THE ONE THING WE ALL NEED TO GET BETTER AT TO SELL MORE IN B2B

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Have you noticed that patience is important in sales at all?

Just a little bit. Just a little bit. I was thinking of this quote I heard recently is your reflection of what you did one year ago. And that can be from a positive standpoint or a negative standpoint. But I think everything in sales and life in general, you have to be patient, but easier said than done. And it's just gonna take some time to get where you want to go, especially if you're selling something complex. Most likely that sales cycle is really, really substantial and it could take even years to kind of hit, hit your stride. So I think if you can kind of look a little bit further out, where do you want to be a year from now and kind of do the right things and habits and processes now, can really help you in sales to get where you want to be.

And I think people mistake patience from just waiting. Waiting is not being patient. Waiting's— you don't know what to do. And I, I think patience, you have to understand how long things take and think about why they take that long. And if you're not Applying patience, you tend to do dumb things, you know, because what's an impatient person? What does that conjure in your mind?

They're, well, from a sales standpoint, they're probably gonna follow up 20 times. They're gonna, they're gonna badger and hound the prospect because they're more worried about themselves than the other person's perspective. They're gonna get irritated in traffic if something happens. They're just constantly That stress level's high and they think things should happen overnight. But whenever you see people that are successful, this is another thing I always think about when I see people like yourself or somebody that's a top sales rep multiple years in a row. Of course, there's some lucky breaks I'm sure that have happened, but I mean, you have no idea what they did to get there. Most likely they put in a lot of work, they put in a lot of dedication. They probably got beat up for a couple years before they really broke, broke through in their territory. So I think if you really take a step back and like, what did they do to actually get there? A lot of times you may never be able to figure that out. But I think most of the time they put in a lot of effort, a lot of work. They probably have a process. They weren't, you know, pitching all the time and just pouncing on people when they had the opportunity. They were letting it develop more natural, or maybe the timing wasn't right and they gave a little bit of a break. So I think, always think of where those people came from before to get where they're at. It's not like it happens overnight. Most likely they put in a lot of effort and they had a lot of good things happen to get there.

Yeah. And I think it's this patience. It's a feeling, right? It's not a fact. It's not a thing you can see. And, you know, if you apply it to things outside of sales, let's say you're a cook, right? And you put something in the oven and the recipe says 45 minutes at 350. Impatience is 10 minutes in, you're like opening the oven, looking in, closing it. 20 minutes, you're opening it and closing it. And is that helping?

No.

No, it's not helping. Is it hurting? Maybe. I don't know. The oven, you know, decreases in temperature, then has to increase and then regulate. And are you most likely going to ruin that dish or make it better?

Definitely not make it better, and you may ruin it for sure.

And certainly this is a big role early in sales because early in sales, since you don't know really how it works, you're assuming you should be doing something on every little deal. And it's okay to do stuff and you should do stuff. But is it the stuff that the client wants, or is it stuff that you want to do so you feel better? And, you know, I talked to— I had this guy, CEO, in my course this week. I had a one-on-one with him, and he was just so anxious to do something. And so he didn't want to do something new because that doesn't feel comfortable. He wants to do something old. Something he's comfortable with. He liked cold calling. And I go, well, why aren't you doing that? It's not working. So I go, why don't you do this new stuff? I don't know, it doesn't feel natural. And it's like, okay, you're spending your week doing something that you like to do, but it's not working. And you've bought a course and now I show you something that you believe it's working. You like it. You're here, we're talking about it. You're sensing that it'll work. Why not try it? And his way of dealing with his impatience was just be busy. And I think every manager falls to this when they hear a rep not making their number. What do they do?

Do more of it.

Do more of it.

Make more calls.

Yeah.

Or, or the data-driven person looks in the CRM and sees, oh, the ratio of connects to conversations to first discovery call is down 3.7%. That's where it is. And, oh, but wait a second, they made all that up. And the manager gets impatient because the activity is an addiction, right? It's a distraction. The procrastination is a distraction. I mean, isn't impatience kind of like almost the opposite where you want to act, but you don't know what to do, so you do what you know?

Yeah, it's that gut instinct, that habit that naturally creeps up. And you made me think of a customer I was working with recently. They had a lot of young people straight out of college that were BDRs and SDRs. And they were expected to cold call. There wasn't as much structure because it's a startup, but they were getting impatient pretty quickly. Because I guess the other thing too is if you go into sales, you expect things just to happen where you can get meetings, you can close deals. And depending on what type of company you're at, there's different variations. But I think a lot of younger people going into sales might expect it to be easier than it actually is. And these SDRs and BDRs didn't have a ton of— Guidance, I guess I would say, direction of how to do it, but they were just told to make calls and they were just getting destroyed, right? As you would expect. And they were, it's easy to get discouraged pretty quickly too. If you're making calls like that, you're right out of college, you're all happy about getting into sales and then you just get annihilated. So, um, but at the same time, they were actually pretty clever too. They, they were starting to have some healthy conversations about, well, if we're doing all this activity, but it's not showing results, like, you know, maybe there's a different way we can look at it. So it actually ended up working out as far as Kind of having a proactive conversation. But yeah, I mean, in that case, they were getting impatient, but I think they were also kind of wondering, is activity really going to solve the problem? And there's a couple things there, but I think a lot of people underestimate how hard it is to get meetings, to close deals, depending on the industry that they're in. And then they might not get as much direction from their company or managers, or they get told the wrong thing to do, and then that just Adds fuel to the fire. So there's that side of it too. And I remember when I first started, I was doing more outside sales. I was going to physical places, but it was kind of just, you get thrown out to the wolves and sink or swim mentality. Some people can survive that and do really well. It's probably tougher these days compared to 10, 20 years ago, but I was able to figure it out because I had a lot of good people around me that helped me, but that's not always the case. And it can probably deter people from staying in sales.

And again, it's a judgment call. Are you being too patient or not patient enough? If you don't know the game you're playing, and I think that's the key problem in sales today, is they don't understand the game they're playing. They think, oh, I give value proposition. I, I see these stupid email things, heat maps on emails now. Remember heat maps on websites? We're not in marketing, we're in sales. If you think you're selling— oh, go ahead.

Heat maps of like where they click on, on the email or what is the heat map exactly?

Oh, it's supposed to show where the eye contact is going.

And I'm like, wow, I don't know how they came up with this bullshit.

Oh, it was from the same people who've been feeding us bullshit for years about their science-based sales approach. As soon as I hear science and sales, I'm like, okay, here we go for a ride again. And you're like, oh yeah. And I asked the CEO on this one-on-one, I go, have you ever been blown away by somebody's value proposition? Have you ever run around the house going, honey, honey, look at this new email I got. Look at this call to action. This person really gets me. It's laughable. Yet all these people spend hours and days trying to come up with a messaging that's going to take somebody who's unaware of them, the problem, and their product and now be interested. Why do they think that way? It— can you take narcissism to a certain extent where since I need to sell, somebody must want to buy? Isn't that the way the universe works?

Not, not quite. Not quite. Yeah, I had a— so my kind of relating it to something personal. So I had this surgery experience, which was kind of a nightmare of the last couple years, and basically wasn't able to work out the way I wanted to for almost a year and a half. So you talk about being patient. It was brutal because I was so used to working out and doing things I wanted to do. But I kind of had this carrot, this light at the end of the tunnel, and I knew, okay, hey, I'm making the steps here. I found a new surgeon. I'm over these hurdles. I got to take small steps. I can walk for an hour and a half. I can start doing Peloton. And eventually— it took a long time, but it was almost 14, 15 months— then I could start going back to some of the yoga classes, some of the things I was doing. But even when I go to them now, I don't go as hard as I used to on purpose because I'm still trying to slow play it. Even that feeling now, like, hey, I can actually get back in those classes compared to where I was a year ago. It's like, I mean, it's night and day, even though it's still kind of smaller steps. But that was for me, like the ultimate patient story. And I'm still, you know, kind of on the tail end of that, but it, but it relates to sales too, because, you know, I recently started my own thing and it doesn't, it takes a while to build that momentum up. I'm not quite at a year yet. So I feel like going into year 2, you'll really start to see some, some tailwinds, but Yeah, it just takes time. So if you don't think about it that way, but you still need to do the right things to get you there and kind of know the game you're playing, right? So it can relate to a lot of personal stuff too. So for me, I always use that surgery example because it helps me not get as impatient when something bad happens in sales or if I don't close a deal when I want to.

Yeah, because you had the habit of exercising, you liked it. You got a result that felt good. And then when somebody tells you, you know, don't do it, you need to recover. So you, you, you know that it's logical, easy.

Mm-hmm.

But then you get a feeling, right? You're like, boy, I, I miss running, lifting, whatever it is. I'm, I'm feeling fat. I'm feeling lazy. I'm, I'm not feeling the same, right? So I gotta go do that. So I think this is where we have to manage our emotions because patience and impatience are emotions. You feel like doing something. I think you need to, in your case, remind yourself. And I have a similar experience because I'm a morning runner. So you wake up and you have different feelings every morning, right? Some, you, you jump out of bed, you feel great. Other days you're like, what the hell hit me? And you're like, and the Oura Ring gives me some, a second opinion. And I know it's like, oh, if my body temperature's up more than 1% and it says take a day off, I take a day off because I know if I don't pay attention to this, likelihood of getting a cold probably triples. You know, and it's just, Now, can I do that just off of my kinesthetic feeling? Maybe, maybe not. It's like today I was running and my, my quad started hurting, and I'm like, is this something I can run through, or is this something I should stop and walk? I make a judgment call to keep going, and it was fine. It worked itself out. And a lot of times we don't know. And I think we have to be conscious of this. And, and in sales, you apply this to sales. And I, I kind of encourage everybody to kind of write down their process so that it's outside of your head. You're not going by your gut instinct because our gut instinct's all over the map. And it's all— and what trumps it all the time? Survival. what I need. I need to eat. I need to live. I don't need to get fired. So you'll do anything to prevent that, including dumb things.

Yeah. And having a process and a map has been a game changer for me because it just gives me that overall vision over that 6, 9-month process of kind of where I'm at. When there's a bad week where you have like a lull, you kind of know, okay, I should expect this to happen. This is always what happens. So if you don't have that overall map and kind of know where you're going, then it's going to be really tough to be successful. And then the other thing is, I would always say that surgery is like focused on the path, not the obstacles. So I know there's going to keep being some ups and downs. It's not— nothing's linear, especially in sales. There's always these weird things that happen. So as long as you're taking the right action, you kind of know where you're trying to get to and moving forward and taking some You know, 1% better type mentality, then eventually you're going to get there and then you can appreciate it way more than before. Also, kind of what's the reason you're doing this, right? So if you're in sales, like, why are you, why are you doing this? How are you helping that customer? And what, what is, how is it going to help you? How's it going to help them? If you kind of have that overarching outcome and, and goal and kind of always go back to that with them, I think that helps kind of keep pushing things. bored when you may want to get impatient because it's just gonna take, take some time, especially if you're doing enterprise type activities and it's just gonna take a long time. So focus on the path, not the obstacle. And then what is the outcome and the why behind you're doing it for both sides, I think helps me.

Yeah. And if you have it written down and then separate it out, because if it's like warm inbound, that's probably gonna happen a lot faster than cold outbound. And how long does it typically take to go from discovery call to presentation demo to evaluation, get a technical sale? If you don't have that in your mind, you want it now. Have you ever— rarely do you find a customer moving faster than a salesperson.

Almost never, unless it's emergency situations like COVID or whatever it may be.

Yeah.

Unless you're selling something that, you know, has a life-saving element to it. So you got to assume that, hey, maybe I am naturally moving faster than my client. Now, that's good to lead them. You don't want to be dragged. You don't want them to have to chase you. But it's up to us to lead the sale and lead it at a pace that's doable. That's the momentum part of a sale. You want that, but you don't want it too fast because if it goes too fast, what do they do? They run to the economic buyer and they scream with their hair on fire, we need this. And then that person goes, well, let's look at the options. Let's see what we have. Do we have anything in-house? Let's put Joe and Mary and Mike on this. And all of a sudden, You've got this quagmire of a deal now. Your champion's not in control of it anymore and you probably messed it up.

And it's so hard not to pounce when that comes up, when that champion or that person wants to just skip the next step, like get, get the financials and then take it right to the CEO or whoever it may be. It's probably not the CEO, it's probably someone lower than that. But I mean, that's happened so many times where you have to fight that urge to Do it and you have to kind of control that situation and take a step back and, you know, mention that, hey, we could do it that way, but this is usually what happens if we do that. So if you really, if this really is important to you, I'd, let's maybe set up another meeting to go over this a little bit more in depth so we can curate it for your CEO or whoever it is. Because that, that's one of the hardest things I think is when people are excited about it, they act like they have more power than they do, or they probably think they have that power, but they don't realize what's gonna happen when they push it along fast. And then you just pounce because you want that deal so bad. And I've made that mistake many times. That's probably one of the harder ones. You have to definitely have that on your map and your process of like, hey, don't go to the meeting or don't let them do that. Set up another meeting in between, go get a one-on-one with this other person or whatever it is. So that's a great point.

Yeah, because you gotta think of it from the executive's standpoint. If it's the first time they've heard of it, What's the likelihood they're going to go from never heard of it, great idea, sign it, go? Maybe, maybe not though, because internally they think it's a great idea and they immediately want to quote and they think they have everything. So they're not going to talk to you anymore and they go running in. So each deal has a momentum, a cadence, a sequence of things that need to happen. And sometimes the client will pull us right into that trap. And, you know, we got the commodity trap and then we got the economic trap. And if you don't know this, your need, your craving, your hunger is just going to fall right into it. And once you fall into it, it's near impossible to get out of it. Because think of it from their perspective. They went to Mr. Big Cheese and Mr. Big Cheese said, not now, maybe later, check out some budget stuff. Is that person going to call the salesperson back? Oh great, now I get to give Dustin some really bad news. Boy, this is going to be fun and he's going to take it so well. He's going to appreciate my efforts and check back with me in 9 months. No, he's going to handle your objection, try and call into the CEO.

And he's get now you get even more of a mess, or they'll just ghost you because most people don't want to deliver bad news.

They don't want to.

They're not gonna call you. Yeah, that's why they're gonna they're gonna avoid talking to you at all costs because they probably like you and they're like, man, I don't want to let let them down. We've had some good momentum, and then they're gonna feel subconscious because they weren't able to make it happen. So yeah, then then that's a whole other mind game in itself, and you're gonna be chasing them. They're not. replying to your texts or your emails, your phone calls. You can tell that this has happened to me before.

Okay.

Um, and then, then you're just hounding them and, you know, you can maybe let it sit for a little bit, but then it, then it's just, you're in that, that mess where you're just trying to figure it out. It's not impossible to get out of it, but it's not fun. And that's what burns people out in sales. And that's what most people are probably doing. So if you could just take a step back, like understand, hey, this is probably going to take 6 months from start to finish. We're right about month 2 or 3 right now. So let's make sure we still do the trial, still do the proof of concept. Don't skip that step because even though he said that we didn't need to do it, let's still do it just to prove it. You know, you have to think of it like that.

But that's—

there's got to be a very small percent of salespeople that actually do that. Most of them are just gonna pounce and move that. And then it sometimes it may work out, but a lot of times it's probably gonna fall flat on your face and then you're hounding people. So it's yeah, and then I mean I think you you kind of have have to have that giving mentality, that quid pro quo. Like if you want to, you know that that patience and impatience. If if you're doing stuff to help them, and then they're doing some stuff to help you, and you kind of have this rhythm throughout it, you know eventually I feel like it kind of comes to fruition. But I think you also need to have that kind of giving mentality, and that helps with patience because it usually karma whatever you want to say that. Somehow it comes back around. You just wanna make sure you're, you have that in your process too.

Yeah, because the pushiness can work in the simple sale because sometimes people do need a nudge. They need a real good reason to do it now versus tomorrow or a week from now. In a complex sale, it's almost the opposite. When you push, you tend to degrade the deal instead of accelerate it. When you lead, because they don't know what they're doing and they think they do, that's a dangerous— imagine driving a car that you think you know how to drive but you don't. Guess what happens? Likelihood of getting home near zero. Same thing with a deal. You've got somebody who thinks they know what they're doing but they don't, and maybe even the rep doesn't know, but you probably know better and the person trying to buy about what people need to have for this to be completed. And the best examples are what's happened in the past. Sit down with other reps and go through, you know, have them bring up their inbox and tell me what the first time you heard from them. Search for the company URL. What was the first email? What was the first time you had a conversation with them? What was the first time they asked for a proposal? When did it actually close? How many times have you had to update a proposal just to change the date on the expiration?

A lot.

A lot. And that can be a trick. There can be a way of controlling it by keeping the expiration date tight. But if that's the only value you're bringing through the process, you're not selling, you're an order taker. Selling is guiding the person through it. Imagine if a concierge at a hotel didn't know where the pool was or didn't know where the gym was or didn't know where the restaurant was. Wouldn't you be like, isn't that all you need to know? Isn't it? Yeah, you're right. I go, you know what? I have no idea where the gym is. No, that's why they're there, is because everyone's lost. It's 80% of the people have never been there before. They don't know where anything is. There's not a sign where they're looking, so they ask the concierge. That's our job. Our job is to guide them to the gym because they think they know. But when you get off the elevator, you think you know where the gym is. Gym's on the second floor. You get off of the second floor, you look around, no gym. It's on the second floor. You just don't know where on the second floor it is. So you could like walk around, but our job is to guide them, even walk them to the gym because they are impatient as well. They just want the problem solved. They don't want the product. They want the problem solved and they don't. Understand why they have to go through all this bureaucracy. You know, because I sold to engineers forever. They'd be like, "Oh, they'll do whatever I tell them to." Can't tell you the number of times I heard that. And then they're shocked when that no one will do anything that they tell them to if it requires money and effort. So you have to kind of work with them. And prevent them from ruining your deal.

It's a great way to look at it, and I always think of myself as a project manager trying to guide and direct them throughout the process over however length of time it is. So having you kind of being like an extension of their company and just helping them do all the stuff internally because no one wants to set up all those meetings. No one wants to follow up with Bobby and Jane. But if I can do that for them. And kind of keep pushing it along, like they feel really good about it. Then eventually it's like you're with them so much and they like you that, I mean, it's much harder to kind of break away at that point. So I always try to take the initiative, sometimes maybe too much, but I'd rather do that than the other way because the other way means all the issues we just talked about are going to happen. So if you can kind of push the envelope and, you know, like, oh, that's just Dustin being Dustin, and then they'll kind of know me for Like making things happen and being reliable and following up and having everything together. And I think people want that comfort that, I mean, they're, they're also sticking their neck out too. So if you're dealing with somebody for months and years, in some cases you want to, you're being patient, but you also want to have that credibility. So I always try to act like a project manager basically and just push it along and get everybody somewhat on my side and then boom. And eventually it usually happens.

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 the stuff that gets in our way between where we are in 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? Hmm, 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's 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 and 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 get 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 sales 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, 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.