[00:00:00] Welcome to B2B Sales Trends, the podcast dedicated to sales leaders in the B2B space, where we
[00:00:11] share conversations about innovative and successful sales transformations to keep you up to date
[00:00:17] on the latest trends.
[00:00:18] This podcast is brought to you by Global Performance Group.
[00:00:23] Welcome yet to another fabulous episode of the B of Sales for the Americas for AdForm. Tell us a little bit about yourself and AdForm as an organization as a form of introduction, if you could. Yeah, sure. Real brief, right? No one wants a full resume by any
[00:01:43] stretch. I've been in New York ad tech space for Aptech sales as you shared. Can you tell us a little bit about some of the key insights of how you leverage data and good sales skills or storytelling to impact the sales team's success in these industries?
[00:03:05] Yeah, absolutely.
[00:03:06] I mean, what's interesting about selling and in our platform that teaches our end client something new? They don't know everything about their business. They don't know everything about the microcosms and how campaigns are running. What can we bring the light to make them smarter? That could be something as simple as which campaigns or creatives are working well, or it could be more complex.
[00:04:21] It talks about micro segments that are behaving with a better ROAS or lifetime
[00:04:25] value. So that's just one good example. He was like, look, our job as sellers is to put our clients in a movie. And that movie, if you think about any good show you've watched, it has an arc, right? It doesn't, it's not all rainbows in your car. It has an arc, and it has something that draws you in. And for us as sellers, that has to be really around pain. What is the pain the consumer is facing, the consumer or customer, people like that?
[00:05:43] What is the pain they're facing? And candid to solve for? And how do I prove that? Harry, that last part ties to data. The proof has to be in the data. When you run this campaign with me or when you buy my software,
[00:08:20] right, I'm going to show you these three quo. It's not very painful to do that. I'm avoiding a risk through that. How the outcome, the gain needs to be bigger. Yeah.
[00:08:21] How do I structure the strategy around that for
[00:08:26] people to see that and come market a product that doesn't even exist. So I think about those discovery questions
[00:09:41] to figure out what does the company care about? What are hope this gentleman listens to this podcast that we're doing because he'll smile knowing that I'm quoting him. But he gave me a famous line many, many years ago and he goes, so Harry, what's the question behind the question? Sure, you want to know if my sweater is cashmere or something else, it's fine. But like, why? Like, why are you asking that question? When do you really care about?
[00:11:01] And I've used that directly on many calls before, to your point when I get what I consider
[00:11:06] to be a level one or a very basic question. what he wants to say more rubbish. I hope not. And you bring up a point, Harry, which I think is critical as we consider sales. We've all had A plus sellers. We've all had A sellers. We've had B plus C. We can go all the way down. And consistently, one of the traits I find that ties to what you're saying is not only
[00:12:21] curiosity.
[00:12:22] Curiosity is incredibly important.
[00:12:24] It's one of my big mistakes that salespeople make nowadays. They ask questions for the sake of questioning. They go in and think, oh, one of the three questions I need to ask this person. You need to lead with direction here. And before you can even think about the question, think about the need that you want to develop
[00:13:45] in the mind of the weekend. I'm going to watch some soccer. All right, cool. Well, I asked you the questions. I got the answers. Harry, it's great meeting you. I hope that we could catch up next week. Yeah, great. You're like, okay, what did you learn facts, but you didn't learn insights there. Facts and insights are two very different things. Right. Exactly. And in this day and age, the reality is with social media and everything
[00:15:02] around it, you can find out pretty much everything is that? How does that connect here to your mentoring and what you do? Well, I believe in the long game for many things in my life, whether it was whether that was personal in relationships, whether that's business, whether that's investing, right, like Vanguard index funds are phenomenal investments. If you have 3, 5, 10, 15 year horizon, right? They're not if you're trying to make money today versus tomorrow,
[00:16:23] they're just simply not. And so the reason I tie that example together? I'm not a product guy. I haven't built product. I'm not building code, but I can explain it visually about how the mentality of what we do helps the bigger picture. So the simple answer to your question is I lean probably too far in, if I really were to grade myself, I probably lean too far into making sure I'm helping people get smarter
[00:17:41] and better.
[00:17:43] And then also using that as a mindset of the ways that I see it.
[00:19:00] Meaning, and I'll be stereotypical about my own life, not here at ad form, which is in general,
[00:19:05] right?
[00:19:06] Marketers are beautiful people. client really needs to sell for and it's marketing helped me grasp and tell that story. So the best relationships I've ever had is where my product marketing team is on calls with me not to hear my feedback, but to hear the client's feedback. Harry, it's phenomenal because nine times out of 10, it's not 10 out of 10, nothing's
[00:20:20] every 10 out of 10, you know that, right?
[00:20:22] But nine times out of 10, I'll get off a call.
[00:20:24] My first question on my product marketing team.
[00:20:26] So what'd you think about how these trends will impact B2B sellers who rely so much on technologies for their sales effort and strategies and so forth. What does the future hold for ad tech?
[00:21:41] The future.
[00:21:42] The future of sales and the future of ad tech.
[00:21:44] Which one do you want to go down?
[00:21:45] The future of ad tech and how great it is. I sent out 10,000 emails and I got five responses. Look, I got five responses. This is great. You got five out of 10,000.
[00:23:00] What is that doing?
[00:23:01] The trend I'd love to see is almost like we have our credit
[00:23:04] rating score, at least in the US.
[00:23:06] I don't know how it is in Europe.
[00:23:07] We have an individual credit rating score I totally missed your email. You don't know why, I get a thousand of them. I have such a hard time looking at my email, junk folders, everything else. I don't know what to read anymore. Let's lower the volume of email dramatically, but make them effective. Let's put the onus back on sellers to tell a real narrative of who I am and what I think I can do for you that's thought provoking enough that leads to an actual meeting.
[00:24:26] Simple down to the point.
[00:24:27] What's the problems that we solve? again. Yeah. You can watch this. It's not funny to watch it. Yeah. Completely agree. Final question, Joseph. If I may, super experienced, you've been there, done that. Very knowledgeable in what you do. You've seen some great sales the strength and confidence to know if I ask a curious question, I better be willing to open that door and walk down the curious path. Right? So I think that's one. Number two, I'm going to tie it back to how you started this podcast, not only your energy and enthusiasm, but the ability to tell a story. People gravitate to stories, right? They
[00:27:02] want a beginning, a middle and the end. They need an stage. So if I were to build a perfect seller, curiosity, storytelling, and financial forecasting, however you want to kind of paraphrase the last part, that would be for me a perfect seller.
[00:28:20] I love it.
[00:28:22] Joseph, thank you so much.
[00:28:24] You've been a fabulous guest.
[00:28:26] Thank you for your insights.