WHY WE ALL NEED THIS SKILL BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE

Hey, before we get into the interview, I want to make sure you're aware of our other podcasts, the Sales Questions, Brutally Honest Answers show, which is a very quick, under 5 minutes in most cases, sometimes just a few minutes where I answer your questions. You can just send me any question to my LinkedIn profile, Brian G. Burns, and I'll put it in the queue to answer. Also, the Sales Leadership Show. If you're looking to get into sales leadership or you want to hear from the world's best sales leaders, that's where I interview them. Check it out, the Sales Leadership Show. Also at b2brevenue.com, you can learn all about all the courses. 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. In sales, at certain times, doesn't it make sense to be a little paranoid?

I think it does. I think it gets frowned upon because it comes off potentially as being negative or you're being pessimistic. But the reality is, if, if you're in sales and You're trying to make money. I think it can be advantageous to be a little paranoid sometimes about your deals and opportunities. It's not being negative; it's really trying to make sure you keep money in your pocket, get more money in your pocket. And but if you have an outgoing personality, you're typically confident. You you want to have that positive energy. It seems counterintuitive to individual people, and I think also the the leadership. could see it as negative or pessimistic. But I think ultimately, if you want to get where you're trying to go and you're trying to close these bigger deals, you have to have a little bit portion of you that is paranoid and digging deeper into these deals to make sure you're not missing anything.

Yeah. And I'm not talking about when you're in front of the client. I'm talking about, yeah, when you're back at the office, when you're not talking to a client, wondering what could go wrong. What typically goes wrong? Is this too good to be true? Am I believing something that I want to believe, or am I believing what's really happening? You know, that can come across as paranoid, but that's good deal analysis, right? And what's the difference? I guess you could take it way too far. It's like, you know, what happens if the CEO gets kidnapped? That might be a little too far, but there's a whole lot of things. It's like, what happens if some executive doesn't want to do it at the last minute? Do we know who that would be? What has gone wrong in the past, not just with your deals, but with other deals within the company? That's probably your barometer. Of what you should be worried about.

Definitely, it's I think part of it might be it's items and things that you don't want to hear. You don't want to you don't want to admit to yourself that some of that stuff could happen or that it has in the past. So maybe you just blindly go go past it and don't write it down. Don't document it because it's painful to think about. Hey, what happens if? That C-suite person seems like they're a little disgruntled. What happens if they end up going to another company or they quit right in the middle of this deal process? Do I have other people I'm talking to or was everything all with that one person? Because I know pretty much anybody in sales has probably had that happen to them before where they were betting on somebody and then they left or got fired, whatever the case. But it's painful sometimes to think about that on the front end, or you have to sit down and plan and block out time to do that. And I think people end up not wanting to go through that pain on the front end, so then they end up experiencing it later when the deal gets blown up or something happens. So you have to get into a system or routine of prioritizing your deals. First off, you got to figure out which ones are the most important that you think are likely to succeed, and then you narrow that down. And then those require more time and effort, more Planning. So whatever your system is, you need to do that because if you don't think through those things, it's bound to happen, especially with all the stuff outside of your control. So you have to really dial in, to your point, what deals have been successful, why, what were the commonalities, and then where did things go haywire on other stuff that fell through last minute for whatever reason? And then there should be trends typically. what I've seen, no matter what the industry is, there's always these commonalities and trends, and you can start getting closer to the, uh, what's likely to close, and then what things can you do to prevent some of that bad stuff from happening.

Yeah, and you gotta ask yourself, why are managers always so paranoid during these pipeline reviews? Because they've been through it, and they know if they present your stuff in the same positive way you are, and it doesn't close, it reflects poorly on them. And this is why I always told my managers, you own the forecast. Don't tell me what the rep said. You own it because I own it when I put it up above. And if you're not thinking through this stuff, is everybody's very comfortable when something goes wrong. Let's have an emergency meeting, the fire drill, thinking that that's going to fix something. But how do you fix, oh, we're going to push this off till next quarter, which happens probably more times than it does close? Or why don't you look at this as well? A new competitor introduced. Or why don't we just get one? But give us the enterprise price, please. All these things that probably happen more often than the deal closes, but we don't want to think about it. But if you're proactive, are you thinking about it? Or which one's proactive, being paranoid or waiting to see what happens?

It's being paranoid, which I guess is a little counterintuitive with the name of it, but being paranoid is being proactive because it's gonna— it's way harder to fix the problem once it happens. To your point, those emergency meetings or whatever Hail Mary you're going to throw up to try to save a deal— of course, sometimes you can figure it out, but even if you do figure it out and you do all that and you give some crazy discount, you get your CEO involved, nobody feels good about it afterwards. I mean, maybe a little bit if you get a commission check, but you feel stressed, you feel burnt out. You're like, man, do I have to keep doing this every time to win these deals? It's not fun for anybody, and I'm sure the customer probably doesn't appreciate all the tactics as well. So that doesn't feel good, and it's really stressful and probably going to make you burn out. Now, if you do it on the front end, although it can be a little painful if you're not used to planning or the more analytical side, it's way easier than what I just mentioned before. So it's, it's like, which, which hard do you want? I think the paranoid version is way better and more proactive, and it shows that you're actually serious about your role and you know what's going on with your deals. I mean, if you're a manager, to your point, and you're having these meetings, pipeline meetings, and the rep is just completely oblivious to all this stuff that could happen, then that's probably a red flag that they don't really know how to sell or they're not ready to take it to the next level with finding big new logos and new business.

Yeah, because what does a manager hear? They love us. This is a sure thing. It's a no-brainer. And then when it doesn't close, what do they hear? Oh, um, it was political. Uh, it was all about price. Um, somebody on the board slammed it down. Something we had no control over, could never have foresaw this possibly happening. And so what's your champion say? Well, they're not calling us back now. Who else do you know there? Crickets. Crickets. Oh, there is something else we could have done. And even when I, I talked to reps on the phone, they always tell me how perfect everything was done. And I'm like, does it matter? Did you get points?

A little, little pat on the back for that.

Do you feel better telling yourself that? It didn't close. Now, most of the stuff we know, right? It's, it's too early. The executives aren't bought in. The champion is way too optimistic and not telling anybody about it, assumes that they're just going to get it done. And, you know, that's what I ran into when you sell to technical people. They have no clue how to get things done at the company. So they think that their wish is someone else's demand. And their wish is their wish. No one else cares. And you're going along with this, you're playing along, and you think that that champion, that point of contact represents the company. They represent themselves. The company is some oblivious cloud of people somewhere, and who knows how bought in they are into this. You're going by what the champion tells you, and the champion's telling you what they want you to know to get what they want. Because do we know the truth? We think we do.

Doubtful.

Right? Do we even know the truth about our own life? Right? How often do we get a wake-up call going, oof, right? I gotta get my act together. A bill is late or something's broken or you forgot somebody at the airport. And in our deals, it feels uncomfortable because we need the deal. We want the deal. We have to get the deal. So to think how we're going to lose the deal almost becomes superstitious, that, that if you think about it, you're going to make it happen instead of you can prevent it from happening and going wrong.

And that's what I meant when we, we first got into it, is that it— if you're constantly focused on what could go wrong and you're preventing that, some people will see that as Oh, you're just focused on— it's never going to happen if you're just focused on the stuff that could go wrong. But that's not what we're talking about here, because you have to be focused on that. Otherwise, you're going to really struggle and run into these things. So, and it's also when you're talking about the champion, because this still happens to me. It's hard to completely get out of it. But when you get so consumed with one big deal, these opportunities, you're just You have that tunnel vision and you don't see things the same as maybe someone from the outside that hasn't been involved into it intimately. So you're in that fog of war that you don't see certain things, even if you are documenting, even if you are preparing and trying to do stuff. So it's good to get some outside perspectives of people that you trust, that know what they're doing, that have done deals like this, and, or your manager, let them beat it up a little bit because you do get sucked into that fog of war and you don't see stuff, some of those red flags. And, and the champion one's probably the hardest because You want to believe them. They're excited and you get excited and then they want to go bigger and it sounds great. And they, they say they have political capital in most cases and you can somewhat understand if they do depending on their history or what their title is sometimes that, but at the end of the day, if you go back and look at most of the bigger deals, like the bigger opportunities that aren't inbound and what have you, most likely there's several people involved that you were somewhat having a conversation with that were bought in. So it's— but it's hard because you want to believe those people. You want to think that they can make it happen. And I'm sure every once in a while they do make it happen. But it seems it's getting harder and harder even for— I mean, you go over $10,000, it still goes through a lot of loopholes that you wouldn't probably expect. And then you talk hundreds of thousands or millions. I mean, it's some serious folks involved from the C-suite, private equity, the board. I mean, You gotta understand that there's a lot of stuff that happens behind the scenes that you don't see.

Yeah. And your champion doesn't see them either. So if you don't see them and your champion doesn't see them, but you both believe they're happening, you got 2 overconfident people assuming it's gonna be a whole lot easier than it is. And the single-threadedness I remember I learned this pretty early on. I liked the first call when it was just 1-to-1, but if it stayed 1-to-1, those deals never closed. Because why is it not— why don't we have other people in here? This touches other people. Other people need to be involved. And if they say, oh, don't call my manager, don't talk to anybody else, I'm working this internal, they always do whatever I say. That's a sign they never do what they say. And everyone I did it to, I used to ask, who's the decision maker? And guess who always said, I am? Everyone. No one ever said, I have no decision-making authority. And when you ask, what's your decision criteria? Well, it's well documented in my decision criteria book up here, and I'd be happy to show you that sometime. There's no decision criteria. It's up to us to make the decision criteria. Decision criteria is whichever one I feel is nice and will help my career the most. And that changes like a light switch between you talking to them and your competitor talking to them. And aren't you a little paranoid about what your competitor is going to do? Because this is probably equally important to them than it is to you. And they're gonna figure out that they didn't win. Are they gonna just roll up and go to the next account, or are they gonna fight? And if they fight, how do they fight? Probably the way they fought before. Do you have a plan to prevent that from derailing your deal?

Mm-hmm.

Oh, I'm supposed to prevent that? Yeah, if you want the deal, or are you just happy participating?

Man, it's, it's just hard to think long-term sometimes that everyone's just the way society is. We're all just instant gratification. We got to get stuff done now, activities, and boom, feel busy, all this stuff. We've talked about in the past, but you have to think of what would that feel like if you spend 6 or 9 months on a deal that you think is realistic to close and it's going to be a great commission, make you look good at your company. And if that falls through for whatever reason and you didn't prevent it, how painful is that going to be financially? Also explaining it to your manager and then your manager having to figure it out above that. And it's just a It's not a fun place to be. Obviously, you're never gonna close everything, but if that's happening over and over again, eventually that's gonna look bad on you. And either you need to find a different type of sales role, or you're— or you need to really reflect and start planning in a different way. So I try to think of the pain, uh, because I've been through that pain and it's not fun, but it's better to try to prevent it from happening versus Repeatedly just over and over again. And yeah, you're right. I mean, it's competitive out there. I mean, it's probably more competitive than ever. And you're going against the status quo. You're going against the incumbent that's been there for 15 years. You're probably smaller than them, not as well known, and you're gonna have to go above and beyond to win these enterprise-type deals. So I would— you really shouldn't expect otherwise. I mean, you need to be doing this work on the front end if you expect it. I mean, how— If you look at Sports, if you're going to beat the best teams in football or baseball, whatever's going on, you can't just expect to show up and it's going to work out. You have to be planning weeks, months ahead and then make adjustments and all that to beat the best. So I think I try to imagine what it feels like to lose that deal because it's happened and, you know, financially and all, just all the despair that happens with that. And that motivates me to block off time to spend a couple hours mapping it out and trying to think of where could it go wrong or what can I do or who else can I reach out to now to make sure they at least know who I am. And that, that motivates me at least.

Yeah. Because you mentioned you can't win them all. So you got to work on the ones that are winnable and not just be content participating, being the service clerk. Fulfilling every request as fast and as efficiently as possible with the hope that they're going to reciprocate with an order. You really got to understand the game you're playing. And do you know what that game is? It's not the service game. I've never got a deal because I gave the best service. People say, oh, you guys helped out in the eval more than anybody did. But you did more for us, not faster quotes, showing how the product works, how it integrates with everything, how to get them comfortable with the product, using the product. And if you sit down and you really think through why didn't that deal close, and I'll tell you right now, it wasn't budget. Get that out of your head. It's the biggest budget is the equivalent of busy. Just interchange those 2 words. It's an excuse. It's not a priority. That's what it means. It's not important. Oh, politics. Well, you're selling B2B, more than one person. So there's more politics, less politics in SMB, consumer. It's not politics. So get that out of your mind. And now think about what did you do wrong? Most likely you didn't talk to more than one person, so you only got the perspective of the champion who is the most optimistic person next to yourself. Because if you've ever had that champion first-line manager meeting and the first-line manager's like rolling his eyes, squinting, Looking at, what are you talking about? Why do we need this? Why don't you just do this? Don't be foolish. We don't even need that. Then you're like, oh boy, this deal would have went far. So the deeper perspective that you have within the account, you'll understand why you're losing or why the deal isn't closing. It's not a priority. They don't value it. They see some other problem as the real issue.

But what is it?

If you don't know what is it, you don't know what to mold, what to change. And everyone just wants to make up with it with pipeline volume. But volume's kind of hit the wall today, hasn't it? When you can email every person on the planet all the time, every day, all day, you can't make more people. It takes too long.

There's, yeah, just a little bit of noise out there right now. So I don't think volume's working as good as it, as it was in the past. And yeah, I mean, it ultimately, if you can prioritize the ones that are most likely to succeed, then that helps you focus, but it's less, you're probably gonna be focused on less. And that is counterintuitive to what you're talking about with the pipeline where most people think they need to have 3x the pipeline or whatever it is in there. So it's counterintuitive to how people have probably been taught or how they think they need to be working on stuff. But the problem is that they're putting that same energy into 30 different deals that look good in the pipeline, but then nothing closes or a very small percent versus if they just had 10, let's say, that were more likely to succeed, and then they can focus on all those traits you were talking about. And if you do find out early, it's better to find out earlier than later. That, hey, this— the timing's off. The champion, I'm probably not going to be able to get them, or there's someone else blocking it because they have this relationship for 20 years with the incumbent. Well, whatever it is, if you— the earlier you find that out, the better, less painful. And at least you can maybe not completely deprioritize it, but put it further down the list and let it happen more naturally, and you can focus on other things. So it's, uh, it's tough. And then the thing that I've also made a mistake on many times is Is, is trying somehow to just start small and get in the door. And it's easy to not do that and try to go for the bigger deal, especially if that champion does get excited and you're both, both excited. So somehow just getting a small win to, to get in the door, because if you're betting on yourself or your product or your service, that way you can show that and get in the door, whether it's a trial or smaller tests or whatever it may be. And that helps you grow into something bigger. So it's also, you know, putting that million-dollar deal in the pipeline when maybe you should start off with a $50K, $100K opportunity to get in there. And then, then you start building up momentum and you can do other things. So I've, I've made that mistake many times and it's, it's tough to not keep doing that because you, you want to believe what they're saying, but you have to start small in most cases, at least.

Yeah, because if you look at your pipeline, is it prioritized off of them having to take action, or is it mostly made up of people that are willing to participate? Ask yourself that. Participation's nice, you need it, but it's not nearly enough. There's got to be a real business need because someone's going to figure it out. If somebody wants it, there's gotta be a real good business reason why, because they have to spend money and time and effort. Money is the least of those because it's their time, their focus, their energy. And you, you bring up a good thing because the, the big deals are kind of positive.

Objections.

We can't do anything now because we got to do something big. Okay. Hmm.

Okay.

What are we going to say next quarter? Right? Is it not big enough yet? And it's usually kind of a little bit of gaslighting. Maybe they don't know what to do now. Maybe they don't have money right now. Maybe they don't have time right now. But it feels good to talk big, doesn't it?

Oh yeah, it feels great to put those big numbers in the pipeline. Then you look cool. I mean, everyone's feeling great about it. Like, oh, you got a million-dollar deal on ABC Company and everyone's talking about it at the QBR. It feels great.

Yeah. Until you like, like what I used to do to myself, it's like, okay, what are you closing this week? What are you closing today? And it's usually nothing. But it gets you focused on what's important. And then put a close date next to everything. Reps can't do this. It's always the last day of the quarter. Why can't they do it? They don't want to face it. Because if you face it, you have to think about it. You have to feel that. You have to almost admit that you don't have the right information. And when do most people go to the doctor?

When it's too late.

They have to, right?

Yep.

We put it off as long as we possibly can, and that's human nature. But is your objective to feel the least amount of pain, or is your objective to close the most amount of deals? the most amount of revenue. And then you have to ask yourself, am I better at repairing or preventing? I've never met a single person who was good at repairing.

You don't know anybody that seeks out trying to end run something last minute and just blow up it and get the deal back? That sounds like, it does not sound like a fun full-time job to be the hero in that situation. And your, your VP or CEO is gonna get tired of doing that if, if you keep asking them to.

And, and I worked at companies where there was a lot of repair going on the last week of the quarter. And, but you're talking about giving 50 points, right? Half the deal away to get the deal simply because the work wasn't done. And it— and your manager will probably do it. Deal's not getting done, what are they going to do? Either roll over or make a bonehead call in there and muck it up a little. And what do they have? Extra support or discounts? Do they have magic words, new features? No, they can discount or give something away, which is essentially discounting. And I'm not saying it doesn't work, but it's pretty expensive and it's still a mess that someone has to clean up.

Yeah.

And it's a little gimmicky too, depending on how you do those discounts. I mean, I think everyone's expecting the end of the quarter discounts and all the dog and pony show with that. So if it's, it's a little gimmicky, I think at this point, depending on the industry and what you're doing. So It's just way better to— well, first off, negotiation-wise, you have to plan way far in advance to make sure you still have something to negotiate with. But in general, most people are not doing that. And I don't think anyone wants to be coming in last-minute hero to save these deals. So it's somewhat painful on the front end, but if you can get that into a habit and routine of those top 10 deals or whatever it is for your case and really beating them up, getting a second opinion from someone you trust, and I mean, that's the way to do it. Being real with yourself, doing postmortems after your meetings or after you lose a deal or win a deal. Why did, why did it go wrong or why did it go well? And documenting all that stuff somehow. Otherwise you're gonna keep falling into these same traps.

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, uh, the, 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? There's 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 is 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 Zero point zero. 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 gonna 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 $300,000, $400,000, $500,000. 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.