PREDICT When a Deal Is Going to Close - Ian Koniak - Revenue Today - Episode # 041

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Sales, marketing, and RevOps. It's sink or swim out there, and yesterday's strategies and tactics won't help you today. This is Revenue Today, and I'm your host, Jared Robin. Join me as we interview revenue leaders in our community to learn what steps we could take right now to help you scale yourself and your company. Revenue Today is sponsored by Rev Genius, and we're on a mission to bring inspiration and creativity to all revenue professionals in the world. Want to shout out our sponsor Demandbase. Demandbase is smarter GTM for B2B brands. They help marketing and sales teams spot the juiciest opportunities earlier and progress them faster by injecting account intelligence into every step of the buyer journey and orchestrating every action. For more information about Demandbase, visit demandbase.com. Hey everybody, I have a special guest today, somebody who has 19 years of sales experience, was the number one enterprise sales rep at Salesforce, has sold $100 million in deals in his career. Currently, he's the Dean of the Enterprise Sales School at Pavilion and the founder and CEO of Ian Cognac sales coaching, and he actually scaled to a seven-figure business in year one. Welcome Ian.

Great to be here. It sounds funny when you say it like that on paper because I'm just a normal guy, but I guess I've had a lot of sales experience over the years.

I gotta I gotta let everybody know what's up, right? Like I gotta talk you up. You're so special.

It sounds funny hearing it, you know, because you put the bio, but at the end of the day. I just try and focus on what's in front of me every year.

And, and, and I love that. Um, and you know, I, I know you've been in the revenue world 19+ years and you've seen a lot, but I wanna ask, debunk a myth about generating revenue today.

Yeah. So my, my background's interesting. I came from selling copiers and printers directly to the enterprise software division at salesforce.com. So I went from this transactional, selling, grinding it out, outworking, outhustling everyone to now only having a handful of accounts and needing to sell some of the biggest deals in Salesforce history. And fundamentally, I thought I could outwork and outhustle everyone. And you know what? It's kind of funny. I hit my number my first year, and then the next 3 years after that, I missed my number and I actually fell on my face trying to outwork and outhustle. And so the myth I want to debunk is that more activity Equals better results. And that actually is not true. It's true if you're in a transactional role. If you're— it's true if you have a quick sales cycle, you're selling and you have a huge list, but for enterprise selling, more does not equal better. Okay. Less is more. It's the 80/20 rule. And I found that if I focused on fewer accounts, but instead tried to go higher, wider, and deeper with the accounts and spent more time crafting my message, developing a point of view, learning their business, and really showing up as somebody who understood them and knew where I could help. I found that's when my results skyrocketed. And that's the change it took for me to become the number one enterprise AE is actually to do less activity, but more focused and more meaningful activity.

So did I get this right? You— the 80/20 Pareto's Law, you only focused on the top 20% of your prospects? How'd you figure that out? And how'd you pick them?

Yeah, I think, think about it this way. Okay, I only had 10 accounts at Salesforce. So 20% would be fine, my 2 accounts. Well, if I have 2 accounts, and they're large enterprise accounts, and there are a good 20 or 30 people in each of those accounts, that means that if you say, 25 per account to focus on across all the divisions, because Salesforce carried a big bag, I'd have 50 people to target, right, in those 2 accounts. And of those 50 people, if it takes on average 8 outreach attempts to book a meeting across email or phone or LinkedIn, that's 400 outreaches to 2 accounts. So yeah, I found fundamentally the way I identified the 2 is really a few different factors. But it's really, you know, who's the ideal customer based on what we sell, you know, where might we have a little bit of footprint that has a lot of upside and white space? Um, you know, who, who's happy, who's not, right? So you obviously need to look at things like revenue and employee counts and industry and, and, and place your bet. But if you can make an informed bet by really, you know, picking the top 20% of your accounts and those are what you would call A accounts and go all in with those accounts and really, um, go across the board in terms of prospecting to multiple divisions and multiple executives at 3 levels. Typically, I was going director, VP, and C-suite. So when you do that, you'll find that in most big accounts, the opportunity is endless. And a lot of these big accounts have subsidiaries that they own. They also have sister companies. They also have different brands, different divisions. So honestly, selling to one of these accounts is like selling to, you know, a small country in some cases. And you can be You know, really, really effective and make all of your number off of just one or two accounts if you're in with the right people and solving the right problems. So that whole less is more, 80/20. When I figured that out, I started crushing it, and I really just placed my bets on only a couple accounts. I went all in with them, and that's where I never looked back once I started that approach.

So were the ten accounts you had cold accounts? When I say cold, I mean like did they not have any Salesforce instances? Well,

like in or the thing that I had working for me is that. Salesforce has 99% of the Fortune 100 as a customer in some capacity, right? So they have— they might not be using a lot of Salesforce, but they might be using Slack, or they might be using Tableau, or they might be using MuleSoft. You know, I carried— I was an account director and carried the entire bag. And Salesforce had done, you know, 30 acquisitions over the years, and a bunch of them while I was there— ExactTarget, Marketing Cloud. So, you know, there's going to be some footprint somewhere. But the accounts that I found that I grew the most were the ones that had a very small footprint, but they had very big ambitions. So I would look at— Yeah. You know, what they owned as a way in the door, because I could say, hey, you're already using us, but it's at a very limited capacity. I'd love to talk about some of the strategic things we're doing with others in your industry. You know, and a lot of times people would be very willing to meet because we did have some footprint, we did have some reputation there, but they were not cold accounts in the sense where they've never heard of us. I wasn't at a small startup, you know, With no names. That did make it easier in that sense, for sure. But it was still a cold account because they, they might have been spending $30,000 with us when the total addressable market with Salesforce in that account would be $10 or $20 million. So it was a very small footprint.

And, you know, I worked for FedEx, so like, I resonate with this. So like, we might have a company's return logistics business, right? Like making $400K from Bonobos. I remember it was the case like, Like that's a great number for like not having their business, but we didn't have the four million. So like totally. And and then often, especially in logistics, like even if they gave you nothing, they had a blank FedEx account, right? Because they opened it up for like an office manager or something. So like you were able to infiltrate. Now you had a goal obviously to hit. You have two accounts you're working. Maybe that's three, right? Like maybe maybe you smudge it a little. Yeah. But because because I I You know, I empathize with that. You know, it's always like, yeah, but they had something cool and I knew somebody and I met them at this game or something.

Yeah. I'm thinking of the exact third account when you say that. I'm like, yeah, well, TaskUs was kind of an account too. So it's funny you say 3, 'cause there, there were, I mean, it was, it's interesting. Go, go ahead with your question.

Yeah. So, so how many opportunities did you have in account with like how many different people? Like, 'cause I, I, I know you probably had, um, geographical opportunities and I don't wanna lead you too much, but Like, yeah, because you had to hit your number. How many opportunities? And like, what was, what was your number? What was your goal? Like, what was your— because I think this is important to understand because you wanted to bring everything on, right? Like, you probably had $30,000 opportunities too, right?

I literally had— I literally— so let me just take a step back and tell you about the account director role at Salesforce. So account director is just that. It's a director that's responsible for aligning the Salesforce army to the biggest challenges or goals that the C-suite or the company is publicly responsible for achieving. So I did have an army at my disposal. I had a team of 30 people that were— I was leading. Okay, now you might say, wow, that's crazy for 2 accounts. But realistically, you've got to remember there's a Tableau account executive. That Tableau executive has an engineer. The Tableau executive has a customer success manager for Tableau. Same thing for— Yep. MuleSoft or Marketing Cloud. So if you take all of these, we call them primes or co-primes, which were the specialists that sold products under me. I got paid on the entire bag. So my job was not necessarily to go sell everything. My job was to understand the vision of the client and make sure I bring in the right resources, which often meant 10 different products to solve a very complex problem. So I'd be quarterbacking and You know, having— and you're dealing as much internally with selling as you are with externally. So I led a very small team into making sure we were marching in the same direction. So I was setting the strategy. Here's where I think we can help. Here's the opportunities. Because honestly, a lot of these co-primes were, you know, they had bigger account lists than me. So they might have 5 of me that's pulling them in different directions. So my job was to make sure I win their time and their mindshare to get behind the vision I had of a big deal happening, because they're also trying to place their bets. What horse are we going to bet on? Which AE are we going to bet? Which— who do we want to follow along to the promised land? So it's a very interesting job. There's a lot of strategy in terms of defining the goals of the organization, mapping what products are we going to sell, and we're basically creating something from nothing. We're saying, here's, you know, the current landscape, here's where I think you fit in as a co-prime, here's where marketing Cloud fits in. And then I would go and divide and conquer. So I would have my marketing person contact the CMO and people there. I would have my analytics person work with their BI team. So I'm basically holding a team accountable to make sure they're actually executing and getting traction in the account. And if they're not, then basically I'm pulling them in and, and I'm doing it myself. But a lot of it was, hey, I trust you because you know what you're doing, go run a sales cycle. And a lot of it was me leading a large deal where they were just supporting me in a big vision where I was bringing in a bunch of products. On top of that, I had something called ECS, which is Enterprise Corporate Sales, it stands for. And those AEs were responsible for selling deals under $150,000. So I was solely charged with going after the big deals, and if I had some run rate stuff or some small deals, I could pass it to ECS. So it's a really brilliant model because it keeps you focused on— Yeah. What I'm good at, which is getting new executives, aligning with their vision, bringing in my team, and quarterbacking. And it was honestly a skill set that I had, you know, I had many years in sales leadership and I had led sales teams, so that came fairly natural to me in terms of aligning people and getting them working towards a common vision. But I didn't— wasn't doing that the years when I was trying to grind it out and do a lot of activity. I was trying to do everything myself, trying to be a lone wolf. But once I started taking a step back and quarterbacking and leading both my team and the customer's team, that's when the results really, you know, really took off.

Now, my question is, do you think you did the same amount of activity, just more focused? Because you're talking about going deeper, right? Like the same amount of calls?

I worked just as hard, but I worked smarter. Yeah, I put my time and attention on large strategic deals. I mean, that's the simple— it's not just the 80/20 rule with accounts that you're focused on. Right. It's also the 80/20 rule with opportunities. So my job was build and create and foster large opportunities that are 7 or 8 figures in nature. So I was responsible for generating what we call SELA, which is a Salesforce Enterprise License Agreement, where maybe they had 20 contracts and I wanted to consolidate them under one, get them the whole suite of products. Like you said, I wanted to sell them everything. We had over 2 100 products to sell. So it's like, which

is a double-edged sword. It's a double-edged sword. It's like, I could sell you everything and it's like, I can't confuse you.

Here's, here's the beautiful thing. When you can sell them everything and when you— I didn't sell, I didn't have a tool. I didn't even have a toolbox. I had Home Depot, right? I had the whole entire store. So my job was, let me learn about your goals. Let me learn about your biggest priorities. How are you measured? Okay. What, where do you think you're you're inefficient? Where do you think your time and attention needs to be focused? What's keeping you up at night? What are your metrics for the year? What are the biggest priorities you have for the next 12 months? And how can I get my team to support you hitting those goals? So it was like really cool because I could have conversations that weren't product-focused or weren't, you know, pigeonholing me into one thing and really just were focusing on customer outcomes. And then I would bring in— I even had a design thinking team that came from the likes of Accenture and Deloitte and all these consultancies to really create a better future and design a better future for clients when they couldn't get out of their own way. So sometimes I'd be in workshops with 30 or 40 executives leading whiteboard sessions with the whole team. So again, if you work for an Oracle or Salesforce or Microsoft or any of these— SAP— any of these big, big enterprise software companies, you have a lot of these resources. But honestly, my first couple years I wasn't using them. And then once I took a step back and I realized, hey, my job is to be the ringmaster. My job is to pull the strings, bring in all the people, and get people working for me. I mean, it just played out in my favor. My activity was no less whatsoever, but it was very, very focused, very strategic, and much deeper work. It was much more about storytelling and creating really powerful executive decks and just a totally different type of work than a transactional trying to close a $50K deal sales rep would be doing.

Ian, I, I have no doubt you or somebody on your team, uh, closed FedEx when we transitioned from an internal homegrown thing to Salesforce. And I just remember thinking, man, that rep made President's Club. Yeah, because that was— yeah.

These deals were $10, $20, $30 million. These, these are, you know, these are pretty large deals. Um, there was a couple deals I could think of that they weren't mine, but they were 9-figure deals where the rep made $2, $3, $4 million. I mean, game-changing money. Wow. I just, you know, for me, I realized the way I was doing it for most of my career did not translate to being a partner for these large enterprises. They don't want someone who's just gonna cram something down their throat, who's gonna pressure them. They want someone who is gonna partner with them over the long term and help them transform their business. Digital transformation is a big, big focus area when I was there, and it still is right now. And You know, only, only certain companies can help with that if you carry a big enough bag and you have, you know, the scale and also the platform that can support the scale of a large enterprise and what they need. So Salesforce was on that list, Microsoft, certainly AWS and Oracle. There's, there's a handful of companies that could really support these enterprise client needs. And I just fundamentally feel like, um, the, the people that are doing these big deals are They're not sales reps in the traditional sense. They're more leaders and visionaries that are basically able to take this massive conglomerate and move them, even though it takes herding a lot of cats. It takes finding the right change agents. It takes like sometimes like getting out of the way and letting them figure it out on their own. Like it's such a, it's like a chess match on these big enterprise deals. And there's a guy I know, Jamal Raymer, he wrote a book about it, Mega Deal Secrets, and he talks about just one of the deals in there. And, and it's true, it resonated because there's just so much. And I find honestly the fastest path to a large deal is get to power quickly, get above the power line and find the change agent. When you do that, a lot of times they'll do a lot of the heavy lifting for you to get the right people in the right room to make something happen.

No, I love that. So you, you, you leave Salesforce to now go into your own coaching business. How are you bringing those same concepts into what you're doing now to help you get to 7 figures?

Oh my gosh, it applies so well. I love the question. So here's the cool thing, and I don't mean to brag, and I apologize if this sounds arrogant, but I took my skills that I developed over 19 years and I said, okay, Like I'll just draw an exact parallel. So you start your fiscal year, you get a big $10 billion account. They have 25,000 employees. They have no pipeline. You say, what am I going to sell them? What am I going to do? How am I going to make my number? How am I going to get to? So my number was two million. It was it was between two and a two and two and a half million during my time there. So that's kind of the the number. And then my last year at Salesforce, I got raised to four point three million. So the the enterprise sales reps are. responsible for selling, I'd say between $2 and $4 million is a pretty, pretty good average in that space. So you're taking something and you're building this pipeline, probably you need double that to close that much, is double the amount of pipeline. If you're good, you'll close half your deals at least.

If you're good, you need double. If you're normal, you need triple perhaps.

Yeah, exactly. If you're normal, you might need to triple the pipeline. But again, that's depending on the person and in their experience and whatnot. But I— so you start with nothing and you create an account plan. Account plan basically maps out, okay, here's the opportunities, here's what the customer's focused on, here's their goals, here's their key executives, here's their people. And then you say you divide and conquer. So here's who you're going after, here's who I'm going after, here's the opportunities we see. It's basically just in your head. It's not on any— there's no reality. This is all in your head. This pipeline is not real yet. You put it in your head, then you put it on paper and say, here's our target. We're going to try to create $7 million in pipeline by halfway through the fiscal year. We're going to try and close $1 million of that. We're going to try to close another $2 million in the back half of the year. Hopefully we finish at $3, $4, $5 million ACV and a lot more in total contract value, but hopefully that's where we go and you execute. So when I started my business, it was the same thing. It's like, well, I want to build this to a 7-figure business. How am I going to do that? Well, here's the strategy I'm going to do. I'm going to— and it was literally like pipeline back-of-the-napkin math. It was, okay, I'm going to create a coaching platform which is subscription-based. It's not, you know, just me charging per hour. It's a product that I can sell, and I need this many subscriptions for gold-level coaching. So when I started my program, I charged $12,000 a client for gold level coaching, which had 12 one-on-one calls with me, plus the portal, plus the group coaching every week. So that was the highest tier was $12,000. The second tier was $6,000 and the third tier was $3,000. So I say, well, if I want to make $1 million, I can get 50 gold level clients. That's, you know, $600,000 at $12K. And I can get another 50 silver clients, which is $6,000 times 50 is $300,000. Now I'm at $900,000 and I can get another, you know, 30 bronze clients and then I'm at 7 figures. So you figure it out then. So you know what the goal is, then know what the number of clients needed to hit that goal is. And that would be the equivalent of like, you know, checking average selling price, average dollar price and backing into how many deals you need. And then it's like, okay, well, what does the pipeline look like for that? So I basically did the math first, figured out the business model, built the Product. See, I don't— I've switched my viewpoint on this big time. I used to think sales can sell anything even with the bad product. Now I think if you have a great product, focus there and then focus on marketing and then focus on sales. So I started with the product. I want to build a great product that can support that level of membership, something scalable, something that has a portal, something that people will tell their friends about. I want to market the crap out of it. And then if people still aren't convinced, I'll jump on sales calls. So here's what happened. I start marketing and I make LinkedIn videos every single week, and I also post every day on LinkedIn. I grow my following to a pretty good amount on LinkedIn, and then I'm also making YouTube videos, which I'm, which I'm growing that channel combined with the newsletter. And I'm doing this well before I have a product to sell. So I started this whole build an audience journey in 2019, 2020. 2020, now clients are coming to me, hey, can you coach me? And I start getting the coaching business and now I can't take more clients because I'm still at Salesforce. Now 2021 comes, I start putting people on a waitlist and this waitlist gets super big and I just do the back of the napkin math and I say, wait, I can make more money selling coaching and doing what I love than selling enterprise software. And it became a no-brainer. Between you and me, the quota was doubled, right? So my quota went up to $4.3 million, which meant Perfect

timing, perfect timing for

this to happen. Serendipity. Instead of saying, oh, this sucks, screw you, I'm like, thank you. Perfect. This is exactly what I needed to make the leap because until then I was pretty hesitant to go and go all in on the coaching business. So the way that I applied the skills is I planned, I focused, I executed. It's consistent. Like, I didn't see the results, but by the time I launched the product in May of 2020, My first public launch, the thing sold out in 2 days because I had already been nurturing and already been building trust with my clients via LinkedIn and YouTube. And I didn't take any sales calls. I did a $500K launch without taking sales calls because they believed in me. In this case, I was the product and I had the marketing that I had been doing. So if product and marketing are there, you know, the sales is really tertiary, it's third. So that's kind of how I think about it. Yeah.

Founders, when we're all salespeople, we're like sales-led everything. And now we're all like marketing-led, growth-led everything. It's crazy. I'm like, I'll do founder-led sales, but that's not going to scale. Like we're feeling it, right?

That's right. And it feels so good not to hop on sales calls. I like selling, don't get me wrong. But like, I think of like, what's the highest value activity I can be doing versus the lowest value activity? And honestly, a low-value activity is seeing if someone would be a good fit for my program. If I'm going to get hundreds or thousands of people in my program, I'm not going to have time to— you don't see people jumping on sales calls that are running, you know, very, very big, large coaching-type businesses. They have teams for that. So I can hire a setter, I can hire a closer, but ultimately you're right. Product and marketing are what's going to drive the audience, is going to drive referrals and affiliates, right? So all the people in my program now—

That's all growth. That's all growth.

That's all part of it. They tell their friends, they get paid like They're going to be my best salespeople is people in the program. So, I'm loving it. Oops. I'm loving it. The other thing is discipline. The ability to delay gratification is really important in the enterprise selling space. You're not going to see the results. You're not going to see the immediate dopamine of closing all these small deals that you would get if you're selling to smaller accounts or have a smaller deal size. So, that's the same thing with running a business. You might be, as you know, Jared, because you are a founder. So, when you're building, it's all on paper. You don't see anything. I'm building my course. Right. I'm recording videos. I'm making all this with no followers, no fans. Like, it doesn't matter. I'm going through the process and trusting if I stay consistent and work on delivering value and serving others, that eventually the customers will come. And honestly, it was the best kind of like skillset I could have developed as a founder because, you know, you're operating on blind faith when you don't have the revenue coming in in the beginning. So you just have to trust. One more thing I'll add is, I didn't do this alone, right? I didn't just scale to 7 figures magically. I'm a huge believer in investing in myself to find mentors and coaches that are paid, not free, but paid mentors that are going to, you know, basically show me how to do it. So I hired a guy named Sam Ovens, who's a very strong leader in digital marketing. Some of the top coaches or course creators in the world came through his program, and he laid out the roadmap for me. I also Got in touch with Marcus Chen and John Barros and, you know, a lot of people, Scott Leiss, a lot of people who had made the switch from corporate to entrepreneurs and I picked their brains and I tried to learn from a lot of people so I didn't make a lot of mistakes on my own and figure out and pay the tuition. So if I had to give one piece of advice away for anyone on this call, it's like find a great mentor or coach and pay them, pay them to be part of their program so that you don't have to figure it out and pay tuition like I did for 3 years. It wasn't until I joined the mastermind and got help that I got to number 1, and I took that 80/20 rule in full force and started actually caring and adding value. So that's like the best thing I could say is just like, people have done it before you at the highest levels. Why reinvent the wheel? Model them, copy them, and you'll save yourself a lot of heartache and a lot of time figuring it out.

You know what, I just invested in Reforge, an awesome program. I, you know, we're talking about growth Loops and stuff. And I was on with the CMO of, um, the former CMO of Optimizely slash Netflix in like a Q&A. Like, and every week it's, it's another thing. And, and, you know, to the audience, we all have help like this is, is, is the takeaway. And, and it helps us get there faster. And, and one thing you brought up that I, I've been playing around with, I need to, I need, uh, and, and I'm gonna hit you up after, I need help with, um, course creation. Mm-hmm. We'll, we'll, We'll talk through that offline. Yeah. Um, but, but like, we'll figure that out. So, you know, going into like KPIs to guide, you, you have 2 different, you have 2 different Ians, right? You have Ian as, um, top enterprise seller at Salesforce, like the KPIs there, and then you have your current. I'm curious as to how it's evolved. Like what, what'd you do then? What are you doing now?

What I did then I mean, KPIs, like, look, everyone—

that's what Salesforce gave you, right?

Like, everyone does this wrong. I mean, I, I can't stand the state of sales leadership right now. It just makes me upset to talk about. Like, a lot of people think activity is the KPI. It's just like, build— some, some people, some companies are feeling the pressure, not the good ones, but they're feeling the pressure, and, and it's their jobs, and the pressure goes right down to the bottom. And I see it with people I I see it with a lot of people I coach. Their managers are asking to do unnatural things and create sometimes pipeline at the expense of honesty and, you know, just get it in there and all kinds of like, like just find the low-hanging fruit at the expense of the big deal. So for me, my KPIs as an enterprise rep really were meeting with power was the number one thing that I needed to get. I wanted to get executive meetings with C-suites, with senior vice presidents. I didn't care about pipeline or, you know, the number of calls I made. It was more about, okay, am I connecting with the right level of people that can be change agents or mobilizers inside of the account? So that was the first thing I looked at. It's like, who have I met with in the account? Who have I not met with? And I made it a point to get meetings with, you know, all the key folks— the COO, the CRO, the CMO, the CIO, right? I need to be a trusted advisor talking to all these folks. That's, that's the first one. The second thing, obviously is deals over $1 million, right? So you're not going to get these very large deals done if you're scraping and clawing at $50K to $75K or $100K deals. That was a mistake I made for many years. But, you know, for me, it was like, how many 7-figure deals can I create? How many transformational deals can I create? And then the 3rd KPI is really once you get those deals created, you have the conversations, you create the opportunities. Now it becomes, okay, well, Are these real deals, and how do I qualify these deals to make sure they're actually gonna close? I don't wanna be closing at a 33%, not even a 50%. I wanna be closing at a 75% ratio. So if I have $4 million in pipe, $3 million of that close. Otherwise, I'm wasting my time. So my time was really spent, I don't know if this would be a KPI, but it's more like, you hear of the metrics, you hear of the med picks, and you hear of different qualification.

Yeah.

Well, the story I'll give, I'll cut to the chase. Um, in 2020 I had a baby, okay? And I went on paternity leave. My, my little guy Luke, he's, he's a little angel, but I had to go back to Salesforce. Well, I came back to Salesforce in October and I had 4 months in our fiscal year left. And Salesforce has, um, their fiscal year ends in January and I had to sell $1 million to hit my plan. Well, I'd already been coaching, I'd already kind of started building my brand and things were going well and I, I was like, Very close to not coming back because I said, why am I going to put myself through this misery? I don't have the pipeline, I don't have the accounts, and if I fail, if I miss it, I'm going to lose credibility as a coach. In other words, who's going to hire a coach that didn't even hit their own number? So I'm like, I was really scared, and I could have easily quit and just given up and said, you know, I had a baby, I just didn't finish the year, and been fine. But instead, I decided to face my fears and lean into it and And say, you know what, look, win or lose, hit it or not hit it, my message is that you are not your number. You're more than your number. You're a person. You have worth outside of your performance. And if I'm going to preach that message as a coach, I better be willing to take my own medicine and risk missing my number. So I went all in, and I actually had to create and close over $1 million in pipeline to hit my number of $2 million. I ended up closing $1.1 million in a period of just over 12 weeks and finished at 110% of plan. So the question is, how did I do it? Right? So I came back and I listed out all of these aspirational deals that I wanted to close, and there were probably $500K, $1 million, $1.5 million, and there was, I think there was about 10 of them. And I came up with a list of criteria to qualify whether this deal was really prepared to close or than 3 months, because 3 months is a short window for enterprise. Yeah. Um, the criteria was, am I dealing with the decision maker, like power or decision makers? Do I— am I solving a problem they really care about or helping them achieve a goal that's truly important to them? Okay. Have I presented a business case for them? Have I, um, given them a proposal yet? In other words, do they have numbers, right? Have I met with power If, you know, not only identify, but have I met with power and has power confirmed this is a priority for them? Have we established timelines? So I came up with like 10 or so criteria in the deals. I put them all in a spreadsheet and I basically went through and I said, okay, which of these qualify? And I saw a lot of gaps. I saw a lot of missing information. So the first thing I did is I basically said, I'm gonna set meetings with power in each of these, and then I'm going to either qualify or disqualify them. And I ended up only choosing a few of those. One of them was like $500K, and there were a few for like $250K or so, and it got me over, over a million. And that evolved— that, that list evolved into an acronym which I created and copyrighted this year called PREDICT. And it's a way to measure and to see if a deal is going to close at the large Enterprise level. So, I'll just share kind of what it is, but this is my KPI for opportunity.

And you're using this now, Predict, with Ian Cognac?

I'm teaching it to my clients. Yeah. So, they use it for their deals. So, it's a— I don't like saying methodology because my whole approach is like, just have a conversation, be a human, and get to know people. But this is the way to put the deal through the sniff test to see, is it a real deal? That's the way to think of Predict. Really to assess whether your deal is quality.

And you're, and you're assessing this with your business capturing the bigger deals probably as well for you, right?

I honestly am just doing B2C now, so I'm not using Predict for myself. But yeah, when I, when I sold training and coaching, which I was doing for a lot, most of the year, now I just cut that business off because my coaching business is going really well. And I love doing that. And I'm focusing there just on purely the B2C side of coaching. But when I was selling B2B and selling training to companies like Salesforce, I did, yes, I did put them through the PREDICT test.

What's the acronym?

So, the acronym is P. P is problem with pain. So, it's really 2 things. So, problem with pain. What problem are we solving and what pain is that causing? Okay? Specifically. No problem, no pain, no deal. Sorry to say. The R is the reason. That's their personal why. Why is this important to the buyer? What's in it for them? What's their personal motivation for getting this done for your champion or for your executive sponsor? And then why is it important for the company? How is this going to help the company and how's it going to help the individual buyer? That's the R. The E is missing from every single methodology out there, and it's one of the most important, and that stands for engagement.

I was going to say that FedEx, we did Sales Ready, Research, Engage.

Good. Okay, good. So, so Sales Ready, FedEx has its own thing.

Ready, DDD, discover, develop, demonstrate.

Okay, so the E was engaged. So the fundamental E, yeah. So are they engaged? Are they giving you information that they need? Are they giving you the data for a business case? Are they getting back to you? Or you want a text thread with them? Are they getting in front of all the right people? So that's the E is for engaged. Okay, the D is for decision maker and decision process. So another double D, right? Decision maker. Do we— are we dealing with the right folks that can actually sign, right? I think MedPic comes from economic buyer. And D is decision process. Do we know what their exact process is for making the decision? That's the D. I is impact. Impact is, have we given a business case? What is the financial impact of solving the problem? What does this mean to them? Give me the dollars and cents. Do we— do we have a business case? C stands for cost of inaction. What happens if they do nothing? So what are they paying right now? How much is it costing them in the status quo? That's their labor, that's their time, that's their current tech stack. That's the opportunity cost of what happens if they don't actually solve the problem. What are they missing out on? That's the C. And there's all kinds of questions under each of these that you can ask, but that's the C. And then the last one is T, and that stands for timeline. Why now? What compelling event do they have that's driving this forward? And what is happening in their business that makes this deal urgent for them, not for us, but for them. So, you know, you pass the predict test, your deal's going to close. That's the bottom line.

I love that. That, that's like a mic drop right there. And, and I'm so appreciative that you pointed out the E not being in many of the processes. And I remember an old sales director saying, this is the most important step of the process because that's the relationship one. But,

um, totally.

You have such great processes, a great company, have had great results. Is there anything keeping you up at night with all of that? I'm curious.

My— this is a different, different, um,

sure,

different answer completely. It doesn't keep me up at night. I have an Oura Ring and my sleep is nails. So, I'll tell you, I sleep— my sleep readiness and my sleep efficiency is over 90% every night, meaning when I'm in bed, I'm I'm sleeping 90% of the time. I'm not tossing and turning. It doesn't take me a long time to fall asleep. I don't wake up. So, I generally— how do you sleep well at night? Well, in my experience coaching, in my personal life, I'll tell you. Proverbially. Yeah. The best way to sleep well at night is to make sure you've won the day. You've set your goals for the day and you've achieved your goals. And if you've done everything you can that you put your mind to and that you put on your calendar and you actually executed, you're not going to beat yourself up You're not going to feel guilty, and you are going to be able to fall asleep really having exerted yourself. It's the old Parkinson's law. So, what keeps me up at night is not, am I working my hardest? Am I working on the right things? I know I am. I'm pretty good at prioritizing and planning. Sure. I was able to scale. What keeps me up at night, and I'm going to take this step back, is, am I doing God's will? Okay? So, I come from an addiction recovery background, and I went through 12 steps. And step 11 is pray only for knowledge of God's will and the power to carry it through, right? So what I mean by that is, am I really helping others in the capacity that I can? Knowing helping people sell more is one thing, but helping people change and evolve their lives to overcome addictions, to improve their marriages, to take vices that they've never told anyone about and, you know, stop living in shame in secrecy about these and really, you know, get the help that they need. Really just deal with shit that maybe they've bottled up, whatever it is. So I've had to do a lot of personal work on myself. Yeah. And fundamentally, where I'm focused right now is enterprise sales training, and those are my clients because that's what I'm known for. But where I really get my passion and energy is helping people transform their lives and make changes that they never thought were possible. And I've had to do this in my own life life and I've been able to overcome some really nasty history of addiction and genetics and all kinds of, you know, obstacles in my life and I know if I can do it, other people can do it. So the science of change and driving people to actually want to make change and execute those changes, that's really where I do see myself in 5 years. So what keeps me up is am I doing the right things that really help get that audience out or am I just isolating myself to just the enterprise sales stuff that, you know, that people wanna hire me for and get paid for.

So let's unpack that in a couple minutes cuz that, that's intriguing. We talked about this quite a bit, but you know, before we get there, like what, what excites you about the future? Like in general, there's so much,

gosh,

that could be.

What excites me about the future? Oh, it's such a good question. Um, I think right now we are more disconnected than ever. I think with our phones and with social media and with this constant need for immediate instant gratification that many of us are struggling with, even though we're trying to use technology to connect, a lot of times it can actually make us feel more isolated and disconnected than ever. And I feel like there is a renaissance and a new movement for people wanting to build authentic genuine connections. kind of coming out of COVID and isolation. And I think there's— people are going to be starved for love and connection and meaning and purpose in their life. And I feel like there's something happening where people are starting to recognize that, you know, maybe the way I'm living is not really making me truly happy and fulfilled. And so, what I'm talking a lot about in my keynotes and with a lot of people is 3 things that really do lead to happiness. And those 3 things, and I think you and I can relate on this based on our last conversation. One is connection, right? Meaningful connections with others and with your— ideally with your partner. And, you know, that's the first thing. When you have connection on a day-to-day basis, you have happiness. And all the studies of happiness, that's like the main thing is people feel that deep—

Happiness is right here too. Like, there's nothing to go out and get or anything to do. It's within us. Remove, remove, remove.

And again, I had all this stuff before, but it was never enough. I was chasing the wrong things. I was chasing money and success and recognition. So now I chase connection. That's the first one. Growth, which is the continuous pursuit of your full potential, really challenging yourself physically, mentally, with business to continue growing all the time. And the third is contribution, really making a difference in the lives of others. So if If I can really help others focus on those 3 areas, and it starts in the home, it starts with your family and your kids and your significant others, being present and giving people the time. If I can do that, that excites me because I feel like that's where I've gotten my joy. That's what got me out of addiction. That's what helped me to now serve others at a much higher capacity. And until I did that work on myself, honestly, I didn't appreciate what was right inside of me and right in front of me the whole entire time. I guess that's what excites me most is that I'm teaching this and that it's really resonating and people are seeing a direct impact in their happiness level, not just their wallet and their income.

Ian, like, this is the perfect transition. So like the first half we learned from you and learned a ton. And what was the coolest part was like towards the end, we're leaking towards the second half in the sense that I want to learn about you, right? Like I want to learn what drives Ian. Also just anything about you. So who are you?

Who am I? Oh man, who are we, right? We are, we are the—

oh, it's such a— we're, we're the same.

We're, we're the product of all the experiences that have led us to this point. Who I am now is not who I was 5 years ago, 10 years ago. Who am I now? I'll talk to—

because yeah, and you spoke about addiction and recovery and all of this. Like, expound on all of this because I, I I want to get all that good stuff of your journey.

I'd say who am I is reflected in my values. It's hard to say I'm this guy. I can put whatever is on LinkedIn or whatever resume, but none of that matters. What matters is your values and your character. And for me, who I am is a person who is just like you and everyone listening to this, but woke up, okay? Woke up to the realization that everything I thought was important didn't fucking matter. Pardon my language. The things that matter most in life I have right now and I have in abundance. And so for me, who I am are my children, my wife, and the love that I share and my faith that I have. I genuinely am somebody who wants to live the values of integrity, being an honest person, being kind, caring for other people, lending a helping hand where I can, Giving back to others, not just the sales community, but to others. I took a call earlier today for someone that was struggling with addiction, and you know, just helped him with where he needed to go. And you know, I I just feel that there's so much more joy in giving than receiving. So I'm genuinely a person who's been very blessed my whole life to have been given gifts and also been given challenges that I've been fortunate through my. Through God and through resilience and everything that's happened, I've been very fortunate to overcome these challenges now where I'm in a place where my ego genuinely, it's not about me, okay? I like to say I'm humble, but it's the truth. It's fundamentally my job. If I am empty inside, I am happy. If I'm not thinking about myself and letting my spirit shine through conversations like this or coaching calls or or trainings that I do, I am in flow for me. So that is my goal, is to dissolve the ego and fundamentally just serve and give and use my 20 years of hardships and triumphs and experiences so that others hopefully don't make some of the mistakes I can and can also prioritize what's most important with what's right in front of them. And that's being a good person, helping others, being present, like genuinely doing something that you like and that you're passionate about and doing it for the right reasons, and then the money will come as a result of that. So I, I think who I was in the past was very, very different than who I am now, and it took a near-death experience and it took nearly losing my family to addiction for, for me to come out of that and realize all of what I just shared.

Damn. I mean, it's so strong. And you, you mentioned that you love helping folks, and, and, and you alluded to like foreshadowing wanting to do more more work in raising, you know, mental health awareness, right? Can you, can you share, like, because you've transitioned, because you, you are this incredible, uh, historic enterprise seller, um, you have created an incredible second-to-none, um, you know, core structure where you're helping individuals, but you want, you know, you distinctively told me that you want to be so much more and you want to What you're doing going into the future. Share a bit of that goodness.

So here's, here's my story, just to kind of give you a little bit of insight. And I share this with sadness, but also with compassion and love for my former self. When I say I struggled with my own doubts, I felt, and I know a lot of salespeople can relate to this a lot. I felt like I wasn't worthy unless I was hitting my number. I felt like I was never enough unless I was performing, right? And in an industry where you're measured by the scoreboard and by your income, I think that's very common. And during my Ricoh years selling copiers and printers, I was the guy. I was the number one. Every position I had promoted, led 80 people when I left, and then I go to Salesforce, I get Rookie of the Year, get lucky my first year. And so now I have 11 years under my belt crushing it, and then I miss quota 3 years in a row. Well, during that time missing quota, I was really down on myself. I was, you know, I couldn't even look at the mirror. It's like I was really upset. And in the first year, I thought it was my boss. The second year, I thought it was my team and my territory. I moved teams. In the third year, I had to look in the mirror and say, wow, maybe it's me. And I remember almost not even recognizing myself in the mirror. It was nearly an out-of-body experience after that 3rd year because I saw myself and I'm like, who are you? You're nothing. You're worthless because you just missed again on the last day of the fiscal year. And it was like the most painful feeling I've ever had to like feel like I was worthless as a human. And all the while I'm married, I have a beautiful family and none of that mattered. All that mattered was hitting my number. Okay? Mm-hmm. So I end up crushing it the next year. I joined a mastermind, invested in myself, finished number 1. And I remember feeling, I thought this would solve all my problems, but I don't feel any different. And then I did it another year after that. And I'm like, whoa, now I have a lot of money in the bank. I bought this house, but I don't feel any different. Then I have a near-death experience and I'm like, oh, I get it. I have been selfish in pursuing only money. Now I got to start Giving back. And I start this coaching business and I start giving back and I start making videos. And all the while, my ego is out of control. Now, instead of— I go the opposite direction. Instead of feeling worthless, I'm like, I am God's gift to sales. Now, I have a personal brand. People are paying for my coaching. And here's what happened. And then I'm going to get really vulnerable for a minute with you, Jared. When your ego is flying high, you behave badly. And a lot of times you fall really hard, and that's what happened to me. So 2017, 2018, I'm rocking. I'm the top guy. I'm partying. I'm getting drunk. I'm taking clients out. I'm going to strip clubs. I'm going out and just behaving really badly, hiding all this, lying from my wife, and just thinking, well, this is just what top dogs do. They go out, they party, they celebrate. I work hard. I deserve it. 2019 happens. Now my ego gets even bigger. Because now people are trying to pay me for my knowledge and skills and I'm getting a following and I end up—

Extra validation.

Yeah, extra validation. So, I end up going to Vegas and I have a bender and I end up doing something that was out of integrity with my marriage, okay? And it was something that I felt tremendous shame around because I always consider myself a good husband but I crossed the line in a state of drunkenness And I felt tremendous shame around that, but I would never admit it to my wife. I would never tell anyone about it. I just kind of kept it in secret. Then I continued to kind of still party. I said, I'll never do that again. And then a few months later I was back at it. And then I'm like, oh shit, I think I have a problem. Okay? So fundamentally, I came from— my family is full of alcoholics. My dad unfortunately passed When I was only 20 years old, he was only 54. My cousin passed away of addiction. My brother struggled. So, I have this whole history of addiction with the males in my family, but I always kind of denied it because I was a high performer, high achiever. And I'm like, ah, it's not stopping me. I'm not in a ditch, so what does it matter? But once I lost integrity with my marriage and crossed the line, I'm like, I got a problem. Okay? So— Mm-hmm. I kept it to myself. I didn't get the help. I just kind of thought I could— do it on my own. And, you know, basically I had always struggled with compulsive sexual behavior, right? I'd always struggled with porn and strip clubs. And this isn't something anyone talks about because it's taboo, but a lot of men, um, I know because they tell me in secret, uh, struggle with the same thing. And especially in the sales culture where you're traveling a lot, you're drinking. So I basically crossed the line in Las Vegas, and then I said, that's never going to happen again. But unfortunately, I continued to view porn and continued to kind of do things in secret. Well, my wife is a Christian woman, and she's always kind of told me what her boundaries were. And she said, this is not okay in our marriage. So I just didn't say anything, right? That's the bottom line. Well, February 2020 comes, and I'm feeling super guilty about Vegas. And I decide, you know what, I'm going to tell my wife. I'm going to tell my wife what happened. But I'm not going to tell her the whole story. I'm going to tell her a little bit just to ease my conscience, ease my guilt. So I start telling my wife about my porn. I told her, you know, hey, I'm looking at porn. I hope you don't have a problem with it. And she's like, why are you telling me this? I'm like, well, you know, I know you hate strip clubs. So I went to a virtual strip club. I went on webcams and there's women stripping there, which is very popular now on these, you know, these amateur camera sites. And that's what I was doing. And she was pregnant, 4 months pregnant at the time. And she collapsed to the ground and started shaking and convulsing, like uncontrollable convulsions. I'm like, oh fuck, what happened? Right? And I share, I share this story openly because it's been 32 months and I'm sober and a different person. But that's, that's where all this is coming from. She collapses and then it gets worse. she starts having labor contractions. Well, she's 4 months pregnant. So, now I'm thinking, oh, what have I done? We got to get to the doctor. We get— we rush off to the doctor, right? And all I did was tell her about the webcams. I hadn't told her about Vegas or any of the more extreme stuff. And that's how she reacted. So, I'm like, oh my God. And the whole time, I've always been— I've always believed in God but I never really internalized how to practice Godly values and live godly values. I just believed there was something, but I didn't make you know that how I live my life. And I started praying to God. I said, "God, please do not take this baby. Do not take this baby. Please let my wife be okay. I I don't care what I have to do. I will get help, please." And we get to the doctor. He puts on the ultrasound device, and he basically is. It's like thirty seconds—a long time. He's looking. He's looking. He's like. I'm just expecting no heartbeat. I'm expecting that, you know, the baby—we lost the baby because if you go into labor at four months, you don't keep the baby. It's impossible. It doesn't happen. After about thirty seconds, he pops up and he said, "Ian, there's a heartbeat. Sammy, there's a heartbeat." I'm like, "Oh, thank God!" It was like it was like such a relief. It's one thing if you think you're hurting yourself. It's another thing if you think you're hurting someone else, and it's a whole. different level if you think you've murdered your, your son that's not even born yet. And that's what I felt, is I just could have murdered my son because of the stress I caused my wife. So I asked the doctor, I said, what is it? What happened? What, what's going on here? And he said, Ian, these aren't labor contractions, these are stress contractions. Your wife has been in such distress over whatever happened, you know, that, that, you know, she— her body went in mirrored labor and mimicked labor. Wow. Wow. It's not labor, it's stress. He's like, what is it? You got a girlfriend? Like, what happened? Like, you cheat on her? I'm like, well, something like that, right? I didn't get into the details, but that was it. That was my rock bottom. That was February 13th, 2020. It's been 32 months since I viewed any kind of porn or anything related to what I was doing before. In that process, I also stopped getting drunk. I stopped smoking pot. I stopped taking Adderall. So I've had to really— I mean, again, by the grace of God, my baby is alive and healthy and beautiful. My wife and I are closer than we've ever been. But that whole process was one of me cleansing all of the stuff that I had bottled up for a whole lifetime. I confessed to my wife. I got into therapy. I got into 12-step recovery. I told her everything. She left me for a while. But you know what? It was based on Her knowing the truth versus her staying because she didn't— of what she didn't know, which is the right thing.

Integrity is everything.

Integrity was everything. So then she came back and she said, I see you're working. I went to 90 meetings in 90 days. And like I said, God has lifted whatever desires or all those things inside of me are gone. And I just am so grateful for it. Now, the simple act of watching a sunset or taking a walk or meditating or just Enjoying time with my family. These values that I have, this is who I am now. It's somebody who puts family first, who puts God first, who puts service of others first. And I know that by doing that, you know, everything I need will be provided. So, that's the long-winded answer to your question because that's what got me to this point now.

Ian, thank you for sharing that with us. And wow, having those experiences makes you stronger, makes you a stronger advisor and consultant. And, and, and friend, and for a friend.

I live my values. I have wife lunch with my wife every single day, no matter what. I put my phone away, I work out, I just ran a marathon. I spend time with my kids. Am I perfect? No, we're all human. We're all doing our best. But I can tell you, I am a different person than I was several years ago, and my values are so different. And that's what I want everyone to experience. I wanna experience the joy that comes from being present and from giving yourself to others and truly living in integrity and not having things that you do that you're ashamed of. If you live your truth and your actions and your behaviors match your values and your beliefs and your words and your thoughts, you are going to be happy. You are going to sleep better at night. And I get the—

Wow.

Pleasure of living that every day. So, there's no secrets for me. That's why I can share this openly because I'm not doing it anymore. I know there's a lot of people that struggle with the same issues that I struggle with, so I want them to know they're not alone. And like I said, if anyone needs support, just find me on LinkedIn and I'm happy to take a call and get you to the right resources because so many people helped me in my struggles when I was there.

Let's— yeah, so if people want to contact you for anything from enterprise sales to challenges with addiction recovery, just mental anything, how can people get in touch with you?

I know it's probably pretty hard to admit this, but I regularly take calls with people that hear me on a podcast or sharing my story that have never told anyone some secrets. Yep. And I will take a call with you and I'll guide you and get you to the right place depending on— everyone's got different vices they struggle with. But fundamentally, if that is the issue that you want my help with, like you don't need my coaching, you just need my support and my ear. And you can send me a direct message on LinkedIn and just tell me, you know, hey, I heard you on this podcast Revenue Today and, you know, you struck a chord. I'd love to talk to you, you know, about my struggles, something like that. Send me a DM, I will write back, I will take a call with you and help guide you. Because again, so many people were doing that for me when I was in my darkest darkest moments. If you want sales coaching and you want to join my program, it is sold out for 2022, but I am taking clients starting in 2023. So there is a waitlist. Just go to untapyoursalespotential.com. That's untapyoursalespotential.com, and you'll see a waitlist form on that page. Just click that, or if you want to go right to the waitlist form, you can go untapyoursalespotential.com/waitlist. I do private coaching, I do group coaching in a mastermind, or you can just take my course online. So that's easy to do. And if you want to just get some content from me and follow my, my, my content, just subscribe to my YouTube channel. I put on new videos every week, or DM me on LinkedIn, connect with me, and I'll get you my newsletter and you'll get a free training every week that way. So there's all kinds of ways to get support.

And Ian, we spoke about doing some mental health stuff together. So like, let's, um, let's put that into reality. It's being recorded, so hopefully, uh, that holds us accountable there. I, I can't thank you enough for coming on. I know there's, there's somebody in the audience that's going to listen today that is gonna, is gonna learn a ton about enterprise sales, and there's somebody else that's going to learn a ton that there's other people out here to support you. So whether No matter what camp you're in, you might be in both. And, um, and, and, and Ian's here for that. I'm here for that. You, you have people out here. Thank you for your time, man. It means the world to us.

Absolutely. And, uh, thanks for, thanks for inviting the conversation and the questions that got me to share some, some very intimate details, which I feel can help a lot of people that may be struggling in the same Issue, especially married men in sales that, that might be out of integrity with their behaviors.

Yeah. And, and I want to thank the audience. If you learned something today or laughed or, um, you know, had something hit you in the feels, tell somebody else about it. You know, we're, we're here for you all. And Ian, thank you again. Um, it means the world to me to have you on here.

Absolutely. Thanks, Jared. Have a good one.

Whoa! Another great episode of Revenue Today. For show notes, links, and mentions, visit revenue today dot live. For all my friends in the Rev Genius community, thank you. It's been awesome to spend this time with you. Please DM me any feedback and ideas in our Slack channel or on LinkedIn. If you're not in Rev Genius, join us at revgenius.com. It's free. And it only takes like 2 seconds and you'll be joining a group of 27,000 revenue professionals strong. We've got it all. Looking forward to seeing you there. Catch you on the flip side. Thank you.