HOW TO WORK SMARTER INSTEAD OF BEING DISTRACTED BY ACTIVITY IN B2B SALES

Hey, before we get into the interview, I want to make sure you're aware of our other podcasts, the Sales Questions, Brutally Honest Answers show, which is a very quick, under 5 minutes in most cases, sometimes just a few minutes where I answer your questions. You can just send me any question to my LinkedIn profile, Brian G. Burns, and I'll put it in the queue to answer. Also, the Sales Leadership Show. If you're looking to get into sales leadership or you want to hear from the world's best sales leaders, that's where I interview them. Check it out, the Sales Leadership Show. Also at b2brevenue.com, you can learn all about all the courses. Links are in the show notes below, as well as our link to our partners over at brevitypitch.com, the fastest, easiest way to become great at sales and practice. Before it's showtime. Here we go. There's math in sales, right? Have you ever used math in sales?

I have. I actually grew up being pretty good at math, so maybe it was more natural for me. But, uh, definitely there is some math in sales, but you don't want to turn it into the, the numbers game math in sales. But there's, there's different types, especially certain things things like the 80/20 rule or Price's Law. I think a lot of that stuff, if you really dig into it, can be very relevant for salespeople, but also for organizations and their sales teams.

Yeah, because I used to use Price's Law when I talked to a sales leader and they'd be modeling how many reps they need next year. And I found out they modeled it based off of how much money they have, not how much revenue they need. And I go, well, let's look at your team now and, you know, write down the, the amount of revenue per rep. And disproportionately, it was loaded onto just a few reps. And Price's Law is just infinitely more focused than the Pareto principle, the 80/20 rule. 80/20 people accept it and they do nothing with it. They're just happy they know it, so they think they're a magician or a mathematician. Price's Law takes the number of reps, the square root of the number of reps, so what number times itself, and that generates 50% of the revenue. It's, it's weird to think that way, but if you don't think that way, what happens? They say, well, what I got to do is take— he's got too much territory. They think it's a territory problem, not a sales leadership problem.

And that's the issue. And, and the Price's Law gets exaggerated the bigger the sales team. So I mean, if you have 10 salespeople, it's not as exaggerated because it's probably, because it's probably 3 people that are doing half of it. So it's more reasonable that you get to 100, then it's 10 people doing half. You get to 1,000, then it's, I think, 33. So the bigger the organization gets to the sales team, the harder it is to see this. Probably it's a little bit easier to see it when it's smaller. But yeah, you're right. It can, I mean, there's both sides of it because I can see how leaders would It can come off as unfair if you start thinking about it that way, but it's, it's the law of nature. I mean, I've heard you talk about it many times. Jordan Peterson talks about it in some of his books and whatnot. And it's, it's, it's something that you can't fight from how I understand it so far. So it's just, there's going to be exceptions, outliers, but if you look at it across the board, that's always going to be the case. So if you know those few people are really going to be driving majority of the revenue, I look at it as how do you maximize those people? I'm not saying forget about everybody else. You can still do things to keep them happy, lift them up, but double down on your resources and investment in the people that are driving the needle. And it, and that's really how it should be in sales. But I think to your point, sometimes private equity or whoever, they have their fancy spreadsheets and they start plugging in the numbers of They use math.

They love math.

Yeah. Yeah. The wrong type of math though. So it's, it's, uh, you can't just add 10 more reps and expect the revenue to just happen because there's a lot of factors that go into that person's ability and how they perform, et cetera.

Yeah. Because people see this as a problem, not the solution. It's the solution because those Price's Law reps have to be doing something different. It might be luck, it might be the territory, but, you know, as you get to 100 or 1,000 reps, not all 33 out of 1,000, it's the territory. There's probably some skill, something that they see different about how to sell that product. That's why when I always did a consulting engagement, I wanted to talk With the rep who's crushing it, not because he has the best territory, but because they shouldn't be crushing it. And what I'd find is they didn't waste their time. They prioritized, they reverse engineered it, and they figured it out. They cracked the code. And that's when you know you're really crushing it at a company. When your VP says you cracked the code on how to sell this product. It's not the idiot who's doing 1,000 dials, got the power dialer and the AI spam generator. Let marketing do that. It's never that person unless it's a tiny little consumer product.

Yep. So yeah, it applies to the, not only the, the teams, but also when you're looking at your territory too. But it's, if you can focus, uh, to your point and limit those distractions and really focus on what's driving the needle, it's going to help you forecast so much better. So it's, uh, how do you keep— I, I just keep going back to how do you keep those top few people that are driving the prices all happy and keep them motivated and keep them moving? And, and right now it's, it's, it's almost like you're trying to make it fair for the, for the whole team. I, I think a lot of leaders are trying to constantly treat everyone the same and treat everyone with, with respect and, and value. And I, and I get that. You definitely need to have a good culture and And invest in your team. But the reality is sales is somewhat of a meritocracy where it's based off performance. So the better you do, the more rewards that you're gonna get. And that's how you rise to the top. And that's just, that's why it's competitive. That's why you can make good money. And if that's the case, you don't wanna, you know, play favorites so much that it creates a toxic culture or something like that. But those people should be making the most money. They should probably get more resources and people helping them so that they can focus even deeper. And everyone's gonna complain about it. But if, if you're complaining about it, then you need to do something about it and start selling the way they do. So I think the companies should try and keep looking at it that way. And I feel like it gets harder and harder, probably the bigger the companies go. But that's just when you hear playing favorites. If you're gonna play favorites, you need to be focusing on the The prices, law folks that are actually driving the needle. And then if, and if you're not in that category, like, hey, why am I not hitting those type of numbers? Like, what, what can I learn from those people that are doing that and try to replicate versus complaining and pointing fingers or they're playing favorites? Like, that's just the, the victim's mentality type thing. So I think if you get into sales, you should realize it's, it is a meritocracy and then you need to be thinking about it this way.

And then you gotta say, as a rep, how do I use Price's Law? And at the beginning of the year, you know, certainly in the people in the course, I kind of shared, it's like if you take 2,000 hours, which is a year, and then you take the square root of 2,000, it's roughly 45. So 45 hours generates half of your revenue. So next time you tell me you're too busy or this takes too long, get rid of the other stuff, not this stuff. What do you do during those 45 hours that generated half that revenue? Uh-oh, you gotta think. Damn. You don't have to. But if you do, you might be able to do more of those things. And how many people have done that analysis?

It's gonna be less than 1% for sure. Probably 0.1%. No one's, no one's tracking that. No one, no one wants to do the postmortems, that's for sure.

Why?

Because you have to think, and then the results that you're gonna find are probably painful to own up to yourself about.

So what do people do?

Just do more. Just do more activity, stay busy, like numbers game, like keep, uh, you know, going as fast as possible without thinking about what they're doing. But they're busy. They, they have meetings, they have stuff going on, they're, they're working. But is it productive work? That's the question.

And you got to ask yourself, why are they more comfortable being busy than thinking about how to make more money?

That's a great question. I mean, it's, it's hard. It is hard at first to, to think, think strategically and get out of that, that busy feeling you're talking about. But it's— that's saving you money in the long run. Like, that's going to help you close more deals. It's going to help you get more commission if you don't do it this way and prioritize and Do the Price's Law we just talked about, then you're going to most likely be chasing deals that aren't likely to succeed. You're going to lose deals at the last minute that you thought were going to happen, and you're not going to make as much money. And that's hard too. That's way harder than doing it on the front end. So it's— if you have that choice at the beginning, why, why not choose to better yourself and understand this principle so that you're not wasting time?

Because That's one reason. Another reason is they feel comfortable just knowing it. So they think like everything else in sales, I know this. Knowing it does you no good. Applying it does you good. You don't want to apply it because you're probably scared of, I wasted all that time and you have to face that. The other is being busy feels identical to being effective. Except for it doesn't pay. That's the only difference. So, and if you like that feeling a lot, go into marketing. Watch what marketing people talk about on LinkedIn. It's always how busy they are. And I bet if I talked to the rep at the company, do you get any leads? No.

Okay.

Because it's evidence of work. It's not work. And also, it's distracting. It's scrolling on Instagram all day long. You think the people scrolling on LinkedIn don't consider that work? A little bit, it's work. A lot of it's not work, right?

Yep.

Arguing with somebody over politics is not work, or sharing funny memes. Not really work. But think about one week generates half your revenue, 1/50th of your year.

It's hard to even comprehend that. That's, I mean, it's so extreme. It's hard to admit that that's the case and trying to find that week. I mean, now, so I did do an audit. last year of a full year and how much time was wasted. And it was pretty substantial in the hundreds of hours that I, from my opinion, I mean, there's all kinds of subjective ways you can say what was wasted time, but based off, you know, meetings that I probably shouldn't have taken, meetings that weren't going to drive the needle, or deals that I kept working on that didn't close for whatever reason, I counted some of those as wasted effort, or I could have invested that into better things. But, and then now I want to go back and see what week was the most productive week because I do still have a—

Yeah, it's not a contiguous week.

Yeah.

Well, yeah.

Okay. Which, which points were the really—

45 hours over a year, right? So that's what trips people up.

Yeah.

I can't just work one week and then crush it and make half as much.

That'd be good. That'd be good.

That'd be a great job. But if you really did the analysis, it would probably be, been super high leverage things. You get out of your comfort zone, you called somebody that you probably wouldn't normally do. You stuck with a deal longer than you normally would've. You extended yourself. Some of it might be luck, much like the territory, things that we don't have control over that hit us on the head. That's okay. It still happened. What caused that luck? Was it talking to your manager? Was it picking the right territory? Was it swapping out the accounts? And I do the analysis, and I go, yeah, I knew exactly what it was. I took my time with an account. I didn't rush it. I built it up, and at the right time I closed it. Now, I could have done more of that, and I will, but I think too many people end up being busy not making money. And this is why what's happened in the last 20 years with the CRM is disastrous. Because that has become the manager's view of what's going on. But it's really exactly what they requested, but fiction.

Correct. Correct. I mean, it's a lot of, depending on what type of company, you could get a bigger territory, especially if you have more of a startup environment or smaller company so that you could have 100 accounts. So I remember years ago that, that sounds awesome when you're like, oh, I'm gonna get 100 accounts. I'm gonna get 150 accounts. It sounds great. And I'm sure they present it that way to entice you to go take that job or whatever it may be. But in reality, if what we're talking about is true for sure, then it's 10 accounts out of those 100 that are really driving, driving the needle. You have to figure out which 10 accounts those are, but most people just go through their checklist. They're doing the same cadence or whatever it is for all 100, you know, maybe a couple different. personas in each account and they're doing the same, peppering them with 12 or 15 touches to see which one just falls, falls through and someone responds. But versus just really figuring out what, what does a deal look like? What does the success look like? And then mapping those best 10 accounts and like, okay, hey, I'm gonna go really deep with those 10, try to get in front of 5 or 7 people versus 100. Now your manager might not want to hear that, so you don't have to necessarily bring that up until you have some success.

That one.

Well, well, yeah, I mean, they're, they're, they're gonna think that you're not working hard or something.

You're lazy.

Yeah, yeah, but you can prove them wrong by closing deals, obviously. So you want to maybe shelter that a little bit depending on the organization. But that's, that's a good example. And it just keeps, it keeps getting bigger and bigger. I mean, I, I, there was times where it was like you have the whole Southeast or you have, and it, and it sounds awesome, but there's hundreds of accounts that could be potential, and it's actually harder than having less accounts. So, but it's, it's, it's counterintuitive to, I guess, how we've been taught and certain things in life or sales early on. So, but if you really go back and look at your numbers, that's, that's the case. So it, it's very, very important for the individual. I mean, what do you think? Is it more important for the individual or is it more important for companies to realize this for their teams?

Well, We're talking to individuals. Companies we don't have any control over. Because I, I, I've done the video, I've posted the Price's Law as far as reps. I mean, the video is probably 4 years old now. I post it at least once a quarter. So 16 times. I don't think a single leader has gotten it. The reps get it because it serves them if they're successful. They're not. They don't like it either. They're like, oh, it's all luck and territory. But it's a law of nature. You can fight it like gravity. You can think you fly, but jump off your roof, see how it works. Is it immutable? Ah, well, see, it, it repeats much like Pareto's principle, you know, because you get the And this is— I don't like to get into politics, but when you see billionaires, right, that it's highly concentrated in 1% of the population. The thing is, you can change society, it still happens. Look at communist countries. Look at Russia, the oligarchs. 99% of the people are in poverty. 1% have yachts. Okay, that's a fascist thing or whatever. But look at other countries. It's very— look at Canada. There's a couple of billionaires up there. It's a socialist country. It just repeats and you can fight it, but you can change the game. But then you just change who those prices law people are. And that's what sales leaders try and do. And that's what salespeople do. They think every hour is equal. So if I want to make more, I've got to do more. No, you got to do better. You might be in commodity industry where more equals more.

Income.

But if you're in B2B, it's much more about who is selling smarter, what works in your market. And if you can't figure that out, you, you're just happy being busy. Managers love the busyness. That's the problem. And managers want equal. They're Bernie Sanders. Right? Oh, we gotta level it off every year. And then what happens? The terrible people stay and the best leave. And then one of the terrible people becomes the best, right? And they say, it's me, it's all about me. You see them on LinkedIn, they're the, the sales influencers with 5 years experience coming from a unicorn. I took the order better than anyone else. Follow my system, which is identical to everyone else's system. How to do more dumb things faster.

That's so funny. And it's also how, how they're compensated too. I mean, it's, it's the busyness factor that you were talking about, but if the higher salary that you have, The more likely that you could not worry about this as much, what we're talking about, because then if you have a bigger salary, you're comfortable with that. That's a whole nother conversation. But then you're probably not going to be as relentless trying to prioritize your territory or prioritize your accounts compared to someone that's way more commission-focused. So there's, there's that too. If you want to influence people to think about this more, the more commission-focused your job is, the more you would do that. So there's There's that side of it as well. And, and it's tough. So I mean, if you have hundreds of accounts or such a big territory, it's like, how do you— because it does, if you read about the Pareto law, like the bigger an organization gets or the bigger the numbers, it's harder to figure out what's productive, what's not. So I think when you're— when you have that massive territory, that's where people really struggle because it is hard to figure out where is that square root, that half of the business, where is it going to come from if you have hundreds of options? So do you have any recommendations of how you would attack that? When you have like these massive territories and you just get kind of thrown out to the wolves.

Yeah, I've always looked for the person who was successful who shouldn't be, right? Let's say you take on a corporate account.

Okay.

Growing that is much different than getting into a new account or somebody who's been with the company 20 years, has the business acumen, the relationships internally. That's very different than the rookie who doesn't know anybody. So I always ask, who's being really successful who shouldn't be? They don't look like a salesperson, they don't act like a salesperson, but they're producing. Because you— when I say act and look like a salesperson, you know what I mean, right? The busy, busy Nice suit, glad-handing, life of the party. Okay. In some instances, that does really well, but that might be because they're an ex-football player or a model or whatever it is they got going for themselves. I'm looking for the, the short, stocky guy who looks like an accountant, who's got some hygiene issues, and But he figured it out. Maybe he came from like the customer side where he gets the customers really well, or he knows the product inside out, or he's just a relationship, you know, magnet, somebody who can just start a conversation with anybody. And then from them, I'd always talk to them and they're like, wow, the whole strategy is wrong. We need to do this, this, and this. And I remember one of my first enterprise jobs, I did 30% of the whole company's revenue.

Wow.

And they saw that as a problem. Like, well, if you do that multiplication, this is where sales leaders, I think they stopped at first grade as far as math. Not only do they not understand math, the math that they use isn't math. It's opinions with numbers assigned to them. Anything in your CRM is not math because it's self-reported. If I ask you how much you weigh, you have a number in your head, right?

Yep.

What if I don't ask? ask you to get on a scale. Are those numbers going to be identical?

Unfortunately not.

And the one in your head probably serves you more than the one on the scale.

Oh yeah. 198 sounds pretty good to me. It's probably a little bit, a little bit above that, unfortunately. Yeah.

And if you had to get on the scale, it's probably first thing in the morning before you've had anything to drink, or maybe after a workout when you're dehydrated. One is a fact and one is an opinion. Everything in the CRM is an opinion. And like, there's a company out there calling revenue intelligence. Well, revenue doesn't have intelligence, and nor does your call recording have intelligence. It's 2 people sharing opinions that you want to kind of get an equation so you can sell a product. And I got into it this week with a fractional CRO on LinkedIn when I put out win rate is total BS. And he couldn't get it. How do you keep track of progress if you don't keep track of win rate? I go, win rate is made up. It's the number of deals you win versus the number of deals that you report working on. If you want your win rate to go up, here's the secret: report less deals. Isn't that 3rd grade division? Oh, and you don't think a rep can get this? Unless you're hiring 2nd graders, they might be able to figure this out. And you're making business decisions off of this made-up ratio? And I did a video on sales velocity. I go, everything is made up in that equation. And they go, no, nothing is. I go, tell me what isn't made up. And they couldn't tell me. This is all made up. How long is a sales cycle? When's it begin? We know when it ends, right? They buy. When's it begin? First time you call them? First time they see your website. How do you know that? CRM. Database of truth.

Cut it out.

This is why you cannot lead sales. If you're looking at the CRM, you're looking at the lies you requested to see. Everyone's an actor and you're the audience. And when do you figure out that the play ends with you getting shot at the end of the quarter? You feel like Lincoln. Wait a second, something's going wrong with the play today. It's not turning out the way I thought.

Well, it's so true. It's the CRM side of it for sure, but it's, yeah, it's almost like the And they're, they're reading the CRM and going to all the numbers and all the stuff you're talking about versus actually going out in the field, seeing what those top people are doing and how do you add fuel to the fire. But so not only do they look at the CRM, but then once you, like your example of doing 30% of the revenue with that situation, then you're gonna get penalized for that. And then they're gonna chop it up. They're gonna give you some accounts. You can't make that much money. That's disproportionate. You're making more than the C-suite, whatever the reason is. So then they'll— chop it up and you basically get— that's the one downside too of prices all sometimes is like the, uh, whether people realize or not that the best people that are driving the prices all get penalized for it and they get more pressure, they get more stress, and then now they have to figure out another way to do it again because stuff was taken away versus making it easier for them to be even more successful is what should, should happen. So I think sometimes the, the prices all sales reps get burned out because they keep getting Like stuff taken away from them is what it seems.

Yeah. And I think as a rep, use it. Find out what you did during those 45 hours. Find out the rep who's doing really well in your company who shouldn't be doing really well at your company. It's not like I've been at a company where they hired their college roommate. He gets a cherry territory, New York City. He gets the best sales engineer. That's— and he did well. Wasn't because of him though. I don't want to talk to him. He's not doing anything unique. Talk to the guy who's got North and South Dakota and doesn't have a pre-sales guy and he's making his number. I want to talk to him because that should not be happening. And once you figure out what they're doing different, model that. Don't put it down. This is what everyone— all the reps, they look at because it makes them look bad. And that's envy, jealousy, paranoia. That's the wrong way to look at it. Find out what they're doing different. And model that.

It's the best people to learn from. You know, people that are a few years ahead of you that are crushing it in sales, and you can learn from them. And that's the people you want to take advice from.

Even bigger deals, more deals, faster deals. That's what it's all about. Sign up today. Put the excuses away. Yeah, excuses feel good, but they're expensive. Excuse— you know what the excuses are costing you? Tens, 50, maybe a couple hundred thousand dollars a year in lost income.

Really?

Yeah, the difference between where you are today— let's say you're making $150,000, decent, decent income, but You know there's other people in your industry making $300,000, $400,000, $500,000. Well, how are you gonna do that? You all think it's just about getting a better job, a better territory, a better manager. They can help. Go do that. Then what happens? It's still you there with those leads trying to close those deals. And do you have the game? Few people do. Everyone thinks they do. Why not prove it? The market tells you what you're worth. Accept it. Now become better. And the way to become better is to improve every day. Really make a daily routine of learning and developing because it's not at the knowledge level. You have to become Unconsciously competent at these skills, which takes time, repetition, and emotion. And I show you how to do it, how I did it, how I've taught hundreds of people to do it. But you have to want to because I can't force you. A lot of people wish I could. So do I, but I can't. So sign up today. We'll see you next time.