Latest / Sales Pipeline Radio / The Tactical Execution of Your Go-To-Market (GTM) Strategy

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The Tactical Execution of Your Go-To-Market (GTM) Strategy · Sales Pipeline Radio

• 0:16
  All right, welcome to Sales Pipeline Radio, live from McCormick
• 0:21
  Place West in Chicago, Illinois.
• 0:24
  We're here at the Salesforce Connections Conference, wrapping up this afternoon.
• 0:28
  But Sales Pipeline Radio waits for no man or woman.
• 0:30
  So excited to be here live with you.
• 0:32
  Excited to have John Flannery live from North Coast San Diego.
• 0:36
  And, we're gonna talk a little bit about sales strategy, we're gonna talk a
• 0:39
  little bit about entrepreneurship, we're gonna talk a little bit about family,
• 0:42
  and have a real fun conversation today.
• 0:43
  If you are joining us live on Sales Pipeline Radio, hopefully you are
• 0:47
  not … If you're in here, come on over.
• 0:48
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• 0:51
  come on, they got a few left, dinner/lunch is almost over here.
• 0:54
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• 0:57
  If you're watching or listening live, really glad that you're here.
• 1:00
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• 1:01
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• 1:03
  got a question for John, throw that into the comment section.
• 1:06
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• 1:09
  up on, on screen, have some fun with that.
• 1:11
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• 1:15
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• 1:26
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• 1:29
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• 1:34
  Very excited for our guest today, John Flannery, sales trainer to the stars.
• 1:39
  We met at a Sales Power, 2.0 or Sales 2.0 Conference in San Francisco years
• 1:44
  ago, and, just really enjoyed learning from you and, just, consider you a friend
• 1:50
  and thank you so much for being here.
• 1:52
  Matt, thank you.
• 1:53
  I believe you started 2008, is that right?
• 1:57
  2018.
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  '18.
• 1:58
  Yeah.
• 1:58
  No, 2000- no, 2008, you're right.
• 1:59
  2008. I've gotta do my decades wrong.
• 1:59
  2008, yeah.
• 1:59
  2008. I was
• 2:04
  2005, and we met at Selling Power in downtown San Francisco, and
• 2:08
  we had a great conversation.
• 2:10
  Our initial conversation was good, and there's been many thereafter.
• 2:14
  Thank you for inviting me on your show.
• 2:17
  Thank you.
• 2:18
  And I, and one of the reason, many reasons I appreciate you is when we
• 2:20
  did our prep call last week for this, I assumed we were gonna be talking
• 2:23
  about, sales technology, sales strategy.
• 2:26
  We immediately just started talking about our kids and families, and
• 2:29
  entrepreneurship, and what being an entrepreneur has allowed for us
• 2:34
  in our lives and in our business.
• 2:35
  And your youngest is just graduating from college.
• 2:40
  My oldest is a junior in high school and is at the beginning of that path.
• 2:44
  And it was fascinating to compare notes, on those stages, but also just
• 2:48
  talk about what being an entrepreneur, doing your own thing has enabled
• 2:54
  for being able to lean in on family.
• 2:55
  Talk a little bit about what you've learned about that over your time.
• 2:59
  It's been 21 years, Matt, in this business.
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  So when I started, Shane was three and Hannah was one, and Hannah just
• 3:07
  graduated from college, as you said.
• 3:09
  So being an entrepreneur at that time meant something very
• 3:12
  different than it does today, right?
• 3:16
  At the time when I started, the kids were young.
• 3:19
  There was no school, no rigor around that I could dive in.
• 3:22
  But in the first couple of years after they got going to school, I really
• 3:26
  had to carve out different times to support my wife, who had the hardest
• 3:31
  job on planet Earth, stay-at-home mom.
• 3:34
  And working part-time.
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  As we get later into our career here, I think the ability to have the flex in
• 3:42
  the schedule to get to college volleyball matches or to graduation we just had, and
• 3:48
  the things that we have, it's a blessing.
• 3:51
  But I'll tell you, that multitasking on the front end of the career
• 3:55
  with small kids… you're smiling because you and your wife, you
• 3:59
  and your wife have dealt with it.
• 4:01
  It's a trade-off.
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  Instead of working for a bigger company where things are more structured and
• 4:05
  formal, I can make my own calendar.
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  And the comment is you only have to work half time.
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  You just decide which 12 hours of the day you wanna work.
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  And that's what it's been.
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  Your choice.
• 4:17
  I wouldn't trade it.
• 4:19
  Yeah, I wouldn't either.
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  How about yourself?
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  Yeah, I wouldn't either.
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  So 2008, it was November 2008.
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  The market had just tanked.
• 4:25
  We were in…the financial markets were in free fall.
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  My wife finally pregnant with our first child, Clara, who's,
• 4:30
  a junior in high school now.
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  And at the time it didn't feel as scary, 'cause I had something lined up, and
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  I thought I could get a couple other prospects to close, and one of them I did.
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  It was just me and a laptop.
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  It was, there was no employees.
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  There was no payroll.
• 4:41
  There was nothing like we have today.
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  But, yeah, it's been a lot of hard work.
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  Martha Stewart was the afternoon keynote yesterday.
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  And the gal that was interviewing her at one point said, "You've just been
• 4:55
  just this rocket ship of success."
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  And Martha immediately interrupted and said, "No, This has been a slog. This
• 5:02
  is still a slog. I love the slog." And I think to realize it and to be
• 5:07
  able to lean into it … knowing that no matter who you see out there, like
• 5:12
  they've been at it for a very long time.
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  There are no overnight successes.
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  And, if you're willing to lean into what is really a slog, it's doing hard work.
• 5:23
  It's, a variation of if you wanna be great at sales, at, in sales,
• 5:27
  you gotta be good at prospecting, you gotta be good at the details.
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  You have to be good at just the daily activity and the regular nos.
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  And you have to just be oblivious or ignorant or whatever to keep
• 5:39
  moving forward for something that you really believe in.
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  And I think whether you're John Flannery or Martha Stewart, like
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  the story's kind of the same.
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  Yeah.
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  Yeah, I would like to say I have her reach.
• 5:51
  I haven't looked at the new-, I haven't looked at the news today, Matt.
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  I do this.
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  I get a feed.
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  I get some feeds on business news, but I don't look at the general news.
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  I'm up at 5:30.
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  Quiet time for 30 minutes, and then I'm here till 5:30, 6:00.
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  I don't do it 70, 80 hours a week like I used to.
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  I now work out, I take care of myself.
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  Different part of my career, right?
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  Totally different.
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  But, the balance thing always comes up.
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  You see that in, in articles and in podcasts and things.
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  I'm not really sure how you do that.
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  I've been doing it a long time.
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  But, I wouldn't trade it for anything.
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  The headaches and the successes that go along the way, the slog is true.
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  Most of what I do I love, some I don't, but that's the part we call work.
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  That's the gist everywhere, right?
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  Like I, so someone told me once, they said like the grass is
• 6:42
  greener on the other side 'cause it's fertilized with BS, right?
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  Like it's not real.
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  It's not what you think it is.
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  And I, even the dream jobs, like I could live my life 100 times over and
• 6:54
  probably not be as lucky as I am right now with my family and my life and my
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  work, and it's not all fun and games.
• 7:00
  It's frustrating.
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  It's stressful.
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  There's a lot of … but it, if you, have a vision for what you want out
• 7:06
  of that and what that's enabling.
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  I think for a long time, like I think and this, I don't know how
• 7:11
  much this resonates with other people listening or watching, like for a long
• 7:13
  time, just the, slog was the slog.
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  There was … I was just like, "I have to, I don't know where this is going.
• 7:19
  I just know I'm gonna work hard." I'm gonna continue trying to move up the
• 7:22
  chain a little bit, continue to try to make a little more money, find the right
• 7:25
  place for me and the right job for me.
• 7:27
  And then that was there was no end in sight.
• 7:30
  Kind of like when you're young, you're like, I'm never gonna die.
• 7:31
  This is gonna continue." And a certain point you're like, what
• 7:35
  am I doing this for?" And it doesn't mean you stop working.
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  It doesn't mean you get lazy.
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  But it means you start to put things in context.
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  You put the things that are most important to you in context, and everyone may have
• 7:44
  a different version of what that is.
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  For me, it, it's centered around family and faith.
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  So understanding what's most important to you and then aligning the work and in some
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  cases the hard work, the continued slog in support of that, it makes it worthwhile.
• 8:02
  I agree.
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  I would say family, autonomy is very important to me.
• 8:07
  I don't have to work with a particular prospect, I don't have to do something
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  at a particular time of the day, but the accountability is still
• 8:15
  full, and I thoroughly enjoy it.
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  It's given me the ability to match up with people like you,
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  other people I wanna work with.
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  It's great.
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  That's fun.
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  So let's pivot here.
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  We've got on Sales Pipeline Radio today John Flannery.
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  He is a longtime sales trainer, sales expert, author, blogger,
• 8:33
  producer, songwriter, all the things.
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  And, I'm curious, you and I have both been doing this a long time,
• 8:39
  and, the, there's a focus on, for me it's a focus on pipeline.
• 8:43
  For you, it's a focus on sales excellence.
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  But the "how to go about that" has changed significantly for both of
• 8:50
  us, you know, in the last 18 years.
• 8:52
  What is relevant right now?
• 8:54
  If you, when you're in front of sales leaders, helping them design the sales
• 8:58
  systems that are gonna be successful rest of this year and beyond, what
• 9:02
  are you prioritizing for them?
• 9:03
  Yeah.
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  it- the topic hasn't changed.
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  The content within the- within the topic has.
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  It's buying.
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  How are people buying?
• 9:15
  Improving your selling results doesn't mean you refine your pitch, you get your
• 9:19
  elevator pitch, you learn what to say in the first 13 seconds of a phone call,
• 9:24
  although we work on all those things.
• 9:26
  It's understanding buying, and you can't talk about buying and you can't
• 9:30
  talk about business with those two letters popping up everywhere, AI.
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  We know what they are.
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  But it's really making sure that sales leaders are helping their
• 9:40
  sellers to understand what is going on in the buying side.
• 9:44
  And last year, Matt, in the middle of the year, was a funky time in business.
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  I'm talking great recession, I'm talking about COVID, I'm talking about all
• 9:53
  sorts of things where there was such great uncertainty in the market into
• 9:58
  what policy was gonna unpack business for the next three to six months.
• 10:02
  I'm talking about tariffs and just, general uncertainty.
• 10:06
  We had to refresh again.
• 10:08
  The medium that we use is sales process.
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  But sales process is based on buying.
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  It's based on buying.
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  So that's the topic that keeps coming up time and time again, but what's
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  within that topic is the key part we speak to sales leaders about.
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  I like that framing, and I've heard a lot of people, pivot the way
• 10:29
  they talk from selling to buying.
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  And I think it's a really valuable frame.
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  Because if you just focus on the way you want to sell, the way your sales
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  process was set up when you sold before.
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  I have a good friend who, I worked with him in a company that was selling to
• 10:46
  real estate agents, and he had come from a long, successful career at IBM, and
• 10:51
  he was bringing an IBM sales process to residential real estate agents,
• 10:55
  where you could have a one-call close.
• 10:58
  There were things that those processes had in common, but the buying
• 11:02
  process was radically different.
• 11:04
  And so if we're able to orient to who the buyer is and how they
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  buy, you're gonna reduce the friction between you and the buyer.
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  You're gonna increase your credibility with the buyer,
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  and just generally be more successful.
• 11:17
  So I think, it's a really valuable frame to think about buying versus selling.
• 11:22
  Yeah, and on the title of this, conversation we're having is The
• 11:27
  Tactical Execution of Commercial Strategy, which is a hoity-toity way of
• 11:31
  saying, how do we have one conversation at a time with the key players?
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  You said IBM is here.
• 11:39
  Residential real estate is mom-and-pop over here, right?
• 11:42
  It's a very different thing.
• 11:44
  How do we have targeted conversations that make sure we understand what's
• 11:47
  important to them, even if they don't know what they're looking for?
• 11:51
  Most people are look… and how do we make sure that we are tracking moving forward?
• 11:57
  That has not changed in my 39 years of sales.
• 12:01
  The conditions around that have changed radically.
• 12:04
  I got hired, the stock market went down like 500 points in October of 1987.
• 12:10
  500 points today doesn't even make the news, right?
• 12:15
  So it's the conditions, and making sure that the leaders understand.
• 12:20
  They all say they have commercial strategy, Matt.
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  They all say they have it, but then when you walk out of a sales kickoff
• 12:27
  meeting, you've been to dozens, so have I. How are we going to execute?
• 12:31
  And in order to execute, we gotta understand buying.
• 12:35
  That's the part where we start and we build around, and if that doesn't reflect
• 12:40
  in your pipeline, just to tie thematically into everything we're doing here on Sales
• 12:44
  Pipeline Radio, you're gonna have gaps.
• 12:46
  And you've seen those gaps that are a mile wide and some that are tighter.
• 12:51
  But that's really the essence of the pull-through in what we do.
• 12:55
  I know your marketing engine, 'cause you have helped us with opportunity
• 13:00
  development in the pipeline.
• 13:02
  When we engage with Heinz, we intersect in there.
• 13:07
  Yeah, I think it's important to make sure that you've got alignment.
• 13:11
  So there's, jazz hands alignment at sales kickoff, right?
• 13:15
  Where the leaders get up on stage and say, "We're all on one team. We all believe
• 13:18
  in the same thing." And then there's operational alignment on Thursday morning.
• 13:22
  Like, how does the team actually operate?
• 13:24
  And, I think the, increased accelerated use of tools, and I'll say we've
• 13:29
  had tools in sales forever, like AI is just another form of that.
• 13:33
  But if we expect these tools to be successful, we have
• 13:36
  to tell them what to do.
• 13:38
  And I think what we're finding in a lot of organizations is there is a
• 13:41
  lack of defined workflow and process,
• 13:44
  that is fundamentally creating the inconsistent we see, inconsistencies
• 13:49
  we see from humans executing.
• 13:50
  And this isn't just sales.
• 13:51
  This is marketing, CS, this is all departments.
• 13:54
  If you're just relying on humans and institutional knowledge to do this, that
• 13:58
  bubblegum and Scotch tape, you know, application might work in the past.
• 14:02
  But if you now expect certain components of that to be autonomous, if you haven't
• 14:06
  developed a work- not just the workflow for that component, but the integration
• 14:10
  in, during, and out in a complex- … increasingly complex buying motion.
• 14:15
  I've never been a big, process is boring to me, but process
• 14:19
  is essential to unlocking this.
• 14:21
  Here comes the, we're gonna get the voice from heaven again telling us
• 14:25
  we're late for our flight to Cleveland.
• 14:28
  I'd like the Cobb salad.
• 14:30
  Yeah, I think they're out.
• 14:31
  If you want the quinoa
• 14:35
  power bowl, I think they're almost out of that.
• 14:38
  They're definitely out of the hot chicken sandwich.
• 14:40
  I don't recommend the hot honey chicken sandwich.
• 14:42
  It was very dry.
• 14:43
  Don't get… it's a conference center, right?
• 14:44
  They had to make 5,000 of these.
• 14:46
  What are you gonna do?
• 14:47
  It's McCormick.
• 14:47
  It's huge.
• 14:48
  It's enormous.
• 14:49
  We're only in, the west part of it.
• 14:51
  There's a bigger part over across the train tracks.
• 14:53
  It's crazy over there.
• 14:55
  Let alone, they built this thing nowhere near a hotel, so it's
• 14:58
  out in the middle of nowhere.
• 14:59
  So like the, the taxi and the Uber line was ridiculous last night.
• 15:04
  Yeah, you're on the pier.
• 15:05
  You're out there on the lake.
• 15:07
  Way out there.
• 15:08
  Matt, you said jazz hands at the kickoff meeting.
• 15:12
  Yes, and how many slides do you need- … to express your commercial strategy?
• 15:18
  And I went to a kickoff meeting this year in Houston, and they had one slide
• 15:22
  to explain the commercial strategy.
• 15:24
  It just warmed my heart.
• 15:26
  Because when you do that, you have to make decisions.
• 15:28
  You have to eliminate things you're not gonna do.
• 15:31
  And then say, and they call it strategy on a page, SOAP.
• 15:34
  Not the best acronym, but it worked.
• 15:37
  And then, then what, right?
• 15:40
  So then when they walk out the door, what are the individuals in customer-facing
• 15:45
  roles doing on a regular basis?
• 15:47
  You don't, not everybody touches the customer at the same time
• 15:50
  going from lead to revenue.
• 15:52
  But what does that look like?
• 15:54
  And if that's not clear, you're gonna have gaps.
• 15:57
  And if it ever works 100% of the way we roll it out, Matt, you and
• 16:01
  I should retire and collect royalty checks, so somewhere in between.
• 16:06
  I'm all for royalty checks.
• 16:07
  That sounds great.
• 16:08
  And, the problem is, even if you define something, the world, your
• 16:11
  environment, your culture, your competitive environment, your industry
• 16:15
  will continue to change, and so you need to continue to adopt that,
• 16:19
  adapt that, adapt to that, I can say, like I can say complete sentences.
• 16:25
  I want to do a shout-out to, Dan Albaum, to Marchello, who are here live watching.
• 16:30
  Looks like both of you coming in from, actually, Dan's coming in from
• 16:32
  YouTube, Marchello here from LinkedIn.
• 16:34
  Thank you both for your comments, in today's episode.
• 16:39
  Yeah, it seems, I literally just before this session finished
• 16:44
  an article, for Substack.
• 16:46
  It's publishing Saturday morning around the future of the BDR function.
• 16:49
  And I was told three years ago that BDRs were going away, that by now they would
• 16:53
  be literally extinct, and it almost seems like the opposite has happened.
• 16:57
  58% of companies that were surveyed recently said they're
• 16:59
  increasing their BDR investments.
• 17:02
  It's just gonna be a, depending on your go-to-market motions,
• 17:04
  it's gonna be, you're gonna have to combine agents and humans and
• 17:08
  robots together in a compelling way.
• 17:12
  But I think that unless it's just robots selling to robots entirely,
• 17:15
  like our lizard brains, especially with high trust consideration
• 17:19
  purchases, need to talk to a human.
• 17:23
  I'm quoting a magazine that one of our customers is in this month.
• 17:27
  It's called Multilingual Magazine.
• 17:30
  It's commercial translations.
• 17:32
  And it talks about, and in their business, AI is real and impactful,
• 17:37
  but it reflects just what you said.
• 17:39
  It says, "Performance comes from judgment, adaptability, and trust in people."
• 17:45
  So if it's robot to robot in Amazon because I need something for the garden,
• 17:51
  or if it's a multinational rollout of 12 different languages for a medical device
• 17:59
  release, they're gonna put something in your heart, Matt, to make you live longer.
• 18:03
  You better get that right.
• 18:06
  And that's a human conversation, right?
• 18:07
  So all this talk of, "I replaced my BDRs with $90 a month of bots," I don't buy it.
• 18:15
  I think it depends on the sale that you're talking about, your
• 18:19
  familiarity with the customer, and do we have to connect at some level?
• 18:24
  I agree with you.
• 18:25
  There isn't one simple answer.
• 18:26
  We want one simple answer and, everyone's got a different go-to-market
• 18:30
  motion, a different sales cycle.
• 18:32
  The time between sales is important, whether it's inbound or outbound,
• 18:36
  whether it's direct or channel.
• 18:37
  It's all gonna impact your motion.
• 18:39
  And even within one organization, you may have different go-to-market motions for
• 18:43
  different segments of your market as well.
• 18:44
  So, we, for as long as I've been doing this, like everybody wants the
• 18:48
  easy button, and, I wish it existed.
• 18:50
  And if we invent that, John, I tell you, the royalties checks are gonna be amazing.
• 18:54
  Yes.
• 18:55
  We'll be offshore of Cardiff.
• 18:57
  They'll bring us the surf and turf burritos to the yacht.
• 19:00
  Just gonna press a button and say, "Juanitas, I need some more
• 19:02
  chicken noodle soup, please."
• 19:05
  It's nowhere near, it's, the similar marketing that we saw five years
• 19:09
  ago that says cold calling is dead.
• 19:11
  Which it's not.
• 19:13
  There's different ways to make it successful.
• 19:15
  So there's not one size fits all in terms of any type of sale.
• 19:19
  I had somebody say to me at a music festival this weekend, "Sales is sales,"
• 19:23
  and I completely disagree with that.
• 19:26
  It's not.
• 19:26
  The jewelry booth at the music festival is entirely different than
• 19:33
  what salesforce.com is doing or what some of our high-end enterprise
• 19:37
  selling organizations are doing.
• 19:39
  Or you just go, you're like, "Hey, a ring's a ring."
• 19:41
  They're all the same rings and everyone just wears the same
• 19:43
  ring, so a sale's a sale, right?
• 19:44
  A ring's a ring.
• 19:45
  Just buy whichever, doesn't matter.
• 19:47
  Not true.
• 19:48
  Not true.
• 19:49
  All right.
• 19:49
  We are out of time.
• 19:51
  They're probably gonna kick us out here 'cause they're having
• 19:53
  lunch, and I don't know what else they're gonna do in this room.
• 19:54
  But, this has been fun, John.
• 19:56
  Thank you so much for your time.
• 19:57
  Thank you for your insights.
• 19:58
  Thank you, Dan and Marchello, for being here.
• 20:00
  For people who wanna learn more about you, they wanna learn
• 20:02
  more about you and continue to follow you, where should they go?
• 20:05
  They can go to www.drive-revenue.com.
• 20:10
  It's Flannery Sales Systems, or you can just go to LinkedIn and
• 20:13
  find John E. Flannery on there.
• 20:16
  Matt, thank you so much for the time.
• 20:18
  Pleasure to know you.
• 20:19
  I'll see you within a month when you're down here with your family, right?
• 20:22
  Yeah, we will be down for our annual Kick It At The Beach.
• 20:25
  It's basically beach, tacos, naps, repeat for two weeks, and I cannot-
• 20:29
  Good for you.
• 20:29
  …Wait.
• 20:29
  It's gonna be awesome.
• 20:29
  I will reach out to you in advance and come up for a brief visit so
• 20:34
  I don't interrupt the family time.
• 20:35
  That'd be awesome.
• 20:35
  But thank you.
• 20:37
  Thank you, and thank you everyone for watching and listening.
• 20:39
  Thanks for joining another episode of Sales Pipeline Radio.
• 20:41
  We'll be back next week.
• 20:42
  More guests, more insights.
• 20:43
  We'll see you then.
• 20:43
  Take care.
• 20:44
  Thanks, Matt.