Why is it so hard to stick to your sales process

Speaker A: So, Fab, we haven't done this in a while.

Speaker B: It has been a while.

Speaker A: We changed formats. Um, Fab and I have decided to do it a little differently to make it advantageous to, uh, his business and my business and so that it makes sense to our clients. And today we have a great subject that we wanted to, um, talk about and, uh, have a chat about. And it's why is it so hard to stick to your sales process? And, um, well, Fab, on that note, I'm gonna let you open it up, man.

Speaker B: Um, all right. I have a lot of feelings about this. Ah, some are feelings, some is things that I've actually seen. Um, but I guess if I package it nicely, there's really two. Two components. And I don't know if there's one more than the other. I think they kind of usually work in tandem, or if one's not working, the other one is working, it's still going to be an issue. And one is like training and coaching that you've talked about a lot about, and the other one is, is your CRM. M. Obviously, uh, I'm still an ops person, but on the training side, what I see is that often sales processes are put in place. Uh, they train reps, which usually training means how to enter a deal in HubSpot or whatever their CRM they're using. Uh, and that's it. And it's never really coached and trained. They just kind of run you through it. Oh, well, according to the spin selling training, uh, we did. Boom. This is it. Here are all the fields, here are all the properties. Go for it. And then nobody really follows up. Uh, and I think with that ultimately means is that at the very least, the sales leaders aren't really fully bought in. Right. Like, they just kind of put a sales process. Because sometimes I feel sales process is to sales leaders is what a website is to marketing leaders. You know, when a new marketing leader comes in, nine times out of 10, they change a website, regardless of whether website needs to be changed. But they just like to put their stamp on something. Um, and I find sales process is the same for sales leaders. They come in and they redo the sales process. Whether the process needs to be redone or not doesn't matter. I've used, you know, they come in, I've used medpic in the past. I'm going to do the medpic and that's it. Like, yeah, you know, um, and so then training and coaching is minimal. So then, yeah, revs. It's sales processes and the sales Methodologies that go along with them are not instinctive.

Speaker A: Right?

Speaker B: Like, you kind of have to learn them. You have to learn that when you're talking to somebody, you're looking for specific things. You know, you have the reps that have the gift of the gab and they're just chatting and blah, blah, blah. And they kind of instead can feel when something's going to close, but they don't really know why, and they're not really always asking the right questions. Then you have the more introverted reps that maybe have a harder time getting started, but when they have a prospect on the line, they, they're. They're pretty good with them. But a lot of sales processes and like I said, the, the methodologies that go along with them are not intuitive. And, uh, they do need a lot of training and a lot of coaching. And I think the sales leaders are not always super comfortable with it as well. And they're like, hey, if it's closing, it's closing. And, um, not if. If it rainbow, don't fix.

Speaker A: Exactly. If I'm closing and closing, who cares about the process? Don't ask me about all this stuff.

Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. So that's one side then. The flip side is not the flip side, but the other side is. The part that I've seen the most, I guess, is, uh, the CRM, right, which is like, not set up. They often ask like, for a trillion properties to be updated. They're not always intuitive. Like, what does it mean has budget? I don't know if they have budget. I didn't ask them, you know. And, but, but to move it to this stage, you have to know if they have budget. But I don't know, like, you know what I mean? Like, I'm, I'm at this stage, but I don't feel. So, yes, I have budget. Whatever.

Speaker A: Like, um, you're just ticking off the boxes because you have to put it.

Speaker B: And because sales are not, you know, as much as like every. Whether it's HubSpot or pipedrive or Salesforce or all of them. You know, a sales process is always linear, right? There's always like stage one, stage two, and so on and so forth. And when there's no training or coaching, uh, it's hard for salespeople to see it as that. Right. I'm having a conversation. If I'm having a conversation with the prospect that's super open and they're giving me a trillion different information, sometimes I feel I'm like, oh, well, I can bypass stage two and three. Because I'm already at stage four. I need to send a proposal or whatever, and then. Or I'm talking to a prospect that's not at all an open book. And I'm like, it's, am I still at stage one? I kind of feel I'm still at stage one, but I had a call, so I guess I need to move the deal over. But I'm missing all this information. So I think the CRMs are not always set up to, um. They're not always set up, uh, because they're not getting trained. They're not set up in a way that makes sense. Right. And they're asking a lot of information that reps don't always know how to get. They don't know when to get it. Uh, and so deals feel nowhere and everywhere at the same place.

Speaker A: Well, you said it twice. So you talked about it in your first point, and in your second point, you talked about intuitive. So. And that's something I want to dig into a little bit. I've got some opinions on it, but I want to sort of hear where you're coming from. Because to me, sales, in a way, is your. Your sales process, to a certain extent, should have some intuition in it. Because intuition, what I think in sales means I'm, um, reading your body language and I'm reading your tone of voice, right? So that we'll call that a form of intuition. But I totally agree with you in that your sales process, you're taking best practices from all these people that have done really well in sales, and you're piling together and you're creating a process because you say, you know, George, the best sales guy in the world in 1922, started doing this, and everyone did it. And then, you know, uh, Justine in 1950 did this. So we kind of put it together and we build a sales process. And then you said something else afterwards. Some people say, well, I'm a sales leader. I've been using Medpic for years, so I'm just going to install it here, no matter, regardless of the business. So the other thing I think you need to do is look at the business and see, does the sales process that I want to use make sense in this business. Now, you might not change the entire sales process, but you might adjust it to that reality. And then there are some intuitive things in sales, but it shouldn't just be intuitive because you can't remember everything, budget, uh, all the questions you need to ask. So although sales process was born from intuition, like medicine was born from intuition, at first or observation. Well, then you need to put it together and see what works and doesn't work. And then your second point. And, you know, yes, I do a lot of training and coaching, and you do a lot of setting up people with their CRM with HubSpot specifically. Um, and, you know, you and I, we've often talked about this is like, they're not using the sales process and they're not using their CRM properly. And, you know, a big frustration is, like, if they were doing it properly would really help them. But the problem, I believe, is, like, you, is that the sales leaders don't take the time to really look at what the sales process should be and what. And how simplified it should be when you're actually doing the sale.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: You know, if I can make a quick analogy here, I just bought an electric vehicle recently, and there's a lot of automation in there. You know, it's not asking me to flick a thousand switches to be able to go forward. You know, it's literally, I press one button and I go forward. Yeah. So, uh, that process isn't it. It becomes intuitive because I learn something and I move forward. Well, your sales process should be the same thing. Eventually, you should almost remember it by heart once you've gone through it a few times. But writing things down in your CRM should also reflect that simplicity because it's a tool to help you move forward. It shouldn't be something holding you back. Like, oh, I want to drive to the corner store and I need to press a thousand buttons in the car and get everything ready, and, um, start the engine and the generator and then lexing, oh, I'm gonna take my bicycle. You know, and that's what often happens. Right. In sales is like, oh, forget it. I'm just gonna write it down on a pad. Yeah.

Speaker B: And I like your car analogy because, you know, driving a car, learning to drive a car, you know, when you're 16 or however old you are, when you learn how to drive a car, you know, driving a car is not intuitive. Right. Like blind spots and. And, you know, and like, now technology is there to help, you know.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Like, but you still have to kind of be aware because sometimes.

Speaker A: Well, there's some intuitive stuff, but it's not all intuitive, but m. You know,

Speaker B: like the width of your car and, like, how to parallel park, and there's a lot of. And if you think about it, you know, you do training, right. You learn your theoretical. Then you sit with a trainer that's kind of sitting with you in the car and teaching you and you sit with your parents and they're teaching you. Then you do your test and you kind of, kind of do it, but you're kind of on the learning training reels, right? Depending on where you live, you have, you know, learner's permit and so on and so forth. And then you just do years and years of driving and you slowly, hopefully get better at it. Um, but then if you compare that to the sales process, it's the complete opposite, right? We come in, there's this new sales leader that comes at a new sales process that's like nothing. What you've done before, you barely get any training on it, you know, so this is as if you're like you're 16 and now you have to drive a car the next day you have to drive an automated vehicle, like, and then an electric one, and then you have to drive an 18 wheeler and then a motorcycle. And then you're like, wait, why are my sales people aren't closing? Um, you know, there's no consistency in that sales process.

Speaker A: It's like learning to drive a car in the. Hand you the keys. In the 50s, they would just hand you the keys and say, go drive. You know, and that's, that's what it is right now. The salesperson, you know, here, do all this stuff and make it happen.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker A: Sorry I cut you off there. You were saying something.

Speaker B: No, but that's why. And that's why I try to encourage startups to start a sales process early on. Because even though you might tweak it and change it, at least it's the same thing year over year. There's some changes and some tweaks and maybe our market has changed a bit and, and stuff like that. Uh, but you're not reinventing the wheel. So when you're hiring a sales leader, you could be like, this is our process. Like, I'm not looking for somebody to rip it apart and start all over again. I'm looking for somebody who can help my salespeop teach me, teach them. And, and yes, if there's something, something crucial about it. But ideally, if you started your process early and starting to think how it works,

Speaker A: it.

Speaker B: You don't need to rip it apart either.

Speaker A: Yeah, and the other thing I'd say is that, you know, to me there's some basic elements of a sales process, and we've talked about this before, that are really repetitive. Like, you know, there's the introduction. You know, everyone does an introduction. You got to talk to the person for the first time. Now, what you say in that introduction, because you're two human beings, follows a certain path that is intuitive to a certain extent. Where the intuition tends to fall apart is when you go into Discovery. Because a lot of people in Discovery are like, they ask one question, they do their sales pitch, right? And that's where you need to learn that. And then, you know, I spend, I spend 90% of my time saying to people, well, no, maybe I'm exaggerating, but when I'm teaching the discovery phase, I'm saying, don't sell. You're like, what do you mean don't sell? I mean, just listen. What do you mean? Just listen. Ask questions and dig deeper and show interest. And if you're not interested, you're a bad salesperson because you're just thinking about yourself, you know? And, and, and that's, that's what's not intuitive. Because your, your company often tells you, we have this new lawnmower, uh, and it's better than any other lawnmower. Go out there and tell everybody and they're out there telling about the new lawnmower and they're not listening. And like the guy, sorry, I don't have grass. You know, I just have, I just have a, I just have cement or, or a forest in my backyard. Oh, okay. You know what I mean? Or, or, um, or there's no gasoline and you're trying to sell me a gasoline lawnmower. I can't do gasoline. My neighborhood has to be electric. Whatever. So, so there are certain stages, I believe, of your sales process that really have to be customized and trained upon. There's basic elements where you're asking questions and you're asking open ended questions and then you're asking close any questions to solify what's going on. But you still have to put that into your process and see what you're discovering. If you're selling a SaaS, what are you trying to discover? If you're selling, uh, you know, huge mechanical equipment, what, what is it you're trying to discover? And, and you're right. No one does this. It's just like, okay, go out there and, and all they care about is the pitch.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: How does the pitch look like? And I, I have a client who called me just last week, said, my guys don't know how to close. I said, oh, hold on. You know, you and I have had discussion. They can't close. Well, usually they can't close comes from something else. And that's all around the sales process and the intuition's important but you can't go all in intuition. You have to force yourself to do certain elements and that's where you need to test, gauge, redo. And that's what I like what you said. Put a sales process in, test it, change it, let it be alive and see what's going on. But you really have to, you have to put one in. Because if you don't put one in, everyone's doing everything willy nilly and they're putting whatever they want in the cr. Yeah.

Speaker B: So I'll, I'll. There's something else that I thought of as you were, you were talking about that. So I'll add a third one. Right. There's a two that I thought the lack of training and coaching. Well more I think the training's there. It's just a lack of coaching and ongoing training, if you want to call it ongoing training.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Then there's your CRM. But then there's a third one which I'm seeing more of because of how I started working with clients. And it's. The sales process is too often

Speaker A: stuck

Speaker B: uh, in a vacuum of just sales and a lot of people have a hard time because a sales process, the reality of the sales process and some businesses more than others, like software particularly because the, the viability of a client long term is more important than like a one off sale. Um, but it's really hard for salespeople to sell and to follow a sales process when marketing doesn't understand what kind of uh, leads sales needs. And it's really hard for customer success to maintain the clients sales close if they don't understand. Like your sales process is really one part of your client onboarding, so to speak. Right. Like you know, like, and that's why it's so important to have a. Yes, your sales process and your sales pipeline and, and whatever is important to optimize. But how is marketing selling sending leads over and like what are their definitions of a qualified lead? Right. I was working with a client just this week actually. Um, you know it's getting pretty clear that marketing is sending over way too many quote unquote qualified leads. And it's not. There's no clear understanding of what a qualified lead is. And so sales is struggling and they're having a hard time keeping with their sales process because marketing doesn't understand what sales is doing and vice versa. And it's not a knock on the client because this happens to almost everybody. But I think in, in this day and age, like the sales Process Again, especially if you're in a recurring revenue business, maybe less in this one off sales business. Sales process is one peg in the whole.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

Speaker B: You know, because, and, and you need to work with sales to understand what are leads, what are marketing qualified leads, what are sales qualified leads, when do the sales people actually accept the leads? And, and when, you know, how do we fab.

Speaker A: I want to quote them and I want to quote someone you know really well, Fab Calando, who once said marketing and sales are the same thing. And the problem, I think what you're talking about is that when you put those in a silo, when you're saying sales do this, marketing do that, and the silos don't really work together. Well, that's where you're getting those problems. I mean, what all the clients that I have where it's, you know, a, uh, vp, sales and marketing, who's in charge of both. That problem doesn't occur because marketing and sales are together now we're talking about smaller companies. I agree.

Speaker B: And when sales and marketing leaders are either from sales or from marketing and the.

Speaker A: Oh yeah, yeah, uh, yeah.

Speaker B: Favor one over the other. But yes, I agree what you mean.

Speaker A: Yeah, but what I'm saying is that like I'm talking to one client that's actually fairly large and he's a marketing guy, but he understands that the sales and marketing are joined together. And you're totally right because, you know, you said it before, if you're stuck in a vacuum and you've got, you know, your marketing silo, your sales silo, there's another silo too, which is client services. Particularly when you're talking about recurring revenue. And if they all have different KPIs that don't match up, that's where the problem occurs, right? If you're telling your sales guy, sell no matter what is. Yeah, but I'm not getting the marketing leads. And then the marketing VP or leader has different KPIs and they don't join, well, then that's where you get into that problem.

Speaker B: And the different definition, the similar definitions, right? Like because marketing is often like, hey, you have to send over qualified lead. And then marketing is like, hey, you know, as long as they fit more or less within our ICP and they have a score of 20, then they're qualified. I'm like, that doesn't mean anything. Like you're just saying stuff, right? Like ah. And so then say you're just saying

Speaker A: stuff,

Speaker B: then these marketing is getting all the sales is getting all These leads and they're like, then they obviously have a hard time following up their. Because their sales process was built into that. They're speaking to qualified lead. Because when you're a salesperson, you prospect, you're obviously prospecting qualified leads, right? Like you're not going to be. You don't sell to like multi million dollar companies and then go, go prospect like a one uh, off dude that just started his company, right? Like you'll go sell m. And so you're used to. That's why like sales people always go back to prospecting and ignore marketing leads so much because there's no common definition. And in the same way, salespeople have a hard time following their process because they forget that after they've moved the deal to closed one, there's a whole life of a client that exists and if I didn't do the proper qualifying, then the business suffers at the end of the day. And so I think you have to. The third reason why salespeople have such a hard time following their sales process is that it's still living in a vacuum of just selling.

Speaker A: And to your vacuum point, I totally agree with you. Okay, that, that's great. And to your vacuum point, I was just listening to your podcast recently and I forget who it was with, but, uh, it was from a fairly large SaaS company in the states. And this marketing guy was basically saying is the era of BDR and is the era of business development as opposed to sales as opposed to closers all dying. Because he says maybe that needs to be all brought back into one because you get a better customer experience and you get a better sale if you're bringing it through. And maybe there's some reality there for certain kinds of businesses where marketing's bringing in lead and then the person. Because clients hate it when like, oh, I just sold to you and I'm going to pass you off to someone else, you know, and then they're going to pass you off someone else. So the one person opens the door, Paul opens the door, Fab, sort of, you know, does the pitch and then George takes care of you for, uh, a bit. And then it falls into, after one year, goes into Eileen's business, you're like, man, you know, I want to talk to Paul or I want to talk to Fab all the way through. So yeah, there's some. And, and that ties into this because what you're doing is you're creating silos and for the client or customer experience, like, I don't want to deal with A silo. I want to deal with one person. And, and it's sort of the same thing internally where someone looks at an org chart and says okay, uh, Albert's really good at marketing and George is really good at sales. So we're going to separate, give them different KPIs and like, you know, you're missing the point because there has to be a flow there and that's part of the sales process.

Speaker B: I'll maybe disagree a bit on that one. Like that if you, I mean again depends on the philosophies that you follow and like the, the, the and and so one organization that I like a lot and follow a lot and which is why I'm working more and more exclusively with with software. Um, like startup SaaS, companies with recurring revenue is winning by design and for them like your go to market will be very dependent on your annual contract value. Right. And so if you're selling large contracts and yes it probably makes sense to have one person there because you know they're selling is uh, builds in with a relationship and the longevity of a client. But if you're selling lower annual contract values, it probably makes sense to have more, not necessarily more people, but more specialization. Right. Because you need to have SDRs that are specialized. But I don't think it's having multiple roles that create silos is having the lack of common definitions that creates the silos. Right. Where marketing creates qualified leads. But, but there's never been an understanding of what a qualified lead is. You know, marketing goes into sales meeting and they're like, okay, qualified leads are now people that you know, do XYZ on our website. And then sales are like, I don't know what that means. So I guess, okay. And um, it's not because you have one marketing and salesperson that that improves is sometimes still the case. I think what, what needs to happen is that you need to really work on those common definitions of like when I get a lead from marketing, I know that it's xyz, right. Like it's not a plus. A whole bunch of fluff, fluff around.

Speaker A: So let me, let me make this very anecdotal. Okay. So I've been doing my own business now for, I've been, I've been prospecting in my own business with my own company and I'm sort of overseeing the whole thing uh, since 2016.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And when I started using certain automation tools five years ago, it was gangbusters. I was using them, I was leading them. I see, I see the results and now over the last four years, it's totally changed. Now I'm doing the same strategy and I'm tweaking it, but because I'm doing it and I'm aware of it, I know that the market is changing so that the value of the leads is changing. But if I was sitting there in a sales silo and let's say I was talking to other Paul doing the marketing stuff, I'd be saying, man, your leads suck. They used to be good. Now they suck because I'm not closing as much. And so there needs to be a conversation into the realities of the market too. And let's face it, anyone using LinkedIn in the last four years has seen a decrease because, you know, the capacity communicate, the capacity to reach out to people, it's a lot more difficult than it used to be. So to your point, you need, there needs to be conversations, there needs to be more, more, uh, interaction between them, more understanding and reality of what you're looking to. But if we rolled this back to the sales process, is that your sales process, you know, when it jumps into the salesperson's arms in the CRM, what's come in from marketing needs to have a process as well. And that's the, that's the top end of the sales process.

Speaker B: Right?

Speaker A: The top end funnel. So what's happening as a funnel goes through? So you got marketing at the top, falls to sales, and then it closes and then into the. They're reoccurring. Yeah. So, fab, you're good at summarizing. I've got some points, but I'll let you summarize it and then I'll, I'll, I'll jump in if there's things that you, I think that you, that you didn't get to.

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, like I said, for me, uh, the three reasons why salespeople, uh, are the two plus one reason. There we go. We'll view it. For marketing, two plus one reasons is, uh, there's no coaching. Right. So we train on the sales process once, maybe twice if we're lucky, and then the salespeople are left alone. And sales processes are not intuitive. Uh, regardless of what we can say. They're just not intuitive. Uh, especially when you've been in sales for a long time, uh, because you develop your own mechanism or if you're young in sales. Right. Because these are not, they're not conversations. You're not just talking to Paul on a podcast for the fun of it. You're talking to a prospect to see if there's a good fit. And that's a very different mindset that is not intuitive. Uh, so lack of coaching, that's 1, 2 is a CRM isn't set up properly. We're asking the wrong questions at the wrong moments. We're asking too many, too many things. Uh, again, it's not intuitive, uh, and so on and so forth. Because every prospect is different and that isn't, that's not taking into account. And the third is the sales process is too often just seen as a sales thing and not taken into the context of the whole reality of the business, especially in relations to marketing. Right.

Speaker A: Like, so what is the silo of sales? Or earlier, you're stuck in a vacuum. So the silo of sales as opposed to the other divisions. And I would say, and I would dare on that one, if I can expand on that one, I would say that almost becomes an operational thing, like how you manage your company, a culture thing. And that goes way deeper than just saying fix your sales process. It's like, how do you run your business and how do you think of your business? Um, well, I agree, I totally agree with you on all of those points. Um, you know, there's a lot of things you can do. And so what would be, what would you say to a sales leader who's listening to the podcast? What would be your, what would be your suggestion for them to do this properly? Obviously to look at these three things. But how would you suggest that sales leader goes about, um, doing this properly? You know, coaching I can deal with. But let's say the CRM and the vacuum, what would you say to that?

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I think for all three, I would say the coaching. And you can deal with all of that because you're the, you're a sales consultant with a million years of experience. You're not that old, but, you know, but I think a lot of sales leaders on their own are not able to do it. So I would say step one is like, get really comfortable with your sales process. Like understand what that process is and the methodology used to support that and literally schedule one on one meetings with your salespeople every week and go through their pipelines and ask them to bring up some opportunities to you and ask them, like, why, why haven't you uncovered who the decision maker, like whatever your process is. Right, like who the. Why? Oh, uh, well, you know, they, they canceled our call. Okay, like, what are you going to do about that? Like, and so on and so forth. Like really spend a lot of time Like I would say this is a, should be a big part of your week. Any other thing around that that's preventing you from doing that, I would try to trim out. Because if you can coach your salespeople, they won't have success. That would be number one, the CRM. The reason why I put that as number two, even though I'm an ops person, is, uh, because you'll, you'll uncover a lot of blockers that your CRM has, uh, through your coaching. Right? Like, ah, uh, actually I do have, I do know who the decision maker is, but I'm only asked that at stage six. Well, I don't know if you have should have that many stages, but only asked that at stage four. So that's why I didn't put it in yet. So then you're like, okay, there's probably issues with my CRM at that point. Uh, and, and for the siloed stuff, I would be like, if you do have a marketing team, sit with marketing and map out at least your acquisition part of the funnel. What's a lead? What's the marketing qualified lead? And uh, and when you say marketing qualified, like tangible, not. I have a score of 20. Right. Like tangible. A marketing qualified lead is somebody who fits our ICP and has declared some interest, for example, or has a pain or something like that. And then what's the sales qualified lead? What's an opportunity? And like really be specific about these. But tangible specific, not an opportunity. Somebody who has a deal with that. Yeah, like that's not specifically when do we create a deal?

Speaker A: I guess, you know, interesting and fab. If people want to find out more about this, uh, where can they find you, uh, to get more info on, let's say, how to set your icps

Speaker B: and all that stuff, they can reach me. I guess LinkedIn would be the easiest. Or a few friends. Fabriclando. Uh, on LinkedIn, it's probably the best. Or reach out to Paul. He knows how to find me.

Speaker A: All right. Okay, thanks everyone.

Speaker B: Bye.