THE SECRETS TO WORKING WITH THE CFO TO GET DEALS DONE

Today's episode, I think, is both unique and insanely valuable for a couple of reasons. One, if we're in B2B sales, we get orders, meaning that people typically don't pay with a credit card or cash. They pay with a purchase order or some kind of signed agreement. And then we have the arduous chore of trying to get it booked internally, having all the things that that the internal system requires for them to book it and recognize that revenue so that we get paid on it. Now, we come into a quandary in that the people who give us the order also take orders themselves, but everybody wants to use their own process, their own terms and conditions, their own paperwork, their way of doing things. And yet, Internally, we have our own way of doing things. So today, we have the pleasure of talking with a CFO. And we talk over these issues. Now, this is not a salesperson. And this is a very unique episode. And at times, it may not be what you're used to. And I get that. But stick with it. Fast forward if it's not gaining your attention. But listen, because if you're able to get orders booked internally easier, Your life is better. If you sell to CFOs or sell to financial people or you sell B2B, on the other end, you need to understand where the CFO fits in, where things like the word budget— what does it really mean? Sign-offs— who can sign off on buying something without getting further approval? The economic buyer. And this is something that's so misunderstood and oversimplified and platituded to death in B2B sales. And so few people understand it. If you're in Winning the Complex Sale, I did a whole office hours on this. I posted it just the other day and you'll see additional content in there To give you exactly what the CFO wants to see. And part of the course is helping you get these deals going through the system like clockwork instead of getting stuck and us following up and not really understanding where it is. Oh, they're going to stick with status quo. That's not a conscious decision. That's, uh, it's just too hard to get it done. Sometimes. And I think that office hours alone paid for the course. The people were really excited and start to understand why I'm teaching what I'm teaching. It is from real-world hardships and getting deals done. And that's what I'm here to help you with. So if you're interested in that course, check it out, Winning the Complex Sale at b2brevenue.com. There's videos, In the show notes to check it out and email me with additional questions. All the stuff is in the show notes on my website and on YouTube. Before we get into the interview, make sure you're checking out our friends over at Covideo. They're doing a lot of great stuff for us salespeople. The product is fantastic. It's by far the best video email system out there. See how you can work it into your system. Uh, you know, people ask, well, how about audio messages? And it's like, eh, do you really want voicemail on LinkedIn? Video is the thing. It's the time.

It's—

are you still doing text, email, just text, email? That's so 2020. You got to get into the 2021 now. Here we go with the interview. I'll sum it up at the end. Hey Robert, thanks for joining us today. As a way of getting started, give us a little background on yourself.

Brian, pleasure to be here. I enjoy listening to your podcasts and seeing your videos. So thanks for having me. And my name is Robert Bendetti. I'm a husband, father, ultra runner, car guy, and chief financial officer. Wow.

The ultra runner and CFO thing. Is that a common correlation or?

I think that it's a lot more common, the car guy part of it. I find that there's a lot of, uh, men and women in executive positions that are into cars and track time. The ultra running, I bet there's probably more salespeople and sales and growth leaders in running than there are accountants.

Yeah.

Cool. What got you interested in being a CFO?

I've always loved numbers and basic math. I kind of, you know, hit physics and I was like, whoa, let's step back. Okay, that's, that's a little crazy. And then I heard there's, hey, if you're good at basic math, there's a degree and you can get paid a good salary and a lot of people hate doing it. I was like, perfect. So undergrad in finance and then got an MBA and I wanted to become a CPA. They changed the rules. You had to have a master's of accounting. So I went back, got another master's degree in accounting and then sat for the CPA exam. So I'm like a legit full You know, certified bean counter representing today.

Cool. Now CFOs tend to interact with either salespeople and certainly when the company wants to buy something.

Yeah, I mean, I interact constantly. I think that A, people are always trying to sell me something either directly or if it's expensive, I've got to approve it. And then on the other side, I don't have anything to do if somebody doesn't sell something. So I'm in the hip pocket whether they like it or not. And in a perfect world, like me and the sales and growth leader are like connected and like I'm trying to help them and they're trying to help me. So I think we're pretty involved.

Okay, well, let's talk about like a company that you work— doesn't have to be your company. Let's just general principles and you can divulge whatever you feel comfortable with. Um, when the sales leader is working with you, they are concerned about, is it bookable and recognizable? Is that true?

Yeah, certainly timing, especially if there's metrics or compensation around it, then they're, they're probably experts in timing and recognition and how it will impact the P&L and their commission, even more so than me. Sometimes I forget what the rules are and why they're so passionate about what they're talking about. I'm like, why do you care so much? You know, I can talk to the controller. And then I realize, oh, that they or somebody on their team is going to get a commission payment if I agree with them. So yeah, certainly timing is very important to the sales leader and growth leader. I mean, as the CFO, often I'm a little more concerned with next quarter or next year than I am with what happened last month and when exactly I booked something. But I understand when you have compensation and metrics in place, why those things become very important to the tactical sales leaders.

And what do you, or what do companies typically need to recognize a deal? I mean—

Yeah, it's that there's a certain amount of that. A certain amount of that is specific to the company.

Yeah.

In a macro sense, you're gonna need paperwork in place. You're gonna have like an agreement with terms and conditions. And then there'll have to be certain things specified in that document. And usually either there'll be template forms like, hey, just use this and we're all covered. Or if maybe you have a partnership with a very large firm and the very large firm, the customer's like, yeah, I don't care about your paperwork. Piece of paper, get out of here. Here's what I'm going to give you. Then you just got to like highlight on the form, here are the 10 things that are present in this document that's in our document. Will you please, I humbly beseech thee, accept this?

Yeah.

And that, that there's kind of the rub, right?

Because companies want to use their paperwork. Here's our purchase order with the T's and C's on it. And they sign it.

Yeah, that's the dance, right? And I mean, think about it, you know, in a certain hat, Brian, like you and I are in a dance. We're working at the same company, uh, in the best— if we, we realize it and we're smart, we're working together. And like, I am dancing with you, you're dancing to me. Sometimes I'm lead, sometimes you're lead, and sometimes we use my paper, sometimes we use the customer's paper. But in the end, you want revenue and I want revenue, so we gotta Agreed. And so, and then there's extremes, right? I know where you're getting at. One extreme is that the sales prevention officer or the CFO— let's just pause for a second, Brian.

Okay.

Is the reason I'm here is I listen.

Oh no.

Yeah. I listen to your videos. I especially like the small ones, the little clips where you do skits. And you dress up as the CEO. And I think it's like Dwayne, the marketing guy. And then there's a sales guy who's always like fabulous. And then there's the accountant. Okay. And the accountant, I actually bought the shirt.

Did you?

It didn't come in on time. That says the accountant hourly rate. Like, I love that shirt. Like, that's super cool. And I wanted to wear it. I wanted to be like, hey, boom. It didn't work out. But here's the thing. In your videos, the accountant is always like the punchline and the problem. And I, and I quote, sales prevention officer, the bad guy, the CFO is terrible, the chief no officer. And the only one that was funny is when you said, I'm not the sales prevention officer. You said, I'm the commission prevention officer. That was actually really— that was funny. And I laughed hysterically at the bit where you said, um, that this account was talking to the CEO and you said, Want me to call HR and start laying off salespeople? And the account was like super happy about it.

Excited.

Yeah, that made me crack up.

Okay.

I kind of, I kind of liked that. I don't know what your question was, but I just wanted to say not all CFOs are terrible people.

And no, well, there's, there's motives and responsibilities and historic things. I mean, because you have to defend an audit, you have to defend the deal. If the company recognizes it, right? Because if for some reason it goes south, customer doesn't pay, the customer wants their money back, the customer sues, the customer feels gypped, you know.

I can get in trouble. And the bigger the company, and if it's public or private, you can even get in more trouble if I recognize revenue before I'm able to. So it's not just my opinion, and the accountants are not just trying to be mean. There is a little bit of discretion, but there's also just like a lot of rules. And because some bad actors, there's more and more rules every year, and then they change them, you know. So if you work somewhere where it seems like, man, revenue recognition changed and we have this whole new rule for some reason, it's not that your accountant is annoying and out to get you. It's because the rules change. And I just have a checklist and I'm following the rules. So I don't get in trouble, right? And my job is to keep everybody out of jail.

Yeah.

And that's what I'm here to do. And I ask the sales and growth leaders that it becomes, in Q1, it's less important and we have more discretion because it all flush out, right? Q2, Q3, and it's like, oh gosh, is this all gonna get settled? Q4, you bring a big deal, you know, a week before the end of Q4 and it's kinda on the line and in Q1 we let it slide. Well, in Q4 it's like, you know, I gotta close the books, I gotta report and man, this is just in the gray area or just over the line. You're gonna start feeling the squeeze.

Yeah.

And so as a sales and growth leader, know that, right? If this is, you are in period 12 and this is a big customer and a big deal and you know they're gonna use their paper and they're going to use their terms and there's gonna be some issues, Man, either no, that's— it's just going to get pushed into period 1 of next year and just be good with it. Or, okay, I have to have super accelerated effort here and I got to get this booked and bagged in week 1 of period 12 so all the dust can settle. Like, don't be surprised. Like, know what period 12 is. Know your fiscal year. Know what the 10 things are that are important. And don't be surprised if you feel like the rules are tighter and tighter and tighter as we get to the end of the year. And it is not because I'm trying to squeeze you out. It's probably because, man, that is on the line. That's a little over. And the auditors are going to be all up in my business. If I'm a publicly traded company and I recognize revenue too aggressively, I can get shareholder suits. Right. And you got your commission and you quit. Like, you're like, bye.

Well, certainly you have all of that. And I think what reps need to understand, and I think companies need to understand, is what is reasonable. Because like, like a SaaS company, I don't know if you've been in that space, if they don't pay, you just turn it off, right? So there's no Hard deliverable. There's no marginal cost other than the cost of sales.

Yeah, there are specific rules about how you recognize software. And, you know, often that payment occurs at one time and then it's covering you for a period. And there's rules about how you define the period of performance and your obligations to service the customer and not. And again, all of this can get worked out with a conversation with your controller or CFO. Like, you don't have to guess. And I, I tell— I, I, I request the sales and growth leaders that are on this call, number one, talk to your CFO. Like, ask them out to lunch or coffee and, uh, or to go on a walk and just establish a relationship and have them walk you through things like this. And where's the gray area? What should I look out for? What's your pain point? What's something that you personally maybe are a little on the conservative side? So that you can build that rapport with that CFO.

And how about like just mindless paperwork, like the credit app where it has zero value because they all lie on it. There's no— and they either pay or they don't pay. And their D&B rating is much more telling than what they tell you.

Yeah. At most firms, what it is, is that what you're trying to firm is for the permanent file record of the— this customer is that you're dealing with a person who has the authority to engage in this relationship and they can speak on behalf and request trade credit for their organization. So there are some rules around that. And that's— you could leave the whole credit application blank. I've done that probably, you know, when I was a small and mid-market CFO, when I'm signing credit apps, I just sign the bottom of the credit. I don't fill out But I'm just proving that I am an agent of the corporation. I have the authority to, on behalf of my company as a, as a representative, engage in credit, trade credit conversations. So if something doesn't work out later, I can prove like, hey, I shipped you this product and this employee who had signature authority signed for this. Somebody's paying. And without that, I have less recourse regardless of the D&B credit score of the company. It could have been just some Yahoo employee who works in the warehouse who wanted to get A trailer full of cigarettes, right, and had no authority to approve the shipment of those goods.

Yeah, you know, I mean, that document I see almost sales, you know, too many years to remember. Never added any value, certainly on the sales side.

Oh, maybe.

I mean, people don't pay, by the way, Also, and you know, a lifetime, not one person has not paid.

Oh wow, I— that happens all the time. It's like a lot of my life, people don't pay all the time. So you've been super lucky. You have awesome relationships.

They pay late, but they did pay.

Yeah, everybody pays late. That happens 100% of the time. I have people pay— not pay all the time. Every company I've ever worked, every quarter of every place in 25 years, somebody doesn't pay.

And is that— can you determine, I guess there's a scale, right, from Mutt and Jeff's dog shop to IBM, their ability to pay?

Yeah, it's a very— it's a big spectrum. There are some that were perfectly healthy companies that just go out of business. There are some where they're just disputing that invoice. There were 42,000 transactions that year, and this one, they just dispute that they ever received it. And in spite of all the documentation, the 10 things I won't go over, and proof, they're just like, nope, I'm not paying it. That can happen. I mean, then it could just be like a service issue. It could be like, yes, this, this happened. I say it met the minimum quality standard based on the terms of the contract. They say it didn't. And then you just get an argument over like, am I going to pay or not? And they're just like, no, I'm not going to pay. And sometimes you can get paid half, and sometimes they just pay nothing. So there's a big spectrum. And Brian, you may be shielded from that just because, A, you're in a certain industry, or the level of sales you have. You were at such a high level with such premium customers, it wasn't an issue for you, but it's like a day-to-day battle for bean counters.

I gotta imagine on SMB and mom-and-pop that, yeah, people go out of business, they lose interest, they no longer need the thing that they bought and don't wanna pay for it. And I also have never seen my company either sue or be sued?

Oh, I do all the time. Yeah, of course. I'm in the middle of like 3 right now. Every place I've ever worked, there's always some legal dispute in process at all times. It has to do with a customer, vendor, supplier.

That's serious enough to go beyond lawyer letters?

Yeah.

Really? Okay.

Yeah, all the time.

That's—

I never realized that. I have my business law book behind me, and CFOs, we constantly lament like, man, I would have paid way more attention to business law class if I had realized how much of my job has to do with that. It's really quite amazing. And Brian, again, I'm not talking about small businesses when I talk about people going out of business. Mid-market and large billion-dollar firms go into bankruptcy all the time. And when they end or completely dissolve, and in the best case of bankruptcy, you may try for 11 years, 10 years, 17 years to get money, and you might get a dollar on a $200,000 invoice.

Right.

And that, that was a billion-dollar company that, that went bankrupt. And then there are firms that, you know, maybe they're in the $15 million And then they just wind down. But from— I'm talking $10 million to $1 billion firms have financial trouble and cease to exist every year.

It does. But mostly the— and they have. I'm not saying that they haven't. And but the companies that I've worked with, the management team never saw it as fruitful To go a legal route. They either negotiated something or forgot about it, moved on, and wrote it off as a bad debt.

Certainly, certainly. And if it's— that's why you have a bad debt accrual.

Yeah.

As a sales and growth leader, when you're having those conversations with the CFO and you're out at lunch, you're going on a walk, having a coffee, learning about them, getting on their good side. You know, ask them about like, how does the bad debt accrual work? Do you take X percent of all revenue? Is it on certain types of contracts? Is it different for different divisions? What's the balance right now? You know, be soft-handed about that one. The CFO will panic about that question. But that's a great question and a good thing to learn. And boy, a CFO would love you, Brian, and the folks listening. If you get— I mean, you're visiting the customer all the time. You're gonna know way before I do that some trouble is amiss. And if, you know, your monthly touch-in or your quarterly coffee with the CFO, you walk in and go, you know, man, the last time I was in with the customer, we had— our business has been trailing down with them and I'm missing my number. But hey, heads up, like the whole— like there are less people in the parking lot and there was a supplier in the weight room. You know, I was flipping through the who came in. There were a lot of suppliers on the list. Great sales leader, read the check-in list if it's still handwritten and see if the competition's coming in and making visits, calls on your customers. And boy, something's up with that customer. And the next big— if we get some business with them, you know, we might want to double-check their credit if you haven't recently. Man, your CFO is going to love you for giving them that kind of heads up. They're going to be like, wow, Brian's on my side. I love it.

And although the CFO reports to the CEO, Isn't the more scrutinous judge of the CFO the board?

For sure. And 100% at a publicly traded company, there's a committee on the board that specifically has very direct access and sort of supervision over the CFO. In a mid-market or a public company, Either way, I'd say, you know, the CFO and the CEO are partners, and the CFO is like the internal consultant for the CFO. Like, hey, I'll be your numbers guy. You know, Julie, you're the CEO. You know, you've got to be a chief relationship officer and a vision caster and a strategy person and going out there and shaking hands and kissing babies and being out in front of the customer. Let me help you with like the numbers and the math. I'll be, I'll be working my abacus. And so partner with a CEO, I— and I'm working on this— I also need to partner with the sales and the growth leader, right? You're my internal customer. We're all in sales, and I'm not trying to be preachy. I'm trying to say this loud enough I hear it, okay? But I have an internal customer, and that includes the chief sales and growth officer. So that's another partnership. But yeah. I mean, the CEO can fire me for sure. But yes, to your point.

But usually they usually have to answer to the board why, because it's usually a red flag if the CFO gets canned, right?

Oh, for sure.

Because clearly you're not doing something that they want done, which is usually not good.

CFOs don't get fired unless the board approves it.

That doesn't happen.

Yeah.

And the board is typically numbers-focused, analytical.

And well, the board's— I mean, the board's job is governance. And so all those things that I spoke about when we were talking about revenue recognition, that is the bigger umbrella around why, why is the CFO conservative about revenue recognition. It's because of the rules. And then there are not only rules around revenue recognition and accounting, there's all kinds of rules, regulatory and compliance rules, and that whole umbrella The people stand like holding that umbrella, that's the board. And that's what the board's job is, is governance. And that includes like, yeah, they're, hey, hey, CEO, what's your strategic vision for the next 5 years? Yeah. But like tactically, their sleeves rolled up on governance and are people following the rules? Are we all gonna end up on the news and are we all getting fired? And their connection to the company and figuring that out is the CFO.

And does your sales counterpart share with you the forecast so that you can scan it for red flags?

It should, for sure. I mean, if you're talking about a forecast for next year—

I mean, like the current quarter, because they're concerned about bookable.

Yeah, I think, um, so there's, there's some duality to that answer. Um, usually, like, The, at a macro level, yeah, I have insight into the next quarter, you know, directionally things going up, things going down, big movers, big rocks. And I can look at the pipeline and if the data and the CRM is accurate, I can get kind of a sense, you know, kind of accurate salespeople and CRM. And, but as far as bookable, like, you know, I'm an accountant, so I'm supporting a team of accountants, the controller, The manager, AP, receivables, payroll. And I'm also like looking back like, what happened last month? You know, so I'm pulled back into what's going on. And I handle the big rocks where Brian calls the controller and is like, I got a hot deal that I got on the 31st. Fax to me.

Well, that's what I would do. I would, I would have it sit on my desk because I know on the 31st, this thing just slides right through. If on the 25th, I've got 5 days of torture ahead of me.

Yeah, you're why I have no hair.

But, you know, and I'll give you an example. Desert Storm. Okay, I'm up at NSA in an unclassified trailer selling millions of dollars of software to fight the terrorists. And I've got a CFO who's saying they need to sign our agreement. And I have the director of NSA say, I want to talk to your CEO. In 5 minutes, the deal's booked. Okay, he's got— I need a credit app. Okay, NSA does not fill out a credit app. It pays government dollars. The likelihood of them not paying on this piece of software, which is a dollar disk, is zero.

Yeah, I mean, we're definitely talking extremes. That does sound super silly. I don't understand why—

It's just—

The senior financial leader of a government contracting firm should understand how—

Well, you know, government contracting was new to them.

Yeah. So that's where the partnership comes in, Brian. I would say we all have to take ownership. And if I was— if we were just having beers, I'd be like, Brian, what's your relationship with the CFO? Why don't they understand? That's partly your responsibility as a sales and growth leader to help them understand. And if they don't, you're supposed to be the teacher and you should have a relationship where you walk them through and say, hey, man, this is how government contracting works. And, you know, here to verify, trust but verify what I'm telling you. Here are some sources.

Yeah.

And if they— because that is nonsensical.

So I don't know why they did that in that circumstance, because that isn't how government Well, they, they clearly have their job and their responsibility, and if for chance it goes south, you know, they're attached to it, and they are, and I get that.

But—

Yeah, I think it's important to, you know, I've changed a lot of industries, and so there is a season that— because I've been into, let's see, hotels, and aerospace and food manufacturing, logistics, textiles, and professional services. And so there's a season in each one of those for like the first year. You know, if I got like a 5-year run somewhere, like the first year, there's— I just don't know much about the industry.

Yeah.

I know a lot about accounting, and I— and, um, but I don't know much about the industry. So I, as an accountant, and I would tell this to other CFOs, like, admit that you don't know. You're not the smartest person in every room. And like, yeah, you got a form, but why do you need the form? And you have revenue recognition rules, but why? And then so you can lean on a person like Brian, like, oh hey, Brian's been in the biz for 10 years, he's had a relationship, this is the 50th transaction we've done with NSA, he's probably got a reason why he's saying what he's saying. He's been going out to lunch with me for once a month for the past 6 months. He's a cool guy, like he wouldn't lie to me. And then boom, we can close the deal and get on with our business.

And other than the customer paying, what's your concern with a deal?

I would say my initial thought is, and this is, I'm going to pull an extreme of like salespeople. If they're not giving away like redonkulous payment terms, they're also like redonkulously discounting price. Like, I think like there's a big basket of salespeople. They're not the ones that listen to your podcast, but let's be honest, there, there are that are just like discount robots where they're just like, oh, the list price is a dollar. I'll sell it to you for a nickel and we'll make it up in volume. And like, I don't need to pay salespeople to give discounts. I could just automate, use automation and AI, and I can give discounts too.

You can do that yourself.

Yeah. I don't need to pay a salesperson to do that. So that, I think, is annoying. Now, there are reasons to discount. So not like obviously, but just where your go-to move as a sales and growth person— I think growth is even too much. You're just a salesperson and you're just like a discount robot. You have no skill, no talent. And when I complain about salespeople, it's It's the bottom 20% of every firm brings no margin and just headaches, and they cause all the trouble for everybody else. And unfortunately, they take 80% of my mindshare and they're only 20% of the staff, and they give every other real sales and growth leader a bad name.

And what would be your, your top piece of advice for a sales rep out there who's frustrated getting deals done? How do they? Okay.

I mean, I would say one thing. Just I'm gonna put my hat of just the person sitting in the room and I get sold. I'll give a little tip because I've seen good, some good and bad recently, especially with the whole virtual thing. It's even more stark. Is I think there's like the the features versus benefit and the features trap that some salespeople have. I see a lot of New salespeople especially, and they're always the discounters too that are trying to sell me something. All they do is talk all the time. Our 30-minute meeting is them talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, and it's facts and figures. Just its features, feature trap, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then like I get the last minute. All right, then I have another growth leader come in and. She's sitting there talking like 1 minute of the meeting. And then like, I find myself like 29 minutes in, I've just been like talking about all my problems and the challenges that I have. And in 1 minute, she identifies the benefits, what's in it for me, that the problem that this solution, which, oh, just by the way, happens to be my product, solves. And then she's like, oh, if you, you know, you want more information, just like reach out. And I'm like, more information? I was like, yeah, I need that like right now. Where are you going? Like, I got an extra 5 minutes. Give me more. Give me more. Give me more.

Hey, we covered a lot in a short period of time, but it's good to hear how people react at that very end where he's talking about how salespeople behave. And that's— we stay in that. Here it is. This is what we do. This is how it works. This is how it's better. And this is how— what it costs. And yet the person doesn't care. They want to know what does it do for them. Talk about their problems. Now, I highly suggest you go talk to your CFO or go talk to the people who book your deals. Try and understand what do they need at the bare minimum and how to work around the situations that you commonly run into. And if you were in a small enough company, try and get your sales leader to get rid of or minimize the over-duplication of paperwork, which there is a tremendous amount. And if you, if you have to do it, then you have to allow more time in the sales process to get these things done with the purchasing people on their end. And they're always going to push back because they want to just do it their way and what's easy for them, because it turns into work for them. And if you're running out of time, guess who has the leverage? They do. Now, this episode I think is critical because we have You have to understand what the whole game of selling is. Too often we get a purchase order and we think we have something. We have a bookable thing. And then you try and book it and you can't get it done. Or it gets delayed or pushed back or get me this or make sure they sign our thing of this. And when you start asking for those things, I get it. I struggled this, with this my whole career, and some companies get it, most do not. A lot of it's theater, but unless you have strong leadership on the sales side to take away the theater and understand the transaction about what exactly is needed to be bookable and recognizable And look at your pipeline. If for any chance they look like they're not going to pay or can't pay, they're not a prospect. Don't try and sell to people looking for funding or going out of business or already in bankruptcy. Those are not good clients. And if you're in a lot of businesses, try and get paid upfront. Because that takes away any of that concern and then you have all the leverage. But think through this part of it and if it's arduous, start it early because it can also be a test of how convinced they are to go forward. It's not the best one, but it is one. And if you want to build up your pipeline, have it just your calendar full of qualified meetings. Start the conversation, get the meeting. The people in it who work it, who apply it— it's not knowledge, it's skill. Meaning that you gotta, yes, learn it, try it, take feedback, ask for feedback, try something else. And once you get your groove, and then you automate it and then outsource it People are scaling their territories like nothing before. Today, it's a magical moment in that if you know what you're doing, you can scale infinitely. If you don't, it's going the opposite direction. The spamming and the cold calling, uh, unless you're uniquely good at it, good luck. And inbound, I'm not hearing anybody tell me inbound's working with them. I did a poll on LinkedIn and I said, how many qualified— you define what qualified is, not somebody like ready to buy, but somebody who is curious about what you sell, active pain, aware of the symptoms of the pain, wants, willing to talk. That's kind of qualified to me. Um, And it was 90% said zero. 90%. And I think the other 10% were marketing people. So that's the situation where we're in. If you happen to be lucky enough to be in this, you're probably not listening to the podcast because you're too busy taking orders. If you happen to be in that, enjoy it. It doesn't last long. Most of us are in this arduous position of a big number, no leads, ineffective marketing, and old prospecting techniques that don't work anymore. Start the conversation, get the meeting is the game changer there. And, you know, I hear people, you know, the cost of a new opportunity is anywhere from $250 to $2,000. So course pays for itself in the first week. Check it out. Uh, all the links are in the show notes at the website at b2brevenue.com, at the YouTube channel. Check that out. Thank you for sharing, commenting, and liking, uh, my posts on LinkedIn. I really appreciate that. And tell a friend about the show.

Better, and especially post-COVID, you got to be very creative. And healthcare, that's for sure.

And, you know, for people who are wondering if it's right for them, what would you tell them?

Yeah, I mean, I think you kind of need to get over your own ego a little bit. I mean, a lot of people think they're really, really good at sales and they probably are in some rights, but at the same time, like, I think you've mentioned it before, like professionals and whatever, industry or athletics, whatever, you know, they're always getting better. They're practicing, they're continuing to improve. And, you know, I know beforehand I didn't necessarily think of sales like that as much, but kind of taking your course and doing that, like, even if I'm ranked at, you know, the very top 1%, I really should be doing stuff to get better. And of course, a lot of companies will provide great stuff, but you really kind of need stuff outside of work, whether that be mentors or classes like yourself. So yeah, I think Regardless of how good you've been doing, I think you don't want to get complacent and you want to keep getting better. It's just my opinion.

And, you know, as far as, you know, getting better, do you see it as kind of a destination or a journey?

No, it's definitely a journey because I think most people in sales are competitive and You know, even though that once they win a deal, they want to keep moving forward. So I don't see it as a final destination. I feel like it's something really you should be doing throughout your career, I guess, until you retire, hopefully sooner than later when you retire. But yeah, I think no matter if you're a sales rep or an executive vice president, you should be doing some type of coaching or training. And this kind of— I was doing a fair amount of stuff, but it was more company-driven. things in the past. So I think expanding outside of that— I mean, nothing wrong with doing it within your company too, but expanding outside of that and getting different opinions, I feel like is a good thing, perspectives.

And how much time per week did it take you?

Yeah, I, I had certain moments where I was binging some of your content quite a bit. The actual courses, like, I wanted to be sitting down, you know, at home, able to write down notes and Put stuff in Word documents, just kind of how I was doing it. So I would say I probably knocked out the complex sale course in 6 weeks or so. I went after it pretty good. And then throughout that and afterwards, I would, you know, listen to the one-on-ones. I would listen to your every 2-week calls, kind of the open sessions. And I binge that a lot when I'm driving because I travel a lot for work. So I listen to those quite often and I don't necessarily have to take notes on it, but it's just good to get those, those real-life examples from other people. But yeah, the course took about 6 weeks or so, but that was just the pace I did it at. I mean, the nice thing about it is that you can, can do it at your own pace, you know, throughout, you know, even a 12-month period, I guess, if you want to. So