THE TOP 3 THINGS THE BEST SALESPEOPLE FOCUS ON IN B2B SALES AND SELLING

Why do we multitask? Why do we do more than one thing at the same time? We walk, we play with our phone, or we listen to a podcast. It's kind of innate, isn't it? We enjoy being distracted. But what's sales? Sales is just the opposite. Sales is all about focus, intensity, because with that focus, You find the answers. You don't find the answers by being distracted. You never find the answers when you're distracted. You find them when you're deeply focused on something. And this is one of the topics we're talking about in this interview today, because being highly focused, looking at your time as a scarce resource. And it is. We don't pay attention to it much. We only look at the deadline and we tend to procrastinate until that deadline becomes looming. And we tend to hope for the best. And what is the biggest distraction in the world today?

Instagram.

No, no, it is activity. And this is what a lot of managers don't understand. With this activity-based selling, yes, everyone feels like they're accomplishing something, but are they? It depends, of course, on your sale. You know, how many meetings can you take a day? It may depend on your personality, but how many of them are qualified? How many of them match your ideal customer profile? How many of them have anything more than curiosity? I saw an interesting post this week on LinkedIn that kind of told me a lot about the state of sales today. Or there was a couple, because one was popular, then everyone kind of copies it. And the point was, why don't prospects just tell us when they're not interested? Okay, so this is a 2-sided misconception about sales. First is we're not in the service interest business. If you get that, congratulations. Most of us don't. We're in the interest-creating business. But I think his real point of the post was we're chasing them. Why don't they just say they're not interested? They are, but we're not listening. They don't just say, hey, I'm not interested. Some do. They unsubscribe. They block. But most people just don't want to get into it. Have you ever had to break up with somebody or been broke up with? Mine's more the latter. It doesn't feel good. It's kind of the ultimate rejection. You don't feel like saying it, and the person you know doesn't feel like hearing it. And sometimes it's best handled by an email or ghosting. But we need— some of us need that direct hit in the head to get the hint. But we're in the hint business. We're in reading between the lines business. It's up to us to judge their level of interest. Where are they? Are they just curious? Is there any urgency here? If they're not participating with you, they're probably not interested. Remember that Sex and the City episode, He's Not That Into You? That was pretty much what I had to tell female friends in my life when I'd hear about this guy that they're really into, but he's not showing that interest or not doing what they believe somebody who's interested should. And you hate to be the deliverer of that bad news. Nobody likes delivering it because it doesn't feel good. It feels bad. You're hurting somebody with— you're really helping them, but it feels like you're hurting them. The person who does the mature breakup doesn't feel good. They feel terrible, but they're doing the right thing. People need sometimes to be told directly. But in sales, we have to be that person who interprets it In between the lines. Enough of a rant. Let's get into this interview. Uh, I enjoyed this guest. I think you're going to get a lot out of it. Uh, please listen for the nuances and ask yourself, how can I become better at it? Because the time thing, there's no best at it. It depends on your style, your sale, and your skill. But it's all we have. When you look at your comp plan, there's a deadline— a year, a quarter, a month, whatever it is. We have to utilize that time the most effective way we can. And one of the most effective uses of time is talking and practicing. Thinking is great. Writing down is great, but until we talk, we're not connecting it in our brain. We think we are, but we're not, because the talking has verbal tonality to it— excitement or boring. So the words are just a part of it. The inflection, the tonality, the energy, the excitement with it Is a whole nother thing. This is what brevitypitch.com is bringing to the sales world, and I'm working with them on all kinds of sales conversations, including deal review. Wouldn't it be nice to have an AI deal review talk through your deal, have them ask you the critical questions, dig into it a little bit deeper, and spur the The blind spots in your deals? Or how about a discovery call? Or a negotiation call? Or a competitive call? Or a business acumen practice session? Or a venting session? Because most reps want to vent. They want to express their frustration. They want to talk through what they're going through, kind of a sales therapy. Maybe that's the right market for Brevity. It's not just cold calling. It's not just, you know, phone conversations. It's interacting and being able to develop those skills. Great use of a product. Check it out. Bring your manager. Go to brevitypitch.com and see what you can do today. I've got a demo of it on my YouTube channel. You can see it there as well. You can just go to the YouTube channel and search Brevite, and it'll come right up, and you'll get to see how I use it. And it's game-changing because you have that sales buddy that you always wanted, but they're always available, they're always professional and cooperative, they're always giving you honest, clear feedback to make you better. And that's how we get better. Here we go. Hey, Stephen, thanks for joining us today. As a way of getting started, give us a little background on yourself.

Yeah, thanks so much, Brian, for inviting me here. So yeah, Stephen Hague joined, joined a company called Infoblox back in the day. It was a private company. We took it to IPO with selling a product that Microsoft were giving away for free. Uh, at the time. So we were charging a premium for it, uh, you know, and, and that was the real— I know, like, the real time to, to perfect sales because, you know, we were an unknown company charging for, for something that was given away for free. So it was, it was a hard, hard selling. So I then focused on a company, you know, uh, Nutanix, and went off to Rubrik, um, Nutanix successfully IPO'd, and, uh, rumor has it Rubrik might IPO later this month. So, you know, specialize in taking companies, uh, from, you know, private to public. Uh, and then currently at Google Cloud Security, joined there 3 years ago, uh, to build that division. Um, worked with Sunil Potti from Nutanix who pulled me across here to come and help set this up. So yeah, really focus on building something small, unknown, and, and you know, building out for it with a big team.

And why sales for you? What was the motive, the drive?

Yeah, so funny. So, Bryan, I thought when I was at university that the streets were paved with gold in marketing. So yeah, well, it was okay. Yeah, certainly if you, you know, if you can get a good job in Silicon Valley, but being in London, you can do well, but I was the guy that was, you know, I joined a graduate scheme at a company called Siemens Network Systems, and I was the guy that was writing all the RFIs and the RFPs and providing all that information. And, you know, I was earning good money, but then I was watching the sales guys come into the office and sales girls, and they had the flash car in the car park, and they were going on the club trip, and they were taking customers out for golf. And they had their expenses, you know, long lunches. And I'm like, yeah, I need a piece of that. So that was, that was it. Yeah, that was it.

A little fear of missing out, a little envy and control over your income.

Yeah, definitely control over your income. And that for me, also being the type of person I am, sort of, you know, really focused on working hard to earn money, you know, but also focused and, you know, quite happy to self-start, work from home, and, you know, really focus on stuff that is gonna go and create money. I'm not really that money orientated, by the way. Uh, I, I'm success orientated. I love winning. I hate losing. Um, I'm— I don't bet because— and I don't gamble because I hate losing more than I do winning. But, um, yeah, that's That's my background. Yeah.

A lot of salespeople seem to have that competitive spirit.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I don't, you know, people always ask me, do you wanna go and play tennis? I'm like, if I go and play tennis and learn now, I'll lose and I hate it. I'll give up. So yeah, it's a bad trait, human trait that I have, but good for sales. Yeah.

And how did you learn sales? What were some of the key Influences on you?

Yeah, I mean, that's, that's a, it's an interesting one. I mean, the first company I worked for was Siemens Network Systems. We were a Cisco reseller, so we had nothing other than the people. So we had no product, we had a fledgling managed service. So it was all around people, uh, how we could make a difference. And we had a phenomenal team. And that was the first thing I, I realized that actually, if you had a really phenomenal team that were all pulling in the same direction. We had great management and great leadership there at the time as well, um, and we just got things done and we had some, had some fun. But as I said earlier, with the, the real, the real time that I learned how to sell was at Infoblox. We had— I would, I would say back then we had the sales force on the street. It was the envy of every company. So, you know, everybody got headhunted from Infoblox. It was like, if you can sell Infoblox, you can sell anything. We had a guy at the top there called Mark Smith, and oh my gosh, he was, he was brutal. Uh, yeah, he was brutal on, on process. And, and, and, you know, he would come over to fly into London, and he, you know, he demands, you know, to fill his diary, and we'd fill his diary with 30 meetings, you know, and we'd try and tire him out so he would like, you know, he'd go back to the hotel, but he wouldn't, he had so much energy. So, but he actually, I remember 3 guys stepped up when I first joined Infoblox as a junior, well, junior salesperson, and 3 guys stepped up, a guy called Steve Glynn, now at Netskope, Mark Caprio, and Dirk Maréchal, who's no name. And they said, give me— these were the 3 top sellers at Infoblox. And they said, what are the 3 things that— or what's the number one thing that you would recommend these, you know, to everybody? And Mark Caprio, the guy was relentlessly relentless with his activity. He would do the 20 meetings a week.

Really?

He would do— oh my God, yeah. But even if they were just— he would take somebody for a, you know, a Coke and a sandwich. But he would just be building that whole relationship. He would do 30 meetings a week. He was relentless. He would play golf, by the way, first thing in the morning between 5 and 7, and then he'd turn up for work. Yeah, the guy was special in that way. Great friend of mine now as well. Steve Glynn told me it was all about— he ran the Boston area, and he told me it was all about building a community. You have to nonstop every day figure out, you know, who can help you sell. Is it a channel partner? Is it an alliance partner? Is there someone in your business that's done some work with them before? His his whole thing was building that every day. He would be having beers with Palo Alto or whoever it was to build that that he he could find a way into another customer. And so yeah, I took that on board. And then Dirk Marichal. probably gave me the most important thing at the time. And he said, it's all about qualification. Uh, you know, most important thing is you have a certain amount of time in your day. Make sure you spend it on things that are really important and they're going to make a difference. And if they're not, be polite, save the customer time, and, uh, you know, save yourself time.

I think that lesson is something that is hard to learn because Being distracted feels good.

That, I would say that's true because you can fill your day with admin, you know, Salesforce admin, which is, you know, important. You can fill your day with, you know, inviting people to events or, you know, there's so many demands today from managers around, you know, what ticks their boxes. But are they Are they actually gonna help you sell more? And also, I think the benefit of being slightly older, more mature and having more experience is you're able to say no. Whereas when you're young, it's really hard to say to your manager no because, you know, they're gonna get you a pay rise or get you some more shares or— You're in charge. Yeah, they're in charge. Whereas I think when you're a little bit more mature, you have more experience. And I think actually, you know, if you say no with a reason, generally a manager will kind of respect your decision, especially if you're a top performer. That always helps.

Was there a particular epiphany that kind of got you on the time thing? Because it matches almost exactly with qualification. Yeah, because you're not gonna spend your time on something you're not gonna get rewarded for.

I would say having kids, having kids and having a family was my epiphany of spending time on things that are important. So yeah, I love spending, I have 2 wonderful children, Bella and Luke. you know, Bella's into a drama, so, you know, go and watch her at the, you know, in theater. That would be a, you know, a top thing. And my son, I'm not sure where he gets his sporting ability from, but, you know, he wants to, you know, be a professional golfer. Um, and he's, you know, he's a good sportsman. And I, I, I put it down to this: I will, I will spend as much time as I can with a client that wants to be helped, and we can help him with our our solutions and we can, you know, I, I like problem solving. If there's a problem that we can solve, we can fix it. If we can't, we— I'm happy because— but the barometer I use is I would rather watch my son play sport on a weekend than work a weekend working on an RFI or an RFP that we're never, never going to win. And so the barometer is that if, if you're gonna— I'm happy to earn some, you you know, earn some money and help you. But if you're gonna waste my time and I'm gonna waste your time, let's, let's move on. Um, so that was definitely the epiphany there, I'd say.

Yeah, because, you know, when you're a young single guy, you know, maybe you have nothing going on during the weekend, right? An RFI might be a great use of time.

You're at the bars, Brian. So, uh, yeah, great. Yeah.

And I used to have a similar barometer where it'd be like, I could have just taken the day off instead of wasting it going to talk to somebody who doesn't care.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think losing deals, because everybody, you know, you, you lose deals through your career. And I, I think I can probably remember most of the deals that I've lost. They hurt, you know, the, the battle scars from them. So losing deals, I think, uh, definitely sharpens the focus because that feeling of, you know, wasted time, uh, but not just my time. I actually think the other, the other thing I think why people would come and work for me is that actually I value their time. So, you know, there's often when I join another company, I'll— one of the technical engineers will join me, and what they hopefully appreciate about me is I would never ask them to do something that I wouldn't do. And therefore, I'd never ask them to respond to an RFI, an RFP if I wouldn't do it. So I'm as protective of their time as I am of my time. And I think that's quite an important thing to, you know, to have that, you know, that passion for your team as much as yourself.

And what did you learn from one of those losses? Maybe a painful one early in your career. I don't mean to dig it up, but I'm just to share it with other people because it is important.

Yeah, well, I tell you, I reckon that of the RFIs and RFPs that I've blindly responded to, I would say if it's not 100% loss rate, it's probably north of 80%. So, uh, again, going back to the time and qualification, is if something comes in now that we have not been involved in or had conversations or had an opportunity to help shape, the polite response is, thank you so much, you know, but we, we don't have the time to respond. However, if you would like to, you know, spend some more time with us and we could spend some time understanding how we could fix your problem, look, we're all in.

Yeah.

Uh, so, so yeah, RFIs and RFPs are something that I've, you know, had a real— in my career A real average time.

Now, have you ever sold in North America by any chance?

Yeah, we have. Yeah, had some customers in the US and quite refreshing, refreshingly different approach to working. Yeah.

Let's talk about that because when I talk to people in EMEA, they seem to feel that RFI, RFP is like 1 in 3 as opposed to Zero.

Yeah.

And that procurement has a much larger role in the early stage of a deal. See, in the US, almost never do they get involved in the early part unless it's a big company, and it's not a good sign.

Yeah, I, I tell you, there's a really good book to read actually, um, If you like a, if you like a good read on the plane, um, Prisoners of Our Geography by a guy called Tim Marshall who writes for the Sunday Times in the UK. He is a really good book, but it talks about cultures and how they've evolved. Um, it talks about Americans, the way that obviously the majority of Americans have been, are immigrants, right? They've, they've made it pretty much They've made a choice. They've made a choice to leave their safe countries, you know, where they— and took a risk. And you— I, I read that, and that was a really, like, interesting moment for me because I was like, the way that when we work with Americans, they'll take a risk with a technology decision. I find they'll, you know, they'll do their due diligence, but they'll that they definitely move faster with technology choices in, in the US, without a doubt. When he— and then he talks about obviously the Brits, right? And, and so with the Brits, our, you know, thousands of years or hundreds, is that, you know, years of, of, um, of evolving, is most of the time we all worked for the lord of the manor, right, farming in his fields. So we didn't take necessary risks because we never had to, right? And, uh, and therefore I think there's, um, a lot more compliance, um, and, and checks and measures in, in selling in, in the UK, right? And, uh, we definitely see that, that— and I always use the analogy in America, if you make a technology decision and you get it right, great. If you get it wrong it's not so bad. You took a risk, guys. We make a, you know, we've made a calculated risk. It didn't pay off. In the UK, if you make a risk and get it wrong, it, it, I think you get fired. Maybe not fired, but you'll get pigeonholed. So it's a, it really is a very different culture to work in, I, I would say.

Yeah, well, that kind of makes sense because, you know, I was thinking of my own ancestors in the You know, 1700s, 1800s, leaving Ireland and Scotland. Yeah. To, to land in the luxurious Northern Canada. Right. It's like, I'm not sure that's the destination you wanted to go to, but yeah, it had to be pretty bad.

Right.

It had to be some real big reason. I don't know what it was.

It rains a lot. Yeah. It rains a lot. Yeah.

So, but back to the procurement, do they tend to get involved earlier or they just want more structure and the appearance of structure and process and methodical?

I would say that probably depends on the relationship. If you, if you, so one of the things that Mark Smith at Infoblox used to say to us, he says, when you're gonna go and recruit recruit someone, find out how many times they've moved companies and how many times they've been into the same company and sold the same, you know, sold another technology. So certain companies, Infoblox, Nutanix, Rubrik, I was able to, you know, complete a hat trick in certain customers. So what he was really keen to see was that we were at the head of the cycle, we had the relationship, we could drive the— understand the business problem work with the technology to solve it. So he was really keen that we got ahead and we were shaping that opportunity by introducing the technology and then procurement coming later. Whereas I think where you don't have those relationships, procurement potentially will come in first and you're just another number. Yeah. So I think that depends, but I definitely believe that there's more compliance In, you know, in the UK and EU.

And how were you able to have that hat trick at 4 different companies or 4 different products into the same customers?

Yeah, I think that this goes back to, again, the new younger people join companies and I help to coach them and, you know, On that, uh, how to build sales. I always talk about sales is like inning. You have to listen, right? You talk too much, I reckon my wife probably— I wouldn't have had a second date. So we talk about, you know, we talk about, um, building partnerships and, you know, stuff goes wrong. And I— there's a large company in the UK Uh, it's a US company but with a big UK presence, and we sold them, uh, some Rubrik technology, right? And, uh, it probably didn't meet up to this— their record— what they wanted initially, okay? And, uh, but you know what, we stuck with it for 18 months. We were in there every week, uh, we— and we made it work. And the product management, we got them involved from, from Rubrik and We ended up using that experience of that company to build an outstanding product that we could then go and sell to other people of that scale. And, and the head of IT there always used to say, guys, it's what you did in the bad times that sets you, sets you back. There are too many people I see that will sell something, hand it over to a, you know, delivery team And leave that conversation. Well, if it works, great. If it doesn't, you are never going back into that client ever again. And, you know, I think it's really important to build that partnership with the client and, you know, you get closer to a client in bad times than you do good times.

Yeah, because I think, you know, reps want to move 100 miles an hour, right? They've got quotas, they're ready.

Yeah.

But the client isn't.

Yeah, well, you have to, you have to have many plates spinning because what I found in a lot of the technology is all about timing. Often in data protection, you know, in what we're doing in cloud security with Google right now, in, you know, Nutanix and even Infoblox, you had to find the time even if the product, the current legacy product they had wasn't working. They didn't really want to go and put their hands up and say, hey guys, we've made a mistake, we want to— can we bring some budget forward? So you had to— you had to— sometimes you were lucky, but if you make enough— going back to the activity part of Mark Caprio— if you make enough calls and you have enough activity and you've got enough partners helping you, hopefully you can line them up so that, you know, you can close some short-term business, work on some longer-term you know, opportunities. But yeah, without a doubt, it's, yeah, it's all about just all of those things that I said earlier.

Yeah, because I've got a lot of clients that are like that, that they get the technical win and then there's a large gap between that and the purchase, which is usually waiting for a have-to. There's a lot of want to.

Yeah, yeah.

But the have tos always get purchased first.

Yeah, without a doubt. One of the things that actually from Rubrik that there's a guy there called Mike Tornincasa, really like top, top guy, introduced all the sales culture at Rubrik, which meant that, you know, everybody had this play, you know, played off the same or sung off the same hymnbook. But he had this thing called a champion's deck. for these big deals. And the Champions Deck, it does sound a little corny, right, to a Brit, but the Champions Deck was really cool. And the biggest deal we worked on last year that we closed, we, we went through the Champions Deck process. And the Champions Deck was all about, okay, what, what is it that you have now? And you would document this with the client, right? So you— we, we take them out for a workshop, you'd spend a spend a day with them, and you would— this champion stick was something that you would work with to get together. And the key thing with this was, what is it that you've got now? What are the problems that you've got? If you had a blank piece of paper, what would this look— you know, what would you build and what would it look like? Then obviously, then the rubric solution, in this case, this is what it was capable of doing. And then you would give them a journey on how they could get there. And that champions deck evolved throughout the process, so that if somebody left or somebody came back and and questioned the decision, you could all go back to this champions deck and say, "Oh, but hold on! You you said that this was a problem, and this is how we're going to fix it." Oh yeah, yeah. Okay, great. Off we go. And by the way, you'd have a TCO and a financial summary in there as well. And that champions deck became almost like a little Bible. that you could always refer back to. And often customers would then take that out of our format and put it into their format and use that to go and do their internal selling, obviously with some tweaking there as well. So with that gap, obviously having everything documented— people forget, people change.

Yeah.

Having that sort of, you know, documented as a joint document was critical.

Yeah, please. you know, whoever you're competing against, you know, throws in their lockouts. Oh, you don't need that. You need this.

Yeah.

And all of a sudden the light has been moved and now you're looking around. No, it's this, isn't it?

Yeah. Yeah. What, so, so that actually happened. So Rubrik, we, we competed a lot against a company called Cahizity and Cahizity had, Rubrik was really focused on, on on securing the data, whereas Cohesity was more backup and, and secondary storage. And so they would go in without a doubt and they'd say, hey guys, you know, Rubrik's really good at that, we do that too, but look, we've got secondary storage too and it's the same price. And we, you know, we'd be scratching our heads because the customer go, we can get all of this for the same money. And then we go back and say, but that wasn't your problem. You told us the problem was you wanted to secure your data ransomware. We do that because we have immutable backups. And they go, oh, yeah, okay, cool. So that— you're right, that was out without a doubt, you know, stop the, the FUD coming from the competition.

Yeah. And I got to imagine, given the dollar amount, it was highly competitive.

Without a doubt, every— everything, you know, all of those products were, and all of those highly competitive on the dollar amount, but also the fact that we were unknown. You know, nobody had heard of Nutanix. You know, it was Nutanix, and what do you make? You make cereal? And hyperconverged, no one had ever heard of that before. Yeah, they were, you know, not only is it a new technology, it was, you know, new name. You've got to build all of those. So partners actually, by the way, were a key way to really help do those introductions.

And as a salesperson, what do you feel is your strongest characteristic?

I think, oh, it's a good question. So I would definitely say qualification and sort of, you know, being brutal with my time. And I think customers respect that when you're open. In fact, just came off a call now with a client that's looking at one of our technologies we're not a great fit for. but we're a good fit for part of it. So rather than waste their time, look, we're not gonna bid on this RFP, but actually where we can help you is here and we're really strong. And, you know, that's our answer there. I think loyalty is key. I think, you know, never shirking the tough stuff, right? It's too easy to not return a call when, you know, a customer is, The technology might not be delivering to the customer's requirement, and and I think holding their hand through that journey, which can be three, four, five years, is and staying staying aligned to them through that time. Yeah, I think that's probably probably my my Spidey power. I think I've by the way, I think I've also got. I look at I look at salespeople. There are salespeople in life that have got high IQ. They're really smart. They're really academic. They've been to Oxford. They've been at Cambridge. They've read every book. They can medic the hell out of everything. You know, and they'll be successful because they can follow a process. I think where where people have a lot of IQ, you can't measure that EQ. Sorry, you can't measure EQ. And I see a lot of successful salespeople who may be slightly on the spectrum somewhere, but but. Have a high EQ. They're able to read a situation. They're able to read body language. They're able to see subtle cues in what the customer said and listen. And they listen more, by the way. I think though we— and when I'm recruiting, I look for people who have a higher EQ, you know, that are able to build personal relationships that People with IQ, high, really high IQ might struggle to do. So there's definitely a place for both. So yeah, I have very high EQ.

Because you would think that qualification is IQ, but it's really EQ.

Yeah.

It's pattern matching. How does this deal sound compared to the deals that close? Or does it sound more like the deals that never close?

Yeah. And gut feel is, you can't teach that. Um, you, you have a sense, and I think that comes, by the way, with experience, right? You know, you know. Um, so, so yeah, I think definitely pattern matching. There are, there are certain times, I think, when you've got a young sales force that may have just graduated, having a process, helping them with, you know, understanding things like Medic. Um, I have a cut-down version of Medic that I'll use for deals, you know, spending hours and days with people, you know, reviewing a medic template. For me, it's like, it goes back to the time thing, is, you know, some people might find that useful because they've got a process, but for me, it's, you know, there's a lot of that that comes from experience in the UQ side of things. So yeah, without a doubt. Um, yeah, I think it's the great thing about sales is it, you know, it, it fits everybody. But the other thing as well, by the way, Passion. If you're not passionate about selling and you're not passionate about your technology and the product and your leadership in your company, you just find something else. Go and find another company, because if you're not passionate, I, I don't know how you can sell a technology if you're not passionate about it. So be passionate about it.

And how did you get passionate about security? It's not glamorous, right? It's— or, yeah, they don't make movies about it, right?

No, that's true. I mean, secure, uh, so Infoblox, Nutanix, Rubrik were more infrastructure. Security is something that's kind of relatively sort of new to me. Um, the story about behind Chronicle, which fits, uh, you know, is the basis of what we're doing today, is super powerful because it was built after Google got hacked in 2008. And so the story is we use it to protect ourselves, and we can— and we are, you know, a massive large hyperscaler. We can help you protect yourself with the same technology. Would you like that? Oh, and by the way, we can, we can help you save costs and improve efficiency and, you know, help you move to the cloud. So that's a real I think I can be passionate about that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because, you know, if you've got Google's backing behind you to help you secure your environment, well, I want that, not a little startup with, you know, 3 engineers. Cool.

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

I'm on LinkedIn, Stephen E. Haigh. And And yeah, yeah, love to connect if anybody wants to. Look forward to hearing from anybody with any questions.

Focusing, prioritizing, utilizing your time to your best results. Those are all great skills, aren't they? Ask yourself, how well are you doing it? Look at your past week and ask yourself, how well did you utilize your time? Judge for yourself. How much time was okay? How much time was just wrong, wasted? And remember, we're biological creatures. We all need to rest. Because what does everybody steal their time from? Sleep.

Sleeping.

What's the most important thing? Sleeping. Why do we steal it from the thing that is most important? Because it's the easiest. In sales, this prioritization, this triage that we do on our deals is critical, and I see very few people doing it. Even when I talk through why it's so important, people get addicted to their pipeline. They get addicted to all the possibilities, the distractions of sales. If you enjoy going to an enablement meeting or a marketing meeting, ask yourself why. There's no revenue there, but it's a distraction. And too many of us are very comfortable with distractions because that's the opposite Of focus is distraction. And what's the biggest distraction today? Activity. Sounds counterintuitive, but activity is distracting us from results. Not all activity, just most of it. When I go into an account and I see the activity board and the metrics and stuff, And revenue's going down, and they cannot understand for the world why. Everyone is just so busy filling up that CRM with information, data, critical analytical data. And I don't need to look in there to know why it's not going up, because everyone's running to lose deals. How can we lose a deal faster? I love that metaphor. How about if we take our time and win the deal?

Huh? What?

I'm too busy. Okay, look at your comp plan. Comp plan is your compass. What do you get paid on? Revenue. That's it. I've never seen a company pay on activity except for the very early, early stages where where there isn't any revenue. They'll pay for pipeline or meetings. Eh, and guess what everybody does? They fake it. Oh, oh, you can't say that out loud, Brian. That's the unspoken truth of sales. Everyone's faking it. And when, when it's faked, what do we call that? Playing business. And it may feel like business, But it doesn't pay like business. And that's the sticking point. What we want is something that pays, and that's revenue. And to figure that out, we've got to be hyper-focused on the ones that can become revenue. And you may say to yourself, well, this is obvious. Then why aren't you doing it?

I am.

Why aren't you 200 or 300% of your quota? Something other than me. No, it's you. Sorry. How many times can you switch companies before you realize this?

Eh.

How many economic cycles can you go through before you stop blaming the economy? Eh. Ask yourself, do you want to be rich or do you want to feel like you're right? And I say feel like you're right because Because you're wrong, but you tell yourself you're right. And this is the problem with sales. It's so subjective that anyone can convince themselves they're fantastic at it. And I don't want to talk you down if that's what you want to do. I want to talk to the people who want to become rich. Because without that motive, without that drive— and we talked about it in the interview— that chip on the shoulder, I look for that too. There's got to be some emotional driver for that person. Otherwise, they become the, the activity monkey, the rock star, head of the leaderboard. But are they closing anything? If they're not, who cares? And everyone today is trying to make up for it in volume. Uh, how's that working for you? You got to do a hell of a lot of volume. And I, I see it in on the marketing side. If it's not working, we've got to do 10 times more. Okay, what do you do then? 100 times more? The volume game doesn't work in the skill arena. We're in the skill arena. In B2C, maybe you can make up for it in volume. In B2B, it's a skill game. You can get a lot of stuff started in B2B. You can build up that fake pipeline, but will it close? If you want to become great at sales, go to b2brevenue.com. I got 2 major courses there. Start the conversation, get the meeting. We'll fill up that pipeline with qualified conversations that turn into business meetings. It is not like any other prospecting course you've ever heard of, seen, or taken. You start a conversation, not a cold call, not a pitch, not a begging for 15 minutes bullshit that you see, not a show me you know me Girl Scout bullshit that you see. That, that might get somebody to open your email, but it doesn't start a conversation. The conversations where the magic happens— interactive, about them— that turns into about you and your product eventually. You have to build that. The other is Closing the Complex Sale, where I show you how complex sales work. And it's not the way you're taught. And if you're looking at things like MedPic, MedPic was designed by forecast managers who have never been on a sales call. It was even in the operations group. I worked for somebody who came out of that company, and believe me, they had clueless how companies buy. Decision-making process—that's one of the Ds in MedPic. Well, who knows that decision-making process? MedPic thinks the customer knows it. Customer doesn't know it. Decision maker. What decision? The economic decision? The administrative decision? The political decision? The technical decision? The when decision? Oh, all of a sudden, that's not a sales process. That's a checklist. And a misguided checklist. I teach you how it really works, how to keep it moving, because I did it and I'm doing it, not because I sit around and look at someone else's forecast all day and do pattern matching about the deals that close and the deals that don't. It came out of an order-taking company, not a sales company. Very different. Anyone can take an order, few can sell. You want to be the one who can sell because it's very crowded in the order-taking arena. So go to b2brevenue.com. I've got 2 videos there. One is an overview of the learning management system that shows you how the course works, how to sign up. The logistics. The other video is on which course is right for you and if the course is right for you. It's all about B2B, reasonably high dollar value because you got to do a little bit of investing here in time, effort, and skill. So you got to ask yourself, is that worth becoming better at it? Is there incremental income for me? If you're in B2B, there is. And you get access to all the content day one. Nothing is gated. You get office hours every other Friday at 2 PM Eastern. If it doesn't work for you, you can submit your questions beforehand, get them answered during office hours, and listen to it when you get a chance. They're all recorded. Everything's put back in the course. You never miss anything. All the one-on-ones, everything is recorded and organized in the course and well described. So you can consume the course at your pace as many times as you want for that 1 year of access. You can pay all at once or you can pay in 12 monthly payments, but it's not a membership. It ends after 12 months. It does not auto-renew. You have to proactively renew it yourself if you want additional access. So there's, there's no scam to it. It's 100% value and more value than you can probably consume in that year. Up to you. How good do you want to become at sales? Most people want to become just good enough. Just good enough. How's that sound? I'm just good enough. No, I want to become the best. Go to b2brevenue.com. We'll see you next time.