THE SECRET TO SELLING TO THE CFO AND OTHER EXECUTIVES

In law and in medicine and in a lot of professions, they call it a practice. What a great name for a profession, a practice, because it reminds everybody that it is not a perfection. It is not an exact science. It's a practice. It involves judgment, repetition. Experience, feedback. Sounds a lot like sales, doesn't it? But what do we want to believe sales is? We want to believe it's like accounting, where there is either right or wrong. There's always a right answer. But in sales, ah, the right answer is the one that gets the deal. It's the one that closes it, gets the meeting. Gets access to the executive. And there's a million ways to do it. A few work. A lot of people try different ways. What I'm trying to say here is quit looking at sales as a bunch of tips and tricks. I know you want to believe that, but someday you're going to realize that that is somewhat helpful and somewhat harmful. What you want to do is understand Sales and practice it. Get better at it every day. Understand it better. Understand it deeper. And I had one person tell me that, oh, just give me the exact tactics. Okay, but do you understand the game you're playing? And what does every great coach do? They take the game, sales, and they break it into small Pieces, small drills, so that people can take these atomic elements and rehearse them, get better at them. And then you pull it all together. Good. Is that tips and tricks? No, it's not. Tips and tricks are quick questions, subject line, call to action. Okay, but that's not selling. And that's why you see so many people today having to sell more and more spam because people believe that you can make up for incompetence with volume. The problem is there's just not enough people in the world to make up for the incompetence with volume. What you have to do is become better. I know nobody wants to do that because they already think they're great, but you can always get better. Even me. So if you want to get better or you want your team to get better, go to brevitypitch.com. Sign up for Brevity Play. It's free. We got a bunch of webinars coming up so that you can learn about sales performance instead of being busy all day. Because being busy feels like you're being effective, just doesn't pay that well. Or at all. Let's get into the interview. This is a great one. Here we go.

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

So, it's nice to join you and big fan of you. It seems like a week doesn't pass that one of my sales reps doesn't send me something of yours. I should probably do a little self-reflection on why that is.

But— I'm sure it's positive.

It's always positive. It's always positive. Yeah. A little bit about me though. I am a father of 3 amazing children. I have a 10-year-old daughter who's going on 16 and then twin 8-year-old boys who ironically look quite alike, which is helpful when you lose one. And been married for 15 years to an—

Wow.

Just absolute saint of a wife who's Definitely put up with a crazy amount of stuff in my sales career and otherwise. Outside of sales, one of my big passions is firefighting. So I've been doing that for the past 20 years just as a way to give back to the community I live in and absolutely love doing that. A little bit of an adrenaline rush.

I bet. Yeah. Well, my first question is, how does a guy who studies accounting get into sales?

I've been offered a lot of olive branches in my life.

Yeah.

But let me give you this story because my journey in sales is quite a bit different than probably most others. So I am a CPA by trade, spent 6 years at Deloitte as a tax accountant. So one of the most boring jobs that you could probably have coming outta college, but I paid the bills. It's fine. It's fine. I remember quite vividly, it was May of 2012. I was at Milwaukee or at Milwaukee office and I stepped out into Cathedral Square, which is a park right outside.

Yeah.

I called my wife up and I was like, I, I can't do this. I can't do it anymore. What I was doing is going to bed or sorry, going to work prior to my daughter waking up and then I'd be coming home after she was asleep. I was working 70, 80-hour work weeks and At that point, I knew there was something better to life than just work. And that's where I started to get into sales. So I actually got into sales as a solution consultant demoing a tax automation provision, tax provision automation solution and was just a knockout SC, but no one could book any appointments for me. So I didn't have anything to do. So from that point, I started just dialing and trying to get some appointments because I was sitting on my hands and Actually booked a few and then closed a few deals and ended up being the top sales rep for that solution. And I guess the rest is history. So now I'm fortunate enough to lead a North American sales team for a Series B fintech startup.

And what was your view of sales before you got into it? Did you think about it? Was it ever a possibility or was it just, that's what the guys do with the better suits or the better cars?

No. You know, I truly believe that it's a trait that you're born with. It may sound strange, but salespeople are inherently born with that trait. They can go out and talk to people, they can figure stuff out. They're very creative, they're very curious. So I was always like that. I was very entrepreneurial back when I was in high school through college. I don't even know how I got into accounting to begin with because there, Honestly, it wasn't a passion of mine. So my thought about salespeople was it's a tough job. It's an amazing job. You get paid for the output that you put in and I had a lot of admiration for that.

And it feels good too, doesn't it, to have control over your income?

Absolutely. You know, the control of your income is very positive. One thing that I always tell my reps, especially the new ones, is that as much As you think you have control over your income, you have to realize that you may not. So if you're having an absolute knockout year, don't start spending like that's going to happen every single year.

Yeah, that's true.

Yeah.

Maybe that's the accounting effect. Spend it before you get it.

Yeah. How about your experience in accounting? Understand how companies make financial decisions. I got to believe that helped you, or is that a—

It was a natural progression. Since I was a CPA, I was talking to CFOs all the time and the solution that I sell right now definitely caters towards CFOs. So the solution that I sell is a business planning application that goes across CFOs, RevOps, basically unifies the entire organization planning process. So talking to the people that I've always talked to and have very similar background to them, as far as the decision-making process goes, it's it's important to understand what they're up against. I'd have to say that, you know, finance is probably one of the easier groups to sell into just because they do hold the strings to the purse. So it's been a good experience. The background at Deloitte definitely helped.

Yeah. And what do they care about? What are they up against?

Well, they have to manage a whole bunch of Things as much as they want to spend money for themselves, they also have to realize that other parts of the organization are looking at them.

Also have needs.

They also have needs and they don't want to have fingers pointed at them when they're grossly over budget and they're trying to pull budget from HR or from engineering or things of that nature. So it's a very delicate walk. CFOs are historically known as CF-nos, if you've ever heard that. But most of the forward-thinking ones understand the value of software when they invest in it.

And I would think that they're one of the harder personas to sell to. Maybe that's just my experience. I always found them kind of dry as to the CFNO comment and also not cutting edge as far as technology, more laggards.

I will say that they are quite a bit behind the curve in technology. They're very risk-averse. But that serves them well in their role, honestly. For instance, the adoption of cloud, you know, when I first got into the EPM space at Planning Spaces back in 2014, we were trying to evangelize the cloud, which is absolutely crazy. Even Salesforce has been around for how many years?

Yeah.

So they've gotten over that hump. Once they do adopt that technology, they're extremely loyal. So it may take a little while to get them there. But once you have that customer, they're, they're definitely loyal champions of yours.

And what things have you learned along the way in sales or what, what about sales surprised you?

So since I don't come from a traditional sales background, I didn't do the BDR thing or anything like that. I found myself honestly being an imposter for the first year. I say that because I didn't have formalized sales training. I figured it out on my own. So I was trying to piece everything together. I was listening to other reps, I was listening to my boss, and what I found was that I was piecing it all together, but it wasn't genuine. It wasn't me.

Okay.

And that really hampered my ability to have that genuine connection with our customers. So if I had to replay my first 2 years, it would be to find that genuineness of me. So that I could really portray that to our customers.

Did you try and play the sales rep? Meaning like I should start sounding like a rep now and not sounding like an auditor?

Well, I was a tax guy, so I was never an auditor. Those guys are awful. I know the— I joke, I joke. I found myself trying to not sound like a used car salesman. You know, sometimes people from the outside coming into sales, have that background of thought.

That songy voice. Yeah.

Yeah.

And honestly, I sounded like one when I first started because I was—

You thought that's what you should do.

Yeah, absolutely.

And what got you over it? What, what was there somebody who told you, hey man, just be yourself? Or—

Actually, no, no one. I had to come to that conclusion myself.

Yeah.

And I think that happened as I just felt comfortable because I felt more comfortable in my shoes being a salesperson. I definitely was able to overcome that imposter syndrome, but I also had some amazing coaches along the way too. I mentioned a few olive branches that were handed out to me. The second sales job that I had as a true AE, there's a guy that was very instrumental. I mean, he was a tough boss, a very fair boss, But taught me the value of preparation, making sure that everybody knows their parts during a group sale. It was a very good experience and I owe a lot to that individual.

And how about the mindset of accounting? Did that transfer at all? Because, you know, accounting, it's very organized, structured, everything reconciles. There's no, you look, nothing can be left out. Everything must balance and—

Yeah, everything needs to net to zero. The thing that I took away that was extremely valuable from Deloitte was just process. Like I wouldn't change those 6 years that I was there. It taught me great work ethic and also taught me the value of process. Having a very good sales process is key throughout A sales cycle. Now, if you skip a step, you may open yourself up to, you know, potentially missing an opportunity to sell some additional value and increase the ARR or worse yet, lose the opportunity altogether. So following that process and understanding the buyer's journey from finance individual were 2 of the things that I took over.

Yeah. And what other skills really took your game to the next level? Was it the process? Was it the personality? Was it the—

Being curious? Like, that's truly what it was. I'm a big proponent of cross-training. So when you're at the gym, if you're just a runner and you don't weightlift, you're probably gonna injure yourself. And I feel the same way when it comes to sales. There's certainly some great sales enablement tools out there, but the value that I get and I'm able to take myself to the next level and also my, my AEs is just reading outside material, whether it's things related to behavioral economics or taking things from my firefighting career and bringing it in as far as leadership goes. There's aspects of your life that are definitely transferable to sales that other people may not be thinking about.

Well, certainly. Yeah. I mean, even like the firefighting thing, You know, because a lot of salespeople sell like they're firefighters.

They do, especially at the end of the quarter. Yeah.

It's like the bell goes off and they run into the building as fast as they can. And that's good for fighting a fire, but maybe not for selling.

But you know what? So there's a lot of correlations between firefighting, good firefighting and good selling. And the 2 things that I can correlate our pre-planning. So if you're gonna go into a large commercial structure, you're gonna know the ins and outs, you're gonna know the exits, you're gonna have everything pre-planned.

Yeah.

So that goes back to preparation. The other aspect, I absolutely love getting into this flow state when I'm in firefighting. You go into a burning building, there's nothing like it. And honestly, I don't remember much coming outta the burning building. I just know I put the wet stuff on the hot stuff and I did my job and it felt Absolutely amazing. I get that same feeling when I'm in sales. When you have a big sales call, you get in that flow state. May not remember exactly what happened, but you know, it felt good and people go based on emotions.

Yep. The adrenaline, the, you know, just outside your comfort zone.

Yeah. Yeah.

That's why— Much like a big deal. Yeah.

It's the whole adrenaline rush. That's why I had to get in firefighting in the first place. Because when you're an accountant, it's kind of tough to get that.

Well, that's it. Yeah. You don't get that as an accountant and a lot of accountants don't want that. They want the steady, even-keeled, every day, pretty much the same predictability. Exactly. Yeah. And what do you look for when you hire reps?

So I do look for that sense of curiosity. There's really 3 things: drive, which I do feel like you're born with to some degree, a sense of curiosity, and then also just a General level of intelligence. I hate to say it, but nothing really is gonna overcome a lack of intelligence, especially when you're focused on coaching. So coachability, intelligence, drive, and curiosity would be the 4.

And when you say intelligence, can you give an example when it wasn't there where they couldn't understand the product or they can't comprehend how someone else would think about the product or—

Thankfully, I haven't ran into that, which is probably a process of good hiring. One of the things that I do ask during the interview process is talk to me about some of the books that you've read in the past year. What are the podcasts that you listen to? Things again out, yeah, things outside of the normal day-to-day of selling.

Yeah. And do you hear a lot of people say, well, you know, I watch PBS once in May?

I do. And the interview ends pretty quickly thereafter.

Yeah.

Sometimes you get deer in headlights looks. And, you know, I try to tell them, I use that honestly as a coaching opportunity during the interview and say, hey, you know, you do need to expand your horizons a bit on things that could take your sales career to the next level outside of sales.

And have you sold to people who weren't CFOs or in finance?

For the most part, it's always been in finance, whether it's been a CFO, controller, Tax director or RevOps.

And what do they care about when they hear, let's say, on a cold approach, what do you think would work?

On a cold approach, it's all about them. You have to understand. And again, it goes back to preparation. What's in it for them? You know, do your research going in, have that value prop. Rarely is it going to be the same from one account to the next. And it takes a tremendous amount of preparation and time to figure that out. If you do that, you go into a sales call, Nail it.

Yeah. And how about keeping it going though? Because they've got a lot of options that they want. They're kind of viewed as an expense within the company as they don't generate revenue, right? They may cut costs and optimize the funds, but they're not, you know, product marketing because everybody else makes the product, markets the product, sells the product.

It all goes, it really goes into proper discovery and figuring out that pain that you can latch onto. Rarely is there gonna be a true, ROI associated, like a hard ROI. It'll be a soft ROI, meaning you're gonna be able to save people time. You may be able to push off a hire. Rarely are we talking about letting people go as a point of ROI, but it's really what can you be doing with your time that you otherwise wouldn't be able to that can further the value of the company. So it's that type of organization, but understanding the pain that you can latch on to, to solve ultimately during discovery.

Yeah, because I got to believe that they would want more control or visibility of how the business is doing. Yeah.

And if, if we're going into the planning cycle, they lose a tremendous amount of that visibility when you have silos. So for instance, when you're planning just for finance, they're collecting all of this information from other parts of the organization. So you end up having marketing doing their plan, you have RevOps figuring out the sales capacity plan. And none of them truly talk to each other. So it becomes a very difficult situation and providing that visibility across the entire organization, having a top line driver that can ripple the effects all the way through the organization is very powerful. And that is something that we're able to help solve for them.

And what type of objections do you get from CFOs?

We love Excel. Like that is—

They love Excel.

They absolutely love Excel. There's, there's 2 customers that we go after, a rip and replace of another solution or just net new. Those net new ones, they're generally tied to either Google Sheets or Excel. It's their baby. They've built this mammoth thing that can open only once a day and, you know, it's job security for them.

Yeah, I mean, but Excel has lots of issues as far as like crashing, corrupting, Oh, tons of issues.

Yeah.

You step on cells and you lose the data and the history behind it. It's a spreadsheet, not a database.

Yeah, exactly. Reporting. Some of the, the crazy— what, what people don't realize is that the people that manage these Excel workbooks are unbelievable programmers. Like when you think about the logic behind there, they are unbelievably creative. It is very complex, but that's what they know. That's the current world that they know. And it's upon us As AEs and sales managers to really enlighten them on a world that may be different.

And what's the hardest part of your sale?

Painting that vision, you know, it's really painting that vision and getting over the hump that there is a better way of doing things. I keep going back to the discovery piece and we've been talking about this internally, having a very good proper discovery and identifying the pains and how you can address them and their ideal solution, the impact of accomplishing that ideal solution really sets you up for overcoming those objections later on in the cycle.

And do they have allocated funding for this or is it something that they have to yet get approval for from a CEO or?

Yeah, there's always, there's 2 sides to the coin. I'd say if it's an inbound opportunity, it'll go a little bit quicker because they do have budget and it's top of mind. Yeah. But the majority of ours, we're trying to paint a vision of what the future might look like for them. And ultimately, they haven't budgeted for that vision because they didn't even know it existed. So there's definitely a little bit of horse trading that has to go on once we've painted that vision for them and they have to be a champion internally for, for the project.

And was there a particular reason you went into product sales versus selling accounting services? You know, because Deloitte has account managers and salespeople, right?

I, you know what, I just, I truly love the solution selling aspect of it. I also love the startup world. Those 2 things you can only really get when you're selling software and the application side of things. You can sell people all day. That's not a novel idea. It just, it just really didn't interest me. I actually tried doing that a little bit when I was at Deloitte at the end of the 6 years and Made me believe that I absolutely love sales, but that just wasn't the product for me at the time.

And what was it like getting into leadership? Because it sounds like you fit really well into the individual contributor role and you're having fun and there's a lot of adrenaline there. It is. I love it.

I would never go back to—

Is there adrenaline though? I do.

It's a different kind of adrenaline. The adrenaline is seeing my reps succeed and it's really a subservient type of role. And some of the best stories and the parts that rank me on like, am I doing a good job, is seeing the promotion of my, my AEs to managers and BDRs to, to AEs. And it's, it's really fulfilling in that manner. Obviously winning the deals and being a part of that process is equally fulfilling, but you can be a part of something special with, with someone's life, being a good coach and progressing them.

Yeah. What I liked about it, I liked building things. That's fun. You know, because the problem with being a rep is you're kind of a higher, you feel mercenary. There's a mission, you go get a deal and then you go get another deal and every year you get a different comp plan, a different territory, you know, so there's not enough, there's not really building to it. There's like, it's more transactional.

That's a transaction.

Yeah.

Yeah. It's transactional. And a lot of people love that IC role because it gives them that independence. But creating things, you're spot on. Yeah, I absolutely love creating things. I've been fortunate enough to work for, you know, teams where I was a plug and play as a manager, taking over teams that were in transition. And then in my current role, I was fortunate enough to build the sales team along with my counterpart from scratch. So the building aspect is really great when you get it off the ground. Man, is it a hustle for the first few months. But once you get the machine rolling. It's really great to see.

And when you're hiring reps, you know, how much experience do you look for? Are there typical red flags that you stay completely away from?

So I guess I'll split the question up into 2. It depends on the stage of the company. So for instance, the current one that I'm at, we're definitely looking for experienced sales reps because we need them to hit the ground running and move forward and we're also going upmarket. So those 2 things lend itself to a little bit more experience. Other organizations where we play in a little bit more of the mid-market space, we can afford to have a little bit more of a junior rep, maybe someone coming out of the BDR role that has that initiative and that coachability to make into an amazing salesperson. As far as red flags, you know what the biggest one? So one of the questions I always ask is what motivates you? And if the first thing they say is money, that's a huge red flag. I believe money is a product of many other motivations put together. If it's solely based on money, they could go out the door next week if they got a better offer and I need longevity in that role.

Yeah. What's a good answer to that question?

Good answer is I absolutely want to succeed and be the top of any list you put me on. So I like that. I love the competitiveness, not to a fault, obviously. Lone wolves never survive. But I always love hearing, I want to be on the top of your stack ranking. If I'm not on the top, I'm gonna slap that guy or the girl on the back, say amazing job, but I'm gonna get you next quarter. That's what I look for.

Yeah. And how about as far as like selling to CFOs, does that have to be on the resume?

No, I, it doesn't because that's something that I can certainly teach. It helps, you know, one of my top sales reps was a controller. So again, no sales experience. I brought him in as an AE and he was Rookie of the Year the first year and then he was AE of the Year the second year and then managed a team. So that definitely does help, but it's not a prereq. So you can either have amazing sales experience or or you can have industry expertise, we can certainly coach up the other one that's missing.

And what did you see people do wrong who hadn't sold to CFOs in the past? Because they're a different animal. I mean, you know them, but a lot of people don't know them.

They are a different animal and getting into their You have to get into their heads a little bit, understand exactly what's important with them. They can't just say, I absolutely want this. They have to, again, goes back to the earlier part of the conversation, they have to justify purchase. And that can be a difficult thing to get through. It's a lot easier selling again to CFOs than HRs, you know, anything like that, or tax directors. But the ones that are not successful are ones that don't really truly understand the role of the CFO. Thankfully, All of our AEs do understand that through solid enablement. But, you know, if you don't have that, it's very difficult to sell.

Yeah. And where did they typically get the deal gets stuck with like the new people? Are they able to get interest, get some traction through an evaluation, but then it stalls at the approval process?

I think so. What I've seen in the past is that they misidentify champions. So there may be a good champion, but truly it's a coach. And when you don't have that champion, you can't get to the executive sponsor. That's where it ends up dying. And, you know, it's really imperative that the team understands each piece of the decision-making process and who is ultimately making the decision and who has access to power and all of that. Some of the newer reps don't necessarily understand the nuances of the finance department, maybe at You know, a director of finance thinking, okay, this person can make the decision. They said it's my decision to make. Like, eh, it's probably not. You should probably go up another level. And if they're not willing to introduce you to that next level, you should probably take a step back and figure out if you have a champion or a coach.

Yeah. And what do you feel you is the best selling skill that you possess?

Curiosity.

Yeah.

Curiosity and the ability to ask open-ended questions. You know, when you truly are involved in a conversation with another individual, it's not you talking to them, it's you listening. And the only way that you can do that is open-ended questions.

What's your go-to question? Is it—

Yeah, very simple. Tell me more. Like, that's it. It doesn't have to be complicated. It's like, tell me more. That's amazing. Tell me more. Yeah. So if I'm ever stuck or if one of my AEs are stuck, that's the go-to. It works every time.

And what's the main emotion that drives CFOs? Is it control? Is it—

Risk aversion.

Risk aversion.

That's the biggest one. I, you know, there's some CFOs that like to have control, but they're just like any other executive. Some of the best executives I know, know when to delegate that control, but they always are risk averse. I mean, they're always looking at how to mitigate risk and that's something you have to keep in the back of your mind when you're selling these types of solutions. Right.

And that, that, that does resonate with me because they're in a role where they don't really get held up as a hero that much, but they always get blamed a lot.

They're at the top of the totem pole. So yeah, You, you know, they, they have to take responsibility for the financial results and if they're a public company, they have to take res— you know, responsibility for the, the shareholder price.

Being accurate and stuff and, you know, and something that pops up that they couldn't, wasn't their fault, but they still get blamed. Yeah. Yeah.

They're always looking out for mitigating that risk at, at any point.

Yeah. Cool. Hey Chris, I appreciate your time today. Where can people go to connect and follow you?

Easiest way is find me on LinkedIn. Just make sure when you type in my name, you don't add an R. So it's Chris Tomp. Chris Tomp.

I got stuck with that a couple times. Yeah.

It was a pleasure chatting with you. Really enjoyed this.

Now, I bet you thought that the CFO only cared about price. Well, remember, it's not Their money they're spending. It's the company's. What they care about is themselves and how they're viewed politically within the company. So that risk mitigation that he was speaking about is critical, and it's our job to prove that our purchase is reducing risk, not increasing it. And those in the course know how to do that. Also, that That interview question about what motivates you, you know, money usually comes to the top of my mind, but that competition thing is a good one. I like that because competition, as we've talked about quite a bit on this show, ignites that emotional connection to winning. And we can go overboard on it sometimes. But a good, healthy competitiveness, not backstabbing competitiveness, but open, honest, upfront competitiveness, friendly competition is great. It fires people up and we're hardwired for it, at least most of us. So if you want to learn how to work with CFOs, what they want to see, and this is a critical part of closing the complex sale, And we covered it yesterday in the office hours. Giving the CFO what they need to see, especially for those large unanticipated purchases, helps the deal go through much faster. Not 100% guaranteed. Nothing is in the large complex sale. But what we're trying to do is mitigate risk, reduce rejection, reduce stalls. Get the deal flowing and have them understand all the key elements. Because guess what's going to happen? They're going to push back. That CFO is going to go to that champion of yours and say, I need this. And that champion's going to maybe interpret it correctly, most likely not, and then float it back to us. And then we think it's a price competition, which, you know, it may be, but typically not. Because again, the CFO, the price, they— everyone cares about the price, and everyone will say that's the most important thing, but actions don't really speak that way. Often they buy the most expensive because it reduces risk. IBM was never the cheapest. Usually they were the most expensive, but at the time it reduced risk. Is Salesforce the best CRM? I don't think anyone would make that argument except for them. Frankly, it's probably one of the worst ones on the market today, but everyone uses it, which kind of creates the need for why, if you don't want to use it, you have to put the justification for why you're not using it. Even though the reasons can be obvious. But people see it as the safe choice. How do you get to be the safe choice? There's certain ways to do that, certain very predictable ways to do that. And it's not your peer selling or your insights or your value proposition.

Eh.

They're, they're minor ingredients in this. What you have to understand is how companies buy, and nobody teaches that except for me. Closing the Complex Sale gets those deals that you work so hard on closed. I got a nice note this week from somebody in the course who closed one deal and had a 10x ROI on the course already. I think that's low. I'm sorry. I was— I appreciated the note. A little disappointed in the ROI. Well, that's only one deal. I'm sure he's going to close many, many more deals for the rest of his life because this is a skill. And we're not just employees. We're not just cogs in the wheel. We're not just showing up and doing what we're told. We're the athletes of the business world. We are the movie stars. We are the chefs. We are the debaters. We are the people between the company and the customer. And it's our job to perform at our best. And whatever that best is, that's up to us to decide. And in what other profession Can you just hang out, show up, smile and nod, and perform at your best?

Nah.

Athletes? No. Doctors? No. Lawyers? No. Accountants? Maybe. Marketing? I don't know. Who knows what they do? What we have to do is get better every day because we're playing the game. Every deal is a game. We're competing against no decision. We're competing against our competitors. We're competing against doing nothing. We're competing against putting this off until next year. All of that takes time, but they don't tell us the reality, and they may not know the reality of these deals. It's up to us to have the judgment skills to sense the reality. The reality is not going to be in the phone recording or in the email, as some AI vendors would like to Uh, sell you. That's marketing. Reality is it's up to us. It's our time, our money. And if we don't get the deal, what do we have? A lot of wasted time. Don't waste your time. Get good at this. You think you're an employee? Yeah, you got a W-2. But what happens if you don't perform? Are you still an employee? Maybe not. We got into this to make the money and win all these things, but you're here for a reason. You're not in support, you're not in marketing, you're not working for the Peace Corps. Why are you in sales? Hopefully you want to win. What are you doing about it? Are you a student of the game or are you trying to do as little as possible to get the deal across the line? That's what I hear most often. Because the work, people kind of like, oh, oh. I can just see the air go out of the balloon. Everyone wants the button. Brian, give me the button, the easy button to get the deal. The easy button is our skills. Our performance, how well we are doing it, not just how often. Every manager is focused on how many are we doing, not how well we are doing it. And here's the secret today. The how many doesn't work anymore because the people who have the problem, who are active, the easy ones come to us. Or our competitors. So it's up to us to go find and create curiosity and interest. And what's the button? What's the subject line? Sales is more than a subject line, kids. Sorry. I know everybody thinks— I see these little contests on LinkedIn, the best spam. Sorry. How long have we been writing letters and emails to each other? Email is what, 30, 40 years? Letters, a few hundred years? And if there was a best, most effective way to do it, wouldn't we find it? And the best and the most effective today is working less than 1%. I think there's a better way. And there always has been a better way. The email and the letters It's the coward's way. It's the, oh, I want to make this generic thing and then personalize and make it relevant. And then I'm going to hire somebody who does it professionally, a professional email writer. Oh, and now I get 1.5%. Good luck with that strategy. Everyone thinks sales is a science. And there's, there's some science to it. But when was the last time you bought something from a scientist? When was the last time you wanted to sit down and have a great conversation with a scientist? I find them boring. I find them not interesting. I find them cold. People buy from people. Because people get other people talking and exploring and opening up. Because on the cold outreach, it's a latent pain that we're dealing with. Active pain finds us. Latent pain we have to find and convert to active pain. If you want to learn how to do it and become great at it, Start the Conversation, Get the Meeting is the course for you. You can go to b2brevenue.com right now, check out the courses. Here's the process to vet them. There's 2 videos on the website. How the Courses Work answers all those questions. I still get emails about them. That's okay. The second video is Which Course Is Right for Me? People still send me emails. Brian, which course is right for me? Here's this video that I did answering 99.9% of the questions. I know you still want to talk to somebody. I get it. But that's expensive for me.

It is.

I got to pay somebody to do it. And— but we'll do it because we want to make sure you're happy and you get into the course that you want and you totally understand what you're getting into. So when you're ready to sign up, there's a button there saying, I'm ready to sign up, but I want to chat first. And you can have a nice little conversation with somebody who works for me. who knows the courses inside and out and can answer any of the questions for you. And if there's still more, I'd be happy to answer them for you. But don't create the question just because you want to show how smart you are or why you don't need the course. Congratulations if you don't think you need the course. Are you making half a million a year?

No?

Then you need the course.

Okay.

Are you making as much as you want to make?

No.

Then you need the course. Everybody likes to tell me why they don't need it. I had one person who wasn't even making $100K a year telling me he doesn't need it. And it's like, well, you want to make more than $100K, right?

Yeah.

Well, how do you think that's going to happen? Silence. Crickets, crickets, crickets. Something's got to change. Oh, you think it's going to be, oh, the economy is going to get better. Eh. It will get better someday. Maybe I need a new territory. Well, talk to your manager about that. See how that goes. Or maybe a new job.

Eh.

Typically, a new job, you make less the first year. You might make more after that, but the first year is a slog. I switched jobs quite a few times, and I'd say 8 out of the 10, the first year was not that great because they're not going to give you a great territory. They're going to give you a barren territory with no leads, a terrible SE, not much help, and a lot of pressure. What a beautiful recipe for success. I can't imagine why salespeople are so disgruntled. And okay, so you work your butt off for that year and then the gravy comes. Then you get something going for the second year. Let's get good at sales. Take a little time, a little money, focus it on you. You're the athlete in this game. It's how well you play the game. I don't mean reacting to what your manager says. I mean proactively out there connecting with strangers, getting conversations started, winning deals. Get serious about it. It's your life. You think waiting is a, a good idea? Really? See, waiting is a decision. It means I will put anything in front of myself. You spent more money on this, on Probably cable TV this month. How'd that help? Relax you a little bit? Entertain you for a few minutes? Leave you kind of empty and bored?

Yeah.

Or you could learn how to make money. Win deals. Because the fun is in winning. And sales has this cyclical process, like a snowball. When you have success, the snowball grows and gets bigger and faster and rolls down the hill with more and more and more momentum. Takes a while though to get the snowball to get bigger. And then you have a hiccup. It hits a rock, a valley, a ditch. You got to get it out of there and get that momentum going again. And momentum is something that you have to maintain. You can't just let it go into neutral and have gravity take over. It will for a while, but ends up dying. It's your career. You make that decision. I'll see you there. Thank you for listening to the podcast. Please tell a friend about it. If you see my stuff fly by on LinkedIn, a little thumbs up would be appreciated. A little comment, a little share. Wouldn't that be sweet? We'll see you next time.