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The world's best conversations about B2B selling happen here. This exciting new podcast from Andy Paul, the creator and host of the Sales Enablement Podcast (with 1200+ episodes and millions of downloads) is focused on the mission of helping increase your win rates by winning a bigger percentage of the deals in your pipeline. In this unique round table format, Andy and his panel of guest experts share the critical sales insights, sales perspectives and selling skills that you can use to elevate your sales effectiveness and create the buying experiences that influence decision-makers to buy from you. Host Andy Paul is the expert on modern B2B selling and author of three best-selling, award-winning sales books, including his latest Sell Without Selling Out. Visit andypaul.com to subscribe to his newsletter for even more strategies and tips to accelerate your win rate!
Hi friends. Welcome to the win rate podcast. I'm your host, Andy Paul. That was Jen Allen Knuth. And Jen is one of my guests on this episode of the win rate podcast. Jen Allen Knuth is head of demand, Jen and co host of the 30 minutes to president's club podcast. My other guests today for this discussion about sales effectiveness, the buyer experience and increasing your win rates are Katie Swick.
Katie is global sales enablement lead at Stripe. Also joining us is Richard Rivera. Richard is president and founder of the Champion Sell, and is the author of a book by the same name, The Champion Cell. Now, one listener note before we jump into today's discussion, I want to remind you to subscribe to my newsletter, join the more than 50, 000 sellers and sales leaders who subscribe to receive win rate Wednesday each week.
That's right. On Wednesday, you'll receive one actionable tip to accelerate your win rates and a lot of other great sales advice as well. You can subscribe by visiting my website. That's andypaul. com or you can subscribe on my LinkedIn profile. Are you ready? Let's jump into the discussion.
Okay, friends, that's it for this episode of the win rate podcast. First of all, as always, I want to thank you for taking the time to listen. I'm so grateful for your support of the show. If you're enjoying this new podcast, could you leave us a quick rating or review for the show on Apple podcast or Spotify receiving this feedback?
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Again, thank you so much for investing your time with me today. Until next time, I'm your host, Andy Paul. Good selling everyone.
All right. Welcome everyone to this episode of the win rate podcast. We have, the best names in sales rejoining us again demand Jen, Alan Knuth could have you back. It is one of the best names in sales, right? I said, there's the sales Hunter Mark Hunter now demand Jen. You have to love it.
I love it.
yeah, Katie and Richard welcome as well. So, you're right. Yeah. A little bit of time to introduce themselves. Jen, we'll start with you.
I'm Jen, nicknamed Demand Jen, which I wish I came up with. Actually, my old boss came up with it, so credit to him. I've spent much of my career in sales. I was a frontline seller for about 18 years for the Challenger Sales Organization and CEB, the company behind it. And then in the beginning of this year, I moved over to Lavender AI an AI assisted writing tool for sellers.
And then just recently left, actually, last month to start up. Demand gen and turn it into something.
there you go. It's about time, right? So that's our state in life.
Thank you.
Yeah. Katie.
Well, first and foremost, Andy, thanks for having me today. Excited for the conversation. So I'm a salesperson at heart. I've done everything from SDRs before SDRs were a thing. BDRs before BDRs were a thing. So I'm aging myself here up to strategic sales. And then for the last, I'm not going to tell you how long I've been doing revenue operations, sales operations and sales enablement.
So. Still a salesperson at heart, just on the dark side now.
Katie on this podcast, just by definition of me participating, you'd never have to worry about aging yourself or being concerned about the actual age. And so I think I've probably have kids as old as you. So, Richard, tell us about yourself.
Oh, hey, everybody. Thanks for having me on Andy. It's a lovely to join Katie and Jen today. So, this last year, I guess the most recent self descriptor is author as I released a sales excellence book called the champion cell earlier this year. Thank you. And that was for four years on the making on the road as a chief revenue officer.
I've been a CRO three times have been leading and growing early stage tech startups for over 20 years, been a part of some really good really good fun journeys and great teams from blade logic to medallia. Fuse and monetate vibe. So sold a few companies, a few IPOs, and we just took all of those learnings of what an elite seller is based on my observation in terms of the outward focus of these humans that buy from us.
So a lot of similar beliefs in your books. I know Andy with the empathy and focus on the humans in the cell and the buyer. So, again, just a joy to join everybody today.
Yeah, we're glad to have you. So, well, let's start off serve questions. Top of mind, because feeding back stuff I've been reading recently on LinkedIn, which is always sort of a game of chance. Is why do buyers talk with salespeople? Jen, why do buyers talk with salespeople?
it's not because they're likable. No, in all seriousness, I think what we saw as buyers had the ability to get more information is buyers often talk to salespeople. When they've run out of other options to learn like we do this in our personal lives, right? I'm not gonna if i'm gonna buy a car I'm not gonna call a car salesman and be like let me start my learning journey with you But I will call them once I've figured out what I think I need What I think that's supposed to look like and how much I think I'm supposed to pay for it.
And I think that's largely the shift that happened when things got a little bit ugly this year is Sellers went from being like, hey, we're pulled in early to now Hey, we're pulled in late and now we can't change people's minds So my take on it is like they talk to us when they can't get the information anywhere else
Yeah. Yeah. Katie, what do you think?
on the salesperson, actually. So, I would say the best salespeople out there, I talk to them, because I'm a buyer, right? Like, I'm a buyer within my company, and I talk to them when they let me know that I need something, that I maybe thought I didn't, or maybe I'm just curious about, right?
So, those are the good salespeople. I would agree with you, though, Jen, like, the average salesperson I get a hold of them when I know that I need something. Right. I'm not happy with something I have, or I've identified a gap in my tech stack, for example of something that I think I need.
Yeah, I'm glad you used the word need because that's what was really driving us. I think buyers talk to salespeople when they need to, right? We have all this data out there saying, Oh, no one wants to talk to salespeople, right? Granted, Gartner, said 75%. Buyers don't want to talk to sellers.
I think the number is 100 percent actually, right? No one wants to talk to a salesperson, but they do it because they need to. And I just wanted to ask you guys this because, I don't know, I posted something on LinkedIn last week, sort of talked about this, buyers don't want to talk to sellers, but they'll make time for those so they can help them get their job done.
And some thought leader whose name I won't name says, pfft. It makes no sense at all. How can these two things be, both be right? And it's like, very easily, right? Because they need to talk to sellers. Richard, what do you think?
Yeah. I think that both are right because I think there's two, two types of deals. We all work. There's deals where there's a known problem, whether it's inbound requests and RFP or you just get lucky. Maybe you're talking to a partner and then they know there's an initiative there.
So there's deals where there's a known problem and that's probably more in line with your point. There's a known problem. I'm in an early discovery phase. At least I'm researching the possible Well, alternatives. But then there's deals where there's an unknown problem to solve. And I think that's the frustration that a lot of sales people face and they see it as a negative, whereas it's actually an opportunity.
I can't, I can think I can't think of a lot of deals in my career, whether a seller or a leader where we just walked into a buying situation with a specific set of dates and milestones and they're gonna buy something on the state. Oftentimes, especially selling startups. You're laughing, but you remember back in the day, you remember back in the day, Andy, where you're selling the new thing.
It's a little disruptive. It's educational. And oftentimes that's an unknown problem to solve. And they're taking that meeting. Who knows why? I like it. I like to think of it at the end of the day is kind of a milestone. It's a, we call it the attraction milestone. I have become attracted to this message and this approach and the prospecting really for two reasons.
There's familiarity there and there's relevancy there. If there's no relevancy or familiarity, I'm not really going to take the meeting. Once you have the discussions, you realize you can learn if it's a known problem or an unknown problem. But for me, it comes down to, they got attracted to your message.
And your approach and they got attracted because of familiarity and relevancy
Jen, I was going to ask you about something you'd posted this week about business acumen, because I think this sort of ties into this discussion. And you're , we're sort of decrying the lack of business acumen on the part of sellers, but the point of view if, correct me if I interpret this incorrectly was sort of that, hey as sellers, you're sort of on your own to develop this, right?
You give certain examples of things people could do, sellers could do in terms of places to engage with potential buyers or. Types of buyer, similar to the type they sell to, that you really shouldn't look to the company to help you with this is
oh, sorry, go ahead.
just wondering, because especially, Katie's, she says the dark side, but we won't go that far.
Is don't companies ever roll in this and what should it be?
For sure companies have a role in this, but I think as someone who sold for so long and sometimes who fell into that trap of being a victim, like why doesn't marketing do this? Why doesn't L& D do this? Why doesn't Enabled Mint do this? I think a lot of my opinion on this was formed by working for a manager, a really tough manager who would sit me down and be like, Jen, you're not wrong.
They should do this. They should do that. They should do this. But the reality is you can sit around and wait for the problem to get better, or you can help yourself. Because at the end of the day, it's your number, it's your job, it's your W 2. And in the moment, you hate hearing that, right? Because you're like, no, I want it to be someone else's fault.
But I think the very best sellers I've ever worked with are people that take it upon themselves to better themselves. And anything the organization does on top of it is gravy, right? But there's nothing precluding me as a salesperson in a world that is so. So full of information going out there and starting to learn about the buyer I'm selling to, regardless of what my organization is doing.
And so I think we just have to exit this era of like, I am a salesperson that is only effective if everything around me works and move into this era where I'm going to take more control and ownership over my destiny and how I sell and how I actually become value, Katie, to your point, become valuable to my buyer.
Yeah. It's sort of a return to the future type moment. It's. That's how we came of age in my generation in sales. It's like, we got nothing.
or we have too much. From a buyer's perspective, with marketers having so many more digital tools at their disposal, there's so many more early to mid stage companies than there used to be per buyer. If you think about how many options there are per buyer, it's just exponentially higher.
So then the message gets higher and then the noise gets higher. So, How do you determine the signal from the noise from a buyer's perspective? I can only imagine that it would be harder today.
Yeah. Go ahead, Katie. I'm sorry.
no, that's okay. So Jen, just kind of building off of something you said. I think increasingly what we've seen out of Forrester and Gardner is that our buyers are more educated than they were ever before, right? So as a salesperson, you can't go in at their same level of education. They're the industry expert and they're asking you to bring something more to the table.
So as a salesperson, that's my responsibility. Like if I'm reaching out to that person, I need to bring them something to use your word, Andy of value. And the only way that I can do that is by building my own industry expertise.
And so, is that sort of the key element of Acumen that's missing from sellers, in your opinion?
So I think there's a skill and a will, right? And this is like the ongoing age old debate, like. If I were to tell you who I like to hire it's naturally curious people, right? So Jen going back, the people that own their desk, that they see themselves as the CEO of their business, and they're just naturally curious and want to help out their buyer, their buyers.
And then I do think that it is the, it is a responsibility of the company to make sure that the information that their salespeople need is easy to find. Right. And this is where I think. We've almost done ourselves a little bit of a disservice by saying more is more. And what I'm seeing is that a lot of times less is more.
And this is why, things like chat to BT or LLMs have become so popular because I don't have time as a salesperson. To become an industry expert by researching for hours and hours before I do any research, I need something that's quick. And so if I can shortcut by using, a chat, GBT or an LLM, I'm going to do that all day lonG.
And I think the in addition to, to, to what Katie sharing, your question is, what are they what are they doing? What are they needing to do? What are they needing to do differently? They need to become experts of the buyers that they're selling to that would potentially take a meeting from them.
Really knowing those personas in their current states, really knowing the problems that they're looking to solve and the outcomes that they desire for themselves. It goes back to that really strong question you asked, which is, what's the responsibility of the company? Traditionally, we said, well, the responsibility of the company is to do demand gen and campaigns.
Yes, of course you want to get as much conversion out of that as possible at a fundamental level. If you, I was just, I just had a meeting with a a VP of sales earlier today. And we were talking about what percentage out of all of their enablement material, because this is a big company, they have a lot of material.
What percentage of it is really helping the buyer the seller understand the buyer. And it's like, well, we have one pain and gain sheet. And then if you look at it, it immediately gets to, well, here's the differentiation and here's the objections. And here's the objection handling. So it's an inward view.
The company does all of that competitive pricing, all that intellectual foundation, but they also maniacally get those new hires and all those reps that are struggling, totally understanding with empathy and awareness, the buyers. Situations, there are problems and outcomes that are relevant to the product that you sell, regardless of the techniques, that you use to go in and to get access and engagement, you're going to do so with so much more connection, so much more empathy and awareness going in.
That to me is the number one gap because the one thing I know, at least from my opinion, the sellers have never been smarter than they are today. They certainly have never had as high a technical acumen and a lot of them have just as much passion and work ethic as we've always seen, but they're just really lack of an awareness and an understanding of the buyers in the context of the solutions that they sell.
And yeah, I think that there's a big responsibility organization.
Can I add one thing to what you said? Because I just love what you just said. I think the bar has also been raised significantly such that it used to make you a great seller if you are an expert in the thing that you are selling. Now I think what we've walked into is I get like when I was selling sales training, I couldn't just be smart and savvy on sales training and why we were different than everybody else.
it's, I had to be just as savvy on the alternative solution someone could take. So maybe instead of buying training, they bought tech. Maybe they did a reorg. Maybe they brought in a new leader. Like it is no longer enough just to be smart in our category. We have to be able and effective at helping a buyer objectively weigh the pros, cons of other things that sit outside our category.
And that's just a much higher bar than just being smart about our product.
Isn't part of that sort of a mindset though? So the reason I say that is, is I curious in your guys opinion on this is I feel like we've over indexed on this idea of pain points with buyers. Right. And that, that there's always these, we're trying to solve these pain points where, and maybe just an artifact of the things that I sold over my career. My buyers were making decisions to go after market opportunities. To expand their business, to achieve something. And they weren't talking about, it wasn't about a pain point, right? Because the implicit assumption, I think this is what holds a bunch of sellers back, is they think, well, we solve a pain, we bring you back to status quo.
Right? Because, hey, I've got a cut on my arm, I put a band aid on it, when I take the band aid off, it's back the way it was before. And so I think many sellers operate with this perspective that in solving pain we're fixing something, but it doesn't advance the company. And I think when people buy, I've gotten my experience in selling things from, helping companies doing their initial computerization, talk about how long I've been around back in the 70s, to, nine figure deals or companies entering brand new markets and investing, Nine figures into new ventures.
That's what people were buying us. So what can we achieve with our business going forward? And I think I'm just curious, I feel like we've gotten stuck, right? We've made sales small by, by having it focus is purely in the pain points when it's really it's much more creative and large. And that's really what the buyers want. Anybody jump in Jen.
Yeah, I love what you said about making sales small. I was a really contrarian thinker when I was a rep and my boss, my mentor, I still talk to him and respect him today, but he said we sold like the server automation product and he goes, if they've got servers, they've got pain. He was from Boston.
That's my Boston accent. He's actually from Jersey.
I didn't
like, okay. Yeah, right. Well, I'm from Texas. I'm like, okay, they got servers. They got pain. So I'm like on the phone with Exxon Mobil today, Shell tomorrow, Southwest Airlines the next day. And I'm like, they all have servers. They all have pain.
And not a single one of them is interested in my message. so I started to question myself. Well, if everybody has pain that just says that we built a good product, it's the right time product market fit. But why are they not connecting with me? Right? I like how you said we make sales smaller. And the way I put it into my words is like, pain versus vision.
Okay, what I heard you say is that buyers want a positive future state. They want an outcome. That's what they're looking for. The way the brain works in the book, I call it survive, thrive, think is that it. In our decision process, our, and I call it the buyer decision path. We do need to have our survival instincts disarmed.
So a seller does need to attach the problem that they're associated with, and that's disarming. But really quickly, sellers need to get to the outcomes. Especially, you're going to see that more and more with AI and trans, digital transformation. I think it's a really huge gap. We're just not getting to the outcomes that we drive, and we're not helping the buyer connect to those outcomes associated with what we sell.
yeah,
I don't know if that makes you think of anything. Yeah.
I think it depends on the space that you're in. Right. So I've sold everything from like travel packages to digital transformations and everything in between. And I think. It really depends on what you're selling and the maturity that you're selling at and selling into. And I don't want to make it too complex, but I think the good sellers do a good job of asking the five whys, right?
And to your point, they're not looking at surface level pain and making it transactional in nature. They're helping CROs talk about, like, new revenue streams or Seller productivity and understanding like, why do you need this? Is it your top line revenue that's off? Is it your bottom line op ex that's off?
Like, really understanding it. But again, Jen, back to your question. Sorry to bring this full circle, but like, if you don't have the business acumen, then you don't know what questions to ask. And so you can only get to that surface level pain. So that's why to me, really being curious and having that business acumen is where our salespeople have to start.
right. Which is, I think is the broader issue, which I generally come back to in a second is that in Jen, you sort of alluded to it. Katie just said it more specifically as well. This is what the top sellers do. So, I'm always more concerned, I'm less concerned with the top sellers because, hey, they know what to do, right?
Because, what I'm trying to serve is, the broad middle. And the ones that are really struggling on a sort of day to day basis. So, yeah, what do we do to help them? Developed this Acman because we have self starters that are going to do it, right? Hey, we live in a complex world. We've got a broad range of people and a bell curve let's say.
And there's some people that just need a little more guidance and maybe a little more resource from us. And yeah, how do we do that? Because yeah, it's interesting. There was a a report just came out this week from Trinity perspectives on Australia, but the mood of the buyer, Keon McLaughlin, who knows Keon. Thank you. And they do a great job on win loss analysis and buyer analysis. But they're talking about single largest, they're doing purchase triggers surveys of buyers. And, in total, more than 50 percent of the triggers based on, this need to improve or what desire to improve the business.
Have an improved future status as opposed to dealing with the pain. So For me the challenges, just from an acumen training standpoint is how do we orient sellers the right way? Because, I think the problem is we know we can sit here and talk about it, but the fact is too high a fraction of sellers are showing up and pitching product.
so there's two things,
trying to solve.
Yeah and I don't, by the way, like, this is a super complex answer, but there's two things that I experienced that helped me personally and I'm a big advocate for. So one is that same hard manager. One of the things he did for everybody on the team when we had deal reviews is before we were permitted to talk about our opportunity, we had to answer, what does the company sell?
Who do they sell it to and how do they sell it? And if we were not able to answer that with specificity. We were not able to bring the deal to get reviewed. And I remember the,
I had a manager do something similar. He added a fourth question though. I started to jump in. Let's
Oh, good.
This was, and how do they make money?
Yes.
Questions, fourth questions, how do they make money?
Yes. And it was crazy. No, you're fine. I love the addition of that question. It was crazy because I went in confidently being like, Oh, they're ed tech. And he was like, but what does that mean? And I just. It's completely dropped the ball and it was mortifying because it's in front of the entire sales
Oh, yeah.
I never made that mistake again, right? So his consistency and showing up every single time and asking the same question meant we knew there were no exceptions. We knew there was no alternative to not knowing the answer to that. So that was number one. The second thing that the business did was when we announced a deal, which a lot of companies do in Slack or email, whatever.
We had to say the, why did they choose to solve this problem? And it became very clear the middle would say things like, and I was again, I was selling sales transformation or sales training. The middle performing reps would say, because they wanted to improve the skills of their sales reps. The top performing reps would say things like.
They're encountering low cost competition from China, and they're losing on margins, and what it did is it drew this really evidence like distinction between why top performers were winning deals that were typically much larger than the average deal, and it made it so that managers could point back to those instances and say.
This is why you're solving for a problem down here. Going back to what you said around making it small. You're solving for here. You need to solve for here. If you don't solve for here, you're never going to get these deal sizes that these other people are doing. And so you see enough of that. And then you learn, Hey, when I'm instinctually going to say, Oh, we'll help you improve this out.
The skills of your sales team. I stopped myself because I'm like, I know I'm walking myself into a small deal.
Well, it was really that the first part you brought up, at least to me and Katie interest in your perspective on this was really about coaching, right? If we're saying, yeah, more so than, Hey, we can get some content to increase your acumen. You were learning and I, which I said I had somebody ask me this exact same questions with the one extra one.
Is that Yeah, that drove me to want to be better. 'cause I never wanted to get shown up again. And the first time the manager pulled that on me, it was not in front of people. He, this was like, I was just starting a new company. I was just starting to sell large accounts, which I'd never had much experience was the guy called me at home, who was a lifelong mentor.
He called me at home on a Sunday afternoon. I said, I just want to talk about some deals. And it was like,
Like.
okay. And when he got through with me, when he got through with me, I had the exact same reaction to you, which that's never going to happen again. He knew more about my deals than I did.
It
it's not because he was talking to the customers. He just had the experience and so on, but it was just like. . Okay. Yeah. That's not gonna happen again. But, so it seems like really we need to be focused more on the coaching as the avenue for increasing acumen. And I tend to think that's true, but then we have to assume managers have it as well.
Well, I think so when I first got into enablement, I, the reason I got into enablement was because I got up and left trainings, right? Like I w I was that salesperson that this is not worth my time. I'm going to get up and walk out. And the more I got into enablement, I realized, Andy, to your point, like at the time the team was giving me knowledge, they were giving me skills, but what they weren't providing was the environment and the motivation.
Right. And Jen, in the story that you shared, I think what's really important is one, the manager that you are working with had the environment, right? It was there, you had to do it. And it was a consistent environment, which makes a lot, it's super important to have consistency in that environment. And then lastly, like, like it or lump it, your motivation was not to look like a fool again, right?
So
Yeah.
everyone always does comp, and I'm not saying comp's not important. Money draws drive behavior, but at the same time, your motivation was there. And the fact that you didn't want to be, that person that failed in front of your peers again. So I just think. And whether it's business acumen or whatever it may be, Andy, like that is the role of the manager to make thing, make sure that like L and D can do knowledge or skills.
But like the role of the manager is really around making sure that the environment is right and it's consistent. And then too, that they have the right motivations in place.
And there was another thing too that the same manager did that, so transformative for me is. So like this fifth question, I'd add to it, but he asked it earlier, which was, okay, why is this in our pipeline? And really early, it's after one call, if you didn't really have a good handle on why you thought we could win the business, right?
Well, we were uniquely situated to win the business. Yeah. Challenges like, why is this in your pipeline? Why is this in the forecast? And that was, again, learned that from managers. Yeah, never read it in a book, never read it anywhere. It's just like, wow. And yeah, it forced you to grow up and it's humiliation or shame or whatever.
Shame is a great motivator. Well, it's funny. They've getting off the beaten path a while, but they did an experiment with Like a juvenile court somewhere, where instead of sentencing juvenile offenders to incarceration or whatever, is, the judge came up with these innovative sort of punishments that had an element of shame associated with it. The recidivism rate dropped tremendously among those people, because they, that was so powerful, they didn't want to. Go through it again. But anyway, um, but we
side note, Andy, I believe that a hundred percent as 15 year old, like we can't leave the house unless our hair looks perfect. So I get that. I get it.
Yeah. I showed my son who's sort of a part time business partner, pictures of himself when he was 15 and 16. And he does not want to see those. Yes.
Andy, I go back to your question. I've been thinking about it like as I was listening to Katie, your question was, how are we going to develop these reps? Like, how do we get them to where they actually have these proficiencies? So first, I used to think of it as a development operating rhythm.
We have. P. G. Or pipeline generation operating rhythms every week. We're gonna be doing this to prospect and build pipeline. We have forecast operating rhythms. We're gonna have a forecast call. We're gonna deep dive. We're gonna ask all those tough questions. Etcetera. But where, we should be thinking about a development operating rhythm.
And so I think of like quarterly, like Katie's reference. You've got these quarterly traditional trainings where everybody stops what they're doing. So in those, you look at your agendas. How much of it is forecast reviews and how much time are you actually developing towards teaching and training the refs, right?
It should be 80 20, 80 percent development. And then, obviously, you've got a weekly operating rhythm. And if you look at your frontline managers Especially in this day and age in startups or tech early stage tech companies, maybe you've promoted a lot of frontline managers before they're ready and maybe they don't always have the mastery for that, which they lead.
So how do you fill their gaps? But then it's about the content, which is really Katie's point. It's like, what exactly is the content? And so if it's really a connection that we're trying to get, we want to emotionally connect that buyer to our unique value proposition, man, we just got to maniacally make sure that we're training them in the current state.
So the last thing I'll just kind of say to that is if let's just talk about all the QBR or formal trainings we've all sat in, right. Or even monthly trainings who's typically in front of the room. Product leader like a CTO or a founder sales leader, process methodology, right? How often do we actually get pre sales and SCs who have actually been practitioners in front of the room?
Talking about the current state, talking about the why and the purpose of what we sell until they really understand it. How often do we go to our customer success teams and either have them or customers get in front of our sellers? We just got to get the sales team closer to understanding. The drivers of the buyers, unique to what we sell, and they've got a, it all starts with the purpose of what we sell.
We just don't emphasize it enough. We're too inward, and to the term you used Andy, we're too inward in our mindsets. We need to be outward in our mindsets. Fundamentally,
the thing about the, yeah, I think the thing about the customers is right on, right? Is so few companies actually bring in customers or even do formal win loss analyses. One of the sponsors of this show is closed that's their business. Just give them a little bump.
But, they do a fantastic job of helping customers or helping their clients understand their buyers and why they buy and why they don't. And I'm amazed as I sort of. Look at their business and hear some of their customers talk. It's like, why if you're a sales leader, your revenue leader, why wouldn't you want this information coming into you on a real time basis, right?
Every month, we're gonna go back and talk to let's say in October, we're going to go talk to the deals we won and lost in September and understand what took place and what we did well and what we didn't. Instead, win loss analysis oftentimes and predominantly is the province of product marketing, right?
Well, product market, well, we'll tweak the price 1 percent or we'll, reshuffle our offer. And it's like, that's not moving the needle.
Yeah, and Andy, to your point, I actually think it's the job of everyone in a revenue organization and probably a product organization as well, I could argue. to be close to the users, right? So, I'll give you an example. Right, wrong, or indifferent, I call at least two users a week. I'm probably not the best person to call them, but I just call and see what they're up to, right?
See, how I can help. Who did they talk to this week? Did they enjoy their experience? Things like that, because I can't afford. To not be close to the users. Because to your point, Richard, how am I supposed to advise the managers, the leaders, the frontline salespeople, if I have no idea what's happening at the ground level.
Right. So I think it's just, it's so important, although it doesn't matter where you are in the org. You have to be talking to users.
Right. And so,
it.
yeah, I subscribe to the jobs to be done theory about sales. I think buyers fundamentally hire salespeople to help them make a decision. And, yeah, I'll challenge sales leaders when I talk to them and they're talking about, they're going to hire sellers. And I said, so, yeah, what are you going to hire?
What are you looking for? They go through their usual list of requirements. And I said, so, have you ever asked your buyers what they need your salespeople to be? No one ever has. That's my past a hundred sales leaders that question. Not one has ever said, well, yeah, let's find out what our buyers need, our sellers to be the attributes they need, the help they need from our sellers.
And then let's orient our hiring and enablement and all of our efforts around creating sellers that our buyers need. That sound weird.
No,
use the word weird for it.
We've done it. We've done it a couple of times. So I had my marketing teams do it. I've had my customer teams do it. And we came back with these attributes that forms a sales profile. Number one. And Katie said this twice. They want intellectual curiosity. They want a mindset that comes in with intellectual curiosity too.
They want someone who really is invested in mastery of the business. Let's say if it's. Threat detection and cyber security, or if it's recruiting intelligence and HR, right, they want you to kind of have expertise as much as you can on the space so that at least you have an awareness of their world, right?
And then when you meet with them, they actually want you to have empathy. They don't want you to have all the answers, right? They want you to have empathy and help find solutions. It's not all, it's not all the hyperbole that we think it is. They want you to come in and talk value. Of course they want you to talk value in the context of the vision that they want for themselves.
It's irrelevant if it's not really related to them. So they talk a lot about A lot about to your point about a lot of character traits that really disarm them and make them feel like, all right, we can actually figure some of these complex solutions out with this person versus the salesperson who says it's actually really easy.
All you need to do is hear him here. My differentiators and it all makes sense for you. And that, that kind of expertise of the market that also includes the alternative solutions that Jen was talking about. I've had a security client go in and the team walked in and they said, look, our AI is going to solve all of these problems.
And they're like, great, good for you. I've got four developers who are going to write queries all day and they're just fine. They give me the same exact output and the seller doesn't know what to say. So that expertise on the market isn't just their product or what it's really just knowing the whole competitive universe, knowing the alternative solutions, knowing the problems and outcomes associated with what you serve.
Yeah, I think, unfortunately, sometimes with that market expertise, though, in the way we give it to sellers, is that, I think, with Richard, you and Katie used the term intellectual curiosity. I sort of prefer a slightly different term, which is intellectual humility, which is, yeah, I know something, but I'm not going to let that stand in my way, right?
I'm open to, and I think, And I'll get to this, I have serious follow up questions to this, but it's I think, too often sellers feel like they're, this is what I do, right? This is my mission. And what they know. And they're afraid to take the step out, beyond that and sort of say, well, oh, maybe there's a different perspective on this that's important.
Again, talking about the vast middle, not the top sellers, which do this well, right? Because sometimes I wonder, whether we over, overdo this idea of, market expertise and customer expertise. Because I reflect on my own experience. I spent a number of years selling custom product development, basically.
Products that did not exist. Working for a small startup, so we had a basket full of technologies, and I was given the charter to go out and Sell something. And it's like, well, to who? Well, the CEO said anybody will pay for the development and pay for production. So, go crazy. But what it did for me as I developed this idea is like harmoniously yeah, I've gotta sell without having a product. I have to connect to somebody. I have to connect to a problem. And to me when I start talking about mindsets before to me this is the mindset I tried when I worked with sellers tried to get them to have, is when you go in, Sell like you don't have a product. Because what would you do then? You'd have to ask questions, right? You can't pitch because you don't have a product. That's why I think, for me, it's like, trying to, this field, longer and longer, it's like, maybe we just need to keep, paring through and make it really simple. It's like, maybe this is just a fundamental mindset, the way we socialize sellers.
Is, yeah, show up, you don't have a product to sell. What's the problem? How are you going to find the problem?
This is why, like, I look back on my career and I didn't realize it at the time, but I essentially sold services my entire career. And I didn't really think about the fact that when you have no, nothing to show and tell. You have to get really good at the conversation, right? Like you have to, Katie, I think you said it earlier.
You have to bring something smart to that conversation delivered in a way that is not Assumptive. I know it all just because I read something. I'm an expert in your business. And I think, I wish I would have learned earlier in my career. When you have an observable, relevant point of view, You can be right and still wrong because of how you frame it.
Right. So if I go in, I'm like, I saw this and this means you must be doing that and you must be struggling and nobody likes to be spoken to like that. And we saw this at lavender with the data around tonality, even in cold emails. It was like, if you had an assumptive informative tone. You were 26 percent less likely to get a reply because people don't like being talked at by strangers.
And so I think in addition to teaching sellers insight, and what can you say that sparks a conversation? We also need to probably put more energy and thought into how that is delivered and the tonality of it and how you actually have a conversation with someone you've never spoken to before, because I do think there are sellers who are middle of the road sellers who try it.
Out of lack of self confidence, they take this overly informative tone, they get shut down and then they say, it doesn't work. I'm going to go back to pitching product.
Yeah. Well, I'm curious about this. Katie may weigh in on this is somebody once asked me, what's one of the best pieces of advice I can give to salespeople? And I said, read everything, right? Because, yeah. I hate to use the term, but myself, with several polymaths, I interest in everything, I read about everything. And it put me in that position where I could have a conversation with almost anybody. Right, and I sold on every continent but Antarctica and, people from all different walks of life and different cultures. felt like I had something, that I could engage with them on. That wasn't necessarily about business, even.
And I think that this is, or I'm just, I think I'm building off a little bit of what you're saying, Jenna. It's just, is, it's, these human skills. Is that we get so wrapped up in this idea that we're sales people. And we're really humans first. And I don't think this is going away with AI. In fact, I think it will become accentuated with AI.
Is, we're humans first. And, yeah, my sort of, quaint little phrase about this is, we do a great job of teaching. And I can see when zoom is enabled.
I'm going to take a very ticky tacky tactical example of this, right? Like, that's why I think LinkedIn video messages are working as well as they are is because I can now put a face to someone who's reaching out to me versus like a random email that's coming my way that I can tell like it or lump it.
The research is showing that I can tell if something's been written by AI. Right? And so I just going back to your point, Andy, I think that human element is really important.
nothing ourselves do. To me, this is one of the barriers. And I'd love to tell the story, I may have told it, hey, Jen's probably heard it on an earlier podcast we're on together, but a woman named Dawn Dieter Schmeltz runs the sales program, National Strategic Selling Institute at Kansas State University.
And so, one of the pioneering programs in undergraduate sales degrees in the United States. And she talks about when she teaches her first semester of professional selling, and they do a role play. And these are 18, 19 year olds with no sales experience, for the most part no family background, and they do role plays.
And she said, they all default to being super salesy. And it's like Okay, let's acknowledge the fact that it's out there in the culture. This is why people think selling is supposed to be done. Isn't really one of our tasks. If we really want to improve the profession and help sellers, build a career in this is disabuse them of that approach, right?
To say, no, it's just go ahead, Richard.
Yeah. I love your example. I actually don't think it's intellectual. I don't think it's something that sells people think. I actually think it's the opposite. I think it's an emotional reaction. Where do I have more control from a fear perspective? I have more control over what I do, what and that kind of taps into my own survival instinct.
So if I have more control over what I do, what I say, then let me focus on that. And then if those words don't work, I'll change the words, right? It's actually pretty scary to focus outwardly to another human being. And then just leave yourself open. My first good sales job. So like I struggled a while, I was a school teacher for a while and I basically sold like a teacher that didn't work out very good.
So I finally, when I finally figured it out is when I sold a service to your point, I sold consulting services. I didn't have a product and I had, and it was scary because I had to focus on them. And they are a stranger to me. I don't know how they feel. I don't know how they're gonna react. I don't know what they're struggling with.
And so it's a, it's, I think it's an emotional protective instinct to go, it's a whole lot scarier to walk into the zoom call. And then, like, make it all about them. How about I just make it about me, because I can control that. So you've got to give them a foundation of safety and comfort by training them maniacally on understanding the human beings that, that they're selling to.
Well, someone, again, once asked me what's, sort of the root cause of bad salesmanship. And my answer is, I'm pretty sincere about this, is bad parenting. Is, I was taught as a kid, my parents used to, dress us up when I was the youngest of four, and trot us out in front of their friends, and, we thought they were just showing us off, but what they really were doing was showing us how to Have conversations with people and people of which there is a status mismatch.
I don't know if it's conscious on their part that's what they were doing. They probably were showing us off. But they also expected us to talk to the people. They brought us into the party. They expected us to ask questions and be interested in other people. Have a firm handshake. Ask about them first, right?
The very specific instructions. Ask about them. And, a lot of socialization, I think, again, takes place in early age, is, how you expose this idea is that you can talk to anybody. And if, and the key to it is just being interested in them. Right? I, when I started selling first professional sales job, 21, look 16, selling to construction, CEOs and founders of big construction companies. I had no idea what I was doing. I didn't know nothing about the construction business, but they gave me their time because I showed up and I was really interested. I'm this curious type. I was really interested. And it's like, if we just get people out of this mode, that's another sort of mindset thing.
I'm interested in your guys perspective on this. And again, I learned this a long time ago is you have to separate this idea of helping from selling. Like two different motions, right? There's times we sell, there's times we help, but the buyers really want from us is help, but sellers think their job is to sell. But if we were able to incorporate, so all sellers coming understood, there's really two things you're going to do. You're going to help and you're going to sell.
think it's a balance. I think it's a healthy balance. Right. And because I also work for an organization that my salespeople refuse to call themselves account executives. Right. And so they lean, maybe a little bit too much the other way. So I do think, everything that we're talking about here.
It's fantastic. But at the end of the day, you do have to provide something of value that someone's going to pay for. Right? So at the end of the day, I do think it's a healthy balance.
Yeah. No, I agree. It's a balance. But I think you have to have that orientation because what's the buyer trying to accomplish? Yeah I, again, this is, I probably spent too much time thinking about this, but it's, it is, I discovered my career is that when I was trying to sell the system or the solution, was sort of, yeah, I was having success, but it wasn't sort of the way I wanted.
And then I discovered that really what I had to sell first was the decision to make a change. And so, what I then started looking at was, actually, each sale is made up of multiple competitions. And I needed to win all of them. And the first one, what had multiple components was, they have to make the decision to make a change first, before they go through and decide who they want to make the change with. and again, for me it was This is all about helping, right? I had to help them get to that point where they could make that decision. then I had a chance of actually winning the business.
But I do think it goes back to what you were saying around mindset, right? It is a choice how I enter into a conversation with the prospect.
exactly. A choice.
Realistically a lot of sellers are looking at a target that they think is unattainable. And so the natural pressure is to say, I have to find a way to sell them something.
I've certainly fell victim to it in 08 when everything fell apart. Like I get that. But I think when we interrupt that and we say. Great discovery isn't about teaching the customer something new about you. It's about teaching the customer something new about themselves, like getting them to make that realization, making them feel like it was their idea and you were just a part of that process.
I think that's the stuff that sucks customers to us that makes them say, I want to keep having conversations here. And I think we have to put a little bit more faith and belief that if we slow down early, resist the urge to sell at all costs, and we do what you were describing. You do win more than you lose with that motion, but it feels like you are losing something by not trying to sell at first.
And I think it goes back to mindset. It goes back to culture. It goes back to the questions your managers are asking. So it's a really big, messy, ugly problem that, you can really fight for as an individual seller, but sometimes we need organizations to back us up.
Well, right. No, I think that is one of the key points, right? Is, and that's something I addressed in my latest book is. No one cares about your success like you. And, you have to find the way to sell that aligns with who you are, and the way that, your strengths. And it's going to oftentimes lead you on a path where you have to have conversations with your manager about, yeah, I'm not going to do things that way. And here's why. But I'm going to deliver, right? Because you put yourself on the line. As soon as you say, look, we're going to do it a little bit different because I think I can do it better, you're committing yourself. But on the hand. You're doing it the way you want to do it. So you should be able to commit to it.
Wait,
Yeah. And I kind of, I've been listening. I kind of talk about this in the champion. So this is about a path of getting a human being of power and influence to sell on your behalf, right? That's a, it's hard enough just to meet somebody and have them like you much less get them actually into action on your behalf, putting their political capital on the line, et cetera.
So let's just go to the execution that you're referring to. You're in the sales meeting. Yeah. Salespeople don't realize that buyers are perceiving our trustworthiness. Based on how we're projecting ourselves. So I talk about four projections and I want to come back to the way you talked about with helping one and I have them during training.
I have them self assess themselves. One are they the entertainer where they just like to hear themselves get on that stage and talk and the buyer actually perceives them as they're basically babbling and entertaining, giving me their sales pitch and song and dance, but that there really isn't a mindset of value or serving me.
And then there's the servant, and I know that we should all have a servant mindset, but I'm talking about in the noun of, let's say, a waiter, right? They're basically not really focused much on value, but they will serve you all day long, and they'll bring you the coffee there, and bring you the check and run around, run hurdles for you internally on discount approvals and all that kind of thing.
But they don't really Delivering a lot of value and then there's the intellectual likes to be the smartest person in the room. They want to hear themselves talk. They're talking value, but they're not really serving the customer. It's really all about them, how smart they are. But the character that we really want to work towards is what I call the guide.
You talked about a helper kind of thinking about what Katie said. The guide is working toward both. I want to serve This customer, this buyer, I want to make them feel like I'm serving them, but I'm guiding them toward value and that value is really relevant and unique to them and having that mindset, almost that identity of showing up and said, I am the guide.
I'm here. There's some things that I have that can help them with my solution, and if there's a value alignment, I'm going to guide them toward that value. I had to figure out my identity early on because I just started doing whatever my manager was or I took on identities of other people. Or like I said, when I started, I was a teacher before and a football coach.
So I started teaching. Well, that didn't just start babbling. He just started teaching. That didn't work. So I think just getting to that mindset of one, what are you projecting? And then two, what does the buyer need you and want you to project?
Yeah. Yeah. I, yeah, they could sort of get back to what I was talking about is I believe, yeah, buyers hire you to help them make this decision to make a change in their business. And if they could do it without you, they would. But by virtue of the fact they are talking to you, they need your help.
And for all the reasons I've always sort of articulated here, is you have to be in a position, both intellectually and emotionally, to be able to help them do that. And not make it about you, but make it about them. Yeah. And we're good about making it about us. And that's,
So good at it.
Yeah.
Well, but the thing is, one of the inherent conflicts in sales is that I think as you get more proficient at it, there is a performative aspect to it. We just can't escape that. We can be as human centric as we want, but at least my experience with good sellers has been there's always this aspect to it that it's an art as well as a science.
I agree.
Yeah.
said.
Okay. Well, friends we've run out of time here. I appreciate everybody taking their time to join me today. Katie, if people want to connect with you, what's the best way to do that?
Hit me up on LinkedIn, Katie Swick.
Perfect. Richard.
Obviously LinkedIn is there. Richard at the champion cell. com.
That's right. And that's your book. So your book has been out for a while, right?
Yeah, it's been out for just a few months earlier this year. And then we'll be launching the training business in the next few weeks, actually.
Cool. And so I see guitars behind you. What sort of music do you play?
I started playing guitar about eight years old. I was only a, I was more of a mellowing camp. I'd stand up there and I would be able to accompany myself. So, so, yeah I played, we broke country music at the country, we tour around doing country and country rock and all that kind of
Wait, you're in a band.
Yeah. We toured and we were on, yeah, it was a past life. And nowadays if I don't have instruments out, like I have a baby grand, if they're not out, they'll never get played. So luckily my wife allowed me to bring them out during COVID.
Oh, perfect. All right. We should have had you play for us if I'd known that. Okay, Jen.
same answer LinkedIn where I live. And this is my favorite time of the year cause we're getting into sales kickoff season. And that's my bread and butter. What I love to do is stand up on stages and help sellers rethink some of our assumptions about how we get things done. So thank you for having me, Richard, Katie.
Awesome to meet you.
Yeah, likewise, everybody, thanks for joining me. And yeah, as I said before, open invitation for all of you to come back whenever you want. So, thank you.