HOW TO GET PEOPLE TO WANT TO TALK WITH YOU IN B2B SALES

Probably the most important part of selling is the connection that we build with the people that we are selling to, selling with, communicating with. And that connection, we think, is probably a little better than it really is. But we need to test it. Do they want to talk with us? Do they call us back? Do they reply to us? Do they engage with us? Do they seek our opinion? Do they believe us? Do they want to engage more and explore what's going on? And I think this part of sales kind of got run over about 10 or 15 years ago. When the Challenger Sale book came out, it kind of deframed The value of a relationship in a sale. And it made it— the best are the debaters, the people who bring insight. Well, okay, that's a skill, a technique, useful in some cases, dangerous in others. But how do you get that meeting? How do you get that conversation even started? That's a connection. That's rapport. That's charisma and charm. That's personality and likability and that human chemistry that we have with each other. You know it, probably the people that you've become friends with, there's some kind of chemistry, some reason why you enjoy each other's company. It might just be convenience. It might just be Period of life. You went to college together, or you work together, you live near each other. Or it could be based off of how much fun it is to be with them. They like the same things, or they show interest in us. This is what I'm going to be talking about today. And I, by showing you an example of somebody who has mastered it and applies it to sales, You'll start to understand what sales is really about. It's not your value proposition. It's not your insights or your debating skills. Those are great skills to have, but not enough. It's the whole package. But one of the core ingredients is your ability to get them to talk with you. Let's get into this. And this is a skill you can practice. And now, how would you practice a skill like this? Hmm, let's see. Uh, you could play ringy ringy with your manager or somebody in the office, or you could check out brevitypitch.com. It's getting more powerful by the day. It's holding real, live, interactive sales conversations that are customizable to your exact market. You can tell it exactly who you want to talk to, what you want to talk to them about, and show them who your competitors are. And it builds a great conversation for you, different every time. Check it out at brevitypitch.com. Here we go.

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

Good morning. Thanks for having me so much. I appreciate it. So, been in sales about 20 years now. Post on LinkedIn when, when time permits. Seen you walking around your neighborhood for a few years. Looks like you're always in a great mood and having a good time talking about sales and taking your walks.

And why sales for you?

That's an interesting question. So I put myself through college working retail. And I went to the University of Houston. They were really ahead of the sales game. I think they offered a specialization as a business minor in professional selling. And so a buddy that I worked with in retail was a marketing major. I was a marketing minor. He brought this certification to my attention and said, what do you think? I said, yeah, let's Let's see if the school knows what they're talking about. And so we, we did this certification and we were like, you know what, this, this could be a career really before I think people looked at sales or maybe even software sales as a career, right? This is 1998, back when salesforce.com was still brand new. And that was actually the first time we were exposed to it was, was part of this business school program. And so parlayed that into a career in transit.

And how would you judge that program now that you've got 20 years in the field? How well did it prepare you?

I think it did a pretty fantastic job. There was only around 30 or 40 of us in the program at the time. My understanding is they've, they've got at least a few hundred now. I mean, it is legitimate in ways that I don't think either of us ever expected. It's something that I think you can even major in now, which is just mind-blowing to think about. The growth and the success they've had has been amazing.

But what about sales appealed to you as a person, as John?

I think it matched my personality. So I was, I was on the yearbook staff in high school. And we had to, we had to sell ads to support the yearbook. And I remember getting in my mom's car and driving around our neighborhood and literally physically cold calling businesses, begging them to buy ads for the yearbook. And as a, as a junior, I outsold all the seniors and won $100, which might have been a million when you're 17 in 1990. And it, I was like, man, could I actually do this for a living? And, and, you know, I didn't, I mean, what did I know about sales in 1991 other than guys that tried to sell you vacuums at your front door, which I'm sure you remember, but a lot of your listeners probably have no, no idea what I'm talking about.

But let's dig into that. What about your personality appealed to that? You seem to like it.

So I love to be out and meeting people and talking to people and getting to know people. I've always felt like sales was purely based first and foremost on relationships. I think people buy from who they like. I think if you have a pretty dynamic personality and you're friendly and you can build and maintain and foster relationships, people are going to Buy from you, right? Again, people buy from who they like. I certainly have tried over the years to be likable. Might not have always been successful there depending on the sales cycle and who's on the other side of the desk. But I think it matched my outgoing personality. I think it matched my competitive nature. And as I said, I put myself through college working retail. So it's not like I came from you know, a wealthy family. And I saw pretty early, especially just, you know, working at The Gap and Ralph Lauren in college, that, you know, if you worked really hard and you put a lot of effort into it financially, it would pay off. And that matched where I thought I needed to be long term. And again, that competitive nature. I mean, I didn't play sports but was competitive academically and through just achievements. And I could tell pretty quick that If you were competitive and likable and driven, which were some of the things that I felt like I was at the time. And I think as you get older, you, you realize what your strengths are and you play to those strengths as well. Yeah.

What was missing from the mix that you had to add?

So learning how to memorize scripts, memorize demos, being a one-man show because, you know, in the early days there was no SE, there was no PSE, there was no subject matter expert, there was no sales operations or revenue operations. And you might have had one contract lawyer who was split amongst 20 or 30 people. So you had to do all of those things on your own, which presents its own set of challenges. Now, this would again, likely be unrecognizable to the majority of your viewers and listeners because they're supported by, you know, an army of people. But I had to learn how to do all those things on my own. My first real professional sales job was working for LexisNexis, selling law books and CD-ROMs and online legal research to lawyers where you were physically walking in the door. And so you had to learn how to be courageous really fast. And you had to learn how to be bulletproof, uh, because the paralegal or the secretary or the admin would promptly throw you out. And you could not let that bother you. You had to be impervious to rejection.

Uh, now I'm noticing that about you.

What is that? Which part is that?

That impervious to rejection.

And Only that I don't have that.

So I admire it when I see people who do.

And I wonder how they get it.

Well, you get hit about the face over and over and over again, right? You, you're calling on lawyers who, you know, are educated and they have their own personality type. And you, you don't know who's on the other side of that door. And so you learn pretty fast in your, you know, mid to late 20s, that this is going to be difficult. And if you're starting out at 9:00, 9:30 in the morning and the first door you open—

What do you do at 9:45?

Yeah, get out. Um, you can't go home, right? Um, this will again sound really wild to some of the folks that, that watch, but we had a weekly quota. I mean, can you imagine? People talk about the Sunday scaries. There was nothing more terrifying than going to bed every Sunday night and knowing Monday morning you're back to zero. We had a weekly, monthly, quarterly, annual quota. And so you had to write so much business every week to keep your job. So yeah, that was tough, and it taught you how to be impervious to rejection, how to manage transactions, how to manage pipelines. It was, it was not easy. And the first, it being the first job presented its own set of challenges as well.

But it sounds like you were pretty far along building up that resilience from high school.

Sure. So, you know, when people, well, yes, yes and no, right? When you're standing on the sales floor of the Ralph Lauren store in the Houston Galleria.

It's very different. It's air conditioned.

Yeah, it's air conditioned and it's, you know, lovely surroundings and, know, $5,000 custom suits and very wealthy people coming in who are technically there, you know, to, to buy made-to-measure suits and crocodile shoes and these kinds of things. But every once in a while, you'd have someone that was just not, not very friendly, let's say.

Right.

And, and, you know, they're, they're just 5 feet away from you. Right. And there's nowhere to escape to. And so you, you know, you learn how to build up that being impervious to rejection. For the folks that have come into sales during the age of Zoom, they're probably not familiar with what that looks like and feels like, right?

Certainly the feeling, but it's different, right?

It's—

It, yeah, it's diff— well, yes, that's true, right? Like you can see if someone's rejecting you on a camera. Right.

When no one shows or someone hangs up.

There's still that, right? Right, right. Yeah, it, yes, it, it still does happen, but when it's physical, it's, I think it adds an extra element, right? And so when you're in a meeting and every, you know, let's say this is 2019 and you're doing a demo in person live in an office and there's 20 people in the conference room and everyone's on their laptop. You know, you know that that's them physically telling you we are not interested, right? And so you've got to figure out a way to say, okay, everybody, right? Like, I brought in lunch here. Like, you kind of open the opportunity to pay attention. So that's a tough message to deliver. And, you know, you asked the question, what were things you had to learn? I think another thing I had to learn was how to deliver a difficult message, a challenging message, whether that was asking people to change a process, asking people to think about things differently, asking people to look at, you know, what was their professional existence on how they were doing things, how could we help, how could we improve. As I coached and mentored younger reps over the years, that was always something I would tell them that they had to get good at, pretty fast, which is you need to become comfortable challenging people and you need to become comfortable delivering difficult messages. Like if they're asking for a bigger discount than what you've offered and you're at the end of where, you know, sales ops, revenue ops, your VP, your manager can approve, that's it. I mean, everyone has to make money on the deal and you have to be comfortable saying, You know, Sarah, we're, we're at the end of incentives now, right? And that's also difficult. And that took some time to learn too.

And how did you internally process it? I mean, you must have been saying something to yourself, like I tell myself, oh, it doesn't matter, move on next. But I think you've done a really good job of that early in your career with very hard things. High school with the high school yearbook.

The LexisNexis.

Yeah, I think you, you, you take the time to internalize and reflect, but you're under pressure, so you can't spend a lot. You can't spend too much time, right? Like, you've got to keep going. You've got to keep moving, um, whether it's a weekly quota or a family to support or a mortgage to pay or a car note, right? You can't get bogged down on too much negativity. You've got to, you You've got to look at what went right this week, what went wrong, what can I do better, what did I say in a meeting that really worked, and, you know, continue to say those things. But also getting comfortable with, again, delivering a tough message, asking people to think differently about how they do things, even if that forces them to take stock on maybe their process they developed over many years, and you're asking them to change that. It could, it could be anything, right? Like, it sounds silly to, to tell this story, but I remember, um, there was a criminal defense lawyer in downtown San Antonio that I was trying to get off of books and buy a CD-ROM. Okay. Uh, and I said, you know, you're going to the Bexar County Law Library to research cases. Those books haven't been updated in years. And he's like, oh, I don't care. I enjoy that walk to the law library. I'm like, this is my—

I enjoy law history.

This is my competition, walking to the law library. Like, no one prepared me to sell against being outside. Like, how do you, you know, my competition is not do nothing or the other publisher. It's I like the walk to the library. And so I said, well, Still take the walk, I suppose. But just know that if you spent a few hundred bucks a month that, you know, your research is current. And he's like, yeah, you know, I guess, I guess that's true. Plus, I mean, San Antonio is every bit as hot as Houston. I live in Katy, west of Houston. And I just couldn't imagine walking to the law library in June, July, August, or September in downtown San Antonio. But he seemed to love those 105-degree temperatures.

Yeah.

And how did you get out of the LexisNexis into kind of enterprise sales?

What was that like?

So I moved into enterprise software through Epicor ERP, warehousing, inventory.

Easy stuff.

Yeah. Oh yeah, exactly. And selling to small to medium-sized businesses where I felt like that transition would make the most sense. And then went back to legal selling to the general counsel at an enterprise software company where the, you know, the deals were much bigger and took much longer and far more complicated. And then found my way to Workiva when it was a startup and spent 12+ years there.

And what do you feel is your strongest selling characteristic?

Do you mean the type of—

Well, some people are great with questions, stories, top-down, bottom-up, rapport building, things like that.

So I like to get people out of the office. I am not a fan of managing the entire sales cycle over email, Zoom, Google Meet, and I see people are adding their prospects to Slack. I think all of that is fine. I think that's the core of how you run a process. But you— I've always felt like my strongest suit is just building relationships, as I said at the outset, and getting people out of the office, getting to know them, them getting to know you. You know, when you sell to legal, accounting, investor relations, they have a natural opposition, I feel, to sales reps for a variety of reasons. As, as a chief accounting officer told me once, she said, the only 2 reps I've ever liked are you and my Oracle rep. And I said, oh, well, thank you. That's, that's very sweet. And if you get people out of the office, you get to know them, they get to know you, whether it's lunch, dinner, happy hour, breakfast, coffee events. You get to find out much more than you would in the office or over email or over the phone. And it breaks down barriers and it gives you I think special access to them that you otherwise wouldn't have. And due to COVID, and I think maybe just a generational shift, this has become a lost art.

It is.

And you might hear that or see that maybe more than I do. Um, you know, I had one of the highest credit limits on, on my corporate card at Workiva than anyone else in all of field sales because I wanted people out of the office. I wanted to get to know them. I wanted to build that relationship away from, you know, their cube or their desk. And that I felt was my strongest suit and led to a significant number of deals and success as well.

And it is a lost art. How did you do it? How'd you get the invite? What was the best venue for you? To build that rapport with?

So I test— well, I ran a test case on how critical getting people out of the office was with a prospect that was— they told us no many, many times. So I found an alternative contact. I invited her to lunch. It was right in front of their office. It's a place called Tru Lux here in Houston, which has high-end seafood. It's Not inexpensive by any means. So I knew that it was close, it was high-end, and it all just made sense. And over a 12-month period, I met her for lunch once a month and found our way to one of the biggest deals of that year just by breaking down those barriers. And, you know, at the third lunch, I said, listen, you know, The other guy I was calling was incredibly resistant. And she said, oh, yes, yes, he wants to retire. He doesn't want any changes made. He can't be bothered. And he does not like you. I said, you're likable. Yeah. She's like, well, he doesn't like you. He didn't like that you cold-called him. But I love that you called me. And, you know, we're going to get this to work, but it's going to take time. And I knew right away that time meant at least 9 months. And it did. It took an additional 9 months and a lot of lunches and a lot of the company's money. But it worked. And I knew then, okay, getting accountants, lawyers, whoever, IT, security, CIO, CFO, get them out of the office, have it make sense, give it something that causes them to say yes. And just strip away those barriers that they put up and we put up. And I think if you can get to know people on a professional level outside of the office, but also a personal level, it just makes a huge difference. And again, if I could train, you know, younger reps who are just starting out to embrace that, because although people are back in the office, I still think that know, Zoom is the default, right? I think if you could get them to see how much value there is in meeting people, that would be great. But I also think that a business that would make hundreds of thousands of dollars is consulting on wardrobing because you would not want to show up in hoodie and basketball shorts. So anyway, there's that.

And you don't want to Make the lunch a business meeting, meaning you don't want to be opening your laptop, talking about the product, talking about other customers, talking about your company.

No. Yeah. So it's interesting you say that. So lunches and dinners and happy hours and things, I would, I would lay ground rules right away. You know, I'd let everyone get to know each other and introductions and all these things. And then I would say, okay, so I, I'm not a big fan of rules, but I do have a few. And my first rule is we are not going to talk shop unless you absolutely want to. There's something you need to know. There's, you know, I wasn't clear on something, or you're struggling internally with moving this process forward, but I did not ask you here. To talk shop. So straight away, I don't want you to think about me as your sales rep. I just want you to think about me as someone you met for dinner. Second is, you know, don't be bashful. Order anything you want, right? We're here to get to know each other. You don't need to stick to water and the 6-ounce flag. You can go all out, right? And then always set the tone as, okay, this is different. Because typically you're not quid pro quo. Right. And that's, I did not want people to ever feel that way. And, you know, prior to the lockdown, prior to COVID, man, it worked like magic. And then came the dark times.

And have you tried it recently? Yes.

I think people are still, although it's 2024, people are still trying to get comfortable, you know, remembering what life was like prior.

It is.

Yeah.

And it's not as if people are in the office 5 days a week. And so it can be a little tricky. But so can getting back into in-person meetings. I mean, people are still not 100% comfortable with that. And, you know, That's another thing that I used to do routinely is any excuse that I could come up with, no matter how flimsy, to, to be in their office, man, I wanted it. Like, I wanted to be there even post-sale, um, just to look around like, okay, you know, what's the dynamic in the office? Who's who? And, you know, is my competition in here? Those were the things that I was always concerned about.

And did other people at the company not understand this or see the value and the real meaning behind it? Did they misunderstand it?

No, I don't think so. I think everyone has their own personality type. Everyone has their own way of doing things. I was again just raised on being in person and always wanting to be there physically and finding, you know, this existence in a sales model Just very challenging. And trying to get back into in-person everything has been critical. And for some folks, it just, it doesn't make sense. It won't make sense. They waited their entire career for, for whatever this is to, to come to fruition, and they love it. But yeah, I was always very active in doing social stuff and You know, certainly had some hair-raising and eyebrow-raising expense reports, but they were justified for sure.

Because it's where the magic happens. It's where people open up. It's where you start to sense the real things like the retirement example. He would never tell you that, right?

No, never. And also, you know, when you get to know people and they get to know you, which I think is impossible in a conference room, then Then they want to help you. So that's another thing that I think you have to get good at is asking for help, right? If you want to be successful and move things forward, and, you know, help can also come in the form of asking for them to do a reference call or asking them for referrals. Like, okay, Wendy, you've had a great experience. It's been 6 months. You know, who else do you know? who's like you that could benefit. And maybe there's, you know, a referral bonus that they get on their bill, but they don't care. I mean, that $5,000 on their subscription, that doesn't hit their wallet. That just hits the company. And so that's where things like, you know, a $200 lunch just makes all the difference as you get to know people, because you can always go back and ask for their help or ask for references, referrals. And, you know, if a deal gets stuck and you've gotten to know someone, you can go back to them and say, okay, listen, it's 6 weeks. We don't have red lines on the T&Cs. I don't want you to go ask legal again what's going on because they're already irritated with you. So why don't you just tell me who you're talking to and I'll be the bad cop. I'll call legal and say, hey, it's John with you know, X company, and I'm trying to find out where we are on this contract. You know, can you, can you give me an update? Because I don't want Wendy to keep asking. Right? And then Wendy becomes the good cop. The rep is the bad cop, which I think is pretty critical in, in a lot of selling scenarios that I think has also become a lost art. Right? You, you were taught through MEDDIC and these other sales methodologies. to create a champion. And, and yes, I agree that that's important, but that champion has to take all the bullets.

And that's a lot of responsibility, champion.

Yeah, it is. And that is, that isn't fair, right? And so, you know, I, I used to say to, you know, whoever my champion was, you're going to be me inside of the organization. But when you feel like the heat's getting too hot, You know, I, I don't work there. So once the deal is signed, I'm good, but you have to stay on the payroll.

Yeah.

So if you feel like things are too hot for you, you need to just tell me, and I am more than happy to call legal, call IT, call accounting, and find out where are we, right? And if they get irritated, that's okay. I don't work there. And that's not something that I think sales reps are taught. They're not taught to take the bullets. And I think you have to be willing to take those bullets.

Yeah, because they're also not aware of what that champion's going through. And if you don't have that, that strong rapport, are they gonna tell you that legal is sitting on it? Or that somebody in finance is naysaying it or the CEO doesn't understand the problem.

So I learned that lesson 2011 or '12. I kept calling my champion and he's like, I don't know. I've asked and I can't get an update. So I called the VP of accounting on his cell phone before that was even a thing, right? Think about that back in 2012. One, I was shocked he answered. Two, I was shocked he didn't hang up. And I said, Al, listen, I am so sorry to bother you. No, tell me what it is. And I said, well, you know, we cannot get redlines on the T's and C's. What do you mean? I said, well, we've been trying for weeks and we— oh, nope, nope. I'm gonna handle it. You'll have them in an hour. And sure enough, we did. And, you know, that was a dice roll on my part. He could have lost it. So again, I think you have to be willing to take the bullets. You have to be Able to challenge and ask the tough questions and take some risks, which we haven't talked about. But I think it's inherent that, you know, if you're in sales, you gotta be okay with risky behavior.

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

So I'm on LinkedIn. I post periodically. It's John Beisty on LinkedIn, B-E-I-S-T-Y. Appreciate you asking and having me, and I'd love to come back and spend However much more time you need, I'm sorry that it's shorter than anticipated.

See, today I think we're too focused on activity. And activity is one of the ingredients. But that— those conversations, that's where the magic happens. That's why we hire salespeople. And that's why we pay commission Is so that salespeople will put the effort into becoming good at this so that they're effective in selling. Anyone can put up a website. Anybody can send an update. But it's that connection you have with the customer. Them wanting to talk to you, not as a service clerk, as a peer, as a valuable member of their network. As a colleague. Too many of us, we want that, or we initiate the communication as a salesperson, and we walk right into the commodity trap. The commodity trap is, it's a thing, it does something, it costs something, I get something. It's a transaction. You don't want to be there. Do you open up to the clerk or the waitress? You might to the bartender, but why? It's time and attention and focus. You know, there is a service ingredient, but you're not a service clerk. It's very different. The difference is you're focused on their best interest, and that pushback And showing them that you're in there, you're looking for their best interest, builds that trust. And I think this part of the sale needs to be resurrected because I think what you've heard over the last 5 years, 6 years I've been interviewing the world's best salespeople here, it's come through each time. These people have become great resources in their network. They bring value, and the value is something that the other person wants, not what you think is value. And this is kind of an advanced human skill. A lot of people never learn this because they just React. They focus and do what they have to to get through life. And they do it with their friends and family, but not with strangers. We have to do it with strangers all day long. If you want a system to save you probably 5 years of figuring this out on your own— because a lot of people, once you fall into the acting like a salesperson, it's hard to stop acting like a salesperson. It becomes Part of our personality. The course for you is Start the Conversation, Get the Meeting. It teaches you how to build these types of conversations. Not about you, not about your product, not about your company. They don't care. You got to build up the trust so they do care.

But do you care?

If you care enough, you probably want to learn these skills. You can take 5 years, or you can go to b2brevenue.com and sign up for Start the Conversation, Get the Meeting. There's 2 videos there, one on how the courses work, and the second one is which course is right for you. Please watch both of them before you decide. If you still have questions or you just want to learn more about it, you can schedule a call with somebody on my team. It's not with me, but it is with somebody on my team, and they can answer any questions for you. Thanks for listening. If you see my stuff fly by on LinkedIn, give it a little like, a little comment, a little share. We'll see you next time.