THE B-PLAYER SALES PROCESS AND WHY IT FAILS IN B2B SALES AND SELLING

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So in sales, wing it's probably the way to go, isn't it?

It, it appears that most people do wing it, and I know I've winged it quite a bit. Earlier in my career, but I think the more companies I've worked with or worked for and the more salespeople I've been around, it's surprising how many people actually do wing it quite a bit. And I think early in my career, I was definitely doing that, just kind of going off my hard work and making things happen type mentality. And that got me to a certain point, but I think if you really want to take it to the next level with your sales career, you can't just wing it.

Yeah.

And let's define it first just so that everybody's on the same page. What does it mean to you?

To me, it means that you probably don't really have a system or a process for whatever your sales that you're doing. So you don't have a system, you don't do the same format every time. You're just kind of going with the flow and showing up and expecting to have things happen based off your personality. and previous success. So maybe you don't really prepare the right way for meetings. You just show up and expect it to go the way you think it will. You probably don't have an overall process, like a long-term process. And then you probably don't have a lot of defined goals for the year or your week or your day for that matter. That's how I kind of see it.

Yeah, that's pretty good. It's kind of how I view it. You kind of go in and see how it goes. But, and I agree with you that it's probably the most dominant sales process out there. So if somebody said, wrote a book on how to wing it in sales, it'd probably be very popular or that everyone would say, I already do that. I know how to wing it. Well, can you think of if you're a surgeon, you just had surgery a couple months ago, right?

Yeah.

You know, if you sat down with the doctors and you go, are you guys gonna think this through before we, we go under the knife? No, no, no, no, no, Dustin, don't you worry. I've done this 1,000 times. How would you feel?

I wouldn't feel that good. I'd expect them to have some good bedside manner, walk through a checklist of all the things they're doing to get prepared, all these different things that they're gonna look at of ways it could go and how they're going to react to it. So they're, they're preparing for hopefully to go really well. But also things, things happen in a surgery as well. So hey, how do you react when things don't go your way? And what if they have to make some tweaks?

So come on, he went to medical school. How hard is it? He did one yesterday.

Well, let me stay away from that surgeon.

Yeah. Or let's say you were on trial. For a crime you did not commit, but a lot of circumstantial evidence. And the lawyer shows up hungover, just had a party kickoff meeting at the law firm. So don't worry, I think this will go well. How would you feel?

Not great. Not great. I'd probably grab a bottle of whatever he was drinking at that point.

Yeah. Yeah, or your financial advisor says, you know, I just throw a dart against the wall and whatever stock it hits, that's when we're putting your money into. See, in any other field, it's ridiculous to even think that people would wing it with their income, just react. And, you know, winging it can work if you're taking orders, if you've got demand, you've got pull, people calling you. You know, if this one doesn't close, someone else will. It's just a time optimization challenge as opposed to a sales skill challenge. And I used to have a manager, and his line was always, "Let's see how it goes." And I'm like, "Well, we do this all the time. Let's talk about how it usually goes. Let's see if we're on the same page of how to." keep it on track if it doesn't go the way we want it to. And he goes, ah, come on, we've been doing this for years and years. And it's like, well, you know, does Billy Joel just walk out cold onto the stage? No.

No way.

He's backstage playing, practicing, warming up, getting in the groove. If any football coach said, hey guys, you know, this practice thing, why don't you rest and we'll see how it goes on Sunday? He'd get fired in a second, right?

Mm-hmm.

Why do they do all those routines? And football's a very confined game. Agreed upon rules, referees, everyone knows what the objective is. Sales, completely undefined. We think it's this game and they, they think it's that game. The client's like, well, tell us what it is, what it does, how much it costs and how it compares to competition. That's how they think. And we think like, oh great, that sounds great. Here's a proposal. When's it closing? And then it doesn't close. And what do we do? Oh, no decision. Damn, another no decision. Sorry, boss. These are very indecisive buyers today. Does that pay the bills?

No, status quo does not pay the bills, unfortunately.

Yeah. And I get why people do it. And, and today, I think they're almost forced to do it because people are looking at activity instead of accomplishment. And activity pays your base, accomplishment pays your income. And I always, always used to talk to reps and they're like, well, my boss says do this. And it's like, yeah, your boss does that, but they kind of just want you to do the right thing. They don't want you to do the wrong thing, but they do want you to work. But they also are not going to pay you on a deal if it doesn't close. Just because you use their strategy, because they're going to say you did it wrong. So it is up to you to figure out how to get it closed. And, and winging it is 100% reactive, right? It's see what they have to say, react.

Yep. Yep. For me, I think at some points I was winging it more because I put too much on my plate. It's not that I didn't want to prepare the right way and get ready, but I had too too much stacked throughout my week and it was like I never had any room to breathe. And that was on me for just putting too much on there where when I really took a step back and prioritized it better, and if I only had 2 hours to work in the day, what would I focus on type mentality that helped me not wean as much? 'Cause I was actually focusing on the stuff that matters and taking all that clutter outta there. So that, that's something I think a lot of Type A personalities or go-getters, they might put too much on their plate. And, and over the years I've tried to get better at that.

Yeah.

And that's helped me not wing it as much. And then I just kind of have these overarching goals for the year. Then I break it down by quarter and I break it down by month. And then every day I kind of map out the night before I map out what I'm trying to accomplish. And that helps me not wing it as much because I have literally every couple hours blocked out of what I'm supposed to be focused on. And then having the right system, I think, is key as well, whether that be preparing for a meeting, whatever your pre-call kind of setup is and then, and then having, you know, methodology like what you teach and, and others teach to, to kind of have a system so that way you don't have to think as much. You, you already have a template and then you just kind of customize it a little bit based off the situation.

Yeah.

And a lot of people do the former where they, they want to have enough things and what they're really doing is creating a distraction for themselves so they feel better. You know, the old motto pipeline solves all problems. Well, real pipeline solves all problems. Feel-good pipeline solves no problems. It just creates more problems. You have to answer to it, administrate it, housekeep it, and is there anything really there? No, no, no, no.

And then, and then you're loading your day with meetings about a meeting to get ready for another meeting, which also makes people feel special, like they're accomplished, like they're making things happen. So yeah, the fake pipeline and loading your day with meetings, you can get away with it if you're not in sales because you have mainly just a base and a bonus type thing. But if you're in a commission type job, it doesn't make sense at all.

Yeah. And, you know, I hate to call out marketing, but that's kind of their strategy is to have enough.

That's your favorite thing to do, call out marketing.

Well, it's just too easy where they all, they focus completely on showing evidence of effort instead of what's the objective. Oh, the objective, they say revenue, but oh, Okay, well, talk to the salespeople. How good are those leads? Not, not very good.

Not great. Not great.

Yeah, but they, they go route of least resistance because there's no real acid test on any of it. So they go get as much attribution as possible. The— this number of people showed up for the webinar and did any of them convert? And then go through Salesforce and try and map any deal that happened that quarter to something they did that quarter. Now, what if happens if they really dug in? They went out and talked to prospects and clients and found out the real pain point issues and then started to promote those things. You ever noticed the lack of marketing people on LinkedIn? It's true.

That's true.

And the only ones that comment on my marketing posts are agency people, the ones who have gone and started their own business to basically do the thing that marketing people don't know how to do. You know, like put a Facebook ad or an Instagram ad that might take you a half hour to learn how to do. And they, they, because I'm I'm basically ruining their business because they've come up with a way to generate enormous amounts of evidence of working. But in sales, the evidence of working only maintains your base at best. It doesn't generate revenue. That's what we get commissioned on. And I think the, the winging it And I came up with this metaphor. Think of it as like recess because I run by this baseball field all the time and there's kids playing, but baseball is kind of a structured game. Recess is just busyness. You go, you throw a ball at each other, you run, you catch a dog, you push a friend over, you wait, run away from them before they push you over. It's just play. And that's what I see people doing in sales today is recess. They don't understand why the bases are in that order and why you can only run around it one way and what the sequence of things is. That's the opposite of winging it. You have to understand how the game is played. And when I started my own company, I would go into an account and I try and draw out their sales process, and we get one step before it fanned out into 100,000 possibilities where they didn't really know. It was all reactive. How does the first meeting go? What's the objective? Uh, what are they looking for, and how do you then take it to the next meeting? How do you block out the competition? And all of a sudden they're like, why? I never thought of that. And it's like, because they were thinking like service reps, where they, they know their product really well, they know how to quote it, they know how to get them the right product, and they can get a discount. But that's really ser— that's retail, that's servicing, that's being a clerk. Not somebody who's going to generate a deal. So what does everybody do when they need the deal? Throw a little bit more discount in there. They buy the deal. It's one strategy. It's an expensive strategy. It's a flawed strategy because once it's out there, you can't really take it back.

Yeah, most people's sales process is demo, propose, negotiate, close. And that's, that's never how it actually goes. Maybe, maybe inbound could be like that potentially. But, and then yeah, if you're just constantly reacting, then you're gonna have those Hail Mary offers at the end of the quarter to discount and try to get something in, but nobody really feels good about that. And the customer reads right through those anyway. So it's how do you kind of plan ahead and think through all this stuff. But the problem is it's a lot of work. That's why people don't do it too. You have to put some work on the front end so that you're actually preparing for it. But once you have a template, it's not as much work throughout that. But the other thing too is it depends on how you're getting compensated. So if you're— if you have a lot more commission, you're gonna be more willing to probably not wing it as much. But if you have a higher base, a little bit of commission, a little bit of bonus, You get a little more comfortable with, with whatever that is, especially if it's in like well over 6 figures. So I think that's a whole nother topic in itself is how you compensate your, your sales reps or what type of job you're doing. But I know since I've done more commission roles and then have my own thing now, I'm way more hyper-focused on nothing falls through the cracks, probably too much sometimes, but I have everything kind of written out and planned out within reason for, for bigger opportunities because I don't. have the luxury of losing deals and just banking on my base. So I think it depends on the type of role you're into and that will help you not wing it as much. That's for sure.

Yeah. Because, you know, remember getting a game when you were a kid, you know, before video games, what was the first thing you did? You'd open the board, but then on the back of the top was the rules. How the game is played. And I think today people kind of think the game or the rules are present, demo, propose, negotiate, and close. That's the way we want to play the game. No harm in being optimistic. We don't control the game. They have the money, we have the product or service, and we have to earn that money with a bunch of different people in the complex sale. And still, most people talk to one person, they believe what that one person says, and they don't have any preparation for all the traps. that they fall into every month, every quarter, every year. And since there's a large time gap in between those traps, those fails, they forget them because our brain is a pain avoidance machine. Preparation is pain, right? It's work without reward.

Mm-hmm.

Because the reward is not getting pain by falling into the trap that you won't realize you're in for 3, 4 weeks or a month or 2. So it really requires delayed gratification because you're not getting immediate reward and to think long-term and prepare. Because in the 2 analogies that I came up with, the surgeon and your lawyer, it's all about preparation, right? You ever see a lawyer prepare? I haven't.

I guess that's a good thing. I haven't had a lot of interactions with lawyers, but I haven't. Oh, you will.

No, but what do they do? They think through all the contingencies. Yep.

Yep.

And they have better lawyers working through it with them. And that's why partners are more expensive. They don't go to trial with the lawyer, but they sit down and go, you know, if you were the opponent, what would you be saying? What would you be doing? What wrench would you throw in my argument? How would you break my argument? And how many people do that in sales?

Very few. Very few.

Right. And you walk right into the trap. What's your competition saying about you? That used to be my one question that I'd always ask and they'd be like, and people would think depends is an answer. That's not an answer. Or that's like saying a lot, right? That doesn't tell me what they said. That tells me the volume of what they say. But let's go exactly. Well, it depends on now. You do this all day. How do you not know this? They don't want to know it because again, it's work. It's scary. If we know that, then we have to come up with an answer that's more work. But guess what? You're not the only vendor in the world, and the client. Although you might be charming, doesn't see the difference until you show and prove the difference. Because they don't want to see the difference. They want to think that they're all the same, because that's what gives them all the power, you know. And that's why, you know, people say, well, I gave them an hour-long presentation and they didn't really connect with our differentiators. Well, then they're not going to go with you because you're the most expensive. And I think the wing it is just the natural route for people to go when they're overconfident about their skills. And I think overconfidence is probably the number one killer of income today. Now, again, it's like this balance between you don't want to be insecure, you want to be confident, but you don't want to be overconfident. And that's a real hard balance to have. It is.

And I, it doesn't matter how successful you are, if you're a CEO of a company, the top sales rep, 3 or 4 years in a row, the best surgeon in Georgia where I live, whatever it is. I mean, you can always get a little bit better. You can always prepare and you don't want to get overconfident to your point. So, I mean, you have to kind of have that mentality that even if you're having a really good year, you have to have that kind of urgency to keep it going the next couple of years because especially in sales, I mean, it changes every year. I mean, it changes every few months with AI and whatnot. Going on. So I mean, if you're not staying up with the times, even if you're doing well, you're going to get, get left behind. So that's, that's what I believe. And that's really for sales, but any profession. And then the other thing I was thinking about is, uh, I, I started keeping track of my mistakes, which is painful because you, you have to like be real with yourself about, hey, where did I mess this deal up? Where did I not do this? You have to be more accountable. But when I kept track of my mistakes, it helps you not do them again because even as smart as you think you are, as good as you think you are at sales, if you don't write it down in whatever fashion is good for you, then you're going to keep doing the same things again. So, uh, because you can't just be quick on your feet and wing it every time, like you're going to miss stuff, especially if you have a lot going on in a high stress job. So keeping track of my mistakes has been a good way for me to kind of not wing it and not do the same things over and over again.

Yeah. And people make the mistake of thinking it's an intelligence thing. It's an emotional thing. And I think this is where people— I'm smart enough, I've been doing this 5, 10, 50 years, it doesn't matter. You got to warm up. You got to think through the contingencies if it's important enough to you. And you got to ask yourself, is it that important to put that little bit of effort in? Because How many of those mistakes have you repeated?

There was quite a few that were repeated, but once I kept track of them better, not as much lately. But yeah, you're right. I mean, because you get in the heat of the moment, you're like, dang, I really want this deal. I'm just going to give the discount and give it all away right here. I'm going to just— if you don't prepare for it, you can get overwhelmed by your emotion because you want that deal to happen. Everyone wants to close the deal, right? So you just blurt something out that you didn't mean to you. And then, then you can't go back after that typically.

Yeah. Because I think we all know that, you know, a good pregnant pause is a great conversational tool in sales. But what do we do? A little trigger goes in our brain and boom, we pounce instead of pausing. You know, if they ask for a discount, pause. Don't say a word. They'll talk themselves out of the discount, right? They go, well, see what you can do, think it over. Okay, that's better than saying, yeah, sure I can, because now they're going to ask for more. They're going to ask until they say no. And if you think through those things, because I think keeping track of mistakes is great, Keep track of other people's mistakes is great too.

Yep.

And read those mistakes before you pick up the phone or get on Zoom, because once you're in the moment, you're in the groove, you feel the mojo going, and you think, oh, if I just say yes or I do what they want, I'll get the deal. It doesn't work that way. You know how many people fall into the trap? Send me a proposal, and then it goes quiet. Probably the most common trap out there. Or oh, I'm dealing with the decision maker. Oh, you mean the person who has zero budget authority, has been there three months, and nobody works for them? That's the decision maker. What decision are they making? Not to call you back. Because when we're early, we believe what we want to believe. We don't believe what's real, you know. And how many deals do you have at 80% going into the last month of the quarter that don't close? A lot of them.

Probably a lot. A lot.

And And I used to do a postmortem at the end of every quarter because you get tied up in the emotion. Your manager wants you to up the commitment. They think you're sandbagging, right? And they, they kind of pull you right into the trap. And now you've got to deliver on what they want versus what's real. And now you got to do stupid things. And well, whose fault is it?

You're gonna get blamed for it one way or the other because you're not gonna, if you don't close the deals, you're gonna get blamed for it. Yeah.

Yeah. You committed to it. You know, the manager's not gonna remember that they talked you into it. And if you say it's a $100K deal and it comes in at $99K, they're disappointed. You said it was $100K. What, you can't hold the price? So if you're gonna— if you want to be successful at sales, you first got to understand the game you're playing. And if you're playing it every day and you don't document it, you don't have it visually so that you can see where you are and where you need to go, especially with larger deals, with Many decision makers, large dollar amount. The likelihood is the go-to-no decision. If you don't do that, you got to ask yourself, am I in sales or am I just a clerk reacting? And be honest with yourself there.

Yeah, you really can't afford to wing it in sales depending on what, what your job is. I mean, because you're going to lose out on a lot of money. And you only get so many chances, especially with these bigger deal opportunities. If it's, to your point, complex enterprise, $100K plus, whatever the situation. But if you don't, if you mess that up and you just wing it and don't make it happen, then you probably aren't going to get another shot with that particular customer for at least 12 months, maybe longer than that, depending on what type of contracts you're dealing with. So you really can't afford to wing it when you really think about it, especially if you're in those kind of more complex environments and you have a lot of commission on the line. So it, it makes sense to prepare a little bit more and do the things that we're talking about so that you don't have that pain later. But again, you, that's thinking long-term down the road and you're not gonna see that reward for a while. So you just have to kind of change your mentality and, and put, put some work in.

Yeah. And I think get away from this idea of, you know, make up for it in volume because you pretty much know if you can make up for volume. And you always see the person at the QBR with the enormous pipeline, but never delivers on anything. Managers seem to love that person, but eventually, you know, the results speak for themselves. You might have a job, but you don't have the reason you have a job, which is to get paid because you're in sales to make money. And the better you're prepared, the better you understand the game you're playing, the better you become at it, the more money you make. What does everybody think? No, no, I just need a better opportunity. Well, go get it then. But how many times do you get the better opportunity without getting the better result?

And to become great at sales, the best way is to model somebody who already has become good at sales and to hear other people who have become great at sales and the journey that they're going through, the false beliefs. The misnomers, the mindset issues, all of this stuff that gets in our way between where we are and the income that we want. Let's face it, we're in sales because we're money motivated, we're competitive, we want to be better every day than we were yesterday. And how do we do that? Just really, you know, read a book, listen to a podcast. That's good. Good start. I like it. But then you have to take action. And then you want both tactical and strategic ideas. You want mindset. You want strategy. You want to understand how companies buy. You want really deep content and examples, case studies, so that you can learn from other people's mistakes.

That's what I'm here for.

I'm here for you to learn from my mistakes. And boy, do I got a lot of them. So go to b2brevenue.com, sign up for the courses. There's 2 major ones. Start the Conversation, Get the Meeting fills up your pipeline, gets rid of that problem of, oh, I don't have enough leads. I don't have enough meetings. It gets those conversations started with the people you want to talk to. Now, it's not about a pitch. It's about a conversation. Now, everybody thinks of conversations when you're talking or you're online at the same time or you're on the phone or Zoom at the same time. That's not a conversation. A conversation is when the client is talking about what they care about, what they're interested in. And that is what we call qualification, where we can sense where are they and how do we build up that curiosity Into interest, into urgency to get a deal. And these are skills that we need. They're lifelong skills that we need in sales. And then how do we get a deal closed? Yes, anyone can take an order, but what if they don't know how to get it done? You got a new account where you're trying to get a big change done internally. What are the issues? If you're not planning that through, Odds are it's not going to get done no matter how much your champion wants it. So winning the complex sale solves that problem for you. Why waste all your time on these false positives or these no decisions? Because they don't pay very well. They pay 0.0. What you want to do is pay a lot. So sign up today. Invest in yourself. You're the asset in sales. Quit waiting for somebody else to approve it or train you. See if you can get it expensed. That should be your first sales obstacle. Your first sales challenge is how do you get your company to pay for it? Just go down, tell your manager you want to do this. I put a little example email in the show notes right below here. Swipe up and take a look at that. And if they won't, you got to ask yourself, why won't you? Why won't you? Oh, it takes time. Well, you work all day.

You're working wrong all day.

Why not improve that? There's the time right there. Oh, the money. Brian, it's money. Well, you make more money if you become better in sales. And Start the Conversation pays for itself the first week because you're gonna get at least 2 meetings just learning from the very basics of it. Closing the Complex Sale will pay for itself 100 times over. Students in it tell me it's the best money they ever spent because they now have control over their deals. And it doesn't end.

Some give up.

Some give up after they win their first deal and they think they've got enough. No, come back. Come back, keep going. You can get 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. And 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 going to 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.