it the deep who, right? Not the one that's on the surface. By the way, you couldn't have found this guy Kamal to save your life in public information back then or today. His title meant nothing.

And every company, when there was big problems, there's always somebody being assigned to go after the really big problems whose title has nothing to do with that problem, right? Because their specialty is solving big problems, which is a kind of a funny specialty. This person that's kind of like a fixer, you know? If you were to go to do business in a very unfamiliar foreign country to you and you wanted to make your way around, you get a fixer and a fixer takes you all around. And we often need a fixer, but we don't know who it is. And they don't advertise themselves much.

But getting that breadth of conversations going so that you could learn how somebody buys or at least get an inkling of it very early. And it's more important how they buy than what problem they're trying to solve. Because if your company provides something of value to that kind of company, then eventually it's going to be on their radar. So now the question is, but how do they buy things? That's actually the number one thing we might want to learn. And I would say, we don't know it. In an account-based sense, if you gave me a hundred targets and you let me wave a magic wand and say, "Fix one gap in my knowledge," it would be, how do they buy? That would be it. And yet we can't find that out without having conversations. So, that's pretty remarkable.

So when you do all of this, you try to help people do this, it sounds daunting to me. It's like, oh my God, I got to have a message for each kind of person, right? I'm going to make a list. That's now easy, a list of titles. But, if it took them, like we saw one the other day with a 46-page messaging document, right? I'm not going to say who it was. And it'd been put together a big committee of very senior people. Well, that took a long time. And by the way, I hate to say it, but that message wasn't going to work in a five-sentence ambush conversation either. What is the cycle time from, Hey, okay, here's my ideal customer, the person at this kind of company, in fact, name the company too. From that moment to message good enough to try and have conversations with? What's the cycle time? Is it five days, five years, five weeks, five minutes? What is it?

James Townsend (34:17):

I think it's under 60 minutes.

Chris Beall (34:20):

Under 60 minutes. Okay. And how much of that is that specific message and how much of that is just, I'll call it the package? How much is the bullet and how much is the design of the gun?

James Townsend (34:30):

Well, the design of the gun is more like a three to five-day process. There's different pieces to it, right? There's the concept sell to those reps that need to be executing it and rightfully so, right. Scripting documents are just words on paper, right? If we don't understand the why behind the psychology or the approach or the words or the poetry or how to deliver in the tonality and the inflection and the pace and, where do I reflect that? Where do I reflect that? And all the things that go into any A-list actor picking up a script is not shooting the final cut on day one, right? That takes a little bit of practice and development. And then learning from a leadership perspective, whether the message that was ordained, because you never get a perfect day one, right? You never do. You got to go back and listen and see what the market's telling you about that message.

So end-to-end, if you think about what we accomplish in Flight School over a three to four-week period, which is really a series of carefully orchestrated blitz's, that could be compressed into five days if we so chose. But it's really about teaching these reps who are, again, perfectly rational folks, they just haven't, back to your golf analogy, they haven't had the repetitions. We're providing the track van, right? We're able to analyze its angle and its tempo and its swing speed, and ball speed when the club had to impact. What's the angle of the club, all these things that we're able to help the rep with. But until they have the repetitions in, on a very precise piece of, in this case, the golf swing, and in our world, the message, they can't improve. So the overall cycle time from start to getting reliable signals out, you can have it in underneath the five days.

The act of building the message is a hypothesis at that time, based on who you're targeting, right? So it's this evolution of things up to being able to go back and inspect the tape and say, was our hypothesis correct? And is the message appealing to that individual in a way that we thought it would? Sometimes it does. Sometimes it doesn't. And then you just have to iterate from there.

Chris Beall (36:36):

Yeah. It's fascinating, right? My experience with this is that getting folks to accept that the purpose of the cold call is to build trust and that you win a hundred percent of the time after seven seconds, if you do it correctly, that to me is the hardest part. Because I call this the dog piece of meat and the chain link fence problem. I would say the disease of people in sales that they have a very hard time, no vaccine will keep them from having it is, they want sales results. It seems obvious that they should want sales results and they tend to go right at them. And so instead of backing up and noticing there's a gate 10 feet to right, the dog tries to go through the fence and bloodies its nose. Can't get through the fence most of the time. Can't get to that target most of the time. And the idea of backing up and going, "Huh? Okay."

So first of all, is it okay to go to an intermediate place? Well, how about trust? How about trust? Is it okay to go from there if you can, to another place? Well, how about a verbal based on curiosity, a verbal agreement to meet? Is that a new place? The answer is, yeah, it is. It's actually a very profound new place, especially with modern technology. You give me the verbal to meet, "Hey Chris. Sure. Yeah. Whatever." I say, "Hey James, you know I'm a morning person, tell you what, I'll shoot you something for next Thursday. We'll move it around." You're going to say yes, just to get off the call, but I know two things about you; you answer the phone, right?And you said, yes. So if I send you a calendar invite, it's on your calendar-

James Townsend (38:13):

A hundred percent.

Chris Beall (38:14):

It's like, I can get my words inside your midbrain by having you answer the phone. And I can an appointment on your calendar by sending you a calendar invite. Now we're down to, is it an appointment you agreed to or not? Well, if you said, yes, you agreed to it. And there we are in a new place, right? I think the cycle time, once somebody understands, that's the goal of the call, get trust. That the gravy on the call is to get the verbal and like the cherry on the top is to get it on the calendar, and the bad ideas to try to qualify it at any point, right? Once they get that new messages, I think per persona are actually pretty straightforward to get them to the point of trying to the hypothesis, right? It could be five minutes to the point of hypothesis.

So you basically built a manufacturing facility to make and try messages for different insertion points. And as I listen to you, I think, well, that sounds like magic, right? Let's say I had 50 possible insertion points in a hundred big companies. 50 times a hundred's pretty big number 5,000. Let's say I could talk to with two trained reps, a hundred of those a day. So I talk to a hundred a day and one week I've talked to 500 of them. We have talked to 500 of them. We afford to generate say it's four personas, four messages and use different message on different lists and be good at it. Do I have to be a product expert or do I have to be that person? I don't think so. I think it's in the delivery, right?

So, I mean, I think you're describing a mechanism that can be used to win a hundred percent of the time through an ABM approach just by expanding your mind to going in at multiple insertion points and having a purpose of learning instead of forcing somebody to buy from you right now. Is that kind of a summary?

James Townsend (40:09):

That's exactly right, Chris. Spot on.

Chris Beall (40:11):

Well, I hope that encourages some people to think that conversation first can be used in an account-based world. I see a lot of skepticism, including in our own company. We'll have reps, our own reps will run into somebody that'll say, "Well, we're account-based. That ConnectAndSell thing, that's mass calling, right?"If you got a hundred targets and 50 insertion points, you have 5,000 people to talk to. What are you going to do about it, right? Interesting.

So, as you look forward, we'll wrap up for in a moment, but as you look forward, we've got all the contact data out there. You've got a thing called LinkedIn Sales Insights now, that really, I think lets you understand the companies much, much better than we used to be able to. And you and I are both really impressed with that new offering from LinkedIn. What do you think is next frontier? Or are we there and we're grinding our way across the great Plains so to speak? The next frontier is right under our feet.

James Townsend (41:08):

I think we're there Chris. I think the world of right rep, right list, right message, I think it is upon us. The market needs to continue to, I think the market's moving in the right direction. And part of it, I give a lot of credit to the ABM strategy that leverages an orchestration play like an outreach in the SalesLoft because it takes us back to the days, to my early days of, be very selective about based on information that was available to you. And back in my early days, it was based on information from asking a switchboard operator who the director of human resources was, or who the individual to handle talent management. Where we're moving into the, as more teams rely heavily on this world of orchestration, by very nature they're becoming more precise about the individuals they target. And that's really what we mean by account base. Be precise about who you target.

And let's be serious, we wouldn't put call steps in those sequences and cadences if we didn't think conversations were important. Therefore if we can message correctly to those very precisely selected personas that are placed in these sequences and have more of those conversations faster, you don't need to boil the ocean. You just need to have the conversation. So I think the market's moving in a very interesting direction, more towards a level of precision, not towards a, let's just call everybody and anyone and let's hope for the best. And the exciting things that you and I are seeing out of sales insights in order to prioritize companies that are growing in particular roles, sales roles or otherwise, looking at companies that are really growing from expansion, not contracting. I think the market's getting a lot smarter about how to use big data and signals in order to like zero in on areas to target.

And I give a lot of credit to teams out there that are running account-based because it just means you're inspecting who's going in. Therefore the conversations that you're having with those individuals should be more fruitful. You're just not having enough conversations such as where we come in, right? So I think the market's moving in a very interesting direction. We're perfectly poised to help in that world in a number of different ways. And I'm excited about what the future has to hold.

Chris Beall (43:26):

Fantastic. Well, I'm excited about continuing to help customers working with you or at least have you help them. Every once in a while I just go in and annoy them, which is a lot of fun also. So I'm going to wrap this up. James, if somebody wants to learn from you, maybe they want to do a ConnectAndSell test drive, maybe they want to learn how somebody who's an actual practitioner would end up on your side of the ledger, so to speak, where you're heading up customer success and helping people, or they just want to learn some stuff about customer success, how do a hold of you?

James Townsend (43:57):

Oh, probably your best bet is to reach out to me on LinkedIn. I'm available on LinkedIn. It's linkedin.com/in/jamestownsend. That's T--W-N-S-E-N-D hyphen cas. Feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn, send me a direct message. I'll follow up with account only LinkedIn. I'm always happy to spend the time either talking about customer success as an evolving profession out there in the world of small, medium and large business to business. It's actually interesting Chris, you and I saw it on LinkedIn sales insights today in medium-size companies, one of the top three highest sought after highest growth jobs, most listed jobs was number three, was CS, next to information technology and others. So I'm always happy to talk to folks about CS, and I'm always happy to talk about ConnectAndSell because I've been around this machine, this weapon for the better part of my adult life, because my wife doesn't consider my twenties to be my adult life.

And I'm always happy to talk about the wonders of ConnectAndSell and conversation first and what makes it special. And also the challenges and how to wire this crazy thing into your go-to-market strategy without breaking stuff. That's important.

Chris Beall (45:11):

I love it. I love it. Well, you're really good at helping folks avoid amplifying suck, which has always been my big concern. So maybe sometime in the golf course, you can help me not amplify suck. Although I have a feeling your interest run in a different direction at that point. We'll wrap this up for Corey Frank, who just couldn't be here today. We'll apologize to Corey. I'm sure he would've asked better questions than I did, and he's a lot more fun to talk with. Plus he dresses so well. But, I kind of like our Flight School shirts today. I think we-

James Townsend (45:40):

Next time we'll do the top button up. There you go.

Chris Beall (45:42):

Yeah. We got to go all the way-

James Townsend (45:42):

All the way, right? Yeah. All the way is really smart.

Chris Beall (45:47):

So James, thanks so much for being on, and I think folks are going to get a lot out of this episode, market dominance in an account-based world at pace and scale led with conversations. Sounds unbeatable. Thank you.

James Townsend (46:00):

You're welcome. Thanks. Thanks everybody.

Does the thought of placing a cold call make you tense, nervous, embarrassed, or tongue-tied?

Today’s Market Dominance Guys’ guest, Gavin Tice, a sales instructor for ConnectAndSell’s Flight School, says not to worry about this awkwardness. He even says it’s an okay place to start. What a relief, huh? Our hosts, Corey Frank and Chris Beall, talk with Gavin today about how a standard operating procedure — in this case, a tried-and-true cold call script and method of delivery — can turn that frown upside down. What Gavin teaches is how to have a lot of fun and success making cold calls. Yes, you heard right: FUN! What a great reason to listen in while this Conductor of Conversations and our podcast hosts discuss the ways that SOPs, social work, psychology, and introversion positively impact the cold-calling experience in today’s Market Dominance Guy’s topic, “How to Turn Awkwardness into Success.”

About Our Guest

Gavin Tice is a Flight School instructor for ConnectAndSell. His background in the military and as a social worker have bestowed on him the perfect mix of skills needed to be a member of ConnectAndSell’s conversation optimization team, as he helps his Flight School students make success-building changes to their cold-calling delivery. A former team member of Gavin’s gives him this accolade: “Gavin’s depth of experience with sales and relationship building is like nothing I've encountered before. He brings his all to the table, every time.”

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Full episode transcript below:

Corey Frank (01:22):

Welcome to another episode of The Market Dominance Guys. This is Corey Frank with the saint of sales, the prophet of profit, and the duke of dials, Chris Beall. I added the duke of dials. That's the new one there, Chris. I don't know if you agree.

Chris Beall (01:33):

I am excited. I'm excited. I've always wanted to be the duke of something, and not just putting up your dukes, so I'm quite happy.

Corey Frank (01:39):

Well, speaking of somebody who is an expert at putting up his dukes, we have a very special guest here. We have Gavin Tice. Gavin, a Marine Corps veteran, social work veteran, and now esteemed head instructor, pilot instructor of the Flight School. What do we call Gavin over there in the ConnectAndSell Flight School, Chris?

Chris Beall (01:58):

Well, he is a Flight School instructor. He's also a member of our Conversation Optimization team, and that's a lot of syllables, but it's what it's all about. It's like the fight is inside the conversation. Let's optimize that sucker.

Corey Frank (02:11):

Anyway, welcome, Gavin to the Market Dominance Guys. It's good to finally have you on this side of the camera.

Gavin Tice (02:16):

Yeah, and so this is nice.

Corey Frank (02:18):

As Chris knows, I would just sit in an empty room and just listen to him wax eloquently about all the topics that we have here.

So what we want to talk about today on this particular episode of the podcast is the Flight School and I'm fascinated because as Chris came up with, maybe you can get our listeners up to speed on how the Flight School came about.

Since it's been a little bit since we heard that origin story and how you met Gavin and why he's such a good, perfect person to lead some of the efforts and what are some of the special qualities that Gavin has that makes it so successful?

Chris Beall (02:54):

Oh, interesting question. Well, Flight School came about because we were trying to help a company out that had run into some problems and they'd asked whether they could have a special deal and we don't do special deals at ConnectAndSell. But I came up with a special deal, which is a month of Monday and Friday unlimited use for the team.

And then, we realized that the best way to do that, that's four Mondays and four Fridays, was to train like crazy on Friday, but to train live so they're actually getting meetings. And then to sort of let them run on Monday, but with coaching and then go to the next part of the conversation and train that. So, we said let's train on the first seven seconds of the conversation the first Friday, and then on Monday, we'll listen carefully for that stuff and do some coaching around it, but let them settle in.

And I figured there were a couple nights of sleep in there and you don't really learn when you're awake. You only learn when you're asleep. So just came up with this idea. And after about the third week, we were flying back from wherever this was and a couple of us on the airplane said this is funny, the first session's like taking the airplane off and the second one's going somewhere, and the third one is we actually changed the order. We said the third ones like landing and the fourth one is handling the objections. Turbulence made no sense. Once you're on the ground, there is no turbulence. So we reordered the Flight School so that it's take off the first seven seconds. And then there is going somewhere, free flight, which is what we call the 27 seconds. And then, handling all the objections that are peculiar to flying, peculiar to the cold call in the third session, which is turbulence.

And then you got to ask for the meeting, you got to get the plane back on the ground. That's how it came about. And it's evolved a little bit, maybe even a fair amount, but it's still the same idea. We added a messaging workshop on the front. We added what we call sort of an icebreaker session. I think of it as deicing. You know, make sure the wings aren't ladened down with ice, so that everybody will be warmed up and used to the product.

What is shocking to me is I've had the luxury now of watching teams go through other kinds of sales training. But I watch from the back through ConnectAndSell numbers and I've never seen anything move the number, including, I won't say who it was, but who I consider the number one sales trainer in the world. I got to see a team, a big team, go through that training. And I looked for the change the next day, the next day, the next day. And there was nothing, in performance. Flight School, a hundred percent of the time changes performance because you're performing under pressure, actual conversations with real-life prospects. You're doing it at pace, ConnectAndSell speed and you're doing it with precision coaching of just the part of the conversation that gets you to the next part of the conversation.

Gavin Tice (05:49):

That's right.

Chris Beall (05:49):

So it's very different. And Gavin was, like so many people at ConnectAndSell introduced by somebody else who said to me 350,000 times in a row, you've got to get this guy on the team. He's like another, you know? And so the question is, was he another Donny or another Nathan? I don't know. He was another one of them. And it turns out he is, but he brings his own very, very special point of view from his experience, which is unlike anybody else on the team.

Corey Frank (06:20):

Let's talk about that experience, Gavin. So starting in the Marine Corps, is there an MOS for cold calling in the Marine Corps, by the way? I don't know. What is that?

Gavin Tice (06:26):

Oh, for sure. For sure. It'd be 0351A, yeah. So definitely an infantry level job, for sure.

Corey Frank (06:34):

Gotcha. And so one of the things that Chris and I were talking about before we hit record here was the unique experience you bring from your service in the Marine Corps and has that helped you train your voice at all? Especially, since you're coaching folks and we're being on tonality in The Market Dominance Guys, as you've heard and nurturing and verbal disfluencies and the ahs and the ums, all that richness that builds trust and authenticity. What's your experience like in the Marine Corps? And what type of voice training do they give you that helped your sales career?

Gavin Tice (07:09):

Hmm, I think it's just being able to... Well, I'll take a step back. Drill instructors go through a school. I'm not a drill instructor, but they actually learn how to project their voices because they've got to sound very angry, but consistent. And it's funny, if you happen to drive past Marine Corps, Parris Island, you'll see the drill instructors literally yelling at trees. I kid you not. They've got their knife hand out and they're yelling at the trees like they would be recruits.

I think what helped me to find my voice is, in the Marine Corps you get challenged all the time and all of a sudden someone says, "Hey, you've got to show the colonels that are here on tour how to do this job." And you have to act, even if you're completely dumbfounded about what you're trying to do. If I had to show someone how to take down a weapon or explain to them the operating range from my old rocket launcher, a Mk 153 small, you don't have time to think and you've got to talk with respect and you can't be afraid. So that, I think, was a great situation for me, because I've never had a fear of talking to a CEO or a founder or a president of the company.

A couple years after that, my boss in the Navy was directly an Admiral. Once again, you can't go talk to an Admiral and waste a lot of their time with a lot of flowery language, you really got to get down to the brass tacks. So if I had to really pull that training from there, that's what it would be.

Corey Frank (08:40):

That's wonderful. Fascinating little bit about the drill instructors. So that's a course on how to project their voice. Different session if the trees ever talk back. But if they were able to glean anything from how to project your voice or how to convey authority, especially as a new recruit, did they teach you how to respond and answer in a certain tonality?

Gavin Tice (09:00):

It would be I, Sir at all times. And the funny thing is they take away your personalization. So the entire time, if you're an enlisted Marine and you go through the 13 weeks of Marine Corps training, you never hear your first name, it's "Recruit (last name)". So it's really awkward when you finally leave that place when someone calls you by your first name again, because you're like, I haven't heard that in months, but I mean we have to be-

Corey Frank (09:29):

It's kind of like being married, right? You never hear your first name.

Gavin Tice (09:31):

You have to be able to communicate on the battlefield, too, right? I mean, not everyone understands that that's actually something that's reality. And whether or not you're wearing ear protection or not, you have to be able to project your voice. So I guess it's just something you learn. I never really thought of it as being something that was special to that experience.

Corey Frank (09:54):

Got it.

Chris Beall (09:54):

Well, it's interesting. I just had two recent experiences that made me think of it. That's why I brought it up with Corey. So one experience is I'm currently listening to General McChrystal's book Risk, which I think is excellent. Actually it's very interesting, too, and I'm listening to it becase I love to listen to his voice. And so it's become my workout thing, my driving around thing and so forth.

And then, I was on a recent podcast called Bulletproof Sales and I'm on with the guy, who's a Marine. And I thought, wait a minute, there're real similarities in speech and the clarity and the simplicity, the directness of both of these people and one of them is reading his own book. So that means it's been through a process. The other is simply talking to me. Now he's written a book, so he's got a lot of language that's refined around that. But there was something about it that gave me the impression that, and maybe this goes to something else that we were talking about recently. It's entirely possible that what's happened in the military where clarity of communication and then understanding a mission and execution of mission. You're expected to understand and execute the mission, so somebody has to communicate it to you clearly.

You're not simply following orders. That's like the big change from way back when to now is I believe, as I listen to people, I not in the military myself, but as I listen, it's like a big change is that there's a relatively greater emphasis on acting intelligently and appropriately within the mission rather than simply doing what you're told. On the battlefield, especially. And that confers competitive advantage to our military, because they're more flexible.

You have to deal with each Marine or each soldier or whatever as the enemy, is you have to deal with a smart person who's trying to do something and they know what they're trying to do. And that could be a problem for you as somebody following orders, you might be able to counter that a little bit more easily.

And I have this funny feeling that our society of business people actually is learning to execute more like our all-volunteer military. And now that we have work from home everywhere and everybody's a volunteer, you can't lock them down and say, you live here. Therefore, you now have to work for BigCo in this area. It's like they can go work for anybody.

Chris Beall (13:17):

That we have a lot to learn from the folks who went through the first big, all volunteer revolution, which is the U.S. Military. I don't know. Does that make a lick of sense to you, Gavin?

Gavin Tice (13:27):

You're touching on one thing which is SOPs, right? Standard operating procedures. Everyone wants to do their own thing, but as you begin to grow, you can't be herding cats all the time, much less how do you benchmark? So the military's built up on standard operating procedures. I can't speak to the other branches, but in the Marines, it's all about small-unit leadership. And there's always a line of succession. Every mission that you go out on, there's a five-paragraph order and the colonel knows it, the captain knows it, the lieutenants know it, staff sergeants know it, all the way down to the private. Because things happen in war and if the line of leadership is taken out, that guy to their left or right must know the objectives, how things are going to happen, where the fire teams are moving, what the codes and signals are. And we use a lot of acronyms. That one's called OSMEAC. So it's orientation, situation, mission execution, and admin logistics and command. And you learn this from pretty much day one in bootcamp. And we have to constantly, everyone knows the operational orders.

I mean we've seen, probably since all the way back to the war of 1812, the best military organizations in the world empower even their youngest soldiers on a battlefield. If there's a standard line of only the senior-level people only know what's really going on, within reason if the younger recruits or the people on the lower ranks don't know that, it falls apart as soon as those leaders get targeted and dealt with. That's really one of the things that is pivotal in our American military.

Chris Beall (15:11):

Fascinating.

Corey Frank (15:12):

We were talking a little earlier too, Gavin, with regards to that, about the social work background that you have and it seems a little bit of a dichotomy here going from the Marine Corps knowing crystal clear what your objective is, very refined, right? Very left-brained. And now you're on the social work side, which is a little bit more of the connection, authenticity, trust side. So you have this kind of amalgam. This nice cocktail or so. Let's talk about the other side of the brain. We talked about the brawns. Now let's talk about the heart, then maybe we'll talk about the brains. That's Chris' part of the show.

Gavin Tice (15:47):

Yeah. It's interesting. Social work looks at everything from a holistic perspective. And if you really translate that, my earliest sales interviews were like how does a social worker turn into a sales guy? And I'm like, well, it's really enterprise sales. And the first time someone said, you've been in sales all this time. I said, how so? They said, tell me about your patients. And I said, well, I meet with the patient. They have a problem that they think they have. I asked them some pretty deep questions. I get a better picture of where they're at. I offer them some solutions and then guess what? I try to close the deal. Maybe it's medication, maybe it's group therapy, maybe it's one-on-one and then guess what? Follow up happens. And when they put that into this nice package, I was like, oh, so I guess I have been in sales. I just didn't call it that. And so I find it very interesting that my degrees in psychology and social work really helped me see sales in a different light.

Chris Beall (16:44):

Sure. Huh.

Corey Frank (16:45):

Chris, we've talked a lot about this program even recently with Jennifer, I believe, about introverts. How introverts make the best Salesforce. Would you consider yourself an introvert, Gavin?

Gavin Tice (16:54):

I guess that's one of the roles I play. I put on a lot of different roles in my day- to-day. I'm an introvert when I'm by myself. I'm a father, a husband, a conductor of conversations, as I call myself on LinkedIn, to keep the people from trying to prospect me all the time, because they don't know what to say to me. But, yeah, introvert's definitely a role I play, for sure.

Corey Frank (17:17):

And so, as you are coaching your clients in the Flight School, your clients, your patients, what's the right term for your folks, your passengers? Is that a right term?

Gavin Tice (17:24):

Yeah, passengers. Victims.

Corey Frank (17:25):

Yeah. What are some of the things... We always like to ask a lot of our guests this, Gavin, from your purview, from your perspective as piloting this thing and they've got a tremendous amount of trust that you're going to not crash the plane here for them and you're going to leave them better than how you found them. What is the state of sales today, from your perspective and maybe how it's changed a little bit in the last few years from when you first started?

Gavin Tice (17:51):

Well, outside of the technology advancements, here's what I think is interesting. Flight school is all about execution. You go through a lot of sales training, you go to workshops and seminars. It's a lot of inspiration. It's a lot of how-to, it's a lot of motivation and that's great. But the minute you get to the car, click out of the zoom, it's over, right?

It's up to you to really decide if you're going to take all those things and put any of it to use. I tell people now, I said, look, knowing one's line in your industry or vertical, willing to sit here and make cold calls with me. So I congratulate you, because there's not a big line for it.

But what I think is more profitable is what we're doing is we're teaching execution. We're allowing and telling people, hey, you're going to fail. Probably the first time in your career that you've been told, it's okay to fail. But if you follow what we have, if you take our direction and you execute, you're actually going to have a lot of fun making your cold calls today. And it's a beautiful thing.

Corey Frank (18:55):

And when you say you're going to have a lot of fun making your cold calls today, do they believe you?

Gavin Tice (19:01):

You get some interesting looks because, especially if it's day one, they're like, you're going to have me say this weird 27 second thing. And I don't know, every time I have made cold calls, people just get angry with me. But again we have a lot of information to provide like, hey, follow our direction and just execute.

And then I'm on the back end of things. Hey, that was really good. A lot of people need nurturing, right? If you don't nurture people around you and you're just kind constantly telling them all the doom and gloom, it doesn't go so well. So I think one of the key things that's changed in sales is now people are starting to really empower their teams and to give them a lot of positive strokes.

Corey Frank (19:45):

What is the state, on that same theme of sales, where you see folks really struggling with today and that, because you see so many, the beautiful thing about certainly what you do at ConnectAndSell, and we do here at Branch 49 is we're pretty business agnostic. Wouldn't you say Chris? Business is business. It really doesn't matter. You really are able to condense it down to people talking to people. Biophysiology, right? All of things that we learned from the Orens and the Chris Bealls of the world and Chris Vosses of the world. So, with that then, Gavin, knowing that you have this special purview where, whether they're selling insurance or plane tickets or cyber technology, it's B2B sales. What are people being taught or what are people doing that they should almost immediately stop doing? And once you pointed out to them, they never do it again. But the habits you learned in bootcamp that you've never done it again because you learned it the right way.

Gavin Tice (20:45):

Well, the first thing I'd say is stop committing hate crimes, which means how are you today? Right. It just signals to everyone, junior person in sales, probably their first job. And this conversation's going nowhere and you get the immediate, yeah, I'm not interested. All said. I think the other part is the showing up and throwing up. Who wants to be told, hey, all the time that you spent in your previous initiatives, the money, all the personnel that got detailed from procurement all the way on up, hey, you've been doing it all wrong. And by the way, I've worked with all these great companies and we saved them all stuff. And wouldn't you like to be in the same place? It's really like saying, hey, you know what? Corey, your baby's ugly. And I'm here to go ahead and put some lipstick on it and make it a prettier baby.

And when you attack people's intelligence like that, because in some cases, a lot of people put their career, their respect within their companies, and it's like Chris's Tesla model, right? If you buy a Tesla for yourself, it's not such a big deal. Go get rid of it. But if you buy a fleet of them for the company and then you find out, oh, you've been doing it all wrong and you should have bought some Toyota Camrys. Like, man, that just beats people down. And who wants to have that in a cold conversation happen, right? Yeah.

Corey Frank (22:14):

Yeah. Chris, from your perspective, what we heard from Gavin here, if I only had time for a 10-minute Flight School, right? You know how you take those helicopter tours across the Grand Canyon, you could do that full hour or we only have a couple hundred dollars and your kid wants to go. I only have 10 minutes. What's the... So if I only had a 10 minute flight school, just to circle around the Grand Canyon and land, what should I learn?

Chris Beall (22:38):

This is actually what this whole Market Dominance Guys thesis is about, is that in seven seconds you can get trust a hundred percent of the time and that trust is durable. So if you don't blow it by doing something stupid, like trying to sell to this person later, then you get to keep their trust forever. And trust is true competitive advantage in a world where the buyer is naturally conservative and afraid of making a mistake, because it is their reputation. It's their kid's college education. It's a lot of stuff that's on the line. And so the question is, well, how do you get started? The funny thing about Flight School, and it would be like an airplane, right? Most important thing is to be able to land it. But if it never gets up in the air, you're not going to have an opportunity to land it.

So you got to get the damned thing off the runway. You've got to get it up the air, you've got to get it committing an unnatural act. The first time you ever see an airplane jump off the ground, so to speak, you should be surprised because there's nothing you can see that's making it float, right? It's not like a balloon full of helium or something like that. It's like something's going on there and that something that's going on there is magically making this thing fly. Well, if you want to learn to fly airplanes, you got to figure out how to make that thing happen. That's the first seven seconds of the conversation. Once you're in the air, everything changes. Now, you actually have a lot of freedom. If you don't just like drive the thing into the ground or there's not very many other airplanes up there to hit, you have a lot of freedom.

So if I had a 10-minute flight school, I would do one thing with somebody and it would be to teach them the importance of, and then have them execute, on the first seven seconds. And the first seven seconds have exactly two components. One, tactical empathy, help them see or understand that you see the world through their eyes and believe that. And the other is the other element of trust, which is proving to this person or at least demonstrating your competent to solve a problem they have right now. And what I find is the big flip for folks is when they realize they're in charge, that you as the sales rep are completely in charge and in control, as soon as you recognize that you are the problem. It's when you try to divert away from the real problem, which is you, that you immediately blow the trust.

As soon as you attempt to pivot to value. You're actually saying I'm not the problem, but if you are the problem and you're saying you're not the problem, you're covering up. You're lying. Right? So why should you be trusted? So if you change the goal, like if I were to take everybody at cold calls, everybody at cold calls and ask them, what's the goal? Well, the goal is going to be to get a meeting. Well, the goal is going to be to have a conversation that leads to a deal. The goal is my commission. That's actually the secret goal, right? The whole Market Dominance Guys' concept says that's incorrect. First of all, the achievement rate is too low, sub 5%. And secondly, the impact act is too small.

You can have a higher impact on the marketplace. If you think of it as a marketplace, say what's my impact on the marketplace. It's going to be, if I can pave this entire market with trust before my opponent makes the first move on their chess board. So I get to make 64 moves and then they get to make one, all of my moves improve my position in the market relative to the trust that folks have in me. And it's always a person, not a company, then I'm going to win in the long run. And the long run's going to be shorter and shorter and shorter because I can harvest that trust through future conversations that explore possibilities. So I would teach that one thing. It's like you only have seven seconds to get trust. The good news is, it's easy. Let's learn how to do it a hundred percent of the time and then get over this thing. Oh, I failed because I didn't get the meeting. That's gravy. We'll teach you later once you know how to get trust a hundred percent of the time.

So now you're winning. Now we'll teach you how to harvest a little sooner and we'll teach you things like the Cherryl Turner Insistence Close, and we'll teach you the nature of the math of the no-show and all that other good stuff. But man, until you can execute. It's like if you asked me, what would you do if you only had 10 minutes to teach somebody how to swing a golf club, it would actually be a very specific thing. I'd put them in a situation where they couldn't make the mistake everybody makes, so that they can learn that it's possible for this damned thing to work. If they're right-handed, I'd take their left hand off the club. Because they're too weak or not physically strong enough to keep the club from releasing, which is the key to the golf swing, if they only have the right hand. It feels funny, but the thing that feels funny suddenly works. And then they have the confidence to pursue the rest of a program of having a real golf swing instead of the fake baloney that most people have.

Corey Frank (27:42):

You know, I think that could be the fetching Miss Fanucci, the title of her book again, for those that were part of the first part of the call is what, Chris?

Chris Beall (27:50):

It's Love Your Team: A Survival Guide For Sales Managers In A Hybrid World. And her point is simple. The leverage point in performance and sales is the highest performance art that we do, that's in the main line of business, right? It's right in the line of business, you have to go through a value chain that includes sales to get anything to happen. Whether in the innovation economy or not, you're stuck, you're on one side of a performance and on the other side is a relationship that's trying to explore is there something here to do together, then you've got to go through sales. So that's about a person. Yeah. And now the question is how does that person feel? Before they can play the game of sales, how do they feel about who they're playing it with? And until you get there... My guess is we see this now in military engagement that's going on somewhere in the world, right over in Ukraine.

And the question is how much do these people believe in what they're doing, the ones who are defending and the ones who are invading? And the ones who are defending, they believe a lot. Right? And they love their team. They love each other. They're stuck with it, right? How do you get there in the world of managing a sales team? That's what Helen's on about. And I'm telling you, I think that's the true leverage point, is that the leverage point in sales is frankly, the belief that the team has that you have their back.

Corey Frank (29:20):

Well, I was just comparing the title of Ms. Fanucci there, her title of her book versus I think the title of your book beyond The Market Dominance Guys is I believe the quote says "the thing that feels funny suddenly works". So that's actually not a bad name for the book. What do you think, Gavin? The thing that feels funny suddenly works. It has a nice ring to it.

Gavin Tice (29:41):

Turn. I would call it this, turning awkwardness into trust.

Corey Frank (29:45):

Turning awkwardness into trust.

Gavin Tice (29:46):

Because that's really it. And it's funny because the awkwardness is on both sides. Awkwardness doesn't have to turn into hostility. Awkwardness is a great platform for getting to trust. It's the best platform for getting to trust.

Corey Frank (29:59):

I did an interview earlier today with a candidate and she is a... I'm not going to say which state, but she is a former Miss East Coast State, about two years out of school. And she had a wonderful, wonderful voice. Gavin, you have a wonderful voice. We talk about a number of folks on this podcast that certain folks have an almost raspiness that just you trust immediately. And this gal has a wonderful, wonderful voice. And I had her read the screenplay, right? And we're big believers here at Branch 49 of the 27 seconds. We are fierce defenders in all things social, as you know Chris. The folks who maybe don't understand the power of the 27 seconds because they're seeing it as merely its words versus the performance art that it entails. And she said so and so and so, so I know I'm an interruption.

I was like, respectfully, Mackenzie. We talked about a little bit about the world of haptics, [inaudible 00:30:59] no programming, right? Everybody has the aunt that reaches out and grabs your hand. They touched your knee. If you have glasses, what's the prop, right? Have you pull off the glasses. And for, as Chris has taught, "I know I'm an interruption." Is almost as if you have to do this with your hand. I'm Sicilian, so I have to talk with my hands. It's the law, right? But if you say, I know I'm an interruption. So when you walk the floor of Branch 49, you see constantly one arm is bigger than another for these folks. Cause they're saying, I know I'm an interruption and that's that timing buffer crutch, if you will, Chris. Right? That helps them accentuate that piece that sometimes is missing. What you're talking about if I can only teach 10 minute Flight School, how do I establish that trust? And then hang onto it for your life so I don't lose it.

Chris Beall (31:49):

Well, Gavin, you teach this stuff. When you're teaching the takeoff part of flight school, that first two hours, how do you know that somebody has clipped, that they flipped over to believing that awkwardness works? You know, that it's an okay foundation. That it's a good place to start from. Cause we know naturally we think it's a bad place to start from. And we've been told our entire child lives and it continues a little less into our adult lives, don't be the bad thing, right? That's what we've been taught. I've been around some babies recently. And even when they're two months old, one month old, we're already telling them not to be the bad thing. And we do it reflexively as parents and then teachers. And then we get to a certain age and sometimes the police have a chat with us. And some authority figure's always telling us not to be a bad thing. Nobody is ever telling us to be a bad thing, but we can't go back through our whole life. Oh thank goodness. Ms. McGillicuddy took me aside and said, I want you to be bad. And yet in the cold call, we are a bad thing.

Where did that happen? How do you know that they just got comfortable with the discomfort of the awkwardness and that they are now seeing it as power.

Gavin Tice (33:10):

I think we all tell them immediately, look, your first five calls are going to be garbage. Just accept that. After that, you're going to see something happen. Depending on, of course, the lists, it happens without fail. They're all right, I'm going to try this whole 27 second thing. And you're listening. And the first couple ones are garbage, but they see... Like people say 27 seconds. Okay. Yesterday I had a fun experience where they were calling some data scientists and they go 27 seconds. It's very specific. Let's go. You must have something really interesting to say. And I was like, wow. Out of probably thousands of conversations, I've never heard anyone say that before. And it happened several times yesterday. So it's interesting. If I could see them physically, I can hear them and you can hear the timbre in their voice change.

Once they've had a couple people that didn't slam the phone on them or tell them they're a bad person. Collectively, it's usually like 27 seconds. Sure. And then hopefully you don't pause too long and then they actually go into what they're it's supposed to be doing. But you see very quickly the timbre in their voices change and then about, mm, conversation 15, they're delivering the 27 seconds very eloquently because they know it's going to work. So it's all about the timbre and modulation in their voice. And it's like magic. It happens all time.

Chris Beall (34:41):

Isn't that funny? And yet what I see out there in the world of sales training a lot is an introspective approach that says, look inside yourself and try to improve by noting your fear and then making it irrelevant or some such thing like that. But you're actually taking people on the opposite journey, which is go ahead and just do it. And then the feedback you're going to get is going to include surprisingly positive things that you didn't expect. It's like the unexpected is the positive thing. And then the reinforcement begins there. Do you latch onto those? When they get that first positive one, is that where you go, listen, what'd you think about that? He said in 27 seconds, that's really precise. Sure. You must have something like what'd you think about that? And what do you do with the first positive?

Gavin Tice (35:35):

The first positive, if I catch it, obviously depending on the size of the team my immediate is, how'd that feel? They go, it felt good. I can't believe it. I'm astonished. I think what's even more powerful is once they're actually into free flight and they go through this breakthrough, that seems very clunky and like, no one's going to buy this, no way. And then they have what I call the rollover, which is they deliver that breakthrough. It usually doesn't sound so great. They say, do you happen to have your calendar available? And the person says, yeah, I've got time next Tuesday. Not the rep asking for that time, the person. And then you hear them pause. And it's almost like did they really just say they'll take the meeting? Was it that easy? And then I hop on immediately afterwards. I'm like, now do you believe me? And they go, oh my gosh, that was ridiculous. And they're like, they accepted already. And I'm like, of course they did. You grew, you got attention, you got their trust. And then you delivered something that made them very curious. And so that's like the magical moment, I'd really say

Chris Beall (36:47):

There's an interesting thing about curiosity that I just thought of. I've been speaking with some people recently about individuals, about their own sort of branding about becoming somebody interesting. And if you think about personal branding in professional personal branding or personal personal branding, it's about becoming somebody interesting to some subset of the world. So flip it around and say, well, that means some subset of the world is now curious about you. And what you just described is somebody experiencing having their brand change to the point where somebody else is interested in them, is curious about them, and they might have felt before that, that they weren't worth having somebody be curious about them. So you've inverted a notion of find self-worth by being told you're worth something by me, the instructor or the helper or the social worker, to find self-worth by the reaction of somebody else who's interested enough in you to say, yeah, I'll meet with you. If there's some of the magic hiding in that inversion, I'll call it a reversal of the usual way we think about this.

Gavin Tice (38:10):

I'd say a hundred percent because the typical situation is anything but. I call up a complete stranger, I show up and throw up all over them, and then they go, yeah, I'm not interested. And then all of a sudden you take this thing that's really weird and a breakthrough. I don't have a breakthrough. What do you mean we discovered? And then they put it all together. And I always tell, look, about one out of every, I don't know, hundred, this isn't going to happen. And so you have to be ready for it. And I prompt them and then it happens. And I think it's magic because they're like a complete stranger just took what I said and it was interesting enough and curious enough that they've taken this with me and I think it goes down to your self-worth. For sure. Because now they know it works.

Chris Beall (38:54):

Isn't that funny. I never really thought of Flight School as a self-improvement program about your feelings about yourself. But I do actually believe that in the general case, and Corey and I have talked about this with regard to Branch 49. We call Branch 49 finishing school for future CEOs. Because one thing all CEOs have, at least all the ones I know, is not only the ability to have a conversation with a stranger, but the confidence that that conversation's probably of some value to that stranger. It's okay for me to be interesting. I don't have to hide my light under that bushel. It's all right. I can peek it out a little bit, but I don't know, Corey, what do you think about this?

Corey Frank (39:38):

You know, the same candidate from today she's been in pageantry since she was a little girl and part of the... It was fascinating and a world I know nothing about clearly. Look at me, I know nothing about pageantry.

Gavin Tice (39:54):

Oh, you're beautiful Corey. Come on.

Corey Frank (39:55):

So there's the extemporaneous where there's a Q and A portion. How would you solve the world? How would you solve the UK crisis? How do you figure? Right. And a lot of it is just the extemporaneous. How can you think on your feet? And are you interesting? Do you have a beginning, middle, end, and all that stuff. And we talked about after we role-played, because she said, I'm sorry, I'm normally very good at this. Right? But I said, understand the nuances you are used to communicating with no... It's like a hook without a barb. I can communicate, put out information that I think is fascinating. The audience isn't going to rate you. Right? The judges are, but the audience isn't, and you're speaking to the audience, you speak to the judges, but on what you had just said, Gavin, right?

That the self-worth, it's almost as if the pitch. Think of it, almost like a little hook, a little barb at the end of a fishing hook. That piece, that barb piece is the curiosity. Did I literally and figuratively hook them enough to say, yeah, Tuesday does work for me. Especially when they could do it proactively without even suggesting a day. And so I find that fascinating when you're dealing with one-on-one communication versus your example, Chris, when I trying to build a brand out into the world of LinkedIn, out into the world of social media, right? Public speaking for insurance conventions or what have you, that this is a very intimate, but also a very tactical exercise to have just enough of a barb where it's not going to wound because I may have to throw that person back, right? That fish has to go back. I don't want to rip anything out. They can break free if they want, but it's enough where they can't because curiosity is just too strong. That connected tissue is too powerful.

Chris Beall (41:47):

That's fascinating business. The whole... Gavin, I've got to ask you a question. When you were first to exposed to this craziness, right? Cause Flight School's not only about this breakthrough concept that we use, the breakthrough script idea, which is a stumble upon that evolved over time. There was the five hour Saturday morning that it coalesced. Thank God I was working with somebody who knew nothing about sales and a lot about the human mind and language, because otherwise we wouldn't have gotten there at all, I don't think. But when you were exposed to it, what were your thoughts and feelings about it when you first heard this crazy way of talking to a stranger?

Gavin Tice (42:30):

It was hard for me to acknowledge the fact that I'm an interruption. I'd always been credible by just saying, Hey, look, this is a sales call. You're welcome to hang up on me. Give me 30 seconds to tell you why I called. But to just say like literally I'm throwing myself under the bus, was a leap for me to say, okay, I can get behind this.

Chris Beall (42:52):

Truthful.

Gavin Tice (42:53):

I mean, I love standard operating procedures. When I learned that having those procedures in place could make me successful instead of winging it and being mediocre all the time, changed my life.

Corey Frank (43:05):

Well, that's wonderful. Well, Gavin, I tell you what we can. We've got to have you back again and again here, if anything, to hear the stories, almost get a state of the union of sales, because I think you have a such unique position, certainly Flight School does, but you Gavin, as an instructor there, to see is our profession getting better? What ails our profession as a aggregate that we, as sales leaders, even if we're not users of the ConnectAndSell weapons system should be aware of as coaches, since we want to love our team and we got to have the fetching Miss Fanucci on here, certainly very soon, Chris, to talk about that concept of loving your team. So this is Corey Frank for Chris Beall, the powerful Market Dominance Guys' podcast. Thank you, Gavin, until next time.

What’s a pattern interrupt? And how can it help you break down the resistance most people feel when ambushed by a cold call? Donny Crawford, Director of Conversation Optimization at ConnectAndSell, joins our Market Dominance Guy, ConnectAndSell CEO Chris Beall, on a Selling Power webinar hosted by Founder Gerhard Gschwandtner. These three conversation experts share some little-known tricks of the cold-calling trade, one of which is that saying something unexpected, like “Can I have 27 seconds to tell you why I called?”, can break a prospect’s usual pattern of hanging up or refusing to engage. As Donny says, it truly is a game-changer, especially when said in a friendly, playful voice. “The friendliness actually matters,” he explains. “You’ve got to be assertive enough, but in a friendly manner.” Get ready to absorb this and other helpful tips from ConnectAndSell’s Flight School cold-calling training lessons in this Market Dominance Guys’ episode, “Pattern Interrupts Are Your Friend.”

About Our Guest

Donny Crawford is Director of Conversation Optimization at ConnectAndSell. With the expertise developed as a former customer and as Customer Success Manager at ConnectAndSell, he operates as chief instructor of Flight School, a structured program designed to help cold callers find their voice. Hear more from Donny Crawford on his other Market Dominance Guys’ episodes. 

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Full episode transcript below:

Gerhard Gerschwandtner (01:10):

Name is Gerhard Gerschwandtner. I'm the founder and publisher of Selling Power magazine. Thank you for tuning in.

Donny Crawford (01:16):

And as long as we approach them with the sincerity that what we can provide and share and advise them on is something that could be beneficial to them. Well, then we're in a good state. So the five sentences, what I love about the breakthrough messaging framework or the ambush conversation framework is really that it's filled with pattern interrupts, things that sound a little weird. Why is that important? It's because it doesn't trigger psychological reactance or reflex responses like Jeb Blount talks about in his book Objections. He talks about reflex responses. People get a lot of cold calls and they built up this wall in front of them and they know how to reflexively response to salespeople. So you have to have quite a few little pattern interrupts that keep them a little on the edge of their seat while they're listening to you. Let's walk through those a little bit.

So the first two sentences within this it's what's called a greeting. You just get right into the conversation, be upfront, be honest, be friendly, be casual. Hey, it's Chris Beall, CEO of ConnectAndSell. Hey, it's Donny over at ConnectAndSell, right? It's just very simple. I'm not hiding behind the fact that I want to keep elusive what company I'm with. I'm just coming straight out in front and letting you know where I'm at. And then I hit you with what's called a pattern interrupt and then upfront contract. So these are terms around the Sandler world. So you want to get them into a place where you acknowledge a truth. I know I'm an interruption. Can I have 27 seconds to tell you why I called? Now, there's a really important method of delivering this line.

And it's with the use of two different voices. We actually spoke with Chris Voss about this. Chris Beall, you were at a mystery dinner with him. For some reason, you guys both picked out of a hat, the Batman, and you were sitting at a table together and you were able to corner Chris Voss and say, how do you get trust from someone? How much time does it take to get trust? And Chris Voss said, "You have seven seconds." And Chris is like, "Oh, that's interesting. Our research says eight seconds." And Chris Voss says with his FBI eyes, "Your research is wrong. It's seven seconds." And he is like, "Oh, okay." So Chris then asked the follow-up question. What do you need to do to get trust? And Chris Voss said, "That's the simple part. There's two things. You need to first establish that you see the world through that individual's eyes.

You understand the circumstance they are in." This first piece of, I know I'm an interruption, it's not an apology. It's just an acknowledgement of truth. It's just an acceptance that I've interrupted your day. I understand that. And I'm going to state it clearly. I know I'm an interruption. And then Chris Voss said, "The second thing you need to do is you need to have a competent solution to the problem that they are facing. And when we accept the fact that we as cold callers, we who are ambushing people are the problem in a cold call, then we can have a simple solution to that problem. Hey, it's only going to take 27 seconds." But Chris Voss actually said something even more important. And what I really want to emphasize here is the use of our voice, how we come across with our voice actually matters. Chris Voss likes the term, the late night FM DJ voice.

That's what you use for, I know I'm an interruption. Hey, listen. I know I'm an interruption. It's a confident, solid voice that someone can trust. And then you change your voice to what's called a playful curious voice. You let it go up a little bit. You might even add a little chuckle every single time I say it. I know I'm an interruption. Can I have 27 seconds to tell you why I called? I manufacture the chuckle. I could say it. I know I'm an interruption. Can I have 27 seconds to tell you why I called but that's bland. I'm a person. You're a person. I'm going to transfer energy to you. If I am energized, you'll be energized with me. I know I'm an interruption. Can I have 27 seconds to tell you why I called? And people usually with me, they say, "Sure, go for it."

And they're smiling with me. They might even chuckle them and release a couple endorphins in the back of their mind. Now they're in a comfortable state. They trust me. Now it's my game to blow if I actually don't follow through on this. Once I have a little bit of trust with them and they say, "Sure, go ahead." Now we proceed to the next part. And this part is actually really important because this is why we're really excited to share something with them. This is why we've actually reached out to them is because I have this deep-seated belief in the thing that I have to share with someone. I have this sincerity, this belief, I'm an expert in something but more than important than that, I really do believe that we have something that is going to be able to make a difference for you and your role in your organization.

And so when I say I believe, I'm not saying, I think we have something kind of cool here. Now I say, I believe I'm putting my reputation on the line. And I say, I believe we've discovered a breakthrough. We've discovered something. We just happen to be the lucky ones. And we have a breakthrough that is interesting enough that you should learn about it. That breakthrough has a couple different little components. They are value components but we're not talking about what we do, how we do it all, all the various value that we bring to an organization. We just hint at it. Our breakthrough addresses some economic challenges, provides an emotional security blanket, right? It gets rid of those frustrations, those annoyances in our personal and probably career lives. And then it also allows you to do strategic things you haven't been able to do.

That's what your breakthrough does. And by the way, everyone has a breakthrough. You might not be landing on Mars, flying a helicopter, taking cool pictures or curing cancer but as long as you do something better, simpler, faster in a more improved way, you have a breakthrough. And why is it important to set stage by talking about this breakthrough? Because you have something you can promise to deliver to someone. If I say we have a breakthrough and you need to learn about it, that's what your discovery call is. It doesn't necessarily need to be you drilling them with questions but if you have something to share with them and something that actually goes through these things. Chris is going to talk about what that breakthrough actually can Intel, if you promise to deliver something, that's a breakthrough to them, then it's what elicits them being curious enough to take a meeting from us. The next couple lines are but the last piece.

Gerhard Gerschwandtner (08:01):

Before Chris, let me ask you a question. I'm curious, you make it all sound so smooth and so obvious and how to resonate with the customer in a positive way because you established a positive climate. The question I have is, how long does it take for salespeople to get to that point where they have that internal breakthrough, where they get it. And it's almost like an opera singer of finding the high seat.

Donny Crawford (08:33):

Does take practice. I'll tell you, it takes practice. The wonderful thing about, and Gerhard, I really like the question because it takes not just role-playing practice where you're speaking to a mirror, talking to a manager and doing it. You have to feel how the reactance you're getting from real-life people. And then it starts to click and get smooth. I would say that you can actually become very comfortable with this after about 30 conversations with people, 30 to 40 conversations.

Gerhard Gerschwandtner (09:12):

How long is it taking in the training school, in the Flight School, 30 minutes, an hour or?

Donny Crawford (09:21):

It probably equates to close to three to four hours of live conversations with people for you to. If you're sticking to it and you're really practicing it and you're really trying to deliver it, it's going to feel stiff at first. It's like you're reading it. But if you really have a go at it, understanding and embracing the reality of it and what you're trying to accomplish, you're selling an appointment, not your product right now. This type of breakthrough script can actually within probably 30, 40 conversations, you start to understand the nuances of how to deliver it effectively.

Gerhard Gerschwandtner (09:57):

It reminds me of a book that was written a long time ago by Constantine Stanislavsky. He wrote a book called An Actor Prepares and it is almost like a perfect training manual with salespeople because the book teaches actors how to step into the character, like in your case, that friendly, trustworthy, helping salesperson who wants to deliver value in any conversation. So it's not just about the words but in embodying that character of that helpful, a customer servant, it takes a lot of internalizing where you  search for memories as an actor in your life where you have been exposed to people like that. And then you embody those people and try to walk through those mental steps. So you have the right mindset and you need the right mindset to develop the right skillset.

Donny Crawford (11:03):

It does start with the mindset. It really does it. You have to have the excitement to be on these conversations. A lot of people are like, "Oh, it's a cold call. I'm just going to be stiff because it's a cold call. And they don't like me. And I don't like doing it." And they get that in their mind. And of a sudden that's going to mess with your energy. That's going to mess with your approach. It's more concerned about them being annoyed with me rather than being confident that I have the right plays in place for me to be stay on the offense on a conversation but keep it light and friendly because the friendliness actually matters. If I do care about someone, and I do believe that we have something that can help them. I am going to put the right amount of assertiveness to make sure that they like what Chris said.

If you save someone from stepping off the curb because a bus is coming, you have to hit them in the chest so that they don't step off the curb. So you have to be assertive enough to guide them in the direction that's going to be beneficial for them to learn something but the reality is you can do it in a friendly manner, right? And so that friendly, assertive aspect of delivering this, it comes with practice, but it comes from interacting with people and realizing, wow, I do have the ability to make them react in certain ways. I do have the ability to influence them.

Gerhard Gerschwandtner (12:32):

I think there's another step that needs to be articulated that a lot of salespeople don't get it. I've trained 10,000 salespeople in Europe and in the United States. And I was always surprised how easy it is to teach good skills, providing you lead them to the first step, which is that they believe in themselves they can actually do it. So people need to give themselves permission to make a change, to make that click in their mind first, before they can integrate new skills into their repertoire.

Donny Crawford (14:05):

I love that.

Chris Beall  (14:13):

Yeah. I have something, an experience that speaks to this. So I used to be, as you know, Gerhard, a fairly serious rock climber mountaineer. And I've had the opportunity to teach a lot of people how to climb. And the key to learning how to climb is to recognize that your fear of heights is natural. It's not something to deny. It's not something to push aside. It's something to embrace and understand. I mean, it's good to be afraid of heights. Try falling sometime. As you know, I fell once about 800 feet, and I can tell you it would've been better not to. It's not something you would seek out. When I taught people to climb, the first thing to do is to teach them to trust that they're not going to fall and die or be hurt. So have them climb up one or two feet, step off, have the rope catch them. Do that over and over where they're still comfortable.

And that's like Donny's 30 conversations, in a safe setting where somebody can coach you, have the experience of not having a bad thing happen when your reflexes say a bad thing's going to happen. And the click occurs when you forget about the fact that you're now at 10, 12 feet off the ground because you're so accustomed to falling onto the rope. And the rope basically feels like the ground to you. And that's the breakthrough moment when people are learning to climb, they have to go through that moment. And I think that happens in Flight School. I think there's a point usually between day two and day three, for most people, and it happens at night, by the way. These changes only occur within us when we're sleeping. We actually are not capable of changing in a fundamental way while we're awake. And that's why we dream.

We go through all of these crazy things that we do at night, which if we take them away, we go nuts and we die, bad combination in that order, by the way. We very rarely die first and then go nuts. And so between session two and session three of Flight School and session two is where those previous couple of sentences are, sentence three, actually the breakthrough sentences. That's where it starts to feel like maybe something good is happening here but I'm not quite there. And then session three that day they wake up and they go with their usual apprehension but it clicks. And it's the click of having this work as advertised, so to speak, it's in the same way that the climber is up 12 feet. And for the first time they go to make a move. They can't make and they fall and nothing happens. It's okay. That's the moment that I think everything changes.

And then the sales rep can now embrace the reality of the ambush conversation which is fear of being in the ambusher is fear of height. It's like fear of the sight of blood. You can't become a surgeon if you think that the site of blood. You can't in sales, you can't be successful unless you don't faint at the feel of ambushing somebody for their own good. But you can't declare that. And just say, I'm no longer going to faint at the sight of blood. You have to practice. You can't get over the fear of heights without practicing. You can't get over the fear of being the ambusher which is the person who's going to be exiled. By the way, the deep rooted source of our fear of being ambusher is people who do bad things to other people in the village get thrown out of the village. That's all there is to it. We fear excel much more than we fear death. And so it's worse than our fear of heights. So you're actually addressing your fear of being the bad thing.

Gerhard Gerschwandtner (18:00):

In the analogy with mountain climbing, I remember interviewing Ed McMahon from The Tonight Show and he was landing a plane that was literally on fire. He walked away from it and he said he was terrified. However, he learned through his military training, you can't transform fear into energy and the energy that somebody told him when he was on the radio, jump and bail and this is going to be a lost plane. And he says, "No, I want to land it. And I want to say that, I think we can fix it." So the lesson I learned is that there is an inner journey to optimal performance that is not clear to a lot of people. And I think, Donny, you hinted at that, that there is some experience that happens where all of a sudden everything changes and you turn fear into energy and that energy turns into greater performance.

Donny Crawford (19:15):

I agree. And it's interesting hearing the part of the benefits that can happen when you've embraced it. And you've made that change. You have to go through that process that Chris was talking about which is that initial fear and that initial fear, once you overcome it, it actually can transfer that fear to this great energy. There's several times in flight school when people are executing on a script and sometimes they just read it really blandly. They just, "Hi, it's Donny over ConnectAndSell. I know I'm an interruption." They're afraid to be saying it. "Can I have 27 seconds to tell you why I called?" And someone's like, "Yeah, go for it." Great. I think we have a breakthrough here and they're really timid and they're not very energized. And then at the end, it's like, "The reason for the call is to see if I could get some time on your calendar. Do you have your calendar there?" And someone will say, "Yeah, I do."

Just by reading the script and being horrible at delivering it. Some people are just like, "Yeah, that's fine. We could set up time." And then the rep is like, it doesn't have to be that difficult. It doesn't have to be something where I have as much energy as Donny is demonstrating I need to have it, but I just need to follow a certain path. There is security to the right type of path to take but then you're going to enhance that experience by really allowing yourself to let your personality shine. I think the best example of this is actually I ran a Flight School for a manufacturer of machinery that they sell to manufacturing plants and food processing plants and all this stuff. And their sales reps are individual sales reps that live in the area that they sell in.

And they go door to door to these manufacturing plants, selling their equipment. And some of them are on the east coast and they have that east coast attitude and they got the sharpness to their voice and the speed and energy and aggressiveness. And then you have the salt of the earth in the middle of the United States sound from Kansas and they got all this personality and sound great. And then you got the Californians, they're all loose and hanging back and chill with the way they talk and super friendly or whatever it is.

And what's amazing is they all say the same words in a script but they've allowed their own personality. They embrace their personality. And they're saying the same words, but they have the same effect on people. And so it's hilarious. Once you allow yourself to be yourself and allow people to get a sense of who you are and that you truly do have something really powerful for them, people are willing to listen at that point and they really are comfortable saying, "Yeah, I'd love to meet with you. You sound great. I love your energy." Whatever that type of energy is.

Gerhard Gerschwandtner (22:07):

It becomes a positive feedback loop because they see they get results with the new narrative, with the new script, with the new delivery, with the new need that is manifesting itself in a positive way. And then they want to do more. And then you create the addicts, the self actualizing.

Donny Crawford (22:28):

Talk about rock climbing. It's scary at first, but dang it. When you're at the top of the mountain and you just accomplish this very hard thing, the high you get from that, it's fun to execute little things well, but the high at the end when you've executed this hard thing and it actually you get a result. Holy crap, I'm hungry for that a lot. I need that over and over and over again. And so once you embrace the little tricky parts to get to that place, it's super rewarding moving forward.

Gerhard Gerschwandtner (23:02):

Donny, there's a book I want to recommend. It's by Josh Waitzkin, it's called The Art of Learning and it actually has the subtitle on inner journey to optimal performance. And Josh Waitzkin was the junior chess champion in the US at the age 16 or 17. And he actually was a subject of a movie called in search of Bobby Fischer. And he actually gave up chess and transferred that inner learning to tai chi push hands competition which is a Korean specialty. And he actually went to Korea to compete in the world championship. And he became world champion.

Donny Crawford (23:54):

From chess to tai chi? That's awesome.

Chris Beall  (24:01):

Let's talk about a breakthrough. By the way, we told folks that we were going to teach them how to have a fail safe discovery meeting. What's funny is, and it's just a funny thing. I'm going to put this in and then turn it back over to Donny. The fact of the matter is, you promise in this breakthrough approach that you're going to share a breakthrough with them. Therefore, a fail say, pre discovery meeting is nothing more than sharing this breakthrough. However, for it to be fail safe, you need to have the psychology of that meeting appropriate to that meeting. When somebody accepts a meeting with you, you actually have got to start that meeting off a little bit differently than an ambush because you're not ambushing them. So now you need to actually establish a connection at the beginning and then you have to get them to go from their current mental, emotional state, which is apprehension that you're going to sell to them to some other state, which is basically a mutual curiosity and collaboration in order to find some truth.

What I call the confessional and there's a little path you can take somebody on in that conversation also from that feeling of apprehension about being sold to, to a feeling of pride. So rather than going to trust what you already have, you can go to pride. And many times I've seen people say, experts say, just get to the point. Well, the point is not, hey, I'm going to interrogate you about what's true about your business in some dry fashion. The point is that we might actually decide to do something together. That's pretty risky for you. It's not very risky for me, by the way, I'm the salesperson pretty risky for you because your reputation's on the line, your careers on the line. And we need to make that move from apprehension to it's okay to work together through some other emotional states.

And the easy one to get through too, is pride of place. And that is just ask somebody, "Where are you on the face of our blue whirling planet?" And they will speak with pride about their home. They chose it and they'll speak with pride about it. And it's quite an amazing experience to allow their pride in themselves in just where they live. Something as simple as that to allow you then to go to their pride and their mission just by asking them this question, which is when everything goes great.

When it's really outstanding, when it's the perfect fit between your solution and the customer's need, when their budget is there, when the price is right for them, where your customer success, people do the right thing. The customer does the right thing. When everything works great, how does your product or your offering change that person's life? And you let somebody answer that. And now there's pride in their professional world. That's how to actually conduct that breakthrough sharing session because then you can get to those three things, the economic one, the emotional one and the strategic one, but you're doing it in an emotional setting. That's got a shot. So there I threw in the purpose. Otherwise, we're not keeping our press or [crosstalk 00:27:18] webinar, but now you've learned it while you've heard it anyway. And Donny, take us home here. We have three minutes.

Donny Crawford (27:25):

If you back up to the blueprint, I think that there's something really important here. If you are able to enter into a relationship with someone, there's two types of people in the world, I'm going to classify the human race. You have the ability to classify them. People you've never spoken to and people who you have. As long as you treat the people who you have never spoken to before with a certain understanding that they are somewhat afraid of you when you try to reach out to them for the first time, everyone has a little bit of that apprehension. If you're able to get a little bit of trust with them, every touch, if you've established trust right at the beginning, get go of the relationship. Just to reiterate what Chris was saying. Every touch from that point forward, if you are able to maintain that trust then in any other discussion that you have with them after the first one.

So I've talked with them the first time. Those are the people who I need to reach out to for the first time. Every other interaction moving forward from that point, they are able to trust you and therefore give you what you need to help them out moving forward. And when it comes to these breakthrough sharing discussions or discovery calls or getting them into a pilot phase, if you've opened up the relationship with a trust building process, and they're able to continue trusting you on an ongoing basis, they are willing and eager to continue to learn from you, work with you, confess their problems with you. And from that point forward, you're able to continue to reach out to them when the timing is right and be able to share with them what you need to share with them so that they're going to be able to essentially get all the benefits that your product, your service you are offering is able to offer to them. But it all does start with this trust.

Chris Beall  (29:32):

Flight School is unlike anything else in the world. It is completely unique. It's life fire. It's the only sales training in the world where you make money. You're not spending money, you're actually making it because you're talking to real prospects, having real meetings and real good things happen. You build pipeline during the training at a much higher rate than you might be doing otherwise.

Gerhard Gerschwandtner (29:53):

That was fascinating, Donny. I just reminded when you talked about the magic that happens in a conversation, I think we all want to discover a better way of connecting with people and you have shown us today. There is a better way, and it's not just about the message. It's about how you deliver the message. The message has to come really deep from inside of you, the essence of you needs to resonate with other people. So you are talking about authenticity, but the authenticity only comes out if you do the opening right. And I see the opening like the first button on a shirt. If the first button is right, all the other buttons are right.

Chris Beall  (29:53):

It's going to line up.

Gerhard Gerschwandtner (30:48):

But if the first button is wrong, they don't line up and you're not going to have a positive connection with the customer.

Chris Beall  (30:54):

It's true.

When you’re making a cold call, is the voice you’re using an effective voice? Or could it use a little fine-tuning so that you can engender trust with your prospect — the trust needed to secure a discovery meeting? Donny Crawford, Director of Conversation Optimization at ConnectAndSell, joins our Market Dominance Guy, ConnectAndSell CEO Chris Beall, to walk you through how to find your most effective cold-calling voice. In previous episodes of this podcast, you may have heard our guys talk about ConnectAndSell’s Flight School cold-call training program. In today’s episode, you’ll get a mini–Flight School lesson all your own, presented by master instructors, Donny and Chris. Not only will you get a tried-and-true script, but more importantly, you’ll hear detailed instructions on how to use your tone of voice to achieve cold-calling success. As Donny says, you’ll learn to bring out your “friendly voice,” and when you do, you’ll see how that voice can make some magic happen. All this — and so much more — in today’s Market Dominance Guys’ episode, “Finding Your Cold-Calling Voice.”

About Our Guest

Donny Crawford is Director of Conversation Optimization at ConnectAndSell. With the expertise developed as a former customer and as Customer Success Manager at ConnectAndSell, he operates as chief instructor of Flight School, a structured program designed to help cold callers find their voice. Learn more from Donny Crawford on these Market Dominance Guys’ episodes: 

• “Three Reasons Sales Reps Don’t Follow Up” https://marketdominanceguys.com/e/three-reasons-sales-reps-dont-follow-up/ 
• “The Power of the Anti-Curse to Overcome Rejection” https://marketdominanceguys.com/e/the-power-of-the-anti-curse-to-overcome-rejection/ 
• “Your Sales People Are Brain Surgeons” https://marketdominanceguys.com/e/your-sales-people-are-brain-surgeons/ 
• “Never, Never, NEVER Retire a Follow-Up Call” https://marketdominanceguys.com/e/never-never-never-retire-a-follow-up-call/ 

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Full episode transcript below:

Gerhard Gschwandtner (01:38):

Hi. My name is Gerhard Gschwandtner. I'm the founder and publisher of Selling Power Magazine, and welcome to our webinar. Thank you for tuning in. We have two experts today that will talk about the topic of how to conduct a fail-safe free discovery meeting, and that's a vital part of the sales funnel. And I want to welcome Chris Beall. He's the CEO of ConnectAndSell, and also Donny Crawford. He is the Flight School director with ConnectAndSell. Welcome, Donny. Welcome, Chris.

Donny Crawford (02:13):

Hey, Gerhard. Thanks.

Chris Beall (02:14):

Hey, Gerhard and everybody. Great to be here. So Donny and I are here from ConnectAndSell. For those of you don't know what ConnectAndSell does, we let you or one of your reps push a button and have a conversation with somebody on your list with no effort whatsoever. So all that dialing, navigating phone systems, hanging up on voicemails, yapping with gatekeepers, all that stuff that 95 times out of 100 leads nowhere ... and by nowhere, I do mean voicemail ... goes away. You push a button. You wait a little bit. You can have a cup of coffee, write an email, pet your cat, whatever you want to do. And then bloop, you're talking to somebody on your list.

Chris Beall (02:53):

So I'm the CEO of ConnectAndSell, been around this company for 10 years, used to be a product guy. Donny Crawford ... His title has actually just changed. He is our director of conversation optimization, and there's a little background that's required here. Donny's been with us for longer than I have in that he was a customer of ConnectAndSell, a user, end-user, a cold caller and follow-upper sales rep back in the day. And he was famous for refusing to take a job unless they would get him ConnectAndSell. So he'd go all the way through the interview process, and then when they'd make the offer, he'd say, "Great, happy to do it and come to work for you. However, I have one requirement." And eventually, when he had done that often enough, apparently somewhere along the way, we were smart enough to beg him to come to work with us. And he worked as a customer success person for a long time and then became our chief Flight School instructor.

Chris Beall (03:52):

And Flight School doesn't make sense what ... The name of it doesn't quite tell you what it is. Flight School's a program, structured program that helps a set of rep together, five or more of them, to go from their current state regarding their skill and their competence, their confidence with regard to cold calling to the top 5% in the world. And they do it through a series of blitz and coach sessions where Donny or one of Donny's colleagues actually coaches them live while they're talking to real prospects. So this isn't role play. This isn't lecture. This is live fire under pressure.

Chris Beall (04:30):

And the reason that Donny teaches this is that the key to first conversations, cold calls, or any conversation is the human voice, right? Almost all the information in a conversation is in the emotional part, which is handled by the voice, not the words, and what is required to get people to be really great at performance with the voice is they have to practice under pressure. Anybody can sound great in a role play. Nobody sounds quite so good when they're talking to a real prospect, and that's what Flight School lets you do is learn to be great. And that gives you confidence, and that's kind of a virtuous cycle. So that's what-

Gerhard Gschwandtner (05:08):

Chris, let me ask you a question because I find the term conversation optimization very interesting. And what you seem to be saying is that in Flight School, you learn just to communicate content but to pay close attention to how that content is delivered in an emotional atmosphere that's optimized.

Chris Beall (05:32):

If I tried to say it better, I would stumble all over the place, so I'm just going to stick with that. That's fabulous. Donny, I mean, tell us. You were just a regular rep at one point in your life, struggling through the world, probably not thinking you were particularly good would be my guess, knowing you, because you don't go around thinking you're great. And then somewhere in there, you got introduced to this ConnectAndSell thing, and somewhere else, you must have had this kind of aha that said the how that we speak with somebody and how they receive it emotionally turns out to be not just important but maybe the key.

Donny Crawford (06:07):

Oh, absolutely. When I first used ConnectAndSell, it was probably 14 years ago at a little startup company, Electric Cloud. And I was a part of a team of really dynamic reps. They were all different personalities, very interesting guys and gals that I was working with, and their voices were really interesting to listen to. And because you're having conversations in a bullpen together, you get to hear a lot of different styles of reps speaking with people. But then ConnectAndSell came to the team, and then we were having more conversations. And so we were exposed to a lot more of these experiences of interacting with people. And at first, I think all of us are stiff when we are kind of reengaging in cold calling and trying to get out there and talk to a marketplace, but there is a moment in our career when we find our voice and we find how comfortable we can be on these conversations that we're having with people.

Donny Crawford (07:06):

And it's that moment that it clicks, and you're like, "Hey, this is my voice. I can be friendly. I can be assertive. I can sound like an expert, but more importantly, I can really make a connection with people." And when you find that voice and within yourself, it's amazing how from then on, it's just going to be magic, and then you can improve little pieces of what you say and how you're saying things. And so I found that to happen probably 13, 14 years ago.

Donny Crawford (07:32):

And then in Flight School, we get an opportunity to work with all of our customers who go through Flight School and their teams of reps who go in there, and they find their voice. And it's fascinating to be able to hear when that moment happens, when it clicks, when it's not just a script they're following anymore, but they've internalized it. And they like it, and they get the friendly voice out there. And they're able to actually make some magic happen on these conversations. It's a neat moment when that actually occurs.

Chris Beall (08:00):

Wow. You just gave us the tagline for Flight School. Our tagline for ConnectAndSell's always been around, right? Conversations matter. Flight School ... Find your voice.

Donny Crawford (08:10):

Finding your voice, totally.

Chris Beall (08:12):

Wow, find your voice. I love it. Thank you. We don't need the rest of this webinar. Thank you, everybody. We've gotten our little piece of marketing development done today. Find your voice. That is what it's really about.

Gerhard Gschwandtner (08:23):

[crosstalk 00:08:23].

Chris Beall (08:25):

I'm an old computer scientist, right? And I'm a physicist mathematician by background, so I always think about things in terms of what's really going on under the covers. And just for everybody in the audience, just to think about this, an email contains about 5,000 bits of information. And if you want to get the rough calculation, it's about 10 bits per letter, per character. Some people would say eight, but given all the emojis and everything, we got up to 10, right?

Donny Crawford (08:51):

It's averaged to 10 now.

Chris Beall (08:52):

[crosstalk 00:08:52] 10 bits per character, and there'd be maybe 500 characters in an email. It's something on the order of 70 words, 80 words, something like that, maybe less. So when you kind of think about that and go, "Wow, 5,000 bits, that sounds like a lot," the human voice carries 20,000 bits per second. That's four emails per second, and every one of those bits will have an impact inside of that other person, because our response to the human voice is entirely involuntary. We can't decide whether in advance, when Gerhard speaks, am I going to end up feeling like I trust him or like him or know him or not? I can't do anything about that. That's something that happens inside of me well below the conscious level. And so while I might be preconditioned ... I've been told Gerhard's a great guy, and so when he speaks, maybe I have a little bit of more of a positive bias. Fact to the matter is, his voice is either going to captivate me, or it's not.

Chris Beall (10:49):

And that's at a rate of ... For those of you who send emails, in a seven-second conversation, you have just sent and had received and paid attention to the contents of 28 emails. But of that, 95% of that information is emotional information. It's carried in the tone. It's carried in the pace. It's carried in things we can't even really put a finger on, but they put a finger on us right in the middle of our brain.

Gerhard Gschwandtner (11:17):

I want to add something. This is really fascinating to me. It's so interesting that you focus on what resonates with other people. There is actually brain research when two people have a conversation that is constructive, that's enjoyable, that is productive, then their brain regions, the same brain regions that light up in the speaker light up actually in the receiver. So when a salesperson or a customer have a productive conversation, the same brain regions light up. However, when you say something that does not resonate, nothing lights up, and there's no communication.

Chris Beall (12:01):

Wow. Wow. So we have a podcast episode on the Market Dominance Guys Podcast. I don't know which episode it is. Maybe somebody will find it and put it in the notes. The title is Your SDRs are Brain Surgeons, and that's what it's about. Well, let's jump into this a little bit, and it basically kind of comes down to this. And I'll give you an overview, and then I'm going to turn it over to Donny here, who's the expert.

Chris Beall (12:26):

So there's a view that we have at ConnectAndSell just kind of founded on a fair amount of experience. We've been doing this for, as Donny said, 15, 16 years and at a pretty decent pace, about 3 million conversations per year that we connect for people. So we have a lot to study, and here's what we've learned, is that in sales, we're taught to lead with value. And we actually imagine something that, when you think about it, is crazy. We imagine somebody sitting there waiting for us to call them and tell them how to do their job, tell them that here's something of value you are not paying attention to, and that's kind of an odd conceit when you think about it.

Chris Beall (13:06):

An alternative to leading with value would be to recognize that trust is the key in business-to-business especially for a number of reasons and that if we can begin with trust, then everything else that follows works better, is easier. It's within a trust relationship. If Donny calls me and I don't know Donny and he has a brief conversation with me and I find myself trusting Donny ... I don't even know I trust Donny, and then he sends me an email. And he sends me an email afterwards. I say to Donny, "Donny, I'm just too busy. I got to go. I got to go." And he says, "Well, okay." And he lets me go because he has ConnectAndSell, so he knows he's going to talk to me someday. So he lets me go.

Chris Beall (13:52):

And then he sends me an email that has the only subject line in email that will actually be open and paid attention to 100% of the time. Thanks for our conversation today. Thank you for our conversation today. That's the ultimate subject line in the world of B2B but not if you haven't had a conversation. So a trust-building conversation, which takes about seven seconds according to Chris Voss, the author of Never Split the Difference, the FBI hostage negotiator guy ... He told me one evening, "We have seven seconds to get somebody to trust us in a cold call. By second number eight, it's too late."

Chris Beall (14:30):

So what this webinar is about is, okay, so say you accept that. Say you accept that beginning with trust and then not blowing it, by the way, which is the other key, because you blow it and you start to sell to somebody, try to corner them with your clever questions ... If I showed you a way to save 23% on the blah blah, what would ... That's all those trap questions we ask them. You can blow the trust that way. Feel free. Salespeople do it every day of the week. They trade trust for the off chance of a lucky commission. They do it every day.

Chris Beall (15:07):

But once you get trust, it's precious enough that you might consider conserving it and preserving it through the rest of the relationship, which might take years. It might take years for an interesting reason we'll share in just a moment. So whether it's email, digital, content sharing, future conversations, meetings, phone, video, you meet somebody to conference, if you've had a trust building conversation with with them, you're ahead of all competitors. And by the way, any competitor that comes and tries to displace that trust will themselves not be trusted. We do not trust people who ask us to not trust people that we already trust. So become that person. We call it paving the market with trust.

Chris Beall (15:53):

So here's why. There's a big idea in here. So if you're selling a B2B product, the replacement cycle for your category of product is about three years. It might be two. It might be four, but in general, in B2B, if we just bought something yesterday, we're not looking for something that does the same thing today. We just aren't. We're not looking to discard our products and services that we buy and solutions in favor of something else because our reputation depends on them actually working. If we're the decision maker, we recommended that solution. You recommend ConnectAndSell, by gumbo, it better work, and you're not going to look for anything else for three years.

Chris Beall (16:33):

So three years is interesting. That means only 8.3% of your total addressable market is in market right now of your perfect market, 100% perfect. You've done every kind of imaginable research, and you know it's dead center bullseye perfect. And guess what? Guess what? 91.7% of them aren't in market, not this quarter. So what are you going to do about that?

Chris Beall (17:01):

Well, there's two alternatives. You can just try to grab them when you got them in front of you, choke them to death, whatever, get them to buy right now, and you can get 8.3% of the market if you're perfect if you had 100% market share of those in market those quarter. But what about the 90 whatever it is, 91.7%? Well, if you build trust relationships with everybody in the first seven seconds and nurture those relationships over that three years, you can dominate your market. That's why my podcast is called Market Dominance Guys. It's not puffing up your chest. It's like math.

Chris Beall (17:38):

Here's the math. Build trust with everybody in your market in seven-second conversations. See if you can get a meeting. Why not, right? You're in a conversation. Sometimes they're in market now, and sometimes they're willing to learn more. Own that market as long as you don't blow it. How do you blow it? Either sell to them inappropriately or neglect them. So this is the big idea, right?

Chris Beall (18:04):

So now imagine you embrace this approach. So you're using sales correctly. You're searching the market for those that fit your TAM. They're your ideal customers, but most of them aren't ready. And for those that are in market now, how are you going to find out? Well, you'd actually have to set up discovery meetings. Now, they're usually called discovery meetings because you want to discover that they need your product. You're all guilty of this, by the way. You have this hope. I sure hope this meeting leads to a deal, right? If you can abandon that hope and actually just have an honest discovery meeting, what I call time in the confessional, where you let them know what it is that you think you do of value you or provide a value and they let you know what their circumstance is and you explore that together, some pretty amazing things can happen.

Chris Beall (18:57):

Andy Paul has, by the way, written an entire book. I'm going to hold it up here. Anybody who hasn't bought Sell Without Selling Out by Andy Paul ... just came out February 22nd. Go by this book. Read this book. Then go get the audiobook, and listen to this book. And then go back and read the book again, and then examine your soul because there's some stuff in here that he's talking about that's really, really simple. Let's make a connection. Then let's go to curiosity, our curiosity. Be curious. Let's truly try to understand, and let's be generous. Now, I didn't blow the book. There's more to read in there, but that's kind of it, right?

Chris Beall (19:34):

So how do you find out who's ready to go forward with you from curiosity to understanding? Well, in what we call a discovery meeting, we might be able to achieve some understanding by asking questions and truly listening, not just hearing but listening, and not listening for what we want to hear but listening for what they actually say and then trying to understand. So here's where we start. We start in a funny place. This person's a stranger. We're a stranger. We're a bad stranger, by the way. We're that tiger. You're the tiger, right? So you're going to ambush somebody. Why? Because there's no alternative mathematically. That is, if I'm going to have a second conversation with somebody, I got to have a first conversation. That's just math. It's damned hard to count to two unless you first count through one.

Chris Beall (20:27):

I know lots of folks would love to skip the step. Can't we just have them come to us out of the woodwork, out of the wild for discovery? Won't they be looking for us? Yes, you and every competitor you have, every alternative, they'll be looking for them too. So your chances of building trust before they have a chance to build trust goes way down unless you're willing to do the hard thing, and the hard thing is to be an ambusher, to ambush somebody. It's just the way it is, and I apologize to all of you who don't feel that ambushing is okay. It's not okay to ambush somebody.

Chris Beall (21:04):

My friend Scott Webb, who is a chief growth officer over at HUB International, he's a pretty dynamic sales guy. He told me once, said, "When I go in to a session with ConnectAndSell to ambush people and talk to them, here's my mindset. They're about to step in front of a speeding bus. I'm going to stop them. They'll thank me. And I don't care if it hurts them a little bit to slap them in the middle of the chest and keep them from walking in front of that bus." So what is the avoidance of the bus? It's the attendance at the discovery meeting.

Chris Beall (21:38):

Now, we call it a prediscovery meeting because it's kind of funny only because discovery, like cold calling, has a funny connotation. It means I want to discover that you need my product soon so that I can make my quota. That's what it normally means. This is a little different. So imagine you have this ambush conversation, and in the ambush conversation, you use five simple sentences, all based on sort of an emotional journey that you believe that you can help somebody go on from their ambush-state fear of you, fear of you to a state where they're actually trusting you in seven seconds, then to a state where they're curious about why it is that you called them and what you're talking about and to where they actually commit to saying they'll come to a meeting.

Chris Beall (22:35):

So this is what Donny teaches, and I'm going to turn it over to Donny at this point. And I'll tell you a story about Donny. I called Donny one day when I was in the Orlando airport. This is an embarrassing story, but it's not really. It's got a great ending. So I said, "Donny, I've really become convinced ..." This was many years ago. "I've become convinced that there's a different way of holding these first conversations that is 100% reliable with regard to getting somebody to trust, and that's helpful for them because it takes them on a journey to actually learning about whatever or it is that we offer that might be able to help them and that learning is the value that we want to offer in the meeting, not the product but just the learning. So I think that this is something we can embrace." And Donny said, "It's a script. It's a terrible thing." And then I took him through what it was, and he said, "It's worse than I thought."

Donny Crawford (23:31):

Oh my word.

Chris Beall (23:33):

"It's the most terrible thing."

Donny Crawford (23:34):

This is painful.

Chris Beall (23:34):

"This sounds terrible. This sounds awkward. I couldn't do that." So for two hours, I walked around the Orlando airport. I thought security was going to come and start talking to me like I was a piece of abandoned luggage or something. They're looking for somebody who had left their child who's 6'1" and 215 walking around, because he doesn't know how to get on an airplane. And I'm talking intensely to Donny, and finally, he says, "Well, okay, I'll try." And then the next day, he calls me up and goes, "Oh my god, this is magic. This is magic." He said, "The first time I tried, it was really awkward. And then but there was a little something. Something resonated."

Chris Beall (24:11):

It turns out there is a way of talking to folks that you ambush that is magic, and that's what Donny teaches in Flight School. But it comes with a consequence, and the consequence is now you got to keep the promise that you make within those five sentences. And the promise is that you're going to share something with them. So Donny, at that, I'm going to turn it over to you.

Donny Crawford (24:32):

Well, let's talk about the five sentences. And you're right, it felt super awkward to begin with. This was back in 2016 when you wanted us to field test it. And so me and James Townsend, our VP of customer success, we hit the phones. I was actually in Klamath Falls, Oregon, this little town in Oregon, Southern Oregon, visiting my sisters, and I was sitting on the bottom bunk in my niece's bedroom, making cold calls with this script that you handed over to me, Chris. And it was awesome, actually. It was a really interesting experience.

Donny Crawford (25:02):

I'm going to recite the five sentences, and we'll go through of what they are. But if I were cold calling and I was reaching out to someone, I would start off ... If I was selling ConnectAndSell, it'd sound like this. "Hey, it's Donny over a ConnectAndSell. How's it going?" They're like, "Good. What can I do for you?" "I know I'm an interruption. Can I have 27 seconds to tell you why I called?" And at that point, they're like, "Sure, I'm a nice guy. I'll give you 30 seconds. How about that?" "Perfect. I appreciate that. So here at ConnectAndSell, I believe we've discovered a breakthrough that eliminates all the frustration and the waste that keeps your best sales reps from being effective on the phone, maybe even been using the phone at all. And the reason for my call is to see if I could get 15 minutes on your calendar, share that breakthrough with you. Do you happen to have your calendar available?" Those are the five sentences.

Donny Crawford (25:50):

Now, it sounds like I went through a whole weird pitch or something like that, a monologue, but the reality is there is some engagement there. And as long as you're using the right voice during each little play, each little sentence that you're delivering, it actually gets someone comfortable enough to ask the question, "Yeah, I do have my calendar, but what is this, right? What do you want to share with me? What's this breakthrough?" And the word breakthrough actually has a really interesting power to it because it elicits curiosity from someone to learn something about something that they potentially could use. They would benefit from it.

Donny Crawford (26:28):

And we're putting it in the context of being able to say, "Hey, there's something really important that we'd like to share with you, and if you give us that opportunity, no big deal for 15 minutes. It's really something everyone can consume. But if you give us that time, this is something that could be really beneficial to think about and to learn from us."

Donny Crawford (26:50):

Now we don't want to be salespeople. We want to actually be advisors. Chris, I've heard you say one of the less trusted professions, probably grouped around politicians and lawyer, are sales people. We want to be more like the nurses, like the therapists, the teachers in our lives, who we trust a little bit more, and us shifting from being a salesperson to being an advisor is actually something that we want to accomplish.

Donny Crawford (27:19):

So in an ambush conversation, we need to treat them appropriately. These people are afraid of us when we've come out of the blue. We caught them off guard. They don't even know why they answered the phone most of the time. They're running into another meeting. They're jumping on a plane. They're picking their kids up from school. They don't know why they answered the phone, but you have them there. And a lot of times, we think of these as cold calls. But the reality is, a cold call just means it's rigid and frozen, and there's not a lot of information around it. But we do have a lot of information about them. They're the right type of person at the right type of business that potentially our breakthrough can make a difference for them.

Announcer (28:02):

We're going to end the first part of this webinar right here. In our next episode, Donny will continue to take you through those five sentences and give you more background and ways you can implement this that maybe entice you to want to sign up for Flight School. Join us again for the next episode of Market Dominance Guys.

Are you motivated to help the prospects you’re cold-calling? Jennifer Standish, Founder of Prospecting Works, joins our Market Dominance Guys, Corey Frank and Chris Beall, in this third of a three-part conversation to talk about different approaches to this process we call “sales.” Thinking of a sale as a “win,” implies that sales is a contest between you and your prospect — and your prospect is the loser. Does this sound like cause for a happy dance? Jennifer says it makes her crazy to hear salespeople say that they’re “killing” their numbers. Corey and Chris agree that this aggressive attitude could also kill the chance of developing a trusting relationship with a buyer, a relationship that would serve both parties now and in the future. Oh, these three savvy sales folks know what’s what when it comes to making magic happen between a salesperson and a prospect. You’re going to want to take notes while you’re listening to this week’s Market Dominance Guys’ episode, “The Magical Type of Cold Call.”

Catch the previous two episodes in this conversation here:

About Our Guest Jennifer Standish is Founder of Prospecting Works, an organization that assists salespeople in overcoming cold-call reluctance. She combines her 25-year cold-calling career with her skills as an intuitive healer, offering a “warm and fuzzy” approach that attracts introverts as well as people who don’t want to be considered salespeople.

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Full episode transcript below:

Corey Frank (01:24):

Let's switch gears for a second and just talk about the exhaust, the results, the outcome of the cold call. The meeting. Whether it shows or it doesn't show. What's your philosophy around that? Folks at ConnectAndSell have a very interesting philosophy around no-shows, which a lot of folks have adopted, including us. But invariably, you're going to get folks that fires happen or maybe the interest didn't lock in or life gets in the way. What do you do about no-shows? What's the attitude about no-shows and how do you approach them?

Jennifer Standish (01:51):

I've experienced very few no-shows, so I don't know that I have a philosophy on them, just because my people show up.

Corey Frank (01:59):

How come? When you listen to an average cold call versus, I think Steve Richard from ExecVision always gave the stat that, I think you may know the most recent one, maybe from Trish [Pertuzzi 00:02:09], Chris. Was it 52% is the standard show rate for B2B calls, I think it is. Something like that. So then, what is that chasm that your team and you are doing that maybe gets them to lock in a little bit more than the average?

Jennifer Standish (02:23):

Well, I'll tell them, I'll say, "So I'm going to send you an invitation and if I don't see that you've accepted it, I'm going to call you back to make sure that you've received it. Because I want to make sure that you get it." And they're like, "Oh, okay, that's fine." And then I'll send it. And then if they don't accept it, I will call them back and I'll be like, "Did I get the email wrong? [crosstalk 00:02:45] going on?" And so they'll say, "Yeah, no, I don't see it. I don't see it." And I'm like, "Well, let me send it again." And then inevitably it gets to them.

Corey Frank (02:54):

So you will call them back.

Jennifer Standish (02:55):

I will call them back. And then if they still don't, then I call them the day before and I'll be like, "I'm just calling because ..." And he's like, "No, no, no, I got it. I just didn't accept it. It's here on my calendar." So I will follow up on people and I will nudge them. And then they show up. But that's just me. They can't get out of it with me.

Corey Frank (03:16):

I believe you. I believe you. Chris talks about the moral authority frame being broken when you don't show for a meeting and you use that, ethically, of course, to secure the second meeting. Couple episodes with Cheryl with, I think it's called I Heart No-shows, it's a very, very ... part of our popular episode. But certainly, if you can secure the meeting now the first time by a couple of nuances, like you're saying, calling them, "Hey, 10 minutes ago, we just got off the phone. You didn't accept it yet. Make sure I got it correctly." That's a simple tip, I love that.

Chris Beall (03:48):

Especially telling them you're going to do that. I mean, the big point over Cheryl's episode, the what I call uber point beyond I heart no-shows, is subtle. It's really subtle. And it's a different point, which is, when somebody agrees to meet with you, you actually now have a relationship within which you can turn, if there's going to be a meeting, into when. And I call it the operational regime. You're no longer in the sales regime anymore at all. In the sales regime, you're only ever answering the question if. If it makes sense for us to take a mixed step. That's all we do in sales. We exchange information and we make a single decision. That's an if. If we should move forward together. Once we make that decision, we must immediately exit the sales regime and go into the operational regime, which is around the question when.

Chris Beall (04:46):

Obviously if you didn't receive the invitation, then the when is not being handled. So I'm taking it on myself to help make the when happen. I'm not selling to you, I'm just helping. And I think that's the key to what Jen just said, it's like you say, this doesn't always work because everybody knows stuff doesn't always work, right? No matter what you try, you can't open a damn door and have that work every time. In fact, I had one bite me the other day when I tried to open it. So it doesn't always work. So I'm going to give you the heads up. Here's how I handle that. And it's also, there's a funny way that you said it, Jen, that I really like. It shows what I call persistent vulnerability. You are saying that it's not going to be perfect and you are going to persist in the face of that imperfection, that potential imperfection, on behalf of the team, that is you and them. You're going to persist. You're going to do the work. And that's service. I mean you're in service to them right at that point.

Jennifer Standish (05:45):

That is key. I believe that from the minute that they pick up the phone, I'm demonstrating client service. I'm demonstrating client service. When I call them, if I were to say, "I'm going to call you the day before to confirm, and if we need to reschedule, we can reschedule." I'm demonstrating client service. [crosstalk 00:06:03].

Chris Beall (06:03):

That's it. And I think sales people, in general, might have this problem. I think all the ones that I've ever worked with have this problem. That they don't get when they've left the world of if and they're now just a service person. And by just I mean, they're now exalted as the service person. So they've gone from being the second least trusted profession in the world, a salesperson, and they've crossed through this boundary, this membrane that separates the world of people you got to be careful of, to the world of people that are trying to help you. So the second most trusted profession is nurses. Why?

Chris Beall (06:41):

Because we're pretty sure nurses are trying ... No. The first, most trusted is nurses. The second most trusted is teachers. We figure they're trying to help somebody also, right? So in sales, if we can go from being a salesperson to being a helper and we can demonstrate our helpfulness while also increasing the odds that we'll be able to execute on what we decided to do, which is to have a meeting with each other, then I think there's magic in there and it's unappreciated magic. And the rough, tough, got to win salesperson has a really, really hard time at that. If see sales as a contest between yourself and the prospect, it's incredibly hard to turn off the if and become a when servant.

Corey Frank (07:28):

And that's endemic, it seems, of a lot of the hustle [inaudible 00:07:31] culture, must do today, crush your number that you [inaudible 00:07:36]. It kind of anonymizes all these relationships down to whatever number is on the board, as opposed to, the empathy is just wreaking from Jen's comments coming through my speakers. I mean, it's like, yeah, sign me up for an appointment. Whatever it is you have. And the antithesis of that is this, kill it at all costs. And that's the world of if versus the world of when. And they don't know when they've crossed that chasm.

Jennifer Standish (08:03):

I'm an empath. This is probably another reason why I'm really good at this. But it makes me crazy when I see LinkedIn and I see all the men who are kill the numbers, crush, crush, be the top 1%. All this stuff. And then I see people, the advertisements of, somebody's on a jet. Live this lifestyle, live this lifestyle. And I'm like, no, it's not about that. Why does it have to be that? I hate it. I hate it. I find it disgusting. I'm not motivated by money. I'm not motivated by commission. I'm motivated to help people. I want people to live better lives.

Jennifer Standish (08:43):

I wish that there were more women who were teaching cold calling, who were doing it ... I'm warm and fuzzy. I'm warm and fuzzy. I do it a very feminine way. Why a lot of women are attracted to my process, a lot of introverts are attracted to my process. I wish more women were out there teaching it because I think that the community would be better for it because that stuff is what is hurting. It's hurting us as a community of cold callers because it produces the thing that works against us. It's got to stop, but I don't know how, because these people sell programs. Chris, help me.

Corey Frank (10:06):

If you listen, Jen, to our first, I think, two or three episodes, we went in and talked about, we're not anti VC. We're not anti private act. We're not anti-capital. But certainly that capital, in some of the hands where they have this pressure, this need to hit a number, there's certain behaviors that certainly are justified or more rabid than others.

Chris Beall (10:28):

There's always been an issue with sales, since the beginning, and we haven't gotten over it yet. So we talked about this in one episode, sales evolved at the crossroads. You didn't sell the people in your village, that's a ridiculous concept. You have to live with them. You collaborate with them. So the classic stuff in sales where, I got you. I got the great deal and now you're going to find out that that sack of rice that I sold you actually was bottomed with sand. That doesn't happen in the village because they exile you and it's really, really bad to be exiled. It's worth the death. But when people started traveling near and far, like on the Silk Road, and they had to buy their supplies from somebody at a crossroads, well then the salesperson is trying to get the best of this stranger who's going to go off and die in the desert anyway.

Chris Beall (11:18):

So I think sales got locked in to a transactional model where it's, I win. We call them wins. Think about that. Wins against whom? It's an odd concept, when you think about it. And so now, here we are in this modern world where there's not much of value to sell that you don't go with. You're part of the product. It's very rare, now, that you get to leave behind some, whatever it is, and say, "Best of luck. Do your best with it." I mean, you can't use a piece of cloud software also as a door stop if it doesn't work out. It just isn't like that. You pretty much have to make it work with everything in your business. And in B2B, everything has to work with everything. There's almost nothing that I would call a legitimate product in B2B. Even our product, as simple, stupid as it is, push a button. I mean, that's the training, right Jen? Jen, push the button. How hard is that? And then wait. Well you have no choice but to wait.

Chris Beall (12:23):

I mean, that's kind of like life, it goes on if you just sit there. And then when it goes, bloop, talk to somebody. Who are you going to talk to? The person that's on the screen. Okay, good, that's it. But it doesn't live in that isolation. It has to be integrated into workflows and how they hire people, how they onboard people. It has to be integrated into some scripting notion that can be reused so that if you talk to this many people, you can hopefully get something done. It turns out you need a school to learn how to talk to people. On and on and on it goes. There is no such thing as a product anymore that is left behind after a transaction. And that used to be the standard. And I think that's changed the practical qualities with sales. That sales is a step along the way to an integrated relationship now. And in the innovation economy, it's all it is. It is all it is. And yet, the old habit of, I got to win. A win against whom? When we call it closed one, who lost?

Corey Frank (13:27):

Yeah, great stuff. That's great stuff. Well, that obviously contributes to, certainly the mindset that, am I learning call by call versus a binary outcome? Either I got the appointment or I didn't. Versus the exhaust and the residue of, which element of the call did I do well and which ones maybe I fell a little flat in that coaching piece? So how do you deal with that, Jen?

Jennifer Standish (13:53):

I'm going to answer that question next, but this is the question I'm going to answer is, as a cold caller, when I cold call for clients, and I haven't in a long time, except for now. What I tell my clients is that you're really hiring me to have intelligent conversations with your prospects. Because what I am doing is, in addition to scheduling appointments, I'm also having really smart conversations and I'm learning about your competitors. I'm learning about your prospects, an industry as a whole. I'm also keeping your data up to date because your list then becomes a real asset to you. And it may not always be appointments that you get from me. I worked for an early stage company and learned a tremendous amount about their primary competitor and the features that they weren't offering their clients. And I was able to go back and go, "Guys, they do not like the fact that big, big, big company over here doesn't offer this."

Jennifer Standish (14:50):

And they were able to integrate it into their services. And so it was like, you can inform product development. So it's not just appointments. Let's concentrate on something bigger. Yes, appointments lead to things, but you can inform product development. You can get industry intelligence, competitive intelligence. You may not be able to get an appointment now, but maybe in six months you do. Maybe in a year you do. I learned when people were going to be let go and a new person was going to be coming, before the person was going to be let go knew. So I knew to call back in a year because that person was going to be let go and then somebody else was going to be hired and I could with that person. So there's all of this information that, okay, immediately it didn't result in an appointment, but my goodness, it was incredibly helpful for the long road. And so, that's what cold calling really means to me is, intelligent conversations.

Chris Beall (15:49):

Wow. So I just came up with the phrase, Corey, and I want to throw it your way. The cold conversation is a short interaction as part of a long game.

Jennifer Standish (15:59):

I play the long game. I play the long game. And, I will tell you that, the clients that I brought in through cold calling ended up being the easiest clients to work with. They were the most forgiving. They paid their bills on time. They never quibbled with my fee. And they became friends long after I left the agency and so did they. And I know this to be true, that there's something that happens when you cold call somebody and they agree to an appointment. That there's a bond that happens because, on LinkedIn, I posted this and other sales people said the exact same thing. That there's something that happens with a client that you get through cold calling, that they become really, really, really great friends.

Jennifer Standish (16:40):

And, in my agency, a client that came in any other way, like through another person, they were miserable. They were awful. Especially if they were brought in by somebody who was miserable themselves. So they was just something about who you resonate with. Which leads me to then say, be careful who sets appointments for you. Because I may resonate with somebody, and if I hand them off to somebody vastly different than myself, there's going to be a disconnect. So be careful. Because I've set appointments for people where there was a big difference and there was a big disconnect. And I was not the right caller for them, because they weren't able to do anything with them, and they would've been better off calling for themselves. And they would've resonated with other people.

Chris Beall (17:27):

Which is a very interesting point too. We've been working with a number of CEOs to help them do their own calling for the purpose of being both the offerer and the offer. That is, they are the bait in the bucket. They are that person. And they can learn how not to have the meeting on the spot and allow the psychology of the meeting to be more practical, shall we say, because it's an agreement to come together. And it does start with a true agreement between two people to do the riskiest thing that we do in life, which is to open ourselves up to another person.

Chris Beall (18:03):

So I think that's where that deep bond comes from. These CEOs that we've working with recently, and Cheryl does most of this work, they are truly, I think, kind of transformed when they start to have their own calling sessions. And it's quite interesting. I mean, we've had one of them on the show who, he was already a pretty good caller, he now converts at about 30% and he said he makes magic happen out there. But he talks about how it's changed him.

Jennifer Standish (18:34):

Yes, yes.

Chris Beall (18:34):

It's changed him to be the person who's reaching out for himself. No chance of a disconnect. But I also think that it's very correct that, if you are the caller, you need to believe in the product. And the product is the person that you're setting the meeting for. That's the product. And if you don't believe in them, don't set a meeting with them.

Corey Frank (18:55):

Well maybe, Chris, you should mention that to Bob Perkins, is the next CEO Round Table session is, you conduct a session, live, where the CEOs, they bring a list. And they set up with ConnectAndSell and it's under the purpose, certainly, of teaching them a little bit of a mini Flight School. But you had said yourself many times on this program, every CEO should be spending a significant amount of time, or a fair amount of time every week, cold calling some of their customers to understand exactly what their frontline team members are doing. And I think for the next Round Table session, I could see maybe something like that.

Chris Beall (19:31):

Yeah, that'd be pretty fun. Yeah, CEOs only Flight School would be pretty wild.

Corey Frank (19:36):

There you go.

Chris Beall (19:36):

And yeah, that'd be something. I bet only half of them would push the button.

Jennifer Standish (19:41):

There is something that, when you learn how to cold call, and you face your fears, the stuff that's holding you back from cold calling are stuff that's holding you back in life. And what I have found is that, when people learn how to cold call, their life trajectory completely changes. And I've witnessed it where people have come to me and said, "I just came to you to learn how to cold call, but my life has completely changed." And many of my clients stay with me for transformational coaching. And they came for cold calling coaching, but it turned into transformational coaching.

Would you hang up on your grandmother? Of course not! Jennifer Standish, Founder of Prospecting Works, joins our Market Dominance Guys, Corey Frank and Chris Beall, in this second of a three-part conversation to talk about the perfect voice for cold-calling success.  Certain voices cause people to react in a positive way, and it turns out that a female over the age of 60 has the perfect voice to get that positive reaction needed to be a successful cold-caller. Who knew?! Well, researchers like Jennifer did. She has discovered that with a little training, middle-aged women without an identifiable accent are phenomenal appointment-setters. Corey and Chris enthusiastically agree with her that “grandmas are the untapped labor market we need in sales.” If this sounds bizarre to you, tune in to hear how the nuances of voice affect the trust you need to establish in the first critical moments of a cold call. It’s all on today’s Market Dominance Guys’ episode, “Hire Yourself a Grandma.”

Listen to the first part of this conversation:

and the next segment after this one:

About Our Guest Jennifer Standish is Founder of Prospecting Works, an organization that assists salespeople in overcoming cold-call reluctance. She combines her 25-year cold-calling career with her skills as an intuitive healer, offering a “warm and fuzzy” approach that attracts introverts as well as people who don’t want to be considered salespeople.

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Full episode transcript below:

Chris Beall (01:24):

Scott, by the way, his thing is commercial insurance. And I know he believes he's potentially saving these companies lives. I mean...

Jennifer Standish (01:38):

Yeah.

Chris Beall (01:38):

Saving those jobs.

Jennifer Standish (01:40):

Yeah.

Chris Beall (01:40):

I look at ConnectAndSell. Somebody asked me, "What do you guys do?", we are determined to pull the cork out of the bottle that keeps the value of the innovation economy on the inside. When it could be poured freely on the outside, where people could make use of it. We all rely on innovations. They're stuck inside of companies and they need to get out for all of us, and that's what we do.

Corey Frank (02:04):

That's a beautiful thing. We go back, because again, I keep seeing it on a t-shirt here. Jennifer's [inaudible 00:02:11] the Chick-fil-A, "Eat more chicken.", right? But you say, "Take more cold-calls, take the meat.".

Jennifer Standish (02:16):

Take the call, take the call!

Corey Frank (02:21):

Take the call. But, a lot of the trust is that I don't have a relevant list. If I'm talking to someone who I feel there's some relevancy, there's some linkage there. Some familiarity, some status tip off as our friend Oren Klaff talks about on the call. Then I have some credibility. But if I have, for instance, I get these alerts from Glassdoor. Glassdoor is a reputable organization, been around for a long time and rates socially how organizations are doing, how happy team members are. But, they also have these alerts that somehow I got on that says, "Hey, you're a good fit for X and Y and Z position.", right? Maybe we've all received some of those. Well, I got one the other day and I shared it with the team that evidently I'm a pretty good fit for short order cook at the Village Inn, down the street.

Chris Beall (03:14):

Yeah.

Corey Frank (03:14):

So there's no relevance there. Now, I don't think I have anything in my LinkedIn file that says that I've gone, now to me that's my ideal position is someday to retire and be a short order cook. But between now and then, so if I got a call from someone at Glassdoor immediately I would say, you don't know what you're talking about. Your list is garbage. You haven't put that human element attached to say, wait a minute, somehow I got a little disconnect here. So how important is that? When you create a list, we've talked about it on the Market Dominance Guy's level. When you create a list for a client, if there's no relevancy there, it seems like what you're saying is right. The whole house of cards kind of falls apart a little bit.

Jennifer Standish (03:56):

Yes. But, I would never talk to somebody that way. If I got a phone call, a cold-call, about a job as a cook, I don't think I would respond that way. I would say, oh my goodness. Wow. I think you've...

Corey Frank (04:09):

Of course.

Jennifer Standish (04:12):

Yeah, I wouldn't say it that way. I would say...

Corey Frank (04:15):

I think internally, how'd you...

Jennifer Standish (04:17):

You need to talk a little bit because seems the algorithm that you're using somehow is misplaced or because I am not at all your target.

Corey Frank (04:28):

Yeah.

Jennifer Standish (04:28):

And I'm afraid that maybe your list is filled with people who are not yours as well.

Corey Frank (04:33):

Sure, sure.

Jennifer Standish (04:33):

But algorithms, they make mistakes. I mean, they're...

Corey Frank (04:37):

If you're a rep, and over and over and over again I've been instilled with this belief system from Jennifer and Chris and the battle cry. You're going back and forth like Braveheart, before we hit the phones in the morning at 7:59. Okay. Release. Okay. You guys are released to the world and third phone call, fifth phone call, 20th phone call, "No, that's not me. No, that's not my role.". Are we committing a little mal practice as sales leaders sometimes by not spending the time we need on the relevancy of the list?

Jennifer Standish (05:08):

Yes. Yes. Because I will tell you that, if you give me a bad list, I'm going to have bad results. I will have horrible results. So the list is actually critical to cold-calling, so you better spend your time. And what I tell people is, you need to have multiple, highly targeted lists, and don't be lazy, come up with multiple scripts. And, I don't like writing scripts all the time. I don't want to write 10 scripts in a row, but I do it because I want highly targeted lists. And I want the scripts to speak to each segment. Otherwise, I'm going to be calling a whole bunch of people and it's going to be irrelevant to them and nothing is going to resonate with them. And then they're going to get angry. So yes, it's got to be highly targeted. Really spend the time, don't call thousands of people and say something generic, because then you're just going to piss people off. I don't want to be that person. So on our side, yes, we need to behave better. We need to behave a lot better.

Chris Beall (06:15):

I agree. Lists are so fascinating to me because we make lists primarily, at first, cold list. Right? We make them based on publicly available information, which we know is limited and flawed. And we know it's limited in flawed in a bunch of different ways. Some of it is out of date. I was with my data concierge, Tom. We were looking at some calling data the other day and we were identifying individual human beings using some techniques that we have. And we found that there had been 476 calls to a guy named John T. I won't say his last name because it wouldn't be polite. And he died in 2013 and the reason that all these calls were going there was that his son, James T was still running the company, had the same email address. Why not J.T. at company name.

Chris Beall (07:17):

And it had fooled the various algorithms out there in zoom info and so forth into putting his late father into these lists. And so it was easy to tell from the data, by the way, there wasn't much to it really. One of the funny things is you get a lot of good information back from calling, but you have to do a lot of calling. So in our case, we do 60 million dials a year. So we have a lot of information and we use some of that information to help folks avoid these faux pas that one could make and at least avoid them a little bit, right. Avoid them. But you can't avoid them perfectly in much the same way you can't really be sure in any sales situation that you're not going to be obliged to say what you found out is that there's not a good reason to move forward.

Chris Beall (08:09):

I mean, if that were not the case, wouldn't the funnel just be a pipe. I mean, it would be odd, right? It's like everybody that we talked to, with whom we will do business with. That doesn't really make any sense. It's an exploration of the world in much the same way that if you go Google something, you can't just blindly take a research result that comes back and goes, oh, I'm going to get that one. Right?

Corey Frank (08:34):

Yeah.

Chris Beall (08:34):

Whatever it is. I mean, go look up Chris and Helen's wedding. Well, you'll find one in Italy that's going on on the same date as our wedding will happen in Washington. But don't buy plane tickets for Italy. If you want to come and hang with us and have been invited to our wedding. Check it out a little bit more and be ready to go back and forth. And I think this comes down to the essence of sales.

Chris Beall (09:02):

Sales has a lot to do with information exchange. We exchange information first to decide if we trust each other enough to exchange more information. That's actually what a cold-call is, cold-call is an exchange of information with the purpose of deciding if we trust each other sufficiently that it's worth exchanging more information. I mean, that's a cold conversation. A cold call by the way, is an attempt to get a cold conversation. Cold calls are kind of irrelevant, because most of them don't go anywhere, but you got to do them anyway. I mean, what can you do? You're going to try to talk to people who are busy right now. Great. Okay. So you found out they were busy, but a cold conversation has a very, very specific purpose, which is to exchange enough information to determine mutually that we trust each other enough to move forward, to exchange more information, right?

Chris Beall (09:55):

So some of has to be in charge of how much information that is and what the cost is. If the cost is about 30 seconds and the amount of information is something roughly on the order of say six or 700,000 bits, we're good. 20,000 bits, a second with the human voice, 30 seconds, 600,000 bits, it's about what it takes to get sufficient trust to decide to move forward. That's why cold conversations are so valuable because as human conversations with the human voice, because the human voice carries those 20,000 bits a second right into their midbrain. And theirs goes into yours too. And so you got a shot.

Chris Beall (10:36):

How many emails? I don't know. Somebody in the audience can do this math divide 600,000 by 5,000. What do you get? 600 divided by five. That's a hundred and something 120 emails. Can you get somebody, without losing their attention, to read 120 emails and respond to you intelligently to each one so you can adjust your next email. That's the equivalent of a 30 second phone call. You can't do it. It's the only practical medium to get sufficient trust between two people, if they're not sitting in the same room.

Corey Frank (11:15):

And the building trust, curious Jennifer, this is a staple of Market Dominance Guys, that Chris is just mentioning here. But from your perspective on modulation or inflection, I want to say tonality, because we always talk about tonality here. I'm thinking for maybe a little bit, even more nuanced, maybe rate of speech. What goes into your mindset? Forget about your team, talking to you as the expert, as the black belt, right? Making the call one shot one kill. I give you four leads. That's it. And we need two meetings of these four leads.

Chris Beall (11:50):

Oh, that's yesterday. She did that.

Corey Frank (11:51):

That's yesterday. That's good. Great.

Jennifer Standish (11:53):

Yeah. I didn't do it today though. Boy, I had one call and really screwed that up. Well, first of all, I say professional, confident, friendly, and a little bit enthusiastic, and that's where women excel. We can do the enthusiastic part very easily and still remain professional. It's where men really struggle because men come to business from a very different place. They come to business in a, I want to be the smartest person in the room, the most successful person in the room and it can be almost aggressive. And so they have a hard time with being enthusiastic. You want me to be in enthusiastic? I don't want to be enthusiastic. But over a telephone line, that enthusiasm really helps otherwise they sound disinterested. So, and it's like, if you want somebody to be excited about meeting with you kind of have to be excited about you and what you're calling about.

Jennifer Standish (12:52):

And that's my formula. And everybody executes that a little differently, but I look at professionalism, you have to sound professional, confident, friendly, and a little bit enthusiastic. And so when I'm working with people, I'll say, "Okay, well try this out.", and then it's very flat and they'll try it out again. And it's very flat. And then I'll say, well, let's pretend you're the leader of a three-ring circus and you're going to go so over the top, it's going to be absolutely ridiculous. And I'm like really go over the top and they'll try and it will be perfect. And I'll say, "There it is.".

Chris Beall (14:10):

That's so interesting.

Jennifer Standish (14:11):

And it was really uncomfortable for you, right?

Chris Beall (14:15):

Yes.

Jennifer Standish (14:15):

And they're like, "Oh my God.", and I'll be like, "it was perfect.".

Chris Beall (14:19):

That's so fascinating. Wow. I went through this with radio ads. Working with Rich Kagan.

Corey Frank (14:26):

Oh yeah, sure. Right.

Chris Beall (14:27):

So we're up there in Tucson and we met at this very, very fancy studio. Well, okay. So I triple-locked the car and I, standing there in the sound booth in the studio, and he is telling me he says, "You are a naturally big voice, big range, you project. You will sound dead on radio. You must take it over the top. You've got to go to the point where it feels ridiculous to you.". And sure enough, when it played back the ads I'm like, "Geez, Chris, can't you bring a little something.".

Corey Frank (15:04):

Yeah. Well the impact of the camera is supposed to add 10 pounds right?

Chris Beall (15:08):

Yeah.

Corey Frank (15:08):

So some of the earlier videos, when my wife watches these, I say, remember the camera adds 10 pounds. She says, well, how many cameras did you use? But look at the Nixon and the Kennedy debates, right? Early on with makeup, if you have makeup on, right, and to the naked eye, if you were in front of me of like, "wow, you're very orange today.".

Chris Beall (15:30):

Right.

Corey Frank (15:30):

But on camera, you don't see it. So that's interesting though, Jennifer, I like the nuances between men and women and the enthusiasm.

Jennifer Standish (15:38):

Yes.

Corey Frank (15:38):

Projection, because we predominantly call IT and we find that the gals on our squad, they do better on average than the gents do.

Jennifer Standish (15:50):

Yes. And I will tell you that if you're going to hire are an appointment setter, middle-aged women, without an identifiable accent are phenomenal appointment setters. Because we just are confident, if you sound like a little girl, you're going to have problems.

Corey Frank (16:07):

Yeah.

Jennifer Standish (16:07):

But I worked for an agency once and we were scheduling appointments for VP of sales and banks. And we had no message. It was basically senior vice president, so and so, so and so, would like to meet with you. And the very first meeting where all of the callers were on the top 10 cold-callers, they were all women and they all sounded like grandmothers. And I thought to myself, this is absolutely brilliant because nobody is going to say no to a grandmother. And they were consistent. And I was in the top 10 and I was younger, but they sounded like grandmothers. And I thought, does this company know what its just done? Or is this just happened to be that these women who were in their sixties needed a second job and they, day in and day out, we're the best of everybody. So I'm not saying go out and hire grandmothers, but middle-aged women without an identifiable accent are the people I try to hire all the time.

Chris Beall (17:05):

I am saying, go hire grandmothers. I read an article about this 10 years ago, and I still stand behind it. The biggest untapped resource in the economy is post-retirement women, in particular. Although the men start to become, I'll call it usable at that point also, maybe because their testosterone levels go down. Maybe because they're no longer bossing people around or maybe because now they're living with somebody's bossing them around and it helps them understand their place in society a little bit better. But it is very, very interesting that we make, I think, a huge mistake. And I think it's one of the biggest economic mistakes that's been made in the last 20 years of believing that the cold-calling job, which is a highly specialized job, it's like being an anesthesiologist. No, you don't cut the patient open and do all that stuff.

Chris Beall (18:01):

But if you don't do your job, right, somebody dies, right. It's really, really important to get this right. And it looks really routine like, oh yeah, you give them this amount of gas. You do this, you do this. But really it's very subtle. And that job has been now relegated, I'll say, to the world of the 24 to 26-year-old, who wants to become a salesperson. And yet if you take it seriously as a hiring manager or as a strategist putting together a company, you would say, well, wait a minute. Why am I overpaying for 24 to 26-year-olds...

Jennifer Standish (18:36):

Right.

Chris Beall (18:36):

Who don't want this job and want to go get another job when I could go to the other end of the economy and hire people in their fifties and sixties and seventies. And I have a great example, Israeli cybersecurity company selling to hospitals.

Chris Beall (18:50):

And they were using as their cold-callers, three people out of the Northeast who were living in a rural place, didn't have much accent. Youngest was 58, the eldest was, I think, 77, the leader was in 77. So yeah, something like that. And they created 32.788 million dollars of pipeline in seven months. And this company got sold for 400 million dollars with significantly less than that have been invested. Now they cheated, they used ConnectAndSell, and they were really good at it. And so they talk to lots of people, because it's considered an inaccessible market. Hospital IT, you can't get there, not with the telephone. Right?

Corey Frank (19:39):

Yeah.

Chris Beall (19:40):

And I have those numbers. And every once in a while, I'll publish the chart that shows the pipeline that was built, not a hundred percent from meetings, by the way, this is another really important factor.

Chris Beall (19:51):

Certain voices cause people to act in a positive way, even if they don't take the meeting. So you're actually conditioning the market for all your future communications that, "thank you", that comes after every conversation. "Thank you for our conversation today.", the only email in the world of B2B that always gets opened. The only subject line that works, everybody talks subject lines all day long. There is only one subject line that works in B2B. "Thank you for our conversation today.", now the only way that it's honest is if you just had a conversation. Now you're down to, how do they feel about it? And that feeling determines what happens to four out of every five of the pipeline dollars that will come out of calling because four out of five of the pipeline dollars that come out of calling do not come from the meeting that was set in the cold-call. They come in the communication that happened afterwards, that's been conditioned. By the trust that was built in the cold-call.

Jennifer Standish (20:51):

I trained a grandmother last year and she was phenomenal. To the point where the owner had to give her a week vacation because he couldn't keep up with all the appointments she was sending. It blew everybody away except for me. And I was like, "This woman going to be phenomenal.". So maybe we really, really, need to change how we're hiring. And these women love it, they feel useful, they're proud of what they're doing. They have a really thick skin, because they've lived a long life and they've seen things. There's just something about their energy and you just trust them immediately. So I don't know, Chris, we should come up with something on to use this talent.

Chris Beall (21:40):

Well, we should, I'm down here right now in Quail Creek, Arizona. And this community, I think, we have 3000 houses or so. And I would say of those 3000 houses, 2,937 of them have somebody of grandmotherly age of the female persuasion who's living there. And they arrange everything here, they make everything happen. I'm not retired, of course, and Helen's not retired, so we call ourselves the working stiffs and there are a handful of us around here. But I actually think every once in a while, that it's just the company that needs to be started. No one has ever made an appointment setting company that operates reliably at pace and scale. And the reason is that the inverted S-curve around hiring eventually kills them. So it's hard to find the marginal talent to add to that group. And then, Corey, you've done it within the companies and you know how hard it is, right?

Chris Beall (22:36):

That thrash at the edge, I call it, the thrash at the margin that occurs where the in and the outer happening at about the same rate.

Corey Frank (22:44):

Absolutely.

Chris Beall (22:45):

It's like your drop of water can only get so big before it's boiling as fast as you're adding to it. And then all of your time is going there, and then the quality deteriorates at the center. It's just the way these things happen, right? And you're taking on customers that are less sincere and less interesting and less worthwhile and blah, blah, blah.

Corey Frank (23:02):

Sure, sure.

Chris Beall (23:02):

But I do believe, that it could be that grandmas hold the key to make in the world's first scalable appointment setting company that can grow without bound, without losing quality.

Corey Frank (23:18):

See that should have been your patent. Not the other thing.

Chris Beall (23:22):

Well, she didn't say what it is. We're not convinced yet.

Corey Frank (23:24):

Oh, okay. All right.

Chris Beall (23:25):

Well, it's not all about grandma's.

Corey Frank (23:26):

Just checking. Grandmas are the untapped labor pool market that this country needs right now today.

Chris Beall (23:36):

Yeah. The innovation economy...

Corey Frank (23:37):

Innovation economy.

Chris Beall (23:39):

Will not fulfill its potential for humanity, unless grandma step up.

Corey Frank (23:44):

You cannot move forward without looking back. That's what I hear you saying.

Jennifer Standish (23:48):

They're hard workers, they're really hard workers.

Corey Frank (23:52):

Yeah, absolutely.

Chris Beall (23:53):

And they're self-managing.

Jennifer Standish (23:55):

Yeah.

Chris Beall (23:56):

They've been managing themselves for quite a while and managing someone else too most sure, sure.

Jennifer Standish, Founder of Prospecting Works, is preaching to the Cold Calling Choir when she says that cold calling trainers don't spend enough time working with their people on their delivery. Jennifer and our Market Dominance Guys, Chris Beall and Corey Frank, all believe that a great script that hits all the points but has a terrible delivery won't get you any appointments. However, a great delivery — even if you're working with a mediocre script — will absolutely bring in the appointments. In this podcast, they also emphasize the importance of a salesperson's mindset when it comes to being a successful cold caller. If you think everybody's going to hang up on you, that everybody's going to be nasty to you, well, then, that is generally what you're going to get. But if you believe in your core that your product or service can truly help people, if you are certain of the integrity of your offering, then you can sell people on your belief. Why? Because your authenticity will come through to your prospects, loud and clear. Listen to this first of a three-part Market Dominance Guys' series by these three cold-calling gurus on today's episode, "Learning to Manage Your Voice Under Pressure."

Then, listen to the next two parts of this conversation here:

About Our Guest Jennifer Standish is Founder of Prospecting Works, an organization that assists salespeople in overcoming cold-call reluctance. She combines her 25-year cold-calling career with her skills as an intuitive healer, offering a “warm and fuzzy” approach that attracts introverts as well as people who don’t want to be considered salespeople.

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Full episode transcript below:

Corey Frank (01:29):

Welcome to another episode of the Market Dominance Guys with the sage of sales, the profit of profits. With Chris Beall and Corey Frank and today we have a guest that is near and dear to both of our hearts Chris, we're going to speak in reverent tones, hush tones of cold calling. Jennifer Standish is here from Prospecting Work so, Jennifer, welcome to The Market Dominance Guys. Please say hi to our seven listeners, including my mother on this well esteemed almost 200 episodes of this podcast. Jennifer, welcome.

Jennifer Standish (02:03):

Hello. Thank you for having me. It's been a great pleasure to be here.

Corey Frank (02:07):

Great. So I understand that you are well skilled in the black art of cold calling but then I also heard, right? When we were talking about it in pregame a little bit that as skilled as you are, you also want to make cold calling obsolete. Do you swear that's true?

Jennifer Standish (02:26):

Well, where did you hear that? That I want to make it obsolete?

Corey Frank (02:29):

Oh, the sage of sales had shared that thing with me beforehand so.

Jennifer Standish (02:32):

Yeah, because I work with a lot of people that have call reluctance and it's such a struggle for them and I just wish that we could somehow rename it, do something, something to help these people be able to make cold calls and I would also like for it to be acceptable to be able to call a business during business hours to discuss business and be able to call somebody and get an appointment and it's such a struggle and cold calling is such a bad name. That if there was a way to just be able to call somebody and schedule appointment and have it be done. I would love for that for it to happen.

Corey Frank (03:12):

Well, I can already tell, Chris and you probably picked up on this. You've known Jennifer a little longer than I have, right? The cadence and the tonality you use just to explain yourself is probably indubitably what hooked Chris, so is that how you guys met? Chris, were you a cold call from Ms. Standish here? How did you guys meet?

Chris Beall (03:32):

I can't remember.

Jennifer Standish (03:32):

No, you-

Chris Beall (03:35):

But I know she told me that she had an idea and it's such a tremendous idea that I asked her not to tell me more about the idea until she got a provisional patent on it because I think I said, "Jennifer, at this moment I'm the most dangerous person on the face of the earth and you should protect yourself before you speak with me."

Jennifer Standish (03:56):

Yeah, so we were introduced by David Masover because we were both on his podcasts and so Chris and I just had a nice lovely conversation and I said, "I have this idea about how to end cold calling." And so I told him and then we spent two and a half hours on the phone.

Corey Frank (04:10):

Oh that's nice.

Jennifer Standish (04:11):

And he said, "you need to get a provisional patent for this. You have to protect yourself and then we can build it because it's a brilliant idea." And I got off the phone thinking that I was going to be the next Elon Musk and I felt as if my life trajectory had just changed and it didn't turn out quite as I had expected but the idea is still there.

Corey Frank (04:34):

Sure.

Jennifer Standish (04:34):

And who knows but I really think that what's missing is we spend so much time on the sales side, becoming more efficient, trying to be more effective, working on bettering ourselves, coming up with a great cadence and all that stuff.

Jennifer Standish (04:48):

But nobody's dealing with the prospect side and how they're part of the problem. When we call these prospects, there are so many things that get in our way from reaching the prospects. Nobody's dealing with them and their bad behavior and how they are costing their company's money and how their gatekeepers are costing their businesses money and how somebody needs to tell these people or maybe it's the CEO or the president, guys you need to start taking these calls. There's a lot of reasons beyond why these sales people are calling you. It's a great networking event. You have no idea why they're calling.

Jennifer Standish (05:26):

It could revolutionize our company. How about karma? Are people cold called? Why don't you need to pick up these cold calls? Because our people are cold calling. What goes around, comes around. You just never know. All of this types of reasons. Take these calls. What I would hope to happen is the number of calls that you were required to get through would go down. We wouldn't need to be making all of these numbers. We wouldn't need as many sales people out there hounding away. It would just facilitate business. We could-

Corey Frank (05:58):

And if I have it straight Jennifer, that... Chris, help correct me. I'm hearing you say if your message to the world, if your message to humanity is to accept and take more cold calls.

Jennifer Standish (06:13):

Yes. Take the call-

Corey Frank (06:14):

Take the calls.

Jennifer Standish (06:16):

Take the call.

Corey Frank (06:17):

That's a great t-shirt.

Jennifer Standish (06:18):

And what I tell them whenever I present, I will have people come back a week or two later and say, "Jen, I didn't think I would ever want to say this to somebody but I took a cold call and it turned out to be a great decision for my business."

Corey Frank (06:35):

I love that.

Jennifer Standish (06:36):

Time and time and time again.

Corey Frank (06:38):

We had a guest on who's a great friend of ours, his name is Robert Vera. He runs the Center For Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Grand Canyon University and one of the things that he mentions a lot is that to take a phone call, to take a cold call especially, there's a special intrapreneurship mindset that these folks have to have. Not an entrepreneurship but an intrapreneurship. So, Jennifer calls me and she's going to give a face melter of a screenplay of a pitch and it moves me but still I got to think of my boss, Chris Beall here whether he tolerates this culture of intrapreneurship of change, of improvement of kaizen, et cetera. What do you think about that, Chris? Is it our job as cold callers to arm them, to preempt the message that a boss will say to stifle the great message and emotion that you just stimulated and was a catalyst for me to say, "Hey boss, I got an idea,” versus. “I get a lot of crappy phone cold calls"

Chris Beall (07:45):

Right.

Corey Frank (07:46):

And I may not be that motivated to make change.

Chris Beall (07:51):

Well, I think that there's two kinds of change that you're dealing with. So one is very private which is the choice to attend a meeting and when we think about the psychology of a cold call, a cold call is always a mistake not by the person making a call but by the person answering the call. It's very rare that they answer the call thinking this could be a really cool cold call, I'm so ready for this, right? And so what they're really doing is going, huh, I don't know what this is and for some reason I feel like I got to pick it up and then they realize it's a sales rep and then the defenses go up and then we have an issue, right? So I think then this is a fascinating area to me. In fact, I just had a post golf meeting two days ago with a marketing expert.

Chris Beall (08:42):

And she said, "Hey, I'm helping a company out that's doing account based marketing, ABM." So ABM basically is like Market Dominance Guys, basically we say make a list. It's like okay so make a list, right? And she asked me this question. She said, "how can cold calling work together with ABM? It doesn't seem like it can because in ABM we have to know lots about each individual target on the list before we have a conversation." And so I think the first order of business for the cold caller is actually a psychological order of business which is can you get somebody curious enough to take a meeting and nothing else. And all that requires is that they be a human being. It doesn't matter what business they're in. As long as you can say something that A doesn't cause them to reject you. I don't mean reject you as a person.

Chris Beall (09:34):

Just reject the idea of taking a meeting with anybody you're associated with but B has to resonate with them while not answering the question. So, that's thing number one. Thing number two, the intrapreneurship thing I think comes into play once you're in the discovery meeting or the breakthrough sharing meeting or whatever you want to call it because that's when you're on stable ground. That's when you're in the confessional. If it's run correctly and in the confessional, you can discover the answer to the question.

Chris Beall (10:02):

Does it make sense to do the next thing, right? Whatever the next thing is. Does it make sense for Corey to come talk to Chris or does it make more sense for Corey to go do the test drive? And de-risk it a little bit through direct experience? Corey can make the decision but it's funny how this relates to cold calling. Cold calling is essentially a mechanism to allow enough human trust, human interaction and curiosity to be generated such that two people will get together for a little bit of time and explore a possibility and that's it and I think the key to cold calling is to know that's it and not much else.

Corey Frank (10:46):

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Jennifer Standish (10:48):

Can I add something?

Corey Frank (10:49):

Of course.

Jennifer Standish (10:50):

I also think that we have to accept that a certain percentage of the population doesn't like to be sold to and they will shut down meetings to their own detriment but there's nothing you can say to them. They just will not be sold to and we just have to accept that but everybody else is somewhat willing. Some people are more willing than others. I've had situations where I get no objection. I get, "sure I'd love to, absolutely. I'm available in this particular date and time" and it's super easy. Other times there's a little bit of pushback but then people are amenable to scheduling appointments. So we just have to accept that some people are more willing to meet with people and are interested in what people have to-

Corey Frank (12:37):

Jen, how much of that do you think and you've seen, you've probably experienced bad cold calls, you've probably from your background, taught many folks to learn this skill. You have, right? A voice. We have a handful of folks on this podcast, all brilliant folks of course present company included with me and Chris but a lot of the folks that are on these podcasts of ours, right? They have a voice that can just melt butter and they have a command of their tonality, their stammer, their pregnant pauses, is that something that you see as correlating to your success?

Jennifer Standish (13:15):

Yes.

Corey Frank (13:15):

When you're on-

Jennifer Standish (13:18):

And I'll tell you cold calling trainers do not spend enough time working with people on their delivery because it's 80% of your success as a cold caller. A great script, hits all the points with a terrible delivery will get no appointments but a great delivery with a mediocre script will still get you appointments. Absolutely.

Chris Beall (13:41):

But write that one down. So this is actually why we do Flight School. Flight School is about learning to manage your voice under pressure because it's one thing to learn in some role play but then under pressure, away it goes and you tighten up and I have an analogy I've used it before here. I'll use it again. So in the next room over there I have this wonderful Kurzweil electronic piano and it's got all these beautiful voices and stuff and there's a song that I play most evenings for Helen and I play other stuff too but I play for my fiance, right? She's been a guest on the show so go check her out anybody who wants to do that and I know full well that she thinks that I am a very good piano player and a pretty passable singer but I'm also pretty sure if somebody walked in the room while I was playing that I was sure was a real piano player or worse, a real piano player and a real singer.

Chris Beall (14:46):

I would suddenly suck to the degree that even Helen would know it even though she'd be too nice to say anything about it and that command of your voice under pressure is the essence of being able to cold call. Helen and I listened to Cheryl Turner once for about 20 conversations and I asked her, "what'd you think?" As Helen's not a cold caller of any stripe and she said, "what's amazing is the emotional pivots and they happen in split seconds and so she knows what she's going to do, but then she does what she has to do with her voice." And I thought that was a really good phrase. She knows what she's going to do but then she does what she has to do.

Jennifer Standish (15:30):

Yeah.

Chris Beall (15:30):

And that's it.

Jennifer Standish (15:31):

It's the mental agility.

Chris Beall (15:32):

Yeah.

Jennifer Standish (15:33):

Yeah.

Corey Frank (15:34):

How do you teach that to... I'm a new grad, Jennifer and I was a history major, liberal arts major, communications major. I'm going to land on your floor. Maybe I'm a middle child so maybe a little bit more introverted, right? Chris has some theories on that in a minute but how do you draw it out to somebody because these are big bad strangers, people who hang up on me and they have teeth and they can ruin my career and they can pull up my LinkedIn and they're going to track me down on social media. What do I do with all this stuff here before I make a phone call?

Jennifer Standish (16:07):

Well, I'm an extreme introvert and I can do this and I think right there I would say well, we got to talk about your mindset because if that's the way you're going into this, yes, you're going to have problems. If you think everybody's going to hang up on you, everybody's going to be nasty to you, that is exactly what you're going to get. But if you believe to your core that your product or service can help people. If you have integrity, if you're calling because you believe that you can help people and you do your homework but if you do your homework and make sure that you're calling the right people, you're not calling everyone under the sun. Nobody likes to receive irrelevant calls, right?

Jennifer Standish (16:48):

You come up with a targeted list and you're calling with the motivation of wanting to help. You're not here to sell. You're wanting to introduce yourself and have a conversation that you're going to sound very different and sometimes I can't make somebody sound different and I will send them to a vocal coach. Sometimes it doesn't help and there's very little I can do but I can always start with a mindset and I can sit down and go through all the things that they're bringing to the table that are going to get in the way and I can help them. I can't do the work for them.

Corey Frank (17:25):

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Jennifer Standish (17:27):

And then we'll see. But a lot of times when I'll say you're allowed to call a business during business hours to discuss business, I give you permission. Right then and there they're off to the races. They're like, that's all I needed. Just give me permission. That's all I needed. Other times it's when you told me that I really help people, that's all I needed. I do help people and I sell cleaning supplies but I keep people safe and healthy and my customers would be lost without me because when you really look at it, all of the businesses all over the world, we are all ultimately trying to help people.

Corey Frank (18:05):

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Jennifer Standish (18:06):

Even paper, look at paper. What is paper? Well paper communicates ideas to people. It's all about people. So if you can trace your company and what it does back to how it helps humanity, then you're selling with a purpose, a noble purpose-

Corey Frank (18:21):

That's beautiful.

Jennifer Standish (18:22):

And then people can get behind it. So I tell sales managers all the time, where are your case studies? You need to be telling these people every single day look at what we did, look at how we helped these people. Look at all the wonderful things we're doing. That's what we are as an organization. We need to be proud of ourselves.

Chris Beall (18:39):

Well, so Donnie Crawford and I are going to be doing a webinar two days from now about how to conduct a breakthrough sharing session. What people should call a discovery call. I'm not really fond of the word discovery call even though I love discovery as you all know Corey, I'm into it but it means I'm going to discover something about you that lets me make you buy my product.

Corey Frank (18:59):

Yeah.

Chris Beall (19:00):

And that's a disingenuous approach to that next step. If you think of it as a breakthrough sharing call, I called you because I truly believe we've discovered a breakthrough and I want to share it with you because I think it has potential. At least this meeting has potential for you to learn something that'll change your life. We may never do business together and this to me is the critical break point that Donnie and I are going to go over.

Chris Beall (19:26):

The mindset break point is to get to the essence of the mindset, to say the following. In the event we never do business together, as I have to sincerely believe in the potential value of the meeting that I'm offering not the product but the meeting, to this human being not their company but to them, in the case where we will never do your business together and if I believe that sincerely then I can take what I'll call the Scott Webb mindset which his mindset is, I envision this person is about to step in front of a speeding bus and I may have to hit them hard in the middle of the chest to keep them from stepping in front of that bus but I know of the bus is coming and they don't. So it's my responsibility to get them to the meeting because that's where something magical can happen.

Chris Beall (20:20):

And when he adopted that mindset he went from a world class but to him mediocre 30% conversion rate and Jennifer was calling for me yesterday, kindly to set meetings for me and she set at a 50% rate on a list she'd never heard of before and God knows it wasn't. I don't need its best list in the world actually, a little hard to get ahold of him too. It'll dial the connective, I don't know 131 to one today or maybe worse and yet she said 50%. Well, when Scott adopted this mindset working at HUB International as the head of sales, he's the big guy there. He went from 30% to a hundred percent overnight.

Jennifer Standish (21:01):

Yeah.

Chris Beall (21:01):

Not overnight but in the next hour and he stayed there ever since. He converts a hundred percent of his cold conversations to meetings and he says the essence is to truly remind himself.

Jennifer Standish (21:15):

Yeah.

Chris Beall (21:15):

He's saving their life.

Jennifer Standish (21:16):

Oh yeah. I tell people all the time, imagine you had the antidote to COVID. You would be relentless. You would find the person who you needed to talk to, who could distribute that to as many people as possible, you would do your homework and you would not stop calling. You would not stop calling because this thing could save lives. It's that sort of purpose and you would be annoying but you would be okay.

Chris Beall (21:45):

When you hit somebody in the middle of the chest. I've actually done that by the way, when Scott said that thing about the bus, it turned out once in Des Moines, Iowa, there was a bus coming and it was coming in the fog and I did reflex without thinking and I hit somebody very hard in the middle of the chest and kept him from stepping off the curb. So when he said that to me, it actually made me shutter.

Jennifer Standish (22:06):

Yeah.

Chris Beall (22:08):

It's a little emotional just to remember that moment.

Corey Frank (22:10):

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Chris Beall (22:11):

So this is a big deal. When we have a breakthrough, it doesn't have to actually be something that they end up taking advantage of, the knowledge of it is of value.

Jennifer Standish (22:21):

Yeah.

Chris Beall (22:21):

And that's all we're offering. It's that knowledge.

Corey Frank (22:24):

I love that it really comes about. We've talked about this several times Chris, right? The belief, the insistence mindset. You can only have an insistent mindset when you have firm belief in the value certainly of what you're selling, right? To your earlier point Jen, right? If I'm a new grad and I have all these boogeyman fears or worse, let's say I'm apathetic to what it is. I think I've shared this a few times on the podcast here is one of the stories, one of my great mentors years ago taught me when we were first starting one of our first companies is about a guy who's just minding his own business and walking past a construction site and there's five guys laying bricks and he goes to the first guy and says, "Hey, what are you doing?" He's like, "laying brick." Goes to the second.

Corey Frank (23:10):

"What are you doing?" He's like, "I'm building a wall", goes to the third guy, "what are you doing?" He's like, "making eight bucks an hour", goes to the fourth guy, "what are you doing?" He's like, "I'm building a cathedral." And the fifth guy, "what are you doing?" "I'm saving men's souls." All right. So arguably the latter two construction workers are the ones that you want as team members, you know that they're going to pay a little bit particular more attention to the runoff and maybe the cleanup and maybe the hard right corners of the walls. The first three pedestrians, tourists in the space apathetic. Yeah, I work for Saunders Prospecting here and well, what do you do? Well, I make 18 bucks an hour. I get paid X amount per appointment. Working my way through law school but generally not the folks that you want to put on any campaign and certainly they're conversion and rates will go less than pedestrian, I would imagine.

Jennifer Standish (24:07):

Right. So I would tell hiring managers to be very careful and I would also tell candidates be very careful. You could be a great salesperson, a great cold caller if you align yourself with organizations in which you believe, right? And I work with a lot of commercial insurance producers and I tell them, do you know that business could not continue without you? And you start them the story about the history of commercial insurance and you keep roofs over people's heads. You keep people employed. We wouldn't be able to do business without you, right? And then they start thinking oh my God, absolutely. So be very careful who you work for and if you don't work out one place, don't give up, try someplace else. Think of really about what is in your-

Chris Beall (24:58):

Wow. I love it and Scott, by the way, his thing is commercial insurance and I know he believes he's potentially saving these companies lives.

Jennifer Standish (25:09):

Yeah.

Chris Beall (25:09):

Saving those jobs.

Jennifer Standish (25:11):

Yep.

Chris Beall (25:11):

I look at ConnectAndSell somebody ask me what do you guys do?We are determined to pull the cork out of the bottle that keeps the value of the innovation economy on the inside when it could be port freely on the outside where people could make use of it. We all rely on innovations. They're stuck inside of companies and they need to get out for all of us and that's what we do.

How do you de-risk your company? Marketing and business consultant John Orban and our Market Dominance Guys, Chris Beall and Corey Frank, wind up their four-part conversation by offering our listeners a great deal of advice about how to balance potential risk. These three sales scholars delve into the potential problems of forecasting your company’s success, the possible perils of determining the market value of your sales pipeline, and the pitfalls of the practice of inflating your sales and revenue prior to a reporting period, which is known as “stuffing the channel.” “I give myself good advice, but I seldom follow it,” admits Lewis Carroll’s famous character, Alice. In this vein, Chris warns that being in love with your brilliant idea for a business can make you into your great idea’s zombie — ignoring all you’ve learned about de-risking. Save yourself from that fate by listening to this week’s Market Dominance Guys’ episode, “Beware the Jabberwock, my son!”

The complete poem by Lewis Carroll is here. 

About Our Guest

John Orban brings his background as a MetLife sales rep and as an administrator of computer networks to his current career as a marketing and business consultant for creative professionals.

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Full episode transcript below:

John Orban (01:21):

All the games that were played to make sales, you would not believe the stuff that went on. And quite frankly, I think it's one of the reasons why a number of insurance companies went out of business, because of all the games that their sales reps were doing.

Chris Beall (01:36):

Well, I think that-

John Orban (01:36):

Think that question compensation system is a problem.

Chris Beall (01:39):

It's a very interesting problem, right? We don't compensate our, our software engineers on how many lines of code they wrote this week and then have them go out and fake up some lines of code that ... you know? Okay, I'm going to do this. Then I had the smartness to delete it and add it, delete it ... Oh, I got enough code, right? I found that person who was alive and could sign that insurance policy. We don't do the at anywhere else in business. And it's a hangover. And it's a hangover, I believe, from the fundamental nature of manufacturing-driven capitalism, manufacturing core capitalism, where we came up with a trick. It sounds like the ultimate trick, which is, take raw materials, use machines and turn them into something, therefore allowing money to turn into more money in a very predictable way, but comes with a problem.

Chris Beall (02:30):

You got to dump the finished goods inventory somewhere. Otherwise it piles up. So, how often do we have to dump it or what's our flow rate to dump it? Well, our flow rate to dump it is determined by the flow rate of our factory and our buffer for finished its inventory. So, we do a bunch of things. Here's a gaming thing that people do at sales called stuffing the channel. So, we expand the buffer by getting channel partners to take on inventory that they may or may not be able to sell. Why do we do that? To make the number today. Why do we do that? Because the number today allows us to invest in the factory at very low interest rates, maybe even negative interest rates to borrow that money, because we don't have to borrow it, we got it from customers in advance and therefore we can make our factory bigger and it can dump our widgets up into finished goods inventory.

Chris Beall (03:21):

And at some point the channel, as they say, barfs it back up on us. That's a thing that the channel does. This is no longer what's interesting in the world. What's interesting in the world now is in  B2B, is helping companies acquire capabilities that let them run better or grow more cost-efficient, or capital efficient way or more smoothly or less brain damage or less unethically or whatever it is they're trying to do. That's what we're selling. And there is no finished goods inventory. There's nothing to dump. And so, we compensate salespeople as though they're dumping or as though there's stuff the channel, let's face it, as though they're stuffing the channel, and we admire them and call it President's Club if they stuff the channel enough this year, because they got a club and nobody next year it's like, oh he had a bad year.

Chris Beall (04:11):

No. The channel barfed up his stuffing back onto it. Right? That's what we're looking at.

Corey Frank (04:18):

That's right, that's right.

Chris Beall (04:19):

And then it's a funny thing. I don't see it changing soon because, frankly, the very best sales people get to ride on that surfboard. And it's okay for them that they get paid immense amounts of money for being really good. Even though you could pay them the same immense amount of money and they would sell just as much or more, and you could trust them. You could just go, "Hey, I'm just going to pay you this." Like we do with CEOs, right? CEOs are considered often to be the top salesperson in the company. We don't ever pay commissions to ... At least I don't get one. Maybe I should go talk to my board about a little commission work on the side. So, it's a very interest situation in which we're still, I would say, early in the evolutionary process of coming to terms with postindustrial [crosstalk 00:05:12] ... it's not even capitalism anymore. It's just postindustrial innovation economy. We're coming [crosstalk 00:05:19].

Corey Frank (05:18):

We're having Matt from [inaudible 00:05:20], was it next week, I believe? He's going to be on the show, and one of his associates. And I was talking with Robert Vera, who's been on this show as well, Chris, as you know. It's a later episode, John, so as you catch up through the last couple of years, you'll eventually get to Robert Vera. And, Chris, you've said this quote too, and it's interesting to see how kindred minds here think alike. It's that, you know, to create this de-risk revenue generation machine, should be the goal of every board and every CEO and every CRO, a de-risk revenue generation machine. And as we talk about the math of sales. Again, your colleague Jerry Hill posted a great article today on the math of sales.

Corey Frank (05:58):

I'm a big fan of math of sales, [inaudible 00:06:00], we have a community. James Thornburg, ConnectAndSell as a weapon has enabled you to take the emotion, don't get emotional about math, and realize where you are as identifying the constraint in the system, and then focusing on that constraint in the system. But you have zero risk, right, Chris? In pursuing this math of sales, this methodology, as you speak, because if it doesn't pan out, what are you out?

Chris Beall (06:29):

[crosstalk 00:06:29] Right. Exactly. It actually, it's really funny. In the innovation economy, fundamentally, the only that we're risking is the time it takes to find out if anybody wants a solution to the problem that they're having, that is along the lines that we think we're capable of producing. It's so low risk and it's so fast, it can be done with one or two people in almost any size market. It can be done in less than two weeks, normally one week you in any size market and it's the step everybody skips. [crosstalk 00:07:02] And the reason they skip it is, think of the process, right? You have this idea. The idea is a brilliant idea. At least it seems that way to you. It takes over your mind. You think about it day and night, whatever that brilliant idea is, you think about it. All of us who do this kind of work, have this problem.

Chris Beall (07:21):

We come up with something. I got a great idea. Let's go use ConnectAndSell to call folks and help them see the wisdom of donating money to X, Y, or Z. It could be a great idea and I could think it all the way through, and I could get these kind of people to do it. The idea takes me over, it parisitizes me, it zombifies me. I am now that idea's zombie, and it controls my life for a little while. So, now, is the next natural step to go and say, huh, I wonder if anybody will buy this? I really want to be out of it within a week if they, if they won't buy it. Rationally, great idea. Emotionally, there's a kind of an ant for instance, and it gets parisitized by a microorganism. I think it's actually a fungus, perhaps.

Chris Beall (08:13):

And that microorganism, it's one of these real little tiny things, lives inside the ant. But it needs to be eaten by a bird in order to go through the rest of its life cycle to reproduce. So, what does it do? Well, it takes over the mind of the ant, the brain of the ant. And it says, you know what? I think, what would really feel really good right now, it'd be to climb this blade of grass. I want to go up I am an upwardly mobile ant. I just feel the urge suddenly, right? It's like, I feel the urge to take this great idea out. And then the ant gets to the top of the blade to grass. It goes, you know, being head up just doesn't work for me anymore, I want to be head down, feel the ant blood rush to my little [crosstalk 00:08:59] hanging here by my hind legs and my [crosstalk 00:09:01] legs.

Chris Beall (09:02):

I wonder why my abdomen turned so red and looking like ... oh, I'll ignore, that big red berry of an [crosstalk 00:09:09], that won't cause a problem. And then a bird comes down and eats the ant and the parasite gets what it wants, right? So, we have to avoid being that ant when we have been zombified by the idea that takes us as entrepreneurs. And how do we do that? Well, it's hard. This is why we should always do business with somebody else, but we need partner in business that says, "Let's take a look." Take a look, and the way we take a look is to go out into our hypothetical market, turn it into an actual list, talk to people on that list with our breakthrough script, that attempts to set meetings for our brilliant idea. Look at a simple number, which is what is our appointment setting rate for those meetings, and if it's above threshold, then we're okay. But otherwise, thank God we didn't get to the top of that blade of grass and turn our shiny berry red butt up into the sky and let a bird eat us.

John Orban (10:09):

That's right. That's right.

Chris Beall (10:10):

Because that's what happens.

Corey Frank (10:11):

That's exactly right.

John Orban (10:12):

Yeah, that's amazing stuff.

Corey Frank (10:14):

Yeah. So, John, you've been in sales for a while and you've sold all kinds of products and now you're in the art world. So, you're using another side of the brain a little bit more on a full-time basis, a consultant advisor to many upcoming artists and galleries, et cetera. So, if I'm selling art versus Chris and I are in the software business, the services business. But I'm selling art. A lot of these same rules apply?

John Orban (10:40):

It's interesting because I'm still trying to learn what's involved with that. And I happened to hear on one of your podcasts that Susan was a former gallery owner. I don't know whether she still isn't in gallery or not, I'd love to talk with her about some of the things that she's experienced but I think most people would agree that art is pretty much of an emotional purchase. You see a picture and it reminds you of vacation you took, or it reminds you of your grandfather or something, and you make that emotional connection and you get it. Over the last, I don't know, 10 or so years I've tried to analyze, why is the Mona Lisa such a amazing picture and how come we've only painted one of those in, what, 550 years or something like that? It doesn't seem to make sense. But they had something going on back in the Renaissance.

John Orban (11:29):

And it's not just the Renaissance. You take the 1800's, up until about 1920 when art just went south, except for people that we're still doing, well, what I consider to be real art, it's always been that emotional connection. It's the interplay of color. And sometimes it's a subject matter, but I'm still trying to figure all that out. And in the meantime, I'm trying to learn to paint myself and get better at it and see if I can crack that code, then I'll do the next Mona Lisa, that's my project for right now, but we'll see how that all works out.

Corey Frank (12:05):

Well, I think why this is so ... here you are, you're a master of your craft. You've been in sales for years and years. You've sold millions and millions of dollars worth of products to thousands of prospects. Chris, you have the same, taking companies public and raise money and [inaudible 00:12:21] residents and all this stuff. And I've made my share phone calls too. And I think as a science guy, Chris, you say, "Hey, what makes a law, a law is that it's a constant." Entropy or thermodynamics or math of sales. But where this is still so elusive is that, when you talk about trust, when you talk about engendering trust, you're talking about building curiosity. We know it when we see it like good art. I can't describe it, but I know it when I see it.

Corey Frank (12:52):

Of course, with the math of sales, I can actually know it when I see it too, you look at stats constantly of dial to connects for companies and look at their chart. But what we're talking about isn't quite a law, but it's also not a theory, correct? What would you call this kind of tweener period we are, what we're trying to build here in market dominance?

Chris Beall (13:12):

There is an underlying theory, but it's not and hard and fast. You can't go in and say in every single situation, this is what is happening. But in business, we don't get to do that anyway. We're not trying to make something happen every time. We always are dealing with ignorance of the future. That's the nature of complex systems, our ignorance is vast, very, very vast. The only way we know how to manage ignorance in large is through portfolio theory. That is we have more little bets. More little bets are safer than one big bet, if we can decouple the little bets. Now, it's very tricky to know that you've decoupled your bets, by the way. I thought that, for instance, my floor finishing company, that I decoupled my bets. And then I out that at midnight, on November 1st, every year, they turn on the big old furnace in every hospital in the Midwest and the humidity goes down and the airflow goes up and wow, that's interesting.

Chris Beall (14:07):

Those things all happen at the same time. And so, if you think your bets are decoupled and I thought mine were, you can find yourself failing everywhere at the same time. So, even that's hard. Portfolio theory is hard to apply because it's very difficult to get under the covers and say, these are truly decoupled, they're decoupled from big moves in the economy, whatever it happens to be. The way we manage risk, therefore, this is part of the theory is, we go fast. So, before bad things can happen, good things are done. So, the market dominance theory says I'm going to decouple my bets by spreading them across many individual conversations within my hypothesized market. And then I'm going to move fast enough that even if they turn out to be coupled in a disastrous way, I don't go broke because I know that's my state I'm trying to avoid is the broke state. The going bust. I used to be a professional gambler, as you know. And the number one rule as a professional gambler is you don't go bust.

Chris Beall (16:09):

Because then you're out of you're out of the big game. So, everything you're doing has to do with matching your bet size against your bankroll size, and running a portfolio of bets over time. And you got to do it fast before bad things happen externally. So, it's more of a system built around those two big ideas that, look, everything is risky. Big stuff that can go big is really risky. Therefore, start small, go fast and use really tight feedback loops, like Boyd, the fighter pilot John Boyd. He's the guy who revolutionized modern warfare by coming up with this notion of the OODA loop. So, the OODA loop says, you're going to orient yourself, then you're going to observe, then you're going to decide, then you're going to act. The shorter of the time cycle of your OOTA loop, the lower your risk is in making one bad decision that's going to cost your life.

Chris Beall (17:06):

Because you have time to do it again, to orient yourself again, observe again, deciding in and act again. So, what the market dominance theory basically says is it's not really about sales. It says in a world of uncertainty, speed to understanding of something no one else knows, that's a value. And that is this list of people will actually buy this thing. And therefore, it'll get cheaper and faster and easier to get more and more of them to buy it. The faster you can do that and get to market dominance in any size market, the safer you are, because market dominance is more predictable than individual sales, which are more predictable than market acceptance. And so you come up with proxies for the future, like, hey, let me talk to you about a meeting. Oh, if you take the meeting, that's a proxy for you buying the product because it's linearly related, mathematically in a portfolio basis, to folks buying the product. That's actually the underlying ... John, you said, this is almost like a physicist would say unified field theory.

Chris Beall (18:10):

It's actually the application of gambling theory, which is universal in the world of ignorance, ignorance theory, I'd call it, to the realities that we face in the world where we're trying to provide value. [crosstalk 00:18:24]

John Orban (18:23):

Yeah. I used to handicap horse races. So, And I only used to bet on long shots, anything that was eight to one or higher. So ... yeah.

Chris Beall (18:33):

Yeah, yeah. That's really funny. The guy who built the Museum Of New And Old in Hobart, Tasmania, built that fortune on two things. One is, he started out as a blackjack player. And then he did the horse racing handicapping thing all on long shots because there's an emotional reason long shots are mathematically superior. You have to endure the fact that you're generally not, it's not going to pay off, but when it does, it pays big.

John Orban (19:01):

And you only have to wait three minutes, about, [crosstalk 00:19:04] to find out whether it's going to pay off or not.

Chris Beall (19:06):

The cycle times are quick. You'll notice, by the way, that without them admitting it, a lot of people who are doing innovative work in business often have a gambling background. Sean McLaren himself has got a background in new Orleans that he can talk about, and I won't, way, way back. I'm not going to say that Sean could have done something longer ago than my life, but it's entirely possible. But I'm such a young guy that I think it's entirely possible. So, yeah, what's funny is the rest of this is, okay, what are the universals? Well, the universals are in B to B, people are afraid of buying stuff because they could lose their career. That's pretty much universal. Do I find people who will buy stuff because it's intriguing to them. Sure. And they're called tech enthusiasts.

Chris Beall (19:54):

Do I need to identify them and avoid thinking that they're part of the market? Yes. Is that easy or hard? It's hard because I love my product. And therefore, when they buy its idea, I feel loved and therefore I'm attracted to it. So, what do I have to do? Put up barriers to going in that direction. What kind of barriers? Well, preferably having a business partner, says, remember when we talked about tech enthusiasts? Yeah. Mary over there is one of those, let's not sell to Mary. Or we're so early, we don't know if our stuff will work. So, let's go sell to Mary, but let's not mistake Mary for the market. When do we know we're dealing with an electron and when do we know we're with a big old, heavy proton? And when do we know it's a neutron and when do we know the quirks are, you got to categorize in order to make good decisions, but that's about it.

Chris Beall (20:43):

That is really about it. And the reason we talk so much about trust, is trust is the hard part, because you've got to trust that you've got the goods and the staying power to not have to make this deal. So, [crosstalk 00:21:01] that somebody can trust you as a partner collaborator very early in the relationship, from the first seven seconds. And that is hard for people to come to for a lot of reasons. We talked about [Eric Honhower 00:21:17] climbing the LCAP thing. [crosstalk 00:21:21],

Corey Frank (21:21):

So, nine or 10, I think it was? [crosstalk 00:21:23].

John Orban (21:22):

Yeah.

Chris Beall (21:23):

Imagine the level of trust he has to have in him self to even try that stuff, much less to make that one move. And it wasn't the slab, which is the one that freaks me out, because I have bad experiences trying to down climb slabs in Yosemite, but it was that karate kick move. Anybody wants to go back and watch Free Solo if you want to get what got me, and I know of what I speak to some degree, as a former big wall climber [crosstalk 00:21:54]-

Corey Frank (21:54):

Alex Honnold. [crosstalk 00:21:54]

Chris Beall (21:54):

[inaudible 00:21:54] Alex Honnold. So, Alex has got to make a move that's the one thing you never want to do as a climber, it's called a committed move. He has to trust an outcome that he actually knows he's not in control of. And it's the one where he decides of all the moves to be made there, that karate kick move, that just looks so bizarre when he does it is actually the one with the lowest risk of failure in the circumstances in which he anticipated finding himself with regard to how he would feel, how his body would feel, how his mind would feel at that point in the climb. And he chose that from his portfolio, just like we have to do in sales. We have to choose stuff that isn't always going to work. Now, he was going without a rope. In sales, we pretty much have a rope. It's very rare that we're betting our entire career on a deal.

Chris Beall (22:46):

I've I've done it a couple times myself, staying detached and just being on the the other company's side, the other person's side throughout a long deal that's fraught, and you're going to go out of business if you don't get it done.

Corey Frank (23:00):

But zero. [crosstalk 00:23:02]

Chris Beall (23:02):

That's hard. That's harder to do, that's true mastery when you can do that stuff. But most of us in sales don't have to do that.

Corey Frank (23:08):

No, but you mentioned ... what's your law in gambling, right? Never go to never go to zero. And you certainly it's a little tougher today because if I raise money in an A round, a B round and I'm not going in that trajectory, I don't necessarily have that concern of going to zero, do I? Because I can always get more money. I can always do it down [crosstalk 00:23:29].

Chris Beall (23:29):

Yeah, yeah. Let me talk about this for, just for a moment, because this is something people ... [crosstalk 00:23:35] people think they're de-risking their company by taking venture capital. I've mentioned this before in the show. Read the docs, read the corporate text, read them in detail and ask yourself one simple question about every sentence. Is this sentence to protect them or me?

Chris Beall (23:54):

Just add them up. Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, add them up. Put them on the scale. Do it page by page, anyway you want to do it, you'll see they're professionals at something. And if you read it in detail, you'll find out their professionals at salvaging value from businesses that are being thrown away. That's what their professionals at. So, you have decided in order to de-risk your company, to go and go into business with somebody whose primary outcome is salvaging your business. If you think about it that way you might have a different point of view about risk. Another way you can get your venture capital is, find the smallest possible market you can imagine that's a true market and go take it, and let that be your venture capital. That will de-risk your company.

Corey Frank (24:41):

That's right. I think we talk about the gambling, right? One of the books ... it's on my list I think I sent you a few weeks ago, John, is against the odds or it's against all odds. I think it's Against The Gods.

Chris Beall (24:53):

Against The Gods, I love that. [crosstalk 00:24:56]

Corey Frank (24:55):

Against the Gods, by Peter Bernstein. Yes. And he talks about that in the 12th, 13th century, right around there, the concept ... you're mathematician Chris, you probably know this better is, the Hindu Arabic numbering system finally came and replaced letters as a symbol of value, right? And then this consequential concept of zero was finally established. And then this concept of zero was established, so the tools and mindset were finally in place for algebra and accounting and math of market domination, et cetera. But that concept of zero seems to be lost a little bit in folks that raise a little bit too much VC. Sometimes I think-

Chris Beall (25:40):

They think they're climbing with a rope.

Corey Frank (25:42):

They think they're climbing with a rope. And the other one that I was reminded the other day, I was just talking about with Robert Vera about this was, there's a weather forecaster in charge of weather forecasting for the United States Air Force in World War II, right? A lot of weather patterns, hey, they just came across Normandy and they've got to figure out how we can get to Berlin as quickly as possible and we need air cover. And so, this particular gentleman was in charge of making predictions for the weather over the following few months. And this weather forecaster quickly realized that these long-range forecasts that he was putting together were effectively useless. No better than pulling numbers out of a hat.

Corey Frank (26:22):

And when he argued, like the dutiful, loyal soldier he was, up the chain of command, when he argued that they should be discontinued, the reply came back, "The commanding general is well aware that the forecasts are no good. However, he needs them for planning purposes." And I think when we have folks again, like our colleague Gerry Hill put out his LinkedIn post today that, hey, we're in the season of kickoffs this year, right? There's all kinds of company corporate kickoffs and raise the bar race for revenue, swing for the fences, whatever cliche vapid kickoff they're going to have as a theme, there's going to be forecasts. And if there's no forecast without math, the math of sales, the concept of zero, you're living off a little bit of hopium there, it seems.

Chris Beall (27:14):

It's a funny world. It's a funny world in the sense that when you take somebody else's money, you're taking it in exchange for a story. So, when you're raising money ... and by the way, anybody who listens to this and thinks, oh Chris, doesn't like VCs or whatever. That's not true. I actually think investors provide all sorts of wonderful services [crosstalk 00:27:35]-

Corey Frank (27:34):

Absolutely.

Chris Beall (27:35):

... I'm just saying, keep your, keep your damned eyes open for certain things that are universal out there. When you're raising money, investors want to see story of how it could be if everything works. If they need an answer to this question, which is, is this worth investing in? Because if it's not worth investing in, if it works, it's certainly not worth investing in if it doesn't work. So, they would just want to know not whether it's going to work or not, but if it works, will it have turned out to be a good investment?

Chris Beall (28:07):

That's actually the first order question. Most things, the answer is no, even if they worked, they wouldn't have been worth investing in. My mother used to have this phrase, if something's not worth doing, it's certainly not worth doing well. So, most mothers didn't tell the kids this, but my mother had a special way with words, shall we say, some of which involved the desert where you could bury a child. So, now that's something that gets confusing to folks because then when they raise the money and now here, what was put on paper was, is it going to be worth doing if it works? Now the question isn't that anymore, now the question is, really, how do we want to balance financial risk and potential return? That's a completely different question. And you need forecasts that are a little shorter term, because now you have questions like, are we going to run out of money? Do we want to run out of money?

Chris Beall (29:04):

All sorts of questions like that come into play. And so, you switch. It's like switching from that hard flat voice where you throw yourself under the bus, I know I'm an interruption. Now you have a new purpose. Come along with me, right?

Corey Frank (29:18):

Yes, yeah.

Chris Beall (29:18):

It's, can I have 27 seconds tell you why I called? Those are different conversations for different purposes. And I think folks get confused by it. The weather forecast has a similar role. The weather forecast needs to ... not, like, are we going to decide to fly or not based on this, whatever it happens to be, it's in general, how are we going to allocate and stage our resources in case things turn out a certain way so we can react at lower cost and shorter cycle time? I think people really, really overplay proactivity in business.

Chris Beall (29:54):

They just wildly overplay it. The primary thing you have in business is your ability to react. Could you proact your way through COVID in December of 2019?

Corey Frank (30:06):

Yeah.

Chris Beall (30:09):

Right? You can't. Who made it well through COVID? Those who had buffers that were against some bad things, they didn't put all their chips on the same table, so to speak. And then those who reacted really, really fast and reacted fast in ways that were not overreactions, Cause overreacting is a bad idea too. Reaction is undervalued, I believe, in the world of business. It is the number one thing you've got to be able to do is take your forecast, take your plans, take your whatever, and go, okay, that was nice. Now what? How quickly can we think through the current situation and what is the one thing that we should do today in order to stay alive? Or in order to take advantage of an opportunity, or in order to snap the mouse trap. One or the other.

John Orban (31:03):

Yeah. I love [crosstalk 00:31:04]-

Corey Frank (31:04):

Religion, right? As a Catholic, we have it in The Lord's prayer, "Give us this day our daily bread," not give us our Q4's bread.

John Orban (31:12):

That's right.

Corey Frank (31:13):

401(k) or ... even God, the son of m said, "Listen, today is what I want you to focus on." Right?

John Orban (31:20):

Right,

Chris Beall (31:21):

Right. Right.

John Orban (31:22):

Well, I also love that concept you talk about how the SDRs and BDRs should be on the balance sheet. Because that gives you that extra hedge to be able to react as well. Because that's a powerful concept, it seems to me. And how you want to value that, I don't know. But that is definitely an asset that's underappreciated, I think.

Chris Beall (31:44):

Yeah. And I think your pipeline should be on your balance sheet too and it's not. It is, but it's in a subtle way. If you actually ask a financial expert, where's the pipeline? It's like, what pipeline? Well, where is it? Is it an asset? Oh, I don't know. Well, let me do this thought experiment. I'll take your pipeline away and make it mine, it'll now be my pipeline. I get all those relationships, I get to sell to them, I get your products to sell to them, won't this be great? What are you going to charge me for that? Are you going to give it to me for free, your whole pipeline? Oh no. Okay, so what's the price. Well, whatever that price is, that should be on the balance sheet? Because that is the market value of your pipeline. You only have maybe one buyer yourself and maybe you don't have any sellers, you don't feel like selling your pipeline, but when you sell your company, it's right in there. We call it good will.

Chris Beall (32:40):

[crosstalk 00:32:43 ] But actually, good will is a hodgepodge. Good will can include brand equity. It can include IP that's that's hiding at the edges, knowhow, all that stuff that's in there. But your pipeline, you can measure that sucker. We have an attribution report in ConnectAndSell. We can actually measure the growth of your pipeline due to conversations that you're having at the very top of your funnel every single day. You do a test drive with us, if you'll let us have access to your opportunity set, just throw them all at us. What's the name of the company and what's the anticipated close date? What's the amount? And if you want us to get really fancy, what's your imputed probability of close, which is bullshit.

Chris Beall (33:28):

But if you'll give it to us, we'll tell you how much money you are making that you can now discount, how much money's going into the pipeline every single day. You can watch it every day, one day at a time. To me, if you don't have control over and visibility into that asset, what are you doing? You're just dreaming, right? You're just like, oh, what are we doing? Well, we're doing some stuff today and according to this plan, it will yield fruit next year. Really? If you were to fertilize a field, would you then just leave it for a year and come back and see how it went? Doesn't make sense. We don't do it in other areas, but we do it in business because we're accustomed to not seeing what's going on. We're accustomed to having what are called reports. A report means somebody tells me something. It's hilarious to me that we call them reports when they come right out of the data. Nobody told you anything.

Corey Frank (34:23):

That's right. Well, we certainly told a lot of stuff to a lot of people in the last two hours here. So, we're going to leave it there. So, John, thank you for being, sincerely, one of our seven listeners, seven subscribers. We got the fetching Ms. [Fenucci 00:34:41] here once in a while, we got his sister, Chris's sister, Shelly, we got my mom, we got you. And I think we got a couple other folks out there, Chris, but-

Chris Beall (34:49):

Two of my four kids occasionally listen.

Corey Frank (34:51):

Well, there you go. There you go. [crosstalk 00:34:53]

John Orban (34:53):

This is a groundbreaking show, what you're doing is just fantastic. It's an honor to have been on the program. [crosstalk 00:34:59]

Corey Frank (34:58):

Absolutely. I don't think it's going to be the last time too, john. We really like to dive into, again, the craft of face to face sales really is something, Chris, that's a nuance, a field that we really haven't explored as much. And it'd be interesting, certainly talking with John further about an expert who does that, and I really love, again, the left brain and the right brain that clearly has made you a success in sales, John. So, any final thoughts, Chris?

Chris Beall (35:24):

Well, I tell you what, we brought in art for the first time. That's heck of a thing we brought in books, but we didn't go deep on the books. I think I've been very lazy about my recommended reading list, but I think we should put them up and make a little bookstore. The Market Dominance bookstore would be a fun thing to have. I have listed over here. What about GoldRat? Right? What about Deming? What about Taleb's? [crosstalk 00:35:49] Jesus, anti fragile. [crosstalk 00:35:51] I love rants, by the way. I love rants like out of the crisis, Demings rant. Grouchy old man saying, yeah, but when you read it, you go ... by the way, it's assigned reading for all my kids. My mom had her cruelty and I have mine.

Chris Beall (36:09):

And when you realize, wait a minute, what makes people do things at work? Pride of workmanship. Just knowing that will change everything about how you approach business. That one sentence. What is the first sentence in that book? Drive out fear. Drive out fear, why would you want to drive out fear if you want to control people? Why would you want to do that? It's a big, thick boo written by a grouchy guy who gave you a little Japanese memorabilia behind you? Who, frankly, gifted Japan the postwar economy because the US wasn't interested, because we had too much pride. We just, we know what we're doing. Look, our industrial machine just conquered the world. We must know what we're doing. Well, it turns out one thing that's really not obvious, drive out fear. And people work for pride of workmanship, not money. That's weird.

Chris Beall (36:59):

But those are the essences, that's the stuff where all this is hiding. And I want to get to the [crosstalk 00:37:06]. That's where it's at, [inaudible 00:37:09] book. I go back to flip the script, I don't even have to open it. My whole team does something in every discovery call that we call a flash roll, and we have to keep reminding ourselves what it's for, is to establish ourselves as experts, not to teach them anything about our product.

Corey Frank (37:27):

That's right.

Chris Beall (37:27):

And it's practiced. I'm very proud of my flash roll. I think mine is the best because [crosstalk 00:37:34] proud of, right? But it's interesting what's in these books. It's interesting when you go into books like Temple Grandins, an anthropologist on Mars, and you realize there's a whole different way of seeing the world and you probably don't see it that way. But people you're interacting with might have some of that in them. And if you're going to deal with technologists, probably really good to read an anthropologist on Mars.

Corey Frank (38:02):

Oh, yeah.

Chris Beall (38:03):

If you're going to understand what it's like when we forget stuff or misapprehend something, read [inaudible 00:38:12] No Shadows in the Brain or Mind, whichever it is. I can never remember the title, because I've got one of those same problems that he's talking about in the book. It's about deficits, neurological deficits and how they manifest themselves in experience and behavior, that stuff will teach you tons. Read Oliver Sacks, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. You're going to learn some stuff about yourself [crosstalk 00:38:35]. So, I will do the book thing one of these days, you guys have great reading lists. I have this little, trashy one that I had come up with. But this is the stuff that ... and then one more thing that you said, John, I'm going to leave everybody with, if you're in business and especially in sales and you don't read in the sciences, real science, not stuff that's politicized, but real science, find something that you can do to read in the sciences.

Chris Beall (39:03):

And my recommendation is just get a subscription in New Scientist's and read two or three articles out of it each week. It's a weekly, so it'll keep you on your toes. They're always coming up with so something like why blue whales don't actually choke to death on all that sea water. I just read that yesterday in New Scientist's, but reading in the sciences grounds you not to the reality, that's not like learn those facts, but to our ignorance, our mutual-

John Orban (39:32):

Yeah. Right, right, right.

Chris Beall (39:34):

It makes it help us embrace our ignorance, which is the key to being in a position to help our prospects move forward with us.

John Orban (39:43):

Yeah, yeah. I agree. I agree.

Corey Frank (39:45):

Well, that's just great. Helps us embrace our ignorance.

Do you believe that the cold calls you make are an interruption in your prospect’s day? Well, they definitely are! But to what purpose? Marketing and business consultant John Orban and our Market Dominance Guys, Chris Beall and Corey Frank, use part three of a four-part conversation to take this inherent problem in sales and look at it from a different angle. Chris cites the podcast he did with ConnectAndSell’s Matt Forbes, whose epiphany about how belief in the opportunity he offers his prospects changed everything about the way he conducts cold calls. John cites the epiphany he experienced reading Betty Edwards’ book, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, when he discovered how a book can change your awareness of ordinary things and lead you to look at your world differently. Chris touts Geoffrey Moore’s book, Crossing the Chasm, for opening his eyes and engendering a new belief in empathy and how employing that essential quality can help you build trust with a prospect. And, with another of his insightful summations, Corey ties all these ideas together with the advice to “major in minor things.” Be prepared to garner insights of your own as our three dedicated students of sales and of life share with you their practice — just like Alice’s — of believing “Six impossible things before breakfast” on this episode of the Market Dominance Guys.

Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain - Betty Edwards

Crossing the Chasm - Geoffrey A. Moore

About Our Guest

John Orban brings his background as a MetLife sales rep and as an administrator of computer networks to his current career as a marketing and business consultant for creative professionals.

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Full episode transcript below:

Corey Frank (01:38):

Was that something that you were taught? Was that your natural state as an introvert? Could you teach that to your other reps that were on your team over the years? You're selling a different dynamic than Chris and I sometimes are used to in that mostly it was face-to-face sets. Correct?

John Orban (02:00):

Yeah. Yeah.

Corey Frank (02:00):

So what are those dynamics that broke down to elicit that level of trust that people would go to the confessional with you?

John Orban (02:10):

This is how I feel about it. That technology is so powerful when I realize what was happening I tore all that stuff up. It scared me. It was way too much power for any one person to have. I'm serious about that. I'll never forget it. I was sitting in the guy's office and I was leading him down this track. "Well, why is that important to you? Why is that important?" And going deeper, and deeper, and deeper. And I got down to a level that if I had gone one more, I don't know what would've happened. And I said, "I can't handle this. I'm certainly not going to be teaching this to somebody else." Now, there are people out there who have learned it and you see them a lot in the personal development field. And they are very close to pure manipulation. That's how powerful that technology is. And it's like I told you on the phone. I don't know why we're torturing people because if you understand how to use this technology, they'll spill their guts. And I know that in some cases-

Corey Frank (03:11):

You talked about Neuro-linguistic programming, NLP.

John Orban (03:12):

Yeah. Yeah. And that in itself sort of raises a lot of red flags to people because NLP, the way it was originally developed and the way it's being used now, has basically been bastardized over the last 50 years since it's been out. So as part of the process of learning about that, I got involved with propaganda because I felt that basically that's all sales and marketing is, is propaganda. And who got at that started? Well, it was this guy by the name of Edward Bernays, who was the nephew of Sigmund Freud, who was exploring all this stuff about the human mind and that kind of thing. And he wrote a very small book called Propaganda. And I also read Goebbels' book on propaganda, which is, it's a short book. It's like 60 pages. So everything you need to know about propaganda, you can learn in a pretty short period of time.

John Orban (04:04):

Bernays, his book... I hate listening to C-SPAN's Booknotes because every time I listen to that stupid program I end up buying a book. So I'm listening to this guy. This goes back to 1998; I found it on YouTube. And he's talking about this book he wrote about, Edward Bernays, and it's in my Kindle library now because I want to start reading it tonight, but it's just fascinating. But all that stuff is related. And so, one of the notes I had written down was the idea of the power of words and Bernays understood that very early on. It's one thing if you call something a gene therapy treatment. It's another thing if you call it a vaccine. And the power of words is just something that people who know how to use it, use it very effectively, and it's just too much power to be in one person's hand. You know? That's just how I feel about it. And...

Corey Frank (04:58):

So Chris, let's springboard off of that to John. And since we originally talked to this episode of Market Dominance Guys, I think you and John met each other through a love of collaboration of different books that you were influenced.

John Orban (05:10):

Yeah.

Corey Frank (05:10):

When I say a book, that I'm a 21-year-old recently minted communications, finance business, econ, Elizabethan poetry grad. And Chris, I want to find the elixer, the matrix plug that can engender me as much trust, as much success as possible, as many conversations. Is there a particular book that you and the fetching Mrs. Fanucci perhaps talk about with all your younger, new-minted sales folks that come on board your respective companies that, "Hey, you've got to read this."? What should be in their arsenal as they set forth?

Chris Beall (05:51):

It's kind of funny. I don't have such a book that I tell sales folks to read. My view is actually consonant with John's view, which is if you learn how to use words and how to do your job sincerely, if you go through the first step, which is to make sure you're on their side for real, make sure you really believe. We had a whole podcast episode on this, which is the one that I've actually they've been sending around recently with big Matt Forbes. And that conversation that I had with him that helped him to go inside and ask himself-

John Orban (06:27):

About belief. Right?

Chris Beall (06:29):

[crosstalk 00:06:29] Do I believe? It's the one titled-

John Orban (06:30):

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I heard that. It's a great one.

Chris Beall (06:34):

It would've been comical for anybody to listen to that conversation. It was a two-hour conversation. I was out for a barefoot run down in Green Valley, Arizona and I thought I'd be out for half an hour. And an hour and a half later, I'm still talking to Forbes about this question because he's good. And when you're good, you're dangerous. And when you're dangerous, it's just like being big. Right? He's a big guy. So he's learned how to handle when you're 6'8" and you've been big your whole life; you learn that you have responsibility for what your body might do to other people who are smaller than you. And when you have the ability to use your voice, and it's really the voice more than the language, then you're like a big person. It's not right to go bump into, smash, knock over smaller people. It's just not right.

Chris Beall (07:24):

And this isn't about like who's better than somebody else. It's sort of a fact of the world. If you know how to use your voice already, then your number one thing to do in sales is make sure that you really believe in the potential value with the thing that you have on offer. It doesn't have to be certain value, but the worthiness of exploration of that value for this other human being, not for their company or anything else because you're talking to a person, and that value is potentially there even if they never are going to avail themselves of it or work with you in the future. That belief beats all books when it comes to salespeople who have any ability whatsoever to [crosstalk 00:08:04]-

Corey Frank (08:04):

How about... Let's talk about that raw skills. John, you can chime in this too. I have the belief I bought into this company. I want to work for MetLife. I want to work for SAP. I want to work for Microsoft. I believe in it, but my voice is... Maybe you have a slight accent. Maybe you have a slight lisp. Maybe I don't know... I'm not conscious enough of my voice as a tool, as much as Matt is conscious enough of his size when he is walking through an airport. How do you teach that? How do you make somebody self-aware? You're a singer Chris, right? And you're an artist, John. So how do you develop that awareness, that, "Wow, this instrument here can be used, manipulated in ways that transcends what my script says and that I have to be responsible for that."?

John Orban (08:50):

It's interesting because one of the other books that I read that really had a profound impact on me was a book called Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards. And in the introduction, she made this comment that artists see the world different than other people. I could not wrap my head around that for the next 40 years. And it wasn't until I took up oil painting. And I'll never forget. I walked out of my studio one day and it was like in the movie Wizard of Oz when Dorothy walks out of that house and opens up the door and she goes from black and white to color. I saw stuff that I had never seen in my life before. I saw sun shining on leaves and going down the side of a tree and sparkling grass and things like that.

John Orban (09:37):

And when I mentioned that at a, I don't know, I'll call it a mastermind group that I was in for a while, one of the people that was there, who became a friend, was a copywriter for a company. And he had this group that he worked with, which he called his Copy Cubs and he was teaching him how to do copywriting. And he said, after that, he made every one of them take some kind of art course before they started his program so that they could reach this higher level of understanding. And I think that's part of the process. You can teach somebody some of this stuff, but until they experience it... I was a teacher for a while. I taught kids in a computer class. And one of the things that was most rewarding to me was when you see that understanding come across the student's face and they get what you're talking about and they didn't get it before. It's amazing. I mean, you basically have transformed their lives and that's what we're trying to do in sales.

John Orban (10:38):

See? That's the other thing that really got me about you guys, is that you seem to have a level of ethics in your businesses that remind me a lot of Zig Ziglar because when I think of Zig, I think of ethical business practices and he was very much into that. And it's like I see you as trying to take that to the next step. It's not just for the prospects that you're dealing with, but also the sales rep and your employees. I mean, you don't treat them like dirt. I mean you treat them like human beings and you're trying to empower them as much as they're trying to empower the people that you're working with. And if you can't empower them, how in the world are they going to empower the prospect or the potential client?

Chris Beall (11:21):

Holy moly. So two things. One is Drawing on the Right Side of your Brain transformed me in an instant also. I was actually afraid of drawing. I would draw by myself and drawing anything that was supposed to be realistic was an embarrassment to me. And in my 30s, early 30s, that book fell into my hands. And I decided not to read it but just to do the exercises. So the only thing I read was the introduction. And then I simply did the first exercise. Terrible. Did the second exercise. Terrible. Did the third one. Terrible. I think it was the fourth or the fifth exercise, you look at your off hand. In my case, my left hand; I'm right-handed. And without looking at the [crosstalk 00:12:11] you take the paper down, you look at your left hand, you block your view with like a little divider. I remember standing a three-ring binder up so that it was really blocking the view, so I couldn't cheat and glance over there. And then you draw what you see.

Chris Beall (12:27):

And it turns out when you can't see what you're drawing, you can only draw what you see, which is... I didn't know that because I was this ignorant person. So, finished it. It took forever. Took probably an hour and a half. Oh, you're not allowed to lift the pencil. Pencil stays on the paper the whole time. So an hour and a half later, here I come out of this interesting meditative, weird ass state that I'm in, and I take the notebook and put it down. And I look over at the page and it is truly bizarre looking. Like, lines that would represent the edges of my fingers are crossed and stuff like that in ways that are impossible. And it's the best thing I'd ever drawn in my life. It was completely realistic without having any realism in it, if that makes any sense at all. To artists, I think that means something, right?

Chris Beall (13:18):

And suddenly, instantaneously, with no further training, I could realistically draw anything.

Corey Frank (13:26):

Really?

Chris Beall (13:26):

And I spent the next year and a half or two years, in my spare time, always with a pad, always with pencils ready to go. And wherever I was stuck, much the same way that you might; you were a Sudoku freak, you might pull out the Sudoku thing and do that; I would pull out the pad and I would draw what's in front of me. And yet, it came down to that one thing. No, no, no breakthrough. And what's funny about-

Chris Beall (14:35):

If I apply this to sales, this is why we take people through flight school. The reason we do it is that there's a moment in there suddenly where being trustworthy and letting your voice express your true belief, that this is good for the other person. That it is truly ethical. It's not a moral question. It's an ethical question. You've gotten to the bottom of the time. It's an ethical question. What is right here? And if you don't believe it's right for them to take the meeting, why are you selling the meeting? You're a thief. You know? Being a thief kind of comes out in your voice. I mean, unless you're a psychopath by the way. If you're a psychopath, pay no attention to all this. Just ignore it and go be a psychopath and do bad things or do good things.

Chris Beall (15:21):

If you're a psychopath, by the way, you have a real burden to be ethical. Ethical psychopaths are some of the most useful people in the world, right? Because they're psychopaths, they can manipulate people right and left, but they're ethical, so they do it for other people. Right? If you are a psychopath, which is a nature of things, kind of thing. There's introverts, extroverts, and psychopaths. Those are the three categories of people, right? So if you're going to be a psychopath, because you're one today, therefore you'll probably be one tomorrow, don't fight it. Just go adopt some really deep ethics because that's the only safe place to be because you're a very, very, very, very dangerous person. And it's good to recognize that. And it's like going around, not like Matt Forbes, but like Matt Forbes covered with dynamite, with little fuses all over the place. Like, don't do that. Don't blow people up. But if you're a regular person and you want to succeed in business, not in sales, but in business, there's a hump you have to get over. The sincerity hump.

John Orban (16:18):

Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Beall (16:18):

You've got to decide that you're only going to do for others what you truly believe has potential. You don't have to know. You can be ignorant. Ignorance is fine. You can be uncertain. Express your uncertainty. All of that is just ducky, but you got to get there. And as soon as you're there, it's great. But how do you get there? What's the equivalent of looking at your left hand and drawing with your right? Do the breakthrough script. And all you have to do is be coached over and over on getting your voice to be the same voice you use to tell a genesis story, a story about yourself from when you were younger because that's the voice, the voice that you use to tell a story about how you came to be like you are; a story, not exposition. The story of how you came to be like you are. That event in your life. That voice is the full voice you need to go find.

Chris Beall (17:15):

And you can have somebody help you find that voice by just telling them your genesis story. We actually did this exercise last night, interestingly enough, right here. Helen Fanucci, who's been a guest on our show here, who I'm marrying, she's right over there in the other room, she has some podcast work that she's doing, shall we say, working with our favorite podcast publisher, Susan. And we were listening to a podcast episode. And her question was, "How's the voice?" And well, it's a little bit, maybe a little more factual. And then she told me her genesis story of how she came to expressing action what she believes in the book, that she did it herself at the age of 23, did it to herself. And I'll let her tell the story. And that voice is the voice, the voice that she tells that story in is the voice.

Chris Beall (18:07):

So if you want to find your authentic voice that you can use to share with folks, if you want to do that exercise, but that the one that works for you, my recommendation is the voice comes out of the genesis story, the practice comes out of the first two sentences, the breakthrough script. And the reason is it's really, really a deep thing to throw yourself under the bus within tenth of a second of meeting. So that's a deep thing to do. Most people can't do it. When you say... And the two sentences are, "I know I'm an interruption." When you say that and you mean it, that you mean you're a bad thing, you get it, you have agreed with yourself to be the invisible stranger, the scary invisible stranger. You know that's going to engender fear in that other person.

Chris Beall (18:53):

And yet you did it anyway. Why'd you do it? You have to be doing it for them and for you mutually, but for them first in that order. For them and for you. And then, you have to do something really hard, really hard with your voice, which is let go and say, "We're going to go on adventure together if you're willing to." And you switch to that playful, curious voice. That's what Chris Voss told me when I said, "What do you think of this?" He says, "It's perfect." He says, "When you switch from that hard flat self-indictment to playful curious in a fraction of a second, that is the thing that makes those two sentences work." And you're not faking it. You're finding it. That's the key. You got to find it in yourself.

Chris Beall (19:35):

As to books to read about sales, I'm not a big sales book guy. I think that Market Dominance Guys is actually built around different books. It's not a sales show. It's a market dominance show. And it's built around Geoffrey Moore, which is, again, it's about people's emotions. When people are buying new stuff, they're afraid of it. Not just you. Now they're afraid of it. At least life insurance, they might have thought, "Well, some people buy that stuff and maybe it's not bad. I don't know. I've heard people been bamboozled, wasted their money." But when you're buying innovations... In the innovation economy, you're buying innovations. And when you're buying innovations, they make you sick to your stomach. They're scary because you fundamentally don't know what's in that thing. You don't know what's in it. And you don't like the feeling. And you're the first buyer in a category and you don't like that feeling because you can't look around on anybody else and say, "Well, Joe, Mary, they already bought it." It's like you're going first because you need it really, really bad.

Chris Beall (20:33):

That book by Geoffrey Moore stands, in my opinion, alone in the innovation economy. Crossing the Chasm. And it stands alone for a simple reason. It tells us what we need to be empathetic about when we're bringing something new to someone else. And otherwise, we don't know what to be empathetic about. In fact, otherwise we're pissed off that they're scared of this thing. And we think, "Why don't they treat me better?" Well, I don't know. You walked into their house with a rattlesnake and it's in a jar and you're threatening to take the top off the jar and turn it loose. And their dog's on the floor. Why should they be scared of you? You know it's just a snake. Everybody knows that this one is more or less defanged. Right?

John Orban (21:17):

Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Beall (21:17):

So that book speaks to me about the world we live in now. He was 25 years ahead of his time. He was right on, but he's 25 years ahead of his time with regard to the universality of the problems we facing. I'll call them interesting businesses. And interesting businesses, by the way, come up with innovations. HUB International, Scott Webb and that team over there, they invented a new product so that they can engage with these CFOs using the telephone. It turns out that commercial insurance is fine, but it's kind of a difficult product to sell in a displacement mode because everybody's already got it. So what do you sell them? The opportunity to learn something. Actually, the same thing I used to sell in [inaudible 00:22:05]. Their's a little more complex. They do a big multi-point analysis of your business and share it with you and it's worth a ton of money. I had it done for us and it was fabulous, but it's the same thing, which is, what can I always offer in service? I can always offer my expertise. Always.

John Orban (22:19):

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Right. Right. Right.

Chris Beall (22:21):

Always. Always. I can go to work for you, right? That's my first thing I can do; in service. But to get there in your own emotions, you need to know what's going on in the other person. And the other person is repulsed, scared of, sickened by your innovation, not because of its characteristics, but because it's new. And read Crossing the Chasm five times if you have to. And if you're a tech entrepreneur and you like your own stuff, you're in deep, deep trouble because you're in love with your baby. And it's not that your baby's ugly. It's that your baby has fangs, bites, and has poison packed in its jaws. And they know it. And there you are coming and going, "Want to hold the baby?" Get the baby away from me. That sucker bites. You know? My neighbor over there got bit by your baby. He's been dead for three days. Come on.

John Orban (23:20):

That's good. That's good.

Corey Frank (23:22):

Love that. I love that.

John Orban (23:22):

Yeah.

Corey Frank (23:23):

I never pictured... I suppose it all come full circle now seeing the deconstruction mindset that you have, Chris, as a scientist. Right? Breaking it down to the core, to the atomic level, and how you can apply that to drawing, which is why I think why you were probably attracted to Ms. Edwards' book and how to replicate it. Right? How to break down helping my son with fractions the other day; take these large fractions, break it down to the simplest form. Right? Two-thirds versus four-sixths versus eight-sixteenths. That's in essence what I hear you both doing from an artist perspective as well as a science perspective and certainly a sales perspective, but simplicity doesn't mean ineffective. It doesn't mean a watered down, non-creative.

Corey Frank (24:12):

I think it is so creative because it is so simple. And we're trying to complicate things too much, as you had said, John, certainly with NLP. And did the eyes move up into the right? How's the mirroring? Am I being defensive? Now, its like I'm really majoring in minor things in a sales presentation where I just try to engender that trust, Chris, as you say. And man, and then just be curious. And holy cow, the floodgates will open.

Chris Beall (24:37):

Yeah.

John Orban (24:38):

And like you kind of intimate, it's a switch that gets flipped. I mean, it's like you go from one state to the other almost immediately once you have that realization.

Corey Frank (24:48):

Yeah.

Chris Beall (24:49):

Yeah. It's funny. I think there are two things that we're talking about here that are quite complementary, but I think it is tough for people to see how they go together. One is there's stuff you need to learn about the world to be an expert who's worthy of talking to of helping somebody else. It is true. You all only need to be one chapter ahead in the book to teach it. Right? John, you taught-

Corey Frank (25:09):

Right. Right.

Chris Beall (25:10):

I used to teach physics. I was often three-quarters of a chapter ahead or one equation ahead. Right? I go back to the Maxwell's equations. Maxwell's equations. Oh my God. Right? What is that thing with the curl again? And then, I'd be all distracted. But I was just a little ahead. So one is the what stuff. You got to be an expert. You got to be worthy. You have to have access to resources. You have to have something to offer. That's fine. But the second is you got to find that thing inside of you that allows you to be yourself when you're in the uncertain situation where you don't know what the outcome is.

Chris Beall (25:43):

And sales management, we talked about that, and that's why I said, "Holy moly." You know? Helen's over there writing a book right now and it's going to be a major, major book in my opinion. And the book is called, Love Your Team. And it's exactly about what you said, John, which is, if you don't empower your salespeople, how are they going to transfer any power to the prospect? Right? And so I think sales compensation is actually one of these. The way we do it, it's locked. It's locked. Work in the office used to be locked, and then it got blown up by the pandemic. And now we've gotten over it, right? It's the same way that John was locked on one side of the phone until he actually started calling, and then curiosity would call into the next call. Everything is locked somewhere.

Chris Beall (26:30):

I think we're actually locked as an economy in a what I can only call a funny way of compensating sales people. We compensate them for the short term. We're asking them to build our business for the long term.

John Orban (26:44):

And that hasn't changed in 50 years. I mean, at least the 50 years I was involved in it. And the thing about that, one of the other podcasts I was listening to, the guy was talking about how you game the system. Yeah. He was sand bagging his calls for the blitz that they had on Thursday or something like that. But I saw that when I was in business. I mean...

We're shaking things up today with Helen Fanucci, CEO and Founder of Pipeline Power, taking the reins as our host. Helen engages Chris Beall in a thought-provoking exploration of dormant leads - those overlooked opportunities that could be gold mines for your business. Chris reveals a startling statistic: "91% of $18 billion is wasted" on leads that never get a conversation. This episode uncovers how this massive waste could be your next big opportunity. Helen and Chris dissect the challenges of following up on inbound leads and discuss innovative strategies to breathe life into these sleeping giants of sales potential.

Some of the key points covered in part 1 of this conversation include:

1. Definition and origin of dormant leads
2. Statistics on conversation coverage for inbound leads
3. Importance of quick response times to inbound leads
4. Comparison of web form submissions vs. inbound phone calls
5. Introduction to ConnectAndSell's Instant Response and Lead Injection features

Would you expect introverts to be good at cold calling? Oddly enough, they aren’t just good —they’re great! Today, we delve into why introverts make great salespeople in this second part of a four-part conversation between marketing and business consultant John Orban and our Market Dominance Guys, Chris Beall and Corey Frank. It turns out that introverts’ reluctance to push themselves forward makes them less likely to take over a cold-call conversation, and this allows prospects to talk. And when prospects talk — shazam! — we learn things about them that help us become partners on their sales journey. This insight sparked John to ask Chris the question, “What role do you think curiosity plays in the process of making a cold call?” Listen in to learn the whys and wherefores of this valuable cold-calling asset on this Market Dominance Guys’ episode, “ ‘Curiouser and Curiouser.’ ”  

About Our Guest

John Orban brings his background as a MetLife sales rep and as an administrator of computer networks to his current career as a marketing and business consultant for creative professionals.

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Full episode transcript below:

Corey Frank (01:18):

Formula we use for screenplay scripting, Chris uses the same one of iteration that creates millions of phone calls and tens of thousands of successful conversations a year has to do with that simplicity. When you have two competing theories, right? Chris. That makes exactly the same predictions, the simpler one is always the better one and until more evidence comes along.

John Orban (01:43):

But you've taken A/B tests to it to a completely different level. Your whole idea of taking an idea, get on the phone for a week and whether it's going to work or not. That's game-changing. I don't know why you're beating people away from the door, maybe you are. But seriously it, I could go on all day about that, but anyhow.

Chris Beall (02:02):

We've politely ask them to stand six feet away. Cause here, we live in splendid isolation in the pandemic and we [inaudible 00:02:16] Six feet away.

John Orban (02:16):

So I want to go one more step on this thing about the communication and what's inside the sales rep. It's not just the sales rep because he's got a sales manager, he's got a sales VP, a marketing VP. God knows how many steps to get to the CEO and every one of those have got problems. When I say problems, I don't mean like they're psychotic or anything of that sort. Although there may be one or two that are in there, but they're all dealing with this stuff. And you're trying to create this smooth path through all this thing. And there's got to be a simpler way to do it. And I think you're on the right track, you really are. You're thinking the right way to go on this. And it amazes me because I was in sales 50 years ago and they basically pointed at a telephone.

John Orban (03:02):

In fact, when I started, I started in the insurance business. I was one of the first group of sales reps that came through that was going to use this new marketing thing called the telephone. Up to that point, everything was door to door. Now I've done my share of door-to-door stuff too. And I know Chris has because you talk about it. I love listening to your stories by the way. And they basically pointed the phone. They gave me a piece of paper, which was a script and said, "Go get them tiger." And I learned everything on my own. And talk about fear, you talk about fear on the phone. I was so petrified. I would stare at that thing and just shake. But I made a couple of changes in my head. Finally, as I went through this process, it pulled me out of my introversion.

John Orban (03:48):

I was forced to get out of it. I ended up going to Dale Carnegie courses, both in New York and also when I came back home after I left the city. I actually worked for, well, I worked for a bunch of different insurance companies, but the first one I did, I was a group and pension specialist in New York City. And so I went to the Dale Carnegie sales course first. And that's where they taught you about the "Sales Burger". If you know anything about that, the hamburger is the benefit and the role is the features. And then you stick this toothpick through it and that's something else, I can't remember what that was supposed to be.

John Orban (04:22):

But anyhow, I did that and then I came back and I went through the Dale Carnegie sales course when I got into the insurance business again. I had a skin as a professional photographer in the interim, but I was terribly introverted. I had a lot of difficulty with it, but making those calls just forced me out of it. I had no choice it was either that, or I don't know. Go [crosstalk 00:04:41].

Corey Frank (04:40):

So you were an introvert by nature, John?

John Orban (04:42):

Oh yeah. (affirmative) And my brother's the same way. In fact, my brother still is, but I was that way. I'm not anymore.

Corey Frank (04:49):

Not anymore. No, you're not. But that's interesting. Chris, what do you make of that? You've hired thousands of sales folks, thousands of team members over the years in your companies. As John's experience a typical one that introverts turn into some of the best sales and what happens. Where's that Rubicon that they cross? What is it internally that sparks, "Hey, listen, I can actually do this. I'm actually safe here."

John Orban (05:12):

That's right.

Chris Beall (05:14):

I think introversion has to do mostly, according to researchers, I don't know if I believe them or not. With kind of where do you get your energy. Do you get when you're hanging out by yourself? Do you feel better later? Do you get out when you're hanging out with a bunch of people? My definition of an introvert is somebody who goes to a party and has one deep conversation with one person they meet there and then they go home, right? That's me, by the way. People are shocked when they find out that I'm fundamentally introverted because I can also be an entertainer. I can entertain at a party with no problem whatsoever, but then it's a completely different game because those people aren't people, they're an audience. So they turn into something else for me and basically it's a toy that I play with.

Chris Beall (05:57):

And it's not a nice thing to say, but it is what happens, right? Introverts have a huge advantage in sales. And it's really simple advantage, which is they've spent a lot of time with themselves, not recovering from whatever it is that was going on. But actually going inside themselves naturally and thinking through stuff about themselves and about situations, about what they've just encountered. They have that alone time and knowing yourself is the key to being able to be empathetic. It's impossible to be empathetic unless you know what it is to be yourself. You have to have some sense of what the pieces and parts are in there and which ones are in play. What bothers you and what doesn't? I think you come out of that into sales, by doing what John just said, which is you get in a catapult and you get flung or you fling yourself.

Chris Beall (06:49):

It's like bungee jumping. You go to where you were so uncomfortable going and then you realize you didn't die. I have a personal example of this just from my life. I used to be a very afraid of heights and not unnaturally so, but like a normal person. Normal people are afraid of heights. It makes sense by the way. And then I took a fall and it was a big fall, not a little fall. It was about 800 feet. And 800 foot fall that takes a long time. There's plenty that goes on during an 800 foot fall inside yourself. It's not like you think it would be actually. It's one of those, "Really? I didn't know that would be like that." And of course, if you survive, then you get to think those thoughts, otherwise you kind of forgot. [crosstalk 00:07:29]

John Orban (07:29):

Was it in slow motion? Did you experience that?

Chris Beall (07:31):

You bet. I got to do things like watch a piece of ice rip a chunk out of my arm and I got to watch in [crosstalk 00:07:39] slow motion. The little drops of blood going out and sparkling in the sun.

John Orban (07:45):

I was riding my bike one day and a dog ran out in front of me. And I went over the top of the handle bars and I had my helmet on, thank goodness, and everything was in slow motion. I came down, I felt my head hit the ground and bounced back up and it was amazing.

Chris Beall (08:06):

It's a remarkable experience. But for me, what it did was it offered me a bridge to a world where I embraced doing things that involved heights. And I became a very serious mountaineer rock climber. In fact, I climbed that very mountain that I fell down later that day because the guys I was with foolishly left me unattended and went fishing. Thinking that any sane person would just hang out and camp with his concussion and his hand that was opened up with the bone exposed and his leg that was rather blue and yellow. But I looked at it a different way. And this is, I think an introvert, its way of looking at things, which is I know myself well enough. I was only 14, but I knew myself well enough by then to know that if I didn't actually attempt to climb that mountain again right now that I would end up as the person who was stuck on the other side of that fear. I had the same fear of the telephone by the way.

Chris Beall (08:59):

So when I got my first job in industry at NCR, I'd done a fair amount of stuff by then. I was pretty old, like 26 years old. And there was this phone and I'm supporting this 10 state area. And I've got to talk to all these different people about the problems they're having with their computers, which by the way, all I had was a manual. I didn't even have a copy of the computer. So I had to walk people through stuff by reading it and then asking them what they saw on the screen because back then you couldn't screen share. Try that by the way, with somebody in the Navajo Nation. Where the cultural issues around just speaking up spontaneously when you're being supported on a computer are really, really interesting. I learned a lot about that. But I had to learn to pick up that phone to do my job.

Chris Beall (09:43):

And it felt like that fall. That is, "Hey, I survived." And I think when you get to the other side of it and you realize, "Oh, there was really, there's something there to be afraid of, but it's not bad. It's something completely different." And you know yourself well enough than to actually be able to use all those, that self-knowledge in slowing down the conversations. And I think introverts naturally when they get going in a conversation, their inner monologue, so to speak, their inner responses tend to be a little slower. They're not looking for the next thing to say quite so fast. And in sales that desire to say the next thing in order to push your agenda is ironically what destroys sales conversations. Sales conversations among people who are going to do business together over time, they're most effective.

Chris Beall (10:35):

If you're actually going to be together down the road, because you're going to stay together. The idea is to form a relationship. And I don't mean a relationship like buddies. I mean like in the modern world, there's nothing interesting that we sell that we don't end up partnering with our customer. Those things don't exist anymore. Everything's got so much software in it. Everything has so much interoperability that's required. Everything has so much adaptation and learning that needs to be done. That you're really partnering. Whereas, sales itself was invented at the crossroads. Sales is a byproduct of one set of strangers going one way, "Hi, we're on the silk road and we're headed off on an adventure. We're going to get some silk, some salt." Whatever it is, right? And then somebody else who's got some stuff that came from some other direction, right? Some supply chain as they call it nowadays.

Chris Beall (11:25):

So they've got that and they've assembled it in the inventory and they know it's in their inventory and you don't. They know the quality and you don't. They know that there's some that's showing up tomorrow and you don't. Or that there's none that's showing up tomorrow and you don't, because you got to get going. So one party's under time pressure, that's the buyer and the other is it's got superior knowledge. And so sales was always about the extrovert pushing their agenda, which is, "Buy the crappiest stuff I have at the highest possible prices. Sayonara, Sonny Lee, get out of here. I will never see you again because they're going to kill you out there." And if you come back anyway, who else you going to buy from? A dude over here is no better than me.

Corey Frank (12:10):

Well, Chris, you talked about that. I think in one of our earlier episodes about, even with the advent of the internet, is that as a salesperson, I used to have this idea that I am the single sole purveyor of information of market intelligence of product features. And so you have to deal with me. Now, the internet, and so more often from an Oren Klaff cold cognition world. I, as a salesperson, would spew these set facts in these set features in the hope that would engender some sort of trust. John, you come from the insurance business for what, 25, 35 years. Financial sector. So man, you are as sage and I'm looking to you to take my little 401k and go from here to here or make sure that my family is taken care here to here.

Corey Frank (13:01):

How do you kind of square that circle then, John and Chris, where I'm an introvert and I'm in sales today, but now right. "Hey, do you really kind of need me because I have all this inform available." So what's a guy to do? I can buy insurance online now. I can buy a Salesforce license online now. If I have 300 reps inside, I can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a year with the Salesforce, a CRM, never talk with the Salesforce cause I don't have to. Where is our role then? Does that mean that a lot of the extroverts are here to stay? The introverts are here to stay? How does it kind of change the landscape a little bit of sales and how will it continue? Do you guys think?

John Orban (13:43):

I had a thought about that actually this morning when I was walking the dog and it came from out of our conversation. When I realized you could do a hell of a lot better job than me. But my friend doesn't know about you, but I do. All I got to do is hook the two of you together, I've done my job. I don't even have to know anything. All I got to know is the right people to hook them up with. And to me that would address that.

John Orban (14:50):

Address that. But I wanted to go back to something that Chris was talking about with sales reps and introversion, that kind of stuff. What role do you think curiosity plays in that whole process, about the person being curious?

Chris Beall (15:02):

That's funny. That's what I was thinking about this morning is that a curiosity is the ultimate vulnerability. When you're curious, you are being vulnerable in a dimension that people are really reluctant to be vulnerable in, especially in sales. You're saying, "I don't know." Or as Tom [inaudible 00:15:23] says to me many, many times a day, he's my data concierge. He was on Market Dominance Guys. Guy's incredible. He says, "Let's take a look." It's let's take a look. I love the way he says it, by the way he always says it the same. I say, "Tom, what about this?" And it's some crazy question to ask us. "Let's take a look." And what he's saying is, I don't know and you don't know. "Let's go find out together." And it's that the thing curiosity gives us in sales is.

Chris Beall (15:49):

First, it allows us to be vulnerable without weak. We're universally vulnerable because we're universally ignorant and that's a wonderful thing. Second, it allows us to legitimately go on an adventure of exploration with the other person. Where now what we know and what they know in the circumstances we're facing and what we're trying to learn are shared, we're peers. We get to go to each other, we're two outriggers on the same boat and the reality is the boat. And so we're going to keep the boat from tipping over. Boats without riggers are easy compared to those cruise ships. We don't know if they're tipping over or not. But are pretty confident that each one of us has got something that we know. And now we can go forward together confidently because we have shared ignorance and shared ignorance is expressed as curiosity. Salespeople, like all people, are curious, but you have to agree when you're being curious that you don't know what's going to happen.

Chris Beall (16:45):

You don't know the outcome. This is the great irony of sales to me. And that's actually the great irony of entrepreneurship, but of sales in particular, as a class of entrepreneurial activity. The key to success is admitting you don't know what you're doing. And that allows you to partner early with somebody. And given that other person is concerned about who's going to bamboozle them. They're concerned about who is competent, but not on their side. So as a buyer, my worst case is the competent expert who is not on my side. The second worst case is the incompetent idiot who is on my side. An okay case is the incompetent idiot, who's not on anybody's side except their own because I get to dismiss them and walk away. And the only good case is the competent person who is on my side. So the common case is the salesperson presents themselves as competent.

Chris Beall (17:39):

Whether they borrowed the competence or they actually have it. Collateral is borrowed competence. I'm going to act like I know what these pieces of paper say, because I can reach over and hand them to you and act like that's a form of knowledge exchange. So I can fake the competence or I can be competent. Who knows? But your nightmare case is the buyer, is that I'm not on your side. And that's what you need to get beyond as a buyer at some point. So by being curious, by being genuinely curious and admitting we don't know how this is going to turn out. We don't know, we're going to explore together. You form immediate partnership. And that's why the breakthrough script that we teach people, which we stumbled across through curiosity, is a script that people emphasize trust. They go, "Well trust the cool thing, right?" Trust is actually just a little platform in that script.

Chris Beall (18:33):

It happens to be durable. It's the one durable asset in a relationship. Once you get somebody's trust that Chris once told me, you get to keep it until you blow it. Now you're your number one job in sales is don't blow it. Don't blow the trust. You just got it in seven seconds. Don't blow it. "So now I know what not to do, but what do I do?" Well, let's see if we can get curious together. Let's see. And so there's the elements of the breakthrough script that are about curiosity are this: I believe that's the only part that's not about curiosity. That's an assertion, but it's an assertion about something I can be sure, my belief. I can confidently assert that I believe something. And you can confidently feel like this guy sounds like he actually believes it. Therefore the tone of voice is really important.

Chris Beall (19:22):

I believe not like I believe it's going to rain today, that's an expression of uncertainty. I believe and then we go all curious all the time. "I believe we've discovered a breakthrough." The "we've discovered" is very light. The voice is very, very gentle. It's basically saying we're done with the assertions. Now let's be curious. So what can we be curious about? We, because people are curious about people. I say this all the time. I'll say it again. There are Americans. You may not believe this. Anybody in the audience may not believe this, but there are Americans who have a deep and abiding interest in the British Royal family. Now, last time I checked the British Royal family became an relevancy to Americans in significant ways, either in 1776 or just after the war of 1812, kind of depending on how you look at it.

Chris Beall (20:21):

So there they are completely irrelevant yet fascination. Fascination abounds, even in the heartland, I knew people in Des Moines, Iowa, who were fascinated by the British Royal family. Now they were also fascinated by corn and pigs and all sorts of other cool stuff. But they were fascinated by the British Royal family. I was like, "Why?" Well, because it's built into people. We're curious about people. There's a magazine that you can hardly believe exists called People magazine. It has no content whatsoever, other than stuff that's about people who are doing things that you're supposed to be curious about and you get interested, right? There's a whole industry about celebrities. There are these people called paparazzi. We ask them to stand six feet away. So we've discovered, discover, that's curiosity. We didn't make it. We didn't grow it. We're not inventors of it. We're not big and strong.

Chris Beall (21:13):

We're innocent. We discovered it. That means we can partner a breakthrough. Who wouldn't be curious about a breakthrough. But all that saying is a breakthrough might be on your side. So now I'm emphasizing, this could be on your side. It could be of utility to you. So we're curious about things that we could use. If somebody brings you a pointy stick and you're an eight-year-old boy, you're curious as to whether the pointy stick will make the dog jump. So you poke the dog with the pointy stick and there you go, right? So curiosity is the number one thing that we can bring to bear. And it's the number one thing that salespeople can't bring themselves to use because they feel like they're out of control. They want to be [crosstalk 00:22:01]

Corey Frank (22:00):

Is that an ego thing, Chris? Is that a humility and ego thing where it's difficult for me to say those words probably more so if I'm an extrovert, because I had this illusion that I'm uncomfortable in large places, I'm on stage and I always have the answers.

Chris Beall (22:14):

And I think it's, I don't know about ego per se. I think it's a protection thing. I think people protect themselves quite rationally by exuding certainty. Extroverts tend to exude certainty about lots of things. Most of which, if you get them in a private conversation, get a couple drinks at them they'll admit, "You know, actually I'm not a hundred percent sure of that." Some of them take a lot of drinks. Some of them, they get a little rowdy at that point. They tell you they're really sure and they hit you with a bottle, but there is a protection to be had for yourself by simply asserting that you know stuff that you're great. And this is what we teach people in sales to do. We teach them to say, "We've helped companies alike." Then you start naming these companies. "We're great."

Chris Beall (23:02):

"I'm great." "I'm great," might work if you're selling to somebody heading out in the silk road and they're trying to get one great thing that they got to take with them and they're really afraid of their future circumstance. But if you're going to go with them, that assertion of greatness, they're going to kind of want to check it out. What does this mean exactly? What's this guy going to do to me? That is I'll call it the extrovert's dilemma in sales. The extrovert finds it easy to pick up the phone, relatively speaking. The extrovert finds it easy to walk up to somebody and shake their hand. They find it easy to turn to that person they're sitting next to on the airplane. They find that easy. What they find hard is being curious, because being curious means you got to let go of what feels like control. It turns out you, here's how you do it.

Chris Beall (23:48):

If you're an expert, any extrovert's watching this, this is how you do it. It's an act of faith. The act of faith is, "If this is good, it's good. It's not, it's not. So let's find out, right. Let's find out because I want my time back." So when sales experts tell you, your time is super precious, what they're telling extroverts is go ahead and get it over with. Get it over with, let it run its natural course and you'll get your time back. And the best way to do that is just to be curious. But you know, it's hard.

Corey Frank (24:19):

You know, Chris and John, I wrote an article recently about disfluencies, in a screenplay, a sales screenplay that we're producing for prospect. Chris has performed his thousands of times in their ConnectAndSell Flight School. They teach it and to the right frequency and tonality and pregnant pause, it is ran into them and works. And it works because the math says that it works on the dial to connect, connect, conversation rate, et cetera. But I was curious, we had a guest on a while ago, Jason Bay. And I remember one of the things that he talked about was he had such a great tone. He does have a great tone. Like butter, just certain folks are just bestowed by the gods themselves to just have the right vocal chord toneage and it's just. I could listen to Jason read the phone book as I told him.

Corey Frank (25:16):

It's a beautiful thing. Naturally, tonality and pacing and cadences are attractive or sway folks from listening to certain people. Think of the attorney in My Cousin Vinny. Who gets up and he stamers through the first cross examination. Think of somebody on a talk show who can't quite get the words out and stammer. Think of the Bob Newharts of the world. For those going back, who had the natural stammer that was part of the comedic timing. So I wrote this article about disfluencies and that certain ahs and ums and ers helped build trust. And I got a couple of academics that responded to this, talking about articles in academia. That when you use these disfluencies, that it actually projects engenders more trust. In the example I gave is one of my mentors always told me, "Never trust a man who doesn't walk around with a little bit of a limp." No one is that fluid. No one is that much of a silver tongue devil. And that ties in a little bit, Chris, with those words that you used, right? Let's take a look.

Chris Beall (26:36):

Just like this, "Let's take a look."

Corey Frank (26:38):

That's so beautiful.

Chris Beall (26:40):

Playful curious.

Corey Frank (26:41):

So John, insurance, life insurance, you've had a lot of reps who work for you over the years and life insurance. Man, that must be a tough thing to engender trust in. "I'm a 21 year old, newly minted life insurance agent. And you're going to sit down with an old guy like me and my wife and tell me about my future?" How do you build that trust? I'm in your living room, right? I'm over the kitchen table. How does that dynamic work? How did you teach and what did you learn over the years of the nuances that some of your reps use to leverage, expedite that trust?

John Orban (27:20):

Well, there's a lot going through my head thinking about what you just said, because one of the things about curiosity that pops into my head is when you're doing that, you're really in a collaborative relationship with that person. You're not trying to sell them, they're not trying to resist a sales close or something like that. I remember one case that I walked into with my sales manager, right at the very beginning when I got started. And I wasn't sure we were going to get out of that house alive. Because he was so mad at us because of something the company had done to him or a former rep had done. I mean, he greeted us at the door and was yelling at us. As soon as we walked in. When we walked out, we had sold him something. And basically what we did was we just allowed him to talk and we just sat there and listened to what he had to say.

John Orban (28:08):

We agreed with him when he was right. We corrected him when he wasn't exactly right. And that really made an impression on me in the way that I was going to deal with people going forward. Now, as you found out, Chris, because you keep talking about it on the podcast, for some reason, people don't want to accept that. They still keep going back to the magic bullet. It was like, again, on, on another one of your podcasts you were talking about, or you were talking about the speech that you gave. And it said, "Never give that speech again, because what they want are tips and tricks." So I thought when I go out with my granddaughters on next Halloween, I'm going to go to the door and say, "Tip or tricks."

John Orban (28:50):

But that's what they want. Everybody wants silver bullet. There are very few people that can pull that off. You really have to develop a relationship with that. You have to listen to what they say. If you just let people talk, you will find out everything you want to know. You may have to prompt them with a couple of questions along the way. But Chris, when you started talking about the sales process is not by the quarter or whatever, you're looking to develop a long term relationship. There was a lot of lip service to that when I first got started, but it was Thursday night. What are you going to report tomorrow? Friday? I mean, every week we didn't have a quota after quarter, we had a quota every week. And so Thursday night was when you wrote the Thursday night special, you went out and found somebody if they were breathing and they could write you put their name. Now I never did that.

John Orban (29:36):

But a lot of people in the office did because that's just the way it was. So I think listening is such a key thing that has to be done. And going back to the curiosity thing, I developed after a while on the phone, I got really curious about what the next call was going to be like, because I had had so many interesting phone calls up to that point. Some were sales, some were appointments, some weren't anything. But it was always fascinating to talk to people and I could talk to them because by then I'd read a hell of a lot of books. And I really felt comfortable with knowing what I was going to be talking to these people about. And I could talk on a wide variety of subjects, which I think is something that a lot of sales reps, if all you're going to read is sales closes.

John Orban (30:22):

You're not going to get the kind of depth that you need when you're sitting down in front of that executive and trying to get them to move along or to learn more about what they've got to say. I remember when they'd talk about rapport. And I remember when I first heard the term rapport, I'd walk into an office and I'd look around, is there a photo of them playing golf? Or is there a trophy on the wall or that kind of just anything that I could grab a hold of. And then it dawned on me that the whole point of rapport is so that you can ask questions and they'll respond. And if you've got good rapport, you can ask much deeper questions. And like I told you, Corey, I got people to the point where they were telling me things I didn't want to know. It wasn't like it didn't have anything to do with the sale process. It was like, I was a priest in a confessional and they were confessing to me and that really freaked me out.

“The time has come,” the Walrus said, “to talk of many things.” Our podcast guest, John Orban, is currently a marketing and business consultant who spent 24 years honing his sales skills as a rep for MetLife. Today, John joins our Market Dominance Guys, Chris Beall and Corey Frank, to talk of many sales- and life-related things. In this first episode of a four-part conversation, John, Chris, and Corey touch on the trickiness of successfully communicating an idea, on the importance of thinking but not over-thinking, on resisting the temptation to make things complex, and finally, on the math employed in sales and, thus, market domination. There’s even a bit about the stability of cruise ships. Seriously. Many things! And these three sales guys are just getting started, so don’t miss the fun in this Market Dominance Guys’ episode, “Of Cabbages and Kings — and Blue Whales.”

About Our Guest

John Orban brings his background as a MetLife sales rep and as an administrator of computer networks to his current career as a marketing and business consultant for creative professionals.

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Full episode transcript below:

Corey Frank (01:18):

Welcome to another episode of the Market Dominance Guys. Here we are in late January, or whenever this is going to air, Chris, 2022. I'm here with Chris Beall, the sage of sales, the prophet of profit. And here we are talking all things market dominance, math. And today, we have a very special guest. We may delve into other topics, such as art, maybe blue whales, Chris, as you said before the show, and of course, all of our fun things to talk about with regards to how to dominate your market in today's business world. So Chris, how about just a few minutes on our special guest, John, and how you guys met, and then we'll dive right into the topics?

Chris Beall (01:57):

Well, John reached out to me on LinkedIn, and said something that made me cry. I can't remember exactly what it was, but it was basically, hey, your podcast doesn't suck too bad. I got kind of hooked on it. And it just touched my heart, quite frankly. And then, as we went back and forth a little bit, I realized that John brings a kind of depth and precision of thought honed over very many years. I'm not saying, John, that you're older than me, although it's possible, I'm-

John Orban (02:30):

Yeah, I am.

Chris Beall (02:31):

... [inaudible 00:02:31] old, but it was one of these situations where we just went back and forth a little bit, and I thought, good god, we have not had this guy on Market Dominance Guys, and we should. It was just like that. He reads books, we were doing a little book thing. He respects thought and reality. He's multidimensional. And he's out there in eastern Maryland, one of my favorite places in the world, so why not get a little geographic diversity here? Love it. Love it.

John Orban (03:01):

There you go, there you go.

Corey Frank (03:02):

But we all need a little serendipity in our life, and John, if you came across the podcast when you were looking for Joe Rogan or Jordan Peterson, or any of the greats, sorry to disappoint you upon first listening, but we're still glad that you're one of our seven listeners. So let's jump right into it.

Chris Beall (03:17):

Anyway, how are you doing?

John Orban (03:19):

I'm doing pretty good.

Chris Beall (03:20):

Fantastic. This is going to be a fun episode, books, books, books, so-

John Orban (03:23):

I don't have a fancy background like you guys.

Chris Beall (03:25):

I have a story with my background. It's a funny story.

John Orban (03:28):

Oh, yeah?

Chris Beall (03:29):

The story of the boat there is that Helen and I spent a month in Australia, first month of 2020. And the last day of the trip. I went out for a nice long barefoot run, because she was hanging in the hotel having some business meeting or other. I mean, the girl carries a $1.2 billion quota. And even though she was between jobs at that point, I think quota chases you somehow, even if you're not working. So she's doing business stuff, so I go out for this long barefoot run. Come around this corner in Sydney Harbor, and here's this giant boat with this blue bottom, and it's got a Panda, like a four-story high Panda coming down off the top of it, like King Kong coming down it.

Chris Beall (04:12):

Yes. And I thought, wow, that's really weird, but interesting. And it's just huge, like, it's a city block or more long. So I looked at it, and I noted its name, and I don't really care about cruise ships, and that was it. And then, boom, cruise industry is gone about a week or two later. It was its last voyage before COVID. And we're not thinking about any of this kind of stuff, and then, here we are a year and a half later, having dinner, looking out over at Seattle, and suddenly, the ship shows up. The [inaudible 00:04:45] followed me from Sydney like a faithful dog ...

John Orban (04:47):

Wow.

Chris Beall (04:48):

... to show itself off. So I took a picture of it. And so, when people ask me, where are you on the surface of this blue rolling planet, I can say, well, I'm about half a mile from where this picture was taken, looking over at Seattle. And they go, oh, okay. There you go.

Corey Frank (05:01):

Our dear friend, Oren Klaff, has a response for why are things the way they are, and why don't cruise ships tip over? Why are tides the way they are? Why do people buy the way they do? And I'm going to butcher it, but he uses what's called, the blue whale close. When a prospect asks you something that is, well, why is it the way that it is? How come your product does X and Y and Z? Something obscure. And as a sales rep, right, sometimes you want to delve into the detail, and go to the cool cognitions, and sometimes you want to dance. And sometimes you want to just forget that the question existed altogether and change the topic.

Corey Frank (05:33):

But he has this blue whale close that he uses. And the blue whale is the most magnificent creature on earth. It is the largest mammal in the world. Cruise ships and tankers of the aircraft carriers, when they see a flock, a fleet, of blue whales swimming towards them, they move, not the blue whales. And this blue whale, right, can eat thousands of tons of plankton every single day to sustain itself. Plankton, the most minuscule, microscopic piece of ... as you know, John, in the universe. This blue whale, the most majestic creature that there is, can choke on a common grilled cheese sandwich. Why is that? Because it just is, that's why. Because it is.

John Orban (06:16):

Good.

Chris Beall (06:21):

That's so funny.

John Orban (06:22):

That's good.

Chris Beall (06:23):

By the way, Corey, that's not only funny, but I just read an article in New Scientist yesterday, in which they were reporting the discovery of why blue whales and other baleen whale don't choke when they ingest as much sea water as would fill their whole body. It'd be like us drinking one human body's worth full of water, right? If you hollowed a person out and you made them into a bottle, and you filled them up with water and you drank the whole thing at once, in about two seconds, that's how they eat. And they finally discovered just a few months ago, why they don't choke. And you know why they don't choke? Because there's no cheeseburgers out there at sea.

Corey Frank (07:07):

That's right.

Chris Beall (07:08):

No, they actually found a big plug in the back of their throat that works in a funny way, and they don't choke. Which is hardly surprising, because if they all choked to death on the water that they're using to eat all the plankton, well, the number of blue whales would be very small. It'd be slow, and sitting on the bottom of the ocean.

Chris Beall (08:10):

Exactly, so, John.

John Orban (08:11):

I talked to Corey some last week, and I mentioned to him that I could never have imagined me listening to a podcast about market dominance. I mean, I'm not a CEO, I'm not an entrepreneur. At best, I'm a reluctant employee. In fact, what got me was a podcast you did, Chris, where you were talking about the seven seconds to get trust built up, that kind of thing. And I was hooked. And then when you started talking about your spreadsheet porn, and stuff like that, I was just all over that. I mean I love spreadsheets, and I got three different spreadsheet programs on my computer, trying to figure out which one I like. Since I started hearing your podcast, I'm done listening to any other podcast for the time being, because as I'm walking the dog, these ideas are popping into my head that go back to books that I've read in the past.

John Orban (09:06):

And I'm just literally freaking out. I mean, sometimes I'll walk around the circle and pick up pieces of my brain that had just blown out my ears while I'm listening to you guys. And it's like, you are redefining the way business is done. I mean, you're basically redefining sales. And I told you, or wrote in prior correspondence, Corey, I think you've basically obsoleted every sales book that's out there. Well, except for one, and that's the [inaudible 00:09:35] Book, In-

Corey Frank (09:36):

Oh, [inaudible 00:09:37].

John Orban (09:39):

... [inaudible 00:09:39]. But that's different, he's got a different approach to it. But I mean, I've read an awful lot of sales books in my life. And it was funny, I was listening to a podcast today, and you were interviewing the Jefferson guy.

Corey Frank (09:54):

Oh, Roger.

Chris Beall (09:55):

Roger.

John Orban (09:55):

Roger. Roger.

Chris Beall (09:56):

Yeah, sales enablement.

John Orban (09:57):

And as I'm thinking about these ideas that are popping in here, I'm thinking, I've never heard anything like this before. But what I have heard is little pieces in books I've read over the last 50 years. And I had this flash the other day when you were talking with Valerie [inaudible 00:10:18]. And I said, it sounds to me like you guys are close to discovering the theory of everything. And since you've got a physicist on board, I'm thinking, well, maybe that's where it's coming from. So I mean, I could go on all day about this, but it's just like, I don't see any reason to listen to any other podcast about business or sales than what you guys are doing. So I don't know, that's the end of my ranting and raving about that.

John Orban (10:44):

And like we were talking about before, Corey, where you were saying the client that I'm working with, would this idea work with him? Man, I think it could work with virtually anything. I mean, you're already selling air compressors, German air compressors, right? With the thing? I mean, I think it's a universal application, and that's what I'm thinking about the theory of everything thing. Because what you're doing is, you're simplifying stuff, and that's what needs to be done. I mean, we have overcomplicated so much in the world. That's the reason why we're having all these problems.

John Orban (11:18):

But the thing that really hit me was when, Chris, you started talking about these bits of information things. And I watched this, I don't know whether you'd call it a movie or a documentary, or whatever, but it was called, What the Bleep Do We Know!?. And its basically gets into quantum physics and that kind of thing, and they said that we are bombarded with four billion bits of information every single second. I mean, I can't even wrap my head around that and I tried to verify that independently. And as I told Corey, I couldn't come up with a four billion number, but basically, the only thing I could come up with was scientists that were saying, it's a heck of a lot of information we're getting hit with.

John Orban (12:00):

Well, that took me back to one of the very first books that I read that literally changed my life. I mean ... well, let me put it this way, it started me on a 30-year path, if you will, of reading everything I could get my hands on, on why people do what they do. What is human behavior, and that kind of thing. And the book was called, and I told Corey, and it's called, Structure of Magic. And it was written back in 1975. And the idea is, we are by bombarded with so much information that we have developed this strategy to deal with all that.

John Orban (12:40):

So we basically do one of three things. We either delete the information. Have you ever had this situation where you're trying to find your car keys? Because I'm all the time losing my car keys. And you're looking around the kitchen counter, and of course there's all kinds of crap on there, but the keys aren't there. That's where they should be, but they're not there. Well, I do, let me not project this on you, but I go ranting and raving around the house. My wife goes crazy, the dog runs and hides somewhere. And then, I come back to the counter, and there they are. The keys are right on the counter, right where I left them. Now, why didn't I see them? They were there, I looked at it, I didn't see them. So that's kind of like what the deletion thing is.

John Orban (13:17):

The second thing we do is, we tend to distort information. And this is for, I think ... well, considering that sort of applied to me a lot, it was very difficult for me to say thank you when people would compliment me. I would always think in my mind, well, you don't really mean that, I really didn't do that great a job, that sort of thing. So you get into that. And I remember reading a book where the author said, all you have to do is say, thank you. And that was pretty significant, right? One of the things that you said, and I say recently. Recently, for me listening to, for you guys, it was probably like a year ago. But you started talking about this idea of, you were going to hire psychologists, and put them on as a sales rep.

John Orban (14:03):

And I said, that's incredible. I mean, that is an incredible idea. Because, when you start to think about this communication thing that we go through, you have an idea in your head. Now, your idea just doesn't pop into the other person's head. You've got to verbalize that somehow inside your head, you then have to say it, the other person hears it, it goes into their head. They have to think about what it is, and then it gets to the thought that they come up with. Now, what do you think are the chances of the thought that's inside your head and the thought that's inside their head at the end of this process is exactly the same?

John Orban (14:43):

It's pretty rare, especially as you think about the fact that while this is all going on, as a human being, you're dealing with your experiences that you've lived in your life, the perceptions that you've formed from those experiences, and then the language that you've learned to try to communicate or express your feelings. And a lot of people are ... a lot of difficulties about that. So in that whole chain of process, from idea to thought to verbalization, listening and all that kind of stuff, you've got all those things that you're dealing with. Now, that's in your sales rep. One of your podcasts, you were talking about how to hire sales reps, and things like that. But to have a sales rep that could understand themselves, for example-

Corey Frank (15:29):

Well, let me take something, John, when we look at ... and Chris knows this, he's heard the story, right? He's been a mentor and a sensei and a Sherpa of mine for 20 years ... gosh, 15 years, maybe. It feels like longer.

Chris Beall (15:43):

[inaudible 00:15:43].

Corey Frank (15:43):

But a lot of things that you're saying, John, right, you're talking about hiring psychologists. Chris talks a lot about, and kind of won me over years ago, two companies over, to look for introverts, as they make the best sales folks. And you take that psychological strategy, right, and he'll talk about that in a second. And then you talk about using the proper tools. Jerry Hill today ... Chris, you saw your boy, Jerry, right, who's one of your top folks over at ConnectAndSell, posted an incredible iteration, deconstruction of the math of sales. Loved it, right? And Chris and I, and other folks live in the math of sales, John, how we deconstruct complex entities to the simple.

Corey Frank (16:28):

And you talked about your car keys. The reason you need to find your car keys, right, is something that we talk about on the show a lot, which is Occam's razor, right? Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily. Chris's company, ConnectAndSell, is in the business of not multiplying unnecessary things unnecessarily. Don't overthink things. Sometimes the simplest solution is the easiest solution. So when you take what Chris advocates from a personality perspective, the introverts and the introverted mind, and you take that and put the math around how to dominate your market, you have what should be something that is common sense. But sometimes, we in sales, especially CROs, investors, like to make things more complex, wouldn't you say, Chris?

Chris Beall (17:16):

Yeah, I think the temptation to make things complex comes from two places. One is, it's hard to make things simple, right? It requires a lot of thinking, actually. Henry Ford said something that I repeat to myself every day. Thinking is the hardest work of all, that's why hardly anybody ever does it. He was being funny, but he was also being very, very serious, which is, when we think it's psychologically and physically very challenging, and it's a lot of work. And the easy thing to do is to think additively, just to come up with one more thing, one more thing, one more thing, one more thing. And the hardest thing to do is to think synthetically, which is to say, this thing and this thing, actually, in some important way in this circumstance, or actually, this other thing when they're together, and I'm going to take that thing and rely on it, even though I can't see it.

Corey Frank (18:12):

You're talking about simple. Again, you're the physicist here, so just to be sure, John, right? I'm [inaudible 00:18:18] to be the poetry guy. I should be driving a cab or tending bar. Chris is the guy that should be running Los Alamos laps, okay? So we got to [inaudible 00:18:25].

John Orban (18:25):

Listen, listen, don't cut yourself short on this. Because when we were talking on the phone and I was telling you stuff about my friend, and you were coming back with a sales script on me, I was freaking out. I could not believe that anybody could take that information and flip it around that quick, and come back with what I thought was powerful stuff.

Corey Frank (18:44):

Well, thank you.

John Orban (18:44):

And I'll tell you what I told him right after I got off the phone with you. I said, listen, these guys can do in 30 days what it would take me over a year to do for you. And I said, if it doesn't work, you'll find out in less than a week. But I said, let me tell you something. If you go through with this, your life is going to change. And he's not the first one I've told that to, because marketing, done right, will change a person's life. I mean, he's going to be on the road, he's going to be touring, he's going to be doing all kinds of crazy stuff.

Corey Frank (19:16):

Well, simple is better. And the formula we use for screenplays, scripting, Chris uses the same one, the [inaudible 00:19:25], that creates millions of phone calls, and tens of thousands of successful conversations a year has to do with that simplicity. When you have two competing theories, right, Chris, that make exactly the same predictions, the simpler one is always the better one.

In striving for market dominance, which among the top companies in any field do you think puts forth the most effort to gain — or hold onto — that dominant position? Our guest, Matt McCorkle, Manager of Branch Operations for Kaeser Compressors, and our two Market Dominance Guys, Chris Beall and Corey Frank, debate this question during this final conversation of their four-part discussion on all things sales-related. Even loyal followers of our Market Dominance Guys’ podcast will be surprised at the shared opinion these three sales gurus hold about which highly ranked company within each industry or service can claim bragging rights to the title of this episode, “We Try Hardest!”

About Our Guest

Matt McCorkle is Manager of Branch Operations for Kaeser Compressors. He has earned both a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in mechanical engineering and has now been with Kaeser Compressors for 13 years.

Catch the three previous episodes in this session with Matt McCorkle:

EP107: On the Phone, They’ll Tell You the Truth

EP108: Sales and the State of Apprehension

EP109: Being There for Your Customers

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Full episode transcript below:

Chris Beall (00:00):

Well, that's funny. Many people have asked me, "Who do you want to do business with in any industry?" And I always say, "I want to do business with the number three player. Always."

Corey Frank (01:22):

Okay. So, Matt, we always leave it on recording because we have just a brief... But thanks. Great stuff, brother. That's really kind of you to spend so much time and to... We're very careful about asking questions. We want to disclose the family jewels there. So I appreciate you indulging in some but not all of your techniques.

Matt McCorkle (01:43):

Absolutely. By the way, there is one that I was realizing, I probably shouldn't have said third, I'm thinking. I mean, I feel like it's common knowledge, probably. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but the guys who are fourth and fifth might be like, "I thought I was third." I don't know.

Chris Beall (02:00):

Well, that's funny. Many people have asked me, "Who do you want to do business with in any industry?" And I always say, "I want to do business with the number three player. Always. Always." Because number one is focused on the past.

Matt McCorkle (02:15):

Right.

Chris Beall (02:16):

Number two is focused on number one.

Matt McCorkle (02:19):

Yeah.

Chris Beall (02:19):

Three is focused on taking the entire industry. It's always the same.

Matt McCorkle (02:24):

And the guys behind are just hanging around.

Chris Beall (02:26):

That's right.

Matt McCorkle (02:27):

[crosstalk 00:02:27]-

Chris Beall (02:27):

So I mean, you look at it back in the day, right? Number one was Hertz. Number two was Avis. Number three was Enterprise. If you knew how Enterprise ran, you knew they were going to own the world.

Matt McCorkle (02:37):

Yeah, yeah.

Chris Beall (02:39):

It was abundantly clear, because they weren't going after Hertz and Avis. They were going after the true loyalty of the person who rented a car, and they were going in places the other guys didn't go. I was talking to somebody today who worked at Enterprise. Day one at Enterprise, here's what they tell you. They ask a question, "So what's the most important thing that we have around here as an asset, piece of equipment or whatever?" "Oh, the cars." "Oh, the system." Everybody has answers and nobody ever comes up with the right answer.

Chris Beall (03:10):

The trainer's right answer is, "No, the telephone. And here's what you're going to learn to do. When that phone rings you answer within two rings and you sound like the person that that person needs right now." And that's how they built that business. Right? Avis and Hertz, they didn't focus on that. So the number three player I've been obsessed with in every industry I've ever done business in. Because you can't become number three unless you're great, right?

Matt McCorkle (03:45):

Yeah.

Chris Beall (03:46):

You've built in real industries. But the question is who wants to own it all? Who wants to go after it? It's never number one or number two.

Matt McCorkle (03:54):

Well, Chris, this is what's great about our partnership with you because I don't know that we can. It's still, to me, a little bit of an open question of whether we can take those spots, because we are the top of the top. I mean, it is a different product, a different solution we offer than the other guys. And it is a dramatic different price. And so part of this experiment is to say, "What is that market share? What is the amount of the market that is willing to pay for the fully engineered German product that we sell? And that it is a good business decision for them to do that. How big of a market is it that needs that reliable of air at the cost we're able to give it to them?"

Chris Beall (04:43):

Well, something to remember, and we've discussed this on Market Dominance Guys, is the market is always a list.

Matt McCorkle (04:50):

Right.

Chris Beall (04:51):

It's always a list. And you dominate that list.

Matt McCorkle (04:54):

Yes.

Chris Beall (04:55):

So what somebody else might define as the market and market share is irrelevant. The question is four of those that you put on the list because you think they belong on the list because they meet the characteristics of those in the list, do you dominate there?

Matt McCorkle (05:10):

Right.

Chris Beall (05:10):

That-

Matt McCorkle (05:11):

That's true. And leave out that segment that doesn't need reliable air because [crosstalk 00:05:18]-

Chris Beall (05:17):

Yeah. That's it. I mean, it's so simple. And the beauty of dominance is dominance always excludes competition unless you want them to have part of it so you can throw them the bad deals. Because even within your list there are the-

Matt McCorkle (05:35):

[crosstalk 00:05:35]-

Chris Beall (05:35):

... so you can throw them the bad deals. Because even within your list there are the-

Corey Frank (05:37):

True.

Matt McCorkle (05:37):

Absolutely.

Chris Beall (05:37):

And you definitely need somebody to throw the bad deals to, or else you get stuck with the damn things.

Matt McCorkle (05:44):

Very true. Very true. I was coaching one of my managers on that just today. I don't think this is done, not meeting the criteria that we talk about as somebody we're going to do business with.

Chris Beall (05:55):

Exactly. My dad told me something. He said once to me, "I'm only ever going to give you one piece of business advice. And here it is. You are never better than your worst customer."

Matt McCorkle (06:06):

Oh, man. Huh, that's interesting.

Corey Frank (06:09):

Yeah.

Matt McCorkle (06:11):

Yeah. There you go.

Corey Frank (06:13):

Yeah.

Matt McCorkle (06:14):

And you don't want to be that.

Corey Frank (06:15):

Actually, we got a couple of and nuggets just right there, just keep the record button on for another five minutes. We got both of you guys in the can with a couple of other... So, Matt-

Matt McCorkle (06:26):

[crosstalk 00:06:26]-

Corey Frank (06:26):

... you're not in Milwaukee, you're in Virginia, then?

Matt McCorkle (06:28):

I'm in Virginia. Yes.

Corey Frank (06:29):

Okay. Gotcha. All right.

Matt McCorkle (06:30):

Where are you out of? You're in Phoenix, you said.

Corey Frank (06:32):

We're in Phoenix. Chris is just south of me right now. He's seasonally adjusted, should be by now. My dad was a cop in Milwaukee for 30 plus years or so. So we grew up-

Matt McCorkle (06:44):

Wow.

Corey Frank (06:45):

... not five minutes from where you're talking about. My grandpa, we got pictures, right, my grandpa selling fruit right around the corner from there. That was all swampland where now they have... It's Summerfest grounds and all that stuff.

Matt McCorkle (07:00):

Right, right.

Corey Frank (07:01):

And so it's a beautiful place, but gotcha.

Matt McCorkle (07:04):

Great city.

Corey Frank (07:04):

Yeah, absolutely. So, Chris, plans for the birthday? What are you doing this weekend, then?

Chris Beall (07:09):

We were going to go play golf somewhere and I decided to change that up. So we're going to go for a hike up Madera Canyon for three or four hours.

Corey Frank (07:17):

Oh, beautiful.

Chris Beall (07:18):

Who knows? Maybe we'll see the trogon, maybe we won't. Helen doesn't give a damn about birds, but for the sake of my mom and my late wife, I'll take a look for the trogon. Oh, my friend, Robert Garner, just yesterday I had a snack with him and a coffee or whatever in Los Gatos. And he pulls out a picture of the trogon and he says, "You got to go see this bird at Madera Canyon." So we'll see whether on my 67th birthday I can see a bird that most people don't ever see.

Matt McCorkle (07:46):

That's really awesome.

Corey Frank (07:48):

Oh, that's going to be great. Well, I've been privileged to know you for many of those. So we'll look for many, many, many more. So thanks for what you do, Chris. And, Matt, thank you again for the time. And we'll keep in touch and we'll get you on the program here again and again. You're a natural.

Matt McCorkle (08:05):

Oh, thank you. You're too kind. Again, really appreciate it. Hope it's valuable.

Corey Frank (08:08):

Awesome.

Matt McCorkle (08:08):

And happy birthday, Chris.

Corey Frank (08:09):

All right, everybody.

Matt McCorkle (08:09):

Have a great weekend.

Corey Frank (08:09):

All right.

Chris Beall (08:10):

Thanks so much, Matt, [crosstalk 00:08:11]-

Corey Frank (08:11):

Thank care, guys. See you. Bye-bye.

Chris Beall (08:12):

Have fun dominating. Bye-bye.

Matt McCorkle (08:14):

Thank you.