[00:00:00] Welcome to B2B Sales Trends, the podcast dedicated to sales leaders in the B2B space
[00:00:11] where we share conversations about innovative and successful sales transformations
[00:00:16] to keep you up to date on the latest trends. This podcast is brought to you by Global
[00:00:21] Performance Group. Welcome yet another fabulous episode of the B2B Sales Trends,
[00:00:28] podcast media people, be sure that brings you acts, tips, thought leadership for sales,
[00:00:34] marketing and customer success. It's brought to you by us who is us. We have
[00:00:39] Global Performance Group, but revenue improvement would take that influence behavior change
[00:00:45] for sales people to communicate with competence, confidence, and courage to sell based on
[00:00:55] outcomes to their customer. My name is Harry Kendall Buffett, today I have with me
[00:01:01] Ford Williams. Ford is the VP of commercial sales at ThoughtSport. Welcome to the B2B Sales
[00:01:10] Trends, podcast, Ford. Thank so much for having me. We're really excited about the next
[00:01:15] few minutes here. Absolutely, thank you for making time. Media has a start to this podcast.
[00:01:23] Give us a quick intro about you if you would. Yeah, thanks so much Harry. So quickly,
[00:01:31] born and raised in the barrier, when did the text sales immediately following,
[00:01:37] immediately following college? So I got involved in the barrier texting pretty immediately here
[00:01:42] and then started working in different SaaS companies, specifically clear slide and App Dynamics.
[00:01:49] And eventually made my way to ThoughtSport where I am now. Started as a rep, then became an enterprise
[00:01:55] leader, then became a strategic leader and then got promoted to take over the commercial order
[00:02:00] commercial teams for us that means a thousand employees and under. It's been an amazing journey
[00:02:06] to help the company grow, to help people grow and to sell a lot of software. So excited to be
[00:02:14] talking to you today. Harry, hopefully I have a few timid to share. But that's my journey so far.
[00:02:20] Well, we've chat at beforehand already and I know you have a lot of things to share which I
[00:02:24] know our listeners will appreciate. Let's start with you journey to becoming, you know,
[00:02:31] and you're currently all the VP of commercial sales at ThoughtSport. What experiences do you
[00:02:39] believe have shaped your approach to sales leadership? That's a phenomenal question. What
[00:02:47] experiences do you believe shaped your project? One of the biggest experiences that shaped me is
[00:02:52] is coming up through companies and organizations and teams that had to generate outbound pipeline,
[00:02:59] had a generate pipeline revenue that companies wouldn't have without us as a sales rep.
[00:03:05] And so when I became a leader, one of the items I took on for forces, making this team self-sufficient.
[00:03:13] Right? If marketing doesn't generate enough leads, if the SDR team isn't generating enough meetings,
[00:03:18] are we still able to hit our number to have the requisite amount of pipe and revenue to overachieve?
[00:03:26] And that just came about from living in the trenches for 15 years. The ability to
[00:03:31] co-co-co-ocytio and generate meetings. So, as definitely one of the things that shaped my approach
[00:03:40] to sales leadership is I came up through that model and I really focused on making my team self-sufficient
[00:03:48] despite spending by marketing and SDR resources, etc.
[00:03:54] Interesting that you say that a lot of the times we at my organization we deal a lot with
[00:04:01] the fact that if good sales people who sort of lived in the trenches as you have referred to
[00:04:08] are moving up on the ranks and you clearly have moved up very quickly there to the level where
[00:04:20] you are right now. They always struggle from that switch of being excellent sales people
[00:04:27] to being excellent managers and leaders. I'm not saying that's for you two days, but that's
[00:04:33] something that we always bump into within many other organization to make that leap.
[00:04:39] It's actually quite a challenge. Do you see that way too? Absolutely.
[00:04:45] Honestly, one of the biggest mistakes I see from individuals being ICs, individuals and
[00:04:51] contributors to becoming a leader, Harry is they overscale initially. And your first leadership job
[00:04:57] you're not probably getting 40 people in a hundred million dollar book of business. You're probably
[00:05:01] getting three, four or five, six people and if you're lucky you're one, two, three, four, five
[00:05:07] million dollar book of business. And I say leaders think hey I'm the leadership, I have a leadership
[00:05:12] title now. Therefore I have to set up all these processes, all these procedures that may not be relevant
[00:05:19] for a team of that size. So one thing I was coached my team on my leaders on is so much of
[00:05:26] your reps coaching and learning should be done through Osmosis, which is a really fancy way of saying
[00:05:31] leaders should still be involved in the opportunities. They should still be involved in the accounts
[00:05:36] that should be on all the calls when you have four or five people don't overscale yourself too
[00:05:42] quickly. So that's one of the challenges that I see when leaders become, excuse me, when ICs become leaders.
[00:05:49] Right, interesting. Well and you've been named, I won't keep that from my audience
[00:05:56] you've been named the VP of the year in 2023. That's pretty cool congratulations.
[00:06:04] And you led your team to a president's club too in 2023. It's fabulous. Have you
[00:06:12] can you explain a little bit about your approach to sales and how
[00:06:20] sort of you transformed your team's performance to get to that level?
[00:06:26] Absolutely. So I took over the team. I had some things in place and others were not in place.
[00:06:32] I had two great leaders in my co-bryan and Derek Corselle, but they were, they
[00:06:38] they didn't help just like we only helped. They didn't guidance. And the first thing I did is
[00:06:42] I looked across the sales cycle and I saw these new reps that we had younger reps
[00:06:47] not going what to do with their dad. Are they to spend their whole day doing territory management?
[00:06:52] Are they spend the whole day chasing opportunities? So the first thing I did is I changed
[00:06:58] the daily activity to only three things. Territory management, pipeline generation or PG and
[00:07:04] progressive, pressing closed VO or progressing closed visible opportunity. Those are the
[00:07:10] only three things I want my reps doing or my team doing every day. If you're doing something
[00:07:15] outside of that like be not in a terminal committee or helping the product team, etc. etc.
[00:07:23] That may help you in some ways but it's not going to help the bottom line of the top line.
[00:07:28] And so I really focused the team into every day you're going to be doing territory management
[00:07:34] which for us was getting accounts from partners. So we're going to reach out to 20 partners a day.
[00:07:39] PG which is reaching out to 50 contacts via phone, email, and LinkedIn every day.
[00:07:46] You're essentially making 50 calls 50 emails, 50 LinkedIn's. And the progress and
[00:07:50] close this law opportunity which is our sales process happening to get going depth there.
[00:07:54] But that was one of the big changes I made is let's overturn what day-to-day activity looks like
[00:08:00] so everyone's focused on only three things. And those three things are generating
[00:08:05] opportunity in moving opportunities to close.
[00:08:07] Love it.
[00:08:10] Yeah, it's a very common problem that people think that your up has about 50,000 different things.
[00:08:19] And if you give people the purpose and the focus of it, that's pretty cool.
[00:08:25] Very good inside there. I like it a lot. And you led a very diverse team right?
[00:08:30] About young enthusiastic sellers to more experience bonds. So how do you address the sort of the
[00:08:36] different needs and the approaches of barriers, generations within your team to get them to where they
[00:08:45] need to be? That's a great question. There's no easy solution because different people are
[00:08:52] in different people respond to motivations. They're fully for any individual,
[00:08:58] hairy ally to start with their why or why are they doing this? Why do they want to be a successful
[00:09:04] seller right? There's frankly a lot easier jobs in the world that will pay you a salary to work
[00:09:09] for nine to five, even provide a comfortable life in many circumstances.
[00:09:15] If you are getting into sales, tech sales, you should want more. And there should be a reason
[00:09:20] you walk forward. And so whether you're a 50 year old ex-filer pilot or a 55 year old seller who's been
[00:09:28] in the market 25 years, both of individuals. I'm speaking more to it or I've hired
[00:09:33] or you're a 22 year old coming out of college like I have in the room across from me.
[00:09:37] You still have a lot. You have a reason to do this. It may be providing for your family. It may
[00:09:43] be buying a home. It may be pain off student loans. It may be proving to your parents that
[00:09:48] their investment of 10 year-level care and college education was worth it. It may be the
[00:09:55] first person to go to college and you want to succeed, where maybe others in your family were
[00:10:00] unable to. Taping into that why allows you to then coach them and guide them and help them.
[00:10:07] But not understand their why and their motivations. You can be missing the mark.
[00:10:12] And so whether they're very old, whether very young, any shape size, etc.
[00:10:19] Starting with that individual is an individual and starting with their why and their motivations,
[00:10:24] I think really allows you to get in there and help coaching guide them and take them to the next level.
[00:10:30] Feel like you really live what you was in the past have applied to your customers.
[00:10:39] As in the questions, understanding the need behind the wall, the warmth and
[00:10:44] really coaching them to the right solution. There are so many overlaps to coaching your own
[00:10:54] teams to how you coach your customers in a way and their direction is interesting.
[00:11:02] I'm absolutely agree. In some ways, Harriet life and your challenges can be treated like a sales
[00:11:09] cycle. You mentioned this understanding the customers why, there are three ways. Why would they do
[00:11:18] why would they do it now? Why would they choose thoughts about or whatever your technology is?
[00:11:23] That's not un-similar to a person's motivations. Why would you why are you in sales? Why are
[00:11:29] you doing this now and why are you at this company? Whether with the customer or the employee,
[00:11:38] it helps them crystallize in articulate what really needs to be accomplished.
[00:11:44] You can move things faster, you can move things along, etc., when you have those wise understood.
[00:11:50] Completely agree. I know you've mentored your team quite a bit and you mentioned before that
[00:12:02] when we tried that you've reduced the sales cycle of your commercial team from eight steps to
[00:12:10] I think four steps you've mentioned? Yes. Share with us how you did that, how you implemented
[00:12:16] that change, how they took it and what the impact was on deal velocity and overall efficiency,
[00:12:25] sales efficiency. That's a phenomenal question. One I love discussing because I think the
[00:12:34] loss of the urgency, speed is so important whether not just in commercial anymore, Harriet, but really
[00:12:40] across the entire software landscape because technology gets easier and easier to use. As I
[00:12:46] like to tell my team we're not selling ERP in 2005, right? It doesn't take months to implement.
[00:12:53] You don't need six partners to do the implementation work. Things are just getting easier and faster.
[00:12:59] Driving urgency is key. When I took over the team there was a few challenges. One was
[00:13:06] the sales cycle was an enterprise light, if you will. It wasn't really enterprise light. It was
[00:13:12] more just adopted for enterprise. I had eight stages. The first thing I did is I looked at the
[00:13:19] stages, understood them because I and I understood it well because I had to come from our enterprise
[00:13:24] and dangerous team. We'll reduce eight stages but even in those teams we really only use six of the
[00:13:30] stages. Down in commercial I saw some redundancies. I focused on those daily activities I mentioned
[00:13:39] and now we're talking about that third daily activity, progressing closed VO. I took it from
[00:13:43] eight stages to four. Four stages are new business meeting with a prep call prior to it.
[00:13:52] POC and then negotiate a close. Obviously there's many options within those stages as well as between
[00:14:00] those stages. Those are tools and the toolbox that I educate the team on that we enable them on.
[00:14:06] But in terms of our goals and what we're driving at, we're selling to the customer next
[00:14:11] steps it should really be that new business meeting POC to close with that prep call being the four stage.
[00:14:18] So that's one way I drove urgency is just a reduction in amount of steps we had to take.
[00:14:23] Almost think of it like a journey with pit stops and we don't have to stop it every in and out.
[00:14:27] We don't have to stop it every 7-11. We can stop it one or two and then keep continuing
[00:14:34] the other item I did is I took our four casting and didn't have to change the
[00:14:39] complement but we were four casting on a quarterly basis and I changed that until the month
[00:14:46] late. I had very easy change, clearly allows you to do that at S tool. Secondly this is
[00:14:52] much of a scientific or qualitative but we created urgency we created celebration around each end of
[00:15:00] the way most works do end to quarter and year. So my team absolutely celebrates end of months
[00:15:06] very similar how we do it into year, whether it's a war room, whether it's a bomb, whether we're
[00:15:11] all in the office during that time period and so they know they need a forecast monthly but they
[00:15:16] also are celebrated for Winnie Monthly. Right cool. So just a few ways to drive urgency.
[00:15:25] Look at this great. I've also heard you talk about it and I've got to look up the term here
[00:15:33] to get it right. You mentioned something about what I said and why wasn't something I haven't
[00:15:38] had before or the library of pain. You've created that and it sounds like a very unique sort of
[00:15:49] resource to you sales team. Can you explain a little bit that concept and what it does,
[00:15:55] the library of pain, love it. Well Harry fortunately it's not a medieval torture mechanism
[00:16:05] but I've library paid is it's a book or a document of all the personas, the pains they would
[00:16:14] be facing and how we solve the pain. I first was introduced to this concept and actually got a
[00:16:20] little book or pamphlet when I was at App Dynamics. I was a young seller and I think I've been on
[00:16:25] the team only six, eight weeks and they handed these out at an SKO I believe. They were my one
[00:16:32] because it basically laid out all the personas we would put cell to. The pains they face in their role
[00:16:40] on a day to day basis and how thoughts bought and neatly solved those pains. And so what it
[00:16:46] provided and what we have here as well it provides targets it provides a path to tap and do what is
[00:16:54] most important for that individual. I've always found Harry that a lot of sellers would get asking
[00:17:00] questions. There's very few sellers that make it anywhere that just talk, right? They ask a lot
[00:17:06] about questions and sometimes those questions are superfluous or unnecessary. They're not on the
[00:17:10] mark but with a library of pain, it's a guy to tap into the pain and back to our earlier
[00:17:17] question Harry that tapping into motivations. Pain is a very powerful motivator. If you're
[00:17:24] you're leading an engineering team or a product team and you are charged to be innovative or you're
[00:17:30] charged with delivery. You're charged with up time or whatever it may be, our risk can ask a lot
[00:17:36] of questions that are tangentially related or they can ask hyperspecific questions that
[00:17:42] happens to the pain. Open that leader of that product leader in this case and have them talk about
[00:17:49] their pain and then you can explain once that pain's been exposed to discuss you can explain
[00:17:53] how we can solve that pain. And the library of pain is just a book of pamphlet,
[00:18:00] Google Doc that highlights that and so it allows a rep to tap into and leverage that pain
[00:18:06] to explain how our product or unique features that can solve those pain once. It also
[00:18:14] Harry is a problem to tell. It also helps a ton versus competition because we're tapping
[00:18:18] into their motivations, we're explaining how our specific features are going to solve it.
[00:18:24] But definitely we're tapping into their success criteria and how our future set in value was
[00:18:29] solved for that. So there's a lot of benefits from it. I think for any sales team it's an
[00:18:36] amazing tool to have. It's interesting, we always, I always think we're in the sales
[00:18:45] training spaces you know and a lot of the times the people ask questions for the sake of
[00:18:54] questions. For the sake of asking questions but you know providing any value to me if you
[00:19:00] ask a question that quite honestly you should have known or you should have anticipated through
[00:19:05] your preparation already and you only want me to answer to that question for you to have
[00:19:13] confirmation on your assumption that does not provide any value to me. So we always talk about
[00:19:20] and this is why this links are nicely in your library of pain which is where we always talk about
[00:19:26] you need to be able to generate a need or in your case of pain in the mind of the buyer
[00:19:34] and how you do that it's not about finding out needs. It's about generating new needs that the
[00:19:40] buyer hasn't anticipated or appreciated before and how we have a certain questioning technique that
[00:19:46] raises that points and generates those needs but this is the thing that sales people do a lot
[00:19:54] of the time wrong they think about oh you know what what five questions can we ask this persona.
[00:20:00] This is not about what questions you should ask this is about what need do you want to generate
[00:20:06] and then formulate and plan for your questions that you need to use in order to generate that
[00:20:13] need or that pain in the mind of the buyer it's a really it's sort of a back to front way
[00:20:18] of doing it, doing it right which is always a big reference for sales people going through
[00:20:25] our stuff. I love that term use there and so just finding need and finding pain generating it
[00:20:33] right I do think that's a chasm that sellers cross in their journey in that many sellers think
[00:20:39] it's all about finding things just like I think it's all about reporting what they're finding.
[00:20:44] I'm more interested in individuals that have moved from that stage to their generating new needs
[00:20:50] their creating that sense of pain that they may have not felt or maybe they didn't
[00:20:56] have they weren't articulated and our reps have that ability to generate it articulated created
[00:21:02] that's when a seller really has transformed almost from someone that gets the or sorry
[00:21:07] gatherers and use them to sort that crates to do if you have it is a crossing the cast.
[00:21:15] Totally totally totally and you know it's I forget what exactly the percentages but there's a few
[00:21:22] starts out there and they're worth very a little bit what is it 60 70% whatever exactly it is
[00:21:28] of the buying decision has been made before buy a even engages salesperson so if you crop up with
[00:21:36] the same old rubbish questions everybody else is asking you know it's not going to do it
[00:21:41] so you need to generate things in their mind that they haven't thought about that they haven't
[00:21:47] considered that they haven't discovered that they haven't appreciated that you can help me run
[00:21:52] my business more effectively right and and that's really the kind of conversation we need to have
[00:22:00] and not what keeps you up and those sort of things that you know average salespeople always
[00:22:08] are doing you right let's take a lot of people to go ahead
[00:22:15] no I was going to say nothing I have two kids and I'm a maniac for work so nothing keeps me up
[00:22:21] and I say I get the bad and I'm dead tired that's what I told people nothing keeps you me
[00:22:27] up I just say laughs at the end of the day exactly absolutely what sort of emerging trends do you
[00:22:35] see in the B2B selling space and what excites you the most at that stage yeah what I what I hit
[00:22:44] on already but I'll get a little bit more scientific or specific I should say about it Harry and
[00:22:49] that's the speed at which people are making decisions people are implementing technologies etc
[00:22:57] if you look at I use that example but it's it's a macro example like you combine in
[00:23:02] the RPS solution and the 1990s or early 2000s and the year-long process that takes to
[00:23:09] bind in the RAP now or buying software now it just continues to be a quicker cycle move faster
[00:23:17] etc. I don't think that necessarily means there's less people involved I don't think that
[00:23:22] that's the reason it's just that the technology is so much easier as part of that another trend
[00:23:27] I've seen is POC's pre-foot concepts trials are shortly I think on websites three four
[00:23:35] five years ago it was it was uncommon to see a 10 day 5 day you know 14 day trial everything
[00:23:42] was 30 days now it's very uncommon to see a 30 day trial most trials are 14 15 so that's one
[00:23:50] trend I'm seeing a is emergency and speed another one that I have seen over time is and this
[00:24:00] I don't know if this is so much trend it's just a misnomer is that this idea and I think a
[00:24:04] lot of people think that it's that a decision is made by a individual I think we use the term economic
[00:24:10] buyer of course there is always an economic buyer Harry but almost all software sales are consensus
[00:24:18] sales meaning many people need to bless it many people need to check off on it and so get into one
[00:24:25] person even if it is the EB is not going to cut it because that person wants a cohesive
[00:24:33] happy group they don't want to get a recommendation not to move forward and move forward and so
[00:24:39] it's not uncommon for there to be quote unquote four five decision makers each with their own
[00:24:45] hydrate of people under them that need to be one over so even in a 50,000, 100,000 are deal
[00:24:52] there's probably 20 30 people that we need to talk to taking this example the thoughts about
[00:24:58] really quick when we sell external embedded analytics we always have to win over product and
[00:25:02] engineering we said so we're selling our product for internal use we always have to win over IT
[00:25:09] and the business group that's going to use it so my point is there's multiple decision makers
[00:25:15] whether we're selling an external or internal and they all have their own constituents or
[00:25:20] cadre that need to be one over so that's another trend of seeing is that there isn't this person
[00:25:25] in a board room that's making a decision it's actually quite a few people that's that's one
[00:25:33] and then finally what are the big changes I've seen over my time is time to value
[00:25:39] right there isn't this lag we bought it and it's going to take weeks or months for a time to
[00:25:46] value and so why do I bring this up is a lot of sellers think hey I sold this customer last month
[00:25:53] so therefore I need to go work elsewhere and not talk to them while they get set up but I think
[00:25:59] the best sales reps realize that customers can see a lot of value and realize that value quickly
[00:26:06] and so they can buy again and again and again we have electronics or TV manufacturer that
[00:26:14] we sold to got set up within weeks I think two weeks bought again eight weeks later and bought
[00:26:20] again I think 12 weeks after that and I just see technology heading that way in that it's so easy
[00:26:27] to get implemented and set up that sometimes these order forms aren't correct because no one
[00:26:33] dotto be we would even move that fast so that's just something for young sellers all sellers
[00:26:39] to realize is that just because you sold somebody last quarter that doesn't mean they can't buy
[00:26:44] this quarter what it means is you probably should be involved in that implementation that
[00:26:48] will out ensuring success while PG and into other groups because that customer can be successful
[00:26:54] in days or weeks and they want to do an additional purchase right so interesting folk thank you
[00:27:03] with the almost at the end and my final question always is what are the top three things in your
[00:27:09] opinion that sales people need to be really really good on what are the top three things that make
[00:27:16] a sales person or makes a sales person elite level as we'd like to call it what do they need to do
[00:27:24] really well what are those three things? It's a great question something I think about all
[00:27:30] the time especially when it comes to hiring Harry the first is inability to generate revenue a
[00:27:36] company wouldn't have without them a very fancy way of saying do they have the ability to PG can
[00:27:42] they pipeline generate. Reps that PG consistently set out bound means consistently the burden
[00:27:48] of their success almost the owner for their success actually passes onto their leader right if I
[00:27:53] haven't individually said in a ton of outbound meetings it's on us to be on their meetings
[00:27:59] help lead those meetings get them to the POC stage etc so one thing I always look for is
[00:28:05] if someone that's hungry not scared to pick up the phone not scared to send that extra email
[00:28:11] so frankly ability to PG right that is the definition of a sales person are you bringing in
[00:28:17] a revenue that company wouldn't have about you so that's my number one my number two is champion
[00:28:23] building so when you do set a meeting and get into a sales cycle no deal ever gets done without
[00:28:30] a champion ever right there is a champion internally right definition of a champion is so
[00:28:36] when that has influence over the economic buyer and is selling on your behalf right there are
[00:28:42] stages to champion building identify one building one testing and using our leverage in that
[00:28:49] champion those are all important and probably worth their own podcast for stages of champion building
[00:28:57] many people the best sellers have ever met having a new ability to bring people to them
[00:29:05] to attract people to them to get people to want to work with and to light them get people to open
[00:29:11] to them personally professionally and so that champion building is both a science and
[00:29:17] an art but if you can champion build and that what I mentioned before PG you're gonna be a great seller
[00:29:24] the final one I look for is an ability to do deals early one emergencies or speed right I as a
[00:29:31] young seller I made the mistake area thinking baby when doesn't matter when I close it deal I can
[00:29:38] close this quarter next order I'm financially sound it doesn't matter when it comes in and that
[00:29:43] was so the wrong mindset right so before when you're working in an organization to think like an owner
[00:29:49] think like the CEO and the CEO the CRL they need to report their earnings quarterly
[00:29:54] to their board whether it's a private venture back company whether it's a family own company whether
[00:30:00] it's a public company businesses operate on quarterly in annual cadances right public companies
[00:30:07] 10Q and 10K etc and if you aren't doing deals early if you're not thinking creative if you're
[00:30:14] not calling that extra person if you're not tying incentives to do deal early deal slip and
[00:30:20] you work that up across all the sellers number slip quarter slip and the company's not doing
[00:30:26] as well one thing I was like a highlight to my team when I'm teaching this lesson is if a company
[00:30:31] brings in a billion dollars or ten years that's interesting I guess if a company brings in a
[00:30:38] billion dollars over a quarter that's a very interesting company a lot of people want to invest it
[00:30:45] and some time is a huge component of money and I try to teach that because we should be doing
[00:30:51] everything early we should be squeezing into quarter so a reps ability and willingness to do things
[00:30:56] artificially really even uncomfortable early as a third thing I look for.
[00:31:02] Love those three things I think you are an exceptional leader and usually this doesn't get said but
[00:31:12] your sales team can be very lucky to have you so thank you so much for your time
[00:31:19] for your insights I know that our listeners are really appreciate what you have shared today with us thank
[00:31:28] you well thank you here you and your team a bit wonderful to interact with have enjoyed the last
[00:31:33] 30 minutes hopefully it's been insightful for those listening absolutely it's been so and for our
[00:31:40] listeners thank you so much for your time now the key lessons for today are absolutely
[00:31:47] think about that the song is pain as for the call and the library of pain think about what is
[00:31:53] the need that you need to generate in the mind of the buyer and how are you going to get him or
[00:31:59] there and also those three things that for mentioned how do you generate a pipeline how do
[00:32:09] champion build as well as how do you call and close deals early on my deal listeners look after
[00:32:17] yourself until the next episode happy selling and we'll talk soon look after yourselves bye bye