Latest / Sales Pipeline Radio / A Relationship and Values-Centric Approach to Selling

Transcript

A Relationship and Values-Centric Approach to Selling · Sales Pipeline Radio

• 0:17
  Matt Heinz: All right.
• 0:17
  Welcome everybody to another episode of Sales Pipeline Radio.
• 0:20
  I'm your host, Matt Heinz.
• 0:21
  Excited to have you all here with us on another Thursday.
• 0:25
  If you are listening, watching, subscribing, downloading,
• 0:27
  thank you so much for doing so.
• 0:29
  I think we're close to 300,000 downloads, Sal of Sales Pipeline Radio.
• 0:33
  That's awesome.
• 0:33
  Uh, you can always get every episode past, present and future Sales Pipeline
• 0:37
  Radio at Sales Pipeline Radio dot com.
• 0:40
  Today, very special guest.
• 0:41
  Some of you may have seen this from LinkedIn yesterday, but I'm
• 0:44
  excited to have our new business development manager, Sal LoSauro,
• 0:47
  join us on Sales Pipeline Radio.
• 0:49
  How's it going man?
• 0:50
  Sal LoSauro: It's doing great, man.
• 0:51
  So good to be here, Matt.
• 0:52
  Matt Heinz: Um, I know this isn't really getting the band back together 'cause
• 0:55
  we, we'll never work together directly.
• 0:57
  Yeah, I mean, we've been pon we've sponsored parts of sort of
• 1:00
  B2B MX and you and I have known each other for a very long time.
• 1:03
  But like you've, I mean.
• 1:05
  I saw on the post yesterday, like, you know, life is short.
• 1:06
  You work with people you enjoy.
• 1:08
  And I know for a fact that like so many people in B2B would say that and have said
• 1:13
  that about you and just the relationship they have with you and you know, we're all
• 1:17
  here to, you know, make a buck and sort of, you know, pay our rent and everything.
• 1:20
  But also just working with good people is important.
• 1:23
  And that's, I thought about that when we were sort of on the hunt for a
• 1:26
  BizDev Manager and that's the first thing I thought about again when
• 1:28
  we, when we've sort of made it work.
• 1:29
  So welcome.
• 1:32
  Sal LoSauro: And I agree wholeheartedly because it is, I mean, we talk
• 1:34
  about it all the time, right?
• 1:35
  We're not, you know, we're not curing cancer and we should, you know, helping
• 1:38
  each other out, working together.
• 1:39
  And the people, especially the people you work with, right?
• 1:41
  We spend more time with one another than we, a lot of times
• 1:43
  we do with our own family, so.
• 1:45
  Yeah.
• 1:45
  Working with people that you know are rubbing you the wrong
• 1:47
  way is not the way you wanna be.
• 1:49
  Matt Heinz: Well, and it's, it's, you know, it doesn't mean that things
• 1:51
  are necessarily gonna be easy, right?
• 1:53
  Oh, no.
• 1:53
  But I think it's even more important to have people that are values fits
• 1:57
  that you know, that you're willing to sort of say, okay, this is hard, this
• 2:00
  is gnarly, but we're gonna work on it together and we're gonna be good
• 2:04
  people together as we go through it.
• 2:06
  I, I, uh, a friend of mine posted something, uh, it was a
• 2:10
  few months ago, maybe almost.
• 2:11
  Almost a year ago, uh, right.
• 2:12
  It was about six months ago, so it was, um, the 20th anniversary of
• 2:16
  a startup we were at going public.
• 2:18
  And it was, it was in the real estate space and it was, it was a lot of fun.
• 2:22
  Uh, and in the moment it was hard.
• 2:24
  Like there was a lot of really hard stuff and I was earlier in my career
• 2:27
  and I wasn't really good at sort of like, you know, managing all that stuff.
• 2:30
  But the post was about the people and about sort of recognizing 20 years later
• 2:34
  how special that group of people was.
• 2:38
  And sometimes that works out, sometimes it doesn't.
• 2:40
  But I think having that, like you said, like you know, having a group of people
• 2:44
  that you enjoy working with, that you have a level of trust with to go forward and to
• 2:48
  figure out hard problems and to not always be right, but to make adjustments as you
• 2:52
  go, I think is just, it's everything.
• 2:55
  Sal LoSauro: I agree.
• 2:55
  I mean, when we first started, you know, going back to, uh, with Andrew, with G3
• 2:59
  Communications and we launched when he started the company, you know, the big
• 3:02
  thing we always talked about was finding people that we wanted to work with.
• 3:05
  People, we just call the give shit factor.
• 3:07
  Like, do people care about what they're doing?
• 3:08
  Right.
• 3:08
  Yeah.
• 3:08
  'cause it's important and yeah, it's not always gonna be easy, but
• 3:12
  when you know someone, you know.
• 3:13
  You have someone's back and they have yours.
• 3:15
  It makes a world of a difference.
• 3:16
  And it's also nice when you, when you're done, like you get over
• 3:19
  that hump, like there's that, that obstacle in front of you.
• 3:21
  Mm-hmm.
• 3:22
  And then you're like, you work together as a team.
• 3:23
  You get through, you're like, ah, mean, you come on the other side,
• 3:25
  you're like, you're, you're a better person because of it, and you're
• 3:28
  a stronger team because of it.
• 3:29
  That's right.
• 3:29
  Um, and again, there's, there's a lot of that that some I think so sometimes
• 3:32
  people don't, you know, uh, take the time to appreciate, I mean, there's
• 3:36
  still people, I was actually just talking to an old colleague of mine where.
• 3:39
  You know, uh, when you, you, you're just happy to see them succeed.
• 3:44
  Mm-hmm.
• 3:44
  That makes you feel good.
• 3:45
  Like, 'cause they're, they're like, they are, they're, they're your family.
• 3:47
  Like, oh wow.
• 3:48
  You saw some, like, you see on LinkedIn, like this person just within this new
• 3:50
  position, you're generally happy about it.
• 3:53
  Right?
• 3:53
  Actually, I had gotten a call somebody, uh, again, a friend of mine who's
• 3:56
  with us at G3, Demand Gen Report.
• 3:58
  She was this looking to move on and she said, can I be a reference?
• 4:01
  I said, absolutely.
• 4:02
  The person called me, I said, congratulations, you just hit the
• 4:05
  employee lottery with this one.
• 4:06
  'cause she is fantastic.
• 4:08
  So it's, it's good to say so,
• 4:10
  Matt Heinz: Yeah.
• 4:11
  So, so speaking of you just talking about sort of Demand Gen Report, people
• 4:14
  see you, like remember B2BMX and Content to Conversion and the long history
• 4:18
  you guys had for the, for the people.
• 4:20
  I mean, I mean, a lot of people watching, it's like, Hey, Sal's back.
• 4:23
  This is awesome.
• 4:24
  Um, but for those that don't know you, I mean, you've been
• 4:26
  in B2B for a very long time.
• 4:27
  Yeah.
• 4:27
  Can you talk a little bit about your experience and background?
• 4:30
  Sal LoSauro: Yeah.
• 4:30
  So I mean, when, uh, so again, when I first, I had worked with Andrew in
• 4:34
  the years past, be before, um, when he launched uh, G3 Communications.
• 4:40
  One of the first publications we had at the time was Demand Gen Report.
• 4:43
  Mm-hmm.
• 4:43
  Now remember, this is when, when marketing automations really in its infancy.
• 4:46
  Okay.
• 4:47
  So, yeah.
• 4:47
  Um, it was, uh, it was, Joe Payne was a real big proponent
• 4:50
  of having a publication.
• 4:52
  That sort of legitimized the space because he was old school like, and
• 4:56
  back in the day when I first got into B2B publishing, I mean, every
• 4:59
  vertical had their own publication.
• 5:01
  Typically an event.
• 5:03
  Um, so that's the story we had come from, we had come from VNU, which
• 5:05
  was Miller Freeman back in the day.
• 5:07
  Yep.
• 5:07
  So we launched, we launched, um, and I had been in print advertising for a long time.
• 5:12
  Yeah.
• 5:12
  Um, we launched Demand Gen Report and I remember Joe coming to us and saying
• 5:16
  like, I have, I have a $10,000 budget.
• 5:18
  I'm expecting you guys to drive leads.
• 5:19
  And I'm like, mm-hmm.
• 5:20
  Oh.
• 5:21
  You want results.
• 5:22
  This is new.
• 5:22
  Right.
• 5:23
  So and that was, I mean, that was basically Marketo and, and Eloqua
• 5:26
  those are two back in the day.
• 5:27
  Yeah.
• 5:27
  And then as things progressed, all the different, you know, the different
• 5:31
  disciplines that kind of got added on.
• 5:32
  And it's amazing 'cause through all that, the same things like we changed
• 5:36
  between ABM and go to market and all these different buzzwords, but the one
• 5:41
  thing remains the same is that is the connection between sales and marketing.
• 5:44
  Yep.
• 5:44
  And making sure that those folks are all, you know, are, are in
• 5:47
  line and doing the same thing and working towards a common goal.
• 5:50
  Um, and then after a few years of having the publication, and again,
• 5:54
  having that base is when we decided we get, we had gone back to our roots of.
• 5:58
  You know, events really bring people together.
• 6:01
  Mm-hmm.
• 6:01
  And nothing, it's almost like, you know, it, it's nothing makes people
• 6:05
  feel close where you can actually complain about and share your horror
• 6:08
  stories and your, and your love stories about how things are on your job.
• 6:10
  Yeah.
• 6:10
  And marketers are, are no different.
• 6:12
  They want to hear what their peers are doing, so.
• 6:14
  That you're right.
• 6:15
  Back in the day it was, it was in Manhattan.
• 6:17
  It was a Content to Conversion conference.
• 6:18
  Mm-hmm.
• 6:19
  And, uh, we had had it at the, it was at the Times Center in Manhattan, and I
• 6:23
  think we had a hundred people back then.
• 6:24
  That was, that was, mm-hmm.
• 6:25
  Yeah.
• 6:25
  Had like five or ten sponsors if that, I think it was like six, seven sponsors.
• 6:29
  And then every year we just, we sort of grew and then Content to Conversion,
• 6:32
  'cause content marketing too was, that was in its infancy, right?
• 6:35
  Mm-hmm.
• 6:35
  That was like a new buzzword as well.
• 6:36
  That's right.
• 6:37
  And then we sort of started adding on the different things, which
• 6:39
  grew to the B2B Marketing Exchange.
• 6:41
  Mm-hmm.
• 6:41
  Um, we had, I dunno if you, you probably remembered that, uh.
• 6:44
  It was, uh, Sirius was always out in Scottsdale back in the day.
• 6:47
  Mm-hmm.
• 6:48
  Mm-hmm.
• 6:48
  And it was a great place to have the event.
• 6:50
  Mm-hmm.
• 6:50
  Because it was like everybody in California was tied to
• 6:52
  having all the events out in San Francisco 'cause they lived there.
• 6:54
  Yeah.
• 6:54
  And people on the East coast want to get out of the, you know, I I, I live in New
• 6:58
  York, I don't wanna be here in February.
• 6:59
  Yeah.
• 6:59
  So we're, Scottsdale was a perfect place for that.
• 7:01
  So that's how that was born.
• 7:02
  And, and again, I think, um, it's funny when, uh, Emerald eventually
• 7:07
  acquired a B2BMX, Demand Gen Report, G3 Communications, and they were
• 7:11
  closing up the office and I, I asked if I could take one of the signs.
• 7:14
  It's a B2BMX.
• 7:15
  it's a picture from one of our, like one of our last events when we were still G3.
• 7:18
  The space is something I've always, you know, been fond of
• 7:22
  and, and instead of grew up with.
• 7:23
  So it's great to be back.
• 7:24
  Matt Heinz: Well, it's a, it's amazing.
• 7:25
  You talk about sort of like when you guys got started and
• 7:28
  it was marketing automation.
• 7:29
  It was the beginning of like drip campaigns and having something
• 7:32
  beyond just batch and send.
• 7:33
  And you think about, like, I think about all the different Content to Conversion,
• 7:36
  B2BMXs, all the different Demand Gen Report themes you've had over the years.
• 7:40
  There's always been these blips of like, I'm not gonna call 'em fads,
• 7:43
  but I guess like innovations and leaps in how we do things, right?
• 7:46
  Like marketing automation was one, social selling became one ABM became one.
• 7:50
  AI right now is, you know, dominating conversations on everything
• 7:53
  from go to market systems to org design and everything else.
• 7:56
  But you mentioned a commonality that is still, and we'll still go, and even
• 8:00
  as robots start to sell to robots.
• 8:03
  Humans are at the center of these transactions.
• 8:05
  And to be able to have a direct relationship, a direct conversation,
• 8:11
  to be able to get to the heart of what people care about.
• 8:14
  You know, one of the things always struck me with you is that we weren't
• 8:17
  having conversations about sponsorships.
• 8:19
  We weren't having conversations about buying something.
• 8:21
  It was about objectives, it was about emotions.
• 8:24
  It was about sort of the things that sort of just drive us right.
• 8:28
  And it made, you know, you talk to a hundred salespeople and
• 8:30
  99 of 'em are gonna talk about their products and services.
• 8:33
  You always invest in the human element and the relationships.
• 8:36
  And I think that's crazy important.
• 8:37
  Sal LoSauro: Yeah.
• 8:38
  And again, I always tell people, my job is to make your professional
• 8:41
  life a little bit easier.
• 8:42
  I can't handle your personal life, but your professional life at the end of the
• 8:44
  day, that's what I'm trying here to do.
• 8:46
  So the idea is, what are you trying to accomplish?
• 8:48
  How can I help best to help that?
• 8:50
  Try to keep it on budget, so, so again, we know how tough that
• 8:53
  can be because, you know, budgets are near and dear to our hearts.
• 8:56
  How we can get the results you're looking for in budget, on time,
• 8:59
  and again, work together as a team.
• 9:01
  And again, at the end of the, at the end of the day, people like to work
• 9:03
  with people who they get along with.
• 9:05
  Understand they, you know, empathy is, I think is an important thing, which I
• 9:08
  think a lot of times we sort of, people forget, like everyone else has, has
• 9:12
  other things going on in their lives.
• 9:13
  Like, how can we make the time we have together, you know, useful and productive?
• 9:18
  And that's at the end of the day, we're trying to do right.
• 9:20
  Matt Heinz: Well, let's double click on that.
• 9:21
  Uh, we've got today on Sales Pipeline Radio, Sal LoSauro he is the Business
• 9:25
  Development Manager for Heinz Marketing.
• 9:26
  And so, uh, so doing a little, that's great.
• 9:29
  Uh, LinkedIn yesterday doing the Pipeline today, uh, been doing the podcast today,
• 9:34
  um, this idea of sort of empathy, right, I think is really important and, you
• 9:37
  know in, in the, in Brent Adamson's new forthcoming book, the The Framemaking
• 9:42
  Sale, he talks about building confidence.
• 9:45
  And if you look at the sales and marketing materials for a lot of
• 9:47
  companies, it's intended to try to build confidence in the product and
• 9:51
  confidence in you as the seller.
• 9:53
  And Brent's point is what you need to be doing is helping prospects
• 9:57
  build confidence in themselves.
• 9:59
  Confidence in the decisions they're making.
• 10:01
  Confidence in the priorities they are setting confidence that
• 10:05
  they're doing the right thing for themselves in their business.
• 10:08
  And I think like he's got a bunch of research to back that up.
• 10:11
  I think good natural sellers I think are good at that anyway, because
• 10:14
  they're thinking about the other person.
• 10:17
  Can you talk about that empathy and confidence in how those work together?
• 10:21
  Just as a general go-to-market best practice.
• 10:24
  Sal LoSauro: Absolutely.
• 10:25
  I mean, again, you know, as I mentioned, like having, knowing
• 10:28
  that the person you're working with understands that, again, not
• 10:30
  every day is gonna be a great day.
• 10:31
  There's gonna be some struggles, right?
• 10:32
  We talked about that when you work with your colleagues,
• 10:35
  but also with your clients.
• 10:36
  Yeah.
• 10:36
  You know how I can basically listen to what you're saying.
• 10:39
  Um, you know, we, we talk about that all the time.
• 10:41
  You know, I, I tell my kids all the time, we got two ears in one mouth.
• 10:44
  We should listen more, right?
• 10:45
  Listen.
• 10:45
  Yeah.
• 10:45
  What's going on?
• 10:46
  How can I help you?
• 10:47
  And a lot of times it's, you know, people don't necessarily know what they
• 10:51
  need, but they just know they need help.
• 10:52
  So I'm trying to listen, listen for those, what, what that
• 10:54
  means, what you're looking for.
• 10:55
  Mm-hmm.
• 10:56
  And, and sort of like, okay, keen off of that.
• 10:58
  Okay, here's what we're trying to accomplish.
• 11:00
  How can we make that happen?
• 11:02
  Um, and again, the confidence part of it, you know, if you, if you listen,
• 11:05
  I'm a big Yankee fan and known for his, you know, his, his heroics in in
• 11:10
  October, but his whole thing was always.
• 11:14
  I'm confident in October because he looked at, he looked at every at bat,
• 11:17
  like it was the first, the same approach he took the first day of spring training
• 11:21
  was the approach he took the last game of the World Series and he said he put
• 11:25
  the work in, so he had the confidence.
• 11:27
  So again, you're working with people, you're empathizing, you're hearing
• 11:30
  them, you, you create this, this relationship, this trust with one another.
• 11:34
  That goes a long way when trying to accomplish goals.
• 11:37
  And that's, at the end of the day, that's what we're trying to do.
• 11:38
  Help folks to try accomplish their goals.
• 11:40
  Matt Heinz: It is still very much a relationship business.
• 11:43
  And what I've learned in, you know, 16, 17 years of selling, you know,
• 11:46
  Heinz Marketing Consulting is that, you know, especially when you're
• 11:49
  selling people, there's a lot of that confidence building goes on.
• 11:53
  The relationship building, the trust factor, the fact that
• 11:55
  like, I trust who I'm talking to, I'm trust who they represent.
• 11:59
  I trust that what I'm getting from them is gonna be consistent with what I've heard.
• 12:04
  It's not the bait and switch of, oh, you talk to the leader and
• 12:06
  then you get the junior interns.
• 12:08
  But to have that trust and credibility by investing in the relationships.
• 12:13
  Right.
• 12:13
  And sometimes it takes time to build those relationships.
• 12:16
  Some people you meet for the first time.
• 12:18
  I mean, what are some of your keys to really establishing the foundations
• 12:22
  of good relationships in B2B selling?
• 12:24
  Sal LoSauro: Yeah.
• 12:25
  I mean, I always tell my, my, when I'm working with folks, it's
• 12:27
  always nice to have the one back to pat, one, the one ass to kick.
• 12:30
  I'm the guy, I, I don't shy away from it.
• 12:32
  I'm the one that like, I'm here to help you out and you're, you're dealing
• 12:35
  with me, and at the end of the day.
• 12:37
  You know that I have your best interest at heart.
• 12:40
  So when you, when there's an issue, which again, issues are, are going to arise.
• 12:44
  And I think knowing and understanding that it's not all gonna be, you
• 12:47
  know, uh, rainbows and unicorns.
• 12:48
  I tell my wife all the time, my kids, they gotta understand sometimes
• 12:51
  there's gonna be struggles, right?
• 12:52
  We're gonna, we're gonna get through it together.
• 12:53
  Mm-hmm.
• 12:54
  Um, I just think there's a, there's a genuine, you know, again, a
• 12:58
  genuine, I tell people all the time, I, I could tell pretty much
• 13:01
  a, you know, I'm a straight shooter.
• 13:03
  You know, what you get is what you see.
• 13:04
  Unfortunately.
• 13:05
  This is, you know.
• 13:06
  Sometimes this is it.
• 13:07
  I have, I have, I have a face for radio and a face for emails.
• 13:10
  But you deal with it.
• 13:11
  But at least you know what you're gonna get with me all the time.
• 13:13
  And I think a lot of times, like you had said, it's, it's not that bait and
• 13:17
  switch, you know, that Sal comes to the table every time with a certain
• 13:21
  set of, of, of, of, uh, of skills.
• 13:24
  And I'm gonna listen to you and we're gonna talk through things and we're gonna
• 13:27
  work through together a lot of times.
• 13:30
  You know, I think where people get, people get in trouble where
• 13:32
  they, you know, they under, they over promise and under deliver.
• 13:36
  I think there's, there's, there has to be that, that baseline set
• 13:38
  like, here's what we're gonna do.
• 13:40
  And again, you, you know, one of the things when joining, joining the team, I
• 13:44
  like, uh, on the site when we talk about the, the culture of Heinz, where mm-hmm.
• 13:49
  You know, again, this is our livelihood.
• 13:50
  It's not our life.
• 13:52
  And I, I want to work hard while we're here to make sure everybody's happy.
• 13:56
  But that includes us as well, right?
• 13:57
  We want to, yeah.
• 13:58
  We all wanna be happy and we all wanna make sure we're
• 14:00
  doing, we're doing good work.
• 14:01
  So, uh, there's a pride that, that goes as well.
• 14:04
  You know, uh, I'm the son of an immigrant.
• 14:06
  My father always taught me, you work hard, there's, there's a pride in it, you know?
• 14:09
  Mm-hmm.
• 14:10
  Building something, you know, if it's with your hands or, you know,
• 14:15
  the way we do it electronically now, there's, there's a pride that
• 14:17
  you take in the work you've done.
• 14:18
  Again, I'm proud of the work I do with Demand Gen Report and, and the event
• 14:21
  and the B2BMX and how I built that.
• 14:23
  So I sort of take that same set of, of values and bring it to everything
• 14:27
  I'm, I'm doing moving forward.
• 14:28
  I think.
• 14:28
  It, it, you know, hopefully it, it shows.
• 14:30
  Matt Heinz: Oh, it does, it does.
• 14:31
  I mean, I've known you for a long time, but it's been really fun to
• 14:34
  watch Maria, who's our COO, um, and who runs our growth efforts,
• 14:38
  sort of to get to know you as well.
• 14:39
  And sort of the deeper she goes, the more she's like, this guy fits here.
• 14:43
  Right.
• 14:43
  Like, when we talk a lot about our values.
• 14:45
  Sal LoSauro: Thank you.
• 14:45
  Matt Heinz: Our, our stated purpose as a business to positively impact careers
• 14:49
  and lives by enabling work that matters.
• 14:51
  You know, you do that every day.
• 14:52
  Some people hopefully pay you for that.
• 14:54
  But you do that every day in the value deposits you make and the content you
• 14:57
  create, the relationships you make, the impact you have just on people around you.
• 15:02
  And again, sometimes you don't get paid directly or immediately for
• 15:05
  that, but it's the right thing to do.
• 15:07
  And I think especially as a services business, we have to have that mentality
• 15:10
  and we think about and celebrate those values on a regular basis.
• 15:13
  And so, uh.
• 15:15
  Always looking for people that are gonna be values fits and culture add.
• 15:18
  Sal, we are mostly a West Coast team.
• 15:20
  We're, we're excited to have someone with a little East coast spirit at
• 15:23
  him now, um, to broaden out the team.
• 15:25
  So, um, Sal, I'm so excited that you're on the team now.
• 15:28
  Um, you're gonna start to see Sal online a lot more often.
• 15:31
  Uh, you're gonna see him at events moving forward.
• 15:33
  We're gonna get 'em back out on the road.
• 15:34
  Um, but if you, if you worked with Sal before, um, look forward
• 15:38
  to having you guys engage again.
• 15:40
  And, um, yeah.
• 15:40
  Thanks so much for being on the show here today.
• 15:42
  Sal LoSauro: Thank you very much, Matt.
• 15:43
  Again, I'm looking forward to working with you and the team.
• 15:45
  It's, it's everything leading up has been fantastic.
• 15:47
  So, uh, I think it's, uh, it's gonna be a very, very good, uh, addition for us both.
• 15:52
  So thank you very much.
• 15:53
  Matt Heinz: Yep, I'm sure of it.
• 15:54
  Alright, well thank you everyone for watching today.
• 15:56
  Thanks for listening.
• 15:57
  Uh, we'll be back next week with another episode of Sales Pipeline Radio.
• 16:00
  Until then, take care.
• 16:02
  Have a good rest of your week.
• 16:02
  Sal LoSauro: Bye everybody.