DO YOU KNOW THESE MYTHS ABOUT B2B SALES AND SELLING?

Hey, before we get into the interview, I want to make sure you're aware of our other podcasts, the Sales Questions, Brutally Honest Answers show, which is a very quick, under 5 minutes in most cases, sometimes just a few minutes where I answer your questions. You can just send me any question to my LinkedIn profile, Brian G. Burns, and I'll put it in the queue to answer. Also, the Sales Leadership Show. If you're looking to get into sales leadership or you want to hear from the world's best sales leaders, that's where I interview them. Check it out, the Sales Leadership Show. Also at b2brevenue.com, you can learn all about all the courses. Links are in the show notes below, as well as our link to our partners over at brevitypitch.com, the fastest, easiest way to become great at sales and practice. Before it's showtime, here we go. You know, in sales, we constantly hear these myths, these platitudes, these kind of trying to condense sales down to one statement. Things like one of my favorites: You know, the best salespeople are born, not. trained or it's a numbers game. What are some of your favorites?

There's a lot to choose from, but there's definitely so many platitudes and myths out there and one-liners that people say. And I think it can affect what people think about sales and it can affect people trying to go into sales and you maybe start believing some of it yourself if you are in sales. So it's important to talk about it. So I, I mean, the ones you just mentioned there, I think are really important. I think some other ones that come up to me is that you have to be pushy to make a sale. I think people think that you have to be pushy to make a sale, and that's just something that has to happen. Sales is a numbers game. I know that's one of your favorite ones. That one comes up all the time. You have to be extremely outgoing to be successful in sales. That's another good one. I mean, All of those are a few just off the top of my head. There's plenty more, but I mean, diving deeper on some of those, I think is pretty relevant, but there's a lot out there to say the least.

Yeah. And I think a lot of it is inherited from B2C selling, you know, because B2C selling kind of a lot of it fits, but B2B is totally different. But yet We pull along all these beliefs with us. And I think a lot of it is just to convince people to keep doing dumb things. Like, how often have you heard, oh, when something falls apart, oh, the next one will work? That means you're one step closer to a win. What does one thing have to do with another? Oh, so there's 7 billion people. This one's not interested. So now there's 6 billion, 999,999 to go. Isn't that a stupid way to look at the world?

Wouldn't make sense in any other profession, but for some reason it does in sales. Yeah.

And I find this crazy because a lot of people believe it, like the born salesperson. It's like, yeah, some people are born more introverted, more extroverted, more gregarious, more ambitious, but that doesn't mean they're going to be great at sales. And it doesn't mean that the opposite can't be good at sales. If I've noticed anything interviewing all these great salespeople is that there's patterns, but none of them match what we've been told.

It's true. And that's a great one. And of course, if you're outgoing, gregarious, likable, that's going to help you to some extent in sales. And not saying that that's not the case, but I think of myself as an example and a lot of great people I've met that are in sales. I was way more introverted growing up and still am. I prefer to be on my own quite a bit. I'm just a little more of a loner from that standpoint, but I've been able to be a adapted extrovert, which has helped me in sales. So doing conversations like this, being in front of the customer, speaking in front of larger groups, doing presentations, I've over the years, and for some reason I can flip that switch and I treat it more of a performance and I can adapt to that environment. And I think also I'm pretty analytical. And I think a lot of, there's been a trend the last 5 or 10 years where the The more analytical process-driven people have thrived in sales. And a lot of people don't recognize that. But if there's so many things that can happen in a B2B sale, if you don't have that process mentality and really guide it from start to finish, you can struggle. So I think there's been actually a trend of more introverted analytical people doing well in sales. And if people outside of sales would think that's crazy to say, but it's, it's, it's actually the truth. So yeah, you don't have to, it helps if you're likable and outgoing, but you don't have to. to be successful, in my opinion at least. And that's just a big one that pops in my head out of the gates.

Right. Because it is a process you've got. You're going on a journey. Let's say you have a 90-day sales process and you're trying to break that down into what characteristic is going to win in that. I'd probably put my money on the person who knows that game. It's been through it a bunch of times, knows how to control it, knows how to keep it moving, as opposed to the person who's just nice and fun to be with, life of the party. There's a time and a place for that, and it's very useful, but that doesn't— that's not the whole game. And I think a lot of us, we pick the part of the game that we like, that's easy to us. And we make that the most important part. And if that's enough, great. But if it's not, don't blame the game, blame the player. And the other thing is—

Definitely.

Yeah. Oh, there's silver bullets. Everybody spends the first 5 years in sales looking for the silver bullet.

Why?

Because all I need is this little thing that I don't have, and that'll take me from a B+ to an A+. Has everyone, anyone found the silver bullet yet?

Let me know if you do, but unfortunately not.

Yeah, we got what, 8 million B2B salespeople? Not one person's found the silver bullet yet. What's the odds of that?

That's nearly, nearly impossible. So that means there's likely no silver bullet.

Yeah. And then everybody, if it's not an exact tactic, subject line, call to action, then it's fluff. Well, there's a lot of fluff then because the tactics, anyone can write the tactic down and copy it and everyone's done that. How's it working?

The gimmicks, tricks don't seem to be working very well, especially the last 5 or 6 years. It's gone off the rails a little bit and everyone thinks that there's an easy answer. I think they just, it's either they don't want to do the work, they're told that the gimmicks and tricks will be effective and they're looking for the easy way out. They don't want to go through the hard part. The reality is that sales, especially B2B, you got to be patient for the long term and you got to build that up over time. And there's a lot that goes into it. You can't expect to win something fast. You can't expect to be successful really quickly. But the way the world is with social media and all that, we just expect like we can get results really fast and we're, you know, went to a good school, did all this stuff, and then we go in there and just think we can make it happen with different email cadences and being pushy to get the sale, but that backfires pretty much 100% of the time. So it's probably a little bit of society, a little bit of the leadership telling them these tactics work, and then also just being growing up in this instant gratification where you think you can just get stuff quickly. And that's just not how sales— if you're gonna close a complex enterprise deal that takes 6, 12+ months, It's gonna be a grind and a fight. There's gonna be a lot that goes into it and you have to be patient and no one wants to be patient in sales.

Right. Because everybody says, what's the secret to this? What's the best way to do that? And it's like, well, you gotta play the whole game and everyone, no one wants to play the, because it is a lot of work and you have to kind of admit that you're not playing the whole game, that the stuff that you're not doing or you're not good at yet. And, you know, the other one that bugs me is all about relationships. And it's a big part, you know, because if they don't talk to you, you can't sell them anything, right? But if they talk to you, doesn't mean you're gonna sell them anything. And I had a VP, the only thing I took away from working with him, because I really didn't like him, he was much more of an operations guy than a sales guy. But he slammed my manager once, who was 100% relationship guy. And he says, look, he could be your brother. Doesn't mean the company's buying it. He was trying to— the relationship's nice, opens up the communication, but is that person the economic decision maker? Where do they fit? Are they 7 levels below? Then does it matter? And they always bring the fun, gregarious guy who's good at presentation, and that's part of it. But at the end of the day, it's got to make economic sense. It's got to be a priority. And they've got to need it, right? There's no— nobody spends $1 million on something they don't need just because they like you. You know, I had this guy emailed me on LinkedIn. What do you do when the competitor goes golfing with your client and how do you break through that? And it's like, well, they're not buying because they went golfing with them. That helped. That opens up the communication that bonds them. It's interesting. It's a good time, but that doesn't create the need. Someone has to create the need. I go, do a better job selling. Are they really lonely and they can't find someone to go golfing with or pay for the golf? No, they can do that. He's trying to find an excuse why he can't sell to that account. And if you think the relationship's so strong that you don't have a chance, why work on it?

Hmm. That's, that's a great one right there. You shouldn't even be chasing it if it's that good of a relationship. But no, and also, so if I'm— if Brian's my champion and you're gonna spend $100,000 on whatever it is, I mean, you're sticking your neck out there too. So just because you like Dustin and we're cool and you're— we're friends, whatever, it doesn't mean you want to put your job on the line in some cases or put your neck out there if you don't feel really good about it from all the ways you have to justify it. So you really have to think from that perspective. It's not just the relationships. There's a lot more that goes into it. You gotta build that know, like, and trust. They have to trust you. You have to be solving a real business problem and it has to be, or there has to be some urgency behind it with, with whatever you're trying to, to figure out. So easier said than done there, but a lot of people think it is just about those relationships. The other thing that comes up a lot too is, I don't know if it's, well, it's a little bit of a myth, but people think if, if whatever their career path didn't work out and they just All of a sudden just stumble or get thrown into sales and think like, oh, just go do sales and it will be, it'll be easy. I think people think sales is easy sometimes and it's just, they'll just walk right into it. Or if something else didn't work out, they'll just go do sales. And maybe it's sometimes you do have success stories from that where people actually do thrive and do really well. But I think people think it's easy and that you can just wing it and be good at sales versus other professions. But that's not the reality. It's I've heard you say before, you have to be a student of the game and you have to treat it as a craft and a real profession because you can make C-suite money in it, but people don't treat it like that. They just wing it. They get thrown into it. They just do the bare minimum and expect to have great results. And then they usually realize the hard way that that's not, not the reality of sales.

Yeah. And then, you know, what I see today is that people think things like MedPic is a sales process. So I go and I do my research and I'm like, okay, well, a bunch of it is just wrong, right? And I know where it came from. I worked— that VP I was talking about earlier came from the company that came up with MedPic. And MedPic wasn't designed by somebody who sold or managed salespeople. It was designed by Sales operations because they were sick of reading the bullshit on the pipeline, and it's helpful as a forecast analyzing checklist items. But what's the decision-making process? Talk about a myth. I've never in my life met a client, and I met a lot of clients that have. Their decision-making process. Oh yeah, they go for RFI, RFP, eval, negotiate, select, close, but that's never the way it works out. And that's really not a process. That's steps. That's like time or seasons. First it's winter, then it's spring, then it's summer. That's not a decision-making process. Those are milestones. Decision criteria, the second D in it. Who has decision criteria, right? When was the last time you bought a car? I don't even know if you have a car, but—

I do. It was 2019, so it's been a little bit. Yeah.

Did you have decision criteria or you just liked one?

I pretty much just did a little bit of research and liked one and then made an impulse decision when I was there. Yeah.

And that was probably the second largest purchase in your life?

Behind houses and yeah, real estate for sure.

Yep. Yeah. You know, and that's, that was an emotional decision, but there was logic behind it. You did some research. You probably talked to some people, did a little search, maybe some YouTube watching.

Yeah, I didn't have a blueprint that I followed to make that decision.

But did you sit down and write a list?

I did not, but I am a little more on the analytical side. But yeah, there's no blueprint, there's no list. I should have done way more research, but it's worked out pretty well, luckily for me. Yeah.

And if I said, oh, well, that car is better, would you have changed your mind?

No, I probably would have held my ground more and wanted to do the one that, that I wanted.

Now think of a company with 10 to 15 people touch this product in some way. How many times have you seen the pendulum go from you to the exact opposite of you?

There's a lot of politics. People underestimate those internal politics. The bigger the company, the more people involved, the, the more stuff that tends to happen and it goes back and forth and there's all kind of drama that goes in between it.

Yeah. And what do they end up doing more than half the time?

Nothing.

So, so, uh, the decision process and criteria are total bullshit. The metrics made up, right? It doesn't mean they're not valid or can't be useful, but are they yours? Are they the client's? Everybody wants to make sales a science, and the— what always gets in the way is people, because people don't work in a predictive manner. It's not random either, but it's not step-by-step algorithmic. We think it works like AI, that people work like AI.

No. Okay.

AI even hallucinates. People hallucinate 80% of the time. Make up stuff, come up with reasons, uh, have attention spans of gerbils. And it's up to us to make sure that this gets done, to herd those cats and make sure it gets done. And managers can sit back and go, well, wait a second, you don't have their decision criteria. Well, they don't have it either. So now we have 8 million B2B reps entering a bunch of bullshit into a CRM that they're making up so that some sales ops person can believe that they have a process.

It's well said. Well said. And the other thing that I think that drives what you were talking about there is that when, when the salespeople, it's, you expect that you have to talk about your company, your product, your features and benefits. So they've, everyone focuses so much on the product and the features and the benefits and having a nice and pretty pitch deck that's 35 PowerPoint slides. And that's what's taught and that's what's expected. But anytime you actually are in those situations and in the reality of that, the customer, their eyes roll back the second you start talking about features, benefits, the product, the company history, the pitch deck. Nobody wants to hear that, but it seems to be this expectation that you're supposed to do that every time you're going in the door, but nobody wants to hear any of that. And it needs to be the complete opposite presentation of that. It needs to be about them, about what they care about. And customized to what, what they're up against. But that's a common one I see all the time at a variety of companies I've worked at. Everyone wants to tell the story. They want to have this massive deck of all this different information, all these features and benefits and shiny objects to show them and equip their sales team. And then the next thing you know, the reps are just talking about themselves, the company and all that. And that's not what sales— you're not gonna be good at sales if that's what you're doing. Maybe it was like that at some point where people gravitated to that more. But now you have to completely flip that because I think the buyers, the last thing they want to hear is any of that. So it's definitely not very effective now. But I think the vast majority of people are still doing that though.

Yeah, it's the commodity trap. We don't even, we don't just walk into it, we run into it, pull the hatch down and lock ourselves in it and then wonder why we're treated poorly. You walked into the— you made yourself a commodity. You're trying to be the best commodity, but they don't buy the best commodity. You bought the best car for you, right? Was it the car of the year that year?

I don't think so. Did you care? I mean, it was— I didn't care that much. I think they upsold me a little bit on the lot. 4Runner Nightshade, whatever the nicest version was at the time.

And you bought it because it made you feel a certain way, right? You felt—

Definitely emotions involved. It looked cool, looked— yeah.

How often have you taken it off-road?

Never. I did— yeah, uh, maybe, maybe like to the lake or something a couple times, but I've never taken it off-road. So that But it looks cool.

It does look cool.

Yeah.

And, and what we forget, that's why people buy things, you know, because the cars I've bought, uh, good reliable cars, but I didn't buy them because they're just good and reliable. And I never bought it because of a salesperson. It's, it's what attracts you. Now, could I be upsold or downsold or cross-sold? Probably with the right person, spent the right amount of time with me. But if the direct competitor met me at the lot and, oh, we do this and we do that, do you even know how much horsepower the car has?

No idea.

Right. Which is probably what, in the top 5 characteristics of a car, top 10. But yet, if you were talking to the sales, what did they say about the car when you were at the lot?

Oh, I'm sure they gave me all 25 features and benefits. It's been a while now, but they, they definitely wined and dined me and, you know, made me feel good about it. Made me feel, feel the experience. You do a test drive, you're feeling good, and then next thing you know, it's boom, game over.

You've got a nice monthly payment.

Yeah, a little, a little too high. A little too high. But—

The other thing that bugs me is single decision maker. And I even had an argument with one of my old managers about this. He goes, yeah, well, there's always that one person who makes the decision. What decision? To buy anything? To buy your product? To buy now? To buy how much? To pay how much? Everyone, why do we want to believe that? It serves us, not them. If, if we have 5 decision makers at a decision to change, decision to look, decision to evaluate, decision to pick you, decision to buy now, a lot of decisions. You think somebody's there? Who's the decision maker here? Like there's an office. For them, we want to believe it because it makes us feel good. Managers like what do they always ask? Are you talking to the decision maker? What they mean is probably the economic decision maker, but you don't get there until you earn your way there. They don't want to talk about the forerunner, right? They want to talk about transportation costs or whatever it is at their level. They don't want to go for a test drive. They've got a car. And I hear this all the time and people do want to, because it's the opposite of the single-threadedness where they only want to talk to a decision maker. Meanwhile, the user of the product, hey, what about me? I make decisions. And guess who's going to get you that meeting? Ain't going to be you. It's gonna be me. So how about helping me out?

The top, well, first off, the top-down approach is really hard. So most salespeople, I mean, to get to the C-suite level, it's not easy to do. Some are fairly good at it, but it, that takes years to build up the repertoire to probably get those type of meetings depending on what type of sales you're in. And even if you do get that top-down situation where you get in front of the CEO or whatever their, their title is, if they're a good leader, which which I would hope most people are these days, even if they are all about it, they're still gonna push it down to their team. And then what's gonna happen the second it gets pushed down to their team, that person underneath them is already gonna feel like they were overstepped potentially by you. So then you're already gonna go into a little bit of back and forth because that person's gonna feel a little threatened. And then you haven't even talked to the end users too, who are the ones that if there's a lot of the end users, they can completely mess up a lot of stuff. So even if you do have that top-down with that one-person CEO that you probably does have a lot of power, they're still going to want other people to run that, get involved, take care of it, because they don't have time. They got a million things going on. They can't focus on all these. They can give a high-level blessing and then push it off to people, but you still have to build that up. So most people don't think through all that. They just think, oh, if I go to the very top, it's going to happen. But I wish that was the case. I'm sure there's some exceptions, but most of the time it could still backfire. There's a, and those end users, you definitely don't want to underestimate that because they, in numbers, they can really derail some stuff if you don't get that, that technical win and win them over, make them feel part of it, make them feel just as important as, as a C-suite.

Yeah. As you go top down and I've, I've seen this with somebody in the course. What happens? They bring in, like you described, the team. So that first demo, all of a sudden you got 12 people. You don't know what the problem is. You don't know how they view the problem. You don't know if they care about the problem. You don't know if they've tried anything before. And, and they don't talk during the meeting because there's 12 of them. But they talk immediately after the meeting, not to you, the rep, but to whoever set up the meeting. And all they have to do is say, Yeah, it just doesn't match what we do. Executive just walks away.

Game over.

Game over. And you're like, hey, what's going on? What do we do? What do we do? Hey, you want a quote? Another one? Can I forecast this? And you thought you saved a lot of time by going top down. And nobody really teaches this stuff. The, the other thing, and I did a video on this, is, um, the more you make, the more you make. I love this one, which everyone just loves to have other people work their butt off on things that don't work. It just takes this randomness about what we do. Let's take all the thinking out of it and it's just a list of people. I mean, even the spammers on LinkedIn know to hone it down to your ideal customer profile, not send it to everybody. And the only reason they're doing this is because new products have credits. that you have to pay for each contact. They wouldn't do it if they didn't have to pay. There's no cost. Why not send it to a million people? And there are managers out there who think like marketers. They're like, why don't we spam the whole addressable market and see what pops up? And I, I tell people, why don't you just post it on LinkedIn? Do a little text post. Take your email, take out the name and everything, and post it as a text post. See how people react to it. It's the same as spamming everybody. And oh, it's not personalized. I'm sure you get a lot of email. Does the personalization really entice you to want to meet with them?

No, I mean, I'm empathetic to salespeople, try to give people a shot, especially if it's something I may be interested in. There are some occasions where there might be something I'm interested in. First off, all of it goes to the spam most of the time. I never even see it. The ones I do see, it's the same thing over and over again, whether it was a great company, great salesperson. I can't tell the difference because I don't have time to read through it and they all look the same. It's You know, they take a cookie cutter thing from my profile, they put my name, and then they go straight into some type of pitch or asking for something. And I just, none of it ever hits home. And I actually am open to certain things and looking for certain things as well. But the reality is, even if your total addressable market is a million people or whatever the dollar amount, how many of those people are actually interested at the right time? And you have to build that interest most, most of the time. So it's just, it's very ineffective. I'm sure there was a time where it worked when email rates— yeah, the '90s. I'm sure that before my time a little bit, but the email rates were probably— it was exciting to get an email. It was probably 30-40% open rate and people reading it and replying back. It was cool.

Looking forward to it.

Same thing with LinkedIn. When you first started, people were posting and DMing, and then now that's gone off the rails a little bit. So it's somebody always ruins it for everybody else, but you It just isn't very effective anymore, to say the least. The other thing that I just thought of is, I mean, a lot of salespeople are confident, a lot of people go into it are confident. And, but there is a lot of factors. It's hard to be really successful and make a ton of money if you aren't in the right, let's say, industry with, with a good product behind you and some of these other factors that people underestimate. I think People just think you can go into any type of field or any industry and make certain amounts of money. But I do think there are a lot of things you have to consider when you're in sales about the timing, the type of product, and obviously unicorn products. If you can get there when they're blowing up, that's, it's a good time to be there. But I think people think you can just make a certain amount of money in all these different places, but that's not the reality, at least from what I've seen.

And to become great at sales, the best way is to model somebody who already has become good at sales and to hear other people who have become great at sales and the journey that they're going through, the false beliefs, the misnomers, the mindset issues, all of this stuff that gets in our way between where we are and the income that we want. Let's face it. We're in sales because we're money motivated, we're competitive, we want to be better every day than we were yesterday. And how do we do that? Hmm, there's really, you know, read a book, listen to a podcast. That's good, good start. I like it. But then you have to take action. And then you want both tactical and strategic ideas. You want mindset. You want strategy. You want to understand how companies buy. You want really deep content and examples, case studies, so that you can learn from other people's mistakes. That's what I'm here for. I'm here for you to learn from my mistakes. And boy, do I got a lot of them. So go to b2brevenue.com, sign up for the courses. There's 2 major ones. Start the conversation, get the meeting, fills up your pipeline, gets rid of that problem of, oh, I don't have enough leads, I don't have enough meetings. It gets those conversations started with the people you want to talk to. Now, it's not about a pitch. It's about a conversation. Now, everybody thinks of conversations when you're talking or you're online at the same time, or you're on the phone or Zoom at the same time. That's not a conversation. A conversation is when the client is talking about what they care about, what they're interested in. And that is what we call qualification, where we can sense where are they and how do we build up that curiosity into interest into urgency to get a deal. And these are skills that we need. They're lifelong skills that we need in sales. And then how do we get a deal closed? Yes, anyone can take an order, but what if they don't know how to get it done? You got a new account where you're trying to get a big change done internally. What are the issues? If you're not planning that through, odds are it's not going to get done no matter how much your champion wants it. So winning the complex sale solves that problem for you. Why waste all your time on these false positives or these no decisions? Because they don't pay very well. They pay 0.0. What you want to do is pay a lot. So sign up today. Invest in yourself. You're the asset in sales. Quit waiting for somebody else to approve it or train you. See if you can get it expensed. That should be your first sales obstacle. Your first sales challenge is how do you get your company to pay for it? Just go down, tell your manager you want to do this. I put a little example email in the show notes right below here. Just swipe up and take a look at that. And if they won't, you got to ask yourself, why won't you?

Why won't you?

Why won't you? Oh, it takes time. Well, you work all day. You're working wrong all day. Why not improve that? There's the time right there. Oh, the money, Brian. It's money. Well, you make more money if you become better in sales. And Start the Conversation pays for itself the first week because you're going to get at least 2 meetings just Learning from the very basics of it. Closing the Complex Sale will pay for itself 100 times over. Students in it tell me it's the best money they ever spent because they now have control over their deals. And it doesn't end. Some give up. Some give up after they win their first deal and they think they've got enough. No, come back. Come back. Keep going. You can get even bigger deals, more deals, faster deals. That's what it's all about. Sign up today. Put the excuses away. Yeah, excuses feel good, but they're expensive.

Excuse—

you know what the excuses are costing you? Tens, 50, maybe a couple hundred thousand dollars a year in lost income.

Really?

Yeah. The difference between where you are today— let's say you're making $150,000. Decent, decent income. But you know, there's other people in your industry making $300K, $400K, $500K. Well, how are you going to do that? You all think it's just about getting a better job, a better territory, a better manager. They can help. Go do that. Then what happens? It's still you there with those leads, trying to close those deals. And Do you have the game? Few people do. Everyone thinks they do. Why not prove it? The market tells you what you're worth. Accept it. Now become better. And the way to become better is to improve every day. Really make a daily routine of learning and developing because it's not at the knowledge level. You have to become unconsciously competent at these skills, which takes time, repetition, and emotion. And I show you how to do it, how I did it, how I've taught hundreds of people to do it. But you have to want to because I can't force you. A lot of people wish I could. So do I, but I can't. So sign up today. We'll see you next time.