WHY THESE DEALS WILL STOP YOU FROM BEING RICH IN B2B SALES

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Links are in the show notes below, as well as our link to our partners over at brevitypitch.com, the fastest, easiest way to become great at sales and practice. Before it's showtime. Here we go. So we all know about red flags in deals. What do you think white flags are for deals?

I think in general, there's a lot of moments where you just want to give up with deals and just throw in the towel, throw in the white flag because it just seems too hard. There's too many barriers, obstacles to get there. So Whether it's deal related, there's a lot of times you just want to throw in the towel and give up and go on to the next one, or just in sales in general. Sometimes you just want to throw in the towel and give up as well. So I, the default is for that to happen, whether it's a deal or something more macro with, with sales in general. So I think you have to understand that it's not going to be easy, that there's a lot of moments where you're going to want to give up and you have to be resilient a little bit and figure out how do you navigate all that chaos. So it's, I think you're lying to yourself if you, say there's not gonna be moments like that. So how do you anticipate that, prepare for them and plan to not throw in the towel and keep getting through those ups and downs with the deals?

Yeah, I think it's a skill in that you gotta be able to read a deal. And I had a great interview with a great sales leader and that's what he saw as the difference between a B and an A player. A player can kind of look at a deal and pattern match it against the deals that did close and the deals that dragged on forever. And, you know, if you look at your forecast, probably the number one expense that you have is working on deals that don't close for whatever reason. Are they closable? And this is something that as a sales manager, they don't tell you. Because they don't— they might have the never-give-up mindset. And I'm— I don't advocate for giving up. I advocate for prioritization because usually you're there.

Difference.

There's a huge difference if you're there in realistic terms 9 months too early. Every salesperson thinks in quarters.

Right?

They think in this month, this quarter, and they push and they anticipate, and they typically run out of things to talk about after they give a proposal. So there's nothing left. Being able to read the deal, you know, how about the person even? You know, how credible is this person? And what they telling me correct, or is it just what they perceive? And I think we see kind of red flags sometimes as white flags or green flags instead. We can sometimes read this engagement too optimistically, probably way too optimistically.

It's very true. I mean, salespeople have egos. You want to be successful, you want to make money. So all that drives you to start hearing things or thinking things that aren't necessarily true. So yeah, maybe it's more the green flags than the white flags where you read stuff incorrectly and you think that your champion or whoever it may be has more power than they actually do. So I think there's a variety of factors that go into it. It's probably the company pressure for sure, because you want to hit numbers by the quarter, by the end of the month, they give you incentives to do that. So That trickles down to the individual salesperson. And then also yourself, you do have typically that resilient, gritty attitude if you've been pretty successful in sales. So you overcome a lot of challenges, but there's a difference between overcoming challenges and pushing and being pesky and persistent on deals that have no chance of closing because it doesn't matter how good you are. To your point, if If you're at the wrong timing, it's not a good match. They have other stuff going on that are higher priorities. If it doesn't matter how good you are or how great your product is, you're still not going to get that done, or it's going to take 12 or 18 months and you're going to have gray hairs by the time you're done with it. And it's going to discourage you for other opportunities. So it's so true. No one actually talks about this very much and definitely sales managers and leaders. Don't talk about this very much. It's more about just, you know, what's in the pipeline and put 3x what you think is going to close and that type of thing. So maybe it's, you're trying to people please, you're trying to be liked. I mean, you want to look good on the pipeline forecast, so you put more in there. And then all of a sudden, even though you knew originally that it wasn't probably a legit deal, now you have it in the pipeline and you talk to someone about it and now you're like, oh shit, well, I gotta Maybe I can actually get this deal and you start believing your own BS and then it just trickles down from there. But there's, there's probably a lot of psychology about why you actually chase those ones that, you know, aren't winnable.

Yeah.

Why?

Because you want it to be. And when you're pushed, you kind of justify it. And there's a cognitive bias, I guess, investment bias. It's like, They said it about people who went in the military will never speak poorly about the military, even if they hated it, because they put 4, 8 years of their life into it. And if they admit that they hated it, then they'd have to admit it wasn't right for them. And I think we get into these deals where we hear what we want to hear, or that— and we also got to understand the champion Doesn't think through how we react to what they say. They're saying things to get what they want. That's their motivation. It's up to us. It's our time, our responsibility to filter through this and read it. Is it too optimistic? Why isn't this deal progressing like other deals? Oh well, they got this and this. Is that real or is that an excuse? Or do you have a champion who wants it, nobody else in the company wants it, but they won't tell you? Or it's their little wish and there's no other anything behind it. They have no political authority, no credibility. And they just love talking to vendors and learning about new products or looking for a new job. You got to get in, like, what's their motive? What's really behind it? Because what the words they say are nice, they're hints. It's not the truth. Put little tests, make them do something. Then you'll find out how serious it is. And if you just get excuses and stuff, well, maybe it's just a hobby of theirs, but that's not a deal. And it's not wrong to have conversations with them. It's just not a deal. Just because they're a prospect and you're a salesperson and you have responsibility for your pipeline. And I think this goes to a side effect, an unintended consequence. of activity-based selling is that everything's a cog. Everything has to have a number, a probability, a stage, and people start playing the game and forgetting what the objective is. Just nobody comps on activity. I've never seen that. They only comp on closed deals. And what I noticed is that people never have time to work on the deals that will close because they're busy over here with the deals that will never close or won't close in their lifetime.

Yeah, a lot of, a lot of great points there. I— it made me think of, at the beginning, it made me think of Shark Tank because I watch that quite a bit. And sometimes Mr. Wonderful, or Kevin O'Leary I think is his name, he'll, he'll tell tell the entrepreneurs that they need to go out back and shoot it because like whatever their business is, he doesn't think it's realistic to make it in the long term. But because if you're an entrepreneur, I mean, another example, that's your baby. You put years into getting there, especially on something like Shark Tank. So the thought of actually doing that and having to start over with something else is just brutal. And you want to keep holding onto that with that bias you were talking about. So that's probably some of it too with those bigger deals that you've, you put your neck out there internally. So know about it. And then now you're just doing this dog and pony dance to try to make it feel like there is a chance to win it and to make it look internally that you put in your full effort. But that always usually backfires because if you put it in there too early, then it's just gonna, it's not gonna turn out well. So, and then how do you put a percent on something when you've only had 1 or 2 meetings? What is that, 25%, 50%?

I mean, how do you put it?

Yeah, yeah, it's, it's, that's just Yeah, fluff for sure. So it's, uh, it made me think of the Shark Tank example because sometimes you have to just give up, uh, proactively because you're prioritizing the right way. So it's how do you actually focus on the things that are driving the revenue and more likely to close versus the others? But this requires thought, it requires planning, it requires taking a step back, getting other people's opinions that you trust. And because we're so busy doing those activities, going from Phase to phase and the CRM, we lose track of that. And we also don't want to hear the truth as well. And we don't want to admit it to ourselves. So salespeople tend to have a know-it-all attitude and they don't want to learn and admit when things are going astray. So it comes down to prioritization to your point, and you have to be very relentless with that, whether it be daily, weekly, and whatever's in your pipeline. And you have to have the tough conversations with yourself. It starts with you because if you can't admit it to yourself, then you're certainly gonna keep exaggerating or fluffing or making stuff up internally at, at your company. So how do you be real with yourself about the pipeline and the deals and actually spend 30 minutes and think about, is this really gonna close or do I just wanna hit it in Q2 or Q3 because it's gonna help me pay for my vacation?

Yeah, it requires proactivity. You have to think about it. You have to, test it. You have to test yourself with it. It's too easy just to have another conversation with them. And the natural correlation with these type of deals is they like talking to you. They usually are the talkers, and they have action items for you, and they might have a fancy title. So it looks and it feels like a real deal, but it's not behaving like a real deal. And you're spending time on it.

Test it.

Because when do you want to find out that it's way too early or it's not a real deal, that there's nothing behind it other than curiosity? What, the end of the quarter? You really want to figure it out that day? Or these deals are the ones that always start over. It starts at 7 figures. End of the quarter, they go, well, maybe we'll buy one, or we can't buy one because we have to do it all or nothing. That's a sign the deal's not going to happen. It's not a real deal. If it's too good to be true, it's probably not true. And how many QBRs have I been through with the 7-figure deals and they're talking to one person and there's no real business problem, no deadline. And I've seen vice presidents not ask questions about it, or they— the only question they have, when can you get me in front of them? They're buying the same bullshit the rep did. Like, why is it this big round number the last day of the quarter every quarter the last 3 quarters? Do you guys see a pattern here? And people think, oh, this is just experience. Well, no, anyone can have experience. Few people develop the skill. You have to proactively do this because who's going to remember it? Nobody wants to remember the bad things. They'll remember the loss. They won't remember the why. They'll blame the re— the champion didn't tell me, misled me. Because what's the number one complaint of reps? People who just won't tell me they're not going to buy. That's not their job. It's our job. You know, blaming them doesn't do you any good. You didn't learn anything. You're going to do it again. Feels good. Oh, it's not my fault. I'm a genius. I'm a rock star. Well, be a rock star judging these deals because that's your time.

Yeah, you have to look at yourself first and people don't want to deliver bad news. And to your point, it's not their job to deliver bad news to you or for them to tell you one way or the other. So you have to figure it out yourself. But yeah, it's tough. I mean, you do get a lot of those green flags where Someone's really— they're excited about it. They have a high-up title. They push to get more things done, and they seem to be interactive with it. You're making me think of some deals I have going on right now. But eventually, eventually they got to give you something. There's got to be some micro step or something tiny that gets you in the door, or they commit to something, spend a little bit. I think a lot of times we where these go awry as well is trying to make them too big too fast, and you're not starting with something smaller. So that happens quite a bit where you, because you have that ego, because you've done stuff in the past, you want to get that, that big massive deal. But usually what happens, it's an all-or-nothing type thing and nothing happens like, like you said earlier. So how do you know that you want to get to that end goal, that, that bigger outcome, but plan for those micro things to get in the door and, and, and lock yourself out. So I think starting small sometimes too will help you not have as many moments where you give up. So if you, if you, you know, play that, that long game and get in the door, that's going to be very helpful as well. But ultimately you have to be— you have to have some system to write down this stuff. So what I do is anytime I lose a deal or it goes sideways, whatever it may be, or win a deal, I try to write the characteristics of why that happened. And then there's always similar things that come up from it. Some of it's timing, some of it's the type of company, and are they growing or are they going backwards? I mean, there's, there's all these different factors that go into it, especially the mind frame of your champion and champions. You know, what type of person are they? Do they actually have something they're trying to get out of this? Are they trying to do big things within the company? How long have they been there? Because if they've been there for more than a year and they're not performing, they're probably not going to have capital to get anything done that's substantial. So there's a million things that go into it, but you have to write this stuff down because you can't remember it from memory, and it's, it's going to keep catching up to you no matter how smart you think you are.

Yeah, because they tend to turn into traps which become almost impossible to avoid, because if you've got A VP at a company who wants to do something big, who's to say no? And what type of salesperson would say no? So you have to kind of go along, but you kind of got to test it as well. And I've fallen into it, fell into one last year. Highly credible vice president wants to do this. It's already approved. Let's just get a quote and let's get it done. And, you know, I ask to schedule a meeting with the economic— don't need to do that. It's all set. They do whatever I want. Oh, and it's just real easy to just boom, here's the quote, and it goes nowhere. Now, could it have been salvaged? It was a smart— of course it was a smarter way of doing it, but you got all this momentum. You don't want to slow it down. Time kills all deals. Kills it when you go too fast too. And all that time that you put into it was just thrown out. Could have been invested in something that was closable. Or you just slow it down. What's the hurry? We'll get it done, don't you worry. But we got to get— make sure all the pieces are in place. Or what I've seen happen is they just cut it. They don't delay it. They don't push it off. They just, we're not talking about it. And then it starts over 3 months from now and you gotta do the whole thing all over again, but now with a bad taste in their mouth for some reason. And these are all over the place and they're usually inbound or easy bound. And sometimes it's a champion who's lonely. They want to change their company and you're the, the useful idiot, right? You're like, okay, I'll help you and I'm free, right? Let's work on some stuff. And that's okay. But is it achievable with that strategy? Maybe. But if it isn't, you're free support for them, free consulting, free help. And look through your pipeline. And I was ruthless with this because I would fall into these traps and they would take up enormous amount of time. And by the time you figured it out, it's too late. So I'd be like, okay, I'm gonna put my deals in order of closure and I'm gonna work on them in that way. And if it's too good to be true, I'm not gonna pipeline it. I wouldn't give visibility to these deals because then you have 2 people, because typically your manager falls into the trap too because they need the revenue and they assume that you believe it's a deal, that they should believe it's a deal. And they may be even fool— more of a fool than you, and they work on it. But if it doesn't close, whose fault is it?

Goes back to the rep.

Yeah. So you really got to be ruthless with your time because it's all you have and really test it. Does this feel, and is it acting like a deal that closes, or is it moving too fast in one weird, bizarre direction for no reason?

And you have to also speak on that point. You have to let them know, like, if you do think it's truly a deal and they're trying to go too fast because they're all excited, they want to go big. If you push back on them proactively and say, hey, you know, typically if we go this route, it usually backfires, and see how they react to it. If they react and believe you and they go, you know, take a step back a little bit, then maybe that's a good sign. So you also have to be willing to push back a little bit. At the right times to, to the customer to show your expertise, show that you're not just the salesperson, you're a peer, you've done this type of stuff before. And if we go down this path, look, there's only so much time I'm gonna commit to this, even though I want it to happen, because I don't think it's realistic and we have to get XYZ done before they would even consider this. So you, you can have those, those real conversations. And I, I think that's that acid test you were talking about as well, to see how they react to it. And ultimately, the more commission-focused you are, the more you're going to be relentless about this stuff. You can get away with it when you have more guaranteed money and it's maybe inbound and you're working for a company that's growing like crazy. But when you are scrapping and clawing and you're trying to close deals and get that commission, you're going to think about this stuff way more. And I know that's definitely changed for me over the last 5 or 6 years with, with different situations that I've been in because it's It wears you out if you're chasing those deals that don't close or they're not even winnable and you're trying to win them anyway, then that will wear you out. And going back to the first thing we talked about, that makes you almost want to throw in the white flag for sales in general. If you keep chasing deals that are not likely to succeed, that's going to wear you out over time and you're going to be like, shit, why am I even in sales? And maybe it's just because you haven't flipped your perspective to really focus on the areas that are most likely to be successful. So that, that was probably the biggest thing for me is learning to do this because it— at some points I have my back against the wall more, so it forced me into it. I'm not saying everyone should do that, but, uh, you think about it differently when, when, uh, that comes up. And then also, how, how well can Dustin or Brian do on that many conversations. If you're spending all your energy on that deal that isn't going to win, then you're not spending the right type of energy on the ones that actually could win, and you're not bringing your full self to those meetings or those situations. So there's a lot of dynamics there, but ultimately it's if you had a couple hours in the day, what are the deals that are going to be winnable? And put all your effort into those. And the rest of the stuff, you don't have to necessarily take it off the pipeline and not work on it at all, but just let it kind of more naturally flow and really focus on the stuff that's going to bring in the revenue because you don't get paid otherwise.

Yeah, because ask yourself at the end of the quarter, how many deals didn't close and then why did you really run out of time or are they really no closer the next month than they were that month? And that's a lot. That's 30% of your time. And you hear a lot of reps who can do the 5 meetings a day or the 10 meetings a day. Assume that's not you, because I haven't met many of those people. They can do a lot of the parrot meetings where they either do nothing or they say the same exact script over and over again. Kind of the demo dolly.

Yep.

But that's not selling, or that's— if that works, great, but probably doesn't work. And remember, you're a biological machine. You need to rest. You need to think about your deals. You need to plan. And all that stuff goes away because you're reacting to a false positive. And a lot of reasons why people get out of sales, they don't like the lying prospects. All the prospects mislead me. Sure, they misled you, or you misled you. And that's hard to realize that, hey, I hear what I want to hear.

Mm-hmm.

I do what I want to do. That's why people work on them. People tend to work on what they want to first, then the have-tos. When do people get their taxes done? January 31st, when they get all the forms?

No, never. Not, not at all. Not at all.

April 15th plus, because they have to. What they do in all that time, they Anything but what they have to. So that's why people fall in love with these deals. That's why it's so easy to fall in love with them, and it's almost impossible not to fall into these traps sometimes. It's, it's how you manage it, the trap, once you're in it. And slowing something down is counterintuitive. It's very intuitive to send a proposal.

And that's good. Feels good.

Yeah, it's gonna happen. And then you blame the person just telling you, oh, it's all approved and stuff. It's my fault for not testing that. I go, this doesn't seem like any deal I get. Usually somebody wants to learn about it and then you share what do you want to achieve? You try a sample project and it evolves. That's how a normal deal does. I'd like it to just hit me on the head and do nothing. But when that happens, most likely it's not a real deal. But it could have been.

It feels good to be busy and moving towards something, but you're working on the things that aren't really going anywhere, but it feels good. So you, you just keep doing it and you avoid The tough conversations with yourself. But ultimately, I mean, if you keep blaming everybody else, eventually you're going to regret that at some point. I mean, the sooner you can take ownership yourself, whether it's sales or other stuff, that's going to help you so much more because you're just going to have spite. You're just going to have angst for all these other people that supposedly messed up the deal and it makes you look good internally or feel good, but it's not really helping anything or fixing the problem. So the sooner you can be real with yourself, the sooner you're going to get more of this done and not have as many of these, or actually have more white flag moments. Because the sooner you can realize this, the sooner you can focus on the areas that are likely to succeed, and you're going to— your sanity is going to go up because you're focused on the winnable deal. So you actually do want to have these white flag moments and be accountable. With yourself, and then you can manage it internally the right way.

Yeah, because everyone talks about the forecast— when is it gonna close— but nobody's really talking about, is it a real deal? Who else needs to be involved in this? What are the signals that it's a false positive? And the manager doesn't want to do it. They don't want to discourage the rep. Because how does a manager look and they say, yeah, that's not a real deal and they close it?

That's what I was about to ask you is like, how does, how does the manager, I guess you don't want to publicly call them out, but maybe the one-on-ones, that's where you can have that conversation.

But yeah. Yeah. And usually just like, so who else have you met there? Well, I, I sent an email to the vice president. No, no. Met, talked to, live, interactive. No one else, 90% of the time. And okay, what's the business initiative and what's the deadline for it? You know, this is actually is where some of those checklist items are somewhat helpful, but they can mislead you because that person can tell you something. What you got to do is really pattern match. And look at this as a skill, not a problem. Because once you look at it as a skill, it permeates everything you do. Because you don't have one deal to work on. You probably have, what, 5 or 10 a month or a quarter? And if you can pattern match which ones are most likely to close, you can focus your time. Because if the other ones are real deals, they'll be deals. You'll have competition. You'll have to compete economically, technically. You'll have to test everything out. They're going to want to talk to references. Use your time wisely. If it's not going to close this quarter, why panic and put all your time into it? Take your time, build it up. It's a skill.

And to become great at sales, the best way is to model somebody who already has become good at sales and to hear other people who have become great at sales and the journey that they're going through, the false beliefs, The misnomers, the mindset issues, all of this stuff that gets in our way between where we are and the income that we want. Let's face it, we're in sales because we're money motivated. We're competitive. We want to be better every day than we were yesterday. And how do we do that? Just really, you know, read a book, listen to a podcast. That's good. Good start. I like it. But then you have to take action. And then you want both tactical and strategic ideas. You want mindset. You want strategy. You want to understand how companies buy. You want really deep content and examples, case studies, so that you can learn from other people's mistakes.

That's what I'm here for. I'm here for you to learn from my mistakes.

And boy, do I got a lot of them. So go to b2brevenue.com, sign up for the courses. There's 2 major ones. Start the Conversation, Get the Meeting fills up your pipeline, gets rid of that problem of, oh, I don't have enough leads. I don't have enough meetings. It gets those conversations started with the people you want to talk to. Now, it's not about a pitch. It's about a conversation. Now, everybody thinks of conversations when you're talking or you're online at the same time or you're on the phone or Zoom at the same time. That's not a conversation. A conversation's when the client is talking about what they care about, what they're interested in. And that is what we call qualification, where we can sense where are they and how do we build up that curiosity into interest into urgency. To get a deal. And these are skills that we need. They're lifelong skills that we need in sales. And then how do we get a deal closed? Yes, anyone can take an order. But what if they don't know how to get it done? You got a new account where you're trying to get a big change done internally. What are the issues? If you're not planning that through, odds are it's not going to get done no matter how much your champion wants it. So Winning the Complex Sale solves that problem for you. Why waste all your time on these false positives or these no decisions? Because they don't pay very well. They pay 0.0. What you want to do is pay a lot. So sign up today. Invest in yourself. You're the asset in sales. Quit waiting for somebody else to approve it or train you. See if you can get it expensed. That should be your first sales obstacle. Your first sales challenge is how do you get your company to pay for it? Just go down, tell your manager you want to do this. I put a little example email in the show notes right below here. Just swipe up and take a look at that. And if they won't, you got to ask yourself, why won't you? Why won't you? Oh, it takes time. Well, you work all day. You're working wrong all day. Why not improve that? There's the time right there. Oh, the money, Brian. It's money. Well, you make more money if you become better in sales. And Start the Conversation pays for itself the first week because you're going to get at least 2 meetings, just learning from the very basics of it. Closing the Complex Sale will pay for itself 100 times over. Students in it tell me it's the best money they ever spent because they now have control over their deals. And it doesn't end. Some give up. Some give up after they win their first deal and they think they've got enough. No, come back. Come back. Keep going. You can get even bigger deals, more deals, faster deals. That's what it's all about. Sign up today. Put the excuses away. Yeah, excuses feel good, but they're expensive. Excuse— you know what the excuses are costing you? Tens, 50, maybe a couple hundred thousand dollars a year in lost income.

Really?

Yeah. The difference between where you are today— let's say you're making $150,000. Decent, decent income. But you know, there's other people in your industry making $300K, $400K, $500K. Well, how are you going to do that? You all think it's just about getting a better job, a better territory, a better manager. They can help. Go do that. Then what happens? It's still you there with those leads trying to close those deals and Do you have the game?

Few people do.

Everyone thinks they do. Why not prove it? The market tells you what you're worth.

Accept it.

Now become better. And the way to become better is to improve every day. Really make a daily routine of learning and developing because it's not at the knowledge level. You have to become unconsciously competent at these skills, which takes time, repetition, and emotion. And I show you how to do it, how I did it, how I've taught hundreds of people to do it. But you have to want to because I can't force you. A lot of people wish I could. So do I. But I can't. So sign up today.

We'll see you next time.