The world's best conversations about B2B selling happen here. This exciting new podcast from Andy Paul, the creator and host of the Sales Enablement Podcast (with 1200+ episodes and millions of downloads) is focused on the mission of helping increase your win rates by winning a bigger percentage of the deals in your pipeline. In this unique round table format, Andy and his panel of guest experts share the critical sales insights, sales perspectives and selling skills that you can use to elevate your sales effectiveness and create the buying experiences that influence decision-makers to buy from you. Host Andy Paul is the expert on modern B2B selling and author of three best-selling, award-winning sales books, including his latest Sell Without Selling Out. Visit andypaul.com to subscribe to his newsletter for even more strategies and tips to accelerate your win rate!
Hi friends. Welcome to the win rate podcast. I'm your host, Andy Paul. Now that was Larry long Jr. And Larry is one of my guests on this episode of the win rate podcast. Larry long Jr. Is the CEO at LLJR enterprises and well known speaker. And as you'll learn from listening to today's episode, , as the CEO and his title doesn't stand for chief executive officer, as much as Chief energy officer.
My other guests today for this discussion about sales effectiveness, the buyer experience and improving win rates are Larry Levine. Larry is the author of the bestselling book selling from the heart as well as co host of the selling from the heart podcast, which I've had the pleasure of being a guest on and also joining us as Michael Hoffman.
Michael is the founder and CEO of Pastasite. Now, one listener note before we jump into that is discussion. I want to remind you to subscribe to my newsletter. You want to join the more than 60, 000 sellers and sales leaders who subscribe to receive win rate Wednesday, each week, not surprisingly on Wednesday, you receive one actionable tip to help you improve your win rates and a lot of other great sales advice.
You can subscribe by visiting my website, handypaul. com. . It's right there. As soon as you get to the page, or you can subscribe on my LinkedIn profile. , Okay. If you're ready, let's jump into the discussion.
Okay. Friends. That's it for this episode of the wind rate podcast. First of all, I want to thank my guests, Larry Long jr, Michael Hoffman and Larry Levine for sharing their insights with us today. And if you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to this podcast, the wind rate podcast with Andy Paul on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts again, thank you so much for investing your time with me today until next time.
I'm your host. Andy Paul. Good selling. Everyone.
Here I am laughing to start the show because Larry long always gets you smiling and laughing. And so it has since the moment I first met him, what was that? Five years ago, six years ago. So, welcome to this episode of the win rate podcast. And I'm your host, Andy Paul joining me. Another all star cast of panelists.
We're gonna give everybody a few seconds to just introduce himself. We're going to start with you, Larry long Jr.
Oh, wow. What's going on y'all? Larry Long Jr. CEO. That's chief energy officer. I'm not your traditional CEO. Motivational speaker. I'm an author. I'm an MC. I'm a coach. I'm a trainer. I do a little bit of this, a little bit of that, but all in the spirit of helping you and your organization get to that next level.
You haven't
Yeah. And if you're watching this on video, Larry's going to display multiple microphones throughout this conversation, just to show us this collection of multicolored mics and speaking of mics, Mike Hoffman,
Mike Hoffman, founder and CEO of PassSite, revenue driven win loss analysis, helping companies understand why they're losing customers and how to win them back, and loving Larry Long's energy, excited to be here. I
Andy, who doesn't like Larry Long's energy? It's like, come on, it's awesome.
if there's a human being on the face of the planet. What you're saying is it can become too much after a while. Yeah, well, I wish I had even more of your energy. So, Larry Levine.
Oh, it's a pleasure to be here, Andy. It's great seeing Larry Long and it's a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Mike Hoffman. I'm Larry Levine. Co host is selling from the heart podcast, best selling author of the book, selling from the heart. And my big mission is to bring authenticity and integrity and trust back into the wonderful profession of sales sorely needed.
Yeah. So let's use that as the point of departure then. So, selling from the heart, you and I think everybody on this call, you know, very much in agreement about the importance of building connections with humans, human to human aspect of selling. So where's that going with AI? You know, in your opinion, I mean, is there going to be less importance associated with, you know, selling from the heart, this human connection or has it become more?
So, so it's interesting because when it comes to AI, this is the 1st thing I think about. So I'm going to twist this up a little bit Andy. But when I think of AI, I think of authentic interactions.
Oh, you've come up with your own acronym for it. Oh, I like
oh it, no it's all good. But in all, since in all sincerity, though, is we live in this technology driven world.
We live in this digitally crazed world. I'm all about technology. I support the use of it. But what I'm deeply concerned with is the more that we lean into this. I believe this is me coming from my heart. We lose our authentic voice and our ability to think for ourselves and engage in deep conversation.
I'm not here to say, don't use technology. Don't use AI. I use it to a certain degree. However, maybe it's because I'll throw the generation out there. Maybe I was of the generation that came up before the internet, where we actually had to talk to people.
you're not that old.
Hey, I will tell you I'm 59.
So I'm knocking on big six, zero.
Oh.
However, this is what I, this is a point I'd like to make is when we lean into technology and we have technology think and speak for us, we become conversationally incompetent.
Mhm.
And I'm afraid that if we continue down that road and we allow it to think for us.
Then that might help us get to what I call the business table. But if we get to the business table, leveraging all of this and we have nothing to say, we're going to be labeled as an empty suit, which is chapter 10 of selling from the heart.
I love the product reference. So,
I just had to throw it out there. Sorry, Andy.
that's fine. That's fine. I just wait. I start talking about my book. No, but I think that's really, I think it's really an interesting point because there was an article I read this week or maybe this last week talking about a study that's already been done about, Dependency. And it was a study done of actually it's done at, I think at one of the big consulting firms and, you know, they looked at the quality of the work and, you know, why it was okay.
It wasn't great, right. It wasn't, and, but yet people become to rely on it to do certain amount of the tasks and the fear was that. They weren't going that extra step that you were talking about to, to make it human, right. To make it authentic. And the fear was, is, Hey, we've got this reliance on this technology.
That's that certainly is. Competent, but doesn't give you that, you know, the human side of things. And there was, you know, further study GI or AI, excuse me, Google did get my hacker resulting stuff that Google did. They came out right around the holiday period. Some of their scientists saying, look, repetitive tasks, great, but anything that requires synthesizing information, providing insights and so on this is going to, you know, this whole idea of AGI, it's going to take much longer to reach than we thought.
And yet, you know, people are sort of being pushed to rely on this technology to do certain things. So, and I think it's a really great point, Larry Long.
As he said, when people lean on it, you lose that human connection. And there's an opportunity that's knocking at our door for those folks that are going to do it right and that are doing it right right now when you're being authentic, when you're out there using your brain and you're leveraging AI, it can augment, it can supplement.
It can boost you to levels that we have yet to see. And that's what I'm excited about. I'm not really fearful of the people that are leaning on it. They're gonna self select themselves out. They're gonna be weeded out. I think Larry called it an empty suit. Which no one wants to be an empty suit. If you're able to get to the table and add substance, add thought that folks haven't even thought about in terms of solving business problems, in terms of getting to where they want to get to, in the words of the great philosopher J.
J. Walker, Dino Mine! I'm all for it.
Well, but that really, that is sort of the question, right? It's, you know, my, I was on a webinar a couple of weeks ago. We were talking about this issue and some people that were AI experts more so than me and I said, yeah, Mike fear out of all this is not, you know, the loss of jobs and so on, but it's that similar to what we've seen quite honestly with the sales tech revolution over the last 15, 20 years.
Is we've embraced it. We've used it, but arguably as sellers, you look at the data, we're worse than we were before the revolution happened, right? Look at win rates, look at quota attainment, look up massive buyer dissatisfaction with their interactions with sellers. And it looked like to me, this is like, well, this is a huge opportunity lost.
In
No,
order to be able to help us actually perform at higher levels, that's not evident that any of the sales technology we've done that we've adopted has done. It's helped us do more things, but it hasn't helped us to do those things better. Mike Kaufman.
just exemplifies who you are. So if you're a bad sales rep, it's going to make you worse. If you're a great sales rep, it's going to make you better. It's. Like sales at the end of the day, if we're talking to like human to human sales versus. A PLG strategy. Sales is about the human connection. And so a good account executive knows where to leverage a item, make them more efficient and knows where the personal touches matter.
I know when I get a cold email now, it's way better than it was 10 years ago. It's saying. I read this on your LinkedIn and I saw you went to this school on this and I'm like, you just scraped my LinkedIn profile and that's an AI type thing. And so people are getting smarter and AI is getting smarter.
But I think at the end of the day, it's actually an opportunity for the best sales reps to differentiate themselves even more and the worst sales reps to get lazy and leverage automation as much as they can. So I'm not, I think it's going to change. Like. Every other technology has changed the game, but I'm not concerned about the best companies, the best AEs, the best sales teams still finding ways to win if they're selling well.
Sure. So, well, let's dive into that though. So I'm what, how are sellers going to use. You know, just use chat GPT or any of the, , current large language models. How do you use those to actually perform at better levels to be a better service and better help to the buyers? Because all the talk right now is , sort of themed around this idea is, well, Hey, you know, your call preparation, instead of spending an hour doing it, you're gonna do it in 10 minutes.
Right. And it's like, sure. With the right prompts, you do that. Fantastic. That underlying assumption in that is. If we give sellers more time, they become better. And the fact is that's a fallacy, you know, you can say more time. They're still going to perform at the same level. They've always been forming it. So the question is, how do we use, you know, collectively, how's a good AE? I have my own opinions, but I'm interested in your thoughts. I'm going to use this technology. of better help to the buyer, to help the buyer do a better job being able to make their decisions.
so I just gotta, I gotta add some to this. Cause this is a fantastic conversation. However I'm going to put a, if I can put a highlighter in another area is if we took outside the tech space and the SAS space, which is primarily where I see a lot of this conversation around AI happening, there's another world out there that, quite frankly, from a sales point of view.
And I'll throw it out there. I'm going to throw a stake in the ground on this that hasn't even heard of AI. However, there's a great way to augment all of this is we can leverage AI or chat GPT, and then we can leverage this with having really great business conversations with our clients and leverage both of them.
I don't care if you're an AE, whatever title, whatever sales space you're calling into is, I believe we can augment all of this, but at the end. When this is all said and done, I believe the best conversations you can have are business conversations with your customers about their business issues, their concerns, their goals, their initiatives.
Take all of this, collect it with what you can find with AI and chat GPT, and you're going to be a seller that's going to outsell everybody else. That's my two cents.
I'm gonna double down. And I don't know what y'all's definition of sales is. We're talking about sales. For me, I look at it as we're playing matchmaker. We're matching whatever we have. It could be a product, could be a service, could be a thought, an idea with someone else, their needs, their wants, their desires, their challenges, their hopes, their dreams, their aspirations.
So double L, the other double L, when you're talking about having those deeper conversations and Andy, you were asking how do sellers do better and get more? Well, it's really better conversations. It's more conversations that are going to drive the most successful reps. I know Mike shared it before those reps that are already good can now be great if they leverage the tools and if they Use this.
That's what we're talking about. I think we've all got it. And I'm guilty as charged. There's times where I've gotten lazy and it's hurt me because I tried to take a shortcut. For anyone that's played sports, you know, that if you try to take a shortcut, good luck, you're probably not going to win.
It's the same thing in sales. So I know that y'all are talking about AI and chat GPT. When I'm talking about AI, I'm talking about Allen Iverson. And yeah, we're talking about practice. When was the last time that these reps out there actually practiced their craft, honed their skills outside of the normal working hours?
When are you working on your objection handling and actually doing it? When are you working on your cold call and actually doing it? For me, I believe that is the question at hand.
Yeah. I mean, I think, so let me just dive a little bit deeper. Cause it's, I look at, you know, as a seller saying, okay, if I'm going to prepare for a call, yeah, I mean, I've seen tools that, you know, to the point Larry Levine made , I can scrape somebody's profiles. I can look at all their digital footprints and digital breadcrumbs and learn everything about them.
And, you know, it was one system I looked at that. Somebody was showing me that from that, then they mapped everybody on a disk profile and then it could generate an email using language specific to the, you know, their disk profile, blah, blah, blah. It's like, sure. I mean, I think that's, could be very useful.
Right. But me, it seems like the real power of this and may disappoint Mike Hoffman was making about the good reps use it better. I look at us, well, give me ideas, the things to talk about. Give me ideas to me. It's a spur to creativity is yeah, maybe here's some factors I hadn't thought about when I had these first conversations to your point, Larry long about, yeah, I want to give you something to think about.
You hadn't thought about before. I think that's the power for the less, you know, maybe the not top performing reps is those who are anxious to get up into that level and say, yeah, I can improve my game by using the tool to force me to think, Right. So that can help my buyers think.
But here, I love this. However here's what I want us to think about. And I believe we need to discuss this is it can make better, just like Mike said, this can make great sellers even better. The point I want to make behind this is if we leverage this, To get a conversation started or we don't know where to start and we're leaning into this and we lean into it too much.
We haven't practiced. We haven't educated ourselves. We're not continually reading honing in on our crafts. Then this is where I believe sellers who use this, who don't understand the follow up questions and how to engage in a healthy business conversation are going to find themselves in some deep trouble by leveraging this to get them to the conversation, bring up some ideas.
And then what happens when that executive goes. I'm just going to use Larry long as an example, and they just go, Hey, Larry, you know, you bring up some fascinating points about point a point B point C. I'm just curious. Why did you bring those up? I'm just curious. And then the salesperson goes so this goes back to Larry's point.
We have to practice the art of conversations and being situationally aware of the environments were in when to leverage it when not to leverage it, how to further engage people with that. This type of conversation.
Yeah, no I agree. I mean, I, again, my concern is that none of that happens, right? We've developed this dependency and just as people become, I don't use the word lazy because I think that's the wrong, you know, people tend to say, Oh, sellers are lazy, I don't think sellers are lazy at all, but I think there's, there is a natural tendency.
I want to try to find the easy button and that, Yeah. I think it's sort of the false. Of course you have Larry keeps holding up props. Yeah. I'm going to get, I'm going to ping you a little bit on you. You talked about Alan Iris and you brought up a baseball bat, so you're mixing your metaphors there.
But anyway so people can't see all the props, Larry, very long displaying. But so you need a basketball, my friend. Yeah, so, Yeah, I forgot what I was talking about, but I got distracted by Larry. Well, let's, anyway, any other thoughts on that? Cause I do, I want to dive a little bit deeper into another related topic on that.
I think of AI, where it's at its best is synthesizing information. So taking like Gongate is the hot one. I'm trying to transition that to like customer feedback. Data, but whatever it is it taking data and making you more powerful with it? So it can easily say you lost these five deals because you didn't do this or your last 50 deals or that kind of thing. But I think that's where the power of it is. It's not in new ideas, in my opinion, or new information. That's where like a sales rep needs to have good conversations and all of that, but then they can leverage. AI to be more efficient in their conversations and things like that. So
I always think
does that mean? What's conversation efficiency mean? Cause that's, you know, a hot button for me in sales. People talk about being more efficient. I'm like, well, you can't be efficient until you're effective first. Once you learn how to be effective. And then you can be efficient.
things like at this stage, you lose most of your deals because of this. That's something that a I can collect that data for you. So if you had 100 lost deals last year and you looked at a certain stage that you lost them all and whether you got feedback from gong or what past sites doing what we think is more valuable through what the customer told you. If you're noticing these themes like, hey, you lost deals because They asked you about onboarding and you went into a totally different talk track and really what they care about is how easy is it to implement your process. AI can collect that data and say you need to be better at talking about onboarding. And so that's what I mean by more efficient is having better conversations. AI can help guide that in my way, in my opinion, but it can't like revamp the way you should talk about onboarding or be creative in the art and the magic of sales. It can just help you be effective or efficient. I'm using those words interchangeably in this aspect, but that's how I think about AI.
It's like making you better, but not making you more creative.
Well, yeah, let's think about that though. Cause I mean, again, it's, if it's making you better, there's the assumption there that you're absorbing this knowledge, right. And I think that in further, my belief is we see the limit of that, right? Unless somebody, unless it's a seller, it's not you've limited success, I think, and you look at the top performers.
I've said, certainly had numbers of them on this show and my previous podcast. And one thing that was really consistent among all the top performers is. They put their own spin on things. They put their own perspective on things. It wasn't just. You know, yeah, I got that insight from, you know, marketing guys.
And I'm going to repeat it. It's no, I'm taking multiple sources of data and coming up with something unique. And that's where I think where, again, where I think AI can help, it comes another source of insight and input to that, that the top people then use to synthesize into something relevant specifically to that particular buyer that helps them think differently about what they're doing.
You you nailed it, Andy. It's the human element. We're taking data. We're getting synthesized data quickly. And the best performers are those that are able to take that, use it in their own AI. So it's taking that data and then what are you going to do? What actions are you going to take? Which can't be a robot.
It's gotta be a human to human a B2B seller, belly to belly those relationships.
Right. Well, let me ask you a question and everybody. So, you know, we see these surveys that, yeah, for Gartner, I think it was, you know, 75 percent of Or may have forced or forget who, but you know, 75 percent of B2B seller B2B buyers don't want to talk to sellers. Right. Okay. Fine. As I like to say, yeah, my favorite comeback to that as well.
That's completely wrong. It's a hundred percent of buyers don't want to talk to sellers, not 75%, but they do talk to salespeople. So why given those, you know, these numbers about those that don't want to talk to salespeople, why do they continue to talk to them?
I'll throw a laughable out there is cause they're trying to, I'm trying to find the diamond in the rough nevertheless, is I believe this set that smart buyers want to talk to salespeople. Cause they want to get educated or they want to find somebody that can help them get from where they're at to where they want to be.
And so I believe that to go back to your 100 percent though, really quick, Andy, is that, you know, a lot of them don't want to talk to salespeople because a vast majority aren't bringing anything to the table worth having a conversation about. So they just go, okay, well. That being said, I really don't want to talk to him.
I, they do want to talk to salespeople. They just want to talk to sales professionals. I love how the thumbs up always comes up.
Yeah, I was going to say, who's doing that by the way, somebody just gave me a thumbs down in the middle of the conversation. Well, let me put a different spin on it is I think buyers. Talk to sellers because they need to.
So
need to, they wouldn't talk to them. If I could get this done completely, this job I have, you know, as one of N number of people in a bond committee or whatever, if I could get that done without talking to a salesperson, I think I would.
Increasingly they do and they would. So
to mind, like you were talking about like a trend of like PLG and being able to buy on your own. And so I'm, my lease is up. I'm thinking about a new car. And a lot of people are talking about Tesla's they're affordable now. And one of the value props I'm hearing, and I don't know exactly how this works is you can pay for it online.
You don't need to negotiate. I love to negotiate, but separate from that, you don't need to negotiate. And then you just go to the lot and get it. And it's all self serve. And to me, maybe like, I'm not an innovator in the industry or an early adopter, but that's not a selling point to me. I have a lot of questions about the car I'm going to buy and all of that.
So for me, I want to talk to a sales rep, but if I talk to a sales rep and they're just a sleazy car salesperson, then I'm like, okay, this is awful. But a good salesperson that can always be a value add in something. So that's the way I'm thinking about it.
Mike, I gotta say, I love it. I just bought a new car on Wednesday, not because I wanted to, but my old car blew up and I was dreading going in and To the car dealership. Just, I've had bad experiences and both you, Mike, and you, Larry made a distinction. I didn't want to talk to a sales rep. I would have beat a sales rep with my back, even though it's pink.
I wanted to talk to a sales professional because I had questions. Talk to me about the difference between the Equinox and the Traverse, the Blazer, the Trailblazer. I had questions that I needed someone who knew to walk me through it and then not give me the whole runaround. I don't like to negotiate.
I just feel, Ooh, I don't feel good. I want the best deal that you can give me and then let me get out of there. We were out. My wife and I were out in an hour and a half. It was an unbelievable experience. Thank you to Jesus.
yeah, well, but you brought up the word that I think is really critical that I think sellers need to think about is if buyers are talking to you, it's because they need to. And this is if sellers understood this, I think it starts making a difference. They're not talking to you because they want to, they're talking to you because they need to.
So what do they need from you? In order to help them make progress toward making their decision. And if you can focus on that as a seller, then that really becomes very powerful. And I think that, you know, people are missing the ball completely. Get out your bat, Larry. On the, because they're thinking about, you know, in the wrong perspective, it's like, you know, I'm, you know, I'm pleading for time from a buyer.
It's like, you're not pleading if they're talking to you, it's because they need to, if they didn't need to talk to you, you wouldn't get any of their time at all.
Yeah, no this is so good. I want, I have to give a shout out to somebody who's near and dear to me because I'm going to use his quote. in this is a dear friend of mine, Scott Schilling, and he's always shared this with me. He says, salespeople go, salespeople, people must walk into every conversation with high intention.
low attachment. He goes, unfortunately, a vast majority of salespeople walk into conversations with high intention, high attachment.
Well, explain what you mean
so, so for me, the way I view that is I want to walk into every conversation to educate, to engage. I want to bring some insights. I want to fully be there and detach from What happens next?
Because when you're in the conversation thinking about what happens next, you can't be present. And so is if I could walk in as a seller to every conversation, regardless of whatever sales channel you're calling into, I'm walking into that conversation with, I'm there to serve. I'm there to listen. I'm there to ask great questions and I'm going to detach from the outcome.
Then sellers can become more present in the moment, listen more intently And then watch what starts to happen to the conversation. But if we go in there with high intention, high attachment, the conversation just starts to go all these different directions because we're so focused on what happens next.
Yeah. I mean, that's essentially she brought that up. Cause I read this great quote that I copied this week is from a guy named Mike Smith, who's the cross country coach at Northern Arizona university, which has become this powerhouse cross country program. At the collegiate level, and he, this quote, spoke exactly to that.
It's interesting you brought that up. The quote is, he's quote, someday you'll be at the Olympic trials and you wanna be the one to start by not trying to make the Olympic team. He said that's the hack, that's the cheat code. Because when you're not trying to make the Olympic team, you're left with just racing the race.
You want to spend all your time thinking about what you're going to do. Not what's going to happen. And that's to your point, precisely. Right.
So good. Yeah. Because how many sellers and I'll raise my hand, said, I've been guilty of this as well. I think everybody has, you've been
We all
five minutes, right? Is imagine if we just detached for a moment. And we just had a conversation and we let the conversation go where the conversation goes.
Now, some of us are going to go. I just can't buy into anything. Larry Levine just said that's okay. However, it's hard to be present when you're thinking about 2 steps, you know, going, okay, now what if they ask this, then what you can't be present. You're attaching yourself to every outcome of that conversation.
Detach from it. Watch what starts to happen.
Yeah. Well, Larry Long, go ahead.
Yeah, that, that's an interesting perspective. And Larry, I love what you shared. The mindset, the perspective of serving, of helping, of assisting that's tape. That's what we should all be doing as sales professionals. Thanks. I'm going to pull on Keenan and say, what's the root cause of why sales professionals don't do that?
Well, there's a lot of pressure. I don't know about y'all, but I coach and I consult and I see there's a lot of pressure on, we got to hit these numbers. There's a lot of spreadsheet warriors that are, we got to hit these numbers. So that changes the paradigm of Larry. I wish I could come in and hear you, see you feel you understand you.
But ultimately I got to be attached or else I'm out of a job.
Well, but
a leadership issue.
Well, no. That's a that's not actually exclusively a leadership issue. Cause yeah, I wrote about this in my last book. I mean, the subtitle of my book sell without selling out was a guide to success on your own terms. You know, at some point you as individual need to take ownership of your career.
You need to take ownership of the situation. If you think there's a better way for you to sell, and it doesn't line with what your boss is talking about, then you got two options. Warners. Tell your boss to get stuffed because you're going to do it your way and judge me if I don't hit my numbers fine, right?
Or two, go find a different situation, right? There's lots, you know, you know, my friend Brendan, Brandon Fluharty writes about the seven figure earners and so on. You know, he was a client at one point and as he and I talk about is your ability to earn that money. It's based on being in the right situation, right?
Yeah. That's some, it's you, but lots of situation. So the same thing is, yeah, the, your seller, you're feeling pressure. You got to do things a certain way. You have a choice. You have a choice. You may not feel like it, but I've had multiple instances in my career. I sort of developed a reputation throughout my careers.
Somebody who just basically never said yes. Anything a boss told me, right? Cause I'd say, well, let me think about that. Because. It wasn't their butt on the line. If I followed their advice and it didn't work, who got fired me, not them. So I was determined from very early part of stage of my career to say, look, I'm going to figure out a way to do this.
It aligns with who I am. And if it doesn't quite align with you you know, again, I'll deliver the goods. Yeah. I like being here. I like this product. I like this, what we're doing. Yeah. I don't necessarily agree with what you're saying, Mr. Boss. So, you know, fire me if I don't deliver.
I think there's a fine line, though, and I agree with some of what Larry long said. One thing I was thinking about is the best sales reps. People don't know their sales reps or sales professionals. Like,
you don't want to feel sold to. So, like, you're not called a sales rep. You're called an account executive. And your job is like if you're doing well at your job, you're not like selling quote, you're having a conversation. I get all that, but they're also there is a number over your head. And I don't think you can have the. Hey, I'm going to go into a sales call. I don't care if I'm going to close it or not.
And if I get fired, that's okay. Because like, I believe like any company that's qualified should be using my service. So I'm going to sell and I'm, and I am feeling the numbers that, that we need to hit now. I'm not going to lie. I'm not going to over promise. I'm not going to do any of that, but I'm going to differentiate from my competitors and. You do have to think about your, the number. So I do think we can't ignore that in this whole
Well, I wasn't arguing that. What I was saying is that there's a way that there's a million salespeople in the world. There's a million ways to sell. Right. And there's not one that's better than the other necessarily. Right. Cause there's, yeah, I can point to thousands of examples of different people that are crushing it.
And they all do it differently, right? No one could do what I do. I sold better part of a billion dollars that I won in orders. I just did it my way. Right. And as
agree with that.
You want to do
and I worried about the numbers. I wouldn't hit my numbers. I wanted to do well. I wanted to make money. But more importantly, it's a point really with Larry Levine brought up is that it was, it had to be the way that I felt was going to work for me, right?
I couldn't be anybody but me and this is a part where we got it. We've gotten away from in sales as we become so compliance oriented and so conformity oriented. You want everybody to conform and comply with the process. Yeah,
Yeah, you know what's in her? I absolutely agree. And here's something we just haven't even brought up to this conversation yet is where does confidence and believability play in all of this? Because they're there. It's huge. And that's something we haven't even talked about is there's a lot of sellers out there.
I don't care what age and tenure that are lacking confidence right now. They lack believability in themselves and their messaging. And now they're in all of the you know, I'll go back. I'll go. I'll go back to what Larry Long said in the p word. A lot of this is lack of practice, lack of focus, lack of discipline, lack of self accountability, lack of awareness.
I can, you know, I can go on and on. And these are the things and these are the things that sellers are facing because they're not taking ownership.
well, but yes but let's go back to a leadership issue here. So let's look at, yeah, we see the data, but quota attainment, less than 50 percent of reps are hitting quota, right. And B2B across multiple segments. And it's been that way since CSO insights are publishing the reports, you know, 10, 20 years ago.
Right. And we've seen this sort of gradual decline. And what we know what's happening, right? Is, you know, the way quotas are being set is just a bat shit, crazy, arbitrary way of doing it. No logic to it at all. Nothing tied to how you're enabling your people. Well, we've got a number to hit, you know, top down.
We'll do the division X number of people hit it X people won't. So multiply, you know, we'll put a factor on the quota. So blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's like, think about it. If you're in a sales organization and less than 50 percent of the people are hitting the numbers. Does anybody have confidence? Anybody have confidence? It's one of the most basic tenets of human psychology in terms of performance is the way to get people to succeed on ongoing basis is to help them succeed initially, right? So instead of setting these stupid quotas that no one hits, Right. Why do that set quotas that a majority of the people are going to hit and you'll hit your numbers and organization and they'll have confidence.
What is somebody with somebody who hits quota one year? What's the number one thing they want to do the next year?
Hit it
quota again. Right. But if they feel like they're underwater, it's just, this is this such insanity and it's just so simple and so logical. And yeah, it's this idea of success experience.
Right. Somebody experienced success. They want to experience it some more. And we start this with this insanity. Like when you onboard people, you got 90 days. What do you mean you got 90 days? Everybody learns at a different rate. Right? So who do we think 90 days who gets masters anything in 90 days.
And I'm willing to bet that if an organization said, look, we're going to do is we're gonna change. So we're going to onboard people in a year. Right. And they compare what they did versus a company that onboard people in 90 days. Right. I'm willing to bet that in year two, the people that took a year to on board are performing at higher levels than the people that put on board in 90 days.
Totally agree.
Andy, we live in a microwave society. Come on now, what you're saying is great that you got to let it marinate, but we want, you called it that insanity. We want it right now. And we're not willing to wait. We're impatient. What Larry Levine touched on in terms of confidence, in terms of believability, that also ties into trust.
And I'm not just talking about our clients and prospects trusting us, but also as a sales professional, do I trust. The organization that I'm in. I've been burned so many times. I go in and I'm already halfway in, halfway out. I don't trust you. So I'm here, but I'm looking around cause I know that something's going to come and get me.
It's an interesting paradigm. I'm loving this conversation.
Well, and there's one thing I'm inspired by is I was, a few years ago, I read this article about the Chicago public school district, very generally sort of considered a, you know, it's a huge school district, a lot of issues, but they had a high dropout rate among high schoolers. And we know that just getting a high school diploma is huge in terms of income potential and earning potential throughout your life.
Right? So they started this program called freshmen on target. And basically what the program is, we are just not going to let freshmen fail. Okay. Because we found out if we get the freshmen to sophomore year performing a certain level, the odds of them graduating and staying at school are substantially higher. And so they just don't, so they what they're doing is they're having these freshmen experience success. And we could do the same thing with sellers and set them on a completely different career trajectory. And we said, look, we're just not going to let you fail in that first year. Now, some will, right?
It's not going to ever be a hundred percent. Some will, but we're going to increase the percentage of those that stay and hopefully learn. Anyway, so Mike, go ahead,
No, I mean, God, sorry. Go ahead. Mike. No, it's just going to say, you know, some of we haven't even discussed is the impact all of this has on customer attrition. Think about that for a second now. All I mean, all the things that we're speaking about around sellers, sales leaders, sales managers, and all the things that we've shared, we haven't even brought up the impact that all of this has.
Customers keep coming back for more and more of what y'all are cooking. And if you guys aren't cooking stuff that everyone's eating, your customers are going to go find it somewhere else.
Yeah. Yeah, no, absolutely. Mike,
100%. I mean, 1 of the main reasons customers churn is because of the expectations they were given in the 1st place. But yeah, Andy, I couldn't agree with you more in terms of I never understood why companies don't adjust for us and how they set quotas
and how there's all these hedges where we only need X amount of reps to hit it to get to this hedge number of managers and then directors and VPs.
And it creates a terrible culture. And you know, And I do think companies, some companies will give their reps a year to fail, but they're not giving them the wins to get the momentum
like you talked about, Andy. And that's how can you create positivity and energy early on by having, we've done things where like reps, when they pass certain certifications, they get rewarded in certain ways.
And how can you make it where there was a lot of energy throughout, because sometimes it does take a long time to. Close a deal to build a pipeline and all of that. And so this churn and burn and spreadsheet math culture is just, it's just illogical. It's not even about like a board or anything. If I'm running a company, you want more revenue.
Don't do exactly what all of these companies are doing.
Yeah. You think that makes sense, right? Yeah.
me, Andy. Nice to meet you,
On the wins. There's a, I don't know if y'all are golfers, but I got it in my blood. I'm Tiger Woods long lost cousin. Larry hit it in the woods. But we got a group here called Operation 36. That has youngsters start off on the green and they've got to get in and 36 holes. They back it up 50 yards.
So it ties into that success, which keeps them coming back, which gets them excited. They're winning. They're making progress by, by extending back, but they're having success. You can't go back unless you have success at this level, which is so fascinating. What I'm trying to think is. What organization is going to have the gumption, I guess you could say, to actually go out and do something a little different than everyone else?
It's kind of like we have this everywhere, keeping up with the Joneses, everyone's doing it this way, so we've got to do it this way. But that, that, that's a great point.
yeah, look where it's led us. So we're in a position where, you know, 75 percent of buyers hate sellers, think there's no value from them. We've got 50, well under 50 percent of sellers hitting their quota. You know, average win rates across multiple segments based on a study done in this book, strikingly different selling, you know, 17 percent worldwide. And it's like, Oh yeah, let's just keep doing things the same way because this is working. Right. I mean, it's just like, it's just
Definition of insanity.
Yeah, I know. So, all right. Well, Hey, this has been a great conversation.
Sure
Let's do it again sometime. This is a good group. I enjoyed this. So yeah, I might ask people where they can find you, but you're on LinkedIn.
So find these, all these gentlemen on LinkedIn. I'm still in the habit of asking and trying to break that habit. Cause yeah, for my first podcast and I first started that in 2015. Yeah, not everybody was on LinkedIn, but now. If you're not on LinkedIn, you're not on the show. So,
You're under a rock somewhere.
yeah, that's right.
I appreciate everybody spending their time and yeah. Open invitation to come back. This was great.