THE SECRETS TO CREATING INTEREST AND BUILDING A DEAL

A lot of us get into sales because people think we should be in sales. Maybe we have a people personality or an extrovert or just like talking maybe, or are curious and get along well with strangers and new people. This is what our guest is today, but she didn't stop there. She developed the skills, studied selling, and now helps other med device companies learn how to do it. I think it's a great story, has little to nothing to do with med device, so don't get put off by that in case you think it's— this is a med device interview. It's not. We get into How she came to these conclusions, what mistakes did she make through that process, and what happens if you don't do it. I think that's what we don't talk about enough when we talk about sales advice. We don't talk about what happens if we don't do it. What happens if we don't get the next meeting calendared? Guess what? They ghost us. What happens if we give the proposal without really understanding the full situation? It usually fails, goes to no decision.

Why?

Because they don't know what they're doing. Now, we don't want to believe that. I get it, because that serves us. See, sales is hard to learn because It's so counterintuitive. We think it's about logic and ROI and the product and competitiveness and price and budget. Those are all ingredients, but you got to know which and how much of those ingredients are going to make up your deal. Now, how would you become good at that? Your 10,000 hours, which is probably 10 to 15 years of sales experience, but it's deliberate practice. It's not osmosis. Osmosis is just the immersion, being there. Like if you wanted to learn a foreign language, the immersion would be to go live there. That'd be osmosis. If you wanted to study that language, it would be in a course, would be deliberate practice with an instructor and feedback. The 10,000-hour rule is about the deliberate practice. I'm not saying that osmosis isn't good. It is good. It's very helpful. It's the way most of us learn because deliberate practice is hard. Until now. What we've been working on at Brevity Pitch is breaking down the sales process regardless of what you sell. Okay, getting the next meeting has nothing to do with what you sell. The problem versus the product conversation has nothing to do with what you sell. You can say whatever you want. But you need to know how to do it, when to do it, and practice doing it. See, brevity, it's not about telling you how to do it. It's about you practicing doing what you want to do, what you think is the right thing. Because it's not the how. The how is the easy part. How's simple. Compared to how well. The how takes an hour. The how well takes a lifetime to become great at it. A comedian will spend a year to get 1 hour of content. How long will you spend to be able to get the next meeting, not be single-threaded, not give proposals to people who have no power? And don't know what to do with them. Now, all of those things are independent about what— from what you sell. And people will protect their ego far more than they will protect their income. Because if I'm a sales rep, how do I become better? Answer that question. Everyone thinks it's knowledge, but everyone can get the same knowledge. So that's, that's an equalizer, not something that really puts you ahead. What puts you ahead is becoming better at it. Because in these moments of the sale, it's not that you won't even do it. Sometimes you won't feel comfortable, or you won't be thinking about it at that time, or you think it'll break rapport and you think it'll ruin the deal. But usually it ruins the deal if you don't do it. So get on the waitlist at brevitypitch.com. If you're a manager, sign up for a demo. If you're an individual rep, there's a free 30-day evaluation copy called Brevity Play. It's not the full product. It works on your cell phone, but it gives you more than 30 days of content and exercises regardless of what you sell, your experience level. Here's a hint. I do it every day. Why? Because I want to become good at it. I do it before a call. As a warm-up. Sometimes I do it 3 times before a call, and I've been doing this longer than you guys have been alive. So don't give me the, I don't need that. Do you want your income to go up or you want your ego to be protected? It's your choice. brevitypitch.com. Here we go. Hey, Ryan, thanks for joining us today. As a way of getting started, give us a little background on yourself.

Awesome. Yeah, thanks for having me, Brian. My name is Ryan Trudeau. I am based in Minneapolis. And yeah, I would love to give some background kind of on my sales journey. My sales journey kind of— I'm gonna bring you all the way back really quickly actually to high school, kind of when I was an adolescent really trying to figure out what I wanted to do. I'm in high school. I knew I wanted to continue with a post-secondary education. Had no idea what I wanted to do, right? So I had an awesome guidance counselor at the time, right, that had told me about a major in management information systems. And there was a couple of things that really stood out to me about that major. It was technology-focused, and she had indicated to me that somebody had just graduated with that major and had landed a 6-figure job post-graduation. I was like, I'm all for it. Like, that's what I want. That's what I want. I was all in, love technology, wanted that type of salary. And anything that I put my heart to and I commit to, I see through absolutely to the end. And I kind of envisioned myself, right? Like being that person that those guidance counselors could go talk about. So went through that whole major, graduated with, you know, with incredible grades, felt like I put myself up for success, you know, did a few different internships, you know, graduated. And then I, you know, hit the market in Minneapolis. It was a very challenging, challenging job market and ended up taking a job as a help desk technician. Very different than where I thought things were gonna go. But I told myself, hey, you know what? I'm still gonna commit to this job. I'm gonna see this through and I'm going to give it my all. And, and that's what I did. And I really started to work myself up the ranks within IT where I, you know, got into software engineering, even was a developer kind of at one point. And got to the point where I actually landed with a really small startup. When I got there, it was less than 20 people. So I wore many different hats. I was building different teams. I was, uh, building an implementation team. I was, um, leading some product development. I was leading a strategic accounts team. I was helping with pre-sales engineering. Um, and as the company really started to grow, I had a conversation with my CEO at the time, and I was like, out of anything that I do, I like supporting the sales team. At the time, it was just 2 individuals, and I said, I really like supporting them. And I think I could do that. Like, I think I could make that full-fledged leap into sales. I like being more customer-centric. I like being in front of those customers more than anything that I do. And he told me that he thought it was a great idea. He was in alignment to help me get to becoming a sales rep. But the biggest challenge that I had in that transition was that I still had those IT hats that people saw me wearing.

Yeah.

And I could never really fully transition into that sales role. So I felt it was in my best interest that I, if I was gonna commit to being in sales, I needed to leave that organization. I needed to go to a little bit larger organization where I was seen truly as a sales resource, not just that technical resource. And I could really start to hone in on that skillset. So that brought me to landing with an organization that sold to government. And I was new to sales. I knew nothing about selling to government, but I was ready to rock and roll. I was ready to go. So, um, got in, I got into that role and, um, my first year out of about 100 sales reps, I think we had at the time, um, I ended my first year being number 2, um, in the company. And I, there was 2 challenges I had with that though. One, I wasn't number one. I kind of set like an unrealistic goal that I wanted to be number one. And I heard rumblings from other reps that had said that I was given kind of a lucrative territory. I was given a lucrative state and that a lot of my success was based on luck. And the interesting thing about that too is that this luck actually came from the state of Oklahoma, who has one of the smallest state budgets in the country. But, you know, regardless, that stood out to me. And at the time, our sales team was actually struggling to fill a role in the Mid-Atlantic, in the Mid-Atlantic states, kind of that DMV area, DC, Maryland, Virginia. they have large budgets. And I went and spoke to my chief revenue officer at the time and I said, I wanna move territories. I, you're struggling to fill that territory. We're struggling to have success. And I wanna prove to people that I can go be successful in a territory that no one's been successful in. Make a really long story short, he agreed to that. And that next year I ended up being the number one rep in the country or in our organization. And then I did that for a year and then ended up leading a sales team. So I led the eastern half of our state government sales team. And then that's kind of brought me where I'm at today, where I am helping our current organization get into the state, local, and higher education market. So I am building out an entire team right now.

And did you proactively pick this market? Because SLED is notoriously difficult, state, local education. I mean, it is rough.

I actually tried to get out of it. I can't believe I'm even saying that. So I went, it is so hard and I did really well selling into government, but it's challenging to your point, you know, and I can talk to some of those challenges, but I, after when I left that organization, I was like, I'm gonna go into commercial selling. I don't wanna sell into government anymore. I was a little bit burnt out from it. I lasted 90 days outside of, you know, selling into government. And a mentor of mine had kind of roped me back into— he had just become a CEO of an organization, the organization I work for today. And he said, hey, you know, we're selling to federal government right now. We want to expand this back, you know, expand this into SLED. Come, come help us figure that out. So 90 days later, I was back in selling into government. I'm actually really grateful for where I'm at. I have kind of created that niche now selling into government. And I've enjoyed it.

And what do you like about it? Is it, I mean, the people are very nice.

They are absolutely incredible. There's a few things I like about it. One, I would say you truly feel like you're making a difference, you know, selling to government organizations, especially with some of the, you know, products that I have sold in the past. At a previous organization, I sold a communications solution that became fundamental to helping communicate, you know, pandemic-related information, you know, during COVID And I truly felt like I was making a difference. And even in the, you know, the role that I'm in right now, I work a lot with Office of Inspector Generals and auditors. And again, I feel like I'm helping essentially save taxpayer money and helping kind of reduce, you know, the abuse and fraud and waste that kind of comes sometimes, you know, in the government sector. So I just feel that I'm making a difference. And again, I feel like I've created a little bit of a niche, you know, for myself. It's a little bit different, but I feel like I've kind of figured out, I guess, government selling for the most part. I continue to learn every day, but I figured out a few things.

But does your company understand how state, local, and education works and the issues, or do they just want somebody to cover it and figure it out and send us the POs?

No, that's an awesome question. No, I think they have it. They understand. I think they have an understanding of state and local. I'm in a very fortunate position where the CEO of my company, he actually used to sell into the state market. So he has a little bit of an understanding. Of how it works. But I think that the thing that we have learned, again, I mentioned that our company primarily has sold into the federal government. A lot of what federal government does cascades down to state and local. So the same challenges that the federal government is having, state, local, and higher education are having many of those same challenges. So it, we have been able to solve made gaps within federal government. And now we've been able to address those same gaps, you know, state, local, and higher education as well.

Well, what I always noticed was that I agree completely with that, but state and local, you know, their funding cycles, their fallout budgets, the planning is very different. The use of system integrators is very different than the federal government. And you're dealing with people who don't have profit motive, they have pension motive.

Yeah.

They all have pensions.

Yes. They're just a little bit change averse too, like they don't like change.

Why would you go work for the state and local government if you like change, right?

You know, in that, I think that's the interesting thing, right? In selling into SLED, I am really, I'm obviously, you know, here and there selling against other competitors. But what I'm selling to a lot is status quo. I will never forget, and I won't call the state out, but I was talking to an agency a couple months ago and it was an auditor and he had a very manual process and he was talking about that actually a lot of what they're doing is, you know, writing things down like they're not even using anything electronically. So I started talking to him about the efficiencies of, you know, moving his workflow, you know, to streamline his workflow into a digital means. And he just wasn't interested in it. So I actually used the pandemic. I said, hey, when you were, you know, during the pandemic, how are you collaborating with your team if you're doing everything on paper? And he goes, honestly, we're taking our papers. We're meeting in a parking lot and exchanging papers. And that works for us. And we like that process. So to your point, like, it can be really challenging to get people across that, across that finish line. But I truly think, and I was just having this conversation today, I think if you can start to connect the dots for some of these government employees of how we can help you make your lives easier, like, I hate to say it like this, but they want to work 9 to 5, right? They do. And I think if I, if I can, if I can help them understand this, this solution is going to help you work that 9 to 5, and it is going to make your job a lot easier and kind of help them envision themselves in that platform. That's where I start to see a lot of success. But I would say the bigger challenge that I see too in government is Even if they want technology, they know it's so painful going back to your budget comment. They know it's so painful to try to process. It's exactly it, try to acquire a solution. And that's where some of my success has come is in this. I think this is, you know, selling it commercially or government, but especially government. When you get that verbal, it's not even half, you're not even halfway there yet.

That's just the beginning.

It is just the beginning. In a lot, especially when you're, you know, in the world that I'm in today selling to audits and inspector generals. They, they haven't really acquired software before, so they have no idea what they're doing. So one thing I've really prided myself in is understanding that procurement process for them so they don't have to understand it. I've even really tried to build those relationships with procurement offices and central IT offices. So I can truly guide them through the process when I get them on board and they're like, alright, I can start to envision the value or the ROI behind this solution. Now I can start to say, alright, we're gonna go on a little bit of a journey here. This is a 6-month journey where we are gonna have to be working with your IT team very closely. There are strict processes and security, you know, surveys that we're gonna have to go through. You know, there, we're gonna have to figure out what contracting is going to look like. Is this gonna have to go out to RFP? Are we gonna use a cooperative contract? And I try to walk them through that process. And I think that's where I start to really build that trust of, they start to understand, hey, this guy knows what he's talking about. He can truly help me get there. Let's go. Let's do this.

Because that is probably at least half the job.

It is half. I, a lot of the prospecting I will do leads with procurement. Like, I just, I know that government employees, I think there's a shift happening a little bit as we start to see a younger generation too. And I think they are starting to get bought into the idea of, you know, digital transformation. But that's why I initially, my prospecting really starts with that, those procurement mechanisms to say, hey, you know, I've sold in your state before. I have worked with your procurement team. I've worked with your IT team. I know what they're looking for. And if you feel that this was a solution that brought value to your organization, I can help you get it across the finish line.

Yeah, because in commercial, they have no clue about how to purchase anything. But then you add government where they've never met the procurement people.

Totally.

They're in a different town, a different county. And they've kind of learned how hard it is to get it done that they don't try.

That is exactly, exactly it.

And half your value is showing them how to get it done and that you know how to get it done.

That is exactly the value. You don't know how many times I have I have won deals purely because I know how to get the deal across the finish line. I've responded to RFPs where we're actually the second vendor in line and that first vendor had no idea how to procure in government. And they came back down to me and said, we can't get this across the finish line because they're unable to procure the solution. Can you help us? So that absolutely becomes kind of my asset and my value.

And did you come upon this skill or ability on your own, or did a manager say you better learn how to get the contract part down because you'll get a lot of stuff started and very little will come out?

It was a little trial by fire. I mean, I've had some great mentors in my life, especially coming, you know, from my first job in government. But it's, I was put in some situations where I had no other option but to figure it out. And I don't know if it's a blessing or a curse, but there are states that are far more difficult to procure in than others. And I felt like the first 6 months of me selling into government, I hit all of those very challenging states right off the bat. And I quickly then started to realize, right, this can be how I win. This can be my success. If I can go figure out how to do this in every single state and get ahead of all of this, understanding what cooperative contracts are, you know, accessible, you know, to me, starting to build relationships with central IT, understanding the inner workings of the relationship between the agency and between their central IT department. I'm like, to your point earlier, like, that can be the value that I bring, you know, to the organization. That's how I can truly gain their confidence and trust. So yeah, it's something that I kind of had to learn on my own and I'm so glad that I've learned it because like I said, it's created a little bit, for good or bad, it's created a little bit of a niche for me.

It is. And I bet your competitors, most of them just kind of assume that the client can figure this out on their own.

Totally. Totally. I had a competitor that tried stealing my procurement knowledge actually very recently. I had a competitor that I was trying to swoop in, kind of steal a deal. The other rep on the other side was obviously holding on to that deal, but that person had no idea how to get it across the finish line. So he was essentially using the buyer as a proxy to understand how I was going to get that deal across the finish line and then using that information to try to get his deal across the finish line. Copy you. Yeah. So totally.

And what do you like about state and local? I mean, clearly you're passionate about it.

You know, yeah, definitely. You know, there's that, that's, there's definitely the niche piece. I, I like, I think one thing is it's very consistent from like a sales rep perspective, right? Working in commercial, you're always going to see the highs and the lows. Government doesn't— they always have budget. They always have money. It can be, all right, they're gonna tell you they don't have money.

Right.

So a lot of it is, all right, I'm gonna help you go find, you know, find that money. But they always have budget. They always have money. I, like I mentioned earlier, they are behind the 8-ball, you know, from, you know, more commercial, you know, companies. But again, I truly think that they're starting to recognize that they have to catch up to commercial. And I think that really was highlighted during, during the pandemic. You, you had all of these physical entities, physical buildings that were closing down, and it was mayhem. Mayhem. People couldn't figure out how to get their unemployment benefits. People couldn't renew their driver's license. People couldn't register vehicles because you had a lot of these states where you could only do that in person. And so all of these states were, you know, started to realize, oh, we have to go through it. We have to start catching up to the commercial setting. We have to, you know, figure out how we're gonna digitally transform. And if you've got government serving their constituents, you know, right? And now these constituents are so used to these seamless, you know, processes of like buying something on Amazon. How easy is that, right? And I think they're realizing that we have to catch up to that. It is so— everything in government is so painful, and we have to start mitigating some of that friction. We have to eliminate some of that friction that these constituents are having and truly make it easier for, you know, for them. So they are looking, you know, to, you know, organizations for digital transformation efforts. And I think I'm in a very You know, unique position. Government still continues to think that they're very unique. And I've had the opportunity to work for tech companies that only serve government. And that has also been beneficial because I do see that trend where government agencies are a little skeptical buying commercial products. They do like to buy products where they believe that they're specifically built You know, for government. So I just love helping these agencies make their constituents' life easier. I mean, that's truly what I love about it.

And what characteristic makes you a great salesperson in your opinion?

I, you know, I spoke a little bit about it in, you know, understanding, you know, the second half of that like procurement process. I think that's, You know, one thing that has really, really led, you know, to my success. The other thing that I think that I do really well is truly putting myself into the buyer's shoes, right? One thing I think sellers forget so frequently is buyers are getting flooded with emails. They're getting flooded with phone calls. And everybody thinks that they can help these buyers. But I think you truly, truly need to understand the pains and challenges that these, you know, some of these buyers are having. And I think it's also not a one-size-fits-all. I think I've done a really nice job at understanding the landscape within government. The challenges or issues that your practitioners are having are very different than what your leaders are having. That's, you know, similar in commercial. So understanding how you can help a practitioner versus, you know, a leader, I think is so important. So, you know, I think those are a couple of different things that have led to my success.

So when you prospect, do you go top down or bottom up? Have you found a procurement in?

It's funny. I do something that's a little bit unique. What I have found is I kind of work in this parallel process where I know in my mind I essentially have to get 4 parties to buy off on an acquisition of a software. IT, procurement, leadership, and then the practitioners. Like all 4 of those have to be involved. One thing that I think has made me successful and has, you know, set me apart a little bit is first building those relationships within IT and procurement. As I stepped into this role and as I stepped into that previous role, that is one thing that I took some time to do is to lay that groundwork, call into procurement offices, make sure they know, you know, who I am, call into central IT offices, start to build relationships there, make sure they know who I am. I'm not necessarily trying to sell to the procurement offices. I'm not necessarily trying to sell to IT. I just want them to know who I am, what our software is. And how I am, you know, going out to help their agencies. And I'm almost asking a little bit for a blessing, right, of, hey, I'm gonna go out to your agencies. I'm gonna talk to them about this solution. Here's how I think I can help them. Are you okay with that? And once I get that blessing, that really starts to help my conversations, right? Because then I can go back to those individuals and say, you know, I've spoken with your procurement team. They, you know, they under— we're on a statewide contract, or they understand. how we would get a potential purchase across the finish line, or maybe it's IT. You know, I understand your state's IT requirements. You know, you have NIST standards, or you have FedRAMP standards, or you have State-RAMP standards. This is how our product, you know, meets whatever security standards. But again, I have the blessing from your procurement team and your IT team to speak with you right now. I'd love to speak with you, you know, about, you know, some of the challenges you're having. So it's kind of like In parallel, I'm running and talking to, you know, multiple different departments, and that's what's led to my success.

You're trying to prove that you're part of the tribe.

That is exactly, exactly it. And having procurement and IT on your side not only increases your success rate, but I think one thing in selling to the government sector that is so challenging is people talk about the sales cycle, right? People always say, oh, You're selling into government, 18 to 24 month sales cycle. In my opinion, there's ways to reduce that, and that's how you do it. You don't, you don't sit there and wait. You don't, all right, I'm gonna go sell to the agency and then wait until I have to talk to IT and then wait until I have to talk to the security officer and then wait until I have to talk to procurement. You're doing all of that in parallel. So now you're taking an 18 to 24 month sales cycle, and now you're reducing that down to 9 or 12 months.

And reducing the likelihood it just dies.

That's absolutely, absolutely.

Most sales reps would go to leadership or user, right?

That's exactly it. That is exact. Yes. And those can be obviously open places.

They're great.

You need them. Absolutely. I was, it's funny, I was showing, I just had a deal. It's end of the quarter, you know, right now. And I just had a deal come across the finish line. And I've been working my own deals as I've been building out a team, and I was showing my team what my buying decision team looked like, what my buyer map looked like. And I said, look at this. I have 18 people that were part of this purchase that were heavily involved in this purchase that I spoke to multiple times. It wasn't a large purchase. It was, I think, $50,000, $60,000 purchase, but they still had 18 people that had to touch that deal. And it was a good learning opportunity, you know, with my sales reps to be able to kind of go through and talk about all, you know, all the different personas that they need to get sign-off on to get that deal across the finish line. And again, you can kind of run at that in parallel.

Because most reps would deal with one, maybe 2 people.

That's, that is exactly— oh, I see it. I see it all the time, all the time. And, and then they're sitting there waiting for that person to respond back to them and they're like, I'm stuck now. I don't know what to do. And when you have different divisions, you can start to cross-reference some of that information. You know, is what the practitioner telling me aligning with what the leader's telling me? Or is what the leader telling me aligning with, you know, what the IT team is telling me? You can start to, you know, cross-reference that. But I've also— it's helped me develop stronger relationships too. I had a deal that I was working on that they were so impressed that I was already working with IT and procurement that they just let me go own it. They're like, hey, don't worry about, you know, including me on your emails with IT. I honestly don't care. It doesn't mean anything to me. You go deal with IT. Once you have that sign-off, let us know and then we'll proceed.

Because you're almost Becoming the champion.

Yeah, it's— yes, exactly.

Because, yes, most reps would deal with one person who wants it, needs it, and loves it, but they don't have any authority, budget, or know-how to get it done.

Totally. Oh, it's something I preach all the time. Always be testing your champion. And it— gosh, it— that is— my CEO and I were having that discussion, my CRO. That is why deals die. You don't have a champion. You think you have a champion, but you do not have a champion.

You have somebody who's enthusiastic.

That's one thing, in all seriousness, total side note, I feel like has helped me out a little bit in my career is I try to be contagious with that positivity, that passion. I don't know, something that just comes naturally to me and I've tried to leverage it in my sales career as much as I can.

But as a sales rep, what keeps you excited? Because I can see a lot of people in that market getting burnt out or defeated.

You know, the new challenges. I know that sounds absolutely crazy. I think if I were ever in a role, in a mundane role where I was just doing the same process every single day, I would hate it. I don't know that I'd want to do it anymore. For me, I always want to be learning. And the way that I'm learning is being put into brand new situations, brand new challenges. And as we've been talking about, right, like state and local, selling in a state and local, it provides new challenges every single day. And I try to look, I make mistakes all the time, right? And I try to look back on those and really learn from those to make myself a better sales rep. So that's kind of honestly what keeps me going is just the new challenges that I'm facing. It can be super frustrating, but it, I love facing a new challenge every single day and just tackling it head on.

And Is there a lot of similarity between the states or are they all a little—

They're all different, you know, and here's, it's so wild. Are you familiar with like FedRAMP, you know, FedRAMP authorization? FedRAMP just at a really high level is a security framework that the federal government created to assess cloud providers.

Okay.

All of government used to use FedRAMP. Right? And then you fast forward to like 2 years ago, and the state market said, hey, we actually want our own standards, so we're going to come up with State-RAMP. It's the same thing, same thing, but they wanted their own standard. And I suppose there's some small differences, but then each state, you'll see some states that will also alter it. So like in Texas, you have Texas RAMP, Arizona, you have AS-RAMP, Virginia has their own IT standards. So it can be, it can be very, very complicated. And then when it comes to procurement, you have a majority of states that have this ability to utilize what are called cooperative agreements to be able to purchase off of. If you're familiar with like a GSA contract or something similar in the state market. But then there's some states that won't utilize any type of cooperative agreement. You have to go on a statewide contract. And then every state has different procurement rules where you have these thresholds of, you know, can they make a purchase on their own? Do they need to go to IT for approval? Do they need to go to RFP? And each of those thresholds differ very significantly across state and municipalities. So again, that goes back to what I was, you know, kind of preaching earlier that you have to become an expert in each state, understanding each contract, each of their rules. It's complicated.

And what do you look for when you look for a state and local rep? Because it's completely different.

It is very, you know, having this, obviously having some of the experience. It is really nice, but I've actually hired recently a few different reps that haven't had any experience. To me, it really came down to some of, some of the intangibles. You really need someone that is willing to work a deal and kind of grind and not give up. Where I'm going with this is that most of the reps I've hired recently have previous BDRs. And like, that, that correlates to me a little bit. If you think about the BDR role, it's a tough role. And I tell our BDRs all the time, you're, you're selling time, which is way harder than anything else. Anybody can always go find more money. You can't find more time.

Right.

Um, and that, that is a, a job that is so hard. You're always having to, you know, change what you're doing. Um, you're, you're, you know, you're getting 100 nos for every yes that you're getting. And there's just so much complexity that I think sometimes gets overlooked in the BDR role. And that's why I've had a lot of success now hiring BDRs into a government sales role because they just, they kind of have that grit to them of kind of sticking with the process and understanding that, hey, once I get that verbal, I'm nowhere close to done yet. I can celebrate a little bit. But I have a lot of work, a lot of work to do. So I really kind of look for people that have grit. I look way more for the intangibles than I do for honestly some of, you know, some of the experience. Yeah.

Cool. Hey, Ryan, really appreciate your time today. Where can people go to connect and follow you?

Absolutely. That's a great question. I am on LinkedIn. You can search Ryan Trudeau. The organization that I work for today is OPEXIS We are hiring state and local and federal sales reps. So if you ever have any interest in kind of hearing more about what government has to offer, would love, would love to chat, chat with you. So LinkedIn would probably be the best place to connect with me.

Notice she didn't talk about motions and plays and qualification disco calls. See, I think a lot of people today are trying to make the process into a code and making it too order-taking-centric as opposed to sales-centric. Order-taking is, are they ready to order? If they are, great, congratulations. I love those. They're easy. Bluebirds are fantastic, but I doubt you can make your quota with that. So the rest we have to sell, we have to nurture, we have to build the connection with them so that we can share information honestly, openly, consistently. That's our job as salespeople. Today, I think people are just trying to have Automated clerks. But here's the problem. You can't— if you mandate that, you can't blame the clerks for not selling. And if you're being treated like a clerk, it doesn't matter. You still only get paid on the deals that close. So in sales, you have to be that judge of that. It's your time. It's you setting the priorities. How do you utilize your time, energy, and skill to maximize your income? And guess what? Your manager wants that. That's why the comp plan is the way it is. They may not sound like that sometimes because they need the reports and the other BS, but they sure do need that revenue above above everything else. Trust me on that one. At the end of the quarter, the TPS reports can wait. The revenue is what counts. But the crazy thing that happens at the end of the quarter— and I've seen a lot of end of quarters, and I hated this process— well, first of all, Unless the comp plan incentivizes end-of-quarter behavior, maybe there's an issue there. Maybe the end of the quarter is more important to the company than to the rep. Well, let's, let's not divert. At the end of the quarter, what happens if you're a sales leader? And if you're a rep, this is what you need to stay away from. If you forecast it, if you commit it, You better know that it's going to close because your judgment is going to be judged. If you're— it's just that you gave a proposal and your champion says it's in procurement, let me tell you, I doubt it's in procurement. You'll know it's in procurement when they contact you and want an updated quote. If it's not in procurement, it probably hasn't been approved yet. And let me get into these moments, these sales prevention drills. There's critical moments when you give the proposals the biggest, probably the most expensive one that's the easiest to fix, but is overlooked by most, including managers. It's critical because The client may not have anything to ask for, so they ask for a proposal. The rep thinks that's a buying signal, they send it, and then nothing happens. Now, why did that happen? The rep's responsibility is to not send the quote. It's to find out what's going on there. And are you sending the quote to the right Do you have the technical win? Have they selected you versus everybody else, or are they going to make it based off price? See how complicated it gets now? And if you were like, well, I don't want to push back— well, you better, because if you just send the quote, you don't know what you have. You may have a deal, granted. A lot of times, if it's an existing account, It's very different. The deal may go through without a problem. Congratulations. What if it doesn't? That's the problem. Why are they going to talk to you? Oh, they love me. Let's test it. Have them call you back. Why don't they call you back? Oh, they're busy. They're on vacation. They've got higher priorities. See where I'm going here? That drill, that prevention drill, gives the rep the, the skill, the confidence, the comprehension of this trap, the proposal trap. And they get to play with it. They get to experiment. They get to see how other people do it. They get some feedback. About an atomic element of the sale. Yet these— this element, if not done well, is killing, I would say, a good 5 to 10% of every company's end of quarter because they think it's a deal. It's not a deal. It was simply a request for pricing. It may be more of a deal than I'm describing, but if it doesn't close, it's certainly not a deal this quarter. And this is probably the most egregious one that we found in analyzing millions of sales conversations using AI. I was looking for these particular moments. And to see how the rep handled it, because I see it in the course Closing the Complex Sale all the time. And reps feel their instinct is to quote, but that can be very dangerous. Check it out, brevitypitch.com. Get on the waitlist. There's still a few spots. They're going to be doling it out. systematically. So get in early. brevitypitch.com. We'll see you next time.