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The secret sauce to your sales success? It’s what happens before the sale. It’s the planning, the strategy, the leadership. And it’s more than demo automation. It’s the thoughtful work that connects people, processes, and performance. If you want strong revenue, high retention, and shorter sales cycles, the pre-work—centered around the human—still makes the dream work. But you already know that.
The Unexpected Lever is your partner in growing revenue by doing what great sales leaders do best. Combining vision with execution. Brought to you by Vivun, this show highlights the people and peers behind the brands who understand what it takes to build and lead high-performing sales teams. You’re not just preparing for the sale—you’re unlocking potential.
Join us as we share stories of sales leaders who make a difference, their challenges, their wins, and the human connections that drive results, one solution at a time.
Jarod Greene (00:00):
Hey everybody. Welcome to V5 where we spend exactly five minutes getting on our soapbox with some of the hottest topics and trends in all of sales and go-to-market. It's going to be a fun one. I got Wendy Petty, CRO of Work Fusion, whose hot take is? What you got, Wendy?
Wendy Petty (00:18):
In today's world, it's still as important as it ever was to have face-to-face meetings. It seems like sellers today think that doing teams and WebExes is okay. It's good for some things where you're not always in the field, but I can guarantee you, especially when you're in enterprise sales, that if you have face-to-face meetings, if you build the relationships, it's building the trust that enables you to really be an enterprise seller. And it doesn't happen over video. And my team knows this. I'm very adamant about getting out, being in front of customers, being in front of partners, and building the relationship and the trust. It's amazing how people forget face-to-face meetings and coming from having been doing this for almost 40 years. When you meet other sales leaders, everybody's saying the same thing, get out in the field and meet. People will say, well, some people are still working at home. Well, it's okay. Go find a local coffee shop. Or we know they're coming into the office. So set up face-to-face meetings.
Jarod Greene (01:27):
Yeah, it's interesting because I think crazy, but five years ago, global pandemic, we're all in the house. We figured out how to work, and I saw the same thing you probably did. There's a slow hesitation to get back out there, but I also see the same thing you do, which is I am willing to bet just donuts to dollars that the rep and the teams that meet face-to-face outperform the teams who don't. So what is the hesitation you hear from other sales leaders who aren't willing to make that investment to get their teams back out on the road or back face-to-face with buyers and prospects?
Wendy Petty (02:05):
I think that if you're new in sales, you might've grown up not having face-to-face meetings. So I have a lot of younger people on my team, and that's been part of the process is getting out. And it works every single time. And I'm a believer in don't ask for someone to do something you wouldn't do yourself. I build my own executive relationships and I'll show the team what's required to get the meeting set up. It might take three weeks. How many meetings do you have in a day? I remember we were doing five, six meetings in a day. It's definitely a little different. So I think people are comfortable working from their house. And I will tell you one thing, the US is very different than London. In London, everybody is face-to-face. It's fabulous. And so it's definitely a different culture over there than it is here. And nobody has any hesitation about doing the face-to-face meetings. There's so many people in the organizations that you have to sell to today. Everyone's located in different locations, so people want to see.
Jarod Greene (03:09):
Definitely want to be seen and heard. What do you think happens? What's the magic that happens when people are face-to-face? I violently agree with you. And for those younger reps who are hesitant, you have to coach them, you have to guide them. But what's the magic behind face-to-face that you just can't replicate over Zoom teams, WebEx, pick your conference and platform of choice.
Wendy Petty (03:34):
So it's a great question. I think the one piece about it is when you go into a meeting, you socialize a little bit first, you ask more personal questions, you get to know each other a little bit better. When you're pulling the calls, you have like 30 minutes and you know exactly what you need to get done. As a seller, you can't see the body language when you're doing a video call. They don't really get to know your personality. So sometimes you click and if you click, it's great. Sometimes it takes time to warm up, but I can meet one to many and get better reaction, faster relationships than I can do over calls.
Jarod Greene (04:10):
The best meetings I've had have always been face to face for every reason you just said, we get to build a rapport, get to learn each other a little better, get to understand value language subtlety. I'm also going to give you, sounds bad, but you get my undivided attention. I think a lot of times we've all been guilty of multitasking on sales call or a meeting, email comes up, Slack comes up. That project you are supposed to finish isn't quite done. And so you're tuning that. And so it is hard to be rude face to face because you completely disarm folks from having those things and you get my advice.
Wendy Petty (04:48):
It's important also from a social experience as you're becoming a seller. Very different dynamic.
Jarod Greene (04:55):
Yeah, absolutely. I think people buy from people.
Wendy Petty (04:57):
And that's it.
Jarod Greene (04:58):
You're an awesome person, Wendy. I'd buy from you like that. Yeah, and just like that, we're at five, but I appreciate you, Wendy. Where can people get ahold of you, talk to you more about this topic that you're clearly passionate about?
Wendy Petty (05:11):
Yeah, so I'm a big LinkedIn. That's the other thing that I'm adamant about is being on LinkedIn. So Wendy Petty on LinkedIn at my company workfusion.com. But very cool. What we're doing is we've created AI agents to fight financial crimes, and so we have been in this market. We have 10 of the top 20 banks today, so we're really well entrenched in the AI space. So I'm also open to mentoring and coaching other sellers. So just reach out to me.
Jarod Greene (05:42):
Awesome. Thank you, Wendy. Appreciate that.
Wendy Petty (05:44):
Okay.
Jarod Greene (05:45):
Alright, take care.
Wendy Petty (05:45):
All right, thanks.