Leveraging Thought Leadership Live featuring Kristie K. Jones

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 LinkedIn Live version of Leveraging Thought Leadership. And today my guest is Christy Jones. She's the author of Selling Your Way In. She is a coach, a speaker, a consultant. She's got 20 years of B2B SaaS startup sales experience and has just launched her first book. So welcome aboard, Christy. How are you?

Good, Peter. Thank you so much. Yep. It's like you said, it's launch week.

Very exciting. It's launch week. So, I mean, we were just chatting before we went live and you broke Amazon yesterday.

I did break Amazon. We sold out by 9 AM Central Time. So good news, bad news. But there's plenty of other places around the country. That you can get our book.

Exactly. Exactly. So, you know, you've got an interesting backstory and a niche in terms of the B2B SaaS sale. So it's not another sales book for everybody. It's not for everybody, right? So give me a sense of sort of how the idea came about and what your hopes are relative to what the book's going to do for you over the next year to 5.

Yeah, sure. I actually started out to— I'd written a course. I produced a course on Udemy over the pandemic on prospecting fundamentals. And so my thought was, oh, I'll just take that book or that course and make it into a book. And about 2 months in, I was working with a book coach here locally in St. Louis. Her name's Dixie Gillespie. And I told her, I'm like, I need to take 30 days off. And she was like, okay. And so I came back 30 days later and I said, this book is boring. I don't want to write it. I'm bored. I'm bored writing it. And, but I want to write a book. So what should we do? So we brainstormed. And one of the things that I'd been seeing out in the marketplace, so to speak, working with the B2B SaaS companies was, you know, we are, we as a collective industry of B2B SaaS are missing targets big time, right?

Mm-hmm.

There's a couple of reasons for that. You know, quotas are a little bit outrageous and revenue targets as a result of a lot of these companies being VC-backed.

Right.

So I'm going to throw some shade at the VC community there, first and foremost. But secondly, like this, so the quota attainment was just a little bit ridiculously high. And I think, as I was starting to really spend time with companies and talk to sales professionals and work with them in a coaching capacity, I realized that a lot of sales professionals have put themselves in the wrong sales role, selling the wrong thing into the wrong industry, working for the wrong company, and ultimately the wrong sales leaders. And I believe that a lot of the reasons why quota attainment is being missed, outside of some of the unrealism that's going on, is that people don't really under— sales professionals don't understand their sales superpower. They don't know how to identify it. They don't know how to leverage it to make it work for them. And as a result, they're not selling the right thing for themselves in order to, you know, maximize their income and own their life, as I say. So I decided—

Because, you know, most of what we see and read about on the enterprise sales— forget just B2B SaaS, but more broadly speaking, enterprise sales— is all about the technology, right? It's Salesforce, it's Gong, it's data, it's predictive analytics, on and on and on and on and on. And we're not seeing a lot coming out into the marketplace about, okay, well, what about the human side here? Right. So if everything, if the technology did everything, then we don't need salespeople. That's called being marketed and it goes into a shopping cart, click next, take out your AmEx. That's not how it works in B2B SaaS, right? Or enterprise sales, et cetera. So it sounds like that's more of your focus is really getting back to what do you need to do as an individual contributor on the sales side to get your job done?

Yeah, you've been eavesdropping, Peter, on my backstage chat stage rants over here. We have leaned way too heavily into the science of sales. And as a result, I believe the art of sales is going to become extinct if we don't stop the madness right now. So, yes, I mean, I'm looking— the top 10 percenters, as I call them, you know, they're doing personal and professional development all the time.

Yep.

So I interview candidates all the time and I ask the following question. So tell me what professional sales training that you've been provided by past employers.

Right.

And 60+% of the time I hear, I haven't been. Nothing has been done. I've got product training. I know how to use, again, like you said, I know how to use the tool, the sales, you know, the cool kid tech stack, as I call it. I know how to do all that. But no, I haven't really provided what I call sales soft skills training.

Right, right.

So my follow-up question to that is, so what have you done for yourself? Right? Even though your company sucks, that doesn't exempt you. From getting trained.

Well, what's amazing about that is in most functions, you could see somebody justify somebody— you could justify somebody saying, well, if they don't provide it for me, what do I care? Right? If I'm an ops person, supply chain, most other professions. In sales, let's be honest, a big chunk of your comp is variable. So why would you not be?

Right. It's insane.

But the percentage of individual contributors that spend— forget money. I mean, money is a small piece of it, but there's plenty of stuff out there for free— time, energy, effort, etc. I bet if you even ask those same people, what were the last 5 books you read on sales methodology, negotiations, you know, do they have a growth mindset is what you're asking. Are you committed to continual learning and development? And if you're not, you shouldn't be in sales. You shouldn't be in most things.

And that is my follow-up question underneath a professional development topic of my interview questions is, Who do you follow? What podcasts are you listening to? What do you— what's the last book you read on business or sales? What webinars, seminars, what are you attending? Yep. Because yes, the top 10 percenters are going to own that regardless of what their company does. They're going to be grateful if their company provides it, but if their company doesn't or their sales leader is not capable, then they're going to go figure that out on them, you know, on their own for themselves. So—

Those are the people that 30 years ago their cars were filled with Um, you know, cassette tapes of, you know, Brian Tracy. Exactly. Yep, yep, same thing.

Yeah, yep, yeah, for sure. Yeah, no, because yeah, you got the big thing, you open it again. You and I are old.

Yeah, we hope—

yeah, you open it up, you got 6 cassette tapes on this side and 6 on this side, and Anthony Robbins or Brian Tracy was— yeah, exactly, that's exactly right. Those are those people. But we're not doing that anymore, and it's— and you know, it's easier than ever. Right.

So that I don't understand, right? Because not that we're old, we're, you know, let's say experienced, but some might, you know, not exactly sure, or mature. But it was harder to get good, high-quality information as a professional that was hungry for it, for both personal growth as well as your income growth, right? It wasn't as easy. Now, between your phone and this, like, like, I can get anything I want anytime I want, 24/7. But I'm not doing it. Like, what? Like, what's up with that? So give me a sense of, if, you know, it's not the 10%, the 10% probably doesn't need you because the incremental improvement you're going to get probably doesn't justify the expense. Who's typically hiring you and what does an intervention look like?

Who's typically hiring me is the startup founder or the CEO who's missing revenue targets and know, or sometimes they've been playing sales leader, if you will, or they're just missing revenue targets and they're confused by why. They're tired of hearing the excuses. They're hearing the same thing all the time. Nothing's changing. And so I come in and look under the hood. Like, you know, it's a paid evaluation, right? I come in and I look at 3 things: people, process, and tools, right? I'm going to interview all of your people, including marketing. I'm going to look at your processes and look at your tools and try to figure out where the brokenness is.

So that's classic consulting, right? But what's interesting about what you said is they're missing revenue targets. So if you are the founder of a VC-backed entity and you're missing revenue targets, you feel the noose tightening.

You don't get to— Oh, you got big problems. Yeah, you got big problems.

You don't get to do that multiple times in a row and still keep your job. You might have some, keep your shares, whatever, but you'll soon be an alum, right?

That's correct.

How come they're not, and this is sort of the burglar alarm problem, right? Nobody buys a burglar alarm the day before their house was attempted to be robbed. It's always the day after. How come they're not wise enough or thinking strategically or long-term enough to go, smells like we may not, like we hit the last one, but geez, it was really, really hard. It's getting harder and harder to hit it. And it feels like we might not. Why do they always wait till after the fact till the numbers come out and go, uh-oh?

Yeah, first off, funnels are a fantasy. So they look at the pipeline, right? They are looking at the pipeline. The sales leader is telling them the pipeline's fine. They're looking at the pipeline. The sales reps go, I got enough in there. Everything's gonna be fine. This is all gonna close by the end of Q4. So the funnel's a fantasy because no one has discipline around the fact that stalled is not a sales stage, right?

Right.

If they told you it's gonna be 2025 before they're ready to do anything, then that's a closed lost deal today. That's not in the pipeline. But we've got so much garbage in the pipeline. that, again, and everybody loves to wear their rose-colored glasses, right? They look very fashionable. So, you know, the river denial I hear is very warm and smooth, and rose-colored glasses are very fashionable. So, because people aren't, because again, they don't have the discipline to go in and say, hey, I've seen, this is what I do when I go in, when I, the first thing I do when I go in there to do the look under the hood thing is I go, I need access to your CRM system, like as a super admin.

Yeah.

And I go and I pull the rep and I go, hey, I don't see any— you have had no two-way communication with your main contact for 6 weeks. What's going on? Oh yeah, no, no, we're going to get back in touch, you know, in November that, you know, budgets are going to open up. And I go, okay, so that's a closed loss deal. Well, no, no, no, no, they're gonna buy. They're gonna buy. But, but they just don't want me to bother them again until November. And I said, right, so that's a closed loss deal. And then you can, if you can reinvigorate that or get the ball to start moving again, In November, good for you. And you can put it back in as a new deal. But that's not— that's a closed lost deal.

How many salespeople, sales professionals, sales managers, if they were really honest, you know, and you went into their CRM, there's that, pick a number, 20%, 30%, 40% that are hanging somewhere between 5% and 20% weighted probability, you know, that are quite old, you know, that are expired. You know, there's an expiration date on a carton of eggs, but not on a lead. But they sit in there and it's kind of like, all right, who are you really kidding, right? Like, if this was— you were counting on that money to save your child's life, would you really still have it in there at that weighted probability? Like, there is a little bit of, you know, because you can play with the numbers and, and, and, you know, how many organizations are still doing a weighted probability average to forecast revenue and then it comes to bite them in the ass and like, yep, there's a lot of fiction in there.

Yeah, I mean, I think, again, remember, professional salespeople are you know, professionally selling themselves and their propaganda, right? I mean, like, of all the professions, you know, the finance guys and girls aren't great at selling that, the, you know, operations people, not so much. But, you know, we, when you sell yourself every single day, and again, and remember, most sales leaders were individual contributors at some point.

Yes.

So like, you know, there's sympathy there, right? Like, oh man, like, I know, like, I remember the time when Whatever. But it doesn't do you any good. And when CEOs and founders are not, and owners are not involved in that pipeline review process and asking the really hard questions, you're gonna find a lot of fantasy in that funnel.

Okay. So you've got this great IP that you've developed and continue to develop, right? And it lives in a lot of places, right? Obviously now it's living in the book, right? So codified and it's polished and you can go and buy it and all those other sort of things. But you're using that same stuff In a lot of different ways in terms of how you monetize it. And what I found interesting on your site and getting to know you a bit is there's the hiring piece, right? You're helping people onboard and hire. That's one way to use your IP. You're coaching. That's another way to use the IP. You're consulting. You have your courses. What other ways do you envision, you know, maybe in the near to midterm, putting, or formats that you'd be putting those ideas into to democratize them, scale them, monetize them?

Yeah. My whole goal is one-to-many. So as I'm aging and more mature, I know I'm not gonna be able to touch everybody, right? I'm not gonna be able to individually come in and make the impact that I do when I work with clients directly. And so the book is a one-to-many strategy, speaking engagements, another way to monetize it for a one-to-many, e-learning courses, like you said, workshops. So I haven't really, I just rebranded as the book was coming out and I really had not been doing a lot of like workshops with the high, you know, with, with larger numbers of sales professionals. But I also think that there's a lot of benefit to bringing people together from potentially different companies, different situations, and teaching them some of the main things that top 10 percenters are doing, but letting them then network with each other. I think the—

Yeah.

Remember back in the day, we were like, I was talking to somebody the other day and I said, you remember, like, you know, you lived and died by like your industry association. Like you attended all the local events, the regional events, the national conference. Like you rubbed elbows with your people all the time. Like we're not doing, I mean, heck, we're not even, we don't even meet our coworkers and our bosses sometimes in person ever. Right. And so I'm trying to figure out ways to bring people together to even, you know, start a little community of individuals that are like-minded who are selling in B2B SaaS. Maybe they've been in a startup situation. So I'm really looking for that one-to-many.

Because on the one hand, it's easier than ever to do that. Years ago, that meant getting on a plane and going to Phoenix once a year or whatever your gig was, right? Or meeting up for breakfast or something like that in your local city. It's easier than ever because that does not have to be in person. It could easily be remote. And the exchange of ideas amongst professionals in similar scenarios and situations that are non-competitive competitive, that's gold, right? Yet it's harder than ever because folks aren't doing it. Right? So there's this rub of, particularly post-COVID, in order to justify an in-person workshop, it's like an act of God, right? You have to justify to the buyer why this has to be done. And I think part of that is COVID got everybody to be honest about the math, right? It used to be, oh, well, the day rate for the facilitator is Pick a number, $10,000 or whatever. Oh, so it's $10,000 to put that event on. No, it's not $10,000 because you have travel, you have opportunity costs, you're putting 30 high-paid people in a room. It's probably a multiple of that. And then once they started to do the math on that, now you have a much higher bar to justify to basically say, okay, all right, Chris, if you want to get 10 of my people in a room, that's a $30,000 experience. Show me the money. How do I measure that impact and ROI?

Yeah, agreed. And, and I think you can still have an impact virtually, but I am finding that, um, I just got together with a group, a client of mine. I'm helping them build an e-learning course for— they're in the SBA space, lending space. Um, and so we brought together 10 people from all over the country to Tulsa, Oklahoma. So again, like, not— this was not the conference capital of the world, right?

Right.

But we got people to go to Tulsa, Oklahoma 2 weekends ago, and we wanted to interview them. So we interviewed top, you know, the top BDAs and BDOs across the country, brought together one of their top clients and some of their employees to do an in-person workshop with me. And it was, you, we could not have replicated that, right? Like we could not have replicated the connections that we made, the conversations we had, even, you know, after, you know, after work, happy hour, you know, we did a, you know, we did a dinner one night and kind of a happy hour around the pool the next night and lunch. And then there were several of us who didn't fly out till late on Saturday, so we all went to lunch together. Like, that was such an amazing— I mean, I heard from everybody. Like, we all continued. Like, even this week I've gotten— we're still on the group chat together from that, from that, um, situation, and we're still pinging each other about things.

Yeah.

And that just doesn't happen virtually anymore like that. You can't make that connection. But so it is an investment to your point. It's not cheap. It is an investment. But again, you can't do it multiple times a year, but there are people who've earned the right to be able to fly and be in person at an event to gain the knowledge that they needed to gain. And so I just think companies need to be thinking more and more about that, particularly like the company that I mentioned that we got together in Tulsa. They don't even have an office, like, but 2 of them lived in Tulsa. So we were like, okay. You know, 2 out of 10. So that was the epicenter.

Right, right. Cool. So now that, you know, the book is out, let's assume it's a year from now and your goals are achieved relative to the book. And we're having this chat a year from now. What does the other side of this look like for you? Or what do you hope the other side of this looks like?

I think it's another book. I think the passion, the thing that I— so this one really was for mostly individual contributors. And I think I'd like to tackle some of the things that I mentioned earlier with sales leadership. And one of the things, you know, you asked about that and I used the word discipline, but I'll change that and say, I think the next book's going to be about creating a culture of accountability because I think that's part of the problem, right? We're not holding each other accountable. We're not holding our employees accountable. We're not holding other departments accountable. And that's how things get sideways, right? If you have a culture of accountability, everybody's going to hold each other accountable.

Mm-hmm.

And, you know, doesn't have to come from the top. But even now, I'm not seeing a lot of accountability from the top.

So stay there a minute because you could be in a high accountability culture and not hold yourself accountable. You'll probably be tissue rejected. But the other is often true. You can be in a loosey-goosey, non-accountability culture, but you have that disciplined sales professional that incredibly holds themselves to account. And performs like crazy. Obviously, it's best if there's alignment, right? If you've got a bunch of individuals that are holding themselves accountable, a team that holds them accountable, and an organization that appreciates accountability and practices what they preach, right? So do you think a lot of the issue now with, with, you know, listen, going back to the dinosaurs, people have been complaining about not meeting their quotas and all that. Like, everybody met their quota, something's wrong. Right? Your price is too low or it's too low. But there's a, there's a difference between a little bit of a stretch goal or whatever, or crapping out your quota by 50%. Right? Like, there's, there's not, it's not a binary, did you miss it? It kind of is, but not really, you know? Yeah.

No, I would push back a little bit and say that the person who is holding themselves accountable will be miserable in a, in a non-accountability culture. Right? Because they're not— because, right, like, so they're— so if you have no— you don't have accountability culture and you hire an A-player, good luck. Because, because they're going to need finance. They're going to need the customer success and account management team. They're going to need other teams in order to hit their quota, who then they won't be able to get, you know, who won't do what they say they're going to do when they say they're going to do it. They got to track them down. Those kind of people will be gone.

Yeah.

They'll be out of your organization because they're like, hey, I don't have time.

That's the issue reject piece, right? So an organization could reject an individual, but an individual could look around and go, I'm hanging out with a bunch of losers. I don't want to be here. This isn't for me. Right?

That's right.

So I get that because the high performers that you were talking about, the top 10%, they should be treated as volunteers because they can go get another gig somewhere else. Right?

That's right.

You need them more than they need you. And there are needs besides financial that you have to satisfy that are probably a bit more intrinsic. Like, it's easy to figure out how to pay salespeople well that perform well. Not easy to figure out how to meet them intrinsically.

Well, top 10 percenters want to hang out with other top 10 percenters. They don't want to hang out with that other 90. And if your team and your company is made up with a bunch of 90 percenters, top 10 percenters aren't going to stick around. They, again, like iron sharpens iron.

Yeah, exactly. All right. I want to Segue for the last couple minutes here into the book from the standpoint of— go back to when you first started to think about writing the book and you talked about the topic and you changed it and all that to where it is now. What was different or what did you learn along the way that you didn't expect early on as part of the process of writing, publishing, and now you're in that sort of heavy marketing phase?

Yep. I have a journalism degree, so I was excited. I love writing. I write all my blog posts. I mean, I write everything. Writing is just something that comes naturally to me. And I used to tell people, like, I never used my degree in journalism, but I use it every day and it makes me a better communicator because I've got really strong written communication skills.

Okay.

And so what surprised me was about the discipline I was needing to put in place Because I just thought, oh, I'll just sit down and like, you know, I love writing. Well, at some point you don't love writing. So, and so things that I didn't expect that I learned was that it takes me about 30 minutes to get in the zone. And so if I just couldn't set aside 45 or an hour, because the first 30 minutes I was probably gonna trash, like there was gonna be a lot of deleting going on for me to get back in it. And the more days that I went in between writing, the harder it got.

Yeah.

And so if I can—

So let me pause you there because everybody's got a different personal cadence. Some people, I got to get up at 4:30 in the morning and it's the first hour and a half. Some people, I go to the cabin. Some people, whatever. There is no one right way. But for you, this learning about yourself to say, if I can't get in the zone and the longer the time between I've been in the zone, the harder it is, means that you got to allocate time to be in the zone. And do it fairly frequently or it's going to be frustrating, right? It's going to just, just, and not effective.

Well, yeah, it's inefficient because it takes me, if it takes you so long and me in my particular case, if it takes me so long to get restarted, then by the time I get restarted and I'm back in the zone, I'm like, oops, I've got a client call.

Yeah.

Right. So I did the hack I learned for me and everybody did it differently. But I talked to a lot of people who wrote books who said, like, I literally just went and holed up in a hotel for X number of days or weeks.

Yeah.

And I was like, well, I'm a solopreneur. Like, my clients won't really appreciate me taking a 4-week sabbatical to write my book, um, which will not help them necessarily. But I went to the public library and they had a quiet room and it had— and it was windows everywhere. So like windows into the library but natural lighting coming in from the out. And there was no cell phones, like no cell phones, no talking, no nothing. And there was like— some days I was alone and some days I was with 2 other people or 3 other people. And a lot of times there were students coming in either after class or around finals time. And there was zero distractions. Like there was no laundry to change. There was no dishwasher to unload. You know, there was no, you know, Amazon delivery at the front door. And so I started to figure— and even today, when I need to get a project done and I need some quiet time, I still go to the library and go to the quiet room.

OK, so the first piece is figure out you, crack the code on you, obviously. What else did you learn in terms of getting it on paper and/or packaging, positioning, and getting the book out into the marketplace?

I think storytelling was super important. So the very first thing we did, like step 1, my book coach said, go write all of the interesting sales stories with people that you've worked with in the past and get those in writing. And then almost every chapter, or every topic we went and pulled from, like we figured out what we needed and what was maybe missing from a sales story perspective. And that was the fun part. Like I've already heard from people saying that, so, you know, that really resonated with me. I love how you storytold something back to that topic. So that, you know, we teach that in sales, right? Like how important storytelling is.

But— Well, but I think from a thought leadership perspective, a lot of people think of their thought leadership strictly as the IP, the models, the methods, the frameworks, et cetera. and I love what you're doing. You could categorize all those things and say, OK, let me just jar my memory. What are 5 stories that'll help me think about whatever, whatever? Right? Oh yeah, get those down because you need the stories to connect the dots. Otherwise, it's just a bad PowerPoint in book form. Right.

Some people will remember the stories. They might not remember the exact points. But, you know, it's like a good commercial, right? Sometimes you're like, oh my gosh, did you see that commercial? But you can't come up with the who, right? Like what was the toothpaste brand? But you remember the commercial because it was so impactful. Unfortunately, the toothpaste brand misses out there. But yeah, I think that was the other thing. And then as we got to the packaging part, I really struggled with actually some interesting things. I struggled with the front cover because that seemed like, you know, I went through several design revisions, if you will. And till I had my mentor, Mike Weinberg, who wrote the foreword for my book. told me how important it was. He said, if you don't like it, you will never like it. It will never grow on you. And so I pushed back hard on the publisher. Like, I made them go through multiple revisions, multiple color, you know, choices, those type of things, until I got something that I felt good about. Um, because I remember him saying with that, like, you will live with— like, you're never going to change the COVID You'll never change it. Like, if you hate it today, you will always hate it. And so, like, don't hate it.

I love that. I love it. But, you know, and then I would just say the other side of that is there are others that obsess over the COVID and obsess and obsess and obsess. And it's like, get over it. Like, yes, there are times where a cover makes a difference, but then there are other times when you think about the use case, we're looking at a cover as a thumbnail on a Kindle.

Yes.

We're not selling books typically the way we used to, where it's this beautiful colorful piece sticking out, popping out from a shelf. against the others. Cool. Lastly, what are some things that you're thinking about or have up your sleeve, or you're not wearing sleeves right now, but if you were, up your sleeveless whatever, from a marketing of the book piece? And by marketing the book, I don't— it's not necessarily number of units sold. How are you getting the book into the right hands of the right people to get you the outcomes you're looking It's probably a better way to frame that.

Yeah, I explained to people, I actually explained to my son the other day because he was, when he saw some of the numbers yesterday, he reached out. He was like, cha-ching. And I'm like, yep, that's not an extra vacation for us this year. Don't go crazy on me. But I told him, I said, I'm getting, I want to get paid on the back end. I want to bring clients to the table that didn't, wouldn't have known me otherwise, who didn't know who I was. You know, I, again, I'm well known in the startup space and the VC-backed space and in the Midwest. Although I've got clients in Europe as well, all over the country and the world. But I want— my most exciting thing, I had someone reach out to me today with a glowing review, like an amazing— reached out to me on LinkedIn and told me how amazing. He's like, I'm already 2/3 of the way through the book. These are all the amazing things. And my whole sales team's going to get it. And every sales leader I know, I'm going to get a copy for. And I copied that and sent that to my marketing person.

Yeah.

And she goes, do you know him? And I go, Uh-uh, I don't know him.

Right.

I didn't know him. I don't know him. And she was like, wow. And I'm like, right, that's why I wrote the book. Like, I want to be exposed. I want to expose myself and my thoughts. This is my one-to-many to people that don't know me, didn't know me, and didn't have a clue that I existed.

Great. Well, best of luck with the continued success of the book. And thank you. We'll check in in a couple of months and see where it's going.

So perfect. Thank you.

Today, Christy.

Peter, thanks so much for having me on.

Thanks.