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[EDITOR’S NOTE: This is a replay of the SALES GAME CHANGERS LIVE Webinar hosted by Fred Diamond, Host of the Sales Game Changers Podcast, on July 15, 2020. It featured sales leaders Todd Albright of Datasite and Trevor Vale of Diligent.]
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EPISODE 253: Sales Leaders Todd Albright and Trevor Vale Explain How Being Your Best Self and Believing What You’re Doing Matters Right Now Will Set You Apart
TODD’S TIP TO EMERGING SALES LEADERS: “Be your best self and that means different things to different people wherever you are in the world and depending on your personal situation. Be aware that your sales leaders are highly conscious of those folks putting in the extra effort – now is the time where legends are made. These markets really reveal the grit and are testimony to the winners in any organization. That’s an opportunity for those of you who are moving up into the right in your career.”
TREVOR’S TIP TO EMERGING SALES LEADERS: “You have to believe in what you’re doing, If you’re a seller, you have to believe that what you’re doing is going to help your customers. Reflect on that belief, reflect on what you do and the product you sell. If you’re not, take time to reflect on that and put yourself in a position to find something that you can believe in and can actually get behind.”
Fred Diamond: Today we have some of our guests from New York, we have Todd Albright with Datasite and we have Trevor Vale from Diligent.
Todd Albright: Fred, thanks for having me, it’s a pleasure to join you and Trevor today. Yes, we’re seeing a huge rebound in the last 6 weeks in terms of activity both in terms of the number of projects we’re working on, the amount of new solutions, we’ll get into the details of that. We’re a provider of technology to support M&A transactions across the whole life cycle. I’ve been at Datasite for about 5 years as the Head of Sales. We just held a leadership call this morning and I’ve got to say, worldwide it really does feel like things are starting to come back.
Fred Diamond: We’re doing today’s show on July 15th, it’s Wednesday, things have begun to come back, both you guys are in the New York area, we’re still seeing spikes unfortunately in other parts around the country. I’m broadcasting here from just outside of Washington D.C., things are okay, we’re in phase 3. Trevor, you are in the city so let’s get right to it with you. How are things going? Tell us a little bit about yourself.
Trevor Vale: Fred, thanks for having me this afternoon and Todd, really happy to be joining both of you. I’m happy to report that my family is safe and healthy and optimistic, as are most of my colleagues and team. I’m really proud at how my company has reacted and performed during this period of uncertainty and I’m especially proud of my sales organization who demonstrated their ability to adapt to a fast-changing marketplace. Our reputation at Diligent as a global provider of digital governance solutions has been amplified in this current environment as more boards and executives are forced to collaborate remotely, some for the first time ever. This resulted in larger than expected demand for our products which has helped us achieve a record quarter. From that lens, we are doing quite well.
Fred Diamond: We’ve done these webcasts every single Tuesday through Friday and doing a daily webcast with sales thought leaders we’ve seen things evolve and we’ve seen things change. We’re already getting questions from the audience, “What are you focusing on today?” It’s interesting because when we’ve done at the Institute for Excellence in Sales training – and I know you both are big proponents of training – we’re talking about how you might get better at prospecting or account strategy or account development. Now people want to know, “What can I do today? Because my customer has shifted and changed.” Trevor, why don’t you go first, what are the top priorities right now? Then Todd, same question for you.
Trevor Vale: We’re looking to set the table right now for the second half of the year so planning our usual start of the quarter QBR’s to collectively reflect on things we did right in the first half of the year, Q1 and Q2. Looking at what we’ve learned, areas to maintain focus on, areas to improve upon, trying to understand the many factors that contributed to, as I stated earlier, a very successful Q2. I’m spending a lot of time reviewing the data, going through the KPI’s, the metrics and speaking to reps to get a handle on what we can do to replicate that success in Q3. Really mindful that my front line managers adopted some unique approaches in reacting to the pandemic and the marketplace, one thing I’ll say is I’m going to continue to trust them to keep doing just that. As a sales leader I’m really focused on getting a handle on that Q3 forecast and what we need to do to move the needle.
Fred Diamond: Todd, how about you? What are the main focuses right now?
Todd Albright: It’s really born out of the rotation we all felt three months ago where all of a sudden every single sales rep in the world, no matter where you were, became an inside sales rep. A lot of our focus was in rotating our business to a work-from-home environment and ensuring that our reps were kitted out with the technologies and the engagement models they needed to stay current with our customers. I’m happy to report along with Trevor that my family is alive and well, the team is alive and well and we also have seen robust growth in this time because our platform is used not only for traditional mergers and acquisitions but also emergency financing, restructurings, if it becomes a distress situation supporting those too.
We’ve been pretty active and pretty busy, most of it right now is as the markets are returning and everyone’s following the S&P every day, as the markets are returning it’s just making sure that we’re staying vigilant in capturing what is now an upswing in our business. That’s been a really big part of the focus.
Fred Diamond: Both you guys are pretty upbeat. As a matter of fact, we interviewed you both in the early part of 2020, it was the beginning of February and it was two of the last Sales Game Changers podcast episodes that we did prior to the pandemic. Trevor, you pointed this out to me, it was a lot different in February than it is today but you’re both very positive, aspirational guys. Todd, I’m curious, tell us some of the positive things as a sales leader that have come out of this situation. You mentioned that things look bright for your organization but what are some of the positive things that have come out? Someone said to me the other day they’re never going to use the word ‘silver linings’ again but let’s talk about some of the great things that have happened for your organization and Trevor, same thing for you after Todd answers.
Todd Albright: I’ll steal a line from Marc Benioff from the Salesforce Earnings Call, I think we saw the best of Datasite through these times and we’ve been at the transformation of our sales organization underwritten by a great product, great customers, great market. We’ve been transforming our sales organization for the past 5 years building our team, building chemistry and culture, common process, approaches to how we do business and you’re able to do those things in a calmer environment. What we have seen – and you never would want to see a pandemic like this put these things to a test – is we just revealed the benefit of those investments. Even as you rotate from home and you go from the very important chemistry of working side by side physically in an office, the fact that you had those underpinnings rotating into this is what’s allowed us to sustain and maintain our culture going forward.
I think a big part of our focus over the last 90 days has just been empathetic because each of our employees is at a different stage – some have young children, some are married to front line health workers, some have aging parents, you need to be real in terms of what the art of the possible is. The big tagline we embrace is, “Be your best self” and fortunately that best self is now coming back in the forms of deal activity and deal flow which everybody wants to see.
Fred Diamond: Trevor, how about you? What are some of the positive things? Todd, you mentioned what we call the “E” word, empathy, and prior to the pandemic we would talk all the time about the fact that to be a successful sales leader and sales professional you have to be an empathetic seller. Over the course of the next couple of months there’s been a lot of questions about what the word empathy means, as a matter of fact, a month and a half ago on one of our Sales Game Changers Live somebody asked the question, “Do I still need to be empathetic? I’ve been empathetic every day for the last two months.” I want to come back to you after Trevor answers the question about what’s been positive, let’s talk about empathy for a minute. Trevor, some of the positive things that you’ve seen.
Trevor Vale: Like Todd, I think there’s a realization that we’ve come to terms with that the personal has now entered the business in a bigger way than we’ve ever seen. I think it’s accelerated the relationship between those two things as my team and others are working from home, we’re working remotely, dog’s jumping up in the background like mine did earlier, our kids coming into a room. I think we’re all getting a much better perspective of each other’s personal life and I think for the most part that’s been a positive thing because prior to the pandemic I’m not saying we weren’t sharing personal stories with one another or knowing what our colleagues were doing but I think this has just accelerated that, this has given us more of a window into the personal lives of each other.
I think that’s overall a good thing, I think there’s nothing that we should hide there and I think that helps with accelerating empathy to a degree. I touched on this a bit earlier in terms of the most positive surprise for me, just super proud of my sales team and how they adjusted to the shock wave that rocked not only their personal lives working from home and all of the things that go with that, but the professional world as well in terms of dealing with buyers in the same circumstances. The collective results they produce probably shouldn’t surprise me but it certainly did. I remember going into Q2 presenting a rather dire forecast to my finance team saying, “Best case scenario here, guys, we can get to 76% of target” and we actually ended up going well beyond that to 110%+. I won’t underestimate my team again and I’m pleasantly pleased with where we ended up.
Fred Diamond: Let’s talk about empathy. You mentioned, Trevor, the beginnings of the new conversations with your customers. One of the old sales tricks from back in the 70s was look at something in the guy’s office when you get the meeting and if you see a picture of a fish, “I see you’re a fisherman.” Now for people who are watching, I can see everything behind you and you’re seeing people with books on their shelves and posters and interesting things. I interviewed somebody yesterday who had a guitar hanging on his wall and we got to talk for a few moments about our mutual love for rock and roll.
We have a question here from Jennifer, Jennifer is in New York as both you guys are and she says, “Yes, empathy but can I also prospect now during this empathetic time?” Let’s talk about it. Todd, give us the definition of empathy and what it means to truly be an empathetic seller and help us apply it to where we should be today.
Todd Albright: Empathy is internalizing the emotional state of the person you’re working with, talking to in that moment. [I have] two young sons and more than once a prospect meeting was interrupted by one of them running into the room and honestly, I’ve been delighted that all of us in this time, our customers, our partners and certainly our employees have just kept it real. This is very honest what’s going on and I think it strengthened the relationship. What we found is that our customers also had a bit of downtime and they were interested in going a little bit deeper into what we had to offer and what we had to say. A big part of our investment certainly in partnership with our marketing organization was investing in thought leadership pieces from leading lights in our industry to help provide good, relevant, hard-hitting content that would add value to somebody’s day.
Let’s face it, everybody was starved for time, you’re preparing a board deck while at the same time making your children breakfast in the morning all while your partner is on a conference call for whatever line of work he or she is in. I agree with Trevor, good will come out of this but what we found – and I was astonished by our sales team. I was blown away.
It certainly helps that both Trevor and I have the work virtual in the headline of our product and we’re in that position of supporting knowledge workers which is a real convenience and you couldn’t have chosen that coming into this. That empathy, back to the original question, yes, it’s obviously time to start prospecting because your prospects want to know as this starts to normalize again what are the tools, concepts, ideas that I should be astute on heading into that rotation.
Fred Diamond: Trevor, how about you? Empathy and as it relates to the types of conversations that your people should be having with their prospects and customers.
Trevor Vale: I completely agree with Todd. I think we are fortunate both Todd and myself to oversee a sales organization that has a very good solid value proposition, one that we can believe in, one that we know can help our customers. From that lens, there’s no reason to be shy about prospecting. My sales team truly believes that what we are doing helps improve the governance of the companies that adopt our solution. Governance is more important than ever not only the pandemic coming into light but diversity and how important that has become for boards to reflect on and consider. We’re fortunate to have good solid products, we’re not selling airplanes right now or hotel rooms – not that they’re not good products but clearly the market for those products is different.
I think being a SaaS provider of ultra-secure digital governance solutions has positioned us well to actually increase the conversations we’re having with buyers as companies and boards are forced to work from home. At the start of this pandemic we spent a lot of time emphasizing the importance of empathy and patience above all else, we were very quick to put all of our usual talk tracks to the side and make sure that we were being very deliberate about letting our buyers know that we’re here for them when they’re ready and that we would wait for them. But it soon became apparent that most buyers were like us, they were locked in their homes, they were dealing with the things that Todd mentioned, the kids, the spouses that were working, in Manhattan we’ve got very small apartments, even if we’ve got big ones they’re pretty small compared to the rest of the world. I think what we quickly found out was that most buyers were willing to race a more business-as-usual approach and get on with things. There was a resilience there that didn’t throw empathy out the window but it got us back to a place where we could talk about working collaboratively with our customers and adjusting. We’ve pivoted quite significantly since the early days of the pandemic into our reality today which is the companies that can do business will do business and I think everybody on the other side of these video conferences is wanting to do business, wanting to make the world a better place and we as sellers play a role in that.
Fred Diamond: A question comes in here from Leslie, Leslie is just outside Chicago, thank you, Leslie. The question is, “I’m making a hundred phone calls a day and nobody is picking up the phone. How do I tell my sales leader that this is a waste of time?” This is an interesting question, that’s come up a couple times. What are your expectations of your team right now and as sales leaders, are you modifying that on a daily basis? One of you two mentioned before that we need to be doing what we were doing, if you will. How do you answer that question where the sales team might be struggling because their customer is struggling right now and they may not be able to be in a buying mode per se? Todd, let’s go with you first, what are your thoughts on that? How are you staying on top of the right things that your team should be doing? As a follow-up, what are your expectations for your teams right now?
Todd Albright: The hardest thing in sales is that cold call so Leslie, I give you great respect for those hundred calls a day that you’re making. One thing that we have always had in place and we invested in at the start of this was just an incredible amount of instrumentation in terms of our business cycles from prospecting all the way through the various stages of our sales methodology down to a close. We’re all here to sell customers on new products based on the value that we can create for them but the reality is that the market changed for a bit of time and you have to decide what is the definition of success right now and that is going to change over time.
We all look at signed orders and in our world it’s the number of M&A projects that we launch and the amount of users and content that go into those projects in order to support the completed transaction. But the reality is that there are other ways that we engage with our customers beyond just getting an order, there are demonstrations of new capabilities, there are the number of new prospects that we are reaching out to as we build our CRM and the number of customers. There are multiple webinars and thought leadership pieces that we hosted so looking at the number of attendees and the appropriate follow-up there. For a period of time you’re keeping it real for the reps because anybody in a position like Trevor’s or mine started as a rep. You’ve got to go back to those days when you were at the cold face on the front line trying to generate business which again, is the hardest job in any sales organization is generating that order at the point of sale.
Reassuring people that you understand the circumstances that they’re dealing with and the second is moving in the goal post a little bit and making sure that there is a definition of success which by the way, sales is an amino acids business, you keep accumulating these little wins and those eventually turn into orders. What we’re seeing is that we put nearly double digit market share gains in the first quarter and that’s continuing in part because we just stayed at it. To Trevor’s point, it’s like we are here for you, we’re aware of what’s going on and we’re going to be there for you and now those things are starting to come back, those seeds that we planted in March and April when this thing was at its apex are starting to germinate now and that’s positive. Stay at those phone calls, Leslie, good things will happen.
Fred Diamond: Trevor, how about you? We’ve heard this from a number of the younger sales professionals who are working for a lot of the companies that are members of the IES. How are you staying in touch with your team to ensure that they’re doing what you think should be the right thing and Leslie’s question here, is making a hundred phone calls right now the right thing for her to be doing?
Trevor Vale: I agree with Todd, I think persistence is key. It could be 101 calls and to Leslie’s credit, the fact that she’s doing that and I’m not sure what solution or product she oversees but I would imagine she’s considered the market that she’s working and the fact that she believes in what she’s doing is key to that whole thing. Persistence absolutely key, maybe it’s call 101 and once she gets a bite, once she gets an engagement that should nourish her. As Todd mentioned, as someone who’s sold before, it is that engagement that puts new energy into every salesperson and allows them to make a hundred, 200 more calls. I’m convinced that Leslie will find success there, we’re rooting for you.
In terms of me looking at coaching and looking at the team, right now I’m really encouraging my team to recognize that we need to constantly refine our engagement practices and recognize that we’re going to have continued uncertainty in the market. No one really knows what’s going to happen next – not that we ever did or do – but we certainly have a unique situation here. I think for us we’re really starting to brace for or prepare for the potential economic impact of the pandemic which could be good, bad or otherwise. Being prepared to adjust, pivot and adapt is going to be crucial for us to meet the needs of our buyers.
I really subscribe to the notion that in today’s selling world, vendors like Diligent or vendors like all of us are lucky to collectively receive 17% of a buyer’s time during a typical sales cycle or purchase decision. If we get 10% as Diligent that’s huge so maximizing our time together and ensuring we’re able to provide value during this time period is critical for all my team. Buyers have never bought in a straight line and it’s certainly no different today so buying is now linear, there’s multiple places that buyers can go to collect information so it’s really important that the conversations they’re having with sellers are meaningful and providing value. While the impact of this virus is still evolving, it’s super important we remain disciplined with our processes and calibrate accordingly.
Fred Diamond: That’s a great point, you brought up a couple of interesting things there, Trevor. You talked about value so as we all know, at the core of sales success is you’re providing value to the customer. This is an interesting time right now in that for the first time ever we know everybody’s experiencing the same thing. Everybody became a homeschool teacher if they have kids who are in their teens and I know you both have kids as well, you’re a camp counselor probably this summer as well for the first time since you were 16 if you were a camp counselor back then, I was. We all are kind of in the same boat and we all don’t know what’s going to happen with COVID and how it’s going to keep going. Trevor, you also mentioned we don’t know what’s going to happen with the economy, you said it’s going to be either good, bad or the same.
Talk about customer conversations right now. A lot of the younger people watching today who watched our webcast, when they connect with someone just to begin with, they’re thrilled because that’s a win in a lot of cases, getting through to a busy person. We’ve been talking over the last couple weeks, we know where everybody is, everybody is rethinking, reopening and how that’s going to go, are they going to bring their team together? Is there market opening? One of our lines for a long time was one of our frequent guests sells things to entertainment spaces and not a lot of people buying popcorn right now if they own arenas. But talk about customer conversations right now. Again, we don’t know what everybody sells but Todd, what are your thoughts? What should we be talking about to customers, how should the tenor be? We talked about empathy a little bit, talk about what a win would be and what are your customers telling you? Are they telling you, “Come back when we have a cure” or do they just want to chat with you? What’s a win right now in the customer conversation?
Todd Albright: We’ve got great customers, we’re thrilled to do business with these folks and they’ve been wonderful, they’ve been reaching out to us which is a testament of the trust that our great sales team has built with these wonderful customers. I think you make a good point, it is going to be volatile out there for a while, my wife is in the infectious disease phase, there’s encouraging news yesterday just in terms of a vaccine barring that it’s going to be highly volatile, high chop waters for a while. What can’t be debated, though, is that this pandemic is going to accelerate trends that were already in motion, rotation to digital being a very obvious one. What we find is we can have very direct conversations with our customers different from we may have had before.
Trevor makes a very good point that sales are nonlinear, you’ve got multiple parties involved. To the point of being a camp counselor and a homeschool teacher, have we ever not had higher respect for our teachers in this world? The fact of the matter is everyone’s starved for time so you can afford to be pithy, direct, relevant, courteous, respectful, astute, all those things which are the hallmarks of good salesmanship and relationship development. But we’re finding in our world, I’ll start with Trevor, is if you were considering his virtual board solution before you’re probably buying it now because there is no doubt that there is going to be a rotation to more digital engagement around governance and these processes. Similar in the world that we’re in which is akin, which is supporting major transaction work, mergers, acquisitions, restructuring, etcetera. The parlance in our world right now is being deal ready, “No man knoweth the hour”, no one knows when something may happen in the financial markets in terms of an opportunity coming by in positive light or in some cases negative light.
You’ve got to be ready to go and that’s to some degree why we’re seeing an uptake in demand for our services, because people are saying, “Volatility is going to continue.” But what can’t be argued or debated is that you are going to see secular change whether it’s physical retail into online retail, whether it’s the ascension of Zoom and teams and these video conferencing technologies as going to carve into airline revenues as an example. These rotations are happening and we can afford to be very open, honest and direct with our customers and I’m sure Trevor is seeing the same.
Fred Diamond: Trevor, how about you? The customer conversations that your team is having and what are you hearing from your customers? Are you hearing the same thing that Todd is hearing? What does it look like there from the people you’re trying to do business with?
Trevor Vale: I agree with everything Todd said. I think the volatility is a bit of a catalyst to accelerate some of the decision making around whether to digitize your board meetings or not, now it’s not an option. I think the smart companies are starting to understand that there is no sure thing anymore and I think this has provided everyone on the personal front as well as the professional front an opportunity to reflect on what we take for granted. It’s also highlighted the importance of some of the tools that we’ve always used whether it’s Zoom as Todd mentioned or DocuSign or Salesforce or all these tools that we have at our disposal to ensure that we just have to grab this laptop, go to another physical location and we’re connected in such a significant way. I don’t think we ever forgot that or didn’t know that but I think now it’s certainly, at least for me, accentuated that we have so many things at our disposal to drive efficiencies.
I think the conversations with the buyers have gotten different because as we mentioned earlier, the in-person meetings, the opportunity to connect on that level now for the most part have gone away with some exceptions around the globe. We know they’re coming back, but in the meantime we’ve got to do what we’re doing right here. We’ve got to try and read each other’s cues, our gestures, try and decipher what we’re thinking, how our attention is being held. One thing I’m really cognoscente of with my sales team is it’s exhausting to do back to back Zoom meetings, WebEx meetings, whatever. At the end of that day you feel an exhaustion that you might not have felt before. I read something recently about when you’re sitting across from someone there are hundreds of things that your brain is doing to assess that person’s interest, the cues that I mentioned earlier. When you’re doing it on a flat screen it becomes a bit more difficult so this thing I read talked about how the brain has to constantly adjust and assume that Todd’s interested in what I’m saying or Fred, you’re interested in what I’m saying and that is exhausting.
That’s both sides of the fence, my sales team are going through this as are the buyers so we have to be cognoscente about being succinct – hopefully I’m doing that right now. We have to be cognoscente about making sure we’re articulating things in a clear way and make sure that we’re not exhausting one another through the process so we can focus on being efficient, we can focus on solving the problems and ultimately focus on enabling our customers to do things better.
Fred Diamond: We have time for one or two more questions, I’m going to ask you both for your final action step that people watching today’s webcast should take today, we like to do that at the Institute. We have a question that comes in here through one of our frequent attendees, Kimi, The question is from Kimi, Kimi is in Manassas, not too far from Northern Virginia. How have you both changed as sales leaders over the last couple months? You both have been sales leaders for a long time, you manage a lot of people, you inspire people, you were great guests on the Sales Game Changers podcast, you’ve worked at great places. How have you changed over the last three months? What have people said that you’ve changed or how do you personally feel that you’ve changed? Trevor, you mentioned succinctness, succinctly answer that question then Todd will give us the final answer, then you’ll both give us the action steps for the day.
Trevor Vale: In addition to the things I mentioned earlier, a quick one is to try and eliminate a lot of unnecessary meetings. Simply put, remove some of the barriers, remove some of the scheduled timing sessions that just aren’t adding value and recognizing that there are a lot of things going on in everyone’s life right now. As I look at my sales team, I’m being really focused on curating the team meetings that we put in place, the forecast meetings. That is certainly one thing that is paramount.
Fred Diamond: Todd, how about you? How have you changed over the last three months? I know you got a haircut recently, you said you had a beard but as a sales leader, how have you changed?
Todd Albright: You don’t know what you have in your wonderful sales team till a moment like this arrives. The greatest privilege I think long-term any of us with children will have is the amount of quality time we’ve been able to spend with them. [Unintelligible 37:24], like Trevor, I’m on an airplane 200 thousand miles a year and now I have this wonderful chapter of engagement and I learned what that meant for everybody on our sales team. All of a sudden the organization is really flat and you’re getting to know people because I’m in a role, Trevor is in a role as a global head of sales, you may be in another role as an individual quota carrier, you’re an inside sales rep, you’re a marketing specialist. But usually when you’re on a call we’re just both dads, we’re both parents helping our kids get through school and getting some business done and I really want to amplify what Trevor said. We did a lot of addition by subtraction, just focus on what’s really going to make the difference and just focusing for three hours to get your work done and feel good about yourself and then get back to some level of balance or blend because there was no bailout for a lot of people. You’re at home and as soon as you get off the Zoom call you’re making dinner. I think just getting rid of the extraneous allows you to distill what really matters to your employees, to the customers.
Fred Diamond: Gentlemen, just give use one thing that people should do right now, some action step that’s going to take their sales career to the next level, something they should do today. Todd, why don’t you go first and then Trevor, something nice, crisp, an action thing that you want people to do.
Todd Albright: I mentioned earlier that one of our themes at Datasite has been, “Be your best self” and that means different things to different people because wherever you are in the world and depending on your personal situation you have a fixed amount of capacity to make an impact. What I would say is be aware that your sales leaders are highly conscious of those folks putting in the extra effort, now is the time where legends are made. I hate to be cavalier about it but in good markets it’s a lot easier to be successful, these markets really reveal the grit and are testimony to the winners in any organization. That’s an opportunity for those of you who are moving up into the right in your career and I would just say stay at it because that recognition, though it might not be stated every day, is known and acknowledged among those in leadership who over time are going to be looking for that next wave of leaders and managers to come up through the organization. I see a lot of upside for those of you putting in that mentality.
Fred Diamond: Trevor, give us something nice and crisp that people can do today to take their careers to the next level.
Trevor Vale: You’ve got to believe in what you’re doing, I think that’s true for everything in life and I think that is highlighted in this current world. If you’re a seller, you just have to believe that what you’re doing is going to help your customers so really reflecting on that belief, reflecting on what you do and the product you sell. I think Todd and I are lucky to have sales organizations that are truly offering customers solutions that help their businesses. I think most sellers are in that position as well but if you’re not, time to reflect on that and put yourself in a position to find something that you can believe in and can actually get behind. If you don’t believe in what you’re doing, it’s going to be difficult to convey that to a customer. The other thing I would say is creativity, as we talked about on this call today, creativity has to be incorporated into everything we’re doing right now. We have to be creative in how we address new circumstances, we have to be nimble and we have to be able to pivot. All good ideas are great until they’re not and we have to be prepared to change what we’re doing so as a salesperson I would say if what you’re doing is not working, try something else.
Transcribed by Mariana Badillo