THE SURPRISING POWER OF MINDSET IN B2B SALES

Today's guest is selling into what I probably have seen as one of the hardest spaces. Imagine selling for a company that's in a different country and you're selling into the legal profession, lawyers, law firms. And I personally have never done this, but several people in my courses have. So I've done a tremendous amount of one-on-ones with them on how to get into a law firm. Especially in the case of the people in the course, first sales job. Imagine that. And they were able to— we were able to figure it out, but it was certainly one of the more challenging use cases for the course that I've had. And unfortunately, it was the first year I put the course out, but they've been able to have success with that. Today's guest has had a career in this space and has now moved into a leadership role. But we get into how do you get into the These large, complex organizations. And you might ask yourself, well, what's so hard about law firms and lawyers? Well, if you don't have any experience with a lawyer, consider yourself happy. But lawyers, high pressure. They bill for their time. They assume everyone else is lying. They have to protect themselves and their clients. They're professional arguers. So now you put that all together and they're insanely suspicious of everything and everybody. So this interview, we're going to get into selling into the hardest of the hard and how do you work your way around that? How do you keep the deal moving, keep your spirits up, keep engaged with the client? And I'll sum it up at the end. But if you're looking to close big deals and get into hard accounts, check out the courses at b2brevenue.com.

Here we go. Hey, Martin, thanks for joining us today. As a way of getting started, give us a little background on yourself.

Hi, Bryan. Good to speak to you. My name is Martin Siddall, and I've been selling technology into the legal sector here in the UK probably for the last 30 years. During this time, I've been lucky enough to sell a variety of systems, so I've sold Accounting systems, ERP systems, document management systems, CRM. But most of my successes come from selling what we call case management or workflow solutions. Been really, really successful in that. And I guess over the last 30 years, I've had every job you can think going in sales, from sales rep to sales director, everything in between. And I'm currently head of account management at a large content firm called LexisNexis.

You just found lawyers fun to sell to and easy to communicate with?

Fun may not be the right word. They're certainly different. I think one of the things that is different is you're actually spending their money rather than spending a corporate's money. One of the things I was told by a very old salesman very early on is you've got to imagine you're selling to a lawyer. He has to go home and tell his wife she can't have the holiday because he's just bought a new piece of tin for his computer. It's a different type of sale.

And I can't imagine a more difficult persona.

Yeah, they like to argue a lot. They like to discuss a lot. They have lots of questions. And contract negotiations are very interesting.

And they also assume, or they take the truth as something that's subjective.

Yes, very much so, very much so. And the other thing that's really strange is a lot of them still buy by committee. So whereas you may think you have the champion, you may have it nailed down, you've then got 10 guys in a room that are arguing their own case. And of course, you're not invited into that room. So from that point of view, it can be quite complicated.

Because they are professional arguers.

Absolutely. No, that's their job. That's what they're good at.

Yeah. And why'd you pick this demographic or persona?

Um, I sort of fell into it by accident, like a lot of things you do. And I started off in hospitality, believe it or not.

Uh, just the opposite.

Yeah, just the opposite. Um, and then by chance, I ended up working for an American company as an operations director. Um, and I did that for a couple of years. But the guys with, you know, with the nice cars, the good suits, and the things making all the money were the sales guys. So I thought, well, I'll give it a go. And 30 years later, I'm still doing it.

And is that what motivates you? Kind of the winning, the income?

I think what gives me most satisfaction is actually working with clients and looking at how we can improve the way they run their business. But actually, the most fun bit is closing deals. I know you're not supposed to say that these days, but I think it's all about closing deals.

Isn't it about hugging and rescuing animals?

Yeah, I'm not sure about you, but when I first started out, there was a champagne moment when you closed a deal. You know, everybody was really pleased for you. Now it's almost like an inconvenience that you've actually closed a deal. Now, that's not right. I don't think that's right. Another one of those pesky Yeah, exactly.

And what's kept you at the same company for so long? That's a great track record.

Yeah, I mean, I've been where I am for about 18 years, and I say I've worked in legal tech for the rest. I guess working for a very large organization, you get to move around a lot, and it almost feels like you have new jobs every 5 years, but you get the benefit of retaining the clients keeping your market knowledge, knowing your client knowledge, and really becoming— and I hate this word— you know, a trusted advisor, because people come to you for advice rather than thinking you're trying to sell to them.

And how do you build that type of relationship with people, especially really hard people?

It's a long-term thing. I think market knowledge is really important. So knowing what's going on in their life, where they want to take their firm, what's going on in the firm down the road, and then getting to know them and their firm. I know in a lot of these discussions you talk about finding the problem, finding the pain, which is very important, but actually I find finding their ambition is sometimes more important. either their ambition as an individual or as a team or as a firm. And that's a more positive way of actually trying to sell to them because you're helping them achieve whatever their next goal is.

And I got to imagine that they don't like to spend a lot of time with salespeople. They are professional billers. They get rewarded on their time mostly.

A lot of the people I deal with at the senior level have stopped doing the billable work, and they are now managing The firm. So, and depending on the size or the level of firm, you can get to know them quite well, uh, so especially been doing it for so long. Um, and I think because I've built up a network of contacts, I can open most doors, um, and I come with some value which I think hopefully they appreciate.

And what is that value?

I think it's knowledge. Um, I think it's knowledge of how technology can help them improve their firm. It's knowledge of knowing what the guy down the road's doing. It's knowledge of knowing what's coming around the corner in the legal market they may not be aware of yet. So I can have intelligent conversations without looking like I'm just trying to sell them some more software. Yeah.

And so I take it you do a lot of prep before you have that meeting?

Prep is absolutely key. Um, and now when I'm running a team, I'm trying to get that across to the team that, you know, there's no point in doing a demo without knowing what you want the outcome to be. There's no point in just trying to wing it because you'll get found out in the first couple of seconds. So actually, prep is absolutely key to everything we do.

And what was your motivation to get into leadership instead of staying? You probably could have done better as an individual contributor.

Yeah, honestly, I'm not a very good manager. I'll pause the recorder. No, my team know that. They're already aware.

It's not news.

What I really get out of it is the mentoring and the training and helping them see their way through a sale, watching them grow, helping them achieve their personal targets and the team target. I'm just not very good at doing the holiday requests and the, you know, the annual appraisals and all of that sort of thing. Um, it's, it's not what really interests me at the moment. It's really about getting these guys up to be as good as they possibly can and giving them whatever little knowledge I've learned along the way to try and help them move their career forward.

And what makes a great rep in this space?

Persistence, empathy, product knowledge, and a willingness to work hard. You know, this is not a 9-to-5 Quite often my guys will get phone calls on a weekend, after hours, early morning, and we always try and say that you've got to be available. You know, it's, it's not what you want to do, but if they're reaching out outside office hours, they're after some help. And if you can be seen to be helping them, it's going to make it easier to have the next conversation with them.

Yeah. And what doesn't work in this space? I'm sure you've either inherited or maybe—

Yeah, I think What doesn't work is telling people what they need, being overconfident, perhaps being that old-fashioned salesperson that, you know, you know everything, they know nothing. Because they're quite— they're obviously an intelligent bunch that we work with, but they're actually very knowledgeable also about technology. In the UK, I think the legal industry has always been ahead of the game when it comes to adopting technology. So if you go in without preparing, thinking you know it all, you're not going to get very far.

And they're very detail-oriented. Lawyers are— that's their whole thing.

There's a lot of proof points, um, so demonstrations can go down some very, very strange rabbit holes just because they need to see— or they need to see you prove that what you say you can actually do. It's in big deals, it's not, you know, we often have half-day demos or a whole-day demo, and we tend repeating ourselves quite a lot. But it's, I guess it's gaining their trust and it's showing that what we can walk the walk as well as talk the talk.

And do they make decisions faster than—

If I tell you I had a conversation with an IT director that actually congratulated me because it had been 8 years in the making. Now, that's not normal. That's not normal. Typically, we can be 6 to 12 months from showing first interest to closing. But a lot of the bigger deals can take years.

Yeah.

And a lot of them depend on where the firm is in their buying cycle. You know, if they're doing a project X and that's taking a couple of million pounds and it's taking the same resource that you need to do your project, That project's going to take precedence, and you could be a couple of years while you're just keeping, keeping them warm, keeping them interested, and then they'll come back to look at your project.

So the key driver is to be more competitive than the person down the street, is that?

Yeah, and, and I think it's, it's been knowledgeable as well. Um, so seeing it from the client side, um, not rushing them into a decision. Now, this is a long game, uh, for us. Um, and having the right product. Um, unfortunately, lawyers can be a little bit led by the guy down the road. You know, it's the old saying, you never got fired for buying an IBM. It's pretty typical in the legal industry as well. If there's a market leader, people will look at that first, and they're less inclined to look at something else that may not be quite so well known.

So they're thinking like the judge, right?

They need social proof. Exactly.

An expert witness. And does the buying cycle— I like in the US for partnerships, the buying cycle would be the end of the year so that they don't have to pay taxes on that money.

Not so much. And especially with when you're dealing with partnerships, you know, the partners— I said before, the partner's almost spending his own money, so he will purchase throughout the year. And If he wants it, he'll tell the rest of the firm he's going to get it. And then they worry about how they're going to pay for it and how it's going to fit into their overarching structure. So quite regularly, you know, we have good first quarter, which is January quarter. Third quarter is always slow, which is summer holidays. And Q3 is always a race to the line to do target.

Yeah. And I got to assume they ghost you quite a bit.

Yeah, yeah. Um, and, and you've said it quite often on your podcast, you know, phone calling is, is dead really. You know, it's, it's so easy to dodge a phone call. Um, it's actually now easy to dodge an email as well. So once again, that longevity, having contacts means that if they want to speak to you, they will pick up the phone. Um, but if I was coming in cold, I'm not quite sure how I would cope with being ghosted quite so often.

And the way in is through networking?

9 times out of 10, it's through networking. It's knowing someone that can open the door for you. Sometimes that's via the IT team. A lot of the IT guys are very open for discussions. Sometimes it's via what they call the knowledge manager, so someone that's running the CRM. Other times it's directly to the partner because he's heard about you from somebody else and thinks you're worth talking to. Yeah.

And have you seen any—

I don't know if you've ever sold in the US or managed US team. Is there much difference there?

Um, technology uptake in the legal market in the US has always been behind the UK. Um, a lot of the stuff that we sell is making lawyers more productive. Um, but obviously in the US, if you're billing, you don't want to be too productive because the longer you take, the more you can bill. Yeah. Um, now It is changing. We are seeing a lot of the US firms adopting technology. In fact, they're probably sneaking ahead of the UK at the moment. But a lot of law firms, the pressure they're getting from their clients is they have to be more transparent, they have to be cheaper, they have to do more for less, they have to make sure the right guy is doing the right piece of work so you don't get a really expensive lawyer charging £400 an hour doing an admin job. So That transparency is driving the use of technology.

Yeah. And how about as far as working for US companies? Have you worked for a UK company?

I have. My first organization that I worked for in legal technology came out of Miami, a company called Equatrac. They did the photocopy control devices. Really liked it. I really liked the American mentality. I like the work ethic. I don't like the fact that they started at 2 o'clock my afternoon time, and they were still expecting me to work at 8 o'clock UK time. But you sort of get used to that. And I used to like coming across to the US and seeing the UK sales— sorry, the US sales guys. There were some really, really good sales guys back in the day, and I learned a lot from them about hard work, about how to approach clients. how to have that perseverance on chasing the case down. So yeah, I really still enjoy working for US firms.

And what do you look for when you're hiring? I take it you're probably in a hiring position sometimes.

It's a really good, good question. In fact, we've just hired somebody, and we had the usual inflow of CVs that were sales orientated. They've been doing the same thing, and you look at it and you think, It's a little bit tired. Maybe they're not as hungry as they once were. How do we freshen this up? So we sort of cast our net a bit further, and we actually found an attorney, what we call a barrister, somebody that had been actually stood in court for the last 15 years, and she wanted to get out of that and into sales. We took a bit of a risk, but it's worked out so well, and I think Casting your net wider actually gives you a much better chance of finding some fresh blood, some fresh impetus to actually bring different skills into the team. I watched one of your podcasts when you were talking about hiring hospitality people, and I think that's a great shout because you've got a lot of empathy there, you've got a lot of hard work, they know how to deal with difficult customers. So I think perhaps, you know, if we were doing that again, we would look wider than perhaps we would have done a year ago.

Yeah, I'd be— when I think of a lawyer, I think of somebody who really does a lot of administration, documents, everything really. And sales, it's really, you know, getting that conversation started, getting the dialogue going.

What we found, Brian, was the fact that the person I'm talking about had to stand in front of a judge. What did he do? Yeah, and had to have all the evidence ready, had to be very confident in front of the judge, had to be very well prepared. And if somebody threw a curveball question at them, they had to have the answer, they had to think on their feet. And actually, that's come across really well, and the ability to talk to strangers. Um, is something that if you've never done it before, it's quite a difficult skill to pick up. And the person we hired absolutely had that skill. It was really a really good decision.

Yeah, I can certainly see the litigator part of it, uh, because that is selling.

Absolutely, absolutely is selling.

Because you're the beauty contest, your competitor is right next to you.

Yes.

And you gotta have the empathy. What are they going to say? Yeah, what's their case going to be?

Yeah, and it's, you know, can you imagine a sales situation where you and your competitor are in the same room having to demo at the same time for weeks on end? Yeah.

And, you know, at least in the, the US legal system, there's this, uh, discovery phase.

Yep, yep.

Where there's paperwork going back and forth, questions Um, depositions. Yeah, so it is a complex sale.

Absolutely, it is a complex sale, and you're dealing with a whole variety, um, of people and third parties. And that's one of the complex things about selling into legal, you know. You don't actually— sometimes you don't get to see the guy that's buying it. Um, you know, you're seeing the person that's going to use it and you're impressing them and you've got the IT guys on board, but the guy that's going to sign the check, sometimes they just won't let you near him. So you've got to find ways of working around that, and that's part of the skill.

And how do you arm that IT person with the things that that senior partner who's going to sign it—

I think that's where you find your coach, isn't it? That's where you actually are. You get to know them, you know what makes them tick, you know, what makes them look good in the eyes of their superiors. A lot of it is showing the benefits other firms have gained from the same system, be that cost savings, be that time savings, be that just being seen to be using modern technology. So that's the way that we arm the people that are trying to sell up for us, is to give them as much information as possible. We always write our proposals almost as though they could be used as internal selling tools for the people we give them to. So they're written in a way that is easy to read, not particularly sales language.

Right.

And is always looking at what the firm is trying to achieve, how quickly they're going to get there, what are the steps they've got to go through. So it almost— if you can't get to the right person, you give the person that's going to get there all of the ammunition they need.

Do you have much influence of why now versus eventually?

Sometimes. Sometimes there's a burning bridge where, you know, we have deadlines to meet. Sometimes it's a nice-to-have, which is always the difficult, difficult sale. At the moment, we're seeing a rush to the cloud. Law firms want to be in the cloud tomorrow. So a lot of our sales are decisions being made. We go into the cloud, it's going to be in 6 months' time. What do we need to do to get you guys on board? So that's a different sort of sale that's almost been brought in after the decision's been made. We don't have a lot of influence. We just have to stick to their timetable.

And what's their motive to get to the cloud? Is it to remove the liability from their IT to yours?

A lot of it is that, yes. And sometimes it does feel like turkeys voting for Christmas when IT people are saying, right, I just want to get all of this tin off my decks. There's a big move in the UK to subscription rather than capital purchase. And I think that's driven by the finance people seeing that they can spread the cost, use different budgets. So it's a combination of wanting to be seen to be leading wanting to get off old hardware that perhaps is coming to the end of its 5-year lease, and also finance thinking that spreading an operational cost versus a CapEx is a good thing to do.

And when you're talking to your team, how do you determine how real the deal is?

Oh, I'm glad you asked this one. So Before I started, there was a very formal forecasting process in place, and quite often the guys were asked, well, you know, you haven't got 4 or 5 times your pipeline, go and fill up the forecast.

That works.

Absolutely, absolutely. And then 4 weeks later, there's too much in the forecast. Trim it back. So the guys are spending, you know, a week a month doing something somebody else said just to— so I scrapped all that completely. We no longer have a team or a formal pipeline review. We do that on a one-to-one basis. We probably do it weekly. I tell the guys to make sure that anything in the forecast is real. So we really wire brush every opportunity in there. And so far it's worked really well. We've always been ahead of target. We're always ahead of the curve. I know what's coming in. The amount in the pipeline is a lot less, but the quality is a lot more. And we have this expression in the team, and once again, you said it the other week, where you have a salesman that comes back from meeting and it's a slam dunk sale. It's going to close. It's going to close. And month by month. Yeah, exactly. And he moves it on a month in the forecast. So we now have this expression, I can't eat promises, and everyone's now quoting that. So if I say, is it a promise? Can I eat a promise? Oh, actually, no, it's not this week. It's going to be 3 months down the line. So we have those really in-depth conversations about every single opportunity in the pipeline, and we really make sure that we review it in a casual sort of way every week, and then we move it forward. And we look outside the pipeline. So we say, okay, what's not in pipe? Let's go through your client list. What else do you think you're going to be working on? What are you going to be working on in nine months' time? What do you want this client to be looking at? So we've taken that formal pipeline review, which actually didn't do the salesperson any good, and we've tried to turn it into a proper tool that allows us not only to see what sales are coming in, but to be thinking six, nine, twelve months ahead as to where we want to be.

And within the account, I can't see like IT being the champion unless it's like an upsell of an existing product. It's got to be probably somebody on the legal side.

Yeah, IT, probably up until about 5 years ago, IT were very much the way in. And then I think they learned their lesson and they became a facilitator rather than an owner. I think too many of these large projects were put at the door of IT, and when they went wrong, IT carried the can, even if it wasn't an IT project. So now we're, we're getting in more at partner level, team leader level, um, and we're trying to concentrate on what the team or the law— the lawyer wants to do using our technology. And we're looking at how we can make their life easier, how we can give them better information in a more understandable fashion, how we can allow them to carry more cases without actually letting the quality they deliver to their clients slip. A lot of it is now based with the users rather than the facilitators.

How do you make that switch from educating them? Because I'm sure a lot of them want to learn. I mean, you work for a hot company that's dominant in this space, that if they don't have it, they want to know what it does for their own career, to somebody who has a real business case that is going to justify a purchase?

We have a lot of people treating it as an educational exercise rather than a selling exercise. And to be fair, we don't mind too much. We'd rather educate them today so they buy tomorrow. But what I have to get the team to understand is someone that's on an educational hunt isn't going to buy this year. So you want to get in Do what you've got to do, get out in a reasonable fashion, but keep in touch with them. You know, how's it going? Is it— is now the time to take it a bit further? Did I tell you the guy down the road's just done this and these are the sort of benefits he's getting? So we don't mind doing the educational stuff as long as it's not everything that we're doing.

And do you find like, um, news events of a big case or a loss of a case, or there's some kind of trigger event that's visible on the internet It's very difficult because nobody really wants bad news out there, so we very rarely hear when something's gone terribly wrong.

We do scan social media and the internet to see what our clients are doing on a regular, on a daily basis. We have these tools that go across a whole set of media and bring back Hot, hot topics. A lot of it we just use to show our clients that we're interested in what they do. So, you know, we'll drop them a line and say, hey, just saw this, sounds really exciting, anything we can do to help? Or, hey, just saw you— just seen you've taken over firm so-and-so, did you know they already use our software? Let's have a chat. So we're actually using it as a very soft way to talk to our clients.

And I got to imagine that the timing of the closure is insanely difficult because you're dealing with professional negotiators.

Yeah. Yeah. The worst part of the deal is when they say they want to do it and ask for the contract. Because a contract in our world will probably add 8 weeks to the deal. And they will go over that contract with a fine-tooth comb. I've had the bizarre incident where we actually employed a law firm to write our contract for us, and then we sold to them and they rejected their own contract.

It's too strong.

Too strong.

Exactly.

That's exactly what he said.

Well, that's it. Because, you know, like when you sell to us, I always sold to software companies. Yeah, so they know how software companies sell.

Exactly.

And the bigger the ones, and you're dealing with the C-suite, they know your end of the quarter. They know because everyone plays the same games with them. They wait till the exact last minute, then they pull something out and they say, well, can you give us 5 more points?

It's not quite that bad. We try not to be that desperate salesperson at quarter end or year end. We almost say, well, you know, if you don't want it this year, we're still going to be around. Just come back when you're ready. There are times when, you know, a little bit of a pressure is applied, but they will only buy when they're ready. You know, we can influence them. We can take it so far. But at the end of the day, if they want to delay, we have to delay, which is why I say being in it for the long term.

Yeah, and what advice would you have for a young salesperson getting into selling into legal or into this kind of non-selling technology into non-technical companies?

Yeah, I think it's know your market. Absolutely know who you're selling to, know why they're buying, know your clients, really understand where they're coming from, what their ambitions are, and know your products. There are a lot of people out there that take along someone to do the demo for them. They have no interest in the products, and they're the guys that are still scrabbling around trying to do deals. Know your product. Be able to have an intelligent conversation with your clients about why what you've got will deliver benefits to them. And always look for the benefits. Absolutely. That's the key, I think.

Right.

Because your product— I remember a CRM company that had technology people demonstrating it and a salesperson selling it. It was like, yeah, the salesperson's the user.

Absolutely.

They can't figure out how to use it. You're kind of admitting that it's complicated.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly that. And, and yeah, you know what technical people are like. They want to go down to the nth degree of a technicality and they lose the audience within—

Good point.

Yeah. So when we're doing demos, a lot of it is we're driving the guy doing the demo and it's almost like demo, stop, explain, repeat, demo, stop, explain, repeat, and making sure the audience is coming with you. And I think they appreciate that. And the guys that we've got doing the demos are now really good at knowing, do it in small chunks rather than going down a rabbit hole and there's no way back.

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

I'm on LinkedIn, or you can email me at martin.sidle@lexisnexis.co.uk. Thanks, Brian. It's been a real pleasure talking to you.

What I noticed there was he hired a lawyer who wanted to get into sales. This model has been insanely effective, not so much just hiring lawyers, but hiring people or having people train for what you're selling to as a user of the product that you sell.

Why?

Because it gives you that perspective, that empathy, that understanding, that day-to-day use of the product. And one of my first sales jobs, I had that luxury. I had been a user of the the product at the company as a pre-sales sales engineer and then was able to get a job as a salesperson. And this was insanely effective for me because I knew exactly how to use it. Now, I don't know what each of you sell, and maybe this isn't possible, but it is one of the most powerful ways of improving your sales skills is being a user And a lot of companies today are getting this, and they make the first month of training using the product. And sometimes it's kind of awkward and painful. I get it, you know, because if you're not a lawyer, if you're not a doctor, if you're not a software developer, it may seem kind of insane. But you can at least experience the world through their eyes, listen to their podcasts, watch their videos, read their books. Blogs, books, go to their conferences, attend them. And you might say, well, God, that's so boring and hard. And it may be, but it will give you the perspective of how the customers think, their culture, their value system, their perspective on the world. And it'll give you a sense of how to communicate with them because The last thing anybody wants to do is talk to a salesperson. Yet the thing they all want to do is talk about themselves and what they're facing. So if you can do that, it becomes so much easier, so much more fun. And that's a little bit of what I teach in Start the Conversation, Get the Meeting. But I put together a complete system for it, step-by-step process for it. And we just had a great office hours yesterday. Where we had a bunch of the people in the course trying to help one of the reps get into it. And if you're in Start the Conversation, Get the Meeting, we just had a CISO join who's starting his own company. So if you're selling to security, which is one of the top personas that we're trying to sell to in the course, check out yesterday's office hours because that person open to working with other reps on how to get into talking with a CISO because they're the most bombarded with sales messages today. And the conversation was great because he had just joined the course. He hadn't taken the course. So he was immediately trying to say, well, how do I get that meeting? And we kind of talked through it a little bit. And And it was like, wow, that would work on me. And that's what we want is what will work in your marketplace. And the person that I was referencing in the intro of this was selling copiers to small law firms, which is even harder than big law firms because big law firms have, as Martin described, IT departments and some of the infrastructure of a large corporation. Small law firms have like an office manager or an admin, and it might have, you know, n number of lawyers there. And we were able to get the guy busy pretty much to the point where he was doing so well, he then leapfrogged into a better technology than copiers. Copiers, as you can imagine, it's a 50-year-old business. It's kind of commoditized. Very much time-sensitive because everyone has a copier and they've got to try and get the contract renewal date and get them excited about switching. So, very complex sale for what is considered a commodity. And look at your sale. How would you get your week packed with conversations? Not pitches. Because when you start with a pitch, you get put into the vendor category. Worst place you can be. No leverage. Conversations get you into a peer category, an equal, a person in the industry. We all want that trusted advisor, but you need trust and you need to have advice. And they don't want your advice until they trust you. They don't trust you until they know and like you. And until that happens, they don't believe you. Do you believe anybody that you don't know?

No.

Because it's 100% about them. You have to become known and liked a little bit. You don't have to be friends. You do need to be friendly. You need that open rapport of a friend or someone who is friendly. Somebody who's not wanting and asking and pitching and pushing for the next step. It will come, but the best salespeople make it seem natural and organic. And how do you do that? It takes practice. It is a skill. It's not a script. You know, everybody out there wants to make it a pure science, and you can record You know, the people who've been doing it for 30 years and then try and replicate it, but the magic is not there. The art, the precision, the rapport, the tonality isn't there. That takes practice and it takes distinctions. And that's why Start the Conversation, Get the Meeting is a year-long program. Now, does it take a year? Well, I don't know how long it will take you. Depends where you're starting. Depends how much effort you put into it. Depends how much Do you want to learn it? But you get a year to hear how other people are doing it. And the beauty is you get to hear 4 years of one-on-ones as well as scheduling your own. You get to hear 4 years of office hours as well as attend them and share, this is what I'm trying to do, this is what I'm getting, any ideas of how I could get better results? And there's always better ways of doing it.

Always.

Even when I do it. And to become great at selling, it does take time, like any performance, like any skill that is more than just— this is not accounting. This is communication with another human being. Think of a lawyer. Think of a litigator. The practice that they put into their presentation in front of the jury. They maybe have done it 50 years, but they still practice, rehearse, get feedback, get perspective, work on timing and tonality because it's a skill and essentially a performance. So, if you're interested in getting your game to the next level, obviously you are, you're here. you want to become better at sales, go to b2brevenue.com. Look in the show notes of the podcast. Check out the YouTube channel. Also, I got a new podcast out there. Have you looked at the Best of the Brutal Truth? What I do is I take the very best over the 12 years I've been doing it and post it there. So if you can't get enough of me, now you can.

So check it out there.

Also, check out the Sales Questions Brutally Honest Answers Show. And the Sales Leadership Show. Thanks for listening. Tell a friend about the show. If you see my content fly by on LinkedIn, give it a little thumbs up, please. A little like, a little comment, a little share would be greatly appreciated. We'll see you next time. Here's some excerpts from a one-on-one that I did with one of the students in Start the Conversation, Get the Meeting course. Now, this person really embraced the course.

After a while.

It took a couple of one-on-ones for him to try each step. He kind of fought it, tried to make it work within his current model. And that really didn't have this type of success. And then after he started, he started to get meetings. He started to get conversations. He started to get all the things that I was telling him about. And he started to get excited about it. He started to see the results that I tell you about, where his week was full of meetings. Now, I'll let you hear this out. I deleted out kind of the specifics of the steps and the tools and the approach, but they're all in the course. If you're already in it, please listen to the full one-on-ones. When you hear the success that people are having, It's not just the steps. It's the matching of the steps with the appropriate actions and pacing. And then you get people asking to talk with you, which is the goal, which is the fun. So let's listen to it and I'll sum it up at the end and give you kind of an idea and recommendation if you want to take advantage of this.

And it's crazy. This This week I'm full of meetings. I was like, what's happening? And like, I— what I did was I baked in like, I just—

I'm very generic.

And people are like, oh, like, like, tell me more about you. Like, immediately I have like 3 or 4 meetings. I already had 2 of this. And, and based on the, on the, on the parameters that you suggested for me, like, oh, go after these bigger companies, X amount of employees. So then by the time I'm talking to them, I already know that, okay, they, they typically have budget. I mean, assuming LinkedIn is correct with the employee size, some of it was, it was off, but it's like, okay, there's still like a deal. It can, it can still happen. And, um, But yeah, I was like, whoa, this is like, I limited to like 30 connections a day. So then that way it's not like, it doesn't go crazy. Cause I remember one of the reps, so do about 30 a day. Like I said, like this week, like 4 or 5 meetings and they're good meetings, you know, and it's just conversations. Like say it's not about like pitching, but it's about working them up to that point where it's like, okay, yeah, we do need to advertise.

So after teaching this for quite a while, here's the steps that you should take. Take the course once, quickly through it. Find both one-on-ones and office hours that speak to the persona that you want to talk with, whether it be the CEO, the CMO, CRO, developer, marketer, whoever it is that you want to talk to, because we break it down in gory detail. We break down the persona and what they care about. And then try each step. Try it with your friends. Try it with your coworkers and start to see the results. Now, most people will fight me on it. They'll spend the first month, 2 months trying to make the system fit into their pitchy email and cold calls. And it works a little better. But it works a whole lot better when you apply it because each step And each pause in between each step has been designed over time to be very effective. And then when you start to see the results, all of a sudden people are replying, people are asking you, people are wanting to talk with you, want to understand what you do. It's almost turning cold outbound into warm inbound. Now, are they in market?

No.

No, they're not. But they're a little curious. And it's up to us. And I show you in the course, how do you build off of that? Instead of us telling everybody how great we are and hoping they can understand why they need us. And instead of them arguing about why they don't need us. Because until you have active pain, everyone's in denial. Think about going to the doctor. Okay, you kind of know you need an operation, but you're like, can I get a prescription? And the doctor's like, he has to ease you, or she has to ease you into the process. Well, let's take an x-ray. Let's see what we're working with here. Oh, can I— how about just a shot? Can I just get a shot till the next time I come in? Then he flips the x-ray up on the light and he points to something. He goes, that's what we're dealing with. That doesn't heal on its own. You have to have surgery for that. He has to build up to that. Until we build up that latent pain into active pain and properly diagnose it and get people to think about what happens if they don't have that operation, they're going to avoid it at all costs. That's why the cold pitch doesn't work. You're just igniting the denial. You're not igniting interest or curiosity. It's just denial. So check out the course. Start the conversation. Get the meeting. It's all at b2brevenue.com. There's an overview video in the show notes on my YouTube channel and on my LinkedIn profile. Pretty much everywhere I am, as well as the website b2brevenue.com. Check it out if this is what you need. You know, this student, zero sales experience, but really, you know, just gobbled up this. And the people who gobble it up the fastest and the best are people who try it and get success. It has nothing to do with knowledge. It's like learning how to do a sit-up doesn't give you a six-pack. You have to do the sit-ups. They're not fun at first, but then you get used to them and you start to like appreciating them. And then you start to get the connection between how you look and what you do. And so you start doing the things that make you look better. This is what we have. It's not just knowledge. It is applying it, taking feedback, polishing it up, and applying the system to your clients.