HOW THE SMARTEST PEOPLE SELL DIFFERENTLY AND WIN MORE DEALS

This interview is a little bit different, and it surprised me because I've got a full-time booker and a producer, and they do a lot of hunting, trying to find the perfect guests for the show, people who have a unique view on sales, people that will add to the audience to give you a different perspective. Now, a lot of you think, oh, Brian, you talk a lot about selling SaaS or technology, but I sell something that's kind of old school or can be viewed As a commodity. Well, everything can be viewed as a commodity until you change it. We're going to talk a little bit about that today, but more is this journey that this person went through. And in the pre-call I had with him, I didn't realize that he had been such a long-term listener and had taken both courses and has his team going through Start the Conversation, Get the Meeting Right Now. And I've worked with Some of them. And, but that's not the point of the interview. The point of the interview is to show this journey, kind of a 10-year or so journey in sales and then moving into leadership by default. And we'll get into that as well because I maybe should do a show on what the right reason is to get into sales leadership. If you're interested in that, go listen to the Sales Leadership Show. I talk exclusively about those issues.

But what you'll get out of this show and this interview is tremendous.

The perspective of somebody who's been selling for 20-plus years, has moved up and built a business in what is thought of as a pure commodity— printing. Can you think of any— printing's been around for hundreds of years. And how do you differentiate? How do you win deals? How do you claw out the competitor and replace it with you? Not on price. It's not going to be price. Let's get into this. I think you'll get a lot out of it. It was a lot of fun doing it. And this, I've been saying like, this is one of those that you want to listen to over and over again.

Definitely.

Or at least download it and save it because iTunes only lets me have so much, so many episodes up there at once.

Here we go. Hey, Bart, thanks for joining us today. As a way of getting started, give us a little background on yourself.

Well, Brian, can't miss the opportunity to just tell you that I'm a huge fan of yours. I've listened to you for about a decade, and I'm also a graduate of your courses, Start the Conversation, Get the Meeting. and closing the complex sale. And my teammates and I use what you've told us to do for, gosh, over a decade. So thank you. A little bit about me. My name is Bart Prins, and there are 3 words that describe what I've done in sales for the last 20 years, and those 3 words are land and expand. Give you a little bit of background. So I started in sales as a BDR during the first dot-com boom, selling the first version of internet advertising to digital advertising agencies. From there, I joined another digital media company where I served as a new business player coach for the first time. And then 15 years ago, I joined my current employer, Taylor Corporation, and today I serve as the Chief Business Development Officer for the corporation. So I mentioned land and expand. As a theme throughout my career, because in every one of those roles I just mentioned, I always had, on the one hand, a lot of different solutions that I could offer. On the other hand, I had very large, very complex customers that had a lot of distinct needs, a lot of functions, a lot of different pockets of budget. And my role was really to sit in the middle and to understand how do we put together the right combination of people, processes and enabling technologies to figure out how are we going to acquire brand new customers and then strategically cross-sell existing customers, all within the context of a system. So just wrapping up, Ryan, I've always been in new business development, and it's really challenging, and I still love it.

And how did you come upon the land and expand approach versus trying to do, I guess, enterprise or switch out vendors or some other approach?

Well, we looked at our existing customers who most often were buying one solution from us, and we were organized in such a way that that was our focus, is just winning that business, serving it every single day. And then what happened is customers in business reviews would say, hey, I've kind of checked out Taylor Corporation. Looks like you do a lot of other things. Do you guys do this? Yeah, we do that. Okay, well, we're interested in that. So imagine that at scale happening hundreds and hundreds of times. Eventually, it's quite obvious, we said, well, rather than responding to customers who are asking us if they could do other business with us, what if we went on offense and started to help them understand not everything that we could do per se, but if they were, for example, a retail bank and they did one piece of business with us, well, other retail banks all buy this, this, and this, and we're really good at those other things. What if we were to not show them everything but just say, hey, by the way, we do this, this, and this. Is that something you'd be interested in? And we left those business reviews with a lot more yeses than nos.

And this sounds a lot like what people are calling today like product-led growth, where you try and get some usage, some activity between you and the customer And you land and expand. You kind of like add more capability, explain the other things that you guys can do for them.

Exactly. And what we've also been able to do is to analyze what our customers are buying, how they're buying it, and then logically put together a cadence of cross-selling motions That really— one time we use the analogy, it's like a locomotive and then the boxcars behind it. Those things go together logically. So once we land the locomotive, it's logical that they will buy these other solutions to attach to it because it makes their life easier. They get more visibility to the total spend, and it's much more efficient to do it that way versus having one vendor for this and then another and another and another. That doesn't really work well.

Yeah, and I got to imagine, is it really hard to get new clients?

It's always hard, absolutely. However, it happens every single day, and we do it every day. I mean, just in the last few years, I mean, hundreds and hundreds of new business relationships have been, been opened up. So we remember that, uh, to stay confident. Now, I will tell you that we've gotten a lot better at it because we've analyzed where do we win and why, where do we lose and why, and how do we, as you've preached, create a system that helps us match data and insights and logic with, you know, allowing room for the art of sales to happen. And how do we go after customers that look like our best ones? So that's where we focus. And I would say our success rate in opening up new relationships has really increased because we've become much more disciplined in where we try to get that new business.

And who's your ideal customer? Have you really honed in on that?

Oh, absolutely. So large consumers of what we do in our business, which is provide printed communication products, services, and technology. So think of big insurance companies, retailers, banks, healthcare systems, consumer goods companies. I mean, it goes on and on and on. So companies that buy a lot of what we sell, that's always a question we've asked ourselves and answered. Hey, has anybody done homework on, do these people buy what we sell? Probably a good thing to figure out. The companies in those markets buy a lot of what we sell. The next question is, do they buy it for the reasons that match up with our value proposition, which is to say, is our solution portfolio considered strategic for them or is it just a commodity to them? Is our solution considered one that is used to make money or is it like, listen, we just need to buy this stuff from someone, so we'll work with just about anybody? A few more things. So typically B2C brands, they buy a lot of what we sell, And then the more complex, the better, because we have so many different tools in our toolkit. A lot of our competitors just can't play in that quadrant of massive needs, high complexity, and we shine there.

And how do you stay out of that commodity trap? Because everyone wants to pull us into it because that's where they have all the power.

Right.

And once we're in it, then it's just price.

So we have a couple of checks in our system. First of all, it starts with targeting the right ICPs. Are we going after companies that in our experience view our solutions as value-adding? They are on the make money side of the business?

Okay.

Yes, most of the time. So for example, to make it concrete, we do a lot of new customer acquisition, retention, and cross-selling for major P&C insurance companies. So they use our products, our integrated direct marketing solutions to find customers, sell more to existing customers and keep the ones they have. That is the make the money side of the business. So they are less likely to commoditize what we do. So the first thing is go after the right customers. Next, when we get an opportunity, we analyze it to assess how is the customer buying what we're selling. And we can get into everything from, well, here is a reverse auction link, go ahead and just fill this out. You're probably one of 25 vendors and we'll let you know if you get anything. Okay, okay, we know how that's going to go. To— On the other end of the spectrum, a customer who says, listen, we're not going to market with this, it's not an RFP, we just want to talk to you. We know, like, and trust you, Brian, as you've helped us build that up. We just want to have a conversation, and that is a different type of deal. So that is how we stay out of the commodity trap, by not letting ourselves get into it. And as painful as it may be, disqualifying respectfully engagements that don't fit how we sell.

Because that, that is the key thing. Too many of us, if somebody seems like they're interested and want to buy or even will talk to us, we just jump on it. And we, we don't let it go until it's too late, until they ghost us.

Exactly. So what we found to be helpful is what we just call reality check moments. So in our business development organization, we regularly look at what have we won and why, what have we lost and why, how do we scale up trying to get more business that looks like the ones we We win the deals we win, and then how do we just cut bait on ones that we're never going to win? This one, I can tell you right now, it feels good to have this in the pipeline. We are not going to win this deal based on— it's not a perfect fit for us. I guess technically we could do it, but also look at how the customer is buying. I'll give you one more concrete example of what I'm talking about. And I think you've said it before, one of your guests said that the deals that you're going to win, they just feel different. They just feel different. When you're asking a customer, hey, I need a little bit more information to really make sure that I nail this part of the solution we're, we're developing for you. Do you get an answer? Hey, I just need 20 minutes of your time. Could you bring the 3 people together that we're working with? Yes, we will give you that meeting. Those are things that logically buyers do when they're going to buy. And if they're not going to buy, You get ghosted. So that is a deal I can predict we're not going to win that deal.

And a lot of people don't look for those things. And if you put those into your sales processes, little tests, little signs of interest and match, because it's a person-to-person thing. Like if you meet somebody at a party, like what do you talk about? You have something in common.

Mm-hmm.

And hopefully between us and our customers, solving that problem or fulfilling that need is the thing in common.

Right.

And if both people aren't interested, it's probably not going to turn into a transaction.

It's not. And again, it's painful for a business development manager to walk away. They get happy years, and, and I don't blame them. I've been a BDM for a long time, and I've had my share of happy years. But I also think that it's important for salespeople to act like business people. And when I see business people talk to other business people, they're not pushing, they're not persuading. They're saying, hey, this is what we do, we're really good at it. If there's a fit here, fantastic, we would love to work on something with you. And if not, that's totally okay too. I think it's important to strategically remove the pressure from the engagement, because you're more likely to get a very sincere outcome of the meeting. It's almost like if there's not a fit here, I've got plenty of other things to work on. We're not desperate here. But if there's a fit, we'd love to work with you. It's okay to just walk away.

You take the pressure off the situation and you build rapport because, you know, too many people try and think, oh, I gotta be the trusted advisor. I think you more need that partner in crime.

Mm-hmm.

Rapport, where you feel like we're both trying to accomplish something.

Right.

And we're both trying to get our companies to solve a problem.

Right.

Now, what drives you? Because you— this is a compliment— you don't appear like a sales guy.

Thank you.

It is a compliment.

I've been a sales guy. I think of myself as a business person, and I try to train salespeople to think like business people. They're running, you know, their own territory, their own patch. You're the CEO of it. Treat it like a business. And in fact, we've been fortunate to hire into our business development organization people that have run businesses. They've been, let's say, maybe a broker. They've run a production facility. They understand a P&L, and we can connect on that level. Your question, what drives me? I love building. I love building things. In our market, to provide some context, and I want to address this, your listeners may say, gosh, most of your guests are in SaaS and technology. We certainly sell a lot of technology solutions in our portfolio, but we have really built a business in printed customer communications that brands use. What I'm talking about are point-of-sale signage, labels, packaging, marketing materials, store kits that go out to a— I mean, the good news is they're things that get used every day. In fact, our market is valued at $80 billion domestically. I would challenge any of your listeners to next time they're in a department store, at a drugstore, a grocery store, when they open their email inbox, when they open their mailbox, Hey, it's a digital-first world, couldn't get it more, and we're moving in that direction. There's an ocean of print out there. What drives me is building an organization that's able to take an existing market where there's a lot of spend already, it's going to someone, and then figuring out how do we start to look and feel and operate like a super efficient, data-driven, SaaS company. And I just admire how those companies are just really disciplined in how they go after a market, how they communicate, how they score deals, etc., etc. I find that putting that combination of kind of an analog business with a digital go-to-market approach, I find that thrilling.

Yeah, because a lot of people in this type of space would more have like a service mindset. Which is okay, but it doesn't really help you grow the business. You have a nice set of customers that are happy, like you, like the product. But I like the land and expand and the analytical approach to it without it being focused on activity.

It's best to expand with a happy customer. So you have to nail both things. You have to nail the service And nail the strategic business development as well.

And how did you get the people above you bought into this? Because I got to imagine they didn't have the same mindset at first.

Perform.

That's my advice to anybody that wants to drive change. You've got to perform with what you have, and it may not be perfect, and it may not be fair, You just have to figure it out. I mean, that's why, you know, I have such a high opinion of elite salespeople. You got to figure it out. Once you've performed well, then you can start asking for things. And run some experiments. Don't make a big deal of it. Don't ask for too much too soon, but perform with what you have. Ask for a little bit more budget. Ask for some free rein to take some risks. Make that work and then ask for more after that.

Yeah, because a lot of people will just be subservient. And I'd love to try that, but my boss wants me to do this. And I go, okay, but if what you do doesn't work, whose fault is it?

Mm-hmm.

Boss says, I'm gonna say I was wrong again.

Well, and as you've told us so many times, bosses love, uh, Unexpected happy news, good news.

Everyone loves a surprise.

So, you know what? From time to time, you may need to just experiment with something a little under the radar. I mean, don't do anything that's going to get you in trouble, but try new things. And when they work, you're able to go to your boss, say, listen, I have been experimenting with it. And the good news is it's working. I just landed these 2, 3 deals by doing this. They're going to love hearing that because it put money in the bank.

And what do you hear from your team when you hire them and they might be used to a different approach?

Well, we explain our approach to the people that we're looking to hire and we make sure that they're on board. And frankly, the people that are drawn to this role, when we talk about a new approach, they love it. They understand that things have changed, as you would tell us, that sales has changed. And the people that fit in really well here in our organization are intrapreneurial, as you might say.

Yeah.

They, they love the idea. They're not— maybe they don't want to be out on their own as an entrepreneur. They don't want to be, you know, a cog in a big company. What we tell them is, listen, imagine coming to a company that had a lot of resources, a lot of solutions, a lot of customers with just oceans of cross-selling potential. Then imagine that we're going to give you a ton of tools and we're also going to give you the freedom to use those tools in a way that works well for you. Because with some humility, we don't have it all figured out.

Yeah.

There are lots of different ways to get to the peak of the mountain with that being defined as success. You can take the northern route, it's faster, it's a little steeper. You can take the southern route, but all the people that we work with get to the top of the mountain one way or another. And then we assess, gosh, that was an interesting way of, of cross-selling that solution or getting a new customer. And then the team is such that we love hearing about what everybody's doing and they feed off that. So that's how we do it.

Yeah, because I think people want autonomy. You know, certainly after they've built up a certain base in their career, a little too much autonomy might be bad, but a little bit is good.

Well, and all of our business development managers need different things. I mean, we have everything from very experienced BDMs that need one thing from me. They need, for example, just smooth things out internally a little bit. Can you make this call? Can you do that? That is what he or she needs. Then you have another BDM who's really strong, but maybe not from our industry per se, and is a good salesperson, but they need a different type of help understanding our solutions and navigating the organization. And so you really have to custom apply how you help them to what they need, and not bring a one-size-fits-all. If I take some of our best people and start to micromanage them, that's counterproductive for everybody.

Right, because we all think that the activity is going to all work out. And I got to believe in your space that that's not it. It's much more of building a rapport with the other person, a level of trust, getting them to really share what they want to do, and then separate you guys from your competition.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

And why did you get into leadership?

You might say that leadership found me rather than I found it or sought it out. What happened is a good while back, I was an individual contributor and an opportunity presented itself to step into a leadership role, a role that had been vacated. And I was approached with the role and, you know, asked would I do it, but sort of, you know, this is what you're going to be doing next. And I reflected on it. I said, okay, one of two things is going to happen here. I'm either going to decline the role and then someone else is going to step into it, and someone who, you know, with all due respect, may be great on paper but doesn't know from day one what needs to be done, how our business works, and what do the BDMs really need. Because I am a BDM, I can tell you what the BDMs on this team need. So one option was just to pass, let somebody else fill it, or I could just step into the role, say, listen, I'll just do it because I can tell you for the next 2, 3 years, we're going to do this, this, and this. And as a BDM, I know how this job works and I can help these people. So I guess I'll just do it. So I sort of just did it too, because I would rather take control of things than have those things happen to me.

Well, I gotta tell you, you're the first one to admit that, because the both times I went into leadership, it was because of that. It was the idea of working for some new guy coming in who has who knows what plan. So then I'm gonna have to change jobs no matter what.

Right.

Which is kind of scary that that, that happens so often.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. And what was that first year like?

It was a mix of supreme confidence because, again, I was now leading the function in which I was an individual contributor. So I knew day to day, here's the things that work well, here's how to do the job, here's what doesn't work, here's what needed to be fixed. So moments of supreme confidence, but then also moments of sheer terror in that I was relatively junior to my peers at the time. And I was now, you know, I went from, there's a book called, you know, From Bud to Boss. So I was now the boss and I had a lot of very capable people looking at me saying, okay, now we like you, trust you, but you're in charge. What are we going to do? So, and everything in between. So at the end of that year, a lot more confidence than any moments of terror, but it would be insincere for me to say that I didn't have both.

And were there any particular either mistakes or lessons that first-time leaders could learn from, from that first year? Because that first year is really hard.

It is. Well, I would tell you that the first thing that we needed to change was, and Brian, you've said it better than anybody, I'm so glad I get to mention it, that customers are cats and salespeople are dogs. If I had heard that earlier, I would have made changes to our go-to-market right away, in that I would have changed the mindset of the organization where this is not about pushing people and persuading. It doesn't like— it doesn't work. They don't like it. Stop doing it. So I probably would have focused less on Trying to prove that activity levels were up with me, that pipeline was up with me in charge, and other sort of metrics that ultimately—now thank goodness we did perform—but didn't really tell the story of how we should be performing. They did not express productivity; they expressed activity that you know did lead to results. But that's what I would have done is I would have just been more confident in. Saying timeout, sales has changed, we've got to just sell differently.

And you already had that empathy, that understanding that, you know, you don't bark at customers, or the, the faster you run at them, the faster they run away.

Oh yeah.

Like cats. And that you kind of coax them.

Absolutely.

A little water, a little food.

Mm-hmm.

Throw a little fluffy ball around.

You know, Brian, if one of the— now that I'm a senior leader in the company, and we have in our organization, not a huge, but we have a budget for purchasing sales tech, martech tools, advertising, things of that nature. So my point is, I'm called on and meet with vendors regularly. And I have learned so much about professional B2B selling Being on the buying side, and I'm much more assertive with buyers now that I've, and I'm able to coach my team much more effectively because I'll talk about an experience with what you know some people may consider you know a blue chip technology company that called on us, and I would say let me just take you through how the engagement went. This, this, this, and this. None of this worked for me, and I was actually interested in buying. So they, they went into the deck. They didn't ask me, what do you— how do you want this meeting to go? To which I would have said, listen, I can't— why don't I just tell you what I'm looking for, what I think you can do, and then we'll just have a conversation, maybe go to the deck. But instead, no. You, Bart, you are on the other side. You're going to listen to my deck because that's what I've been trained to do. And at the end, With 30 seconds left, I'll ask if you want to have another meeting. I'm sitting there and I'm to the vendor. I'm like, listen, in my head, I'll just, I'll give you the answers to the test. And so we've trained our salespeople to say, listen, be empathetic. Just ask, remove the mystery. What kind of meeting do they want to have? Do they want to have a deck? Do they just want to talk? Do they want to start off? It's all based on what they want. Don't just pitch.

Yeah, I, I went through a similar situation just at the end of the year. I bought probably my largest thing, and I could just tell where I was in their cadence and the handoff. And they'd have, you know, the last person attend the meeting but not say anything other than hello, and I could tell that they were working and they just wouldn't drop off the line.

Mm-hmm.

And the other person was just Literally giving me the recording, but it was live.

Yep.

And I'm like, just send me a link to the YouTube video, I'll watch it myself, and then, then we can have a call, you know, because you do want to learn about it, but you want to learn from where you are to where you want to go, not everything.

It goes back to how New buyers buy, Brian, as you've talked about. And in fact, when we've taken the approach of opening up a meeting, I'll open it up, say, listen, I, I don't buy nearly as much as you do. We'll talk to— we typically sell to marketing organizations. I don't buy nearly as much as you do, but I buy a fair amount. And as a result, I'm in some great vendor meetings. I'm in some terrible vendor pitches, and I remember them. And so I always try to just open up, how do you want this to go? And I've actually had a customer say, you know what, I've never been asked that. So that's, that's shocking to me. I'm glad I did ask. But they'll say, thank you for asking. Here's kind of how we see, we see the next, you know, 45 minutes going. And then they were bought in. They're like, this is one of the good ones. Thanks for at least asking.

Well, when you start where they are, they already have like a little bit of a question. Maybe if they don't, they might say, well, tell us a little bit about you and your company. Fine. You've got the permission to then, right? You maybe go 5 minutes, then check in with them. You know, is that what you thought we did? And kind of build up, because until they talk, what do you have?

Right.

You know, it's, it's selling without being salesy. They don't I tell our salespeople, I tell our young talent coming into the organization, you need to, especially the young talent, you need to unlearn everything that you've seen in movies and that you think sales is. Please give me the chance. We're going to totally start over. This is not about pitching persuasion. This is not, you know, small transaction, B2C, high-volume selling that you've seen in the movies. This is professional Big budget, B2B complex sales, and it just works differently.

And what do you think separates you from other salespeople?

I am a relentless learner. That's one of the things that I've learned separates me. I listen to your podcast, as we talked about in the conversation leading up to This one I listen to every day. I would say no less than 2 or 3 hours of very intelligent people talking about business, about professional selling, about where the world is going. And there's not a day that goes by that I can't take a little nugget of gold out of something that I listen to and then apply it to our business. So a relentless commitment to learning, and self-improvement, I believe, is one of the things that sets me apart. And then I'm very, very empathetic. And I know that word is used all the time, but I spend a lot of time before I would craft an outbound communication asking myself, okay, if I'm on the receiving end of it, does it make sense? Do I get it? Am I suffering from the curse of knowledge, as you've talked about, where I know what this stuff means, and I find it interesting, but they may be like, this is jargon, I have no idea what this means. So I will really kind of be empathetic and beat up our communications, beat up our proposals, beat up how our business review is going to go by asking, if I'm on the receiving end of it, what does it look like? How does it feel? And is it going to get the reaction we want?

Yeah. And how have you avoided the B-player trap? I mean, you've been at a— you've had a great run at this company. How did you keep that momentum, that learning, that curiosity, that desire to become better, as opposed to thinking, I'm the best there is?

Well, it's a mix of— are you familiar with the work of— I think you are— Dr. Chris Croner? with his Sales Drive Assessments. So he's a guy that has an assessment system. And he has 3 criteria that he looks for in, in business development managers in particular. And one of them is just an absolute need for achievement, not need for fame or money, but almost a need, because these people are so uncomfortable not being successful. I can sort of relate to that, the fear of not being successful. motivates me, and I find that's positive for me.

Um, also, would you consider that like a chip on the shoulder? Some, some kind of—

Yeah, that could be one thing, but it's— I have high expectations of myself, and as I, you know, rest my head on my pillow every night, I need— I have to feel good about myself. I'm uncomfortable not having done my best. I'm uncomfortable not being an A-player. So that's one thing. I've also stayed out of that trap because the world changes. And just because I was adaptable today and I was good today, that would be great if the world didn't change every day, but it is changing more and faster and is going to continue to do so from here on out for the rest of my career. So I see it as I need to be an A-player so that I can adapt to where the world is going. And if I don't adapt, it's going to leave me behind. And I'm going to be in the senior part of my career as someone that is incapable of adapting to the new way of buying and selling.

Because that element, that relentlessness, that inability to Just get in that comfort zone has been very consistent among the great sales reps I talked to. You didn't happen to be a middle child, did you?

Only child.

Only child. And, and what, what did you experience as a, as a kid as far as being good enough? Or did you just play sports? Was there particular competitive situation that you were in?

Yeah, I played sports. I was good, not great. What really drove me was I had a dad who was very, very hardworking, didn't come from a lot, and achieved, and everything he got, he made. And then his peer group, sort of the community in which we lived in, which just had a lot of high-achieving people. So the expectation was for high performance. And so you didn't want to kind of fall out of step of that. Certainly, this is not a rags-to-riches story, but it's almost like, listen, with a lot of options in life comes a lot of responsibility. And it's up to you. You have a responsibility to make the most of those and be a high achiever, which includes performing professionally, Giving back, being a good parent. Expectations are high. That, that, that's driven me.

And I heard the kind of keeping up with what's working so that you don't get put out of the market by not being competitive. Now, that fear of loss— that— was there any trauma, any loss of something, or tragedy, or Anything like that?

Not one trauma. I would say, you know, 1,000 mini traumas of seeing that what worked 6 months ago, this isn't working anymore. This is getting played out. This is over. And my quota is not getting smaller. And I have to make my quota to make ends meet. So it was that. It wasn't one big thing. It's just if you observe where we've been, so Going back to my start in the first dot-com boom as a BDR, the phone worked, emails worked. I actually shared with one of my colleagues the other day, I had people that I was cold emailing that would write back and say, oh, I'm, I'm not really interested, but I'm sorry, it took me a few days to get back to you. There was a time that that actually happened in email. So then that started to work less. Then, you know, just fast forwarding, we got all these automation tools. And there was a point where, hi, first name, you know, is company name interested? That worked for a little bit.

It did.

And then it got abused, and then it didn't, and it doesn't anymore. And so it's like all this stuff has a shelf life of, you know, 18 months, and then it's on to the next thing. So expectations, my expectations of myself and the corporation of me and my, me of my, uh, my BDMs, that isn't going down. We have to constantly be looking for what's next and adapting like a mammal would in a changing climate.

That's it.

And a lot of people are looking for that gimmick that will work 100% of the time. And, and they copy each other, but that's what causes it to not to work. Right? Everyone does it.

And then it gets abused. And, you know, I, again, going back to empathy, I feel for prospects because again, I'm on the receiving end of that stuff and they get it 10 times more than me. I'm just like, listen, this— what is this? There's no way, there's no way this works. There's no way this— but I don't think they know what else to do.

They don't know what else to do. And then they go and copy the company that's in the tornado, right? And they go, well, the company in the tornado's got a big brand. that everyone understands. People are recognizing the need, they recognize the problem. You're a little bit already there, but you don't have that with things like printing. You've got to build—

Oh, not at all. It's one thing to make a call, you know, hypothetically, where we've invented, you know, the Uber for the construction materials business, and to call on construction materials buyers and saying we've created the Uber for that business. Well, I would listen to it. I mean, that seems kind of interesting. Oh, you know, that is working. It's a whole different thing to try to replace an existing, oftentimes very mature category with entrenched existing suppliers. Now, the good news is they already spend money in the category in which we're calling on, and there's always opportunities to bring that spend over to us. The bad news is, you know, we don't We're not calling with an Uber of whatever that is going to pique their interest.

Right.

But you're able to do it.

Yeah, we make it work.

Hey, Bart, I really appreciate your time today and enjoyed the call. Where can people go to connect and follow you?

On LinkedIn. I'm very active. Bart Prins at Taylor Corporation on LinkedIn.

I know we covered a lot in that interview, and that's why you need to listen to it over and over again, because when you make the These shifts in mindset, in skill set, that's when your game increases. Too many of us early in our career, we're looking for that little trick, the little gimmick, you know, following some failed SDR on LinkedIn. And what are they talking about? What's the new subject line? What's the new breakup email? Yeah, I mean, Okay. Yeah, there's some value to that. But the problem is, as soon as everyone starts using it, the effectiveness goes down. What never changes is that we're selling to another mammal. And we try and stay at that professional human level, but you're still a stranger to them. And when you meet a stranger, guess what you do? That reptilian brain says, stranger? I don't know them. Are they going to help me, hurt me, or leave me alone? If you can build your sales process at that level, the effectiveness goes up exponentially. If you stay at that logical prefrontal cortex level, you're never going to sell. People don't buy there. They explain why they buy there, but the decision is made at that reptilian brain. And if you can get there and hack to that level, that's what start the conversation and get the meetings all about. It's about becoming part of their tribe, becoming trusted. I hate the word trusted advisor because it's— it kind of implies that you have both trust and advice. And a pitch is not advice. A pitch is just a pitch. It's just a commercial. And I think it's been done too much. Can it still work? Yeah, if you repeat it long enough and you happen to find somebody with active pain. But until the pain is active, people don't want to buy and solve problems. You don't solve problems that you don't believe you have. You don't take aspirin for a headache you don't have. You have to have the headache. Now, this is some of the Critical elements of selling. And if you can build up a system for this, that's when you succeed. Don't let it take 10 years. Now, a lot of people say, well, that costs money. I did the math, and it basically— if you're making $250,000 a year, it costs one day's pay. If you're making $125,000, it takes two days' pay. Now, you could say, well, you're right, that's not much, but it lasts forever. The skill lasts forever if you apply it, if you can pull your head out for a few minutes and assume that you're not perfect. You know, because I just— before I started recording this, I saw some comments on a video I did. Clearly, the person didn't even watch the video. And what I love is when the video is about listening and they didn't watch or listen to the video. And they put some little comment down there. And I'm like, no wonder you can't sell. You don't listen. You think you know it all. And what did you learn? What are you giving? And this is kind of that B-player trap that we get into. It's real comfortable. And it's almost impossible to avoid. It's the confirmation. What we need to do in sales is, and when we're in front of clients, be prepared and confident. When we're not in front of clients, we should be tearing apart our deal. What is the weakest part? What are they most likely going to do? What would I do if I was them? What would somebody else do if they were them? And be able to empathize, put yourself in the other person's place, and understand how they get rewarded, what they care about, and how they explore Fixing problems. This is what we teach in the courses. We did a great office hours yesterday. When you hear people break through, when they get that little dopamine hit and they start to see the momentum, and then all of a sudden prospecting turns into fun, it turns into a game, it turns into play, it becomes predictable because you know where you are. And what you need to do to get it to the next step. It takes a little exploration. It takes a little humbling of our skills because we're naturally taught to talk about us and what we do. And that— there's a time for that. It's not that that's not good, but that wrong time is immediately. People need to warm up to you. I'm not talking about just rapport and stuff. I'm talking about— Trust. The psychology of meeting a stranger, being approached by somebody they do not know. How do you break through that and become known, liked, and trusted? There's a formula for that. It's been developed. You can learn it. And once you do, you can master it. And imagine if you mastered the ability of getting meetings, starting conversations, and then you got a deal. What if you could master the ability to keep the deal on track, to keep the deal bigger and faster without losing control. That's what it's all about. Check it out at b2brevenue.com. Thanks for listening. Tell a friend about the show. Check out the other podcasts, Sales Questions, Brutally Honest Answers, The Sales Leadership Show, and The B2B Revenue Leadership Show.

I was just going to give a bit of a testimonial if that's all right, just to kick it off.

Only if it's positive.

No, it is positive. It was a— yeah, just because I started the course, I think in June of last year, 2021. I got a few more months left of access, which is good. But I feel like it's been a transformative experience in my own personal and professional life. I was able to go from a period of a low sales slump in the middle of last year in the summer and early fall, and then really was able to then come back and exceed my target by the end of the, by the end of the 4th quarter. And so the only other thing I would say is that it's also really differentiated me amongst people on the sales team in terms of focus and clarity of what's important. And now I feel really good about what I'm doing in terms of the approach of reaching out to customers and having those conversations and being focused as opposed to just doing a lot of the other busy work on the side, like organizing resources and doing business analytics and all this other stuff. And so it's really been a noticeable difference with our executive team at my company. And so I just want to thank you for the content and for these opportunities. And so I hope that helps. If there's anybody new, it's— I'm a work in progress, but it's getting better.

Good. Yeah. And you're selling pretty hard stuff.