HOW TO DEVELOP YOUR CHAMPION SO THE HELP CLOSE THE DEAL

In sales, we always tend to go hard to easy instead of easy to hard. And when I talk to people early in sales, I go, start with the things that you have control over, like your time. Your time is one thing that you should have control of, especially if you're working from home. You can block off those precious times, those precious moments, because we all get the same amount of time no matter how good or bad we are with it. And if you look at it as an investment versus an expense or a waste, you do much better. Here's some of the things that I've done that I think will help you. Get a wall calendar or, you know, whether it be on your wall or not, wherever you're working, in your office, your bedroom, wherever you are most of the time, so that you can see the year at a glance or at least a quarter at the glance. Glance so that you can understand what day is it, how many days do you have left, what are the holidays, the trade shows, anything that'll interrupt that so that you can constantly see where you are. Because guess what? We're circadian creatures. Being good at managing our time is counterintuitive. It is not something that we are born with. We have to develop this skill. And I got to tell you, working with people of all ages, it's a hard skill to develop. So the sooner you learn it, the sooner you develop it and make it part of you, the more benefit you'll get from it. Try and have a similar pattern on the weeks and sometimes even the days. Block out certain times to do certain things. Turn off mindless notifications about social or, you know, this thing or that thing, and have notifications on your calendar to give you time to prepare for the important meetings. And yes, put the stuff on your calendar. You can mark it as private and have separate calendars for separate things, but you have to own it. And yeah, sure, your boss will call you and schedule meetings and stuff, but They'll always allow the deal veto. The deal veto is, I'm working on a deal. Leave me alone. These are some of the skills you'll learn and start the conversation, get the meeting. Being able to schedule your time and have your days where you're talking and developing prospects into interested customers is so critical. And coming up with a system to do it will scale. Because today we have the technology. We just have to use it appropriately and not have it use us. We've— time management and time investment is critical. Let's get into the interview. I'll sum it up at the end. Hey, have you checked out Winning the Complex Sale? I bet you should. Now's the time. You're either going to win the deal or not win it. And it doesn't matter why you don't win it because the commission's always the same—

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

Thank you, Brian. Great. Again, my name is Embry Davis. I am a senior business development manager here at Procurement IQ. I'm currently in Houston, Texas. I've been here for about 2 years. I report out of Procurement IQ's Los Angeles office. We're a division of IBISWorld. We provide market research, and we provide market research specifically for procurement professionals. So I sell directly to procurement departments, to professional buyers.

Oh, they must be just a joy to work with, aren't they?

Well, we like to use the analogy here, if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere. So, you know, one, it's a challenging, you know, selling process and a challenging engagement. selling to people and engaging with people who are actually trained to get the best deal, trained to tear up the deal to get the best price. But that challenge is exactly what keeps me here and keeps me going every day.

Did being a school teacher help you adapt to this?

Oh man. So yeah, let's actually take a step back as far as my journey and who I am. So a little bit about my story, I started off having several sales jobs, and I'd say outside of the corporate world and the B2B side, starting off in the retail space. And one of my very first jobs, even at 14, 15 years old, which was one of my actual favorite jobs, was working at McDonald's. And just literally just talking to people and just meeting new and random faces and making that job just fun, being on the intercom. And from that point, I realized whatever Whatever it is I do later on in life, I need to do something where I'm meeting just new people and engaging in new people. So from there, a little bit about my story after college and during college, worked some retail jobs, worked for Macy's selling high-class and high-end luggage, to after that, directly after college, just figuring out, like many people, what's next? What am I going to do? you know, where do I go from here? And a part of that journey, I, I don't think I— I majored in public relations in college, you know, and I had a dream of probably working, you know, at an agency, at a PR firm, PR agency. And from there, I'll say from there, after college, I started just applying everywhere strictly, you know, within, you know, agencies. And then I'm saying, hey, I need to make some money. I need to get a job. I need to find something. So I ended up Somehow, I have no clue how this happened, applying for a job at DC Public Schools. I didn't study education, I didn't do anything, but I just said, I need to put some money in my pocket. So from DC Public Schools, I ended up applying for a substitute teacher position. And if you know anything just about the school system, there's not a lot of male teachers there. You know, there's not a lot of men in that space. So I got the job, you know, went through, you know, background checks and, you know, that whole process, you know, at the time, getting my SHATS because I'm, you know, working around kids. And I, you know, went in for a day as a substitute teacher. The principal loved me and he said, you know, we got to have you back. Can you come back tomorrow? I'm like, okay, sure. You're going to pay me again tomorrow the same rate, right? Came back tomorrow, they said, hey, we're getting a lot of good feedback on you. We actually just had a teacher quit. Can you take over this class? Can you take over this 8th grade math class? And next thing you know, I'm, you know, started off as a substitute teacher to taking over an 8th grade math class, and time flies. You know, I love engaging with people. I love engaging with students, but I thought to myself, I said, how did I end up here?

You know? Well, that's it, because a lot of people— I mean, teaching's one of those things, it's kind of a calling.

Yeah.

It's not really an accidental profession, but it was for you, I guess. You wanted to do substitute as kind of part-time?

Yeah, well, it was at the time, it was more so, you know what, I need to do something that's going to put some money in my pocket. You know, I'm out of school right now, fresh college graduate, I got to pay the bills. So it went to, you know, what's going to put money in my pocket? So I think From there, I slowly transitioned into getting into sales. So I said, all right, this isn't what the plan was, so what's next? So that summer, I'm applying to different internships. I'm applying to just different jobs, trying to move into the corporate world, but keeping my mind open to many things. So I ended up working on a political campaign. And this is something that opened the door for me to get into sales. And working on this political campaign, one of my core duties was canvassing and cold calling.

Oh, beautiful.

The first time I got introduced—

The glamour.

Yeah, the glamour. So, you know, and I'm cold calling, I'm reading off of a script, you know, and the campaign that I was working with, you know, I was working on the gentleman, he was running for, you know, senator in Baltimore. And, you know, he ended up winning that campaign. And after that was over, You know, I was constantly applying for jobs and figuring out what was next. And I had no clue what inside sales was, you know, at this time. So I'm applying for these random jobs. I go on an interview and I honestly, to be quite honest, I don't really understand what this position actually is, but they're looking at my resume and they're saying, you know, we think you would be a great fit. You know, you've made 100 cold calls in this role. You're, you've knocked on doors. Um, you know, it looks like you have a great success rate, but I don't really see the connection with how this job translates into, you know, what this is. So long story short, you know, that cold calling and political campaigns set me up for kind of that SDR role, that business development associate, which was my introduction to, you know, the B2B, you know, corporate sales engagement.

And how did you like it? Because I gotta believe the political cold calling This is probably the most rejection you're going to get, isn't it?

Yeah, absolutely.

You're calling people at home. Most don't even know or care.

Yeah. So I think it wasn't about— it was easy to, at that point, to kind of get past the rejection because of the environment, you know, just the culture, how happy, how exciting kind of the organization was, the passion behind kind of the change, the passion Passion behind kind of, you know, you know, the, yeah, the, the mission. So I really, I really didn't care about it. And I was around a really good group of, you know, people that just kind of kept me motivated. And they were just, you know, just a good spirit. So I guess my introduction to cold calling originally was a, was a great introduction just because of that, the environment that I was in.

So it didn't feel like a grind?

It didn't, it didn't feel like a grind. But, you know, when I, when I, when I moved on to that next position, that's where I saw another side of it and I fell in love with it. Yeah. And what kept me there honestly was the competition. And that goes into my background. You like that? I love the competition around that business development associate, that cold calling role. And I played basketball my entire life. I still play in some men's leagues now. And I just love that competitiveness, you know, and I'll say that's why I'm still in sales now. The competition is really what drives me, looking at that dashboard, you know, seeing somebody creeping up on me and seeing somebody ahead of me, you know, that it fuels me every day. I have to go get more coffee every time I look. Cool.

And then you moved into this current role, and then did you have that connection between effort and reward? Versus just being better or not having somebody better than you?

So I think this is where it began. This current role was kind of that, the most competitive. It was a chance to learn a new way of selling. So I've had, you know, probably some smaller roles, you know, in between there, just moving my way up to sales, but getting into selling directly to procurement is where you literally have to throw everything out of the window. You know, it's a— it's an entire, you know, just new ballgame, a new way of selling, a new set of priorities. And something interesting, and I really want to dive deeper into this with you today, is, you know, when you think of procurement, you think of a function in a department that's responsible for buying everything for an organization, for a company. And, you know, you know, looking at the Fortune 500, the Fortune 1000, And these are companies who have a procurement function, and these are professional buyers. But what's so challenging about selling to procurement is one of the challenges we run into as an organization is these procurement professionals, they are so experienced at buying everything for other departments and facilitating that buying process for marketing, for HR, for for the finance departments, for everybody else. One challenge we run into as an organization is sometimes they don't know how to buy things for themselves.

They don't do it, right?

Yeah, they don't buy things for themselves. They say, you know, I'm the, you know, category manager or procurement, you know, specialist for marketing. I'm in charge of all the marketing categories. Well, who's in charge of bringing on resources for yourself? Who's in charge of bringing on resources for procurement? You know, how do you buy something for yourself? And this is, you know, where my My job, you know, I don't want to say becomes challenging, but actually becomes interesting where I have to teach you that there are actually resources that can help you do your job better, which in turn helps the entire organization.

So who within procurement do you target? Is it the leader, I assume, or—

Very interesting. That's a great question. So typically, I try to stay— the best person for me to target is really right at the middle, the in-between of kind of that bottom-level buyer and end user. But I'll say the straight answer is a director of procurement, someone who is managing, you know, just, you know, buyers or category managers, you know. And the ideal fit of an organization is a company that has a chief procurement officer, where they have someone at the executive level that's setting executive strategies for how we go about purchasing and buying as an organization. But I wouldn't necessarily engage them directly because they're— they almost aren't as focused on the day-to-day and the technical aspects that will help, you know, the end users do their job better.

And I take it you don't get any inbound. Is that true?

Oh, I wish. Zero, I'll say. Zero inbound. See, I looked at one of your videos. One of my favorite lines from one of your videos is where you talk about the webinars and those Gmail emails that comes in, the Yahoo emails. That's what an inbound looks like to me. So everything, and a little bit more about my role, I am responsible for the end-to-end sales process from, you know, prospecting to identifying accounts, to scheduling my own meetings. I don't have an SDR. I don't have a marketing team feeding me leads. So from scheduling that initial meeting to even finding someone to actually schedule all the way up to the terms and conditions, you know, I'm, I'm throughout the entire process, full lifecycle.

Yeah. And you've been there a while, so you must be a good match for it.

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. So I'm, I'd say I'm one of the more tenured folks at my organization. Is that how you characterize it? That's how I characterize it. So just a little bit about Procurement IQ. We're a division of IBISWorld. They've been providing market research for over 50 years. And Procurement IQ, we were born, let's say about, you know, 6 years ago to provide not just industry market research, but market research that's tailored for procurement and purchasing teams to use. So we're still a division of IBISWorld. So within, I'll say, our 6 to 7 year tenure, I've been here a little bit over 4 years. So almost since the inception of the company, of our division of the company.

And what's the hardest part? Is it just getting that initial attention and interest?

Yes. But to take that a little bit deeper, the hardest part of my role is identifying a champion. But what does a champion look like in terms of the vertical that I sell to? A champion is someone who is innovative and is open to pointing out problems and challenges within the organization. So, and that's why that person is not always just recognized Based on their title, you know, based on if they're a VP, based on if they're a— yes, it's that personality type, you know. Have, have you ever made a recommendation to change the way that you're doing something? You know, sometimes you can see that in a LinkedIn, you know, in a LinkedIn description, but sometimes you can, you know, see that— you don't see that until you just get on the phone with them and talk about, you know, Transformation. That's a keyword that I look for. Are you someone who has transformed a department, transformed an organization? That change agent is what I look for.

Yeah, because without that, you probably don't have a deal. Is that true?

Yeah, for the, for the most part, I'll say like 70% of the time, without that key person or without people who, you know, who are willing to challenge the status quo, Yeah.

Yeah.

And how long does it take you to sense that?

Hmm.

Have you gotten that down to a science or?

It's different every time, to be honest. So one thing about procurement, and when I say people change agents, people are willing to challenge the status quo, procurement functions and procurement professionals, what I noticed, especially looking at the Fortune 1000 space, People who are passionate about that function in that role, there's a lot of— it's almost like a revolving door that, you know, you see people that move from one organization to the next. And a lot of the times, those are kind of the people that you, that you want to look for.

Yeah.

People who have exposure to, you know, organizations operating differently, a different way of doing things that came from one way and says, hey, I've seen something different versus I've been in this role for 20 years. This is how we've been doing it. I don't see a problem with changing anything else.

Well, that's it, because you got to think like who gets attracted to procurement? You know, I don't think it's a college degree. It's kind of something that, you know, people probably started in accounting and they say, hey, you want to do procurement?

Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think we've done some research. There's actually, you know, you have procurement and supply chain, they go hand in hand, but there are only a handful of universities, I think maybe even less than 10, that offer advanced degrees in something like procurement or supply chain. And it may be even less than 5. I know Michigan State is one of them. University of Houston is another, but there's not many even advanced degrees that you can get in this function.

And how many deals do you need to make your personal goal? Is it tens, hundreds?

I'll say, to be honest, anywhere between— on average, anywhere between 10 to 15.

Okay. So highly focused then.

Yep. Highly focused. I say we have some folks on the sales team and business development team who their entire pipeline is larger deals where that's going to be 2 to 3 deals. But I'll say for the majority of my organization, it's going to take anywhere between 10 to 15 deals to hit that annual target.

And I bet you've learned a lot in the last 4 years.

Absolutely, absolutely. Keep them coming in, keep them coming in. And it's going to be, it's going to be a slow process. And I know you just in previous roles haven't dealt with procurement, you know what, you understand that they typically slow the sale down, you know.

Well, right, because they don't— their reward is typically, you know, having it done properly, not fast.

And, and just like, you know, I know there's a lot of other salespeople, you know, looking at this just for, you know, from your audience, you know, just to give You know, other folks insight on procurement and their role. And one of the reasons why they slow the sale down is because when any department comes to procurement, you know, or when a procure— yeah, when they come to procurement to make this purchase, to push things through, they're not looking at just buying a solution for you. Procurement is an interesting function where they have insight not just into your department, but insight into what the entire organization needs. So if you're saying, hey, you know, we need this new ERP system, or we want this marketing software, marketing tool, they kind of shut you down. And not in the sense of your need, but how can— if we buy this, instead of just buying something for you, how can we buy something that's going to impact the entire organization? Let's not just look at your need. Let's look at what the entire organization needs to see if If we can make one purchase that can fill multiple gaps versus, you know, if for someone just selling to a VP of marketing, that VP of marketing is just thinking about how this solution can help his department. And there may be a great business case that you've helped build, but until you— what will help another salesperson is looking past that department. How can this help marketing? How can this help sales? How can this help HR. And when that gets to procurement, you know, they have that full vision of, okay, now I see the greater impact of this.

And what do you wish you knew 4 years ago that you know today?

The main thing that I wish I knew 4 years ago that I know today is identify that change agent. You know, identify someone that has the vision, that challenges that status quo. And I have to say that, that's, you know, where do you see, one question that I would ask is, where do you see your department in 4 years? Where do you see your organization going in the next 2, 3 years? And if some people says, and some people, they don't have an answer because they don't care. They don't care. I like the way that things are going. That's finding someone that has a vision You know, for innovation, for growth, for change. Identifying that person, you know, 4 years ago in that mindset, that's what I wish, you know, I knew back then.

And did you have a lot of false positives back then? People who were interested in what you did, but not interested in changing the company? Because I'm sure it's very interesting stuff.

Yeah. So, and one thing that the same way that as a salesperson, so sales and procurement are so similar. You know, it just— and what I mean by that, you know, we have to qualify opportunities, we have to qualify people. If procurement is not qualifying me, if they say, oh, this is great, you know, let's connect in a few months, let's connect in a few weeks, if they're saying— A few months. If they're saying this is great but not qualifying me, you know, in a way where— in qualifying me as far as the market research that we provide Some of those questions are—

Yeah, test to push them back.

Yeah. Some of that question, some of the most important questions is, how often is your information refreshed? Tell me a little bit about where you're getting this information from. Unless they're qualifying me as a resource, they're not taking this serious. So that's one thing that I have to look at. They know that they have to check all boxes if this is going to go to a call 2, call 3, call 4, et cetera.

But also, you know, they probably don't have budget already allocated for things like this. This is new. It has to be sold internally. They're usually not selling internally. They're usually—

Yeah, absolutely. So, and the interesting— and that goes back to one of the first things that I said earlier, you know, procurement people, they oftentimes buy things and have— and kind of hold the budget for other departments where they rarely have a budget budget for themselves. And one of the sad things and the sad truths about a resource that I sell is that oftentimes you have to find the right person at the right time. And we often are the right tool, but unless I'm speaking with the right person at the right time, then this isn't going to happen.

Have you had any success developing a champion versus finding a champion? Because that fire, that desire to change the company, because it's a personal win for them too. They're looking at this as a career thing, either internally or externally.

Yeah. So that's a tough one. That's a tough one. And I think, you know, with what you mentioned, you know, it's a choice of where's my time, you know, really best spent? Is my time best spent developing this champion? Or is my time best spent finding that person that's really waiting for me to give them a call? And I like the— and one of the things that I try to implement into my sales process is disqualifying just as fast as I qualify. And I think that my time is oftentimes better spent disqualifying that person instead of trying to educate them. And really focusing on that organization or that person that gets it. I get it. This makes sense. Now it's just a matter of the how. How do we do this? And us working together on that.

Well, because you probably have a sizable territory, right?

Yeah. So it's really no territory. My territory is any organization, let's just say above $600 million on up that has a strategic procurement function.

Right.

So you cannot waste your time, right? Oh, well, you got to judge based off of who is already a champion.

Yeah, absolutely.

Who can't do the personality change?

Yeah, that personality change. Yeah, it's not there. And, you know, again, this sales process is typically already, you know, long and can be even longer, you know, depending on, you know, how we format that. solution in that deal size. But, you know, on average, you know, you know, at first, from that first meeting, this is, this can take anywhere between, you know, on the lowest end, you know, let's just say 3 months to onboard, but all the way up to, let's just say 12+ months. So I have to pick my battles. Cool.

Hey, I really appreciate your time today. Where can people go to follow you and learn more about your work?

Um, you can contact me on LinkedIn, uh, Embry, E-M-B-R-Y Davis. Um, I'm with Procurement I should come right up. You know, check us out at procurementiq.com. If you're interested in, you know, reviewing any of our market research reports, you know, feel free to contact me directly.

It all seems to come down to time, doesn't it? And sometimes it may be worth the time to invest and build up a champion, to get to know, like, and trust them and develop them and have them trust you. Wouldn't that be a superpower? So that when the time is right, you're the go-to person instead of just trying to randomly find that needle in the haystack, which is like 1 in 1,000 because so little of our market is in market at any one time. But the key is to either accelerate that or develop it. Start the conversation, get the teaches you how to do it at scale so you don't have to hunt and peck and deal with all that rejection all the time. So check out that course at b2brevenue.com. And I also have done a video to give you an outline and the differences between the courses in the show notes on the YouTube channel and on my LinkedIn profile. Thanks for listening. Tell a friend about the show. And if you see my content fly by on LinkedIn, give it a little like, a little comment, a little share.

Take care.

We'll see you next time. Here's some excerpts from a one-on-one that I did with one of the students in Start the Conversation, Get the Meeting course. Now, this person really embraced the course after a while. It took a couple of one-on-ones for him to try each step. He kind of fought it, tried to make it work within his current model. And that really didn't have this type of success. And then after he started, he started to get meetings. He started to get conversations. He started to get all the things that I was telling him about. And he started to get excited about it. He started to see the results that I tell you about where his week was full of meetings. Now, I'll let you hear this out. I deleted out kind of the specifics of the steps and the tools and the approach, but they're all in the course. If you're already in it, please listen to the full one-on-ones. When you hear the success that people are having, it's not just the steps, it's the matching of the steps with the appropriate actions and pacing And then you get people asking to talk with you, which is the goal, which is the fun. So let's listen to it and I'll sum it up at the end and give you kind of an idea and recommendation if you want to take advantage of this.

And it's crazy. This week, this week I'm full of meetings. I was like, what's happening? And like, I, what I did was I baked in, like, I just, I'm very generic, and people are like, oh, like, like, tell me more about you. Like, immediately I have like 3, 4 meetings. Like, I already had 2 this, and, and based on the, on the, on the parameters that you suggested for me, like, oh, go after these bigger companies, X amount of employees, so that By the time I'm talking to them, I already know that okay they they typically have budget. I mean assuming link correct with the employee size. Some of it was it was off, but it's like okay there's still like a deal. It can it can still happen. And but yeah, I was like whoa this is. I like I limited to like thirty connections a day. So then that way it's not like it doesn't go crazy because I remember one of the reps. So do about 30 a day. Like I said, like this week, like 4 or 5 meetings. And they're good meetings, you know, and it's just conversations. Like I say, it's not about like pitching, but it's about working them up to that point where it's like, okay, yeah, we do need to advertise.

So after teaching this for quite a while, here's the steps that you should take. Take the course once quickly through it. Find both one-on-ones and office hours that speak to the persona that you want to talk with, whether it be the CEO, the CMO, CRO, developer, marketer, whoever it is that you want to talk to. Because we break it down in gory detail. We break down the persona and what they care about. And then try each step. Try it with your friends. Try it with your coworkers. And start to see the results. Now, most people will fight me on it. They'll spend the first month, 2 months, uh, trying to make the system fit into their pitchy email and cold calls. And it works a little better, but it works a whole lot better when you apply it because each step and each pause in between each step has been designed over time to be very effective. And then when you start to see the results, all of a sudden people are replying, people are asking you, people are wanting to talk with you, want to understand what you do. It's almost turning cold outbound into warm inbound. Now, are they in market? No, no, they're not. But they're a little curious. And it's up to us. And I show you in the course, how do you build off of that? Instead of us telling everybody how great we are and hoping they can understand why they need us. And instead of them arguing about why they don't need us— because until you have active pain, everyone's in denial. Think about going to the doctor. Okay, you kind of know you need an operation, but you're like, can I get a prescription? And the doctor's like, he has to ease you, or she has to ease you into the process. Well, let's take an x-ray. Let's see what we're working Oh, can I— how about just a shot? Can I just get a shot till the next time I come in? Then he flips the x-ray up on the light and he points to something. He goes, that's what we're dealing with. That doesn't heal on its own. You have to have surgery for that. He has to build up to that. Until we build up that latent pain into active pain and properly diagnose it and give it the proper treatment, that's right. Get people to think about what happens if they don't have that operation, they're going to avoid it at all costs. That's why the cold pitch doesn't work. You're just igniting the denial. You're not igniting interest or curiosity. It's just denial. So check out the course, start the conversation, get the meeting. It's all at b2brevenue.com. There's an overview video in the show notes. On my YouTube channel and on my LinkedIn profile, pretty much everywhere I am, as well as the website b2brevenue.com. Check it out if this is what you need. You know, this student, zero sales experience, but really, you know, just gobbled up this. And the people who gobble it up the fastest And the best are people who try it and get success. It has nothing to do with knowledge. It's like learning how to do a sit-up doesn't give you a 6-pack. You have to do the sit-ups. They're not fun at first, but then you get used to them and you start to like appreciating them. And then you start to get the connection between how you look and what you do. And so you start doing the things that make you look better. This is what we have. It's not just knowledge. It is applying it, taking feedback, polishing it up, and applying the system to your clients.