CREATING YOUR OWN SUPERPOWER TO SELL MORE NOW

When we're involved in a large complex sale, we have several conversations with our clients over long periods of time, and hopefully more than one person within that account. And during each of these conversations, because we typically don't get them live, or it's through email, asynchronous communication, they have the choice to either engage or not engage. And they do this for one of two reasons. One, they have to. They need information from you. They want something transactional. The other is they want to. They enjoy talking with you. They get value out of it. You're aligned on a purpose and a goal. You have things in common. Now, if you don't have that, you're in the transactional sales rep. category. If you have that, you're in what I call partners of crime. Now, I wish there was a better description for it, but partners in crime conjures up this feeling like you guys and gals have something going on together. It's not malicious. It's not unethical. It is ethical. It's noble. You're trying to improve the client's situation, modernize it in some way, automate it. Whatever it is, it's for the betterment of the company. But the company isn't set up for quick changes. It's set up for slow or no change. These conversations are critical because perceptions are created And if you can't modify those perceptions, if they're wrong, then that becomes reality. We want our reality to be the one that becomes the next reality. Now, a lot of people will listen to this episode and think it's about charm or personality, or some people may even use the word unprofessional. Now, I hear that all the time. I even see comments from sales leaders on my videos on LinkedIn. Oh, this is unprofessional. Good. It's meant to be because a professional relationship is transactional, meaning you have something, I buy something, transaction completed. And that's fine if you're a commodity in the need and the want is already recognized and a value is already established. And for some reason, yours is the best. But most of us aren't in that. We're going after new people. We're trying to do new things, sell new things, new concepts, new ways of doing things, more complete and accurate ways. And that requires a conversation. And the conversation has to go beyond transactional. You have to have open minds. People think that just because you're talking with somebody means that they're listening or you're listening. No, you have to have a dual bidirectional communication on the same plane, on the same topic, the same bandwidth. Now, what you get with strong rapport is that bandwidth expands. Have you ever had people in your life that you can tell what they're thinking just by looking at them? What that smile means, what that eye roll means? That's rapport. You've known that person long enough to know what those signals mean. And certain words— this is rapport. Now, a lot of people are looking down at this, meaning that your value can trump everything.

Can't.

It really cannot. I've got another interview coming out this week on the B2B Revenue Leadership Show about somebody who sells modern dentist laser equipment. I don't know what it does, but apparently it's really good. And the dentists like it. They can afford it. They want it. But very few buy it. It requires a change in their workflow. In their daily routine. It's a little upset. It's a little, you know, it's like imagine if you went from a gas car to an electric car. Now, car drives the same way, but it fuels different. And where you can fuel it is different. And that causes a little bit of anxiety. That change, all, you know, regardless of how minor it may be, requires—

Change.

Conversation requires a transact— a transition, a transformation in our clients. And although it may seem simple to us, we're not doing it. They're doing it, which requires us to walk them through this. This is why this rapport is so critical. It is not about just liking the person. It is about willingness to communicate with that person. And it's not about small talk. It's about whatever they care about. Because the more you get to know each other, the more this rapport builds with each person within the customer's site, the more of a picture you get of what they're up against and what will help them. Without this, they're telling you just that little tiny bit and you think that's the whole picture. Now, at the very outro of this, I'll give you a great example of what's wrong and how we're making these bad decisions based off of this. Let's get in the interview. I think you'll really like this person. It's certainly an enjoyable interview. We have a lot of fun. But I want you to get the point because the point is not to become gregarious and, you know, the life of the party. If that's you, congratulations. The point is to become good at talking and listening about what the client cares about and what's important to them. It's the same thing but different. How you do it is up to you. Use your strengths, your skills, not just emulate other people, but become good at it whatever way you can. Let's get into the interview. I'll sum it up at the end. Hey, make sure you're telling a friend about the show. And I've got another feed of this podcast called The Best Of. So just search The Best Of The Brutal Truth if you want more of a daily show. I've been doing this for 12 years. I've got a lot of great content. And a lot of it isn't showing up because iTunes only supports 100 or some shows, maybe 300 at the most. 8 years is a long time, and there's a lot of gold in there, and I like to cycle it up so that you can see it. So if you're looking for more Brutal Truth, uh, check out the Best of feed. Here we go. Hey, Eric, thanks for joining us today. As a way of getting started, give us a little background on yourself.

Yeah, hi, Brian. Uh, thanks for, uh, inviting me today. Um, I, I work at Orca Security, and, uh, We're one of those fast-growing cybersecurity unicorns. I ended up in this space after more than 30 years in the computer software space, starting as an engineer, making my way gradually into sales, and then becoming an expert in many different technologies. And now I'm a cybersecurity expert. Wow. And as I was telling you when we were prepping, I just moved to Sofia, Bulgaria with my family, still working for Worka here and covering Europe for them.

Did they know about that, or—

Oh, oh yeah. My family or the company?

The company. Well, I'm sure your family knows.

They know I moved here, and let me tell you, it was the toughest negotiation of my life, um, to be able to— you know, no company is targeting— so no startup is targeting Bulgaria, okay? They don't even know where it is on the map. So, uh, it was, it was a real tough negotiation.

Well, you've got a great background. I mean, you went to a top computer science college. Why sales? Why go to the dark side? Was there a psychological flaw that was—

You know, when you look at LinkedIn to see someone's background, all you see is one track. You don't see the other track. And in my life, there's, there's a laugh track, okay? And so I've always had— I've always been a performer on stage, whether it's in high school, etc. I do stand-up comedy. And I just wasn't satisfied being an engineer initially in my career. And frankly, I didn't see why I should do all the work and then the sales rep should walk away with the big paychecks. I figured, shoot, I can do the same thing and make the same money.

Yeah. And, but then there's this overseas— tell me about the Tel Aviv thing.

Well, um, I've got a lot of family in Israel, and I, I've studied Hebrew my whole life, and, uh, and I speak it conversationally. But what happened was, what initially, um, started out as, you know, my parents trying to make me a good Jewish boy, uh, turned into an interest in Hebrew language. And later in my career, it turned into connections with Israeli startups. So I became sort of their Sakagawawa, uh, you know, half-breed, um, guy in the United States who, uh, who speaks Hebrew and understands Israeli culture, understands American culture. And I helped a lot of Israeli startups enter the USA.

And what was the, the first year in sales like? Because I'm sure you, you hung around the salespeople and you go, anyone can do this. But then when you have to do it, you're like, it looks so easy.

Yeah, I was completely clueless. I, I would say for the first 5 years, I was completely clueless. I didn't know what I was doing. I would just do what I was told by my sales managers because I, it was, I was like, I was like a blind mouse in a maze. I mean, I, I had no idea. It was a real challenge be— Because so much of sales is self-propelled and not people telling you this is due next week, but it's like, how much money do you want to make? Do you want to make zero or do you want to make a lot of money? And so realizing that and realizing not to seek the rules from other people and chart my own course was something that took a while to figure out.

And how did you learn it? Was it trial and error? Did you, you know, have a mentor, somebody who said, look, this is how it works, it doesn't make sense, but it does work that way? It—

I definitely had some mentors, um, who taught me, um, but a lot of it was at-bats. Um, you— people can tell you things, but there's nothing like failing big yourself many times to learn how to really do it. And so I would say lucky enough, I'm a smart enough person that I could still have some success even though I didn't know what I was doing. But, and also have enough confidence due to the fact that I'm— I push myself in my hobbies to go in front of a stage and humiliate myself. in front of people. So, you know, sales was just a way to get paid to do it. Um, so, um, so, so doing that, um, and just not being afraid of the failures and taking them as lessons.

Well, the stand-up comedy has a great analogy to sales because you think it's the joke, but it's the delivery of the joke that—

It's, it's, it's, it's not just the delivery. It's that even when you bomb, making the audience feel good about it. Because nobody— people don't want to see you bomb, and they, they don't want to feel bad for you. So if you can show them that, no, I don't feel bad about this, in fact, I'm still enjoying it even though I'm bombing, that's what's like sales. Um, because, you know, sometimes the customer has to give you bad news, and that's just the bad news of today. There's going to be good news possibly coming tomorrow, but you can't make them just feel like you're a pathetic creature that they have to feel sorry for. You have to— they just have to be like, oh, that nothing bothers Eric, you know, that sort of thing.

Well, it has a lot of analogies on so many levels, because you're extending yourself. You're up there, you're the center of attention, and it's all up to you. Your job is to perform and try and make them laugh, entertain them in some manner.

Yes.

In sales, we've got to get people's attention. We got to get them to look at the world differently after we talk to them than before.

That's, that's absolutely correct. And it's, I mean, I use humor in my delivery. I use it in my outreach. I use it in my way of just dealing with, with failure and just laughing about things. There, it's not just analogous. As I said, there's like a set separate career path. And listen, I'm not a professional comedian. I suck. Okay. But I understand sort of the mentality and how, and how to, how to use an audience to achieve my goals, my personal goals. And in a way, that's what you're doing with prospects. You're— I hate to use the word use, but you are using them to achieve your goals. But, but doing it in a friendly way that makes everybody feel good about it, including yourself and the person that you're selling to.

And when you became— got into sales, what were some of the things that you learned that were either the surprises or counterintuitive?

Yeah, yeah, a few things. First of all, I learned that even though you might work for a company whose goal is to sell a product, there— 90% of the people in the company have goals other than that. You know, they're trying to, you know, make—

not sell a product.

Yeah. Exactly. They're trying to make the new presentation for marketing. They're trying to plan the next event. And your goal to get the contract signed tomorrow can actually put you in direct conflict with, with their objective that they might even get paid a bonus for. So realizing that, that not everyone's got, got the same goal as me was one thing. Another one was how much of sales Takes just being a human being. Um, I, I talked to so many younger sales reps who've got all these acronyms of Medici and this and that and this sales, sales, sales product, whatever it's called. I don't even care. But as if, as if, you know, it's like discovering how atoms work. Okay. And, and they, and they hide behind that. But in the end, sales is just people having a conversation as friends to get something done. Um, and then the third thing that I've learned, um, is what I call the rabbit hole, which is that the customer is not the source of truth. When you're in a conversation with the customer, very often they're completely wrong and they don't know what they're doing. And that's one of the reasons that you're there, is to explain to them the right way. But I've seen timid early sales reps and also pre-sales people who just take the bait and just let the customer dictate the path of the conversation, how software will be evaluated. And one of the most valuable techniques that I use is say, sorry, with all due respect, I disagree with the premise of what you're suggesting. It doesn't sound like the right way to do things. And, you know, that does cause a little bit of tension, But, you know, they're— at least they see you've got a brain in your head and you've got something to share with them, and that gets their interest. Right.

And this is something I learned as well, is that we may know how to sell, they do not know how to buy. They don't go to buying school, they don't go to decision-making school, they don't go to change-the-company school.

That's true. And there's so many times when some— somebody's ready to do it and they're like, uh, I don't know what's next within my organization. I'm waiting to find out. And frankly, I don't necessarily know either. I have to be a sounding board to them and I have to say, okay, well, uh, have you— do you have someone who's responsible for this? Do you have something with someone who's responsible for that? And I'm, I'm coaching them and we're sort of 2 people in a, in a tunnel holding one candle to figure it out together. But we're collaborating and we're working as a team. And you know what? When the deal happens, We're bonded, you know. I'm in touch with people I sold to 20 years ago, okay? We're friends on Facebook. We meet in different parts of the world because we've been through a process together. I'm closer with some of these people than I am with my wife.

Well, that's kind of the rapport you need to get because we think, I'm sales rep, you're customer, we help each other. But no, you both want to accomplish something. They want to fix something within their company, and their company works the same way. Not everybody at that company cares about fixing that.

Yes, yes. And it really becomes a conspiratorial collaboration between 2 friends to get something done. And Listen, I don't always become best buddies with the people that I sell to. I'd say 75% of the time I do, 25% of the time they keep me at arm's length and the deal just gets done. But when I become buddies with the people, I'm not faking it. I really enjoy their company. It makes the job more pleasant for me. I get to know them, what's going on in their lives. They know what's going on in my life. I become a co— I'm a coworker. You know, if you're, if you're gonna have to work with someone to accomplish something, you might as well get to know them and become friends with them, if it's possible to become friends with them.

Right. And I think too many people look at it as just being friends. The word coworker, I think, is closer to what it really is. You're partners in crime trying to get something accomplished.

Yes. Yes. Um, I— if you don't reach a point where you feel like you're collaborating, then the risk of your deal— you still might close the deal, but the risk goes up because you really don't know what's going on.

Yes. And if you don't have that rapport, the bandwidth and the likelihood that you're getting the full, complete, accurate, honest story is diminished greatly.

Yeah, yeah. I've had so many times where before I've gotten really close with the person I'm selling to, there's sort of a little bit of a game going on where they're like, oh, I can't really tell you who the competitor is. Oh, I can't tell you what the price to beat is. And I'm like, at some point I just say, do you want to buy our software? Because if you do, Tell me all this stuff and I can work with you to overcome the objections that you have internally with the other people. If you don't want to buy it, then don't tell me anything because I won't be able to convince you of anything. Oh, we're more expensive? Oh, it's a secret that wouldn't be ethical to tell me? Why isn't it ethical to tell me what price to be?

Yeah.

Do you want to buy it? Tell me the price to be. I'll tell you, I'll tell you yes or no. Okay, then we don't have to waste any more time on this. Um, You know, just cutting through the sort of the false rules that aren't really rules and just focus on what are we really trying to do here? People, for the most part, people appreciate that. I always say though, with my particular style, which is a very open and friendly style and a very natural style with customers, 90% of my customers love me. The other 10% hate me. hate me and request another sales rep because they just want someone who's scientific and more businesslike. And, you know, I'm just not serious enough for them, but I'll take 90% odds. You know, if I lose 10% of my deals, that's fine. Have the other reps close those deals.

Well, it's also a very telling part of a deal because I'm sure in your space you get into the beauty contest all the time. They, they pick the top 3 to 5 vendors in that quadrant. Come on in. Show us, and they want to keep you at arm's length. But if you do not get that type of rapport, the deal is probably not leaning your way.

Yeah, and, and actually, in, in my business, which is sort of the very hot new technology enterprise software space, there's all these confounding factors of higher-up people who know people who are buddies with them. And there's just a whole track of activity that you have no visibility. You don't even— you could lose a deal. And it's like, gosh, everybody loved us. How did we lose the deal? And it's because somebody played golf with somebody when they were making the decision, and they just made it based on the golf game. They made that decision. So you've got to use everything at your disposal. If you have a personality and you can use that, I'm not saying be fake.

Right.

People can sense fakeness. I'm saying expand your sphere of friends to include your customers as well. Be genuine with them and they will be genuine with you and you'll win twice. You'll get the deal and you'll have a new friend.

Yeah, and, and it's so powerful. People look at it as old school, but people haven't changed that much. Technology's changed a lot.

People haven't changed that much. And I'll also tell you something else related to that, Brian. I've done work on almost every continent. Well, not— I'll say a lot of continents. How's that? But, but especially in Asia, people are like, ooh, Asia, you know, you got to do it a special way. You know, there's a special way to present your business card and In China, make sure you do it this way. And in every Asian country where there's supposedly a lot of rules, what I found is that people just want to make friends. That's all. And they want to do business with their friends. So they don't care if you give them the business card upside down, if you bow, if you don't bow, if you shake hands or not shake hands. They want to see if they can sit down and have a meal with you. and get to know you and feel like you're a human being. And so, um, it's not old school or new school or one culture. We're all humans. You know, we might look differently on the outside, but we got the same— when they look at chromosomes, even between races, there's not any difference.

Yeah.

There, there, everyone is, is the same. It comes down to just, just minute differences. So if you just, um, realize that and treat people as human beings first, you're going to get somewhere. And you're not going to win every time because someone's still going to go around you and play those games. But at least you're not going to be working against yourself by trying to engineer things, um, you know, with the science of selling.

Well, what drives you? What, what's your motive?

Um, you mean for sales or— Yeah, I mean, you're doing this, you're good at it, you're passionate about it. Is it— Yeah, yeah. Um, I want 2 things. I want to make a lot of money and I want to have a lot of fun, and I won't sacrifice one or the other. I will not be miserable to make money, and I will not just do it for fun and not for money.

Right.

I want both, and I want them evenly because they play into each other. But because I like to have fun, that means I sort of laugh at the things When I see people hiding behind structure and— That's unprofessional.

Yeah, it's unprofessional.

You don't know how many times I've gotten that. I mean, I do lots of shtick in my sales process. I make ridiculous videos that I put on LinkedIn. What, walking around with a camera in your neighborhood? No, no, no. I mean, I got like this, this is my Orca hat. Okay, I got my little orca. And this isn't limited to this company. I mean, I've always had shtick, um, because I want to have fun in it. But I've had people are like, you know, we're not— Eric's doing all this stuff, and when we're selling to banks, we, we can't be perceived that way. It's like, okay, well, whatever, you know. I've sold to banks, I've sold to telecoms. They all know me. They buy from me, right?

You gotta ask yourself, could Chris Rock sell more orca than you, right?

Probably.

Exactly.

Right, exactly.

Because who wouldn't take a meeting with Chris Rock?

Because it's going to be fun.

They know it's going to be a good time.

Exactly, exactly. You're, you're selling to human beings. And, um, you know, I, I coach, uh, younger sales reps or less experienced sales reps often. And they try to impress me with their knowledge of the sales stages and using scientific words to describe different situations. And I just, I just pull the rug completely out from under them and I go, you're hiding. You are completely hiding. That's your teddy bear.

It's the new teddy bear.

Because that is not how deals get done. And I've also seen it on the sales management side. Um, I gotta be careful what I say, if you know what I mean, Brian. But, but on the sales management side of things, there's a lot of process and KPIs, the stuff that you talk about all the time.

The ingredients of sales.

Yeah. And, and, and I love it when, when you say, you know, you know, What do you want to do? Make a KPI go from 12% to 13%, or do you want the revenue to go from, you know, to double? Okay, what's, what's more important?

Well, they, they act like we're CRISPR, right? That the deal, you know, they've got this microscope and they got the hoods on and they're like—

and I—

and you hear those, you know, MedPic or whatever, and it's like, that's sales operations. That's forecast characteristics.

Yeah. And, and, you know, I, I must say that I have seen in the last few years some changes to how sales managers, um, operate. The sales managers that I work for— I've been trying not to become a manager. I like to be a cowboy myself. But, um, for the sales managers, instead of them, uh, sticking to the sort of BS KPI stuff when they're managing people. I'm seeing that sort of die down a little bit, but they still keep it for their board presentations because what are they going to say to the board? Um, in the end, we're hiring a bunch of characters. They're great entertainers. And, and, and the crazier and more entertaining they are, they close more deals and we're crossing our fingers. They can't say that. They got to make a spreadsheet and they got to show that the graph is going up and up and up and that, oh, there was a dip this quarter.

Oh, this is how we're recovering. Yeah, well, right, there's, you know, the boardroom, it's play business, but sales— and what people don't understand is we're not selling to an algorithm, we're selling to another human being that we need time and their attention to understand and have them understand why we're the best at this.

Yes, a brochure is not going to do it.

An ad's not going to do it. A webinar is not going to do it.

There's, there's a certain point where I know the deal is going to happen. I mean, unless my decision maker and his, you know, main— his or her main people get all hit, collectively hit by a bus, I know the deal's going to happen. What I don't know is if it's going to happen today, tomorrow, a week from now, or 2 weeks from now. That becomes tricky when it's like September 25th and everyone's like, oh, it's going to close this quarter, it's going to close this quarter. And it's sort of a running joke, um, with, with my sales managers that I'm always like, it's going to close. Whether or not it's going to close this quarter, Or early next quarter, I don't know, but I'm not going to sacrifice the deal to an unnatural deadline, that's for sure. And even if you tell me to do it, I still can't control it because they've got a whole bunch of other people who are blocking them, you know, who are on vacation or, you know, going out, you know, finance is going out to drink for drinks because someone's leaving and they can't get the contract reviewed or whatever. So Um, I've seen less pressure in more recent years on that sort of quarterly stuff. Um, and, and I've seen more trust, but that might be because I'm getting to the point that people trust me. It might not be an overall sales culture thing. It might just be that I'm reaching the point in my career that people are like, just let Eric do his stuff, leave him alone. Right. I don't know.

And when you talk to the younger reps or even your younger self, what do you wish you'd either figured out earlier Or you didn't waste time on?

You know, I thought I thought about that question because I've heard you interview other people and ask ask that that that same question. I think that there's two or three things. First of all, there's no substitute for mastering the technical domain of what you're selling, and so many sales reps rely on their sales. engineer, their pre-sales person. It's sort of like, hi, I'm the sales rep and the company has this many people and we have— this is our funding and these are our current customers, and now Bill is going to tell you about the product. Um, uh, I would say that the good sales reps don't do that. They master it so they could actually do the entire presentation without the sales engineer. If you reach that level of mastery You will close more business because that means you can have more one-on-one conversations where it isn't, hey, yeah, I'd love to do the call, but I need my brain to be in the room to explain to me what I'm selling. Okay. If you can have— if you can become a domain expert selling to the customer who's a domain expert without needing to have, you know, you're like a blind person without having your cane in the room. Then you're going to make more money.

And people think that that's insurmountable, that they have to go back to college and get a degree. And I'm like, today that is not as hard. It takes the want, it takes the hunger, the curiosity.

It takes curiosity. You can learn anything if you can make analogies, because Every complex profession in the world is analogous to simple fundamentals. And so you just build on those analogies, and then you can gradually become an expert. What you have to do though is ask a lot of questions, and you have to look very stupid in the process, and you have to not be afraid of looking stupid by asking those questions.

Well, I sold cybersecurity having zero security experience, all software technical stuff, highly technical stuff. But you go into security, it's a whole nother world. And if you can't understand it, because in security you overload all those words— firewall, this, that situation—

That's what I'm talking about. It's the like there's, there's like a priesthood that keeps people out by having a language that seems to be difficult. But once you get through the overloaded terms, you realize that these are, these are the same concepts of security that existed in medieval times.

In the physical world.

Yeah. Having a wall around something. If someone can get inside and they steal the keys, then they can open up all the other doors.

You have to have the key and knowledge.

It's, it's not a mystery, but, um, there's layers of words upon words. And so you have to have the, the patience and the confidence to get through those layers.

Because we're the translator of the industry speak to normal human beings speak.

Absolutely correct.

Because if I looked at all— and I used to do this, I look at the competitors, everything looks the same. They all— they use the same words, do the same thing. They're the best. Everyone's the best.

Yeah.

So how can a customer pick? We have to differentiate off of what they understand.

Yeah, actually, um, in my business, the customer is picking about 60% based on technology and about 40% just based upon the confidence that they develop in the team. And that's often represented by me. So if I can talk the talk very deeply with the customer, that is going to increase their confidence level in making the decision.

Right, because now it moves from Eric being a fun guy to talk with, easy to get along with, helps me. Now We're talking about what I care about and he understands me.

Exactly. It's, it's like we, we share the, the same problem domain. We can, we can even joke about the industry and, and the problem domain because I understand it. You know, I'm not just the guy who's asking for the contract and asking, whoa, what's the next step in the process here? You know, I can actually say, hey, good thing you're doing it this way because that's going to give you some some value and talk about technical things intermixed amongst all the, all the personal things we might be talking about as well.

And as I look at your background, not a lot of it is security.

No, I've been doing software.

Software, yeah, but technology.

But listen, once, once you do— I've, I've done so many startups, I don't even know how many I've done anymore. But once you've, you've done— you've been in this industry long enough, if you're good and haven't parked yourself somewhere to retire to early for 15 years. If you've moved around, then you've trained your brain to just keep learning new technologies over and over again and to start to see the analogies between other things that you've sold.

Because analogies certainly in security helped me immensely because the first— I went into like, you know, a zero-revenue security company. Third round of salespeople. They hired security people first, then data center people, then software people.

Yeah.

And I go, you've been selling this all wrong. You said, yeah, security don't care about this. Yeah, until a certain point.

Well, it might have been, Brian, that you had seen not only analogous patterns in the technology, but analogous Yeah, which you could map to other software that you've sold, and then you could just, you know, come up with a way to apply analogous solutions, sales solutions to it. So that doesn't surprise me at all.

And if there was one skill that you could take a pill for that would up your game to another level, what would it be?

Listening better and Taking more notes. I do a lot of it already, and I'm much better than I was, but there are so many times that you can use the customer's words against them. And I don't mean that in a negative way. I mean that, well, Bill, you said this 3 weeks ago. Did that change? No, Eric, you're sort of right. Yeah, that is my— Just remembering what they said. And that's how starting off each meeting, like, okay, yeah, yeah, we just met each other.

Groundhog Day.

Cool. Hey, Billy—

Eric, I'm sorry. I appreciate your time today. Where can people go to connect and follow you?

Um, well, on LinkedIn, that is, uh, the best place to find me. I'm a very promiscuous LinkedIn user. And, uh, yeah, yeah, I— in fact, I think that, that I was very early, so I think like my LinkedIn LinkedIn handle is even Eric Gold or something like that, but that's the best way to reach out to me.

So, the lesson from this interview is not to just be liked. The message is to become that partner in crime. I just love that analogy because you know when you feel that, you know when You get this open, honest, complete conversations with the customer instead of that Heisman, that arm's length, we'll tell you what you need to know. Here's the RFI. Here's the RFP. Because when you hear that, do you think they're talking to everybody like that? I don't think so. They're talking to somebody like a partner and And if it's not you, you're not winning. So it becomes a great asset test of how well you're doing, how well you've— they are looking at you. Are they looking at you like a vendor, or are they looking at you like somebody who's helping them? I hate that word trusted advisor because it— when we say that, or the consultant, Trust me, no one ever looked at a salesperson as a consultant. It is such an ego-lifting, looking-in-the-mirror, arrogant way of thinking that the customer thinks of you. At best, they're thinking of you as somebody who's helping, as a coworker. That's the tone. Because yes, you know a lot about this space. But are they asking you about that? When they ask you about it, they value it. When you're telling them, they're like, eh, so what? We have to earn this. And earning it is not just about showing how much you know. It's showing how much you care and want to help about their best interests. That's what trust is built. This is a trust relationship. It's not entertainment. It's not buddy-buddy. It's not personal friends. Although those things can happen, those are side effects. That is not the outcome that you want. The outcome is that rapport with them because they will tell you the truth, the whole truth as they view it. And that's what you need, because otherwise you're in this perception of what you believe is going on. Let me give you an example of this. And this is the scariest thing that I kind of realized this week, is I did a poll asking reps, how would you grade your sales skills? A, B, C, other, whatever. Okay. Of course, More than half picked it as A. Now, this is okay, a little tongue-in-cheek. Yes, it's a LinkedIn poll. But you also saw in the comments, like, if you don't think you're the best, who's going to? Well, now the danger of this becomes if you think you're an A and you lose a deal, guess who you don't think is at fault? It can't be you. You're an A. It's got to be the price. It's got to be they're flakes. They can't get it done. They don't know what they want. The competitor end-run us. Or it could be something else. Now, the real danger here is, okay, say you lose, you attribute it to the wrong thing, And you think you learned something. Okay, you think it's because of cost, but it had nothing to do with cost. It had to do with some red herring feature that your competitor used to lock you out. Or they went around you. They went top-down and you were going bottom-up, or the opposite. They went bottom-up and you were going top-down. Oh, they found somebody on the board. Maybe they did just cut their price. But if they cut their price, that means they looked at you as a commodity. So are you learning? And are you learning the right thing? Because learning the wrong thing isn't learning. That's making a mistake. So now you're compounding it. And if you learned it, how are you going to prevent it from happening again? Thinking that you're perfect or that you can't get better is the worst place to be. And I think there were a couple of good comments about, you know, the more I learn, the less I know. That is a good saying because sales has this crazy paradox, meaning when we're in front of customers, we should be confident. We should think that we're an A. When we're not in front of a customer, we should definitely think we're a B minus, hoping that we can become an A by looking for the things that we're missing, because we're always missing something. We're dealing with people and groups of people, because every time you add a person to the decision, the complexity goes up. Exponentially. So when you're thinking 5, 7 people, this is a really complex sale, which requires a lot of planning and a lot of prevention, which nobody does because everybody's reactive. They love us. Yeah. One person may love your product, but are they open and telling you how to Get it done? What resistance are they hearing? Who is saying no? What is the competitor doing? What's their real timeline? Why do they need to do it this year versus 5 years from now? Is this a science project or is this a business problem that you're solving? To get those answers, you have to have a broad bandwidth of trust with more than one person within that account. And that takes time to build. And they have to want to talk with you. And you have to build up that skill. Because if they treated you like you're in the room, you would have a good understanding of why you're going to win and why you're going to lose. If you're overconfident, You're gonna miss all that. You're not gonna see it because you're not looking. You want to work like an A, but always look for how to become better. I've told people ever since I became on this side of the sales world, meaning where I was helping people win more deals, I've learned more about selling. My learning curve went up exponentially because I was helping people sell all kinds of things in all kinds of situations at all kinds of price points and experience levels and all kinds of industries. And usually the hardest of the hard. Nobody was calling me in to help them take orders faster. They were all calling me in because nothing was working. So if you want to learn how the complex sale really works, Winning the Complex Sale is the course for you. It's a year-long course where you get to participate. And what's great about this course is even after people have been doing it for a year, they want to renew. They love to renew. They want access to the office hours and the one-on-ones because this is something that you can never know enough about. Nobody's perfect at the large complex sale. And it's all about prevention. Repair is not nearly as effective as prevention. And how do you prevent? You got to do it before you're in the trap. And the customer pulls you into the trap every time, not consciously, because they don't know how to do it. They didn't go to purchasing school or decision-making school. And did anyone teach you how to buy stuff at your company?

No.

Did they teach anybody?

No.

Even procurement, they'll do anything not to issue a PO because that's work. And you wonder how we get anything done. Take the course, step up. Don't be lazy, don't be cheap. This is your life, your career, and the time you cannot buy back. You can't buy one second of it. You can only buy knowledge and skills. And having people. And the worst thing you can be is somebody who thinks they're an A and they're a C. And there was probably a lot of that. And this, you know what, and I see it all the time, people who are willing to work insanely hard at what doesn't work. And they just think that, just, and what do they do? They double down, they work even harder. Sound familiar? Let's work smarter. The complex sale is all about smarts. It's not about hard work. You got to do some of that on the right ones in the right way. We'll see you next time. Make sure you're checking out the other shows: Sales Questions, Brutally Honest Answers, The Sales Leadership Show, B2B Revenue Leadership, and the YouTube channel. And if you see my stuff fly by on LinkedIn, please give it a little like, comment, and share. Thank you. Here's some excerpts from a one-on-one that I did with one of the students in Start the Conversation, Get the Meeting course. Now, this person really embraced the course after a while. It took a couple of one-on-ones for him to try each step. He kind of fought it, tried to make it work within his current model. And that really didn't have this type of success. And then after he started, he started to get meetings. He started to get conversations. He started to get all the things that I was telling him about. And he started to get excited about it. He started to see the results that I tell you about where his week was full of meetings. Now, I'll let you hear this out. I deleted out kind of the specifics of the steps and the tools and the approach, but they're all in the course. If you're already in it, please listen to the full one-on-ones. When you hear the success that people are having, it's not just the steps. It's the matching of the steps with the appropriate actions and pacing. And then you get people asking to talk with you, which is the goal, which is the fun. So let's listen to it and I'll sum it up at the end and give you kind of an idea and recommendation if you want to take advantage of this.

And it's crazy. This week, this week I'm full of meetings. I was like, what's happening? And like, I, what I did was I baked in like, I just, I very generic and people are like, oh, like, like, tell me more about you. Like immediately I have like 3, 4 meetings. Like I already had 2 this and, and based on the, on the, on the parameters that you suggested for me, like, oh, go after these bigger companies. X amount of employees. So then by the time I'm talking to them, I already know that, okay, they typically have budget. I mean, assuming LinkedIn is correct with the employee size, some of it was off, but it's like, okay, there's still like a deal. It can still happen. And, but yeah, I was like, whoa, this is— I limited to like 30 connections a day. So then that way it's not like, it doesn't go crazy. Cause I remember one of the reps So do about 30 a day. Like I said, like this week, like 4 or 5 meetings, and they're good meetings, you know, and it's just conversations. Like I say, it's not about like pitching, but it's about working them up to that point where it's like, okay, yeah, we do need to advertise.

So after teaching this for quite a while, here's the steps that you should take. Take the course Once quickly through it. Find both one-on-ones and office hours that speak to the persona that you want to talk with, whether it be the CEO, the CMO, CRO, developer, marketer, whoever it is that you want to talk to, because we break it down in gory detail. We break down the persona and what they care about. And then try each step. Try it with your friends. Try it with your coworkers and start to see the results. Now, most people will fight me on it. They'll spend the first month, 2 months, uh, trying to make the system fit into their pitchy email and cold calls. And it works a little better, but it works a whole lot better when you apply it because each step and each pause in between each step has been designed over time to be very effective. And then when you start to see the results, all of a sudden people are replying, people are asking you, people are wanting to talk with you, want to understand what you do. It's almost turning cold outbound into warm inbound. Now, are they in market? No, no, they're not. But they're a little curious, and it's up to us. And I show you in the course how do you build off of Instead of us telling everybody how great we are and hoping they can understand why they need us. And instead of them arguing about why they don't need us. Because until you have active pain, everyone's in denial. Think about going to the doctor. Okay, you kind of know you need an operation, but you're like, can I get a prescription? And the doctor's like, he has to ease you, or she has to ease you into the process. Well, let's take an x-ray. Let's see what we're working with here. Oh, can I— how about just a shot? Can I just get a shot till the next time I come in? Then he flips the x-ray up on the light and he points to something. He goes, that's what we're dealing with. That doesn't heal on its own. You have to have surgery for that. He has to build up To that. Until we build up that latent pain into active pain and properly diagnose it and get people to think about what happens if they don't have that operation, they're going to avoid it at all costs. That's why the cold pitch doesn't work. You're just igniting the denial. You're not igniting interest or curiosity. It's just denial. So check out the course, start the conversation, get the meeting. It's all at b2brevenue.com. There's an overview video in the show notes on my YouTube channel and on my LinkedIn profile, pretty much everywhere I am, as well as the website b2brevenue.com. Check it out if this is what you need. You know, this student, zero sales experience, but really, you know, just gobbled up this. And the people who gobble it up the fastest and the best are people who try it and get success. It has nothing to do with knowledge. It's like learning how to do a sit-up doesn't give you a 6-pack. You have to do the sit-ups. They're not fun at first. But then you get used to them and you start to like appreciating them. And then you start to get the connection between how you look and what you do. And so you start doing the things that make you look better. This is what we have. It's not just knowledge. It is applying it, taking feedback, polishing it up, and applying the system to your clients.