[00:00:00] Welcome, my lovely people, to another fabulous episode of the B2B Sales Trends Podcast. Now, some deals look like instant wins. Now, they come fast, everything just worked great, and most sales teams celebrate those. But the best sales leaders actually don't because they know those aren't real wins. Those are sort of accidents.
[00:00:24] Now, on the B2B Sales Trends Podcast, we speak with sales and go-to-market leaders about the systems, the strategies they use to grow revenue, increase win rates and scale high performing teams. We share the systems, the secret ingredients they are using so you don't have to figure it out the hard way.
[00:00:42] Today, we're talking about how complex deals are actually won, how to create that demand, navigate decision makers and think your way through a deal instead of just following the system. My guest today is Stuart Green, and Stuart is the SVP and GM of Veradigm, who spends his career selling into large complex organizations and understanding how decisions really get made.
[00:01:14] Stuart, welcome to the show. Stuart Green, Stuart Green, Welcome to the show. Stuart Green, Great to be here, Harry. Thanks for having me. Stuart Green, Stuart, there is more technology, more data, more tools in sales than ever before. We know, we hear it all the time. But when you look at those complex B2B deals, especially with large organizations, what actually determines whether you win or lose?
[00:01:37] Stuart Green, Stuart Green, Ph.D.: Well, I think there's a couple things, right? So we're in kind of an evolutionary phase of we've had sales methodologies for some time. We've had tools that we share to kind of input information, share information around the organization. We have people that pull analytics. We're now approaching this area of AI where you are able to kind of tee yourself up and understand a little bit more about the organization.
[00:02:06] Stuart Green, Stuart Green, Stuart Green, Ph.D.: And that's a little bit more about the organization that you're calling on, as well as the organization that you represent. Stuart Green, Stuart Green, Ph.D.: And why that is important is, you know, I have often said that people read their own press releases, right? They get very excited. My solution is perfect. But they haven't quite understood the problem that the customer is facing.
[00:02:26] Stuart Green, Ph.D.: So what I mean, I'll tell you for me personally, right? So I lead a team that calls on life science companies, media agencies, you know, large multinational pharmaceutical companies, which are all super complex to deal with.
[00:02:40] Stuart Green, Ph.D.: What I need to do is break down that complexity, right? And understand what am I really trying to pursue? What I find, you know, and I've been doing this a pretty long time now, but what I find is when a salesperson comes in to do a review, they're doing the review in a slanted way.
[00:02:58] Stuart Green, Ph.D.: They're not talking about the areas where maybe it's going to be harder for us to win. They're focused on, okay, yeah, we're a perfect fit for this. This is what we need to do. And then the famous, you know, we should probably drop the price before understanding even what the issue is.
[00:03:14] Stuart Green, Ph.D.: What I am finding now is those salespeople that embrace technology and tools, whether it be Salesforce, whether it be Gong, certainly various AI tools. I happen to use Claude. It's a great way to prepare to kind of challenge yourself because what I share with people is I'm not terribly worried about the stuff I know.
[00:03:37] Stuart Green, Ph.D.: I'm petrified about what's around the corner. I'm petrified. Well, that might be a, I'll say neurotic. How's that? I'm neurotic about those people within these large companies that have influence that aren't going to vote for me.
[00:03:53] Stuart Green, Ph.D.: And I have to think about one, how do I identify them? Two, how do I figure out what their bias is one way or another? And then three, how do we get them on side? And that is where I've been using tools and I asked my Salesforce to use tools to get a greater understanding of what we don't know.
[00:04:12] Stuart Green, Ph.D.: Now you mentioned breaking down the complexity. I know you've been using a process to do that. Share with us a little bit that process to really breaking down the complexity, make it easy for sellers to really do what you said now because we always find that it's easier in theory for salespeople than executing it on a behavioral level.
[00:04:38] Stuart Green, Ph.D.: So share with us how you break down that complexity, if you would. Stuart Green, Ph.D.: Sure. And I guess just one add on to your question. It's not easy. If it was easy, anybody could do it. Stuart Green, Ph.D.: Right. I'm with you. Stuart Green, Ph.D.: There's kind of two schools of thought. The tools and the technology is an enhancement. If you don't have the basic fundamental understanding of how to navigate these organizations and really understand what your single sales objective is,
[00:05:07] Stuart Green, Ph.D.: They can give you all the tools in the world. Stuart Green, Ph.D.: Right. So what I try to do, and look, I personally am a big fan of target account selling, right? There's a ton of methodologies out there. I actually took a class in this. I think it was like 1997 and I fell in love with it. Stuart Green, Ph.D.: And it's not falling in love in, hey, I'm going to build this big, huge report and explain to you all the different things why we're going to win.
[00:05:33] Stuart Green, Ph.D.: What I use it for is really two things. Number one, there's a list of 20 questions that I've kind of, you know, I think I wrap them into my talk track. Stuart Green, Ph.D.: And just when I'm talking to my sales leadership or salespeople or colleagues in the organization, I tend to ask those kind of questions anyway, but it's nice to look at it. Stuart Green, Ph.D.: Right. But what people forget is who is your competition? Stuart Green, Ph.D.: Right. And that's what I push on because that's really, those are the levers that you need to pull. You need to understand who you're competing with.
[00:06:02] Stuart Green, Ph.D.: And to me, when salespeople pull the, well, I don't know and, and, uh, well, procurement says I have to go through them or Joe says he's the decision maker. That's a lazy sales methodology. Stuart Green, Ph.D.: Right. It's kind of the old trust but verify. Stuart Green, Ph.D.: Right. You want to take all the information you can. Stuart Green, Ph.D.: But I have found if someone says they're the decision maker, they're usually not the decision maker. And the decision maker is never a committee.
[00:06:30] Stuart Green, Ph.D.: Right. There's influencers in that committee. There are people that have different levels of power in that committee. And so what I try to do is get, you know, the folks to come back, you know, what is a very clear, sober understanding about where we are? Right. And don't sugarcoat it. Right. If we have deficiency or if we're off on price or, you know, Harry's the guy and, you know, his brother's the sales rep for some company. Like, that's an important thing to know.
[00:07:00] And what I find is, especially in the age of LinkedIn, especially people get kind of lazy. Right. And at the end, building a relationship is building a relationship. Right. I still sell to people today that I've been selling to for 20 something years. Now, I haven't had too many jobs, so I guess I'm a little bit easy to follow. You know, I'd say in my adult life, it's really three.
[00:07:27] Companies in excuse me, in this space that that I focused on. But, you know, look, your reputation matters. Your ability to deliver matters. Your ability to make someone feel like you're on side for them matters. And you need to do all of that, you know, to run those hard yards as well as, you know, use the technology to understand where you fit.
[00:07:55] You know, what's going on in the organization? Right. As a salesperson, I always suggest you need to be a real absorber of news. Right. You see something you want to. I mean, typically, by the time it's in the news, the people in the know already know. And, you know, good salespeople are constantly trying to get that kind of information. You know, and I look at our jobs as one.
[00:08:24] The way that you get people on side as good customers is when they realize you're not just there for the transaction. Right. And I'm not romanticizing it or or, you know, I obviously want to get the transactions. But what I have found is my approach is, look, I want the customers I'm talking to, I want them to be successful. I want them to look good in front of their boss.
[00:08:49] Right. It's not about me extracting the final last dollar to where I think I won. My objective is to build a relationship, do a transaction, but have a reason to come back and build that relationship. Don't major on the miners. So let's break that down even further. Let's let's start with the beginning of that. And I fully agree.
[00:09:13] You've alluded already a couple of times to this idea of, you know, the stakeholder idea, for example. So there are more and more stakeholders. That's what makes a deal complex. Right. To let's what else makes these deals complex these days? These stakeholders, the amount of them, the variety of stakeholders. What else makes them complex these days?
[00:09:38] Well, as much as I love the technology and I love the news and I love to learn more, there is a lot of noise in the channel. Yeah. And good executives, good business salespeople parse out the noise. And that is a super important thing for young people, especially to understand how to do. Look, I have two kids that are well, two adults that are in this business.
[00:10:07] And of course, I'm sure my wife loves when we're sitting around the table talking about different strategies to use on deals. And it is very fun to hear, you know, because, look, they grew up with technology. They're tech first, which is super important. Right. I just sent a group text out to all my nieces and nephews after attending a conference with some of the highlights about, hey, it's going here.
[00:10:31] You better get on board now because those individuals who resist technology, those individuals who don't understand how to use technology are simply putting themselves in a deficient place. At the same time, if you don't know how to navigate. Right. And a lot of that comes with experience. And a lot of that, you know, look, I talk a lot, but I also think I'm a pretty good listener when it comes to what the customers are telling me.
[00:11:00] I really try to retain it. I try to triangulate it. You know, again, trust but verify the old Ronald Reagan quote there. It's not that people, you know, it's not that people are trying to mislead you or they're lying or whatever. But it's it's their version of the truth. Right. So people talk past each other constantly.
[00:11:27] And look, this is kind of a learned skill, but you have to have a little patience around it. Right. I've decided I've decided I've learned people hear what they want to hear. And then they pivot to trying to get that work statement into, hey, we're in great shape here. What I try to do is I look under the rock. I try to figure out, OK, this is what we're trying to do.
[00:11:55] I have to understand how Harry buys, not how I want to sell. Which is one of the biggest challenges in technology for the last 20 years. Right. So you have a lot of companies that had a lot of leverage. And they shared, hey, you need to follow this format. This is what you need to do. Really inflexible. Well, what I find is customers want to leave them as soon as possible, where possible.
[00:12:25] And that's what they really need to focus on is understanding how the person on, you know, you hate to use other side of the table, but the person that's on the other side of the table is absorbing what you're saying. Right. I'm brilliant. I can talk about all this stuff. I'm going to talk about the tech. You're going to believe everything I say. And I'm going to walk out and be super happy. The only problem is that's probably not what happened. You know, and that's a learning. It really is.
[00:12:53] I mean, candidly, in my career, I've messed that up an awful lot of times where I thought I was somewhere. I think now I'm much more deliberate. I do a lot of checking back with the customer. OK, I've said this or we talked about this. Did I get it right? I pulled together discussion documents. Hey, last time we got together or at least an email, which is where things like Gong are fantastic. But I outline, OK, these are the five things we talked about. Did I get that right?
[00:13:22] I don't always get it right. But what happens is then I kind of can build a bridge back because, look, people aren't just working one opportunity. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You mentioned that it's really about them and them being the customer.
[00:13:42] So do you agree with to have a sales approach, whatever the term or the methodology is, regardless, to put the customer really in the center, to make sure that we're not just selling our stuff, but really ensuring that we can affect customers' business outcomes.
[00:14:07] And for that, a certain sort of vulnerability has to come in to say, you know what? It doesn't really matter what I'm required to sell here. But really, if my job is it to really collaborate effectively and to help you achieve your goals, I need to put you in the center of it.
[00:14:30] And that means your outcomes, the impact that you want to create from that, therefore the economic value that I can help you achieve and contribute to that. What's your take on that? Absolutely. A customer has to be at the center of everything you do, right? You know, I say to our employees, you know, without our shareholders, we have no investment. Without our employees, we have no value to deliver.
[00:14:56] Without our customers, we have no purpose, right? And that's, you know, that's my little tagline. But I also think great salespeople, great commercial people, great executives compartmentalize, right? Because people tend to get into this romanticized view of what they're doing. You know, we've talked in the past about customer drive demand versus demand that you create, right?
[00:15:25] And I think the best salespeople understand what fits when and how to do that. You know, look, you have a goal. There's something you're trying to do. You shouldn't try to hide that, right? I've also been in situations, especially when you're selling consulting. Oh, well, I'm not here to sell you anything. Sure you are. That's what we do. That's okay. Right? But what I'm here to do is listen and see where I can provide value, right?
[00:15:55] And see, does the customer's business problem fit my solution? You know, solution fit is the thing that I think most salespeople struggle with because they say, hey, I have this great thing. It solves everything, but they're not listening to the problem. So they end up spinning a lot of cycles, using a lot of company resources. You know, then they do the proverbial, I'm going to bring, you know, the president in or the GM or whatever. You come in, you have a nice theoretical conversation, but you don't move the ball.
[00:16:25] You know, and that's really what you have to, in my opinion, focus on. You really got to listen to what the customer's doing. You know, when I answered the previous question, we talked a little bit about companies who say, this is how you have to buy from us. Like some of the large, you know, huge companies, specifically in technology, kind of go out and they're like, hey, we're not going to negotiate. Here's our price.
[00:16:55] This is what it is. And that works for a very short period of time. Right now, granted, a lot of those companies also have brilliant scientists. They make incredible products and they can scale. But what happens is you create an environment where your customer wants to move off your platform. Right. So the objective is not just to get that single transaction. The objective is to become fabric of that company. You know, two kinds of sales.
[00:17:24] We do have transactional sales. Right. I'm sure some of the people listening are inside sales reps. They're objective. Get to the transaction and move on. Right. But I think more what we're talking about is how do you approach these large multinationals really complex? I mean, I'm talking deals that are two, three, four, a hundred million dollars. Right. You know, they run the scale. And that's a very different approach to how you need to build a relationship.
[00:17:51] And a relationship is not a meeting. A relationship, you know, in the old days was not a business card. A relationship is when one, you have someone that wants you to win. Two, you have someone that's going to share information with you that's going to help you build out your sales plan. Right. Those are relationships. When you call them, they're going to call you back when you say, hey, can you do me a favor? I need to set up a session with my boss or the engineering team or whatever it is.
[00:18:20] And they're going to go out of their way to help. Now, why do they do that? They do that because I've created value for them in the past. Because when I get an exciting piece of thought leadership, I make sure they hear it. When, you know, they're in a jam where they've over budget or under budgeted and it's a last minute thing and they need a, I make it easy to do business with because it all goes around in a big circle. And if you take advantage, you're dead.
[00:18:50] Right. You may get that one transaction. You may get the maintenance. But you're never going to increase your presence or relevance to that client that way. In the pre-call to this recording, we started out talking about you got to start with the real demand. Right. And then this is what you were referring to right now is this idea of you got to earn the right to be relevant. Right.
[00:19:15] This idea of becoming part of the customer's ecosystem, not just showing up when there is a need or when there is an ask. Right. Is that what you're referring to right now? I assume. You know, I think one of the things that people really need to contemplate, you know, and this doesn't just go for sales. This is in general. And I'm going to butcher the quote.
[00:19:42] But the concept is you want to be the person that people talk about when you're not in the room about opportunities. So I've been fortunate in my career where, you know, I've gotten calls from very, very senior people that said, hey, I was talking to so-and-so. They said, you might be able to help me with this. I focused on that, building the relationship with them. And then the deal comes, you know, at some point in the future, you have to build that
[00:20:11] relationship well prior to a transaction. Right. If you're only there for a transaction, and look, those happen. Right. But really the delta and really the people that are super successful. Right. No one listening to this wants to be 90 percent of their quota. Everybody wants to be 110, 20 because those are the differentiators. Right. In a lot of businesses, you just kind of show up and, you know, 60 percent of your quota is going to get baked in from demand.
[00:20:41] Your company creates through alternative channels. Right. You want to be the difference maker. And that means you have to look, you kind of have to chunk up the year or multi years in buckets. You have to spend a fair amount of time relationship building before you need it. You have to spend a fair amount of time prosecuting those deals that are going to make the quarter. You know, the way, you know, we're talking about technology to some point. And I'm going to go a little old school.
[00:21:11] When I look at the quarter and I talk to my chief commercial officer or the sales guys on the team, I keep it really, really simple. I call it the checkbook, even though I'm terrible at balancing my own checkbook. But basically, I list out the deals. Right. You pull them out of Salesforce. You say, hey, here's what's 90 percent. Here's 50 percent. And here's the flyers. And I use that punch list to prioritize all my work. Right.
[00:21:39] Now, that's the transactional part of it. The subsequent part to that is, OK, hey, so and so is going to launch a drug in six months. I know that because, you know, at least in my space, which is life sciences, a lot of that is very public information. So if I wait the six months till they launch, it's over. Right. I want to get in when they're in clinical trials. I want to get in super early. And if I can provide them value.
[00:22:07] Then when it's time for them to make a significant purchase of something that that we do, I'm already present. And the goal is you want them to say, you know what? I know you're going out. You're looking at these three vendors for X, Y and Z. Make sure you call Stu. Make sure his company's contemplated in this. And that's how you get differentiated results. Right. In my opinion. Fully agree. Fully agree.
[00:22:35] Now, let's talk a little bit more about the tools and the systems that we have referred to. You know, we discussed that there are many, many tools out there, more systems than ever and so forth. CRM, call intelligence, reporting, all these things you just referred to on. Where do you see those tools actually helping? And where do they start replacing thinking instead of supporting it?
[00:23:02] You know, I'll kind of explain kind of how I think of the world there from that. You know, we talked about customer drive demand. I've used a phrase that I'm sure someone else told me, but I can't remember who. Conditioning the market. So, the tools, the technology tools that we have today are awesome for conditioning the market. Right. Thought leadership pieces. How do you go out? How do you do account-based marketing?
[00:23:29] How do you start to work that top of funnel to kind of build out your leads and the strategies there? Right. So, that's part one. Part two then is you need to use your tools, whether it's Salesforce, Gong. You know, candidly, sometimes I throw a bunch of information into Claude and I say, can you organize this for me? Yeah. Right. Because I have a bias. Right. Right. Every person does. You know, look, most people, I want to do the easiest thing first, not the hardest thing.
[00:23:59] And I think, and I don't know if it's an intended consequence of the development of these tools, but it helps me not kid myself by taking a very objective look at what my priorities should be. You know, candidly, I'm not a huge believer when we talk about complex sales. You know, I don't want the reps and the leadership spending all their time putting notes in Salesforce because by the time they get it in there,
[00:24:29] it's irrelevant. They need to understand, track milestone dates. I personally prefer that in an account plan. An account plan can be, you know, two pages or a deal plan can be two pages. But I also drive hard on the account plan so we understand the customer in a continual way. But using the tools, you know, first off for efficiency. You know, I think I'm a pretty good writer, but I write how I speak.
[00:24:58] And, you know, you want that nice American Midwest, no bias writing to go on and tools like Claude, ChatGPT, etc. are awesome for that. Right. They just kind of rephrase, reap. And then you need to go in and edit again. Right. I'm not advocating that you just go, hey, Claude, write me a sales plan for this. And I'm never going to read it, but it's going to appease my boss. I think you need to use these tools to help you prioritize.
[00:25:25] You know, my company, we're implementing Gong across the organization. And the first time I saw it, I didn't quite get it. The second time I saw it, it really highlighted. And I'm sure when the guys from Gong listen to this, they're going to buy me lunch or something. But it helps you prioritize. Right. It use objective factoring to understand where should the priorities be. So as a leader. Right.
[00:25:54] So I have a chief commercial officer. I'm expecting him to go in there and understand, OK, what what deals do we prioritize? Then I layer that on top with the different groups and understand. And where do we create focus? You know, I think one of the challenges and it depends on the size of your organization. Right. If you're looking at a startup, if you're looking at a smaller emerging company that's trying to get to a transaction, teams rally really well.
[00:26:23] Because, you know, if it's founder led or CEO led and and people kind of pull together and they'll say, hey, Harry wants X, Y, Z. And the lawyer jumps in, the engineers jump in and everybody does it. As you grow to scale, that methodology doesn't work. Right. So you often get people we want to have an entrepreneurial culture. We want people to approach it like we're a startup. And I think that mentality is fantastic.
[00:26:50] But as a practical application, that doesn't work. Right. It doesn't work if you if you leave your workflows to that methodology where I try to use technology. You know, I've kind of set up this recurring thing in Claude that says, go look at my schedule. Look at my Salesforce report. Look at my other notes from yesterday and tell me what are the five things I need to focus on. I don't always agree with Claude. Claude and I have a very nice relationship now.
[00:27:18] But it does help me kind of get through the noise. You know, maybe Claude's right on three of the things, but it really does help. And I try to do that every day. I mean, it's set up as a recurring thing every day. So but using that, using Gong for the guys to prioritize. You know, we're in a place now where there's Ambien Scribe. You know, there's voice recording of calls. And at first I was like, well, wait a second. That's that's a little creepy.
[00:27:47] You know, now it's much more widely accepted. You know, in our in in my. Career history, like I've worked on a lot of confidential projects I've worked. I get what I guess I would determine is inside information from companies, you know, that I keep, you know, between my ears. Confidential, don't share with other people in the organization. So I do get a little nervous sometimes if something said on a recorded call.
[00:28:15] You know, I will speak my company today. We take privacy confidentiality extraordinarily seriously. And and we really have a lot of SOPs in place to kind of protect that. But really, the other part is we have responsible individuals that don't share that. But, you know, the interesting part when you record a call is you think you heard one thing and then you say, hey, can you summarize this call for me? And again, it gives you an objective view.
[00:28:45] Because human bias is great when you understand that from a buying perspective. But one of the biggest problems I've observed, I've probably had in the sales career said I hear what I want to hear. I go back and tell my boss, oh, John said we're going to do this, this and this. We're in the driver's seat. Price is good. Meanwhile, we lose the deal because they John wasn't the decision maker. Right.
[00:29:09] And you hear that kind of information and you can go through, you know, what in, you know, in electronic health records, we'll call it unstructured notes. But really, that's what it is. And I really recommend every salesperson, no matter what your age, your success level, where you are, you better know how to use this stuff. Yeah. Because it is going to make, it's going to drive how business evolves.
[00:29:37] It's not going to take the place of having real relationships and understanding human nature. At least, I don't think anytime soon. Yeah. But it is to really help you with efficiency. I don't think it's all these tools in AI will replace salespeople, but it will replace salespeople who can't use them. Right. Absolutely.
[00:30:01] Because, you know, we're still selling to people and the people to people interaction is still extremely important. It's just the level has now increased. Mediocre is not good enough anymore. You really got to be at an elite level. And that means using all the tools out there and facilitating these conversations and having these customer relationships.
[00:30:28] And at a level that was, you could get away with it a few years ago. You can't anymore. You got to be at that top level, in my opinion. Yeah. I mean, certainly it depends on what you sell. And certainly it is always helpful to have the boss, you know, of a major company say, hey, Stu's got, you know, he's doing a good job. We should continue with them. Right.
[00:30:53] But the other thing that you'll learn, and I'm sure you experience it as CEO of your own company, you have to let the team make the call sometimes. Yeah. Right. So as a salesperson, you have to challenge yourself. Hey, Harry told them that he would be very comfortable with them working with me, but he's not going to make them do it. Right. Right. That's the line that people forget that last line. They say, oh, I met with the CEO. It's all tipped and tied. Don't worry about it. And you get lazy, you lose the deal.
[00:31:22] You know, we've been through these technology, I would say, I don't want to call them bubbles, but evolutions for some time. Right. So, you know, if we go back to 2000, right, we had Y2K. Everybody was like, oh, my God, you know, everything's going to stop. Well, it didn't stop. Right. Then we had the advent of the Internet where it really became, you know, something that everyone was using. Oh, we're not going to have stores anymore.
[00:31:50] We're not going to have, you know, everything's going to be done online. You know what? We still have a lot of stores, although it is easy to return via mail. So there are efficiencies. Then we had Salesforce and other CRM tools that kind of came out into the marketplace. Oh, well, this is just going to make it where everyone in the org can look at everything and the people and the relationships don't matter. That never happened. Salesforce is a wonderful reporting tool. You can get a lot of information.
[00:32:15] They have modules that talk about not just them, but in general, you know, next best action, which is wrong a lot. Right. Right. And now we're in a place where we're talking about AI. So the best salespeople are the salespeople that embrace the Internet, that embrace Salesforce, that embrace, but didn't forget that it's really not something you just, you know, enter some information and spit out. And then, you know, I always said if it was that easy, they wouldn't need us.
[00:32:44] If there are leaders right now listening to this and they want to improve how to win these complex deals, what's the one thing these leaders should start doing right now? Stop reading your own press releases. Play like you're losing. Even if you think you're winning, there's always something around the corner. Yeah, I'm a little neurotic about that.
[00:33:13] And sometimes that's not the case. But, you know, when I talk about things, I always talk about making that one last call or just understanding where that person, where are Harry and Stu? You know, they came to the meeting. They look like they're aligned. If I don't know they hate each other and they're both vying for the same job, that's a problem. And I think you have to be neurotic. I think you have to constantly challenge yourself.
[00:33:41] You know, I mean, I don't want everybody to go out there and be miserable and think everybody's lying to them and it's wrong. But, you know, you have to look at things in a very neutral way. You know, one of the things I say about great salespeople and great businesses executives, you have to have a very short memory. Because as a salesperson, you're going to hear no a hell of a lot more than yes. Yeah. Sometimes things aren't going to go your way and you've got to change your strategy.
[00:34:10] You know, it's akin to golf, right? I hit the ball in the woods. I'm not happy. I could waste a bunch of time being annoyed with myself, which will happen later over a couple of beers. But I have to get out of the woods, whether I hit it out, whether I take a drop. I have to apply a strategy. What do I want my next action to be? So the shortest, the key is it's not all going to go swimmingly.
[00:34:40] You have to be prepared to pivot. You have to think through, you know, you have to play multidimensional chess, not checkers. I always tell my team if some, you know, when something happens, there's always something happens. You know, let's be sad for five minutes. Good. Let's stop it. After five minutes, let's progress. What can we learn from this and how can we improve on this and make sure that we don't make the same mistake again?
[00:35:06] And then let's go full speed and focus on what you actually can influence versus all the stuff that's all that I was going to say, all the crap that's around you that you can't influence. So let's focus on what you can bring to the table and make sure you're doing that really, really well. Right. Well, I think just to add to that comment, if it's OK. Yeah. You know, typically, and I don't know if it's good or bad. Right. Your sales managers are very often your better salespeople. Right. They want to progress. So they demonstrate there.
[00:35:34] Only it's two completely different jobs. Very different. And what we as leaders need to identify is, you know, look, you don't get in these positions if you're not confident. A little bit of arrogance in there. You've done it before. You have a vision. And that is the quickest way to have an unscalable business to have where you have a single thread. One of the things that I push back on often is people tend to push the decision up.
[00:36:03] Hey, I'm not really sure what to do. So I'm going to tell Stu that way, if it goes wrong, it's not my fault. Incorrect assumption, at least with me. I'm pushing it right back to you. As a leader, specifically a sales leader, you have to be able to get to have success through others. And those others may have completely different makeups than you do. And I did not understand this early in my career. I will say that I did not. You know, I'm a pretty hard driver.
[00:36:32] I work a lot, not because I'm a hero, because I like to. You know, I'm neurotic. I want to think about, you know, what are all the ways that something can go wrong? And I've met a lot of people who are awesome commercial people that are nothing like me. And, you know, one of, you know, I think I shared with you before, my chief commercial officer used to be my boss. And one of the things that I really learned was how to manage by type.
[00:37:00] How to think about how do I get the best out of these people? Now, as organizations scale, I certainly can't manage 300 people that way. So it's important you develop your leaders to do it that way. And then it's important they develop their leaders to do it that way. Because the quickest, you know, you see so many companies, they come out like gangbusters, they're doing great, they're taking over the world. And then something changes and they can't pivot.
[00:37:30] Right. And that's the differentiator. Yeah. Yeah. There's a great book out there that I came across recently. It's called Surrender to Lead by Joe Terry and Jessica Crigo. If anybody wants a bit of a different read on leadership, I can only recommend that. But anyway, the last question every podcast that I've asked 100 plus times now, and it's really interesting, the different responses that we get.
[00:38:00] And I'm curious to hear yours is this idea of considering buying has changed. What, in your opinion, are the top three skills or traits that define truly great elite salespeople, in your opinion? What are those top three? Well, I think the first thing is I would challenge your assertion and your question. Right. Things change constantly. Yeah.
[00:38:26] So the number one skill that somebody needs to have is an ability to adapt. Right. So nothing is static, especially when you do what we do, because every day there's new companies, new challenges. You have to deal with the customer's financial situation, a competitor's financial situation. People that are single-threaded in the way that they approach sales, I think are really challenged. Yeah, you're going to win sometimes.
[00:38:53] But the biggest, the number one thing for me is adaptability. Hmm. The second important thing, and not everybody loves this, is a little neurosis. Hmm. Right? It's, it's, if you get too comfortable, it's really a problem. You have to be comfortable being uncomfortable. You know, okay, all of this is going to happen. It's going to be perfect. It's going to run through the system. I don't know. Maybe something gets delayed and legal.
[00:39:22] Maybe there's an engineering thing that needs to be corrected. Maybe the customer has to go on vacation or your coach has to go on vacation. Um, you need to be able to adapt to all of that and you need to be able to pivot. So you need to be a little neurotic so you're aware. And I think the third thing, you know, we discussed a little bit earlier, it's really having a short memory. Right? The ability to take a hit, refocus and come back.
[00:39:52] That's what the great salespeople do. Right? They understand it's not all going to go your way. But, you know, I, I, I forget where I read this, but it's kind of like in the old days when, you know, people were cold calling, like going to an office, knocking on a door and trying to get business. You know, it was an article, it's called the King of Cold Calls. I'm sure it's out there on the internet somewhere. And it was just, this guy wrote an amazing story just about how he would go all, and now
[00:40:21] granted it's harder to do that now with security, et cetera. But the one thing I took away from it, he said, your first call of the day and your last call of the day have to have the same energy. And during that day, a lot of things happened to him, but he had to reset, relook and reattack every single time. So those are the things, um, that I think are super important.
[00:40:48] And, you know, the other, you know, just if I was going to add a little bit to it, the ability to, um, speak, to be able to conduct a conversation, look somebody in the eye, the ability to, um, be somewhat analytical and be accepting of maybe where your product is not the best or service is not the best. And how do you overcome those objections? Um, I would say humble, but not too many salespeople are humble, including myself.
[00:41:17] Um, but that's really, I think the makeup, those first three pieces, um, you know, and when I talk about adaptability, it's, it's the ability to adapt to technology, to your environment, to changes. Um, because as far as I know, there's no companies that are selling the same thing they sold 30 years ago that are wildly growing. You know, they introduce new products, new services, new concepts. And that is something that, that the great salespeople need to really understand.
[00:41:47] The ability to adapt, being a little neurotic and have short memory and have a great way of communicating with, uh, with customers. Stu, you've been an amazing guest on this episode. I know our listeners very much appreciate your thought leadership and your insights on this topic. Thank you for taking the time. You got it, Harry. It was a lot of fun. Lovely people. Tools don't win deals. Processes don't win deals. People do. Uh, they understand how decisions actually get made.
[00:42:17] They create the demand. They build relationships early. Uh, Stu has alluded to. And when things get messy, they know how to think their way through it. So that's what separates really average from elite. If you want more of these conversations, subscribe to our YouTube channel or listen wherever you get your podcasts from until the next time. My lovely people take care of yourself, your loved ones. And of course, your B2B customers. Bye-bye.
[00:42:45] If you'd like to put yourself or someone, you know, forward to be a guest on our show, there is a quick form in the show notes to complete. It only takes a minute and it helps us to find voices and opinions that shape the future of B2B selling. Thank you. We appreciate it.