HOW A GREAT SALES LEADER HELPS THEIR REP WITH WINNING DEALS IN B2B

Once in a while, you speak with a great sales leader and it becomes very obvious why they're so successful at being a sales leader. And it's usually the opposite of what I hear on other podcasts, webinars, LinkedIn posts, where they're talking about metrics and diagnosing things.

Using data.

People use data because they don't want to talk with other people. And this is one of the issues we get into today, where a great sales leader has a great vantage point. Meaning that, let's say they have 10 reps. They get to see 10 times the deals that an individual rep gets to see. They start to see patterns. Patterns that individual reps may not see for months or years. And this is the vantage point that a great sales leader should leverage with their team. Because when you put the aggregate of all 10 together, magic starts to happen. I'm not talking about selling as a team. I'm talking about sharing experiences, sharing Uh, deals, good ones, bad ones. What are the companies that best match what we do? What are the ones that look like they do, feel like they do, but end up falling apart and just being an enormous time sink? And this is the difference between really A and B players. Because let's face it, look at a quarter, a month, look at your calendar, look at how you spent that time, where you spent it. I mean, on deals. And then reflect how many of those deals either have closed or have a high likelihood of closing. If you're like most people, it's less than half. That means we're wasting half of our time. And that's kind of a harsh way of looking at it, but what if we applied that 50% of our time to deals that are more likely to close? Or nurture the deals that are going to take more time and understand that upfront instead of being surprised with it at the end of the quarter? This is one of the interviews you're going to want to save. Up front, the guest is French. He's an American citizen, but I mention that only because the accent is still a little strong, but very, very clear. More pause in between, and I could have edited that out, but I didn't want to because I want it genuine. So This is one, if, if you're impatient with that, on most podcast players, you can speed it up, but I wouldn't. I'd really take into it and at least hear both the intro and the outro. So you get the gold. And that's what I'm all about is bringing you gold. Here we go with the interview.

Hey, G, thanks for joining us today. As a way of getting started, give us a little background on yourself.

Thanks, Brian. Some background on myself. All right, so my name is Guillaume. My American friends call me G. So I actually born in France, but I've worked most of my career in English. So that's where the accent come from. So born in France and moved to Canada 10 years ago. And I've been working all of my career in the fintech space, doing business-to-business selling from capital market solution, trading solution, treasury solution into corporate and financial institutions. So I spent the beginning, the first 10 years in Europe, worked in France, in Luxembourg, Switzerland, Turkey, And when I moved to the US, worked mainly in Canada, but now I cover some, I mean, the Midwest, some Midwestern states as well as states in the Northeast.

And why sales for you?

Why sales for me? Oh, that's funny. Funny question actually. When I did my master's or finished my university degree, one of the teachers there said, we want to be in sales. And I was sitting in the front row. There was like 300 students. I was the only one raising my hands. My hands. I'm like, I look back and I'm like, I'm the only one who wanted to be in sales. So I don't know, it's something, um, I felt, uh, came naturally for me, um, and, uh, I always enjoy it. Maybe there was a money aspect, um, to it too. And, uh, just, you know, it came, came like that and I decided to stay in sales almost my entire career. I actually did a stunt. I did a few years where I wanted to prove to myself that I could do something else. So I took more of an operational role. I became a project manager for the solution I was actually selling. But to be fair, I got bored after a few years.

Let me guess, do you have the adventure gene where you like different things? Do you spend your vacations going to new locations?

Um, a bit of both. I used to be like this when I was younger. Um, now I would say, you know, I'm a family man too. I have a wife and 3 kids, so pretty busy. Um, and I would say that I tend to— the time that I have left, because it's always about time, I try to spend it with them. Um, but I do like snowboarding in, in crazy conditions. I used to ride motorcycles in I do triathlons and I like things to go fast, right? You know, so yeah, it's a mix of both. But yeah, adventure, you know, with age tend to disappear.

That's true. And why financial services? What about that appeals to you or fits your personality?

We have to be honest, right? So somewhat, somewhat, I wasn't, I mean, it was by mistake almost. What interested me was technology. I liked— I like software. I like software because it's ever-changing. There is never a year that is the same. Uh, not only the product aspect, the clients are changing, the market trends, and, and, and it's exactly like sales. You always have to reinvent yourself. So I really like that. Uh, then I had 2 choices, healthcare or financial system, in terms of, uh, working for an editor when I was in France that Um, had a strong client base and a good product. And I tried healthcare, but then I got a job in, in fintech. So after a while, I decided to capitalize on that. Um, and I think when I turned 40, yeah, like when I turned 40, I had like an epiphany almost. It's like the ecosystem you're working in finally becomes clear. You understand why your clients are doing— and I mean, not just your clients, but all the stakeholders in the industry and change what they're after and what, you know, they want to achieve. And I find that has a lot of value, especially when you do consultative selling, to understand what clients are doing. So I just stay, I stick with it simply.

And who are the clients typically? What's the persona? Is it bankers? Is it analysts?

Is it— Right now I'm selling mostly to large corporations like Fortune 1000, governments as well, and financial institutions. I used to sell to banks in the past, but the products that I'm selling now are not designed for banks. I work for a large fintech, FIS, right? So it's another division that sells to the banks. Yeah.

And what are those people like? They're not the partiers. They're kind of very straight shooters.

Give me the facts.

No, no, no. I mean, The people now, the people I used to work with before were traders, so those were the partiers. Okay. And now, now I'm working with treasurers, uh, uh, director of finance. I'm not gonna say they are not partiers, they enjoy life, but, um, I mean, no, it's, it's very serious and very, you know, structured. That doesn't mean we don't enjoy a good meal or something, but, uh, no, it's serious.

Good. And do you like that persona or have you warmed up to it?

Oh, you know, it's not even something I really thought about. Do I like interacting with my clients? I mean, I do. Most of them are very smart and interesting people. I would say with the buyer, like procurement, and I have read from your blog that you've been in procurement. It's harder to create relationship with procurement because we've been established as enemies, right? So after a few years you can, right?

Yeah.

But with my clients, like the IT people or the treasury people or the finance people, once you realize and they realize the benefits you can bring to the table and you've established a relation based on trust and making sure that everybody wins in this relation, right? Yes. we really enjoy. And some have become friends. Like, I have clients who came to my house and we bike together, we go for a run together or things like this, you know. So, no, no, it's— but it doesn't happen all the time. It's not what I'm seeking. That's what I'm trying to say, right? My friends are here, not necessarily on the Zoom call.

And what's the hardest part of your sale? Because I got to believe that there's lots of alternatives that aren't really Understood.

Yeah, true. Um, so what, what do you— what, can you precise maybe the question here a little bit?

Yeah, because what I'm getting at is, do you—

do they try and commoditize you?

Do they see you and all your alternatives as equal and they just go to price, or what's important to them?

All right, all right. Okay, it's a good question. So It depends who you're selling to, right? In B2B space, you could have like a very large company, a very large organization who would sign up for a treasury solution, and it's a very transformative project, right? In that case, the value we bring to the table is the capacity to deliver a tailored solution to this customer. In that case, and I'm not going to name products here, I don't think that's the forum, right? But in that case, I think we have the top product. I mean, it's called Quantum in the treasury system. We have one of the top products on the market. The question is, are they going to adapt their processes to get something simpler or buy that, right? If they've decided that they need this solution, it's a no-brainer. We're going to be at the top. I'm not saying we don't have competitors. We have like SAP, an ERP, or some other areas, but when it comes to this area in particular, I have one of the best products. Now, when it's like more of a commodity, uh, cash management or a SaaS solution that's just gonna help, you know, access to a bank portal, like something more simple, yes, in that case it's a commodity. It's based on price. Um, there could be, you know, risk, risk aspect to it, like the fact that it's a Fortune 500 company you're buying from, or these kind of aspects. But let's say most of the time in enterprise solution, it is very important to have like a solution that answers the client requirements and not just something that you can buy off the shelf.

And what do you feel is your strongest sales characteristic in your personality?

So today, and I've thought about this a lot for this interview, right? First, I was really kind of proud to be named by one of my coworkers, and I'm like, okay, so what makes me different? I think over the years, um, I've realized that, you know, there's this used car salesman type of mentality where you try and showcase all the features and all this stuff, uh, and be the best and often talk too much. Um, I'm, I'm often the guy who doesn't talk in a meeting. I'm just listening. Um, And I think what makes me different is I, I don't know if that's the right word, and pardon my French, but I stopped lying. I stopped lying.

Honest.

Honest, ask questions, really understand what they're after. Um, and I work for a Fortune 500 company, so I, I assume, and I'm right, that the structure, my pricing structure, my legal contract the procedure to implement, all of that is covered by other teams, right? So I'm actually trying to be the advocate of FIS when I'm at the client and be the client advocate when I'm working with my internal stakeholder. So I'm trying to make people happy, make everybody happy, which is pretty rare in our industry, right?

Yeah.

Um, and I realized by thinking client first, FIS second, my reps, because I'm a sales manager, right? So my reps third and myself last, I make everybody successful. and therefore I'm successful. I don't need to think about myself. If everybody's successful, I'll be successful. And I think that's a little different than what people are sometimes doing. So I hope that answers your question.

It does. And when you were a rep, why did you want to get into leadership?

I like I like working with people and it's like the same as, you know, I used to play soccer and coaching soccer team for younger kids, all of that. It's about, it's more about helping and helping on where you can add value, right?

Mm-hmm.

I see the leadership, or I don't know if you call it like sales quadrant, but you know, you have prospecting, building relationship, progressing a deal and closing a deal. Each rep would need help at a different stage. I'm not the best at prospecting, to be fair. I never liked cold calling and never really enjoyed that. I was more like building relationship and this whole thing started to create a virtuous circle and working by itself. Like, of course you do your calls, but you didn't need that. So helped, I helped my rep with prospecting. I helped them a lot when it comes to strategizing on a deal. So being a manager, I can work more big deals and be more helpful and therefore more successful. So I thought by focusing my time on that and having my entire team successful, I'll mitigate my risk and I'll have a better time. Like, I like what I do better than just, you know, filling up the CRM and stuff.

Yeah. And what was that first year like as a leader? Because it's completely different than being a rep.

You're right. So I've been a leader a few times in my career. I became a leader and went back to sales, I mean, being a rep and back to a leadership position. I think the first time it's overwhelming and you have to change your habits. You know what they say, you get to your desk at 8:00, 8:30 and shit hits the fan, right? Hit the fan. And you're like, oh, and until noon you can't do anything. So I started waking up earlier, getting all my things done, so then I could help people like in the morning rush. And then I realized like, how do I anticipate this better and how do I proactively help people? So I started to have a good cadence in terms of one-on-ones and helping people proactively. So all these things would not come to me And that, you know, unexpectedly. Um, so I would say the first 6 months were very stressful, um, especially on this gig I, I'm in now. But, um, really just, you know, I had a good boss at that time who told me that, say, I advise you wake up early until you fix this. And, you know, go to— I know, I mean, and I started at 6 for, for a few months, you know, so So you're good at getting that stuff out of your way. Yeah. Yeah. So then you can spend the time focusing on strategy and not just running after things all day long, right? And I'm especially good in the morning. So I want to have like this 10 to noon time for myself where I can work, right? Yeah.

And you use the word strategy. When you're looking at a deal, what do you look for? Because a lot of leaders make the mistake of just, just do this, call Mr. Big Cheese or Mrs. Large?

So I work with senior reps, right? Um, I mean, I'm in my late 40s. In my team, I have people that are like, I think the youngest is late 30s and the oldest is early 60s, right? So I'm not going to tell them how to do their job. Basically, they've been working for like as many years as me, almost, uh, or some longer. Um, I call it like brain— I mean, it's almost brainstorming session. And I like to think a little bit like a chess player, you know, when you think, okay, I move this piece, what could be the impacts? I move this piece, what could be the impacts? And oh, you have like 60 different scenarios when you do that, right? But that's why— that's kind of my tactic is I talk to the rep about their deal and you have like this checklist and I'm not going to go through the checklist, but Did you identify the buyer? Is there a budget? All of this is obvious, but when you get into the deal is what is this person feeling? What are they getting from this? Not just what are they getting in terms of immediate ROI, how can that advance their career? How does this project fit in their, I mean, other list of projects they're working on? Maybe they have 100 projects and you're 99 and you think you're number 1. All those things, I'm really trying to ask questions. and act like a sounding board for the reps. And sometimes I just throw ideas at them and they take them if they think it's the right one or not. But I think that works because all of my reps, they like this. Like, we all, we all do the strategy sessions and we talk together and figure out scenarios.

Well, that's it, because you're hitting on the things that they probably don't want to think about. but think they— but know they should be thinking about it? Personal wins, because everything you mentioned was personal wins. How do they feel about it? How does it impact their career? Where is it on the priority list? Because as the rep, it's got to be that it's my top priority. It's got to be your top priority.

Yeah, no, it seems like it would be obvious, but it's not. It's not. And I think even for the rep, you know, to come to this level of trust with their manager, because I think, I mean, the client, we understand, like, it's a human being. He has other priorities. He might be unhappy this morning. I didn't know his coffee was cold, whatever. Um, but the rep himself, sometimes that I realize, especially with new, new hire, they are proud. They're proud people. They don't want to talk like that. They don't want to show that they have We've not thought about everything and they have weaknesses. So this comes actually, you know, you build trust during those one-on-ones and with your team. It's not about telling them what to do, it's helping them. You're trying to— it's teamwork. So I think I'm— I was successful doing that in the past and I keep doing this a lot today. And that reflects into the way they interact with their customer as well by By, it's like consultative selling. You're trying to ask questions and really understand how you fit in the ecosystem and what are the expected results, if that makes sense.

Yeah, it does. And I think what you, the mode that you take, because you're thinking like the customer as well, you're not thinking like the sales rep because the sales rep thinks like, how do we end run them? Uh, what new discount can we offer to incentivize them to do something?

Well, that, that could— that happens right at the end when you close the deal. You need a time bomb, a discount. Like, we all do that, right? But I'm not gonna— I mean, but that's more at the end, right?

That doesn't take 10 years of sales leadership experience. That's, that's day one.

Yeah.

But they're wondering what's the client thinking, but what's blocking them is their own need. Yeah, but you don't have that need. No, not that immediate need. You can take a step back. That is—

Yeah, that is right. You, um, the client— I mean, for the rep to understand, the thing is, that's when we talk initially at the beginning about the ecosystem, like the clarity, understanding what your client does and how they compete with their peers and Like if it's a corporation, how do they interact in terms of, um, you know, compliance with all government regulation? How do they interact with their banks? The fact that I understand what each party does is maybe helpful for some of the reps who don't have as much experience in the industry. And that's why I like to think like the client, right? And yeah, I guess that helps.

And plus, even though these people are very analytical, even-keeled, Non-emotional. They're still making a logical decision with emotion.

You're right. You're right. I mean, they buy from people they trust. It's not always just about price. I mean, I think processes sometimes can almost kill our business because you will follow those processes, but you forgot to just simply be human and talk to the client like you would do to a, not a friend, but you you talk to somebody, you will interact like somebody who comes to do work in your house or whatever. You're not just gonna follow a process. This is what I do. No, it's— you have your habits, like you have your— I think you did a video like this with the, the skills become automatic, you know?

Yes.

Well, that's what I do. Like, I— yes, but that comes only with experience, right? So it's just trying to have those, uh, those skills, but those skills need to be attached to strong personal and professional ethics.

Yes.

Because you want to come up, come, you don't want to come across as someone who knows everything. And sometimes that's maybe my problem is like, I know what they're going to say, so I just want to cut them, you know? But—

Well, you also did something really smart in that, the chess analogy where you're like, if I move to here, what are they, how are they going to countermove?

Yeah.

Because That's what you're future pacing the deal. You know, if we offer a time bomb, do you think it's going to have any impact now? Or did— have they picked us to the exclusion of every other option, including doing nothing? Are they, are they going to buy something from someone, or are they going to shelve this problem till next quarter?

Yeah, this happens all the time. Like, the status quo is often the It's a competition. Yeah, it's a competition. You're right.

You're right. Have you guys found a way of working around them just not doing anything right now?

Volume. Just have other opportunities to fall back on. You can't force someone to do something they don't want to do unless you have the— I mean, you can, but that's not going to result in a happy ending. I don't know, like, I think volume is the key, um, and that, you know, it ties into why I became a manager too, uh, um, having enough opportunities to fall back on and making sure you have a right cadence to progress them. Uh, why did the deal stall is something you need to figure out. If they don't have the budget internally, you're not gonna make up the budget for them.

Right.

Uh, I mean, you can try, but I think personally I find it as a waste of time. to go figure out internal issues for the client. I can help if I understand them. I can help. Okay, I'll give you a discount. I'll delay the billing of this part, whatever could help you make it fit. But if it doesn't fit, you know, you're not gonna put a square in a round, whatever, you know. So—

How about change? Does this change their work? Must change their workflow somehow, the client's workflow.

It does.

Is that a major obstacle in your deals that they're, they're not comfortable, they're scared, or they're very comfortable doing it the way they're doing it now, even though it's not as efficient?

Generally, no, because it's the decision maker. I'm not talking to the end users. The end user would react like you're describing. But actually, sometimes end users are pushing because they come from another organization where they had the system and they want the system. Sometimes having a Our system is, is a way for the client to hire better talent because they don't want to go everything on Excel and manual tasks. So it's like almost they know they have to go there. When I started in 2000, working in 2000, it was the beginning of electronic trading. And I had, I had people, uh, clients who say, I'll never trade on, on a screen, I'll trade on the phone talking to my broker and all of that. Now everybody's trading electronically. So it's the same in what I sell for treasury 20 years later. It's just they have to do it. Yeah.

And what do you see as a key differentiator between the very best reps you've experienced? Doesn't have to be at your current company or current role and the very best. Is it a characteristic? Is it a skill? Is it just hard work?

I have different types, and that's after the years I realized like there is not like a specific format that makes a rep the best. I had reps like, I'm not the most patient of guys. I had reps that work deals that I told them we've lost them, and 2 years after they'll bring them up and I'll be like, man, that was patience. Well done. So very successful rep was very patient. Then another one is just, you know, activity leads to result, and maybe, you know, in less complex solution, it actually works. A lot of activity will lead to results in my field right now. I don't think it does. You need to have the right activity on the right person, which is different. So obviously hard work is, is the one, right? Um, but I think, and I realize that now, is the one that are really genuinely trying to help the clients and trying to do the right things. Like we were talking earlier, like if you do everything in the guidelines and try and do the right thing for the client and for your company, you'll In the end, you'll be successful. I mean, I know it sounds kind of lame what I'm saying here, but there is not a perfect answer. Like, there is— I wouldn't put a rep in a box and say, this is the rep and I want to clone it. My team is composed of very different people.

And that's good to hear from a leader because I think one of the first things a leader does their first year is try and, you know, make everybody like them, sell like them, work like them, live like them, talk like them. And it's a disaster because people can change, but only when they want to change.

Yeah.

And it's all about trust too. It comes back to trust. They will change only if they see that it would have a positive impact on them. But trust doesn't come like that. You need like months and months and months of collaboration until they realize, yes, it would make sense. But I mean, I don't know if trying to change someone is not like a waste of time. It's like when we're talking, trying to force someone, a client to buy if he doesn't have the budget, it's like, no, let's go around it and find a way of making them more successful. And then, you know, if the rap is not successful, maybe there is something different that you just need to— maybe it's not at the right place and needs to find another job. You know what I mean?

So, and where do your deals typically get stuck? Because It sounds like you've got a very advanced product that has a real need, solves a real problem, but a lot of people aren't ready yet or doesn't make economic sense yet, or they've got internal issues.

There's a difference between deal and opportunities, right? You have all the prospecting aspect, can take years to get a deal, to get an opportunity to a deal stage. Those are highly transformative products. So again, I have been talking for 2, 3 years with companies before we even get to a deal, right? Then when it starts, it generally doesn't get stuck because we know what we're doing. They have the budget approved. So it could be a company spinning off or COVID, I mean, a pandemic or some things like this that could actually stall your deal. I think they get stuck sometimes in procurement because of some legal aspects, whatever, some legal clauses that are, you know, slowing us down. And, but generally they don't get stuck. We walk them so they don't get stuck. You know what I mean?

What's going on in those 2 years or that long process before you feel it's a real deal opportunity versus education? Rapport building, trust building.

Yeah. So what's going on, it's a lot about, I mean, there is the return on investment aspect of it where you need to help the client who's trying to get a budget competing with other internal projects and make sure your ROI gets to the, I mean, your project gets to the top. And that's what I'm working on is helping them get approval. But first you need to convince them that they actually need it. So again, I don't think that's part of the process. That's why we are talking volume. This is just normal. That's the time it takes. Some clients are more educated than others. They might have hired a consulting firm to do this job for them. Yeah. In that case, we come in and we have a very strict RFP. We try to avoid those because we don't have a relationship with the client at that time. So actually, that's the point. It's building relationships. That's what we do during those 2 years and building trust, you know.

Yeah. And everyone thinks that that happens in the first 5 minutes of a call. No, it's the first 2 years of it.

Yeah.

And what advice would you have to a rep who's considering going into leadership but isn't sure? Have you found any particular questions that you should ask yourself before getting into leadership? That who is it right for and who is it wrong for?

Yeah, well, it's a complex question because there are multiple aspects. I'll take the easiest and most obvious one is the impact on your commission check. Obviously getting into a leadership role versus a direct contributor, the upside is, is less than what you would have as a manager, but the risk is less as well. So it's about if you've saved enough money and you didn't spend all your commission check on fancy cars and things like this being young, you're okay to become a manager. If you're after money, you're going to be very frustrated because you're going to see some reps making more money than you, and you should be okay with that. You should be proud of that, actually. You have reps making 7 figures I don't always make 7 figures. I hope I will, but that's okay. You know what I mean? And I think that's the best advice is just, you know, you're doing this as a team and people are doing this for different reasons. So compensation is one, but then there are multiple others in terms of, you know, personal ability and patience. I don't know. There are so many aspects.

That's true. Hey, I really appreciate your time today. Where can people go to connect and follow you?

Well, I'm on LinkedIn, Guillaume Chabanel. I think you're just going to tag the name and I'll be happy to connect with anyone who's interested to talk. And yeah, I just want to thank you because I follow you and I always really enjoyed your video in the morning when you're walking with your camera in your neighborhood. It's really, really cool. I actually introduced you to my entire team and really thank you for the time.

Because when we're early in the complex sale, The deals tend to look completely different. They're complex. They take a lot of time, a lot of players, a lot of moving parts, a lot of roller coaster of emotions. Deal looks rock solid, 5 minutes later it's next quarter. So, it doesn't look like there's much of a pattern to match to when you first look at these deals. Warm inbound deals behave very different than cold outbound. Renewal deals are very different than new logo deals. All true. But there's similarities. There's lots of pattern matching. And this is something that will save you an enormous amount of time because too many people look at each deal as this unique snowflake of an experience that has never existed before, has no correlation or causation with anything you've ever seen before. No, no. Nor does it mean it's going to work exactly the way other ones have. That's true too. But you use pattern matching, a heuristic, the way people predict the weather. Yeah, but hopefully more accurately. My point here is that a manager, if they really take on that responsibility, And leadership is all about finding this, these patterns, sharing them with the team, testing them out, debating some of them, because they're just hints. They're not answers. And I love how he said, I don't like to give the answers. I like to talk through what are the repercussions of any particular strategy. And that's really powerful because it gets people thinking. And a lot of reps just want the answer, but they also want to relinquish the responsibility. And that's the dangerous part. Why is that dangerous? Because if you relinquish responsibility, what they call moral hazard in the financial world, then All of a sudden, the blame at least can be pushed onto the manager if it doesn't work. But as a rep, all that really matters is, does it close and how much does it close for and when? We as reps have to play that game with ourselves. Ask ourselves, if we do X, what is going to happen? If you send that proposal in At this moment, is that going to help move the deal forward, or is it really just a request for them not to call you again until they want something else? Now, a manager over the years will kind of see patterns to all this and can point this out, but the, the rep should always own the responsibility of picking which action they wanna take because they're the ones who are gonna benefit or suffer the most from the consequences of it. And we have to own that. You can't say, well, I did everything right. That's what I hear all the time. Well, if you did— It's not that it's right or wrong. It's what works. And if it doesn't work, Because what you think is right, and if the deal doesn't close, is it right? It may feel right. It may be consistently right. It might be politically right, but it's not achieving the goal. The goal is to close the deal. It's not to be right. And these are tough lessons to learn. And this is what I teach in Closing the Complex Sale, is really dissecting These deals and how to find these patterns and how to prevent falling into traps. Because the complex sale is a lot like life. It's just one trap after another. And if you fall in the trap, you think there's an easy way to get out and start over. It's not. It's hard to get out and sometimes near impossible to start over. You can always start over, but saving it from that point forward. Starting over is just, okay, you lost all that time and effort and political capital that you built trying to get the deal to the stage it was already at. They call it the complex sale for a good reason. And you'll hear most reps say, well, it's not that complex. I don't know what you're selling, so I don't know how complex yours is. But if winning is significantly and economically better than losing, you might want to get to know it really well. Let's face it, you're here right now because you want to win more deals. You want to make more money. You want to learn the best ways to sell. And you came to the right place. But I want to be honest with you, completely open with you. And to help you get to that place as fast as possible. And the way to do that is to become a student of the game. But you have to understand the game. And here's where a manager might do you a disservice. Because most managers, they— the deals that they see are the forecasted deals, the best of the best deals. The ones that don't make it to the forecast are the ones that we typically work on. Right. They're the marginal deals, the stretch deals, the B-level deals, but you're working on them. So you obviously believe they're closable because why would you work on a deal that's not closable? You may not find that out for a while, but— Which is try and sell a million-dollar product to a $500K company. No, because it's not economically possible. They may love it, they may want it, they may need it, but there's no economic way of them buying it. My point here is to really get you thinking about this, because whether you accept responsibility for it or not, you have that responsibility. At least economically. And he— and I— you got to congratulate yourself because I did another poll on LinkedIn where I'm coming to the conclusion that the number one issue in sales is delusion among the reps, not the clients, and not the managers. I asked how many sales reps read a sales book has read a sales book in the last year. Now, I was surprised how many were honest. More than 50 hadn't, and the rest I think were fibbing, because I think it's more closer to— I'd say less than 10% of salespeople read a single sales book. And I'm not big on sales books either, but it's kind of a barometer of, you know, if you got into Uh, plumbing, wouldn't you buy a plumbing book? When I was a software developer, it was like you went book to book to book to book. A lot was just references. It wasn't like reading it like a novel, but you, you definitely were into expanding your knowledge because you had to. And sales, I think too many people get to that B level Where they're 80% of quota, they're above the firing line, and they get too comfortable. So if you're the smart one and you become a student of the game and you're competing against the B player who thinks they're great enough, who's going to win? And the other part of this delusion is confidence paradox. And this I've noticed Ever since I've been in sales. It's when somebody makes the mistake of taking the confidence that they need when they're in front of a client and applying it like spam through their whole life. Yes, we should be confident and very self-assured when we're speaking to a client because it comes across if we're, you know, don't know what we're talking about, we're shaking, we're sweating. We're nervous. That doesn't sell very well. But we all get that. And that I 100% agree with. But then what ends up happening is reps apply that confidence to things that they're not good at. Prospecting, negotiating, talking with executives, anything off-field. When I mean off-field, I mean not customer-facing. They get overly comfortable with their pipeline, pipe dream, and they don't really question or test their skills because they're confident. It's this paradox that we all have to regulate. And it was really hard for me because I recognized it really well because I had to work myself up before a customer call. And then afterwards I'd have to tear apart what I did.

So you—

and it's not beating yourself up, it's looking for how you could have done better. And if you do that with confidence, you're not going to see what you didn't do well. You're going to say, oh, that was a 98.6, and yeah, I could have slowed down on this point.

Oh boy.

What you want to do is when you're not facing a customer, put that confidence aside and take the real confidence is being able to push yourself, crave feedback, test it and say, are they right? Did I talk too much? Did I not prepare my questions? Did I talk over them? Did I ask the questions at the right time? Did I spend too much time on rapport? Do I have the next meeting? Do I understand the why behind the why behind the why? Or am I just guessing that they showed up on time and they smiled and nodded and they, they looked enthusiastic? Because I got to tell you, they're faking it. They're being polite. What they do right after those meetings— because I've been there, I've seen it— They go and huddle and they belittle the need, the lockouts that you have, and all of a sudden your deal that looks rock solid may not be. If you want to learn how to win the complex sale, go to b2brevenue.com right now and sign up for the course. If you need to build up your pipeline and you're sick of spamming and robocalling all day, Start the conversation, get the meeting. It's how A-players fill up their pipeline without doing all the silly, stupid spam. Don't need an SDR. You can do it all in 30 minutes a day and have a nice full pipeline. But who wants that? I don't know, just A-players. We'll see you next time.