How often do salespeople need to be trained? Most people would say, “Once during onboarding should do it.” “Not so,” says Dan McClain, Sales Director at ConnectAndSell. As today’s guest on Market Dominance Guys, Dan talks with our host, Chris Beall, about the importance of periodically sharpening sales reps’ skills. In this second of their two-part conversation, these two sales guys, both amateur chefs, agree that knives work better when they’ve recently been sharpened — and sales reps work better when their selling skills have recently been sharpened. Dan reminds our podcast audience that, over time, all sales reps drift from their company’s established message, their pace may become rushed, or their tone lackluster. For these very reasons, ConnectAndSell’s own reps go through a periodic blitz-and-coach cold-calling session, an essential tool of ConnectAndSell’s Flight School, because, as Dan says, “We all need to get better.” And because this essential advice bears repeating, that’s what we’ve named today’s Market Dominance Guys’ episode: “We All Need to Get Better.”

About Our Guest
Dan McClain is Sales Director at ConnectAndSell. His life-long dedication to sales has led him to his current goal: helping sales leaders, teams, and individuals connect with their targets at a velocity of 10X by using ConnectAndSell Lightning. Dan is based in the San Diego area and is active in his local chapter of AA-ISP.

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Full episode transcript below:

 

Dan McClain (01:30):

It’s really easy to go hire someone. It’s really hard to go buy, ConnectAndSell. Even when you put a mathematical equation in front of them saying, “We could double the output of what you’re doing and actually you’ll spend less money.” It’s still hard.

Chris Beall (01:45):

Yeah.

Dan McClain (01:45):

It seems like a no brainer. It seems like this would be such an easy job.

Chris Beall (01:50):

Well, part of it also is this program is a little bit funny, because Cory Frank came to me and said he wanted to get a book out on the [inaudible 00:01:58] market dominance. Well, a book on market dominance is fundamentally only interesting to owners of different kinds. Whether an owner is an investor in a business or the owner is the owner or the owner is a CEO. CEOs are often pretty… I can tell you from experience pretty aligned with their company. There’s a problem called the agency problem, right? You have somebody else doing something for you, but they’ve got to look out for themselves. And so the question is-

Dan McClain (02:24):

Why wouldn’t you include a VP of sales in that grouping of people that would be interested in market domination?

Chris Beall (02:29):

Well, because here’s the thing, a VP of sales, like our VP of sales, Jonti McLaren, highly aligned, right? He’s a big cash investor in the company. And so it’s easy. And he owns enough of the company that he’s naturally aligned. And this is true in certain kinds of startups where they’re still in startup mode, so to speak, where maybe the VP of sales is with the founder.

Chris Beall (02:52):

They’re a founder of themselves and they got that ownership mentality. But I think we have a little bit of a vicious cycle going on where folks don’t know quite how to drive organic growth. They’re guessing, “Should we do ABM? Should we do this? Should we prospecting hard on social media? Is it a prospecting problem or a closing problem?” It’s hard to tell, right? It’s not obvious what you’re going to do. And then how fast is it going to kick in?

Chris Beall (03:18):

Right. If I say I got a seven month sales cycle, eight month sales cycle. So I’ve got 17 months of average tenure. So wait a minute. If I’m past month four, I’m down to the point where I got to start to see results somebody else cares about three months before I’m likely to get kicked out of here because I didn’t produce the numbers. There’s kind of a short term attitude on the part of ownership often.

Chris Beall (03:43):

I’ll call it ownership, regarding the sales function, where they treat sales as an externality. Like sales is something you graphed onto the company. And I’ve said it on this show, sales traditionally was used to dispose of inventory. The factories created, dispose of it as sufficient profit to keep the lights on and maybe give you a net profit that you can use in order to grow the business, right? That’s how capitalism works.

Chris Beall (04:06):

You put capital in to buy plant and equipment. You make stuff, the widgets are being made. Well, the widgets must be sold. And what was the tradition? Put a rep in a territory, give them a quota, give them a fair amount of autonomy. There wasn’t much management required. And then it’s great, they get to keep the territory and maybe get a better territory.

Chris Beall (04:32):

If it doesn’t work out, you put another rep in. And meanwhile you’re telling more stories about how great you were back in the day, so you have something to do management wise. So I think that role doesn’t make sense in the world of at least software. And the world is becoming software, because you don’t have widgets anymore. How many units of ConnectAndSell software… And we even have people in the loop, get turned out yesterday that you and your team have got to dispose of at a profit.

Chris Beall (05:02):

None. There’s no units, right? We didn’t make a bunch of widgets that are piled up in a warehouse somewhere. So I think sales was treated as an externality because it worked as an externality. Now we’re asking sales to do a strategic job, which is to take us into markets like your first job. And the question is, “Well, is the alignment right?” Is the long term relationship there going into markets doesn’t happen overnight. So I think we have some issues around kind of how the sales function is conceived of. And then we say, “Hey, you do your job with head count. Marketing, do their job with money and imagination.” And I don’t think that’s right anymore either. That’s my feel anyway. I think sales is one who needs the money and the imagination.

Dan McClain (05:51):

Yeah. That’s true. Interesting.

Chris Beall (05:55):

Yeah. I it’s the stuff that we think about it a lot. Right? Because we’re sort of on this spear tip of what we believe, which is the conversations first move the business. But I want to go to a success story that you and I experienced a little bit together and see what your thoughts are about it. There’s an Israeli cybersecurity company selling the hospitals. And they have three SDRs and some people think SDRs are great. Some people think SDRs are like, “What do they do with SDRs?” By the way, you probably enjoy the meetings that are SDR set for you. Right?

Dan McClain (06:27):

Oh I love them.

Chris Beall (06:28):

And they’re pretty good. You get good reviews. Because people tell you, “Hey that Sal or Crystal or whoever…”

Dan McClain (06:36):

Yeah. Quite often, Hey, the reason I took this meeting is they were persistent. They were professional. They just really handled the conversation nicely. Often that’s a big part of it.

Chris Beall (06:48):

So you get meetings there, but you’re your own SDR. Right? And you’re a student of the game, you’re student in the craft, I’ve been known to call you and mention that you may have drifted a little bit on a conversation and you take it with curiosity right after you [inaudible 00:07:02].

Dan McClain (07:02):

I’ll never forget that call. I was standing right out there in my backyard, right by the Palm tree. When you called me and said that. I said, “No, I’m not drifting. I’ve got this. I’m not drifting.” You told me to go listen to a call. I went and listened to a call and I was like, “Ah, he was right.” Called you back, “Chris. You’re right.”

Chris Beall (07:23):

I thought that was an interesting conversation. I was driving across the Sierras with a load of stuff from my house. I was moving to Reno and I’m listening to this conversation I’m going, “Is that Dan? That doesn’t… That doesn’t… That sounds like somebody else. What is he saying? Why is he saying it?” It was pretty interesting. Let’s talk about that for a moment though. Because it’s really interesting this whole, so here’s this company that you were working with and they had unusual SDR team. Right? Their minimum age was, I don’t know, 50 something.

Dan McClain (07:55):

They looked like me.

Chris Beall (07:56):

Just like, yeah. I’m older than you are. The oldest one was I think in the maybe pushing seventies, maybe.

Dan McClain (08:03):

Maybe low seventies. Yeah.

Chris Beall (08:05):

Low seventies. And they went to Flight School. Now, these are highly experienced people. I knew you were in the deal. I wasn’t in the deal. I knew somebody at the company. So I was kind of peripherally associated with it. First of all, why would somebody with all that experience in your mind go to Flight School? Why’d they do that? I mean, I know it’s what we offered them but they could have said, “Nah, let’s not do that.” And do you remember, just walk us through that? You’ve got these folks, they were good. Right? They were converting it-

Dan McClain (08:34):

Yeah, [inaudible 00:08:35]. They converted highly even on the test drive. And it was interesting because in that negotiation, that we were looking at, “Okay, how are we going to use this?” We thought “It looks like they were going to buy big.” And then interestingly enough, they actually came back and they bought really small. But buying small, just allowed us to come in and go through this flight school motion and show them the art of the possibility. And we took them from really good to great. And that’s one of those customers where every week when I just log in and peek on what they’re doing, puts a smile on my face.

Chris Beall (09:17):

Yeah. And it’s such a non-obvious play. We had somebody on the other day on the show, Jennifer Standish and Jennifer makes the claim that we should be hiring grandmas to be SDRs, because they’ve got the voice and they know how to tell people what to do in a way that makes them do it, but not feel bad. That’s kind of interesting when you think about that insistence close, right? The Cheryl Turner insistence close, it kind of has to do with telling somebody what to do and having to feel good about it. Right?

Dan McClain (09:48):

Yeah. So interesting. I’ve been leaning on you with some help, some different customers and you keep telling that story. And then it got in my head and I kept thinking about it and then I was doing some prospecting and it was a really interesting call because I got the guy at the right time because he said, “I’m currently looking for sales amplification.” is what he said. We got that. That’s what we do. And he goes, “Can you just send me something? So because I’m looking at all kinds, just send me something,” I said, “Tell you what, I send you half a page.

Dan McClain (10:22):

And then also just I’ll go ahead and send you the calendar invite for Thursday and we’ll move it if we have to.” That’s the Cheryl Turner insistence close. And the guy said, “Perfect, I’ll give you 15 minutes.” I said, “Great. That’s all I need.” And then after that call, I hung up the phone. I called you to tell you about that experience. And then based on your recommendation, I called and I was talking to Cheryl about it. And then I went off and listened to some of her calls. And some of the stuff that she does, it’s so subtle, but just there’s so much genius in what she’s doing.

Chris Beall (11:03):

Yeah. I think this is funny. I have an analogy. Corey and I have used on this. You’re probably the only guy other than Corey who can speak to it actually, because you actually can’t get me up even on a standup paddle board. My back is tight and it’s hard to do. You surf. You’re like a real surfer. Right? But my claim is I used to watch a lot of surfing and you know, I’m a physicist by background.

Chris Beall (11:23):

So I kind of, I don’t know, picture maybe a little bit of what’s going on and that interaction between the water, the board and the person. Where they are, what they’re doing, how they’re moving and all that kind of stuff. And my claim is, and this is a hard claim, not a soft claim. I don’t think this is a fluffy analogy. The best analogy I’ve been able to come up with is this. In that ambush call, that one and only.

Chris Beall (11:49):

The only time you’re ever going to talk to somebody for the first time. That script is like a surfboard and your voice is the surfer. Your voice is where the artistry comes from. And what you feel when… And you can speak to this. And I want you to actually speak to it. Tell us a little something about what it’s like to surf and what it’s like to surf, big stuff, scary stuff, hard stuff, whatever it is you’ve done. But when you’re doing something like surfing, you’re feeling the world that you’re in and you’re feeling it millisecond by millisecond and you’re adjusting to it.

Chris Beall (12:27):

And you’re adjusting to it with a combination of balance and positioning. But it’s things you know you’re doing, but you don’t quite know exactly how you’re doing them, but you know, you learn to do them kind of thing. Right? And I think that Cheryl Turner dance that she does with people where the words are the same, the surfboard’s the same surfboard, but the conversation is always unique. It always has for a voice in it.

Dan McClain (12:53):

That the conversation is always unique, because there’s another thing that you have to bring into this analogy used and that’s the wave or the water itself.

Dan McClain (13:53):

It’s always changing. Even if you surf the exact same place every day and it’s dictated by the sand underneath the water, because that’s always moving. That’s fluid. So every single day, the shape of the wave’s going to be different. The speed is going to be different based on maybe some storm in Australia or Japan. So even at the same exact place, every single day, that’s different.

Dan McClain (14:17):

So just like the conversation or the person you’re talking to is going to be different and you have to adjust. And then there are some things that are on autopilot, as you’re paddling into the wave where you put your hands on your board and you pop up. I don’t think about that anymore. My body just does that. But what I’m doing is, I have to decide what angle I’m paddling into the wave based on the speed of it, the size of it and the shape of it. And that’s always different. And I know that I have to only look forward at what the wave’s doing, because if you look behind you, it looks too big and scary.

Chris Beall (14:54):

Oh interesting.

Dan McClain (14:55):

Then you’ll pedal backwards and get out of it. But when you’re charging into there’s so many factors that are constantly changing. So it’s not like skiing or snowboarding. I mean the movements might be the same, but that medium, that you’re on, you can look ahead and you know what it is.

Chris Beall (15:16):

Yeah.

Dan McClain (15:17):

And it’s only vast experience to know, to be able to look ahead and know what it’s going to do. And what’s interesting is it’s different every day.

Chris Beall (15:27):

Yeah. And you’re a little different every day too. So one of the points of that, and I remember talking to Corey about it, I was trotting around and it was actually the day I saw that boat that I got behind me. I was trotting around in Sydney, Australia. And I was on the phone with Corey and we’re talking about this surfboard, surfer analogy, which now you’ve added the wave to. And one of my points is, look, if you’re learning to surf, nobody throws you like an old door and says, make yourself a surfboard. Right? I mean, it’s the shaping of boards is an art and science that’s come to us through what’s 70, 80, 90 years of people having experience with the shapes, the materials, the thinning, all that kind of stuff. You’d [inaudible 00:16:16].

Dan McClain (16:15):

Yeah. And it’s still evolving to this day.

Chris Beall (16:18):

Yeah. And you’d be an idiot as a young surfer to think you’re going to reinvent making surfboards before you even know how to surf. And yet, we ask young SDRs to make their own scripts.

Dan McClain (16:31):

Yeah.

Chris Beall (16:31):

And I think that’s crazy. I mean, do you think that’s crazy?

Dan McClain (16:37):

I think that’s crazy town. Why would you put the tip of this spear, the message that’s going out about the company, into someone’s hands that’s probably only been there X number of months. It’s that simple.

Chris Beall (16:54):

Yeah. Well just, I mean, I am willing to bet there are people who shape boards who are really good at shaping boards, making a surfboard that really works well, who are not themselves, the greatest surfers in the world.

Dan McClain (17:07):

True. They probably look like you or I.

Chris Beall (17:11):

Yeah. Well more like you, because we get to me and we’re off the surfing category and we’re into the can’t stand up at the paddle board category. But I think it’s quite fascinating if this analogy… I think this is a legit analogy. I think this analogy maps, as they say in the world of math, one to one and onto. Every part of it maps to the other part is supposed to map to, and you can reason from it. Right? And if you believe it, you would say, “Well, I would never have a rep make up their own script.”

Chris Beall (17:42):

I wouldn’t do it, because what are the odds they’re going to make one based on 50, 60 years of experience across not themselves, but I think of that board shaper, they’re not just taking their own experience, they’re taking the experience of everybody who’s ever made a surfboard. And they’re putting it into the next one. Whereas when you get on that board on a wave, you’re taking your experience, you’re making it more subtle, more effective in time. You’re a little quicker to do the thing that needs to be done to be the place you want to be to get the thing done, than you want to do than you were a year ago, two years ago, 15 years ago, whatever it happens to be.

Dan McClain (18:20):

They should not even be in that loop of communication. They should have it given to them. Then they should be trained on it.

Chris Beall (18:26):

Yeah. I agree. If you wanted me to surf you better give me a board.

Dan McClain (18:30):

What’s so interesting is go on LinkedIn and look at this subject there will be hundreds of different opinions.

Chris Beall (18:40):

Yeah. Oh yeah. Oh you mean the subject of should reps make up their own script? I know what the argument is for it. Well, they got to be comfortable and you know what-

Dan McClain (18:50):

I don’t people think that, but really they don’t. No one cares about that they shouldn’t or people do. Should you really care about their comfort or the comfort and experience of that person that they’re talking to? That’s what’s important.

Chris Beall (19:03):

Yeah. I mean, I’ve said it before, if you’re an SDR… And by the way, if you’re an account executive and you’re calling for yourself, like Dan does, you’re an SDR at that point. [inaudible 00:19:13]. You’re not magically skilled in first conversations just because you’re capable of closing multimillion dollar deals. That doesn’t translate. It’s like the fact that I can do all sorts of… I can load the car up. You can get all the gear in it. I can drive it to the beach. Look at all my skills. Well, at some point you’re going to have to get on that damn board, right?

Dan McClain (19:36):

Yeah. Absolutely. And that’s uncomfortable. So is having a script just put in your hand and told that what you’re going to say. That’s uncomfortable. I do things every day that to me feel uncomfortable, but I may be old enough to know it’s not about me. And we always joke about this. Nobody cares about my feelings.

Chris Beall (19:58):

You always say that about me, that I don’t care about your feelings. I don’t, but I care about your wellbeing.

Dan McClain (20:04):

There we go. Yeah. And I get it and it’s awesome.

Chris Beall (20:07):

It’s, it’s a funny thing. Well, for folks that are managing teams out there and that’s who you’re mostly working with, is people who are managing teams and you see there are struggles, even once they have ConnectAndSell in the hands of the team. And you have resources you can draw on. You can draw on Donny Crawford and his team. There are conversation optimization folks and they’ll come in. I think we just did something today, right? Didn’t we do something with a flight school session with a-

Dan McClain (20:36):

We did. Actually had two going on today. One that Gavin was running and then one with the transportation company that you’ve been helping me with. It was me and a newer to them director of business development and he runs the team. And it was such an exciting day, because we had made some tweaks to the messaging that simplified and that the reps actually felt good about. They felt good about, I felt good about it. We ran it. And in a very short amount of time, we had two meetings on the books.

Dan McClain (21:09):

And what was even more exciting was I saw that sales leader turn the corner on. This was the first time he was critiquing the reps, telling them what to do. And it was one of those calls where I was actually dreading it, because I didn’t think it was going to go well. And four or five times during that call, I got the chills. The hair on my arm was standing up, because it was exciting. And he and I were in there together figuring things out and everyone on that team I think left excited about what we were all doing together.

Chris Beall (21:49):

That’s fantastic.

Dan McClain (21:50):

This quest of market domination. It was awesome.

Chris Beall (21:54):

Well, I know that those guys are very serious about market dominance. They really are. And that’s, as we say, we curate dominance here. ConnectAndSell is such a delight. I mean, how many people get to say this in a sales job that you’re doing something. whereas part of the job, every once in a while, you know the hair does stand up on your arms, you get those chills. I was talking to Elena Hesse the other day and she was on the show.

Chris Beall (22:18):

And she said to me, first time we talked, she said, “I have tears in my eyes.” I said, “I do too.” We’re two grown people out here listening to these reps, move forward in a way that’s so exciting. They’re having so much fun and they’re doing so much business. And it’s right here in front of us. There is something about watching the world evolve at full speed right in front of your eyes. It’s just kind of professionally unusual I guess I’ll put it. It’s like who gets to have this kind of fun?

Dan McClain (22:49):

Yeah, no, it’s true. It was such a great day. And it was just one of those things that just invigorated me that will probably last a month. So I’m going to need another one of those sometime within the next month. It was just awesome.

Chris Beall (23:03):

More flight schools. Well, I have to say you’ve been here a long time. What are your thoughts? Some people kind of thought flight school was crazy. We’re not in the training business, plenty of people out there to train reps. I always thought the ecosystem would take care of it. There’s these incredibly strong trainers out there.

Chris Beall (23:21):

What is it you think in looking at connect and self flight school, which for those of you who don’t know what it is, it’s a four session blitzing coach experience for a group of reps and their manager live fire, talking to real prospects where they’re under pressure as a result. And yet the coaching is not of the whole conversation. I think the first two hours we coached just the first seven seconds. And the second two hours we coach just what we call the 27 seconds, the value part.

Chris Beall (23:51):

And then the third two hours we coach just what we call turbulence. That’s why it’s called flight school. Take off flying somewhere. Plane goes like this, the objections that you only get in a cold call. And then the fourth sessions, how to get the meeting. How do you ask for the meeting. Landing the airplane, all we beforehand, we have this messaging workshop and a little kind of an icebreaker session.

Chris Beall (24:12):

So, that’s what it is. I never thought we should have such a thing, even though I’m the guy who came up with it, sort of working with Janie Wall and James Townsend down in San Antonio at a customer… Is it a big deal to you or is it just another training thing or did you think it was a good idea when you first saw it? Or did you think like I did? It’s like I came up with it, but I was still pretty skeptical about it.

Dan McClain (24:35):

Yeah. Well, like a lot of things… At first, I was uncomfortable with it til I kind of have experienced it. And then eventually we put our team through it and guess what happened? We all got better. We all learned stuff.

Chris Beall (24:47):

Wait, you guys, I remember this, we do this regularly. Like you went through flight school, but you guys have like five, six years, seven years of experience using ConnectAndSell. Why would you need to go through flight school? What did it help you do different?

Dan McClain (25:00):

No matter how good we are, A we drift, like we talked about, but you can always get better. It’s about keeping that spear sharp. If we stop doing our blitz code sessions on Monday and Friday, it would be easier for me, but you know what? Would I get that coaching? Would I get a chat with Gavin or Donny or Nate? “Hey, you’re doing this, try this.” “Hey, I heard something.”

Chris Beall (25:25):

Yeah. So you and I both cook a little bit, maybe even a lot, right? We’re having wild board tonight just for you.

Dan McClain (25:31):

Oh fantastic. We’re having pizzas. This has been a frustration for me. I can cook. I’m not a baker and I have one of those pizza ovens. And I’ve been buying the crust at the store and I’m having a problem getting the temperature of this pizza oven correctly. Because, what’s happening is the top of the pizza’s burning before the crust is fixed. So actually a friend of mine is a restaurateur and they’re actually sitting out there having some beers. And when I’m done, we’re going to go cook some pizzas together.

Chris Beall (26:03):

All right. Well I hope it works out well. I’m going to make a point, a sharp edge point, which is we both spend a fair amount of time on occasion the kitchen. I think I’m a pretty good hand with a knife taught by an ex Navy chef. Worked an aircraft carrier and you know a typical Navy chef. He didn’t put up with any crap in the kitchen right? Down to, you’re going to hold the knife, thumb and forefinger on the blade to stabilize the knife. You’ve [inaudible 00:26:28] just holding it by the handle like you’re whipping a baseball bat around all that kind of stuff. He taught me everything about that stuff. And yet still to this day, I’ll take a knife out of the drawer and I will lazily continue to use it when I know it’s not sharp. [inaudible 00:26:49].

Dan McClain (26:48):

My friend in Texas, he has a knife sharpening business. Anytime, like if we’re going on a week vacation, I send him my knives.

Chris Beall (26:55):

Oh, that’s good stuff. So to me it’s like that. It’s like a knife can look sharp without being sharp. And it’s when you go to make that cut and a ripe tomato is probably the most telling cut. Right? Because if your knife is sharp, you feel it and you feel it in that first little motion. Right? Because the knife is curved to allow you to move straight forward, but still be cutting down and you’ll feel that little tug. And you go now the question’s, what are you going to do? And I think that the way you guys get tuned up in flight school is a lot like that. You feel that little tug and it’s easy to be lazy and not sharpen the knife.

Dan McClain (27:37):

Yeah. And it’s so interesting, because if you’re not sharp, a lot of meetings will slip through your fingers. Yeah. Why that happen all the time? I’m like, “I think I could have got a meeting with that person.” That meeting that I got this week using the Cheryl Turner insistent close, I will be honest part of it was just right person, right time. But part of it was the way I executed something-

Chris Beall (27:58):

That has to be a lot of it. Cheryl runs 30%.

Dan McClain (28:00):

Yeah. I’m not running 30%. I’m trying to get better.

Chris Beall (28:05):

Listen to on those industrial air compressors in those medical office buildings, [inaudible 00:28:09] crazy stuff.

Dan McClain (28:10):

It is.

Chris Beall ():

But it does show it’s an art form. Helen and I listened to Cheryl one day. We listened to a whole bunch of conversations. And Helen was thinking about actually cold calling the hundred VPs of one of her big monster companies that was part of her account base. Hundred VPs of HR. And she asked me, “What is this cold calling really about?” And I said, “Well, let’s listen to Cheryl.”

Chris Beall (28:32):

And so we were listening to Cheryl, listening to a bunch of conversations and Helen, who’s a cute observer of these things, she says, those micro pivots, same words, but that little pause, that little laugh, that moment of expressed empathy that I’m with you, that expression of being a peer, always never being put back, but never pushing back either.

Chris Beall (28:58):

She said, “That stuff is amazing.” She said, “I didn’t realize what you guys work with is an artistic medium. And it’s truly an art form.” And I actually think this is something I have to say, if I could ask folks who are watching this thinking or, or listening, thinking about it, we call the use of ConnectAndSell, learning how to cold call. We call it finishing school for future CEOs.

Chris Beall (29:26):

Because the one thing you’ve got to be able to do to be good in the CEO job, is hold conversations without a lot of prep with strangers that go better than they would’ve for somebody else who might not be able to make those little moves, have that feel. That the feel for the situation and be able to help somebody see something in a new way, which is kind of your main job as CEO.

Chris Beall (29:49):

It’s the main job as a salesperson. They’re very similar jobs. Before you joined ConnectAndSell or no, before you used it for the first time, would you have said that you thought that cold calling or cold conversation was an art form or would you have said yes, just something you do or what would you have thought about it or did, did you not think about it?

Dan McClain (30:09):

I think at that time, knowing what I knew then, it would’ve been very easy to hop on the cold calling is dead bandwagon because then I wouldn’t have to do it. And I could feel good about not doing it. Even, though if it’s like exercise. You know you should.

Chris Beall (30:27):

Yeah.

Dan McClain (30:27):

It’s hard to take that first step. But if you do not good things just might happen.

Chris Beall (30:33):

What is funny too? Because it’s like exercise and that you’re doing it for yourself. And yet folks will act like they’re being told to do it for somebody else. You’re really doing it for yourself. I mean, you really are doing it for yourself. I’ve looked at the numbers, our numbers break down today. This quarter, the bulk of the dollars and the bulk of the deals have come from you guys.

Chris Beall (30:54):

You account executives being your own SDRs and that’s even though you have a world class SDR team armed to the teeth with a high performance weapon using it all day long setting meetings for y’all. But I have a funny feeling that when you set a meeting for yourself, that there’s some subtlety in there somewhere that allows you to be a little bit better in that meeting. That you killed that boar and now you’re cooking it. And I think you’re going to cook it a little bit better.

Dan McClain (31:25):

Absolutely. In fact, when I schedule the meeting myself, when I send it out, I put a little asterisks in a certain spot in the invitation. So I know that’s one that I scheduled and yeah, I do. I come to it, I think with a little more of everything, little more excitement, a little more aggressiveness. I’m going to be sharper, clearer because I know that this one I got.

Chris Beall (31:49):

Yeah. It’s a funny thing. I think it’s the most subtle thing. Let’s wrap this up. Our audience is… We have people all up and down. We got SDRs who listen to Market Dominance Guys, because I guess they want to be CEOs and owners of businesses someday or chief revenue officers God what they’re going to be. And then we got people kind of like, you’re Henry Washala who took his whole business part, put it back together after binge listening to the show for four days.

Chris Beall (32:17):

We got a lot of folks. I know you’re not a big advice giver. You probably don’t give advice to people for a whole bunch of good reasons. Most of which is you’re kind of too humble to think what you’re going to say is going to make a difference. But I want you to get out of that humble posture for a second and just give folks listening, just one piece of advice from your career. And it has something to do with what we’ve been talking about. What would you tell somebody if you just had to tell them and then you got to go away.

Dan McClain (32:45):

I would say, kind of back to this whole notion of should the SDR say what’s comfortable versus should you give them a script? Find out who’s the most intelligent person in the room and listen to them. Usually that’s someone with a C in their title, usually.

Chris Beall (33:02):

Yep. That’s interesting. On that. We’re going to wrap this up. Dan McClain, you have been a marvelous guest on Market Dominance Guys. I think we’re going on in episode 130 something at this point. Proud to have you on. Proud to be on your team and excited looking forward to what we’re all going to do together. And I just think about those companies, those people you’re helping pulling the cork out of the innovation economy, letting value flow. And that’s what makes a hair stand up on my arm. So thank you so much for being on the show and for being you.

Dan McClain (33:31):

Yeah. Thanks for having me. I was a little nervous. This is my first podcast. I didn’t know what I was getting into. I’d love to come back anytime.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

You’re no doubt familiar with the buyer’s journey, but what do you know about the seller’s journey? Dan McClain, Sales Director at ConnectAndSell and today’s guest on Market Dominance Guys, shares his personal journey as a salesperson with our host Chris Beall in this first of a two-part conversation. Starting at the beginning of his career, Dan tells the story of how he got into sales straight out of college, what his early selling experiences were like, and how he cold-called his way to where he is today. Most memorable for him was his first experience using ConnectAndSell Lightning, the cold-calling tool that boosts the number of conversations a salesperson can have with prospects. Pushing that “Go” button and being served one conversation after another changed his life and led to his current job selling Lightning at ConnectAndSell. Helping other salespeople discover this tool is now Dan’s mission. Listen in as Dan and Chris remember the details of their first meeting in today’s Market Dominance Guys’ episode, “The Seller Has a Journey Too.”

About Our Guest

Dan McClain is Sales Director at ConnectAndSell. His life-long dedication to sales has led him to his current goal: helping sales leaders, teams, and individuals connect with their targets at a velocity of 10X by using ConnectAndSell Lightning. Dan is based in the San Diego area and is active in his local chapter of AA-ISP.

—-more—-

Full episode transcript below:

Chris Beall (01:24):

Hey Market Dominance folks, it’s Chris Beall and I’m here without Corey Frank, which is a bit of a shock because I lean on Corey pretty hard. He always comes up with the cool questions and he’s got the literary references and he’s got a tie on, which is nice.

Dan McClain (01:42):

Oh.

Chris Beall (01:42):

You don’t see one on me. I know Dan.

Dan McClain (01:44):

You could have worn a tie. [inaudible 00:01:46]

Chris Beall (01:46):

And instead I’m here today, not instead but normally we’d have Corey, but now I’m all by myself as a host except I’ve got Dan McClain. Dan McClain, among many other things that he does including things involving surfboards and riding vehicles across sandy terrain that doesn’t look safe at all to me.

Dan McClain (02:06):

Absolutely.

Chris Beall (02:07):

And shooting the occasional wild boar and eating them. And growing tomatoes in a way that I’ve never seen another human being grow tomatoes, including naming his tomato plants appropriately.

Dan McClain (02:17):

True.

Chris Beall (02:18):

So Dan is also somebody who works for ConnectAndSell. He sells for ConnectAndSell. I don’t know if he properly sells, he’ll describe what it’s actually like I’m sure. But Dan, welcome to Market Dominance Guys.

Dan McClain (02:30):

Thanks for having me. This is my very first podcast.

Chris Beall (02:34):

Oh my God. I’m excited. No wonder you’re wearing white, you’re a podcast virgin.

Dan McClain (02:39):

That’s right. Absolutely. [inaudible 00:02:41] And my hair too.

Chris Beall (02:42):

Fantastic. And notice that Dan has a Flight School shirt on, I got a Flight School shirt on. We are as twinsy as can be right now. So Dan, just a little background. How did you fall into the world of sales, and especially sales that involved anything resembling software? Is this like your dream when you were a child? Is it something that you got hit in the head once? I know you surf and sometimes you could hit your head surfing I bet.

Dan McClain (03:11):

It’s true.

Chris Beall (03:12):

What happened?

Dan McClain (03:13):

Well, growing up I always knew I was going to be in sales. My father was in sales but, it was different back then. He was in industrial sales and he covered Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, kind of the Midwest belt, and he would drive his car around and he had an expense account and that seemed kind of cool.

Chris Beall (03:34):

Interesting.

Dan McClain (03:34):

And I’d hear him on the phone every once in a while. And I thought, “That’s what I want to do”.

Chris Beall (03:38):

Wow.

Dan McClain (03:38):

Well actually then college, I had to put myself through. And I learned very quickly that the traditional jobs that one can get when you’re in college aren’t enough to pay for college, even way back in the late ’80s, early ’90s. And so I had to be creative, and I actually started a couple of my own small little companies. A volleyball business, where we taught leagues and lessons and ran tournaments. And also a valet car parking business at a very cool restaurant in Minneapolis called J.D. Hoyt’s. And doing that I kind of learned some entrepreneurial things.

Dan McClain (04:16):

And then towards the tail end of college, a friend of mine had a sister who married an entrepreneur that ran a company called Skyline Displays, they make trade show exhibits. And he saw what I was doing and he thought, “I’d like to hire this guy and send him off to California” to do what they called “R&D sales”. Because what they used to do is they’d come up with something new, they’d release it to the field before it was ready, and then it was very expensive to make a change because it was on such a grand scale. So they thought, “Why don’t we just have one person go try to sell some new stuff”. And I just kind of fell into it. I moved out to California pretty much the day after I graduated from college. And that was a very interesting move. December 5th, 1995, very cold Minnesota day. I drove out to Newport Beach and it was one of the happiest days of my life.

Chris Beall (05:04):

That’s what they call a selling point.

Dan McClain (05:10):

Absolutely. And when I went out there on the recruiting trip, they were very smart. They flew me into the Orange County Airport, and when you walk out of the Orange County Airport you see green grass and Palm trees. So I told myself, “I hope it’s a good job because I’m taking it”. And I think like most people in sales I was young, started off, struggled, and it took me a while to hit my stride to kind of figure out what I wanted to do. And then I had a roommate who was a recruiter. He goes, “Hey you’re in sales, but you’re kind of struggling. I got this customer that’s looking for [inaudible 00:05:43] and they’re a software company. Do you know anything about software”? I said, “No”, but it paid more money so I took that job.

Dan McClain (05:50):

And then I was in software for 10, 15 years. And then my company did a ConnectAndSell test drive. I was one of the test subjects using the weapon and it was interesting. I didn’t know what I was getting into. And when you use ConnectAndSell, turn it on, you hit that green go button. Well when it was time to hit that green go button, president of the company standing here, the VP of sales is standing here, these are big verbose gentlemen. They’re like, “Turn it on”! All of a sudden my hands started shaking, my brain went blank, and I hit the go button. And the first conversation came fast, 30, 40 seconds. I don’t know what I said. It wasn’t intelligent or legible. The person hung up. And they yelled, “Do it again”! Did it again. Then the second conversation came fast, and it was, “Hey, yeah call me next week. I think I want to talk to you”. And the third guy picks up the phone, I schedule a demo, a meeting, boss and the president leave me alone rest of the day. I think I scheduled two more meetings on my very first day and it was awesome.

Dan McClain (06:53):

And then I used almost every day. This was back in the days when people traveled, I was covering 10 states. And I was Account Executive, didn’t do a whole bunch of prospecting, but I used it very specifically to call my [inaudible 00:07:07] task list and sales force. And it worked so incredibly well for me because I was calling the CIO or the VP of IT of a billion dollar company that ran SAP. And I was selling very expensive software to bolt onto that to make it run better, faster, stronger. And used it for two or three years and got to the point where every time I’d turn it on a little voice inside my head would tell me, “Dan, you should go sell ConnectAndSell”. So I got to know you, called up you. I think I sent you some referrals, tried to get in somehow. I told you I wanted to join the team, we had a couple conversations over a couple months and you introduced me to Jonti McLaren, our SVP of sales. Went up and met him and been a happy member of the team now for five, almost six years. That might be more information than you’re asking for, but that’s how I got into sales from then up until now.

Chris Beall (07:57):

Wow. That’s really good. Thank you. That was really tight. Yeah, I remember talking to you. I remember that call when you called me. I was walking down Santa Cruz Avenue, Los Gatos, California. I was just about to go to the Great Bear Coffee shop and get myself I think it was an early afternoon latte. And I think we talked for quite a while. I think we talked for quite a while actually, and I was impressed that you would call me and that you actually used ConnectAndSell. And so I was pretty sure that you were going to do something here one way or another. You know it is kind of funny how many of our really, really top people in the company are former ConnectAndSell customers and users. And so James Townsend used to use ConnectAndSell, and he also ran part of a company called Halogen and did right things there. Donny Crawford, I was just talking to Donny as our Chief Flight Instructor. He used to go in and do job interviews when he was a rep. And he’d take them all the way through and they’d make him an offer and he’d go, “Oh by the way, I’m not working for you unless you get me ConnectAndSell. That was his thing. And you know Donny pretty well, it’s kind of hard to imagine him doing something like that.

Dan McClain (09:03):

Yeah. It’s interesting.

Chris Beall (09:05):

He was consistent on it. It’s true. A lot of people. Jonti McLaren was our SVP of Sales and Marketing. Everybody thinks that Jonti joined the company because his dad is the Exec Chairman, was the CEO back in the day. But in fact that’s not why at all. Jonti built his first company on top of ConnectAndSell and he sold it and did pretty well, right? His Tesla looks better than our Subaru I guess [inaudible 00:09:28]

Dan McClain (09:28):

Yeah. And wasn’t his use case a little bit different? Was he the CEO of the company or the Chief something, and he was using it to find business but also to gauge the market interest in what he had?

Chris Beall (09:40):

Yeah. Yeah. It’s interesting to me, you said your first sales job where you had a real sales job was like, “Go do it”, was actually a market exploration job. And that’s a pretty unusual sales job, especially for somebody whose kind of new to it. Think about it. It’s like, “Why am I going to trust this new guy to go off and bring me a signal back from the market”? Somebody had a lot of faith in you. This job right now is kind of like that though, right? There’s something about ConnectAndSell, you always feel like you’re selling something new. Do you have any idea why that is? I mean it’s kind of funny, right? Because I can describe it. I was talking to a potential investor today, and I can describe it in like two sentences and they get it. It’s really hard to get business people on the phone in order to explore business to business. Right? It’s just hard. ConnectAndSell lets you do that by pushing a button and waiting a few minutes, talking to somebody. That’s it. That’s what it does. And yet.

Dan McClain (10:28):

[inaudible 00:10:28].

Chris Beall (10:28):

And yet. It’s what is the factor that you see? Because this is about market dominance, right? So we’re always talking about, okay you can use a human voice to dominate a market. You go right into somebody’s midbrain, right in through their ear. Email gets blocked by all sorts of things. It doesn’t get to you in spam. It sits there and annoys you. If you open it, you don’t read it very much but it’s only got 500 bits information in it or 5,000 bits to start with. Here you are inside of somebody’s head. You know when you sit at a restaurant and it’s quiet and you’re trying to focus on something, I don’t know you’re reading your email or whatever. And the person next to you is chewing in a way that’s just horrible. It’s just obnoxious, right? You can’t turn that off.

Chris Beall (12:00):

You can’t make yourself not hear it. You’re stuck, right? So when you cold call somebody, cold conversation them, you’re inside their brain just like that chewing, but you better be doing a better job of whatever.

Dan McClain (12:11):

Yeah.

Chris Beall (12:12):

Some people get it, some people don’t. What is it that you see that divides the sheep from the goats? Or as we say, the pigs from the weasels?

Dan McClain (12:20):

That’s interesting. And I was on a very interesting blitz and coach session with a customer today. And we were listening. I think the one really huge thing is just the confidence in the voice. Am I talking to someone right out of college that’s reading whatever they’re saying off this piece of paper? Or do they sound like a peer that I may want to engage with? We had one of the reps and we said, “Hey, it sounds like you’re reading off the script. And you have to stress the word I believe and sound like an expert”. Very next call, we’re listening. He goes, “I believe”. He really stressed it, like overstressed it, and you could tell he got the person’s attention. And he wasn’t smooth, but he at least had added confidence to his pitch. Scheduled a meeting.

Chris Beall (13:10):

That’s fascinating. So how did that happen with you? I mean the first time you pushed the button, you got a president standing over one shoulder, you got a vice president standing over the other, they’re yelling at you. It’s like having big Matt Forbes yell at and tell you to hit the button. Which [inaudible 00:13:25] used to do [inaudible 00:13:26]

Dan McClain (13:25):

Yeah. These were intimidating guys.

Chris Beall (13:30):

So you hit the button and it was confusing at first. When in that process, you got a couple meetings that day, did you get comfortable on the first day of ambushing people?

Dan McClain (13:39):

Absolutely. I got comfortable actually after the second conversation where the guy said, “Hey, busy. Call me next week”. Because I knew he was interested. I knew he actually wanted to talk to me. The challenge was it was the CIO of a billion-dollar company. And it was that moment where internally I think I switched gears. And then when I had that third conversation, I didn’t feel nervous anymore. I felt confident. And then it was just a natural conversation where I didn’t sound like some young person that doesn’t know what they’re doing so they have to read something off a piece of paper. I sounded like a peer that maybe he actually wanted to engage with. And he had also expressed interest in what we did. Company was Suncor Energy, it was the CIO and they had said, “Yeah. We want to put Redwood Software”, the company I worked for, “We want to put them as a line item on a 300 million process improvement project”. So in the SAP space, we were on the bill of materials. We were one line item.

Chris Beall (14:43):

Wow.

Dan McClain (14:43):

Yeah. And after that third call, I actually put my feet up on the desk and I realized that ConnectAndSell was doing the worst part of my day. Sales Force, dial, voicemail, reschedule. Sales Force, dial, talk to that mean gatekeeper, voicemail. It did all that for me.

Chris Beall (15:02):

Yeah.

Dan McClain (15:03):

[Inaudible 00:15:03].

Chris Beall (15:03):

It’s interesting. So you got it like that, and now you sell it. So you get to watch people getting it or not getting it. And so you pointed out somebody sounds like they’re reading because they are reading, or they haven’t been coached to use their voice appropriately and they can get a little bit stuck. Do you have a point of view about the order in which things ought to happen? Like what we do today is we’ll hold a test drive. And a test drive for those of you listen to this don’t know what it is, it’s a full day of production with ConnectAndSell.

Chris Beall (15:37):

Tony Safoian who was CEO over at SADA, I was on his podcast and I asked him, “Didn’t you guys make some money during that test drive at ConnectAndSell?” And he laughed. And Billy Franz, whose his VP of Inside Sales at the time, said something along the lines of “Chris, we made tens of millions dollars pipeline that day”. And that was in three hours, right? So you would kind of think, “Well, okay. No brainer. No brainer”. But that’s how we sell, and it works pretty well but sometimes people they won’t even listen to you to take a test drive. Right?

Dan McClain (16:13):

That’s true.

Chris Beall (16:13):

Have you broken that down in your mind as to why? I shouldn’t say it’s irrational, but we offer test drives for free. The test drive is always educational. It’s always fun. I’ve never had one that wasn’t fun. I’ve been associated with God knows how many of these things. 1800 of them or something like that. They’re always fun. So you got something that’s fun, your reps are going to like it, it’s educational, it’s going to reveal the truth about what they’re saying.

Dan McClain (16:40):

Mm-hmm.

Chris Beall (16:40):

Oh my God. That’ll be interesting. And yet folks often go, “Yeah, I don’t know about that. I don’t want to take that test drive”. What do you think is going on inside those people? What do you do about it? If anything?

Dan McClain (16:53):

This is something that has baffled me that I’ve been pondering for years. I have no idea. And it’s such an interesting thought, because when I came and joined the ConnectAndSell team I really thought it would be as easy as, “Hey, you’re a VP of Sales? You want your people talking to 10 times more people? Let’s do a free test drive. Free”. I really thought it was that easy. And then when I flew up and met with you and with Jonti, we went out for sushi. It was big Matt Forbes and Sean McLaren. Sean McLaren left, and then it was just me and Matt Forbes and he goes, “Hey, listen. Hey, listen buddy. This job is not easy. It’s really hard”. And I thought, “Nah”. He really impressed upon me how hard it would be. And then actually a day before my official start date, I came up to that… There was an AA-ISP trade show in Dallas. And I’m thinking to myself, “I know how to use ConnectAndSell. I don’t really understand this whole breakthrough framework we have”. But I had it printed out and I’m thinking, “I better show Chris and Jonti that I’m not afraid and I better get on and use. And I better do it in front of them”. That was a little bit scary. But I think I’ve kind of veered from your question. I don’t know the answer to that question.

Chris Beall (18:13):

I don’t either. I don’t either. I always think it’s like somebody says, “Okay, so here’s the deal. Now mind you, it’s only going to be one day but we’re going to fly you and the kids to Disney World. And you’re going to get to spend a whole day at Disney world and you’re going to get to have nice meals at the restaurants and it’s going to all be nice. Unfortunately, the sad part is it’s only one day and you’re going to have to fly home, but at least you’ll know what Disney World’s like. You’ll know whether you and the kids like it”. Right?

Dan McClain (18:40):

Yeah.

Chris Beall (18:41):

And I bet if you made that offer to some folks they’d go, “Ah, I don’t know about that. That doesn’t sound quite right to me”. I don’t know what it is though, but it’s a very similar offer I think. There’s got to be something hiding in there that neither you and nor I have figured out yet.

Chris Beall (18:56):

I have a bit of a thesis. It’s got two parts. One is the too good to be true thing. That’s too good to be true. Well in a way, rationally, what does it matter? But I don’t want to waste my time. But I think the other thing is it kind of sounds like something that could be a bit of exposure for you if you’re a sales leader.

Dan McClain (19:19):

Yeah. True.

Chris Beall (19:20):

And a little bit of exposure can go a long ways if you’re not comfortable with it, and a long ways in a negative direction. And that may well be. That kind of speaks to market dominance. We talk about on this show, the only safe position to be in a market is a dominant position. Otherwise, someone else by definition is in the dominant position. And if they’re in the dominant position, then you’re working at their discretion. They can choose whether you live or die. The dominant player can always come undercut you on price, overspend you on whatever, out raise you on capital, attract better talent, have a snowball effect from better customers who then are willing to reference other customers. You name it. There’s a book called The Gorilla Game that’s about this very thing.

Dan McClain (20:08):

Mm.

Chris Beall (20:09):

As Geoffrey Moore wrote it back after he wrote Crossing the Chasm. And The Gorilla Game basically says this: In innovation anyway, and tech especially, all the chips go to the dominant player. The dominant player rakes in 90 plus percent of all the profits that will ever be achieved in that category. They take them all. And everybody else kind of serves them, whether they know it or not. They can think they’re competing, but they don’t know.

Chris Beall (20:34):

Sometimes I wonder whether folks… I don’t say want it or not, but whether it’s an uncomfortable idea trying to go after that dominant position rather than, “Well, at least this is the devil I know. And I’m kind of getting along. Why rock the boat, right? Why throw the grenade? Roll it down the hall and see what happens”? Do you ever feel that, or am I just kind of in a crazy place here?

Dan McClain (21:01):

Well I always try to look at things in the most simple manner. And when I think about that, I think what is the average tenure now of a VP of Sales? Is it 11 months? Is that still?

Chris Beall (21:16):

Well it’s 17 months end to end. So if you’re selling to him, you’re catching them eight and a half months from their departure on average.

Dan McClain (21:25):

Yeah. I think if you catch them right in the middle, they’re in a good spot. But if they’re too new, they’re too new. They’re over their head swimming. Or if they’ve been there and they know they’re on their way out, maybe there’s apathy or maybe they’re concentrating on where they’re going to land next. It’s certainly interesting. And it’s also interesting the VP of Sales today is certainly not the VP of Sales even four or five years ago.

Chris Beall (21:51):

Hmm. How’s that?

Dan McClain (21:53):

From what I see, they’re not in control of as much budget. Or they just don’t have as much decision-making authority. I’m seeing marketing departments have more, or just the CEO being more involved in those decisions.

Chris Beall (22:07):

Got it. Well we’ve always said, I’ve always said here, one of the challenges… And this is a market dominance challenge people got to think about is, marketing has budget for money, sales has budget for heads.

Dan McClain (22:18):

Yeah.

Chris Beall (22:19):

That’s the tradition. And so sales leaders, their first order of execution is to make sure they got enough heads for next year. That’s your number one job, right? It’s your capital source.

Dan McClain (22:30):

Yeah.

Chris Beall (22:31):

So if you’re an entrepreneur, you raise money in order to have enough capital to go to market and spend what you’ve got to spend to get the market you want and then also have a buffer against the unknown. And I think the way a VP of Sales might think about things is, “Hey, so it’s November. My big problem is making sure I don’t have 62 people, but that I’ve got 73 people. Because that’s going to be my buffer”. And now when we’re assigning quota and we assign straight up, when some things happen say my top person walks out on day one of the fiscal, and now I’m going to face it. Because I don’t think everybody really knows this, but you’re going to pay about one times quota to replace your top rep if they walk out on the first day of the fiscal. If you do the math, it’s going to be about their whole quota. Million-dollar rep is going to cost you a million dollars.

Dan McClain (23:23):

Wow. That’s interesting.

Chris Beall (23:24):

Helen and I were talking about it. She was talking about a hundred-million-dollar rep. Imagine them leaving on the first day of the fiscal.

Dan McClain (23:31):

Wow.

Chris Beall (23:32):

That happens, right? I mean these are big, big numbers that are crawling around here.

Dan McClain (23:35):

That can be devastating. And I can’t tell you how many times in the last six months I’ve heard it’s really easy to go hire someone, it’s really hard to go buy ConnectAndSell.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

“When you share your life nuggets, you don’t know when it’s going to matter to someone,” observes Elena Hesse, our Market Dominance Guys’ guest and the Vice President of Operations of Thomson Reuters’ tax and accounting professionals in this third of three podcast episodes with our hosts, Chris Beall and Corey Frank. For the past four years, Elena has led the “NoTimeToRead Book Club” for #GirlsClub, an organization dedicated to changing the face of sales leadership by empowering more women to earn roles in management. Corey starts off the conversation by asking Elena to describe what happens in a book club that doesn’t require reading the book. “A book is just a vehicle for a conversation. You never know when something is going to resonate,” she says, as she explains how the subject matter generates ideas and experiences that club members share with each other. And just like the book club participants, Corey, Chris, and Elena share ideas and personal insights of their own, which cover everything from the sales benefits of a live conversation over an emailed message to the trust-creating habit of asking for clarification when you don’t understand something. As Chris says, “The essence of curiosity is embracing our ignorance.” So, get ready to open your mind and heart to embrace what these three experienced salespeople share with each other — and with you — about the essence of this week’s Market Dominance Guys podcast, “Why Conversations Matter.”

 

About Our Guest

Elena T. Hesse, Vice President, Operations – Tax & Accounting Professionals at Thomson Reuters, has been with this firm for more than 30 years. Elena is also a thought leader for #GirlsClub, leading the book club discussions to support #GirlsClub and its continuing work of changing the face of sales leadership by empowering more women to earn roles in management.

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Full episode transcript below:

 

Corey Frank (01:46):

Elena, one last question for you, maybe a good plug for what we were talking about here towards the end about empowering women leadership, particularly in sales and tech, which you’re at the heart of certainly at Thomson. You have a book club, The No Time to Read Book Club. Maybe you can end this with a little plug for the book club, and what you do, and maybe some of the learnings over the years leading that?

Elena Hesse (02:05):

Absolutely. One, the reason that the book club even exists, in a way, is because of Chris Beall. Because Chris, you told Lauren Bailey about me, and she reached out to me for Girls Club, so that all happened.

Elena Hesse (02:22):

So, in the Girls Club organization, which I’m a part of as a thought leader, Lauren and Angela, there’s so many great people there, we have this book club. We do it for each cohort. I think this is our third or fourth year. What I really love about the book club is that it’s really a time for women. Sometimes there are men too, so this is not just a one gender conversation.

Elena Hesse (02:49):

The first book I pick, the next two, they pick. It tells you where their heads are. Where are they looking for help? Where do they want some insights? And we just talk. We read the book. Sometimes they don’t read the book. I’ll be honest with you, there’s a reason for the title. It’s hard to squeeze in book reading sometimes.

Elena Hesse (03:08):

A lot of the women in Girls Club, if I were making a general statement, I would say are women with families. A lot of times you got young kids. Time’s precious, so we don’t use that as a filter, if you will. So, we have a book club in which reading the book is not necessarily needed, because I always read the book.

Elena Hesse (03:26):

There’s always some people that read the book, and we just go through the highlights, and share our personal stories as they relate to the books. I don’t know if it’s any more magical than that, Corey. It’s really people coming together to say, “Never thought about that,” or “This how I reacted to it.” When you’re sharing your life nuggets, you don’t know when it’s going to matter to somebody.

Elena Hesse (03:48):

I will make a point to our conversation and how it all started, Chris. You flatter me and humble me with remembering a statement that I made many years ago, frankly that I would never have been able to repeat back to you if you asked me, do you remember what you said? I would not have been able to, right?

Elena Hesse (04:07):

You never know when the teacher arrives. The student has to be ready. I’m not saying you’re a student in that respect, but you never know when something’s going to resonate. You never know. So, anytime you can bring people together with some level of continuity to the conversation, a book, that’s just a vehicle for a conversation.

Elena Hesse (04:28):

A good book club, that is just the muse. You could go in lots of different directions and learn about each other, and walk away with something that no one would’ve thought that one little something would’ve mattered.

Elena Hesse (04:41):

So, I like to have spontaneous interesting conversations because I never know what I’m going to learn something. God knows I never could have repeated back that quote you told me. I’m very happy that I gave you something that meant something, obviously. I bet you we all have things that resonated with us and the person who delivered it had no idea what they were delivered to you.

Corey Frank (05:01):

Well, Elena, we have almost 200 episodes of this podcast stemming from my purely selfish desire to get inside the head of Chris Beall, so welcome to the club. I think that’s a beautiful way to end this episode, especially since you’re almost going to make Chris cry again.

Chris Beall (05:16):

It’s working, it’s working.

Elena Hesse (05:18):

You are not crying, don’t tell me that. Are you?

Chris Beall (05:23):

I am, but I won’t even hide it very well. Yes, Corey knows me well. The fact is, we all have so much to learn from each other. The essence of curiosity is embracing our ignorance.

Elena Hesse (05:35):

Yes, yes.

Chris Beall (05:36):

Really being enthusiastic about our ignorance. I love being ignorant. It’s my favorite thing in the world. Whenever I think I know something, it makes me nervous.

Elena Hesse (05:46):

Yeah. Like, do you really know it? You’ve got to be vulnerable to that. I’ll be in conversations, and if someone says a word that I don’t know, I will say, “Stop, please. Can you tell me that means? Because I don’t know what you’re saying right now.” I’m sure I’ve looked really ridiculous, but I don’t care.

Corey Frank (06:03):

No, just the opposite, Elena. I think that’s endearing. I think that for somebody who understands the courage it takes, especially at a manager or director, vice president C-level, to stop and ask a question like that? Hey, an acronym you’d use. Especially in sales, we throw around these all the time.

Elena Hesse (06:19):

Gosh, yeah.

Corey Frank (06:20):

I think, to me, there’s got to be some Chris Voss, Candyland shortcut, that really engenders trust very, very quickly, like a shortcut if you say, “Stop, what does that mean? I don’t understand that”. We could you feel the burden on you and the trust part just catalyzes from there.

Elena Hesse (06:40):

Because typically people are saying things that are important, and you want to have the same vocabulary or knowledge so you can move faster, kind of back to our original statements.

Chris Beall (06:49):

Yeah. Well, everybody’s an expert on thousands, millions of things, in fact. We just don’t know what they are until we have a conversation. We have a little tagline at ConnectAndSell, and I’ve had branding people talk to me about, “Why don’t you change that and make it fresher?” Conversations matter.

Chris Beall (07:06):

It’s not that they matter for selling, they just matter. We just can’t figure stuff out on our own, because our own experiences take us inside our own experiences. We need to be inside of other people’s experiences in order to be able to gain access to what they’re an expert at.

Chris Beall (07:28):

Everybody’s an expert at millions of things. It’s not limited. You think of how long a life is, think about all the years. Years? Try milliseconds. We learn stuff hundreds of times a second. We can’t really share it with anybody unless we have a conversation. You have to have that high velocity, 20,000 bits a second, right into the mid brain. Then we have a shot.

Elena Hesse (07:53):

Yeah, and let’s absorb it, and be brave enough to maybe change a position if you hear something that makes sense. Don’t get too buried in your own belief. Pick your values. But what I believe in, because I’m using those very differently, it could change a little bit because your experience has showed me something I never saw before.

Elena Hesse (08:15):

Now, that’s why I think … I’m not going to get political, I promise. But just generally … both sides of the aisle, once you pick a position, you got to stay consistent or else you’re not considered credible. I want a leader who takes it all in, and makes decisions that are right, not just following a pattern of an echo chamber. So, it’s okay to say you’re wrong.

Corey Frank (08:41):

Oftentimes.

Chris Beall (08:42):

Well, Corey’s wrong all the time, so.

Corey Frank (08:44):

Yeah, just ask my wife. Right, exactly.

Chris Beall (08:48):

… Into little diamonds.

Elena Hesse (08:52):

Sure.

Chris Beall (08:52):

This was the best conversation I’ve had in a long, long time.

Corey Frank (08:54):

Oh yeah.

Elena Hesse (08:54):

You’re sweet. You guys are very flattering. I don’t know if you do this for everybody else, but you make people feel good to participate. I was very happy to do so. I’ve learned things. I’ve jotted down books and movies.

Corey Frank (09:09):

Yeah.

Chris Beall (09:09):

I keep thinking of Little China. Go watch that one, that’s a good movie.

Corey Frank (09:12):

Yeah. My wife knows there’s no such thing as a quick conversation with Chris because it’s so tangential. You talk about a lot, about a lot of things.

Corey Frank (09:22):

I’ve known Chris for a long time. I’ve never heard the primates example, but this is a guy that reads scientific journals for fun all the time. It’s the Jiro thing. Jiro the movie, he dreams of sushi because he’s such a craftsman that is so entrenched. As they say, “By the work, they shall know the workman.”

Elena Hesse (09:45):

Yeah.

Corey Frank (09:45):

So, he’s dreaming of sushi. You’re like, “Come on, it’s just fish. It’s a meal. Can’t you go drive through somewhere, or go to one of those things in Japan where they go around and grab the sushi?”

Corey Frank (09:54):

It’s like, no, you’re missing the point. “Well, can’t I dial and talk to people? Can’t I just email? Isn’t it the same.” It’s going to take a little bit longer, but come on. You’re missing the art, and the honor, and the dignity of the profession.

Elena Hesse (10:06):

Yeah, I love those last few things you just said, the art, and the honor, and the dignity of our profession.

Chris Beall (10:14):

I think we would do well to spend more time with our sales teams on these topics.

Elena Hesse (10:23):

Yeah.

Chris Beall (10:24):

People will say, “Well, sales is an honorable profession,” all that kind of stuff. I don’t think most people selling in the innovation economy even get what they’re doing, why they’re so important.

Chris Beall (11:29):

We tend to, I think sadly, by leaving the coin operated comp plans in place, we actually insult our salespeople by saying … This is a Japanese thing. I spent a lot of time in Japan at one point in my life doing a big joint venture with Mitsui, so dealing with board level people there. They’re very happy to let you be yourself, but if you’re open, they’re happy to teach you about what it’s like to be them, which is really kind of interesting.

Chris Beall (12:02):

The thing that characterized Japanese society more than anything else was that it’s insulting to tip somebody, and yet we pay our sales people by tipping them. The commission is a tip, right? The implication in Japan, the thing that’s so insulting, is you’re saying to them, “I don’t believe you would’ve done your job with excellence unless I gave you this additional financial incentive.”

Chris Beall (12:30):

That’s an absolute insult to a Japanese person to say, “You did it for the money.” You went the extra mile not because of who you are and your commitment to the excellence of what you’re doing and the joy of serving somebody. You did it because you’re trying to get 20% instead of 18%. It’s the deepest insult.

Chris Beall (12:53):

I think that we have a hangover in our society from sales at the crossroads where a commission would make sense. Because basically I trick you into buying and I should be rewarded for it. That’s kind of what it was.

Chris Beall (13:08):

Now, here we are, we’re actually in partnership with people we have not yet met. That’s the essence of the modern sales person, is your tribe includes people you have not yet met that you’re going to help, that you’re going to be curious about, and you’re going to help. Yet we base our compensation schemes on the notion that you wouldn’t really do it unless there was something in it for you.

Elena Hesse (13:31):

So, I’m curious. I will say this, when I first started in sales and probably the reason that I was willing to go into a sales position, because I’m a CPA, so that part of my brain was like, “What? commissions?” I don’t want to put anything at risk.

Elena Hesse (13:47):

But when I started at Creative Solutions, they did not have commissions. It was straight salary, there was no anything. But kind of to your point, we looked at reports all the time to see who was selling the most. That was driving behavior, but it wasn’t paying based on that behavior.

Elena Hesse (14:07):

So, my question to you Chris, since you’ve had a lot of exposure here, how do the Japanese companies pay their sales reps? Is it strictly a salary? Is there no differentiation for excellence? They just don’t use money for that? What do you see?

Chris Beall (14:22):

Well, in their sales world, God knows what they do. I never got into that. That was not part of what I was … It’s funny, I never felt in these long relationships that we were putting together that anybody was working me for a commission. I never felt that, not even for a minute.

Chris Beall (14:40):

I never also felt, I have no instances to counter this, that a handshake wasn’t as good as a contract. Never, not once. There was no like, “Here’s a word here. We could do this,” or whatever. You didn’t do deals other than on an achievement of mutual understanding of what you were going to do next. That was the deal itself. There was no other deal. I don’t know if I recognize these people-

Elena Hesse (15:06):

A lot of trust.

Chris Beall (15:07):

… but I do know that every time I would go to leave Narita Airport in Tokyo, there’s a yellow line that you cross and you’re no longer in Japan when you cross that line. I would stop at that line.

Elena Hesse (15:27):

And like have [inaudible 00:15:29]?

Chris Beall (15:29):

I would stop, because I felt like I was leaving civilization. We have examples there. We don’t need to have this corrupting system, where I have to grease your palm a little bit before you’ll carry my suitcase. We don’t have that everywhere. We have salaried positions. We trust our engineers to work without tipping them for a line of code, or giving a commission.

Chris Beall (15:52):

Can you imagine? “You wrote 26 lines of code today, $55, yay.” No, we would actually be concerned, like “Oh my God, this stuff’s got to work. That could be sloppy.” I want it to be right. What do they get? They get their stock options, and they get their opportunity for promotion, and they get their career, which is actually worth more than all that put together.

Chris Beall (16:13):

You get your reputation, you get your career, you get the fact that you can walk out the door without taking a single step. You get all of that. I think we still have got a cultural hangover. We got untrapped from the office, and we can now choose to use the office. But we’ve never gotten untrapped from the coin-operated notion of a salesperson.

Elena Hesse (16:36):

It’s a very distracting part of the business, because if you don’t have the coin-operated machine well oiled, highly tuned, with all the variations, it’s like a pinball machine, as I pull it back, I’m trying to hit as many things as I possibly can. If I hit them and didn’t get paid, now my focus as a salesperson is, “System’s not working. How much do I need to get paid?” I’m in the back of my mind, at the very least. That’s distracting me from my relationships.

Corey Frank (17:10):

Well, the social contract, they’re going to feel is broken.

Elena Hesse (17:14):

Exactly.

Corey Frank (17:15):

“You hired me, and you’re going to spend all this money on all these MarTech back tools. I follow your playbook, I should have six figures, and I should hit my quota.” When I don’t, it’s tough to look introspectively, I’ve got to look at probably the leads, my boss, my manager, my comp plan, my commute, whatever it is that’s natural.

Corey Frank (17:37):

Actually, in the movie, in Jiro they talk about that other concept we’ve heard, Kaizen, that continuous improvement, that main kind of principle. But the piece that they talk about in Jiro, [foreign language 00:17:48], a incredible book from the 17th Century about the Samurai way and the Japanese. They call it ikigai. It’s finding one’s central satisfaction and meaning in life. It’s the reason for being.

Elena Hesse (18:02):

For your personal reason for being?

Corey Frank (18:05):

Your own personal reason for being. That’s one of the Japanese philosophies that they have, is that it describes your value and your own worth, to you. It’s your life, and your purpose. When you, like Chris, you go around Tokyo, the cabs are impeccably cleaned. They’re like 1986 Maximas. The cab drivers are impeccably dressed and they wear white gloves.

Elena Hesse (18:29):

Wow.

Corey Frank (18:31):

They’re beautiful.

Chris Beall (18:31):

And they smell good, the cabs smell good, they smell great. They all smell the same, they all smell great.

Corey Frank (18:37):

I think that pride starts at home. That pride of … If I cared about my title, I’d be a banker. But if I’m a salesperson, the only thing I have to show, I can’t have really my title, I got to have my stuff, my currency, which is [inaudible 00:18:52].

Elena Hesse (18:51):

Yeah. I never thought about it that way, but yeah.

Corey Frank (18:54):

Other currency, which is learning, curiosity, being supportive, group, et cetera. But anyway.

Chris Beall (19:00):

I think the lock-in comes from the market. We pay our salespeople commission because the lock-in comes from the market. The lock-in to the office came from the market, and then the market blew up because it turned out it was better to work from home than to die. But that’s what it took. It actually took-

Elena Hesse (19:18):

A pandemic.

Chris Beall (19:19):

“Otherwise we’re going to die.” The fact that we commuted for an insane amount of … Truly, if you just think about it, we did an episode on this, the hundreds of billions of dollars in the hours spent just commuting makes no sense, once you figured out how to do something remotely.

Chris Beall (19:39):

You can’t go back and find them and go, “We were so good when we were together, that it was worth two things.” One is all the commuting, and two is having our entire talent pool be within 50 miles of us instead of everybody on earth. Those things were incredibly valuable. They weren’t incredibly valuable, they were locked in.

Elena Hesse (19:56):

So, I have a point. I know you got to leave in a minute and I’m going to respect that. But I will say this onto return to work. I believe in everything you just said. There’s a lot of was in commuting. However, I can’t accidentally bump into anyone on a video call. I can’t do it.

Elena Hesse (20:16):

My learnings come from accidentally bumping into the world I live in. If I’m not at least coming into a central place where other people that I want to bump into are there periodically, I’m talking about hybrid, like two days a week, then I lose. The company loses. But it’s a really hard message to get across to people who are so used to now working from home all the time. Because it’s hard to argue your productivity comment. I am probably more productive-

Chris Beall (20:43):

Or the rest of your life. It’s like, who are you working for? Are you working for the man, so to speak? By the way, my one minute may come here.

Chris Beall (20:53):

I think what we’re going to see on this topic is we’re going to see the market play out. The market is now for top talent. The top talent is simply, they’re going to call the game. The rest of us who hire top talent, we’re in the thrall of those people. They are our customers, and that’s it.

Chris Beall (21:16):

It’s not a very subtle game at this point. It’s simply, what do they want? If they want to bump into people, well, maybe they’ll bump into people. Here’s where I think they’ll end up going. Corey knows I’m a mathematician by background, and that I’ve never lost that hideous nature. The math says that we should get together, but less frequently and more intensely.

Chris Beall (21:38):

So, where the conferences used to be to meet customers, we will start having conferences to be with each other, and to actually take that time truly away from other things, and not just bump into each other, but bump into each other with a little intentionality, but still bump into each other.

Chris Beall (21:58):

The other flip is, when you do that, it’s like opening a digital relationship with a conversation. When you get together, immediately, and I do mean immediately and I’ve charted this stuff, you start interacting differently with the people you were just with physically when you’re texting them, so it’s a catalyst for that future.

Chris Beall (22:21):

But two days a week, I think, might be a little much. But two days a month all getting together, maybe not at the office but somewhere else where … Because the flights are cheap. The hotel venues or whatever, conference venues, are cheap. When people get away, they focus with each other, and you can have fun. Fun is the other thing. People got to have fun together.

Elena Hesse (22:48):

Yeah. I think your point is right on, and I think that’s one of the reasons that we successfully lifted and shifted in COVID, is because we already had the tapestry of trust within physical contact with my team. Then we were able to go and continue that.

Elena Hesse (23:05):

The problem is, as we were hiring people remotely, we don’t have that physical connection, that meeting up with each other. I don’t know the 100% remote people as well. I just don’t. We got to create situations. We can talk all day.

Chris Beall (23:21):

I’ll make one more point. You have a 20,000-bit-per-second channel into somebody’s mid-brain in a conversation, and I don’t think we pick up the phone enough. I talked for 42 minutes this morning with one of my reps, that I had no reason whatsoever to speak with when I woke up this morning.

Chris Beall (23:38):

Mark and I now have got this 42 minutes. That’s 42 minutes, times 60 seconds a minute, times 20,000 bits of emotion-laden information even though we don’t think of it that way. What were we talking about? Friction in our sales process. We were getting down into the nuances of, “If you do it in this order, there’s friction. But this order, there’s no friction. So, are you willing to try it in this order instead of the traditional order?”

Chris Beall (24:07):

It was bumping into each other. Why? Because there was a conversation, that somebody who sets meetings for me, had with somebody that Mark’s going to do a test drive with. I wanted those two to talk in a debriefed sense. So, I sent a text to both of them. Then mark said, “You sent me a text,” and he called me, and we bumped into each other.

Elena Hesse (24:28):

That’s great.

Chris Beall (24:29):

The key, I think, is to get away from the damned email and thinking that you’re communicating when you’re sending email, because you aren’t.

Elena Hesse (24:39):

Yeah. That’s one of the reasons I like Teams Chat. It’s the closest thing to bumping into somebody I can do, because I can spontaneously say, “Do you got two minutes, because I need to pick your brain.”

Chris Beall (24:53):

Yeah. Well, Helen sells that stuff, so I’ll tell you how much value. That’s Teams Chat.

Chris Beall (24:59):

By the way, I’ve been listening conversations at Microsoft about what they want their customers to do, because she’s now customer success. The only word I heard yesterday, and I heard it over and over, is phone, which is really, really interesting.

Chris Beall (25:14):

She has people working for her in customer success who actually are spontaneously asking, “Can we do some cold calling? I want to talk to people outside of the IT people we’re talking with.”

Elena Hesse (25:25):

That’s awesome.

Chris Beall (25:26):

Customer success is the new sales, and thank God we don’t pay them commissions. That’s where I’m going to end this. Elena, I tell you what, next chance we have, let’s get together somewhere.

Elena Hesse (25:39):

Yes.

Chris Beall (25:41):

This was a great get together though.

Elena Hesse (25:43):

Yeah, this was awesome. I very much appreciate it. Nice to meet you Corey, and nice to get to know you more, Chris Beall. Congratulations on your upcoming wedding.

Chris Beall (25:51):

Thank you.

Elena Hesse (25:52):

Helen sounds fantastic, if she could have captured the heart and the mind of Chris.

Chris Beall (25:58):

She wins. No, I win. I’m the lucky one.

Elena Hesse (26:01):

Oh, you’re sweet.

Chris Beall (26:02):

I’m just a lucky old beast. Corey calls himself a big dumb farm animal. I’m just a lucky beast that wandered into the right corral.

Corey Frank (26:09):

Well, Elena, it’s been a absolute pleasure. Thank you for finally saying yes to this, which I’m sure was Chris’s frequent torments to you to “Come on the show, come on the show.” So, thank you for finally saying yes.

Corey Frank (26:21):

So, another episode in the books, Chris, with one of the best yet, with one of the brightest yet. So, with Cory Frank coming in for our Chris Beall, the Sage of Sales, the profit of profit. Elena, you’re now the Curator of Curiosity, how about that?

Elena Hesse (26:34):

I’ll take it.

Corey Frank (26:36):

We [inaudible 00:26:37] in the title, it looks great.

Chris Beall (26:37):

I love it.

Corey Frank (26:38):

Until next time, this is the Market Dominance Guys.

 

 

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

“When you go to a doctor, do you want that doctor to be excellent — or okay?” Elena Hesse, our Market Dominance Guys’ guest and the Vice President of Operations of Thomson Reuters’ tax and accounting professionals, poses this question to our podcast hosts, Corey Frank and Chris Beall. Their answer — and yours too, no doubt — is that they want doctors who love their job and do it extremely well. Elena, Chris, and Corey talk about how this equates to the role of the salesperson. In the old days, sales was generally a “hit and run” affair. You’d probably never see your customers again once the sale was made, so there was little reason to provide true value in a product or to develop and maintain a relationship with a customer. But in the modern world, most of us want to sell our customers an upgrade or an add-on or a renewal. So, product value and excellent customer relations are essential. In other words, if you want to be successful in sales today, our three sales experts say that it’s crucial to have skin in the game. Oh, yeh. It’s self-examination time. Evaluate your personal investment in your job as you listen to today’s Market Dominance Guys’ episode. “Do You Have Skin in the Game?”

 

About Our Guest

Elena T. Hesse, Vice President, Operations – Tax & Accounting Professionals at Thomson Reuters, has been with this firm for more than 13 years. Elena is also a thought leader for #GirlsClub, leading the book club discussions to support #GirlsClub and its continuing work of changing the face of sales leadership by empowering more women to earn roles in management.

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Full episode transcript below:

Corey Frank (01:46):

Elena, one last question for you, maybe a good plug for what we were talking about here towards the end about empowering women leadership, particularly in sales and tech, which you’re at the heart of certainly at Thomson. You have a book club, The No Time to Read Book Club. Maybe you can end this with a little plug for the book club, and what you do, and maybe some of the learnings over the years leading that?

Elena Hesse (02:05):

Absolutely. One, the reason that the book club even exists, in a way, is because of Chris Beall. Because Chris, you told Lauren Bailey about me, and she reached out to me for Girls Club, so that all happened.

Elena Hesse (02:22):

So, in the Girls Club organization, which I’m a part of as a thought leader, Lauren and Angela, there’s so many great people there, we have this book club. We do it for each cohort. I think this is our third or fourth year. What I really love about the book club is that it’s really a time for women. Sometimes there are men too, so this is not just a one gender conversation.

Elena Hesse (02:49):

The first book I pick, the next two, they pick. It tells you where their heads are. Where are they looking for help? Where do they want some insights? And we just talk. We read the book. Sometimes they don’t read the book. I’ll be honest with you, there’s a reason for the title. It’s hard to squeeze in book reading sometimes.

Elena Hesse (03:08):

A lot of the women in Girls Club, if I were making a general statement, I would say are women with families. A lot of times you got young kids. Time’s precious, so we don’t use that as a filter, if you will. So, we have a book club in which reading the book is not necessarily needed, because I always read the book.

Elena Hesse (03:26):

There’s always some people that read the book, and we just go through the highlights, and share our personal stories as they relate to the books. I don’t know if it’s any more magical than that, Corey. It’s really people coming together to say, “Never thought about that,” or “This how I reacted to it.” When you’re sharing your life nuggets, you don’t know when it’s going to matter to somebody.

Elena Hesse (03:48):

I will make a point to our conversation and how it all started, Chris. You flatter me and humble me with remembering a statement that I made many years ago, frankly that I would never have been able to repeat back to you if you asked me, do you remember what you said? I would not have been able to, right?

Elena Hesse (04:07):

You never know when the teacher arrives. The student has to be ready. I’m not saying you’re a student in that respect, but you never know when something’s going to resonate. You never know. So, anytime you can bring people together with some level of continuity to the conversation, a book, that’s just a vehicle for a conversation.

Elena Hesse (04:28):

A good book club, that is just the muse. You could go in lots of different directions and learn about each other, and walk away with something that no one would’ve thought that one little something would’ve mattered.

Elena Hesse (04:41):

So, I like to have spontaneous interesting conversations because I never know what I’m going to learn something. God knows I never could have repeated back that quote you told me. I’m very happy that I gave you something that meant something, obviously. I bet you we all have things that resonated with us and the person who delivered it had no idea what they were delivered to you.

Corey Frank (05:01):

Well, Elena, we have almost 200 episodes of this podcast stemming from my purely selfish desire to get inside the head of Chris Beall, so welcome to the club. I think that’s a beautiful way to end this episode, especially since you’re almost going to make Chris cry again.

Chris Beall (05:16):

It’s working, it’s working.

Elena Hesse (05:18):

You are not crying, don’t tell me that. Are you?

Chris Beall (05:23):

I am, but I won’t even hide it very well. Yes, Corey knows me well. The fact is, we all have so much to learn from each other. The essence of curiosity is embracing our ignorance.

Elena Hesse (05:35):

Yes, yes.

Chris Beall (05:36):

Really being enthusiastic about our ignorance. I love being ignorant. It’s my favorite thing in the world. Whenever I think I know something, it makes me nervous.

Elena Hesse (05:46):

Yeah. Like, do you really know it? You’ve got to be vulnerable to that. I’ll be in conversations, and if someone says a word that I don’t know, I will say, “Stop, please. Can you tell me that means? Because I don’t know what you’re saying right now.” I’m sure I’ve looked really ridiculous, but I don’t care.

Corey Frank (06:03):

No, just the opposite, Elena. I think that’s endearing. I think that for somebody who understands the courage it takes, especially at a manager or director, vice president C-level, to stop and ask a question like that? Hey, an acronym you’d use. Especially in sales, we throw around these all the time.

Elena Hesse (06:19):

Gosh, yeah.

Corey Frank (06:20):

I think, to me, there’s got to be some Chris Voss, Candyland shortcut, that really engenders trust very, very quickly, like a shortcut if you say, “Stop, what does that mean? I don’t understand that”. We could you feel the burden on you and the trust part just catalyzes from there.

Elena Hesse (06:40):

Because typically people are saying things that are important, and you want to have the same vocabulary or knowledge so you can move faster, kind of back to our original statements.

Chris Beall (06:49):

Yeah. Well, everybody’s an expert on thousands, millions of things, in fact. We just don’t know what they are until we have a conversation. We have a little tagline at ConnectAndSell, and I’ve had branding people talk to me about, “Why don’t you change that and make it fresher?” Conversations matter.

Chris Beall (07:06):

It’s not that they matter for selling, they just matter. We just can’t figure stuff out on our own, because our own experiences take us inside our own experiences. We need to be inside of other people’s experiences in order to be able to gain access to what they’re an expert at.

Chris Beall (07:28):

Everybody’s an expert at millions of things. It’s not limited. You think of how long a life is, think about all the years. Years? Try milliseconds. We learn stuff hundreds of times a second. We can’t really share it with anybody unless we have a conversation. You have to have that high velocity, 20,000 bits a second, right into the mid brain. Then we have a shot.

Elena Hesse (07:53):

Yeah, and let’s absorb it, and be brave enough to maybe change a position if you hear something that makes sense. Don’t get too buried in your own belief. Pick your values. But what I believe in, because I’m using those very differently, it could change a little bit because your experience has showed me something I never saw before.

Elena Hesse (08:15):

Now, that’s why I think … I’m not going to get political, I promise. But just generally … both sides of the aisle, once you pick a position, you got to stay consistent or else you’re not considered credible. I want a leader who takes it all in, and makes decisions that are right, not just following a pattern of an echo chamber. So, it’s okay to say you’re wrong.

Corey Frank (08:41):

Oftentimes.

Chris Beall (08:42):

Well, Corey’s wrong all the time, so.

Corey Frank (08:44):

Yeah, just ask my wife. Right, exactly.

Chris Beall (08:48):

… Into little diamonds.

Elena Hesse (08:52):

Sure.

Chris Beall (08:52):

This was the best conversation I’ve had in a long, long time.

Corey Frank (08:54):

Oh yeah.

Elena Hesse (08:54):

You’re sweet. You guys are very flattering. I don’t know if you do this for everybody else, but you make people feel good to participate. I was very happy to do so. I’ve learned things. I’ve jotted down books and movies.

Corey Frank (09:09):

Yeah.

Chris Beall (09:09):

I keep thinking of Little China. Go watch that one, that’s a good movie.

Corey Frank (09:12):

Yeah. My wife knows there’s no such thing as a quick conversation with Chris because it’s so tangential. You talk about a lot, about a lot of things.

Corey Frank (09:22):

I’ve known Chris for a long time. I’ve never heard the primates example, but this is a guy that reads scientific journals for fun all the time. It’s the Jiro thing. Jiro the movie, he dreams of sushi because he’s such a craftsman that is so entrenched. As they say, “By the work, they shall know the workman.”

Elena Hesse (09:45):

Yeah.

Corey Frank (09:45):

So, he’s dreaming of sushi. You’re like, “Come on, it’s just fish. It’s a meal. Can’t you go drive through somewhere, or go to one of those things in Japan where they go around and grab the sushi?”

Corey Frank (09:54):

It’s like, no, you’re missing the point. “Well, can’t I dial and talk to people? Can’t I just email? Isn’t it the same.” It’s going to take a little bit longer, but come on. You’re missing the art, and the honor, and the dignity of the profession.

Elena Hesse (10:06):

Yeah, I love those last few things you just said, the art, and the honor, and the dignity of our profession.

Chris Beall (10:14):

I think we would do well to spend more time with our sales teams on these topics.

Elena Hesse (10:23):

Yeah.

Chris Beall (10:24):

People will say, “Well, sales is an honorable profession,” all that kind of stuff. I don’t think most people selling in the innovation economy even get what they’re doing, why they’re so important.

Chris Beall (11:29):

We tend to, I think sadly, by leaving the coin operated comp plans in place, we actually insult our salespeople by saying … This is a Japanese thing. I spent a lot of time in Japan at one point in my life doing a big joint venture with Mitsui, so dealing with board level people there. They’re very happy to let you be yourself, but if you’re open, they’re happy to teach you about what it’s like to be them, which is really kind of interesting.

Chris Beall (12:02):

The thing that characterized Japanese society more than anything else was that it’s insulting to tip somebody, and yet we pay our sales people by tipping them. The commission is a tip, right? The implication in Japan, the thing that’s so insulting, is you’re saying to them, “I don’t believe you would’ve done your job with excellence unless I gave you this additional financial incentive.”

Chris Beall (12:30):

That’s an absolute insult to a Japanese person to say, “You did it for the money.” You went the extra mile not because of who you are and your commitment to the excellence of what you’re doing and the joy of serving somebody. You did it because you’re trying to get 20% instead of 18%. It’s the deepest insult.

Chris Beall (12:53):

I think that we have a hangover in our society from sales at the crossroads where a commission would make sense. Because basically I trick you into buying and I should be rewarded for it. That’s kind of what it was.

Chris Beall (13:08):

Now, here we are, we’re actually in partnership with people we have not yet met. That’s the essence of the modern sales person, is your tribe includes people you have not yet met that you’re going to help, that you’re going to be curious about, and you’re going to help. Yet we base our compensation schemes on the notion that you wouldn’t really do it unless there was something in it for you.

Elena Hesse (13:31):

So, I’m curious. I will say this, when I first started in sales and probably the reason that I was willing to go into a sales position, because I’m a CPA, so that part of my brain was like, “What? commissions?” I don’t want to put anything at risk.

Elena Hesse (13:47):

But when I started at Creative Solutions, they did not have commissions. It was straight salary, there was no anything. But kind of to your point, we looked at reports all the time to see who was selling the most. That was driving behavior, but it wasn’t paying based on that behavior.

Elena Hesse (14:07):

So, my question to you Chris, since you’ve had a lot of exposure here, how do the Japanese companies pay their sales reps? Is it strictly a salary? Is there no differentiation for excellence? They just don’t use money for that? What do you see?

Chris Beall (14:22):

Well, in their sales world, God knows what they do. I never got into that. That was not part of what I was … It’s funny, I never felt in these long relationships that we were putting together that anybody was working me for a commission. I never felt that, not even for a minute.

Chris Beall (14:40):

I never also felt, I have no instances to counter this, that a handshake wasn’t as good as a contract. Never, not once. There was no like, “Here’s a word here. We could do this,” or whatever. You didn’t do deals other than on an achievement of mutual understanding of what you were going to do next. That was the deal itself. There was no other deal. I don’t know if I recognize these people-

Elena Hesse (15:06):

A lot of trust.

Chris Beall (15:07):

… but I do know that every time I would go to leave Narita Airport in Tokyo, there’s a yellow line that you cross and you’re no longer in Japan when you cross that line. I would stop at that line.

Elena Hesse (15:27):

And like have [inaudible 00:15:29]?

Chris Beall (15:29):

I would stop, because I felt like I was leaving civilization. We have examples there. We don’t need to have this corrupting system, where I have to grease your palm a little bit before you’ll carry my suitcase. We don’t have that everywhere. We have salaried positions. We trust our engineers to work without tipping them for a line of code, or giving a commission.

Chris Beall (15:52):

Can you imagine? “You wrote 26 lines of code today, $55, yay.” No, we would actually be concerned, like “Oh my God, this stuff’s got to work. That could be sloppy.” I want it to be right. What do they get? They get their stock options, and they get their opportunity for promotion, and they get their career, which is actually worth more than all that put together.

Chris Beall (16:13):

You get your reputation, you get your career, you get the fact that you can walk out the door without taking a single step. You get all of that. I think we still have got a cultural hangover. We got untrapped from the office, and we can now choose to use the office. But we’ve never gotten untrapped from the coin-operated notion of a salesperson.

Elena Hesse (16:36):

It’s a very distracting part of the business, because if you don’t have the coin-operated machine well oiled, highly tuned, with all the variations, it’s like a pinball machine, as I pull it back, I’m trying to hit as many things as I possibly can. If I hit them and didn’t get paid, now my focus as a salesperson is, “System’s not working. How much do I need to get paid?” I’m in the back of my mind, at the very least. That’s distracting me from my relationships.

Corey Frank (17:10):

Well, the social contract, they’re going to feel is broken.

Elena Hesse (17:14):

Exactly.

Corey Frank (17:15):

“You hired me, and you’re going to spend all this money on all these MarTech back tools. I follow your playbook, I should have six figures, and I should hit my quota.” When I don’t, it’s tough to look introspectively, I’ve got to look at probably the leads, my boss, my manager, my comp plan, my commute, whatever it is that’s natural.

Corey Frank (17:37):

Actually, in the movie, in Jiro they talk about that other concept we’ve heard, Kaizen, that continuous improvement, that main kind of principle. But the piece that they talk about in Jiro, [foreign language 00:17:48], a incredible book from the 17th Century about the Samurai way and the Japanese. They call it ikigai. It’s finding one’s central satisfaction and meaning in life. It’s the reason for being.

Elena Hesse (18:02):

For your personal reason for being?

Corey Frank (18:05):

Your own personal reason for being. That’s one of the Japanese philosophies that they have, is that it describes your value and your own worth, to you. It’s your life, and your purpose. When you, like Chris, you go around Tokyo, the cabs are impeccably cleaned. They’re like 1986 Maximas. The cab drivers are impeccably dressed and they wear white gloves.

Elena Hesse (18:29):

Wow.

Corey Frank (18:31):

They’re beautiful.

Chris Beall (18:31):

And they smell good, the cabs smell good, they smell great. They all smell the same, they all smell great.

Corey Frank (18:37):

I think that pride starts at home. That pride of … If I cared about my title, I’d be a banker. But if I’m a salesperson, the only thing I have to show, I can’t have really my title, I got to have my stuff, my currency, which is [inaudible 00:18:52].

Elena Hesse (18:51):

Yeah. I never thought about it that way, but yeah.

Corey Frank (18:54):

Other currency, which is learning, curiosity, being supportive, group, et cetera. But anyway.

Chris Beall (19:00):

I think the lock-in comes from the market. We pay our salespeople commission because the lock-in comes from the market. The lock-in to the office came from the market, and then the market blew up because it turned out it was better to work from home than to die. But that’s what it took. It actually took-

Elena Hesse (19:18):

A pandemic.

Chris Beall (19:19):

“Otherwise we’re going to die.” The fact that we commuted for an insane amount of … Truly, if you just think about it, we did an episode on this, the hundreds of billions of dollars in the hours spent just commuting makes no sense, once you figured out how to do something remotely.

Chris Beall (19:39):

You can’t go back and find them and go, “We were so good when we were together, that it was worth two things.” One is all the commuting, and two is having our entire talent pool be within 50 miles of us instead of everybody on earth. Those things were incredibly valuable. They weren’t incredibly valuable, they were locked in.

Elena Hesse (19:56):

So, I have a point. I know you got to leave in a minute and I’m going to respect that. But I will say this onto return to work. I believe in everything you just said. There’s a lot of was in commuting. However, I can’t accidentally bump into anyone on a video call. I can’t do it.

Elena Hesse (20:16):

My learnings come from accidentally bumping into the world I live in. If I’m not at least coming into a central place where other people that I want to bump into are there periodically, I’m talking about hybrid, like two days a week, then I lose. The company loses. But it’s a really hard message to get across to people who are so used to now working from home all the time. Because it’s hard to argue your productivity comment. I am probably more productive-

Chris Beall (20:43):

Or the rest of your life. It’s like, who are you working for? Are you working for the man, so to speak? By the way, my one minute may come here.

Chris Beall (20:53):

I think what we’re going to see on this topic is we’re going to see the market play out. The market is now for top talent. The top talent is simply, they’re going to call the game. The rest of us who hire top talent, we’re in the thrall of those people. They are our customers, and that’s it.

Chris Beall (21:16):

It’s not a very subtle game at this point. It’s simply, what do they want? If they want to bump into people, well, maybe they’ll bump into people. Here’s where I think they’ll end up going. Corey knows I’m a mathematician by background, and that I’ve never lost that hideous nature. The math says that we should get together, but less frequently and more intensely.

Chris Beall (21:38):

So, where the conferences used to be to meet customers, we will start having conferences to be with each other, and to actually take that time truly away from other things, and not just bump into each other, but bump into each other with a little intentionality, but still bump into each other.

Chris Beall (21:58):

The other flip is, when you do that, it’s like opening a digital relationship with a conversation. When you get together, immediately, and I do mean immediately and I’ve charted this stuff, you start interacting differently with the people you were just with physically when you’re texting them, so it’s a catalyst for that future.

Chris Beall (22:21):

But two days a week, I think, might be a little much. But two days a month all getting together, maybe not at the office but somewhere else where … Because the flights are cheap. The hotel venues or whatever, conference venues, are cheap. When people get away, they focus with each other, and you can have fun. Fun is the other thing. People got to have fun together.

Elena Hesse (22:48):

Yeah. I think your point is right on, and I think that’s one of the reasons that we successfully lifted and shifted in COVID, is because we already had the tapestry of trust within physical contact with my team. Then we were able to go and continue that.

Elena Hesse (23:05):

The problem is, as we were hiring people remotely, we don’t have that physical connection, that meeting up with each other. I don’t know the 100% remote people as well. I just don’t. We got to create situations. We can talk all day.

Chris Beall (23:21):

I’ll make one more point. You have a 20,000-bit-per-second channel into somebody’s mid-brain in a conversation, and I don’t think we pick up the phone enough. I talked for 42 minutes this morning with one of my reps, that I had no reason whatsoever to speak with when I woke up this morning.

Chris Beall (23:38):

Mark and I now have got this 42 minutes. That’s 42 minutes, times 60 seconds a minute, times 20,000 bits of emotion-laden information even though we don’t think of it that way. What were we talking about? Friction in our sales process. We were getting down into the nuances of, “If you do it in this order, there’s friction. But this order, there’s no friction. So, are you willing to try it in this order instead of the traditional order?”

Chris Beall (24:07):

It was bumping into each other. Why? Because there was a conversation, that somebody who sets meetings for me, had with somebody that Mark’s going to do a test drive with. I wanted those two to talk in a debriefed sense. So, I sent a text to both of them. Then mark said, “You sent me a text,” and he called me, and we bumped into each other.

Elena Hesse (24:28):

That’s great.

Chris Beall (24:29):

The key, I think, is to get away from the damned email and thinking that you’re communicating when you’re sending email, because you aren’t.

Elena Hesse (24:39):

Yeah. That’s one of the reasons I like Teams Chat. It’s the closest thing to bumping into somebody I can do, because I can spontaneously say, “Do you got two minutes, because I need to pick your brain.”

Chris Beall (24:53):

Yeah. Well, Helen sells that stuff, so I’ll tell you how much value. That’s Teams Chat.

Chris Beall (24:59):

By the way, I’ve been listening conversations at Microsoft about what they want their customers to do, because she’s now customer success. The only word I heard yesterday, and I heard it over and over, is phone, which is really, really interesting.

Chris Beall (25:14):

She has people working for her in customer success who actually are spontaneously asking, “Can we do some cold calling? I want to talk to people outside of the IT people we’re talking with.”

Elena Hesse (25:25):

That’s awesome.

Chris Beall (25:26):

Customer success is the new sales, and thank God we don’t pay them commissions. That’s where I’m going to end this. Elena, I tell you what, next chance we have, let’s get together somewhere.

Elena Hesse (25:39):

Yes.

Chris Beall (25:41):

This was a great get together though.

Elena Hesse (25:43):

Yeah, this was awesome. I very much appreciate it. Nice to meet you Corey, and nice to get to know you more, Chris Beall. Congratulations on your upcoming wedding.

Chris Beall (25:51):

Thank you.

Elena Hesse (25:52):

Helen sounds fantastic, if she could have captured the heart and the mind of Chris.

Chris Beall (25:58):

She wins. No, I win. I’m the lucky one.

Elena Hesse (26:01):

Oh, you’re sweet.

Chris Beall (26:02):

I’m just a lucky old beast. Corey calls himself a big dumb farm animal. I’m just a lucky beast that wandered into the right corral.

Corey Frank (26:09):

Well, Elena, it’s been a absolute pleasure. Thank you for finally saying yes to this, which I’m sure was Chris’s frequent torments to you to “Come on the show, come on the show.” So, thank you for finally saying yes.

Corey Frank (26:21):

So, another episode in the books, Chris, with one of the best yet, with one of the brightest yet. So, with Cory Frank coming in for our Chris Beall, the Sage of Sales, the profit of profit. Elena, you’re now the Curator of Curiosity, how about that?

Elena Hesse (26:34):

I’ll take it.

Corey Frank (26:36):

We [inaudible 00:26:37] in the title, it looks great.

Chris Beall (26:37):

I love it.

Corey Frank (26:38):

Until next time, this is the Market Dominance Guys.

 

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

“If you’re not curious, you’re not going to be a good sales rep.” That’s the well-considered opinion of our Market Dominance Guys’ guest, Elena Hesse, Vice President of Operations of Thomson Reuters’ tax and accounting professionals. As a naturally curious person herself, Elena has observed that “You can’t be speaking more than you’re listening” if you’re going to learn what you need to know about your prospects and their businesses. You have to ask those insight-seeking questions and then truly pay attention to their answers in order to discover whether your product or service is a good fit for their needs. Our two podcast hosts, Corey Frank and Chris Beall, totally agree with Elena that the best way to establish a good relationship with your sales prospect is with an inquiring mind — not a sales pitch. Curious about what else these three have to say? Listen to today’s Market Dominance Guys’ episode, “Do You Have an Inquiring Mind?”

 

About Our Guest

Elena T. Hesse, Vice President, Operations – Tax & Accounting Professionals at Thomson Reuters, has been with this firm for more than 13 years. Elena is also a thought leader for #GirlsClub, leading the book club discussions to support #GirlsClub and its continued work in changing the face of sales leadership by empowering more women to earn roles in management.

—-more—-

Full episode transcript below:

Corey Frank (01:17):

And we are here again, Chris, the Market Dominance Guys podcast is on the air. Welcome to our fabulous guest that we have in the seat today, Elena Hesse who’s the Vice President of Operations over at Thomson Reuters. The behemoth that is, the worldwide force that is Thomson Reuters, and Elena hails from somewhere on the hand in the… Not the upper Michigan, but somewhere over there.

Elena Hesse (01:42):

Right there. [crosstalk 00:01:42] That’s right.

Corey Frank (01:43):

Absolutely. Well, pleased to have you as always, my name is Corey Frank and we have the duke of dials, the profit of profit. We have the CEO of ConnectAndSell, my pal, Chris Beall. So Chris, welcome once again to the Market Dominance Guys, another great reporting with an incredible guest here that we’ve lined up for today.

Chris Beall (02:00):

The guest who has the best quote I have heard in my entire business career, so…

Elena Hesse (02:09):

What is that, Chris?

Chris Beall (02:09):

And you know, I’ve heard a lot of stuff and I said a lot of stuff and I don’t forget very many things.

Corey Frank (02:13):

Okay. All right. Pen in hand. What’s the quote?

Chris Beall (02:15):

Pen in hand. Well, we’ll tell you the quote later, but hey, we missed you on the episode with James Townsend. I was going solo, but some people say it’s acceptable, but now we’re in the real deal. So, Elena, this is just beyond thrilling to be here with you. This is-

Elena Hesse (02:31):

[crosstalk 00:02:31] Your expectations are kind of low.

Corey Frank (02:35):

No, no, no, no, not at all. Thomson Reuters again is just a beat-in industry. It’s been there for a while. Looks like you’ve had quite a stellar career over there, but I have to ask what kind of rundown gin joint did you stumble into to meet a guy like Chris Beall, for him to lasso you as a guest on the Market Dominance Guys?

Elena Hesse (02:54):

Well, I wish I had a fancy story. I will say that I was walking the aisles of our sales team when Chris was in the office to get us started on ConnectAndSell and got introduced to him there. We just started chatting up, which I love people and Chris is easy to love because he’s got a lot of stories to tell.

Elena Hesse (03:13):

I was fascinated with ConnectAndSell and just the whole concept. So one of my good things, bad things, I don’t know, I’m super curious and probably asked a million questions is probably my MO is I always like to know how things work. And he explained a lot of that to me, so that’s how it all began. We need a gin joint, Chris to meet up.

Chris Beall (03:37):

Well, here’s my version of the story. Who is the person running the show that day for us? April, right?

Elena Hesse (03:42):

April. Yeah.

Chris Beall (03:43):

Yeah, so…

Elena Hesse (03:43):

April Welliver.

Chris Beall (03:44):

So we’re in the hands of April, who’s just incredible, wonderfully organized. This is one of the cleanest test drives and we do these test drives, right? The full production, full-day, crazy things happen in them. In fact, the biggest one we ever did was actually a Thomson Reuters down in Texas, the day after Christmas, once we did 108 people in a test drive.

Elena Hesse (04:05):

Wow.

Chris Beall (04:05):

And it was just fly on Christmas day and go down there and have… And it was more fun than is right to have. But this one, here we are, I hide in the conference room because I don’t want to disturb the action on the floor. So my people are doing that, I only had one people at that at moment. And so I’m hanging out in the conference room and I’m just doing things, making calls and sending emails and doing whatever and April walks in and says, “Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey,” I go, “What?”

Chris Beall (04:29):

She said, “You got to meet Elena. She’s the boss! She’s the budget holder.” I said, “Ah, budget holder. Got it.” So I go walk out on the floor and you got to picture this. There are reps on the right or left, kind of depends on how you see in Zoom… And both sides, right, and there’s an aisle straight down the middle. So she’s walking to me, I’m walking toward her and it’s loud. It’s like your floor. It’s like Branch49. It’s loud.

Chris Beall (04:56):

And I’m looking at the numbers and there are 26 meetings that have been set in one hour and 55 minutes. So stuff is happening. So I walk up to Elena and we get about 12 feet apart. And I say, “So Elena, what are your thoughts? And she says, and this is the best quote in the history of business, from my experience, she says, and I have this word for word. I did not forget a word. “Chris, I have no thoughts. I have tears of joy in my eyes. You have turned my silent library into a sales floor.”

Corey Frank (05:34):

That is the famous Elena. Okay. You’ve mentioned that quote several times over the years. Now, I can actually put a name and a face with that quote. Yes. The library, the famous library quote. Yes.

Chris Beall (05:47):

Yes, and I cried.

Chris Beall (05:51):

And I do again… It really… Because we’re on this, as you know, this market dominance mission, right? And we’re always just doing these test drives, hoping to resonate with a team and a leader that really want to dominate and do it right. I don’t mean dominate in a mean way. I mean, what I mean is trust-based, high-velocity, trust-based market dominance. And it was like, holy moly, what she just said was a better way of stating our mission and what we understood we were doing than we had ever said. And that’s… We’ve been at this for years. It’s not like we just started, this isn’t easy stuff. So I still… Elena I hold that quote in my heart.

Elena Hesse (06:37):

Well, you’re very sweet. I appreciate it. I wish I could have told you what I said.

Chris Beall (06:42):

That’s my job to remember.

Elena Hesse (06:45):

But unfortunately, I just say a lot of things.

Chris Beall (06:48):

But it’s so poetic and it’s such a thing. It’s like you turned my… It was yours. I loved the proprietary nature of it. You turned my silent library into a sales floor. And I [crosstalk 00:07:03]-

Elena Hesse (07:02):

Well, I mean at the end of the day, right, if we’re not talking, if we’re not communicating, we’re not selling. I will say this, that may be controversial, I have no idea. Right now what we’re seeing all over the industry, including Thomson Reuters, and there’s positive intent here and there are good things here, but it’s the move to digital and trying to get as many eyeballs as possible out on the websites and draw them in and digitally satisfy a buyer or a prospect’s needs.

Elena Hesse (07:33):

My personal opinion is that’s great, but at the end of the day, I don’t think I’m any different than most of the buyers and prospects. I want to talk to a person when I want to figure out the nuances of what’s going on and that matters. In a world that’s going heavy digital, I want us to have really quality conversations and if people are responding to the tool sets that you have, certainly that gets them in the door. Then I think sales reps, really good ones, get it done. So thank you, because I know we still use… That was a few years ago and ConnectAndSell is still being used today, so that’s a big testament to you guys.

Corey Frank (08:15):

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Chris Beall (08:16):

But you went through a lot of changes. You guys have [reorged 00:08:18] a lot of ways. There has been a lot that has gone on. Robert Beaty once said to me when he was taking me to the airport somewhere in San Diego. And he said, “Do you realize our COO’s office has a whiteboard?” We’re doing this big reorg and the only words on the whiteboard are “intelligent cross-sell using ConnectAndSell”. And he said those words have sat there for months and months and months.

Chris Beall (08:40):

Because to me, what was so exciting about your organization, in particular, was it was the classic cross-sell opportunity because you’re coming in with my pay, and here’s something that could be sold a lot of different ways. You could go sell it direct, you could do all manner of things, but you also have this big tax and accounting organization and the idea of channelizing through those customers and doing that as an upsell… And it’s a very modern upsell because ultimately it comes down to the usage.

Chris Beall (09:15):

It’s not just here’s a transaction, now we got your money. Right?

Corey Frank (09:18):

Right. Right.

Chris Beall (09:19):

It’s very, very modern. It’s like what my fiance Helen does. She runs customer success for those Microsoft products that you think are Microsoft products, right? And including the power apps and stuff like that. Ultimately, customer success is all about helping folks succeed and the economics come through the usage. And this cross-sell play, post-MNA, nobody cross-sells.

Chris Beall (09:42):

They say they’re going to, it’s in the docs, right? It’s like, why did we buy this company? Why did we merge? Wow, we’re going to do this cross-sell. And I was hard over on that at Thomson Reuters, because I saw this company that had done a divestiture and after a divestiture you always have, I’ll call them… There are organizational stresses that occur after a divestiture and you can never get rid of the overhead as fast as you got rid of the revenue. That’s the main [crosstalk 00:10:07].

Elena Hesse (10:07):

True, true.

Chris Beall (10:09):

Right? So you loosed a wolf in your house. So then it’s like, “Oh, do I have to feed you?” This is interesting. And so I thought, “Wow, this is the best I’ve ever seen.” Because it’s also a really, really cleanly run company to promote the idea of cross-sell without cross-training.

Chris Beall (10:26):

Where you disaggregate the first conversation from the expertise and then put them back together in order to get the customer to be able to trust and move forward. And so it’s still my number one example of all time of modern, conversation-enabled… Cross-sell still goes on every day I look every day at the numbers and listen to conversations and it’s my entertainment. As I said, there’s no work to be done. I’m a CEO, right. It’s like, what do you do?

Elena Hesse (10:52):

Yeah, for sure.

Chris Beall (10:53):

We have a delightful relationship. It took five years to create, I don’t know if you ever heard the story Elena of how it went down, but I was at a conference and every year I would ask the executive retreat, AA-ISP, and every year I’d ask Rob, I’d go by him on the way to something at the end of the conference and say, “Can you make your next year’s number without ConnectAndSell?” And every year he would say yes. And then in 2017, I think it was… Or ’18. I said, can you make… I think it was ’17. I said, “Can you make 2018 without ConnectAndSell?” I’m on my way to the dessert bar. And he says, “Nope.” And I said, “Okay, test drive next Tuesday.” And he said, “Got it.”

Elena Hesse (11:31):

That’s awesome.

Chris Beall (11:32):

And it took five years.

Elena Hesse (11:34):

Yeah. Yeah. It’s always funny when people ask how long is the sales cycle? Like it all depends on any product, on anything it’s so hard to do that.

Corey Frank (11:44):

Well, the sales cycle is, to your point, Elena, the sales cycle is digital. It may take a little bit longer than conversations… You had just said a few minutes ago, right, that this trend in the digital world away from conversation, certainly, right. Chris and I have talked a lot about that over the years. And we still see that. I mean, there are great tools out there, the outreaches of the world that have nurtured. But Chris, you were on a podcast just recently and somebody aired this infographic from the residue of your brain and do you want to talk about this because Elena, I don’t know if you’ve heard Chris’ dissertation on the math of why conversations matter more so than just digital.

Elena Hesse (12:27):

No, I have not. Is there a summary you can share with me?

Chris Beall (12:31):

Well, this is… The summary is pretty simple and it’s what you said as a buyer, you need to talk to a human being to get through the nuances and I’ll make a claim. You also need to talk to them to de-risk the situation. That is if you were to go do the research all by yourself, you’re taking the risk that you’re not an expert and somebody else is, right. The seller is always the expert. You’re always the generalist as the buyer. There’s career risk, right? You’re a very, very… You’re a deeply embedded player at Thomson Reuters, but even you, if you screwed up and bought the wrong thing and it hurt the company, it would hurt your career.

Elena Hesse (13:09):

Yeah.

Chris Beall (13:09):

Simple.

Elena Hesse (13:10):

And 1 So you’re collecting that information to offer up to a final decision-maker. You’re right on the career more so… If I’m an owner and I’m doing that to myself, well then I’m doing that to myself. But many people are serving that up to their bosses, right. To make a recommendation. And that is a reflection. And really right before this conversation, I was in need of a chat with a colleague just as an example.

Elena Hesse (13:43):

There were emails that went back and forth that I wanted to have a conversation about because I knew that if we continued the emails or the teams chat, that one, we’d be doing it forever. And two, you lose really the background intangibles as to what we needed to discuss that you can’t always capture in a word, especially without facial expression and body language. I think that’s super important still to this day. But I will say this, there’s a place for digital, absolutely. I think we were in a world that was all sales rep, personal touch, if I didn’t dial you didn’t know about me. And now we’re trying to get to this digital play where you can buy without talking to someone. Neither one of those is the answer.

Elena Hesse (15:30):

It’s here. It’s here somewhere here in the science and the art of where that pendulum that needs to swing is something we are still figuring out. And the good news is we’re trying to figure it out, right?

Chris Beall (15:43):

I agree deeply.

Elena Hesse (15:44):

[crosstalk 00:15:44] be perfect.

Chris Beall (15:44):

So what this is about, by the way, Elena is super simple, which is the trust piece of the relationship-building is something that requires a huge amount of information. That’s not the information about the product. The first-order question is, do I trust you enough that I would put my career in your hands?

Elena Hesse (16:02):

Right.

Chris Beall (16:03):

That’s the real question, right? When we’re buying for ourselves, I always make this comparison. If I buy a Tesla and I spend $70,000 on a Tesla, because I want a good one, right? It’s like a mid-range Tesla. I buy it and I bring it home and I discover after driving it for a couple of days that unbeknownst to me, no doctors ever told me this, I’m allergic to electricity, and being close to electricity gives me hives. It’s like, oh my God, right? So I got to dump this Tesla and I got to get it out of my life.

Chris Beall (16:34):

And so I dump the Tesla and I’m out $10,000. So now I’m out $10,000, and as you said, but I’m the owner of my own life, right? So I bought the Tesla for me. Now I buy that same Tesla for the company and it’s going to fulfill a very important mission in our, say supply chain. So our company… I don’t know we do something with eggs and we got to have a vehicle to transport eggs. Then I get this Tesla and it electrocutes the eggs and makes them unusable. The Tesla salesperson, I never talked to them, right? I just went online and I went click, click, click. I didn’t realize, oh, there was something the salesperson could have told me which is, don’t use this thing to transport eggs. By the way, folks, I just made that up.

Chris Beall (17:19):

Teslas are fine for transporting eggs and you cannot get hives from them. Elon, I’m sorry I said all of that, but you’re a funny dude too so I can say stuff and get away with it. I will not tweet any of that. I guarantee you. So anyway, the point is we need to get trust as the seller and trust… And this is what Chris Vos taught me. So Mr. Never Split the Difference, I asked him one night, “How long do we have to get trust in a cold call?” And he said, “Seven seconds.” And I said, “Seven seconds. Wow.”

Chris Beall (17:53):

Our research says eight seconds. And he said, “Your research is wrong. It’s seven seconds.” Oh, got it. Okay. So what do we have to do in those seven seconds? He says, “Oh that’s easy. All we have to do is show the other party we see the world through their eyes. We call it tactical empathy and demonstrate to them we are competent to solve a problem they have right now.” And I said, “Well, isn’t the problem they have right now, me?” And he said, “Bingo, that’s why you’re in control. You own the cold call because you are the problem. And therefore you can offer to solve the problem. And if you say the right things in the right tone, you’ll get trust.”

Chris Beall (18:30):

And I asked him, “How long will that trust last?” And he said, “A lifetime, as long as you don’t blow it.” And when you think about the problem of B2B, the top of the top of the top of the top of the top of the top of the funnel is that seven seconds to get trust and I asked him what happens after eight seconds. He says, “No chance, you’re done.” We have to replace you as the seller. You fail to get trust. You will never be trusted. So when you think about it from that perspective, which is what this 130-episode podcast is about. This is the book Corey wanted me to write and it’s like, wow. So digital is great then as long as we have trust. So how many bits of information does it take to get trust? Well, it takes about 600,000 bits of information to really get trust. To get-

Elena Hesse (19:15):

To get trust without a person? Is that what you’re saying?

Chris Beall (19:15):

To get trust at all, right? Your brain has to consume a huge amount of information before you go, “You know, I think we’re going to let these Vikings into the village,” right? It’s like you got to know a lot about them Vikings before you’re going to do it or you got to meet a Viking that you trust, right? One or the other. I mean, that’s how it works. So it’s like, “Hmm, I have an issue if I try to go digital first because oddly it doesn’t have enough information.”

Chris Beall (19:44):

So an email contains a few thousand bits, right? 5,000 bits in an email. So I’ve got to get you to read 120 emails in a focused way to get to 600,000 bits, which is a 32nd human conversation. That to me is the core of the problem is our brains are wired for involuntary trust and it takes a huge amount of information and we don’t have enough time in digital land to do it. Who’s going to read 120 emails? I mean, it’s not going to happen, but a lot of people will listen to seven seconds of a conversation and then let you go ahead with the next 27 seconds. And then you have a relationship, now send them the email.

Elena Hesse (20:24):

Right. Great point. Great point. I mean, I read a book once called The Speed of Trust. Are you familiar with that?

Chris Beall (20:31):

I love that book. Oh my…

Elena Hesse (20:32):

Yeah. I love it too. And I think it’s the essence of how good business is done. I can get a lot farther, faster when I trust who I’m dealing with and in a world of over-information, misguided information on every aspect, not just buying something, but the news, everything.

Elena Hesse (20:53):

When you know that we’re in a space where trusting data is not guaranteed because even the source is at question. I want to be able to trust that information and that’s based on the person that I can look straight in the eye and say, “Hey, I’m listening. I believe in what you’re saying, tell me the truth. And then if you do boom, we can go,” right? So yeah, I think it’s more important today than it was 10 years ago.

Chris Beall (21:21):

I think it’s everything. And I think that folks don’t get it because I call it Gresham’s love of business communications. So Gresham’s law of money says bad money or counterfeit money drives out good money. Because when the bad money is in circulation, well the good money goes and hides because you can use the bad money, right?

Elena Hesse (21:36):

Right. Right. Right.

Chris Beall (21:39):

Bad digital communication because it’s cheap, it’s counterfeit in a fundamental way, which is with money, with coin back in the day. What was interesting about counterfeits was the cost of goods was low. You made them out of cheap metal and then you passed them off as the good stuff. Well, digital is always cheap. It’s not cheap to design. It’s cheap to disseminate so you can flood the market. If I can send you one email, I can send you two.

Chris Beall (22:05):

If I can send you one, I can send you and Corey the same one. If I can have a bot that goes in and says Elena and Corey, I can pretend I’m personalizing. If I can have that bot look up on LinkedIn something and say, “Hey, I see that someone,”… I got one yesterday. “I love your volunteer work at Live Earth Farm.” It’s like, what? Now, I don’t trust you. You were there when you [crosstalk 00:22:29] the sheep. I don’t trust you.

Elena Hesse (22:30):

Yeah. Yeah. It’s a deal. It’s real. And it goes beyond [crosstalk 00:22:36] selling. And I know this is about selling, but I think that comment just goes beyond selling. Unfortunately, for salespeople or organizations, we suffer at the hands of the larger digital play being untrustworthy because already salespeople, let’s face it have to overcome, you’re just trying to sell me something, right? Communication is powerful. It’s powerful. And how we use it is how we’re going to get something out of it. Be careful for what you use and how you use it, right.

Chris Beall (23:07):

Well, and I think sequence really counts. It’s ironic that these cadence and sequence tools actually promote something that is called a sequence or a cadence, which is true, it is do this, then do this, then do this, wait this long, blah, blah, blah. But there’s a funny thing about it, which is that the sequence of operations in the sequence, the easier one is start with an email. But the only one that’s known to work is start with a conversation. And none of the sequence tools have built into them, start with a conversation.

Chris Beall (23:36):

They have start with a dial. But a dial is like a breeze blowing through the woods. It means nothing. A dial is like I walk by… Say I was interested in Helen back in the day, right. I’m still very interested in her and we plan to get married and stuff. But you know, say that was my goal, right. I know a bar that she frequents and she likes to drink Manhattans. But instead of going in and talking to her, I just walk by. That’s like a dial. I walk by on the outside. I didn’t talk to her, but I go, oh, activity it was that touch. That’s what we call the irony of the whole digital thing is we send something to somebody that they ignore and we call it a touch. Right? And it’s…

Elena Hesse (24:16):

That doesn’t make any sense.

Chris Beall (24:16):

It doesn’t make sense, but it’s the core of the entire sequencing revolution. We teach people something that when they do it, they go, oh my digital is 14 times better. And what really is 14 times better which is just start with a conversation. Pretty easy, right? Except, of course, you got to get conversations, it’s our business. But start with a conversation of voila that here’s the magic subject line that changes everything about email. Thank you for our conversation today.

Elena Hesse (24:45):

Right.

Chris Beall (24:46):

Boom.

Elena Hesse (24:47):

Right. I agree with you. I don’t think any one particular digital play is bad. It’s just how we are… Let’s figure out the best way to use them. You know? I mean a hammer looks stupid when you have a screw. So, I mean [crosstalk 00:25:04]-

Corey Frank (25:04):

All you have is a hammer.

Chris Beall (25:05):

Yeah, or trying to drink a cup of coffee out of a hammer too. It really works better, just drip, drip, drip, all over the place. Elena, you have thoughts. What are your thoughts?

Corey Frank (25:15):

You know, I’m curious, you’ve been at Thomson for a long time, right? Thomson is known as… It’s a top-shelf sales organization, has been for years, right. Recruits the best talent and acquired all these companies over the years. You’ve probably had a front-row seat to see ridiculous amounts of talent, particularly in the inside sales teams, all the different divisions from the Thomson learning to the taxation and the other great subsidies.

Corey Frank (25:41):

What do you see makes an uncommonly great salesperson that maybe they don’t have the pedigree or the LinkedIn, but a fisherman knows another fisherman. You know that this person… Because you’re a mentor over there at Thomson, right? Certainly in the leadership role that you play. So what are those that residue, maybe unseen by the common person that you know this person is going to ascend to higher ranks? What are those traits that you look for, the inside sales, specifically?

Elena Hesse (26:12):

Sure. This is going to sound like I’ve been prepared for this question. I did not know you were going to ask me this question, but I actually have an acronym that I’ve used for years. And if you’d like, I’m happy to share it and I’ve tweaked it a little bit over the years, but I honestly believe this acronym is true for a salesperson. It’s true for any professional, but I will focus on sales, if I could. So I call it the ACE sales rep, A-C-E. So it’s an acronym and there are two words for each letter. So if you would, don’t mind me going here. I know acronyms can get old, but it helps me. So for A, I think a great salesperson has a wonderful attitude, not an attitude that’s only good when I’m winning, but an attitude that’s there when I’m losing and knowing I have to bounce back.

Elena Hesse (27:03):

So actually what I’m going to do is I’ll list out the names of the things. And then I’ll come back to how I look at it. So attitude is one. Accountability is the second A. Okay, I’m going to skip over C and go to E, effort, effectiveness. And I consider those rotating on the axis of the C in two ways, consistency and curiosity. So when I say that, back to my attitude and accountability, if you’re not consistently having a more positive attitude than not, then you’re going to fail because we hear nos more than we hear yeses. You’ve got to be self-regulated to understand that both things are going to happen and stay steady. Okay. Accountability is simple. If you’re going to say it, do it. It’s on you. Your quote is yours. Yes, someone gives you the quota, but it’s done with reasonableness like 95% of the time. You’d need to be able to own that, right?

Elena Hesse (28:07):

Let’s go to effort in regards to consistency. In the world that I came from… In the beginning of my life, I started as a sales rep at Thomson Reuters. It used to be called Creative Solutions. The same thing that holds true, then that holds true today in effort, for us, it was all about dialing, right. Making the calls, making the calls, but effort is seen in lots of things. It’s how much are you there? Are you leaning in? Are you being here now? Are you showing effort in what you’re doing? Or are you coming up with excuses? And then effectiveness, so that ties to effort in a way, because we would have people that would say, “I made 50 dials,” right? But if you’re making 50 dials and you’re not selling, then you’re not effective. So how are you figuring out how to make that effort pay off?

Elena Hesse (28:53):

All of those things are on this access of consistency. At the end of the day, if I had to pick one of those as my number one, it would be curiosity. If you are not curious, you’re not going to be a good sales rep. Sorry, you need to be curious enough to know what someone else’s problems are and to figure out if you can solve it. You can’t be speaking more than you’re listening. You have to be a discovery person and you have to be uniquely and authentically interested. I think I’m very curious. And certainly, when I was a sales rep, I had my successes, but I think curiosity has helped me through all of my different phases in life, personally and professionally. So yeah, if I meet somebody that I’ll make a statement and if they don’t ask me why, what, how, they don’t want to know more, then why are you going to do that with a sales opportunity? Probably a long-winded answer…

Chris Beall (29:48):

Gosh, that was a good answer.

 

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

The triumphs, rewards, and prosperity of the customers he serves is at the heart of everything today’s Market Dominance Guys’ guest does. Meet James Townsend, Vice President of Customer Success and Growth at ConnectAndSell, as he discusses with our host, ConnectAndSell CEO Chris Beall, the different ways that sales has changed in the 10 years since James joined the company. They compare acquiring data on prospects, targeting the right insertion points (aka company insiders), the importance of cold call training, and selling vs. serving customers’ needs. You’ll want to stay tuned to the very end when they talk about what they see as “the next frontier,” on today’s Market Dominance Guys’ episode, “Getting to the Right Insider.”

About Our Guest

James Townsend is Vice President of Customer Success and Growth at ConnectAndSell, a company that pioneered the service of getting prospects on the phone for its customers’ cold callers to talk to. As one of his LinkedIn followers states, “James is a consummate professional with a deep desire to see his clients succeed.”

—-more—-

Full episode transcript below:

Chris Beall (01:09):

Hey everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Market Dominance Guys. I am not Corey Frank, and I apologize for that. Corey is not available today. But gosh, I think we got something even better. I mean, Corey, you know a thing or two, but we’re here with James Townsend. James is ConnectAndSell’s Vice President Of Customer Success, master of intensive test drives, guy who makes a bunch of weird stuff work with a bunch of other weird stuff, including human beings. And he’s been around this company and this whole business of talking to people in order to move business forward. Really the original market dominance play longer than I have. So welcome James to Market Dominance Guys.

James Townsend (01:52):

Thank you, Chris. Hi everybody.

Chris Beall (01:54):

Wow. You sound good, James. So where are you on the face of our blue whirling planet?

James Townsend (02:01):

I’m in snowy Ottawa, Ontario, Canada right now.

Chris Beall (02:06):

[inaudible 00:02:06]. That doesn’t sound very good. This is April 19th. Is April truly the cruelest month?

James Townsend (02:12):

It is. It was this morning, I’ll tell you that much.

Chris Beall (02:14):

Wow. Wow. Well, James, you’ve been around the world of conversation first everything in a bunch of different ways. Could you give us a little background, first of all, just overall career-wise? And then how did you get your leg caught in the bear trap that we call ConnectAndSell? What have you learned along the way that’s just kind of obvious to you now that wasn’t so obvious back when you first touched this thing? The bear trap we call ConnectAndSell. Well, I got my upbringing in the BPO world, a call-center company called Cytel, which was then bought by Client Logic. And so the boot camp of running massive amounts of inbound sales and customer calls for Dell, our client back in the day. Made the jump to BPL Consulting and then ran into a guy at a grocery store and said, “Hey, we’re hiring for an outbound telemarketing manager.”Before it was cool to run a sales development team that used to call it outbound telemarketing, back in the day.

I jumped on board at Halogen. About a year into my tenure at Halogen, I was lucky enough to cross paths with this sales trainer out of Long Island, who, as we were going through the goal call approach said to me, “You got to check out this product ConnectAndSell. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel,” he said. And I said, “Well, all right, Uncle Pete, I’ll check out this product ConnectAndSell.” And the rest is history. We used it very successfully as a customer. I think I was customer number 14 back in the day, back in 2007, 2008. To this day, I still come across folks that we were competitive with back in the day. And they say, “How did that little Canadian company get in every deal?” And there we go. We were this small team of 10 top-of-the-funnel sales development folks covering a whole lot of ground conversationally.

About three years in, I was so enamored with ConnectAndSell, I joined the company, I joined the mission. I joined the cause back in October 19th, of 2010, I remembered the day vividly. From there, it’s been a fascinating journey helping companies and sales practitioners embrace the power of a conversation-first focus. And along the way, we’ve learned some stuff about how to make those conversations great. And I think you said it right, Chris, when you said, “If we’re going to provide a mechanism to allow sellers to have lots of conversations, we may as well make those good Conversations.” And there are things that go into that around how do you target and who do you speak to and cadence and frequencies and targeting and all sorts of fun stuff that play into how do you attack your market in the most fiscally efficient way possible.

So I’m in the bear trap on the mission and loving every minute of it. Because, there aren’t many products in the market that fundamentally solve a problem. And from everyone I come across in the last 10 years having a sales team that speaks to enough decision-makers on regular basis, like I saw with my team at Halogen. Number one complaint in our town halls was, “I’m just not talking to enough DMs.” Number one complaint, month over month at ConnectAndSell was able to in future town halls, after implementation of ConnectAndSell that no longer became a complaint. It was now, how do I make good on all these conversations that I’m having and make them great conversations to generate opportunities for the business? So it’s been a fun ride and it continues on. We still learn things every day about how to enable companies and teams around this revolutionary technology.

James Townsend (05:41):

Well, that’s interesting. So you’ve been with the company since October of 2010.

Chris Beall (05:41):

2010.

James Townsend (05:44):

2010.

Chris Beall (05:46):

  1. I joined up in 2011. It’s been so long, it’s kind of hard to keep track. So you’ve been much more on the front lines. When I joined up, I was the head of products and there was a lot to do with the technology. There was kind of bringing it to the web. There was making it horizontally scalable. There was performance stuff, efficiency, bringing down some of the internal costs associated with having those hundreds of agents actually navigating phone calls and all that. But you were focused on another end of the problem, which is how to take this obvious increase in firepower and help customers apply it to a business problem. Early on, did you see the problem the way you see it today or what’s changed? What’s the single biggest thing as you’ve engaged with the customers who are trying to have more conversations, use those conversations, drive their business forward, and dealing with all the realities of sales at the top of the funnel, which is you bring on reps, it’s hard to get them on board. It’s hard to get them trained. It’s hard to keep them. Targeting is always challenging, all that kinds of stuff. But what’s the biggest change between year one and where you are right now? Because now you’re helping some of the most dynamic companies in the world really go out and dominate their markets.

We do Market Dominance Guys here stuff, right? We talk about it, but you actually go out and kind of, I would say, make it happen with those folks who want to go that route. What’s changed that you would say, if you had time traveled forward 10 years and somebody said, “Hey, it’s going to be like this.” “I don’t think so,” right? It’s “This is going to stay the same.” So what’s been the biggest change?

James Townsend (07:31):

Oh gosh. I think the biggest change that I’ve seen is, I think back to when I was a practitioner using ConnectAndSell with a team, the challenge that our CEO at the time charged us with, this is kind of pre-ConnectAndSell, it’s about a year before ConnectAndSell, he said, “Go find me the old fashioned way,” right? Calling a switchboard and asking for who the HR director was or who the VP of HR was. Data as a accessibility to data now is much more readily available with data plays out there, we know the big ones. But then it wasn’t as readily available. So I think what’s changed now is because data is so readily available, and whether we empower a revenue operations team or marketing operations team or a team of sellers to profile a set of companies and profile the people in those companies. I think what we saw ourselves back early the year prior to ConnectAndSell was taking a very pragmatic approach to identifying decision-makers by calling switchboards and asking produced a what at the time we called a master state list of super high-quality targets.

Now, fast forward 10 years, do we place that same level of focus and diligence when we’re building a query in Zoom info or Apollo or any other or LinkedIn navigator? I would say no. So the big thing that I’ve seen change is companies needing to rely on inspection and more precisely targeting the people inside of their addressable market, because you can have the best message in the world there. I was talking to a head of sales last week, unnamed company, very large sales training and coaching organization, well known. So he said to me, “James, I just don’t understand why my team is not setting as many meetings as they used to.” And I said, “Well, messaging aside, because that’s a very important piece of the equation, let’s look at who they’re speaking to.” When we took that same approach that we did it back at Halogen, which is inspect at a very precise level, the job titles of the individuals that we intended to reach out to, when we ran that exact exercise with this head of sales, it turned out that 50% or more of who his team had sourced themselves were nowhere in the realm of those that would be even modestly interested in sales training and coaching, period.

So I think we’ve evolved to a place in the market where, because data’s so readily available, because search technologies and artificial intelligence and community-driven sourcing and all sorts of different mechanisms and big companies that are providing access to data is at our fingertips today, we’ve lost sight of the necessity to be very precise about who we intend to sell to. That’s to me, the number one biggest. The second biggest change is, I think as companies, we focus too heavily on product training and not enough on problem training, in terms of what our solution is going to provide to the individual that we intend to speak to. And I’m seeing a movement out there with other practitioners and certainly we share that the world of what’s in it for them. And Sean McLaren’s been telling us that for years, right? “It’s not about who you are or what you do or how it works. It’s about,” and Mike Bosworth said it last week and I go to market games, right? It’s about curiosity. It’s about the problem. It’s not about the product.

So, the second thing I’ve seen out there in the market is a much larger reliance on product, and part of it’s because we have divisions called product marketers and we have product trainers and we put our team through intake and onboarding. Not our team at ConnectAndSell, but out in the market. And we train them on the offering. And therefore the first thing that a seller, he or she will talk about is the offering. So those two things, how we build very focus sets of target data and look at our market in a very precise way, and then how we message to that market, I’ve seen a big amount of drift in those two areas, Chris.

Chris Beall (12:12):

Well, that’s interesting. It’s kind of like Gresham’s law where bad money drives out good, right? Counterfeit money causes good money to stay in people’s pockets, so to speak. We don’t think about that much anymore because counterfeiting’s not the deal that it used to be. But in a way, so much of the data that we can get so easily now is kind of counterfeit. It’s so easy to get, we just load it up. And maybe we’re part of the problem with ConnectAndSell in the sense that you load it up and then you can talk to a ton of people, and well, it feels like progress. It’s kind of like sending emails, right? Sending emails always feels like progress, right? Because you can look at the numbers and you can get into them. I call it digital business porn, where you’re staring at the numbers all the time and feeling good in some way.

It’s like, wow, look at this. We sent out this and we got this response rate and tweaked this and did this. And it feels like progress. And then you look at the results at the end and they tend to be more haphazard. There is an element of that. And I guess we contribute to it in a sense because we bring an abundance of conversations and so it’s kind of easy to go, “Well, I’ll just push the button, talk to somebody else and they’ll get better.” One of the things that I’ve noted is that we have tended to believe over the lifetime of the company that using ConnectAndSell and talking to a ton of people will cause reps to get better. That is at bets will lead to improved performance. And you and I are both golfers, right? You’re a little bit more better of a golfer than I am.

But if we both hit a lot of golf balls in our life and hit a fair number of them in competition, and we both know that just going around a golf course over and over standing at a range and beating balls all by ourselves, probably isn’t going to make us better. In fact, there’s a famous well-known phrase in golf, which is grooving a bad swing. And once you’ve grooved a bad swing, you actually are using repetition to create variety of outcomes. It’s kind of funny when you think about it, right? I repeated that so often that now it’s unreliable. It’s a thing that can happen in the world of golf. I think we used to think that.

We’re both wearing these Flight School shirts right now, for anybody who’s seeing this on video. And if you’re just listening, we’re both wearing these white shirts that have a logo on them that shows a airplane kind of coming at you, a military plane. And it’s because we have invented something called Flight School here in response to the fact that we noticed that folks don’t get better just by talking to a ton of people. It’s actually a precision process to make people better in terms of their competence and confidence. So what I’m wondering is, how do these two go together? Like if you were to make the ultimate, let’s say you wanted to make account-based that’s focused on companies that you want to have as customers sales happen at pace and scale, so you can dominate a market, because that’s what Market Dominance Guys is about. It’s all account-based, always starts with the list. The list is always intentional. The list is ultimately of people, but it starts as being a list of companies. And then what? Then you need a message that’s going to be sufficiently intriguing to cause somebody on curiosity to take a meeting so that you’re in a psychological space where they can confess.

And when they confess what their truth is about their problems, their challenges, and you figure out there’s a reason to move forward, now you’re, I’ll call it down funnel. You’re in the process and kind of, we let go of it at that point. When you think all that coming together, what are the pieces that you think are most often missing? Is it one, the belief that you can’t do account-based sales at pace and scale? You have to go like, you get five accounts, James, that’s all you can handle. Whereas you know that you might need to 50 accounts with 20 entry points each in a week in order to be able to kind of make sense of that market. So what do you think needs to come together? And what frustrates you when you’re working with customers? Because you’re really a consultant on their sales business process. What frustrates you, where they just kind of like, they don’t get it? Either they don’t get what they can do or they don’t get what they need to do. And that’s a big question, but you wrestle in this mud every day.

James Townsend (16:37):

Well you just said it, Chris, the list is your strategy. And more often than not the most important piece of the people in the company, I think businesses out there do a pretty darn good job at the companies they’re looking to target from a firmagraphic perspective, from an industry sector perspective, from a size number of employees. Now, could there be different ways to look at a set of companies to target based on recent growth, based on hiring signals, based on is that company contracting, is there acquisition? For sure, right? But I think from a, who do we sell to perspective, I would give the customers we work with a B plus, let’s say, in terms of targeting the businesses.

You just said it in terms of insertion points is when we get to the people. And our tendency is in a world driven traditionally through omnichannel, right? You have a social strategy on one side, you have an email strategy on the other side. You have conversations are still important. A lot of our joint clients that are using technology like Outreach or high-Velocity Sales or Sales Loft, or any of the kind of orchestration plays, because narrowing exposure from how many emails am I sending to a particular enterprise, that there tends to be a tendency to narrow the focus to only one insertion point, maybe two, maybe and a half, maybe two and a half. If you look at a, your question is around, how do you scale an account-based strategy? It’s identifying those insertion points very pragmatically, understanding the cold spots, right? And what companies do I need to look for adjunct insertion points.

And then the meta-point, Chris, is asking a junior, senior, mid-level irrespective of tenure, but asking a human being, a perfectly rational human being to conceptualize the world in terms of adjunct insertion points and direct insertion points, and taking the time to inspect a set of accounts against those insertion points, it’s just not tenable. So that you can certainly scale a strategy providing that the initial groundwork, back to our Flight School, when you’re in doing the courses and the ground training, and you understand how to maneuver the airplane around the airport before you’re even in the air, that’s what we need to be focusing more tightly on is getting really good at the groundworks, so we can and take off on the correct runway. And we are up in the air. We can have some level of precision in terms of getting back to that runway.

So you hit a couple of important points, which is number one, the message is for sure important, but doing that groundwork to identify those insertion points, then building a message that is unique to those people, not the company. And that tends to be where we focus a lot of our time and energy, which is how do we as a product improve something for that company. It’s not about that company. It’s about the insertion points, the people that we’ve identified to reach out to. And a lot of times we have cold spots in terms of our overall strategy, if we look at it holistically in term, are we’re selling ourselves short by targeting too few individuals in that company and oftentimes two senior individuals, right? If we’re in at enterprise play, I’ve seen this recently within the last 12 months where SDR Bob, let’s call him, was targeting Apple. And Bob had one supply chain leader at Apple, just one. One lonely supply chain, probably the right person at Apple, very high up in the pecking order. But when you look at Apple holistically, in terms of insertion points, there are hundreds of supply chain leaders, right?

So, did somebody do the groundwork to understand how to penetrate Apple from a strategic perspective, from a strategy perspective? No, it was provided to the hands of an individual that said, “This is who my AE really needs to sell to, therefore I’m going to go and talk to that person and that person only.” So one lesson to take away from that is, companies get a B plus at targeting the organizations, the accounts, the companies, the entities that they’re looking to sell to, I would give a D plus to a D minus on targeting the right insertion points in order to penetrate properly. And learn things about that company about how they sell by having enough conversations and getting signals back that frankly, we’re not going to get back from email and social at a rate that we need to in order to map out how that company might buy or who I really need to end up going to speak to. Because, you can’t always rely on publicly available information to give you that information that you need in order to sell.

Chris Beall (22:18):

Well, in fact, I’d say you never can rely on it. You might get lucky. But it’s incredibly rare, especially when selling to larger companies to find exactly the right person, especially when you take account timing, right? Everybody’s got different projects they’re working on, different focus areas. So they’re delegated stuff. There’s things that are being worked on by committee. There’s all sorts of circumstances. I would say companies have become more transparent with regard to who works there and more opaque with regard to what’s actually going on inside over the last 10 years. But because what’s going on inside these companies is much more, it’s more complex. There are more people involved when we’re selling systems, especially we’re always selling something that ultimately has to integrate into their business, right? This always been true of a all B2B products. But, it’s like the difference between selling somebody an electric vehicle that they’re going to use in order to say, drive around the parking lot, a golf cart, and an electric vehicle they’re going to use to deliver their products to the marketplace. They’re very, very different. They might seem kind of similar, but at the job that you’re doing for them is very different and different people will be involved in even deciding to take a look.

And I love what you said about the conversations with these insertion points. And I think for those who don’t kind of get it, an insertion point is just a potential way to get in/ to go from being an outsider, to being an insider, which is the crucial transition that we make, I think not just with companies, but kind of with anybody, right? You got to get in a trust relationship before you’re going to start to hear the truth. And we always point out at Market Dominance Guys, the only reliable way to make that happen is to get scheduled conversations. Because in a scheduled conversation, the psychology is such that it’s okay for both parties to kind of get real. You have enough time, you’ve come together voluntarily. Whereas in an ambush call, it’s ridiculous to expect the ambushed party to get real. Their reality is pretty obvious. They want to get off this call with their self-image intact. Whereas when they voluntarily show up for a meeting, they’ll be a little apprehensive about whether you’re going to sell to them or not, but you can dispel that apprehension by your behavior. And then you can get down to the truth.

And I think, if I hear you correctly, you’re saying that in a sense, the big issue is companies, which being sales leaders will choose for what seems like efficiency, to focus on the buyer, rather than having conversations with, scheduled conversations with enough people to learn what’s really going on inside that company. And ultimately to be trusted sufficiently to be led voluntarily, probably to relevant people. It’s like when I was working with SAP way back in the day, I just went and hung out in Palo Alto for months and talked to different people. And finally somebody said, “You know what? You need to talk to this guy, Kamal.” And next thing I know I’m in a room with the guy who has the problem that we’re trying to solve, right? It took a long time, many conversations before somebody said, “Oh, I get it. I get what you really do. And I know this other person is kind of the right person for you to talk to.”

So when you try to help folks with this, and I know you’re not a sales consultant per se, but there’s something about being in this conversation business that sort of makes you into a sales consultant, right? Especially with regard to engagement, the sales engagement process, where you’re going from utter ignorance, other than data, to at some point into a relationship with somebody where you’re working mutually to solve a problem. When you are doing that, what is it that you do? Or is it even anything I know it’s not really your job, right? What do you say or do or demonstrate to somebody to help them open their mind, to not reaching out to just one person, but reaching out to 10 or 20 or 30, as their way of succeeding in engagement? Is there a speech you give him or is there like a, you make a list and you try, what do you do to make that happen?

James Townsend (26:38):

I tell them about Mike, and I won’t expose his last name, but Mike, a real gentleman, you just retired from sales. 30-year sales veteran. We’re in Vegas, running an intensive test drive of ConnectAndSell and we’re eating pizzas over lunch. And I say, “Mike, what do you think?” He goes, “Ah, it was wonderful,” he said. I said, “Well, why was it wonderful?” He goes, “I now know how Huntsman buys,” he says. I said, “Well, what do you mean?” He goes, well, “I’ve had the account for four years.” He goes, “But I had 22 conversations this morning.” So your analogy or your experience, Chris, with SAP and walking around the campus and talking to various folks, Mike accomplished in a morning, right? Because he had 22 conversations.

Your question around, how do we get folks to focus on it? We look at the data, right? We look at a parade of, first, we ask the question in a messaging experience around who do you sell to, right? And there’s often this debate within senior leadership in this messaging experience, workshop, whatever we want to call it, where they’re like, “Oh, well we sell to senior marketers. Well, we actually sell to digital transformation.” Okay. Who do you sell to?” And they’re having this internal struggle within themselves as to who they actually target? I said, “Well, let’s pick one.” Right? Maybe it’s the VP of digital transformation. We go through this experience of this journey of helping them pull out the poetry of what do you say to this person, right? In terms of what’s in it for them. If you were sitting at a bar and you walk into the bar in the back of their jacket, you taught me this, I do a customer profile and they’re frustrated about things that you solve for them, yada, yada, yada. You latch onto one of those things and say, “Ooh, I can solve that for you. I believe we discovered a breakthrough with that.”

We go through this evolution of identifying the top one, two and three individuals that, from a strategy perspective, senior leadership, look at it and say, this is our strategy, right? And when it comes to the mechanics of building the list, we can very easily parade out, okay, well, based on what we’ve already talked about in the messaging where you, as senior leaders have said, “Yes, this is who we sell to and how we will speak to them. And here’s the what’s in it for them component. And here’s the economic, emotional, and strategic angle about what’s in it for them.” The whole poetry meets brain surgery, as a wise man once said. We can then connect the dots around, “Okay, well, you said you sell to VPs of digital transformation of those in the digital transformation realm. I’m not seeing those job titles in searching points, job titles represented in what we’re intending to put into motion for your salespeople to speak to.” So, it’s this world of like disconnect, reconnect, right?

What you were saying earlier, Chris was interesting, because it’s about off-topic a bit, but it’s the whole public and private information. What you were finding in SAP was the private information, which wasn’t available in public. What Mike found with Huntsman was the private information. And then we say, if you’re looking to understand private information about what is happening inside this company, one person or two people may not be providing you coverage or an opportunity to harvest private information signals that are abundant. You may be selling yourself short by running this particular strategy, which is either A, the people you’re looking to target have no allegiances to what we about in the messaging exchange, right? So there’s a huge disconnect. Or, if there is some familiarity between the strategy and what’s being intended to be executed, is that strategy deep enough where you’re going to get those conversation signals, right?

And again, a lot of times we have traditionally narrowed our focus because you don’t want to be that company, not ConnectAndSell, just in general, I’m speaking in general terms, that for lack of a better term carpet bombs six or eight or 12 different decision-makers with email and social inside of a particular enterprise. So we’ve got this mental model, which is, I will email only one, therefore I should only call one. But the reality is I can still email only one, but why should I not converse with others inside of that potential account, which I need to learn from?

Chris Beall (30:51):

Well, that’s fascinating, because when you think about that, it’s like what you said, which I deeply believe is true and overlooked is, your number one job is to learn as an insider, to go inside somehow and get that private information. And you’re very unlikely to get that from guessing at who’s going to give it to you. I’ll go back to my SAP analogy. The person that led me over to my friend Kamal, became a very good friend over time, was not the person who was going to have anything to do with electronic cataloging for B2B e-procurement, which was my business. But they knew from having conversations internally that somebody was bothered by that and was being tasked with it. And wasn’t comfortable with the solutions at hand. And now I was a convenient person to make that introduction. That’s one kind of private information was the, I’ll call it the deep who, right? Not the one that’s on the surface. By the way, you couldn’t have found this guy Kamal to save your life in public information back then or today. His title meant nothing.

And every company, when there was big problems, there’s always somebody being assigned to go after the really big problems whose title has nothing to do with that problem, right? Because their specialty is solving big problems, which is a kind of a funny specialty. This person that’s kind of like a fixer, you know? If you were to go to do business in a very unfamiliar foreign country to you and you wanted to make your way around, you get a fixer and a fixer takes you all around. And we often need a fixer, but we don’t know who it is. And they don’t advertise themselves much.

But getting that breadth of conversations going so that you could learn how somebody buys or at least get an inkling of it very early. And it’s more important how they buy than what problem they’re trying to solve. Because if your company provides something of value to that kind of company, then eventually it’s going to be on their radar. So now the question is, but how do they buy things? That’s actually the number one thing we might want to learn. And I would say, we don’t know it. In an account-based sense, if you gave me a hundred targets and you let me wave a magic wand and say, “Fix one gap in my knowledge,” it would be, how do they buy? That would be it. And yet we can’t find that out without having conversations. So, that’s pretty remarkable.

So when you do all of this, you try to help people do this, it sounds daunting to me. It’s like, oh my God, I got to have a message for each kind of person, right? I’m going to make a list. That’s now easy, a list of titles. But, if it took them, like we saw one the other day with a 46-page messaging document, right? I’m not going to say who it was. And it’d been put together a big committee of very senior people. Well, that took a long time. And by the way, I hate to say it, but that message wasn’t going to work in a five-sentence ambush conversation either. What is the cycle time from, Hey, okay, here’s my ideal customer, the person at this kind of company, in fact, name the company too. From that moment to message good enough to try and have conversations with? What’s the cycle time? Is it five days, five years, five weeks, five minutes? What is it?

James Townsend (34:17):

I think it’s under 60 minutes.

Chris Beall (34:20):

Under 60 minutes. Okay. And how much of that is that specific message and how much of that is just, I’ll call it the package? How much is the bullet and how much is the design of the gun?

James Townsend (34:30):

Well, the design of the gun is more like a three to five-day process. There’s different pieces to it, right? There’s the concept sell to those reps that need to be executing it and rightfully so, right. Scripting documents are just words on paper, right? If we don’t understand the why behind the psychology or the approach or the words or the poetry or how to deliver in the tonality and the inflection and the pace and, where do I reflect that? Where do I reflect that? And all the things that go into any A-list actor picking up a script is not shooting the final cut on day one, right? That takes a little bit of practice and development. And then learning from a leadership perspective, whether the message that was ordained, because you never get a perfect day one, right? You never do. You got to go back and listen and see what the market’s telling you about that message.

So end-to-end, if you think about what we accomplish in Flight School over a three to four-week period, which is really a series of carefully orchestrated blitz’s, that could be compressed into five days if we so chose. But it’s really about teaching these reps who are, again, perfectly rational folks, they just haven’t, back to your golf analogy, they haven’t had the repetitions. We’re providing the track van, right? We’re able to analyze its angle and its tempo and its swing speed, and ball speed when the club had to impact. What’s the angle of the club, all these things that we’re able to help the rep with. But until they have the repetitions in, on a very precise piece of, in this case, the golf swing, and in our world, the message, they can’t improve. So the overall cycle time from start to getting reliable signals out, you can have it in underneath the five days.

The act of building the message is a hypothesis at that time, based on who you’re targeting, right? So it’s this evolution of things up to being able to go back and inspect the tape and say, was our hypothesis correct? And is the message appealing to that individual in a way that we thought it would? Sometimes it does. Sometimes it doesn’t. And then you just have to iterate from there.

Chris Beall (36:36):

Yeah. It’s fascinating, right? My experience with this is that getting folks to accept that the purpose of the cold call is to build trust and that you win a hundred percent of the time after seven seconds, if you do it correctly, that to me is the hardest part. Because I call this the dog piece of meat and the chain link fence problem. I would say the disease of people in sales that they have a very hard time, no vaccine will keep them from having it is, they want sales results. It seems obvious that they should want sales results and they tend to go right at them. And so instead of backing up and noticing there’s a gate 10 feet to right, the dog tries to go through the fence and bloodies its nose. Can’t get through the fence most of the time. Can’t get to that target most of the time. And the idea of backing up and going, “Huh? Okay.”

So first of all, is it okay to go to an intermediate place? Well, how about trust? How about trust? Is it okay to go from there if you can, to another place? Well, how about a verbal based on curiosity, a verbal agreement to meet? Is that a new place? The answer is, yeah, it is. It’s actually a very profound new place, especially with modern technology. You give me the verbal to meet, “Hey Chris. Sure. Yeah. Whatever.” I say, “Hey James, you know I’m a morning person, tell you what, I’ll shoot you something for next Thursday. We’ll move it around.” You’re going to say yes, just to get off the call, but I know two things about you; you answer the phone, right?And you said, yes. So if I send you a calendar invite, it’s on your calendar-

James Townsend (38:13):

A hundred percent.

Chris Beall (38:14):

It’s like, I can get my words inside your midbrain by having you answer the phone. And I can an appointment on your calendar by sending you a calendar invite. Now we’re down to, is it an appointment you agreed to or not? Well, if you said, yes, you agreed to it. And there we are in a new place, right? I think the cycle time, once somebody understands, that’s the goal of the call, get trust. That the gravy on the call is to get the verbal and like the cherry on the top is to get it on the calendar, and the bad ideas to try to qualify it at any point, right? Once they get that new messages, I think per persona are actually pretty straightforward to get them to the point of trying to the hypothesis, right? It could be five minutes to the point of hypothesis.

So you basically built a manufacturing facility to make and try messages for different insertion points. And as I listen to you, I think, well, that sounds like magic, right? Let’s say I had 50 possible insertion points in a hundred big companies. 50 times a hundred’s pretty big number 5,000. Let’s say I could talk to with two trained reps, a hundred of those a day. So I talk to a hundred a day and one week I’ve talked to 500 of them. We have talked to 500 of them. We afford to generate say it’s four personas, four messages and use different message on different lists and be good at it. Do I have to be a product expert or do I have to be that person? I don’t think so. I think it’s in the delivery, right?

So, I mean, I think you’re describing a mechanism that can be used to win a hundred percent of the time through an ABM approach just by expanding your mind to going in at multiple insertion points and having a purpose of learning instead of forcing somebody to buy from you right now. Is that kind of a summary?

James Townsend (40:09):

That’s exactly right, Chris. Spot on.

Chris Beall (40:11):

Well, I hope that encourages some people to think that conversation first can be used in an account-based world. I see a lot of skepticism, including in our own company. We’ll have reps, our own reps will run into somebody that’ll say, “Well, we’re account-based. That ConnectAndSell thing, that’s mass calling, right?”If you got a hundred targets and 50 insertion points, you have 5,000 people to talk to. What are you going to do about it, right? Interesting.

So, as you look forward, we’ll wrap up for in a moment, but as you look forward, we’ve got all the contact data out there. You’ve got a thing called LinkedIn Sales Insights now, that really, I think lets you understand the companies much, much better than we used to be able to. And you and I are both really impressed with that new offering from LinkedIn. What do you think is next frontier? Or are we there and we’re grinding our way across the great Plains so to speak? The next frontier is right under our feet.

James Townsend (41:08):

I think we’re there Chris. I think the world of right rep, right list, right message, I think it is upon us. The market needs to continue to, I think the market’s moving in the right direction. And part of it, I give a lot of credit to the ABM strategy that leverages an orchestration play like an outreach in the SalesLoft because it takes us back to the days, to my early days of, be very selective about based on information that was available to you. And back in my early days, it was based on information from asking a switchboard operator who the director of human resources was, or who the individual to handle talent management. Where we’re moving into the, as more teams rely heavily on this world of orchestration, by very nature they’re becoming more precise about the individuals they target. And that’s really what we mean by account base. Be precise about who you target.

And let’s be serious, we wouldn’t put call steps in those sequences and cadences if we didn’t think conversations were important. Therefore if we can message correctly to those very precisely selected personas that are placed in these sequences and have more of those conversations faster, you don’t need to boil the ocean. You just need to have the conversation. So I think the market’s moving in a very interesting direction, more towards a level of precision, not towards a, let’s just call everybody and anyone and let’s hope for the best. And the exciting things that you and I are seeing out of sales insights in order to prioritize companies that are growing in particular roles, sales roles or otherwise, looking at companies that are really growing from expansion, not contracting. I think the market’s getting a lot smarter about how to use big data and signals in order to like zero in on areas to target.

And I give a lot of credit to teams out there that are running account-based because it just means you’re inspecting who’s going in. Therefore the conversations that you’re having with those individuals should be more fruitful. You’re just not having enough conversations such as where we come in, right? So I think the market’s moving in a very interesting direction. We’re perfectly poised to help in that world in a number of different ways. And I’m excited about what the future has to hold.

Chris Beall (43:26):

Fantastic. Well, I’m excited about continuing to help customers working with you or at least have you help them. Every once in a while I just go in and annoy them, which is a lot of fun also. So I’m going to wrap this up. James, if somebody wants to learn from you, maybe they want to do a ConnectAndSell test drive, maybe they want to learn how somebody who’s an actual practitioner would end up on your side of the ledger, so to speak, where you’re heading up customer success and helping people, or they just want to learn some stuff about customer success, how do a hold of you?

James Townsend (43:57):

Oh, probably your best bet is to reach out to me on LinkedIn. I’m available on LinkedIn. It’s linkedin.com/in/jamestownsend. That’s T–W-N-S-E-N-D hyphen cas. Feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn, send me a direct message. I’ll follow up with account only LinkedIn. I’m always happy to spend the time either talking about customer success as an evolving profession out there in the world of small, medium and large business to business. It’s actually interesting Chris, you and I saw it on LinkedIn sales insights today in medium-size companies, one of the top three highest sought after highest growth jobs, most listed jobs was number three, was CS, next to information technology and others. So I’m always happy to talk to folks about CS, and I’m always happy to talk about ConnectAndSell because I’ve been around this machine, this weapon for the better part of my adult life, because my wife doesn’t consider my twenties to be my adult life.

And I’m always happy to talk about the wonders of ConnectAndSell and conversation first and what makes it special. And also the challenges and how to wire this crazy thing into your go-to-market strategy without breaking stuff. That’s important.

Chris Beall (45:11):

I love it. I love it. Well, you’re really good at helping folks avoid amplifying suck, which has always been my big concern. So maybe sometime in the golf course, you can help me not amplify suck. Although I have a feeling your interest run in a different direction at that point. We’ll wrap this up for Corey Frank, who just couldn’t be here today. We’ll apologize to Corey. I’m sure he would’ve asked better questions than I did, and he’s a lot more fun to talk with. Plus he dresses so well. But, I kind of like our Flight School shirts today. I think we-

James Townsend (45:40):

Next time we’ll do the top button up. There you go.

Chris Beall (45:42):

Yeah. We got to go all the way-

James Townsend (45:42):

All the way, right? Yeah. All the way is really smart.

Chris Beall (45:47):

So James, thanks so much for being on, and I think folks are going to get a lot out of this episode, market dominance in an account-based world at pace and scale led with conversations. Sounds unbeatable. Thank you.

James Townsend (46:00):

You’re welcome. Thanks. Thanks everybody.

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Does the thought of placing a cold call make you tense, nervous, embarrassed, or tongue-tied?

Today’s Market Dominance Guys’ guest, Gavin Tice, a sales instructor for ConnectAndSell’s Flight School, says not to worry about this awkwardness. He even says it’s an okay place to start. What a relief, huh? Our hosts, Corey Frank and Chris Beall, talk with Gavin today about how a standard operating procedure — in this case, a tried-and-true cold call script and method of delivery — can turn that frown upside down. What Gavin teaches is how to have a lot of fun and success making cold calls. Yes, you heard right: FUN! What a great reason to listen in while this Conductor of Conversations and our podcast hosts discuss the ways that SOPs, social work, psychology, and introversion positively impact the cold-calling experience in today’s Market Dominance Guy’s topic, “How to Turn Awkwardness into Success.”

 

About Our Guest

Gavin Tice is a Flight School instructor for ConnectAndSell. His background in the military and as a social worker have bestowed on him the perfect mix of skills needed to be a member of ConnectAndSell’s conversation optimization team, as he helps his Flight School students make success-building changes to their cold-calling delivery. A former team member of Gavin’s gives him this accolade: “Gavin’s depth of experience with sales and relationship building is like nothing I’ve encountered before. He brings his all to the table, every time.”

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Full episode transcript below:

Corey Frank (01:22):

Welcome to another episode of The Market Dominance Guys. This is Corey Frank with the saint of sales, the prophet of profit, and the duke of dials, Chris Beall. I added the duke of dials. That’s the new one there, Chris. I don’t know if you agree.

Chris Beall (01:33):

I am excited. I’m excited. I’ve always wanted to be the duke of something, and not just putting up your dukes, so I’m quite happy.

Corey Frank (01:39):

Well, speaking of somebody who is an expert at putting up his dukes, we have a very special guest here. We have Gavin Tice. Gavin, a Marine Corps veteran, social work veteran, and now esteemed head instructor, pilot instructor of the Flight School. What do we call Gavin over there in the ConnectAndSell Flight School, Chris?

Chris Beall (01:58):

Well, he is a Flight School instructor. He’s also a member of our Conversation Optimization team, and that’s a lot of syllables, but it’s what it’s all about. It’s like the fight is inside the conversation. Let’s optimize that sucker.

Corey Frank (02:11):

Anyway, welcome, Gavin to the Market Dominance Guys. It’s good to finally have you on this side of the camera.

Gavin Tice (02:16):

Yeah, and so this is nice.

Corey Frank (02:18):

As Chris knows, I would just sit in an empty room and just listen to him wax eloquently about all the topics that we have here.

So what we want to talk about today on this particular episode of the podcast is the Flight School and I’m fascinated because as Chris came up with, maybe you can get our listeners up to speed on how the Flight School came about.

Since it’s been a little bit since we heard that origin story and how you met Gavin and why he’s such a good, perfect person to lead some of the efforts and what are some of the special qualities that Gavin has that makes it so successful?

Chris Beall (02:54):

Oh, interesting question. Well, Flight School came about because we were trying to help a company out that had run into some problems and they’d asked whether they could have a special deal and we don’t do special deals at ConnectAndSell. But I came up with a special deal, which is a month of Monday and Friday unlimited use for the team.

And then, we realized that the best way to do that, that’s four Mondays and four Fridays, was to train like crazy on Friday, but to train live so they’re actually getting meetings. And then to sort of let them run on Monday, but with coaching and then go to the next part of the conversation and train that. So, we said let’s train on the first seven seconds of the conversation the first Friday, and then on Monday, we’ll listen carefully for that stuff and do some coaching around it, but let them settle in.

And I figured there were a couple nights of sleep in there and you don’t really learn when you’re awake. You only learn when you’re asleep. So just came up with this idea. And after about the third week, we were flying back from wherever this was and a couple of us on the airplane said this is funny, the first session’s like taking the airplane off and the second one’s going somewhere, and the third one is we actually changed the order. We said the third ones like landing and the fourth one is handling the objections. Turbulence made no sense. Once you’re on the ground, there is no turbulence. So we reordered the Flight School so that it’s take off the first seven seconds. And then there is going somewhere, free flight, which is what we call the 27 seconds. And then, handling all the objections that are peculiar to flying, peculiar to the cold call in the third session, which is turbulence.

And then you got to ask for the meeting, you got to get the plane back on the ground. That’s how it came about. And it’s evolved a little bit, maybe even a fair amount, but it’s still the same idea. We added a messaging workshop on the front. We added what we call sort of an icebreaker session. I think of it as deicing. You know, make sure the wings aren’t ladened down with ice, so that everybody will be warmed up and used to the product.

What is shocking to me is I’ve had the luxury now of watching teams go through other kinds of sales training. But I watch from the back through ConnectAndSell numbers and I’ve never seen anything move the number, including, I won’t say who it was, but who I consider the number one sales trainer in the world. I got to see a team, a big team, go through that training. And I looked for the change the next day, the next day, the next day. And there was nothing, in performance. Flight School, a hundred percent of the time changes performance because you’re performing under pressure, actual conversations with real-life prospects. You’re doing it at pace, ConnectAndSell speed and you’re doing it with precision coaching of just the part of the conversation that gets you to the next part of the conversation.

Gavin Tice (05:49):

That’s right.

Chris Beall (05:49):

So it’s very different. And Gavin was, like so many people at ConnectAndSell introduced by somebody else who said to me 350,000 times in a row, you’ve got to get this guy on the team. He’s like another, you know? And so the question is, was he another Donny or another Nathan? I don’t know. He was another one of them. And it turns out he is, but he brings his own very, very special point of view from his experience, which is unlike anybody else on the team.

Corey Frank (06:20):

Let’s talk about that experience, Gavin. So starting in the Marine Corps, is there an MOS for cold calling in the Marine Corps, by the way? I don’t know. What is that?

Gavin Tice (06:26):

Oh, for sure. For sure. It’d be 0351A, yeah. So definitely an infantry level job, for sure.

Corey Frank (06:34):

Gotcha. And so one of the things that Chris and I were talking about before we hit record here was the unique experience you bring from your service in the Marine Corps and has that helped you train your voice at all? Especially, since you’re coaching folks and we’re being on tonality in The Market Dominance Guys, as you’ve heard and nurturing and verbal disfluencies and the ahs and the ums, all that richness that builds trust and authenticity. What’s your experience like in the Marine Corps? And what type of voice training do they give you that helped your sales career?

Gavin Tice (07:09):

Hmm, I think it’s just being able to… Well, I’ll take a step back. Drill instructors go through a school. I’m not a drill instructor, but they actually learn how to project their voices because they’ve got to sound very angry, but consistent. And it’s funny, if you happen to drive past Marine Corps, Parris Island, you’ll see the drill instructors literally yelling at trees. I kid you not. They’ve got their knife hand out and they’re yelling at the trees like they would be recruits.

I think what helped me to find my voice is, in the Marine Corps you get challenged all the time and all of a sudden someone says, “Hey, you’ve got to show the colonels that are here on tour how to do this job.” And you have to act, even if you’re completely dumbfounded about what you’re trying to do. If I had to show someone how to take down a weapon or explain to them the operating range from my old rocket launcher, a Mk 153 small, you don’t have time to think and you’ve got to talk with respect and you can’t be afraid. So that, I think, was a great situation for me, because I’ve never had a fear of talking to a CEO or a founder or a president of the company.

A couple years after that, my boss in the Navy was directly an Admiral. Once again, you can’t go talk to an Admiral and waste a lot of their time with a lot of flowery language, you really got to get down to the brass tacks. So if I had to really pull that training from there, that’s what it would be.

Corey Frank (08:40):

That’s wonderful. Fascinating little bit about the drill instructors. So that’s a course on how to project their voice. Different session if the trees ever talk back. But if they were able to glean anything from how to project your voice or how to convey authority, especially as a new recruit, did they teach you how to respond and answer in a certain tonality?

Gavin Tice (09:00):

It would be I, Sir at all times. And the funny thing is they take away your personalization. So the entire time, if you’re an enlisted Marine and you go through the 13 weeks of Marine Corps training, you never hear your first name, it’s “Recruit (last name)”. So it’s really awkward when you finally leave that place when someone calls you by your first name again, because you’re like, I haven’t heard that in months, but I mean we have to be-

Corey Frank (09:29):

It’s kind of like being married, right? You never hear your first name.

Gavin Tice (09:31):

You have to be able to communicate on the battlefield, too, right? I mean, not everyone understands that that’s actually something that’s reality. And whether or not you’re wearing ear protection or not, you have to be able to project your voice. So I guess it’s just something you learn. I never really thought of it as being something that was special to that experience.

Corey Frank (09:54):

Got it.

Chris Beall (09:54):

Well, it’s interesting. I just had two recent experiences that made me think of it. That’s why I brought it up with Corey. So one experience is I’m currently listening to General McChrystal’s book Risk, which I think is excellent. Actually it’s very interesting, too, and I’m listening to it becase I love to listen to his voice. And so it’s become my workout thing, my driving around thing and so forth.

And then, I was on a recent podcast called Bulletproof Sales and I’m on with the guy, who’s a Marine. And I thought, wait a minute, there’re real similarities in speech and the clarity and the simplicity, the directness of both of these people and one of them is reading his own book. So that means it’s been through a process. The other is simply talking to me. Now he’s written a book, so he’s got a lot of language that’s refined around that. But there was something about it that gave me the impression that, and maybe this goes to something else that we were talking about recently. It’s entirely possible that what’s happened in the military where clarity of communication and then understanding a mission and execution of mission. You’re expected to understand and execute the mission, so somebody has to communicate it to you clearly.

You’re not simply following orders. That’s like the big change from way back when to now is I believe, as I listen to people, I not in the military myself, but as I listen, it’s like a big change is that there’s a relatively greater emphasis on acting intelligently and appropriately within the mission rather than simply doing what you’re told. On the battlefield, especially. And that confers competitive advantage to our military, because they’re more flexible.

You have to deal with each Marine or each soldier or whatever as the enemy, is you have to deal with a smart person who’s trying to do something and they know what they’re trying to do. And that could be a problem for you as somebody following orders, you might be able to counter that a little bit more easily.

And I have this funny feeling that our society of business people actually is learning to execute more like our all-volunteer military. And now that we have work from home everywhere and everybody’s a volunteer, you can’t lock them down and say, you live here. Therefore, you now have to work for BigCo in this area. It’s like they can go work for anybody.

Chris Beall (13:17):

That we have a lot to learn from the folks who went through the first big, all volunteer revolution, which is the U.S. Military. I don’t know. Does that make a lick of sense to you, Gavin?

Gavin Tice (13:27):

You’re touching on one thing which is SOPs, right? Standard operating procedures. Everyone wants to do their own thing, but as you begin to grow, you can’t be herding cats all the time, much less how do you benchmark? So the military’s built up on standard operating procedures. I can’t speak to the other branches, but in the Marines, it’s all about small-unit leadership. And there’s always a line of succession. Every mission that you go out on, there’s a five-paragraph order and the colonel knows it, the captain knows it, the lieutenants know it, staff sergeants know it, all the way down to the private. Because things happen in war and if the line of leadership is taken out, that guy to their left or right must know the objectives, how things are going to happen, where the fire teams are moving, what the codes and signals are. And we use a lot of acronyms. That one’s called OSMEAC. So it’s orientation, situation, mission execution, and admin logistics and command. And you learn this from pretty much day one in bootcamp. And we have to constantly, everyone knows the operational orders.

I mean we’ve seen, probably since all the way back to the war of 1812, the best military organizations in the world empower even their youngest soldiers on a battlefield. If there’s a standard line of only the senior-level people only know what’s really going on, within reason if the younger recruits or the people on the lower ranks don’t know that, it falls apart as soon as those leaders get targeted and dealt with. That’s really one of the things that is pivotal in our American military.

Chris Beall (15:11):

Fascinating.

Corey Frank (15:12):

We were talking a little earlier too, Gavin, with regards to that, about the social work background that you have and it seems a little bit of a dichotomy here going from the Marine Corps knowing crystal clear what your objective is, very refined, right? Very left-brained. And now you’re on the social work side, which is a little bit more of the connection, authenticity, trust side. So you have this kind of amalgam. This nice cocktail or so. Let’s talk about the other side of the brain. We talked about the brawns. Now let’s talk about the heart, then maybe we’ll talk about the brains. That’s Chris’ part of the show.

Gavin Tice (15:47):

Yeah. It’s interesting. Social work looks at everything from a holistic perspective. And if you really translate that, my earliest sales interviews were like how does a social worker turn into a sales guy? And I’m like, well, it’s really enterprise sales. And the first time someone said, you’ve been in sales all this time. I said, how so? They said, tell me about your patients. And I said, well, I meet with the patient. They have a problem that they think they have. I asked them some pretty deep questions. I get a better picture of where they’re at. I offer them some solutions and then guess what? I try to close the deal. Maybe it’s medication, maybe it’s group therapy, maybe it’s one-on-one and then guess what? Follow up happens. And when they put that into this nice package, I was like, oh, so I guess I have been in sales. I just didn’t call it that. And so I find it very interesting that my degrees in psychology and social work really helped me see sales in a different light.

Chris Beall (16:44):

Sure. Huh.

Corey Frank (16:45):

Chris, we’ve talked a lot about this program even recently with Jennifer, I believe, about introverts. How introverts make the best Salesforce. Would you consider yourself an introvert, Gavin?

Gavin Tice (16:54):

I guess that’s one of the roles I play. I put on a lot of different roles in my day- to-day. I’m an introvert when I’m by myself. I’m a father, a husband, a conductor of conversations, as I call myself on LinkedIn, to keep the people from trying to prospect me all the time, because they don’t know what to say to me. But, yeah, introvert’s definitely a role I play, for sure.

Corey Frank (17:17):

And so, as you are coaching your clients in the Flight School, your clients, your patients, what’s the right term for your folks, your passengers? Is that a right term?

Gavin Tice (17:24):

Yeah, passengers. Victims.

Corey Frank (17:25):

Yeah. What are some of the things… We always like to ask a lot of our guests this, Gavin, from your purview, from your perspective as piloting this thing and they’ve got a tremendous amount of trust that you’re going to not crash the plane here for them and you’re going to leave them better than how you found them. What is the state of sales today, from your perspective and maybe how it’s changed a little bit in the last few years from when you first started?

Gavin Tice (17:51):

Well, outside of the technology advancements, here’s what I think is interesting. Flight school is all about execution. You go through a lot of sales training, you go to workshops and seminars. It’s a lot of inspiration. It’s a lot of how-to, it’s a lot of motivation and that’s great. But the minute you get to the car, click out of the zoom, it’s over, right?

It’s up to you to really decide if you’re going to take all those things and put any of it to use. I tell people now, I said, look, knowing one’s line in your industry or vertical, willing to sit here and make cold calls with me. So I congratulate you, because there’s not a big line for it.

But what I think is more profitable is what we’re doing is we’re teaching execution. We’re allowing and telling people, hey, you’re going to fail. Probably the first time in your career that you’ve been told, it’s okay to fail. But if you follow what we have, if you take our direction and you execute, you’re actually going to have a lot of fun making your cold calls today. And it’s a beautiful thing.

Corey Frank (18:55):

And when you say you’re going to have a lot of fun making your cold calls today, do they believe you?

Gavin Tice (19:01):

You get some interesting looks because, especially if it’s day one, they’re like, you’re going to have me say this weird 27 second thing. And I don’t know, every time I have made cold calls, people just get angry with me. But again we have a lot of information to provide like, hey, follow our direction and just execute.

And then I’m on the back end of things. Hey, that was really good. A lot of people need nurturing, right? If you don’t nurture people around you and you’re just kind constantly telling them all the doom and gloom, it doesn’t go so well. So I think one of the key things that’s changed in sales is now people are starting to really empower their teams and to give them a lot of positive strokes.

Corey Frank (19:45):

What is the state, on that same theme of sales, where you see folks really struggling with today and that, because you see so many, the beautiful thing about certainly what you do at ConnectAndSell, and we do here at Branch 49 is we’re pretty business agnostic. Wouldn’t you say Chris? Business is business. It really doesn’t matter. You really are able to condense it down to people talking to people. Biophysiology, right? All of things that we learned from the Orens and the Chris Bealls of the world and Chris Vosses of the world. So, with that then, Gavin, knowing that you have this special purview where, whether they’re selling insurance or plane tickets or cyber technology, it’s B2B sales. What are people being taught or what are people doing that they should almost immediately stop doing? And once you pointed out to them, they never do it again. But the habits you learned in bootcamp that you’ve never done it again because you learned it the right way.

Gavin Tice (20:45):

Well, the first thing I’d say is stop committing hate crimes, which means how are you today? Right. It just signals to everyone, junior person in sales, probably their first job. And this conversation’s going nowhere and you get the immediate, yeah, I’m not interested. All said. I think the other part is the showing up and throwing up. Who wants to be told, hey, all the time that you spent in your previous initiatives, the money, all the personnel that got detailed from procurement all the way on up, hey, you’ve been doing it all wrong. And by the way, I’ve worked with all these great companies and we saved them all stuff. And wouldn’t you like to be in the same place? It’s really like saying, hey, you know what? Corey, your baby’s ugly. And I’m here to go ahead and put some lipstick on it and make it a prettier baby.

And when you attack people’s intelligence like that, because in some cases, a lot of people put their career, their respect within their companies, and it’s like Chris’s Tesla model, right? If you buy a Tesla for yourself, it’s not such a big deal. Go get rid of it. But if you buy a fleet of them for the company and then you find out, oh, you’ve been doing it all wrong and you should have bought some Toyota Camrys. Like, man, that just beats people down. And who wants to have that in a cold conversation happen, right? Yeah.

Corey Frank (22:14):

Yeah. Chris, from your perspective, what we heard from Gavin here, if I only had time for a 10-minute Flight School, right? You know how you take those helicopter tours across the Grand Canyon, you could do that full hour or we only have a couple hundred dollars and your kid wants to go. I only have 10 minutes. What’s the… So if I only had a 10 minute flight school, just to circle around the Grand Canyon and land, what should I learn?

Chris Beall (22:38):

This is actually what this whole Market Dominance Guys thesis is about, is that in seven seconds you can get trust a hundred percent of the time and that trust is durable. So if you don’t blow it by doing something stupid, like trying to sell to this person later, then you get to keep their trust forever. And trust is true competitive advantage in a world where the buyer is naturally conservative and afraid of making a mistake, because it is their reputation. It’s their kid’s college education. It’s a lot of stuff that’s on the line. And so the question is, well, how do you get started? The funny thing about Flight School, and it would be like an airplane, right? Most important thing is to be able to land it. But if it never gets up in the air, you’re not going to have an opportunity to land it.

So you got to get the damned thing off the runway. You’ve got to get it up the air, you’ve got to get it committing an unnatural act. The first time you ever see an airplane jump off the ground, so to speak, you should be surprised because there’s nothing you can see that’s making it float, right? It’s not like a balloon full of helium or something like that. It’s like something’s going on there and that something that’s going on there is magically making this thing fly. Well, if you want to learn to fly airplanes, you got to figure out how to make that thing happen. That’s the first seven seconds of the conversation. Once you’re in the air, everything changes. Now, you actually have a lot of freedom. If you don’t just like drive the thing into the ground or there’s not very many other airplanes up there to hit, you have a lot of freedom.

So if I had a 10-minute flight school, I would do one thing with somebody and it would be to teach them the importance of, and then have them execute, on the first seven seconds. And the first seven seconds have exactly two components. One, tactical empathy, help them see or understand that you see the world through their eyes and believe that. And the other is the other element of trust, which is proving to this person or at least demonstrating your competent to solve a problem they have right now. And what I find is the big flip for folks is when they realize they’re in charge, that you as the sales rep are completely in charge and in control, as soon as you recognize that you are the problem. It’s when you try to divert away from the real problem, which is you, that you immediately blow the trust.

As soon as you attempt to pivot to value. You’re actually saying I’m not the problem, but if you are the problem and you’re saying you’re not the problem, you’re covering up. You’re lying. Right? So why should you be trusted? So if you change the goal, like if I were to take everybody at cold calls, everybody at cold calls and ask them, what’s the goal? Well, the goal is going to be to get a meeting. Well, the goal is going to be to have a conversation that leads to a deal. The goal is my commission. That’s actually the secret goal, right? The whole Market Dominance Guys’ concept says that’s incorrect. First of all, the achievement rate is too low, sub 5%. And secondly, the impact act is too small.

You can have a higher impact on the marketplace. If you think of it as a marketplace, say what’s my impact on the marketplace. It’s going to be, if I can pave this entire market with trust before my opponent makes the first move on their chess board. So I get to make 64 moves and then they get to make one, all of my moves improve my position in the market relative to the trust that folks have in me. And it’s always a person, not a company, then I’m going to win in the long run. And the long run’s going to be shorter and shorter and shorter because I can harvest that trust through future conversations that explore possibilities. So I would teach that one thing. It’s like you only have seven seconds to get trust. The good news is, it’s easy. Let’s learn how to do it a hundred percent of the time and then get over this thing. Oh, I failed because I didn’t get the meeting. That’s gravy. We’ll teach you later once you know how to get trust a hundred percent of the time.

So now you’re winning. Now we’ll teach you how to harvest a little sooner and we’ll teach you things like the Cherryl Turner Insistence Close, and we’ll teach you the nature of the math of the no-show and all that other good stuff. But man, until you can execute. It’s like if you asked me, what would you do if you only had 10 minutes to teach somebody how to swing a golf club, it would actually be a very specific thing. I’d put them in a situation where they couldn’t make the mistake everybody makes, so that they can learn that it’s possible for this damned thing to work. If they’re right-handed, I’d take their left hand off the club. Because they’re too weak or not physically strong enough to keep the club from releasing, which is the key to the golf swing, if they only have the right hand. It feels funny, but the thing that feels funny suddenly works. And then they have the confidence to pursue the rest of a program of having a real golf swing instead of the fake baloney that most people have.

Corey Frank (27:42):

You know, I think that could be the fetching Miss Fanucci, the title of her book again, for those that were part of the first part of the call is what, Chris?

Chris Beall (27:50):

It’s Love Your Team: A Survival Guide For Sales Managers In A Hybrid World. And her point is simple. The leverage point in performance and sales is the highest performance art that we do, that’s in the main line of business, right? It’s right in the line of business, you have to go through a value chain that includes sales to get anything to happen. Whether in the innovation economy or not, you’re stuck, you’re on one side of a performance and on the other side is a relationship that’s trying to explore is there something here to do together, then you’ve got to go through sales. So that’s about a person. Yeah. And now the question is how does that person feel? Before they can play the game of sales, how do they feel about who they’re playing it with? And until you get there… My guess is we see this now in military engagement that’s going on somewhere in the world, right over in Ukraine.

And the question is how much do these people believe in what they’re doing, the ones who are defending and the ones who are invading? And the ones who are defending, they believe a lot. Right? And they love their team. They love each other. They’re stuck with it, right? How do you get there in the world of managing a sales team? That’s what Helen’s on about. And I’m telling you, I think that’s the true leverage point, is that the leverage point in sales is frankly, the belief that the team has that you have their back.

Corey Frank (29:20):

Well, I was just comparing the title of Ms. Fanucci there, her title of her book versus I think the title of your book beyond The Market Dominance Guys is I believe the quote says “the thing that feels funny suddenly works”. So that’s actually not a bad name for the book. What do you think, Gavin? The thing that feels funny suddenly works. It has a nice ring to it.

Gavin Tice (29:41):

Turn. I would call it this, turning awkwardness into trust.

Corey Frank (29:45):

Turning awkwardness into trust.

Gavin Tice (29:46):

Because that’s really it. And it’s funny because the awkwardness is on both sides. Awkwardness doesn’t have to turn into hostility. Awkwardness is a great platform for getting to trust. It’s the best platform for getting to trust.

Corey Frank (29:59):

I did an interview earlier today with a candidate and she is a… I’m not going to say which state, but she is a former Miss East Coast State, about two years out of school. And she had a wonderful, wonderful voice. Gavin, you have a wonderful voice. We talk about a number of folks on this podcast that certain folks have an almost raspiness that just you trust immediately. And this gal has a wonderful, wonderful voice. And I had her read the screenplay, right? And we’re big believers here at Branch 49 of the 27 seconds. We are fierce defenders in all things social, as you know Chris. The folks who maybe don’t understand the power of the 27 seconds because they’re seeing it as merely its words versus the performance art that it entails. And she said so and so and so, so I know I’m an interruption.

I was like, respectfully, Mackenzie. We talked about a little bit about the world of haptics, [inaudible 00:30:59] no programming, right? Everybody has the aunt that reaches out and grabs your hand. They touched your knee. If you have glasses, what’s the prop, right? Have you pull off the glasses. And for, as Chris has taught, “I know I’m an interruption.” Is almost as if you have to do this with your hand. I’m Sicilian, so I have to talk with my hands. It’s the law, right? But if you say, I know I’m an interruption. So when you walk the floor of Branch 49, you see constantly one arm is bigger than another for these folks. Cause they’re saying, I know I’m an interruption and that’s that timing buffer crutch, if you will, Chris. Right? That helps them accentuate that piece that sometimes is missing. What you’re talking about if I can only teach 10 minute Flight School, how do I establish that trust? And then hang onto it for your life so I don’t lose it.

Chris Beall (31:49):

Well, Gavin, you teach this stuff. When you’re teaching the takeoff part of flight school, that first two hours, how do you know that somebody has clipped, that they flipped over to believing that awkwardness works? You know, that it’s an okay foundation. That it’s a good place to start from. Cause we know naturally we think it’s a bad place to start from. And we’ve been told our entire child lives and it continues a little less into our adult lives, don’t be the bad thing, right? That’s what we’ve been taught. I’ve been around some babies recently. And even when they’re two months old, one month old, we’re already telling them not to be the bad thing. And we do it reflexively as parents and then teachers. And then we get to a certain age and sometimes the police have a chat with us. And some authority figure’s always telling us not to be a bad thing. Nobody is ever telling us to be a bad thing, but we can’t go back through our whole life. Oh thank goodness. Ms. McGillicuddy took me aside and said, I want you to be bad. And yet in the cold call, we are a bad thing.

Where did that happen? How do you know that they just got comfortable with the discomfort of the awkwardness and that they are now seeing it as power.

Gavin Tice (33:10):

I think we all tell them immediately, look, your first five calls are going to be garbage. Just accept that. After that, you’re going to see something happen. Depending on, of course, the lists, it happens without fail. They’re all right, I’m going to try this whole 27 second thing. And you’re listening. And the first couple ones are garbage, but they see… Like people say 27 seconds. Okay. Yesterday I had a fun experience where they were calling some data scientists and they go 27 seconds. It’s very specific. Let’s go. You must have something really interesting to say. And I was like, wow. Out of probably thousands of conversations, I’ve never heard anyone say that before. And it happened several times yesterday. So it’s interesting. If I could see them physically, I can hear them and you can hear the timbre in their voice change.

Once they’ve had a couple people that didn’t slam the phone on them or tell them they’re a bad person. Collectively, it’s usually like 27 seconds. Sure. And then hopefully you don’t pause too long and then they actually go into what they’re it’s supposed to be doing. But you see very quickly the timbre in their voices change and then about, mm, conversation 15, they’re delivering the 27 seconds very eloquently because they know it’s going to work. So it’s all about the timbre and modulation in their voice. And it’s like magic. It happens all time.

Chris Beall (34:41):

Isn’t that funny? And yet what I see out there in the world of sales training a lot is an introspective approach that says, look inside yourself and try to improve by noting your fear and then making it irrelevant or some such thing like that. But you’re actually taking people on the opposite journey, which is go ahead and just do it. And then the feedback you’re going to get is going to include surprisingly positive things that you didn’t expect. It’s like the unexpected is the positive thing. And then the reinforcement begins there. Do you latch onto those? When they get that first positive one, is that where you go, listen, what’d you think about that? He said in 27 seconds, that’s really precise. Sure. You must have something like what’d you think about that? And what do you do with the first positive?

Gavin Tice (35:35):

The first positive, if I catch it, obviously depending on the size of the team my immediate is, how’d that feel? They go, it felt good. I can’t believe it. I’m astonished. I think what’s even more powerful is once they’re actually into free flight and they go through this breakthrough, that seems very clunky and like, no one’s going to buy this, no way. And then they have what I call the rollover, which is they deliver that breakthrough. It usually doesn’t sound so great. They say, do you happen to have your calendar available? And the person says, yeah, I’ve got time next Tuesday. Not the rep asking for that time, the person. And then you hear them pause. And it’s almost like did they really just say they’ll take the meeting? Was it that easy? And then I hop on immediately afterwards. I’m like, now do you believe me? And they go, oh my gosh, that was ridiculous. And they’re like, they accepted already. And I’m like, of course they did. You grew, you got attention, you got their trust. And then you delivered something that made them very curious. And so that’s like the magical moment, I’d really say

Chris Beall (36:47):

There’s an interesting thing about curiosity that I just thought of. I’ve been speaking with some people recently about individuals, about their own sort of branding about becoming somebody interesting. And if you think about personal branding in professional personal branding or personal personal branding, it’s about becoming somebody interesting to some subset of the world. So flip it around and say, well, that means some subset of the world is now curious about you. And what you just described is somebody experiencing having their brand change to the point where somebody else is interested in them, is curious about them, and they might have felt before that, that they weren’t worth having somebody be curious about them. So you’ve inverted a notion of find self-worth by being told you’re worth something by me, the instructor or the helper or the social worker, to find self-worth by the reaction of somebody else who’s interested enough in you to say, yeah, I’ll meet with you. If there’s some of the magic hiding in that inversion, I’ll call it a reversal of the usual way we think about this.

Gavin Tice (38:10):

I’d say a hundred percent because the typical situation is anything but. I call up a complete stranger, I show up and throw up all over them, and then they go, yeah, I’m not interested. And then all of a sudden you take this thing that’s really weird and a breakthrough. I don’t have a breakthrough. What do you mean we discovered? And then they put it all together. And I always tell, look, about one out of every, I don’t know, hundred, this isn’t going to happen. And so you have to be ready for it. And I prompt them and then it happens. And I think it’s magic because they’re like a complete stranger just took what I said and it was interesting enough and curious enough that they’ve taken this with me and I think it goes down to your self-worth. For sure. Because now they know it works.

Chris Beall (38:54):

Isn’t that funny. I never really thought of Flight School as a self-improvement program about your feelings about yourself. But I do actually believe that in the general case, and Corey and I have talked about this with regard to Branch 49. We call Branch 49 finishing school for future CEOs. Because one thing all CEOs have, at least all the ones I know, is not only the ability to have a conversation with a stranger, but the confidence that that conversation’s probably of some value to that stranger. It’s okay for me to be interesting. I don’t have to hide my light under that bushel. It’s all right. I can peek it out a little bit, but I don’t know, Corey, what do you think about this?

Corey Frank (39:38):

You know, the same candidate from today she’s been in pageantry since she was a little girl and part of the… It was fascinating and a world I know nothing about clearly. Look at me, I know nothing about pageantry.

Gavin Tice (39:54):

Oh, you’re beautiful Corey. Come on.

Corey Frank (39:55):

So there’s the extemporaneous where there’s a Q and A portion. How would you solve the world? How would you solve the UK crisis? How do you figure? Right. And a lot of it is just the extemporaneous. How can you think on your feet? And are you interesting? Do you have a beginning, middle, end, and all that stuff. And we talked about after we role-played, because she said, I’m sorry, I’m normally very good at this. Right? But I said, understand the nuances you are used to communicating with no… It’s like a hook without a barb. I can communicate, put out information that I think is fascinating. The audience isn’t going to rate you. Right? The judges are, but the audience isn’t, and you’re speaking to the audience, you speak to the judges, but on what you had just said, Gavin, right?

That the self-worth, it’s almost as if the pitch. Think of it, almost like a little hook, a little barb at the end of a fishing hook. That piece, that barb piece is the curiosity. Did I literally and figuratively hook them enough to say, yeah, Tuesday does work for me. Especially when they could do it proactively without even suggesting a day. And so I find that fascinating when you’re dealing with one-on-one communication versus your example, Chris, when I trying to build a brand out into the world of LinkedIn, out into the world of social media, right? Public speaking for insurance conventions or what have you, that this is a very intimate, but also a very tactical exercise to have just enough of a barb where it’s not going to wound because I may have to throw that person back, right? That fish has to go back. I don’t want to rip anything out. They can break free if they want, but it’s enough where they can’t because curiosity is just too strong. That connected tissue is too powerful.

Chris Beall (41:47):

That’s fascinating business. The whole… Gavin, I’ve got to ask you a question. When you were first to exposed to this craziness, right? Cause Flight School’s not only about this breakthrough concept that we use, the breakthrough script idea, which is a stumble upon that evolved over time. There was the five hour Saturday morning that it coalesced. Thank God I was working with somebody who knew nothing about sales and a lot about the human mind and language, because otherwise we wouldn’t have gotten there at all, I don’t think. But when you were exposed to it, what were your thoughts and feelings about it when you first heard this crazy way of talking to a stranger?

Gavin Tice (42:30):

It was hard for me to acknowledge the fact that I’m an interruption. I’d always been credible by just saying, Hey, look, this is a sales call. You’re welcome to hang up on me. Give me 30 seconds to tell you why I called. But to just say like literally I’m throwing myself under the bus, was a leap for me to say, okay, I can get behind this.

Chris Beall (42:52):

Truthful.

Gavin Tice (42:53):

I mean, I love standard operating procedures. When I learned that having those procedures in place could make me successful instead of winging it and being mediocre all the time, changed my life.

Corey Frank (43:05):

Well, that’s wonderful. Well, Gavin, I tell you what we can. We’ve got to have you back again and again here, if anything, to hear the stories, almost get a state of the union of sales, because I think you have a such unique position, certainly Flight School does, but you Gavin, as an instructor there, to see is our profession getting better? What ails our profession as a aggregate that we, as sales leaders, even if we’re not users of the ConnectAndSell weapons system should be aware of as coaches, since we want to love our team and we got to have the fetching Miss Fanucci on here, certainly very soon, Chris, to talk about that concept of loving your team. So this is Corey Frank for Chris Beall, the powerful Market Dominance Guys’ podcast. Thank you, Gavin, until next time.

 

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What’s a pattern interrupt? And how can it help you break down the resistance most people feel when ambushed by a cold call? Donny Crawford, Director of Conversation Optimization at ConnectAndSell, joins our Market Dominance Guy, ConnectAndSell CEO Chris Beall, on a Selling Power webinar hosted by Founder Gerhard Gschwandtner. These three conversation experts share some little-known tricks of the cold-calling trade, one of which is that saying something unexpected, like “Can I have 27 seconds to tell you why I called?”, can break a prospect’s usual pattern of hanging up or refusing to engage. As Donny says, it truly is a game-changer, especially when said in a friendly, playful voice. “The friendliness actually matters,” he explains. “You’ve got to be assertive enough, but in a friendly manner.” Get ready to absorb this and other helpful tips from ConnectAndSell’s Flight School cold-calling training lessons in this Market Dominance Guys’ episode, “Pattern Interrupts Are Your Friend.”

 

About Our Guest

Donny Crawford is Director of Conversation Optimization at ConnectAndSell. With the expertise developed as a former customer and as Customer Success Manager at ConnectAndSell, he operates as chief instructor of Flight School, a structured program designed to help cold callers find their voice.

Hear more from Donny Crawford on his other Market Dominance Guys’ episodes. 

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Full episode transcript below:

Gerhard Gerschwandtner (01:10):

Name is Gerhard Gerschwandtner. I’m the founder and publisher of Selling Power magazine. Thank you for tuning in.

Donny Crawford (01:16):

And as long as we approach them with the sincerity that what we can provide and share and advise them on is something that could be beneficial to them. Well, then we’re in a good state. So the five sentences, what I love about the breakthrough messaging framework or the ambush conversation framework is really that it’s filled with pattern interrupts, things that sound a little weird. Why is that important? It’s because it doesn’t trigger psychological reactance or reflex responses like Jeb Blount talks about in his book Objections. He talks about reflex responses. People get a lot of cold calls and they built up this wall in front of them and they know how to reflexively response to salespeople. So you have to have quite a few little pattern interrupts that keep them a little on the edge of their seat while they’re listening to you. Let’s walk through those a little bit.

So the first two sentences within this it’s what’s called a greeting. You just get right into the conversation, be upfront, be honest, be friendly, be casual. Hey, it’s Chris Beall, CEO of ConnectAndSell. Hey, it’s Donny over at ConnectAndSell, right? It’s just very simple. I’m not hiding behind the fact that I want to keep elusive what company I’m with. I’m just coming straight out in front and letting you know where I’m at. And then I hit you with what’s called a pattern interrupt and then upfront contract. So these are terms around the Sandler world. So you want to get them into a place where you acknowledge a truth. I know I’m an interruption. Can I have 27 seconds to tell you why I called? Now, there’s a really important method of delivering this line.

And it’s with the use of two different voices. We actually spoke with Chris Voss about this. Chris Beall, you were at a mystery dinner with him. For some reason, you guys both picked out of a hat, the Batman, and you were sitting at a table together and you were able to corner Chris Voss and say, how do you get trust from someone? How much time does it take to get trust? And Chris Voss said, “You have seven seconds.” And Chris is like, “Oh, that’s interesting. Our research says eight seconds.” And Chris Voss says with his FBI eyes, “Your research is wrong. It’s seven seconds.” And he is like, “Oh, okay.” So Chris then asked the follow-up question. What do you need to do to get trust? And Chris Voss said, “That’s the simple part. There’s two things. You need to first establish that you see the world through that individual’s eyes.

You understand the circumstance they are in.” This first piece of, I know I’m an interruption, it’s not an apology. It’s just an acknowledgement of truth. It’s just an acceptance that I’ve interrupted your day. I understand that. And I’m going to state it clearly. I know I’m an interruption. And then Chris Voss said, “The second thing you need to do is you need to have a competent solution to the problem that they are facing. And when we accept the fact that we as cold callers, we who are ambushing people are the problem in a cold call, then we can have a simple solution to that problem. Hey, it’s only going to take 27 seconds.” But Chris Voss actually said something even more important. And what I really want to emphasize here is the use of our voice, how we come across with our voice actually matters. Chris Voss likes the term, the late night FM DJ voice.

That’s what you use for, I know I’m an interruption. Hey, listen. I know I’m an interruption. It’s a confident, solid voice that someone can trust. And then you change your voice to what’s called a playful curious voice. You let it go up a little bit. You might even add a little chuckle every single time I say it. I know I’m an interruption. Can I have 27 seconds to tell you why I called? I manufacture the chuckle. I could say it. I know I’m an interruption. Can I have 27 seconds to tell you why I called but that’s bland. I’m a person. You’re a person. I’m going to transfer energy to you. If I am energized, you’ll be energized with me. I know I’m an interruption. Can I have 27 seconds to tell you why I called? And people usually with me, they say, “Sure, go for it.”

And they’re smiling with me. They might even chuckle them and release a couple endorphins in the back of their mind. Now they’re in a comfortable state. They trust me. Now it’s my game to blow if I actually don’t follow through on this. Once I have a little bit of trust with them and they say, “Sure, go ahead.” Now we proceed to the next part. And this part is actually really important because this is why we’re really excited to share something with them. This is why we’ve actually reached out to them is because I have this deep-seated belief in the thing that I have to share with someone. I have this sincerity, this belief, I’m an expert in something but more than important than that, I really do believe that we have something that is going to be able to make a difference for you and your role in your organization.

And so when I say I believe, I’m not saying, I think we have something kind of cool here. Now I say, I believe I’m putting my reputation on the line. And I say, I believe we’ve discovered a breakthrough. We’ve discovered something. We just happen to be the lucky ones. And we have a breakthrough that is interesting enough that you should learn about it. That breakthrough has a couple different little components. They are value components but we’re not talking about what we do, how we do it all, all the various value that we bring to an organization. We just hint at it. Our breakthrough addresses some economic challenges, provides an emotional security blanket, right? It gets rid of those frustrations, those annoyances in our personal and probably career lives. And then it also allows you to do strategic things you haven’t been able to do.

That’s what your breakthrough does. And by the way, everyone has a breakthrough. You might not be landing on Mars, flying a helicopter, taking cool pictures or curing cancer but as long as you do something better, simpler, faster in a more improved way, you have a breakthrough. And why is it important to set stage by talking about this breakthrough? Because you have something you can promise to deliver to someone. If I say we have a breakthrough and you need to learn about it, that’s what your discovery call is. It doesn’t necessarily need to be you drilling them with questions but if you have something to share with them and something that actually goes through these things. Chris is going to talk about what that breakthrough actually can Intel, if you promise to deliver something, that’s a breakthrough to them, then it’s what elicits them being curious enough to take a meeting from us. The next couple lines are but the last piece.

Gerhard Gerschwandtner (08:01):

Before Chris, let me ask you a question. I’m curious, you make it all sound so smooth and so obvious and how to resonate with the customer in a positive way because you established a positive climate. The question I have is, how long does it take for salespeople to get to that point where they have that internal breakthrough, where they get it. And it’s almost like an opera singer of finding the high seat.

Donny Crawford (08:33):

Does take practice. I’ll tell you, it takes practice. The wonderful thing about, and Gerhard, I really like the question because it takes not just role-playing practice where you’re speaking to a mirror, talking to a manager and doing it. You have to feel how the reactance you’re getting from real-life people. And then it starts to click and get smooth. I would say that you can actually become very comfortable with this after about 30 conversations with people, 30 to 40 conversations.

Gerhard Gerschwandtner (09:12):

How long is it taking in the training school, in the Flight School, 30 minutes, an hour or?

Donny Crawford (09:21):

It probably equates to close to three to four hours of live conversations with people for you to. If you’re sticking to it and you’re really practicing it and you’re really trying to deliver it, it’s going to feel stiff at first. It’s like you’re reading it. But if you really have a go at it, understanding and embracing the reality of it and what you’re trying to accomplish, you’re selling an appointment, not your product right now. This type of breakthrough script can actually within probably 30, 40 conversations, you start to understand the nuances of how to deliver it effectively.

Gerhard Gerschwandtner (09:57):

It reminds me of a book that was written a long time ago by Constantine Stanislavsky. He wrote a book called An Actor Prepares and it is almost like a perfect training manual with salespeople because the book teaches actors how to step into the character, like in your case, that friendly, trustworthy, helping salesperson who wants to deliver value in any conversation. So it’s not just about the words but in embodying that character of that helpful, a customer servant, it takes a lot of internalizing where you  search for memories as an actor in your life where you have been exposed to people like that. And then you embody those people and try to walk through those mental steps. So you have the right mindset and you need the right mindset to develop the right skillset.

Donny Crawford (11:03):

It does start with the mindset. It really does it. You have to have the excitement to be on these conversations. A lot of people are like, “Oh, it’s a cold call. I’m just going to be stiff because it’s a cold call. And they don’t like me. And I don’t like doing it.” And they get that in their mind. And of a sudden that’s going to mess with your energy. That’s going to mess with your approach. It’s more concerned about them being annoyed with me rather than being confident that I have the right plays in place for me to be stay on the offense on a conversation but keep it light and friendly because the friendliness actually matters. If I do care about someone, and I do believe that we have something that can help them. I am going to put the right amount of assertiveness to make sure that they like what Chris said.

If you save someone from stepping off the curb because a bus is coming, you have to hit them in the chest so that they don’t step off the curb. So you have to be assertive enough to guide them in the direction that’s going to be beneficial for them to learn something but the reality is you can do it in a friendly manner, right? And so that friendly, assertive aspect of delivering this, it comes with practice, but it comes from interacting with people and realizing, wow, I do have the ability to make them react in certain ways. I do have the ability to influence them.

Gerhard Gerschwandtner (12:32):

I think there’s another step that needs to be articulated that a lot of salespeople don’t get it. I’ve trained 10,000 salespeople in Europe and in the United States. And I was always surprised how easy it is to teach good skills, providing you lead them to the first step, which is that they believe in themselves they can actually do it. So people need to give themselves permission to make a change, to make that click in their mind first, before they can integrate new skills into their repertoire.

Donny Crawford (14:05):

I love that.

Chris Beall  (14:13):

Yeah. I have something, an experience that speaks to this. So I used to be, as you know, Gerhard, a fairly serious rock climber mountaineer. And I’ve had the opportunity to teach a lot of people how to climb. And the key to learning how to climb is to recognize that your fear of heights is natural. It’s not something to deny. It’s not something to push aside. It’s something to embrace and understand. I mean, it’s good to be afraid of heights. Try falling sometime. As you know, I fell once about 800 feet, and I can tell you it would’ve been better not to. It’s not something you would seek out. When I taught people to climb, the first thing to do is to teach them to trust that they’re not going to fall and die or be hurt. So have them climb up one or two feet, step off, have the rope catch them. Do that over and over where they’re still comfortable.

And that’s like Donny’s 30 conversations, in a safe setting where somebody can coach you, have the experience of not having a bad thing happen when your reflexes say a bad thing’s going to happen. And the click occurs when you forget about the fact that you’re now at 10, 12 feet off the ground because you’re so accustomed to falling onto the rope. And the rope basically feels like the ground to you. And that’s the breakthrough moment when people are learning to climb, they have to go through that moment. And I think that happens in Flight School. I think there’s a point usually between day two and day three, for most people, and it happens at night, by the way. These changes only occur within us when we’re sleeping. We actually are not capable of changing in a fundamental way while we’re awake. And that’s why we dream.

We go through all of these crazy things that we do at night, which if we take them away, we go nuts and we die, bad combination in that order, by the way. We very rarely die first and then go nuts. And so between session two and session three of Flight School and session two is where those previous couple of sentences are, sentence three, actually the breakthrough sentences. That’s where it starts to feel like maybe something good is happening here but I’m not quite there. And then session three that day they wake up and they go with their usual apprehension but it clicks. And it’s the click of having this work as advertised, so to speak, it’s in the same way that the climber is up 12 feet. And for the first time they go to make a move. They can’t make and they fall and nothing happens. It’s okay. That’s the moment that I think everything changes.

And then the sales rep can now embrace the reality of the ambush conversation which is fear of being in the ambusher is fear of height. It’s like fear of the sight of blood. You can’t become a surgeon if you think that the site of blood. You can’t in sales, you can’t be successful unless you don’t faint at the feel of ambushing somebody for their own good. But you can’t declare that. And just say, I’m no longer going to faint at the sight of blood. You have to practice. You can’t get over the fear of heights without practicing. You can’t get over the fear of being the ambusher which is the person who’s going to be exiled. By the way, the deep rooted source of our fear of being ambusher is people who do bad things to other people in the village get thrown out of the village. That’s all there is to it. We fear excel much more than we fear death. And so it’s worse than our fear of heights. So you’re actually addressing your fear of being the bad thing.

Gerhard Gerschwandtner (18:00):

In the analogy with mountain climbing, I remember interviewing Ed McMahon from The Tonight Show and he was landing a plane that was literally on fire. He walked away from it and he said he was terrified. However, he learned through his military training, you can’t transform fear into energy and the energy that somebody told him when he was on the radio, jump and bail and this is going to be a lost plane. And he says, “No, I want to land it. And I want to say that, I think we can fix it.” So the lesson I learned is that there is an inner journey to optimal performance that is not clear to a lot of people. And I think, Donny, you hinted at that, that there is some experience that happens where all of a sudden everything changes and you turn fear into energy and that energy turns into greater performance.

Donny Crawford (19:15):

I agree. And it’s interesting hearing the part of the benefits that can happen when you’ve embraced it. And you’ve made that change. You have to go through that process that Chris was talking about which is that initial fear and that initial fear, once you overcome it, it actually can transfer that fear to this great energy. There’s several times in flight school when people are executing on a script and sometimes they just read it really blandly. They just, “Hi, it’s Donny over ConnectAndSell. I know I’m an interruption.” They’re afraid to be saying it. “Can I have 27 seconds to tell you why I called?” And someone’s like, “Yeah, go for it.” Great. I think we have a breakthrough here and they’re really timid and they’re not very energized. And then at the end, it’s like, “The reason for the call is to see if I could get some time on your calendar. Do you have your calendar there?” And someone will say, “Yeah, I do.”

Just by reading the script and being horrible at delivering it. Some people are just like, “Yeah, that’s fine. We could set up time.” And then the rep is like, it doesn’t have to be that difficult. It doesn’t have to be something where I have as much energy as Donny is demonstrating I need to have it, but I just need to follow a certain path. There is security to the right type of path to take but then you’re going to enhance that experience by really allowing yourself to let your personality shine. I think the best example of this is actually I ran a Flight School for a manufacturer of machinery that they sell to manufacturing plants and food processing plants and all this stuff. And their sales reps are individual sales reps that live in the area that they sell in.

And they go door to door to these manufacturing plants, selling their equipment. And some of them are on the east coast and they have that east coast attitude and they got the sharpness to their voice and the speed and energy and aggressiveness. And then you have the salt of the earth in the middle of the United States sound from Kansas and they got all this personality and sound great. And then you got the Californians, they’re all loose and hanging back and chill with the way they talk and super friendly or whatever it is.

And what’s amazing is they all say the same words in a script but they’ve allowed their own personality. They embrace their personality. And they’re saying the same words, but they have the same effect on people. And so it’s hilarious. Once you allow yourself to be yourself and allow people to get a sense of who you are and that you truly do have something really powerful for them, people are willing to listen at that point and they really are comfortable saying, “Yeah, I’d love to meet with you. You sound great. I love your energy.” Whatever that type of energy is.

Gerhard Gerschwandtner (22:07):

It becomes a positive feedback loop because they see they get results with the new narrative, with the new script, with the new delivery, with the new need that is manifesting itself in a positive way. And then they want to do more. And then you create the addicts, the self actualizing.

Donny Crawford (22:28):

Talk about rock climbing. It’s scary at first, but dang it. When you’re at the top of the mountain and you just accomplish this very hard thing, the high you get from that, it’s fun to execute little things well, but the high at the end when you’ve executed this hard thing and it actually you get a result. Holy crap, I’m hungry for that a lot. I need that over and over and over again. And so once you embrace the little tricky parts to get to that place, it’s super rewarding moving forward.

Gerhard Gerschwandtner (23:02):

Donny, there’s a book I want to recommend. It’s by Josh Waitzkin, it’s called The Art of Learning and it actually has the subtitle on inner journey to optimal performance. And Josh Waitzkin was the junior chess champion in the US at the age 16 or 17. And he actually was a subject of a movie called in search of Bobby Fischer. And he actually gave up chess and transferred that inner learning to tai chi push hands competition which is a Korean specialty. And he actually went to Korea to compete in the world championship. And he became world champion.

Donny Crawford (23:54):

From chess to tai chi? That’s awesome.

Chris Beall  (24:01):

Let’s talk about a breakthrough. By the way, we told folks that we were going to teach them how to have a fail safe discovery meeting. What’s funny is, and it’s just a funny thing. I’m going to put this in and then turn it back over to Donny. The fact of the matter is, you promise in this breakthrough approach that you’re going to share a breakthrough with them. Therefore, a fail say, pre discovery meeting is nothing more than sharing this breakthrough. However, for it to be fail safe, you need to have the psychology of that meeting appropriate to that meeting. When somebody accepts a meeting with you, you actually have got to start that meeting off a little bit differently than an ambush because you’re not ambushing them. So now you need to actually establish a connection at the beginning and then you have to get them to go from their current mental, emotional state, which is apprehension that you’re going to sell to them to some other state, which is basically a mutual curiosity and collaboration in order to find some truth.

What I call the confessional and there’s a little path you can take somebody on in that conversation also from that feeling of apprehension about being sold to, to a feeling of pride. So rather than going to trust what you already have, you can go to pride. And many times I’ve seen people say, experts say, just get to the point. Well, the point is not, hey, I’m going to interrogate you about what’s true about your business in some dry fashion. The point is that we might actually decide to do something together. That’s pretty risky for you. It’s not very risky for me, by the way, I’m the salesperson pretty risky for you because your reputation’s on the line, your careers on the line. And we need to make that move from apprehension to it’s okay to work together through some other emotional states.

And the easy one to get through too, is pride of place. And that is just ask somebody, “Where are you on the face of our blue whirling planet?” And they will speak with pride about their home. They chose it and they’ll speak with pride about it. And it’s quite an amazing experience to allow their pride in themselves in just where they live. Something as simple as that to allow you then to go to their pride and their mission just by asking them this question, which is when everything goes great.

When it’s really outstanding, when it’s the perfect fit between your solution and the customer’s need, when their budget is there, when the price is right for them, where your customer success, people do the right thing. The customer does the right thing. When everything works great, how does your product or your offering change that person’s life? And you let somebody answer that. And now there’s pride in their professional world. That’s how to actually conduct that breakthrough sharing session because then you can get to those three things, the economic one, the emotional one and the strategic one, but you’re doing it in an emotional setting. That’s got a shot. So there I threw in the purpose. Otherwise, we’re not keeping our press or [crosstalk 00:27:18] webinar, but now you’ve learned it while you’ve heard it anyway. And Donny, take us home here. We have three minutes.

Donny Crawford (27:25):

If you back up to the blueprint, I think that there’s something really important here. If you are able to enter into a relationship with someone, there’s two types of people in the world, I’m going to classify the human race. You have the ability to classify them. People you’ve never spoken to and people who you have. As long as you treat the people who you have never spoken to before with a certain understanding that they are somewhat afraid of you when you try to reach out to them for the first time, everyone has a little bit of that apprehension. If you’re able to get a little bit of trust with them, every touch, if you’ve established trust right at the beginning, get go of the relationship. Just to reiterate what Chris was saying. Every touch from that point forward, if you are able to maintain that trust then in any other discussion that you have with them after the first one.

So I’ve talked with them the first time. Those are the people who I need to reach out to for the first time. Every other interaction moving forward from that point, they are able to trust you and therefore give you what you need to help them out moving forward. And when it comes to these breakthrough sharing discussions or discovery calls or getting them into a pilot phase, if you’ve opened up the relationship with a trust building process, and they’re able to continue trusting you on an ongoing basis, they are willing and eager to continue to learn from you, work with you, confess their problems with you. And from that point forward, you’re able to continue to reach out to them when the timing is right and be able to share with them what you need to share with them so that they’re going to be able to essentially get all the benefits that your product, your service you are offering is able to offer to them. But it all does start with this trust.

Chris Beall  (29:32):

Flight School is unlike anything else in the world. It is completely unique. It’s life fire. It’s the only sales training in the world where you make money. You’re not spending money, you’re actually making it because you’re talking to real prospects, having real meetings and real good things happen. You build pipeline during the training at a much higher rate than you might be doing otherwise.

Gerhard Gerschwandtner (29:53):

That was fascinating, Donny. I just reminded when you talked about the magic that happens in a conversation, I think we all want to discover a better way of connecting with people and you have shown us today. There is a better way, and it’s not just about the message. It’s about how you deliver the message. The message has to come really deep from inside of you, the essence of you needs to resonate with other people. So you are talking about authenticity, but the authenticity only comes out if you do the opening right. And I see the opening like the first button on a shirt. If the first button is right, all the other buttons are right.

Chris Beall  (29:53):

It’s going to line up.

Gerhard Gerschwandtner (30:48):

But if the first button is wrong, they don’t line up and you’re not going to have a positive connection with the customer.

Chris Beall  (30:54):

It’s true.

 

 

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When you’re making a cold call, is the voice you’re using an effective voice? Or could it use a little fine-tuning so that you can engender trust with your prospect — the trust needed to secure a discovery meeting? Donny Crawford, Director of Conversation Optimization at ConnectAndSell, joins our Market Dominance Guy, ConnectAndSell CEO Chris Beall, to walk you through how to find your most effective cold-calling voice. In previous episodes of this podcast, you may have heard our guys talk about ConnectAndSell’s Flight School cold-call training program. In today’s episode, you’ll get a mini–Flight School lesson all your own, presented by master instructors, Donny and Chris. Not only will you get a tried-and-true script, but more importantly, you’ll hear detailed instructions on how to use your tone of voice to achieve cold-calling success. As Donny says, you’ll learn to bring out your “friendly voice,” and when you do, you’ll see how that voice can make some magic happen. All this — and so much more — in today’s Market Dominance Guys’ episode, “Finding Your Cold-Calling Voice.”

 

About Our Guest

Donny Crawford is Director of Conversation Optimization at ConnectAndSell. With the expertise developed as a former customer and as Customer Success Manager at ConnectAndSell, he operates as chief instructor of Flight School, a structured program designed to help cold callers find their voice.

Learn more from Donny Crawford on these Market Dominance Guys’ episodes: 

—-more—-

Full episode transcript below:

Gerhard Gschwandtner (01:38):

Hi. My name is Gerhard Gschwandtner. I’m the founder and publisher of Selling Power Magazine, and welcome to our webinar. Thank you for tuning in. We have two experts today that will talk about the topic of how to conduct a fail-safe free discovery meeting, and that’s a vital part of the sales funnel. And I want to welcome Chris Beall. He’s the CEO of ConnectAndSell, and also Donny Crawford. He is the Flight School director with ConnectAndSell. Welcome, Donny. Welcome, Chris.

Donny Crawford (02:13):

Hey, Gerhard. Thanks.

Chris Beall (02:14):

Hey, Gerhard and everybody. Great to be here. So Donny and I are here from ConnectAndSell. For those of you don’t know what ConnectAndSell does, we let you or one of your reps push a button and have a conversation with somebody on your list with no effort whatsoever. So all that dialing, navigating phone systems, hanging up on voicemails, yapping with gatekeepers, all that stuff that 95 times out of 100 leads nowhere … and by nowhere, I do mean voicemail … goes away. You push a button. You wait a little bit. You can have a cup of coffee, write an email, pet your cat, whatever you want to do. And then bloop, you’re talking to somebody on your list.

Chris Beall (02:53):

So I’m the CEO of ConnectAndSell, been around this company for 10 years, used to be a product guy. Donny Crawford … His title has actually just changed. He is our director of conversation optimization, and there’s a little background that’s required here. Donny’s been with us for longer than I have in that he was a customer of ConnectAndSell, a user, end-user, a cold caller and follow-upper sales rep back in the day. And he was famous for refusing to take a job unless they would get him ConnectAndSell. So he’d go all the way through the interview process, and then when they’d make the offer, he’d say, “Great, happy to do it and come to work for you. However, I have one requirement.” And eventually, when he had done that often enough, apparently somewhere along the way, we were smart enough to beg him to come to work with us. And he worked as a customer success person for a long time and then became our chief Flight School instructor.

Chris Beall (03:52):

And Flight School doesn’t make sense what … The name of it doesn’t quite tell you what it is. Flight School’s a program, structured program that helps a set of rep together, five or more of them, to go from their current state regarding their skill and their competence, their confidence with regard to cold calling to the top 5% in the world. And they do it through a series of blitz and coach sessions where Donny or one of Donny’s colleagues actually coaches them live while they’re talking to real prospects. So this isn’t role play. This isn’t lecture. This is live fire under pressure.

Chris Beall (04:30):

And the reason that Donny teaches this is that the key to first conversations, cold calls, or any conversation is the human voice, right? Almost all the information in a conversation is in the emotional part, which is handled by the voice, not the words, and what is required to get people to be really great at performance with the voice is they have to practice under pressure. Anybody can sound great in a role play. Nobody sounds quite so good when they’re talking to a real prospect, and that’s what Flight School lets you do is learn to be great. And that gives you confidence, and that’s kind of a virtuous cycle. So that’s what-

Gerhard Gschwandtner (05:08):

Chris, let me ask you a question because I find the term conversation optimization very interesting. And what you seem to be saying is that in Flight School, you learn just to communicate content but to pay close attention to how that content is delivered in an emotional atmosphere that’s optimized.

Chris Beall (05:32):

If I tried to say it better, I would stumble all over the place, so I’m just going to stick with that. That’s fabulous. Donny, I mean, tell us. You were just a regular rep at one point in your life, struggling through the world, probably not thinking you were particularly good would be my guess, knowing you, because you don’t go around thinking you’re great. And then somewhere in there, you got introduced to this ConnectAndSell thing, and somewhere else, you must have had this kind of aha that said the how that we speak with somebody and how they receive it emotionally turns out to be not just important but maybe the key.

Donny Crawford (06:07):

Oh, absolutely. When I first used ConnectAndSell, it was probably 14 years ago at a little startup company, Electric Cloud. And I was a part of a team of really dynamic reps. They were all different personalities, very interesting guys and gals that I was working with, and their voices were really interesting to listen to. And because you’re having conversations in a bullpen together, you get to hear a lot of different styles of reps speaking with people. But then ConnectAndSell came to the team, and then we were having more conversations. And so we were exposed to a lot more of these experiences of interacting with people. And at first, I think all of us are stiff when we are kind of reengaging in cold calling and trying to get out there and talk to a marketplace, but there is a moment in our career when we find our voice and we find how comfortable we can be on these conversations that we’re having with people.

Donny Crawford (07:06):

And it’s that moment that it clicks, and you’re like, “Hey, this is my voice. I can be friendly. I can be assertive. I can sound like an expert, but more importantly, I can really make a connection with people.” And when you find that voice and within yourself, it’s amazing how from then on, it’s just going to be magic, and then you can improve little pieces of what you say and how you’re saying things. And so I found that to happen probably 13, 14 years ago.

Donny Crawford (07:32):

And then in Flight School, we get an opportunity to work with all of our customers who go through Flight School and their teams of reps who go in there, and they find their voice. And it’s fascinating to be able to hear when that moment happens, when it clicks, when it’s not just a script they’re following anymore, but they’ve internalized it. And they like it, and they get the friendly voice out there. And they’re able to actually make some magic happen on these conversations. It’s a neat moment when that actually occurs.

Chris Beall (08:00):

Wow. You just gave us the tagline for Flight School. Our tagline for ConnectAndSell’s always been around, right? Conversations matter. Flight School … Find your voice.

Donny Crawford (08:10):

Finding your voice, totally.

Chris Beall (08:12):

Wow, find your voice. I love it. Thank you. We don’t need the rest of this webinar. Thank you, everybody. We’ve gotten our little piece of marketing development done today. Find your voice. That is what it’s really about.

Gerhard Gschwandtner (08:23):

[crosstalk 00:08:23].

Chris Beall (08:25):

I’m an old computer scientist, right? And I’m a physicist mathematician by background, so I always think about things in terms of what’s really going on under the covers. And just for everybody in the audience, just to think about this, an email contains about 5,000 bits of information. And if you want to get the rough calculation, it’s about 10 bits per letter, per character. Some people would say eight, but given all the emojis and everything, we got up to 10, right?

Donny Crawford (08:51):

It’s averaged to 10 now.

Chris Beall (08:52):

[crosstalk 00:08:52] 10 bits per character, and there’d be maybe 500 characters in an email. It’s something on the order of 70 words, 80 words, something like that, maybe less. So when you kind of think about that and go, “Wow, 5,000 bits, that sounds like a lot,” the human voice carries 20,000 bits per second. That’s four emails per second, and every one of those bits will have an impact inside of that other person, because our response to the human voice is entirely involuntary. We can’t decide whether in advance, when Gerhard speaks, am I going to end up feeling like I trust him or like him or know him or not? I can’t do anything about that. That’s something that happens inside of me well below the conscious level. And so while I might be preconditioned … I’ve been told Gerhard’s a great guy, and so when he speaks, maybe I have a little bit of more of a positive bias. Fact to the matter is, his voice is either going to captivate me, or it’s not.

Chris Beall (10:49):

And that’s at a rate of … For those of you who send emails, in a seven-second conversation, you have just sent and had received and paid attention to the contents of 28 emails. But of that, 95% of that information is emotional information. It’s carried in the tone. It’s carried in the pace. It’s carried in things we can’t even really put a finger on, but they put a finger on us right in the middle of our brain.

Gerhard Gschwandtner (11:17):

I want to add something. This is really fascinating to me. It’s so interesting that you focus on what resonates with other people. There is actually brain research when two people have a conversation that is constructive, that’s enjoyable, that is productive, then their brain regions, the same brain regions that light up in the speaker light up actually in the receiver. So when a salesperson or a customer have a productive conversation, the same brain regions light up. However, when you say something that does not resonate, nothing lights up, and there’s no communication.

Chris Beall (12:01):

Wow. Wow. So we have a podcast episode on the Market Dominance Guys Podcast. I don’t know which episode it is. Maybe somebody will find it and put it in the notes. The title is Your SDRs are Brain Surgeons, and that’s what it’s about. Well, let’s jump into this a little bit, and it basically kind of comes down to this. And I’ll give you an overview, and then I’m going to turn it over to Donny here, who’s the expert.

Chris Beall (12:26):

So there’s a view that we have at ConnectAndSell just kind of founded on a fair amount of experience. We’ve been doing this for, as Donny said, 15, 16 years and at a pretty decent pace, about 3 million conversations per year that we connect for people. So we have a lot to study, and here’s what we’ve learned, is that in sales, we’re taught to lead with value. And we actually imagine something that, when you think about it, is crazy. We imagine somebody sitting there waiting for us to call them and tell them how to do their job, tell them that here’s something of value you are not paying attention to, and that’s kind of an odd conceit when you think about it.

Chris Beall (13:06):

An alternative to leading with value would be to recognize that trust is the key in business-to-business especially for a number of reasons and that if we can begin with trust, then everything else that follows works better, is easier. It’s within a trust relationship. If Donny calls me and I don’t know Donny and he has a brief conversation with me and I find myself trusting Donny … I don’t even know I trust Donny, and then he sends me an email. And he sends me an email afterwards. I say to Donny, “Donny, I’m just too busy. I got to go. I got to go.” And he says, “Well, okay.” And he lets me go because he has ConnectAndSell, so he knows he’s going to talk to me someday. So he lets me go.

Chris Beall (13:52):

And then he sends me an email that has the only subject line in email that will actually be open and paid attention to 100% of the time. Thanks for our conversation today. Thank you for our conversation today. That’s the ultimate subject line in the world of B2B but not if you haven’t had a conversation. So a trust-building conversation, which takes about seven seconds according to Chris Voss, the author of Never Split the Difference, the FBI hostage negotiator guy … He told me one evening, “We have seven seconds to get somebody to trust us in a cold call. By second number eight, it’s too late.”

Chris Beall (14:30):

So what this webinar is about is, okay, so say you accept that. Say you accept that beginning with trust and then not blowing it, by the way, which is the other key, because you blow it and you start to sell to somebody, try to corner them with your clever questions … If I showed you a way to save 23% on the blah blah, what would … That’s all those trap questions we ask them. You can blow the trust that way. Feel free. Salespeople do it every day of the week. They trade trust for the off chance of a lucky commission. They do it every day.

Chris Beall (15:07):

But once you get trust, it’s precious enough that you might consider conserving it and preserving it through the rest of the relationship, which might take years. It might take years for an interesting reason we’ll share in just a moment. So whether it’s email, digital, content sharing, future conversations, meetings, phone, video, you meet somebody to conference, if you’ve had a trust building conversation with with them, you’re ahead of all competitors. And by the way, any competitor that comes and tries to displace that trust will themselves not be trusted. We do not trust people who ask us to not trust people that we already trust. So become that person. We call it paving the market with trust.

Chris Beall (15:53):

So here’s why. There’s a big idea in here. So if you’re selling a B2B product, the replacement cycle for your category of product is about three years. It might be two. It might be four, but in general, in B2B, if we just bought something yesterday, we’re not looking for something that does the same thing today. We just aren’t. We’re not looking to discard our products and services that we buy and solutions in favor of something else because our reputation depends on them actually working. If we’re the decision maker, we recommended that solution. You recommend ConnectAndSell, by gumbo, it better work, and you’re not going to look for anything else for three years.

Chris Beall (16:33):

So three years is interesting. That means only 8.3% of your total addressable market is in market right now of your perfect market, 100% perfect. You’ve done every kind of imaginable research, and you know it’s dead center bullseye perfect. And guess what? Guess what? 91.7% of them aren’t in market, not this quarter. So what are you going to do about that?

Chris Beall (17:01):

Well, there’s two alternatives. You can just try to grab them when you got them in front of you, choke them to death, whatever, get them to buy right now, and you can get 8.3% of the market if you’re perfect if you had 100% market share of those in market those quarter. But what about the 90 whatever it is, 91.7%? Well, if you build trust relationships with everybody in the first seven seconds and nurture those relationships over that three years, you can dominate your market. That’s why my podcast is called Market Dominance Guys. It’s not puffing up your chest. It’s like math.

Chris Beall (17:38):

Here’s the math. Build trust with everybody in your market in seven-second conversations. See if you can get a meeting. Why not, right? You’re in a conversation. Sometimes they’re in market now, and sometimes they’re willing to learn more. Own that market as long as you don’t blow it. How do you blow it? Either sell to them inappropriately or neglect them. So this is the big idea, right?

Chris Beall (18:04):

So now imagine you embrace this approach. So you’re using sales correctly. You’re searching the market for those that fit your TAM. They’re your ideal customers, but most of them aren’t ready. And for those that are in market now, how are you going to find out? Well, you’d actually have to set up discovery meetings. Now, they’re usually called discovery meetings because you want to discover that they need your product. You’re all guilty of this, by the way. You have this hope. I sure hope this meeting leads to a deal, right? If you can abandon that hope and actually just have an honest discovery meeting, what I call time in the confessional, where you let them know what it is that you think you do of value you or provide a value and they let you know what their circumstance is and you explore that together, some pretty amazing things can happen.

Chris Beall (18:57):

Andy Paul has, by the way, written an entire book. I’m going to hold it up here. Anybody who hasn’t bought Sell Without Selling Out by Andy Paul … just came out February 22nd. Go by this book. Read this book. Then go get the audiobook, and listen to this book. And then go back and read the book again, and then examine your soul because there’s some stuff in here that he’s talking about that’s really, really simple. Let’s make a connection. Then let’s go to curiosity, our curiosity. Be curious. Let’s truly try to understand, and let’s be generous. Now, I didn’t blow the book. There’s more to read in there, but that’s kind of it, right?

Chris Beall (19:34):

So how do you find out who’s ready to go forward with you from curiosity to understanding? Well, in what we call a discovery meeting, we might be able to achieve some understanding by asking questions and truly listening, not just hearing but listening, and not listening for what we want to hear but listening for what they actually say and then trying to understand. So here’s where we start. We start in a funny place. This person’s a stranger. We’re a stranger. We’re a bad stranger, by the way. We’re that tiger. You’re the tiger, right? So you’re going to ambush somebody. Why? Because there’s no alternative mathematically. That is, if I’m going to have a second conversation with somebody, I got to have a first conversation. That’s just math. It’s damned hard to count to two unless you first count through one.

Chris Beall (20:27):

I know lots of folks would love to skip the step. Can’t we just have them come to us out of the woodwork, out of the wild for discovery? Won’t they be looking for us? Yes, you and every competitor you have, every alternative, they’ll be looking for them too. So your chances of building trust before they have a chance to build trust goes way down unless you’re willing to do the hard thing, and the hard thing is to be an ambusher, to ambush somebody. It’s just the way it is, and I apologize to all of you who don’t feel that ambushing is okay. It’s not okay to ambush somebody.

Chris Beall (21:04):

My friend Scott Webb, who is a chief growth officer over at HUB International, he’s a pretty dynamic sales guy. He told me once, said, “When I go in to a session with ConnectAndSell to ambush people and talk to them, here’s my mindset. They’re about to step in front of a speeding bus. I’m going to stop them. They’ll thank me. And I don’t care if it hurts them a little bit to slap them in the middle of the chest and keep them from walking in front of that bus.” So what is the avoidance of the bus? It’s the attendance at the discovery meeting.

Chris Beall (21:38):

Now, we call it a prediscovery meeting because it’s kind of funny only because discovery, like cold calling, has a funny connotation. It means I want to discover that you need my product soon so that I can make my quota. That’s what it normally means. This is a little different. So imagine you have this ambush conversation, and in the ambush conversation, you use five simple sentences, all based on sort of an emotional journey that you believe that you can help somebody go on from their ambush-state fear of you, fear of you to a state where they’re actually trusting you in seven seconds, then to a state where they’re curious about why it is that you called them and what you’re talking about and to where they actually commit to saying they’ll come to a meeting.

Chris Beall (22:35):

So this is what Donny teaches, and I’m going to turn it over to Donny at this point. And I’ll tell you a story about Donny. I called Donny one day when I was in the Orlando airport. This is an embarrassing story, but it’s not really. It’s got a great ending. So I said, “Donny, I’ve really become convinced …” This was many years ago. “I’ve become convinced that there’s a different way of holding these first conversations that is 100% reliable with regard to getting somebody to trust, and that’s helpful for them because it takes them on a journey to actually learning about whatever or it is that we offer that might be able to help them and that learning is the value that we want to offer in the meeting, not the product but just the learning. So I think that this is something we can embrace.” And Donny said, “It’s a script. It’s a terrible thing.” And then I took him through what it was, and he said, “It’s worse than I thought.”

Donny Crawford (23:31):

Oh my word.

Chris Beall (23:33):

“It’s the most terrible thing.”

Donny Crawford (23:34):

This is painful.

Chris Beall (23:34):

“This sounds terrible. This sounds awkward. I couldn’t do that.” So for two hours, I walked around the Orlando airport. I thought security was going to come and start talking to me like I was a piece of abandoned luggage or something. They’re looking for somebody who had left their child who’s 6’1″ and 215 walking around, because he doesn’t know how to get on an airplane. And I’m talking intensely to Donny, and finally, he says, “Well, okay, I’ll try.” And then the next day, he calls me up and goes, “Oh my god, this is magic. This is magic.” He said, “The first time I tried, it was really awkward. And then but there was a little something. Something resonated.”

Chris Beall (24:11):

It turns out there is a way of talking to folks that you ambush that is magic, and that’s what Donny teaches in Flight School. But it comes with a consequence, and the consequence is now you got to keep the promise that you make within those five sentences. And the promise is that you’re going to share something with them. So Donny, at that, I’m going to turn it over to you.

Donny Crawford (24:32):

Well, let’s talk about the five sentences. And you’re right, it felt super awkward to begin with. This was back in 2016 when you wanted us to field test it. And so me and James Townsend, our VP of customer success, we hit the phones. I was actually in Klamath Falls, Oregon, this little town in Oregon, Southern Oregon, visiting my sisters, and I was sitting on the bottom bunk in my niece’s bedroom, making cold calls with this script that you handed over to me, Chris. And it was awesome, actually. It was a really interesting experience.

Donny Crawford (25:02):

I’m going to recite the five sentences, and we’ll go through of what they are. But if I were cold calling and I was reaching out to someone, I would start off … If I was selling ConnectAndSell, it’d sound like this. “Hey, it’s Donny over a ConnectAndSell. How’s it going?” They’re like, “Good. What can I do for you?” “I know I’m an interruption. Can I have 27 seconds to tell you why I called?” And at that point, they’re like, “Sure, I’m a nice guy. I’ll give you 30 seconds. How about that?” “Perfect. I appreciate that. So here at ConnectAndSell, I believe we’ve discovered a breakthrough that eliminates all the frustration and the waste that keeps your best sales reps from being effective on the phone, maybe even been using the phone at all. And the reason for my call is to see if I could get 15 minutes on your calendar, share that breakthrough with you. Do you happen to have your calendar available?” Those are the five sentences.

Donny Crawford (25:50):

Now, it sounds like I went through a whole weird pitch or something like that, a monologue, but the reality is there is some engagement there. And as long as you’re using the right voice during each little play, each little sentence that you’re delivering, it actually gets someone comfortable enough to ask the question, “Yeah, I do have my calendar, but what is this, right? What do you want to share with me? What’s this breakthrough?” And the word breakthrough actually has a really interesting power to it because it elicits curiosity from someone to learn something about something that they potentially could use. They would benefit from it.

Donny Crawford (26:28):

And we’re putting it in the context of being able to say, “Hey, there’s something really important that we’d like to share with you, and if you give us that opportunity, no big deal for 15 minutes. It’s really something everyone can consume. But if you give us that time, this is something that could be really beneficial to think about and to learn from us.”

Donny Crawford (26:50):

Now we don’t want to be salespeople. We want to actually be advisors. Chris, I’ve heard you say one of the less trusted professions, probably grouped around politicians and lawyer, are sales people. We want to be more like the nurses, like the therapists, the teachers in our lives, who we trust a little bit more, and us shifting from being a salesperson to being an advisor is actually something that we want to accomplish.

Donny Crawford (27:19):

So in an ambush conversation, we need to treat them appropriately. These people are afraid of us when we’ve come out of the blue. We caught them off guard. They don’t even know why they answered the phone most of the time. They’re running into another meeting. They’re jumping on a plane. They’re picking their kids up from school. They don’t know why they answered the phone, but you have them there. And a lot of times, we think of these as cold calls. But the reality is, a cold call just means it’s rigid and frozen, and there’s not a lot of information around it. But we do have a lot of information about them. They’re the right type of person at the right type of business that potentially our breakthrough can make a difference for them.

Announcer (28:02):

We’re going to end the first part of this webinar right here. In our next episode, Donny will continue to take you through those five sentences and give you more background and ways you can implement this that maybe entice you to want to sign up for Flight School. Join us again for the next episode of Market Dominance Guys.

 

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Are you motivated to help the prospects you’re cold-calling? Jennifer Standish, Founder of Prospecting Works, joins our Market Dominance Guys, Corey Frank and Chris Beall, in this third of a three-part conversation to talk about different approaches to this process we call “sales.” Thinking of a sale as a “win,” implies that sales is a contest between you and your prospect — and your prospect is the loser. Does this sound like cause for a happy dance? Jennifer says it makes her crazy to hear salespeople say that they’re “killing” their numbers. Corey and Chris agree that this aggressive attitude could also kill the chance of developing a trusting relationship with a buyer, a relationship that would serve both parties now and in the future. Oh, these three savvy sales folks know what’s what when it comes to making magic happen between a salesperson and a prospect. You’re going to want to take notes while you’re listening to this week’s Market Dominance Guys’ episode, “The Magical Type of Cold Call.”

Catch the previous two episodes in this conversation here:

EP122: Learning to Manage Your Voice Under Pressure
EP123: Hire Yourself a Grandma

About Our Guest

Jennifer Standish is Founder of Prospecting Works, an organization that assists salespeople in overcoming cold-call reluctance. She combines her 25-year cold-calling career with her skills as an intuitive healer, offering a “warm and fuzzy” approach that attracts introverts as well as people who don’t want to be considered salespeople.

—-more—-

Full episode transcript below:

Corey Frank (01:24):

Let’s switch gears for a second and just talk about the exhaust, the results, the outcome of the cold call. The meeting. Whether it shows or it doesn’t show. What’s your philosophy around that? Folks at ConnectAndSell have a very interesting philosophy around no-shows, which a lot of folks have adopted, including us. But invariably, you’re going to get folks that fires happen or maybe the interest didn’t lock in or life gets in the way. What do you do about no-shows? What’s the attitude about no-shows and how do you approach them?

Jennifer Standish (01:51):

I’ve experienced very few no-shows, so I don’t know that I have a philosophy on them, just because my people show up.

Corey Frank (01:59):

How come? When you listen to an average cold call versus, I think Steve Richard from ExecVision always gave the stat that, I think you may know the most recent one, maybe from Trish [Pertuzzi 00:02:09], Chris. Was it 52% is the standard show rate for B2B calls, I think it is. Something like that. So then, what is that chasm that your team and you are doing that maybe gets them to lock in a little bit more than the average?

Jennifer Standish (02:23):

Well, I’ll tell them, I’ll say, “So I’m going to send you an invitation and if I don’t see that you’ve accepted it, I’m going to call you back to make sure that you’ve received it. Because I want to make sure that you get it.” And they’re like, “Oh, okay, that’s fine.” And then I’ll send it. And then if they don’t accept it, I will call them back and I’ll be like, “Did I get the email wrong? [crosstalk 00:02:45] going on?” And so they’ll say, “Yeah, no, I don’t see it. I don’t see it.” And I’m like, “Well, let me send it again.” And then inevitably it gets to them.

Corey Frank (02:54):

So you will call them back.

Jennifer Standish (02:55):

I will call them back. And then if they still don’t, then I call them the day before and I’ll be like, “I’m just calling because …” And he’s like, “No, no, no, I got it. I just didn’t accept it. It’s here on my calendar.” So I will follow up on people and I will nudge them. And then they show up. But that’s just me. They can’t get out of it with me.

Corey Frank (03:16):

I believe you. I believe you. Chris talks about the moral authority frame being broken when you don’t show for a meeting and you use that, ethically, of course, to secure the second meeting. Couple episodes with Cheryl with, I think it’s called I Heart No-shows, it’s a very, very … part of our popular episode. But certainly, if you can secure the meeting now the first time by a couple of nuances, like you’re saying, calling them, “Hey, 10 minutes ago, we just got off the phone. You didn’t accept it yet. Make sure I got it correctly.” That’s a simple tip, I love that.

Chris Beall (03:48):

Especially telling them you’re going to do that. I mean, the big point over Cheryl’s episode, the what I call uber point beyond I heart no-shows, is subtle. It’s really subtle. And it’s a different point, which is, when somebody agrees to meet with you, you actually now have a relationship within which you can turn, if there’s going to be a meeting, into when. And I call it the operational regime. You’re no longer in the sales regime anymore at all. In the sales regime, you’re only ever answering the question if. If it makes sense for us to take a mixed step. That’s all we do in sales. We exchange information and we make a single decision. That’s an if. If we should move forward together. Once we make that decision, we must immediately exit the sales regime and go into the operational regime, which is around the question when.

Chris Beall (04:46):

Obviously if you didn’t receive the invitation, then the when is not being handled. So I’m taking it on myself to help make the when happen. I’m not selling to you, I’m just helping. And I think that’s the key to what Jen just said, it’s like you say, this doesn’t always work because everybody knows stuff doesn’t always work, right? No matter what you try, you can’t open a damn door and have that work every time. In fact, I had one bite me the other day when I tried to open it. So it doesn’t always work. So I’m going to give you the heads up. Here’s how I handle that. And it’s also, there’s a funny way that you said it, Jen, that I really like. It shows what I call persistent vulnerability. You are saying that it’s not going to be perfect and you are going to persist in the face of that imperfection, that potential imperfection, on behalf of the team, that is you and them. You’re going to persist. You’re going to do the work. And that’s service. I mean you’re in service to them right at that point.

Jennifer Standish (05:45):

That is key. I believe that from the minute that they pick up the phone, I’m demonstrating client service. I’m demonstrating client service. When I call them, if I were to say, “I’m going to call you the day before to confirm, and if we need to reschedule, we can reschedule.” I’m demonstrating client service. [crosstalk 00:06:03].

Chris Beall (06:03):

That’s it. And I think sales people, in general, might have this problem. I think all the ones that I’ve ever worked with have this problem. That they don’t get when they’ve left the world of if and they’re now just a service person. And by just I mean, they’re now exalted as the service person. So they’ve gone from being the second least trusted profession in the world, a salesperson, and they’ve crossed through this boundary, this membrane that separates the world of people you got to be careful of, to the world of people that are trying to help you. So the second most trusted profession is nurses. Why?

Chris Beall (06:41):

Because we’re pretty sure nurses are trying … No. The first, most trusted is nurses. The second most trusted is teachers. We figure they’re trying to help somebody also, right? So in sales, if we can go from being a salesperson to being a helper and we can demonstrate our helpfulness while also increasing the odds that we’ll be able to execute on what we decided to do, which is to have a meeting with each other, then I think there’s magic in there and it’s unappreciated magic. And the rough, tough, got to win salesperson has a really, really hard time at that. If see sales as a contest between yourself and the prospect, it’s incredibly hard to turn off the if and become a when servant.

Corey Frank (07:28):

And that’s endemic, it seems, of a lot of the hustle [inaudible 00:07:31] culture, must do today, crush your number that you [inaudible 00:07:36]. It kind of anonymizes all these relationships down to whatever number is on the board, as opposed to, the empathy is just wreaking from Jen’s comments coming through my speakers. I mean, it’s like, yeah, sign me up for an appointment. Whatever it is you have. And the antithesis of that is this, kill it at all costs. And that’s the world of if versus the world of when. And they don’t know when they’ve crossed that chasm.

Jennifer Standish (08:03):

I’m an empath. This is probably another reason why I’m really good at this. But it makes me crazy when I see LinkedIn and I see all the men who are kill the numbers, crush, crush, be the top 1%. All this stuff. And then I see people, the advertisements of, somebody’s on a jet. Live this lifestyle, live this lifestyle. And I’m like, no, it’s not about that. Why does it have to be that? I hate it. I hate it. I find it disgusting. I’m not motivated by money. I’m not motivated by commission. I’m motivated to help people. I want people to live better lives.

Jennifer Standish (08:43):

I wish that there were more women who were teaching cold calling, who were doing it … I’m warm and fuzzy. I’m warm and fuzzy. I do it a very feminine way. Why a lot of women are attracted to my process, a lot of introverts are attracted to my process. I wish more women were out there teaching it because I think that the community would be better for it because that stuff is what is hurting. It’s hurting us as a community of cold callers because it produces the thing that works against us. It’s got to stop, but I don’t know how, because these people sell programs. Chris, help me.

 

Corey Frank (10:06):

If you listen, Jen, to our first, I think, two or three episodes, we went in and talked about, we’re not anti VC. We’re not anti private act. We’re not anti-capital. But certainly that capital, in some of the hands where they have this pressure, this need to hit a number, there’s certain behaviors that certainly are justified or more rabid than others.

Chris Beall (10:28):

There’s always been an issue with sales, since the beginning, and we haven’t gotten over it yet. So we talked about this in one episode, sales evolved at the crossroads. You didn’t sell the people in your village, that’s a ridiculous concept. You have to live with them. You collaborate with them. So the classic stuff in sales where, I got you. I got the great deal and now you’re going to find out that that sack of rice that I sold you actually was bottomed with sand. That doesn’t happen in the village because they exile you and it’s really, really bad to be exiled. It’s worth the death. But when people started traveling near and far, like on the Silk Road, and they had to buy their supplies from somebody at a crossroads, well then the salesperson is trying to get the best of this stranger who’s going to go off and die in the desert anyway.

Chris Beall (11:18):

So I think sales got locked in to a transactional model where it’s, I win. We call them wins. Think about that. Wins against whom? It’s an odd concept, when you think about it. And so now, here we are in this modern world where there’s not much of value to sell that you don’t go with. You’re part of the product. It’s very rare, now, that you get to leave behind some, whatever it is, and say, “Best of luck. Do your best with it.” I mean, you can’t use a piece of cloud software also as a door stop if it doesn’t work out. It just isn’t like that. You pretty much have to make it work with everything in your business. And in B2B, everything has to work with everything. There’s almost nothing that I would call a legitimate product in B2B. Even our product, as simple, stupid as it is, push a button. I mean, that’s the training, right Jen? Jen, push the button. How hard is that? And then wait. Well you have no choice but to wait.

Chris Beall (12:23):

I mean, that’s kind of like life, it goes on if you just sit there. And then when it goes, bloop, talk to somebody. Who are you going to talk to? The person that’s on the screen. Okay, good, that’s it. But it doesn’t live in that isolation. It has to be integrated into workflows and how they hire people, how they onboard people. It has to be integrated into some scripting notion that can be reused so that if you talk to this many people, you can hopefully get something done. It turns out you need a school to learn how to talk to people. On and on and on it goes. There is no such thing as a product anymore that is left behind after a transaction. And that used to be the standard. And I think that’s changed the practical qualities with sales. That sales is a step along the way to an integrated relationship now. And in the innovation economy, it’s all it is. It is all it is. And yet, the old habit of, I got to win. A win against whom? When we call it closed one, who lost?

Corey Frank (13:27):

Yeah, great stuff. That’s great stuff. Well, that obviously contributes to, certainly the mindset that, am I learning call by call versus a binary outcome? Either I got the appointment or I didn’t. Versus the exhaust and the residue of, which element of the call did I do well and which ones maybe I fell a little flat in that coaching piece? So how do you deal with that, Jen?

Jennifer Standish (13:53):

I’m going to answer that question next, but this is the question I’m going to answer is, as a cold caller, when I cold call for clients, and I haven’t in a long time, except for now. What I tell my clients is that you’re really hiring me to have intelligent conversations with your prospects. Because what I am doing is, in addition to scheduling appointments, I’m also having really smart conversations and I’m learning about your competitors. I’m learning about your prospects, an industry as a whole. I’m also keeping your data up to date because your list then becomes a real asset to you. And it may not always be appointments that you get from me. I worked for an early stage company and learned a tremendous amount about their primary competitor and the features that they weren’t offering their clients. And I was able to go back and go, “Guys, they do not like the fact that big, big, big company over here doesn’t offer this.”

Jennifer Standish (14:50):

And they were able to integrate it into their services. And so it was like, you can inform product development. So it’s not just appointments. Let’s concentrate on something bigger. Yes, appointments lead to things, but you can inform product development. You can get industry intelligence, competitive intelligence. You may not be able to get an appointment now, but maybe in six months you do. Maybe in a year you do. I learned when people were going to be let go and a new person was going to be coming, before the person was going to be let go knew. So I knew to call back in a year because that person was going to be let go and then somebody else was going to be hired and I could with that person. So there’s all of this information that, okay, immediately it didn’t result in an appointment, but my goodness, it was incredibly helpful for the long road. And so, that’s what cold calling really means to me is, intelligent conversations.

Chris Beall (15:49):

Wow. So I just came up with the phrase, Corey, and I want to throw it your way. The cold conversation is a short interaction as part of a long game.

Jennifer Standish (15:59):

I play the long game. I play the long game. And, I will tell you that, the clients that I brought in through cold calling ended up being the easiest clients to work with. They were the most forgiving. They paid their bills on time. They never quibbled with my fee. And they became friends long after I left the agency and so did they. And I know this to be true, that there’s something that happens when you cold call somebody and they agree to an appointment. That there’s a bond that happens because, on LinkedIn, I posted this and other sales people said the exact same thing. That there’s something that happens with a client that you get through cold calling, that they become really, really, really great friends.

Jennifer Standish (16:40):

And, in my agency, a client that came in any other way, like through another person, they were miserable. They were awful. Especially if they were brought in by somebody who was miserable themselves. So they was just something about who you resonate with. Which leads me to then say, be careful who sets appointments for you. Because I may resonate with somebody, and if I hand them off to somebody vastly different than myself, there’s going to be a disconnect. So be careful. Because I’ve set appointments for people where there was a big difference and there was a big disconnect. And I was not the right caller for them, because they weren’t able to do anything with them, and they would’ve been better off calling for themselves. And they would’ve resonated with other people.

Chris Beall (17:27):

Which is a very interesting point too. We’ve been working with a number of CEOs to help them do their own calling for the purpose of being both the offerer and the offer. That is, they are the bait in the bucket. They are that person. And they can learn how not to have the meeting on the spot and allow the psychology of the meeting to be more practical, shall we say, because it’s an agreement to come together. And it does start with a true agreement between two people to do the riskiest thing that we do in life, which is to open ourselves up to another person.

Chris Beall (18:03):

So I think that’s where that deep bond comes from. These CEOs that we’ve working with recently, and Cheryl does most of this work, they are truly, I think, kind of transformed when they start to have their own calling sessions. And it’s quite interesting. I mean, we’ve had one of them on the show who, he was already a pretty good caller, he now converts at about 30% and he said he makes magic happen out there. But he talks about how it’s changed him.

Jennifer Standish (18:34):

Yes, yes.

Chris Beall (18:34):

It’s changed him to be the person who’s reaching out for himself. No chance of a disconnect. But I also think that it’s very correct that, if you are the caller, you need to believe in the product. And the product is the person that you’re setting the meeting for. That’s the product. And if you don’t believe in them, don’t set a meeting with them.

Corey Frank (18:55):

Well maybe, Chris, you should mention that to Bob Perkins, is the next CEO Round Table session is, you conduct a session, live, where the CEOs, they bring a list. And they set up with ConnectAndSell and it’s under the purpose, certainly, of teaching them a little bit of a mini Flight School. But you had said yourself many times on this program, every CEO should be spending a significant amount of time, or a fair amount of time every week, cold calling some of their customers to understand exactly what their frontline team members are doing. And I think for the next Round Table session, I could see maybe something like that.

Chris Beall (19:31):

Yeah, that’d be pretty fun. Yeah, CEOs only Flight School would be pretty wild.

Corey Frank (19:36):

There you go.

Chris Beall (19:36):

And yeah, that’d be something. I bet only half of them would push the button.

Jennifer Standish (19:41):

There is something that, when you learn how to cold call, and you face your fears, the stuff that’s holding you back from cold calling are stuff that’s holding you back in life. And what I have found is that, when people learn how to cold call, their life trajectory completely changes. And I’ve witnessed it where people have come to me and said, “I just came to you to learn how to cold call, but my life has completely changed.” And many of my clients stay with me for transformational coaching. And they came for cold calling coaching, but it turned into transformational coaching.

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