EVERYONE TALKS ABOUT IT - BUT FEW UNDERSTAND WHAT IT MEANS IN B2B SALES

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. Value in sales. I think it's probably the most overused word next to relationships. Value. What's it mean to you?

It is overused. There's a couple different contexts. I mean, there's certainly a value when you're in front of the customer and how you're showcasing something at ROI or what have you. I, I maybe look at it a little bit differently from a value of yourself as a salesperson and how you create value for yourself long term and stand out and be different. So I guess depending on which way you, you talk about value, there's a lot of cloudiness from that standpoint. But I, I look at it as like, how do I create value for myself long term and also create, create value for the, the customers? Obviously, there's results around that, but there's also some soft skills that I think have helped myself create value and just in general for any salespeople out there. So I ultimately like, how do you, no matter what's happening in the market or the economy, how do you continue to stand out and have value to your organization, to your customer that's transferable in perpetuity so that, you know, when it's a crappy economy or something out of your control happens, how do you keep providing value and stand out to keep, you know, getting the best jobs or whatever it may be.

Yeah, because I think too many people look at value as intrinsic, meaning that I have value whether you perceive it or not. Well, you may, congratulations, but that's not helpful in sales. In sales, we have to bring value. And it's not what we think is value. It's what the other person values. We think it's about product knowledge, competitive knowledge, features, functions, awareness, being able to answer all their questions, service them. And that's clerk-level value. It's important. You need that. But what other value do they need? And how do you give it? Before expecting anything in return. And I think salespeople have the law of reciprocation backwards. I think everyone's got it backwards. It doesn't work until you give first. See, no one— everyone else thinks, I'll give once I get. But no one's going to give you anything until they give. And so you got a stalemate.

Neither person's giving.

And each is waiting, waiting for their present, right? And if you take that approach, you're never going to get sales. And this is why prospecting today doesn't work. It's like, I got to find somebody who's interested, then I got to qualify them to see if they're good enough for me to work with, and then I'll prioritize them. And it's like, well, that's not the way the world works anymore. If they're interested, they go and find what they want. They don't need us anymore. What do they need us for? We've got to bring some other value, show them something that they don't know, show them the long-term implications of how they solve this problem. You know, people call it consulting, but it's like, you have to figure it out. It's our responsibility to figure it out. And not just react. Check in, touch base. Do you need another quote? That's clerking.

The giving mentality is definitely a, a lost art, or it's what you talked about where you expect someone to do something for you and then you do something for them. But if you truly do have that giving mentality, obviously you can't I will say from personal experience, when you start doing stuff on your own or you're more commission focused, you have to be a little careful on that so that you're not always giving and you have to prioritize the giving a little bit. But in general, that usually comes back around in a positive way and you want to make sure you're not doing it too much. But that jab, jab, jab, right hook, you know, how are you standing out? Because everybody else is doing what you're talking about. They're just pitching, call it the pitch slap. Whatever it may be, just ask, ask, ask. They're not really putting— everyone talks about empathy, but they're not really putting themselves in the customer's shoes. They're just asking, asking, asking, like talking about them, them, them. But if you're truly giving them something, so you have to weigh what, what is, what are you willing to give on the front end that's of value? I think that does stand out. And by the time you start doing that, potentially it almost feels like you're already working with that. Prospect or that customer. So you start developing a relationship rapport, a little bit of that know, like, and trust, and that, that, that can build up over time. So I think you need to be strategic with it. I naturally do it more than I probably should, or I've learned when I went off on my own that I have to tame it back a little bit because I have to protect my time in some ways. But in general, it's never— I've never felt bad about having the giving mentality, or it's never made me feel like— it's made me feel good, if anything, because you're helping people, you're giving, giving something to them. And it, it does— people appreciate that. It's like, if, if you help me out with something, Brian, I'm immediately gonna feel like I need to do something for you.

And it's the law of reciprocation, but everyone's gonna do it backwards. It's like, yeah, as soon as— now let's look at, at another example that most salespeople can identify. Let's say you wanna become a manager. How do you become a manager? Let's say you're a solid rep, but you want to become a manager. Do you wait for your manager to approach you and say, hey, do you have any interest in becoming a manager? If you do, I'd be happy to mentor you. Is that how it works?

Well, if you're being reactive, that may be how it works. But if, if you really want to be a manager, you need to start talking to people. You need to let, you need to let people know.

You need to Like, right, you don't just say, hey, I want to be a manager. You start acting like a leader.

Yep.

The new rep starts, hey, that's a manager's job to help them. No, you take them out to lunch. You say, let me show you how to log in. Let me show you how to get set. If you get stuck and I have time, I'll help you out. You get your work done, then you help other people get done. Do you badmouth the company, the product, your territory, and everything, no matter how true it is?

No.

You act like you want to become a leader. Then all of a sudden it becomes the de facto standard. The same is true within our accounts, but we keep being reactive. If they do this, then I'll do that. But that's not how it works. What if you started giving to them? And I'm not talking about handing out $20 bills to strangers. I'm talking about who do you want to sell to? Give to them. Not just some mindless monkey who calls you and wants career advice. That's not what I'm talking about. That's a friend. But in a business context, you want to get meetings with them. You got to give to them. You got to show them that you bring something, that you're not just there to take. Because when somebody knocks at your door, what do you do? Cringe.

I don't want to go answer it, probably.

Because either—

because you don't—

you know it's not a friend, right? You're not expecting—

yeah.

So what do you do? You look out the little peephole. Do you recognize them? If it's no, what do you do? Get real quiet, turn the lights off and hide, right? Until they go away because they want money or your time, one or the other. But let's say it's a FedEx guy and you're expecting your new iPhone. You run to the door.

Why?

He's got your iPhone. You want your iPhone. He's bringing you something. And everybody can't— this doesn't even penetrate when I talk to people, and people get cringy, like, why would I do this? I don't understand. Because you're used to taking inbound processing orders, and that's different, right? Because then you are qualifying them. But is that the problem that people have today? I hope you have that problem.

I'd sign me up for the inbound problem. That'd be great. But a couple examples I thought of is depending on what industry you're in, there's usually some organizations or associations that your customers, so the people you're calling on, they're involved with some organization or trade show, whatever it may be. So I did healthcare for quite some time and there was this prominent healthcare organization that all the I, customer profiles I was talking to were part of. So I was like, how do I figure out how to get involved here, be more like a peer, not a salesperson? And it, this wasn't a one-time thing. This, this took 6, 12, 18 months to build up. But I, I picked one. So I strategically picked one because I knew that they cared about this place. And then I volunteered my time. Now you have to balance how much time you, you volunteer. But by the time I got through all that, I was On the board, I was part of all these planning things. I had peer-to-peer conversations with all these people. They didn't think of me as that salesperson, but that took a lot of effort, time, strategy to to do that. And I was just giving, giving, giving, giving, giving for the majority of that. And eventually, because we had a commonality, I could turn some of those into business conversations and talk about you know how they you know any feedback or perspective that they had. But that that's a good example of. Trying to get involved in your industry and be part of what, what they care about. I know that's helped me. You just have to be strategic with, with, with which one. And they're always looking for people to give in those things because it's, it's just everyone's second. Yeah, there's no full-time people doing it most of the time. So everyone's, it's always a fire drill or no one's planning for the event. They can't get sponsors, whatever it is. So that's a good one. The other one too, just because I know quite a few people on podcasts, but you know, Introducing someone that's trying to get out there and help them get on a, on a podcast like that. That's a, that's a give, right? Because it feels good and people, some people want to get their name out there for whatever reason. And, you know, that's something that because I have, know some folks, I, I'm able to do that. So that's thinking a level deeper of how do you give back? And that's before any business transaction or anything else. So it's, but that builds up over time. It's, that's a lot of momentum. So if you continuously do that, it just keeps building up.

Because that's value. But if you ask salespeople, what do you think your value is when you go in to meet a client? It's product knowledge.

Yeah.

But, and that's a part of it, but a tiny part of it. And then you gotta ask yourself, do you really lose on product capability? Maybe you do if it's a really deep technical sale, but most of the time they could do it with either product, any product mostly. And let's take that podcast example because that's a, a pretty simple give right now. I get pitched no less than 10 times a day, anywhere from blind strangers to someone who might be applicable. And a lot of career salespeople who wrote books who wanted to become sales speakers, authors, whatever. And guess how they pitch me?

They're not giving you anything. They're just asking.

They're just asking. But then they say, if you have me on the podcast, be happy to promote it to my 25 followers on LinkedIn. And I'm like, now let's take our conversation here. Now, if I get a pitch and I have never seen this person like, comment, or share any of my content, so I have no awareness of them. My— they're asking for what's probably a 4 to 5 figure favor. But they're unwilling to click the like thing. on my content, but they want me to spend the time to interview them, edit, produce, promote them. It's kind of unbalanced, isn't it? And these are professional salespeople who wrote books, who will talk about value.

Scary.

But they can't do that. And why can't they do that? Because they don't see that as value. They see themselves as intrinsically valuable. Their knowledge and sharing their knowledge is enough. It might be, but it isn't for me. There was— and that's why I don't really interview sales experts anymore, because There's not much there. When I did, guess how many people would invest any time in becoming known to me, do anything for me?

Probably less than 1%. No, they were— it was all about their stuff or their book or whatever they had.

Yeah, 1%. And then there was this sales consulting company that wanted to be on the show. I was already the, the top sales podcast. So easily a 5-figure favor. So I go, why don't you guys write 5 reviews for me on iTunes and I'll have you on the show? And they wouldn't do it. They go, we'll pass.

Wow.

So it's, it's lazy and arrogant. And that they see all their value as them. We're so valuable that I should promote them just because they exist. It's a little narcissistic, isn't it?

It is. I mean, it, I guess it makes sense for salespeople because they're very ego-driven, but it's also scary that all the sales trainers or gurus, whatever it is, are, don't even know how to approach People in a thoughtful way, especially someone that has a big audience that could amplify what they're doing. So it's, I guess that's why salespeople get a bad rep out there because there's a lot of that type of stuff going on. So it makes it harder to stand out and actually give real value. On that note, a little bit about social media. I mean, another thing that for me, at least from what I've seen, and I still have a long way to go, but Investing in personal branding, things such as LinkedIn specifically, in a, in a strategic way of like, who is my audience? What is my message? How do I want to approach this? And being consistent with it over a longer period of time, that for sure has helped me stand out. Now, maybe sometimes people don't agree or don't like some of the stuff that I may talk about or post, but at least You know, consistent. I'm getting out there. People, before I even go to these events I was talking about, or before I meet with even some per— people in person, it feels like you already know each other because I'm on there. We've had conversations. I'm not pitching anything. I'm just trying to give value the majority of the time. And that builds up like a snowball if you do it the right way. It's not easy. It's, it's hard and it, it takes a lot of time and effort and it, it can be painful, but That for sure. I think in the future, the next 10 years in B2B sales, if you're not investing in that and trying to really stand out, I think it's gonna go even heavier to, to that. So if you're not doing that today, you better really rethink depending on the type of sale you're doing because it's gonna be even tougher to get in front of people and there's even more people getting pitched. So they don't, even if you do it the right way, they don't want to talk to you because other people ruin it for you. So if you're not doing something like LinkedIn, you need to rethink that and really talk to some people that have had success with it.

Right? Because some people think that sharing values, telling the world what you had for breakfast. No, but when you produce content, you're trying to solve a problem, explain an issue, clarify something. Do this, don't do this. The best do this because Some of the things about sales is counterintuitive because— and you teach them something, have them think differently. That is valuable. Do it quickly, succinctly, and don't ask for anything. That's valuable. And you're seeing a lot of people trying to do the walk and talks now, trying to copy off you.

And I'm—

and everyone's like, are you worried about this? I go, watch them. They're talking about themselves. They're bragging. They want you to do something. Is it a take or a give? It's much closer to a take. And how many times are people gonna watch that? People watch if there's something in it for them. If you get stuck on this intrinsic value, And you see it all the time. You get it anytime I comment about a rep, or I do— like, I did a video on what to look for when interviewing a rep. You get all these salespeople, well, what about the manager? And it's like, you're the type of person that no one should hire. You're deflecting. You don't want to become better. You want to show that they're just as bad as you. That doesn't solve anything. It's like Congress discusses— they always point out what the other party's bonehead payment was on some stupid thing. That doesn't make yours any better. Doesn't solve a problem. So ask yourself, what are you giving? What do you bring other than the product knowledge? It can be industry knowledge. It can be job Awareness. It can be what their competitors are doing, market intelligence, what the most advanced people are doing in the industry. It can be a lot of things. It doesn't have to be product, only product knowledge. Now, most reps take the personality approach, talk about sports, politics, whatever it is. They're likable, but that's kind of a taste thing, right? Because what's likable to some people is dislikable to others. Unless you're really universally likable, that's not enough. It's got to be something in it for them. You might be that entertaining that it's, but probably not. And this is where reps get stuck because they can talk to the champion well. But they can't talk to the economic buyer with the same brevity and clarity and engagement. Because how many times did they do that and they want to show the economic buyer a demo? Because that's what they know. People think that giving a demo is a give. It may not be. Depends how good you are at it.

Not, not anymore. I think everyone's getting— what is it, the demo, demo dollies? I think I heard that from somebody. But yeah, it's— well, and to that point, I was going to say that if, if you do this giving mentality and you develop, you're going to develop much deeper relationships. And that's where you can actually have a, a Rolodex, whatever you want to call it, of people in that industry that trust you for whatever reason. But if you do, doing this giving mentality we're talking about, that's going to build up your Rolodex, and that makes you that gives you value because if you're at the same company for 5 or 10 years, same industry, and then you want to make a switch for whatever reason, if you go to another place and you can showcase— now there's probably a lot of fluff when people talk about the people they know and whatnot, but if you're truly doing this giving mentality, then you, you probably do have a Rolodex that's transferable to the next position in the same industry or even an adjacent industry that you can keep leveraging. And that could be very attractive to a startup or a company that's growing because they can't get in front of those people, but because you've been doing What we're talking about now, you've built up this transferable value of network that want to help you out, probably because, oh, hey, Brian went to a new company and he— I remember how much he helped me at that podcast or that event. You know, I'm gonna at least talk to him and see what's going on. So it— you don't want to think of that down the road, but the reality is if you keep building this up, it just naturally happens and stuff comes out of the woodworks that you maybe didn't even anticipate because you've been helping people. So, uh, you have to balance it. But I, I think that, that Rolodex, and I know you've talked in the past about just being friendly with, uh, recruiters and all these different people. I mean, you just keep building that up and, and that's going to keep you having value no matter what company you're at or what industry for that matter.

Yeah. And if you build up this ecosystem, you have to ask yourself, Why are they going to talk to me outside of the transaction? What do they get? It can be about their career. It can be about their company as a whole, the industry as a whole. But we focus solely on the transaction. And then they— we wonder why we get treated like a salesperson and are ghosted. Can't understand that. They're playing games, and they'll always say, why'd they buy? Because of me. But they won't talk to you about anything but the transaction. Maybe it's not about you. And why do you want that type of rapport? Because there's going to be so many things that are outside the transaction that affect the transaction. That they don't see a reason to share with you. So you need that deep rapport with at least one person there who has something to gain by buying your product. Otherwise, you're gonna get ghosted. That's the default. And people are always upset when that happens, and they're like, well, how do I repair it? And it's like, There was nothing to repair. They didn't see you as anything other than a clerk delivering a quote and a demo and answering questions. And today, reps are pushed just to do that because we got to do more. We make up for lack of sales skills by having more deals that we can lose faster. And then they go to marketing and they go, can you find more prospects who just want to buy now without any evaluation or analysis or market study or proof of concept? They don't exist. Marketing does not create the world. They capture the world and they bring in people who are interested in the— at exchange, that transaction, their email address for some stupid piece of content. And then we, then we torture them to go through our qualification process, handing them off to people who know less and less about what's going on. And if that doesn't work, then we gotta analyze where did it fall apart? And it's always at the front end. We need, just need more of these people. Maybe, or, or maybe do a little triage. Are they gonna buy anything? Do they have a reason to? Are we talking to the right people? Is there emotional connection to solving this, or are they just willing to show up?

Do you think sales reps are able to push back on that? Like, if, if, if the company has that mentality and they're just— it's a numbers game or do more of this, is it, is it going to be tough for them to break through what we're talking about? Or do you think that if they think about it the right way, they, they can do it themselves and be proactive? Like, hey, I'm gonna— I know they're telling me to do this, but if I don't hit my numbers, it's gonna come back to me. So I'm gonna focus on what I think can close and try to control more of this process. And they take ownership, but probably they're scared to do that, where they just listen to their manager, listen to all this like numbers, numbers, numbers, and then it ends up ultimately it's going to come down to them, not the other people. They're the ones that are going to get let go if they don't hit the numbers. So they should— they need to own it themselves, I guess, right? And break through that.

What's the manager thinking? The manager's thinking, if you make your numbers, because of my leadership. If you didn't make your numbers, because you didn't do what I told you. That's how managers think. I've never met one that didn't think that way. So the good Boy Scout does what the manager says. When it doesn't work, they just do more of it, and it's a downward spiral. And then when they get fired, they, they don't understand why. The, the maverick goes and does what— figures it out. And you can't fight the manager. The manager's not going to change. I get at least one email a day. What happens if my company thinks it's a numbers game and it's not? Are you going to change the company? Are you going to change companies? I doubt— I've only seen the company change once in my career. You move on, right? Otherwise, you're playing the wrong game. You're dragging and fighting against a system that doesn't work. And your management wants you to. They want you to make your number. Do they really care how? You know, Dustin's 200% of his number, but do I care how?

No, doubtful.

You know, you're 50% of your number and you're doing what I tell you, you're doing it wrong. You have to be.

Make more calls.

Make more calls. And why do they tell you that? It's easy.

The first thing that pops in your head is just do more of it. So yeah, it makes sense.

And people are so locked into this thinking because it's easier to do that than to really analyze the problem. Like, so what are you running into? Where does it stall? How are you doing that? That takes time. You have to dig in and your numbers game might be wrong. And people are like, oh, it can't be wrong. Then I'd have to really figure this out. And let's face it, what deals do managers spend their time on? Is it cold outreach?

No.

It's top of, you know, it's bottom The final people who are closing now. So they think the whole world is like that. And why isn't your world like that? My world is like that. They just want us to figure it out.

They've upgraded so they don't have to deal with all the, uh, the cold prospecting anymore. Uh, that, that's so true. And it's also, as a manager, how do you provide value? I think that's a great way to provide value because you really should be working for your team, not the other way around, and helping them get over these hurdles, not just saying do more, do more, do more. But that probably doesn't happen very often. But the good managers definitely try to diagnose this and help you provide value. So yeah, it's— I mean, look, you gotta, you gotta do something different. You gotta stand out. And if you want to provide value, you need to be doing some of these things that we're talking about. Otherwise, you're just gonna be like everybody else. You're replaceable. And more of that B or C player. But if you want to be the A player, you need to have that giving mentality and make it about them.

Yeah.

And if you don't know, I mean, everybody who's on my podcast is doing something outside of the transaction to add value. It might be industry knowledge, might be networking, it might be connecting, helping build their team. helping them sell internally, telling their coaches and champions what they're up against, but they're not sitting back judging themselves on how many quotes per day they can issue.

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, uh, the, 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? Um, there's really, you know, read a book, uh, 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 Zero point zero. 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? 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 gonna 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 $300,000, $400,000, $500,000. 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.