THE FUTURE OF B2B SALES AND HOW YOU CAN TAKE ADVANTAGE OF IT

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.

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Before it's showtime. Here we go. Everyone's got an opinion about the future of sales. What's yours?

A lot goes into that for sure. I believe that there's a lot of stuff we were told over the years that isn't necessarily working these days. So the future should be pretty interesting to see what happens. But The activities and numbers game that has been preached for quite some time, I think, is much tougher. So the future is going to look a lot different. And ultimately, I think you have to be different. You have to stand out from that sea of sameness. So how do you differentiate in sales? And it's probably going to come back to a lot of evergreen type situations and also being systematic with your approach. So it's an interesting topic because there's so many things out there. There's so much noise with AI, these different things that you see. So how do you really stand out and be different and be successful in sales in the future? It's a great question.

I still remember one night I was sharing a hotel room with my manager. It was a long time ago. And he goes, well, we better make money while we can. They're not gonna need salespeople in 5 years. And it was a long time ago. Needless to say, that's probably the 100 or 1,000 times the number of salespeople as there was then. So I think people overestimate the impact of technology on sales because we've never had so much technology. Do we have less salespeople? No.

We have more.

We have more. Why do we have more? There's more companies. Everyone still needs to eat. Everyone still needs revenue. And as the technology progresses, because that's really what time is, it's, it's the evolution of technology and how people react to it. You see it right now because we're kind of at a pivot point with AI. And I see a lot of people, you know, trying to start agencies to get meetings using AI. It's just, it's just spam. It's not selling. They don't know you. Um, I think that's going to continue though. I don't think it's the future. I just think it's a byproduct of time and technology. The need for what salespeople do will never go away. It's just who does it and how.

For sure. And there's always going to be advances in technology, to your point. I mean, going back any time in history, there's always been something that happened. The automobile, and then the horse and wagon got completely taken away, but those people figured out how to adapt to that. Like farmers, when you started having tractors and they weren't using their regular stuff. So everyone always thinks it's going to take over and you're not going to have a job and there's going to be nothing to do, but there's always ways around it to your point. So I think you have to, you have to adapt to it for sure. So with AI and different technology that's out there, see ways it can actually be useful to you. So how can it help you work less, be more productive, get more things done, do things behind the scenes that are more monotonous that aren't necessarily worth your time to do it. So you don't want to completely negate it. You need to make sure you're useful with, with the areas that it can help you. But if you think it's gonna replace getting meetings and closing deals, maybe transactional situations potentially. But I think even that's getting overloaded right now and people are getting overwhelmed with it. So there's always gonna be that need for the salesperson. And I think the problem is though, a lot of people are getting taught the predictable revenue and AI situation. So they, they, it's been so ingrained in people's minds for, for so long from leadership down that they're not gonna be able to adapt as easily and it's gonna be not very fun for a lot of salespeople, or they go into it and start off there and are, you know, thinking, what is going on? This doesn't make any sense. I'm not getting any meetings. I'm not closing any deals. So maybe I'll just get out of sales completely because this, this isn't working for me, but they're getting taught ways that probably aren't going to be around a few years from now, potentially. So that, that's an interesting thing too, is, is it deflecting people from staying in sales? Is it, uh, making people more negative and trying to get out of sales? I think about that quite often as well.

Yeah. And I think it's gonna be more crowded at the bottom, kind of the get the meeting type function of sales or transactional low price items.

Hmm.

But I think it's gonna be still scarce at the top because at the bottom anything makes sense. And that's where the numbers game, the following your intuition, not thinking, Just, or copying somebody. So that's what predictable revenue is. It's like, okay, if you're Salesforce and it's 2003, this is a good strategy. And people don't know what that means. That means it's like perfect market timing fit with this huge demand and awareness. And all you have to do is get your rep in front of people. Is that your problem today? No. Your problem is people don't know what you do, don't care what you do, and you think they do. That's the mistake. I saw one note on LinkedIn this week. It's like, don't assume they're interested.

Why would you?

If they were interested, they'd be on your website, not you on their website. You're interested. They're not. Your job is to get them interested. The days of finding interest are over. So I think if you want to become successful in the future of sales, it's like specialize, develop your skills, move up the food chain of sales, not down. Because what's the point of starting an agency of sending spam? The technology to prevent your spam is increasing just as fast as your technology to send it. So this is what the, the marketing has run into all the time. It's like ad blockers. Now what do you do? What did, uh, Facebook have to do? Apple kicks them off, locks their privacy thing. So all they had to do was come up with some AI pattern matching. What other ads are they looking at? You notice your Instagram feed If you look at, um, shoes for dogs, all you'll see is dogs, shoes, food for dogs ads.

Yep.

So I love technology. I leverage technology. I don't anticipate it replacing me. I want to utilize it. I mean, imagine the people 20 years ago who started, or 5 or 10 years ago, started leveraging LinkedIn. They're killing it now. They can go from job to job. They're in demand.

Everyone knows who they are.

Those characteristics will never change. What people are trying to forget is that we are mammals. Everyone wants to treat each other like there's a need and a fulfillment and we put them together.

That's not how people buy.

And I mean, even myself, I know you as well. I'm very empathetic to salespeople and I want to help folks that are genuinely trying and it's something that potentially could help me. But even myself, there's so much noise out there that I can't even distinguish what's good, what's bad, nor do I have time to even look at it. So whether it's LinkedIn or email, phone calls, I mean, it's just Nonstop, no matter where you're coming from. So just imagine what, what the customers are thinking. And like you said, they're, they're already filtering stuff so that you can't, your emails can't go through. They're not looking at LinkedIn messages because it's usually just some type of pitch and it's just rampant nonstop, but you still need to use certain things. So the LinkedIn example is a great one. I mean, I wish I would have started 10 years ago as well, but I started a couple of years ago. But, you know, the other best time was 20 years ago for sure. And that, that keep— you can use technology like that doing it the right way and it, it will be working for you while you're still doing the mammal approach that you're talking about and going to in-person meetings, you know, having Teams conversations and meetings. So you can do both simultaneously. You just have to do it the right way. And LinkedIn, I think for sure, and that know, like, and trust model is going to be a huge thing that eventually the next few years, probably it's, I don't think people are going to have a choice, but the problem is that they're going to be so far behind. The algorithms are going to change. It's going to be so hard to do what people were doing years ago on LinkedIn that they're, it's going to be too hard and they're just going to give up probably. So I think if you don't plan now that what's going to happen these next few years, you're going to be so far behind. It's going to be tough to get ahead. And, and of course specializing too. I mean, stay, if The longer you stay in the same specialty, the more successful you're going to be. I think there's that 3 or 4-year rule where if you're really niched and focusing on one area, you start to see the benefits in that 3rd, 4th year significantly. So that's a good point as well.

Yeah. You know, if you pick, you know, an area, you don't have to stay at the same company, but probably some specialization that you're good at that the market values. And get really good at it. Because if you bebop around and you get paper thin in a bunch of them, what's your real value? Maybe it's knowing a particular market in a geography or a vertical. If you can really specialize in that, you become more and more valuable to somebody who wants to hire you and to the clients that want to buy from you. So if you have that salespreneur mindset, it'll make sense to you. If you have the employee mindset, good luck because how long are people staying at any company even if they want to?

There's a lot of moving around. Yeah, I think the average is less than 2 years for account executives right now. Some stat I read recently. So They're, it's really hard to keep your people when people are, you know, the fish that chases the shiny lure. They're always chasing that next big thing or that next way they can make money. So people are hopping around left and right. Yeah.

And just think about your network. How many people in your network or in your geography or territory, no matter how you define it, even know your name, know who you are? If they saw you fly by online or in person, would they recognize you? Not know who you are, maybe just like, hey, that guy looks familiar. And people say, well, that's no— what value is that? It's a start. That's where it starts. You ever been in an airport and you see somebody with your college colors on or your team's colors?

Nope.

Kind of, you feel a bond, don't you? Definitely.

Yeah.

So there is that connection already, and, and the same is true in business. So I think if you want to stay in sales, don't worry about there being jobs. There will be tons of jobs. It's, do you want the jobs that will be available, and are you qualified for them? Now, if you want to move up, okay, there's always going to be management jobs, but still what you're selling and the market you're selling it into and how well you sell it. Anyone can take orders, and those order-taking jobs won't be around, I'll tell you that right now. I don't know if they exist today for much more than a quarter before people game it or eliminate you. So the real selling, being able to start at a company, open up your laptop, Be able to start conversations, start getting on the phone, get on Zoom, being able to talk over what you're doing, getting their feedback. How long does that take? If that's days, you're doing good. That's going to take months. Year's only 12 months, and they give you 9 before they start looking at you a little weird.

Definitely. No, I mean, there's gonna be, there, there, there already is, there's, there's a scarcity for those true, really good salespeople that treat it as a craft. They treat it as a profession. They're always trying to get better. And if, if you take that mindset and the, the salespreneur mindset and you, you treat it like your own business, you're probably gonna do pretty well. You're, you're gonna have some ups and downs for sure, but you're gonna adapt. You're gonna think outside the box. You're gonna go with some new trends that, that work, but it, but it all comes back to some of the stuff that you were mentioning, but it's, It's a long-term mentality and you have to be in it for that long haul. Otherwise you're gonna hop around like we talked about, you're gonna get discouraged. And part of that can be from the companies you're at too, because they have that short-term all over you about getting meetings and closing deals. So that, that doesn't help. But I think having that entrepreneurial mindset certainly helps and just understanding what's going on like this, this conversation that we're having. If you're not really in depth and in the news and listening to podcasts and understanding the changes, because it's happened really fast, you're going to get left behind. So you have to be creative, you have to be different, and you can't— what worked 10 or 20 years ago most likely is not working now. So you have— you can't get so stuck in your ways. You have to be able to adapt a little bit and be open to learning, not Not have that know-it-all attitude, which most people have in sales, have that learn-it-all attitude. And it doesn't matter how successful you've been. There's always somebody that's done better, that has more wisdom, that's had more deals closed than you. So you can always get better and make some tweaks. So seek, seek those people out within your company or listen to podcasts like yours. I mean, you, you have to open your brain up, but I think most salespeople, they tend to be more on that, that, that fixed side where they think they know everything already and they're not going to change. or do anything new that may be out there?

Yeah, I think they— what they do is they get to that stage and then they stop. And what— that's what I've learned about salespeople. They love the new. They pick up the new book, the new trend, the new tool. They get to know it to their comfort level, and then they pick up another one, forget the other. Assume they know it because they know the title or the author or something. That's the wrong way to do it. And I think a lot of people listening to us, well, what happens if I got a good job in a good industry in a good company? Great. But in the future, how long does that last? You know, nowadays, 3 to 5 years is a great run. I bet in the future it's going to be 2 to 3 years maybe, because companies get acquired. And we see it now, even big companies, you know, when we're recording this, like HubSpot's on the, on the, for sales, right? Google's looking at them. So you would think that you're at this huge company, whether you like it or not, you'd be stable. Now you're part of a big company, then How does it work? So I think in the future, if you want to be at the high end, you got to be able to drop into a startup or an early-stage company, get them into market, close some big deals, grow with the company as long as you can, and then do it over again. You know, being part of a big company, your income's always going to be capped and it's gonna be more about how to sell internally at that company than it is externally in the marketplace because that ability to sell internally really doesn't transfer well. Some of it does, but not the good parts.

Yeah. Well, that can be painful as well, the internal selling, because I did that for quite some time as well. But it's, it's so true. I, I have a good friend that she was working for a company that had, I think, roughly 200 people, and then it was just acquired by a Fortune 50 company. So you talk about just completely flipping the switch of the mentality, and now it's just one division out of, who knows, probably 40 or 50 divisions. And it's, it's an act of Congress to get anything done. You know, a new job posting goes out where before you could just call up your VP and be like, hey, I, I want to go for this job or let's do this other person. Now they got to interview 10 other divisions and it's this 8-month process to get it, to get a new role or something. So it's, you never know when that's going to change and you have to be thinking about yourself. So that entrepreneurial mindset, if you're the employee mindset, just doing everything the company says and going with the flow, it can work for quite some time. If you get in at the right time and the company's growing, you can ride that for probably Quite a while, but that's really hard to find those situations. And eventually you will become potentially replaceable or just another number on a piece of paper. So it depends on what you're looking for, like how much comfort you want, if you want more guaranteed money versus the commission. But if you want to really make money and do things, I think you want to be in that more startup type mentality where you can make your own path. And it's going to be harder though. So it's going to— it's not going to be nearly as easy as it would be in the bigger company, but you have a lot more upside. So it's interesting for sure. But ultimately, I mean, you have to have patience. I mean, that's the one thing that most people don't have these days is they're just going to that next shiny thing you talked about, whatever that new book or AI is. If you're not, you need to find something that works and then really develop that craft, that process, that operating system that you have. And I know for me, when I took your course, years ago. It's, that was, it's been, I think, over 5 years now, and I've been able to do that in different industries. So if you find the right system, the right process, you can keep replicating that over time and you keep getting better and better at it, and you always have to make tweaks and go back to it. So I think you need to gravitate to one overarching system or mantra that you have for yourself, and then that can go with you to different places. But if you don't The longer you wait to do that, the harder it is going to be to do it. So you're going to have, once you get to a certain point, you have obligations, you have all these different things going on. You can't take as many risks and what have you. So it's better to invest now than to regret it later. And, but it's going to be harder either way. So why not do it now and invest in the system and the process and all those different things versus regretting it later is my philosophy.

Yeah, because you gotta ask yourself, if you are successful today, how much of it is you versus the product, the company, and the customer and the territory? If it's 80% you, great, you could probably do it somewhere else. But at earlier stages where the money is, it's about getting into new accounts as opposed to upselling and cross-selling. So if you're able to do that, the risk is pretty minimal no matter where you go. So you might as well go where the most upside there is. And if you can make it repeatable, that's where the magic happens, where you're not depending on, if I get a great territory and a great SE and a great comp plan, then I'll be happy. Then it'll work. But that works for everybody. You could put a stapler there and that'll work. What you have to do is build you up, your capability as a revenue generator. That's the future of sales because that'll always be needed. A cog in the wheel at a big company, you're just a cog on a wheel. You might be 100% better, but does that matter? And that wheel's gonna move anyway. And what I think the future of sales, it's up to individual reps to make it happen for themselves. It's not gonna be a tool. Don't worry about one company. Pick what you can be successful at and really focus on that and own it. Instead of blaming all the other things and keep looking for something else, you might not find it.

It's so true. I mean, and then that example you mentioned with the bigger company, or maybe you didn't impact the sales as much as you wanted to think, but the salespeople don't want to admit that. I know in the past, I, I didn't want to admit that when I was working for a great company that was crushing it. And I, you know, who knows what percent I actually had of The impact, but you don't want to admit that to yourself sometimes. But looking back, it's a little bit easier. So that's probably part of the issue there. And there is going to be scarcity for it. So it's, if you can really be an A player in sales and have that process that's repeatable in any environment that you're in, that you're going to get paid pretty well. You'll probably have a lot of good opportunities. You'll have a lot of people coming after you. You'll have a lot of inbound for your own career. So That's truly where you want to get, but that's not just gonna happen. You have to put a lot of work and effort and time into both the process and also the inner game too, because there's a lot of ups and downs with sales. So if you're not focused on the inner game and the process, it's gonna be hard to maintain all those ups and downs. And you have to be a little bit of a maverick, as you would say in the past. I mean, you have to be willing to take some risks, some calculated risks at times, but People want to feel comfortable. They don't want to go to a new industry or go to a new job. And that's understandable because it, it can backfire for sure. But you have to, if you want to find, keep finding those roles, you're going to have to plan ahead, be proactive, and take some calculated risks at some point. Because if you just stay at the same place, maybe you get to exit, maybe it gets bought out, which, which is awesome, but you have to keep looking. proactively. Otherwise, you'll be too late and you'll go, go somewhere once the wave has already peaked and it's about to come crashing down, potentially.

Yeah, because I think today everybody thinks they have to work for themselves or have a big side hustle, and there's nothing against those things if you're ready and it matches your personality, your risk profile, and your skill set. But being able to work at a— for companies in markets, it has a lot more immediate upside and a lot more control. You know, the people I see doing side hustles, the side hustle usually is what they really want to do. The job is to pay for it. And that's okay, but do you feel like you're mixed? You know, I did the side hustle and I wanted to do the side hustle. I didn't want to do the main thing that paid well. And as soon as your manager sees the side hustle, they know what's going on. You know, that the hourglass is ticking until you leave and you can just see it on LinkedIn. You just know what's happening. Okay. In 6 months, they're going to start their own company. Oh, surprise, surprise.

Oh, didn't know.

And again, nothing wrong with it, but then, uh, is that gonna really fulfill you long term? Maybe it will, maybe it won't. Or are you just doing it because you don't wanna do the other thing or you didn't get good at the other thing?

I don't know.

But that's— It's true. Yeah, it's true. I mean, the side hustle culture and then all the stuff you see on social Probably convinces people to take more risk because they see either a unicorn example that's the 0.0001% exception, or it's just BS success that isn't probably really true. So you see all these side hustles that people making, whatever it may be, and who knows the real answer on that? But either they put in a ton of work years ago and it finally came to fruition, or it's just not true, and there's a lot of fluff, and it's. There's a lot of stuff behind the scenes that you don't know about. And it does come back to what drives you. What is your vision? Where is the passion? I mean, what are you good at too? Because a lot of times, if you think you could be more entrepreneurial or do a side hustle, are you really a number 1 at a company or are you better off being an individual contributor or better off being a number 3 or 4 at a company? And that's not easy to answer those, but you have to understand that because once you get into the Those situations, you're, it's harder to get out and it's gonna be painful. So, uh, yeah, of course you wanna be passionate. You wanna know the vision of where you wanna go. I think if you, if you have that why, if you understand the long-term goal, and that's gonna help you get through that short-term discomfort, which there's certainly gonna be a lot of discomfort during your sales journey, no matter which route you go. So if, but if, if the endgame is money, if it's freedom, if it's working on your own terms, that type of thing, then you just have to be aware of that and keep reminding yourself because otherwise you'll want to jump ship early in situations.

Yeah. I mean, you could build up your own system where you could be— a lot of people talking fractional, but you could be really good to do that. Ask yourself, can you sell at a company where you have marketing full-time and support? If you can't crush your number there, you probably can't do it fractionally with no support, commission only, and starting from scratch. And I see a lot of people trying that today. And the same is true with entrepreneurship, you know, because you, you don't get anything. There's nobody there to help you. There's nobody to make sure you get to the desk by 9. Do you even have the structure and the discipline and the desire to do that? This is the good part about being an employee. And that's why I like the salespreneur mindset is like, you got a great base salary, you got some infrastructure, go crazy. Take some of that money, invest it in yourself, your infrastructure. Pretend you're fractional, pretend you're, you know, dust and ink and see how it works. Before you go out in the scary cold world. And it's a great way to nurture yourself because I think too many of us, we get to a great year and we attribute it 110% to ourselves and we think it's transferable. The market will tell you. You don't need to listen to us. And the market does tell you stuff, but do you listen?

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? Um, just really, you know, read a book, uh, 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. Just 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 going to 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 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 $300K, $400K, $500K. 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.