HOW TO WIN BOTH SIDES OF THE COMPLEX SALE

In every sale, there's 2 major components. One is the technical sale. Does your product do what they want? Most of us, we get through that pretty good. But does it do it better than the competition? Does it do it better than doing nothing? Do we— when do we get that return? That's the technical sale. You've got to get it. Otherwise, you're not going to get a deal. The other part is the business sale. This is, how do we get the paperwork done? How do we get the budget allocated? How do we get it approved? How do we get it through and make it legally binding? And how do we issue and receive a purchase order? That's the business sale. We get, we get a lot of training on the technical sale. We don't get a lot in the business sale. And most of us are comfortable with the technical sale— scheduling a presentation, getting a demo, winning a proof of concept, beating out our competition. We're pretty good at that. But they don't really teach us the business sale, how it works, what they care about, because it's completely different. They don't care about the product. They don't probably know what it does. They don't want to know what it does. They want to know what it does for them, not just the business, but them personally, which is a real eye-opener if you want to do large deals. That's what we're going to be talking about today, because if you don't get both, you typically don't get a deal. Now, The old school used to be top-down. Business sale and, you know, technical sale will take care of itself. The problem is, if I worked at a company like that, nobody used the product, so you never got any repeat business. They wouldn't renew maintenance and they'd not use the product, so it wasn't referenceable. That's not good. And today, what's everyone trying to do?

Top-down.

Just get the technical sale. That's what product-led growth is all about. Let them use the product, figure it out for themselves, and if they like it, they buy it. And the salesperson kind of orchestrates the business side of that. But that's mostly administration, expediting the purchase order through the system. If you can do both— and that's what I learned from an early manager. He goes, Some reps are really great at the technical sale. Some reps are great at the business sale. I wanted to be great at both of them. And I go, that's what I said to myself. Because if you can be great at both of them, you understand where deals are and how to keep them moving. Now, most people just tell themselves they're great at both instead of becoming great at both. And we're going to be talking about this today because here we've got a rep Who's been selling for quite a while, got into sales, really enjoyed the competition, started off just grinding and working hard, but then really sat down and started really dissecting the sale. And he'll bring up things like MEDPIC, which it's a good checklist. I like that part. The part I don't like is decision criteria. Well, it's our job to set and break that criteria because they don't know. Now, think about yourself. When you're buying something new, what decision criteria do you come up with? I don't know. What you hear, what you think, what you see on a brochure or see in an ad. You don't really know. Like if you were buying, let's say, an air conditioner for your house. You just want the air cool, right? That's your level of abstraction. Is the air cool? You don't care about the inner workings, how it manages Freon, its impact on the environment, its watts per hour. You don't know, and you probably don't care. But in business-to-business sales, it's kind of different. We have to do that differentiation. Some of it's technical, some of it's personal, some of it's emotional. But if we don't do it, they won't see the difference. That's the technical sale. But then there's the business sale. What's it cost? Okay, you might buy the cheap one if you're only going to live in the house for the next 6 months or a year. It'll last. It'll probably last 5 years. But will it last 10 or 20? If you're staying in the house forever, you're probably worth getting the, the great one if you're going to stay. That's the business sale. Now, if you can manage both of these, your career will go pretty well in sales. But most people get comfortable in one and they avoid the other. You can't— you can avoid it, but you lose. Let's get into this conversation.

I think you're really going to enjoy it.

But before we do, do you know that sales is a performance? It's not just showing up. It's not just being enabled. Every conversation counts. Do you know the cost of your conversations? Think about the number of real Critical conversations where you're competing, trying to get that technical sale, when you're explaining to an executive why now, why you, what do they get for it. That's a very different conversation. What if you're not comfortable with that, or you try and avoid it, or you don't know what to say? In today's interview, we're talking to somebody who wasn't comfortable with it, But had to get comfortable with it. So you can do it over 5 or 10 years. That's one way, osmosis, experience. But even then, you still need to practice. Or you can do it in 5 minutes with brevitypitch.com. Any type of conversation with anybody about anything, all you have to do is tell it. It's pretty crazy. You can put in somebody's LinkedIn profile, the person you're going to talk to. Who are you competing against? What type of call is it? Is it a closing call? Is it a negotiation call? Is it a whatever type of conversation is? How difficult do you want it to be? Maybe explain something about the personality, the context, and it'll create that conversation for you. And no 2 conversations are identical. Now, wouldn't that be great? When I started doing this, I leveraged my CEO to do the business sale. That closing meeting, it was him. It wasn't me. I was with him, but he was doing the talking. He was a Stanford MBA. I went to school at night. I had some ideas about business. I had a business degree. But I didn't have an MBA. I didn't start my own company back then. I was in my mid-20s. And I relied on him. But when I moved to another company, I didn't have him. And that CEO didn't go to Stanford. He was an engineer and he was terrible in front of executives. So, I couldn't bring him. My manager, he was kind of a cowboy. And he just wanted to close the deal. He couldn't talk business. He was going to give it away in discounts. So I had to figure out that business conversation. But I didn't feel comfortable. It took a while to get comfortable. But when I did, it's a game changer because now you've got both sides of the sale. I wish I had Brevity Pitch back then. Believe me, I'd be a power user then. The way I am now. Because now, like this week, I had a unique type of conversation and I haven't had it with this type of person for a while. I put it all into brevity and I practiced. Call went pretty good. At least I felt more comfortable. I felt warmed up. I felt, you know, the connections in your brain are kind of—

There.

And that's what we want every day. These conversations, when they go well, it's money in our pocket. When they go not so well, it's money in your competitor's pocket. Where do you want that money to be? Go get your manager and check out brevitypitch.com. If you're a sales manager, imagine having your reps being able to Go through a whole simulation of that call before they pick up the phone, before they start on Zoom. They're warmed up, they're prepared, all in 5 minutes.

Here we go.

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

How much time we have?

Well, more— let's start with why'd you get into sales?

Yeah. So, well, it's kind of a long story, but I started out as an application engineer in the States and did some consulting. And then I got the tap on the shoulder asking me to go to Asia for a 3-month assignment. And so I did that for about 4 years. I went to Japan and I traveled around Asia and did that. And then I left and I had a kind of a— it was kind of a time in my life where I was a little bit burned out and I thought I wanted to do something very, very different. And so I was looking around and I stumbled into some colleagues of mine from my old days, my previous days. And they said, why don't you come, you know, open a resellership for us? And so I did. And it started out, you know, one guy in a Volkswagen van and ended up with about 50 people, 2 companies later. And it just exploded.

Yeah.

And I was the MD, salesman, Vice President of Sales, Vice President of Engineering, Vice President of Finance, Vice President of Marketing, the whole thing all rolled into one. And it was a wild ride and I did that for several years until about 2018. It was time for my son to go to high school. So we moved back to the States. So that 3-month assignment turned into about 27 years.

Wow.

But throughout all of that, I cut my teeth really in Asia and then wound up in the sales, in the sales world from that.

Any difference selling in Asia versus the US?

Oh, just a little bit. Just a little bit. Yeah. In Asia, it's, I mean, well, you know, in those days, that was quite some time ago, it was kind of when you went to do a sale, it was more show up and throw up. You know, you'd go and you'd show up and do a demo and that was it. You know, demo to anybody kind of in those days. As, you know, things went on and as time progressed, it became more about you know, selling a solution, selling a platform and more of an intelligent engagement with the customer. So, but in Asia, it was largely about price, price, price, price for years and years. Yeah. Not a terribly sophisticated sale, but it wound up that way later.

How about the language barrier? Was that an issue or?

Yeah, it's a lot different to do a presentation and a demonstration with You know, a translator in between. But most of the countries now, by the time I left, even in Japan, by the time I left most of the countries, they spoke English. It was kind of a second language. So it wasn't great English, but at least they would understand you. So you could do largely, you could do your presentations and things in English for the most part. But they didn't start out that way, of course.

And what kept you in sales?

What kept me in sales? Well, I, you know, I started out as an engineer and I went to the sales side and sold my soul and went to the sales side and— Couldn't get it back?

I'm sorry?

You couldn't get it back?

I couldn't get it back. No, I lost my mojo in engineering. But no, I really enjoyed kind of the thrill of the deal going in and, you know, doing a presentation, winning some business, and then, you know, walking out and high-fiving your engineer on the way out to the parking lot. And I kind of, you know, I like the thrill of the sale, of the process. So that's what packed it in.

You've always been in very competitive situations, right?

Oh yeah. And I was in a very competitive industry, as you probably know, you know, and even today it's even more competitive. But yeah, I've always been kind of competitive in school and after school and in all my roles really.

And what did you learn about locking out your competition and displacing them and setting traps for them?

Yeah, well, it wasn't until much later. I mean, early on, it was kind of, it was just planting a seed, planting, you know, fear, uncertainty, and doubt about the other guy. But later on, it came about in the questioning phase, you know, when you're before you even do the presentation, when you're still questioning the customer, is setting those traps. Uh, for the competition and in those questions even. Yeah.

And what do you feel you did better than your competition? Was it setting the traps, positioning, being more assertive?

I would say I worked harder than everybody else. Yeah. Uh, insomnia, probably. No, but, uh, yeah, yeah, I, I worked, I worked harder than everybody else in the business. Yeah. And that's maybe not a feather in my cap, but it did work for a period of time and then competition got smarter and tougher. So, you know, I would say, it's hard to say, but the competition just got smarter and a lot, lot tougher.

And then you had to work harder or work better?

I had to work smarter. I had to work smarter. And so, and actually I took a class in medic, if you know what that is, medic sales. I shouldn't say sales process, that's really a qualification process. But the front end of that, of course, is the command of the sale. And in doing that, I learned a lot about, and that was more recently in the last 10 years or so, I learned a lot about, you know, questioning and setting traps that way.

And how about as far as getting the deal done, was it a very quick sale? That's kind of how I remember CAD sales? Is that—

Yeah. Well, it depends. The larger the deal, you know, I always said is the larger the deal, the smaller they get, smaller the deal gets, the nicer deals it gets and the longer it takes. But I would say that in a transactional sort of business like that second company I was at, it was more transactional sales and there were a lot, the volume was much higher. The sales process was shorter. The spend was shorter. But as things have moved on and the competition's got a little bit tougher, I would say it's probably gotten even a little bit longer. And the size of deals, the size of deals get bigger, then of course it takes longer.

And what I've noticed with the bigger deals is sometimes they become traps in and of themselves where they bring in a bunch of vendors. It might be different in your space because they're gonna buy something. I've seen in other spaces where they, they do a little science project and then buy one or don't buy anything.

Yeah. Well, I, I got a lot of customers who, who often said, you know, well, give me a quote for 1, 5, and 10 units or 10 licenses. It's like, well, what are you gonna buy? You know, and they, well, just give me a quote for 1, 5, and 10. They end up buying one, you know.

So, and, and Yeah, exactly.

And then they beat you up about the price and they want the 10 price for the 1, right? But, you know, the funny thing is that the amount of time and the amount of effort that it took to do a 10-seat deal, 10-license deal, was often the same amount that it'd take you to do a 1 or a 2-seat deal.

Yeah.

So you had to kind of pick your battles. You know, they could all be transactional except for larger ones, but The 1 or 2 seat deals can oftentimes just drag you down just as fast. So you have to pick your battles in it. It's the 80/20 rule, you know, all over again, you know, 20% of your customers will bring in 80% of your business.

And was it a bottom-up sale or top-down sale?

Kind of more, I'd say, kind of create the groundswell early on. And it was bottom-up, but As things have progressed and as the competition's gotten tougher and the space has become more consolidated, a lot more consolidation, I would say it's probably a top-down nowadays. I spend more of my time speaking to the executives than I do, and maybe that's just because I'm smarter and wiser and older now that I call on the executives instead of calling on the engineering managers and such. Yeah.

And what do you wish you knew back then that you know now?

Loaded question. Good Lord. Well, I wish I knew early on. I wish I knew that there was a relationship between a balance sheet and a profit and loss statement. I missed that whole part of my engineering education. Go figure. But because I lost a lot of money because of that thing. But I would say probably if I had been a little bit more intelligent in my sales process, in other words, understanding that it wasn't just show up and throw up, that picking the battles more wisely, I think I could have done a lot better. Yeah, I would say that would probably be the number one thing.

And was it the questioning skills that kind of got that to really find out what's the real reason they're looking?

Yeah, because, you know, when you do this, yeah, exactly right. When you do this show up and throw up, you're not asking the customer anything. You're doing all the talking. And instead of letting them do the talking. So I think, you know, Maybe the other thing that I learned along the way was that, you know, let the customer do 80% of the talking and you should be doing 20% of the talking, the 80/20 rule in the opposite.

Was the show up and throw up more what you were taught or was it that you just wanted to get your views out, your position?

It's interesting. Well, I think it was kind of a number of things. It was what everybody was doing in the industry.

Yeah.

But it's also when you're a young salesman and you're, you know, new, you tend to, you know, want to do your presentation and, you know, the second you hear the thing you want to hear in the questioning phase, you go right to, oh yeah, this is the product that you need. And so I spent a lot of time, wasted time, you know, showing them things that they didn't need or things that they weren't interested in and losing the audience along the way. So I think those are some of the things that are really important, you know, for the new sales rep.

And how about on the business side of the sale? You brought up the balance sheet and that. Why was that so important or is it important?

Oh, very important. Well, you know, one of the things, because I spent all my, you know, education and my first 10 years or so of my career in engineering and we don't get exposed a lot to the profit and loss statements in engineering. We don't care. Yeah, we don't really care. That's not our problem. their problem, you know, in purchasing. So one of the things that I think was very, very good for me to learn in the sales, you know, and taking on and doing the sales, going into sales was to learn that, you know, there's another side of this and you learn to read the P&L statements and the balance sheets and to find out the health of a company and each customer that you're talking to. That was very important. So for me, it was a matter of, in terms of running my business, is I was always concerned about the revenue and the, you know, profit, the profit and the revenue. That was it. It was just the P&L statement is all I ever looked at. Balance sheet, what the heck is that? You know, we lost money. How did we lose money? Look at the P&L statement, you know, but the balance sheet became very important later on. And, you know, ultimately the relationship between the two, it's very important because there's other things in the sales, you know, for example, capital expenditure versus overhead.

Right.

You know, especially in the, in the SaaS world, you know, now it's all overhead as opposed to being a capital expenditure before when it was a perpetual license offer that you're selling. So that became very important as well. And nowadays it's all about, you know, in the SaaS world, it's all about the overhead because that's what you are, you know.

Do you think it's harder or easier to sell subscriptions versus Permanent licenses.

That's a good question. I think it's probably better for both parties now because number one, for the customer, it makes sure that you stay engaged with them. If you're not engaged, they're gonna they're gonna churn, right? And churn is very very bad. And for the and for the customer, make sure that you're engaged with them. And for you, it makes sure that you're always in contact with that customer and that you're always working. You're already selling it, but you're having to sell it again and again and again. But it also represents a good opportunity for an upsell or cross-sell along the way, you know, you expand. So I would say nowadays with the SaaS model, it's probably more, it's better, much, much better.

Yeah. I mean, because in the old school, it was kind of hit and run. You get the maintenance contract, here's the support line. Let me know if you need more.

Right, right. And when you go in to visit them, it was like, well, how many did you say you wanted? You know, it wasn't okay. It wasn't, what do we have? We have customer success now. You know, we have these other parts of the organization, but it's actually been good for both. It's been a tough pill for a lot of companies to swallow and for, you know, smaller resellers, they've had to shift their business model from that old perpetual model and that was tough to do. That's a very tough thing to do.

And how much of your sale was economic versus technical?

Well, it was all economic in the end. It was? Well, I mean, in the end it was, but, you know, again, I'm, it's in a very different world, but especially in Asia, it was very much more technical, I would say. But in the end, you, it always had to, you know, pass the smell test for the management and finance. And you would ultimately, you'd make a deal with the engineering department or the engineering director. And all along the way, then they would chip away at it because you had to give a little bit to the purchasing guy and then the CEO would get in and he'd say, well, wait a minute, where's our discount? So everywhere along the way. So it became a finance thing in the end. And then There's budgets and there's, you know, end of year budgets and there's fiscal years and things that, you know, always come into play. So I'd say a little bit of both, but early on I'd say it's very technical.

And running your own type of business or being responsible for running it, whether it was yours or not, did that help you learn how the customer was seeing the economic side of the sale?

Oh yeah, definitely. And again, that's, you know, largely that's what, you know, made me focus on the profit and loss statement and the balance sheet much more. And it was that empathy that I think that I had that, you know, propelled some of that. And it's something that I think that salespeople, we need to do nowadays, especially, and we don't, you know, we have to put ourselves, and I get like this when Somebody calls me out of the blue. I actually take cold calls from people who are trying to sell me stuff and I listen to what they say and I listen to their pitch.

Yep.

Because I'm curious to see if they get it. And there's about 25% of them, you know, are focused on you. But largely it's, they're talking about themselves. And I think that's a big mistake. That's a big thing. It's a massive Yeah.

And it's hard to learn too because you're kind of not desperate, but you feel it's your job, right? To talk.

Oh yeah, absolutely. And if it's that dead space in between, you know, you throw something out there and the questioning and that dead space, that can just, it can be deafening, the silence sometimes. And to put something out there and then just wait in that silence, that'll kill you. Yeah. So it's, and it's something we get used to, you know, spending all our time talking. So I think that's important. Yeah.

And would, did you ever get into sales leadership?

Oh yeah. I mean, running my own business, of course, I was instantly a sales leader. But, and I learned an important thing with that in sales leadership. And I learned a lot of, actually some of the best lessons I learned was as a sales leader.

Yeah.

But it was early on, I did some of the sales management and shortly thereafter I had to, you know, kind of focus on the whole business and kind of do what a CEO is supposed to do. And so I had a, I'd had one of my salespeople I promoted to sales manager. That was the first big mistake, right? Because I took my best sales guy and I made him sales manager. Well, how? Yeah, exactly. Cringe. How many times have we done that? And that's been the biggest mistake. You know, you're taking your best guy out of the field, the revenue goes down, you made him a sales manager, he didn't want to be a sales manager. And then all of your salespeople start getting, you know, start leaving the company because he's a terrible manager and your sales go down because he's not selling. So that was one big lesson. But I mean, there are a whole host of lessons that I learned in sales management though. But—

Because it's a very different job.

Huge, hugely different.

Completely.

Yeah, I mean, you know, as a salesperson, you've got your myopic, you've got your own little world that you worry about. And as a sales manager, you've got, you know, 7, 8, 10, you know, 15 people that are working for you going in 15 different directions. And everybody has a different style. Everybody has a different way of doing things. And everybody's coaching needs in that job are different. And then they all have different roles sometimes. Some are territory people, some are, you know, mid-market, some are post-sales, some are pre-sales. So that's very different as well.

And what did you notice becoming a sales leader for the first time? Did you learn more about selling, trying to communicate it to other people?

Well, it does expose your own weaknesses a lot. You know, it And it did make me have a lot of appreciation for all the previous sales managers that I'd worked for. It's like, wow, what a bunch of complaining, whining little salespeople, you know.

Shoulders.

Yeah, it's, you have a lot more appreciation and it also gives you some empathy when you realize that, you know, they were kind of, you know, had your back when you were in some tough times and when you had to be I don't want to say defended, but we had to be supported, you know, internally or even externally. You know, they had your back a lot more than you thought. And there was a lot that went on behind the scenes that you never knew. And as a salesperson, you're doing a forecast. I don't know, I got to do a forecast. I got to forecast. But then as you become a sales manager, you learn that there's a good reason for you having to do a forecast and that the forecast is actually more for you As a salesperson than it is really for the company, you know, and it's a good way to do some self-analysis. Yeah.

And you go back to the 80/20 rule, it's like really makes you think about the deal.

Yeah, it does. It does. And looking at it in a different context as well, you know, and then, you know, things like timeframe and, you know, when's it gonna come in and deals slipping from one quarter to the next, you know, that becomes more and more important. And you realize how important that is to be accurate, not just doing a forecast, but being accurate in your forecast.

Because you learn about that second half of the sale, right? From the time the proposal goes in to the time it comes out as a PO, right? It's not a simple process.

No.

And, you know, there's understanding, there's a whole bunch of pieces to that, right? It's understanding who has to sign off on it, what's the paperwork process? Is the guy even in the country who has to sign off on it? And, you know, what is their, what is their budgets look like? What is their, you know, end of fiscal, what does their fiscal year look like? You know, how are they doing financially? Is it, is this gonna be put, is this, what are their other priorities? You know, there's a whole host of things that come into play. Absolutely.

Did you develop any tricks on that latter half of the sales process to both know where it is and guide them through it or?

The one thing I did learn as I went through it, more I went through it, was these questions have to be— I shouldn't say it has to be, but it's best if you ask these questions early on in the sales process, understanding that paperwork process. Now, let's say that, you know, you do decide that this is the right product or any product is right for you. What's the, you know, what are the approvals? Where does this have to go to get approved? You know, those are just little questions that you throw out there and you don't just ask those Once and move on. Sometimes you ask them several times during that sales process and you'll sometimes get different answers from different people.

Yeah, it looks like because they didn't teach the engineers how to buy stuff, did they?

No, no.

They skipped that course.

And in a lot of companies, they don't know. Sometimes they don't know that people have never been through a purchase process of this magnitude and it affected so many departments and And so that's something they weren't even aware of. They don't know. They said, well, I don't know. I fill out this requisition and magically it happens.

I forward it to procurement or I forward it to my manager and I just assume it comes through to you guys.

Yeah. And the earlier you can understand what that process is, the earlier you can understand, okay, who could stop this along the way or who could be a block for this or slow this process down? So even though the engineering manager, the director of engineering, the vice president of engineering, you know, wants this thing at the end of, you know, August, for example, you know, it may not be until, you know, September or even October until it actually happens, until this— because of just the process itself.

And the engineers have urgency, but management, procurement, legal, they don't have urgency.

No, no. Yeah, and the other thing I thought was funny too is in the In the forecast, everybody always asks, okay, you know, when is it going to close? And then you, you know, my propensity early on was to always give, well, it should close by the end of August. Well, you know, my decision and my desire to close it in August has no reflection whatsoever on their ability to purchase. And so that's also very important is that timeframe that goes on that forecast, that doesn't come from your mouth, that comes from their mouth.

Yeah. And they don't— certainly the engineers don't know unless they've been through it recently.

Yeah. No, not at the engineering level. No.

And, you know, that they forward it to their manager and their manager, hopefully they know why they're doing it.

Yeah, hopefully.

Hopefully. Or you have to start the sales process with them too.

Well, yeah, that's, that's an important point too, because I think you, you need to They need to know what they're buying in most cases, and they want to know what they're buying. And so those are people that you need to also engage in that sales process early on to find out what their needs and, you know, what their initiatives are early on. You know, while you may be doing the technical thing, you need to be doing this as well.

Were you able to skip a proof of concept or extended eval through the demo process, or did you have to endure that?

Pretty much, I would say for the most part, you always went through the same process. Sometimes it was shortened. Sometimes they had used it in school or they had used it at the previous company. And so they said, yeah, yeah, we already know what it does. You know, we don't even— so I even had deals where, you know, they said, we don't even need to see a demo. We're gonna talk about, you know, the business aspects. And so I've been able to close a few like that. That's rare. I would say probably 10%, 5% of the cases. For the most part, it's the full sales process. You can shorten some parts of it, but, and then oftentimes if you try to shortcut that sales process, you can end up, you know, doing it all over again. Unfortunately, yeah, that happens more often than not.

And were you able to connect either an ROI to the capabilities of the product so that the economic people Knew why you versus somebody else and why now versus somebody else.

Yeah. If you don't do that, you know, it's a nice to have, not a must have. And so hopefully you do that in every case. It should be tied to the business. Otherwise it's a commodity really, you know.

It's a toy for the engineers, right?

Exactly. Yeah. It keeps them happy. So then, and that's somewhat, you know, understanding that process, as I mentioned, is understanding what the economic buyer, if you will, what that person's, you know, initiatives are and their concern, you know, what keeps them up at night. It's certainly not, okay, the engineers have a cool tool to— A new toy. A new toy, yeah. Can I pay them? That's what keeps them up at night. Are we gonna be around? And what's the competition doing? And, you know, all those things.

And I'm sure you ran into some really great salespeople. What separated the great ones from the average ones?

I would say probably my experience had been the really the ones that went, that focused more on the management side and getting to the people who you know, were in the executive position. That's something again that I learned, most salespeople learn later in their career. And also I would say one of the many things that salespeople tend to happen to salespeople as they move on and become more experienced within the same organization setting is they tend to prospect less. They don't have to. They don't have to, right? So, you know, prospecting goes down, they end up just calling the same customer. all the time with the same customers. And so it becomes more of a mining thing. So the best salespeople I found were always having a good mix of existing customers with new logos, always be prospecting. And even if it's prospecting, it could be within the same company, but always be prospecting and always set a period of time out of every day and every week for prospecting. I felt that that's very important.

And what pushed you to learn the business side? Was it stalled deals? You just got tired of losing a deal or a deal taking too long or too small?

I'd say all of the above, really. You know, I would say getting blindsided sometimes that, you know, you think you're winning and you like, we did everything great, we did this, we got this wrapped up, no problem. And then you find out, you know, you get the call from the customer and say, well, we decided to buy You know, this other guy, how could this happen? You know, this is impossible. We, you know, we did everything right. We, you know, technically we— well, there were, you know, there was all the business side and we weren't talking to the right people. Um, and we were focused on the engineering side. So that's, that's a little bit of immaturity on my part, I'd say. And I learned that later on in my career.

Yeah.

You know, that you really, you really have to get to the people who make the decisions. And who will hold the purse strings. Yeah. And usually it's the CXO.

Yeah.

Because if you fall in love with the product, you think the customers fall in love with the product is a sure thing, but then somebody calls above or 2 levels above you.

Yeah.

They have no clue what the product does.

Right. Yeah. They don't, they don't care really, you know, sometimes. Yeah. Uh, and I, I, that, that happened to me even several occasions. So I would say, yeah, why did I learn the business side? Well, one is I found it fascinating because I was running my own show. But 2, it was out of necessity really more than anything else.

And do you see a lot of sales reps ignoring that?

Just— Yeah, people are getting better about it. I think the, in the modern day, shall we say, You know, and, you know, back when I first started selling, we didn't have, you know, BDRs and sales development reps and all those. Yeah. And so we didn't have people, you know, making those calls for us. We're making all our own calls. And what was the easiest way into a company? Easiest way into the company was, you know, an engineer who knows exactly what you're talking about when you call in and they, you know, you hit all the pain points, right?

Right.

So it's uncomfortable for salespeople to call in to an executive and sometimes it's difficult. You know, you're a salesperson with a title and then you're talking to a guy who's a CEO or CRO or whatnot. And so that can be intimidating, a very intimidating thing for some people. Yeah.

And they don't want to hear about the product. They want to hear about what the product does for them.

Right. How's it gonna help solve this and this and this problem? the initiatives that they're— that were handed down from their executive management to them. Great.

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

Yeah, LinkedIn is the best place. My name is kind of long, but it's Conrad A. Montgomery at LinkedIn, and I'd be happy to connect with anybody.

And one of the big mistakes that I— we all make is that we don't validate there's a real business awareness of this problem before we initiate the sales conversations, the proof of concepts. One of the key things that I did was when somebody wanted to do an eval, I tell them, well, You know, it's our process that I need to meet the manager. I don't need to talk, you know, have a meeting with them. I just need to say hello, shake their hand, know their name, put a name and a face together. And a lot of times I'd get pushback on that. Well, he's not here. And so, okay, well, uh, can you get me his card and I'll call him? And what I noticed was When they refused or pushed me off, those deals weren't worth going after because it was kind of a science project, meaning that the, the user buyer didn't have really approval to do this. They were kind of doing it on their own. Doesn't mean you couldn't get a deal, and it doesn't mean that I didn't move forward. Sometimes I didn't, but sometimes I did. But you know where you are. Now, if you don't do something like this, you can pick how you do it your own way, is that you go through this evaluation process and they, you know, send me a proposal and it goes nowhere because they haven't brought in management, leadership, the business sale. Not only hasn't even started, it's not even on the drawing board, and you've got it forecast for this month, you know, because they wanted a discount. You say, well, can you do it by the end of the month? Okay, sure, yeah, here we go.

Boom.

Well, needless to say, those deals didn't close. And this is when I really got adamant about a 2-prong approach. Now, it is A delicate dance. This is not something where you just, you know, you get the lead, you call the manager, hey, is this approved? No, you don't do that. You have to do it slowly because that can kill the deal as well. You really have to work with your champion to introduce this to leadership, align it with what they care about. In a timely manner before you overcommit yourself and the deal so that it is possible to get this. Because we kind of assume that this is already approved because they're acting like this is a real initiative. And that's great if it's inbound. When it's cold outbound, you know that leadership doesn't even know about this. So you've got to do it very differently. Sounds like work, doesn't it? Yeah, well, that's why we get paid so much in sales. It all comes to us, you know, because we have to be the person to really look at this deal critically and see what pieces are there and what pieces are missing. And how do we get the pieces missing in place in a sequence that doesn't affect or negatively affect the deal? This is why they call it the complex sale. Now, if you want to become good at this— not good, I'm sorry— if you want to become great at this, go to b2brevenue.com. My courses are are very different than the failed SDR courses that you see on LinkedIn. First of all, I've sold. I didn't take orders. I didn't manage accounts. I sold at 12 different startups. And now I've been teaching sales for the last 12 years. And you know what? I learned more in the last 12 years than I did in aggregate the whole time before that. Why? Because I'm now working with reps and all kinds of sales, from selling coffee roasting to copiers to legal firms, uh, to enterprise software to power systems for enterprises. And you know what? They all have similar, similar ingredients. They all have a technical sale. They all have a business sale. They all have people.

And everybody, does this apply to my sale?

Yes, it does. If it's the complex sale, large dollar amount, let's say over $50K, more than one person involved in the sale, and it's a business. Does that match your sale? Then Closing the Complex Sale is the course for you. If you don't have enough deals to work on, you need to prospect. And as somebody said on office hours on Friday, does anybody get inbound anymore? I don't know. It's hard. It is. It's a lot of noise out there. But you know what the difference is? Nobody's talking to people like people. Everybody's talking like prospects, targets. I don't think anybody wants to be your target. I teach people how to start conversations that turn into business conversations because that's how people like to work with other people. Don't you like to talk with colleagues, other people in the industry? I think I do. Do I like to be pushed? Do I like to enter a sales process?

No.

Bless me. No, I don't. So if you really want to become great at sales, you've got to become a student of the game. To be a student of the game, you have to study the game and you have to understand the game, all of it, not just the parts you enjoy, the parts you need to understand to close the deal. Go to b2brevenue.com, check out the courses. Also check out my other podcasts. Sales Questions, Brutally Honest Answers. If you're a sales leader and you want to have clean sales force hygiene, shoot me an InMail on LinkedIn. Brian Burns on LinkedIn. I've got a partner who is about to release a product that allows you to very quickly clean up the deals In Salesforce. It shows you exactly what's out of date in like a spreadsheet format, and you're able to change it there and it updates Salesforce underneath it. They're looking for feedback. They're not— it's not a bait and switch, I'll tell you that right now. And I told them, do not try and sell them the product on the call. They want feedback of how you're doing it today and does this Solve a real problem for you. And they want to talk with sales leaders. So if, if you're curious about that, and with all they need is about a half hour to get your feedback, I will connect you with them. Send me a little InMail on LinkedIn and I'll connect you up. Make sure you're checking out brevitypitch.com. We'll see you next time.