HOW TO LEVERAGE THE PROOF OF CONCEPT TO WIN THE DEAL

Most of us have some element of a proof of concept or proof of value, as some people like to call it, or a demo or a road test, but something that kind of comes after that initial presentation. And if done well, it can be insanely powerful. If it's done poorly, it can go awry and we can mess up the deal or slow it down in some cases, or Ruin it in others. And in today's interview, we're going to be talking about these issues. So this interview is a little bit different. It's not so much about how one great salesperson is great and became great. It's more about this one element of a sales process. And what we should do is really look at our sales process and how do we stay engaged How do we get them to want to talk with us, need something from us so that that interaction and exploration into their organization can become part of the sales process? Remember, we may know how to sell. They do not know how to buy. And some people fight me on this. Some people say, well, we just got to match their buying process. Well, Well, that would be great if they had a buying process. Nobody gets taught that. Procurement knows how to buy something once they're told, once they get a purchase request. You know, they'll do their thing, but they're not doing it for the best of the company. They're doing it for the audit. That's their test. All they want to do is get best value in the auditor's eyes. The view of their superiors and how they will be represented. And they— guess who they hate talking to? Salespeople. Because procurement thinks they know it all because they're procurement and everything looks the same to them. And if you deal with just procurement, you're a commodity. So you just either become the lowest price product or you find a better customer. So let's get into the interview. I'll sum it up at the end and I'll critique something I saw on LinkedIn. LinkedIn, and I think really proven my point that hubris and confirmation bias are the biggest killers of our deal— more than price, more than our time, more than our selling skills— because we're not applying them because we're using our confirmation bias instead of our analytical skills.

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

Yeah. Hey, Brian, it's great to be here. Appreciate it. Big fan of yours. So definitely enjoying the opportunity. Yeah, I've been in IT technology sales for about 30 years. Sold a lot of different products in a lot of different verticals, software, hardware, even actually had my own VAR business for several years. And so been around the block, as you might say.

And why sales?

You know, it's funny, my dad was a salesman. He was in the food industry. And I guess it's just always kind of been in my blood. You know, just one of those things you just kind of grow up around and kind of get acclimated to. And yeah.

Cool.

And you have strong feelings about doing POCs or how you do POCs?

Yes, I do. POCs, in my opinion, can stand sometimes for prevention of closure. And there's a lot of reasons There's reasons for that, right? But yeah, at the end of the day, it's kind of a double-edged sword. It can be a good thing, but it could certainly be something that can stall a deal, you know.

So, well, let's talk about the good thing. How have you seen it handled well and why do it?

Yeah, it's a good point. I think the good part about it is, is if you can get your customer engaged and in the process, right, early on, and you're really active with them, you get introduced to a lot of other decision-making people, you get access to people you may not have necessarily spoken to in the process of trying to sell them. And, you know, if you do it right, it gives you the ability to showcase your product well, and hopefully build a relationship that says, hey, you know, this is a great solution for you. And we've kind of shown you why and what it can do for you.

And how have you seen it prevent closure?

One of the biggest challenges that I've seen is the fact that It stalls a deal, right? It stretches things out to the point where it can take months more than it should. And part of the problem is that, you know, people in general are busy and they get busy with work-related things that aren't necessarily, you know—

Buying stuff.

Yeah. And not only that, they're higher priority, right? So your little demo or test or whatever you want to call it, you know, takes a back seat when the boss says, hey, you got to get this job done and we need it done right away, right? So that's part of the problem. So you can start off hot. You can have a lot of great interest in the beginning. But then what happens typically a lot of times is you get what I call, you know, kind of ghosted during a POC, meaning that they're not avoiding you on purpose necessarily. They're just really busy. And, you know, because it's not a priority and they've got to do other things, they tend to ignore you.

And how do you prevent it? Or let's say Tomorrow you go to a great account and they go, yeah, we should probably do a POC. How would you respond?

Yeah, I think you have to get a little bit of information upfront, right? First of all, do you have a budget to even buy the gear, right? Because it's great to sell somebody on a solution, but if they have no authority or budget to buy it, then you've wasted your time, you know, and their time as well. So that's one of the things you have to kind of vet out upfront. I think the other thing that's really important, that's been helpful for me, is that you really have to understand what is it exactly that we're trying to do? What do you need to see? What kind of functionality do we have to show you? What questions do you have? What other stakeholders might be involved in the decision? All of those things, if you can get that up front. And then the biggest question is, do you have time to do this? Right? Because a lot of times people get interested. It's a big— And as a salesperson, right, you're excited. Oh, they're great. I got a guy on the line. He's ready to go. But then You know, they may not be ready. So I think those are important questions to have upfront. And I think that helps with the process.

And, you know, because they're gonna say, yes, we have time, but not much. This is important. Yes, we've got money. How do you vet that out? Or—

It's hard. It's hard, right? I mean, you can't always get a straight answer. Sometimes they tell you all these things you want to hear because they're excited. And then, you know, you find out later on that, you know, they really didn't have any authority to make a purchase decision. And the person you really needed to talk to, you never were introduced to, and, you know, you know how that goes. So that's one of the challenges. But I think one of the other things that I found that works pretty well is getting multiple stakeholders involved. I always want to have at least 2 folks involved in the process. Whenever they kind of push you off onto one guy, oh, he's going to be in charge, right? He's going to run the whole thing. And it's like, no, no, no, no, that's not the way it's going to work.

Yeah.

So I try personally to try to get more people involved. And I think if you can get, you know, 2 to 3 people, if one for some reason gets super busy, at least you can lean on the other 2 to see if we can get the ball rolling. And I've had that, I've had that work quite a few times, actually.

Yeah, I definitely agree with that. Um, but how do you do that in your process? You know, you have typically some kind of presentation meeting. Yeah, yeah.

Discovery call.

Sure, sure. Yeah, that's a good question. So the discovery call obviously would come way before any kind of a POC. And then what we hope to do is to try to invite as many folks to the meeting as possible. That's key, right? And, you know, with this whole COVID thing, it's been difficult because these Zoom meetings, you know, Or, you know how they are, they're hit or miss. Yeah, yeah. I mean, typically, you know, back pre-COVID, I'd go into a room and I'd try to get, you know, 5 or 6 or 7 people in a conference room, and then we'd be talking to everybody and having them all there and asking questions so that at least they were involved. You get some other contact names, you know, you have some other people you can talk to and, you know, see what their process is and who they're— how they're involved and that kind of thing.

That's right.

That's what I think works best.

And what are your thoughts on charging for a POC?

You know, a lot of people like the idea of that, and I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing. My whole version of that, what I would call a paid POC, if you will, is we sell them a unit and we just say, hey, look, you know, you've got your own timetable, you have your own schedule. We don't want to have to keep bothering you all the time to get some testing done so we can get our gear back. How about, you know, we've shown you a bunch up front. You know, you said that it seems to meet your requirements and it can help you out. You know, why don't you go ahead and just buy a unit and try it out for, you know, we'll help you. We'll be there just like as if we were doing a POC with a demo piece of gear or demo software, whatever you want to call it. And, you know, but you'll have a little more skin in the game and you'll be able to, you know, work on your own timeframe. And that actually tends to working better a lot of times than doing a demo POC, to be honest.

Yeah, I mean, because I've almost found no success with charging for POCs. It defeats the purpose. Your purpose is to get skin in the game and get some money and cover your costs.

Right.

And then it turns into a deal. It's just a small deal. And you recommend, if you're gonna do a small deal, just buy a unit, whatever it is.

Right, right. And one of the tricks that we've learned to use recently is 'cause we have a software part of our solution, it's software and hardware, but even if you were just selling software alone, This would work too. We host the demo on our gear, right? So what we have access to it, we can, we have visibility into how often and when they've gone in, what they've done, right? And it sort of gives them a little accountability, you know, hey Jim, I noticed you haven't logged in for 3 weeks. Is there a reason for that? You know, is there something, you know, wrong? Are you having a hard time getting into the system? Whatever it might be, but at least we have an idea of, you know, whether they're actually actively engaging in the process.

And can they do a POC without some handholding either from you or—

Well, you know, it's funny because you have customers that say, oh yeah, just send me the box and I'll figure it out, or send me the software, I'll figure it out, right? And that's never a good scenario because you lose control. Yeah, I mean, you lose all control at that point. So I never do that. And in fact, what we try to do is usually sort of prepare a lot of it ahead of time to minimize the time they have to spend to get it up and running and start testing, right? The goal is, is that we want to hand them something that's ready to use out of the box, and all they have to do is, you know, not go through the pain of configuration and all that stuff, just start testing. So I think that helps as well.

And how about the idea of having a reference call with an existing customer in their space as the proof point of the POC?

Yeah, a good Good point. I've done that before as well, and it's actually worked out really well, especially if you have a good customer who's willing to, you know, spend their own time to talk to one of your potential customers. Yeah, I love that idea. It's a great— it's a great tool.

Because a lot of the stuff that people sell, the POC can serve as a great reason to stay engaged with them, you know. Yes. If you're selling advertising, the classic thing, they have the beauty contest, come in and pitch us. And the best people just say, well, let's just get started and you tell us we're not qualified and we'll produce some stuff, give us some feedback. Because what do you do after that demo? They're going to immediately ask for a proposal, which is the worst thing you can do.

Right, right.

You might as well just say, please don't ever call me back unless you want something.

Right, absolutely. Now, and that's, you know, actually another good point about successful POC, and I didn't mention this before, you want to try to deal with the pricing question upfront, right? You want to give them an idea, what are they getting into? Is it going to cost me $1,000 a box? Is it $5,000? Whatever. And you want to have those discussions ahead of time because there's nothing worse than getting down to the wire there and then they get a price, you know, and they're like, oh wow, this is, you know, way past our budget. We have no idea it was this expensive, or we can't, you know. So yeah, I think that's something I would definitely try to do upfront as well. That way, They know what to expect when you give them a final proposal, and hopefully, you know, by then you've sold them on the solution, right? And again, a part of it is a little bit of accountability, right? You have to kind of force that a little bit sometimes where you have to say, hey, look, you know, we've shown you X, Y, and Z. You said we had to show you X, Y, and Z. You know, what else is there left for us to show you? You know, we'd love to show you more if you have more questions and everything, but, you know, at the end of the day, we've done our part and we've checked those boxes for you, right?

Yeah, but, but then they always win, right? Because they can always just go quiet. I think if the POC— because I've always sold where there's engineers with zero budget authority but were always price conscious, of course, because price meant they had to go up the org and figure out how to get it done, right?

Right.

And they always wanted to play with a new toy, right? You know, so you'd always look for what's the business use of this? Does it make business sense? And I always made it a rule, I need the introduction to the manager before we can get this signed off.

Right, right. And that's great. That's a great point. I mean, I think that that's something you should be doing, right? You need to understand their buying process. What is your buying process? You know, who's involved in it? And, you know, and a lot of times you're right, you get pushback, or they'll— I don't know. And, you know, let me find And, you know, and whatever. But at least you set the expectation that you want to get that information before you start moving forward with the project, right?

Yeah. And I agree with you that when you deliver the product or give access to the product, you've got to walk them through it because otherwise anything that goes wrong is the product's fault.

Exactly, exactly.

Not their fault.

Absolutely. And that's why I think preparation ahead of time is key for success, right? You've gotta, you've gotta know all the potential booby traps that are out there, and you gotta be prepared for them and try to, try to deal with them before they happen. Because yeah, it's always going to go back to the product as being bad if something goes wrong, no question. But part, part of the thing— here's another point though that I'd like to make on that— is that sometimes when you have a little glitch, it's not a bad thing because it does 2 things.

Right.

It gives them an idea of What are you going to do if I have a problem when I buy this thing? Right. What's it going to be like to work with you after, you know, after I've made the purchase? And then also, it's really just an idea is that, oh yeah, you know, we're going to run into little glitches and problems here and there, but we've got solutions and we can get right on top of it and, you know, not a problem at all. So, you know, I think part of the whole process of the POC is that you're selling the customer on you as a company and a person and a rep and a, you know, sales engineer, tech That person, right? It's like, what is it like to do business with these people?

And that, that is a great point, because after that first meeting, all the kind of structure tends to slip away, and it's as needed, and, and people stop showing up on time, and they forget to call back, and a POC is less important than maybe a demo, so it gets deprioritized.

Yeah.

But it is all signals to the client of what it's going to be like after you buy it.

Absolutely. And then the other thing too, I think, is if you're in a competitive situation, which we like to call a bake-off, I think one of the things that helps is just that whole factor of, you know, being better than your competition from a, you know, personality, from a service, from an actual performance standpoint, from a knowledgeability standpoint, right? All of those things sort of play into how you can win the deal and not even necessarily having the best product. I mean, don't get me wrong, you have to have a good product or people aren't going to buy it. But if you have a good product and you're competing against another really decent product, it's really not that different. You know, just sometimes having that customer experience that be that much, you know, that much better is enough to push it over the line.

Yeah, because a lot of times it turns down to a level of comfort.

Absolutely. Yeah.

You know, because that requirements list at the beginning of the beauty contest, you know, probably 80% of it they're never going to use, right? You know, how much of Zoom do you and I use, right? We just—

Right.

Hit and record, right?

Absolutely.

And that is so critical to focus in on what they really care about.

Absolutely. Yeah. And you have to get that up front too, like we talked about before. I mean, you need that information because you can't go in with your best foot if you don't know Well, what are the hot buttons, right? What are the pain points? You know, we always say pain points, but it's not just pain points. It's, you know, what are the, the, you know, hey, my things. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What are the things that matter to that guy, right? The guy you're selling to. And I'm a big believer in people sell to people, right? I mean, it's, it's true.

Yeah, I wish more managers thought about that.

I know.

Well, that's why they have us, right?

Right.

If it could be done with a website, they'd do it.

Exactly. Exactly.

That people are buying and they buy for their reasons and their wins, not necessarily their company's. Right. And yeah, they'd like to see every possible feature. But if they're only going to use 20, what's that 20 that matters?

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. It matters to them too. Not, not what you think matters. Right.

Right.

But it matters to them.

Yeah.

Because we think our speeds and feeds and next generation AI data.

Exactly. No, you're absolutely Right. And that's, that's the funny trap some salespeople fall into. They think they've got to do the speeds and feeds approach. And it's like that, from my experience, that's never been a good strategy.

No, it's like, what's going to get them a promotion? What's going to increase their value in the marketplace, right? Reduce their headaches at work?

Yeah, I had a customer the other day, actually, it was kind of funny. He thanked me for bringing our solution to them because it made him look good in front of his boss.

Yes, I mean, right, they're not buying it because it's 10 times faster or—

Right, right.

Anything that no one else will notice.

Right, exactly. Yeah.

Well, what coaching would you have for reps out there that are facing a lot of POCs and when to leverage it and when to not?

Yeah, I mean, I think the biggest thing, and you know, this is, this is you know, kind of Sales 101-y kind of stuff, but you really have to understand your customer before you try to sell to them.

Yeah.

In other words, you understand the company, you understand what their challenges are, you understand how the organization is built. You know, the product that I'm selling today, a lot of our customers have very small IT staff, right? So our job is to make their life easier, right? So if I understand that, hey, I'm in a, you know, a $200 million company, and they've only got an IT staff of, you know, 5 people and they have 12 locations all over the world. Okay, well, they're pretty busy, right? And anything I can do to help make their life easier is going to make a, you know, impact on their day-to-day, right? And so you kind of try to get those kind of, you know, insights, and then you try to say, okay, how do I map that to what my product can do for you? You know, build that kind of connection.

And what do you wish you learned earlier in your career? that would have saved you a lot of money or created a lot more revenue?

I think the biggest thing is listening, you know, listen 90% of the time, talk 10% of the time.

And what are you listening for?

Just any little nuggets, right? I mean, little keys. And it's funny how it works, right? You, you have a conversation, it starts to go one way. In your mind, you're thinking, oh, they're going to talk about this, they're going to talk about this. Then out of the blue, typically Some other point comes up or somebody says something else and then you go, oh wow, light bulb. Hey, that's an important thing. I better make a note of that because that seems like it's an important thing for this guy. And then what I usually try to do is I usually try to bring it around to that part of the discussion and find out more about, okay, why is that important to you? What has that been a problem for you? Is that a challenge? Is that, you know, something you want to do better that you're not doing good right now? You know, whatever it happens to be, right? So that's— those are the things that I think, you know, I call them nuggets. Those are the nuggets that That really can sometimes make a difference.

And we saw a lot more of that in person when you're in a conference room.

Absolutely.

You can tell who's really in charge when everyone turns around and they come in, whose questions seem to matter most.

Yep, absolutely. Who's doing most of the talking, and then who's also paying attention, who's not. I mean, I've been in so many meetings where half the guys are sitting there on their phone or their laptop the whole time, and it's like, why are you even in the room? I mean, if you're not going to listen to what we're saying, I mean, you know, it's kind of funny, but But yeah, absolutely. That face-to-face is so much better from being able to get that kind of information because part of the problem with doing remote, you know, Zoom call type stuff is a lot of times people don't even want to turn their cameras on and then you have to like listen and it becomes more of a conference call and, you know, it's just not the same.

Yeah, it's not as engaging and you don't know if they're playing with their phone or reading email on the screen.

Exactly. Exactly.

Yeah. And What do you think differentiates the very best salespeople you've seen from the okay reps?

Yeah, that's a good question. I would say it's, you know, attention to detail probably is the biggest thing, right? Getting all your ducks in a row, knowing as much as you can, being as well prepared for a presentation as you can, you know, going on site and meeting the right people, not just having a meeting with the people that don't matter. You know, all of those things I think really make a difference, you know, and you have to have, you know, everybody always talks about the fire in the belly, you know, everybody's got to have that to some degree. But, you know, it's— I think it really is details is the most important thing.

And what details are you looking for?

I'm just trying to learn as much as I can about the customer and what problem I can solve for them at the end of the day. I mean, it really boils down to that.

Their why.

Yeah, their why. It's the most important. It's the only— well, to me, it's the only thing that's important.

Yeah, because if it's big enough, things are going to happen. If it's not big enough, it's just going to slip away.

Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.

And what makes you great at sales?

I don't know. I just think I have a natural affinity for working with people, talking, communicating, listening, you know, which I've learned over the years, um, and just really understanding, you know. You know, there's a, there's a saying out there, it's It's not don't listen to hear, listen to understand. And I think that's, that's the important part, right? If you can understand, then you can have, you know, better success at, you know, doing what you want to do.

Right. Because it's not the words, it's the meaning of the words.

Exactly.

What are the meaning of the words to them?

Right. Absolutely. To them. Yeah.

And do they feel understood? Right.

And, you know, that's a good point, actually, because a lot of times I'll ask a question when somebody says something, I'll say, uh, just so I understand what you're saying, I'm hearing you're saying, know, X, Y, and Z, and then make— just get a little confirmation that that's really what they're trying to say, right? Because sometimes, you know, people communicate in weird ways and they don't always say, you know, things the most clear and concise method. And, you know, so—

Right, because that is what everybody wants. They want to be understood, right? You know, that Scott gets us, right? Absolutely.

Yeah, and that's exactly right, because that's exactly what's important to them, and that's going to make them more comfortable with you, and it's also going to give you more a conversational, informational sharing kind of a relationship with them as well. You know, because I've been in deals early on in my career thinking, oh, things are going great. You know, I'm right down to the wire and then it just blows up in my face. And what I didn't realize at the time was I had no idea what I was really doing. I just made some assumptions based on what I thought I was doing. And, you know, that's never a good plan. So, yeah.

Yeah, because a lot of people are what I call false champions. They'll meet with you, they'll share ideas, they've got passion for what they're doing, but do they have that credibility? Does the company still have that credibility of that person, that confidence in them that they know what they're doing?

Absolutely. Yeah.

And when you look at your forecast, how do you prioritize it or get a sense of what's really going to close and what's worth investing in?

Yeah, that's a good question. So I would say primarily it's just based on the engagement quality, if you will. That's sort of the quotient that I measure it by. You know, how well have we been engaging? How consistent has it been? How has it been progressing through the process? Is there a visible, you know, light at the end of the tunnel, if you will, towards a closure? Or are we just floundering out there hoping that, you know, something's gonna happen. And, you know, and, and you— I'm sure you've been there, you know what I'm talking about.

Well, well, that's it. Yeah, because a lot of people don't even— they don't want to see what they should be seeing, right?

Absolutely. Yeah, yeah.

You know, just because somebody's willing to take the call doesn't mean there's a need behind there. They might just want education, right? Exactly what's going on in the industry.

Yep, absolutely. And there are a lot of people out there that do that, right? I mean, a lot of times you'll get get people that act like they're, oh yeah, we really need this and we really are interested. And, you know, okay, well, that sounds great, but, you know, let's dive a little deeper and find out what, you know, what's really going on underneath the hood, right?

Yeah.

And they don't really think that, you know, we only get paid if we close something and that wasting our time isn't a nice thing to do. Right.

No, absolutely. And it's funny that you say that because I, I, I start a lot of emails off sometimes when things are stalling with the phrase, I don't want to waste either of our time, you know, letting them know that I know their time is important, but you know what, so is mine, right?

And a lot of sales reps don't think that way. They don't think that their time is valuable, right?

Yeah, it's one of the most valuable assets we have.

I mean, it really is what we have, that and our ability.

No question.

And what advice would you have for the reps out there who are kind of struggling and wondering if B2B is the right sales space for them to be?

Just try to learn from your peers. You know, one of the cool things I like about sales is that I've been with so many different types of salespeople. And the beautiful thing about it is, is they can have completely different styles, completely different personalities, and yet they can all be successful equally. And it's just amazing to me how varied it can be, right? So I always look at, hey, what's this guy over here doing that I'm not doing? What's he doing? How's that working for him? Hey, you know, Jim, what did you do on your email campaign that got so many hits? You know, things like that. Just try to learn. Like, and like you always say, it's about honing your craft, right? It is a craft. You have to treat it like any other thing. It's like if I want to play a musical instrument, I'm not going to be, you know, a success out of the gate. It's going to take a lot of hard work and practice. And hopefully along the way, as I'm learning, I continue to get better and better.

Yeah.

And what gave you that mindset? Was there something in your past or was it a lesson hard learned?

Uh, it's just life. I mean, in general, I think it really is. I mean, you know, I mean, it, it just about anything I've ever worked at, you know, I've gotten better just by putting more time into it, you know.

Oh, cool. Hey Scott, appreciate your time today. Where can people go to connect and follow you?

Uh, I'm on LinkedIn and, uh, linkedin.com/in/SWEHBA.

So you really should have a plan and anticipate how do you get that part of the sale completed. How can you use a part of the proof of concept to get the deal done, to get that technical sale, to get the engagement of other people within the organization to prove your point to the exclusion of every other Now, the thing that I was talking about on LinkedIn, and it really goes to show the hubris of salespeople. The post was about developing sales skills. And I read the comments because I love to get perspective from other salespeople. And when I hear, oh, they're going to talk about ask questions. Well, yeah, you may know that you should ask questions. That part's obvious. But what questions do you ask? Are they written? Have you planned them out? Are they in a sequence? Are they building the client from where they are to where they need to be? Or are you just reacting? Are you winging it? And winging it is confirmation bias, meaning— I know what I'm doing. You may know what you're doing, but it's not a test. It's a performance. It's how well you ask questions, how well you build it. If you ask the question, are you ready to buy? That's a transactional question. Are you building up urgency? Are you getting a next step? Do you have— are you starting where they are or where you wish they And then the other one was, oh, they're going to talk about trust. Okay. Well, yeah, we know we need trust, but just because you trust the client doesn't mean the client trusts you. And how do you build trust with a stranger? Guess who's least trustworthy? Salespeople. So they start at zero trust or negative trust. They assume that you're lying, that you're going to say whatever you have to to get the order, that you're going to mislead them. So we have to assume that because when a salesperson meets with you, where are you on the trust scale with them? Ah, they're a stranger and we're mammals. Guess how mammals view strangers? Most likely a threat.

Hmm. Okay.

So knowing that you have to have trust is near worthless. How you build trust is insanely valuable. This is where I see hubris, confirmation bias getting in your way. Because if you check the box of I know about trust and questions and all the other Things about sales. And most of the comments are that. Very few are like trying to understand or differentiate or explain their approach. Most are like, oh, this is common sense. This is Sales 101. Well, yeah, the topic is Sales 101. How you do it and how well you do it is your performance. The result and the grade is not if you know it. The result or the grade is, did you get the order? And you could say, well, it wasn't because of what I did. They're political issues. Okay. Well, did you sense that? And did you continue spending time on it? Or did you move on to something that had a higher probability of closing? Judgment. And how good is your judgment of what to work on in what order?

Hmm.

The market tells us how good we are, and then we rationalize why we're still good. And this is something that I've really kind of learned this year about how big of an issue this is. I always kind of knew it but attributed it to something else. The B-player trap. And yeah, that's part of it. But we're in a profession that is so misunderstood because people get into it and think since they've been doing it N number of years, successfully, unsuccessfully, who knows, that they know it. And knowing it does you very little good. It's how well you do it. And how well you do it The market tells you. Are you crushing it? Are you winning the deals that you're going after? If you're not, focus on what you have control over. Do you have control over their politics? Not control, but maybe influence. How do you influence that? How do you build it up? Are you moving too fast? Probably. Most salespeople do. It's natural. Are you looking for a silver bullet? Or are you developing yourself? You're the silver bullet. For the first 5 years of my sales career, I was reading all the books, listening to all the tapes— at the time they didn't have podcasts— and watching people. And I kept looking for the key, the secret. And what I ended up finding out after the 5 years was the process, the skill set, Your ability is the secret, is the silver bullet. And to develop that and how well you executed your sales strategy— strategy is a plan, predetermined plan, not reactive, not like they don't call me back, what do I do? That is not a strategy, that's a tactic. And what we do is we look for tactics. Everyone loves the tactical, and they're good, they're fine. I'm not— nothing against them, but they're not a strategy. They're not understanding the whole game you're playing. Imagine playing a game by just winging it. If you've ever picked up a video game and didn't ask anybody, like, what's the objective? How do you win at this game? Watch somebody else for a while. What do you tend to do? You know, every time I picked up a video game, I always moved too fast. And you wing it. You don't read the instructions. You don't watch somebody else do it. But what do people, good gamers do? They get on YouTube, Twitch, whatever it is, and they watch and they talk to other people playing the game. They understand the rules of the game. The problem with sales is nobody really teaches us the rules. They teach us like the tiniest little tactics. Talk to listen. Okay, that's that should be a year one type of thing. But I see people year twenty-five that haven't gotten it. Year thirty-five haven't gotten it. Designing their questions. They ask questions, but are they in a certain sequence to lead somebody in a direction to find out if they're qualified?

Or not?

And can you build interest? Or are they just looking for the answer, the cheat code? A lot of people just look for the cheat code. And I gotta admit, I looked for the cheat code, but the cheat code doesn't develop your skill. It just gives you access to all the elements of the game instead of earning them. But that doesn't mean those elements help you become a better player. It just means you can The game's open. So you essentially get the reward of the game without the work of the game and having the skill of a player. So this mindset is really a distinction between the B and the A players. And for the last 2 and a half, 3 years, I've been interviewing nothing but the best salespeople I could get. Nominated by the people that work with them, not self-reported. Not everyone thinks they're the best. 35% of the people I polled on LinkedIn think they're the best salesperson, period.

Period.

Not, not in their company, on the team, or, uh, in, in their industry. The best salesperson, period. This is hubris. This is confirmation bias. This is happy ears. And comfort where comfort shouldn't be. It is not helpful. It can be— it gives you confidence. I get that part. But that confidence doesn't open up to see the problems of the deal. Have you planned for anticipating how deals are going? Not looking for patterns and a process. Everybody wants— Okay, I'm here. It's the MacGyver thing. It's like I'm stuck in a trunk. There's a ticking time bomb. How do I? D D How do I get the bomb not to go off and get out of the trunk? Okay, that's how they view sales. Well, the problem is why are you in the trunk? How do you prevent getting in the trunk? How do you stay away from bombs? Selling is. It's that type of performance skill. Knowing the elements is just the tiniest part. And everybody loves to say Sales 101. No one's ever said advanced. No, because they don't want to think that they don't know something because they think the knowing is all of it. But yet, wait a second, you've only been at this company for a year. The last one a year, the last one a year, there's clearly something wrong. If, if you have not had the success that you feel you've earned through hard work and executing your strategy, focus on what you have control over. You have control over your strategy, your tactics, your planning. That's all you. You have it. And if you don't, You can develop it. That's what I try and do in the courses. Because a lot of people take the core elements of the course and then they ask me for the key, the secret, the cheat code. But they're not developing the skill. And then if the cheat code doesn't work, they could go, this doesn't work. Brian, you're wrong. Well, it doesn't work in every situation. How do you develop that skill? Do you show up for office hours? Do you listen to the recordings of office hours? Are you listening to the one-on-ones instead of just trying to schedule one? There's more of them in there than you could probably consume in a year. Are you applying it and getting feedback and asking? That's how you get better. It is that. Or are you just sitting back in confirmation bias saying, I know this? Knowing it's the first part. Doing it, getting feedback, and becoming great at sales. That's what gets you the commission. No customer gives you a sales test. You don't come in and go, okay, fill out this test and I'll give you a meeting. Fill out this test and I'll watch your demo. Fill out this test and I'll ask for a quote. It doesn't happen. How do you build trust? Do you know how? How do you know if you have trust? How do you know if they're going to— they're lying to you or they're going to make the commitment to take a next action? These are the things that salespeople need to become great at. Why? Because if you want the deal, you have to become better, not only from your competition, better than them status quo doing nothing. Because in most cases, that's your competition. Let's say they pick you, but they don't buy. What's the commission on that? It's zero. All that effort, all that time. And when somebody wastes your time, Somebody is like, just take your annual income and divide it by 2,000, we'll give you a rough number. So if you make $100K, it's $50 an hour. If somebody asked you for your wallet, opened it up, and took $50 out of it, what would you do? You jump them. You call the police. But if somebody wastes an hour of your time and doesn't buy anything, what do you do? You hound them for 50 days. You know, he's checking in, touching base, seeing how it's going. So they, they steal more of your time. Don't waste your time. Invest your time to become better. Go to b2brevenue.com. Look at the overview of the courses. Everybody wants to talk to me about it. The calendar's full, but I recorded a video It's in the show notes on the YouTube channel and on my LinkedIn profile. It gives you a good 20-minute overview on each course, which one to pick, in what order, to help you decide if it's a match for you. The key is you have to be self-motivated because I can't put it in your head. I can't make you do it, and I can't do it for you, no matter how much I would like to. And I'd like to get paid the commission. But I'll settle for a small monthly amount, which is a payment plan, not a subscription. And you get access for a year. And if you apply yourself, you'll become a lot better. If you sit back and you say, okay, now I know this, why am I not making more? That's not going to work. Get serious about your career. It is your career, no one else's. Focus on what you control, expand what you can control, expand what you can influence, and own the result. Because you either get a commission check or you get a lesson that you will either ignore or learn from. The lose and learn, uh, first of all, are you learning the right lesson? Second of all, are you going to remember that lesson? And next, are you going to prevent that lesson from being learned 50 more times or 1,000 more times in your career. I've got friends in sales. I see them making the same mistakes over and over again. I ask them, would you like to talk about it? No, no, I know what I did wrong, or I know those people who play this, that, and the other thing. Okay, okay, keep learning it. One friend for 30 years, same lessons. Okay. None of my business. It's not my course. He's my friend. He's not asking for help. I let it go. You decide. It's your career. We'll see you there. Make sure you check out the other podcasts: Sales Questions, Brutally Honest Answers, B2B Revenue Leadership, and The Sales Leadership Show. 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. 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 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 very generic, and people are like, oh, like like tell me more about you.

Immediately.

I have like 3, 4 meetings. Like I already had 2 of 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 then by the time I'm talking to them, I already know that, okay, they, they typically have budget. I mean, assuming LinkedIn is 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, um, but yeah, I was like, whoa, this is— I like, I limited to like 30 connections a day. So then that way it's not like, it doesn't go crazy. 'Cause I remember one of the reps—

So do about 30 a day.

Uh, like I said, like this week, like 4 or 5 meetings and, and, and, and they're good meetings, you know, and it's just conversations. Like 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 bit.

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 with here.

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 and 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 get people to think about what happens if they don't have that operation, they're going to avoid it at all costs. Calls cost. 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.