Sales Transformation

We've got a special guest for you today.

We've got Andy Paul back on the show.

Always have a great time when we bring Andy Paul on the show.

If you don't know who Andy is and you're in the sales world,

I don't know what is wrong with you,

but you need to pull your head out of your, you know what.

Andy is a prolific podcaster, author,

and been a mentor from afar for me.

So I know that we're gonna have a very action-packed episode.

Andy, welcome to the show.

Colin, thanks for having me back.

Yeah, it's always good to catch up with you.

It is, it is.

And it's even more fun when it's a podcast.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, yeah, we talk somewhat frequently

outside the podcast, but yeah,

it's always good to talk on the record.

Yeah, yeah, and I know I've gotten my fair share

of good podcast advice from you as well,

because you've been doing this a while.

Two-way street there.

I've gotten good advice from you as well.

So we put out a good podcast.

So love to have you back and talk about some of the things

that are top of mind for you, right?

Talking about effective selling and win rates,

which clearly, based on the data,

is something that teams are struggling with.

I mean, what are the latest numbers

that you've seen out there,

or from talking to sales leaders,

as far as quota attainment and win rate

and these sort of things that are just a challenge

for so many people?

Yeah, well, I mean, the data that exists isn't good

in terms of trends, though, yeah,

I think quota attainment's one thing,

win rates are another.

I mean, there's, unfortunately,

people define win rates differently,

and it's not always clear that there's a sort of

consistent definition, so you have the context

of the data is clear, but yeah,

quota attainment continues to fall.

That's a complex topic,

because it all gets into how a quota is set and so on.

Yeah, win rates are a little more clear cut

if you're sort of honing in on a definition saying,

look, if I have 10 opportunities I was working in

that closed this last month, and I won two of those,

then my win rate was 20%, right?

So just sort of keep a very simple definition.

And in that sense, yeah, are the win rates falling?

I mean, certainly there's anecdotal data

saying that at this time, and sort of economic downturn,

that win rates are falling, but they really shouldn't.

There's no obvious reasons why your win rates should fall.

Certainly a number of opportunities you're working

may be falling, because there's less money out there.

But if you're really, my contention is,

and my experience has been,

that if you're really executing a sort of

disciplined process in terms of qualifying

the people you're going to invest your time with,

then win rates really shouldn't change.

Now again, the struggle is,

do you have enough opportunities?

But now the one exception to that potentially is,

is that, and again, I'll make the argument

that it shouldn't be the case,

is that there could be an increase in no decisions

happening during economic contraction,

or when times are tough, downturn, whatever one would call this.

But again, we could spend time arguing as

whether that should be the case or not,

and whether you should have chosen to invest the time

in those companies that ultimately made that no decision.

Now, I don't want to escape past something

really important that you said.

Yeah, let's get into it.

You said win rates shouldn't drop.

Maybe you should, maybe the amount of deals you're working

is less than it was previously, just based on current time.

But you said if you're disciplined in the quality of people

that you're spending time with, right?

Meaning, and I think this is something that sellers

and sales organizations struggle with a lot

of letting a lot of deals get into the pipeline

that shouldn't in the first place.

Yes, well.

It's hardly disqualifying.

Well, here's the bottom line for me,

and it's always been this, is that as a seller,

you are making the choice to win or to lose.

That's a hard truth for some to probably get.

And the choice is the actions that you take

to help the buyer make their decision, right?

This buying experience, we know increasingly

all the data is showing, and Gardner just came out

with their report a couple weeks ago at their conference,

the nine most important factors influencing the buyer's

selection of a vendor.

Not one of them had to do with the product or the price.

It's about how they experience working with the seller

and the seller's organization.

Why is that the case?

Because a competitive product at a competitive price

is just table stakes these days.

And in so many segments, in the mind of the customer,

there's so many vendors out there, they're all the same.

They're all the same.

They all basically do the same things.

They all basically cost the same amount of money.

So in that situation, in that environment,

on what basis is the buyer making the decision?

Well, Gardner came out with this data,

and there's other data that other similar analyst firms

and consulting firms have shown,

is that it boils down to the experience

that the buyer has with the seller.

You mean it's not the features and the price?

It's not the features.

Can you believe that?

Shocking.

But the thing is, it's always been this way.

But the reasons differ, but it's always been this way.

I mean, my experience, and I've been in this business

a long, long, long time, is,

yeah, I was working for a lot of startups,

growing teams, we were selling these really complex,

very expensive communication systems,

seven, eight, I think nine figure deals, right?

Capina gets, we had some deals that were larger

than our revenue as a company.

And we were competing against these multi-billion dollar,

multi-national corporations that could,

we were a rounding error in their revenue.

How do we compete?

Sometimes we didn't have a product,

we just had something on paper that we were trying to,

something innovative we were trying to sell.

Wasn't the product, wasn't the price,

it was how we sold it,

how we built credibility and trust with the buyer,

how we connected with the various stakeholders,

and that's how we built that credibility and trust,

how we got to the point where we really understood

that what was driving the decision on the part of the buyer

was the most important thing for them to accomplish.

That's how we competed and won.

So this idea that the product has the primacy

has really been outdated for decades,

but never more so than today.

It's really about what you as the seller do

to create a positive buying experience for your buyer.

Now, why is it that more sales teams

are not taking this into consideration

when building their sales process?

I try to stay positive when we talk about these things.

I didn't think I stumped you.

You're just trying to be polite.

Because people just aren't thinking about it.

Again, I use the word choice.

I mean, again, success in selling boils down to the choice.

Am I making the choice to do the things that I said

that create the buying experience of the buyer,

that help them make the decision?

And that's the differentiation.

It's not the products, not the price, it's the seller.

And I think that's great news for sellers.

I think that's fantastic news for sellers.

We can't control the product, we can't control the features,

we can't control the price,

but I have control over what I do.

I have control over the connection I make with the buyer

and the various stakeholders.

I have control over the credibility and trust

and trustworthiness that I'm able to develop with the buyer.

I have control over the questions I ask.

I have control over being intentional

to make sure that every time I interact with the buyer,

I'm delivering something of value

that helps them make progress toward making a decision.

So they're getting a return on the time they invest in me.

That's all up to me.

I control all of that.

So to me, this is like Nirvana for sellers,

is that you're in control of your own success

if you make the right choices,

operate the right level of intent, excuse me,

when you interact with your buyers.

Now, sometimes that right choice might be realizing

we are not the best option for you.

Absolutely.

So another way to phrase this,

I'm sorry to jump on that,

was just that when you're thinking about,

okay, I can invest my time with this particular prospect,

do I really have a chance of winning?

You have to be very pragmatic about these things

because you have a limited amount of time

to invest as a seller.

So you have to, again, expect the idea of choice.

You have to choose wisely

and not just accept everybody that comes into your pipeline

and say, yeah, I'm gonna sell to you.

What I like to say is you as the seller,

you need to envision yourself being the bouncer

at the head of the velvet rope,

people wanting to get into the club.

You choose who gets into your club.

Just because they're lined up outside waiting to get in

doesn't mean they get in.

Just because marketing's sending you leads

and they say, oh, this is a marketing qualified lead.

Yeah, so what?

It's your choice, it's your career, it's your time.

You make the choice.

Yeah, and as a seller, that could be spending more time

with people that have better deal velocity.

It could be spending more time with less people, right?

As a seller, you get to choose

what's the right choice for you.

But I think that the big problem that I think,

and I'd love to get your thoughts on this,

is I don't even know if a lot of sales organizations

have really great, well-defined disqualification criteria.

They don't.

Like my experience, most don't, right?

And they leave it up to the seller

and there's pressures on the sellers, we know,

because especially now, when times are a little bit harder,

you tend to see a little bit more,

I'll say it nicely, panic selling, if you will,

desperation-driven selling, right?

Yeah.

And that leads to, yeah, well, I'm gonna talk to this person

I wouldn't normally talk to,

but I'm gonna talk to him because I need something.

And that's problematic, right?

Because that creates this vicious cycle of,

you know, you're taking bad leads and you get bad results

and then you get desperate

and you start talking to more bad leads

and just sort of continues to fuel itself.

So at some point, when I use the word discipline upfront,

is again, this is a choice you make as a seller.

And you have to be conscious of everything you're doing

and sort of monitor the results of the steps you take.

I'm a big advocate for continual experimentation

in your personal selling processes

to really understand what really is working,

but you need to really understand what those are

and then improve upon them

rather than to sort of accept that this is sort of

a lot in life that I'm being deluged with these leads

coming in for marketing and yeah, I'll talk to them.

Or, you know, my SDRs are feeding me these leads.

They say they're qualified and every time I get them,

it's like, yeah, they're not really qualified, right?

Right.

But we feel pressure.

But again, as a seller, it's ultimately up to you.

It's your career.

No one cares about your success as much as you do.

So if you find yourself distracted

by poor quality opportunities, disqualify them.