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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 this episode of the win rate podcast. Gosh, another stellar cast of guest panels joining me today and get everybody a chance to introduce themselves. We'll start with can we say the king of sales, Bob King.
Hey,
Was that sufficiently promotional for you?
I love it. My
Okay. All right,
King. I wrote the book on closing. It's called the joy of closing looks like this. And I'm a closing coach sales consultant and still sell stuff. I still love what I do. I love selling things. So I still have a sales job.
well, I think we all do. Right. So, Mason.
Hey, everyone. I'm Mason. I'm a co founder of a software platform and services company called Praction. We essentially built a chief revenue officer platform for smaller B to B sass companies in about 5 to 20 million range that can't afford or aren't ready for a chief revenue officer, but they need all the go to market infrastructure and work that a CRO would do.
And then we have a pretty robust services business where we come in. As either a fractional Chief Revenue Officer or some sort of initiative that a CRO would do, you know, for larger late stage SaaS companies.
cool. Dan Sixsmith. Good to see you again, Dan.
Yeah, same Andy. Thanks. Dan Sixsmith, host of the sales is King podcast, where we interview sales leaders, CROs, sometimes we spill over to marketing with CMOs and authors and podcasters like Andy have been on. And we've had that podcast for going on seven years now. And in my day job, I am a avid follower of value selling.
I have been in the space for about 15 years. Worked with consultancies to help sellers engage more with value, be able to do business cases, quantify the ROI and the benefits, but also make them more strategic and consultative. So I work for a company called MediaFly, which is a, has a revenue enablement platform, which includes a value selling model.
Got it. Okay. Well welcome everybody. So first question, Bob, for you, I was watching one of your videos and you said that everyone needs to be closed, so tell us exactly what that means.
Well, the, I say everybody is a closer. Everybody has been a closer and everybody needs to be closed. So. if it's just getting your kid to clean their room or finish their plate or go to college or choosing the book that your book club's going to read next or the movie on a Saturday night, at some point in pretty much everyone's life, you've gotten another human being to take on your agenda and think it was their idea.
So that's a skill that we all have and we also as human beings like to rely on each other for expert advice about decisions that we're about to make. And , you can call it whatever you want to call it, but basically the person helping you make that decision in one way or another closed you.
And so the, only thing I more satisfying than finding what you want and knowing it is helping someone else do that. And that's really what closers do, and that's why I wrote my book, because I really wanted to take away that stigma of the stereotype of you know, the ABC person who stares at the Porsche they want to buy and then goes in and, you know, marshals their self will and your greed to get a sale rather than what my experience of closing is, which is helping the customer get what they want.
So, alright. So I guess a couple questions come outta that for me is, and everybody jump in is, so why just call it. The joy of helping, instead of the joy of closing.
I'm a very provocative person and I really didn't want anyone to be trained the way I was trained and which was to, you know, basically marshal myself well and engage the customer's greed and in the evolution of my expertise as a closer, which is the first 40 pages of my book. This crazy thing happened where I was trained by scoundrels, even though I was, you know, working for not a very good company, my whole life got better as a result of earning people's trust.
And then I found a way to do that for a company that people wouldn't regret being in business. And I had to find a better way to do it than what I'd been trained to do. And so, you know, that's sort of the short version, but I wanted to be disruptive to the model because I think there's a lot of great books on sales and how to present.
Yeah. But almost nothing about how to work with the customer's resistance and get them what they want. And so I wanted to write a book that spoke to that. And a title that addresses that directly and confrontational. I'm a confrontational person by nature, which I enjoy.
Okay, I mean, yeah, I'm not a big fan of the term closer, but I mean, you've got a specific definition, which is, you know, sort of influencing somebody to take on your agenda and think of it as their own.
Well, no, I think closing is everything that happens after you present price. So everything before that is presentation and when you are, when people say sales, they usually meet, they usually don't, sometimes they mean closing when they say you need, if you have this one skill, you'll never be out of work.
They're not talking about sales. They are literally talking about closing. And when they say, and when they, and a lot of the books on sales. I haven't read the whole, I haven't read a lot of literature. I have not read the canon of book some sales, but when I was creating my website, you know, I wrote my book, obviously when anybody starts a company to fill a need because they see a void in the market and you write a book for the exact same reason.
And when I read books on closing, they literally made my skin crawl. When someone from my sales team, because I managed a couple of sales teams would tell me, Oh, read this, you know, so and so sales guru. It was all I could do not to fire them when I started reading what was in there because it's not all what I wanted them to do.
And so I wrote the book to kind of spill what I saw was a niche. But when I started, you know, I had to promote it. So I made a website and I looked at a lot of other sales websites. And come to find out, there's a lot of great new thought advanced, you know, how to present your product without getting, you know, without being salesy, without getting the customer's shackles up, you know, that you're about to try and close them.
But then nothing about how to actually close them. And so I wanted to
across the
book that, yeah, huh? And it's getting them across the finish line. That not only is what you make money from, but also is what provides value to your customer, because the worst thing you could do is make your customer want your product or your service.
And then leave them to the vicissitudes of either the market where they go online, find a cheaper and oftentimes a very inferior product to what you have, or someone comes along right after you who isn't even cheaper. They're just know how to close somebody. And so you're not really doing that customer any service by being a great presenter other than being an agent of change.
But the change they're going to have is far inferior than it would be if you knew how to close them.
Okay. Dan thoughts.
I mean, I think it depends on the world in which you live in. Right. So if you're a car salesman or a you know, a finance you know, stock broker, it, to me the closing is important, you know, it's kind of the one on one I've got to handle objections. I've got to get this guy in the door or gallon the door, I think in, in, in my world, which is more of the B2B consulting kind of a consultative selling space, it's, you know, multiple decision makers, stakeholders, You know, you're building consensus.
And you're enabling the buyers to get to a decision, and maybe it's a little bit of a different close, so to speak, because your facilitation process along the way hopefully is getting them to that decision, and there may not be kind of the obviously, it all has to end up in a contract, but in my mind, I'm seeing something more like, you know, you're handing them the pen and the Kind of, you know, car salesman office and saying sign here.
So I'm, I just have a little bit of a different kind of view of what closing looks like in, in my world, at
Right. But hasn't to some degree haven't SAS companies in particular serve perpetuated the stereotype of closers by saying, look, I've got SDRs and I've got closers. Right. Then you go almost did any job 15 years for a SAS company, and they're looking to hire an AE and what's the
which one make the money? I can't remember.
Yeah, but it's, they want a
I'm asking you to do that. Do the first people make the same money that the
No. But my point
well, why would that be?
but my point about the closer was what they're looking for is the type that makes your skin grow. Oh,
totally disagree. I think when you meet people that are really good closers, they're not that type. The irony is the people that
that's the key. That's the key point. They're not hiring people that are effective in the way you're talking about. Closers are hiring people that go close and it's
But they don't do it the way I, the ones I'd met and you know, I even like, look, I went on timeshare presentations just to see other forms of closing besides like, you know, every now and then you buy a car and you know, or there's, you know, I was in home improvement, but here's the crazy thing. And I would challenge Dan I think I, how many clients would you have if you didn't know how to close them is the first question I would ask because you consult with companies, right?
Yeah?
A hundred percent.
And when you consult with them, you are a change agent. You are asking them to embrace a philosophy that you're going to charge them for. At some point, they have to be convinced that's in their interest.
yeah, a hundred percent.
And so is it a situation where you just have such a great idea that they all say yes, or are you working with an individual company?
You know what? It might be a team of people, but ultimately there's one or two people usually that are most important to get on your board to make that decision. And I would guess. Just based on the fact that you're successful, that you are really good with those, you know, people that are actually making the decision and that when they bring up resistance, you respond in a way that creates intimacy, gives them confidence to move forward.
Yeah. A hundred percent. But, you know, if I'm not, if I'm not solving one of their top issues, or if I'm trying to get them to move forward on something, that's not a major pain point. And I think all the closing in the world or all the convincing in the world might not happen. And believe me, I'm big on closing, so I'm
that is closing. That is what you know their pain point. You what you're doing about it is, I mean, in my vernacular anyway. Yeah.
But I
I think I'm with you, Bob.
yeah, and I'm, my background is pretty aligned with Dan's. And I think closing as a phrase makes it sound like it's a one point in time. And I think, Bob, what you're saying, like, what happens, you know, especially this consultative sell world, and I work with a lot of enterprise sales teams and companies, right, where you're working in large six figure contracts with major Fortune 500 brands, that there is no one point in time of closing.
It's throughout the sales process, you have a variety of different milestones that are occurring, that seller has to do closing, right, to get to that next. Milestone to keep that prospect wanting to move forward in the sales process. So I think that aligns a little more like, you know, when we think of the joke, like closing, right?
They think, okay, it's this last. We have a contract on the table and I got to do all of this maneuvering and theatrics, which may happen more in a transactional
agree. That's what you think about. But I
That's what you think
do not subscribe to the notion that's what it is. But the other thing is, okay, yeah, so I have been B to B clients. I have a lot of a couple of B to B clients, and I was kind of dubious about, you know, I mean, I call my presentation. The how to part of the book is called One Call Magic, and there is a lot about the closing part, but there's also how to present.
And what I've found is that B2B salespeople, I mean, in addition to thinking the closing is either awkward or somehow beneath them, which does not serve their success in what I've seen, but maybe you guys know about that world than I do, know more about it. But also a lot of them don't think they have a pitch.
Which is crazy. So what I've been able to do and it's, I did not see it coming is just by like making break, heightening their awareness, the fact that they have a pitch and that they're delivering it multiple times. So trying to make it up every time as you go along is kind of like deciding what pedal you're going to push for a car to stop.
You know, you're not paying attention to truck. You're just a bad driver. It's not, you're not spontaneous or somehow less of a salesperson. You're just not doing your job well. You have one chance to make a first impression. And even if you're not meeting with the person who can say yes, you're always meeting with someone who can say no. So being able to close that person has skills and getting that person to say, you know, they're going to present whatever six versions of this to their, to the next, to the person who can say yes, or at least the next rung on that ladder, getting that person on your side going, wow, this guy told me all kinds of things I had no idea about.
And I feel much more comfortable recommending them than all the other stuff, even though they're a little cheaper. That's how you sell on value by making an incredible first impression and connecting, you know, emotionally with that customer. Even if they can't, even if it's not going to produce an impulse buy, you still can produce an impulse enthusiasm, which is valuable.
Getting a series of yeses along the way, right? That's
Absolutely. I love this here. Well, I loved the only book on sales I ever read that I liked was Dale Carnegie, which is a how to win friends and influence people is a book you should read just as a human being, not just as
Absolutely. Absolutely. Still
I think what you're saying that the first impressions are key first impressions are what are going to dictate later in the funnel, right, of a customer saying, okay, what's my experience going to be like if I decide to move forward with that process, not, if I'm not getting a good sales process or the sales rep has bad motivations, then what kind of process am I going to get when I signed the contract and I'm getting customer service?
Support and so forth. But I think the pitch, I think you're spot on. You know, you have to create a discipline. You have to know your baseline and the muscle memory of what is being offered, but you know, we, you know, I think you flipped that a little bit and it's aligned with what you're saying of like sellers need to have a point of view and they need to come to that call with that point of view, obviously doing a lot of research, understanding the business, understanding the stakeholders.
Come with that point of view, validate that point of view, you know, with that prospect on the call, and then map that point of view with an effective diagnosis. So, actually properly hearing what the prospect has to say, you know, and we use, we like to, in trainings, use the analogy of a doctor, right?
Everyone has bad experiences with a doctor. I'm a mild hypochondriac, so I go in and say I have a headache. A bad doctor just goes, okay, we'll go take some Advil. I walk out going, okay, do I have a headache or tumor? Right? Like what? You didn't do any real diagnosis of it. And you're just slapping, you know, the easiest feature solution.
We can translate that. You know, to the pitch, right? Is that okay? Are you actually listening to the pain or the need that this prospect has? But are you doing effective? Diagnosis that only comes with a point of view and education that you have of how can you solve a pain.
well, you can make the argument though, that coming to, and at least on medical terms, coming to it with a point of view is, that's an inherent bias, so it's biasing how you're listening to the patient. And as my wife teaches medical school, so, you know, they have a class where they, I've identified that doctors, figures, rougher, plus or minus a couple, that doctors have anywhere around two dozen inherent biases they have to work their way through when they interview a patient in order to make sure they're actually listening to the patient.
You know,
Well, this is where the medical analogy sort of collapses, but I think it,
are closers with like the greatest clothes in the world, which is, you know, if you don't do this, you'll die.
Yeah, well,
They, you know, they don't think they don't whip that out. Like they've, if you've been to a doctor, you've seen how they do it.
right, they're closers,
going on.
Well, right, we can talk about their pharma incentivizations, but
also the worst customers. I don't know if you know that. If you're a member of like anything but a doctor, please, or a real estate agent. But that's only because real estate agents only want to invest in real estate doctors. They're just convinced they know more than you and that you're trying to rip them off.
How's that for a provocative statement? There you go.
How's that for a broad generalization?
Yes.
Andy, I think what you're saying on
No, just everyone I've met so far.
yeah, putting aside the medical part, which you're spot on the in sass, at least the point of view becomes critical. Cause what's happened is that the market, every market that you're in is highly saturated, it's commoditized.
So now, especially, you know, and it's been talked about to death, you know, the free interest air is over.
Right. But within any market that you're in, if you're a technology provider, you probably have a hundred competitors. And now we're all doing incrementally the same thing. There's very little difference. So now prospects are choosing a vendor who's going to actually be more of a partner. You're now buying, and this aligns, you know, with Bob's point, you're now buying, if every vendor's created the same in terms of the feature stack that I'm gonna get.
And the offering, now I'm going to buy for the person and the people and the service that I'm going to get. But then what sort of take do they have on my position and my problem that maybe is unique and different. Because then that's going to assess how they're going to solve my business challenge, maybe better than another vendor.
Because that's the game that we're playing. Because the feature parity, everyone has it now for most solutions. So I'm now having to run a better sales process.
it's not just, it's also how you frame those things. So it's, you know, did you pay attention to that customer on a human level
Yep.
you warmed them up? Maybe you discover a few pain points that you can work into your product pitch at some point. If not necessarily because you, they're unique to you, at least you, it conveys an understanding of that customer's.
motivation and what, you know, ability to craft the change that you've made them now want. But you have to have a structured pitch to take them through an emotional experience of chaos to confusion. And that's one thing when you are selling, when you have to get the deal that day, or some manager comes in undercuts you and you're out gas money and time, it creates the need to do something that B2B salespeople oftentimes don't, they don't feel that need, but when they do it, good things happen.
So your version or my version of point of view is really belief. I think you just have to believe in what you're going to accomplish for that customer before you ever start the meeting. And that's something customer will feel whether they can say yes or not. Getting them to feel that will help you get to the person who can say yes.
And the other thing that we didn't talk about is when you talk about the company and your product and things like that, I mean, when you show up for a customer, they're expecting two things from you. A scope of work and a price. That's really all they want, right? And not to make a decision. That's what every customer looking for anything ever in my understanding of what's out there wants.
And you know, if you're just a salesperson, that's what you're going to give them. And that's why you don't make very much money. But if you're going to give them more than that, Pay attention to them. Try and understand their needs. Establish your expertise. Recommend a scope of work. Well, make them feel the pain of their current situation.
This is the other thing that people without pitches don't do. They do not make them feel the pain of their current situation and the pleasure of your solution. And that is really important. In fact, that's one way where the medical model fits in really good because no doctor who's recommending a treatment for you is not going to tell you what might happen if you don't take the treatment.
For So, you know, that's just kind of, it's a logical thing to do, but because it's confrontational, it's something that a lot of sales people avoid. And it's really the big missing element in most of the BNB pitches that I've come across. And when you add that to the pitch, a lot of success comes along with it.
You make the, anyway, so, and there's things in my book, it's called the three reasons to create that, that along with a little bit of urgency that I think is really helpful for BNB customers. But the biggest thing is that belief. If you don't have the belief, I mean, you said point of view, but really it's belief.
If you don't believe that you have a solution for that customer. Everything in your pitch is being multiplied by zero. And that takes commitment. It takes an effort on the person. You know, that's why they make, that's why the closer makes the money and the presenter usually doesn't, if those two roles are divided
yeah, I mean, there's a certain assumptiveness that goes into, or presumptuousness with saying, with this idea of belief in certain B2B situations where, honestly, you don't know. Right? You don't know. You're assuming that you have a solution for them. You may, but it may not be the solution that you normally bring to the table.
and you have to be open to that, if you're an expert, I mean, you really need to be an expert, not
Yeah, but I think one of the things that happens is, not that I think, I know what happens, and you see it all the time, and you listen to recordings, and the response of the buyers is that, you know, salespeople come in, I've got this belief, we've worked with hundreds of companies just like you, we know exactly what we're doing.
What the buyer's saying is, oh, they're not really listening to me. Because, yeah we wait we look like, These other companies, but we view our business differently. We do our business around our culture is different. We're not like them. when they feel like the seller's not listening to a turnoff and they stopped listening.
And you know, I think that is one of the big issues that exists for so many sellers. The way we train them is, you know, this idea of I've got this confident pitch. We've worked with dozens of companies just like you. And as humans, the buyers are saying, I'm not like anybody else. And they've seen this on a B2B, on a B2C
a terrible pitch, by
seen it, they've seen it with a B2C.
bad pitch. Like we work with hundreds of companies just like
Well, it could be dozens. Yeah, the whole idea of
success of your clients, but to sort of relegate the person that's trusting you with their time and maybe their, you know, treasure to say you're just like everybody else is really, I don't think that inspires a lot of trust.
And the whole thing is about building trust.
Sure, absolutely. But I think that's part of the default that many sellers go in with. Because it's, yeah, considered social proof. Dan, you were about to say something.
No I'm good. I mean, I, um, I'm with you guys. I mean, it's gotta be personalized. We just had James Roth on the CRO of zoom info, and he was all about just leveraging as much information as you can get ahead of time and go in there and show the buyers that, you know, their business, you know, that, you know, how they think about how they make money.
What's important to them and doing all the homework and the research and then having a personalized approach. You know, that goes a long way versus throwing spaghetti at the wall.
Well, what you're talking about, Dan, which I align with and is awesome, is, you know, we undervalue the operational rigor and discipline that reps have to have. and you have to create frameworks. You have to have discipline in the organization and accountability that frameworks are being applied to in the field.
And part of that, Dan, like you just said, what's gonna give a prospect an amazing experience is all the prep that you're doing ahead of that call. Mandating that prep. Proving that you have that point of view, you're making a business case. What are you coming into that call with? What are your assumptions?
What are you gonna validate? What are you gonna uncover? And then what are the outcomes that you're gonna try to drive from, you know, that call if you do find that there is? Mutual value to be had and by the lines of what you're saying, like to be a great closer and to create all these yes, you know, trail of yeses decision points, you have to have sellers who have that operational rigor and discipline to be working at that type of level.
And what we often uncover is that you may have great sellers who know how to close or super personable. You know, the list goes on, but they don't have any of that discipline and rigor. So they're coming onto these calls loose. There's no plans. There's no education and assumptions. And they're just betting on the fact that they know how to talk to someone right and be personable and work on the fly.
So we really focus on that pre work of like, how do you create operational rigor, accountability and discipline within a sales organization? Because I will see an impact with prospects.
okay. So explain that in detail for the listeners. So when you say operational rigor, what do you mean?
A lot of different things, right? So it's it's a framework that you apply. So what are you doing pre call? What are you doing during the call? What are you doing post call? To have that sort of operational rigor and excellence to ensure that everything is centered around increasing the likelihood of success.
of an opportunity closing, and we really focus on that likelihood. And this is what you do for like inbound, you know, type of sale selling, right? You do an outbound, you got, you're knocking on someone's door, you got to take a different approach, but you have someone knocking on your door. What are you doing?
What are all these activities, actions, operations that you can do to increase the likelihood?
So how are you
a lot of different things. So. You look at first and you educate the reps on what's outside of your control. You can't control, you know, if a company is going to go bankrupt. You can't control, you know, a prospect going on summer vacation.
You can't control larger industry trends. What can you influence though? You can influence their program strategy based off of what they're trying to buy, right? Dan works with MediaFly, revenue enablement. You can influence how they're potentially thinking about going after sales revenue enablement, you can influence urgency, you can influence budget, you can't control it, and then what are the things that you can control, and this is where the operational rigor has to come in, and that increases the likelihood of that deal, so what can you control?
You can control the research and prep that you do, and how educated you are about one hour solution, and then, you know, the prospects company, their pains and their needs. You can control your excellence in terms of the process that you take them through. What is that experience, almost a customer experience, that they are engaging with that is going to show that, hey, this solution costs six figures?
Are you giving them a six figure experience? Are you curating?
How are you quantifying that?
So one, you look at, obviously, certain conversions in the funnel, right? And this works for larger sales programs. You have inbound come in. You know, you get that meeting. How well are they and how quickly are you moving them into the next step in that process?
We measure with enablement teams. Do you come out of a first call with outcomes? Do you come out of a first call with next steps and did you educate the buyer on what a process would be for them to evaluate the solution and did they agree to engage in that process? That's a really critical
What about the, I'm curious in the world you're talking about, which isn't my primary world, but I think we're all dealing with human beings. And even according to some politicians, corporations are human beings and the Supreme Court. So I don't think it's totally misplaced. What about the fact that almost Probably 80 percent of the time, a customer is going to lie to you at the end of the first meeting.
How do you factor that in? That if you're assuming they're telling you the truth every time, that's not what I understand about human nature. And it's definitely not my experience closing people.
Oh, 100%. I mean, look, when you coach and work with sales teams, and remember, all of this, like, I work with companies that are, you know, 50 million trying to get to 100 million and you are working on incremental changes to process and creating that excellence because several percentage points will unlock millions of dollars in new revenue for the business.
And that's the optimization game you're playing. You're not doing brute force sales, right? That got you from zero to 20 or whatever it may be. So When you coach sales reps, we always say, we believe what you're saying. We do not believe what the prospect is
Well, thank God for that. Cause that is because every customer presents objections as conditions and they almost never are. And they're almost never, what's really holding them back. That's
exactly why you create a bunch of moments in the process to pressure test, how much you can believe what that prospect
the most important person to train is your salesperson because that person needs to channel their inner six year old and make a full and complete presentation with all the dumb, stupid reasons that prospect is going to fall in love with the idea of doing business with you because they don't, it seems like they're making an analytic decision.
And if you ask them, of course they think they are, but people do business for really. small reasons compared to what they think is important. And it's how you take price out of the equation as Dan, you know, spoke out, spoke about earlier is how do you sell on value? I mean, yeah, you under, you get, you have to educate the customer.
You have to give them information they didn't have when you got there so they can make an informed decision to pay more for what you have. That's the essence of selling on value. And that starts with belief, but it also includes. A lot of stuff that you're educating them, but at the same time you're educating them, you're giving them like just a a limbic brain massage about all the reasons other people do business with you.
All the great outcomes, maybe a little price conditioning, all that stuff that you have to do in a one call close situation. When you bring that to B and get your, get those people to act more like six year olds and less, you know, you have to be like, Part lawyer and part six year old to be a great closer and it's 80 percent six year old, right?
Nobody wants to sign a contract with a six year old, but even if you're presenting the driest, you know, whatever SAS stuff that feels like statistics if you don't have that enthusiasm for it You're leaving a lot of money on the table, in my opinion. And you're going to believe a lot of
that's a big difference that you just said, Bob, which is great. And I fully align. You know, what the emotion and everything that you have to cultivate is very different for a one call, one call closed transaction, you know, versus, you know, like sales teams that we work with, you know, these are 90 day plus buying cycles, you know, for 600, 000 price point contracts.
that you could blow any step of the way or
Exactly, but that's.
either creating a snowball or, you know, melting
But that's my point. Exactly. But that's
a series of one call.
that's, it's more like a series of local closes than it is
closing. You're closing to get the prospect to each next milestone that they have to take. And you're also mitigating the fact that most of the time the buyers are on this call doing 80 percent of the homework.
They're already educated. They've shopped around to all the other tools. They know the features that you have. So oftentimes you're working with them not on baseline education of the solution, but again, proving why you are the best person to, and best company to solve that solution. And with those things, that's where the operational rigor has to come in, because to get close to those next milestones, you have to constantly, as a seller, put out pressure tests to how serious is that prospect taking this evaluation
All right. So let me blow your mind a little bit and ask you a question. All these companies started off much more like owner, you know, at some point, some person had an idea, saw me in the market, went out, did. Tested that business and earned business beyond what they thought and that's why they expanded, right? So here's my rabbit hole question for you. What do you think the owner had who I would bet any amount of money is closing all those deals five steps faster than anyone else on the sales team. All right. Right. Or did when they started, what do you think that person had that the sales team doesn't
I'm glad you said we work with transitioning companies from founder led sales to scalable sales. And a lot of different things. One, they created the product, so they're naturally going to have a lot more passion, the product that they have created is often a solution that they needed because they were the prospect themselves, so they're creating, like you said, you wrote your book, the joy of closing, because it was something you needed yourself probably based off of all the sales trainings that you saw.
Something like that. Sure. I never thought about it that way, but I definitely have made good use of its principles.
So it's something you wanted likely and look, the financial incentive that a founder is going to have is going to be much different and the motivations that they're going to have is going to be much different from then when you hire 50 salespeople,
doesn't have to be. And really, what you talked about was two things. Belief, right? And confidence that they're going to take good care of the customer and that everything they're promising, because they're so responsible for the delivery of the product, they have the confidence to know it's really going to go the way they, the beautiful dream they present in their sales presentation is actually going to come true for that customer.
And that's how you, and they're a little better at being a six year. They have more six year old involved in the case than the sales team. Those are the three things I bet they have.
so let's take that point is how do you,
the same passion that a founder is going to have because a founder will. Layoff.
you could have the same confidence, they could have the same confidence,
Confidence, I think, is
is different than passion and feeling the same emotion that a founder is going to
they can create the same emotion if they're really good. And more importantly, if you invite them to and you get them in touch with the company's intentions. And not just, you know, the pain of the other hard thing about being a closer is you have to be so resilient because not every job is going to go as planned and human beings work on stuff and customers can be disappointed and you have to learn how to, you know, customer service that stuff which is another whole third part of the book.
Let's ask the question though. So how do you build confidence in sellers? I'll make the argument that in SaaS, where average win rates across all ACV segments are 18 to 20 percent, that every, almost every seller goes into a deal expecting they're going to lose. Why wouldn't you? If you lose four of every five opportunities, you're.
Operating assumption is, I've got a new prospect, I'm going to lose this. That's your sense of confidence. So, and this is across industry. 18 20 percent win rate. So, how do you build confidence in sellers in that environment?
You look at that 20 percent that does 80 percent of the business or some, whatever your industry's formula is, and you ask what they have. And I, my experiences, what they have is they have resilience. So they know, by the way, if you're closer to
but that's not,
if you're closer to 20%, that means if everyone said yes, the first time you met with them, you'd still get.
Three no's for every yes or five, four no's for every yes. Right. But they don't. So you're
These are 20%,
going to have to listen to like 50 no's
but Bob, this is 20 percent off of qualified opportunities in a pipeline. This is not 20 percent off top of the funnel, raw leads coming in. This is 20 percent off opportunities in your pipeline because you qualify them and you expect at some level that you're going to win.
So we have this, I believe, this huge crisis of confidence in B2B sales because people are taking what they think are good opportunities and by and large, they're losing. And if your company, that your average win rate as a company is 20%, that's average throughout SaaS. This is not my data, this came out, I forget the company that did it.
that's a success. That's every, any superstar sale closing rate for anybody is 25%. That superstar
not true. My, my career rate is 65%. I've had many people on the show in complex enterprise sales with career win rates well over 50%.
Awesome. Those people do not need my book. Those people read my book anyway. Cause if they get one new toy to walk into their next meeting with, they know it'll more than pay for itself. Like. Thousands of times over. But I wrote a book. I also want to book that I'm telling the 80 percent what the 20 percent will never tell them, which is, you know, you can't make that important.
You have to make the wins important and you have to make the success stories important so that you walk into that. Prospect with confidence that you have a solution for them, or maybe it's also if you those times when you don't have a solution for them actually acknowledging it so that when you tell someone you have a solution for them, you come across as a trustworthy person that has that customer's interest at heart and not just making your next sale.
But Andy, I think what you said about increasing the confidence, that's why we really focus on, you know, with larger sales teams, that you have to feel really confident about the things that you can control in your process. Increase. All of this work is to increase the likelihood.
Nothing's a guarantee. You could do everything right, and you won't get a deal. You could do nothing right, and you could still get a deal sometimes. But what can you do to increase that likelihood? Are you actually being doing value selling? Are you multi threading? Are you engaging with the right stakeholders?
You know, a bunch of activities.
another thing that's totally overlooked is are you engaging with that customer post sale? Not necessarily to sell them more stuff, just to make sure that you delivered on the promises that or that your company delivered on the promises that you make that can fuel so much because the truth is you're never tired driving home from a sale.
Right.
You feel like, and nothing's happened. You don't have the money, so many ways that you could never see that money. You're, you know, you're not at the top of the sales team board. All that happened is another person trusted you to provide a solution for the problem. And so,
let me dig down on that question, though, that you mentioned. Is, you're saying, okay, increase the likelihood. So, really interesting, because this is where I think there is an incredible lack of rigor in sales, in general, in B2B sales, is what are you going to do in this moment
Yep.
to be able to help the buyer to increase the probability of winning the deal?
And, I see a huge gaping hole in the way that sellers are coached and managed, and that there's almost a complete lack of rigor, especially when you see these low win rate environments
Yep.
in that. And, how can people come to selling with the confidence if they really don't understand what they can do at any one point in time to increase the likelihood of winning the deal.
Right. And it's getting that confidence that you don't have to go in for the clothes immediately. It came for the contract. You have to get the buyer to make a series of decisions against different milestones that we know we need in order for them to effectively evaluating, get them to to a yes, working with us.
And it's
What about milestones they need?
Right. Well, it's mutual milestones, right? For them to properly evaluate. So you put that against it. What are the series of decisions that a prospect has to make against those? How do you effectively manage against those decisions, convince them to take that next step?
And that next step doesn't have to be
one
do you have to convince them?
you can do that I guarantee your 65 percent closing rate people do is make the customer qualify for your good or service, like actually give them a little rigor and say, you know, we don't work with everybody, but this could be a good fit for you. Things like that, you know, that people just don't think of in a B2B environment, but that you absolutely need to employ when you're dealing with individuals.
Well, but I was, based on the point you made, so, and that, you know, to me words matter. And the way the words we use is, you talk about, we have to convince them to take the next step. See, if I'm having to convince somebody to take the next step, they're probably not a prospect.
Well, I think
probably not a qualified opportunity.
They are in need. Well, and again, I'm talking about inbound, right? Outbound, we gotta run a whole different motion here. If they come knocking on your door, and let's say you have 20 competitors that all do the same thing, they're definitely that ICP, they're definitely qualified that they need what you have to provide.
You have to convince them that they should move along this journey with you. Cool? And your company versus all the others that they have at their fingertips. Oftentimes, we work with a lot of companies that are market leaders, that there's a lot of ankle biters and cheaper solutions out there that candidly do 90 percent of the same things.
So there is convincing that has to be done of, hey, we're not convincing you that, you know, we're, we have what you need. We're convincing you to take the next step of, This buyer journey with us so that we have time and we can walk you through a really thoughtful evaluation So that you can feel at the end of this very confident with that one.
We've educated you on the marketplace We've educated you on all the solutions out there and that we've educated you on why? We're going to be the best fit for you, but that requires a really thoughtful journey especially knowing again That most buyers come to that first conversation doing the majority of their education, and they already have their assumptions in place.
Sure.
But do you challenge this? I mean, I hope you have a pitch that challenges their assumptions
of course, that's where the point of view
because that's how you come. Interesting. I mean, if you just sort of, oh, you've done your research. Wow. You're so smart. Like, that's a really boring pitch.
Well, right. Keep in mind, none of these
And the cardinal
equal a
cardinal sin is to bore your customer.
That is the one thing B2B, B2C, anytime if you are presenting to a prospect and you are boring or telling them something they already know or reading words off a screen that you're presenting on PowerPoint instead of saying something different, which is, I see that all the time in B2B, they just read the PowerPoint and act like they are providing value.
You can't do that. The way they present is not good. The standard of excellence is almost the low, the more, the bigger, the ticket price, it's almost like the lower, the standard of excellence in terms of, you know, actual things that will convince a customer to move forward.
So when rates so low because we have poor B to B sellers.
well, it's one of, well, it's one of two things. Either you don't have product market fit, right, you're not selling into your ICP, or you're just not very good at selling.
Deal navigation is something that's super important to your point, Mason, the rigor, but how to navigate, how to get the right stakeholders in, who's in the buying committee, how many people, when do I bring them in next, you know,
that's that's having the rigor and excellence. But then, too, you have to put the right motivations in place. So,
whose motives, the sellers or the
The seller's motivations, right? You align the company and the seller's motivations appropriately, we're going to have better outcomes, one, with that customer if it signs, but two, as it relates to retention, as it relates to potential growth with that customer.
So, for example, we go into a lot of companies changing compensation models, because what's a, what's SAS right now is churn. Turn is a significant, yeah. Well, turn to sellers, but also turn to customers, right? Is that , all these companies, their growth is kneecapped because they're able to bring things in, but they can't retain those customers, right?
And is that because they don't make them happy or because someone's cheaper and always
At your heels?
the wrong ICP to
a cocktail mix of things, but one thing that we do that actually really Impacts that is you started with the seller and you put right incentivizations and motivations in place saying, Hey, seller, you, we don't want you just selling to everybody. We want you to really qualify this.
We want to make sure that they are the best and that we're going to be able to fulfill their needs. We're going to actually not only incentivize you on the first deal, will incentivize you if they renew business with us. We're going to incentivize you on, you know, does that customer, once they're handed off to a customer success program, does that customer upsell and grow?
Did you sell everything that we have out of the gate or did you just sell them, you know, the two out of the five features that they need right now and you didn't oversell them so that then, you know, they become unhappy because they can't leverage everything? And that's just one small example of you create, you know, Early on in the process, the right motivations, it changes the way the sellers actually operate.
It changes the way to show them, hey, think long term with this. Don't just work on the initial close. Think if, you know, we plant this seed today, is there going to be a lot of fruit that's harvested from this for the company? And it makes a big impact.
Well, so
you're making the point that the person who earned their trust initially, right? Even on a corporate level, that person who earned their trust and closed that deal, even after is more powerful in terms of reducing churn than your entire operational success team. That should tell you something about the power of a closer.
A
I'll extend that to a certain degree. Because I think one of the easiest things, which is completely overlooked, that SaaS companies can do to increase retention rules is increase their win rates. deals that are won by high win rate sellers churn less often. Because the experience that the buyer had to Bob's point, they fell in love with this person, they have a preference, experience is so superior with the high win rate sellers, they're bringing in better business.
Those customers more likely. So we've got all this people and I read, you know, it's price, but way too much time on LinkedIn reading what, you know, go to market experts and renewal experts are talking about. It's like they never once mentioned the most obvious thing is do better business. If you do better business, it stays with you longer.
How do you get better business? You get your people to win at higher rates. They're selling better deals, and it's so simple, and yet it's the loop that's just not closed. And if you look at successful companies who are, in essence, and companies I've been in that we were not. A subscription software company, but we had renewing and recurring revenue from customers.
We expected to get, you know, 60 percent of our revenue every year from our previous customers. Yeah.
Yeah, but you have to put the
thing about a customer perceiving your the value that you know, the customer, the biggest thing about a customer perceiving their high customer service is the expectations that are set at the time of the deal signing that those expectations, whether they are verbalized or in writing, yeah, there's always a contract, but there's also an understanding that gets created.
In the process of selling the deal of, is there going to be personal involvement? Are they going to pay attention to you? All those things, all those expectations are set by the person getting the deal. And they are, if you know, I don't, it depends on what you're selling and whether or not you're involved.
And obviously even the expectation of whether you will be involved needs to be set, like, look, I trust people to do their jobs. You know, I'm not very involved in the rest of it. Having that conversation can set your team up for success. Way better than just, you know, what happens most of the time, which is, you know, they don't see you again and they feel like you ripped them off.
If they don't have an expectation and an understanding of what your touch points are and what your involvement is going forward, then it's always going to be uncomfortable and
Well, 100%. Dan.
No, I agree. I think the one thing that I want to come back to is, I think I love what Bob said, because it's almost a, it's a balance between the, you know, what Mason said and what Bob said. So the deal rigor. But also the enthusiasm and the confidence and the belief because people buy an emotion, right?
So, you know, you have to go in there and be confident. But you also have to make the right moves as well. There was one study I read where B2B buyers said they wanted to be lit on fire. They wanted to be inspired by sellers. And I said to myself, when the hell was the last time. Even I did that, you know, I had a good meeting, but am I lighting people on fire?
Am I turning this zoom meeting into like You know, impassioned people. And it's interesting. So I think it's definitely a balance between the emotional and the rational.
right. But that was my question about confidence because we're in an environment and it's true across B2B. I just use SAS as an example, because there's a study that came out a couple of years ago, the average win rates across B2B, all industry segments with 17% is how can you be confident seller
Well, it's hard, man,
If you lose more than you win, consistently
attention to your successes and letting that. The important and taking satisfaction in earning someone's trust
But you've got to
giving them what they want and seeing it as getting someone something that they want and not you getting something you want, which is the quickest way to kill a B2C deal.
but you have to be able to replicate, you have to be able to replicate that.
yeah, the moment that customer, if you make a B2C deal about you, that souffle falls so hard and so fast, there's nothing you can do to make it.
Even for an instant, if for an instant, they think. That you're making yourself more important than them, which, you know, I,
B2B will do the same thing.
Yeah.
I mean, we're not going to solve this question today, but I do put it out there for people to think about. Is that, is, can you be a confident seller if you lose more than you win? And my argument is,
can, you have to be, there's no
no, I don't think you can. I think your definition, if you're a 20 percent win rate seller.
You're not selling with confidence. Full stop. 30 percent probably not selling with confidence because if practice makes perfect, what are you practicing day in and day out? You're practicing losing. And I've seen it.
and you're not making enough changes to, to move the needle
And you're not making
still doing the same thing, apparently
I think it depends on the industry that you're in and sometimes, you know, maybe you don't have the right fit. Maybe there are other fits out there that are better for that customer and knowing that and even steering them in that direction, which might be doing nothing. I mean, there's always some customer that do not embracing the change would be better for them than embracing it.
And if you don't have, if you can't tell a customer that you're really not an expert.
All right.
We're certainly not their expert and you don't want to be a expert. You want to be the, their expert, the person they trust to recommend a scope of work that's going to produce a change that is meaningful, valuable, and maybe even life changing for that company or that person.
Perfect way to end it. I love it. All right, everybody. Thank you. Yeah, I'm assuming everybody can reach out to you guys on LinkedIn. They know where to find you.
My website is joyofclosing. com and my books on Amazon.
It is on Amazon, so people should
I think there's a lot of joy in closing Bob.
Thank you. Thank you, King
joyful experience, and
You guys got to get
And for me, yeah. On LinkedIn, Dan Sixsmith. Happy to connect with you. And this was great, Andy. Thanks for the invite and love meeting the other guests.
Yeah, as always. All right, guys. Thanks a lot.
Thanks, guys.
Bye everybody.
Well, don't leave yet.