HOW TO MASTER THE SALES CONVERSATION AND WIN THE LARGE B2B DEALS

Hey, before we get into this interview, I want to— just want to congratulate everybody who's listening to a sales podcast, and doesn't even have to be mine. Congratulations. I was doing some research and some math this week, trying to understand how many salespeople are spending their time trying to get better at the profession that they chose, listening to podcasts, Going to webinars, reading books, and the math didn't look very good. Looks good for you guys, meaning that the ones who do it clearly are going to get better just because you're curious about it. Yeah, you might learn a new skill. You might think about sales a little bit differently, but you want to get better. Guess what percentage it is? It's scary low. And I just submitted a poll on LinkedIn. It hasn't closed out, but the results are nothing less than delusional. Meaning that more than 45% think they do it at least an hour a week.

Eh.

My math shows 1 to 3%. Very little. Tiny. Closer to 1%. Now, let's say I'm wrong. Let's say I'm way off. Am I 3— 30 times off? 40 times off? Hmm, probably not. So look around. Sales is one of those delusional professions where people think they're so much better than they are. And who am I to say that? Well, myself, I guess. I would just look at it this way. Look at all the people who complain about not getting the results that they want.

Hmm.

And does the blame go to them? You know, I really should study. I should work harder. I should come up with my own system. I should really get feedback and see what other people are doing. No. What do they do? Oh, it's the economy. And here's another thing. When the economy goes south, so does the studying and the learning. It goes way up when things are good. It's kind of counterintuitive. And this is scary because imagine if you're a sales manager and all your reps are complaining and everything, and they think they're spending over an hour a week, yet they're not. They're lying to themselves. I think they really think they are. I think they think, oh, I read my LinkedIn feed and I read some spammy post that's all about getting some— get me to sign up for a newsletter. That's not really what I'm talking about. I'm talking about listening to a podcast like this or listening to a webinar or picking up a book. Maybe it's not that good. I'm just talking about pure raw time here. Congratulate yourself because you're already in the top 1 to 3% by doing this. Now I've got a treat and a reward for you. I've got yet one of the best interviews I've ever done. And here's why. Here, you're going to listen to a guy who talks about what the clients care about. Now you're going to be listening to this and the excuses and the justifications and the rationalizations that are going to be going through your head are as follows. You're gonna be like, well, I don't have that background. He says it takes 5 years to become great at that. Here's the cheat code. It can take 5 years to become good at that job, but that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about selling to those people, talking about things they care about. And when I used to get a new sales job, the first thing I did was, how do I come up with a 30-minute conversation Solely about what the other person cares about. Not me, not my company, not the product. Certainly about the problem. But as soon as I say the problem, everyone starts talking about the product. Because in our mind, the problem is the product because the product is the solution. And that's not how clients think. That's how salespeople think. Clients think like, hey, this is my world. It's not perfect. I'd like it to be better. And I don't like the way it is. That's a good conversation to have around all of those issues. But you got to know what they are. You got to dig into them. And once I was able to come up with this half hour, I then expanded it. I take little notes about what each person cared about that I was talking to. And then I go and research that. And I get a little bit more information about it. I develop some questions about it. And all of a sudden, my sales calls would be great conversations. Now, I can teach you how to do this at scale, online, on the phone, interactively, asynchronously. It's up to you. But to become great at this is to become great at sales. It's called Start the Conversation, Get the Meeting. But enough about that. Let's get into the conversation today. You're really going to enjoy this. Do not get hooked on, oh, well, I have to do the job for 5 years. No, no, no. Take my model. Spend a couple of weeks building a 30-minute conversation about it. Oh, the cheat code. Here we go. Hey, Ned, thanks for joining us today. As we're getting started, give us a little background on yourself.

Yeah, sure. Thanks, Brian. I appreciate you having me on. My name is Ned Rossini. I'm Vice President of Sales for AW Companies, Inc., which is a full-service BPO and contact center outsourcing partner. We're also in the staffing space as well. I have been in the contact center space for, gosh, going on 20 years now, back when my hair was much blacker than it is now, I guess, but spent probably, uh, the first 15 years of that time in operations. So I started out as essentially a rep on the phone, worked my way up through the organization, and ended up probably having about 150 people report to me by the time it was all said and done. Um, and exited operations, like I say, probably about 5 years ago and joined sales, kind of stumbled into that role, um, and have been doing that ever since. So, uh, That's a little bit about me and kind of how I ended up where I am today.

And how do you like it?

So I really like sales. Kind of the biggest regret that I have about coming from operations to sales is I wish I would've gotten into sales about 5 years sooner and kind of had a little bit more of 10 years of operations background, which is the greatest way to learn anything, of course, is to do it for that amount of time. But when I first got into sales, it was a little bit of a, like I say, kind of an unintended consequence consequence of things that were going on for me in operations. We were on a large government contract that, that went away through no fault of our own. It just— the, the government stopped doing this particular program. Um, and so we went through, uh, a little bit of a layoff period there. And literally, Brian, the day that I got invited to join the sales team, my counterpart at a different office had got laid off the day before. He and I communicated, of course, and I thought my number was going to get called. And lo and behold, they said, hey, Ned, would you want to join the sales team? Um, and I, I didn't even know we had a sales team, to be quite honest with you. I But I had no interaction with them. And so, yeah, but I really like sales and honestly probably think this is where I'll spend the rest of my career.

So, was it a choice?

It was a choice. So, you know, the answer to that is yes, yes, no, no, right? So, luckily for me, I had someone that was in the C-suite that I had a good relationship with that was kind of pushing for me to get this sales job. I wasn't aware of that until, like I say, the day that they brought me in to say, hey, would you be interested in joining the sales team. Um, I probably— ironically, I had another job already lined up because the layoff process is long, and, and the company had done the right thing with giving us plenty of heads up, and no one had done anything wrong. Of course, it just was, it was a circumstance that we were in. Um, and so I did have a choice, but I wanted to stay with the company. Um, and I thought, you know, I never thought about going into sales before, but I think I was at a place too, after being in operations for 15 years, that trying something new and trying something different was appealing. So I did have a choice, but then again, Brian, I kind of really didn't have a choice either.

Okay. And who do you call on? Who's your customer?

Yeah. So for us, we are heavy into the retail space. We do some other areas as well, financial services, telecom, insurance space. But what you have to envision is any reason that a customer would need to reach out to an organization, there are various channels for them to do that, primarily voice. So if have a question for, say, you know, your insurance company, you would call them and ask them that question. And then, of course, in the last 5 to 7 to 10 years, we've seen a huge shift to being a digital experience. And so those would be kind of the industries that we serve, and we serve the client's customers, if that makes sense.

Sure. Is it a hard sell?

Is it a hard sell? It is a— I'm going to use the word difficult sale, and there's a couple reasons for that. One, the sales cycle is very long. Right? So you're talking at least it's probably 9 to 12 to 18 month sales cycle, and there's a lot of relationship building that goes into that as well. So I think it's a difficult sale because within that sales cycle, so many things can happen that are both positive and negative, to be quite honest with you, that are out of your control. And then the other thing that you're that makes it a difficult sale, in my opinion, it's not a it's not a demoable product, right? It's not something that I can put on and show somebody and go, okay, well, here's how you increase. These certain efficiencies by doing ABC. It's a philosophical sale, so to speak. It's a relationship-based sale. And then really a lot of what contact centers are offering, there's not a huge variation in, for example, the actual process of putting in a contact center project. There are differentiators, there's no doubt about that. But when it comes to, you know, one being this dynamically different product than the other, there's not a whole lot of that as well. So I would say that it's a difficult sale, maybe not a I don't know if hard is the right word, but you get a lot more nos than you get yeses.

Because they have something in place already. Is that true?

Typically, yes. So you basically have kind of 3 types of buyers, I would say. One is an organization who, let's say for example, they're in the startup phase and they've now grown to a place to where they go, okay, we're having enough customer contact that we need to do something different, right? And so they'll bring in an outsourcer that may have been part of their roadmap from day one, But it took a little time for them to grow there. Number 2 is someone who's been doing it in-house themselves, and it's just not a part of their core competency and something that, for lack of a better term, they're just not doing a good job at. And they're saying, hey, we don't— we're in the grocery retail business, we're not in the contact center business. And they'll bring a contact center partner in maybe for the first time. But the most common application is someone who is currently using contact center outsourcing partners. You know, the contract comes up every three years or five years or two years or whatever it is, and they're now interviewing other people to come in. And they may have seven partners that they use, or they may have one. So there's all different types of scenarios.

So it's trying to find the right time. You don't want to be too early or too late, or yeah, absolutely.

And that's then that's the dance that you play, right? And so and so that's why the sales cycle is is so long. And then even outside the sales cycle itself, you know, I might meet somebody this afternoon who who just signed a three-year deal with. Somebody that they're going to stay in, um, and, and it's my job and my responsibility to stay in contact with that person and basically manage that relationship for a good 2 years until that sales cycle kicks off again, um, and the highs and lows that go along with that. You know, for your, for your, for the good of humanity, you hope they have a good experience with the current vendor that they have, but then kind of selfishly, you're also hoping, um, that the, that the current vendor had some type of misstep or there's something that's occurred where they're, they're interested in choosing somebody else.

And how's this transition into sales gone for you personally?

Yeah, so yeah, uh, great question and I appreciate you asking that. It's been a, uh, it's been the, um, the biggest learning experience of my life tenfold. And, and what I would say is there's been a tremendous amount of advantages that I think make my situation unique, um, and the success that I've had is largely attributed, um, to the fact that I spent all that time in operations and really kind of know exactly what a person's going through that I'm calling on. But there's Also, and so that's been a huge advantage, right? But there's been some tremendous disadvantages that I've had too in being thrust into what is kind of an enterprise sales role with really not knowing a whole lot about sales. So it's the ultimate yin and yang. It's been a challenge, it's been rewarding, it's been all the above.

And how have you prevented yourself from getting overwhelmed?

And so the answer is through experience because I've not always done that, right? And so at first, I certainly did not do a very good job of keeping myself from getting overwhelmed. And, and most of the things that I've learned in my, you know, kind of what is I would consider to be still a short sales career in 5 years is I've had to learn the hard way. Um, and so the, the, the main thing is when you come from an operations role, especially in the business that I'm in, which is contact center, you measure your success, um, hourly. I mean, in some cases, 15-minute increments, you know, and then it rolls up from there to daily and monthly and annually and things of that nature. Um, and so Enterprise sales just isn't that way. I mean, you may do something today that, that, you know, 6 months from now you might get a response to, um, and, and that be the best response you've had in the last 3 months. Um, so the first thing that I had to learn was how to, how to, I guess, temper my expectations when it comes to what I viewed as like daily success versus non-daily success. And honestly, Brian, it took me a good 6 months, um, to get my head wrapped around that. I may try really hard on Thursday and, and not get a single response or just get nos or Nothing happened. And then that may be weeks on end, and I may be saying to myself, man, I'm failing at this job, when in reality it's just a different, um, it's just a different cadence to what you're doing as opposed to a role that's in operations, and especially in the business I was in.

That's it. Because, you know, as mammals, we're really good at stimulus-response, kind of your operations role. You know, how many calls you process per hour was probably your KPI, right?

Correct. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

But we're not really good at, okay, stimulus, no response for a long period of time, stimulus, stimulus, action, action, action, and then outcome.

Yeah. And what I find is for me, I spend 90% of my time at best, right, for what it would be considered like 10% of the actual outcome or action of what you're looking for. Um, so you'll spend all this time going through the steps that you need to go through, uh, to put yourself in a position to eventually win a deal 12 months down the road or whatever the case may be. And I think for me, I had a very common perception of sales in my mind, which I think a lot of people have, which is, well, we're just, we're just out here on the golf course, uh, shooting the old golf egg around, closing deals left and right. Like, like, what's, what's the problem? You know what I mean? But what you find out is, is that, uh, You know, it's lonely, right? I mean, I go from working in a contact center with several hundred people to now working at home by myself before the— even before the pandemic, working my butt off and getting no results. It's a different animal altogether. And it's as much a mental exercise of how to prepare for that as it is what I would consider to be like the tangible skills of, okay, how do I go about doing this job successfully? You know, steps 1 through 8 in the sales process, right? So I did okay with that. And, you know, Thank goodness that's where the operations experience comes into play, but it works against you from a mindset standpoint.

Yeah. So how have you kept the mindset from going a little crazy or strategy du jour?

Yeah, absolutely. So a couple different ways with that. One is, as I said, I wish I had a better, I guess like a more romantic answer other than saying had some sleepless nights, have had definitely spent periods of time with anxiety and stress and things of that nature. And not necessarily in a negative way, in a good way, the way you would want someone who's competitive and wants to do well and things of that nature. If I go a couple weeks without getting a positive response, or it seems like, you know, any response that I get is negative, you want a salesperson to be concerned about that, right? It's, uh, so, so those things are all positive, but you have to learn to accept the things that you can control and not accept the things that you can't control. For example, you know, in operations, if I get behind on my task list for whatever reason, I can show up at the office at 6:30 AM. I don't love to do it, but I can get an hour and a half of, you know, time where I'm going, okay, here's the 3 things I'm going to work on, and then I'm kind of caught up. Or I can do that at the end of the day or whatever the case may be. But sales isn't like that. You have to educate yourself on ways to handle it mentally. And that is by saying, look, here's the— I'm on step 4 in this sales cycle. I've done these 4 the very best that I can. I'm waiting on step 5 to occur, but there's no amount of hope or wish or anxiety or anguish that I can do to make that 5th step happen. So you just have to learn through experience. Um, and I would even have salespeople who would want to help me with that because they would see me struggling. Um, and I think it's the competitor in me that wanted to do well. And they would say, hey man, you've gotta kind of protect your own mindset a little bit and just know that, uh, that person may never call you back, or that person, you know, is busy with 12 other projects, or this, that, or whatever. So you just learn through experience to go, hey, everything's okay, um, it'll circle back around. And then And then the, you know, there's a yin and yang too, right? There's those ones where I thought I'd never hear from the prospect ever again. Uh, next thing I know, they got in, they, you know, they've got a new position with their current company or a new position with a new company. It's a perfect fit for what they do, um, and they're reaching back out to me saying, hey man, I think there's a fit here, let's get together and talk about that. So you learn that for every kind of negative situation, there's a positive situation, or there's at least some type of ratio there. But you just have to stay in it for a while and learn those lessons yourself, or at least that's what I And what do you think the smartest thing you've done in the last 5 years as far as your process? Sure. So, so the smartest thing I've done in the last 5 years, Brian, to be honest with you, and I hope I don't offend salespeople that are out there listening to this podcast right now, so I want to be careful how I say this, is the smartest thing I've done is I've never shed my operations skin at all. Everything that I do, um, and my approach from my— from the way that I think about how I'm going to prospect all the way through you know, the steps in the sales cycle, I'm— I feel like I'm consistently able to put myself in that person's shoes and what they're dealing with. And to be quite honest with you, that's the biggest differentiator for me. Um, I've never— you know, when I first came into sales, right, the first 6 months, my thought process was, why would anyone want to meet with me and talk about contact center if you're the VP of contact center for XYZ brand, right? Some logo that we all know. Um, and what I found was that that kind of humility, um, to put myself in their shoes and say, well, here's what I went through when I was in that role, and here's the things that I struggled with, and, um, that's how I would approach my outreach to them instead of doing something like, you know, hey, your 7 steps to fix all your problems in this one email, right? Or like, uh, you know, here's, here's how everyone else gains efficiency and saves money in your in your shop type deal. Because when I was in operations and I would get that type of outreach, I, I had very little interest, um, in interrupting my daily flow to stop and read an email from somebody that would say, you know, kind of these gimmicky cliché emails that are so popular that so many people do. Um, instead I would say something like, hey, here's the, here's the problem I faced when I was in your shoes. Um, you know, are you facing that problem as well? Do you want to get together and talk about it? Um, and I don't That may break every sales prospect rule that there possibly is, but what I found is in the first six months, I got very positive response to that. And then I had kind of tenured sales folks coming and saying, "How are you getting these meetings with these these logos or this company or this company? Or are you actually getting these meetings?" And the answer was always yes. It's because I didn't know any better. It's because I didn't know what else to do except speak from my current experience that I had, and I was surprised at how responsive people were to that as opposed to seven steps to your best. You know, XYZ, fill in the blank, whatever it is that they're sending, you know, to everybody and their brother, they're getting 42 times a day. It was something that would stand out to them as unique. And a lot of times I found this wasn't necessarily on purpose, Brian, or trying to manipulate it. Again, I just didn't know any better. I, I think especially at first, a lot of the people that I was calling on, I don't think they realized I was in sales until probably like maybe, you know, halfway through the first meeting, or, or, or maybe by the second meeting or the third meeting where it kind of came out that that's what we were doing. Because the first meeting would just be about kind of what their problems are. And yeah, I feel your pain when it comes to that. We would have a conversation. So I mistakenly came across that strategy, um, and I've kind of kept that the entire time. And I feel like people are— as you build relationships with them, when you have that approach, they're much more, uh, truthful with you. They feel like, you know, um, they know that I'm not necessarily trying to take advantage of them, or what's the best way for me to get the sale, or what's— you know, I don't— I don't have that DNA inside of me to do that. And so as a person who was in operations all that time, I have the luxury of saying, "Oh man, I remember when that happened to us," and then I tell a story, and the next thing you know, we're laughing about it. And and then they call me back three months later and say, "Hey man, I wanted to talk to you more about that." And or when I call them, they answer the phone, and it's a good relationship. And and I just never never shed that. And then I developed that into kind of what was a mistaken strategy into more of an intentional strategy, and it's it's paid dividends for me along the way.

So you led with your strength instead of trying to. remove your strength and try and start completely from scratch and copy somebody else.

Yeah, right. And so it was, and actually, you know, the system that we use, which is a system that the vast majority of people use, right? We use Salesforce like most of the rest of the world. And so in Salesforce, you have the luxury of going back and kind of seeing what other people are doing in the way of their outreach. Like it automatically catalogs what you did. And so I know at first I would go back and I don't want to offend any of my former colleagues or anything, but I would go back and read their emails and if someone who was fresh off the contact center floor, I was like, no one's ever going to respond to that, you know. And if they do, they respond to anybody. So there's really nothing that's unique going on with what you have to say and do. Um, and so I was able to, to kind of learn not only not reinvent what I was doing to kind of take on the mantra of the typical salesperson, but I actually read that and went, that's, that's never going to work. This person's never gonna respond to you if you keep doing this, this type of kind of gimmicky cliché Fill in the blank type type stuff. So I think that was a huge advantage for me, and not an advantage that a lot of people have. And so the advice that I would have for someone who doesn't have the same luxury of coming from operations like I did, I would encourage them to go talk to the people that they trust that are within their organization that are in this position that they're trying to sell to. Right? So if you're selling human resources services or payroll services or IT items or whatever you may be selling. I would recommend you go talk to those people and ask them what type of pain they're feeling or what's their life like. And then if you're a lifetime salesperson, match up what you thought kind of what was going on in the industry and what these people are actually telling you about what's going on in the industry. And I think that's the best way to learn how to position yourself and what is interesting to people out there and try to get them to start that process of building a relationship.

Yeah, I think today people think that all these executives don't want to talk. Well, they don't want to talk about you. They want to talk about them.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And that's a great point as well, Brian. And, and some of the first sales advice that I got was— and I didn't get a tremendous lot of sales coaching in the beginning, um, or really if at any point, which actually turned out to be an advantage for me. I don't know if that was strategic by my first manager or not, but it made me figure things out for myself, which was good. But, um, that was some of the first sales advice. They, they do want to talk and they will talk. And here's the other thing that I learned too, like in that first 6 months it was, why would someone want to talk to me about contact center? Well, what I found out, and then like by month 7 I was like, oh, Jiminy crickets, these people want to talk to me a lot, you know what I mean? So I kind of had this problem on my hands where I was like, yeah, yeah, it's like, geez, what, you know, not at first it was, you know, am I going to be any good at this job? Now it's like, my goodness, too good at it. What if I am good at this job? Like, what does that mean? And that thought never entered my head when I first took job. It was more about, gosh, we'll see how this goes. How long is it going to take for these people to figure out that I'm, I'm not a good resource to talk to about this stuff? Turns out I, I was a good resource to talk to. And then the problems that they had are the same problems that I had when I was in their seat. Now maybe it's, it's, you know, it's a different industry, it's a different KPI, it's a different this, that, or whatever, but the problems are generally the same. And so what I learned is stop putting the, the prospect that you're calling on on this pedestal that's in an unhealthy way to you. Be respectful of the prospect, that goes without saying. I'm not saying that at all. But, you know, when I was first walking into meetings, I was going, how long is it going to take this person to figure out that I'm low man on the totem pole and I really can't match what they know and what they do? That was unhealthy to me, right? That was hurting my sales process, and, and it was, it was setting me back. You know, I was spotting them 7 points before I ever walked into the— on the field, so to speak. And what I learned was was, um, sometimes I knew more about it than they did. And that's not from a place of arrogance. It gave me confidence to go in and say, hey, I can help this person solve this problem if I can get to the root of what the problem is. Um, and that was a big, big kind of light bulb moment for me as well. But I'll tell you, Brian, the thing that helped me out the most— and this was the, the first good deal that I closed with a big logo that kind of shocked everybody at my company, including me— um, was this, you know, I was going to this appointment and I was with a, with a, you know, as I said, a nice logo and a high-ranking person in this organization. And I hadn't been doing this very long. I was nervous. I'm going to go down there by myself and walk in this conference room and talk to these people about their contact center. And, uh, you know, who knows what that's going to be like for me. And I just remember saying, not even planning it, just kind of blurting out, hey, I, you know, I'm, I'm not going to be the slickest salesperson you ever met in your life, right? I, I don't have have a ton of sales experience, but I've been in the contact center space for 15 years. I've walked a mile in your shoes, so to speak. Um, and I kind of expanded upon that and articulated that in a way that made sense to them. And I physically— and I'm not a body language expert, but I physically watched their, their body language change. Um, and I began to build trust with them right away. And I ended up getting the deal in an industry that we had never served before. And I remember getting a call from my, from my CFO and then a note from my CEO that said, hey man, you might, you might be pretty good at this job. Um, you may think about sticking with this and seeing how it goes. But it was just coming from a place of honesty saying, you know, um, and, and the comment back to me was good because we're tired of talking to salespeople. Um, we want to talk to somebody who knows what they're talking about. So totally unintended consequence. And to this day, Brian, I open up most of my, uh, most of my, uh, meetings with some version of that statement of, listen, I'm not trying to be the greatest sales guy that ever lived, but I know a thing or two about contact centers, and that's what I'm here to talk to you about today. So that's been helpful for me, that mindset.

Yeah, because I think you hit the nail on the head. Customers are used to salespeople not understanding the problem.

Right. And that's one of the biggest problems I see in the industry that I serve with the colleagues that I'm in that I have respect for. And there's all different types of sales folks out there, but I think it's a lack of understanding of what the pain points are, of what people are going through, and then what's the applicable solution that you can kind of become a consultant with them with and say, hey, here's, here's what's worked in the past. It sounds like a good fit for you. Would you be interested in talking more about that? Typically the answer is yes. And then over the course of time, they're revealing more of what the problem is. More people are coming to the meeting. Um, you know, when, when I'm making that follow-up call, they're taking my call and other people are going, well, how are How are you getting this? And I'm like, how are you not getting this? You know what I mean? Like, why would you be asking me that? So that's definitely a big part of it.

And for the audience, let's give them an example of why the other salespeople weren't getting it because they were talking about the metrics of your company, the other logos, the world-class this and market leader that.

That doesn't mean anything. And the whole— and everybody's saying the same thing, right? So there's no, there's no real differentiator there. And the, and the point— because I've been the operations person in the room where you think to yourself, basically your only thought is, when is this going to be over? There's nothing interesting being said where the person goes, you know what, we've— I've been in that situation a bunch of times. I've never thought to resolve it or solve it like that, even if it's not the perfect solution. And it's got them thinking and it's got them respecting your knowledge and it's got them curious of what else you might have to say or things that you might have to add to what they're doing. And then you become valuable to them as opposed to being a time suck on them where there's really, to your point, going, you know, hey, here's our geo footprint, here's the other clients that we serve, here's the resume of our C-level people and look at all the great stuff they've done. And that, and that poor person in the seat is saying, I, you know, I'm not interested in your CEO's background of where he worked 20 years ago, you know, or where she worked 5 years ago. That's great. But what's that got to do with me and the problems that I'm facing today?

And let's say somebody who is green to the call center industry, if they came in, how long would it take them to learn? Not as deep as you, but kind of deep enough to have those conversations?

Yeah, you mean on the— so on the sales side, I think it's gonna— like, on the operation side, I think it's probably about a 2-year process is what I would say, that you've kind of been through all the battles that there are to go through, right? You've been through some type of seasonal ramp, or you've been through, you know, my, my, the contract I was on was a government contract, and it was in the financial services space. So like, dealing with an IRS tax season during that time is a, is a unique experience that you have to go through to know what that's like. And, um, you know, a season or 2 of that, and you'll, you'll learn some stuff about, about what What it's like in the call center under being pressure and things like that. So, um, from an operations standpoint, probably about 2 years. From a sales standpoint, it can be quite a bit longer, I think, because, um, there's so many— just like with a lot of industries, there's so many different scenarios and so many different vertical markets that are out there. So for a salesperson, I think they have to go talk to people that have walked that walk and been in that situation before to see what type of pain they're going through. So that's a good question, Brian, that I've never thought of, how long it would take another salesperson. person, I'm gonna put it at 5 years, um, to really have like that, that detailed intricate experience. And different, different BPO partners kind of have different sales strategies. So some BPO partners, for example, say, hey, now you only sell to utilities, right? Or you only reach out to, you know, banks or financial services. And so those people, their learning curve is probably a lot shorter. Um, I've always been in organizations, and I haven't been in many, just a few, but where we, we weren't necessarily siloed by industry type, which is great. I love that as a sales person to be able to call on anything. But I do think being, you know, I need to know a lot about utilities, I need to know a lot about banks, I need to know a lot about telecom, government, you know, retail, so on and so forth. It's even more challenging because even though all verticals are similar when it comes to their contact center experiences, there's certainly nuances that, that, for example, an insurance client is going to expect you to know versus a telecom client.

But I got to imagine that the companies, either yours or the competitors, would have sales reps and then kind of experts.

Yeah, absolutely. So the general strategy is, of course, to bring in a subject matter expert, no doubt about it. So for example, like on an initial discovery call, I would typically handle that myself. And then maybe there needs to be 2 discovery calls or 3. You know how that goes. It depends on how much information you're able to get and that kind of thing there and how those calls But at a certain point, it's always been a strategy for the companies that I've worked for, and I would assume all of them, that once you've kind of gathered the information in and now you've built the solution, you go back to them with those particular operations leader or IT connectivity leader or hiring leader or whatever the case would be and kind of present that information to them.

And what part of sales surprised you?

So, the part of sales that Honestly, the difficulty of the mental part of it was the thing that surprised me the most. And it's because I didn't know what I didn't know. I had no idea that it was going to be such a roller coaster ride, right? So I joke around and tell people that I've had mornings where I woke up and thought to myself, I'm going to be the next CEO of this company because, man, I'm just— this is going fantastic. You know, look at all these logos and these meetings and all this stuff. And then by lunch, you're like, they're going to show me the door. You know what I mean? Like, I'm not even kidding. Like this person got back to me and said the deal's off or we're not moving forward or we're sticking with our current person or they just ghosted me altogether or whatever the case may be. And so, you know, and then by 4 o'clock in the afternoon, I'm back to thinking, no, I'm gonna be the CEO because the person did get back to me, right? That was the part for me that as a person being new to sales was the most difficult thing for me to handle because of what I think is absolutely crucial for a good salesperson is having a competitive spirit and just being hungry all the time. When you have that, that it's hard to take a loss. Um, and there's so many losses in sales. And loss isn't the right word. Maybe it's you didn't get the outcome that you wanted when you wanted it, as exactly the time frame that you wanted. It's probably a better way of putting it than a loss. But that was the hardest part for me, was the mental piece of it, the ups and downs, and learning how to manage that. And it took me a good 2 to 3 years, um, of learning that. And then the other thing that I would say is probably maybe more tangible is learning about different personality types, uh, that are out there. Some people are slow to trust, some people are quick to trust, some people want to get straight to the point, some people you gotta get to know, you know, everything about their, their family and their dog and who their favorite sports team is and all that stuff. And some people, they don't want to waste your time, their time with that, right? So learning how to handle those personality types and say, from a strategy standpoint that's not manipulative but beneficial to both the prospect and myself, how do I go about handling those? Because I had I had the widgets down. You know, that wasn't anything that I needed to learn. It was, okay, what are the characteristics of Brian and how— what's the best way for me to approach him so that I'm serving him the best way possible and making him say, okay, this guy Ned's actually going to be an asset to me instead of somebody that every time the phone rings I go, oh great, you know, not this guy again.

Hey Ned, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to connect and follow you?

Yeah, definitely. So of course LinkedIn, they can check out my profile there. Um, and so, uh, but our website is awcompaniesinc.com, um, and you can find us there as well. So that's A as in Alpha, W as in Wendy, companiesinc.com. Um, and again, message me on LinkedIn. Would love to get together and chat with anybody, um, who, who may be struggling with sales or just want to talk about it or talk about the industry. Whatever the case may be.

What do you think of that? Now, imagine if you could do that. If you could build up a conversation about that. You don't need 5 years of experience. It's nice if you have it. But— and you do have to be a student of the domain that you're selling into. Because the more you know about it, the more you'll understand why people buy. And if you, if you've been spoiled by inbound or managing accounts and upselling versus greenfields, congratulations. I wish I had that. Most of us have to go out and get new clients. And when you're cold calling, when you're cold prospecting, they don't really know about it. And here's the thing about latent pain. Latent pain is pain that people feel, but they haven't put a name to it. Let me give you some latent pains. Your retirement. Hopefully, you're going to retire. We all are going to get old. Trust me, I know firsthand. And if you're not thinking about retirement, that's called a latent pain. You're going to have it. Maybe you're not thinking about it. But, you know, you get those 401 reminders to sign up, to contribute. Maybe your partner, spouse, people in your family are saying, hey, what are you thinking about after all this great sales success you have? Maybe you'll make enough not to have to worry about it. I hope you do. That's one latent pain. We all have health as a latent pain because we're little biological creatures out there decaying as we speak. We don't want to notice it. We don't want to really pay attention to it until we have to. That's called active pain. Until we feel it, we don't focus on it. Have you ever walked by a glass window and saw a reflection of yourself and said, whoo boy, that dude's out of shape, and you find out it's you?

I have.

It's not a great feeling, but that's the instant latent pain turns into active pain. You get my drift? See where I'm going here? This is where 98% of your market is. 99% of your market is in latent pain. And granted, there's probably 20% that won't buy it no matter what. Okay, got that. Reasonable. Understand that. But that other 80% All you have to do is activate that latent pain and you've got the start of a deal. It's that simple? Well, kind of, but you have to build up rapport, a know, like, and trust relationship, earn the right to start nibbling at that latent pain and turn it active. Because there are so many latent pains, and you may You may find a lot of people just want to ignore it. Okay, find the people that you can activate because that's the real market here. Like I started off the podcast with, 1 to 3% of my market is even open-minded. Trust me, salespeople, oh, we're tough rascals because we have this confidence paradox, meaning that when we're in front of a customer or even in front of our manager in our company, we have to be confident that we know what we're doing.

Right.

But what we end up doing is believing that confidence and assuming that we're really good at what we're doing instead of what we should be doing is saying, well, how do I get better? Okay, I'm good, but I want to become better because the only way to make money in sales is to sell. The only way to sell more is to become better. And that may seem like an obvious answer, but nobody faces it. We're in latent pain out there. We think we're just fine until the paycheck comes and you're like, well, that's not what I was expecting. I was expecting a little bit more. Taxes, FICA, what's all this? Then we're in active pain. To become great at a performance profession, you have to perform. You have to practice. You have to find distinctions. And the good news is, for you at least, not for me, it's bad news for me. For you, it's good news. All you have to do is activate your pain to learn more. And starting with a podcast is a great start. Books are good, studying's good, webinars, it's all good stuff, but you really have to apply yourself. And at the pinnacle, the very top, the top 1/10 of 1%, are people who take courses on sales with their own time and money.

What?

Because guess what? If you sell more, you make more. And you can come up with any excuse you want about why you don't want to do it, but don't tell me because I know it's a lie. I know you're lying to yourself, and now you're lying to me, and I'm I'm like, I don't want to hear it.

This is a lie.

You have to get yourself to the point where you tell yourself the truth. Why am I not becoming better? Passively listening to a podcast or even actively listening to it, taking notes and studying it, it's good. Oh, and connecting with everybody, that's good too. But what did you take away? Your little bit of inspiration. A little bit of perspective. Okay, now how do you apply it every day? How do you build your own system? Huh? I get it. It takes a while. It took me a long time too. But when I started, we didn't have all these luxuries. The idea of having an online sales coach to me was— well, there was no online. And the people who knew how to sell really didn't want to teach anybody because they were busy selling. The books really weren't for the complex sale. They were all about what to say. Okay. But the what-to-say books— we're not in the what-to-say sale. We're in the what-to-do sale. This is the complex sale. It all looks simple until they try and order something. Then it gets complex because people are involved That don't care, that don't want to buy things, don't want to allow people to progress. So we have to work around that. We have to have a system. And you can do it with trial and error. And we downsize, it takes 5 or 10 years. And there's an opportunity cost with that. Opportunity cost is the distance between what you're making now and what you could Let's say you're making $150,000, reasonable salary, but you want to make or could make $300,000. Are you going to do that by reading a book? No. Listening to a podcast? No, not even mine. It'll help. It'll get you psyched. You'll see how other people are doing it, but you, you can't walk away with a system with that. You have to have dedicated application of time, a system. And why not take someone else's system that has been proven to work longer than you've been alive? Seems reasonable. I did it, you can do it, everyone can do it. And then you hone it and make it your own. Now you're talking, Brian. Now you're talking my language. Let's get that income up. Let's reduce that opportunity cost and increase the top-line revenue. That turns into the lifestyle that you want. So you don't have to worry about that latent pain of retirement. You retire early and enjoy the rest of your life. Check out the courses at b2brevenue.com. Invest a little bit of time and money in yourself. This is why you're in sales. Don't be that B player. I got to tell you, the world for B players is diminishing daily. Because guess what? They're not doing anything. There's nothing. There's no real distinction between them and just hiring somebody off the street. Is there product knowledge? Really? How long does that take to learn? Hitting a bunch of buttons, answering a bunch of questions, reactive selling. That's not really much of a skill. A little bit, but not much. Proactive? Now you're talking skill. That's what every hiring manager wants. And believe me, when I was a sales hiring manager and I'd interview these people, and it's like, they're nice, they look good in a suit, they've got a nice smile, nice haircut, but are they going to change how a company does their business? No, they're going to take orders. But I don't have orders to take. I have orders I need created. Anyone can take an order. Jesus, that people really pound their chest when they take an order. Look at me. I I was here when the order came in, right into my inbox. Look at that. Look at me. That's not selling. That's receiving. Sign up today. Take control over your income and your life. And you'll be very happy. We'll see you there.