THIS IS HOW TO WORK SMARTER AND WIN IN B2B SALES AND SELLING

The hard part about interviewing great experienced salespeople is that sometimes they don't know what they're doing differently. And they tend to boil it down to a platitude. Oh, it's all about relationships. It's hard work. The harder I work, the luckier I get. And those platitudes are nice. But as a listener, you're probably like, well, I know that, that doesn't really help me. Well, today's episode is just the opposite. This is one of the interviews where I'm talking to a great salesperson and it becomes very clear why they are doing so well. Maybe it's because we have similar backgrounds and viewpoints on the large complex sale or have sold deals that had similar problems. When I teach closing the complex sale, the patterns become very clear, is that we tend to fall into that commodity trap where the person we're selling to views us as a thing that has a cost. And it'd be nice, but we've lived our whole lives without it. Why don't we wait? Sound familiar? People call it no decision, status quo. But ask yourself, I mean, there's hundreds of things in your life that you're looking at, thinking about, pondering, but you only buy a certain few. You don't buy all hundreds of them. Let's get into this interview. I think you're really going to enjoy this. This is a keeper. This is like one of the ones you save on your phone or on your desktop or iPad. For future reference, it's that good.

Here we go.

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

Yeah, thanks, Brian. Yeah, so I've been in the supply chain industry for really the last 30 years. Started out as a technical guy, actually computer science and engineering as a programmer. And I was— I did that for about 4 or 5 years and worked as a sales engineer for a number of years, and, and I saw the sales guys like in these suits driving these cars, having all this fun, making all this money.

Doing all the work.

Yeah, right, right, exactly. And I'm like, I need to be doing that.

Yeah, I'm on the wrong side of this equation.

Seriously, seriously, right? So, uh, took the leap, took the leap to, uh, to work in sales and got a real education in the, in the mid-'90s, um, to just hardcore, uh, selling printers and, uh, uh, multifunction copier machines like that. Like the hard— I think I jumped into some of the hardest stuff you could possibly do. But, you know, and then have been an enterprise sales rep for part of that, as well as a sales leader for a few years. And then I owned a software company at one point as well.

Wow.

And I took those programming skills, put them to use, and we wrote— I wrote the basics of a warehouse management software system. right, in the supply chain industry. And we went out and sold the thing to like 3 or 4 clients and then actually had to make the thing work, right? So we hired a real programmer to make it work and built a business off of that and sold that company back in 2007, 2008. Wasn't the best time to be selling a business, so we kind of broke even. And then I went back to work. really for the last 15 years as an enterprise software sales rep, right, selling to large companies, selling warehouse management and software systems. And then most recently just had a big change in my career and, and took a, took a role of Vice President of Sales and Marketing at the company that I work at now, Pacific Barcode. So I've got a, I got a team of about 11 people that report up to me now. And so it's just, it's a different transition, right? You know, from—

Well, my career is similar. I started to engineer, pre-sales, sales. What was your motive? It sounded like it was economic.

Actually, you know, I always knew, I don't know where this came from. Maybe my dad was a great, was a big influence on my life. Very, very positive cheerleader for me my entire life. But I always actually, from a very young age, from actually from like 7th grade, I always knew that I wanted to get a technical background but work in sales, right? And yeah, and having that technical background would basically make me a very complete salesperson, right? So that I could walk the walk, talk the talk without having somebody there to hold my hand. And that decision has made a massive difference in my career.

Because a lot of technical people have a real hard time In that transition. They like the economics of it, but they don't like the pressure. They don't like being treated like, yeah, a fix-it man, right?

No, no, no, not at all. Actually, I wanted— so I mean, yeah, I knew that was— I knew that was going to be part of it, um, but I approached the sales equation sort of like I would the programming equation, right? And that's— I literally went through and read every single sales book. And at the time it was Tom Hopkins, Zig Ziglar, you know, all those guys, all the, all the classics. And I literally studied and read and studied and tweaked and adjusted. And I've continued that through, through most of my career.

Well, software development and software engineering, because it sounds like you were in the '90s, that's when software engineering came out.

Yeah, yeah.

Object-orientedness, reusability, component-based development. That's pattern matching.

Yeah.

That's taking how people are doing the same thing 5 different ways and how do you make it generic?

Yeah, yeah. No, that's exactly—

That's a sales process, right?

It is, right? Right. Yeah, that is.

That's it.

That's an interesting— I think that's an interesting connection. That's a very interesting connection because, um, too many of you, I'm Yeah.

Classic salespeople, they look at each sales call, each deal as this unique snowflake that's never presented itself to Earth before.

Yes.

But come on, people have the same motives, similar problems, similar process, similar concerns. And a smart salesperson matches this.

Yeah. Yes.

Did you do that?

That's a really— That is, that's such an interesting— I never made that connection before. That's a really interesting, yeah, observation and insight. Um, because it is true that that's something that, at least for me, and I know you have too, is I've had a massive focus on sales process so that I can build scalability and repeatability for my, right, for my own sales cycles when I was an enterprise sales rep. So yeah. Yeah.

And I think too many people look at it, you know, because there is an art to it, a big art element, but it's not 100% art. There is a lot of similarities between these deals and what's going on.

Yes. Yes. Yeah. I couldn't agree more.

Did that become your superpower as a salesperson?

Yeah, it did. Absolutely. There was a point, there was a point back in, I want to say it was like 2013 or 2014, and it was a real pivotal moment for me. I was— I had been a couple of years at a WMS warehouse management system software company, and I was doing okay, but I was that guy that was like 95%, 98%, right? 90%. I was just knocking on the door to greatness, and I just couldn't figure out how, how can I get myself to that next level? And in one year, I got beat. I mean, I took a beatdown hard.

Right?

I had a couple deals that I was absolutely convinced that I had. Had them in the bag, going to close them, talking to sales leadership. This is 95% done. And I was the first guy out of each one of those deals. I was so deluded in lying to myself on where I really was in that process that it made me, for 6 months, I was so shaken by that experience because I was so sure that I had those deals. So I literally took 6 months and went back and retooled and revamped my process so that I could really clearly follow and understand where I fell down. But I also learned that part of Part of winning these enterprise-level deals and becoming successful at it means that you have to very clearly— you got to do a few things. One is I've got to very clearly line up, you know, I've got to lead my customers through the buying process because they just don't know, right? They don't know, right? They think they know, they really don't know. And the other thing too is when you're competing at a high level, the competition is fierce and you have to— you literally have to outwork the competition. I mean, you have to go— if they're going 3 steps, you have to go 5. If they're going 7 steps, you've got to go 10. And it just requires that of you. And that, once I made that connection, it was lights out.

And did you make any judgment mistakes? Did you view it as like you weren't the golf course type salesperson? Because a lot of us who come from a technical background, we don't have the schmooze gene.

Yeah. You know what, actually what it was, I think I got the schmooze part of it.

You do?

Yeah. What I didn't have though was the true business part of it. And that was the ability to not be afraid to ask hard financial questions or ask hard questions when presented. I was too busy trying to look good. Right? And I let my ego was riding way too high and I wasn't humble enough to ask the actual real questions. You know, because that's it.

Because a lot— when a sales rep and a customer come together, they both have a view of the world, a frame.

Yeah. Yeah.

And one person becomes submissive to the other person's frame.

Yes.

And almost always it's a salesperson. And when that happens, what do they buy? They buy the least amount possible, as slow as possible.

Yeah, that's right. That's right. It's absolutely right. Yeah, that's absolutely right.

Tell me about the business part that you needed to hone and polish.

Yeah. So, so for me, that was really— it was about seeing myself as an equal business stature, right, to those that I, that I was doing business with. When it came to the technical people, of course, Right? When I was dealing with IT, man, I was up here, you know.

You're in your zone.

Absolutely. I knew what I was talking about. But when I was working with, you know, COOs or CEOs or, you know, or, you know, senior vice presidents of operations, I was definitely operating at this level and I was not leading. I was absolutely submitting to their will instead of pushing back or challenging them on their— there are some of their preconceived Notions. I was, I was too afraid and I let fear drive me that I was going to mess up the deal. But what was funny was when I started— when I— and I realized that as part of that retooling is that I had to somehow— I had to either fake it for a little while or I just had to get more aggressive about it and change, change the way that I was showing up in the relationship, right? I was not— I was showing up, um, just timid and I was showing up submissive. And when I started to assert myself, It's incredible how that dynamic changed completely, right? Because I actually— the funny part was it completely flipped, is that I became— that they actually— I would, I would put my hand up and stop and we would— I would, I would challenge them and they would appreciate the challenge. And I didn't realize that that was a thing, right?

Yeah, because you're getting them to look at it differently.

Correct.

Because I bet they were looking at what you were selling as an expense. A cost.

Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

Not an investment, not a critical piece of their business.

Right. Yes. Yeah. Now, Brian, that's exactly right. That's exactly right. Yeah. And there— and it took some time for me. I had to believe that too, you know. It took some time for me to believe it before I could actually sell it.

So yeah, there's a lot of reps go, oh, it's just cost. Can I get 5— give them 5 more points?

Right.

And that's, that's the begging. That's the Oh, it's just an expense.

Yep, yep.

Instead of what can this product do for their business? Now you got it technically what it can do for them, and the technical people were lighting up, and Scott's a genius, thanks for coming in, you're showing this great. And then COOs doesn't understand what the product really does, doesn't care, right? What it does for them.

Yeah, yes, yes, yes.

And after you made this change, what happened to your Your career?

Oh yeah! No, it took off! It absolutely took off! You know, it's not— I started smashing it! I was 120%, 130% a year, right? You know, so actually start— started just crushing it, you know, and then closing bigger and bigger and bigger and larger enterprise deals that were with multiple countries across, you know, bigger, you know, yeah! Just bigger and bigger deals, you know? Get to that point where you're starting to make the— starting to earn that life-changing amount of money that we're all after, right? Yeah!

And it felt good too, didn't it?

Oh yeah, absolutely. Oh yeah. Oh, without a doubt.

It kind of becomes the cheat code when you're selling enterprise deals.

It does.

Because everybody thinks it's about hounding or being the most charming or having the greatest insight. No, it's really being able to get the economic people on your side.

That was one of the big changes and the big shifts that I made in my own personal process was where selling warehouse management and a lot of software systems require some level of return on investment, at least a conversation. There's always, obviously, every sales situation is a little different. But one of the things that I moved— so I created basically a 7-step process. I knew that there were exactly 7 steps in pretty much every single one of my deals. And one of those steps was the financial analysis part of this. And what I realized was in a lot of my deals that I had a lot of deals that would go to no decision. We really weren't competing against competition. It was more, there was no decision. And I had to analyze and think, why are these things going to no decision? Part of the problem was we never got to the return on investment side of it where we could put the dollars to it. So I actually move that to the very front of the cycle, right? After— right after a discovery call, right after we discovered what the pain points, the next step was to actually insert a step for building the business case. And one of the interesting things that I learned, 9 times out of 10, customers had no idea how to build a business case. They don't care.

They've never done it before.

They've never done it before, right? So, so in that step, I built a business analysis or a business case workshop where I would get them part of those steps where I would I would set the expectation. I actually created some videos pre-framing them before they got into this workshop about the things that they could think of, and I would send them these videos. And then we would literally get to work and roll up the sleeves together and build this business case. And then before we moved on, we created a document that had the executive summary that they would take to whoever was the person that had the financial authority to say yes on this project. You know, we would explain the big things that the executives want to know, right? What problem are we trying to solve? What's it costing us now? What's it going to cost us to solve it? Right. And then what's the payback going to be going forward? And before I even did a demo, I would require them to go through that process. It was, it was simply a non-negotiable.

Yeah.

I would not do a demo with them until we got to that point. And that moved my close rate from like, you know, 30, 40% to 70, 80%. Massive difference in close rate.

And in step 1, who are you talking to? What was the persona title?

Yeah, so a lot of times we were dealing with— typically because the person that owned the problem was usually in the operations side for me.

Okay, so they're a business person?

Absolutely, yeah. So it's usually like a vice president of operations, a director of manufacturing, usually VP or director level in either manufacturing or operations.

So they understood the value of business case, but probably hadn't built one before.

Right, exactly, exactly right, exactly right.

Now, in that sale, I agree, that makes sense. Have you sold things where it requires you to do that later in the process?

Or the—

Well, step 1, a lot of, a lot of people I sold to never cared about what the ROI is, but the people who pay do.

Yeah. Yeah.

So you can't do it at the beginning because you're boring them. It's like showing the product to the end people, right? Look, I don't care what it does.

Yeah, yeah, actually. So what, what, you know, in the company that I'm working at now, yes. So that, that is, it has actually shifted to the middle, right? Middle, middle-end-ish with what we're doing today. That was, you know, uh, when selling at least the enterprise-level warehouse management systems was such a long sales process. The cycle was minute. I mean, the, the lightning speed it ever moved where it was maybe 2 to 3 months, right? But then there were some cycles that were a year, 2 years, 3 years. So I had to, as a salesperson, I had to decide where am I going to spend my time? I just got a finite amount of time. And if they weren't willing to move through on that process, I would literally eject out of the sales cycle and say, when you're ready to do this, let's talk, you know.

And what were they using before you showed up? Was it in-house built or paper or competitor?

Yeah, right. Not most of the time. 90% of the time it was nothing. It was just pen. Yeah, pen and paper and manual business processes.

That's smart. Yeah. Because you could go 6, 9 months and then they decide, well, paper's still working.

Not broke, don't fix it. Yeah. The easy thing to do is just to hire more people, which is, which is what, what most people would default to or most organizations would default to.

Now, did you get pushback from your management about this or were they visible to it?

This was a big— this was actually a problem that we tried to solve corporate-wide. And so I was, uh, I was kind of the guinea pig for it because we, we had it. We were doing a great job of, of, uh, identifying and generating leads, but there was a real gap on the no decisions.

Yes.

Right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Especially when they've got something that's working. It's an established business, not a startup.

Yeah, correct.

Lots of change.

Yeah. Yes. Yeah, correct. Correct. So yeah, no, it was interesting to watch just the sort of the Lego pieces and you move them around a little bit and what impact that has. We were just talking about sales process, right? And what impact, what positive impact that can have in getting a deal moving forward. So, and it's funny because it tied back to that thought leadership piece that we talked about earlier, right? So when I switched the conversation to this business conversation and we're talking about return on investment, my feeling of being in control and my feeling of leadership rose exponentially because these, these VPs of ops, instead of now me being submissive to their process, I'm now leading that process. And I was a lot more confident, which added to, you know, my ability to close these things.

Yeah. And they don't view you as a rep. They view you as somebody who really gets it and is kind of leading them. Showing them a smarter way of doing it, smarter way that other people do it.

Yeah, no, that's right. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. So yeah, so you know, in the role that I'm in now, what I'm trying to do is is working to teach my you know teach now I'm on the coaching side of that and teaching my team how to how to work how to you know follow that same process. So it's kind of fun.

It's a little hard too, isn't it? It's a different way of doing it.

Yes, it is.

You're laughing.

Yes, it is.

Yes, right because I I think most reps grow up in. And then, you know, present, demo, propose, negotiate, close, or maybe POC in there somewhere.

Correct.

It's a lot of reactive, and the only proactive thing is the checking in.

Yeah.

As opposed to guiding them.

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. No, part of it. Yeah, yeah, that's absolutely right. I think one of the things that At least in this role. So I've got this process that I created. There's a piece of it, this, because the checking in thing is a real problem too, right? You know, and that's something that is just— there's no value in checking in, right, whatsoever, right? So, and it's— but it's so like, it's just so ingrained in our sales DNA to check in, right? Yeah, it's a nuisance. I get— it's funny because I'm getting it now from— now that I'm, you know, working on leadership, I'm getting it from— On the other side, people sending you— Oh yeah, yeah. As I'm buying, you know, sales tools and investing in software solutions for us to be better, I'm on the other end of it, right? And I'm getting salespeople checking in and I have to resist the urge to come back and coach them as much as I want to, you know. But one of the things that— another thing that made a difference in my sales cycle was we built— I worked with our marketing team and I'm doing this now with my team— is that we built a series of marketing assets. Right, so that can be deployed at every stage inside of those cycles. So from stage 1 to stage 2, there's this arsenal of marketing assets that adds value to the customer's day. Blog articles, white papers, case studies, insight stories, whatever they are, right? And then, and then from state phase 2 to 3, I grew an arsenal of assets. And so what, what, what I did and what I'm encouraging and teaching my team to do Is to use those, add that. So instead of checking in, you send them the asset. Wanted to add some value to your day. Thought you might find this interesting. And so that really— I had a deal. I was about 6 years into my— I was at the last company for 8 years. About 6 years into it, I closed one of the biggest deals I'd ever closed. And I got to the end of the cycle and I was like 3 weeks up until the end of the close for the deal. And I think we were 50/50 with the other competition. And we got to the end of the deal and I asked my— I got the call after doing the fist pumps and the jumping up and down, being super excited for the deal. I took a breath and asked my contact, I said, what made the difference? He's like, Scott, there were 2 articles that you sent us and they connected with us, they landed with us, and it resonated. And it proved to us that you could handle this project on a global level. And that's what tipped the scales. And it's just, we were 50/50 the whole way. And it was these 2 marketing assets that I thought would resonate. And it crazy, it just blew me away that just something that simple would tip the scales.

Because you have to bring something to the table each time. Don't show up empty-handed.

Right.

And content's one thing— topics, issues, what other people are doing— and a lot of reps don't know how to talk to that.

Yeah, yeah.

They're, they're great. Oh, can I help you extend the eval, get your new proposal?

Yeah.

Do you want to have lunch?

Yeah, right.

That's what— that's their arsenal of ideas.

It is, it is, it is.

Instead of like what you're doing is like, what are they concerned about at stage 1?

Right.

What are they thinking about?

Yeah.

What are they thinking about at stage 2? They want to see social proof. They want—

Right.

All these little things, but don't send it all at once.

Yes.

Because reps say, I'm effective, I'm efficient. We just had the meeting, I sent them 18 pieces.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that's right, man. Outlook delayed delivery is your friend, right? You can use that.

Delay in a lot of things is your friend, isn't it?

Anyway. Yeah, reschedule that stuff. Yeah.

And how have you found leading? Because that's a whole nother world.

So I have done it before at a previous company, but this is at a different level. So it's actually— it is. It's awesome. I think, you know, if you— for me, it's a calling, right? It's absolutely a calling, right? So it's something I've always wanted to do. I've just up until this last year, I never quite felt ready for it. And I needed to— I needed to earn my place. to pay the price for admission, to have actually been successful at the role, like highly successful, in order for me to feel like I could then turn around and coach and lead. So what's been interesting about this is I observed a couple of different leadership skills. And to me, I break it down kind of like this. I think on one end of the spectrum, you have the coaches, right? They're 100% coach. And on the other end of the spectrum, you have the master and commander, right? So when a sales rep comes to you, if you're the master and commander, you tell them what to go do exactly, because they're always looking to be told what to do, right? And the other end of the spectrum, there's the coach, right? And there's a little bit— what I've learned is that to me, what's most effective is being somewhere a little bit in the middle, right? And so like when I started this role, there was more of a commander culture, right? And it's fine. It is what it was. And it's because the leadership here and the ownership here just didn't have the time just because the coaching part requires an investment of time. Right. Because when a sales rep comes and asks me for a question, my response back to them is not an answer. It's a question in order to teach them to think for themselves, to start to ask instead of commanding. And so that's been my number one challenge, has been to stop myself from giving an answer, even if I know the answer. Right?

My job is to coach, you know, because the commander, if they do what you say and it doesn't work, who do they blame?

Yeah, that's very true. Yes.

So not only have they not learned, they now don't think you know what you're doing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that's absolutely right. It's absolutely right.

And I think today there's too many tools and people are dependent on them thinking that, oh, do I need to enter another thing into phase 3 to hit the button on day 17?

Right.

As opposed to a little empathy, like, what did you hear last time? What do you think's going on? What are you scared of?

Right. That's right. Absolutely right. That's absolutely right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So—

And what do you like about coaching and leading now?

Oh, well, you know, I mean, listen, there's a pretty amazing satisfaction when you have such a positive influence on someone else's life, right? You know, I've achieved, you know, achieved a great deal in the short period of time that I've been working and to come in and help others achieve that level of success is just very satisfying, right? You know, it's very— what's the saying that a rising tide buoys all boats? Right. So having an impact, I don't know. To me, sales has a— the sales team has sort of a fiduciary responsibility to the organization. I look at us and our jobs as almost like we provide— the work that we do provides jobs. Nothing happens until you sell. How many times we said nothing happens until you sell something?

Right.

And so there's people in this building that I'm responsible for as the Vice President of Sales and my sales team. But there's There's an honor to me that comes with that. I'm honored that I get to do this. And so that's what I love about it is I literally get to do that. I get to wake up and do this every day and have influence and lead these people in a positive direction so they've got a great life.

And if you were to meet, let's say, somebody not in your company to detach, from what you're doing today. If a rep came to you and they were performing at a B level, yeah, how would you help them get to the A level?

You just described the last year.

Can you break it down into a 2-minute answer?

Yeah, I'm gonna try, man. I'm gonna try. Uh, it really comes down to— it comes down to the master and commander philosophy. What I've found is a lot of the B Players want to be told what to do instead of learning how to think for themselves. Right? And so the coaching to teach them how to think for themselves. And then once they can do that, then layer in a scalable business process that they can follow. Then start measuring them by that business process. And once you do that, then it's lights out. Right now, I'm there where this team is really starting to kick and really starting to take off because of that.

And how long did that take?

A little less than a year. A little less than a year.

Sounds like a lot. It's not a lot of time.

It's really not. It goes by so fast. Yeah, incredibly fast.

Hey, Scott, I really enjoyed this conversation. Where can people go to connect and follow you?

I'm just LinkedIn, you know, Scott McKenzie. Yeah, with the Pacific Barcode. That's, that's the number one place. Yeah. Meet you, Brian. Really enjoyed this. Thank you. Thank you for doing this. Like I said, I've been watching you for a while and I've embraced a lot of what you've had to say.

So this was, this was a thrill and an honor for me Now, you might be saying, well, if I asked for that business case or justification up front before I did a POC, that doesn't fit my sales process. I get it. And you're probably right. Where it fits into your process is up to you. But what you should take from this interview is how did he come to this conclusion? Why is he doing it? How to stay focused on the deals that can and will close? And try and find those patterns. And here's the beauty, especially if you have other reps in your company. Find the ones who are taking more of an analytical, thoughtful approach as opposed to the brute force grinder approach. Because those people are thinking about the deals. They're trying to find their patterns and ask them, you know, so how— what's your sense of when a deal's going to close? How do you evaluate a deal? And don't just ask them super high-level questions like, why are you so successful? And it'll take— you'll be like me trying to get down and down and down to what they really do differently. Because when you work with other reps, you can leverage their patterns, their experiences. And that's really what your manager wants you to do is talk to them, hear them out. It may take a while to get to the real crux of the issue. It starts off with, oh, I just work hard, or I grind it out. People like me, or I really work on this report. But then get Deeper and deeper and deeper. Have you ever had a deal that stalled? How did you prevent that? What was their reaction? And if you want to become great at these skills, Closing the Complex Sale is the course for you because this is what I teach. Because what we tend to do in the large complex sale is try and leverage the tips and tricks of the simple transactional sale. But then when we apply it to the large complex sale, it ruins the sale. It's the difference between, you know, a friendship and just a simple interaction with people. In a friendship, you're willing to build up the friendship. You'll do things for your friends. They need to borrow things. They need help. They need this, the advice, whatever. And you're willing to invest in that friendship because you care about the person and eventually you'd like them to reciprocate. That sounds like a complex sale, right? What most people do is no, they steal the tips and tricks and they think it's going to work in the complex sale. And it backfires because you sound and act like a salesperson, not like a partner or a helper or a coworker. And this is something that people have a hard time getting over with because the reason we fall into the commodity trap is because we acted like a salesperson. So we get treated like a salesperson. We get treated like a commodity vendor, not a partner, not a coworker, not a collaborator. And these distinctions, I get it, it takes a while because everyone thinks they're already doing it. But if you're not getting the results, it might be that you're not really doing it the exact way or a better way. I understand it can be frustrating. Especially when you're being pushed by your company to do the salesy stuff, the pushing and the hard closing and the next step and, you know, like value proposition. Everyone's turning into a sales robot, but we forget why we hired salespeople. We hired people because that's what other people want to talk with. If they just wanted to talk to a chatbot, they would talk to your chatbot. The people part is where the magic happens. It's where the other person opens up, shares what they're up against, what the real issues are. And that's where you can bring them the information and the vantage point and their mindset that they need to get the deal done. And, you know, they say 80% of the best of the best deals are just not closing. This is why. So you can either try and find a better deal— good luck with that— or you can become great at closing the complex sale. But wait a second, Brian. I don't have much of a pipeline. Wait, I have an answer. Start the conversation, get the meeting. Oh boy. And do I love the emails I get. Just got one last night from somebody who says, Brian, I'm so psyched. I'm getting a lot of traction with this. And it's fun. And it's easy. And it's smarter than trying to come up with the most relevant personalized email and cadence ever. How's that working for you? I'm on the receiving end of them. They're not very good. I don't know what the people do. I don't know why I'm reading this. I don't know. You're not understanding the modern world. And the beauty of the modern world is that we're still mammals. And if you work at that level, magic happens. Go to b2brevenue.com right now. Sign up today. Let's get you going. Let's get your career on track. The best way is to follow the best approach. We'll see you next time. Thanks for listening. Tell a friend about the show. Check out the best of The Brutal Truth and Sales Questions, Brutally Honest Answers.