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Today’s show featured an interview with Andrew Barbuto, author of “Top Sales Producer: How to Crush Your Sales Quota,” and his sales manager, Patrick Thornton at Basis Technologies.
Find Andrew on LinkedIn. Find Patrick on LinkedIn.
ANDREW’S TIP: “Picture what your life is like if you are your ideal customer profile. Put yourself in their shoes. What is your day like? What are some of your challenges? You’ll be surprised at the insights you can get from that. Our job is to help our customers and our prospects. How are you going to do that unless you really understand what their needs are?”
PAT’S TIP: “Reach out to one sales professional, but any professional that you respect and admire, and say, “What’s one book that you would recommend that really helped shape and advance your career?” Read it and then see what happens.”
THE PODCAST BEGINS HERE
Fred Diamond: Andrew, I’m excited to talk to you, and I’m excited to also have Patrick on the show. As people know, I get a lot of inquiries from authors who have just published a book, and we’ve had millions of interactions on the Sales Game Changers Podcast. We do a great show and we talk about things like B2B sales and how to grow, et cetera. I always say to them, “Sounds great, but you need to bring someone on who is either a customer or a mentor who’s an active and current Director or VP of Sales.” You quickly got Patrick on the show with you as well.
Andrew, give us a brief introduction, and then I want Patrick to give us a brief introduction as well. Then we’re going to really get down to the things that you did to get to the point of writing a book about crushing your B2B sales quota.
Andrew Barbuto: Thanks so much for having me. I am a senior agency lead working at Basis. I’ve been at Basis for about five years. Basis is an advertising technology company. As you mentioned, an individual contributor and had my own book of business. Pat was an incredible manager and still mentor. About six or so months ago, I decided that I want to put down all of the things I’ve learned for the last eight plus years into a document, and it turned into a book. That’s where Top Sales Producer: How to Crush Your B2B Sales Quota has come from.
Fred Diamond: I applaud you on writing a book. People who are listening to the Sales Game Changers Podcast know that I’ve written two books, one on sales called Insights for Sales Game Changers, and I’ve also written a book on Lyme disease. But it took me till the age of 60 to write my first book, Insights for Sales Game Changers, even though I was the editor of my college newspaper and everybody thought I was going to be a big successful author.
Patrick Thornton, did you see a book in Andrew? He gave just some nice props about you, uses the word mentor. I know you managed him. When you first met him, did you think, “This is a guy who’s going to write such a great book to help sales professionals around the globe be successful”?
Patrick Thornton: That wasn’t my first thought, but the more I got to know Andrew, I certainly wasn’t surprised. When he started at the company, he just immediately made a big impact on me as a rising star type that was first person in the office, last one there. We struck up a quick relationship because he was always looking to talk to people who’ve been at the company, different sellers, to always continuously improve. While book wasn’t the first thing I thought, especially once I got to manage Andrew and work with him closely, I’m not surprised at all. Everything that he wrote, I’ve seen it firsthand, him put it into practice and be extremely successful with it. Short answer is no, but in the end, yes.
Fred Diamond: One of the great things about the book is it’s not a book about hacks. You see people all over the internet, all over social media, hacks on things to do, shortcuts, et cetera. I didn’t see that in the book, which great. When you’re selling B2B, and most of the companies that are members or partners of the Institute for Excellence in Sales, companies like Amazon Web Services, Oracle, Hilton, hacks ain’t going to get you there. It’s hard work. It’s understanding how the customer buys. It’s building relationships.
When you talk about the book, I want to get these three things in detail. You talk about the things that really set you apart. You talked about excelling and always improving at the basics. We’re going to get deep into that. You talked about working harder. It’s hard work, man. The people that I know who’ve had 20, 30, and Patrick, I’m sure you can agree with this, the people who are still doing this, 15, 20, 30 years in, they just didn’t wake up and say, “I’m done flipping burgers. I want to be a VP of Sales at Microsoft.” It’s a 20-year journey in a lot of cases to get there. The old adage of overnight success that took 15, 20 years to get there. The third thing you talked about is customer obsession. We talk about that all the time. Let’s get deep into all these. Excelling and always improving at the basics, preparing. Talk about that, Andrew.
Andrew Barbuto: You make a lot of really important points, which is sales is not easy. It is hard, very hard. Anybody who tells you otherwise is probably not doing sales on a daily basis. When it comes to always improving at the basics, what does it take to be a strong salesperson? It takes hard work and hard work doing the basics well. When I say the basics, I’m talking about the things that are required of bringing in new clients, retaining clients, growing clients. Things like research, finding those new companies that could potentially turn to customers, prospecting regularly, sales meetings, conducting them effectively.
What I do is I make it a priority to never get complacent with my processes. The world changes, so we need to change as well. If there’s anything that I can learn to continue to improve my processes, I’m always willing to listen to it. That’s why I continuously set up meetings with Pat to pick their brains. There’s always more to learn, and you could always get better no matter how good you are. When I say excelling at basics, that’s what I mean. Sales, it’s hard, but there are several elements of it that are pretty consistent and have always been that way. It’s just a matter of doing those really well, working really hard at it, and always improving, I think are the makings of a really strong top sales producer. If you want to continue to stay at the top, you have to continue to always improve and learn.
Fred Diamond: Patrick, I want to talk about something that he just mentioned. We talk a lot about mentoring. We also talk a lot about the concept of sponsoring somebody, not just giving them advice. We also talk a lot about coaching. For the people who are listening to the show out there, on the younger side, junior in sales, give them some advice on as a mentor, how do you want them to show up? A lot of times, the mentor is saying, “Don’t just ask me how can I be successful or how can I get better at sales.” They want to come with specific questions.
Talk a little bit about that when you were working with Andrew and how you were able to specifically provide value. I’m sure there were plenty of times you guys just sat at lunch or over a beer or something and just talked about life, but talk specifically about how a mentor can be of value to someone and how the protege can get the mentorship that they need.
Patrick Thornton: As a mentor, all you’re really looking for in the person that’s the mentee is are they willing to do the work? Because you can give the greatest advice in the world, but if it falls on deaf ears, or if you’re having the same conversations week over week, month over month, and you feel like you’re not really being heard or seeing action, then frankly it’s a waste of time for both of you. I think that’s why my experience with Andrew was so rewarding and why I always respected getting to connect with him, is every time he was eager for constructive feedback, success stories, always wanting to improve. Then as a mentor, when you’re talking to a person like that, what you’ll find out over time is, especially if they’re doing this with other people, it’s very rewarding for you in the end because they’re bringing new ideas, new things that are working out in the marketplace back to you. I really think the biggest thing is a lot of mentors want to do it, but you have to take it seriously and have to put in the work.
Fred Diamond: If you’re going to give someone advice and they don’t take your advice, maybe you’ll give them another shot, but then it’s clear that you’re not even quite sure why they’re asking you for advice. Just curious, tell us a little bit about when did you know you were going to go into sales? What was your college major? When you were 13 or 14, were you out there selling things door to door? Was your father in sales or your parents? Give us a little bit of an insight when you were growing up.
Andrew Barbuto: When I was a kid, I thought I was going to be an NBA player, but I was only five feet at the freshman year of high school, so it didn’t really pan out for me. As I was entering into college, I really didn’t know what I wanted to do. I feel like many people, I actually just wanted to go to college. I was really excited to be on my own and enjoyed it. But when it comes to how I ultimately ended up in sales, so my origin story actually goes back to my junior year of college, where I really needed to figure out what I wanted to do. I tried to stay it as broad as possible, and business is obviously very broad, but which part of business?
One of the companies that did a lot of recruiting on our campus was Enterprise Rent-A-Car. They have a really great management trainee program. I did that my junior year, I think going into senior year, I believe it was. What I discovered in that program was two main things. One was I had a knack for connecting with people, and connecting with people leads to sales success. I was the leading sales intern in selling our insurance, and it was B2C sales, so you had to do it every single day.
The other thing was my obsession with customer service. For me, and I’m sure you can relate and everyone could probably relate who’s listening to this, I feel like there’s been a significant just a lack of emphasis placed on customer service. For me, I think it’s so critical that if you have customers, that you treat them right, and you put a lot of emphasis on that. That was one of the things that Enterprise did, which was no matter what, if a customer came back and they had any sort of complaints whatsoever, they would not let them leave until they made it up to them. I was like, okay, this is a company that puts the right amount of emphasis on custom service. That’s how I got through it, that’s how I found I was good at it, and that’s how I found out that I really enjoyed doing it, was talking to people every day, connecting with them, and providing great customer service.
Fred Diamond: Patrick, I’m curious. With what Andrew just said, you’ve managed, led plenty of salespeople in your career. Can anybody be successful in sales or do you think, from your experience, you need to have a lot of the intrinsic desire that Andrew spews forth in his book, that we’re going to be talking about, that we’ve already started to get from him? What do you think? Could you take anybody and make them successful, or do you need some of this intrinsic type drive?
One thing that we’ve gathered from Andrew already is his drive. I’ll be honest with you once again, Andrew, I’ve read every sales book that there is, and it’s very hard to write a book. It’s easier today with self-publishing, et cetera, but it takes commitment, it takes energy, it takes time, takes nights away, takes thought, takes someone to help you edit, et cetera. I applaud you, not just on your sales success, but on publishing a book, having published two in the last couple years.
Patrick, what do you think? Is it intrinsic skills, desire that you need to be successful in sales? Or can you take someone who doesn’t have that and make them successful?
Patrick Thornton: Honestly, I think sales success is up to the individual. A great manager can help up-level you, bring you further along. But ultimately, I can have the smartest or most naturally-gifted teammate in the world, but if they don’t show up every day, put in the work, try to do shortcuts, check out, they’re not going to be successful, and I’m not going to be successful as a manager. What really stuck out with me with Andrew I think is a principle foundation that every successful seller needs to have, is really, I love the word persistence, desire. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. There are no shortcuts to long-term success. Really putting in that work every single day, pushing yourself, that’s how you’re ultimately going to be successful. I really do think it has to come from within. A great manager actually should try to get that out of you. But ultimately, it’s up to you.
Fred Diamond: You’re talking also about scheduling a lot of one-on-ones. Now, I can understand why Patrick would want to spend time with you. Your improvement would lead to his success. I always tell people this, people who are junior in their sales career, when they ask for advice on how to work with their managers, I always say, understand that your manager needs you to be successful so that they can be successful. They need eight other people like you to be successful, because he or she is reporting to someone. Then that person needs five, seven, eight regional people or VPs to be successful. They want you to be successful. They may not be spending all the time with you, but they want you to figure it out. They’ll hopefully, the great companies like the Premier Sales Employers that we recognize at the IES, recognizes companies that are committed to their salespeople success.
You talked a lot about how you had one-on-ones with other sales reps. Talk about, were people open to that or were they suspicious? “You’re trying to steal some of my secrets.” Not the manager level people like Patrick or the mentors, but the peers. Talk about how willing, and did you have a lot of conversations with them to get better?
Andrew Barbuto: Not at all. Salespeople are honestly some of the best people in my experience, especially the top salespeople. One of the qualities that I’ve found in all of them is they’re always willing to help. They’re always willing to help, and they’re always looking to learn. Those are two qualities that they all have had. Every time I’ve reached out to them, they’ve been more than happy. In fact, they’re like, “I would love to talk to you.” Then when I’m on the phone with them, I’m picking their brain and they want to learn from me as well. I don’t know if every company is like this, but at least in our company, the top salespeople that I’ve spoken to have been more than happy to help. They’ve really enjoyed it, and it’s usually not even just a one-time occurrence.
Everybody that I’ve spoken to has those qualities in common, which is always happy to help, which is a really important part of sales in general. Friendly, kind, and looking to improve, which is another key quality that I think is important to have in a salesperson. That’s been my experience and it’s been a back and forth. I give some, they’ll maybe spend a time interviewing me, essentially I’ll interview them, and we trade ideas back and forth. It’s been really some of the best learnings that I’ve had that I’ve been able to apply, especially at the beginning of my career at Basis, because it was a transition for me as I was going into software. I hadn’t previously sold it, and it is a pretty unique sale. Having those conversations have been some of the most beneficial to expedite my ramp up period with learning how to sell software.
Fred Diamond: A lot of the sales professionals that I’ve worked with who have been successful, they just didn’t wake up one day and be successful. When I was at Apple Computer or in Compaq, I worked with a lot of senior salespeople who worked at some of the great employers like Xerox and Oracle, and it took them 10, 15, 20, 30 years, but they wanted me to know. They wanted me to understand lessons that they learned because that was going to help them be successful as well. Let’s talk a little bit about the concept of hard work. You talk a lot about that.
You talked about some examples that a lot of times people think, “Someone answered my phone call. The deal is at 50%,” when in reality it might require another 30 emails, another 25 meetings, another couple Zoom calls, then understanding inside what’s going on. Someone said to me recently they’re wondering why a deal has taken so long because of all the buying signs that were there. One of the challenges with B2B sales, especially complex B2B sales, is that we don’t know everything that’s going on. Yeah, the customer wants to be engaged if they want to be engaged, but we don’t know what’s happening internally.
Patrick, talk about hard work. What do you like to see in a sales professional? You want to see that they’re hustling, that they’re working. Give us some insights. We have a lot of junior salespeople who listen to the show, and we obviously know that Andrew exhibited a lot about this, but give us some of your insights into what do you expect of your salespeople?
Patrick Thornton: The key is just consistency, being self-motivated, really doing your job on a day in, day out basis. If you’re looking for your manager or a sales leader to motivate you every day, I don’t know how successful you’re going to be long term. It really has to come from within. Regarding hard work, doing your actual job is one piece of the puzzle. But I think what you see from especially the top young salespeople, how they’re able to really fast track their success, is the work that they do outside, reading books on sales, listening to podcasts like this, proactively seeking mentors. It’s not only working hard at the job that you’re paid to do, but putting in that additional homework, working smart to really differentiate yourself against not only your peers, but the competition as well.
Fred Diamond: We’re doing today’s interview in September of 2024. Andrew’s book is coming out in December. Work from home. Over the last couple years, because of the pandemic, there’s been this major shift to working from home. Right now, a lot of companies are struggling with how much hybrid, do we want people in the office? Do we insist that they come in the office? We see articles all the time.
Andrew, I spoke with a lot of junior sales professionals during the pandemic who really struggled. Patrick, I spoke to a lot of first-time sales managers who struggled, because a lot of the success is having someone in the office, taking them into a conference room, going to the whiteboard, going to lunch. Talk to that a little bit if you could. What do you see right now with the whole concept of hybrid, et cetera? What is your advice for sales professionals to achieve the success you have? Then, Patrick, as a manager, where do you think this is going? Where do you want it to go? What do you think we’re going to be?
Andrew Barbuto: My perspective on this is that I have been at my company for a little over five years. At one point for a couple years or maybe a year or two, I was in-person. I got to meet all my teammates. We have gotten together since then. It’s hard for me to make an assessment without having started during the virtual work environment, because right now, my feeling is I’m equally as productive, if not, I would say actually significantly more productive, actually. But I know culture is really important, especially with younger salespeople, being in person with your teammates and your manager, I’m sure that would be very helpful.
For myself, I would say I’m actually much more productive in the current environment. Most of my clients are also remote. What I was going from was on a good day, maybe having two meetings, which is taking the subway and such, to now I could have three, four meetings, no problem. At the end of the day, that’s really what I look at my job as. I want to be speaking to clients as much as possible. Also, the majority of my teammates are in other states anyway, so it’s not like I would be in-person with all my teammates. We’ve gone fully remote and we’ve found that our productivity has not decreased at all. The culture is still very strong. My advice would be as much for virtual meetings as you can, go out of your way to reach out to people that you don’t work with every day, set up one-on-ones with them and pick their brains, interview them, come with questions, get to know them, or just have a casual lunch chat with them. It’s important to get to know people that you’re not working with every day, because of course, otherwise you’re not going to be able to meet them.
Fred Diamond: Patrick, what is some of your advice for the junior to mid sales professionals? It’s a challenge. Even though a lot of us are remote and a lot of companies have gone remote, there’s still a challenge with optimizing your time, keeping your mindset where it should be. What are some of your thoughts on this?
Patrick Thornton: My biggest advice is just to be focused on what you can control. Obviously, different companies have different policies when it comes to working from home, hybrid, in-office. I do know that personally in my career, I gained a ton of value by being in-office every single day and organically getting to know different sales leaders at the company. But if that isn’t possible now, given your current company and setup, there are some amazing opportunities that hybrid presents. Perhaps asking sales leaders or successful salespeople if you can sit in on Zoom meetings. People usually don’t have any problem with you just hanging in the background. I found early in my sales career, some of the best ways of learning were actually tagging along at meetings.
It can be challenging in the remote environment to naturally build relationships, but I think a big theme of our conversation today is trying to get a mentor. Just being proactive and trying to reach out to other people at the company and just saying, “Hey, would you be open to checking in maybe monthly, maybe quarterly, because you’re somebody I feel like I can learn a lot from. I wish there was more opportunity for face-to-face interaction, but is that something that you’d be open to?” All you have to do is ask. I think a big theme for today is usually top salespeople, if you’re a hard worker, a young go-getter, they’ll want to help you out as well.
Fred Diamond: Last thing I want to talk about is the concept of customer obsession. Andrew, you talk about this a lot in the book, you talk about getting to spend as much time as possible with your customers and your prospects. We talk about all the time, the main differentiator we found with elite sales professionals is that they’re entrenched, they’re embedded in the marketplace. They can now come to their customer with solutions, as compared to in the past where they would say, how can I help you? Or what you’re paying, and all that kind of stuff. The great salespeople are the ones that are now so entrenched. They understand where their customer’s business is going, where the market’s going. I want to get both of your insights into advice on how our listeners can truly be customer obsessed.
Andrew Barbuto: In fact, I start out my book with talking about this very topic, which is, I think the first thing that you need to do if you’re a salesperson, either you’re starting in a new role or you’re going into sales the first time, is to become an expert. Become an expert on your industry, become an expert on your company, and become an expert most importantly on your customer’s company. What that entails is to have conversations with them outside the context of a normal business engagement. People are busy, it’s nice to set up interviews with them to just understand what their days are like. In my experience, clients are more than happy to have those conversations, to just say, “Hey, listen, I just want to understand a little bit more about your world. I want to understand how I can best service you.” It’s a great relationship builder.
Also, it can provide stories, because that’s one of the biggest things for salespeople when they’re first starting out. It is a huge advantage to be able to reference stories in meetings. Before you have stories, this is a good way to be able to understand. For example, I met with one of my customers and I was just like, “Why did you choose me? You have a lot of potential choices. What do you like about me?” It gave me really a phenomenal insight, not only for my relationship with them, so I can continue to do those things, but also to reference in other meetings. It’s good to understand what they like about particular salespeople.
That is the foundation. For everything else that you do in order to be a top salesperson, that needs to be number one, be it an expert in your industry, your business and your customer’s business, so that way you can advise them, because that is the definition of a top salesperson in 2024, is to be an advisor.
Patrick Thornton: I think Andrew hit it on the head. The real key is just always provide ongoing value. Whether it’s a prospect or a customer, timing is everything. You can’t always just be asking them to buy your product and service. The way to really stay top of mind is to provide them with relevant updates about their business. Then lo and behold, when the timing’s right, you’ll probably be top of mind compared to other people just asking for meetings or asking them to react to their product or service.
Fred Diamond: We always tell people, your customer doesn’t need you unless you’re bringing them value. They don’t need to know about your features and your benefits. They can get all those over the internet or social media. How are you truly bringing value to help them achieve what they need to achieve?
I want to thank Andrew Barbuto. I want to congratulate you again on the book, Top Sales Producer: How to Crush Your B2B Sales Quota. Patrick Thornton, congratulations on the mentoring that got Andrew to the place where he can publish such a book. It’s going to be a value for a lot of people. The book is great. You talk about research, you talk about prospecting. We talk about preparation all the time. We talk about great ways to give demos. You also have a good chapter on the financial side. The great sales professionals that we work with, they understand the finance and how everything plays together.
Give us your final action steps. Give us something specific. You’ve given us a lot of great ideas. To round out the show, give us something specific people should do right now to take their sales career to the next level.
Patrick Thornton: My guess is, anyone listening to this is looking to better their sales career. My advice is simple. Reach out to one professional, ideally sales professional, but any professional that you respect and admire, and say, “Hey, what’s one book that you would recommend that really helped shape your career, advance your career?” Read it and then see what happens. Then from there, don’t be afraid to ask other people, because again, I feel like that extra work really helps self-improvement and taking yourself to the next level.
Fred Diamond: Besides Insights for Sales Game Changers by Fred Diamond, and besides Top Sales Producer: How to Crush Your B2B Sales Quota by Andrew Barbuto, is there another book that you recommend that would be your answer to that question?
Patrick Thornton: Those would have to be the top two. If I had to pick a third, my favorite, I wouldn’t say it’s sales specific, but it’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. It’s just one of my all-time favorites.
Fred Diamond: That’s a classic. Besides the two books I mentioned before, the one that I usually refer people to, it’s called The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks, who talks about how to get past your upper limits.
Andrew, congratulations again on the book. Congratulations on your success. Give us a final action step.
Andrew Barbuto: One of the things that I do that I think is a really good eye-opening experience, we’re obviously so busy during the day, but take a moment, close your eyes and try to picture what your life is like if you are your ideal customer profile. Put yourself in their shoes, just block everything else out, and just pretend that you are that person. This is something I did the other day. Just think about, what is your day like? What are some of your challenges? What are some of the tools you use? Who are you trying to impress? Who is important? What do you want your career path to be?
When you take a moment and try to really put yourself in their shoes, you’ll be surprised at how much insights you can get from that, because that could be directly tied to what our job is. Our job is to help our customers and our prospects. How are you going to do that unless you really understand what their needs are? By taking a moment and trying to pretend you’re them, I’ve been able to get some really, really good thoughts that I’ve then used in my outreach, in my meetings, and in my pitches. That’s something that I recommend everybody does.
Fred Diamond: I try to wake up every morning thinking about what are the challenges that my customers are facing? Doing that a couple times throughout the day is really going to differentiate yourself.
Once again, I want to thank Andrew Barbuto, Patrick Thornton. My name is Fred Diamond. This is the Sales Game Changers Podcast.
Transcribed by Mariana Badillo