Latest / Cyber Go-To-Market Talk: The Cybersecurity Podcast About Cyber Sales, Marketing & Revenue Growth / How to Beat “Do Nothing” in Cyber Sales: Ken Powell

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How to Beat “Do Nothing” in Cyber Sales: Ken Powell · Cyber Go-To-Market Talk: The Cybersecurity Podcast About Cyber Sales, Marketing & Revenue Growth

0:32
SPEAKER_00: Greek philosopher Aristotle apparently said, we are what we repeatedly do.
0:36
SPEAKER_00: Excellence then is not an act, but a habit.
0:40
SPEAKER_00: And never is this more true than in sales.
0:42
SPEAKER_00: A lot of our success comes from executing the fundamentals really, really well.
0:46
SPEAKER_00: But if we're honest, we sometimes let those fundamentals slide.
0:50
SPEAKER_00: Our habits become former habits.
0:52
SPEAKER_00: Ken Pyle is a longtime sales leader at companies like Oracle and SAP, and also in cyber with McAfee back in the day.
1:00
SPEAKER_00: And that's where our paths crossed many years ago.
1:03
SPEAKER_00: He believes so much in this principle around the fundamentals that he's written a book, Raise the Bar, Step Up the Habits of Great Sales Athletes.
1:13
SPEAKER_00: And that's what we talk about in this episode.
1:15
SPEAKER_00: And we cover a lot of ground, including the question he asks in every deal review and what he says if you can't answer it.
1:23
SPEAKER_00: Why Bent shouldn't be consigned to the sales trash heap like so many of the LinkedIn crowd say it should, the$4 million committed deal that he cut to$200K, and the question he put to the rep that enabled them to get it back on track.
1:38
SPEAKER_00: The one-page account plan question that took him and a senior seller two days to answer, but knowing the answer paid off with revenue.
1:48
SPEAKER_00: There's those things a lot more to get from this conversation and from his book.
1:52
SPEAKER_00: Here's Ken.
2:03
SPEAKER_00: Well, Ken.
2:04
SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the podcast.
2:05
SPEAKER_00: Good to be here, Andrew.
2:07
SPEAKER_00: I'm looking forward to this.
2:08
SPEAKER_00: Uh we actually go way back without necessarily knowing we go way back, so it's kind of interesting story there.
2:14
SPEAKER_00: And you're a wily grizzled veteran of the high-tech sales world and learn a few things along the way that we're going to drag out of you today, Ken.
2:23
SPEAKER_00: So I'm looking forward to the chat that we're going to have.
2:26
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, thank you so much.
2:27
SPEAKER_00: But first of all, Ken, we get to play the Cyber Go to Market Talk podcast, spin the wheel game.
2:34
SPEAKER_00: I think you're probably, I don't know, seventh or eighth person to do this.
2:37
SPEAKER_00: For those that are on audio only rather than the video, we're going to spin the wheels.
2:41
SPEAKER_00: Got five subject areas.
2:43
SPEAKER_00: One is the cyber donut hot seat, one is it's personal, another is visionary or smoking crack, differentiation teardown, and overrated or underrated.
2:54
SPEAKER_00: So you're ready for me to spin, Ken?
2:56
SPEAKER_01: Let's do it.
2:58
SPEAKER_00: All right.
3:03
SPEAKER_00: All right.
3:03
SPEAKER_00: We landed on overrated or underrated.
3:07
SPEAKER_00: So we're going to come back at the end of the episode.
3:09
SPEAKER_00: I've got three things to say to you.
3:11
SPEAKER_00: And you have to tell me whether you think they are overrated or underrated in go to market today.
3:16
SPEAKER_00: But let's get on with the episode.
3:19
SPEAKER_00: So, Ken, when I look at your LinkedIn profile, something stood out to me.
3:23
SPEAKER_00: And that is you say that 69% of sellers miss quota right now, and 60% of deals are lost to do nothing.
3:33
SPEAKER_00: Now, most of those are kind of startling stats and you know food for thought.
3:37
SPEAKER_00: Which do you think is the most problematical, though?
3:40
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, they both concern me.
3:42
SPEAKER_01: The one that really jumped out at me, and it and it the stats haven't changed much.
3:47
SPEAKER_01: It goes back 15 years, was how many missed quota?
3:52
SPEAKER_01: And I think a lot of that had to do at the time I was at SAP, and it had a lot to do with what I call saturation coverage.
4:00
SPEAKER_01: And so as you're a sales leader, you think about why do people, why are we missing our number?
4:05
SPEAKER_01: And so you play around with the bell curve of performance of sellers, where, you know, you've got the classic bell curve and you're trying to shift everything to the right.
4:14
SPEAKER_01: And that's the whole idea of how do you get sellers to raise their bar and step up?
4:19
SPEAKER_01: Or are the territories too thaw, too thin?
4:22
SPEAKER_01: Do we have too many sellers out there?
4:25
SPEAKER_01: And so you're you're trying to figure this piece out.
4:27
SPEAKER_01: But I was staggered by how many people or how many sellers miss their number.
4:32
SPEAKER_01: The second one, which is funny, which is funny, maybe that's the wrong word, but the the do nothing.
4:40
SPEAKER_01: And it there's a couple of reasons why it points to that.
4:44
SPEAKER_01: One is, you could argue, your sellers are horrible at qualifying, right?
4:48
SPEAKER_01: So the do nothing is the deal wasn't real to begin with.
4:51
SPEAKER_01: So that's a whole other analysis of your pipeline.
4:54
SPEAKER_01: The second one is that the customer, well, this does go to qualification, but the customers themselves have done a tremendous, and this is a pertinent today, have done a tremendous amount of due diligence without you in the room.
5:10
SPEAKER_01: And decisions have been formed, opinions have been formed without you even being at the table.
5:16
SPEAKER_01: And you could have just been column fodder.
5:18
SPEAKER_01: So as a sales leader, you're always looking at that as why.
5:23
SPEAKER_01: So these are the two stats I'd like to put up there.
5:25
SPEAKER_01: The third stat that I didn't put up there, but the one that I get hit with the most is my people are horrible at forecasting.
5:33
SPEAKER_01: And as if you're a sales leader, you know, this is the one that drives me nuts is hey, we just need to clean out our pipeline beginning of every quarter, beginning of every year.
5:41
SPEAKER_01: Clean the pipeline should not be in your vernacular.
5:45
SPEAKER_01: There's there's purging a pipeline.
5:47
SPEAKER_01: No.
5:48
SPEAKER_01: That's that's a symptom of something that's broken from the very beginning.
5:52
SPEAKER_01: So, anyway, the whole forecasting piece, but the real stats are do nothing and missing the number.
5:59
SPEAKER_00: I think that purging the pipeline, though.
6:00
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it happens again and again.
6:02
SPEAKER_00: I I I work with my clients, I get I'm on their slack sometimes, and I see it like, okay, guys, yeah, we closed the quarter two days ago, clean up your Q3 pipeline now, and let's look at the forecast for the quarter, all right?
6:14
SPEAKER_00: So, so what's going on there?
6:15
SPEAKER_00: That's the the real problem under underlying all that.
6:19
SPEAKER_01: First of all, if you have that as a problem and you're a sales leader, you've got to take a step back and say, I need some help here.
6:26
SPEAKER_01: It is a symptom.
6:28
SPEAKER_01: And by the way, this is not a modern problem.
6:30
SPEAKER_01: This has gone back to my very first leadership when I was, when I got my first regional manager job.
6:38
SPEAKER_01: Um, so this is a this has been going on for a long time.
6:41
SPEAKER_01: The whole idea of cleansing a pipeline, cleaning out a forecast, getting the junk in, why is it in there in the first place?
6:49
SPEAKER_01: Right?
6:49
SPEAKER_01: Why is it in there in the first place?
6:51
SPEAKER_01: So every time I work with one of my clients that has that issue, we're gonna go, why is it in there in the first place?
6:59
SPEAKER_01: And then we do some digging to find out.
7:02
SPEAKER_01: But I'll say it really comes back to everything that I highlighted in my book, which is raise the bar, step up, and I've I got it, the habits of great sales athletes.
7:12
SPEAKER_01: I wrote this because the answer to that question is all there.
7:16
SPEAKER_01: It's it's really foundational disciplines, but I will get to it.
7:19
SPEAKER_01: It is around the qualification and how you make qualification of any opportunity simple.
7:26
SPEAKER_01: You know, and you so how important this is, if you take a look at the landscape of qualification methodologies that are out there, there's a ton of them.
7:35
SPEAKER_01: And they're all good, they all do their job.
7:38
SPEAKER_01: But I prescribed to something that was extremely simple that IBM came up with in the 60s, if not before, called Bant.
7:45
SPEAKER_01: Why do I like it?
7:46
SPEAKER_01: It was four letters, and salespeople could remember it.
7:49
SPEAKER_01: You know, it was budget authority, need, and timing.
7:51
SPEAKER_01: I've used them all.
7:53
SPEAKER_01: You know, I was, I've worked with somebody who used Challenger.
7:56
SPEAKER_01: I worked with Medic, MeditPick, and all the others.
7:58
SPEAKER_01: I was at Oracle.
8:00
SPEAKER_01: We had we had an extremely thorough qualification process.
8:03
SPEAKER_01: But what I liked about taking ban is a seller can actually think about it, and I just modernized it instead of just budget, it's you know, budget and business case, authority, it's authority and alignment.
8:14
SPEAKER_01: Because we all know in complex B2B sales, there are a lot of people involved that can influence your deal, especially today.
8:21
SPEAKER_01: Right.
8:22
SPEAKER_01: So the whole idea is who are the people?
8:24
SPEAKER_01: Do you know your champion, the person that's going to put their career on the line, not a coach, a champion?
8:29
SPEAKER_01: And who are the influencers out there that could kill your deal, the silent people that you don't even know about?
8:34
SPEAKER_01: I'd been one of those before.
8:36
SPEAKER_01: And I realized the seller just didn't know who they were selling to.
8:39
SPEAKER_01: At any rate, but funded, there are fundamentals to answering that question.
8:45
SPEAKER_01: If you can get to the fundamentals, really, I would say there's probably four you have to do of the seven I put in here.
8:53
SPEAKER_01: You will never go through that exercise of cleansing a pipeline.
8:56
SPEAKER_01: You're asking the questions is what deals in here are real?
9:00
SPEAKER_01: And if you ask that question, I'm going to ask you, how have you qualified it?
9:04
SPEAKER_01: What do you determine?
9:05
SPEAKER_01: What are the attributes of real in your world?
9:09
SPEAKER_00: You know, I gotta admit, when I when I started reading your book, I kind of fell into the trap, which is very common these days.
9:14
SPEAKER_00: Everyone just maligns Bent, right?
9:16
SPEAKER_00: It's like, oh my God, I can't believe you uttered the word or the acronym or whatever, like that, right?
9:22
SPEAKER_00: They they malign all the way down.
9:24
SPEAKER_00: And then I realized as I was going through it that you're you're you're kind of subscribing to the what you call the modern version of Bent, right?
9:30
SPEAKER_00: It's like let's go a little bit deeper.
9:32
SPEAKER_00: I'll tell you what I found is that I think people use it wrong, right?
9:35
SPEAKER_00: And the classic example I see is, you know, there's some sort of handover of a of a lead or an opportunity to the seller, right?
9:44
SPEAKER_00: And the thing is, well, how qualified is it?
9:47
SPEAKER_00: And they throw out, well, is Bent qualified?
9:49
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, okay, so we haven't really talked to these people very much already, but we've already got the budget and the authority figured out, and that's where we're at.
9:56
SPEAKER_00: That's just not the way the world is these days.
9:58
SPEAKER_00: It's such an early part of a deal.
9:59
SPEAKER_00: It's the you know, budgets are kind of, you know, there's a lot of slush buns digging around and people misallocate them all around, right?
10:06
SPEAKER_00: If we waited for an SDR or someone to qualify a budget, we'd never have a deal that would ever get passed over, right?
10:11
SPEAKER_00: It's not going to work.
10:12
SPEAKER_00: So I was kind of encouraged that you you went a little deeper into you know modern Bent.
10:16
SPEAKER_01: Well, the the the ticket is is the grading.
10:19
SPEAKER_01: So, you know, in the book I outlined how you grade this.
10:21
SPEAKER_01: And and they're they're basically, I came up with 25 key questions.
10:25
SPEAKER_01: So when I work with a client, I work with sales, I said, uh, here are questions that you're going to want to know the answers to, and under each pillar, right?
10:33
SPEAKER_01: And then so in the book, I break it out and how is it modernized?
10:37
SPEAKER_01: But I will tell you, if you if you grade your opportunities, what I'm seeing is they fall short in two of the pillars, budget and timing.
10:46
SPEAKER_01: So I would argue that, at least for my clients, they're big companies, they fail.
10:52
SPEAKER_01: Or a lot of people fall short.
10:54
SPEAKER_01: Failure is probably the wrong word, on budget qualification and timing.
11:00
SPEAKER_01: So the qualification piece is important because if you are doing a prep prepping for a call, which by the way, going back to your or my old employer, was the first thing I did was I wanted everybody to plan before they picked up the phone or before they had a meeting.
11:17
SPEAKER_01: Plan your call and then call your plan.
11:20
SPEAKER_01: What are you trying to get out of it?
11:21
SPEAKER_01: Who are you meeting with?
11:22
SPEAKER_01: What are they going to get out of it?
11:23
SPEAKER_01: And so if you think about that, what better thing to reference is a qualification criteria, right?
11:31
SPEAKER_01: So using your own style technique, you do want to find out hey, for a deal of this complexity that's of this important to your company, how do you how does something like this go through your system?
11:41
SPEAKER_01: I know my company, it's really complex.
11:44
SPEAKER_01: And frankly, I maybe do one business case, two business cases, my career.
11:49
SPEAKER_01: Think about that.
11:49
SPEAKER_01: As a sales leader, how many CRMs have you had to justify?
11:53
SPEAKER_01: Right?
11:54
SPEAKER_01: And and it's I've I think honestly has been two.
11:57
SPEAKER_01: And I've had a long career.
11:59
SPEAKER_01: So the point is, on your client side, you have to realize that your clients, your champion, is in the same boat.
12:07
SPEAKER_01: They rarely build a business case.
12:10
SPEAKER_01: Just know that.
12:11
SPEAKER_01: So I found that when I say, hey, listen, we do this all the time.
12:16
SPEAKER_01: I don't care what company you work for, we do this all the time for our clients.
12:19
SPEAKER_01: Let me do it for you.
12:20
SPEAKER_01: As a matter of fact, I'm gonna give you our business case model, our variable definitions, you know, our assumptions.
12:28
SPEAKER_01: I'll give it to you an Excel spreadsheet.
12:30
SPEAKER_01: Here's what's really important.
12:31
SPEAKER_01: We'll do the work because we do these all the time.
12:33
SPEAKER_01: But then you go put it in your format.
12:36
SPEAKER_01: I've never had a client turn that down.
12:38
SPEAKER_01: They said, Really?
12:39
SPEAKER_01: That's awesome.
12:39
SPEAKER_01: You let me do that.
12:40
SPEAKER_01: And they say, Yes.
12:41
SPEAKER_01: So the point is that when you're looking at call planning, qualification questions are really important.
12:49
SPEAKER_01: And that I map that, so I connect those two.
12:52
SPEAKER_01: I said, if you're trying to think about why you're meeting with Andrew, it's not about, hey, let's catch up and grab a cup of coffee, you know, talking about the ballgame that happened.
13:02
SPEAKER_01: It's really, I'm not gonna waste your time.
13:04
SPEAKER_01: I will send you an agenda.
13:06
SPEAKER_01: Here's what I think would be very productive.
13:08
SPEAKER_01: I made everybody, I this is back in the day, I printed out tablets.
13:14
SPEAKER_01: Went to a place and published tablets with one page call plan.
13:18
SPEAKER_01: I said, consider this a strategic doodle pad.
13:22
SPEAKER_01: I don't care.
13:22
SPEAKER_01: Just look at it before you pick up the phone.
13:25
SPEAKER_01: And that created what?
13:26
SPEAKER_01: A little bit of a discipline, because I asked them to do it.
13:29
SPEAKER_01: And then before that, it started to become habitual.
13:32
SPEAKER_01: And that's how we were able to transform that sales force from a transactional sales force into an enterprise player, which was the ambition of the CEO.
13:41
SPEAKER_01: So just fundamental disciplines is what I'm recommending.
13:45
SPEAKER_01: Use that football metaphor, blocking and tackling.
13:47
SPEAKER_01: That's all I wrote about in this book.
13:50
SPEAKER_01: It's free.
13:50
SPEAKER_01: Take it.
13:51
SPEAKER_01: But I guarantee you, if we if we do these as professional sellers and you're committed to raising your bar, this is what's really important.
13:59
SPEAKER_01: You're committed to becoming better.
14:02
SPEAKER_01: Do this, and you will become the best you can be.
14:05
SPEAKER_01: You may not be great, you can always ask us how how good can I be?
14:10
SPEAKER_01: And that's frankly what I'm bringing today at this point in my career.
14:15
SPEAKER_01: That's my ambition.
14:16
SPEAKER_01: It drives me nuts, Andrew, that there's no professional sales education you get in university.
14:22
SPEAKER_01: There's certification classes, but I think it's beholden to those of us that have spent a career here to come back in some ways pay it forward.
14:30
SPEAKER_01: That's the reason I wrote these books.
14:32
SPEAKER_00: You know, you brought something there that was interesting for me, which is, you know, I work with predominantly startups.
14:38
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, almost by definition, they're a bit loose, right?
14:42
SPEAKER_00: It's this is not the they've spent six months, you know, honing the process and getting the gates between different things and talking about, you know, they're not there yet, right?
14:52
SPEAKER_00: So I think it's it's often an environment where everything's loose, right?
14:56
SPEAKER_00: The call planning doesn't quite happen, the forecasting's a little bit by gut feel, the, you know, pipeline generation, the tertiary allocation, you know, it's just it's just the nature of where they are.
15:06
SPEAKER_00: But what I see happen is that when the leader tries to create a little bit of rigor around certain aspects, often they struggle to get the buy-in of the sales team.
15:17
SPEAKER_00: It's kind of an interesting dynamic.
15:19
SPEAKER_00: And I'm wondering, you know, you're talking about these habits, right?
15:22
SPEAKER_00: Any tips for a leader who's like, okay, you know, we've been doing well, guys, but now we need to tighten up.
15:28
SPEAKER_00: Let's start introducing some rigor and some habits.
15:30
SPEAKER_00: Any tip for that sales leader about how to get the buy-in and how to get things moving?
15:34
SPEAKER_01: You know, in I won't mention the date, but a long time ago before the internet bubble, I started a company that's sole purpose was just what you said.
15:43
SPEAKER_01: From my opinion, and I've gone through sales training since the start.
15:47
SPEAKER_01: Any type of sales training that our companies that I work for invested in, I went in with an open mind.
15:52
SPEAKER_01: I wanted to learn something.
15:54
SPEAKER_01: And I would take what I thought was good and use it.
15:58
SPEAKER_01: But would I use the whole thing?
15:59
SPEAKER_01: Never.
16:00
SPEAKER_01: And this is the interesting, there, there's a couple things at play here.
16:03
SPEAKER_01: It's the ego of the seller.
16:05
SPEAKER_01: And then, but but number two is that not everything that we've educated our sellers on, trained them and coached them on is all about them.
16:13
SPEAKER_01: So as a seller, I'm all about me.
16:17
SPEAKER_01: I'm all about being successful in my role.
16:20
SPEAKER_01: And anything you ask me to do, I'm going to challenge you, Andrew, say, I get what you're saying, but how does that raise my bar?
16:27
SPEAKER_01: How does that make me better?
16:28
SPEAKER_01: And so my entire philosophy as a sales leader, and I would tell my sellers this I said, whatever I'm asking you to do, here's my guarantee, is going to raise your bar and it's going to make you be all you can be if you step up.
16:40
SPEAKER_01: Do you want to be the best you can be?
16:42
SPEAKER_01: And if I get the heads nod, I said, then this is about trust.
16:46
SPEAKER_01: I trust you, you trust me.
16:47
SPEAKER_01: And number two, it's also about input that if you think something is stupid, if you think something is not helping you, I want to hear about it.
16:56
SPEAKER_01: I'm not going to shut it down.
16:58
SPEAKER_01: I want to hear about it.
16:59
SPEAKER_01: I've gone to very large companies in the past that had disciplines I thought were a waste of time.
17:04
SPEAKER_01: There's two ways you handle it.
17:06
SPEAKER_01: One is you just ignore it.
17:07
SPEAKER_01: What are you going to do?
17:08
SPEAKER_01: Fire me?
17:08
SPEAKER_01: I'm your best performing rep.
17:10
SPEAKER_01: Or you go back and say, I don't get it, how this makes me a better seller.
17:14
SPEAKER_01: I get it how it feeds marketing what they want.
17:17
SPEAKER_01: Now you're starting to involve the entire life cycle.
17:20
SPEAKER_01: You had mentioned something earlier about a lead coming in.
17:24
SPEAKER_01: And I would go to Mark and say, I don't want a lead.
17:26
SPEAKER_01: I want a qualified opportunity.
17:29
SPEAKER_01: Oh, I'll define that for you.
17:31
SPEAKER_01: A qualified opportunity is a business that's going to do something with a solution like ours, regardless of us, on or before a specific date.
17:39
SPEAKER_01: How's that for a definition?
17:41
SPEAKER_01: And scratch your head, you know, going, wait a minute, that's that's a mighty big, you know, order.
17:46
SPEAKER_01: I said, well, if it's a lot of work.
17:48
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, if I don't want it.
17:50
SPEAKER_01: But here's the challenge having run marketing as well is like you do want to tag stuff because the campaign was the campaign successful.
17:57
SPEAKER_01: You're asking a seller now to do things that's not helping them become all they can be.
18:03
SPEAKER_01: That's a no-no.
18:05
SPEAKER_01: So in the whole idea of how you go from where you're at today to a contract sign and a successful customer transition are a lot of steps.
18:14
SPEAKER_01: And if you think, I want you to take a step back as anybody who's involved in a larger company or even a startup, you've got to ask that question.
18:22
SPEAKER_01: I need my sellers to be successful.
18:24
SPEAKER_01: I want to remove hurdles that impede that success.
18:29
SPEAKER_01: Now, the trust piece, that your sellers are self-starters and that they actually are running as fast as they can, right, in the right direction.
18:39
SPEAKER_01: But that's the trust.
18:40
SPEAKER_01: Where the trust breaks down is sellers that aren't making their number.
18:43
SPEAKER_01: When they're not making their numbers, what are you doing?
18:45
SPEAKER_01: Do you have another job?
18:47
SPEAKER_01: You know, there's all those distrust that happens between, let's say, other parts of a company and sales organizations.
18:55
SPEAKER_01: So a sales leader has got all of these motions that you have to make sure, and emotions that you have to keep under control.
19:03
SPEAKER_01: So I come down to it is I'm going to only ask you that to do the things that are going to make you better.
19:09
SPEAKER_01: Here's what they are.
19:10
SPEAKER_01: And if you believe it, and I'm going to say it, you will achieve it.
19:14
SPEAKER_01: And a lot of it has to do with maybe product.
19:16
SPEAKER_01: I've worked with clients, I've actually worked, took over a sales organization that didn't believe their product was market leader, that didn't believe that they're that they were where they needed to be to win business.
19:27
SPEAKER_01: It was the most apathetic sales organization I ever came into.
19:31
SPEAKER_01: My first sales kickoff was the theme, believe it, achieve it.
19:35
SPEAKER_01: That was the theme.
19:36
SPEAKER_01: And I followed that theme the entire year.
19:38
SPEAKER_01: As a matter of fact, I started doing that.
19:39
SPEAKER_01: I did a sales kickoff.
19:40
SPEAKER_01: It wasn't just one and done.
19:42
SPEAKER_01: That theme went through the entire year.
19:44
SPEAKER_01: So a lot of thought went into what are we trying to accomplish this year?
19:47
SPEAKER_01: And how are we changing our game on how we're going to market?
19:52
SPEAKER_01: And that would always become a theme.
19:53
SPEAKER_01: There was one where it was just called connect, because it was really important that I wanted my sellers to be able to connect the value that we delivered to the CEO's aspirations of our customer of sustainable, profitable growth.
20:06
SPEAKER_01: So connecting those dots.
20:08
SPEAKER_01: That became the theme.
20:09
SPEAKER_01: So why did I say this?
20:11
SPEAKER_01: Because you asked the question is how do you get that connection done?
20:14
SPEAKER_01: That's how I've done it in the past.
20:16
SPEAKER_01: I'm not saying it's the only way to do it, but I'm just sharing you some with you some successes.
20:21
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's one of the things I find, Ken, and it'd be interesting if you get your thoughts on this, is that you know, I'm in the business, and my and the significant part of my business is all about sales skills and sales things you do and things like that.
20:34
SPEAKER_00: And I think the same for you, right?
20:35
SPEAKER_00: When you're working with your clients, part of it is is that angle.
20:38
SPEAKER_00: What I often find is is it's the mindset that is the thing that has the pretty big impact.
20:45
SPEAKER_00: To take your example, it's what you know popped in my mind as you're saying they didn't believe they had the best product, they didn't believe they had a good product, maybe, right?
20:52
SPEAKER_00: I've seen companies that go, no, that was a pile of craft, right?
20:55
SPEAKER_00: And yeah, and you kind of wonder, well, how do you sell something like that?
20:58
SPEAKER_00: And I think the mindset is something that we maybe underestimate how important it can be when we're working with sales teams.
21:04
SPEAKER_01: Now you think about, I mean, it's funny.
21:06
SPEAKER_01: Wait, you you kind of branched into the idea of commoditization and commodities.
21:11
SPEAKER_01: And I I mean, I I think think if you're selling a car.
21:15
SPEAKER_01: I mean, a car is a car, it's it gets you point A to point B, especially if it's internal combustion.
21:21
SPEAKER_01: What's why would you buy one car over the other?
21:24
SPEAKER_01: What's your goal?
21:25
SPEAKER_01: What what what are you trying to accomplish as the buyer?
21:29
SPEAKER_01: It's very difficult because that is a commodity, not by the you know, by commodity sense, but it's commoditization.
21:36
SPEAKER_01: I would argue, I could argue that everything we buy is a commodity.
21:41
SPEAKER_01: Now, as a seller, that's a scary thought.
21:44
SPEAKER_01: But if you if you sit down there and say, no, no, no, no, no, no, we're different.
21:48
SPEAKER_01: You don't understand.
21:49
SPEAKER_01: I said, perfect, make me understand, help me understand.
21:52
SPEAKER_01: What is it that you believe you do that no one else does, and how have you made it a must-have versus a nice to have?
22:01
SPEAKER_01: Yeah?
22:02
SPEAKER_01: And so even in the, and I'll go back to, you know, I was in the antivirus world, desktop antivirus software, it was very crowded.
22:09
SPEAKER_01: There were a lot of good solutions out there.
22:11
SPEAKER_01: They all did the same thing.
22:12
SPEAKER_01: Think about it.
22:13
SPEAKER_01: They all protected you from putting loading viruses onto your desktop.
22:17
SPEAKER_01: That was the plan.
22:18
SPEAKER_01: So why buy one over the other?
22:20
SPEAKER_01: Same with this.
22:21
SPEAKER_01: So I go through, and and as you get into wanting to believe it, you need to be able to go through that exercise.
22:28
SPEAKER_01: I can tell you today, when I was a sales rep.
22:32
SPEAKER_01: At Oracle, back before Oracle was a billion-dollar company.
22:35
SPEAKER_01: I can tell you, we were getting our butt kicked in the field.
22:38
SPEAKER_01: We were horrible.
22:39
SPEAKER_01: Product was bad, nothing worked, fired the entire Salesforce.
22:43
SPEAKER_01: And those of us that were hired back or hired, I was, I was brought in, had to say, well, how do we compete?
22:50
SPEAKER_01: We our product is not good.
22:53
SPEAKER_01: We're getting creamed in the market.
22:55
SPEAKER_01: People don't want to talk to us because of past past bad behavior.
22:59
SPEAKER_01: I can tell you to this day how I differentiated that product.
23:03
SPEAKER_01: Remember, we were selling a database.
23:05
SPEAKER_01: You couldn't even demo it.
23:07
SPEAKER_01: You don't demo databases.
23:09
SPEAKER_01: You know, it was one of the hardest selling environments, but I had some of the most fun.
23:13
SPEAKER_01: Because when we figured it out, we got really good at it.
23:17
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, this is a so can I, you know, when we go back to, I guess, Network Associates last McAfee days, people will know it from that from that name.
23:26
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, the end of the 90s, early 2000s.
23:29
SPEAKER_00: I don't know, I don't know the right number, but I'm going to guess in that whole information security space, cybersecurity space back then, there might have been, I don't know, 100 vendors, let's say, in that space.
23:39
SPEAKER_00: You got firewalls, you got AV, you got some, you had some scanning tools, things that was kind of the scope of it.
23:46
SPEAKER_00: Nowadays, I've got access to the database that tracks all this.
23:50
SPEAKER_00: There's about 4,300 companies in cybersecurity.
23:54
SPEAKER_00: And especially right now, everyone claims AI is something on their product, right?
23:59
SPEAKER_00: So whether it's true or not is whatever.
24:00
SPEAKER_00: So the point about commoditization and competitive and differentiation, it's incredibly difficult for a seller to sit there one-on-one with someone and explain or tell them why they're different in a way they remember and the way they believe it and the way they value it, right?
24:18
SPEAKER_00: And you know, one of the ideas I've had recently, just to get your opinion on this, is you know, if all we do is try and compare features all the time and say, well, our blue widgets better than their blue widget, you get lost in the in the mix, right?
24:31
SPEAKER_00: It's like, so what?
24:32
SPEAKER_00: Like, like take take AV, right?
24:33
SPEAKER_00: Our detection rate was 98.3%, and theirs was 92.
24:37
SPEAKER_00: whatever, and then next month it all flips around, right?
24:39
SPEAKER_00: It's just constantly changing.
24:40
SPEAKER_00: So you got to think about a way that you communicate differentiation that you believe that has a higher purpose, something bigger than just saying our blue widget's better than their blue widget.
24:49
SPEAKER_01: Is that ring true for you?
24:51
SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
24:51
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I it it's it's the whole chain of literally the whole linkage of, again, what I put in that book.
24:58
SPEAKER_01: It it is just you, every seller that works for me has to be able to clearly tell me for every deal, I don't care the size, why would they do anything?
25:07
SPEAKER_01: Why now?
25:08
SPEAKER_01: What happens if they do nothing?
25:10
SPEAKER_01: I call that why not?
25:11
SPEAKER_01: And then, and then and only then you're allowed to say, why me or why, you know, your product.
25:17
SPEAKER_01: And then I sit down, I challenge it with, I want you now to do the why, I call it the Y4, the Y4 business case, which is nothing more than asking the question, going, just as you brought up, here are, and I would say I don't even like to use the words feature, but we will for sake of argument here.
25:35
SPEAKER_01: You write down the features, the features that you're really proud of.
25:38
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna ask you, how does that link back to their pain?
25:42
SPEAKER_01: So if you think about the why do anything, that's the pain, fear, gain question.
25:47
SPEAKER_01: Why are they doing anything?
25:49
SPEAKER_01: Remember, pain is immediate, but fear is future pain, pain in the future.
25:54
SPEAKER_01: So I always say pain gets you a meeting, fear gets you the deal.
25:59
SPEAKER_01: And then gain, this is crazy.
26:02
SPEAKER_01: Gain is a distant third.
26:04
SPEAKER_01: So most of our buyers aren't thinking about gain.
26:07
SPEAKER_01: It's like a cherry on the top.
26:09
SPEAKER_01: They may use it in the business case, but the uh reason for execution for doing anything is that's not the reason.
26:16
SPEAKER_01: It's gonna be pain and fear.
26:18
SPEAKER_01: Period.
26:18
SPEAKER_01: Put your hand over a candle.
26:20
SPEAKER_01: That pain, you're gonna move it up to I I guarantee it.
26:24
SPEAKER_01: Guaranteed.
26:25
SPEAKER_01: All right.
26:26
SPEAKER_01: So it's it's innate.
26:28
SPEAKER_01: Fear is very interesting.
26:30
SPEAKER_01: It's a great motivator.
26:32
SPEAKER_01: Fear can take over.
26:33
SPEAKER_01: And that's why I say it's it's it's the articulation of future pain or pain in the future.
26:39
SPEAKER_01: And that's where the deals get done.
26:41
SPEAKER_00: And you, as you know, in cyber, you gotta tread that line very carefully.
26:45
SPEAKER_00: People don't like to be footted, right?
26:47
SPEAKER_00: It's like, if you don't buy my stuff, you'll get a breach.
26:49
SPEAKER_00: It's like, oh, come on.
26:50
SPEAKER_00: You know, yeah.
26:51
SPEAKER_00: So you gotta be really careful how you walk the line with the loss of version or the fear side, right?
26:55
SPEAKER_01: You know, Andrew, it it comes back to when you have, when you finally get that conversation and you've actually put together your call plan.
27:04
SPEAKER_01: Your job is to probe and listen.
27:07
SPEAKER_01: If you take a look at the qualifying questions, the first one, need or the end, need.
27:14
SPEAKER_01: Now, I say need is not what you're looking for because people will tell you what they think they need, what they think, what they think they need.
27:23
SPEAKER_01: A lot of times, most sellers react to that.
27:26
SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's what you need.
27:27
SPEAKER_01: We could do that.
27:29
SPEAKER_01: Or the more experienced ones go, huh, that's very interesting.
27:33
SPEAKER_01: Tell me a little bit more.
27:34
SPEAKER_01: Why do you think you need that?
27:35
SPEAKER_01: And that's driving to get what?
27:37
SPEAKER_01: To the pain, fear, gain.
27:39
SPEAKER_01: The way it works is pain, fear, gain is satisfied by a need.
27:44
SPEAKER_01: And then I ask you, well, what do they need?
27:47
SPEAKER_01: What's the solution that meets that need that rides the pain, that mitigates the fear, that realizes the gain?
27:53
SPEAKER_01: You're not allowed to say your product, right?
27:57
SPEAKER_01: I like to way back I used to tell people if I go like this and go, oh man, does anybody have any aspirin?
28:04
SPEAKER_01: What do you think?
28:05
SPEAKER_01: I gave you a need.
28:07
SPEAKER_01: Well, I need I need aspirin.
28:08
SPEAKER_01: I told you what I needed.
28:09
SPEAKER_01: And you go, you're the aspirin salesman.
28:11
SPEAKER_01: Say, hey, I got aspirin here.
28:13
SPEAKER_01: Right.
28:13
SPEAKER_01: I got a deal.
28:15
SPEAKER_01: And everybody else, pain reliever guys, left the room because theirs wasn't good for a headache.
28:19
SPEAKER_01: Why?
28:20
SPEAKER_01: Because I was holding my head.
28:21
SPEAKER_01: But what happens if I say next thing, man, my back is killing me?
28:25
SPEAKER_01: The dude who sold a lead already split.
28:28
SPEAKER_01: Now, silly analogy, but what I'm trying to be clear is don't ever assume and connect the dots.
28:36
SPEAKER_01: Make it clear that you really understand why they think they need that.
28:40
SPEAKER_01: And that's what you had said something that you just said it in passing, but it was key is so what?
28:46
SPEAKER_01: You'd said, so what?
28:47
SPEAKER_01: I want you to challenge it.
28:49
SPEAKER_01: And by the way, this is a six sigma root cause analysis.
28:52
SPEAKER_01: I didn't invent this, I ripped it.
28:54
SPEAKER_01: But anytime you're sitting down there and you're trying to identify a root cause like pain, it could take you five probes.
29:03
SPEAKER_01: I don't care if you're late for a meeting.
29:04
SPEAKER_01: I say, Andrew, why are you late?
29:06
SPEAKER_01: Oh man, I've been traveling.
29:08
SPEAKER_01: Why I've been traveling?
29:09
SPEAKER_01: So you can see how it just works down.
29:11
SPEAKER_01: Eventually, over after five, I believe that's the number, you're gonna get to the root cause.
29:16
SPEAKER_01: And by the way, I want you to do that also when you're thinking about your product.
29:20
SPEAKER_01: Hey, we've got this great feature.
29:22
SPEAKER_01: So what?
29:23
SPEAKER_01: I think maybe you said, so what?
29:25
SPEAKER_01: So what?
29:26
SPEAKER_01: Oh, well, it does this.
29:27
SPEAKER_01: So what?
29:28
SPEAKER_01: Do that five times.
29:29
SPEAKER_01: So you can see I've these are the disciplines.
29:31
SPEAKER_01: I want you to apply that on all of the Y4.
29:34
SPEAKER_01: And that's clearly, I mean, it's clear in the book.
29:36
SPEAKER_01: So these are simple, very simple, seller-centric disciplines that you use your own style and technique.
29:44
SPEAKER_01: I'm not teaching you how to ask that question, because if you're truly intellectually engaged and curious about the business and trying to solve real problems, you're going to be curious.
29:54
SPEAKER_01: Hey, man, tell me, why do you think you need that?
29:57
SPEAKER_01: That's a new one to me.
29:58
SPEAKER_01: And then what you're trying to find out is do you even have an answer that fits that need, that rigs the pain?
30:04
SPEAKER_01: You may not, and that's okay.
30:06
SPEAKER_01: You get credibility or say, you know what?
30:08
SPEAKER_01: That's nothing we do.
30:09
SPEAKER_01: But I'll tell you what, let me think about it.
30:11
SPEAKER_01: We know people that do this and companies that do this.
30:14
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to get back to you.
30:15
SPEAKER_01: I'll give you some of our ideas.
30:17
SPEAKER_01: That's called credibility.
30:19
SPEAKER_01: And I've done that.
30:20
SPEAKER_01: By the way, I just qualified a deal, what?
30:23
SPEAKER_01: On the first call.
30:24
SPEAKER_01: People ask me, when do you start a clothes plan?
30:26
SPEAKER_01: Kane, I said, first call.
30:28
SPEAKER_01: It's the first time we're meeting.
30:30
SPEAKER_01: Seriously, that's a big question.
30:32
SPEAKER_01: When do I start it?
30:33
SPEAKER_01: You should have started on that first call.
30:35
SPEAKER_01: Because you were asking, why do anything?
30:37
SPEAKER_01: Why now?
30:37
SPEAKER_01: What happens if you do nothing?
30:39
SPEAKER_01: Oh, do I even have an answer?
30:42
SPEAKER_01: Anyway.
30:43
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
30:44
SPEAKER_00: You know, uh one of the things that that stuck out to me in the book, aligned to this idea about why do anything, why now?
30:51
SPEAKER_00: You know, what's the big thing behind it?
30:53
SPEAKER_00: Is you know, it's almost like an epidemic out there that people always talk about ROI.
30:57
SPEAKER_00: ROI, ROI.
30:58
SPEAKER_00: What's the ROI?
30:59
SPEAKER_00: What's their ROI?
31:00
SPEAKER_00: What's ROI?
31:01
SPEAKER_00: It's just thrown around.
31:02
SPEAKER_00: It seems to be an umbrella phrase for everything to do with any sort of justification, right?
31:06
SPEAKER_00: You have a slight different uh viewpoint around this, around payback.
31:09
SPEAKER_00: Take me through that argument.
31:11
SPEAKER_01: You know, the the interesting is thinking about ROI is that is actually a methodology.
31:16
SPEAKER_01: And I was at a company that did IRR.
31:19
SPEAKER_01: Talking about an ugly way to justify a business case, I didn't even get it.
31:23
SPEAKER_01: I'd never heard of it.
31:24
SPEAKER_01: You know, and they had to go through training.
31:26
SPEAKER_01: It's still a difficult one for me.
31:28
SPEAKER_01: I'm an engineer, you know, not a not an accountant.
31:31
SPEAKER_01: The the point is that I found a payback.
31:34
SPEAKER_01: Here are the two motivations.
31:36
SPEAKER_01: Having sold big enterprise class solutions where a lot of the people who bought it got fired for not delivering on time and on budget.
31:44
SPEAKER_01: Now think about it.
31:45
SPEAKER_01: I was selling SAP.
31:46
SPEAKER_01: What's Oracle?
31:49
SPEAKER_01: Where these implementations, literally, if you didn't do two things, one is show quick wins.
31:56
SPEAKER_01: So these things are massive implementations take multiple years and cost sometimes 7x the license purchase, right?
32:03
SPEAKER_01: Just implementation.
32:05
SPEAKER_01: A lot of reasons for that.
32:07
SPEAKER_01: But what you need to do is show these, what I call quick wins.
32:10
SPEAKER_01: So a win is that, and I typically said it's got to fit within a within their fiscal year.
32:16
SPEAKER_01: So if they've got six months left, you better have something that's going to show progress within six months.
32:21
SPEAKER_01: And so these are the things that you have to do if you want to be successful.
32:26
SPEAKER_01: And a lot of that would relate to payback, is I'm investing.
32:31
SPEAKER_01: So you've got the promise.
32:33
SPEAKER_01: And everybody who, I mean, even everybody's saying, hey, you buy my security solution, you buy my ERP, it costs a dollar, and the return is 10x over this period of time.
32:45
SPEAKER_01: The return is 10x over this period of time.
32:48
SPEAKER_01: Well, what do you mean by return?
32:49
SPEAKER_01: What's the payback?
32:50
SPEAKER_01: What's the recovery?
32:51
SPEAKER_01: It all depends.
32:52
SPEAKER_01: I want you to say, what's the payback?
32:53
SPEAKER_01: I want you to ask that question.
32:55
SPEAKER_01: Because if they're doing a business case, like I was in one company, I'm like, I don't do TCO.
33:01
SPEAKER_01: I do IIR.
33:03
SPEAKER_01: And so the variables that I need from you are very different than the ones you would do for ROI or TCO and all those acronyms.
33:10
SPEAKER_01: So I just say, hey, how do you guys measure the payback on this?
33:13
SPEAKER_01: Is it recovery of money spent to get it?
33:16
SPEAKER_01: Or do we have a metric on the productivity gains, if that was one of them?
33:20
SPEAKER_01: So there are only two things.
33:21
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to digress for a second.
33:23
SPEAKER_01: A CEO of a company is held accountable for three words.
33:28
SPEAKER_01: And I tell people, write these three words down.
33:30
SPEAKER_01: Sustainable, profitable growth.
33:32
SPEAKER_01: They only run two plays.
33:34
SPEAKER_01: They run a cosplay and a revenue growth play.
33:37
SPEAKER_01: Revenue play, cost play.
33:39
SPEAKER_01: If your solution doesn't fit into those two plays, you're out.
33:42
SPEAKER_01: Thank you for the coffee.
33:44
SPEAKER_01: Thank you for the lunch, you're out.
33:47
SPEAKER_01: The connection of your solution to the cost, and most of the things that we sell, by the way, address cost.
33:53
SPEAKER_01: That's okay.
33:54
SPEAKER_01: It's words like efficiency, effectiveness, all the fancy words saying I'm trying to drive cost out of it.
33:59
SPEAKER_01: What to do increase profit?
34:02
SPEAKER_01: Because the profit number is sustainable profitable growth is revenue minus cost.
34:07
SPEAKER_01: Very few tech solutions, technically very few solutions I've come across actually increase revenue because that's typically people, process, and product.
34:17
SPEAKER_01: I would argue if you think Salesforce increases revenue, come on, right?
34:22
SPEAKER_01: You'd argue it does the opposite.
34:25
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
34:25
SPEAKER_01: So I would I, you know, and always throw the classification called business critical, mission critical, or nice to have.
34:33
SPEAKER_01: You don't want to be in the nice to have category as a solution.
34:37
SPEAKER_01: Mission critical means, in my definition, I say, hey, if you stop using our solution or solution like ours, you stop doing business.
34:45
SPEAKER_01: I would argue the pay, the billing system for ATT is mission critical.
34:51
SPEAKER_01: If their billing system goes down, they'll stop doing business.
34:54
SPEAKER_01: And that's probably why it's written and they've got thousands of people managing that.
34:58
SPEAKER_01: Go try to rip and replace ATT's billing system, it won't happen, or any of the telcos.
35:03
SPEAKER_01: And now you start to look at mission crowd, business critical stuff.
35:06
SPEAKER_01: That's stuff like Salesforce.
35:08
SPEAKER_01: It goes, if it goes down, do you stop doing this?
35:11
SPEAKER_01: Nah, I might be inconvenienced.
35:12
SPEAKER_01: The salespeople may cheer, but you're not going to go out of business.
35:16
SPEAKER_01: That's that's where most of us play in the business critical aspect of sales.
35:22
SPEAKER_01: And with that, the justification or the payback becomes really important.
35:27
SPEAKER_01: And that's where that whole connect comes into play.
35:30
SPEAKER_01: So now you start to see how difficult or how sophisticated a seller's job really is in what I'll call complex B2B sales, not transactional stuff in the complex B2B world where people are investing to better their business.
35:45
SPEAKER_01: It's so important that a seller be smart enough, engaged enough to connect the dots ultimately to sustainable profit growth.
35:54
SPEAKER_01: So anytime I hear or I do a deal review, I will ask you, is this a revenue play or is it a cost play?
36:02
SPEAKER_01: If you can't tell me, heaven help you.
36:05
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think it's uh it's interesting in cybersecurity, right?
36:08
SPEAKER_00: Because it's really tough to say my AI security tool, well, that's not a great example.
36:15
SPEAKER_00: My database security tool is somehow going to increase revenue, right?
36:19
SPEAKER_00: It's it's a it's a very dotted line that you're gonna squint at to try and make that justification, right?
36:24
SPEAKER_00: And I think what happens is that we get a little bit too comfortable, that's just not possible, right?
36:30
SPEAKER_00: Whereas I do wonder a lot where if we really understand the business and the initiatives inside the company, you know, what's going on, then how do we help someone, how do we ask our champion or ask the CISO, how would you align this investment towards something else, if at all, right?
36:47
SPEAKER_00: And can you maybe have to bust a mist from me?
36:49
SPEAKER_00: I tell this story, I hope it's true.
36:52
SPEAKER_00: I tell the story I heard that Tom Siebel, when he was running SIBL systems, you know, it started every quarter, every six months, we'd have five big initiatives for the company.
37:00
SPEAKER_00: This is what the company cares about to be successful right now.
37:03
SPEAKER_00: And when he would talk to you and meet with you on a QBR or whatever, he wanna know how you're thinking about what you're doing and your job on the bottom end of operations somewhere is gonna somehow affect one of his five initiatives, right?
37:15
SPEAKER_00: And I always think about that, you know, when we're engaging with customers, like what else is going on at this company that we could align to?
37:21
SPEAKER_00: Doesn't mean to say we're gonna drive revenue up 10%, but maybe it's a project that we might enable a little bit or take the take the risk out of the friction out a little bit.
37:30
SPEAKER_00: But as cybersecurity sellers, we seem a little bit reluctant at times to bridge that gap and kind of go beyond the departmental value around security.
37:39
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
37:40
SPEAKER_01: You know, it's a I spent a I spent part of a good part of my career with what I'll call key accounts, strategic accounts, global accounts.
37:49
SPEAKER_01: My job in some of these big companies I work for was either quantify that it was a good investment to have a global accounts program and what that program was going to provide, or key accounts or strategic accounts, and two, codify it.
38:04
SPEAKER_01: And in the in codifying it, which is how do you go to market in a consistent fashion?
38:10
SPEAKER_01: I built an account plan and ultimately a template, but the account plan concept was one that was designed to kind of address what you brought up.
38:20
SPEAKER_01: If you're locked into the department, so here's the way I broke it down in a simple way.
38:25
SPEAKER_01: You got the mothership.
38:26
SPEAKER_01: It's like picture this triangle or the capsule that has pick a hundred billion dollar company.
38:32
SPEAKER_01: I mean, there are some that are that that big that I've worked with that were key accounts of mine.
38:37
SPEAKER_01: And they were broken into lines of business.
38:39
SPEAKER_01: So picture these pillars that support that capsule, you know, and and each one of those lines of business has a mission, has a revenue contribution to the mothership.
38:48
SPEAKER_01: So it's a hundred million dollar company, hundred billion dollar company.
38:51
SPEAKER_01: I could be running, I'll use ATT or any of the big, well, let's use ATT because they have legacy stuff.
38:57
SPEAKER_01: I could be ATT mobile.
38:59
SPEAKER_01: And let's say I'm$60 billion and I'm running that line of business.
39:03
SPEAKER_01: So I'm a person, and my mission from the top, the CEO, is to let's say grow my cellular mobile business by 10% year over year.
39:13
SPEAKER_01: And here's your budget.
39:15
SPEAKER_01: And let's say you're the dude, Andrew, that's got ATT long landline long distance.
39:19
SPEAKER_01: And that's a very different mission.
39:20
SPEAKER_01: It exists, by the way, hard to believe.
39:23
SPEAKER_01: But it's like, Andrew, you're only to shrink 30% this year over year, and your budget goes down by 12%, and your job is to uh lessen churn by 22%.
39:35
SPEAKER_01: So your go-to-market as a line of business is very different than mine, period.
39:42
SPEAKER_01: But it doesn't make it any harder or any easier.
39:45
SPEAKER_01: You've got a miserable job, frankly, right?
39:48
SPEAKER_01: But it's, but it's a but it, but it needs to be done.
39:51
SPEAKER_01: And so my point is that as a person who may be stuck, and if I was in charge of that big account, and this can go down to a$500 million account, it could go down to a hundred million dollar account.
40:03
SPEAKER_01: They all have contributors of that revenue.
40:06
SPEAKER_01: It's typically not one stream.
40:09
SPEAKER_01: If it is, you're in startup mode, which is fine.
40:12
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
40:13
SPEAKER_01: But you mentioned stuck in the department.
40:16
SPEAKER_01: My question is, where does that department sit in what line of business?
40:20
SPEAKER_01: As a matter of fact, I'm gonna make this really easy for you.
40:23
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna give you a visual.
40:25
SPEAKER_01: And in the account plan template that I built was this it's the hardest, it blows a rep's mind.
40:31
SPEAKER_01: Even if you're a senior strategic account executive, whatever the title is, and you're getting paid a lot of money.
40:38
SPEAKER_01: When I ask the question, how big is this?
40:41
SPEAKER_01: How big is the mothership?
40:43
SPEAKER_01: What are they saying to analysts?
40:45
SPEAKER_01: Meaning that revenue and sustainable, profitable growth, how does it break down?
40:49
SPEAKER_01: What am I going to increase in revenue?
40:51
SPEAKER_01: What are we going to do with expenses?
40:53
SPEAKER_01: The CEO says this.
40:54
SPEAKER_01: They say it in code.
40:55
SPEAKER_01: So I just go and research all the analysts that cover that company and find out what the code breaks down to.
41:00
SPEAKER_01: So I know these numbers.
41:01
SPEAKER_01: And then I'm going to go to every line of business head, or I'll use AI to discover it, saying, What's Andrew's?
41:07
SPEAKER_01: Because it all flows downhill.
41:09
SPEAKER_01: It's true.
41:10
SPEAKER_01: Everyone is issued a number.
41:13
SPEAKER_01: Everyone.
41:14
SPEAKER_01: It's not just salespeople.
41:15
SPEAKER_01: So the line of business heads got a number.
41:17
SPEAKER_01: And that individual is going to say, okay, division, get in here.
41:20
SPEAKER_01: This is called annual planning.
41:22
SPEAKER_01: And I'm going to go, Andrew, you got that sorry, uh ATT, long distance landline, landline business.
41:28
SPEAKER_01: Here are your marching orders.
41:30
SPEAKER_01: Here's your number.
41:31
SPEAKER_01: And then what are you going to do, Andrew?
41:33
SPEAKER_01: You're going to build a strategy around that, a tactical execution plan, and you're going to execute against that.
41:39
SPEAKER_01: So now I'm selling.
41:40
SPEAKER_01: I'm a seller.
41:41
SPEAKER_01: I'm coming in.
41:42
SPEAKER_01: And now I said, okay, Andrew's got this, but he works for the line of business.
41:45
SPEAKER_01: I've I've targeted you, or let's say you're already my client.
41:49
SPEAKER_01: I've studied the entire account because what do I want to do?
41:52
SPEAKER_01: I want to sell wide and I want to sell deep.
41:55
SPEAKER_01: I want to sell wide and sell deep.
41:57
SPEAKER_01: By the way, that was also one of my themes.
41:59
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
42:01
SPEAKER_01: You do that because now you have this map of the entire account.
42:04
SPEAKER_01: You know the lines of business.
42:06
SPEAKER_01: You you've done through the gone through discovery to identify what their marching orders are.
42:13
SPEAKER_01: What are their profit goals?
42:14
SPEAKER_01: What are their revenue goals?
42:15
SPEAKER_01: What are their expense goals?
42:17
SPEAKER_01: You're doing what you're supposed to do.
42:20
SPEAKER_01: And then you're going, huh, Andrew's a client of mine.
42:23
SPEAKER_01: I would like to get over into this other line of business, total division.
42:27
SPEAKER_01: Hey, man, can you make an introduction?
42:28
SPEAKER_01: You're satisfied with us.
42:30
SPEAKER_01: And this is where you get back to that whole life cycle is that you want to make your customers evangelists, people that will evangelize for you.
42:38
SPEAKER_01: And with that, if I do my job as a seller, because I'm constantly, I just don't transact and bail.
42:45
SPEAKER_01: Hey, how are we doing?
42:46
SPEAKER_01: And make sure you're successful, you're going to make that introduction.
42:49
SPEAKER_01: And that's the sell wide, sell deep.
42:51
SPEAKER_01: It is all about warm introductions and it is all about networking.
42:53
SPEAKER_01: Don't kid yourself.
42:55
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think it's uh, I think there's no doubt that my ability to understand an account, especially a public account these days, is so much easier with the tools at my disposal.
43:04
SPEAKER_00: However, to your point, it's the nothing beats the feet in the street, the hand-to-hand lunches, coffees, questions, you know, dumb questions that suddenly uncover a whole bunch of things.
43:16
SPEAKER_00: And one of the one of the stories I tell is my wife, she's she does SEC reporting for companies as a consultant.
43:22
SPEAKER_00: And one of her customers was Molson Cours a few years back.
43:25
SPEAKER_00: And you think that, okay, Molsen Cours, beer company, right?
43:28
SPEAKER_00: We have to go sell to a beer company and think about the beer, the beer, the beer.
43:31
SPEAKER_00: Actually, the beer is in decline, and the area they're investing in is all the seltzers, right?
43:37
SPEAKER_00: So you're thinking, okay, well, do I am I gonna have more success with what I'm selling in the seltzer division that's getting a lot of energy and investment and money and the high caliber people are probably getting moved over there?
43:48
SPEAKER_00: Or am I gonna go spend money in the beer division, which might have a much bigger budget, but maybe they're a little bit you know, penny, penny wise, pound foolish on quite how they're doing things.
43:57
SPEAKER_00: It creates an interesting challenge for you as you think about where do I go spend my time now in this account and what do I say differently in the beer division versus the the seltzer division?
44:06
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but that gets to that landline long distance.
44:09
SPEAKER_01: My conversation with you has a lot to do about cost containment, and maybe about churn.
44:16
SPEAKER_01: Your concerns are very different than the seltzer division, to use your analogy.
44:20
SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's the that's the rocket ship.
44:23
SPEAKER_01: And unfortunately, a lot of times sellers go right for the rocket ship.
44:28
SPEAKER_01: The instinct isn't wrong because there's money being spent there.
44:32
SPEAKER_01: sometimes recklessly, and and you may be able to get a quick pop.
44:36
SPEAKER_01: I say that if you are a thorough, you do need to know your swim lane.
44:41
SPEAKER_01: So what do you actually, what do you actually do?
44:44
SPEAKER_01: Where are you, where do you best fit?
44:47
SPEAKER_01: And that's really important because a lot of sellers will fail because they see something happening off in the distance, but they're not a good fit.
44:55
SPEAKER_01: And they chase it and what do they do?
44:57
SPEAKER_01: They waste time, they waste energy, they have stuff in their pipeline that's not real, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
45:03
SPEAKER_01: So knowing your product, and I say there's a couple of disciplines here that I don't articulate.
45:07
SPEAKER_01: For me, it's common sense, but know your product is a I want you to master and I would say product solution, master what it is you represent as if you designed it yourself.
45:19
SPEAKER_01: That's my challenge to you.
45:20
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
45:21
SPEAKER_01: Be a master of your solution.
45:23
SPEAKER_01: Number two, I want you to also master, become a master of your of your target account to the best of your ability.
45:31
SPEAKER_01: In my account planning sessions, I only have one page.
45:34
SPEAKER_01: I asked a very simple question.
45:35
SPEAKER_01: Well the first page is tell me what they do for a living.
45:37
SPEAKER_01: Think about this for a second.
45:39
SPEAKER_01: How what is what does Molson cores do for a living?
45:42
SPEAKER_01: It's a brewery they brew beer for the uninfair no they also have Seltzer.
45:47
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
45:47
SPEAKER_01: Well let's just say carbonated beverages how's that?
45:50
SPEAKER_01: How do they differentiate what what what does G Heilman do?
45:53
SPEAKER_01: What does Anhouser Busch do?
45:55
SPEAKER_01: Now if you ask the CEOs of those companies going you all brew you all carbonated beverages there's no difference guarantee you they're going to be able to tell you how do you differentiate yourself from what Bush, Heilman, Molsencours, you're all the same.
46:13
SPEAKER_01: You want to get punched in the mouth say that to the CEO.
46:15
SPEAKER_01: The point is though that they can clearly articulate that now my challenge is every seller needs to understand that as well.
46:21
SPEAKER_01: I used to I mean I sold the banks hey a bank's a bank I asked so you sit down and you look at account plan and it says it's a retail bank go ask JP JP Morgan how they differentiate from pick a regional bank.
46:34
SPEAKER_01: What's the big deal?
46:35
SPEAKER_01: You're just a bank and and they'll light you up so the the point is is that this gets back to that conversation of commoditization, right?
46:43
SPEAKER_01: As a seller, it's super important to say what would the CEO say?
46:48
SPEAKER_01: What does the CEO of Molson Cores say about their business?
46:53
SPEAKER_01: Where are they focused?
46:55
SPEAKER_01: Why where they're going why and how are they going to get there?
46:58
SPEAKER_01: That that would be a basic question I would ask.
47:01
SPEAKER_01: I've worked on account plans with very senior sellers at you know companies that we did billions of dollars in these big accounts billions a year.
47:09
SPEAKER_01: And I struggled with one of my senior sellers for two days trying to figure out what the CEO's vision was.
47:16
SPEAKER_01: Now this was probably before we had AI but even so we had great search engines, right?
47:22
SPEAKER_01: And a lot of times it's difficult because it's not clear.
47:25
SPEAKER_01: When we were done with that one page, what do they do for the living?
47:29
SPEAKER_01: I mean it's like what do they do?
47:31
SPEAKER_01: How do they differentiate themselves from the competitors?
47:34
SPEAKER_01: What are the most recent events meaning that acquisitions, new management, new leadership and the third and the fourth one was kind of like what partners can influence who are their partners, you know, and and where their influences have it's very simple but hard to do because I'm asking you about a strategy.
47:51
SPEAKER_01: The next one is a CEO stated strategy for the next year.
47:55
SPEAKER_01: The CEO stated strategy just one page.
47:57
SPEAKER_01: Okay could be three I don't care but I'm going to ask you is it a cost strategy or is it a revenue growth strategy?
48:02
SPEAKER_01: Because then the change how can I help?
48:05
SPEAKER_01: That's our ultimate question.
48:06
SPEAKER_01: How can I help?
48:07
SPEAKER_01: Can I and how can I?
48:09
SPEAKER_01: And this this allows you to put yourself in the seat of an executive at that company.
48:16
SPEAKER_01: You're genuinely thinking about it you may say you know what this account's a dog for me.
48:20
SPEAKER_01: There's nothing I see that we can do.
48:22
SPEAKER_01: Now as a sales tell me why you think that and you walk me through your logic and hopefully maybe I have some experience that you don't have that I can share with you that may open a few doors.
48:31
SPEAKER_01: That's happened too by the way.
48:33
SPEAKER_01: And that's the beauty of sales leadership and that's the beauty of leadership even up above is I often tell people the reason why you want to have a good account plan and a good pursuit plan is that when you share within your company there are great ideas that you never thought of.
49:00
SPEAKER_01: And the ramifications of of process not followed are dire.
49:05
SPEAKER_01: And there's a reason why there's safety training there's a reason why there are ways of doing things.
49:12
SPEAKER_01: And oftentimes it's human nature man is that we wander into a place where we think we know better.
49:19
SPEAKER_01: But I studied this for a year at this company.
49:22
SPEAKER_01: And if you look at and I found this when I did research on Apollo 13, you know the movie where that, you know, that was a mistake someone who didn't follow process not up with the astronauts, but down on the ground before they took off.
49:35
SPEAKER_01: Someone just made a mistake.
49:37
SPEAKER_01: They didn't follow the process because why?
49:39
SPEAKER_01: They knew better.
49:40
SPEAKER_01: They had a shortcut.
49:41
SPEAKER_01: So what I'm saying is as a seller you have to know that there are people that may not be smarter than you but they may have a different experience that they can share with you, oh man, I never thought of that really.
49:52
SPEAKER_01: And you scratch your head that's really that's happened to me.
49:55
SPEAKER_01: Men of them know it all right but I've been with people said that's a great idea.
49:59
SPEAKER_01: And as you get more mature and more open minded you have a tendency to say that's a great idea to think about that.
50:04
SPEAKER_01: Tell me more I'd like to try that.
50:06
SPEAKER_01: I'd like to execute that.
50:08
SPEAKER_01: And so that's what I want all our sellers to do is literally an open mind and talking to guys like you and your experiences and people that you've talked to you're exposed to all kinds of great ideas and it's not to us to share that.
50:23
SPEAKER_01: You know share it.
50:24
SPEAKER_01: Hey it may not work for you work for me.
50:26
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
50:26
SPEAKER_00: And when I think about what's in the book Ken and we'll come back to that in a minute you know these are all the good habits and the fundamentals to put in place.
50:34
SPEAKER_00: You know what what we're not talking about, what you're not talking about is some you know fancy ninja move or whatever.
50:40
SPEAKER_00: You know, it really is thinking about well how do we do things how do we do the the things that are going to make us professional sellers to the habits that enable us to do that.
50:49
SPEAKER_00: So I I find that book really compelling and I'll come back to that in a second but let's let's first of all go to the spin the wheel game we landed on overrated or underrated.
50:59
SPEAKER_00: So I'm going to give you three things and you just simply have to tell tell me Ken w you think it, whatever it is, is underrated or overrated.
51:07
SPEAKER_00: Are you ready to go?
51:08
SPEAKER_00: Yeah let's do it all right first one is three times pipeline coverage as a rule is that overrated or underrated well okay I think it's I think it's overrated.
51:20
SPEAKER_01: Tell me more well here's the point I could be a 1.5 so remember I talked about qualified pipeline and maybe I didn't say I said qualified opportunities.
51:28
SPEAKER_01: But if you're a great qualifier I'm going to argue your pipeline could be 1.5 to one I ran at that level.
51:34
SPEAKER_01: But it didn't get into my pipeline until what?
51:37
SPEAKER_01: I'd qualified it very well.
51:38
SPEAKER_01: But remember I told you you qualify at the very beginning there will be events outside your control that alter a deal from closing as forecasted.
51:47
SPEAKER_01: But losing a deal to do nothing is not an option.
51:50
SPEAKER_01: So a three to one as a rule I like to say I would ask you Andrew what is your pipeline to close ratio?
51:58
SPEAKER_01: That's a question I'm going to ask you.
52:00
SPEAKER_01: And I would allow you to set it if you say five to one, I said, well we may have a qualifying opportunity here.
52:06
SPEAKER_01: If you say it's three to one I say walk me through that where'd you get it?
52:09
SPEAKER_01: So the reason I say it's overrated is that I want you to tell me your pipeline to close ratio.
52:15
SPEAKER_01: Why should you know that you've been selling for a while you've got a track record you've got a method to your madness.
52:21
SPEAKER_00: That's that's why yeah all right on to number two number two is fear based selling in cybersecurity overrated or underrated?
52:32
SPEAKER_01: I think it's underrated and and I'll tell you I'll tell you why you didn't ask but I got to tell you why when I was in the the let's just say emergence of cybersecurity a long time ago the only way to get people aware was the whole idea of fear, which is pain in the future.
52:54
SPEAKER_01: And that's why I think that for when I talk about fear-based selling it gets about convincing somebody as I like to say is get off the railroad track.
53:03
SPEAKER_01: There's a train coming around the bed it's an imminent disaster.
53:07
SPEAKER_01: But I can back it up and so and this does go back to when I was running Global Professional services at that firm we were at, the only way that we got into intrusion detection where we got into penetration testing was really selling a challenge based on fear.
53:25
SPEAKER_01: The challenge was I bet you$50,000 we can penetrate your company.
53:31
SPEAKER_01: Oh you can't I'll tell you what I'll give you you you have to buy my stuff you don't have to pay me 50 grand you got to buy my stuff if we can.
53:38
SPEAKER_01: Now back then I knew where we could get in it was very common.
53:41
SPEAKER_01: But was that selling fear?
53:43
SPEAKER_01: A little bit and and but there wasn't a challenge that it was a it was a way to get a conversation started.
53:51
SPEAKER_01: So I think there's an opportunity if you position fear as pain in the future or future pain and you do it right and you're connecting the dots it's a great conversation.
54:02
SPEAKER_00: I'm not talking about feature function comparison to the other 4500 apps out there or whatever the I think the key phrase you had there was you got to do it right is I think is a very inelegant and frustrating way to do it and one that's probably gets a drives a much better conversation.
54:17
SPEAKER_01: All right last one is discounting to hit the number the end of the quarter underrated or overrated stupid does that fit one of the categories it's it's in the invisible link next to it yeah tell me more stupid okay Dave when you're discounting to get a deal done you failed miserably on the value of your opportunity on what you're bringing to the table the conversation if someone asked for a discount and by the way I sat across from some of the best negotiators in the world when it comes down to I mean the people in procurement or supply chain they train on this stuff quarterly.
54:53
SPEAKER_01: When's the last time a seller a seller went through negotiating training literally with with with just I mean so you're you're out class to begin with.
55:01
SPEAKER_01: And so they actually are trained to squeeze it out of you.
55:06
SPEAKER_01: And what you have to be able to do is there's a couple things is one is walk.
55:11
SPEAKER_01: Two is you can't fall for the miss the end of the quarter I mean hell I I was at Oracle.
55:17
SPEAKER_01: This is what everyone did to us.
55:18
SPEAKER_01: And and so the challenge there are a couple things that you can avoid feeling that pressure one is a pipeline of qualified opportunities where you've got your commit versus your upside.
55:31
SPEAKER_01: So pipeline of current quarter is two designations your committed number so I Andrew I work for you Andrew I commit two million bucks and say Ken what deals are make up that two million so I got five deals three of which are in the commit I've got two and upside.
55:46
SPEAKER_01: So remember that ratio I talked about now that ratio could go all the way through but you're going to say okay what's I said here's the deal things can happen on these but I've committed I've committed two million and you're going to say what's your best case all five so I don't you know this is a conversation that you have everyone has this conversation and so what I want to do on that is if if we if we are able to qualify our opportunities up front and have our own ratio, you know, we're we're we're going to make we're going to make the number and I I I don't know I don't know if I've missed numbers I mean as you get into leadership the numbers get really big but I don't think I've missed a number as a sales leader.
56:31
SPEAKER_00: I think that I think one of the things I truly believe is it's amazing what ills and problems are covered up by a big healthy strong pipeline.
56:39
SPEAKER_00: You know take that situation right you're sitting there in the quarter would you rather be closing trying to close five of 15 deals to hit your number or have to close 15 deals but only have five that are even close to being closing.
56:51
SPEAKER_01: Think about if you had that that problem without close plans.
56:54
SPEAKER_01: I mean you know I just there's a yeah it would be and you know you're in a transactional world where you have small deals that may be the case but my whole my whole swim lane is complex B2B selling and and but but I will I want people to know that the disciplines don't change.
57:13
SPEAKER_01: It's just how you codify it how you use it.
57:15
SPEAKER_01: But the beauty is this disciplines fall across all sales but the biggest challenge is when I say codify how do you build this into technology tools that you're using such as a CRM or so forth and so on.
57:29
SPEAKER_01: But there are certain ways to manage this effectively I mean when I talk to sellers I I I just look at closed plans.
57:37
SPEAKER_01: We call them joint execution plans because they're mutual they're shared with the customer the customer signatures are on them and it's all about them.
57:44
SPEAKER_01: But I use closed plans in conversations with salespeople because it's the steps I mean it this goes this actually goes back to a McAvee store story.
57:52
SPEAKER_01: What's preventing you from picking up the purchase order today?
57:54
SPEAKER_01: That was the first question I asked a senior seller.
57:58
SPEAKER_01: And we built a close plan in my office came up at 80 steps and this was a a committed deal that had slipped three quarters.
58:04
SPEAKER_01: Like if I said is this a real deal I think I may have told you the story I I reduced the forecast from four million dollars to 200K and the CEO calls me up he goes dude where's that deal in the pipeline I go I said I don't know if it's real so I lowered it.
58:19
SPEAKER_01: I'm tired of the exposure he goes well shouldn't you know I was humiliated I said absolutely so I called the rep in and we had a great it was a great exercise stays with me to this day a lesson but it was really the formulation of the whole idea this goes way back of a mutual close plan.
58:38
SPEAKER_01: And the funny thing is I used to tell people now, Andrew, don't send it to your client and call it a mutual close plan.
58:43
SPEAKER_01: So then we invented the joint execution plan.
58:46
SPEAKER_01: So anyway it's a great story but it is a discipline that every seller has to master.
58:53
SPEAKER_01: You must master it.
58:54
SPEAKER_00: Yeah well look everyone the the book is raise the bar, the habits of great sales athletes I highly recommend that you go and take a look at this.
59:03
SPEAKER_00: You'll look at it and you'll get some great ideas great ways to approach things that you either have completely forgotten about or you just get told about for the first time.
59:12
SPEAKER_01: Hey you I just I've I got I've got to throw this one in there because you brought up big account or key account planning the second book is now out and I by the way I I've written a series of three it's it started with the great sales athletes this one is own the account strategic account planning and management the second one is own the third one is own the room which are the disciplines of elite sellers it's it's what you do and the ultimate that this one is really is extremely unique because there's nothing like it this is this is from asking the question how do I go from where I'm at a transactional relationship or foundational relationship to a strategic partner.
59:52
SPEAKER_01: That's where I want to be how do I drive my accounts to that relationship?
59:56
SPEAKER_01: What do I have to do?
59:58
SPEAKER_01: And and this is this was designed because I built it for some of the biggest software companies in the world been deployed at four of them and it works.
1:00:07
SPEAKER_01: But this is not about account plans this is a very different book and written for purpose was in the works for a long time and is finally out there.
1:00:16
SPEAKER_01: I'm really proud it'll be available on Amazon on October 21st but you can buy it direct today off my website.
1:00:23
SPEAKER_00: Well that's awesome Ken listen it's been a blast uh chatting to you getting some real real pearls wisdom from your long experiences and thinking about how we can keep raising a bar and making ourselves much better professional athletes in sales.
1:00:37
SPEAKER_01: That's right.
1:00:37
SPEAKER_01: Well hey thank you Andrew it's great appreciate it