Boosting Sales Success: Unleashing the Power of Champions to Drive Deals - Guest: Darin Alpert

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What up everybody? Welcome to another episode of the live Better Sell Better podcast. This is your host Kevin Dorsey, AKA kd. And today we are going to get tactical on something that people talk a lot about but no one talks about how to actually do it right. Words like champion selling enable your champion. Well, it's not a champion, it's a coach. Well, it's not a coach, it's a mobilizer. But you got a mobilizer. But you got a multi thread. How do you multi thread through your champion? How do you turn a champion into an advocate? You get all these language and all these ideas, yet no one really talks about, well how do you actually do it and what is the difference? There are many deals out there that people think they have a champion, but they do not. Or they think they have a coach and they do not. And that is why I'm so excited to have Darren Alpert on the show today. He has been in the GTM world for a while now, founded a couple companies, sold a couple companies, been backed by Mark Cuban and He knows how to do this and to do this right. So we're going to dive into multi threading, coaching, champions, all that. Darren, my friend, welcome to the show.

Thanks Katie. Good to see you, man. Good to be with you.

I'm pumped for, for this one. This is, this is a topic near and dear to, to my heart right now. So same and it's rare that someone says like this is what they want to dive into. So we're going to come right out the gate and start just kind of like the why. Right. Like hopefully people understand this, but why do you need call it a champion or a coach? And we're going to break down the differences here in a second. But like why you need to have like that. That one staple person in a deal.

Yeah. And it may be multiple people too. Right. Like you might have, you might need. Depending how big of an order you're selling into, you might need like five or six. But like the end of the day you really need one. One true person that's going to stick their neck out on the line and like be with you, texting you when the deal's getting signed.

Yes.

Right. So why do you need it? So I used to work at Bazaar voice and this is where I learned the true like champion selling and the science and the art of it. And shout out to guy named Matt Curtin who was my old boss there, and Kelly Connery, who's a pretty well known name in the software world in the old CRO at Bazaar voice. They just hammered this home. No champion, no deal is what they told me. If you don't have a champion, you literally will not have a deal. And I think there's people that think like, oh, I'm talking to this person and they're willing to get on a call with me and they're telling me all this stuff about the org, but are they actually gonna be there guiding you through a procurement? That's the test, right. So yeah, this has been hammered into me and it's. And it's helped my career tremendously and.

I love that because hopefully y' all are picking up on the language he's using right now. Stick the neck out on the line, guide through procurement, text ahead of time. Right. Like there's different levels of this. So let's kind of keep going down this path now. Right. Is like first of all, let's define the differences. Right. You hear things like coach, you hear things like champion, you hear things like mobilizer. How do you define kind of the different buckets? So People know basically who they're talking to. Like, is this coach a champion, a mobilizer? Like, kind of. What are your definitions of people that tend to get involved and we're going to go into like how you actually create them.

Yeah. So the way I've learned, and I don't know that you can necessarily create them, I think they need to convince you that they want to do something. Like to me, buyers need. Buyers are all guilty of not buying anything until they, they prove to you that they're innocent and they will buy. And that might sound counterintuitive. So I define and it's not my definition. This is what I've learned. The definition of a champion that I've run with and been taught is four things that a champion has to have all four of these things in order to actually be a champion. One, something in it for them personally. So maybe they're new in their role, maybe they're a new. You know, I think about when you took your new role, like, you probably had a lot of things that you potentially wanted to change after your first couple months, right. You probably looked at new tools, whatever it was that you had used previously. So that's one, what's in it for them personally? Two, are they selling when you're not there? Are they literally texting the CFO or the CEO if it's not that person that you're selling to to help get a deal done? Three, do they have access to the economic buyer? So literally, maybe they are. Maybe if you're selling to like a cmo, for example, that, that CMO can put pen to paper, but most of the time it's probably going to the CFO, especially as we go into 2024 for. With budgeting things. And then the other one is power and influence in the organization. So like you coming into your, your, your recent role, right, like you may not have, I mean you did because of your title, but like how much influence did you have a month in? Right. Probably a decent amount because of where you came in at, but you're still building trust in the org. Like you're, you're sniffing them out, they're sniffing you out. They obviously hired you, but could you actually get it? Like, I'd be curious if you bought anything within your first 30 days that you had to get approval for. No.

So like for, for me coming in, right, this is just some, some transparency. Like control matters to me more than title, more than compensation, and so I actually negotiate more heavily on those things. Whereas, like, I'd actually Rather take a lower comp but have an established budget and control over my spend than make more and have to fight those, those battles. So. So no. So like for me it was like, this is important to me that I can control this. But I'm also very frugal. I don't do a lot of tech. Like I'm looking how to replace things. But like I was able to come in, it's like, all right, this is what I going to bring in. Here's how I'm going to afford it, here's how I'm going to justify it. But it wasn't really asking for permission to, to do so.

Got it. So if anybody's trying to sell the kd, you just got some insight on how, on his psyche and how he buys, right?

Yeah, well, it was hilarious. I'll share it. I've shared this publicly how hard it has been for me to buy things. Right.

And I think everybody though, I think there's just more budget scrutiny now than.

Oh, no, no, no, no, hear me. I have my budget.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, true.

I have my budget. I know how to justify it. I know if I want to spend a hundred K here, how much I need to see on that, what I need to move around to afford it. And it has been hard to buy as a buyer, like working with sales reps, working with companies, trying to get the information that I need. That's been a tough challenge. Right. Like I am the champion coach, mobilizer, decision maker, access to. I am those things and it's been hard.

Why hard? What's hard?

Sales reps forcing a sales process does not match my buying process bar, Major bar.

That shit needs to go away.

So that's, that's, that's been like the, the problem where it's like, look, just give me what I need here so I can go do what I need to do. I don't care about your little ROI calculator. It doesn't matter at all to me. So anyway, back, back to this year. Back to this.

But that's important. Nike as a buyer. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, so back to this.

Yeah. So you got personal gain, which I love selling when you're not there.

Yep.

Access to the economic buyer power and influence. I saw someone post this earlier this year and I hadn't seen it phrase this way before is also what is their buying reputation?

Right, Right.

So have they bought something internally and it went well?

Yes.

Or have they ever bought something internally and it hasn't. Because if they have a poor buying reputation that's going to carry weight as it works the way, oh, here comes KD again, asking for another tool that isn't going to work and they get pushed aside.

Or here's five layers of sign off that you need, kd, because you're frivolous with your spending.

Yep, yep.

And. And think about this, right? Like, you've got tools like user gems and other other things out there that will track somebody that's gone from one job to another, Right. And it's like there's tools you've probably used at your old role where you're like, like where the reps like, oh, man, Katie's in this new rule of roll at bench. Like, this is a for sure kind of bring this in. But it's like, what if you bought something already at bench and it didn't go well and internally your influence is not as good as it could be as a buyer. And now you've got all this scrutiny under you. And the reps like, oh, this is a lot. Katie said he's going to buy it again because he.

And one day. Yeah. And it's funny because I am actually, I'm the other way as a buyer. When I go to a new place, I actually use it as a reason to look at new things. Right. That's when I do my read. Like every year I, you know, going not on a tangent, every year I review my entire tech stack. Every year.

Yep.

Every year I review my entire tech stack and I'm asking the question, is this what's best for my team?

Yep. Yep. Because it's a chance to do it. You're working on the business versus being stuck in it.

Right. If. If it's going well, as I believe is what's best, great. But I look, I look at it, I will look at your competitors, Right. There's so much changes in a year. I review it every single year. And if I join a new place, best believe I'm coming in with a blank slate.

Yeah. But I think there's a lot of people that would think otherwise. Yeah.

Like that. I'm talking to the leaders now. Right now too. Leaders. Like the tool that you used for four years may not be the best tool anymore. I'm just letting you know there's some things out there that are new and different. So. So now if we look at this man, you said something that I think is very interesting that I want to unpack.

Right.

I said, you know, like, how do you create a champion? And I was like, I don't know that you Can. What's the response there? So talk to me about that. Otherwise, people are going to tune out right now and say, well, if I can't create a champion, what. What am I listening to? So how do you, I guess, empower this? How do you find out personal goals? How do you help them sell when you're not around? Like, let's talk about some of the how now.

Yep. So they. The first step is, to me, as a salesperson, your sole job is to figure out if a buyer has pain that they even want to solve. Like, that's the first step, because you might have bumps and bruises and you might have, like a paper cut on your finger, but that's not really probably enough to go to a doctor. Right. If you've got a broken ankle or you've got like a, you know, a gunshot wound, for example, that's the extreme. Obviously, you're going to a doctor right away. Right. So the first step is figuring out if somebody's got a paper cut or if they've got a broken ankle. And once you figure that out and even with a broken ankle, be like, yeah, I can live with it. I'll put a brace on it. Like, I don't have insurance. Like, I'm going to deal with it. Like, that happens. Right. So the rule there is prescription without diagnosis is malpractice. And I don't know if you've heard that before, Katie, but it's something that.

I say it all the time. All the time.

Yeah. Yeah. So that's how you. That's how you build a champion, is they're building themselves to you, the seller, by telling you that they've got pain that is worth solving and that they're going to do something about it because they have personal gain. And that then helps you figure out the other three components of a champion.

So let's go to that next one, though, because I think this is a place that a lot of people miss is how do you help that champion sell internally? Because too often, if we're honest, more often not sellers, all they're really trying to do is get the champion to get them to the power line. Right. Of like, hey, Darren, can you get me to Tony?

Yep.

That type of stuff versus empowering that champion to sell. So what are. What are the tools? What's the. What are the tactics that you use to help that champion sell better internally when you're not around?

Yeah, so I think about that of like. Like, right now, we're on a zoom call.

Katie.

You and I are kind of, like, facing each other on the zoom call, obviously, we're, like, next to each other on the screen. But, like, if you were in person, you'd be sitting across from each other, most likely. Right. Where I've had success is, like, psychologically or physically. If I'm in a meeting, instead of facing each other, you swing the chair around, you sit next to each other. It's. Are they willing to pull up dashboards that they're using? Are they sharing what the internal project is called? Like, it's Project Hummingbird that we're working on. Okay, what does that entail? Oh, well, Project Hummingbird means we need to do all these different things in order to have the success at our org.

Right.

If they're sharing this, like, vernacular that they use in the organization, and they're like, how can you help us solve this? This is a big thing that we're trying to work through. You're on the right steps. So to me, it's like, you've got to work with them, not try to fight against them. And if, like, they tell you, like, yeah, this isn't that important. You got to bail. You got to move on to a deal that you potentially can swing the chair around. So I think that's the biggest thing I've always viewed selling as. You're essentially a free consultant that may or may not have a solution. That's it.

Well, I don't have enough time to dive into that on this call here, because, funny enough, Keenan said this is one of the biggest takeaway. Like, I love Gap selling. I agree with, like, 80% of it. There's 20% that I think is a little bit different or nuanced, but he had a line in there. It was like, every salesperson should be able to start a consultancy.

Yes.

For the buyers that they sell to. Like, that's the level of knowledge you need to have where you should be able to consult VPs of finance. You should be able to consult VPs of HR. Like, whoever it is you're selling to. Most sellers are nowhere near that level of being a true consultant. And then seeing if the product is a good fit, they're just consultative sellers, AKA just trying to get people to buy their product. That's not being a consultant.

That's not how that works. No, but they easily could. Right? Like, we live in this world, and I've worked at G2, I worked at Trustratius. We live in this world. Like, I think sellers should be Yodas. Like, they're the Yoda, sharing to the buyer. What other customers are doing. Hey, your XYZ company here is ABC company that has similar revenue, similar headcount, similar growth problems that you've got. Here's how they solve this problem that you said you want to solve. Right. Like, I don't understand why that's so hard for people. Like leverage the stor. Like the stories are out there. Like you're not selling anything. You're literally just sharing the stories that you're already helping other customers that look like them are solving. That's it.

Yeah.

I don't know why that's so hard.

Because it, you know why it's so hard there and is because it takes a little bit of time.

Right.

And people have zero interest in taking time to do things. Right. They have interest in moving fast and taking the results. Right. The whole move fast and break things mentality. Funny enough, as I said this out loud, is what is breaking SaaS.

Right? Right.

Everyone is moving so fast that now sales in general is being broken because it was so addicted to speed that we don't do things including champion selling. Like we're pushing and pushing, trying to get things done so fast, fast that we don't actually enable our champion. So let's keep going down this path. Right. So there's, there's the check ins, there's guiding them. How else do you kind of guide a champion or work with the champion to drive a deal through? You know, you mentioned guiding you through the procurement process, like getting you access to power. Let's keep going down. How do you keep working with this, this champion?

So it's the way it's set up too. And I posted about this yesterday on LinkedIn. To me, like one of the first steps is you have to get off of email. You have to get off the email. You got to be texting if you're not texting with your champion. I would almost argue that's the fifth thing. Because if you're stuck in email world, like how messy are our inboxes? It's gross. Like everybody responds to a text message and if, and if they're not, like, if you're, if you're getting on that read receipt after like three days and they haven't responded, probably don't have a champion.

Yeah.

You know, because if their hair was on fire that much with the broken ankle, they want to fix it.

Yeah. And actually I want to, I want to jump on that real quick and then we'll keep going down because I just think that's a good thing to unpack. Is like what are the warning signs that you don't? Because often, you know, as sellers we listen with happy ears and all of that. But like what a lot of sellers do is they'll ask like, do you have access to, you know, to Darren? Oh yeah, no, we meet every single, every single week. It's like, okay, great. And like, you know, have you bought things there before? Oh yeah, I've bought a lot of things. And like they just get these. Yes. Like yes, I got one.

Right.

What are some of the warning signs that maybe you don't actually have a true champion? So you mentioned like delay in response. I think that's a good warning sign. What else?

I would say if a seller is doing more communicating than the buyer, you probably don't have a champion either. And I think Dong put some data out about this too. It's the flow of information. Are you as a seller providing more information than the buyer? Buyer is. Because if that's the case, like you're selling and you're not consulting. That's what it comes back to. You're trying to push something that may not even be there. That's a big one.

What else? So we've got delays, we've got. You're doing a lot of information, nothing much coming back. What else should I look out for in terms of my champion either not really being a champion or that I'm losing steam.

Yeah. So let's even say you sell into a five person accounting firm at Bench, for example. Right. Like I used to sell gluten free advertising. Fight me gluten free. There was never a deal, I got done solo. There was always someone else involved. So if you're single threaded and even with a solo business owner, like they would still talk to someone else. Or like, here's our marketing consultant, here's our social media person, whatever. If you're single threaded, I don't think you have a champion. Because even in the smallest of small businesses, like no purchase gets done solid single handedly.

Right.

Oh, let me talk, let me get you introduced to so and so. They can chat with you about this. Like she's not there. Like it. You're pigeonholing yourself. So I think that's a really big one.

I like that. Okay, and so how do you multi thread in a way that empowers your champion? Because a lot of sellers like they walk this thin line where it's like.

Well, I don't want to like go.

Around Darren, I don't want to go above Darren, but at the same time I Asked Darren to introduce me to, you know, Tony that like, he's going to feel like he's not involved. Like, how do you work with that? Champion to get multi. Threaded.

Yeah. Well, if they're not making. That's another one. I mean, if they're not making intros and like getting you connected and setting up calls with other people, like, hey, hey, Kevin, we're having this call about Project Hummingbird. Like, we need you to jump in here to help us with that. Like, and they just adding you to a meeting and you're like, I guess I'll cancel this demo of this other like, intro call I had. That's a big one. So I don't even think it's about you going around them or you multi threading. They should be doing it organically because if there was enough pain in an organization, they would be looping in as many, like, whatever. People need to get involved organically. If I look backwards at deals I've closed, a lot of those happen where they're making interest for you and they're getting you included.

Yeah. The only thing I'll add there, and I want your take on it, is oftentimes, right. Champion. And even, you know, people senior up, they haven't ever bought your product before.

Right.

So they don't always know who else to involve. So like I love to say it's like normally at this stage we pull in legal because it doesn't even make sense to start talking to Darren if we don't already have sign off on legal. Like, and so it's like Q or whatever. Right. It's like, you know, because if they don't know a good buying process.

Yep.

They won't make the right introductions. You know, like, I had, I had this happen to me two months ago where one of the managers, you know, on my team, I got an outreach on LinkedIn, someone said, hey, like, you know, blah, blah, blah. I've been talking to xyz, like, you know, let me know if there's anything we can do to move this deal forward.

Yep.

I was like, what deal?

I didn't know this existed.

I haven't even, I haven't even seen anything, let alone like that. There's a deal in place right now right there. And they're like, oh, like, you know, we've, we, you know, we thought like, you know, we might be able to get this done by this quarter. I was like, I, I literally know nothing about this called Hope Casting.

Okay.

And it's like, and if we were going to get this signed. I haven't seen a contract. I haven't run this by legal. I don't even know what it costs yet.

Like, what? Yeah.

How does that happen?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think you hit on a really good point there. Because as a seller, like, if you get somebody that tells you, this is the Yoda guiding, right? If you get someone that tells you, like, look, we want to get this done. And, like, the best thing you could hear from I think a buyer is like, help me get this done internally. What do I need to do? Because they may not even know, right? Like, a lot of times they don't know. So if it's like their first time, especially, it's like, okay, here's a mutual action plan. When we work with other clients, this is what. This is what gets done. And it doesn't need to be like this. Like, I've seen these mutual action plans, and they're like, by week two, we need to have this done. And week three, it's like, that's not the buyer process. Like, that's selling process to try to reverse engineer a quarter and close, like, stop. You know, that doesn't help the buyer. So it's like, look, these are the. It's like a video game. These are the checkpoints we have to hit. We might hit them on my selling timeline, but it comes down to how the buyer's gonna buy. So you can lay out the roadmap, but it's like, they're gonna cross the checkpoints and get to these different checkpoints on their schedule based on how much pain they really have.

And that's what's so hard, is, you know, back to this idea around time is even if something hurts a lot, it doesn't necessarily mean they can move faster.

Right.

It's just. And it's a pain. And unfortunately, the longer it goes on, the more someone gets used to pain.

Pain.

Right. The harder it is to even get them to change. Pain is not enough. I think people forget that, like, pain is not enough to sell somebody, like, you have to drive it through.

Look at pro athletes. How many of them play through, like, broken ankles? And you don't hear about Philip Rivers. The old Chargers quarterback, played one year with a torn acl. He played a playoff game with a torn acl. You don't think they were pushing that guy to get surgery? They're like, you need surgery. He's like, no, we're trying to win the Super Bowl. Right? It's the same thing. Yeah.

Like the analogy I give my team, like, Companies I talk to all the time, I drop some philosophy on them.

Right.

I say, if a lion has always had a thorn in its paw, does it hurt?

Maybe. I mean, it probably hurts.

It hasn't taken it out. It's all he's ever known.

Right.

So. Right. Pain is actually a stimulus. It's something new. If it's always been there. This is that, this is the fact for most buyers is the pain that sellers are trying to solve has kind of always been there. So they've adapted. They walk with the limp. That's just all that they know. They don't even know that they can go faster because it's never been their reality. People are just trying to poke on that pain. They're like, yeah, this is how we do it. Spreadsheets, Right.

So you need, that's, that's where you got to sell the future of like, well, if you didn't have that limp, this is what you could be doing. Right. You're telling me you want to go run a marathon, but you can't because you have a limp. Why don't you fix the limp?

Right. That's the stuff where, like, you know, working with your champion. Like, I love the idea of like mapping out that buying process, but one of the things I love to do, I don't get to do it anymore because our deal size is much smaller, it's much faster. But like when we were selling the larger deals is each part of the process had assets to support it.

Right.

So like, basically what we built out was like, what are the stage FAQs? So like, you know what legal's gonna ask? Yeah, like, you know, preemptive. Preemptively. Darren, when you go talk to Sam, he's going to ask you probably seven or eight questions. Here.

Yeah, here.

And you know what? I'm going to record a short 90 second video walking through this document so they have their questions answered. Like, give them the assets that they need to do this. And like sellers, I'll give you this one to y' all introduce title level references earlier in the sales process.

Yep.

So if you're in legal, offer to connect them to someone else in legal at a company that bought with you. Yeah, right. Like, people don't do references through the stage. They always do it at the end. You got to get to the end, which means you need to be introducing.

That's right.

References throughout that process.

More I on that point. That one's interesting because David Premier talks about that. He's got that book, you know, sell the Way you buy.

And.

And his take is like. And I don't know. I don't know how I feel about this. Like, I'm kind of torn. Like, he talks about, do buyers actually want a reference call or do they want to hear from someone like them? Like, most of the time they want to hear from someone like them. That doesn't mean they need to be on a reference call. That literally could be a customer story. And that's why you have to have these customer stories that you have.

Boom.

Here's five lawyers that are legal teams that have bought with us. And here's how they talked about the experience.

Yeah, yeah, no, that. And funny enough, that's more. So what I mean about a reference is, like, someone like them. Okay. Where it's not. Because, like, reference calls are. Honestly, they're a lot like references in interviews. I don't make reference calls on people in an interview process. I literally do not make reference calls.

Yep.

The ones you give me.

Right.

I make reference call for the people you did not give me.

Right. And the reps to do that, too. On you.

Yeah, exactly. Like, you're just going to give me the best people. It's like, no. Like, they're like. And if you have any questions on how they navigated, like, the contract, here's kd. He'll chat with you for five, six minutes, walk you through the contract terms, what they did with it, and go from there. Like, this is a different topic, but, like, buyers, we don't want to talk. People are saying this. Buyers don't want to talk to salespeople for the most part.

They want to talk to Yodas. Right.

We want to talk to people that truly can consult them and understand and give them advice based off the reality they're in. And the vast majority of sellers, it's probably close to 90% of sellers don't use the product they sell.

Yep.

Because they don't use the product they sell. They can't have that level of conversation even with the champion sometimes. Right. Of like, here's what it's going to take to drive this deal through.

Yeah. Yeah. Like, you. You've never been an accountant, right? No. Yeah. But you figured out how to sell it, right?

Right. Well, it's funny with this one, we don't actually sell to accountants. We sell to small business owners.

Okay.

But they're like, I have been one of those. Yeah. So, yeah. That paint, that's part of the things that I have been it. I've lived it. I know exactly what that feels like. I'VE gone through all that. I was like, yup, that's relatable. This is, is very relatable. Funny enough, I'd probably be using Bench as my bookkeeper if I didn't work at Bench.

Right? Yeah. So that's, that's organic.

That's great.

Yeah.

Okay, so let's kind of keep going down this path here and then as we start to wrap up. Right. So we've talked about how to know if you have a champion. We've talked about, you know, enabling that champion through the buying process. We've talked about identifying the personal gain selling when you're not selling. Access to the economic buyer. You know, power to influence. Let's touch on that one more.

Power to influence. Power. Power and influence.

Yeah, power and influence. How do you engage it? How do you support it?

Yeah, they could be different, right, because you could have power as a cmo, but you could have influence as a top salesperson, as the top ic. And I've done this like where I was a rep at a company and I was like, hey, I would love for us to have this tool. And I had influence because I was closing deals. That helped get our CRO to be like, yeah, we should look at this. Like if so and so wants this, it doesn't matter if it's me or whoever. So like the influence thing can be a non C level person, it could be a non vp, it could be an individual contributor, but the power tends to come up, up VP and above for the most part in my experience. It's like a general statement but like shockingly you can have an individual contributor have influence and that's, that's part of like a top, top down and bottom up selling approach. You know, like, like if you're trying to sell into an org and you see that there's like a President's club winner or like four or five of them that are like they've, they've won multiple years in a row. Guarantee you they have influence in that organization. They've been there for a while, they've gotten deals done. And if you're selling like a go to market tool, like if you were selling like Apollo or like Zoom info, I'd be going to one of the top reps and be like, hey, what deals are you missing? Like what do you, what's missing in your day to day sales world?

This is the shit that nobody is willing to do where it's like, how can I go find a power user or like a power influencer and like help them hey, Prez, club rep, give me five accounts. Let me go get you some contacts. Who do you want?

Yeah, I'll give them to you.

You don't think that would help close the deal for the company if you went to that individual and said, hey, I got you.

Let's.

Let's see how this works for you.

Yeah.

And then they're vouching for, right? Like, yo, we need this. There was a tool that this happened at when I was at Patient Pop, where like, the reps came to me and said, we need this. Actually, I'll never forget this. So, like in Patient Pop, you know, we had like, at one point, it was like 150 people had like four floors, right? Like, just. Just have a squad, right?

Y.

We had this gray couch that sat by the. One of the entryways. And I called it the therapy couch because, like, you know, reps would be sitting there, like, working from time to time, just sit down next to him like, yo, like, what sucks right now? That was always my opening question.

What sucks?

Broken, right?

Yeah. And.

But then sometimes reps would sit there and wait for me, right? So, like, just waiting to make eye contact. I'm like, oh, therapy couch. One day I was walking out to go to a meeting and there were like six of them just on the couch.

Just, here we go.

I was like, yes. What, What? What's up? They're like, sit down. We want to show you this. We need this tool. It'll help us so much. We've had a few samples of it. We love it.

What can we do?

That sales process was two weeks.

Yep, exactly.

Seventy thousand dollar contract. It was two weeks.

And how good were those six reps? Were they top reps?

Every single one of them. Every single one of them was a top performing rep. And like, they sat down, they showed it to me. They showed me why they liked it, what they've been able to do with it and what it would. Cause right now, again, I hope y' all are hearing me. These were reps, these were not managers, these were not directors. None. Not my fellow vp. These were reps. And they got an almost six figure deal done in two weeks because they could show me what it was going to do for them. Those are the best champions in the world.

And that's also why they're top reps, too.

Mm.

They're selling internally when. When that other rep that they were. That they were selling the tool wasn't there. Yeah. And it's.

You know, I have a lot of fond memories that. That one is is one for me because it also, like, it showed the relationship I had with the reps.

Yes.

They knew. They knew they could flag me down. They knew I'd sit down on that couch and hear them out. And sure enough, you know, it turned into something that they got. And then, yeah, results did go up because of it. And then I had my internal champions already there to spread that tool, you know, so it's good stuff, man.

So let's. Let's reverse engineer that deal for the selling rep of the tool, whatever it was. One, there was something in it personally for those six reps. They could run faster. Right. Or perform better. Two, they had access to the economic buyer, who sounds like it was you. Three, they were selling when the other AE trying to sell the tool wasn't there. They literally corralled you on the therapy couch. Four, they had power and influence because.

They were top reps. That's a.

Like that other AE selling a tool must have been salivating. Right?

And what's hilarious, though, I had never spoken to the ae, right? Not once.

Right.

One time until the very end. Right.

Funny.

I've actually sent one of my senior AES, right? I was like, yo, like, go, give me the price.

Yep.

I literally did not talk to the AE at this company until, I think, the second to last closing call. And then the closing call, like, it was all internal that. That happened there. And he was smart about it. So they have a trial or an IC version. One person did it. He had reached out to the rep that had, like, signed up for. For free, said, hey, who else on your team would be interested in this? I'll give you three more. Okay. So they went to the other three. Got it right. So there's three more there. And then it started to go. Now we're like, wait, what are you using? Oh, yeah, I'm like, using this tool. So it starts to spread a little bit. Right. And that was.

That was it. So PLG is a great way to build champions too. Like, just give them access.

It's still shocking to me that it doesn't happen more like, oh, it's complicated.

Oh, it's hard to implement. Like, no, it's not. You're just making it that way.

It really isn't. Especially, like, it might be complicated to do the whole product. There's a piece of your product that should be able to give me value relatively quickly. If not, then you don't have a good product.

Yeah.

So give me something that I can work with.

So. Oh, but Katie, we sell ERPs we sell Salesforce. Like there's a piece of Salesforce you could use tomorrow. And I don't even. I would argue that Salesforce isn't even that great of a tool if we're going to go down that conversation. Yeah. But anyways, yeah, HubSpot has built PLG for ICs, so.

All right, man. So as we, as we wrap this up, right, we've been talking about champion, selling, coaching, everything there. I'm going to do a pivot as we wrap on this, right? Because the name of this podcast is is Live Better Sell Better. Because I also have this weird idea, right, that if we lived better, if we had more energy, more joy, more excitement, more fulfillment in life, that the sales would also improve. What would your live better advice be?

Yeah, so I'm a big health food nut. I avoid gluten, I avoid dairy. I haven't. I've had five drinks in the last year. I used to love tequila and I've had like five of them in all of 2023. And I think another big one is avoiding seed oils. I don't know if you know much about that world, but, yes, a lot.

It's hard. It's hard to avoid. Like, it's really tough.

Really tough. So I think your diet, and your diet isn't even just food. It's like consuming the news. It's what you consume mentally. Eating, like, verbally, like hearing what you're seeing. Like, you need to create this environment. That's all positive. Because sleep. Right. Because if you don't, the sales world is stressful enough as it is. Like, you need to cut out all the distractions. That's my take.

I love, I love, and I love how you called out. Diet is not just the food.

Yes.

Whatever you're taking in, right? News, social media, friends, like, I think that's such a great way people you hang out with.

Yeah.

The diet of all these things. So, my man, this was phenomenal. Where can people find you? Where are you putting out content? Where can they connect with you? How do they get more daring insights in their life?

Yeah, well, I don't know that they want that, but I've got. I'm all over LinkedIn, like, UKD. So that's. That's the main place. And I've got like a tiny Twitter following that I don't even talk on there. But It's. It's all LinkedIn. You can find me on LinkedIn.

Love it. Love it. Well, my man, thank you very much for the time. The energy, the insights and everything else here. I'm sure we'll be having plenty of combos moving forward, but thanks so much.

Thanks, Katie. Appreciate it, man.