Andy Paul's Blog, page 34

#524. How to be resilient when life sucks. With Allison Graham.

Allison Graham, consultant, and author of Married My Mom Birthed A Dog: How to be Resilient When Life Sucks, joins me on this episode of #Accelerate!

KEY TAKEAWAYS

[2:07] Allison thinks the biggest challenge facing sales reps is the noise in the marketplace. Allison started writing a column in 2003. It took her five months to get the job. Today, anybody can publish anything, with little or no merit.

[5:10] Allison suggests a remedy. Salespeople need to flip their script. Talking about their company and product is of no interest to the prospect. Talk about the specific problem you are going to solve for the client, and how you will solve it.

[6:39] Then, get eye-to-eye with the right buyers, make an impression, and talk their language about problems they are having. Let them know you’re the solution provider, and make it irresistible. Tie your product to their problem.

[9:34] Allison has written about resilience. She based a book on her work/life experiences of the first ten years of her sales career. Her sales were good, but her health was miserable. [11:36] You can become a victim, or you can become the Resiliency Ninja. Step into your full potential, your full success, no matter what challenges come. If you can’t bounce back from a low quota, that will influence your ability to sell.

[13:31] A 50% close ratio means 50% “No.” SDRs hear “No,” maybe 90% of the time. Not hitting your numbers twice, makes it tough to bounce back. Getting a “No,” is better than a “Maybe.” Buyers need to decline, until you earn their “Yes.”

[16:30] Resiliency is a skill that applies to both big and little issues. Too many little hurts can become a big hurt, if you are not prepared with resilience. Process issues as they come.

[18:47] Big issues like loss, disease, and divorce, impact performance. Allison created the Resiliency Ninja Formula for the book. It combines self-awareness, strength of heart, body and mind. She developed tools to build strength.

[21:21] These tools fight our internal messenger of BS that always says the worst. Allison describes a writing exercise to enable seeing self-judgments objectively. Flipping the internal script is key to becoming resilient.

[24:00] Allison claims positive thinking will make you miserable. She explains how. Positive thinking without basis leads to despair when there is a problem. Optimism is hopeful, and seeing the best. This is good.

[27:41] Acknowledge problems, and share them thoughtfully with trusted people. Share by giving hope and tools, not sorrow. Share successes with prospects. Allison describes the Continuum of Challenges: stress, obstacles, and adversity.

[36:19] We tend to minimize big things, and overstress day-to-day stresses. We are taught this from youth. We need to acknowledge big hurts, and give less power to little pains. We must learn to process adversity.

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#522. How to Accelerate Sales with AI and Machine Learning. With Roy Raanani.

Roy Raanani, CEO and Co-Founder of Chorus.ai, joins me on this episode of #Accelerate!

KEY TAKEAWAYS

[1:43] Roy says the biggest challenge facing sales teams is how often things are changing, so, how fast they can learn, adapt and get that learning into the process.

[3:02] Many of the ideas for process change come from individuals up through management to the C-suite, and if there is buy-in, back down throughout the organization. This needs to happen quickly, to match changing circumstances.

[3:40] Chorus.ai came to be through the combination of the right technology and Roy’s experience in sales. Chorus focuses on reps’ conversations with prospects. The gap to fill was in knowing and documenting the content of conversations.

[6:31] Hearing the call gives clarity on what happens. This opens the way for analysis and next steps. Something to ask about competitors: “What other solutions are you looking at?” Most reps don’t ask this.

[8:24] Chorus.ai uses of machine learning. It gets smarter with more data. It gets better at identifying patterns and prediction. It identifies patterns in conversations to close deals effectively.

[12:47] Chorus.ai looks for the signal among the noise, to point out points of interest where a human follow-up would be needed. This supports managers who cannot listen to every call. The learning algorithms are evolving. The data is there.

[15:40] Roy shares key findings of research on discovery calls, from analysis of over 500K calls, measuring talk-to-listen ratio, number of questions, engaging questions, and so forth. There were some surprising insights about win rates.

[20:41] Asking too many questions, too quickly, tends to shut down the prospect. Open-ended questions work best early on. Factual questions that do not engage can be saved for another time, or the demo.

[22:32] Roy and Andy discuss the proper time for the demo, and why some reps rush it too early. They are just “checking the box,” in the playbook. Discovery is continual.

[29:12] Trish Bertuzzi writes about rep’s concern about sunk costs that prevents a rep from admitting a deal will not close. [30:33] There was something missed early on that indicates whether this customer is on track to make a decision. Roy notes that the data in the Chorus dashboards shows how effective the discovery stage has been.

[31:59] Discovery still focuses on pain points. This is not engaging to the customer. The customer is engaged by discussion on their goals, and plans. Focus discovery on aspirations.

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#523. Coping with the Ups and Downs of Sales and Life. With Bridget Gleason.

Bridget Gleason is VP of Sales for Logz.io and my regular partner on Front Line Fridays.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

[2:14] Bridget cites a book about living a good life by not stressing about the less important aspects. Pay most attention to relationships, health, family, and purpose.

[3:19] Andy refers to another book with the same lesson. It’s easy to obsess about sales performance. Andy remembers his blood pressure going through the roof at age 23 in his first management job. Do the best you can, and let go of it.

[5:45] Calmness comes with age and practice. Surveys taken in retirement say retirees’ biggest regret is having worried too much. Worry is worthless.

[7:15] Bridget’s nature would be to worry. She works against that tendency, using mindfulness and meditation deliberately to calm the mind. She aspires to not go up and down with the sales number.

[8:43] Andy spent about a month doing little because of sickness. When he started to worry, he engaged in meditation. Bridget relates how she coached a new rep having a low quarter. It’s good to be resilient.

[11:24] The highs and the lows are transitory. Other things in life can compensate. If you put in the basic work, the score takes care of itself. Have patience during longer sales cycles.

[12:44] A man once worked for Andy who had a nervous tic when he was worried about his performance. He had good reason to worry. We need to get out of our own way. We may need to be shown our blind spots.

[13:56] Sales coaching is being neglected, which means reps are looking for direction from a trusted source. This should be their manager.

[15:48] When Bridget is being direct, she is giving constructive criticism, not destructive. She also appreciates that her team shares direct feedback with her.

[17:47] The most difficult conversation is to fire someone. Bridget had to fire a top rep, who had sabotaged the system so he got all the leads. She hopes he learned from it. Andy has had to fire people who had just experienced family tragedies.

[23:16] Though a termination is a business necessity, it is a hardship to the person terminated. The company should make every effort to coach the person before a decision is made. And they may go into a situation that is a better fit.

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#521. The True Measure of Sales Productivity. With Erol Toker.

Erol Toker, Founder and CEO of Truly, joins me on this episode of #Accelerate!

KEY TAKEAWAYS

[2:00] Erol says the biggest challenge facing sales professionals is how the nature of sales is changing underneath them. They need to take of their sales hat, and have an engineering approach to finding solutions.

[3:18] Product and domain expertise is essential to meeting the needs of the customer. The key is to add value that goes beyond the product. Willingness to learn and provide service is an advantage in sales.

[5:45] Truly is a sales communication platform. They build “the system of record for conversations.” For sales teams engaging buying teams, it is important to know who spoke to whom about what, by what channel. Truly gives that report.

[6:54] Truly records how much time you are spending in which stage of the opportunity, with which customer contact role, and what is being said in the conversation.

[9:22] Erol gives a client example on how Truly is used. In one company, among 80 reps, there was no common definition of a decision-maker conversation. Truly used quantitative metrics through analysis to formalize to a common definition.

[11:08] Truly’s ICP is a larger revenue organization, with at least 40 reps within a sales team, such as 40 SDRs, 40 Account Executives, or 40 Account Managers. The objective truths they measure are more important on large teams.

[12:02] Sales productivity is about understanding input and output. Truly looks at Customer Success. Outcome is more important than product. If a company does not understand their output, it is impossible to measure it against input.

[14:00] Order-of-magnitude increases in inputs (how many email messages are sent) do not produce order-of-magnitude increases in outputs (responses). Companies at different stages have different levels of productivity.

[17:46] Individual contributors need the data to learn whether they are productive or not. Reps need to know how to measure the right activities to enable productivity to go up over time.

[21:48] Andy gives an example of an agile company he has helped. Will conventional companies retain the same business model in ten years as they do today? Andy suggests that the current structure of sales no longer makes sense.

[24:33] There is a trend to think that technology will make you better, rather than to understand that making people more effective will make you better. Companies need to think long-term. Reps need the basic skills of human connection.

[28:47] The future of sales is about becoming more human, not less. Helping the customer quickly gather the information to help them make the good decision, is what matters in sales.

 

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#520. The Key Traits of High-Performing B2B Marketing Teams. With Mathew Sweezey.

Mathew Sweezey, an author, keynote speaker, and Principal of Marketing Insights at Salesforce.com, joins me on this episode of #Accelerate!

KEY TAKEAWAYS

[2:53] Mathew says the biggest challenge facing sales professionals is understanding how people relate, how they want to be sold, and what they’re actually buying. A-type personalities do not often make the best sales professionals.

[4:17] Many sales postings ask for extroverts. These companies may not be around long. One third of the Fortune 500 has been replaced in the last decade. Old ideas are past. What a company sells, and how it sells, are separate issues.

[7:52] Salesforce surveyed organizations in 2016 to determine traits of high-performance B2B marketers. They used two self-selecting questions to identify the high performers.

[9:42] The questions asked their happiness with their position in their market, and with marketing outcomes. If these were exceptional, they were doing other things exceptionally. The top factor was executive buy-in, because tools are costly.

[11:41] Executive buy-in is the top factor in any organizational change. The CEO holds the organization accountable, and provides the funds to do it.

[13:22] High-performing organizations invest more in tools. High performers use 12 tools in their stack, vs. one-to-five. There must be a base level of technology in place to know the consumer. The C-suite is continually being asked for budget.

[18:22] Mathew shares his opinion on Gartner’s prediction that 80% of the B2B sales process will be owned by Marketing by 2020. Sales still works, but buyers have a new process. It’s the experience in total that matters.

[22:10] Customers will continue to have more information before talking to the salesperson. There will still be many touchpoints. Sales roles will shift and change. There will be a new relationship-building role between Marketing and Sales.

[25:15] The new role must be focused on the relationship. SaaS close rates are poor when the relationship is neglected. Andy cites Absolute Value. Matthew cites The Experience Economy, which places experience over product.

[28:07] People are learning. Skillsets, behaviors, and habits are going to change. The future of selling is about becoming more human, not less. Technology can only help you make better decisions. Matt quotes Tim Washer about blogs.

[30:03] Jacco vanderKooij writes about the emotional phases of the buying experience. Joe Pine writes about guiding the buyer to next question they need to ask through the buying experience. It is a human process of solving problems.

[32:05] The customer experience is about achievement, not about pain points. Support the customer on the story arc where they want to be.

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#519. Tracking Account-Based Marketing Success. With Andrew Sinclair.

Andrew Sinclair, Founder of Lane Four, an account-based sales and marketing application, joins me on this episode of #Accelerate!

KEY TAKEAWAYS

[2:01] Andrew says the biggest challenge facing sales reps is the time it takes reps to do administrative tasks instead of selling, to meet management’s need to track field activity.

[3:25] Terms like ‘track,’ ‘report,’ and ‘measure’ indicate that CRM is not meant to facilitate the job of the reps, but to control their activity. Andrew prefers enabling end-of-job tasks, such as using the sales order to enter activity data.

[6:06] Lane Four, for ABM, came from Andrew’s consulting company, which is focused on supporting funded startups. Four years ago they started building tools to make Salesforce easier for marketers. This led to account-based services.

[7:57] Bolting apps onto Salesforce can lead to data in separate sets. Lane Four is a native app integrated into Salesforce, minimizing data lag.

[12:49] Andrew explains how lead assignment and follow up — the first of the prototypical processes of Lane Four — is facilitated. Tracking is done automatically, measured in business hours between activities.

[15:30] Account creation is the second main process in Lane Four. Andrew talks about understanding organization and industry factors, leading to good account decisions.

[16:46] Opportunity creation is the next process Lane Four addresses. Andrew discusses forecasting models and various aspects of this process.

[18:18] The meaning of opportunity depends on what you want to measure, how long the sales cycle is, and how many meetings it involves. There is a lot of tracking involved.

[19:34] The longer the sales cycle is, the fuzzier the stages are, and the harder it is to track time. Andrew talks about the need for weekly sales meetings as a separate channel for tracking.

[21:27] Andrew notes adoption curves. Not everyone enters data at the right point and time. Predictive tools are only as good as the data entered.

[24:45] Humans are hugely unpredictable. Even large data sets can measure the wrong data and come up with the wrong forecast. Use regular sales meetings to verify engagement data. SDR data tools help measure sales engagement.

[27:10] There has been no widespread A/B testing on the use of SDR tools. People keep going for the shiny object. People on different tools are not being tracked similarly. Operational models need to be consistent, so as to track them consistently.

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#518. Accelerate! Expresso: Weekly Highlights Show for July 17-22

These snippets have been edited into a tight, short show that will give you a taste of the insights you missed if you didn’t catch every episode of Accelerate! last week.

In this episode, you’ll hear excerpts from my conversations with my guests during the week of July 17 – July 2. That’s episodes 512-517.

Listen in as I was joined by the following experts: Stephen Moulton, Babette Ten Haken, Tony Hughes and Paul Teshima. As always, Bridget Gleason was my partner on Front Line Friday.

Take a quick listen now. Then go back and listen to an entire episode with your favorite guest.

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#517. Sales Secrets and Hiring Hints for Startup Success. With Pat Helmers.

Pat Helmers, author of the Selling with Confidence sales system, and host of the Sales Babble podcast, joins me on this episode of #Accelerate!

KEY TAKEAWAYS

[1:25] Pat says the biggest challenge facing sales reps is trying to differentiate themselves from all the noise on the internet. To start, build a relationship with your prospects. Go where they are. Find their itch before you pitch.

[2:48] Serve before you sell. Have two attitudes: I’m here to help, and, I’m here to add value. Don’t be afraid to ask service  questions. “What can I do to help you?” This can be a learned behavior. Non-sellers can become sellers.

[5:48] Pat works mainly with software startup companies. A lot of them are scratching their own itch with a product, and haven’t learned where else it is needed, or how to frame it for their prospective market. Pat explains the path to growth.

[8:33] Startup founders should not hire a salesperson first. They need to be their number one salesperson. Just as they pitch to VC and private equity, they can pitch to prospects. The best way to understand the product is to sell it to real people.

[10:20] The founders have to know how to sell it. A good start is to go to LinkedIn for prospective clients. Don’t hire a marketing department before you have a market. Creating relationships will never be automated.

[11:38] Founders, when they decide to hire, often hire the flashy hunter, because they are not hunters themselves. Instead, create filters, in the form of assessments and tests. Pat gives an example of a sales post, and his hiring process.

[16:02] Pat explains his hiring process. It includes giving a a software demo as a 15-minute presentation phone call, with himself as the customer. If the candidate shows the base set of skills, Pat will work with them.

[18:15] Hiring is risk management. Seth Godin asks people to intern for him for free. Who wouldn’t intern with Seth Godin? Pat’s filtering process is the next best thing for finding talent.

[18:44] At about the fifth step, Pat walks through their resume for hours with them, line by line, to see how genuine they are. Pat doesn’t bring a candidate in for lunch unless he’s 90% sure.

[20:26] Andy cites Jason Dana’s NYT article about job interviews, saying that looking at the resume gives a more accurate prediction of job success than the interview does. By the end of Pat’s filtering process, he has a successful hire.

[23:17] Certain cliche words on a resume screen out candidates when Andy hires. Many B2B companies are still advertising for extroverts and closers. That is not a good fit for B2B. Asking for the sale should be the natural meeting ending.

[27:21] Customers don’t want to spend excessive time deciding. They want to make a good decision. Most are satisficers. As a company grows, founders can’t make every decision. They become leaders and leave decisions to others.

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#516. Do Sales Quotas Lose Meaning if Too Few Meet Them? With Bridget Gleason.

Bridget Gleason is VP of Sales for Logz.io and my regular partner on Front Line Fridays.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

[:57] Bridget is now Captain Fantastic!

[3:10] The topic is quota. Comparatively few individual sales contributors make quota. 40% – 80% do not. Quota may not be relevant. Raising quota 30% arbitrarily is not scientific. Bridget believes goals are important, and quotas are goals.

[8:16] The disconnect between the percentage not making quota, and the quotas themselves, needs to be addressed. Salespeople need to be in positions to experience success. The experience motivates them to further successes.

[9:26] The current effect is that sales managers are disenfranchising large portions of their teams. If the middle 60% have a good experience, they will want to improve. Bridget’s boss said all reps need to make quota this quarter.

[11:36] If the company needs to grow 30%, that doesn’t mean quota needs to go up 30%. If quota goes up 10%, more will contribute to the success, and you may reach the 30% growth. Quotas are often set to be difficult by pressure from the CEO.

[15:50] Andy coached one company with a great sales team. The CEO always put together goals mid-year, based on how the team was doing. The quotas were manageable, and there was trust. Another company set expectations, but not quotas.

[18:30] The company that set clear expectations grew rapidly. Trust was a key aspect of that growth. Some environments, like Silicon Valley, are very conducive to sales. Compensation should be in alignment with the effort to get the deal done.

[20:26] Startup companies, at certain stages of development, might not pay a commission, but may compensate all the team working on the deal. That is most of the staff pulling together, not one salesperson. There is so much learning at a startup.

[21:45] In SDR teams there is a lot of job-hopping, but sticking with it can be rewarding. It is disservice to self to avoid all the tough times. Take a lesson from the struggle.

[23:01] Managers should look beyond the quota, or be more pragmatic about how to establish quota, and what it means. Are they doing all they can to get more people to meet quota?

[24:27] Are there ways to set goals without setting quotas? Andy invites feedback on this question. Please send it to Acceleratefm@gmail.com. Or send your drawing for a female superhero figure of Captain Fantastic to the same address!

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#515. Let AI Nudge You into Sales Relationships. With Paul Teshima.

Paul Teshima, Co-Founder and CEO of Nudge.ai, joins me on this episode of #Accelerate!

KEY TAKEAWAYS

[1:28] Paul says the biggest challenge facing sales reps is that buyers know more than ever, so a rep cannot add value just by holding information about their product or service.

[2:19] Paul gives an overview of Nudge. It is an AI platform that focuses on understanding the insights around relationships, and how those relationships can help you get into an account, or influence an account, for the buying process.

[4:41] The version of AI — that Nudge.ai follows — is to tackle problems that are repetitive, take some thought, and are behind-the-scenes. Paul gives an example. There is a lot of promise for this ‘grunt work’ type of AI.

[5:38] AI does more than analyze of Big Data. AI applies machine learning for continual improvement of the analysis process around the data. Paul explains by example, how topic modeling is used for Google Alerts.

[10:09] Relationships are being sacrificed to the sales stack. Paul talks about freeing up research time by moving research from the rep to AI. This gives reps time to build relationships, and focus on effectiveness while the ai works on efficiency.

[11:51] The more a role is process-oriented, such as SDR calling for appointments, the more AI can help ‘B’ players become ‘A’ players. In field sales, where the process varies, AI is less applicable for improving individual performance.

[13:35] The personal interaction is what makes ‘A’ players. AI can free up reps to get more training, and more customer time, which is how they may improve their performance.

[14:28] Sales automation tends to enforce conformity. Reps need more freedom to interact to fit the customer, and according to their own strengths. Paul sees deal sizes shrinking, which leads to less interaction and more process.

[17:00] SaaS allows for fast global reach. Startups are looking more toward the Enterprise, earlier, and Enterprise is more likely to look to a startup. Paul discusses changes in the sales force and strategies as the digital generation matures.

[22:00] Paul differentiates between insights that are actionable for an SDR, and information overload that goes over the top.  SDRs are not industry experts, and don’t need deep insights.

[23:27] Technology, tech, and sales stacks are not getting the sales force closer to quota. All the tech just helps you keep level, even with best practices. The competition is dense.

[27:17] A nudge is a push giving momentum. Sales is about restarting or maintaining momentum. Nudges keep you top-of-mind with prospects during low periods. AI suggests which prospects you should nudge today.

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