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Today we walk through the top 4 excuses Toni has heard (and used) when hitting target gets difficult.
While some are BS, a few actually reveal important insight.
Today we get into 👇
While some are BS, a few actually reveal important insight.
Today we get into 👇
Creators & Guests
What is The Revenue Formula?
This podcast is about scaling tech startups.
Hosted by Toni Hohlbein & Mikkel Plaehn, together they look at the full funnel.
With a combined 20 years of experience in B2B SaaS and 3 exits, they discuss growing pains, challenges and opportunities they’ve faced. Whether you're working in RevOps, sales, operations, finance or marketing - if you care about revenue, you'll care about this podcast.
If there’s one thing they hate, it’s talk. We know, it’s a bit of an oxymoron. But execution and focus is the key - that’s why each episode is designed to give 1-2 very concrete takeaways.
[00:00:00] Toni: Hey everyone, this is Toni Holbein. You are listening to the Revenue Formula. In today's episode, we are going to talk about the four top excuses that I've experienced in my professional career, mostly about sales. Enjoy.
[00:00:19] Cecilien and I yesterday, we just, uh, like we just kept cleaning up the house. And it still looks exactly like the same as it did before, but we spent a whole day on it. We're completely exhausted. Looks the exact same way.
[00:00:34] Mikkel: Yeah, so back to kids, that's what we're doing again, a kids intro. No, it's the same with us, like my wife said. Can you see that I cleaned up at home? It's like, no, but it looks good. Oh man. Oh man. All good stuff. But so we're going to talk a bit about excuses today, specifically the ones to watch out for in sales.
[00:00:56] also kind of driven by the fact that sometimes excuses, they will reveal a couple of
[00:01:00] Toni: That's, that's the thing. What is it? Even, uh, uh, a blind chicken finds a corn?
[00:01:05] Mikkel: Exactly, yeah,
[00:01:07] Toni: Awesome. Does it, does it, does it translate? I'm not quite sure. I don't think so. Yeah.
[00:01:10] Mikkel: translate? I I don't think so. Well, I, I think this is H. C. Anderson, famous Danish writer. You know, did the Ugly Duckling and stuff like that.
[00:01:18] I think that's where it's coming from. But it's a Danish saying, so it's one of those where you try and translate and people go like... What?
[00:01:24] Toni: it's also a German thing.
[00:01:25] Mikkel: Oh, it is great. So at least two countries that bumps the number from 5. 5 million to what 70 million people who know this.
[00:01:33] Toni: Germany alone is 83
[00:01:35] Mikkel: Okay. 80. And then
[00:01:36] Toni: Austria with like another, I don't know, five or something.
[00:01:41] Austria is surprisingly small. Yeah.
[00:01:45] Mikkel: says the German limiting in Denmark. Okay, cool. Cool. But let's, uh, so let's get into it there.
[00:01:50] I think we have four excuses we're gonna get into today, uh, where you kind of need to have some alerts firing off. the first excuse we're gonna get into now, is really with a CRO that, towards the board makes an excuse.
[00:02:05] Toni: few mistakes.
[00:02:05] Yeah. So that's the typical thing. Um, it's you, you sit in the boardroom, and, uh, the investors ask you, so why did you miss? and, and what usually happens is, in, in many situations, and we see this a lot, you know, on, uh, with, with some of our customers, it's, um, at least in the beginning, it's always like, well, it's those lazy AEs, or, you know, the, this guy didn't feel well, the other one is going through a divorce, he just, you know, I don't know, did something else and forecasting is terrible, we need to buy Winning by design, we need to buy force management, we need to buy.
[00:02:45] Um, we need to give them better phones, you know, it's, it's basically, um, that's, that's what this, this realm of possibility is kind of centered around. It's really kind of, it's these account executives, um, and when they hit target, uh, they get the applause, they're the champions, they're the heroes. They came in, they saved the day, they're, they were riding in on a, on a unicorn, smashing the gong.
[00:03:11] With a, with a bottle of champagne.
[00:03:14] Mikkel: Someone had to clean it up, but you know.
[00:03:16] Not them.
[00:03:17] Toni: Um, and, um, and when, when you don't hit target, well, then, then the opposite happens. It's like those, you know, those lazy, those lazy guys, you know, um, and they can't do anything right and so forth. Right. And I think this is.
[00:03:34] this is something that, I think is a, uh, is a symptom actually.
[00:03:39] I think this is a symptom of an organization that still lives in this, I don't know, pre enlightenment phase, I would say, um, because it's all centered around the magical mystical creature of the account executive. Um, and, and those organizations, what they do a lot is they. Uh, think the way they can hit target is by hiring more AEs, the way they think they can hit target is by trying to shorten the ramp up because you know, that's going to give you some.
[00:04:09] Um, and the third way they, they try and, you know, hit target and, you know, increase revenues by increasing quotas. Those are the three only, those are the only three ways you can do it. And then in their financial modeling, they have, uh, you know, a productivity measure, sometimes 70%, 80 percent and so forth.
[00:04:28] Um, that they use kind of that's, that's kind of the whole makeup of this thing. And when this, you know, falls flat, then, then that's the only thing you can point at. So I understand that. Right. So if you. If this is how you see the world, there will only be so many things that when you look at the world this way, that can stand out that broke here, right?
[00:04:47] Um, and, uh, so why, why are we talking about this excuse? Well, this excuse really is, you know, showing in many, many cases that, uh, people haven't realized that the account executive is just such a small, tiny part. Of the whole revenue process in many cases. Now you could be an extreme, um, enterprise sales kind of engine, nine, maybe 12 month sales cycles.
[00:05:14] Uh, half a million to a million dollar deals. You know what? The AE will carry lots of that magic. Um, and it will be about that person many, many times. So I don't disagree. Um, however, in most companies, sub 100k, especially sub 50k ACVs, Um, the, the AE really is, um, quote, unquote, only. It's an important part of the whole thing.
[00:05:38] Don't get me wrong, but it's only the person that takes, um, demand. So, you know, captured demand and turns it into money. Great, great thing to do. Uh, but you know, who's doing the onboarding, who's making that they're successful, who's making sure that they renew, et cetera. Um, who's even creating this demand to begin with, who's capturing this demand and yada, yada.
[00:06:00] so there's so many, you know, other factors in play and, and the, I would say the, uh, liberating thing here, once you have understood this is, okay. We missed target. Understood. You know, that's usually not so difficult to figure out. Um, and, um, and then instead of having, uh, you know, these AEs are bad, uh, and we need to, uh, or we didn't hit ramp up and we need to, you know, think about our quotas.
[00:06:29] Instead of having those three levers available, you suddenly realize stepping back that you have thousands of them available. Uh, is it, Uh, how many meetings did the SCRs book? Uh, what's, what's the health rate? how, how many go from MQL to SAL? How many actually then progress to SQL? Why is that actually the case?
[00:06:47] Are there different industries that are working better than others? you know, we're tapped out on Google, but we're doing this other thing over there. I mean, suddenly you have a thousand little, you know, screws you can, you can start and, um, and play with. That, uh, that will probably help you hit target next time, but also will give you a much deeper understanding of why you didn't this time.
[00:07:07] Mikkel: Yeah. Yeah. I think the funny thing is also... if you,
[00:07:11] If you buy into the whole they are lazy, well, whose responsibility is it to fix that?
[00:07:17] It's then the CRO and the sales managers and, you know, all the VPs on that team. You know, the thinker will point back at them to say, well, why is your team lazy? What have you done to fix that? And also, you know. The thing is also, you will see a team coming on the back of a Q1, hitting target, and then all of a sudden not hitting Q2, and it's because they became lazy?
[00:07:37] Toni: No, but it's also not so totally true. Uh, but the other thing is also where they're really lazy to begin with. I mean, come on. Um, that's really the real question.
[00:07:46] Um, and you know what? Unilaterally, salespeople are lazy. Yeah.
[00:07:50] Mikkel: salespeople are lazy.
[00:07:53] Toni: Yes.
[00:07:53] Mikkel: they prioritize only what can be closed. Um,
[00:07:56] Toni: but you know, they have this ability to, you know, channel the energy towards these couple of things that are, that are really valuable for the company. And then they flip this and then they're doing their job and they should be paid for this. And so I think this whole laziness thing is, and by the way, obviously there's the overwhelming majority of salespeople out there is working their asses off.
[00:08:15] So, you know, this whole thing is, is, is not fair anyway. but I think the, um, uh, I think it's also not about pushing them harder and, uh, and this, then the next thing, usually people then, okay, let's pay bigger commissions. Let's make them, let's make them tougher. You know, zero until 75 percent and then a gazillion at 120%.
[00:08:37] And all of these, none of, none of these things work like that's, you know, and, and, and they don't work because the problem wasn't incentivization. The problem wasn't laziness to begin with. So you're really fixing something that didn't need fixing, uh, uh, you know, and, and it's so many other things that do need fixing.
[00:08:52] Mikkel: Yeah. So how do we push back on this? If this is the, you know, if you're another revenue leader and you hear this,
[00:08:58] Toni: number one, if I was on the board, I would just flat out call bullshit, uh, on this AEs being lazy thing. Uh, I just heard this too many. I said it myself too many times
[00:09:08] Mikkel: Yeah.
[00:09:09] Toni: to know that it's not true. You know, that's number one. And number two, as a CEO, I would, uh, I think I'm, I'm too CRO y to be like, ah, okay, no, I understand.
[00:09:18] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. so, and I think the real pushback is, okay, Mr. CRO. Uh, how many opportunities did they have to work with? did the processing metrics go down, ACV conversion rates, sales cycles? Tell me, did this go down because of that went down? Yeah. You know, there's a legitimate case that some of that might have been laziness.
[00:09:38] and then there are 20, 000 other things that could have gone, you know,
[00:09:41] Mikkel: into the CAC
[00:09:42] Toni: And, uh, I expect my CRO, you know, when we get there, when I'm not the CRO sales person myself, by the way, I expect them to answer, Hey, we didn't hit target because... In that way. And this is also the way how you will, uh, probably fix next quarter.
[00:10:00] Because it's not gonna be by trying to make AEs less, less lazy. That's not gonna be the
[00:10:07] Mikkel: no, no.
[00:10:09] Okay. So now, now we kind of started with the first
[00:10:12] Toni: No, I just warmed up. Let's
[00:10:13] Mikkel: Yeah. So the next one is also something you hear from, you know, a marketing perspective. It's kind of a universal thing. It's, and this is outbound though, but these opportunities are shit.
[00:10:26] Toni: Yes. So we're really going through my, my top, my top
[00:10:30] Mikkel: excuses.
[00:10:31] Toni: So outbound ops are shit. Um, or those ops are shit or the SDRs from the, uh, the ops from the SDR team are shit. I mean, this, this, uh, excuse comes in many funny variants, obviously. Um, and the really important thing here, and this is, this is largely true across. Uh, it's just more funny if you push away those nuances here.
[00:10:56] Uh, the thing is they're right. Outbound opportunities are shit, period. and the reason why that is, is, in comparison to inbound opportunities, they are
[00:11:13] Mikkel: a
[00:11:13] Toni: lot harder to close.
[00:11:15] Mikkel: close.
[00:11:16] Toni: They are a lot, lot less enjoyable to have the first meeting with. they take longer to close. and, and they, they probably, they have like a, a very punishing conversion rate, you know, out of 10 meetings, you get nine no's, uh, or eight or whatever.
[00:11:32] so all of these things are really discouraging. And if you then as a human being, as an AE sit there, uh, and
[00:11:38] Mikkel: uh,
[00:11:39] Toni: you don't always. That's one of the issues, by the way, you don't always fully quantify in your head how many outbounds and inbounds and which one and so forth. But what you do know is that there's a clear understanding that, oh, I'm going to jump on this call.
[00:11:53] It's an outbound meeting. It's probably going to go to shit. Probably nothing is going to come out of this. so let me complain to my manager and say like, I hate those outbound meetings. It's a waste of time. I should be spending my time on X. Um, you know, don't we all talk about efficient growth? This is not efficient.
[00:12:08] My time is not being used efficiently. And they're all right. It's all correct. but the, uh, the reality is, and this is what I then push back on with those AEs is like, well, number one, we only have so many inbound opportunities. Uh, we're working really hard on changing that, but that's what it is. if we want to grow our business, we need to find additional revenue channels.
[00:12:27] Outbound is one of them. you are very, very, very open to do outbound yourself, the account executive, uh, to fill up your pipeline because it's not looking that great, is it? Um,
[00:12:39] Mikkel: And,
[00:12:40] Toni: um, and then, you know, the, so this is all, you know, making them understand, but then the last one is. You do need to enable them differently to close those outbound opportunities. You know, the, the real solution here is a different enablement piece. And I can tell you from own, terrible personal experience. If you deploy an outbound motion on top of an inbound sales team, it is bound to fail. Like it's bound to fail and the reason is that, it will almost be like a, like a transplanted organ that, that the, that, that the body will reject.
[00:13:14] It's like, no, this is not our culture. You know, we can't have this here. It needs to kind of go away. and the reason is mostly that if you have a sales team that's successfully hitting, uh, with inbound opportunities, that they are kind of, Uh, they're kind of an order taker,
[00:13:31] Mikkel: Yeah.
[00:13:32] Toni: kind of an order taker team, uh, which, so what does an order taker mean is, you know, someone goes, uh, walks into McDonald's or Burger King or Wendy's or, you know, Five Guys, whatever's your poison, and says, I would like to have a burger.
[00:13:44] And then they say, here's your burger, sir. Costs you, I don't know, 5, uh, buy, and high five, right? They were a perfect salesperson, but they were really just taking orders, right? Someone was coming, he's like, I want to have this thing. And then they gave it to them. versus in an outbound conversation that doesn't really happen like such, you know, it's like, uh, they were, they were, uh, shoved into the five guys.
[00:14:07] Mikkel: What is this place?
[00:14:09] Toni: And, uh, and then, Hey, sir, how may I help you? It was like, where's the exit?
[00:14:13] Mikkel: Yeah.
[00:14:15] Toni: and, and then figuring out how to take that conversation into actually getting them a burger. It's like, aren't you like, do you have this feeling in your stomach that there's something missing? You know? Um, and yes, um, and, uh, and that's, it's just a different conversation, you know, the audience, you need to pick them up from a completely different spot.
[00:14:34] I mean, in many cases you need to, you need to even apologize that, yeah, you know. I'm very grateful that you're spending this half an hour, 45 minutes with me. I know that, you know, Mark, my SDR kind of brought you to the table. and then he would probably go into like, well, let me kind of quickly tell you how, uh, our customers are successful with, you know, what we're providing, give them a little bit of a.
[00:14:55] You know, fitting case study and then switch into, but enough of our customers would love, I know how you're solving this problem today. Right. Um, and, and that is a different conversation from when someone comes inbound. It's like, Hey, what brought you here? What's the problem? What are you, what are you trying to address and tell me?
[00:15:13] Uh, because they already have the context and they're coming inbound. They're the one asking. Um, meaning you have the right to kind of ask a bunch of questions back and even ask them about money and whatnot, and an outbound conversation, you just don't have
[00:15:26] Mikkel: No.
[00:15:27] Toni: And what happens if you give this kind of situation to a bunch of inbound reps, uh, it will just fail.
[00:15:33] Uh, it will just fail. And big watch out here, what everyone, what, well, everyone, 80 percent of folks do is they listen to the AEs, they go back to the SDR team, and then they basically tell them to increase the quality. AKA they let fewer opportunities in, which means fewer opportunities generated by the SDR team.
[00:15:54] the conversion rate will roughly maybe stay the same, go a little bit up, but overall production will go down. Uh, the whole math won't work out anymore. The SDRs don't produce enough. They get even more discouraged to even send anything to the AEs and so forth. You're killing this whole thing altogether.
[00:16:08] So the real answer is not to go to the SDR team to fix it. The real answer is you need to fix it on the AE team. And sure, the story sometimes is in between and you will always have a, you know, a couple of bad apples in the SDR part. I mean, that's, that's just how it works. You need to kind of manage through this as well.
[00:16:23] Um, but really it's, um, uh, in my experience, uh, largely it's an AE problem.
[00:16:29] Mikkel: Yeah.
[00:16:31] So next one. Next one. Also kind of down the same ballpark. More of a Mikkel thing, I guess. Yeah. But uh, these inbound leads are shit. Kind of the same, the same setup, right?
[00:16:45] and it is something we hear. It is something that happens, especially as you need to go on scale. Um, so let's, let's dive into that one.
[00:16:52] Toni: So, you know, interesting watch out again, you know, they're right.
[00:16:58] These inbound leads are shit. Um, first of all, they're not many, you know, enough of them. Right, Mikkel? Right,
[00:17:05] Mikkel: Mikkel? Give us more Dokuzan ready.
[00:17:07] Toni: Mikkel? Now's the time we insert the plug for Growblocks, the way. Um, and no, but so this is number one. It's not enough, but number two, it's the quality is shit. They don't convert. I'm wasting my time.
[00:17:18] It's wrong ICP. It's a student. It's a teenager, you know, whatever. and, um, the, again, the, the reality is that it's true. but why it happens is, it usually happens just like with outbound. It happens when you add another stream on top, right? You, you know, going back to this, oil, uh, drilling, um, conversation, you start with, you know, in Texas with a pump, great, easy, and then you go somewhere else and so forth.
[00:17:45] And what you do in marketing is you. First of all, you just scatter gun around and see what works. Then you find something that works and then you milk this until it's done. Uh, well, it's not done until it doesn't keep growing. Then you need to find something else to kind of lash on top. Right. And what marketers then do is they go to channels that have, you know, wider reach, you know, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook.
[00:18:08] YouTube, YouTube, um, and so forth. Um, uh, we're going to keep
[00:18:15] Mikkel: Yeah. You need to watch it in the video. We'll, we'll do a blue boy reel.
[00:18:18] Toni: and, um, um, and, uh, what will come out of this in the beginning will probably be kind of terrible because it's, um, usually folks then push a demo request button onto something that's a awareness channel and.
[00:18:33] That will generate kind of awful results. So we had, we had one instance where we were kind of really pushing on Facebook and we had literally teenagers, uh, clicking the demo request button. And then, you know, we called them, um, and then we had the angry moms on the phone.
[00:18:50] Mikkel: the phone.
[00:18:51] Toni: It happens. Okay. It happens. But so this is, this is a normal evolution of stuff that just, you know, keeps going on. I think the, the answer here is not to. stop what marketing is doing or enable the AEs. I think it's, it's, you need to, you need to tell the AEs what's going on. uh, you need to, you know, make them understand that this is part of, you know, growing pipeline and so forth.
[00:19:13] is it the best way to do it? No, but this is not an AE conversation. That's a completely different conversation. Um, and it's also not an Ablement thing. I think it's more of an awareness, understanding, uh, thing. And you know, maybe you start labeling them into, different, different buckets. Maybe there's an A lead and a B lead and a C lead.
[00:19:30] Yeah. So they kind of know going into this. and, uh, you know, I would manage through it like this rather than to, okay, you know what, actually you're right. Let's kind of not do any of those marketing things
[00:19:40] Mikkel: you know I think it also, in some cases, it depends on who says their shit, because if you run a specialized SDR, so an MDR that, you know, calls up those demo requests, leads, whatever, and then books a meeting for an account exec, if they're the ones saying their shit, then I would pay very close attention to what is going on versus an AE.
[00:19:59] But the
[00:19:59] Toni: But the truth is they, so they will probably not say their shit because in some cases those folks get paid by the marketing side.
[00:20:07] So they're kind of being a bit more respectful, but they will tell you in so many different words that, You know, they're not ready. They're not interested. Conversion rates are terrible. I'm, I'm dialing my fingers, uh, bloody, but nothing is happening. Um, so, so they will give that feedback in different ways.
[00:20:23] And I think this then leads us into this Chris Walker conversation of, you know, the leads you generate in the top funnel and what they yield and so forth, and should rather be the margin, blah, blah, blah. Uh, but really, um, I think this is, this is then more, you know, how do we fix on the marketing side? but the, again, the excuse from the AE is totally legit.
[00:20:42] These are shit or MDRs. Um, but I think the fix here is to be, to be clearer where they're coming from and maybe bucket them in different ways in terms of showing kind of, uh, you know, readiness, uh, versus not, um, and then work through it like this.
[00:20:56] Mikkel: Yeah, great. So, there's another one, uh, I just have also heard, uh, just spending my time with sales. It's this inevitable, hey, we have a competitor and they're crushing us. So they do this one specific thing. If I can just have that one thing, all will be well.
[00:21:15] Toni: Yes. I'm not sure who said it, but someone was like, it's featureitis. Do you get it?
[00:21:21] Mikkel: Yeah.
[00:21:22] Toni: I'm not sure if everyone else
[00:21:23] Mikkel: No, explain.
[00:21:24] Toni: I'm, I'm not going to explain. It's like, you know, it's, you know, some, some diseases you call something itis or retis or something like this.
[00:21:34] And then in this case you put Feature in front and then you get Featuretas,
[00:21:37] Mikkel: future E. T. I. S. Okay. Yeah.
[00:21:39] Toni: you go. Um, no, but I think the, uh, so again, and this is, this is what's so tricky with all of those excuses is you can't just, you know, waltz in and say like, shut up, you're wrong. Uh, you're so right. Um, yes, they lost this deal because of this feature.
[00:21:57] I think that's clear. Um, they're making a lot of whole other, you know, mistakes around that. which you need to kind of need to unfold, right? Um, but the, the core of the issue for me comes from not actually knowing your competitor well enough.
[00:22:15] Mikkel: Yeah.
[00:22:16] Toni: That's actually where this problem is coming from. Um, and you know, once you do, you can, you can navigate this whole thing completely differently.
[00:22:24] Right. Um, so number one, Um, usually it's not about a specific feature. Usually it's about something else and the sales rep needs to uncover
[00:22:35] Mikkel: uh, uncover what
[00:22:36] Toni: that actually is in order then to have the ability to push back and be like, but that feature doesn't seem to be key for you. Is it right? The reason why it might be key for someone that then goes to competitor is that the competitive rep build a better case and said, your whole world.
[00:22:56] really gravitates around this feature. If you cannot have this feature, half of the use case is basically useless for you. And you know what, please, um, we really love company XYZ. Yeah. They, you know, great competitor to have. Just ask your rep what they do, you know, with this feature.
[00:23:16] Mikkel: Classic.
[00:23:17] Toni: they're basically, um, I'm not sure what it is, kind of indoctrinating or whatever.
[00:23:22] Um, they're, they're blowing this feature up for, uh, for your buyer to a degree where suddenly this becomes a deal breaker. You know, without, without that conversation with the other sales rep, it would have been like, Oh, you know what? Actually I would rather use it anyway. Um, and you know, this is also when someone asks you.
[00:23:40] Hey, can you do X, Y, and Z? And then you ask like, well, so why do you want to have it? You know, first of all, you, you question this back. And then, um, then I think the other piece, well, okay. I understand that, but you know, is this a deal breaker for you? And many times like, no, actually, no, I was just, I was trying to be curious on the call, you know, drill in a bit deeper, and, uh, you know, losing then, uh, really comes when someone.
[00:24:03] Uh, and it's not always the com the competitor. Sometimes might also legit be the customer. Kind of builds a lot of value around this one feature, right? so what, what should be, you know, happening instead really is,
[00:24:14] you need to understand better which competitors you're up against. Which then should help you to number one, okay, I'm going to use the next word, vaccinate, uh, your, your prospects, uh, against the competitor and making sure that, really what they should be caring about are the things that you're strong at.
[00:24:36] And then really the things that, and ideally this overlaps to a degree with some of the pieces where the competitor is bad at, and then give them the. You know, give them the ammunition to then say, Hey, you know what, you should really ask about A, B, and C, um, I think they have a fantastic solution in place for this, but maybe you double click on this, um, to really get them to, basically kind of see, have them see that there's a disadvantage there versus over, over with you, which then helps you a bunch kind of, you know, going through that, uh, going through that process.
[00:25:09] I think the other piece is also that, Some reps, um, it's a little bit like, um, it's a little bit like infosecurity or legal or procurement in general. It's like, ah, you don't want to, you don't want to poke the bear. You know, it's like, ah, if I, if I, if I say infosec, then she will need to, you know, do, and, you know, do the infosec assessment, but we don't want to do it.
[00:25:30] So maybe if I don't mention it, maybe get around it. But the thing is, what usually happens, is like, ah, okay, yes, we need to do it anyway. And then suddenly your, your sales cycles pushes, push out three or four weeks, right? Because you didn't take it up front. Um, and it's the same thing here. It's like, hey, are you talking to other competitors?
[00:25:47] You know, are you, I wouldn't, I wouldn't say it like that, but you know, are you evaluating other options here in order to solve this? Some companies, some buyers will tell you explicitly who they're kind of talking to. Uh, in other cases, you will, you know, read it between the lines. Sometimes when you're doing a replacement, you know exactly who it is.
[00:26:05] and really the trick is to build your case tailored towards that specific situation. but you can't do that if you don't know whom you're up against or if you don't have. Any clue whom you're up against, and you can't do it, if the team that you're up against, if you don't have any intel on them, uh, that then, you know, and then that intel still needs to be translated back to a talk track for you, by the way, right?
[00:26:26] If you fail on these things and the answer is not battle cards, it's part of the answer. That's part of the, the, the conversation here. But if you can't get those three things together, yeah, your reps will be coming back and asking for a feature X, Y, and Z, because that was a deal killer.
[00:26:41] Mikkel: Yeah, I think I've also heard about a bunch of companies where they will have actual playbooks around how to tackle fear and uncertainty and doubt from the different competitors they face.
[00:26:51] And this is then a playbook that gets updated the more they learn, you know, figuring out what works. And this is heavily a sales enablement thing. Um, I, I even, I've seen folks put it in product marketing, but I think that's actually wrong because they don't, they're not in the weeds of what sales is doing, at least not very often, I would say.
[00:27:08] Um, so it's a heavy sales enablement thing in my head. That's it. me just,
[00:27:13] Toni: wrap this here thing one more time. So we talked about, excuses that we're seeing a lot. One is really the CRO VP of sales, you know, with the excuse of the AEs were lazy, you know, wrong, uh, AEs giving the excuse or complaining about outbound opportunities are being shit, wrong. Um.
[00:27:33] AEs complaining about inbound leads that are shit, well that's true, right Mikkel?
[00:27:38] That's always true, uh, but the way around it is, is, you know, is solvable, and then lastly, AEs complaining about, uh, competitors crushing them because of missing feature. X, Y, Z.
[00:27:50] Mikkel: Yeah.
[00:27:51] Toni: Wonderful. We just shipped a bunch of new updates, on the GrowBlock side. Uh, really cool stuff. demos extremely well. And, uh,
[00:28:01] Mikkel: Such a hot pitch.
[00:28:02] Toni: you need to check it out.
[00:28:06] Mikkel: Maybe we cut that part. But anyway,
[00:28:09] I don't know how to bring it home now. I just completely lost it with that pitch. Any who. So that was four awesome excuses that we hope you're never, ever gonna hear. And if you hear them, you hurt them here, how to tackle them. Thank you so much, Tony.
[00:28:22] Toni: Thanks Mikkel and thanks everyone for listening. Bye bye.