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[EDITOR’S NOTE: This is a replay of the Sales Game Changers Panel Webinar hosted by Fred Diamond, Host of the Sales Game Changers Podcast, on May 13, 2020. It featured sales leaders Dan Cole (The Spy Museum) and Steve Richard (ExecVision).]

EPISODE 234: How Sales Leaders are Leading Teams and Customers Moving Forward with The Spy Museum’s Dan Cole and ExecVision’s Steve Richard

Watch the webinar here. Listen to Dan Cole’s Podcast . Listen to Steve Richard’s Podcast.

DAN’S TIP TO EMERGING SALES LEADERS: “If you feel your empathy to your customers is getting stale I would say take a day or a week off because nothing’s changed in sales. Empathy should always be a part of what we do whether we’re in a pandemic or not. It is what is going to allow us to move our business forward.”

Fred Diamond: Dan Cole, it’s great to have you today on the webcast. You’re with the Spy Museum, you’ve been on the Sales Game Changers podcast. First of all, why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself? As we look at the results of this poll, 30% of the people are concerned about their job and the future of their company and 40% are challenged with connecting with customers. Dan, why don’t you give us a little bit of a welcome and give us some thoughts on what the results of the poll say?

Dan Cole: Fred, thanks for having me and it’s great to connect with you again and Steve as well. I appreciate being here today and welcome to all of our guests as well. I’ll just keep it in a brief nutshell, I’ve been selling all my professional career, started selling copiers in the late 80s and then for the majority of my career went into the events business. Trade shows, worked here locally at a company called National Trade Productions and then for the Consumer Electronics Show at the Consumer Technology Association, spent a great deal of time there. Went to the other side of the business to Hargrove on the supplier side and I see friends from Hargrove around this call today.

Now I’m at the International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C. at our brand new gorgeous location that we hope to open soon. It’s interesting, the poll, I think one of the things that we’ll get into today and I think Steve would agree, the 30% that are concerned about their jobs and their companies, I know empathy is a word that does come up often and we’ve got to remember that our clients are dealing with the same concerns. They have the same concerns about them personally so I’m sure that our clients are dealing in the same type of world as well.

Fred Diamond: Steve Richard, it’s great to have you on today’s webcast. We’ve had you on the Sales Game Changers podcast before, we’ve also had you speak at the Institute for Excellence in Sales. I like to say that you’re a savant when it comes to prospecting and understanding customers and their conversations. You’ll talk about your company here in a second, ExecVision, but you’ve listened to over a million sales conversations and sales calls, I’m curious what you’re seeing today. Give us a little bit of introduction about yourself and give us your impressions of the results of the poll as well.

Steve Richard: I’m very passionate about studying and understanding buying and selling. As someone who accidentally got into sales, sales found me, I didn’t find sales. I was supposed to be in finance, couldn’t get a job and didn’t want to work for our family septic tank business so that’s how I got here, Fred. Along the way I feel in love with it and I think that what’s going on right now is that some of the rules of selling and buying are being re-written a little bit. I’m observing because I’m a founder of two companies, one called Vorsight, the other called ExecVision. ExecVision is a technology company and what we do is help people with their call recordings to use call analytics, speech analytics and then use that to help train and coach people to actually get better to improve behaviors.

That’s what Fred is referencing with these million calls. What I can tell you is right now a lot of these roles are getting re-written, people are struggling. Believe it or not, they’ll talk. The ability to get a customer or prospect to talk is quite possible, of course you have to have their mobile numbers these days or other methods of communicating, certainly social media but what we’re finding is that sales cycles are dragging on, people are generally speaking dragging their feet unless it’s something that they absolutely need to have to keep the lights on. It’s hard to keep them engaged in the process and you can understand why, because there’s a lot of concerns just like what we saw in that poll, people potentially losing their jobs are not going to buy anything, it wouldn’t make any sense.

Fred Diamond: Dan, what are your priorities right now?

Dan Cole: We’ve got a lot going on. Certainly, as Steve said, it’s a weird, bizarre, somewhat unsettling or very much so an unsettling time for our entire staff at the museum. From a priority standpoint as it relates to the sales team, there’s some main ones that I would call them engagement, encouragement and excellence. Not only with our clients but with our staff as well, staying connected to each other, motivating one another, staying connected with our clients, engaging with them, again that empathy knowing that they are most likely going through the same challenges as we are and also.
Staying connected with our partners, our service providers whether they be a caterer or AV company or a florist or a general contractor, staying engaged. That’s the engagement part, the other three are sustaining revenue, trying to build upon revenue, building pipelines and looking to 2021. Q3 and Q4 are obviously a challenge, can’t take our eyes off of ’21 so prospecting in that direction as well are our priorities.

Fred Diamond: Steve, how about you? What are the big priorities for you in what you’re doing?

Steve Richard: Making sure we keep going. What we’re seeing is actually pretty interesting. One of my companies is called Vorsight with about 35 employees, 25 folks on the phone doing something called outsourced appointment setting. What that means, it’s companies’ contract with us, with Vorsight to get appointments on their behalf and I have an opportunity to swap notes with memoryBlue as a customer of ours and they’re another appointment setting firm as well as market sourced in Atlanta and many others. The funny thing with that business is we’re actually seeing that the clients are sticking around for the most part and actually, new clients are signing up so there are portions of the economy that are hot and it’s really unfair.

Dan, you found yourself at the coolest job ever at the wrong time which is just so sad and unfortunate because I can’t wait to get to that rooftop, I’m going to take you up on that. Likewise, there are some clients that are in things like cloud computing where they compete against AWS and they couldn’t be any hotter right now and their demand is off the charts and they want to keep going. What we’re seeing is if you do have reps that continue with the engagement – I think that was a key word, Dan – keep engaging prospects and customers without the hard sells stench, to quote my friend John Barrows. If you can do that, then you’re going to be in a much better place coming out of this than if you don’t. Sadly, one of our customers for our ExecVision technology is Madison Square Garden, can you imagine that? And they were absolutely doing fantastic before all of this hit with the Knicks and Rangers having some trouble but the Rangers being a little bit better than the Knicks, but then this all hit and they had to completely retrench. They’re not allowed to call any customers right now with the exceptions of providing refunds and those kinds of things. There are certain things like that but ultimately if we don’t keep going the global economy stops. I think the reality is sales is the engine of the global economy, salespeople and we all have heard this at your events before, Fred, nothing happens in the economy until something gets sold. If we don’t keep engaging and keep our activity levels up, we’ll have problems.

Fred Diamond: Last Friday on our Creativity in Sales webcast we had Lee Salz who wrote a book called Sales Differentiation and he told a great story that sales is going to lead companies out of this. You’re absolutely right if things don’t get sold. Again, on today’s webcast we’re talking to Steve Richard with ExecVision and Vorsight and Dan Cole with the Spy Museum. Steve, what’s a positive thing that’s come out of this? We’re going to get into some of the details here but tell us a positive thing or a compelling surprise that has come out of this situation and Dan, I want to hear your answer on that as well but let’s take Steve first.

Steve Richard: Real easy answer, there are dozens and dozens of people that I haven’t talked to in years that I’m reestablishing relationships and connections with that are very meaningful and will serve all of us in the future. Then opportunity to meet people like Dan that I never would have crossed paths with at all so that’s really positive and certainly spending a lot more time with the family and people not having to commute as much so there’s an opportunity for learning that in many cases didn’t exist.

Fred Diamond: How about for you, Dan? What’s been something positive that’s come out of this that maybe will have some legs for the future?

Dan Cole: I think there’s a tremendous amount of good will between ourselves and our partners but I’ll tell you what, our clients as well. People are rooting for us as we’re rooting for them so the good will that exists, I want to say it’s somewhat surprising not in a negative way. We’re all rooting for each other, I think Steve touched on that, that from a sales perspective we have the privilege of being on the front line, we have the privilege of carrying the torch and I think clients and prospects alike appreciate that and appreciate that sincerity. For me personally, I think Steve nailed it as well. I got to meet Steve through this and meeting others at the Institute as well. Fred, you’ve been a really good friend and especially at times like these, meeting new peoples and maintaining relationships with those that you’ve been with for a long time makes us even more important. I think the most pleasant surprise is the amount of support that clients give to vendors and vendors give to clients. This is where the word ‘partnership’ really gets tested, we throw around that word a lot but I think now in a time like this, this is where one can really determine whether they have a true partnership with a client, a partner or with one another.

Fred Diamond: Dan, I’m curious, again when we first met you, you were at Hargrove, now you’re with the Spy Museum, you’ve been with event companies, you’ve been with conference companies, you’ve been in the technology space, you’ve led and managed if not thousands, at least hundreds of people. How have you seen yourself change as a sales leader in the last 6-7 weeks since we’ve been in this temporary new world?

Dan Cole: I think that’s a great question, the distance that we all experience. I come from an office so a lot of people work virtually in other industries but we all work with one another and that is an advantage that we see each other every day, we can read each other’s body language, we can have meetings with one another, we can sit down with one another with clients. This has changed completely and I don’t know if it’s changed me but what provides a greater emphasis and a greater focus with me is remembering to remember that everyone is dealing with this in their own separate way.

My conversations and my availability is custom tailored to each person on my team. First of all, they’re a bed rock for me as I want to be with them. There are some on the team that don’t need a phone call every five minutes – not that everybody does at all – there are others that appreciate a phone call once or twice a day just because this is something different. I think what it’s caused me to do is to create place and greater emphasis on remembering that people deal with adversity in different ways. If that’s a change from what I’m used to face to face, I think that change is a change for the positive.

Fred Diamond: Steve, before I ask you that question I’m curious how you’ve changed as well as a sales leader. You’re also a business owner as well, you’re one of the principle owners of two companies right now. Once again, if anybody has any questions for Steve or Dan, submit them via the question panel. How have you changed? Again, you’ve been home, I don’t want to disclose how many kids you have with you at home but I know –

Steve Richard: I’ll disclose it, it’s four, ages 4, 6, 8 and 10 and even though I’ve got the door locked they might find a way to bust in here any minute.

Fred Diamond: Thank you so much, it’ll be cute if one of your kids comes up to you with something and they sit on your lap. Has that happened, just curiously or have you been able to lock yourself away?

Steve Richard: Yeah, they’ve figured out how to take a paperclip and pop the door open.

Fred Diamond: [Laughs] How have you changed in the last 4-5 weeks as a sales professional, as a sales leader?

Steve Richard: A couple things. I think the first thing is I come from an inside sales background, a lot of people think of inside sales as just the folks that get the appointments which is called sales development commonly now. It’s also people have been closing deals and I’ve been involved with the association, Fred, you know too, the AISP for many years. This isn’t that different in many ways than what most people who carry big quotas and sell with an inside sales model have dealt with and really, if you think about it, pretty much every field person is now an inside sales person so oddly what I found is that in many cases I’m giving people advice and tips and insights on, “Here are the things you can and should be doing when you’re essentially an inside salesperson.”

I think the other part of it is I have been going back to the fundamentals and the basics and sometimes you get on a role and you’re doing your thing and you’re getting your deals, sales are coming in and you’re serving your customers and they’re renewing and everything is fine but then the bad habits creep in and you don’t sharpen the saw. What I’m seeing is the best sales teams right now are using this as an opportunity to go and sharpen that saw. We’ve seen the metrics in our system in ExecVision, we can track call coaching. Now it’s anonymous so we don’t know what company it is but we can see how much call coaching is happening, comments, score cards, all that. It’s up double since before the pandemic so there is absolute evidence and proof in saying that companies are really working on their craft that they weren’t before as much.

Fred Diamond: Dan, I’m going to ask you in a second, Steve mentioned habits, some of them are beginning to grade a little bit. I’m going to ask you a question about what habits could sales professionals be working on but as I would presume, we just got three people who quickly jumped in and said, “Steve, what are those tips that you’re now giving the outside people who are now inside?” Dan, think about that for a second but Steve, let’s address that for a second or two. You’ve always been a guru on inside sales but now everybody is in inside sales so what are some of those tips that you’re telling people right now that they should be doing?

Steve Richard: Spend some money on technology, for example and actually I have to do this at my house because I’ve got four kids with three devices each, wireless speakers, now all of a sudden my network’s taxed, I’ve got to upgrade my router. $250 bucks on Amazon, you get a Black Hawk, it’s cheap. Get yourself a Yeti Speaker, it’s $130 dollars on Amazon, you can get the low end ones for $70, it looks like a legitimate podcast looking thing, get one of those, it’s a no-brainer. Get a better camera, it’s a no-brainer. Set expectations that the camera is going to be on all the time, it seems simple, most people don’t do it. Record your calls, Zoom you can record, other technologies you can record in a compliant way so the people know they’re being recorded and it’s state laws and everything. Record your calls, absolutely 100%. The thing that’s actually nice about Zoom is you can get a lot more decision makers involved, easier, faster with less friction than you could before. Sometimes you can’t get them in the same room but it’s pretty easy to get them in the same virtual room.

Fred Diamond: We’re going to address that in a few moments now, everybody being at home. Dan, you’ve also done a lot of sales training in your career as well. By the way, we didn’t say this but you’re also known as The Sales Rhino, someone just chimed in here. Dan’s known as the Sales Rhino.

Steve Richard: Why?

Fred Diamond: [Laughs]

Steve Richard: Hang on, I’m sorry, Fred. Why?

Fred Diamond: Dan, you can tell us why and then you can answer the question about habits that sales professionals should be focusing on right now.

Dan Cole: First habit is charging down opportunities, there’s your Rhino answer, Steve. I’ve taken this opportunity to encourage but I’d also say working on myself, I’m developing systems and routines because I’m stuck here at home so I might as well develop a higher degree of discipline throughout my day. I told some people I have not worked from home in the past this day to day and I always wondered what would stop me from going outside and looking at the beautiful weather and not slacking off, but being distracted, it’s just the opposite. I have to force myself, I’ve told members of my team that are on the call, they experience the same, we encourage each other to go out, take walks, take breaks, what have you because if not, you are staring at a screen all day long. Developing disciplines and routines and systems, there’s a book called Atomic Habits by James Clear that many I’m sure in this audience have heard.

He said it’s all about your systems, it’s not necessarily about habits. Steve, you brought up sharpen the saw, Stephen Covey has been a mentor of mine for my entire professional life so professional development, we don’t shy away with that on our sales team. We encourage everybody on a daily basis to participate in some form of professional development whether it be reading a book, leading a role play or watching a video. Every Friday we have something called ‘book club’ where someone shares either a chapter from a book or an article and we all discuss it so sharpening the saw, I think, is absolutely the most important habit which includes everything I just explained.

Fred Diamond: One question that came in here that said, “Is it better to use a video conference or the phone for client calls?” Knowing that people are home. We’re all dressed up, we’re wearing nice shirts and all that but we’ve seen the memes and pictures of people who haven’t showered yet or shaved or whatever, people who are accidentally hitting the potato button on their Zoom, if you will. Talk to us a little bit about that, Steve and Dan, mention your thoughts about that as well. People are home, we know they’re home, what are some best practices to be contacting them?

Steve Richard: I’m going to give you three, the first is going to be for a scheduled call. When you’re doing scheduled calls like on Zoom and Microsoft Teams, GoToMeeting, etcetera you absolutely want to have the video on and it’s not my opinion. I’ve looked at various sets and research that companies have done, on average your win rate will increase by about 2% so if you’re winning 16% of your deals, you’ll win 18% and by the way, if you turn your camera on and the other person does not turn their camera on, it doesn’t make a difference because it humanizes you.

You have to see the person. I think that we’re never going to go back to work where people weren’t doing this now, this was the nudge we all needed because before everyone got on these and no one ever put the camera on, now everybody puts their camera on. The second is if you’re doing an unscheduled call. If it’s an unscheduled call, obviously you can’t really use video as part of it but instead, this is kind of an odd website, it’s completely free, it’s called truepeoplesearch.com and it’s essentially a database of mobile phone numbers of folks. If you don’t have the prospect contact information, there are other paid resources too like Zoom Info and Sales Intel and Seamless that provide that. Obviously in that case it’s going to be a phone call. Then the third thing is the value of social media and social selling is way higher, to borrow a line from Jill Rowley, the old Queen of Social Selling, the old eloquent sales professional who now is a talking head, she says, “Not always be closing but always be connecting.”

Connect with someone on LinkedIn, don’t ask them for anything and then reference something like a common connection. So, if I connect with Dan and I reference Fred, my probability of him connecting is much higher. Once he connects if you click on the contact info in LinkedIn, they usually have persona email and personal cellphone number sitting right there. Let’s be connecting, let’s be informed as sales professionals now more than ever.

Fred Diamond: Dan, I’ve just been informed that you’ve been the Rhino since 1988, FYI, one of your fans just let us know that. How about you, Dan? Again, talking to people, we know that they’re home, we know they might be in their garage, they might be in the makeshift in. A lot of people that you talk to probably don’t necessarily work from home so how are you engaging your people to interact with them?

Dan Cole: I’m going to give the credit to the sales team that I know is on this call right now. This is a really challenging time for them because our bread and butter in terms of how we articulate benefits of our events space that Steve was alluding to earlier, the events we have, my team sells a space at the top of the Spy Museum on the roof and these are gorgeous panoramic views of D.C. It’s an emotional sell as it were so taking people around on “site visits” is a natural part and a very important part of our sales process, we can’t do that right now, we can’t be in the office and certainly our clients and prospects can’t be participating in site tours. With the help of our AB team we do have the opportunity to view space virtually, that is available on the website and the team is also proactively sending out those links.

We just did so a few minutes ago with an association that’s taking a look at our space so that’s how we’re dealing with that particular tool. I would also echo on a general standpoint what Steve said, this is a great opportunity for humanizing the experience, it does not mean that the other person has to turn their camera on, as Steve said but we hear this cliché about relationship building. This is the ultimate way to do it, it shows that we’re willing to take an extra step, put the camera on us, the onus on us and be able to at least do the best we can through body language and sincerity, develop that relationship or sustain that relationship. Again, don’t have to pressure the other people to put their camera on but it is an opportunity for us to continue to build and develop relationships. I hate this term, “The new normal”, I don’t want to be normal but young people coming up in this profession like Steve said, they’re not going to know any difference. They’ll be face-to-face selling but I think this virtual element is here to stay so this is something that we all need to become accustomed to whether we are in the field or we are leading the sales team or both.

Fred Diamond: Let’s talk about relationships for a second here, we have a question that came in through the panel. Steve, you’re one of the most well-known people I know in the inside sales world, whenever you host something you get hundreds if not thousands of interactions. Dan, you know everybody as well, you’ve been selling to people, you actually introduced us to 10 people that we’ve had on the Sales Game Changers podcast. Let’s talk about relationship building now, we can’t just go meet somebody for lunch. People are doing virtual lunches but let’s talk about building relationships right now. I think, Steve, you mentioned before that this has been a great opportunity to connect with people that you haven’t connected in a while. Give us some of your ideas on how people can be building relationships. Besides the people in your house, your spouse and your children, you’re really not seeing too many other people because we’re being very conscious of physical and social distancing. Dan, why don’t you go first? What are your recommendations on building relationships now and in the foreseeable future? They’re talking about some offices not opening up until September and then Steve, you deal with people around the world, I’m interested in your thoughts.

Dan Cole: Do you want me to go first, Fred?

Fred Diamond: I do, yes.

Dan Cole: I think now more than ever this is a time to take people by surprise and I’ll tell you what I mean by that. I think that often times when we’re trying to contact people, the first inclination we as human beings have – and it doesn’t have to be from a snarky standpoint as, “What do you want, why are you calling, what happened?” we’re used to that from normal time. I think now more than ever especially going back to this format, one of the things that I try to do and I know that our sales team does because they have unbelievable relationships is really put the other person first in terms of what we can do for them. It doesn’t have to do anything with the Spy Museum. In fact, I think that’s the most sincere way of doing things, pay it forward to me is a way of life and what you put out in the universe, it gives back to you.

I think that absolutely applies to relationships with clients and prospects alike. No one cares how much you know until they know how much you care, that comes from listening, that comes from a genuine, sincere interest and I think the way you do that is you don’t necessarily have to concentrate on your product or service immediately because most people do. I want to be one of the ones that say they were getting in contact with me and I know Julie and Stephanie as an example are in touch with clients and just letting them know through emails, “Here’s some of the online programs that are absolutely free for you and your clients to listen to, have a listen.” Not one word about selling space whatsoever and that’s where I think relationships come from, that sincerity and that genuine interest in others.

Fred Diamond: Steve, what about you? You’re a big relationship guy. By the way, if you’re watching today’s webcast there’s tens of millions of people also accessing some of the online mechanism so if you see a little bit of a jitter, just bear with us, the audio seems to be pretty sound. Steve, relationships, what are some of your thoughts on continuing to build relationships right now in this virtual world?

Steve Richard: Write down all of the topics, and a great way to do this is talk to people where you already have a strong relationship so they’ll talk to you. What are the topics that they’re thinking about now? If they’re tangential to what you do, great and if they’re not, that’s okay too. I’ll give you an example for us. I spent a lot of time with people on call recording laws and what you can do, how do you record all your calls if they’re unscheduled outbound cold calls and do it in a compliant way. Most people don’t know what’s possible with technology so there’s an education and by the way, that’s not our technology so it’s not what I’m selling.

Another example is using call dispositions. Again, not our technology but the sort of thing where if I can bring to bear the call dispositions of 10 other companies just like them and that’s something that they care about right now because they’re trying to get more data on what their teams are doing working from home, that’s going to help them a ton or our sales process. They say, “I’m looking at refining my sales process while I have an opportunity, what do you know about sales process?” Quite a bit, let’s take a look at ours and some other ones and do those kinds of things. You’ve got to bring that knowledge to bear so that people look at you as someone who cares about them and who’s going to bring value.

I had a question come in from one of our customers, companies called Superior Glove, they sell gloves, literally gloves to safety managers so not so much to consumers but they sell them more like in an industrial setting. He came back to me and asked me a question about sales compensation and then I’m connecting dots because one of our investors sent to our CEO this article about how people are revising their forecast and their sales compensation so I sent him that link. That’s going to create a bigger, stronger bond with Joe and by the way, I also bought his book and I’m going to write a review on Amazon. Those kinds of things, all these things really make a difference.

Fred Diamond: Steve, I want to follow up with you. We’ve got a couple questions coming in here from the audience. Again, if you have a question for Steve Richard or Dan Cole submit them via the question panel, they’re great, we appreciate them. Steve, you’re an expert on sales process. Flow, email, text, call, those types of processes. A question comes in here and let’s get specific if we could. Of course it differs based on industry, company and who you’re talking to. Dan, I’m interested in your thoughts after Steve gives his insights, “What’s the best way to touch base with current customers or prospects today? Should I be emailing, should I be texting, should I be calling? It seems like everyone has put everything ‘on hold.'” Again, if this pandemic had never happened we would have a flow that you guys have developed and refined millions of times with your processes. Again, it’s May 13th, by the way we’re not using the P word or both C words anymore but what are your thoughts on that? What is the best flow for customers and prospects?

Steve Richard: If you know your customer’s optimal communication channels, obviously go for that, that’s the first thing. If you know them and you have a relationship with them, for me and a lot of our customers it’s text, it ends up performing the best and then the message, you want to say something about them or their business to start. An easy way to do this is if they’re active on LinkedIn or other social media, Twitter or whatever, what’s the thing they posted or commented on recently? That’s essentially what’s in their brain. It’s simple, everyone can do it, shame on us if we don’t. If you don’t know what their communication pattern is, if they’re an existing customer obviously ask them but you’re going to have to run a test we’ll refer to as a cadence or a sequence.

A cadence or a sequence is touch one is going to be a voicemail, touch two is going to be a social media connect and this might be cold, it might not be an existing customer, it’s a prospect. Touch three is going to be an email and there are certain rules that we know based on the research that we’ve done, based on the research I’ve seen other people do. One is if it’s cold, it’s a 30 day period, you don’t want to go more than 30 days so you burst your activity. This comes from a company called TOPO that was acquired by Gartner, SiriusDecisions, a similar company acquired by Gartner – Gartner buys everybody. That shows the burst of activities, within that burst of activities you want to have two voicemails and at least two social media touches and then it is fine to have calls where you don’t leave a voicemail and depending on how heavily solicited the prospect is, you can go up to like 10 emails in that 30 day period.

That’s an optimal on average but it’s going to differ from company to company and based on who you’re selling to. If you’re selling to someone much more junior they’re going to be like, “It’s overwhelming” because they don’t get solicited that much but if you’re selling to someone who’s more senior you’ve got to do that to rise above the vendor static and noise that’s in the marketplace.

Fred Diamond: Dan, slightly different question for you. Again, you’ve managed a lot of outside sales professionals over your career. Again, Steve, a lot of his experience has been inside sales teams and appointment scheduling, things along those lines and business development. Dan, what skills should historically outside sales professionals learn today? It’s interesting, everybody came inside about almost two months ago, I’ve been working from home for almost 20 somewhat years so it’s almost second nature even though I’ve learned some things like the chair that I’m using, I need to replace this chair [Laughs] it’s a dining room chair. But even now, you would think that people have probably gotten it down but it’s hard and a lot of people we’ve heard and talking to the sales leaders we’ve spoken to, a lot of the traditional outside sales professionals are struggling with being inside and the new world and not being able to go and travel and do all those things. What are some things you recommend that historically outside sales professionals learn now to be valid moving forward?

Dan Cole: I’m going to go back to the fundamentals and I think the most valuable talent or attribute that a salesperson can have outside or inside is the ability to listen empathically. I have found there’s nothing more important than that. We can present features and benefits all day long but if they have nothing to do with our client or prospect it doesn’t matter, so asking the right questions and understanding what challenges and pain points are that exist for clients gives us the opportunity to sit back and listen, no more important skill. That doesn’t change whether I’m working inside now because of this pandemic or whether I’m working on the outside. I do think, to Steve’s point, we do need to develop for a field the comfort level of who we’re talking to in terms of how they like to be communicated with going back all the way to selling copiers and I know Steve [Inaudible 39:10] on this call who was my manager would agree. This is a people business, at the end of the day we are communicating with fellow human beings and listening to me is the most important skill one could develop. If there’s something that I could spend my entire life in terms of learning and re-learning it’s the ability to listen empathically.

Fred Diamond: A question comes in from the audience, “My empathy is getting stale. What should I be doing now to have fresh outreach to my prospects?” That’s a great question. We’ve been doing this webcast for almost seven weeks now and we’ve seen the evolution of the answers. The first two or three weeks it was obvious, get used to being home, start being empathetic. “How are you?” Simple types of, “How are things going, are you okay? Are you home now?” type of things. Here we are, we’re two months in. During the initial poll that we did, 30% of the people listening today said they have concerns about their jobs in the future.

It’s almost like, “Can we start selling again?” We’ve all spent the last two months getting used to being at home understanding what’s going on in this world that no one foresaw, without getting into politics. What can we be doing now as our empathy gets stale? Dan, you just mentioned empathy and Steve, you’re the conversation king. Dan, why don’t you crack at that one first and then Steve, I’m interested in your thoughts on what should we be talking about now. It’s two months in and we have quotas, we want to sell. I know there’s a lot of quota and compensation relief, it’s a whole different topic that we’re not going to address today but Dan, what are your thoughts on how can you be fresh? What should you be doing to be fresh?

Dan Cole: If your empathy is getting stale I would say take a day off or take a week off because nothing’s changed. My question is why is empathy even more enforced now? Empathy should always be a part of what we do whether we’re in a pandemic or not and get used to it especially now. It goes back to what I originally said before, this comes to authenticity and sincerity and if you can’t exude empathy despite what you’re going through, because we’re all going through it, we’re all nervous, we’re all anxious about this. Find a way to get it, take a day off or do some real serious thinking because that is what is going to allow us to move our business forward, it goes right back to listening.

Everyone to a degree, although everybody handles this differently, is terrified somewhat so to have a degree of empathy is absolutely necessary. You’ve got to pull yourself up by the bootstraps and develop that empathy or recharge yourself so it comes back to you because that isn’t going anywhere, the need for that. When we come out of this pandemic and especially now, you’ve got to be sincere and I think Steve gave great examples of that. You have to be sincere or you might as well not try to be empathetic. We’ve had deep discussions on our team on what our clients are going through, what we’re going through and now’s not the time to drone on obnoxiously, but empathy creates that environment and the basis for continued business. That’s my take.

Fred Diamond: Steve, again I keep referring to you as one of the conversation kings, you’ve listened to more sales conversations than anybody I know and most people I know combined. Talk about that for a second, the shift in conversation right now.

Steve Richard: It was all about acknowledging it before, we’re actually seeing that there’s a negative relationship now if you bring it up, too much are in the wrong context or certainly lead with the two C words, like you said before. Instead, what we’re seeing working is just level with people. None of us are so foolish to think and you can literally say this on a call, if I’m cold calling Dan, “Dan, I’m not so foolish to think that you’re in a position to buy anything at the Spy Museum, I can only imagine what’s happened there because I know you have that event space and I know that everything’s closed, I totally get that. At the same time, I have a job to do and I can bring value to you. Let’s schedule some time so we can talk.”

That leveling with them is very powerful and putting you on that human level, and I’m going to give a nod to Linda Richardson and something I heard from a guy named Kevin Vanes who’s a VP of Sales at Terminus the other day. He talked about the six critical skills, Linda Richardson has the six critical skills. Presence, relating, questioning, listening, positioning and checking. If you’re having an empathy crisis, in addition to taking a day off, read a book and I would read a sales book. Go recharge, go back to the sales mothership. A lot of people have studied this profession, my mentor, Tom Snyder spent years studying the profession of buying and selling and he imparted that passion for it back to me so recharge your battery, it’s like you’re an electric car. Then go back out at it and then honestly, if you can’t be empathetic and you’ve lost that authenticity, you just don’t care about these people – and I mean this with all due respect – maybe get out of sales, maybe do something else for a while and then you can come back to it later on.

Fred Diamond: That’s a great point and actually a great book is Alan Stein Jr.’s Raise Your Game. One of the things that we’ve learned over the 8 weeks we’ve been doing this webcast is you’re a sales professional and if you’re watching today’s webcast, we have a lot of people here from all over the globe. There’s some names I recognize, people in the IES community and there’s a ton of names that I’ve never seen before so thank you so much for participating on today’s webcast. Again, we’re going to be turning this into a Sales Game Changers podcast, keep your eyes open for that. Also, I just want to acknowledge our sponsors of the IES, we have Cvent, Asher Strategies, DLT, ImmixGroup, Red Hat and SAPNS2, they’re our platinum sponsors. You are a sales professional, this is a very difficult time to be in sales but you’re a sales professional. How are you being professional? We have time for two more questions. Do you guys have a couple more minutes? We have a couple more questions that came in, then we’ll wrap up here. How are you taking care of yourself? Again, we have a lot of sales leaders on today’s call. Steve, you look great, you got the beard going here, I told you in the beginning of the call it looks like you’ve lost a little bit of weight but what are you guys physically doing as sales leaders in the midst of this to be sane, to be healthy, to be fresh? Steve, go first.

Steve Richard: In the morning, frozen blueberries in a smoothie with some spinach, protein, ripe banana, unsweetened almond milk with a peanut butter bagel, and I run every day. That’s pretty much it, I do some planks because my back hurts me but if you do that every day, for me at least it works.

Fred Diamond: Eat healthy and get out there and be active. Dan Cole, how about you?

Dan Cole: I’d like to meet you at a centralized location because I’d like to pick that up every day from you, if you don’t mind. My daughter who’s to the right of me has been encouraging me to eat more avocados and that’s something I’ll do as well.

Steve Richard: Dan, I eat one a day, I eat an avocado a day.

Dan Cole: Costco, if you wear a mask and go in there, they’ve got the best deals on them. This is not an Apple watch, it’s my Fitbit, I am obsessed with walking and anybody who would like to join a challenge with me, I’m also a competitor as I’m sure the other two gentlemen on this podcast that you’re looking at are as well. I do a ton of walking every day and on the weekends try to do 10-11 miles, just sharpening the saw with the headphones and listening to podcasts and webcasts and what have you. To answer your question, Fred, lots and lots of walking.

Fred Diamond: What are going to be the challenges over the next week that the sales professionals need to overcome?

Dan Cole: Okay, thank you, Fred [laughs] sorry, Steve. Mine’s a review of what I said before and I think Steve covered this. I think it’s a challenge to assume that clients won’t buy. In other words, and Steve touched on it to, to over-empathize. It’s important to empathize but the authenticity that Steve talked about was basically what I wanted to say, to stay authentic, to understand that we have a job to do, to encourage our sales teams in a very difficult time, to remember that we are of value to each other and to our clients. Then what I want to remember to do and hopefully I’m being effective in doing so is to make sure that I am communicating with each member on my team in the way they want to be communicated with, the way they want to be led, everybody approaches this crisis in a different way, truly, including all of us. Those are my challenges and ones that I hope to overcome.

Fred Diamond: Dan, you just made a great point that comes up not infrequently at the IES. Don’t make the decisions for your customers, don’t presume that they’re having a challenging time, they’re not going to buy, they’re not looking for solutions. Sales professionals out there, do not put your head in the mind of the salesperson and make those assumptions. Steve, why don’t you bring us on home?

Steve Richard: Get out of autopilot if you haven’t already. Take a look around, use your business acumen, look around the economy, there are lots of companies right now that are absolutely thriving and you can sell to them in many cases or be prepared to sell to them when you come out of this. Go subscribe to an email newsletter called The Hustle, every morning they deliver long form journalism and they’re explaining situations of micro industries that are flourishing you’ve never thought of before. Building pipeline and doing the right activity day in and day out when you know it’s not going to close, I think that’s going to be the biggest challenge. It’s like, “How do I keep getting myself to my activity levels when I know for a fact that these deals are not going to close in the ways they were before?”

That can be a mind game, get yourself over that mind game. Then finally, manage up and managing up is not making excuses. If you’re going to manage up, you better not show up saying, “There’s no way I can hit this number, boss” and then they look at your activities and go, “You’re right, there’s not, you didn’t try.” This is not a time not to try and I am absolutely flabbergasted right now how frequently I’m talking to sales leaders and business owners and they’re saying that even in the midst of 15% unemployment we’ve got salespeople who are not essentially trying. Now, I empathize with depression and those kinds of things, I get it, at the same time this is not the time not to try and I know the unemployment is very rich right now and a lot of people are making more on unemployment than they were making before, it’s not going to last forever and that’s not a way to build your career. Find a way if you care about your profession and what you’re doing to get the activities done you need to get done. Dan?

Dan Cole: I want to pay you back on something you said, Steve. Now is not the time, I go to YouTube and John Maxwell talks about the concept of failing forward. We’re not failing but we are redefining challenges that we face. Thinking that we’re failing, we have to ask ourselves, “Is it true?” What you just said, so much speaks to me. Now is not the time, it’s an opportunity as difficult as this is.

Fred Diamond: Gentlemen, once again thank you so much, thanks everybody. If you haven’t taken a picture of the screenshot we have three seconds. Three [laughs], two, one. Thank you so much, thank you to all our guests, again Steve Richard, Dan Cole. Again, this will be repurposed as a Sales Game Changers podcast. Thank you to our transcriber Mariana who is finishing up as we speak. Gentlemen, thank you so much, stay safe.

Dan Cole: Thank you all.

Transcribed by Mariana Badillo

The post EPISODE 234: How Sales Leaders are Leading Teams and Customers Moving Forward with The Spy Museum’s Dan Cole and ExecVision’s Steve Richard first appeared on Sales Game Changers Podcast.

Subscribe to the Podcast now on Apple Podcasts!

KEY MOMENTS
Key lessons from your first few sales jobs: 04:47
Name an impactful sales mentor: 09:19
Two biggest challenges you face today as a sales leader: 10:28
Most important tip: 15:03
How do you sharpen your saw and stay fresh: 18:00
Inspiring thought: 19:43

EPISODE 099: ExecVision Sales Leader Ted Martin Shares the One Thing that Will Improve Your Inside Sales Effectiveness

TED’S CLOSING TIP TO EMERGING SALES LEADERS: “There’s always going to be an excuse. Some people live by the excuse, other people don’t. If you truly want to affect change and if you truly want to make something of your career, in your life in general, don’t accept excuses.”

Ted Martin is the VP of Sales at ExecVision, a leading company in the conversation intelligence space for inside sales teams.

We also did a special episode with Steve Richard, the CRO over at ExecVision.

Prior to coming to ExecVision, Ted was the VP of Sales at Wealth Engine where he grew a team from 0 to 50 in close to three months.

Find Ted on LinkedIn!

Fred Diamond: We got a little peek into ExecVision when we interviewed Steve Richard, but why don’t you tell us what you sell today.

Ted Martin: ExecVision is conversation intelligence software. What we’re trying to do is fill the gap in the coaching world right now where a lot of times managers aren’t able to do legitimate tactical call coaching and utilizing what is one of your greatest resources, actual call recordings.

What our clients are doing is they’re taking these call recordings, removing the black box and making it to where you can actually do something with them and bring back value to the one on one which for myself it’s personally gratifying about this. In my career I’ve been focused on helping develop sales people and that’s a huge passion of mine. By being able to simplify this process for our clients is personally gratifying to me.

Fred Diamond: Tell us a little bit about the beginning of your career – how did you get into sales as a career?

Ted Martin: By mistake! (laughs) When I was in college, I was going in through the ROTC program and was going to be going into the army and last year I was honorably medically discharged out of the blue and I was thinking to myself, “It’s my senior year, what the heck am I going to do?” and ended up getting an outsource cold calling job and pretty much packed up my 99 Dodge Durango, moved up to DC with zero money and gave it a shot.

Fred Diamond: Obviously you enjoyed it, it worked out well for you?

Ted Martin: Yeah, most definitely. What ended up happening was I became partner of Vorsight which is where in business partners with David Stillman and Steve Richard so it was amazing. It was a great opportunity for me.

Fred Diamond: You mentioned Vorsight, what exactly does Vorsight do?

Ted Martin: Vorsight is an outsource appointment setting firm and we were a training business so that’s what I was focused on originally was being one of those guys pounding the phones trying to schedule appointments for our clients.

Fred Diamond: Now you’re helping companies with conversation intelligence, tell us a little bit about some of the lessons that you learned from some of your first few sales experiences and how that’s helping you now as you roll out what ExecVision’s doing.

Ted Martin: Early on in my sales career some of the things that I recognized that were very difficult for me was the idea of there’s always an excuse for something so now in sales management often the excuse is to put off a one on one or something like that because in many cases they can’t be as valuable as you’d like them to be.

In the conversation intelligence space how we’re working with our clients is to make it to where that one on one is more valuable, and it’s valuable not just for the manager where you’re asking questions of your reps but it’s more of a 50-50 reciprocal relationship between the rep and the manager to where both are putting in a lot of effort into the development of the representative.

Fred Diamond: How’s the response been to the technology and to the solution?

Ted Martin: Actually, Jesse (Williams) and I were talking about this earlier, our director of marketing. The category has grown significantly just in the last year so we’re really excited about it. Originally where people were kind of like, “Man, I don’t know how this would apply within our business” now people are coming back saying, “Hey, we know that this is a need” and now it’s just making sure that we fill as many orders as possible.

Fred Diamond: Do you generically or just go on after inside sales teams, inside sales leaders?

Ted Martin: You would think it would just be inside sales leaders but it’s not. It’s anybody that values the conversations that you’re having with either your current clients, your prospective clients or even potential people that might work for you as well. It’s all about being able to understand how your message is getting out there and trying to make it to where you can perfect that as much as possible.

Fred Diamond: Before we go on and talk a little more about what you do, can you define again conversation intelligence for us a little broader?

Ted Martin: Sure. It’s super simple, if you think about the conversations right now it’s more than just being able to say what’s being said but it’s being able to help leadership understand how to affect the way you drive the conversations within your business. Today, like I mentioned before it’s a black box. You have people, you teach your reps how to do the job and you hope that they go out and you use a manually updated tool called the CRM system to ensure that they’re actually executing against the message that you want and now what we’re trying to do is say, “Hold on a second, you don’t have to just rely on those tools and rely on hope to understand what’s happening, conversation intelligence actually allows you to know point blank what’s being said, how it’s being said and the results of that conversation without any manual interference.”

Fred Diamond: For someone who’s new to the concept of conversation intelligence, what is the result? Is it reports, are they a KPI type of a thing or dashboards?

Ted Martin: It depends on where you are in your level of maturity and utilizing something like conversation intelligence. I know right now myself being a sales leader I’ve been pitched so many different sales tools out there and most executives have been pitched anything that’s going to improve, any KPI or conversion ratio that’s out there. The challenge is being able to understand what are you looking to accomplish with it. With conversation intelligence you could be looking for the next KPI but in reality if you think about the very simplest way of using it is can you improve the one on one, can you improve the way your reps are actually executing against the message and in doing so if you can improve that then it’s simple conversion ratios that you will be tracking against to track success.

Fred Diamond: Tell us a little more about you. What specifically are you an expert in? Tell us a little more about your area of brilliance.

Ted Martin: What I’ve been told – this is not coming from me, jokes aside – first off, it’s around building successful inside sales teams first around prospecting so creating interest, teaching and building reps around the tactics of how to create those opportunities and then I’m a very process oriented individual which drives me to my passion of building inside sales teams so from that perspective I’m very in the sales process, very methodology driven.

Fred Diamond: Take us back to some part of your career when you had a very impactful sales career mentor. Why don’t you tell us somebody who was that mentor for you?

Ted Martin: It’s an easy answer, his name’s Peter Weyman, he was the most recently chief revenue officer at Zoom Info and it’s interesting because when I think of Peter he helped me very early on think about how to structure my career and how to think through as a young, up and coming sales professional. How to look at potential opportunities that otherwise I would have looked at differently being a 25 year old smart guy. Then the other side would be a person name Jill Ulvestad. She helped me truly hone my craft in learning how to sell and if it wasn’t for Jill I would not be where I’m at today.

Fred Diamond: We actually interviewed Jill’s partner, Tom Snyder, for one of our previous episodes. Ted, what are the two biggest challenges you face today as a sales leader?

Ted Martin: I think for me personally the first one is selling into a market that you are defining which is something that – I’ve experienced this three times in my career so this isn’t new but it’s still a consistent challenge because it’s a different type of market. The second thing is being able to build a repeatable process while doing it with reps that you’re looking to develop. As a consultant as well as a sales leader one of the things that I’m personally passionate in is the development of sales talent. That’s what drives me as a sales leader and trying to do that while also trying to aggressively hit growth numbers is super challenging as you can imagine.

Fred Diamond: What are some of the things you’ve done to succeed?

Ted Martin: If you think about on the development of talent side it’s ensuring that your people are bought into (A) their own professional development but (B) tying their professional development to the growth goals of the business and in doing that you’re able to ensure that you’re hitting both of those important goals that you’re driving towards.

Fred Diamond: Ted, what’s the #1 specific sale success or win from your career that you’re most proud of? Why don’t you take us back to that moment?

Ted Martin: Sure. There’s a few, but I will say my first one was the first deal that I ever closed, it was a sales consulting opportunity where I was doing a training for a company called TCMPI but I would say the one that is most memorable which is not a direct selling opportunity but it was when I became business partners with David Stillman and Steve Richard at Vorsight, it was huge for me because I was young at that time. I was 25 years old and it was my first opportunity to really drive and build something which totally gratified me.

Fred Diamond: Did you ever question being in sales? Again, you mentioned you were in ROTC in college but then you got a job in sales, you moved up to DC with no money with your 99, was it a Dodge?

Ted Martin: Dodge Durango.

Fred Diamond: Now you’ve been in sales for a while. You’ve achieved some great things in a relatively short amount of time. Was there ever a moment where you thought to yourself, “It’s too hard, it’s really just not for me”?

Ted Martin: No, honestly. Everyone has the opportunity where they’re probably thinking, “Hey, maybe I shouldn’t be where I’m at” and obviously that’s come up in my career before but not being in sales with the path that I’ve developed for myself with the guidance that I’ve had from my mentors, I’ve never thought that.

Fred Diamond: You dig it, you enjoy it?

Ted Martin: I love it.

Fred Diamond: Every second of the day? Good for you. Ted, what’s the most important thing you want to get across to junior selling professionals to help them improve their career?

Ted Martin: The one thing is there’s always going to be an excuse, there’s always going to be a reason to not do something. I coach our reps on this all the time, there’s always going to be a reason why someone else didn’t do something that affected a deal or something. Eliminate all the excuses, do self-diagnosis, think about what could I have done better even if you did 99.9% of the steps right, don’t allow room for excuses.

Fred Diamond: That’s very great. I just finished a book called Extreme Ownership. Have you read that?

Ted Martin: I have not.

Fred Diamond: It’s by a couple of Navy Seals that also who were in Iraq and they also have a business now where they work with companies and the nit in it is that you have to eliminate all those excuses, you’re responsible for everything and how do you make things work even when it’s a bad month, when your #1 customer says, “We ain’t going to buy” you still got to perform. The company still has to hit its metrics. That’s great, great answer, eliminate the excuses. Ted, what are some of the things you do to sharpen your saw and stay fresh?

Ted Martin: I would say it’s spending time with my two and a half year old son. He and I are avid park goers at this point and I’m trying to train him to become a left tackle at Notre Dame so we’re on our way.

Fred Diamond: Is he left handed?

Ted Martin: No, but left tackle’s very important in football.

Fred Diamond: In Notre Dame it is, guarding the blind sight. What’s a major initiative you’re working on today to ensure your continued success?

Ted Martin: I would say with the company itself it’s continuing to understand what the clients want, understand what the prospects want and ensuring that our market understands where they are in their level of maturity with conversation intelligence. One of the things that we’ve recognized with the market is that in many cases you can have a high level of analytics with the amount of data that comes out through conversation intelligence. The challenge is a lot of people don’t know what to do with it yet and that’s a common BI challenge so what we’re doing right now is trying to make sure that we help clients understand where they fit within their market.

Fred Diamond: Why have you continued? What is it about sales as a career that has kept you going?

Ted Martin: I would say short term or more present day I it’s my family. I’m a single dad and full time dad, full time worker so being able to make sure I know I’m doing everything to provide for my son is extremely important but if I were to take a step back ten years ago when I graduated college, the first thing was I needed money but then if you look at that middle part of my career, probably about five years ago, I had identified what I wanted out of my career and it was really important to me to say that I have an effect on another person’s life helping them achieve a goal that in their eyes maybe at one time was not achievable or that they know that they need help getting there and that was interesting that you would think, “Can you find that in sales?” but what’s great about selling is that if you know how to do it, you’re the only person that can get in your way of being successful. If you identify how to become successful and then can teach people and enjoy teaching people how to be successful, that’s what drove me from developing.

Fred Diamond: Give us one final thought to share to the Sales Game Changers listening to today’s podcast.

Ted Martin: If you’re an up and coming salesperson, up and coming sales leader again, remember in selling you don’t have to just go into upper management. You can be a rock star account executive. I’ll touch on a point that I mentioned before, there’s always going to be an excuse. Some people live by the excuse, other people don’t. If you truly want to affect change and if you truly want to make something of your career, in your life in general, don’t accept excuses.

Fred Diamond: I used to live in Detroit in the late 90’s and I coached Mel Farr, he was a hall of fame football player and I coached his grandson in baseball and Mel had this expression: excuses are for losers. I’m really excited that you brought that up, that aspect there. You’ve got to eliminate those excuses. Everybody has them, everybody has real ones, everyone has little ones but you still got to perform. Your company needs you to perform every single day, every single month and figure out some strategies to be successful.

Transcribed by Mariana Badillo
Produced by Rosario Suarez

The post EPISODE 099: ExecVision Sales Leader Ted Martin Shares the One Thing that Will Improve Your Inside Sales Effectiveness first appeared on Sales Game Changers Podcast.

Subscribe to the Podcast now on Apple Podcasts!

KEY MOMENTS
Key lessons from your first few sales jobs: 04:25
Name an impactful sales mentor: 10:48
Two biggest challenges you face today as a sales leader: 12:25
Most important tip: 19:48
How do you sharpen your saw and stay fresh: 24:08
Inspiring thought: 27:02

EPISODE 086: Lessons Learned at the Marines and California Highway Patrol Built Kim Harrington into a Sales Leader with a Bent Towards Community Service

[NOTE: Kim worked at Kesstler Financial at the time of this interview. Shortly after this interview, he became the Vice President of Sales at Belfort Furniture.]

KIM’S CLOSING TIP TO EMERGING SALES LEADERS: “In life you can either be a great example or a horrible warning so focus on being the best person you can be, regardless of who’s signing your paycheck. Go into your day acting like you’re self-employed. This is your business, don’t wait for somebody to take the initiative and just be the best person you can be.“

Kim Harrington is the Vice President of Sales at Belfort Furniture.

He’s a veteran in the United States Marine Corps and a retired California Highway Patrol officer.

He moved into real estate and mortgage and then became the national sales director at Kestler Financial Group.

Find Kim on LinkedIn!

Kim Harrington: It’s about the journey, I was raised in foster care in New York City and once again went onto the United States Marine Corps which was the best decision I ever made in my life and then on into the Highway Patrol and into sales. Sales, been doing it for the past 20 years and I believe that it’s one of the most rewarding industries that you can imagine because you get a chance to really help people with their needs.

Fred Diamond: You’re a sales leader, you were actually referred to us by one of our previous podcast guests, Steve Richard who was on special episode #2. I’m curious with your experiences in the Marines leading then with your experiences in the California Highway Patrol, did any of that prepare you for a career in sales? And if so, how so?

Kim Harrington: Absolutely. First of all, in order to be a true salesperson that has the servant’s heart and you’re thinking about the end user, the people that are going to benefit from what you have, you have to have the professionalism and the discipline that goes along with those jobs. You have to take it very seriously, it’s not just about making money, it’s about making sure that people get what they need and what they should have to secure their financial future and other things.

Fred Diamond: Tell us how you first got into sales as a career. Again, we mentioned that you were in the Marines and of course you were with the California Highway Patrol. What then took you into sales?

Kim Harrington: It’s an interesting story. Basically I had two jobs in my entire life, I was a marine and I was a highway patrol officer. That was it. What do you do after that? Obviously the next step is to go into sales, but I had a friend of mine that sold me a house in San Diego, and I’m going to be nice and I’m going to say he wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed. However, he was driving an $80 thousand car and wearing a $700 suit so my next step was to take the exam to become a real estate agent. I did that and I loved that for about 3 years, it was fantastic in California as well as in Atlanta, Georgia. That was the first step and an initiation into getting into sales.

Fred Diamond: What are some of the key lessons that you took away from your first few sales jobs that have led you to management today?

Kim Harrington: The thing about sales – and I preach this – is that I have a phrase: Don’t put your values of money on other people. It really comes down to a lot of discovery making sure that you identify the areas where there’s a need for someone and then your job is to fill that need. You can’t think about the cost of it, you can’t think about how much you’re going to get paid, you have to think about the true benefit for the client, the end user and that way everybody succeeds in that endeavor.

Fred Diamond: How do you do that? What are some of the ways that you have taught younger sales professionals to understand that?

Kim Harrington: The first step is as always: you have to build credibility. You have to build trust, credibility and you have to have rapport with the people that you’re talking to. You can’t go – for the lack of a better term – directly to the chase. You have to really establish the fact that you’re there as their advocate, that you’re going to be with them throughout the entire process from the very beginning all the way through and even after you have a signed agreement that you’re going to be around and available afterwards to be a resource to them.

Then you have to be credible, you have to know your client, you have to know your products real good, you have to know your competition, you have to know the industry and you have to be reliable. If you have an appointment at 8 am, you have to make sure you’re there at 8 am, 8:15 is not OK. Then the fact that you have to build rapport, you have to connect with the person in a meaningful way, it’s not about treating everyone the same, it’s about connecting with that person if they’re a very task oriented, detailed person, that’s how you need to communicate with them.

If they’re very relational person and they want to talk about little Timmy’s award at the soccer tournament, that’s what you have to talk about. You have to make a meaningful conversation to connect with that person and to let them know that you’re truly going to be their advocate.

Fred Diamond: A lot of the sales people that you’ve come across in this role, where do they fall short? Where do they need to work on to be really good at that?

Kim Harrington: I think the majority of people, and I see the biggest deficit is in the area of taking control of the conversation and I don’t mean in the sense that you’re in charge, you’re going to be the leader but you’re the expert. If you are the expert at something, rather than just field questions that may lead nowhere it’s really important for that person to take a leadership role in the conversation. To me, the very best way to do that is to just gain permission to ask questions.

Your job is to be an investigator, ask a lot of discovery questions, meaningful discovery questions that are going to uncover their needs whether they’re conscious needs or unconscious needs and then when you have all that information you can position what they need and what you have to offer in the very best light.

Fred Diamond: Along that topic, tell us a little more about what you specifically are an expert in. Tell us a little more, Kim Harrington, about your specific area of brilliance.

Kim Harrington: Once again, I think we all have unique gifts and at the same time we all have errors where there’s an opportunity for improvement. I believe that what I have to offer to sales teams and to just people in the community is the fact that I believe that everything starts with being of service to others and if you can have that approach to not only sales but as to life as well, because you can live at an address, you can work at an address, that does not make you part of a community.

You actually have to get out there and be embedded in a community. You have something to offer, there are people out there that are drowning and they are absolutely in need of something that you have and the key is for you to go out there, provide it to them and have no expectations of anything in return. To me, everything starts with that. Once you can have that established you can learn the technical stuff, you can work on your skills but without the heart you’re not going to be successful. You can get by but you’re never going to reach your full potential.

Fred Diamond: We have a lot of young sales professionals listening to the Sales Game Changers podcast. That’s great advice but why don’t you take it a little bit step further? What are some of the things they can do to get deeper embedded into the community to build those deeper relationships with the people that they’re eventually going to be serving?

Kim Harrington: Perfect. The thing about being a volunteer is this: you have to identify your strengths. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel, we’re not talking about having a second job or another employer to report to, we’re talking about a couple of hours a month. Look for something that you’re already good at, you don’t have to work for it. If you’re a great carpenter, Habitat for Humanity. If there are other areas where you know that you can add value to at risk kids, you already have that strength.

Find a community within the community for at risk kids where you can volunteer your services. If you are someone that is embedded into recovery for drugs or alcohol then you can get involved with organizations like MAD or even the county jail or juvenile hall. They have needs that they are unable to fill because people aren’t willing to volunteer their time or in some cases their treasure so sometimes they need that as well.

Fred Diamond: Obviously, we’re talking about ways to build yourself as a practicing selling professional but what I’m hearing you say is build yourself out more completely, how you’re providing service to other people and that’ll help you in your career pursuits.

Kim Harrington: Absolutely.

Fred Diamond: You’ve had an interesting background. Tell us about some of the mentors that have helped you along the way.

Kim Harrington: I go back to – and this is going to sound crazy – but the elementary school where I grew up, that area, PS-132, there are people embedded in those schools that are true leaders and if you think about the formative years of someone’s life, the meaningful times, I can go back to Mr. Levinsky, my fourth grade teacher that was adamant that you had to laugh every single day. You had to laugh hard, you had to laugh often and that life is not that serious when it comes to certain things, you just need to make sure that you have a sense of humor.

Then there was my elementary school gym teacher, Mr. Pollock who refused to hear the word I can’t do it. He said, “If you’re going to be in my gym class, you’re going to at least try.” He said, “You need to set your goals high and shoot for them because the fear is that you’re going to set your goals too low and hit them.” Those are the type of leaders and mentors that shaped my life and I took their lessons and carried them along with me in life.

Fred Diamond: Very good. You’re talking elementary school, do you still keep in touch with Mr. Levinsky or Mr. Pollock at all?

Kim Harrington: No. I’m 57 so I’m quite certain they’re not around anymore.

Fred Diamond: Let’s go back to talking about some of the sales challenges you face. Kim, what are the two biggest challenges you face today as a sales leader?

Kim Harrington: For our industry the biggest challenges are more legislative than anything else. The other thing is that there is a – and we love it – a lot of competition out there. When it comes to dealing on the security side, there’s over 4,200 broker dealers in the country, over 640 thousand registered reps and if you break that down per state, per county, per city there’s an overabundance of people in this industry that have something to offer people in the community. The difficult part is identifying those people that are committed to their craft, they’re professional and that they have the servant’s heart. That’s the challenge because you have to go through a lot of people to identify those quality people that you want to partner up with.

Fred Diamond: Why don’t you take us back to one specific sale success or win from your career that you’re most proud of? I’m sure you’ve had plenty of them, but take us back to one specific one.

Kim Harrington: When it comes to sale success for me, once again I view it through the lens of helping other people get what they want and I would say the biggest success for me is watching someone that is completely green, that’s never done sales before, that had their own preconceived notions about sales through movies or the news media and things like that and to see that person become committed, learn a sales process, follow the sales process, stay committed, deal with the adversity of the sales industry which comes a lot of rejection but knowing they have something to offer and being able to stick to it and then see someone like that from becoming green to becoming an expert and people seeking them out for advice. Those are my biggest success stories.

Fred Diamond: You have a lot of those people that have gone through that process with you?

Kim Harrington: Yes, hundreds.

Fred Diamond: Did you ever question being in sales? Again, you started out in the military and then you moved to law enforcement. Was there ever a moment where you thought to yourself, “It’s too hard, it’s just not for me”?

Kim Harrington: Of course. I think everybody has those thoughts. However, if you really think about it I heard an analogy the other day. Prior to April of 1954 globally it was basically a fact that a human being could not run a mile in less than 4 minutes. Then Roger Bannister came along and he broke the 4 minute barrier. Since that time, since April of 1954 there have been 20,000 people that have run a sub 4 minute mile. 20,000 before none, after that 20,000 and we’re talking about high school students as well. The difference is that since April of 1954, as soon as someone put their foot on the track they knew it had been done before.

So that’s the same thing with sales or anything else. If it was easy, everybody could do it so difficulties and adversity breeds character and if you’re able to basically be committed, and that’s the key, 100% committed to your craft then let the chips fall where they may.

Fred Diamond: Kim, what’s the most important thing you want to get across to the selling professionals listening to the podcast to help them improve their careers?

Kim Harrington: I would say that the first thing you need to do is know who you are. You have to identify your strengths as a human being. Then you also have to identify those areas where there’s an opportunity for improvement. Once you understand yourself, you can use those skills that you learn to define yourself and then identify the characteristics and the personality of the people that you’re communicating with.

Your goal always is not to be someone that is superior than anyone else that you’re talking to or inferior, your goal is to get with that person, identify their needs and if you have something to offer that will help them with their need then fill it. If you don’t have something to offer, then you should be a resource to that person, help them find what they need and then you’re going to become a valuable person in that other person’s life and that is the key to me to great sale success and also being just a great human being as well.

Fred Diamond: Kim, what are some of the things you do to sharpen your saw and stay fresh?

Kim Harrington: You always have to have the appetite for learning whether you’re 80 years old or whether you’re 5 years old. A 5 year old can definitely learn from someone that’s 80 but an 80 year old can also learn something from a 5 year old and if you’re not open to at least exploring opportunities, to be willing to hear what someone else’s perspective is, if you are myopic, if you’re close minded, if you think you know it all and if you come across that way, that is not a characteristic of a true sales professional.

A true sales professional is someone that has a caring heart, they let their skills and their expertise, their professionalism speak for themselves. We’re all smart in our own way, we don’t have to tell someone how smart we are.

Fred Diamond: What’s a major initiative you’re working on today to ensure your continued success?

Kim Harrington: For Kestler Financial Group we are once again continually growing. We’re looking for outstanding individuals to add to our sales force as well as our administrative staff – we have the best administrative staff I believe in the country. Without their support, none of this would happen and I believe that just keeping our eye out for quality talent. If you have quality, people that work for you knowing that we’re going to take care of them first and if you have happy employees, if they’re excited to come to work then that’s going to pass along to the clients and that’s what we strive for.

Fred Diamond: I’ll tell you, man. You’ve created an environment that if people aren’t excited to come to this particular place to work, you have all these great restaurants around here, you have free parking, the office itself is brand new. You’ve been here what, about a month now, I guess?

Kim Harrington: We’ve been here for little over a month.

Fred Diamond: We’ve talked about this throughout but there’s a lot of challenges with sales especially in a financial services space where you are. People don’t return your phone calls, talking about money is a tough thing as you know. Why have you continued? What is it about sales as a career that has kept you going?

Kim Harrington: You have to be committed. It’s going to be hard, it’s going to be difficult but you have to be committed. There’s a tree in the Far East, it’s called the Chinese Bamboo Tree. The Chinese Bamboo Tree takes 5 years for it to grow and break the ground. However, in order for that to happen you have to fertilize the ground, you have to be committed to water that every single day, every single day you have to water it. The thing about it is it doesn’t break the ground for 5 years.

However, once it breaks the ground it takes 5 weeks for it to grow 90 feet so the question is did it take 5 years for it to grow or did it take 5 weeks for it to grow? Well, it took 5 years because if that person lost his appetite for being committed one time, that tree would have never grown and there would have been people along the way saying, “What are you doing? It’s been 3 years, it hasn’t grown yet, why are you still doing it?” “Because I’m committed, I know it’s going to grow, I believe in myself and I believe what I’m doing.”

Fred Diamond: I have one final question before we get your final thoughts. Again, one of the words that comes up not infrequently on the Sales Game Changers podcast is mindset. Having that mindset that you’re going to be successful, that you’re providing value. You’ve obviously had a great career here, you’ve done a lot of great service to the country and to the people and of course now to your customers. Could you talk a little bit about mindset and how do you keep that positive, strong mindset going or some things you do?

Kim Harrington: First of all, I listen to motivational tapes every single morning on my drive in. I just make it part of my day, I believe that if you start your day with a positive energy, it’s going to last throughout the day. I can turn on the news easily and the news for the most part is going to have a negative tint to it. It’s not their fault, it’s just the way life is and it’s important that you hear about things that are going on in your community but I believe starting a day on a positive note is extremely important.

There’s a gentleman that I listen to named Less Brown and he talks about this thing, this mindset thing and part of it is surrounding yourself with only quality people because the fact of the matter is misery loves company and if you’re hanging around with 9 people that are broke, I guarantee you you’ll be #10 so you have to surround yourself with quality people.

Fred Diamond: Kim, why don’t you give us one final thought to inspire the listeners today?

Kim Harrington: In life you can either be a great example or a horrible warning so focus on being the best person you can be, regardless of who’s signing your paycheck. Go into your day acting like you’re self-employed. This is your business, don’t wait for somebody to take the initiative and just be the best person you can be.

Transcribed by Mariana Badillo
Produced by Rosario Suarez

The post EPISODE 086: Lessons Learned at the Marines and California Highway Patrol Built Kim Harrington into a Sales Leader with a Bent Towards Community Service first appeared on Sales Game Changers Podcast.

SPECIAL EPISODE 002: ExecVision’s Steve Richard Tells How to Get More Intelligence from Your Sales Conversations

Steve Richard is the co-founder and chief revenue officer at ExecVision, a leading conversation intelligence platform. He’s also the co-founder of Vorsight, a leading outsourced appointment setting company.

Steve says his mission and life’s work is to help sales professionals become wildly successful. He believes that the quality of sales conversations matters, yet the profession of sales largely misses the mark on teaching sales reps how to have great conversations. After 10 years as a sales trainer Steve learned that the only way to achieve his mission was through the use of technology to help more sales professionals worldwide. 

Outside of entrepreneurship and business, Steve volunteers for Columbia Lighthouse for the Blind and is an avid scuba diver, skier, runner, football watcher, dad to 4 little kids, and husband to the best wife in the world.

Find Steve on LinkedIN!

Fred Diamond: Tell us what ExecVision does. What do you physically sell and tell us who buys it.

Steve Richard: ExecVision sells softwarethat allows managers, reps, leaders to get into the content of the conversation. There is no way that everybody could hear all the sales calls that are happening in your organization, it’s just impossible. So with ExecVision it’s artificial intelligence (AI) assisted call coaching where the AI is helping direct you to what are the meaningful, relevant, coachable moments and then how do you have the intervention with that sales person to help them change behavior and improve their performance so they don’t make the same mistake over and over again.

Fred Diamond: Can people change behavior?

Steve Richard: Yes. It’s hard, though. Adult behavior change is hard and that’s a really good question and that’s really the crux of the whole thing – getting the sales people involved in their own development. I’ve talked to some people who said the reason that ExecVision software is so powerful is because the sales people can also raise their hand virtually to request coaching and then the sales people can also listen to them comment on their own calls as well as their peers, their managers, trainers, third party trainers, other people but that fact of just listening to yourself is probably the most powerful thing that any sales person can do and unfortunately it’s a thing that far too few sales people ever do.

Fred Diamond: Tell us who your customer is. Do you sell to sales managers? Do you talk to marketing? Do you talk to the C suite? Who’s going to buy ExecVision software?

Steve Richard: Yes, yes and yes. Usually it’s going to be the second level leader in sales so it’s going to be the first level managers will be important but it’s the second level, the person who manages the managers will typically be really into that. A big thing they’re trying to figure out too is are my managers coaching and if my managers are coaching, are they coaching the right way? This is a really compelling way that you can actually quantify the coaching acting in the company and then actually quantify the behavior change coming from the coaching in the company.

Fred Diamond: Before we talk about your particular and your specific sales journey, how did you create all the content? How did you create the pieces that bring everything together? I know Vorsight’s done training in the past. Is that where all the data comes from, the information?

Steve Richard: That’s a great question, it’s kind of a long and winding journey but really it started with the appointment setting firm where we were able to at the top of the funnel have about 30 people on the phone making calls on behalf of all these different clients and we were blessed with the ability to AB test what works and what doesn’t so we have this incredible laboratory of sales effectiveness.

From that laboratory, that’s where the training came from because people kept saying, “Teach us your secrets.” And over the course of having that training business trained four thousand sellers along the way. That training business still is there to this day in Funnel Clarity that you know. And then from that, that’s where arose this idea that you cannot scale this mission without having technology. It’s impossible. And what I found in many cases, Fred, is the best ideas, the best practices in any company come within the four walls of the company. They’re there, so I would go work with the sales team of 50 people and in throughout the course of the 2 day training event I’d find out that Bobby over here knows this thing really well and Susy knows this thing and Janet knows this thing and Fred knows this thing but none of them talk to each other so if we just had a way of surfacing the best practices and sharing with each other we can create consistency and accountability and we’ll kind of come back to that theme later on in the sales team.

Fred Diamond: Very good, so you’ve devoted the best part of your career to helping sales professionals optimize their career and get better. Let’s talk about your career, how did you first get into sales as a career?

Steve Richard: Completely accidentally, I had to pay off school loans. I think a lot of people have that answer. So I graduated from Georgetown undergrad finance degree. Everyone went to Wall Street, I went 0 for 22 in interviews so I’m a spiritual guy, I’m a Catholic so that’s God’s way of telling me, “You’re not going to finance.”

I had to pay off 65 grand in school loans, how are you going to do it? Some friend of a friend said, “Hey, you’re pretty good at presentations in the class. You’re not that good at helping build the presentations but once it comes time to deliver them, you’re good at that. Why don’t you go into sales?” I’m like, “Alright, sounds good.” I thought you gave presentations, I don’t know. And that’s when I found myself at the Corporate Executive Board, couldn’t have started my career at a better place.

I know a lot of your guests have come from Corporate Executive Board and you see the authors at the challenger’s sale, they weren’t that at the time and that was just like a sales NBA. And from there, that’s where I was – I was actually failing in the beginning of my sales career so right out of the gate I was just about to get put on a performance plan and my backup plan, Fred, this is no joke, our family business is precast concrete products in the Northwest corner of Connecticut AKA septic tanks.

This is a true story. My backup plan was to go work for my Uncle Jimmy in the septic tank factory and drive the septic tank truck. Nothing wrong with that, right? That’s great, but you know, compared to being at CEB. So I figured out really quickly what it took to be good at particular at the top of the funnel of prospecting, how did I do that? Everything I was doing didn’t work. I went and interviewed and sat with every other person in that company, I kind of did ExecVision the hard way, the old fashioned way and by doing that with my little notepad and none of the calls were recorded so I had no artifact. But with my little notepad I just wrote down all the best practices and I started doing all the things the top people were doing and none of the things that I was doing and I ended up being #1 out of 100 because of it. And one of those guys is David Stillman who’s our CEO and my business partner. So my journey in sales was accidental and I think alike a lot of other people I was not natural and it took a lot of hard work to get to a good place.

Fred Diamond: Very good. What are some of the lessons that you learned?

Steve Richard: If you go back to CEB when I was in a role prospecting, today we call that job sales development, the sales development reps or the BDR’s. What I learned first of all is that the gatekeepers are an incredible source of information if you know how to leverage them the right way and no one did. And I saw how the best people in CEB were doing this, it was really remarkable so I found frequently that the hardest part was just simply getting to the right person.

Once you get to the right person then delivering the message effectively and engaging at conversation sometimes is actually quite easy. That was perhaps the easiest part of the process, so that was a big part of it. Another big part of it is people are programmed to say what they do. You asked me the question before, “What do you do?” don’t answer the question with that, answer the question around what are the challenges that people are seeing, what are the trends in the market, what are the relevant topics.

One of the big challenges that we see is it’s hard to figure out if managers are coaching so we help address that. Another challenge we see is it’s hard to get adult and sales people to change their behavior. They become creatures of habit, they fall in routines, they fall into ruts. As I’m saying these things to you, I can actually see you, you can’t see Fred but he’s nodding. His head is nodding up and down. It’s that type of insight that’s very impactful.

Fred Diamond: What type of companies do you work for?

Steve Richard: Anybody who lives and dies by the phone and or screen sharing meetings is an ideal candidate for this. Now, this is the sad part, there are probably people out there that are listening and I don’t mean to offend you but I’m just going to be real. We find as a general rule of thumb the field sales people, the field sales reps that are out there tend to be a little more resistant to the idea of calls being recorded and, by the way, a legal and compliant way so that people are aware that it’s happening or it’s done in such a way that it complies with state rules but being recorded and then going back and reviewing.

I don’t want big brother, I don’t want anybody looking over my shoulder at what I’m doing and that’s exactly the opposite of the type of culture that we’re trying to create. We find that the inside sales people and or BDR’s, SDR’s, people who live and die by the phone but they typically don’t see a client, they don’t get in front of them, we find that those people are much more open to the cultural idea of, “Hey, I want feedback on my calls. I want to learn and improve.”

I even want feedback, Fred, from my peers which is interesting whereas a lot of sales people will say, “I don’t want my peers to hear what I’m doing.” Or here’s another thing, maybe it’s not just about coaching, maybe it’s also about knowledge sharing. “Hey, my sales engineer did this call and they did such an amazing, remarkable job.

I want to make sure everyone has a chance to learn from it.” This knowledge sharing capability is a very big part of that so I think over time we’re going to see a change just like now everyone gives all their information to Facebook and LinkedIn freely, I think we’re going to see people become more and more open to the idea of transparency and visibility but those are big ideas. You’re basically naked, you can go into our ExecVision instance right now at our company if you had a license and we have ours so everyone accesses everybody else’s calls.

Some of our clients make it so only the reps can access their own or the teams within there, however you want, but for us it’s all open. So someone who just starts at our company today – and we’re a company of about 60 people – can literally access every single sales call I’ve done since 2015. They can hear all the good, bad and ugly. They can watch the founder fall on his face, but that’s the kind of culture I want to create. I want to create a positive, productive culture where a lowly quote unquote entry level sales person will give me feedback, and in many cases I take their feedback and I learn from it.

Fred Diamond: We have a lot of people listening on today’s Sales Game Changers podcast who manage young people, people who are first or second maybe third job into their career. You talked about how a lot of the sales reps want to get coached, they want to know how they’re performing. Is it a generational thing? Tell us a little bit about why there would be an openness to that type of transparency.

Steve Richard: I wish it were that simple, I wish it were a generational thing. I actually don’t think it is based on that based on what I’ve observed. I find a lot of people who are in their 60’s and 70’s that use ExecVision who love it the most. It’s more of a cultural thing usually within whatever group they’re in. I don’t even want to say the company, Fred, because a lot of companies will have one manager will be very culturally resistant to it but another manager will be very culturally open or one individual versus the other.

I find it’s more of a question of there are people who believe – and you’ve probably heard the Japanese word Kaizen – it’s the reason they kicked our but in the 80’s in auto manufacturing, the continuous improvement. There are people who philosophically believe in Kaizen, they live by Kaizen and then there are people who just don’t, who just kind of want their paycheck and they just want everyone to leave them the hell alone and it’s OK. It’s completely OK either way. One of the big findings we had from the software – it’s not actually from the software, it was actually more from how the software is being implemented at our clients.

You think about coaching, the first thing that comes to my mind is I got an orb chart in my head, and you’ve got the VP at the top and the manager’s under the VP and then the reps. And you think in terms of well the VP is telling the managers to coach and the managers have to do all the work to coach all the reps. That paradigm is fundamentally broken because the managers don’t have time, they don’t have time to coach so one of the things that we’ve seen, and we’ve seen and then emulated with our other clients is flip the coaching paradigm on its head so what you do is get the reps to take some ownership of their own development. Get the reps to comment on their own calls, to score their own calls, to share what they see with how they’ve broken down their game tape with the managers.

The managers then do the same, the managers have information being pushed to them. So in our company now, Fred, we’ve got a really unique culture where I’ll share my calls with the whole company in some cases, say, “Hey, listen to this highly. I want you to hear this 4 minute section, it’s just golden.” And then in many cases I have them sharing calls with me even though I’m not their direct manager and the answer to the question, “who coaches in the company?” is everybody. If you have a coaching culture, everyone’s open to that. Everyone knows what good looks like which is a very important part of the whole thing and then everyone knows how to change the behavior to move to a point of good.

Fred Diamond: Steve, take us back to an impactful sales career mentor for you and how they impacted your career.

Steve Richard: You’ve had Vineeta Mooganur on the Podcast, so it’s Vineeta’s husband Praveen. Very impactful, he was the first sales person I scheduled meetings for at the corporate executive board. I was in a slump. After, I got good, so I got good then I went into a little bit of a slump again right after the holidays and I said, “What do I do?” he said, “You know what you need to do already, you sit down in that chair and you just do what you need to do. You just sit there and don’t drink any water, don’t go to the bathroom, don’t eat anything, don’t go talk to anybody, you sit here until you get yourself back right on track.”

And he was right, I sat there for I think 6 hours that day and I had three appointments and I was back. There was a lot of other things too but that was a big one.

Fred Diamond: So you just got on the phone.

Steve Richard: Got on the phone, yeah. The other big mentor is Tom Snyder, a great lesson, you’ll probably have him on.

Fred Diamond: He’ll be on a future episode, yeah.

Steve Richard: Very good. Great lesson he taught is people value more what they conclude for themselves than what they’re told, you hear him say that a lot. People value more what they ask for than what’s freely offered and that is the essence of persuasion, it’s a great lesson.

Fred Diamond: You talk to tons of sales leaders, of course you’ve been talking to sales leaders for pretty much your whole career. What are the two biggest challenges that either you face today or that you see sales leaders face with today?

Steve Richard: I wrote an article on this, it was called, “The 2 Most Important Words in Sales Leadership.” I went back and reviewed my calls, I did some key word searches of my own calls with sales leaders so I was doing what you are doing except I was trying to sell them stuff and it was over 200 calls and the words that kept coming up are consistency and accountability and I said those before.

As you get into that, you’ve heard of Sandler and the Pain Funnel and the asking the questions about challenges and problems and pains and frustrations and when you peel away all the layers of the onion, in the middle every time was, “Boy, if we could just have a culture where we had consistency and accountability at scale all of my problems would go away.” There it is. So how do you do that? I believe you do that through observable moments and visibility.

Fred Diamond: Observable moments. Relevant coachable moments.

Steve Richard: It’s true!

Fred Diamond: Take us back to the #1 specific sale success or win from your career that you’re most proud of.

Steve Richard: You know what’s funny, Fred? I’m really geeking out over the neuroscience of buying and selling and I can tell you my biggest win ever is ADP, they’re a client of ExecVision, that’s phenomenal. But I couldn’t tell you what happened along the way. I can tell you the 5 most painful losses that I experienced in my career in much more vivid detail than the wins and I go back to the neuroscience, the reason is because when you’re in your waking hours, you’re using your short term memory which is like your RAM in your computer, and then overnight there’s the process where your brain when you sleep transfers that, some portion of it, into your long-term memory.

Unfortunately, there’s something called the forgetting curve where our brains are wired to purge the vast majority of the information we receive so that’s why sales training doesn’t stick mostly, because everyone forgets it if it’s not put into their long-term memory through repetition.

But the thing about painful losses is they are put into the long-term memory so now I’ll tell you a story about it, I’ll tell you two quick stories. One of them I was selling sales training against a guy named John Costigan in North Carolina. Very interesting character, very compelling, very good offering and it was at Rosetta Stone, now at the time I didn’t know he was in the deal and they kept telling me over and over again, “You’re going to get this, you’re going to get this, it’s all you, you’re going to get this.” And I didn’t even know there was anybody else. “Oh, it’s a formality, you’ve got to meet with the new chief revenue officer.”

And after that the new chief revenue officer put me through the ringer on all this stuff that we had to put together, it was 40 hours of my time and my team’s time to put all this stuff together and little did I know, his best friend or one of his best friends, John Costigan, and they play golf together in North Carolina. And the lesson I learned and actually I think about Andy Miller when I say this is you can’t outsell the relationship. You just can’t. And after I got the news we lost, it was inevitable, it was a forgone conclusion.

I looked in LinkedIn and I looked at this guy, this chief revenue officer and how I was connected to him, and there was one connection: John Costigan. And I said, “Dang it!” I wasted a lot of time and I was pitch in dead. I had no chance of winning that business.

Fred Diamond: You mentioned artificial intelligence before. Let’s chat for a second or two, what’s your philosophy on how artificial intelligence will play into the future of sales or sales coaching? We hear from people who say that AI is going to take over sales. There’s not going to be any sales people at any point in the future. Give us your thoughts on that.

Steve Richard: OK. Number one, baloney. Not going to happen because they can’t shape people’s buying visions in the same way, they can’t get to that point of having a consultative dialogue. When it comes to coaching there are some companies out there that are saying that AI is somehow going to make your team be better. We also say BS.

To think that somehow AI is going to make your employees engage is nonsense but we do believe, Fred, is at the same time there’s this problem of the big pile of call recordings for those that record. There’s just far more information out there on buying and selling than anyone can absorb so the whole concept of AI assisting in the process of identifying the coachable moments we believe is going to be a key to unlocking performance.

Fred Diamond: What’s the most important thing you want to get across to the selling professionals listening to today’s podcast to help them improve their career?

Steve Richard: That’s a great question. Aligning with the buyers and understanding where the buyers are in their buying journey and understanding how to react to different situations. I was actually doing a call camp yesterday, Fred. We talk about how every different approach or strategy or tactic that you have in your tool kit as a sales person is kind of like if you’re playing hearts. Have you ever played Hearts or Spades or Bridge?

Fred Diamond: No.

Steve Richard: You throw the card out and you’re playing into your partner’s hand and you don’t know what your partner has and they have to play back into your hand. Or another way of thinking about it as Lego pieces, you want to assemble a conversation with a different set of Legos every single time and what I find is that a lot of sales people don’t understand the buying journey. You ask a very simple question.

An example I use to illustrate this is buying a mattress, it’s almost a perfect example. At any given time you’ve got 3% of the market in an active buying cycle, for a mattress 40% is susceptible to looking. How you approach the actively buying crew is different than how you approach the ones that are susceptible to looking is different than you approach the ones that are not susceptible to looking. And then once you’re in an active buying cycle, how you approach someone who’s at a period where they’re understanding what their needs are is very different than when they’re evaluating options.

So frequently we see sales people that jump ahead too fast and they start talking about features. If the person’s in evaluation mode, the features make a ton of sense, but if the person’s just trying to figure out, “What are we trying to do here? What are we trying to accomplish in the first place?” The features make no sense at all.

Fred Diamond: Steve, I’m going to reflect back to a question I asked you before the break and an answer that you gave on the question about a mentor and you talked about how you were in a slump and your mentor said to you, “Just go figure it out.”

Steve Richard: Yeah.

Fred Diamond: “Go sit, and you know what you need to do.” And you did, six hours later you had three appointments scheduled and you applied yourself. You guys are in the data space, you collect tons of data on sales calls and then analyzing them and then finding trends and giving information back. How can sales professionals take that and get better? Let’s talk about the gap. We talked a little bit before the gap between all this great data, this beautiful data that you’re collecting and then presenting to the customer and then how does the rep take that? The actual rep, and get better.

Steve Richard: You want to know the one thing, the easiest thing that every sales person can change that almost all of them are not good at? And this is shocking, Fred, it really is.

Fred Diamond: I do. Tell me that.

Steve Richard: And we’ve heard a lot of calls or AI’s analyzed a lot of calls, closing for next steps.

Fred Diamond: Next steps.

Steve Richard: It seems like it’s so simple but you’ll hear these people have these great conversations and they don’t ask for the next anything, whatever that anything is, if it’s a meeting, if it’s to get together at an event, a dream forest, if it’s closing to ask for the business, they just don’t close for next steps.

Fred Diamond: What do you ask for, another appointment, a sale?

Steve Richard: OK, so little secret for the people who hear this is the offer is a really interesting thing. What is the thing that you want the buyer to do next and how does it align with their buying journey and then how does it connect with something your product or service can do that’s different, your unique selling proposition, value proposition.

Fred Diamond: Steve, what’s a major initiative you’re working on today to ensure your continued success?

Steve Richard: Major initiative to ensure continued success is making sure that people are ready and prepared for the transformation required from transparency and we deliver something called The Sales Coaching Academy for our clients. I’m delivering a lot of Sales Coaching Academies. What we find is most people don’t know how to coach, they don’t know how to create an environment where coaching is positive and productive. One of the things we’re actually able to measure in our software is if the coaching that someone receives is negative versus positive because if the rep is constantly being berated with negative feedback, that’s, you know. Manager might think they’re being constructive but in the reality they’re just being bad and mean, the rep is going to reject the coaching. So getting the leveling up the humans to keep up with the machines on this coaching problem is a big thing I’m thinking about.

Fred Diamond: What is it about sales as a career that keeps you going?

Steve Richard: I love studying, buying and selling. It’s what I’ve committed my career to other than the four kids and my wife and my few hobbies, not that many, the skiing and the scuba diving, it’s all about studying, buying and selling because you learn something new every day. My friend says sales is the school you never graduate from and I believe that’s true.

Fred Diamond: Steve, why don’t you give us one final thought to share with the Sales Game Changers listening to today’s podcast to get them inspired?

Steve Richard: Remember my personal story, I wouldn’t be sitting here right now, I would be working for my uncle Jim in the septic tank plant if it wasn’t for the fact that I was humble enough to say, “I don’t have the answers, I’ve got to go learn from the best people and emulate their success” and by doing that, by creating a best of breed of their approaches, I went to #1 and I actually broke the com plan that year, Fred. I made more money than CEB wanted to pay, they said we’re going to change the com plan because of you. They even called it the Steve Richard rule. How do you do that? It wasn’t natural talent, it was learning from other people and being humble.

The post SPECIAL EPISODE 002: ExecVision’s Steve Richard Tells How to Get More Intelligence from Your Sales Conversations first appeared on Sales Game Changers Podcast.