Latest / Cyber Go-To-Market Talk: The Cybersecurity Podcast About Cyber Sales, Marketing & Revenue Growth / 58: In B2B sales, different is better than better

Transcript

58: In B2B sales, different is better than better · Cyber Go-To-Market Talk: The Cybersecurity Podcast About Cyber Sales, Marketing & Revenue Growth

• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: We are living in a very noisy world right now.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone is loud and clamoring for attention.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: For our prospects, most of them won't know us.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: And even sometimes those that know us don't know us for the right reasons.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: And the question is, as a seller in this world, how on earth do you stand out and get the right attention?
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: Let's talk about in this episode how different is better than better.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Bite-Size Sales Podcast, where we believe that you don't need to take time out of the field or off the phone stuck in a classroom to get great sales training, and that taking bite-sized steps each day to get better at your craft is the best way to improve your results.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: I am your host, Andrew Monahan, and I'm using my 20 plus years in B2B sales to bring you simple, actionable ideas that you can use every day to help you get better.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: This episode is sponsored by Sales Bluebird.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: Most of us don't have time to keep up with the latest sales ideas and all the blogs, podcasts, news articles, YouTube posts every week.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: Sales Bluebird curates content from all these sources and gives you three mindset tips, three sales skills tips, and three sales leader tips once a week in your email inbox for free.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: Sign up right now at salesbluebird.com.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to episode 58 of the podcast.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: And today's topic is all about how we as salespeople can stand out in this noisy world that we're living in right now.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I kind of remember the first time I heard this phrase that different is better than better.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: But I do remember at a time it really hit home with me.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: You know, at the end of the day, you know, being better is something that is not always in our control.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: You know, maybe for a given prospect or a different company, someone else's solution that we compete with is gonna be better for them, right?
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe ours is, maybe theirs is, and you know, our job obviously is to try and find, you know, position ourselves for success.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: But the thing that we are in control of is how we act, how we look, how we interact, to be different, to rise above that noise.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm hoping this episode is gonna give you a bit of inspiration, get your creative juices flowing to think about what you're doing right now and how you can better uh be different compared to everyone else.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: And the first place I'm gonna turn for inspiration, it's gonna seem a little bit weird at first, but bear with me on this.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm I'm really I do mean inspiration rather than copy, but there's a guy, Jesse Cole, and some of you may have come across him.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: He has his own podcast, it's called Business Done Differently.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I just love this story.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: Jesse is someone who at an early age in his early 20s, he bought a baseball team in in Georgia.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: And this is not a triple A team, a double A or single A team.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: It was actually below that in the Coastal Plain League, and it was based at Savannah.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: He moved there to buy this or this baseball organization and start doing something with it.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, to give you an idea quickly, you know, when he bought it, it was obviously shut down for a reason, right?
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: There wasn't anyone, it didn't have much of a following that was consistent.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: There was obviously commercially, it wasn't a great success.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: And these days, just two or three, four years later, they're filling out every seat in the stadium for every game.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: 4,000 plus seats per game, right?
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: So, what is Jesse doing with his organization that seems to be working?
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: And it's all about being different.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, I encourage you to go and look at uh their website and look at their YouTube video in the about us, because this will really you'll see what I mean when you look at this.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: But let me give you some examples of of some of the things they're doing.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: So the first thing when they bought the organization is they realized they had to come up with a new name for it.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: And the name they settled on was the Savannah Bananas.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: And like some of you listening to this, right?
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: Some people said, Oh, that's kind of funny.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: And some people thought that is the stupidest name ever for a baseball team, right?
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: It was polarizing, but it made them stand out, right?
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: Immediately people recognized that this this time it might just be a little bit different.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: Whether you hated it or liked it, you knew it was going to be different.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot came from that, right?
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: A lot fed off this idea of the Savannah bananas.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: And it's all about in their mind of having fun and entertaining the fans, so they want to come back each time, not necessarily for the quality of the baseball, but for the experience they have when they're at one of the games.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: So things that they do.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: One thing they do is rather than have the old white guy reading the stadium announcements about things you can and can't do and things like that, they actually have someone else singing the announcements.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: So immediately there's a pattern interrupt right there.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: Secondly, they have a dancing first based coach, right?
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: So this is actually a real coach for the team at the first base.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: He dances, he break dances between innings or or between um between plays as well, right?
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: So again, something a little bit different to entertain the fans behind first base.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: They also have a five-year-old kid who's outside the stadium at the start of the game, who is the professional high fiver.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: And his his job is to welcome the fans as they come in by just giving out high fives to everyone and anyone that he can.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: Another thing that's interesting is rather than having the bat boys, they have a bat dog.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: Their cute little puppy is officially the Savannah Bananas bat dog and gets dressed up to look a bit like a banana sometimes as well.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: And finally, the example I've got, which I really do love, is rather than having uh traditional, let's call them cheerleaders doing whatever traditional cheerleaders do and looking like them, what they actually have is what they call the banana nanas.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: And this literally is a group of old ladies in their 70s or 60s who somewhat dance in formation as the banana nanas, right?
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: Again, different and fun and makes them stand out.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: And then these are just a few examples of all the things they do to really put on a great experience.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, as I said, you know, you know, you know, in our B2B sales world, I don't know if you want to copy all these things, right, about how you go to market, but I think there's some inspiration to be drawn from this to say, what can we, if you really think about doing things differently, what would it be?
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the ideas, one of the things that they do at that organization is to literally say, you know, this is what happens in normal baseball games.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: How can we do it completely differently so that we stand out?
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: Now, moving on to more of a business setting.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: In 2003, Seth Godin, the marketing consultant, marketing expert, wrote a book called Purple Cow.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: And the whole idea about the purple cow is in that field of cows that all look pretty much exactly the same.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: What if there was a purple one that looked and acted differently?
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so this is you know taking the same idea but bringing it much more into business context.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I think Set's argument at the time was it's getting noisier and busier out there.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's getting harder to stand out.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: What are the ways we should be thinking about this so that we can stand out as organizations and as individuals?
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: And this is a great book.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, he talks about the same idea, right?
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: The being different.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: He gives case studies of the Arion chair, for example.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: He gives a case study about Pearl Jam and how they've been releasing music.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: And he gives case studies around Krispy Kreme and a whole bunch of others, I think apples in there and a bunch of other ones.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: So he kind of takes the idea that's you know a bit outrageous in the Savannah Bananas case, but brings it a bit more front and center for B2B sales, looking at the the purple cut.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: But the concept is exactly the same, right?
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: Which is if everyone else is doing this, how can I do something different to differentiate myself and stand out and get the attention that I deserve?
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: And when I think about this in our sales world and the things that we're in control of, I think of three main areas.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: One is how we look, the second one is how we act, and the third one is how we interact.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: So how we look, how we act, and how we interact.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: How we look, you know, some of you may think that's a little bit silly, but you know, I encourage you, go to the next conference that you want to go to, the next trade show, whatever it is, and just look at all the salespeople that are there.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I bet you most of them are are dressed in some sort of jeans or slacks with a with a sport coat on on top, some sort of blazer, right?
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: And you can just see them from a mile away, right?
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: There's the sales guy, he dresses like one, right?
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe in some conferences or some trade shows it might be a little bit differently, but I see that again and again and again.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: And there's an opportunity there somewhere just to be different, right?
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have to wear, oh, by the way, so Jesse from the Savannah Bananas, he commonly wears at the game and at conferences that he goes to, he wears a yellow tux.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: That's as his outfit, it's bright yellow, right?
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: So you don't need to go as far as uh as donning a yellow tux all the time, but what can you do that's different?
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: I know I've worked with one guy over the years, and his thing, he just wears a bow tie all the time.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, you just remember the guy with the bow tie, though that's Michael.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, for me, that's one of the ways that he stands out, very successful uh salesperson.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: So that's looking.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: Acting is interesting, right?
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: I I bet you just by being human and being let me put my fingers out normal, that you can stand out from a lot of the people that are out there.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: There is no doubt, even in this day and age, that some of us believe that because suddenly we're in a a business environment, we need to talk differently and and say silly things and use big words that we don't know really and don't understand properly.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: It seems to be this weird thing that happens to us uh every so often.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I bet you if you just kind of thought more human and more normal and acted that way with people and be vulnerable and be transparent with people, you probably differentiate yourself from I don't know, 40-50% of the other people you're competing with out there, right?
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: So how you act, right?
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: What is it about how you approach people?
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: What level are you used to working at?
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: How do you do that?
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: Are you human?
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: Things like that is gonna help you stand up.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: And the third area that I think about is how do you interact, right?
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: So when you are working with these organizations, how you interact with the senior people, the junior people, everyone around is one way for you to kind of stand out from the crowd.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, I I bet again, you know, you could differentiate yourself from 40, 50 percent of the people out there just by doing it consistently, interacting professionally, but fun and and and lighthearted at the right times and serious at the right times, and and just doing and saying the right things so they believe that you're someone with how you deal with them, there's some you're someone to be trusted and someone they want to work with.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: So I think you know, my challenge for you is to think about these three areas.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: How do you look, how do you act, and how do you interact to be different out there and to rise above the noise out there that's there all the time with our prospects?
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: One quick caveat though is this has got to be genuine, right?
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: Don't it don't try and put something on.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's gonna be fake, it's gonna be cheesy, it's gonna be weird.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of like those, you know, the the the emails that used to go out saying, Oh, I can't get hold of you, you know, have you ticked the right box, you know?
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: Can you not get back to me?
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: Did the filing cabinet fall on top of you, right?
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: It it might be funny the first time, but believe me, after that it's not funny, it becomes very cheesy and fake.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: So don't do that, but how can you harness something about yourself and how you do things and make it really part of who you are so that someone can see that you're different to everyone else?
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why I would say final kind of thought about this is the phrase, follow your different.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, Christopher Lockhead, an amazing marketing person, has uh a podcast out there, and it's literally called Follow Your Different.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: So look for what's different about you or what can be different about you.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: Follow it, maximize it, and use it to your advantage.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: If you like this episode, the single most useful thing you could do to support this podcast is share it with your sales network.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: It'll probably take you less than 20 seconds.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: All you need to do is click the share icon in your app right now and share it wide and far.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: It will mean the world to me and it could make a difference to those you share it with.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: Also, I need your suggestions, please.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: If you have a topic you want me to cover or just want to get in touch, simply email me at upside at unstoppable.deo.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: That's upside at unstoppable.do.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: And now to wrap up, training without implementation is just entertainment, and pretty poor entertainment when I deliver it.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: So make sure you take action on what you learn today and keep getting it better and better each and every day.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: Also, this world does not need more sales BS.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: So please don't create any more.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: Be great at the fundamentals, be honest, be real, be yourself, just do not BS.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: And finally, I'm signing off as the great Joe Sexton Wood by saying gone to sell.