How Top Sales Performers Think | 701 | Bob Kocis

And welcome, welcome, welcome. This is Peter Winick. I'm the founder and CEO at Thought Leadership Leverage, and you're joining us on the podcast, which is Leveraging Thought Leadership. Today, my guest is Bob Kosis. He is amongst other things, the author of The President's Club Mindset. And let me just grab his bio 'cause it just disappeared. He's gone from the sales floor to the C-suite. He's a multi-time chief revenue officer and global sales executive. He's president and COO of Appian, where he leads global operations and drives strategy. So he's sort of interesting in the standpoint that this is not just academic or theoretical. He's really someone out there doing the stuff and then decided to sort of dive into this universe of thought leadership. So welcome aboard, Bob.

Thank you, Peter. I really appreciate you having me on today.

So let me guess, you're sitting around going, you know what, I don't have enough to do. I don't have enough hours. You know, I've got too many hours in the day. Let me take on something else, right? To keep my days busy. That was probably how this started.

It was a, it was a very difficult decision because, you know, in the, in these positions we're in, you were incredibly busy, but you know, when you have so much passion around a topic and, and also the industry's been so good to you and you see the, you see the, all the folks that are out there that are looking to make a big impact and get better at what they do, get better at their craft, right? I just felt the need to give back a little bit to the community and, and give back to all the people that were, were great to me. So that was kind of what drove me to do it.

So more, more legacy than business driver, because I see a lot of execs that dive into thought leadership and in one, it's one use case might be to elevate their own brand, their company brand, et cetera. And another might be, wow, I've, you know, I really want more people to know what I've known or what I've learned the hard way. But it seems like you're in the latter bucket.

It is much more legacy. It's, and it's why what I did was, you know, this isn't a book just about me. I brought in 10 people that had combined won over 150 Presidents Clubs and interviewed them as part of the book because it's not just about me. I mean, we have such great talent in the, in the tech world and sharing those stories and sharing those insights. I think it made, it made the, the whole process just much better and, and, and much more fun for me. And I think more fun for the reader.

So stay there a second because sales is one of those things where, you know, if you were looking to hire an engineer or a coder or an ac— like, you know, you wouldn't hire an attorney that didn't pass the bar. Yet sales, I still think, is in many places a little bit of the Wild West in terms of sometimes we hire for charisma, sometimes we hire someone that can follow the process. What are the top 2 or 3 things you learned from interviewing all these Presidents Club folks? Because I, I like the idea of like, well, let's learn from the top because That's what we strive to be.

No, for sure. I think there's a few things that I would say came out of the interviews really, really cleanly. One is most of them all said that one of their keys to success was really curiosity and the depth of curiosity, the depth of them being able to stay curious with their clients, really understand what was motivating and driving their clients. So I think that's one thing for folks listening today, they can learn from that, I think.

Some people don't have that innate ability to stay there a minute because, you know, curiosity, lifelong learning, whatever. I'm old enough and I think you are as well to remember, you know, back in the day you'd have a salesman for whatever, technology, pharma, whatever. And typically if you looked in their car, there would be cassette tapes everywhere of Zig Ziglar or, you know, a bunch of these other folks. And this was before the age of podcasting. You know, it wasn't as convenient as clicking a button. And the smart ones were always trying to take in more and tweak and, and, and, you know, sort of get better. It sounds like that's something that you validated from, from this research. Oh, w—

without a doubt. And I think the best ones, the elite ones, the elite sellers, what, what they do incredibly well is they're able to put the customer in the state of what's gonna happen after they partner. Like, they ask the questions, they stay curious, they go deep. But then they're able to get the customer in this state of, this is, this is how I'm gonna be after I partner with this individual, right? And how I bought, when I buy from this individual, and they get them in that end state and they focus on the end state. They don't focus on the close. They focus on, with the customer, they're focused on how they're gonna be successful after they buy and what that process is.

So I, I, I love that because I think far too often, too many sales methodologies are all about pipeline, get 'em through the pipeline, get 'em to the close, and then, well, what happens the next day? Well, then you're onto the next one, right? But like for the client, the customer, the close is the beginning, right? What happens next? Right? And they should be, I love how they should be interested, excited, invigorated around whatever that journey's gonna take them as opposed to the salesperson going on to the next deal and handing it off to, to the next piece. So that's, that's pretty cool. So in the process of writing this book, And I'm going to assume you're a President's Club kind of guy. What did you learn? Because this sounds like a curio— it sounds like I'm getting a little meta here. Your curiosity drove you to this, like you're—

you did.

Yeah, yeah, it was, it was really, it was super interesting to me because like I had this, you know, lifelong of learning that I kind of was able to pull together and, and learn more. And I think what— there's a few things I, I took away from it. I think the curiosity thing we already talked about, but I think also The great elite sellers are incredibly proactive. They're like, they're looking around corners. They're finding, they're always ahead of everybody else in the process. And they're always thinking 2, 3, 4 steps ahead of the competition, of the prospect or the customer. And they're always figuring out like, where do I position? Where do I, where do I put ourselves in a place to win? And the ones that, the ones that, that don't do that are probably, they're probably struggling a little bit more, I would say. So I think that's a really good lesson. That kind of I pulled together from it as well. And then I think one unilaterally said, hey, you don't do this by yourself. Like you have to be, even if you're a salesperson with no direct reports, you have to be a leader and you have to pull along all these great resources with you to go win that deal, whatever that resource might be. Right.

So, so I want to stay there for a moment because I think that's both internal and external. I think selling. Used to be going after the quote, you know, decision maker. Like the whole concept was it's one person's decision. If I take Bob out for a round of golf and he's the buyer and he gets to like me and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I think what the data shows us and the HBR articles and such show us is that buying is now a team sport.

Oh, it's without a doubt. It's without a doubt a team sport. Well, let me give you an example of that, which I think The elite sellers do better than anybody else. What they do is they, they really painstakingly understand. Let's look at the buyer for a second. They really understand that political environment, that power base that exists.

Yeah.

You're going to have champions who promote you. You're going to have people that are kind of neutral. They may be looking, but they may or may not really care. You'll have people that are enemies potentially.

Right. Right.

And a lot of sellers will kind of not want to engage the enemies. They'll, they'll want to engage all the people that want to be their champion and want to be promoting them. Um, but the elite—

well, I get that. I mean, I get that intellectually nobody wants to go out and be combative, but if you don't neutralize the enemies, they're, you know, therefore they're still an enemy.

That's the word, that's the word they use. They said, look, you got to go in, in there and you got to find a way to neutralize the enemy.

Yeah.

I don't find a way to at least get them where they're not fighting against you. Right. And I think that was a, uh, that was something that, that came out that I kind of knew, but I'm not sure I realized how, how important and critical that was, you know, to, to becoming an elite performer.

Cool. So I want to, I want to shift now, because that, that was a great sort of overview of the, the actual content and how it came to be. How does it now play a role? Right? So now you, you're on the other side of this. You've written the book. You can put Author next to your name, all that sort of stuff. What does success look like for you for this, right? 'Cause it's probably not number of units sold, but what are the metrics that you're looking at to go, yeah, this, this was worth the energy and the effort?

Yeah, for sure. Thank you for that. Oh, I, you know, for me it's, it's really about impacting people. Like just the, the engagement I've got off LinkedIn and all the folks that have reached out and the people that have read it so far that have, have said, hey, this is, you know, you've done a nice job with this and,, and I think there'll be a lot more because it just shipped, you know, this week. So, you know, I'm sure I'll get more of that, more of that feedback, but that's just very rewarding to me. You know, it's about, it's about giving back to this, you know, younger generation. We have a whole generation that even my kids are in that are coming in now into sales and coming into technology. And I think it's going to get more exciting, you know, for the sellers out there with AI, right? The whole AI movement can get so much more exciting, but you can't forget You know, it's still a value sell. It's still the ability to really engage with clients, deeply understand, deeply solve problems. And I think that's for me, it's really for me about giving back and about how I can impact that next generation.

You know, the AI piece is interesting and I think I agree and disagree at the same time. So I think I agree in that it makes a sales professional's job much easier. From a research standpoint, right? We've all had Hoovers, all these databases, all this stuff. It's really, really easy to go in there and say, I have a meeting with Bob tomorrow, right? What's going on at his company? Where is he? Like, whatever. And I can find out some really, not just name rankings, oh, you graduated school in this year, so I can figure, like, whatever. I can find out some cool stuff and do a deep dive that might have taken me a half a day in minutes. So to me, one is it's raised the bar, because if you're not doing that, that's a problem. But the other side of, so that's a good thing. The, the side that I think is bad is, and you probably see this more on the marketing side, I'm getting pitched every day for all sorts of things. Many of them, no relevance to who I am and what I do. And you can tell it's AI generated, right? 'Cause they're pulling stuff from, oh, just listen to your podcast with so-and-so in the conversa. And I'm like, no, you didn't. Like, you, like, like, you know, so to me it's, it's, you're starting, 'cause sales is about the relationship. And when you're starting it artificially and inauthentically and, and, and, you know, it's not even honest, right? You know, they're using this, these, this technology to try to develop rapport. How do you, how do you feel about that?

Well, I think I agree 100%. I think people, you're not gonna, I even say it at the end of the book. I'm like, I comment on AI at the very end. I'm like, look, it's not gonna replace sellers, but here's what, here's what the great sellers do. We've deployed, you know, you, we've seen this, Peter, our whole careers. We've seen all kinds of technology deployed, whether it's CRM or whether it's always analytics or whether it's, you know, BI dashboards, you know, and solutions from Clarity, we've seen all these things.

And everything's going to save us.

Everything's going to save us. And I can't tell you how many times, and I said this in the book, can't tell you how many times I've had a CEO or a CFO say, we won't need salespeople anymore because this new technology has come out. I mean, I have seen that multiple times in my career, right? Maybe more than multiple times. And it's funny because I always sit back and laugh and I, and, and say, look, That is not the case. But what I would say is that the elite sellers, they use technology better than anybody else.

Yeah.

That's what they do.

They know—

it's always been true though.

It's always been true all the way back to when I started. And then, but when you're positioning, like, you know, companies now are all, all about positioning AI, right?

Yes.

Positioning it to the client. The client's still gonna want to know, regardless of whether you use buzzwords, they're still gonna want to know you're solving their problem and you're delivering value.

So that, and I could trust you because it's, if, and I could trust you because I'm taking some risk by going with you. Could be a little, could be a lot, whatever. And if things don't go as planned, and we all know things typically don't go exactly as, as planned, are you gonna pick up the phone and be there to help me when something happens? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Yeah.

'Cause AI's not gonna, I mean, AI might help me with certain things. Cool. So, you know, I know the book is new. What do you see, like if you're thinking about the next year or two, where, 'cause now that the book is done, some people might say, well, that's done, check the box, I did it and I want the book to do well, whatever. How do you think about your journey as a thought leader moving forward in the next year or two? What might that look like?

Yeah, I think I'm, I'm gonna continue to engage in, in, in great, you know, podcasts and sessions like this one and, and, and allow people to engage with me in, in kind of different formats like this. You know, I've been asked to do a few speaking engagements that I'll do next year. I can't really do too many because I have too many things going on, but I can do a few and I'll do that for a few folks. And I'll continue to kind of, you know, be out there and promote it and kind of talk about the lessons and even, you know, asking some of the folks I interviewed, you know, we have a video coming out from one of the folks here in a few weeks that will share their perspective on it as well. Because I think it's really important for young sellers and even sellers that are trying to raise their performance, to learn from multiple sources. You know, you, you want to hear it from different angles, from different people.

Yeah.

And we'll learn, everybody learns differently. And it isn't just about me talking, it's about, you know, this group and, and different folks asking different questions and, and that really coming together to really allow people to take the best components of it and apply it to what they're doing. Yeah.

So you moved to more of an evangelizer role, if you will. I would say.

Yeah.

Which is kind of cool. You know, the other thing I would think about is, you know, language models, methodology, and framework, they get really, really sticky. And I think that in, you know, if we put it in the context of sales, there are still companies that talk about the blue sheets, although there are no blue sheets anymore, like, which was an old sales methodology that now when people say that, A, they're basically saying out loud, I'm over a certain age, but it also means Oh, this was the place that I collected the data based on the— like, it sort of means something to folks, right? So I think that language, those models, those methods, those frameworks do become sticky, right? Because if you're not in the President's Club, one would argue, right? Because you can say, well, only, you know, half of a percent of folks make it to the President's Club. I would argue most folks aspire to that. You know, that's really the market is probably not the folks that are already there. They might be curious., but clip that down to the next quartile and such.

Yeah. If I could comment on that, what I would say is the folks, if you're not making President's Club consistently and that's what you aspire to do, right? What I would encourage you to do, and I've seen this with the best sellers, they use methodologies better than anybody else. Yeah. And they, and they learn and they take the best components. So methodologies like Medic and MedPick that are out there, that is phenomenal. Like those, those methodologies are golden. You should learn those. Command of the Message, which is another one that's phenomenal. Yep. It's been there in the last 5, 10 years, is also known as phenomenal. Like there's a lot of really great methodologies regardless of which one your company invests in. You as an elite seller, if you want to be an elite seller, you need to take that, be elite, and show the company that you are absolutely going to run with this. I do see folks that block it. They're like, I don't want to learn something new. Oh, I learned this and I want to do that. Yeah. And, and, and Quite frankly, Peter, those folks don't make it because the whole company doesn't rally around them.

Because it's also somewhat disrespectful. Like, hey, we made a decision as this company, whether you like it or not, or your old firm, you did this. Because I think the reality is you're right. There's a lot of debate around which methodology is better, this, that, and the other. And I agree with you that with some small nuance, Whoever's top of their game from mastering whatever the methodology is, nobody's gonna say, oh, I went from Company X to Company Y and they changed sales systems on me and therefore I'm, I'm a terrible performer. You never hear that, right?

No.

Now you do hear terrible performers blaming the system. Oh, this CRM's horrible. I'm just spent all this time doing data entry, you know? And then you hear the other side of that going, wow, this has given me what I need at my fingertips to be smarter, better, faster. Top of my game. So I, I think that's really true. I love that, the concept of just master whatever it is, and you could bring some individualization. I think there is a, a bit of a trend to sort of automate sales, right? There's some of these systems out there that say, you know what, phone call number 3, use this PDF here. And that's, I think, a bit dehumanizing. Like, that's lovely for a marketing campaign, but I think you have to give people a little bit of agency as well.

Well, I mean, your point around humanizing it, until, until the customer decides they don't need to buy from somebody they actually trust, we are going to be, we need to stay human in sales.

Yeah.

You know, so until that day comes, I don't think it's coming in my lifetime. Yeah. Because when customers make a purchase decision, especially today, when the market is so crowded, it's so complex, they're solving incredibly complex problems. They need somebody with the intelligence that they can trust and know they're going to be delivered. So, and Steve points right on.

Speed, I think, today, in terms of things that used to take, you know, a CRM implementation 10 years ago would take a year. Now it's a month, right? Like, so you don't have the time to do that. Cool. Well, this has been great. I wish you the best on your journey, and thank you for putting this out there. Thanks. Appreciate it.

Peter, really appreciate your time today. Thank you so much.

To learn more about Thought Leadership Leverage, please visit our website at thoughtleadershipleverage.com. To reach me directly, Feel free to email me at peter@thoughtleadershipleverage.com. And please subscribe to Leveraging Thought Leadership on iTunes or your favorite podcast app to get your weekly episode automatically.