HOW TO BECOME YOUR OWN CHAMPION AND WIN THE LARGE B2B DEAL

I'm sure you've all heard the term, if you don't have a champion, you don't have a deal. And that's pretty consistent in my experience. But there's degrees of champions. You have the, the raving fan who will put his job on the line to get your product in there because it really helps them, helps the company, changes their world. And then you have On the other end, people who want it, need it, can afford it, but don't know how to get it done. And if they meet any resistance, they give up. Is that a champion? Eh, that's all you have to work with, right? Today's guest has a territory which it's more the latter, where the people, yeah, they want it, they need it, but they don't know how to get it done. They're not very motivated. They're not driven by profit or career advancement. By retirement and their pensions. So what do you do in a case like that? Big organizations. And I've never had a rep on the show that covers this type of territory— state and local government and education, uh, what we call in the U.S. SLED, S-L-E-D, state, local, and education. This These territories are hard. I've sold to state governments before, but more on reactive, not on purpose, because they're so difficult. Because selling to even-keeled people who are happy, they have problems, but they don't care because they get paid either way. They're, you know, generations behind in technology and automation. So, you prioritize, right? You work on most likely to close to least likely to close. And if you don't have somebody on the other side excited and willing to stick their neck out, what do you do? You know, in most cases, you move on to something easier. But if you only have that in your territory, You have to create magic. And that's what we're going to talk about today is creating that magic, becoming and behaving like your own champion. Today's guest has become the master of this. This is his strategy, not out of bravado, but out of necessity. We're going to get into this. And this is one of the interviews If you hear state and local, everyone thinks their territory is completely different, but the behavior of a complex sale is very consistent. It's just that somebody has to do all that work and has to know how to get that work done. And we've talked in the past interviews about kind of viewing the large complex sale as a project management project. And it kind of is. You're a project manager. With no authority, meaning that you have to recruit, you have to motivate, you have to direct and give motivation to people that don't work for you, that don't owe you anything, that don't report to you, that aren't under your supervision. It has to be voluntary and organic. Let's get into this interview. I think you're really going to like this. This is one that, uh, at first I was like, I'm not sure the audience will get this or not. But as I spoke with Ryan, I really thought this was probably one of my best interviews ever. I think you're going to enjoy it. Think it through. If you're in closing the complex sale, make sure you check out office hours for yesterday. I Covered this in detail. We talked it through with several examples. I think you'll appreciate it. It'll become more and more part of Closing the Complex Sale because it's a skill level thing. To know that it's possible is nice. To hear how one person does it, it's nice. But how do I do it in my world? That's the challenge. So go check out Closing the Complex Sale. If you're in it already, make sure you're listening to the office hours. But before we get into the interview, the number one problem in sales today is practice. How do we practice? We don't get the number of conversations that we're used to. Not able to get people on the phone. Takes forever to get a meeting. So when we do, we have to show up with our A-game. But how do we do that? We can plan.

Sure.

We can write out our conversation, think it through, have some structure to it. Rehearse it, but it's not live. It's not interactive. We're not verbalizing it. We're thinking it, which is better than nothing, but not good enough. Brevity Pitch has solved this problem. Now, instead of doing it with another human being, it does it with AI, but it's a real human voice even though it's generated by a computer. Now, being able to do this, get your reps in both in things that you anticipate and the surprises. Do it with different personality types, aggressive, passive, all of these things that enable us to get those reps in. This is what they call deliberate practice. Doing something, getting feedback, doing it again. And repetition is the mother of skill. But in sales, how do we get those reps without it affecting our income? And trying to get someone else to help us, uh, we've tried that. Doing it in the mirror, you feel goofy. But you want to talk to something that is as close to a real human being as possible, but on our time frame, at our convenience, to the extent that we want to. Check out brevitypitch.com. It's the future of sales practice. Let's get into the interview. I'll sum it up at the end. Hey, Ryan, thanks for joining us today.

Where are you getting started? Give us a little background on yourself.

Awesome. Yeah, thanks for having me, Brian. My name is Ryan Trudeau. I am a beast in Minneapolis. And yeah, I would love to give some background kind of on my sales journey. My sales journey kind of— I'm gonna bring you all the way back really quickly actually to high school, kind of when I was an adolescent really trying to figure out what I wanted to do. I'm in high school. I knew I wanted to continue with a post-secondary education. Had no idea what I wanted to do, right? So I had an awesome guidance counselor at the time, right, that's— had told me about a major in management information systems. And there was a couple of things that really stood out to me about that major. It was technology-focused, and she had indicated to me that somebody had just graduated with that major and had landed a 6-figure job post-graduation. I was like, I'm all for it. Like, that's what I will— that's what I want. I was all in, love technology. Wanted that type of salary. And anything that I like, that I put my heart to and I commit to, I see through absolutely to the end. And I kind of envisioned myself, right, like being that person that those guidance counselors could go talk about. So went through that whole major, graduated with, you know, with incredible grades, felt like I put myself up for success, you know, did a few different internships. You know, graduated, and then I, you know, hit the market in Minneapolis. It was a very challenging, challenging job market and ended up taking a job as a help desk technician. Very different than where I thought things were gonna go. But I told myself, hey, you know what? I'm still gonna commit to this job. I'm gonna see this through, and I'm going to give it my all. And that's what I did. And I really started to work myself up. the ranks within IT where I, you know, got into software engineering, even was a developer kind of at one point, and got to the point where I actually landed with a really small startup. When I got there, it was less than 20 people. So I wore many different hats. I was building different teams. I was building an implementation team. I was leading some product development. I was leading a strategic accounts team. I was helping with pre-sales engineering. And as the company really started to grow, I had a conversation with my CEO at the time and I was like, out of anything that I do, I like supporting the sales team. At the time it was, it was just 2 individuals. And I said, I really like supporting them and I think I could do that. Like, I think I could make that full-fledged leap into sales. I like being more customer-centric. I like being in front of those customers more than anything that I do. And he told me that he thought it was a great idea. He was in alignment to help me get to becoming a sales rep. But the biggest challenge that I had in that transition was that I still had those IT hats that people saw me wearing.

Yeah.

And I could never really fully transition into that sales role. So I felt it was in my best interest that if I was gonna commit to being in sales, I needed to leave that organization. I needed to go to a little bit larger organization where I was seen truly as a sales resource, not just that technical resource. And I could really start to hone in on that skill set. So that brought me to landing with an organization that sold to government. And I was new to sales. I knew nothing about selling to government, but I was ready to rock and roll. I was ready to go. So got in, I got into that role and My first year out of about 100 sales reps, I think we had at the time, I ended my first year being number 2 in the company. And I— there was 2 challenges I had with that though. One, I wasn't number 1. I want— I kind of set like an unrealistic goal that I wanted to be number 1. And I heard rumblings from other reps that had said that I was given kind of a lucrative territory. I was given a lucrative state, and that a lot of my success was based on luck. And the interesting thing about that too is that this luck actually came from the state of Oklahoma, who has one of the smallest state budgets in the country. But, you know, regardless, that stood out to me. And at the time, our sales team was actually struggling to fill a role in the Mid-Atlantic, in the Mid-Atlantic states, kind of that DMV area, DC, Maryland, Virginia. They have large budgets. And I went and spoke to my chief revenue officer at the time, and I said, I wanna move territories. I, I, you're struggling to fill that territory. We're struggling to have success, and I wanna prove to people that I can go be successful in a territory that no one's been successful in. Make a really long story short, he agreed to that. And that next year I ended up being the number 1 rep in the country or in our organization. And then I did that for a year and then ended up leading a sales team. So I led the eastern half of our state government sales team. And that's kind of brought me where I'm at today, where I am helping our current organization get into the state, local, and higher education market. So I am building out an entire team right now.

And did you proactively pick this market? Because SLED is notoriously difficult. State, local education. I mean, it is rough.

I actually tried to get out of it. I can't believe I'm even saying that. So I went, it is so hard and I did really well selling into government, but it's challenging to your point. You know, I can talk to some of those challenges, but I, after where I left that organization, I was like, I'm gonna go into commercial selling. I don't wanna sell into government anymore. I was a little bit burnt out from it. I lasted 90 days outside of, you know, selling into government and a mentor of mine had kind of roped me back into— he had just become a CEO of an organization, the organization I work for today. And he said, hey, you know, we're selling to federal government right now. We want to expand this back, you know, expand this into SLED. Come help us figure that out. So 90 days later, I was back selling into government. I'm actually really grateful for where I'm at. I have kind of created that niche now selling into government, and I've enjoyed I've enjoyed it.

And what do you like about it? Is it— I mean, the people are very nice.

They are absolutely incredible. There's a few things I like about it. One, I would say you truly feel like you're making a difference, you know, selling to government organizations, especially with some of the products that I have sold in the past at a previous organization. I sold a communications solution. that became fundamental to helping communicate, you know, pandemic-related information, you know, during COVID And I truly felt like I was making a difference. And even in the, you know, the role that I'm in right now, I work a lot with Office of Inspector Generals and auditors. And again, I feel like I'm helping essentially save taxpayer money and helping kind of reduce, um, you know, the abuse and fraud, um, and waste that kind of comes sometimes, you know, in the government sector. Um, so I, I just feel that I'm making a difference. And again, I, I feel like I've created a little bit of a niche, you know, for myself. It's a little bit different. Um, but I, I feel like I've kind of figured out, I guess, government selling for the most part. I continue to learn every day, but I figured out a few things.

But does your company understand How state, local, and education works and the issues, or do they just want somebody to cover it and figure it out and send us the POs?

No, that's an awesome question. No, I think they have it. They understand. I think they have an understanding of state and local. I'm in a very fortunate position where the CEO of my company, he actually used to sell into the state market. So he has a little bit of an understanding. of how it works. But I think that the thing that we have learned, again, I mentioned that our company primarily has sold into the federal government. A lot of what federal government does cascades down to state and local. So the same challenges that the federal government is having, state, local, and higher education are having many of those same challenges. So it— we have been able to solve many gaps within federal government, and now we've been able to address those same gaps of state, local, and higher education as well.

What I always noticed was that I agree completely with that, but state and local, you know, their funding cycles, their fallout budgets, the planning is very different. The use of system integrators is very different than the federal government. And you're dealing with people who don't have profit motive, they have pension motive. Yeah, they all have pensions.

Yes. Um, I, I— they're just a little bit change, uh, averse too, like they don't like change.

Why would you go work for the state local government if you like change, right?

You know, in that, I think that's the interesting thing, right?

I—

in selling into SLED, I am really— I'm obviously, you know, um, here and there selling against other competitors, But what I'm selling to a lot is status quo. I will, I will never forget, and I won't call the state out, but I was talking to an agency a couple months ago, and it was, it was an auditor, and he had a very manual process, and he was talking about that actually a lot of what they're doing is, you know, writing things down like they're not even using anything electronically. So I started talking to him about the efficiencies of, you know, moving his workflow. You know, to streamline his workflow into a digital means. And he just wasn't interested in it. So I actually used the pandemic. I said, hey, when you were, you know, during the pandemic, how are you collaborating with your team if you're doing everything on paper? And he goes, honestly, we're taking our papers, we're meeting in a parking lot and exchanging papers, and that works for us and we like that process. So to your point, like, it can be really challenging to get people across that finish line.

Yes.

But I truly think, and I was just having this conversation today, I think if you can start to connect the dots for some of these government employees of how we can help you make your lives easier, like, I hate to say it like this, but they want to work 9 to 5, right? They do. And I think if I, if I can, if I can help them understand This solution is going to help you work that 9 to 5, and it is going to make your job a lot easier and kind of help them envision themselves in that platform. That's where I start to see a lot of success. But I would say the bigger challenge that I see too in government is even if they want technology, they know it's so painful going back to your budget comment. They know it's so painful to try to—

Process.

It's exactly it. Try to require a solution. And that's where some of my success has come is in this. I think this is, you know, selling commercially or government, but especially government. When you get that verbal, it's not even half. You're not even halfway there yet.

That's just the beginning.

It is just the beginning in a lot, especially when you're, you know, in the world that I'm in today, selling to audits and inspector generals. They haven't really acquired software before, so they have no idea what they're doing. So one thing I've really prided myself in is understanding that procurement process for them so they don't have to understand it. I've even really tried to build those relationships with procurement offices and central IT offices so I can truly guide them through the process. When I get them on board and they're like, all right, I can start to envision the value or the ROI behind this solution, now I can start to say, all right, we're gonna go on a little bit of a journey here. This is a 6-month journey where we are gonna have to be working with your IT team very closely. There are strict processes and security, you know, surveys that we're gonna have to go through. You know, there— we're gonna have to figure out what contracting is going to look like. Is this gonna have to go out to RFP? Are we gonna use a cooperative contract? And I try to walk them through that process. And I think that's where I start to really build that trust of, they start to understand, hey, this guy knows what he's talking about. He can truly help me get there. Let's go. Let's do this.

Because that is probably at least half the job.

It is half. A lot of prospecting I will do leads with procurement. I know that government employees, I think there's a shift happening a little bit as we start to see a younger generation too. And I think they are starting to get bought into the idea of digital transformation. But that's why initially my prospecting really starts with those procurement mechanisms to say, hey, I've sold to your state before. I have worked with your procurement team. I've worked with your IT team. I know what they're looking for. And if you feel like this was a solution that brought value to your organization, I can help you get it across the finish line.

Yeah, because in commercial, they have no clue about how to purchase anything. But then you add government where they've never met the procurement people.

Totally.

They're in a different town, a different county, and they've kind of learned how hard it is to get it done that they don't try.

That is exactly, exactly it.

And half your value is showing them how to get it done and that you know how to get it done.

That is exactly the value. You don't know how many times I have won deals purely because I know how to get the deal across the finish line. I've responded to RFPs where we're actually the second vendor in line and that first vendor had no idea how to procure in government. And they came back down to me and said, we can't get this across the finish line because they're unable to, you know, procure the solution. Can you help us? So that absolutely becomes kind of my asset and my value.

And did you come upon this skill or ability on your own, or did a manager say you better learn how to get the contract part down because you'll get a lot of stuff started and very little would come out?

It was a little trial by fire. I mean, I've had some great mentors in my life, especially coming, you know, from my first job in government. But it's— I was put in some situations where I had no other option but to figure it out. And I don't know if it's a blessing or a curse, but there are states that are far more difficult to procure in than others. And I felt like the first 6 months of me selling in the government, I hit all of those very challenging states right off the bat. And I quickly then started to realize, right, this, this can be how I win. This can be my success if I can go figure out how to do this in every single state and get ahead of all of this, understanding what cooperative contracts are, you know, accessible to me. starting to build relationships with central IT, understanding the inner workings of the relationship between the agency and between your central IT department. I'm like, to your point earlier, like, that can be the value that I bring, you know, to the organization. That's how I can truly gain their confidence and trust. So, yeah, it's something that I kind of had to learn on my own, and I'm so glad that I've learned it because, like I said, it's created a little bit— for good or bad, it's created a little bit of a niche for me.

It is.

And I bet your competitors, most of them just kind of assume that the client can figure this out on their own.

Totally. Totally. I had a competitor that tried stealing my procurement knowledge actually very recently. I had a competitor that was trying to swoop in, kind of steal a deal. The other rep on the other side was obviously holding on to that deal, but he That person had no idea how to get it across the finish line. So he was essentially using the buyer as a proxy to understand how I was going to get that deal across the finish line and then using that information to try to get his deal across the finish line. Copy you.

Yeah.

Yeah. So totally.

And what do you like about state and local? I mean, clearly you're passionate about it.

Yeah, definitely. You know, there's that, that's, there's definitely the niche piece. I, I like, I think one thing is it's very consistent from like a sales rep perspective, right? Working in commercial, you're always going to see the highs and the lows. Government doesn't, they always have budget, they always have money. It can be, all right, they're gonna tell you they don't have money. So a lot of it is, all right, I'm gonna help you go find, you know, find that money.

Yeah.

But they always have budget. They always have money. Like I mentioned earlier, they are behind the 8-ball, you know, from, you know, more commercial, you know, companies. But again, I truly think that they're starting to recognize that they have to catch up to commercial. And I think that really was highlighted during the pandemic. You had all of these physical entities, physical buildings that were closing down, and it was mayhem. Mayhem. People couldn't figure out how to get their unemployment benefits. People couldn't renew their driver's license. People couldn't register vehicles because you had a lot of these states where you could only do that in person. And so all of these states were, you know, started to realize, oh, we have to go through it. We have to start catching up to the commercial setting. We have to, you know, Figure out how we're gonna digitally transform. And if you've got government serving their constituents, you know, right? And now these constituents are so used to these seamless, you know, processes of like buying something on Amazon. How easy is that, right? And I think they're realizing that we have to catch up to that. It is so— everything in government is so painful. And we have to start mitigating some of that friction. We have to eliminate some of that friction that these constituents are having and truly make it easier for them. So they are looking to organizations for digital transformation efforts. And I think I'm in a very unique position. Government still continues to think that they're very unique. And I've had the opportunity to work for Tech companies that only serve government, and that has also been beneficial because I do see that trend where government agencies are a little skeptical buying commercial products. They do like to buy products where they believe that they're specifically built, you know, for government. So I just love helping these agencies make their constituents' life easier. I mean, that's truly what I love about it.

And what characteristic makes you a great salesperson in your opinion?

I, you know, I spoke a little bit about it in, you know, understanding, you know, the second half of that like procurement process. I think that's, you know, one thing that has really, really led, you know, to my success. The other thing that I think that I do really well is truly putting myself into the buyer's shoes, right? One thing I think sellers forget so frequently is buyers are getting flooded with emails, they're getting flooded with phone calls, um, and everybody thinks that they can, they can help these buyers. Um, but I, I think you, you truly, truly need to understand the pains and challenges that these, you know, some of these buyers are having. And I think it's also not a one-size-fits-all. I think I've done a really nice job at understanding the landscape within government. The challenges or issues that your practitioners are having are very different than what your leaders are having. That's similar in commercial. So understanding how you can help a practitioner versus a leader, I think, is so, is so is so important. So, you know, I think those are a couple of different things that have led to my success.

So when you prospect, do you go top down or bottom up? Have you found a procurement in?

I, it's funny what I do, something that's a little bit unique. What I have found is I kind of work in this parallel process where I know in my mind I essentially have to get 4 parties to buy off on a acquisition of a software, IT, procurement, leadership, and then the practitioners, like all 4 of those have to, have to be involved. One thing that I think has made me successful and has, you know, set me apart a little bit is first building those relationships within IT and procurement. As I stepped into this role and as I stepped into that previous role, that is one thing that I took some time to do is to lay that groundwork, call into procurement offices, make sure they know, you know, who I am. Call into central IT offices, start to build relationships there, make sure they know who I am. Not necessarily trying to sell to the procurement offices. I'm not necessarily trying to sell to IT. I just want them to know who I am, what our software is, and how I am, you know, going out to help their agencies. And I'm almost asking a little bit for a blessing, right, of, hey, I'm gonna go out to your agencies. I'm gonna talk to them about this solution. Here's how I think I can help them. Are you okay with that? And once I get that blessing, that really starts to help my conversations, right? Because then I can go back to those individuals and say, you know, I've spoken with your procurement team. They, you know, they want a statewide contract, or they understand how we would get a potential purchase across the finish line. Or maybe it's IT. You know, I understand your state's IT requirements. You know, you have NIST standards, or you have FedRAMP standards, or you have State-RAMP standards. This is how our product meets whatever security standards. But again, I have the blessing from your procurement team and your IT team to speak with you right now. I'd love to speak with you about some of the challenges you're having. So it's kind of like in parallel, I'm running and talking to multiple different departments, and that's what's led to my success.

You're trying to prove that you're part of the tribe.

That is exactly, exactly it. And having procurement and IT on your side Not only increases your success rate, but I think one thing in selling to the government sector that is so challenging is people talk about the sales cycle, right? People always say, oh, you're selling in the government, 18 to 24 month sales cycle. In my opinion, there's ways to reduce that, and that's how you do it. You don't sit there and wait. You don't, all right, I'm gonna go sell to the agency and then wait until I have to talk to IT and then wait until I have to talk to the security officer and then wait until I have to talk to procurement. You're doing all of that in parallel. So now you're taking an 18 to 24 month sales cycle and now you're reducing that down to 9 or 12 months.

And reducing the likelihood it just dies.

That's absolutely, absolutely.

Most sales reps would go to leadership or user, right?

That's exactly it. That is exact. Yes. And those, those can be obviously open. Great. You need them.

Absolutely.

I was— it's funny, I was showing— I just had a deal. It's end of the quarter right now, and I just had a deal come across the finish line. And I've been working my own deals as I've been building out a team, and I was showing my team what my buying decision team looked like, what my buyer map looked like. And I said, look at this. I have 18 people that were part of this purchase that were heavily involved in this purchase. that I spoke to multiple times. It wasn't a large purchase. It was, I think, $50,000, $60,000 purchase. But they still had 18 people that had to touch that deal. And it was a good learning opportunity, you know, with my sales reps to be able to kind of go through and talk about all, you know, all the different personas that they need to get sign-off on to get that deal across the finish line. And again, you can kind of run at that in parallel.

Because most reps would deal with 1, maybe 2 people.

That's, that is a problem. Oh, I see it. I see it all the time. All the time. And, and then they're sitting there waiting for that person to respond back to them and they're like, I'm stuck now. I don't know what to do. And when you have, when you have different divisions, you can start to cross-reference some of that information. You know, is, is what the practitioner telling me aligning with what the leader's telling me? Or is what the leader telling me aligning with, you know, what the IT team is telling me? You can start to you know, cross-reference that. But I've also— it's helped me develop stronger relationships too. I had a deal that I was working on that they were so impressed that I was already working with IT and procurement that they just let me go own it. They're like, hey, don't worry about, you know, including me on your emails with IT. I honestly don't care. It doesn't mean anything to me. You go deal with IT. Once you have that sign-off, let us know and then we'll proceed.

Because you're almost becoming the champion.

Yeah, it's yes, exactly.

Because yes, most reps would deal with one person who wants it, needs it, and loves it, but they don't have any authority, budget, or know-how to get it done.

Totally. Oh, something I preach all the time: always be testing your champion. And it gosh, it that is. My CEO and I were having that discussion, my CRO. That is why deals die. You don't have a champion. You think you have a champion, but you do not have a champion.

You have somebody who's enthusiastic.

I try. That's one thing, in all seriousness, total side note, I feel like has helped me out like a little bit in my career is I try to be contagious with that positivity, that passion. And it's I don't know, something that just comes naturally to me and I've tried to leverage it in my sales career as much as I can.

But as a sales rep, what keeps you excited? Because I can see a lot of people in that market getting burnt out or defeated.

You know, the new challenges. I know that sounds absolutely crazy. I think if I were ever in a role, in a mundane role where I was just doing the same process every single day, I would hate it. I don't know that I'd want to do it anymore. For me, I always want to be learning. And the way that I'm learning is being put into brand new situations, brand new challenges. And as we've been talking about, right, like state and local, selling into state and local, it provides new challenges every single day. And I try to look— I make mistakes all the time, right? And I try to look back on those and really learn from those to Make myself a better sales rep. So that's kind of honestly what keeps me going. It's just the new challenges that I'm facing. It can be super frustrating, but it I love I love facing a new challenge every single day and just tackling it head on.

And are is there a lot of similarity between the states, or are they all a little?

They're all different.

You know, and and here's. It's so wild. Are you familiar with like FedRAMP, you know, FedRAMP authorization? FedRAMP, just at a really high level, is a security framework that the federal government created to assess cloud providers.

Okay.

All of government used to use FedRAMP, right? And then you fast forward to like 2 years ago and state the state market said, hey, we actually want our— we want our own standards. So we're gonna come up with State-RAMP. It's the same thing, same thing, but they wanted their own standard. And I suppose there's some small, you know, differences. But then each state, you'll see some states that will also alter it. So like in Texas, you have Tex-RAMP. Arizona, you have AS-RAMP. Virginia has their own IT standards. So it can be very, very complicated. And then when it comes to procurement, You have a majority of states that have this ability to utilize what are called cooperative agreements to be able to purchase off of. If you're familiar with like a GSA contract or something similar in the state market. But then there's some states that won't utilize any type of cooperative agreement. You have to go on a statewide contract. And then every state has different procurement rules where you have these thresholds of, you know, can they make a purchase on their own? Do they need to go to IT for approval? Do they need to go out to RFP? And each of those thresholds differ very significantly across state and municipalities. So again, that goes back to what I was, you know, kind of preaching earlier, that you have to become an expert in each state, understanding each contract, each of their rules.

Complicated. And what do you look for when you look for a state and local rep? Because it's all completely different.

It is very, you know, having this, obviously having some of the experience is really nice. But I've actually hired recently a few different reps that haven't had any experience. To me, it really came down to some of, some of the Tangibles. You really need someone that is willing to work a deal and kind of grind and not give up. Where I'm going with this is about most of the reps I've hired recently have been previous BDRs. And like, that correlates to me a little bit. If you think about the BDR role, it's a tough role. And I tell our BDRs all the time, you're— You're selling time, which is way harder than anything else. Anybody can always go find more money. You can't find more time.

Mm-hmm.

Um, and that, that is a, a job that is so hard. You're always having to, you know, change what you are doing. Um, you're, you're, you know, you're getting a, a 100 nos for every yes that you're getting. Um, and there, there's just so much complexity that I think sometimes gets overlooked in the VR role. Uh, and, and that's why I'm, I'm, had a lot of success now hiring BDRs into a government sales role because, uh, they just, they kind of have that grit to them of, um, kind of sticking with the process and understanding that, hey, once I get that verbal, I'm nowhere close to done yet. I can celebrate a little bit, but I have a lot of work, uh, a lot of work to do. So I, I, I really kind of look for people that have grit. I look way more for the intangibles than I do Or honestly, some of, you know, some of the experience. Yeah.

Cool. Hey, Ryan, really appreciate your time today. Where can people go to connect and follow you?

Absolutely. That's a great question. I am on LinkedIn. You can search Ryan Trudeau. The organization that I work for today is OPEXIS Tech. We are hiring state and local and federal sales reps. So if you ever have any interest in kind of hearing more about what government has to offer, would love to chat with you. So LinkedIn would probably be the best place to connect with me.

Now, isn't that a unique and powerful way to look at your deals? Too many of us, we become reactive that if we don't have a champion, we service that champion, we answer all their questions, give them lots of proposals, lots of discounts, lots of extensions on evals, and we hope that they reciprocate. And often, of no fault of their own, it falls apart. You know, a lot of people call this single-threaded in a deal, and it's not just that you're not talking to more than one person. Yes, you do need to talk to more than one person, but we're kind of relinquishing all the control and direction and momentum of our deals to our client who doesn't know what they're doing. Not because they're ignorant, just because they've never done it before. No one teaches anybody how to purchase stuff other than purchasing. Nobody teaches people how to sell internally, how to fight the politics, how to get all the naysayers out of the way. You know how these big deals go, and there's people who just love saying no. Not now.

Next quarter.

We got more important things to do. We've got our offsite this week. Oh God. We, we can either react to it or we can direct it. The challenge is to direct it. You got to know how it works. And you could go figure it out on your own, or you could learn from somebody else. Hint, Closing the Complex Sale. Being able to do this, what type of win rate would you have after this? Too many of us, we focus just on our competition. Our real competition is our client's internal process, and it's arduous, mysterious, and laborious on purpose. Companies don't want their employees just randomly out there buying stuff. Even though they need stuff, there's smarter ways of doing things. I mean, just look at all the products out there.

There's a lot of them.

And the secret is they all do help. They all do work. They all do increase productivity and automate things. Ah, but there's a lot of them, and people have their normal job to do, never mind evaluating our stuff. And buying our stuff and helping us out. Why not us take on that responsibility? You gotta have a little bit more insight into how companies buy and how to marshal all these people, how to engage them, how to start conversations with them, because you just can't call them up and say, hey, you guys are interested in buying our stuff and I just wanted to say hi.

They don't—

no, no, no. You gotta have a relationship. You can't do that. That might kill your deal, not help your deal. It has to be done with a little bit of finesse, a little bit of style, a little bit of social engineering so that it is welcome, productive, and effective. So it takes a little bit of planning. You just can't, you know, pretend they work for you. That's why I, in the intro, I said project manager With no authority.

And if you—

you got to remember that you have no authority, but you have to act like this is getting done with a when and how mindset instead of an if mindset. See, everybody's out there, if they want to buy, will they want to buy, decide to buy. Why not lead that decision? You know, because if I gave out this episode without this interview, you'd be like, ah, he's full of it. So I like to— and I didn't talk to Ryan before the interview. I had no idea where this was going. I like to just dive into it with people so I get their organic reaction instead of a rehearsed pitch. But what if you had this mindset? And the skill set to go with it. The mindset's nice, but if you don't have the skill set, it falls flat. Closing the Complex Sale can kind of fill in that gap for you, as well as starting the conversation where you know how to initiate those conversations with those people. Maybe you think you do already. How's it working for you? You know, are they responding to your cold calls and your beautiful love letters that you send? Send all the time. Love to give you a demo. Love 15 minutes of your time. How's that working? That's what I thought. Start the conversation, get the meeting, opens up how people want to talk with other people. Not salesperson to champion, human to human, mammal to mammal. It's the future. Appreciate you listening to this one. If you really want to take your sales game to the next level, go to b2brevenue.com, check out the courses. It solves the 2 major problems, starting conversations and closing those large complex sales. It's your income. You decide how good you want to become at it. You know what you're doing so far. Check out the other shows, Sales Questions, Brutally Honest Answers, The Sales Leadership Show. And we'll see you next time. You see my stuff fly by on LinkedIn, give it a little like, a little comment, a little share, and tell another sales rep about the show.