HOW TO LEVERAGE YOUR CURRENT SKILLS TO SELL BIGGER DEALS

In sales, there's always this big debate. Do you double down on what you're great at, or do you try and uplevel the parts of your sales game that isn't at the A-level? You can take whatever strategy you like, but today's guest doubled down on what he was already good at and then made it his superpower in sales and how he was able to get Larger deals done and justified. Now, you may think that this might take getting a degree. It doesn't. It does take initiative. It does take you going out and learning this stuff. But if you hear this interview, you get the outcome. You get the big deals done. Now, I've always wrestled with this. When I first got into sales, I would recommend starting with what you're already good at. Here's the reason. When you're good at something and you apply it, you get that dopamine hit, meaning that it feels good. You're good at something. And then what you can do is then apply that to some of the other elements of your sales game. Now, when I got into sales, what I was good at was I knew the product really well. I was great at the demos and getting people excited and on the technical side. And I augmented that with my CEO who was fantastic on the business side. Now, not everybody has that luxury, but we have to first be aware of it. And second, find a way of doubling down on what we're good at and having other people or other tools or situations help us with the weaker parts. Let's get into the interview. I think you're really going to like this guy. He's got a great story.

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

Good morning, Brian. Hey, thanks for having me. Yeah, Herb Klan. I live and work in Charlotte, North Carolina. Born and raised in Pittsburgh, PA. I studied finance at Penn State. Moved out to Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 2010 to start working for GE Healthcare. I was there up through the spring of this past year. I switched from GE Healthcare to Cisco Systems where I'm currently an account manager here in North Carolina.

So how do you go from a finance major to a sales guy?

Yeah.

What happened?

It was a long winding road. And it wasn't something that happened overnight. It was kind of throughout the course of 5, 6 years. I joined GE Healthcare through their financial management program. It's a 2-year rotational program. You get to join different teams within the finance function. I spent time in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Salt Lake City, Utah, Chicago, Illinois. After that, I went up to GE Corporate to join their corporate audit staff. And that's a global program where you travel all over the world every 4 months. You're rappelling into a different GE business, you know, aviation, treasury, power and water, and you're either doing a financial audit or an operational, you know, streamline project. And, you know, some of the feedback I used to get on the, on the audit staff was, you know, Herb, you're too much of a sales guy.

Really?

When it comes to, you know, explaining a financial adjustment to a CFO, We need you to say yes, no, or a number. Don't tell the story. You're too much of a sales guy. And back in my FMP days, I had done enough work behind the scenes with the commercial team. I'd seen some of the commission checks and was always fascinated with those who carried a bag. And in 2015, when I was rolling off the audit staff and it was time to take a job in a GE business, I wanted to go back to the healthcare, um, business, uh, but I wanted to jump into sales. And it took about 6 months interviewing for different roles. Finally found a couple guys that believed in me, were willing to give me a shot, and here I am 7 years later.

And what was, um, the friends and family reaction to that? Because, you know, finance is not an easy major. It's one of the harder ones.

Correct. Yeah. Um, I think my family was probably, um, less surprised that I was trying to switch into sales than they were when I told them I was declaring finance as, uh, my focus of study, you know, um, when it comes to, you know, being personal, personable, trying to, you know, create relationships, build relationships. Um, like I said, tell the story. Um, You know, I think my family, uh, you know, saw it to be a good fit and were very supportive and encouraging.

That's it, because finance is kind of like the, the brainiac side of business, kind of the unemotional, I would say introverted even.

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

And it attracts that type of person who likes some solid things, known things, no fluff.

Yeah, you know, no one wants the, the funny guy at the end of the table managing their money. Yeah. Um, no, that's, that's usually not very, very popular. But, you know, the thing that, um, my time in finance really gave me is a process mindset.

Yeah.

Um, especially on the audit staff, like most of the, um, like the top performers I was working with, they actually had an engineering background and understanding a wing-to-wing process, the inputs, the outputs, um, you know, either validating that everything's correct or, you know, something's not right and what that implication downstream is. It's the same thing in sales, you know, going from point A to point B, walking someone from current state to future state. And, you know, why, why my solution? Why now?

Well, that's it, because a lot of people look at sales as a personality characteristic instead of a process, right? And whether you call a process a game or some structured way of a journey from where you are to where you want to get.

It is. Yeah. You know, in today's commercial world, journey is probably like, you know, sometimes overused, almost way overused, right? It's like a buzzword. But, you know, when you're on a journey, you're on it with multiple people. And that's the thing about managing the sales process is, you know, understanding the customer. And when you say customer, who do you mean? Often it's 5, 10, I mean, you can have a dozen different customers on one project.

Yeah.

And so understanding how each of them fit, like whenever I was doing my financial audits, you know, we'd usually get a data dump on a Friday, we grind through the weekend, and if you found something, there was a step-by-step kind of best practice we used where Monday morning you're clearing it with the financial analyst that may or may not have made that error. And you basically go to them with your finding and say, hey, look, either later this afternoon, tomorrow morning, I'm going to be sitting down and meeting with your boss. I want to bring this to you first, get your feedback. I can incorporate any and all adjustments into this. And then after you clear it, you move up the organization to the finance manager, to the finance director, eventually the controller. And then on Thursdays was the big you know, CFO presentation. What's the first thing the CFO asks you when you walk in with a million-dollar adjustment to the income statement at the end of the quarter? What does my team think?

Yeah.

You know, and so you already have the team's buy-in, there's no surprises. You know, and you walk out of that, that internal boardroom, and you walk into, you know, the external customer boardroom, if you will. And it's the same thing, you got to clear it up the organization. You got to make sure that everyone understands what you're proposing, how it impacts them, what they can gain from it. And then that support kind of builds a little bit of a groundswell. There's no surprises, everyone feels involved, everyone feels included. And that's usually where, you know, I've been able to kind of find success. Cool.

And what was it like the first couple years in sales? Did you feel at home? Or was it a struggle? Were you a fish out of water?

Um, I had a good team around me. So as, um, baffling as it was at first, um, I was surrounded by some pretty seasoned vets that were willing to, you know, hey, Herb, 6, 12 months, you know, 18 months, like, you're gonna be lost. I got you. It will click. It will make sense. And when it did, you know, then I kind of enjoyed the benefit of like the exponential curve just because I had that at solid base, um, you know, beneath me.

And what about it surprised you?

Um, probably how when it comes to B2B transactions and you're dealing in, you know, million-dollar numbers, People that are making these decisions have probably never made a million-dollar decision in their life prior to that, especially outside of work.

Yeah.

Most people, the biggest thing they've ever bought is a car or a truck or a boat, right? Whether you're selling a million-dollar MRI or in my career now, a million-dollar cybersecurity solution, That is a lot. And so it surprised me that the decision-makers were often trying to navigate their buying process the same way they would, like I said, a personal asset like a car. And it's much more complicated than that. And so it surprised me that a lot of my time was spent educating them on how to buy, Versus me selling. I didn't— I don't really have to do a ton of selling as much as I do, you know, on the kind of educational side of buying.

And was it mostly emotional obstacles as opposed to logical obstacles, them getting comfortable with this new product and the risk and the change of spending that kind of money?

Yeah, yeah, that the, the emotional obstacles are always there. I, I like to always, you know, put a, put a stake in the ground around something objective, whether it's a financial outcome, an operational outcome, you know, a clinical or say like a technical outcome, like putting words on paper, Putting numbers on paper, often I will you know learn my customer's mission statement, their vision. If they have like a five-year strategic growth plan, and then often try to marry my proposal up to that because once you have those linkages and you give that to your customer, they then can almost use that as their own justification as to why they're doing it, and it feels less risky. Because when your solution ties into the broader task that they are charged with carrying out, they almost then have the ability to go sell for you. You know, you kind of leave that one-page executive summary behind, the document that can sell when you're not there.

And what things did you learn that most people still don't get? Because you, you came up in, I think, a great situation— high dollar amount, a lot of mentors, people that could help you along.

For sure.

But given your background, what surprised you about sales?

Um, you know, I, I like the saying, you know, if you can't teach it, you don't know it.

Yeah.

And the biggest surprise was the lack of financial acumen of the commercial sales team. You know, not because they can't learn it, it's just no one's ever taught it to them. And like, I saw time and time again where, you know, I'd kind of be in the passenger seat, like Rodgers behind Favre, and, you know, the customer says, well, you know, we, we don't have money for that right now. And, you know, my colleague would be like, okay, well, you know, we'll check back in 6 months. And they— and it's like, well, you know, hold on, if you, if you could just help me understand, when you say you don't have money for that right now, when you say money, what do you mean? Oh, we don't have the funding. Right. So when it comes to a capital, you know, expenditure acquisition, is there some sort of like systemic process? Oh yeah, we have this, you know, enterprise resource planning system, ERP system. that we have to get our projects signed off on and budgeted. We can't execute until they're funded. Well, right. So when we're talking about doing this deal, would your ERP system be able to issue a purchase order against a project that is budgeted but not funded? And they're like, well, yeah, I don't see why not. And suddenly it's a completely different conversation. You're talking about budgeting versus funding, versus invoicing. So many salespeople even use orders and revenue and cash collection, these words interchangeably. And understanding whenever you're sitting down in front of an end user, they're really not concerned with any of the, say, the 3 big financial statements. Once you get up to that director level, they got something tied into running their portion of the P&L.

Yeah.

Right? And you eventually get to the point where someone cares about the balance sheet. In today's world, you know, subscription is kind of where it's at. CapEx versus OpEx. Everyone wants to be the Netflix of whatever it is they do.

Yeah.

You know, but a lot of organizations are still behind when it comes to accounting for that. How do you, how do you subscribe, you know, to a $5 million enterprise networking infrastructure like that? used to be a one-time CapEx purchase. We know how to depreciate that. We got an army of accountants that are really good at it. You know, we got a whole cube farm upstairs. It's a completely different mindset.

Well, that's it. And early in my career, the CFO occasionally would get involved— our CFO would get involved in these large deals. And, you know, they were well into the 7 figures, and we would trying to get a leasing company involved so that they could lease the equipment over the lifetime of the program so that they wouldn't have to make it capital equipment. And just these simple little financial vocabulary made the deal so much easier to get done. But you knew that from your finance background, right? That's right. Yeah, right.

And I found it to be extremely important to kind of clarify that stuff early and upfront. You know, it's really good to say, hey, I'm sure, you know, we're all speaking the same language, but just to ensure that I understand we're all singing from the same sheet of music, right? Like the capital acquisition request, you know, like that can be executed on today. You lock in the pricing, you don't have to worry about the lead times. You set your own shipment date, and we will ship when you're ready in your fiscal year, in which the project is budgeted and funded, so on and so forth. It's important to lay that out ahead of time because you give your customers and sometimes your teammates the opportunity to kind of learn in that moment without having to say, yeah, I don't know that, but I probably should. Because you want to keep them in that creative mode. You— the last thing you want to do is put someone in a defensive position. Where they feel less than, you know, they feel, you know, silly. Um, that's— I mean, the meeting's over at that point. So I always try to keep people in that creative space where they feel empowered, they feel educated, like I'm on their team, I'm trying to help them, because at the end of the day, that's why we're there.

And other than the financial expertise, what selling skill do you feel is your strongest?

Um, it's probably not a super, uh, um, you know, popular answer, but it's PowerPoint.

Yeah, it's the first time I've heard it.

Yeah, um, it's, it's PowerPoint. That's my, that's my Superman skill. Um, I can take a very, very complex concept.

Yeah.

And boil it down into a one-page Easy to read, digestible format, you know, that kind of lays out the, you know, what's the WIFM, what's in it for me? You know, like I said earlier, tying back those objective stakes to financial outcomes, operational outcomes, technical outcomes, next steps clearly outlined. Because once I have that, it's almost like my ticket to the boardroom, right? That's literally the piece of paper, the ticket that I'm walking into these meetings with. As I'm working through the organization, getting everyone on board. And by the time that page hits the CEO's desk, everyone's already, already seen it. They know the story. It's clear as day. And again, that document can be there when I'm not to kind of sell on my behalf.

Yep.

I can control the messaging, make sure that, you know, none of these key points get lost. And so that's, that's what I do.

Cool.

And what was the transition like from GE to Cisco? Because different market, different products, different challenges.

Yeah, well, to maybe start with your last point there, as far as challenges go, when I was, you know, at GE Healthcare and I was running the imaging business in Charlotte, North Carolina, and you go from one hospital to the next hospital to an imaging center to an imaging center, You basically pick up on, okay, this is kind of the trend of issues I see, and this is the solution in my portfolio, so I can match them up, marry them up, move forward. Coming over to Cisco, I have their top 10 accounts in Charlotte all outside of the healthcare industry, so I'm having to learn these different business models from manufacturing to entertainment, automotive, fashion, uh, hedge fund. I even have a chicken factory, chicken farm in my, um, in my list.

They need their internet as well, don't they?

They need networking too. Um, but at GE, you're always, you know, mindful of the fleet, the fleet of cath labs, the fleet of CT scanners. So it is like an ongoing working relationship. But the biggest difference I've seen so far being in the seat for 100 days between GE and Cisco is, you know, Cisco is the network. They are the IT infrastructure, you know, not just routers, switches, wireless access points, but all that information. Where's it stored? Into the data centers, you know, on-prem, in the cloud. And then last but certainly not least, most importantly, is the security aspect of it. how safe is your network? We also have the collaboration portfolio, and in today's world, hybrid work, work from home, interconnection. I mean, look at us now. So the relationships with the customers at Cisco seem to be a lot deeper because the Cisco team has to be there every day. I mean, literally on call 24/7.

Yeah.

So that if something If something is happening, you know, we can keep it alive, we can keep it up. It is a living, breathing thing versus, you know, um, when you're in the CapEx equipment world.

And what new skills did you have to develop?

It's, um, probably learning to be even more comfortable being very uncomfortable. You know, as an account manager, it's, it's your job to you know, pull in the experts when you need to. You know, we got specialists for a reason. You know, at Thanksgiving dinner, my family's like, what is it you do? I'm like, I put the right people in front of the right people at the right time. You know, at Cisco, I'm having to do that a lot more often.

Right.

Because it's one, like you can memorize, you know, certain texts and specs of equipment, but when it comes to very customizable, cloud solutions, you get questions from customers, I mean, you couldn't even guess, you can never anticipate. Having to have those architects, those super specialists at the ready and pull them in and let them go, that's been a transition and something that frankly I've grown to enjoy.

Did the financial skills transfer well?

Yeah, probably even more so, just due to Cisco's, you know, kind of go-to-market business model when it comes to software subscriptions, shifting from CapEx to OpEx, you know, licensing agreements, enterprise agreements, so on and so forth, like being able to talk about moving funds from, you know, the one-time CapEx purchase, you know, over a lease, like you said, you know, throughout the course of a loan, or, you know, just a subscription-based model, being able to sit down and have that conversation, you know, in a comfortable kind of regular manner, that's transferred pretty well.

And what skill, if you had now, would take your career to the next level? Let's say I offered you a vitamin, and in it, if you took it for 30 days, you'd have that skill. What would that— what would that skill be?

That is a— that is a very good question. Um, I don't know.

No? No weaknesses? No wish I could?

I I wish I could. I wish I could have maybe a little bit more of an executive presence earlier in the sales process. I never try to start at the top of the organization.

Yeah.

I always try to, you know, kind of, you know, knock on the front door and work my way up.

Yeah.

Sometimes, you know, you run into obstacles along the way, and you kind of get blocked and the elevator's not working. And you know, you're not going to get any higher. When you do make it to the top, when you do make it into the C-suite, that's often an easier sell than it is, you know, at the lower levels of the org. Because their time is limited. You know, they're looking for the value points right up front. And if you have a clear, compelling argument that is an outcome-based solution tied into their strategic priorities and initiatives anyway, and the numbers make sense, usually moves pretty quickly. So that's something that I am working on. Just that, that, that confidence, maybe that strategy to, to not feel like I need to go top, or excuse me, bottom to top, you know, every time, but rather start somewhere in the middle and see if you can, you know, hit that, that trampoline up and just move things along a bit faster.

Yeah, certainly for the last 20 years, I think that the idea that, you know, an executive will mandate a product because a salesperson told them about it without that support from the user base, that doesn't exist anymore.

Right.

Other than like in sales, right? Where, you know, like Salesforce has no business selling to salespeople. They sell to the sales leader. The salespeople don't care.

Right.

The sales manager that cares. But in IT, if the implementers, the engineers say, and that's not the right fit, there's no CIO that's gonna say, no, make it the right fit. Those days are over.

Right, right.

Because there's just too much to know, and that's why they hire the people.

It's also very important to go wide in the organization, especially when it comes to IT. You know, anytime a company, you know, buys something from Cisco Systems, you know, that it gets added to the IT team's to-do list.

Yeah.

Right. And if it's already a mile long and you're just tacking on to it, you know, that can, that can be exhausting. Getting into the different functions, whether it be, you know, marketing or operations or engineering, and kind of, you know, tethering your solution to a strategic initiative in one of those areas, it's often when you can kind of see it moved up the priority list, and then you kind of, you help your network engineers understand, you know, why it is, you know, that important and why it should be prioritized.

Is that your chief kind of obstacle, the priority list? Because that's typically what I hear in security and IT is that they like it, they want it, they can afford it, but you're number 17 instead of number 2. So we'll get to you in 2 years.

Yeah, the prioritization of the projects, that is an obstacle. I would also say breaking the status quo when it comes to going from on-prem to cloud. And when it comes to breaking out from some of the traditional networking to some of the more advanced solutions that often come through startups and acquisitions by Cisco, driving that adoption is something that we're working on every day.

And given it's Charlotte, are most clients laggards where they're kind of holding on to the on-prem, or technology is not their core business? It's kind of what they run their business on, but their real business is chickens.

My customer base, they seem to be very forward-thinking.

They are? Okay.

Yeah. You know, outside of New York City, Charlotte is, you know, the biggest US financial hub, again, second to New York. And I think that kind of innovation, that technology, that's kind of an energy that's here in Charlotte, even a logistics company that I serve, they have partnerships with MIT around machine learning.

Okay.

And artificial intelligence for their trucking fleet. Um, you know, automotive dealership, you know, they're all about the user experience and mobile devices and meeting their customers where they're at. You know, the day of, you know, the phone call going to the kitchen about your service appointment 3 weeks, you know, from now, that's now fully automated on, you know, the communication platform as a service, you know, via text. Hey, you need an Uber Home while we service your vehicle. And then the automated notification, hey, can we call you an Uber to bring it back to pick it up?

Yeah. And what is it about sales that you know is true that most reps don't get yet?

Again, I think I would go back to simplifying the complex.

Yeah, that's our job, right?

If you can't teach it, you probably don't know it. And if you don't know it, your customer certainly doesn't know it. And if they don't know it, they feel stupid. If they feel stupid, they get defensive, and you're done. So if you take an educational approach, take the time, take the time to practice with your friends, with your family, you know, pretend like the next meeting you're going to is Thanksgiving dinner and you have to explain how this all works. You know, rarely have I ever had a customer say, Herb, you're making this too easy, right? Like, people, people want to understand. And when you put them in that position of empowerment where suddenly they may become more of the expert on this project than their boss, that's whenever people get excited and the adoption actually goes through.

And what do you use? Metaphors? PowerPoint? Stories? What What's your superpower there?

It's the PowerPoint and it's metaphors, probably, you know, analogies sometimes to a fault. Again, you gotta go back to what the customer knows. I already mentioned, you know, buying a vehicle, for example.

Yes.

So when you're going through the different options, you know, in your portfolio, I'll often say, hey, what do you drive? Oh, I have a truck. I drive a Ford. Okay, so this is a Maverick, this is a Ranger, here's your F-150, I'll sell you the Raptor. That's kind of too much. That's kind of too much. If you're pulling your boat, we're going to go Ranger, F-150. Now it's just a matter of prioritization. And you see the light go off, it clicks. So metaphors and analogies often go a long, long way.

Where'd that creativity come from? Because that's kind of orthogonal to finance.

Yeah. Well, prior to studying finance at Penn State, I studied a lot of German history and film. I was always very interested in the arts, big fan of music. Growing up, that was kind of a big part of my upbringing. Um, you know, there's always Fleetwood Mac, Elton John, Pink Floyd on in the house. You know, I came up through the period of, uh, you know, the, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and I always, you know, really enjoyed music. Like I said, enjoyed the arts, enjoyed film. It was kind of always a passion of mine. Um, you know.

Did you play an instrument, or were you a practitioner of any of these?

No, nothing worth writing home about.

Um, you don't have to be good at it, but the practice of any performance art is very similar to sales.

Yeah, no, I, um, I, I played the, uh, the French horn and the guitar growing up.

Yeah.

Yeah, so, you know, Blackbird's not easy, but when you get it down, it's, it's a cool party trick.

Well, you, you also learned— did you have an instructor?

Oh yeah, yeah.

So that coach, right? Practice, repetition, little tiny improvements, finding those little distinctions.

Accountability.

Yeah, it sounds like sales, right?

Ralph Goldinger at May's Music Shop, he used to play, um, the Disney cruises. So he, he'd be gone for a month, you know, he'd give me the list. Here, here's the songs from The Killers that I want you to learn how to play.

Yeah.

You know, and when Ralph, you know, gets back home 30 days later, you know, Herbie better have practiced. You know, driving that accountability that was instilled very young.

And what's your why behind all this? What, what's the motivation?

I like people. I like spending time with people, getting to know people, helping people. I have a great family, you know, I have a great friend base. And, you know, you got to have a career of some sort, you know, you got to make money, you got to do something every day. And I mean, trust me, like the money in finance and accounting and auditing, you know, it's, it's great. Yeah, you know, you're in the cubicle and you're at the water cooler and—

It's a grind.

It's a grind. And I wasn't feeling like I was shaking as many hands as I, as I wanted to shake. I was having as many productive meetings as I wanted to have. And when you leave the office and you get in the company car and you're putting 50,000 miles on a year, you're meeting people. Yeah, you're, you're meeting people. And, you know, that gets some people going, and it struck a nerve with me. And I like— life on the road is, is good.

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

LinkedIn. LinkedIn would be great. Herb Clan. Brian, it was it was great to connect with you again. Longtime fan of the show. I love the clips. Sometimes they hit a little too close to home, and I got to check myself. But you you keep us honest, and I appreciate everything you do.

If you want to become great at closing the complex sale, go to B2B Revenue. The letter B, the number 2, the letter B, the word revenue, dot com. And I'll show you how it works. And I structured it exactly how we talked about today. Start where you are and build as you grow your way, not my way. But you have to understand how the game's played. That doesn't really change that much. It's a little different at different companies. Words sound different, the faces are different, uh, the excuses are different, but the objectives and the steps are the same. And we tend to get tricked by the words, the context, and Not being ready, not anticipating. That's the, the hard part, because if you don't anticipate it, you fall into the trap. And what's a trap? A trap is something that looks so enticing that we obviously take it. It makes it look like the obvious right move, and in truth, it's usually the worst move, a move that will delay or kill the deal, not immediately, but over a couple weeks, for reasons that we don't really understand. But I'll teach you, and you learn at your pace. You have access to the course for a year. You can pay monthly or all at once, but it's not a membership. So if you're not committed to the full 12-month payment plan, Don't sign up. Most people sign up and then complain to me. No, I'm doing it as an option for you. You have to commit. And I do it for a year because you think you know it. We all do. But then you fall into the trap. You blame the trap instead of you being not prepared. I give you a formula, a visual, a way of modeling the real world so you can understand where you are and where you need to go. And this is based off of 30-plus years of complex selling and taking more of an engineering approach than just a smile and relationship. That's all good. Everything's good in sales. But to understand it, it has to be a whole lot more than they like you. Go to b2brevenue.com. Sign up today.