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Hi friends. Welcome to the win rate podcast. I'm your host, Andy Paul. Now that was Donald Kelly. And Donald is one of my guests on this episode of the win rate podcast. Donald Kelly is the CEO and chief sales evangelist for the sales evangelist and host of the long running podcast, the sales evangelist podcast.
Well, the guests today for this discussion about sales effectiveness, the buyer experience and improving win rates are Ryan Staley, Ryan is the founder and CEO at The Whale Boss. He's also host of his own podcast called The Scale Up Show. Also joining me is Amy Rahovchik. Amy is an experienced enablement leader.
She's currently director of enablement at the CROP organization, C R O P. She's the host of her own podcast, The Revenue Reel podcast, and a frequent contributor to this show. Now, one listener note before we jump into today's discussion, if you enjoyed this show, please do me a favor, take a second now before we begin the show to rate and review this podcast on Apple podcasts.
It really helps us to get discovered by even more professional solvers like you who are looking to take their careers to the next level. Thank you for your help with that. I really appreciate it. Okay. If you're ready, let's jump into the discussion.
Okay, friends, that's it for this episode of the win rate podcast. First of all, I want to thank my guests, Amy Rahovchik, Ryan Staley, and Donald Kelly for sharing their insights with us today. And if you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe to this podcast, the win 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. Until next time, I'm your host, Andy Paul. Good selling, everyone.
Hello everyone. And welcome to this episode of the win rate podcast. I'm your host, Andy Paul and gosh, an all star cast of panelists here today. Gosh, one of the main people in sales podcasting, Donald Kelly. Donald, how you doing?
Doing well, man. Thanks so much for having me, Andy, to hang out with this cool crowd.
Yeah. Cool crowd for sure. So, yeah, score on giveaway a minute to introduce themselves. Ryan Staley. We'll start with you.
Yeah, no problem. I'm loving the the Brady bunch tile that we got going on. You know, the four, not six. So anyways, super quick backdrop on me. I've been a lifer in terms of the revenue space have been in, started actually working in like a boiler room, if you will, was like the predecessor to the SDR, right?
We're making 250 a day, went to mid market enterprise and kind of did the same thing from a management perspective. grew a business group from zero to 30 million in ARR and five and a half years with four salespeople, been helping companies deploy those systems. And then have been like hyper obsessed with integrating AI into sales and go to market for the last, I don't know, 15 months because of the whole ability to do that.
More with less. So that's me, man.
cool. Donald
Well, I love that. I've been in the sales game for a minute as well, especially in the podcasting side, I run a sales company out of South Florida and we do a lot of cohort training. A lot of our folks are entry level sellers or folks who are trying to get into mid market accounts do a lot of top of funnel type training for them, whether that's through LinkedIn, whether it's fundamentals of cold outreach and adopting and trying to make sure we stay relevant these days.
So it's kind of, kind of fun hanging out doing that.
cool. Yeah. You look like you're having a good time. Amy,
Yes. Hi, everyone. Oh, thank you. I'm Amy. I've sold for a long time into the legal space, most notably pivoted to sales enablement, built out to departments, also a podcast host. And I'm like currently actually helping an organization to build out a sales training program for the justice impacted.
And
what that means.
Yes. So formerly incarcerated humans need to, that are looking to for a second chance so, and also need to learn how to build a network, need to learn how to use the technology, need to learn how to build some skills, right. And be marketable out there. And so that is, that's what we're doing.
Yeah, it's very cool. And tell us the name of the organization.
crop, creating restorative opportunities and programs. They are, it's a lot bigger. It's not just sales. They're doing a design program as well, but in California, really focused on coming up with new ways to make space for again this group of society that is often not thought about and forgotten.
Oh,
graduated from that program on previous podcast. Um, And tell us the name of your podcast. We're going to have everybody said they have a podcast, but you should plug your own podcast
yes. Yeah. So my show is called Revenue Real and we tell stories about what happens when revenue expectations meet reality. And so we laugh or we cry depending on the day, but mostly we try to laugh. But
And Ryan, name of your podcast.
It's called the scale up show. I'm in the process of relaunching it soon, but that's where it's at right now, about 350 episodes in and cover basically AI enablement for sales folks, interview founders as well on, on their journey and what they're doing. So
Excellent. And Donald.
Mine is called the sales evangelist and you can go find it anywhere you listen to podcasts and we produce about three episodes a week and two 20 minute episode and one five minute quick tip. And it's a cool try to focus it on some quick, actionable stuff. So check it out.
Yeah. Yeah. With how many episodes did you say?
About 1700 right now.
Yeah.
love that,
That's a big number.
persistence over a long period of time, man. That's
telling you we keep going until it gets boring. So it hasn't gotten boring yet. So
Yeah, I've only done about 1300 myself, so I feel like a piker.
Nice. That's good.
All right. So, um, let's talk a little bit. We, I wasn't really planning on, but yeah, we at the top of the hour, but let's just talk about it with AI and. and go to market and so on. So I've expressed this concern on the show is, Hey, we look back in the last 15, 20 years and we've been in this golden age of sales technology and sort of the net result has been, if you look at various data points, is that maybe we've actually gotten worse at selling during that period with all this great technology. Quota attainment, win rate data, everything showing, you know, massive buyer dissatisfaction with their sales interactions. So how is it gonna be different with AI? How do we ensure that when we go 10 years in the future and try and look back and we don't go, Oh my God, we didn't really help at all. Right?
Yeah, we may have been able to do more with less, but at the end of the day, we weren't, Better sellers. We weren't better able to help our buyers do the things they need to do, which is make a decision. So how are we going to avoid that? Ryan, start with
Yeah. I was, so there's always the risk of that happening with anything. I think right now, sellers and sales leaders are drowning in tasks, right? We've had, they have so many different tools and so many different tasks to do that they're spending. I don't know, maybe it's according to Salesforce, but it was like 73 percent of their time, not even selling.
So if you look at it, I think why AI is different. And transformative in that nature is because like, it's not just taking those tasks and arbitrary arbitraging time, if they will, if that's even a word, right. But more so it's giving the ability for people to have skills that either. They're not very good at, and then level up a couple letter scores, if you will, or give them skills that they don't even have.
And an example of that is like. By nature, I am not a copywriter. I am not a graphic designer and I'm not a video creator. And now if I understand how to configure those tools right way, I could instantly have access to all those skills that would have taken me years and years to learn, and I could do it like that for pennies on the dollar.
And so that's where things start to really change the entire dynamic. And we're not even talking about the thinking aspect of it either.
Yeah, and I feel like, especially when the notion going back to that, Andy is like, we have seen that. And I think we saw a dip in the I don't know, over the past, probably three years, two years or so, where we saw everyone was laying folks off. Yeah. And a lot of the order takers, I think, had the hardest time because that's what they were used to for so long, just order taking.
And you saw folks who, go back to what Ryan said they're obviously they're able to have a business acumen and have a good business discussion and to help people solve problems. They can utilize technology to help their job to become more effective and efficient. And I think that's the happy medium that we want.
But I would definitely say, and I'm going in your camp on this one, that we did see a decrease in sales effectiveness or capabilities to sell because we went through this bull market for so long. And obviously with the add on of technology. It just made it mask or put lipstick on a pig, so to speak, that we would accept certain things as this is normal when in actuality really wasn't, I don't know if that part makes sense there.
Yeah, no, it does. It does. One of the interesting I have, and it's, again, I'm bullish on the technology, but I'm seen enough quote unquote revolutions in technology over my career that. haven't fundamentally changed things. And if you look at, you know, the writing of Paul Krugman has written a lot about increases in personal productivity in the workplace is that, you know, his data shows that look at, you know, the return on the investment in technology in terms of personal productivity is about the only thing prior to the introduction of AI and still soon to see what the results are.
But the only technological innovation that really made a difference among knowledge workers was email.
I knew you're going to say that.
And everything else pretty much did not have an impact.
I think, yeah, no, I think it's a perfect lead in for what I was going to say. How do we avoid not delivering value to the buyers? And I think it starts by acknowledging, at least from where I'm sitting, the root cause problem, which is that we've been in such a hurry to grow at all costs. That there's been a lot of downstream effects to that and one of the, aside from the fact that the average win rate right now across SAS sales teams is 17%, 17 percent on average.
But one of the things that we also don't talk about are all of the companies, all of the startups that go under because they have not been delivering value. And so when you to use Donald's nomenclature, put lipstick on a pig, you're just going to automate or scale what is a, A, a process that's been designed to serve the company, right?
A sales process designed to serve the company as opposed to the buyers. And until we address that mindset issue that is often at the heart of our, a lot of our go to market efforts, then we're going to continue to have the same results.
I wouldn't get back, I agree. And I want to get back to one thing that Ryan said, which is, you know, from the Salesforce report, you said 73 percent or something percent, you know, spent on tasks other than selling. Generally, and as someone who's been in sales probably longer than most of you have been alive, is that that number hasn't changed. When I started in sales, the number is roughly, you spend about a third of your time actually selling. Right. And the rest of the time, and yet during that time that I've been in sales, we've seen these, I said, multiple revolutions starting with voicemail, email, you know, cell phones, the internet, high speed broadband, and yet we're still stuck.
So what's going on or what's going to change with AI that says, look, what is this root cause? Why will sellers only spend a third of their time actually selling? And is there something that. We think there'll be this mindset change. Cause I think it's not just technology. There's some inherent mindset.
I'm not sure exactly what it is. Where it's like sellers sort of find things to consume time that isn't selling. And I don't know if it's sales avoidance or sometimes, and I know from personal experiences, you know, if you're on the phone a lot, it's hard work. It's hard to do it eight hours a day in a, you know, high level that you need to be.
I just want to, you know, your guy's thoughts on how we're ever going to break out of that one third sort of paradigm we're in Ryan. Start with you.
Yeah, I want to hear your thoughts on this, right?
Yeah. So I think and you're right, like, you're never going to get to a hundred percent, right? Just because like, it's like
how do we get, how do we get 40%? Right? Let's start there. I'm not worried about big changes. I just want small changes.
so here's where I would say there's opportunity and I agree. I think like I've had like SAS CEOs literally tell me like, and not that this is good at all by any means, but like, I can't wait till I could automate that person. Or I can't wait till I could automate people. Like they've been as aggressive to say that and out loud to me in confidence.
Right. But here's why I think we're like, it's the whole environment is kind of setting up for something. And like for an example with this, where I think it's like different a little bit, or there's opportunity is like. I'll give you an example of like one simple task that's done so much.
And it's like meeting preparation, let's say so meeting preparation. Like if you're meeting with a big opportunity and you want to know like down cold, what's the letter from the CEO in the annual report? What are the top risks in the 10 K? What are the top logos they have? And then what are like big trigger events that they have where there's mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, whatever, right?
So you look at that and to do that research as well as the background on the history Of a person's LinkedIn profile that probably would take and multiple people that would probably take 30 to 35 minutes to do if you're doing it the right way. So there's ways where literally you could put one prompt into Claude and literally have all that created for you in two minutes. So you've got, you've taken one, one single piece that you're talking about that you do multiple times a week from 35 minutes to two minutes. And then let's say you take another 10 minutes, you know, working through it and reading it. That B you basically just cut a lot of BS time in half. So there's a lot of jobs to be done like that across the profile that could get significantly better by leveraging components like that.
At least that's what I'm seeing.
And I think I remember the case study, the study that you shared from, you talked about from face from salesforce, I was trying to look it up and in the state of sales, I know they've produced that, but what exactly did they classify as selling? And, you know, Andy, maybe we can all come back to that same idea and then go back to the conversation of then.
What are some of those things? Cause you're right. Right. I think that meeting prep side, and when you say 30, I'm like, in my head, I'm like 30, maybe probably more than that. Right.
man.
So it definitely can be a long time, but what are some of those things that was in that, that indicated selling activity? Yeah,
to person meetings. They had prospecting in there. Those were the kind of like the two core buckets that I remember off the top of my head. And like, here's the thing too. I want to say, it's like, I don't think it's just productivity.
no. Yeah. Yeah.
there and chat GBT 3.
5 got 95 percent of the way there of something that took me 10 years to learn from a business acumen perspective. So that's the other side of it that I don't want to get too stuck on just the productivity aspect, cause it's way bigger than that. And so that's like what I'm seeing and what I've shown it to with like CROs and other executives as well.
Yeah. Well, it's
I may, Andy I think one of the hard things though about you know, This conversation, which it's absolutely worth having, right, to make sure everybody's on the same page to find some terms, understand the baseline but there's the things, the tactics, right? The things that worked five years ago to open up opportunities and to build those relationships.
They're not working as much anymore. And I'll put it dark social just as one example. Dark social is the activity that happens outside of our tech stacks, our inability to measure. So it's the conversations that a prospect is having with their peer networks in a Slack community over on LinkedIn that are essentially driving traffic to the website.
Maybe they're starting their flow from there, but one of the reasons why the activity that a salesperson can and should be doing in the communities where their buyers are hanging out. Maybe they're not doing that because that action is not able to be measured and therefore does not count as a qualified opportunity.
And so just as if this conversation isn't convoluted enough, there's another layer of complication for us.
That's true. That's true. There's definitely an offline activity.
Yeah. But for me the fundamental issue though, is not that we can't be more efficient in the way we prep for calls. Yeah. Obviously based on the name of the podcast, people know I'm Considering most first and foremost about sales effectiveness, right? Because I think your win rate is the big best expression of your sales effectiveness with the buyer in terms of being effective, helping them make their decision. Yeah. We get much more adept at gathering this information, but the issue is always communicating it, or using it in a way that helps the buyer. And I think that's still the hurdle. you know, if I look at What I think is one of the fundamental issues that exists with sales technology is what mainly constitutes today.
It's all about us, the seller, and the things we do. And it doesn't really say, how do we help the buyer make a decision? Right? How do they help them go through their decision making process to make a decision? And yet what we see initially, primarily again, not exclusively, primarily on the AI space with the tools that have come up, It's all about us again. not as much about the buyer. So I think, and to me, it's like, okay, how do we cross that chasm? Because I think that is, that's the key, right? It's great. We can do with a couple of prompts. We can cut, you know, 35 minutes to probably two hours away from our call prep for a specific. But then the seller still has to go execute on that in a way that the buyer perceives is helpful to them.
Yeah, it requires context. It requires context and understanding of the buyer's journey and what stage they're at on the buyer's journey. What are they trying to learn in these moments? And then when you do have the context, I do think it is possible to take the tools and to supercharge what you've learned.
For example, I just created a configuration in chat GPT to operate as a show runner, right? We were talking about podcasts and I can export somebody's LinkedIn profile. Right? Click, upload it right up. And it tells, it gives me context. It gives me themes. I've trained it to look for certain things and to ask me certain questions.
But so that's when you, you have the superpower that is understanding the context, teaching the context and applying it in a matrix style, right? Not all buyers on your buying team are looking for the same outcomes. Some are more concerned with revenue. Some are efficiency. Some are just trying to minimize risk, you know, and.
Get home for later that day. And so being able to see and operate through that nuance I think is critical for a seller and for those that are looking to lead or train to be able to teach that as well.
I'm gonna say something, and I don't know how this is gonna come out, and I might get blacklisted in the sales world. I think,
I doubt it. I doubt it, but go ahead.
I think it's the money. And hear me out for a second. Because of the If I look at one of the visions that we have or the vision we have with our organization is we want to elevate the way people are viewed as view sales professionals, not just as these, you know, order taker or not just as a sleazy person.
I want when somebody makes a call to a prospect that they deem them just as important as that McKinsey consultant that the company would spend 45, 000 or 100, 000 on. Those McKinsey consultants, not necessarily a big deal, Built on completing a task because of the you know, the commission they're going to make on that.
It's more so about the effectiveness of the change that they could bring about in that organization. And I think, especially go back to the way that, and this goes back to the leadership standpoint. And obviously we want to make tools to make the ponds, the sellers, even more effective to get more yield, more money from the end results.
So when I'm going into this game and I know that's a big part of why I'm doing this, yes, I really do want to help Andy. Yeah, but. I am also going to get like 50k off of this commission. It makes it that much more me centric rather than solving a problem for you. And I don't know how to solve that. But I think that when you mentioned it, and as I think about it, and this is the discussion that we've been having, I think that's where it muddies up and I love my money just as anybody else.
Right. The stuff I can do on money, don't try to take that, take my dollar from me. But how do you go about doing that? How do I help to adjust sellers mindset to become more, to see themselves as that P KPMG consultant that's making an organizational change.
Well, I think that's a great point. And again, that's something I think where AI can be useful is I think the mindset of one of those high level consultants, when they're going into a client engagement is. They're not selling a product. They're selling a change, right? They're being hired to help generally being hired to help a client make the decision to make a change in their business. So their advocacy is for the change, whatever the right change might be. And I think this is really a mindset that we need to start inculcating into sellers, which is, yeah, you're there to help somebody make the decision to make a change in their business. And it's not about buying a product. It's really about the change.
And
me on the thing
and I, and for me,
He's excited. He's moving around.
For me, you know, I like to say is sellers should go in as if they're don't have a product to sell. They're selling change, right? And I, last point on that is just, yeah, I spent a good chunk of my career doing just that where I was selling products that didn't exist, right?
We had a bucket of technologies and we had to go find clients that might be interested in possibly creating a product, having us design a product for them and then manufacturing to solve or to meet, achieve an opportunity that they want to achieve. So, you know, I couldn't convince somebody to buy my product cause it didn't exist.
I think you mentioned that on my show last time you were on because I really remember that notion and something that I made and again, please don't judge me, but I feel that this was a thing that I Aha moment the other probably say two months ago Everyone that I've talked and spoken to as a buyer, every prospect, every client that I've worked with all have some kind of challenge that they have and only an X percentage of them were really looking for said change to that problem because or maybe they didn't know that problem exists or they weren't in the market for it.
However, they're always open to learning. I was at a HubSpot event and the CEO at HubSpot. This was where it mind blown change. She said that 30 it was a 44 percent of executives said that they've discovered new solutions. From social and when I think about that, like, it's not that they were searching because they were talking about how the search like Google search is going down, but they're open to learning.
They're open to finding and discovering and it was that's exactly the worst. They discovered new solutions through that. So here's the point that I'm coming across. I found that majority of people. Who are in the buying position are open to learning something. However, the majority of sellers are just doing that are open to selling.
But if we were to adjust and become teaching. Teachers go back to what you're saying. Identify. I'm a consultant. I've been doing this for, if I'm in an industry in manufacturing for five years, selling a manufacturing equipment that I know, you know, I've been talking about and working on and working with clients for three years, I know more about that situation than a new operations manager who came from a different industry and they need to get a change.
So I am an expert in that per se.
Right.
With that knowledge that I have, if I focus on teaching or educating, I'll probably have more opportunities to get people to view me or want to converse with me. And there was a book insight led selling had the authors on a show. And one of the fascinating things they discovered is that most executives They will take appointments with sellers.
And the reason why is because of just that they know if they go through KPMG or these big consulting firm, they're going to drop 45 to 100. But if they get a seller who are going around like honeybees to all of these different companies, they will bring tremendous amount of knowledge. To the table, and even if they just date them and don't buy from them, they were able to gather more information in such a short period of time because the sellers have the sellers need to go back to this idea of the, we do have that knowledge, not necessarily things that people can Google, but we do have the, you know, the experiential knowledge change factor education that we can offer buyers.
And if you go as an educator, we can have better opportunity.
Well, it ties into what you were talking about a little bit before is, you know, think about, we've got this data points that come out from Gardner Forrester and so on and say, you know,
Sure.
Want to talk to salespeople, right. They prefer not to.
Heh
But I think we have to ask ourselves the question, and this gets to what you were just talking about, Donald is, okay, sure, you know, the number is what, 75 percent or something.
And first of all, I think that number is completely wrong. I think the number is actually 100 percent of buyers don't want to talk to sellers, right? But no one wants to talk to a salesperson. If they could do it on their own without talking to sellers, they'll do it. So if you're a salesperson and you're talking to an executive, you're talking to a potential buyer, why are they talking to you? Because they need to, right? If they don't want to, but they're having that conversation for a reason. There's something that they need. There's some help they need. What is that, Brian? Go ahead. I'm
a lot of firepower in this call. So yeah, so I think, and it's funny, like you brought up the competition aspect, Donald, which is great.
Amy, this is going to hit home for you based on your background. But like when one of the key verticals we focused on was legal and. They would be so curious and it was like keeping up with Jones's. Oh, what is this firm doing? What is this firm doing? What is this firm doing? So there's a lot of that, but even going back to it, I remember sitting and we were with a meeting with Lowe's like Lowe's, You know, the top fortune or fortune 50, you know, like Home Depot competitor Lowe's there's multiple, there's another Lowe's or a few other
We're with you Ryan.
I remember, and they have enterprise reps coming into them all the time. Right. And I was leading the enterprise team and they're like, you're guys, your team is really good. And I'm like, why is that? Like, walk me through it. They're like, cause like, there's so many people that walk in here that don't even understand our business.
Like they don't understand our vertical. They don't understand like that. We have earnings calls that we have to show, like. Results for like, so they don't understand the company ownership level. They don't understand the vertical and they don't understand the problems of that specific vertical. So then even if they're selling a fricking printer, they could customize it to solve the needs or align with that.
And I think that's what a lot of people are missing too. Cause it happens to me all the time. Like people will hit me up. They're like, Hey, Ryan, do you want to learn how to sell like, right? Like I get spam with that all the time. And I'm like, that's
get it
I appreciate that, you know? So anyways that's my two cents on
but it's a really key point you bring up. It's one that, that I'm passionate about. The. Isn't spoken enough about, and I, again, based on my experience recently in the conversation that was sales leaders and so on is this idea of specialization
Yeah.
is, this is how I built a career and my career in sales is I specialized.
And this was not my idea when I first got started. I was told I was going to sell to the construction industry. And, but it's that idea is that. You know, we have these AEs that are out self sourcing leads and you talk to him and said, well, what are you focusing on? Well, our ICP, well, your ICP covers, you know, spans multiple industries.
You know, are you specializing in one? Well, no I'm talking to everybody in our ICP and that's like,
It.
Why is this hard for people to serve? I think it starts with sales leadership to embrace this idea that, you know, Donald's excited again is it's such an opportunity missed us. You know, if we want people to become more successful, you become more successful, the more focused you become, because the more focused you become, the more intimate you're going to be with the requirements of the customers you're selling to and the things that they're willing to pay you to do for them.
Right. Which is, you know, the critical point and yeah, I've had this, you know, I'll put on conversation with this gentleman online who hates the idea that I talk about, you know, win rates should be at 50 percent or higher because, Oh no. If your win rates are too high, you're not talking to enough people.
And I'm like, no dude,
Yeah. You need
focused. You narrow in. Yeah. If you're talking to people outside your specialization area or outside your ICP, you're wasting a lot of
Yeah. And you're doing the brand irreparable damage. It's Andy, what you're saying it, I hear subject matter experts and the rise of subject matter experts. And I'm really excited to see these sorts of conversations popping up on LinkedIn about the importance of being a subject matter expert while doing outbound or, you know, in a closing role.
But I guess I, like, I want to just make sure that we're acknowledging the reps that are winning and have been winning over the past 10, 15, 20 years and when we'll Continue to win are already doing this. They know how to prioritize their high potential accounts. They know how to identify and build key relationships across the organization.
They know how to find hidden allies and time their outreach based on signals that tell them that the company is ready to entertain a conversation about said business problem. And the best one is they know that they're selling that outcome and are, have an ability to communicate it or about it by telling stories and by moving throughout the organization.
Now. I think, sadly, the reps that get there are getting there by themselves, whether it's listening to Donald's show or Ryan's show or Andy, your show or reading the books. But it's very rare to see that level of enablement or even buyer enablement coming from the company.
Yeah. Well, they need to be focused. Yeah. By managers, Donald,
because the thing that I wrote this question down while I think it was going through the last spiel there
my rant, Ryan's rant. One of our
and Ryan, you guys all cooking here. I just like, I'm like, I want to stay for longer. Rant is a wrong word. This this amazingness. Um, but the, There you go.
Eloquence. I didn't have the eloquence to think of a word like that. Um, but, it stems back to like the purpose, right? The purpose when as a sales leader, the way that we're measured is based on how much money we're bringing into the organization. And obviously it's just an easy factor.
And again, this is evolution of sales, perhaps maybe in the next 15, 20 years, perhaps we'll get here. Even if, what if you asked a question like this, what, and this is, again, I'm just, I just jot this down. What is the impact of the change you brought to the organization when that deal closed, as opposed to what was the size of that deal that you closed, Andy?
Because I think if you focus on it for the question, what is it? What is the impact of the change you brought to the organization? That's a whole nother way of thinking about it. If I sell three products and I'm like, man, I just need to close a deal and make some money. What Which is product is going to be the best product for me to sell.
But if I go back and look at the change, impact of the change that I brought to the organization, that's going to be a lasting impact, but also that may be another way for me to be able to add or use some of these other Lego pieces or product type. To make the biggest impact. I'm not just focusing on getting this deal and running.
I'm looking at how can I help this solution across the org to be able to be more effective because in the end result, it's going to help you to do Y result. And like you said, Amy, people are doing this, but how do you get there? And again, I said, it's a change that has to start. And that's one of the reasons we like the cradle of grave mentality with our content.
Like how can we get people early on coming in, but also. You can educate individuals as much as you can, but you have the biggest impact. How can we help leaders to adopt this mentality when the tree has been growing in one direction for 40
thoughts and prayers, Sarah. Keep me posted on how it's working out over there.
Well, I think that you, there are, to your point, Donald, specifically, there are conversations taking place. You see it on LinkedIn and other places. idea about tying compensation to exactly what you talked about is rather than tying it purely to revenue is tying it to did the customer achieve the value, however they measure that whether it was, you know, cashflow, internal rate of return, you know, market share, whatever they're using as their primary for success is yeah.
Did they achieve that?
And that's harder. And to tie Ryan right back in, we should be able to use technology to do that. You know
Yeah. Ryan thoughts.
Are you talking in regards to the comp plan or are we still talking in regards to like the understanding or alignment with the buyer side? Which way? Okay. So
precedes the other. Well,
even know if you need tech for this, but what I've seen is a lot of comp plans are structured where, you know, You make the sale, you make the money and that's it.
Right. And then it's done. So it, it incentivizes short term thinking. Whereas one of the things that I saw actually worked pretty well is we had a half of it was based on upfront payment, like based on the total contract value and the other half was based on a residual, they only got that residual based on the customer staying on board a and B.
The, they had to hit certain metrics as well. So it was kind of a combination of that impact. Plus, you know, basically result that for the business. So that was good. Cause they were aligned on both sides of it. And then we're talking about like how to leverage tech on the other side of it, where we could level up the acumen and really taking an account, the buyer enablement, if you will, or the, or what's important to the buyer.
And this is the thing that's scared the living bejesus out of me. When I was using chat GPT for the first time. I basically said, okay, the key things that to executives that I learned from my team over time and repetitive resources that really got me inside of their head and let me help them was a understanding what their KPIs were, how they were evaluated for their specific job and you can go up and down the chain with that, whether they're C level or director.
Right? That was one. Two is like, what was personally meaningful for them with their goals? Like how did those goals attach? To those KPIs. And then what was the outside factor that was driving that? Did they want a boat? Did they want a second house? Did, was there kids sick? Did they have college kids going to college?
Did they needed a level up or did they just want to get a new job? Right. And all those factors are those emotional triggers are what allows you to jump inside the buyer's head. And when I tap those questions into chat, GPT, like it got really freaking close as long as you ask the right questions and that's what's scared.
Like, and made me like sit up, take notice and be like, I have to prioritize this. So anyways, that's my two cents.
Yeah.
It's a great point. I feel like understanding how someone's measured and then being able to tie back to their personal metrics to the company or organizational goals, that was pretty brilliant. And then to loop in their personal goals, man, I trust you just by hearing you say that, Ryan. That was brilliant.
Huh.
the fact is that's how people make decisions though, is that they make decisions based on two levels, what's in it for the company, what's in it for me. And sellers too often don't make the effort to understand the what's in it for them personally. Because that oftentimes is more more of a driver from a decision standpoint, because people are human, right?
They're trying to. Look after their own interests. Not everybody's, you know, there'll be selfless to a degree, but they don't discount what's in it for them.
I love this man. This conversation is good. Thank you for having me here so far. Holy gold moly. Man.
It's all downhill from here.
Oh my goodness. This is, I'm gonna hang out with Ryan, Amy, and shoot, get Andy to come over.
that's so funny.
Oh gosh. Well, so let's, yeah, we're coming near the end here. Let me ask a question, sort of ties into what we've been talking about. So in your minds, what, you know, what separates good sellers from the rest? Those people who are more consistently successful. And I'm trying to stay away from this terminology of top performers.
Cause I think it's misused and completely misunderstood for the most part, but you know, people are just consistently good at what they do. What are they doing differently? Right,
that I often go back to.
agree.
And I found that some of the best sellers that I've ever worked with or some of the best deals I've ever been a part of was go back to, I had a sense of high sense of curiosity. And I really wanted to understand like a little bit more about how this would function for them and impact or whatnot, or just going deeper in my initial conversations with folks.
It, when I was curious. I discovered more and curiosity comes from just a place of having conversations. As opposed to, especially when I was a BDR or inside sales, going back to what Ryan said, you were, it was like, you know, get the X amount of things and get the appointment. But when I went in with that curiosity aspect and said, you know, let me ask.
Go deeper into that question. Ask a little bit more about that. Then I found those personal impact statements and I was able to pass it on to the AE and pass Intel. And I felt so excited that I was able to bring more information rather than they're looking to get some demo on the 27th and they have these three pain points, you know what I mean?
I think curiosity really plays a huge factor in that skillset can be taught.
No, right.
but we'll start with
go ahead,
so mine, the only reason I raised my hand is because it ties to Donald and that is to be curious about feedback and advice, right? Right now, I think I said this earlier, the things that worked five years ago. By way of email sequences, they don't, they are not working right now. And so the reps that are pulling ahead are the ones that are taking pause, going back and talking to the buyers and asking for that feedback, trying to understand where they're at in the buyer's journey, what they're focused on learning and to really design, https: otter.
ai their experience, again, around what the buyers need. So that's, and beyond that, obviously, showing up with intention, I think, never hurts. So those are, that's my final answer, Andy Paul.
Okay. Final answer. Ryan.
So I'll bring it home. And the three, three person weave with this question building. So this is great. You guys laid the foundation that I believe in on both those sides that you talked about. The third, and this relates to the win rate, Andy is like, I literally saw a who had maybe 60%. Of the pipeline close 150 percent more because she was emotionally connected to the prospects and I think it often gets overlooked and the other guy was just hammering away at process.
And so, there's one like single question you could ask that I'd love to ask. They like gives you insight and lets you walk around inside their head in terms of what's important. And it's like, actually maybe there's two layers to it, but it's effectively like what's the number one thing you spend time on when you're not at work.
And most of the people will say their kids, right? Then you say when you're not doing something related to your kids. And the reason why that question is amazing is because people will go on for a half hour telling you about if they have free time, like what their passion is or what they would love to spend time on.
And that lets you walk inside and live rent free in their heart for a little bit of time.
Like it. I like it. Yeah. My, my answer is choices. The consistently good sellers make better choices about how they approach the buyer, how they interact with the buyer, how they use their curiosity as opposed to being scripted. Who they're going to invest their time in, which I think is one of the really big ones, is you know, I tell sellers, is you know, your job is, you may really need pictures, your job isn't to sell to everybody that comes across your desk or whatever, your job is to make a choice, you're like the bouncer at the head of the velvet rope, getting into a club, and that club is who you're going to sell to.
And so for me, it's, yeah, can we teach people to make better choices about how they're deploying their time and effort? Then that helps them too. So, alright, everyone, this was fantastic. Thank you for joining me. Pleasure to meet you, Ryan.
It was awesome.
Make sure you get your back on the show. Amy, of course.
Always a pleasure, sir.
Great to see you. Donald as well. Fantastic. We need to get together more often. People can find you on LinkedIn, I presume.
right.
Yeah, well, we're going to have you, I think we should do the same thing on my podcast. Yeah. I'll just print all three. We'll do the same thing and then we'll just have, we'll flip spots, Andy, you and I, and then let's do this again. Cause this was fun.
Yeah.
it sounds like we're going on tour then, so I'll get my team to do the same thing.
All right, everyone. Thank you.