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Welcome to the Sales Transformation Podcast, the definitive stop for leaders driving change in the sales world. Hosted by Kevin Warner, we dive deep into the minds of Founders, CEOs, VPs of Sales, and Sales Development Leaders from trailblazing startups to industry-leading public companies.
Our mission is simple: to illuminate the path to extraordinary sales leadership. We explore a broad spectrum of sales territories, from the intricacies of Founder Led Sales and Outbound Sales to the transformative potential of Technology in Sales and Social Selling. Whether it's mastering your CRM, optimizing conversions, scaling sales teams, or engineering a complete Sales Transformation, our conversations are set to challenge the status quo and redefine sales success.
With a new content every day of the week, we bring you unfiltered interviews with the luminaries of sales, people who have not just succeeded but transformed the way we think about sales. Kevin Warner also shares sharp, tactical sales tips every week, packing decades of sales wisdom into bite-sized insights.
So, if you're ready to rewrite the sales rulebook and learn from the best in the business, the Sales Transformation Podcast is your ticket. Write us a review, share the show, and join us on this journey of sales evolution. Let's transform the way we sell, together!
All right. Welcome back to another episode of Sales Transformation brought
to you by Ledium. I'm your host, Collin Mitchell. And today we've got Jeff
Torbeck on. He is back for a second
time. And the last time we had Jeff
on, we talked a little bit about how the good old days of revenue at
all costs does not work. And today we're going to dig into something
Totally. You shouldn't spend the same amount of time with every customer. And customers
don't love hearing that. But like goes back to the old 80-20 rule,
right? 80% of your business is done in 20% of your accounts. You
got to be able to figure out which those are and spend the most time with them and
then figure out how to move quicker with deals
that maybe don't need as much effort. But I think it goes back to as well,
exactly what you said, like the faster you can disqualify deals in
your pipeline, the more time you're going to have to either work the deals that
are truly real or go find new deals. Right. There's
so many people that just chase deals forever. And it's like, think about
the amount of time you spent call, texting, email them, LinkedIn, messaging
them, research to write this like perfect email or a funny meme.
Yeah. And, and, and the thing is, is it actually requires
like a mindset shift, right? Because, um, people
have like a negative association with, you
know, put it in a closed lost or disqualifying it. And
that actually should be a win in your mind where it's like, great. I
don't have to spend time or energy here because my time as a seller is valuable
and it can now go elsewhere with prospects that actually
Totally. And closed loss doesn't have to mean it's gone, right? Closed loss could
be like, they're just kicking tires and they're months away. If we, you
know, continually send them the right content about what we're building
when they are ready, they'll get back into it. And that's a better sales cycle for
you. I think like people are so scared to disqualify deals
because they think that that means it's gone. But I think to what
we said earlier about like. sales stages, are you
doing enough to really understand and have enough reasons why
things are disqualified so that you can then either nurture or market
or sell towards those breakups? If
somebody just doesn't have the budget or they don't see the value, cool. Don't spend
the time with them. But if somebody's just figuring this out
and for my space, they don't know if they want to work with Marketplaces
yet or things like that. Great. Let us just keep sending them information. Let them do
their research. Like they're going to have to talk to other people before they're
kind of like bought into the idea of marketplaces. And if they're not kind of
sold on, that's what they want to buy then. It's not a great time
to put them in a buying cycle because they're not going to buy a marketplace. They're in an
education cycle. So our job is to educate them with content
and reports and blog posts or whatever it is so that they can
help either get there to say, hey, something like a
marketplace will help us or it won't. And if it won't, that's fine, too.
So I think we also have to be able to open the door to tell organizations or
to tell buyers like it's OK to say no to me. Right.
Cause a lot of people hate to say no to a salesperson because it's like taking
food off their table or whatever you want to say. But like you, as
a, as a, as a salesperson need to be able to leave the
door open for them to be like, Hey, Colin, this just, this
probably isn't the right time or the right product for us. No problem. Like, let
me understand why. And then we can like part ways and, you know,
Yeah. And I think it's helpful to set that expectation from the beginning, but
even that sometimes isn't good enough. Like you have to almost remind
them that, Hey, it's totally okay to say no. Um, you're
not going to hurt my feelings. Like, you know, and I think
that, uh, ultimately, you know, sometimes if, if
you're just keep following up, then you've
Totally. Yeah. If you're checking it or following up, you know that it's not a deal. And
I think, yeah, the power of you walking away too as the actual
seller is huge, right? I've won a lot of
deals by telling people like, Hey, like we're just spending way
too much time on this. And I don't think that you're ready to
do this, or you don't know how to do this, or you don't have the ability to buy it.
And that's fine. I'm happy to re-engage you when you have that. Let's
like have that conversation. And typically that will really get them to kind of open
up and say like, Oh, well, let me bring my boss in or something like this. My, my
dad always told me this. He was at HP, uh,
selling there and he had a seller that was this top seller. And that was
a different business back then, you know, when you were selling million dollar, $10 million deals
upfront, but his top salesperson would come in and say, What's
your budget and when can you spend it? And so if they're talking in Q1
and like, Oh, we have, you know, a million dollar budget. Great. Well, this is a
million dollar problem, so we can help that, but we can't spend it to Q3.
It's like, cool. Talk to me in Q3, because there's no point in me dragging this
along for two, two quarters of my time. If you don't have the
ability to spend it now. And that's such a simplified example,
but it's so real about a lot of the deals that we chase,
whether it's on timing, budget, approval. We need
to be willing to ask those questions upfront and
directly to where we may get a no. And
Yeah. And just don't be the guy or gal that pushes
it to Q3 and then doesn't do anything until right
before Q3. Hey, it's me again. Remember that
Yeah. And since since we're on the topic of data here I
mean I think another really valuable data point that a lot of people miss
the mark on is getting feedback from
your close loss. Like that is such a valuable data
point that so many people don't take the time and you have
to dig a little bit because you know prospects especially
if they're the one the types that don't want to tell you no and it took forever just to
get a no out of them. They're going to give
you whatever answer maybe seems easy, like, oh, it's pricing, or
we don't have budget. And maybe it is, and you could take it for face value. But
you've got to kind of preface that question with like, hey, Jeff, totally understand
it wasn't a good fit. It would really help me moving
forward if you could just give me some candid feedback on why you didn't see us
as the best fit or why we weren't moving forward. So you can frame
that however you need to. The important, Pete, is do
your best to try to get really good, honest feedback of why you lost the deal because
that's super valuable information. If you took it all the way to contract and
then you lost it, there's a reason why you lost it and you want to see
Yeah. Was it our error or was it just
the company we shouldn't be selling? I think that's spot on,
right? Because we talked about the ICPs earlier, right? I
don't think people challenge their ICPs enough. Companies
don't challenge it enough. But if you're starting to get a lot of close loss in your
ICP, my first kind of thought would be like, is our ICP
right then? Right. Or are we not good at selling? And
I most of the time I would probably argue it's not the
latter. It's the sooner. Right. It's we maybe need to redefine
our ICP based on how our products developed, how we're going
to market, how people view this space. I think that's super important.
And one of those things that, yeah, I think we should double click on. If you're
going to lose a deal, like make sure you get as much information on why. And I
think that's a skill to be able to get people that want to tell, you know, to give
you a little bit more information, honestly, about why they say no.
Yeah. You might just have to dig for it. Yeah. Yeah. Cause
if you bill price or budget is the quickest go
to most people. Right. It's kind of like when you reach out to people and
they say not interested, it's like, well, are they really not interested or are they just trying
Totally. Oh yeah. I'll constantly send an email being like, Hey, I'm
happy to follow up in a week, but like, what's going to change? Does, should we just part ways
now as you go through there? But I think if you build a good relationship, right.
And that goes through like the discovery call and the demo, like the
top reps in my mind are the people that have really good EQ and
can really build a quick relationship with somebody so that they
will be honest with them. And they, they can go back to
them for feedback and say like, Hey, I know we're not doing the deal, but just
so I can learn from this. Like, let's talk. And typically, that's
where I see top sellers really separate themselves from the average
Absolutely. Well, Jeff, it's been awesome, once again,
having you on the show. Again, if you missed the first episode where we talked
about why revenue at all costs does not work anymore, definitely
want to check that out. The link will be in the show notes for you. But as
we wrap things up here, any final thoughts, Jeff, and then where's the best place for
Yeah, I think that the final thoughts is I'm excited
about this, you know, move away from revenue, no cost. And
I'm excited about that. Companies are really leaning into data-driven decisions
more to make better thoughts and grow companies. And
I'm excited to see kind of this new age of how companies are
going to grow the right way, this profitability, not
maybe not as much funding. It won't be as cool to see a hundred million dollar
round of funding. Maybe it's only 20, but like to be able to see what they
build with this and then. the exits are going to be more successful
for the people involved because they won't have to dilute stock and stuff as much.
So I'm excited about it. If people want to continue the conversation, catch
up with me, pick my brain, anything like that. Best place to find me is LinkedIn.
I try to do all my business work on there because I think it's just a great such
a great place for everybody to connect. I've met so many cool people through there and
networking through there. So definitely if you if you're looking for
Awesome. We'll drop the links there in the show notes to make it easy. If you enjoyed today's
episode, please write us a review, share the show with your friends so
we can help more sellers and sales leaders transform the