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Today’s show featured an interview with Brian Shea, the headliner at the August 15 Big Stage program.
Find Brian on LinkedIn.
BRIAN’S TIP: “If your call plan and your engagement strategy is not built outside-in, meaning what’s important to the buyer and how am I going to show up different tomorrow with that buyer to show that I understand them, I understand their business, I understand their industry, I understand their headwinds. If I don’t know all the answers, I have highly curious questions to ask them about the challenges that they have in achieving their corporate objectives. In other words, I can probably execute that meeting without any slideware.”
THE PODCAST BEGINS HERE
Fred Diamond: Brian Shea with Lucrum Partners, you’re going to be the keynote speaker at the Institute for Excellence in Sales Big Stage program. It’s going to be on August 15th. Now, it’s going to be hybrid. It’s going to be in person in Reston, Virginia at the Carahsoft Conference and Collaboration Center, and it’s also available virtually. Brian, we already have quite a few people who have signed up all over the world. We’ll be opening the doors in person at eight o’clock. Brian’s going to hit the stage at 8:30. He’ll go till 10:00. If you’re going to be listening virtually or watching interactively, and we’ll have some breakout rooms, and it’s going to be a great session. Brian, you’ve attended many IES programs in your role in the past, and we’re excited to have you speak. The topic is going to be Making or Breaking your Customer Experience: Great Eight Skills of Today’s B2B and B2G, Business to Business, Sales Rockstars.
First off, introduce yourself to the audience. Give us a little bit of a background, and then tell us how do we come up with the great eight skills.
Brian Shea: Fred, let me first thank you for the opportunity of joining you today. Thank you for the opportunity at the Carahsoft Conference Center. We’re looking forward to it, and thank you for everything that you do for the profession of upscaling sales. My background is this. I’ve worked really hard for a number of years trying to figure out how to sell more stuff to more people. I’ve been a sales leader, I’ve been a sales coach, I’ve been a sales consultant. I’m absolutely thrilled to be able to help clients today break through with all the changes that have happened in our industry post COVID. One of the things that we’ve learned is what worked before the pandemic is not working in the post pandemic world.
In short order, the probably most troubling statistic, Fred, that initiates the conversations with many of my prospects is this. When SBI Growth earlier this year said that nearly 66%, nearly two thirds of CEOs did not have confidence in their team’s ability of executing their growth initiatives this year, that let the air out of the room. It really starts with the why and understanding what are the components that sit underneath that, that are causing the analyst to hit the red button around sales performance, sales execution, and really go-to-market execution.
Fred Diamond: We first came in contact with you maybe 10, 15 years ago. You’ve worked for some of the leading sales performance improvement companies in this space historically, and then I forgot about your stint at one of our member companies when you were involved with a lot of our programs. Now you’re doing some great things helping companies put an instantiated sales process into play. You’re doing some great work with one of our good friends, Corporate Visions. We’ve had Tim Riesterer on the IES Big Stage a couple of times. As a matter of fact, he was our very last in-person speaker before the pandemic back in 2020 and did an absolutely fabulous job.
I think some of the research that Corporate Visions is coming up with is not just fascinating, but it’s extremely valuable for sales leaders. I know some of their work is going to be the basis of the presentation. Tell us a little bit about that, and then let’s get into two or three of the skills that you’re going to be talking about on August 15th.
Brian Shea: My relationship with Corporate Visions and Tim Riesterer and team, they are incredible. I am a strategic partner of Corporate Visions. My firm works with their firm both on the Corporate Visions’ side as well as their research arm. There’s more news coming out about it. Probably many people that are listening today would’ve remembered AA-ISP, the Association of Inside Sales Professionals, is now rebranded Emblaze. There’s going to be lots of communication coming out shortly about who is Emblaze, what does Emblaze do to serve the community, and the incredible research that comes out of Emblaze and how it informs the market in general. But more specifically, how it informs the Corporate Visions’ intellectual property, the training skills, the messaging skills, and the like.
We think about research. Fred, I think you and I have talked about this in the past. When you hear sales leaders say, “I’m applying best practices,” what is that? It’s often subjective. It’s often an inside-out perspective on designing, whether it’s a sales process, an account management process, a set of plays, a playbook. I will be a little disruptive, I think, by saying I don’t believe in best practices, but rather where we, my firm and also our friends over at Corporate Visions really anchor to, is best practices are no longer relevant. But what is relevant is the voice of the customer. How do we get to the voice of the customer to understand what drives them to say yes or no?
If we think back to Matt Dixon’s recent book, The JOLT Effect, he laser focuses on status quo. Well, status quo is when a buyer is basically neutralized and says, “I’m not ready or willing to change.” An interesting statistic that underpins that and breaks it apart is, did you know that 53% of buyers say that a losing vendor could have won the deal? As a sales leader or as a B2B or B2G seller, why do you want to come on August 15th? We’re going to talk about this. We’re going to talk about this because when thinking about what drives buyers to make a decision is they have to see a definitive gap between their current state, what they’re doing today and whom they’re doing it with, and your proposal. How will your proposal change their environment? Because change is hard for any of us, whether it’s changing a daily habit, whether it’s changing where we shop for groceries, we don’t like the change inherently.
It goes back to how do we use key messaging to inform a buyer that their need to change is prevalent and there is a benefit to them. We talk about neuroscience, and that’s what we’ll be bringing forth on the stage on August 15th. Some of my neuroscience input spread, we’ll give a little tease here for August 15th, will be Snoop Dogg, David Bowie, B.B. King, and Taylor Swift. They all have an input on how to drive for value. We’re going to bring that forward and how we can actually cross the bridge and what we can learn from real rockstars on how to be more effective in selling.
Fred Diamond: For people who don’t know, you and I have actually talked about music very frequently. You did a lot of work in that space and you happen to meet a lot of the great music stars of all time. I’m a big fan. I’m looking forward to how you’re going to tie that in. I don’t think anyone’s ever tied in David Bowie and Taylor Swift and Snoop Dogg in a presentation.
Change is very, very difficult. You really raise a great point. We could be as great as influencers and persuaders if we can, but if a customer’s just not willing to change, and like you just said, we hear this all the time, that in a lot of cases, our biggest competitor is the customer not doing anything, or no decision. We all know the side that, yes obviously is the best thing that we want to hear, but no is also the second-best thing that we want to hear, because we know to move on or to come back at a certain point.
Brian, why don’t you give us a little bit of a tease of two of the skills? Again, the topic is going to be Making or Breaking your Customer Experience: Great Eight Skills of Today’s B2B and B2G, Business to Government, Sales Rockstars. Let’s give people an insight into two of the skills that you’re going to be talking about.
Brian Shea: The first piece to recognize for us, Fred, is net new acquisition. Trying to acquire a new customer is different than trying to retain and expand the customer. Your audience just said, “We all know that.” Well, here’s the difference. When sales teams are trying to acquire a new customer, objective number one is we have to break the status quo. We were just talking about that. Having that as a mindset is the underpinning of the skills that are required to break the status quo. We’ll go through a couple of those in a moment.
When we’re looking to retain or expand with an existing client, our number one objective is to protect the status quo. We want to think of digging the proverbial moat around our customers. We don’t want them to change, but rather what we want them to do is do more of what they’ve done in the past and do it with us.
Let’s talk about acquisition. The hardest thing to do is to acquire net new customers. Well, one of the skills that buyers continually state is demonstrate clear differentiation. When talking about values and changing from the status quo, too many organizations sound the same. They use the same buzzwords. Their widget, their solution, their product suite sounds very much like the current incumbent and/or any of the other companies that are coming and knocking at the door of the buyers. What we know is that 74% of decision makers will buy from a company that’s able to create a buying vision. That delivering clear differentiation is one of the key skills, but it’s being able to create clear differentiation while aligning that solution to the business needs of the customer.
Two of the six that we’ll dig into are around that driving for clear differentiation and ensuring those points of differentiation align your solution to the business needs of the customer. That’s a real big shift in selling acumen to get up, hire in an organization, and talk to business impact, not buy my widget because it makes you faster, it makes you cleaner, whatever the feature function benefit is. Those are two quick sneak peeks on two of the skills for acquisition.
Fred Diamond: I’m loving this because the great salespeople are so aligned with their customer’s needs, specific customer needs. What are their business challenges that they’re looking to achieve? What at the highest level is there, and I don’t mean a high level, like 50,000 level, but at the highest level from a priority perspective, are their customers hoping to achieve? Needing to achieve for whatever might be, profitability, improving customer service, their ability to sell. The great salespeople, they understand that that is what the customer is struggling with every second of the day.
I just got off a podcast and we talked about listening, and the whole purpose was listen carefully to what your customer is saying, because every customer out there, a lot of the great salespeople we talk to that had 15, 20, 30 year careers, they’ve been working with the same customers in a lot of cases. Customers in IT, operations, finance, they don’t want to jump from place to place. In a lot of cases, they want a nice, stable 15, 20-year run at a company. They know they’re going to get their paycheck, they’re going to get the benefits, they’re going to do what they need to do, so they’re so aligned with helping them achieve specific business-related goals. The great salespeople, they know where the customer is and where they’re going. I’m excited that you’re going to go deep into that.
Brian, I’m excited. I know you’ve attended many IES programs. I’m excited you’re going to be speaking here. I love the data that you’re going to be presenting. I look back on your career and all the great things you’ve done for so many sales professionals and customers. I’m excited to physically see you do that.
Brian, we end every Sales Game Changers Podcast with an action step. You’ve given us so many great ideas. We already know the action step is for people to register to come, either in person or virtually, but you’ve listened to enough shows. Give us an action step listeners should do right now after listening to today’s Sales Game Changers Podcast to take their sales career to the next level.
Brian Shea: The one recommendation I would make to both sellers and also to sales leaders today is this. When thinking about getting ready for your next sales call, your next customer engagement, look at your messaging, look at your call plan and ask yourself a couple of questions that sound something like this. Have I designed my call plan to reflect an inside-out strategy? Meaning, am I ready to show up and talk to them about me? Talk to them about me and my company, and my offerings, and my history, and my leadership team, and all the great awards that we’ve won, and all the stuff that’s not really impactful to anybody.
Rather, the change is this. If your call plan, if your engagement strategy is not built outside-in, meaning what’s important to the buyer and how am I going to show up different tomorrow with that buyer to show that I understand them, I understand their business, I understand their industry, I understand their headwinds. If I don’t know all the answers, I have highly curious questions to ask them about the challenges that they have in achieving their corporate objectives. In other words, I can probably execute that meeting without any slideware.
Fred Diamond: Very good. That’s going to be very powerful. We’ll also put the registration link in the show notes so you can register for the event on August 15th. I want to thank Brian Shea for being on today’s Sales Game Changers Podcast. My name is Fred Diamond. This is the Sales Game Changers Podcast.
Transcribed by Mariana Badillo