What I Wish I’d Known About Sales With Tom Happe

Speaker A: Foreign. And welcome to what I Wish I'd Known About Sales, the show where we learn all about the highs, lows and lessons from the front lines of selling. I'm Martin from Leap Forensics and today I'm joined by Tom Happ, founder of True Leads. Tom started his business in lockdown, no funding, four children to support, and has since built a company focused on helping B2B tech teams generate consistent, predictable pipeline training through real conversations. So, Tom, welcome to the show.

Speaker B: Thank you very much, Martin. Great to be on here.

Speaker A: Good stuff. Thanks. Uh, so let's start with the big one. What is the one thing you wish you'd known at the very start of your sales career?

Speaker B: So, yeah, put a bit of thought into Smart. And I think the main, big thing for me at the start of the sales career is you're so focused on learning how to be brilliant at sales in terms of the techniques, the persuasion, the objections, all that good stuff. But, but the main thing I've learned over years of doing this and a lot of trial and error, uh, is selling to the right people because you could be the best salesperson in the world, but if you're selling to the wrong prospect at the wrong time, you are wasting your time. So I think so much of the training and things that you get taught, especially early in your sales career, and a lot of the expectation of selling is how to improve yourself, how to be good at presenting, how to be good at rejections, how to know your product, all that good stuff, which is obviously important. But if you're doing that in front of the wrong people, you. You are wasting your time and your effort. So I think true lead is built on that. And like later in my sales career, it was about identifying the right people. And then when you get those right opportunities is really honing in on them and maximizing those opportunities rather than spending a lot of your time speaking and selling to the wrong people. So I think that's.

Speaker A: Yeah. Um, so obviously like icp. Icp, icp. And getting in front of those. The right people. So, um, obviously there are some, uh, things that throws up. What would you say, um, most teams or individuals are getting wrong about generating the pipeline, the right sort of pipeline for their businesses.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think the challenge is, especially when I was in the tech world and a lot of the companies I worked for, American based, and, um, there's obviously a lot of pressure and that pressure drives individuals to do sometimes the wrong things. So. So I think you're obviously targeting, you know, the number of leads you're getting the amount of pipeline you're generating. You know, it's all numbers and metrics driven, but sometimes you're driving your team towards the wrong thing. So I think if you really step back and it's very, very hard to do. But when I was an individual contributor, you sort of had to like, shield yourself away from that corporate noise and focus on what was really important. And what was really important was having the right conversations, the right people and uh, getting progressing the right types of deals. And I may not have always had the biggest pipeline or the most leads, but I had the right ones. You know, I think that was, although you're under pressure to increase that, it was sort of protecting that from the organization to make sure that you're personally working on the right opportunities. And that's what sort of flipped in my sales career because it was, you were, you were working on the right opportunities with the right timing, the ones that had the budget, the ones that you could grow into bigger accounts. And I think that's, that's the key to it really. But you're under so much pressure, um, internally to, to drive other metrics, you forget what's actually important, which is getting in front of right customers.

Speaker A: Yes. I suppose it's kind of looking at the vanity metrics, which kind of, when you're looking at a whole team of people, probably makes sense. But if you've got a feel for which accounts are, uh, kind of the right accounts, I guess.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Is that.

Speaker B: Yeah. And it's quite high risk because if you do all that and then you, you don't close any business off of it, you're going to be under scrutiny because you haven't hit all the other metrics. But it was my, my role as an individual contributor especially, and when I was a sales leader was to drive revenue. So it was like trying to really focus down on that. And yes, there's obviously metrics you need to look at in terms of the number of leads, early funnel, you know, meetings, all those sort of good things which, you know, sort of, um, need, you need to help. But obviously it's about qualifying really hard in the pipeline you have and progressing that and actually turning that into revenue, which is going to turn the needle and actually make a difference.

Speaker A: Yeah. One of the things that, um, you've spoken about on LinkedIn is like conversation LED pipeline. What does that actually look like? So if I'm an SDR or an AE listening to this, what does good actually look like? Kind of day to day.

Speaker B: Yeah. So again, this is A lesson that took me a long time to learn. But when I was started out in sales, you sort of, like I said, you do the training, you're looking at other people in the organization and you try and sort of emulate what they're doing. You sort of think that's working for them. Let's try and do that. Let's try and um, incorporate the sales pitch I've been taught or this bit of product information. You're sort of going off what you have in front of you. But later on in my sales career you realize that actually it's not about that, it's about being yourself and actually having that honesty and integrity. When you're reaching out to prospect to one, you need to show some knowledge of what your, what, what the product is, the market. You understand what the customer is doing but you need to go with a bit of integrity, a bit honesty, um, to get on that human level with the, with the client. So I think it's, it's sort of having that human approach and not assuming that every single prospect wants to buy what you have but going, being curious, open up with open questions, getting on their level and sort of, that opens up opportunities because they trust you from the start. So I think it's that human level conversation as if you were speaking to somebody down the purple, somebody that you met at the gym, like just being human. And I think you can get so caught up with all the um, acronyms and the products and the training that you forget that and you just, you sound like a robot. And then people get put off by that. So it's trying to again just like cutting out the noise and going back to that human approach. Being able to explain what your offer is really clear and concisely. Um, and having a human conversation with people and that's what I try and help people do.

Speaker A: Yeah. So have you got, can you give me like a good example of that? So like you know, in prospecting or like how to open up a conversation when someone is not necessarily, you know, they're in their like super busy work M mode.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. So I think example of this is many times my sales career I was looking after like a brand new vertical so they didn't have, there's minimal customers in that vertical. I was looking after the Nordics and Benelux region for example for global cyber security vendor, uh, in the us, uk, loads of customers. Case studies. Brilliant. Obviously I was coming in to build up a new vertical so a simple, simple sort of thing that I did was looked at the customers we had already, which ones were similar in, you know, Benelux, for example, in, in, in Holland, the Belgium, et cetera, and how that would translate. So, for example, it's financial services. So I took the best bits of what we were doing with financial services in the uk, the us, what the case studies were, what the use cases were, set up a simple LinkedIn campaign to reach out to banks within the Netherlands and sort of when with a human approach, it's like, look, we're already working with these people already in the uk. These are the particular use cases. Not sure if it is the right time or, you know, the. You experience in these challenges, but I'd love to have a conversation with you to see if that, if you're open to it and with that approach you're not. It's not hard sell, it's just sort of like, I've joined this company, we've got these great products and services helping these types of customers. I think it might be relevant to you. And it's that sort of human element actually just opens up the conversation. They're open to speaking to you. So I think that's an example where, um, with that campaign, managed to open up opportunities with Heineken, abm, Ambro, like, you know, rabobank, like those brand new organizations, really big organizations with a simple LinkedIn message just based on a few little tweaks in the messaging and the approach. Whereas a lot of people would go in that, in terms of bombarding those prospects with case studies with information, trying to sell to them. And it's sort of like you're not at that stage yet. You're the educational sort of learning phase. So that's one example, but there's many others which I think have helped throughout my career that have, you know, led to that similar approach.

Speaker A: Yeah, no, that's, that's really interesting. Uh, really interesting. So obviously you kind of need, I'm guessing, to do that at any scale, you need to build some sort of systems around those conversations. So how do you do that without making it feel kind of robotic? Because that is also one of the things that people, you know, when they talk about AI and prospecting, like there needs to be a bit of human touch in there somewhere. So. Yeah, like how do you, uh, systemize it?

Speaker B: Yeah, I think the, the main thing you need to look at, obviously, as you mentioned, is your icp. But people say that, but do they really do it? So as a sales rep, when I worked at some of these organizations, it was amazing. Uh, people didn't actually know who the best person the target was. They would go for like the senior CIOs great, but there's so many other people underneath that which may be relevant as part of the sales process, especially sort mid to enterprise level organization. So it just takes time to build that out. And yes, you can use AI now to map some of that out, build your data etc. But you need to sit down and go through that list of, for example, ah, an account you want to Target and identify five to 10 people that you would want to speak to. And it's, and it's as simple as that. Uh, and then building that out in terms of like which challenges are relevant to those individuals before, before you reach out to them. So, and it sounds like quite a big task. But if you're in enterprise sales and you've got a handful really strategic accounts, it's quite a straightforward process. But I think nowadays you can get distracted by trying to automate everything, trying to build massive data lists etc, and it's just getting down to the basics and then also with LinkedIn, trying to find out um, where your lowest hanging fruit is in terms of which connections you already have in your network, which relationships you already have within channel partners, etc. That you can um, build upon. So there's a, there's a lot to it, but I think it's, I think in the world of AI, like it's brilliant but you can overcomplicate the whole process by trying to be too clever, if you know what I mean.

Speaker A: Yeah, definitely. So was there a point in your career when you weren't doing that and you kind of learned it the hard way? Do you remember having like a light bulb moment of oh, hang on a minute, let's try this.

Speaker B: Uh, massively like the first, especially the first two or three companies I worked for, I think especially when you're starting out your career. I think I was very much when I looked at a sales role, looking obviously like your salary, what you can earn, etc. And all those good things. And it led to a little bit of job hopping trying to find the right role. But what I didn't realize in that uh, that time was how important match, you know, joining the company, not just the right company, but joining the company where you've got a good territory in terms of the right prospects in this. So, so many companies I worked at, it was a great company but the product was, wasn't the right fit for the um, you know, vertical I was looking after. So for example I looked after public sector for quite a while, um, and the product wasn't suitable for that. But I was tasked to open, open up that environment, which I did a good job in. But it's sort of like if you get all these ingredients right in terms of the product, the market fit, the right prospect, if all those ingredients are, uh, in place, you're going to make your life a hell of a lot easier. So it's a lot of trial and error, but certainly at the beginning of my career, you realize looking back now, a lot of time, like I said right at the start was you were selling to the wrong people with the wrong Personas. And they've told me a great guy, you got great product you're working with, you know, you present well, all those great things, but they weren't the right buyer, you know. So I think it does take a while to learn that and get that right. And then it used to make your life a hell of a lot easier,

Speaker A: you know, so it sounds like obviously that is the, that's the big fundamental. Um, I suppose a bit off a slight tangent. Where does this approach or does this approach break down? Are there certain situations where it's harder to apply, like maybe, you know, at scale or in certain markets? Or should everyone just be doing this?

Speaker B: Yeah, I think if, um, a lot of the organizations work with, obviously have, you know, quite an established market, for example, so if you've got proven case studies, proven sort of testimonials in a certain market, then obviously you can repeat that. Right. It's just a case of finding more buyers in that similar area. If you're a startup and you're still experimenting, obviously the volume play plays a massive part in that because you can then test your messaging, see what verticals, uh, are working, see which Personas are relevant. And we've been through that process ourselves, especially the first two or three years, you sort of, you sell to anybody that you can, um, and then you refine over time in terms of what the right buyers, uh, are, which ones, uh, you can help the most. And then you get to the stage where when you are doing your prospecting, you just know from that initial call that you can help that prospect so much, you know, that it's completely the right fit. Um, but you also have the case studies and the, the sort of validation to back that up. So I'd say that if you have a, you know, established business market, go to market plan and it's just refining that, then this approach is perfect. Um, but if you're early stage, then you do need to start looking at more the volume play to test the data and the numbers before you get a bit more targeted in.

Speaker A: Yeah, and I think the other thing as well about selling to the right kind of customers is obviously if you're selling to the right customers, they're much more likely to stay with you for years into the future. Uh, you know, which works for them, works for you. Happy days. Um, so, you know, you talk about kind of the human approach, being human in sales. Um, I think some people here be human and end up maybe being a little bit too casual or maybe they're a bit ineffective with it. Like, how do you find the balance? Like, what's, how do you strike the balance there?

Speaker B: Yeah, that's a really good question because I think it depends on somebody's personality. So, for example, I know we chatted a little bit about football earlier, but, you know, you can make it too personal. And I think also, especially when you Prospect it on LinkedIn, my belief is that we're all here to do business at the end of the day, like, we're, we've got other platforms to make friends with. We all got our own lives. Yes, we do have friends on LinkedIn and people that we're close to, but we're all here trying to live in and do, do, do business. So, uh, it is a fine balance between building that relationship but also being quite clear and concise on what you're trying to achieve. And I think a lot of salespeople shy away from that and, like, are scared of actually being seen as somebody that's going to sell to them. So I think you do need to make it clear that you, you know, you're, you're doing your job, you're reaching out to this individual because you, the right profile, there's some areas you can help them with and you would like to try progress that to a meeting or call and be honest about that, because otherwise, without that, you're going to create a lot of noise. You're not actually going to get the result that you want. But it's a slight balance between being human, being personable, but actually making it clear at the start that you do want to do business with this individual eventually. But you're starting at a base point where there's a relationship. So it's a very fine balance, which I think you need to work on individually to get that right, to be honest. Um, and some reps we work with are just very, very direct. You know, they're, they've got a really strong LinkedIn profile, really strong product they're promoting and a very direct message. And it works because there's no fluff, there's no sort of, um, back and forth. It's like very clear what they're trying to do, very clear call to action. And they try and book a meeting where others want to go for a softer approach, which may take a bit more time, you know, so it really depends on your personality. Um, but the last thing you want to do is, for example, if you're reaching out via LinkedIn or email, etc, is not being yourself. So if you're quite a sort of friendly, easy to go person, you're going in with direct message. That's not going to work for you. So you need to be careful of how you do that and who you're approaching.

Speaker A: Absolutely. Just for the benefit of the listeners to the podcast, um, we're both Aston Villa fans and, um, I'm actually wearing my full Aston Villa kit, including socks and shin pads today. So there we go, the magic of audio there. How do you balance consistency, uh, versus creativity? So you're big on systems, but sales also, you know, requires adaptability. So how do you balance that?

Speaker B: Yeah, I think that that is key, um, because I was, you know, a lot of salespeople, well, not to say they're lazy, but they want to. You want to make a repeatable system and I think you go, sometimes go with good intentions. So you might be thinking, great, I'm really motivated now. We're going to build out lists, we're going to do prospecting, we're going to do some calling, reach out, but then there's a consistency of that breaks down. So the benefit we have nowadays is with, uh, AI, with automation, with all the tools we have, you can build a system around this and that's sort of those examples I gave you earlier, or when it was a very manual system, but it worked. But over time we've refined that in terms of building your data, building your messaging, working out your ICP and then repeating that day to day. So there are ways to do that, but that is key, especially when you're looking at the social selling pieces, because if you do it one week and not the next, you're not going to get that consistency building up. And it's the same as if you're calling. There's no point calling one day and not the next. So it's a discipline, I guess, and something you need to do as a salesperson. But, um, you need to make sure you're consistent through the good days, on the bad so that you're, you know, you'll get the benefit from that sort of compounding effect, you know.

Speaker A: So you mentioned social selling there and obviously that, that's, that's a big topic if you know, if you're an SDI fairly early on in your career. What do you need to understand about social selling?

Speaker B: Well, when I started out selling it wasn't a thing, right? It wasn't, it was non existent. LinkedIn was a recruitment platform. You didn't use it for selling, you didn't use it to reach out to people, you updated it, make sure it is ready for your next job so that if the job wasn't going well that you're working at, you had a backup so that that's what it was for. But nowadays it is the go to social selling platform. People doing business on here every single day. So um, you need to be uh, you know, building your network every single day. You need to be building your profile and your brand every single day. Um, and those that aren't doing it are getting left behind. But I think that the key to it is, and this is a lot easier when you're setting up your own business or you're independent because you could 100% be yourself. But when you're working in an organization a lot of people hide behind it and they're not quite confident to go and share and be themselves. But you have to do it. And I think the sales managers out there that can see their team doing it and being successful look out for that now and they're really looking for those people that want to embrace it. But at the start it's very hard because you feel that you're going to be judged by your colleagues, judged by people in the organization. But I'm telling you like once you start getting the results from it, the sort of doubters will stop. So you need to put yourself out there, which is very uncomfortable. Um, you need to share regularly which sometimes can be very uncomfortable. And you need to do, like you said, the consistency of building your network every day, reaching out to the right people and engaging with them every day. And I think if you do that we're looking at April 2036. If you, if you're starting out in your BDR world now imagine the compounding impact in a couple of years time you've built a network of um, prospects and individuals that ah, are part of your network that you're sharing to every day that are seeing you, that trust you. It's going to compound massively. So you've got to think longer term with it as well, I think. And without that, um, the true leads wouldn't exist. Like a lot of the business I've done over the last six years wouldn't have happened. It's all come from that network and that's what I'm trying to help other people do. So is critical, I think, and it's going to become even more critical with the rise of AI and automation and all the spam we're getting in our inboxes. Actually, what stands out is you and yourself. And the best way to do that is through social selling.

Speaker A: Yeah. And, and helping people to kind of understand who you are, what you know about what you do. Right.

Speaker B: It's a level of trust as well. And I'm not saying still do your calling story, but people know. People know you, but by the time you speak to them, they would have seen your post. They trust you, they've seen you on the podcast, they've seen some. They know who you are. So there's a level of trust there. So it's, it's just a lot easier if you've got that, uh, foundation. Whereas nowadays if you haven't got that and you go onto your profile and you're not sharing, you haven't got any content, it's just like, there's nothing about you that you can resonate with. So it's just becoming more critical. And I think it's not easy, not by any stretch, but you need to be doing it in today's world, I think.

Speaker A: Okay, so apart from not doing social, uh, selling and targeting the wrong companies, you know, not getting your ICP locked down, what would you say are the biggest mistakes that SDRs are making right now?

Speaker B: Um, that's a good question. I think for me, when, especially when I was starting out, it was being impatient. And I think that's a big thing in sales because, again, like, you're targeted, you're under pressure all the time. Sometimes it's very hard to do. But you, you do need to start thinking longer term. Like, especially if you're doing enterprise sales, it's very unlikely that the first person you call is going to be, you know, right at the right time that they want to buy there's a project. So it does happen, but very rarely. So you need that patience and you need that consistency to make sure that you're building for the future. And some of the best deals I've ever closed came from really early funnel leads and opportunities. One of the Biggest deals ever closed came from a campaign I set up on LinkedIn. Um, it was a white paper download. Then it was a call into that individual and nobody else would have followed up with it. But from that conversation, they had a budget, they had a plan for the next year with a big project that was coming out for a Managed Security Services deal. And I was one of the first people to engage them. So it was patience. That wasn't a project right there and then, but I was at the very early stages of that. And I think that's the sort of thing where the likes of Lead Friends, it's all these tools, like identifying the buyers really early in the funnel, but being patient enough to wait for it to, uh, come to fruition is key, I think. And if you don't do that, you're at risk of burning that bridge altogether. If you're too aggressive, um, impatient with your prospecting, you're going to potentially burn that opportunity. So again, it's hard to do because you're under pressure to get results, but I think if you're starting out, that's the mindset you need.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's about having that balance, I suppose. Um, what's one thing that you would ban in outbound sales?

Speaker B: Um, I think for me, and we've, we've, we've, you know, we trialed it. Obviously the AI stuff is phenomenal. Like some things we're doing, building out the data, the messaging, like, you know, it's helped us so much in what we're doing, but I see so many people using it the wrong way, which I'm sure you have. The worst thing for me is the comments on LinkedIn, like the AI comments, I think they just, it's so lazy, you know, it's just ridiculous. And you can tell from mile off, you look at, you look at the comments and they're all the same, they all sound the same. It's just lazy. It just looks bad for me. And I think that's the same as, like, your responses. I think you can automate to a point that you do need to step in and, and be human with it. And I think that's the bit people are missing. But saying that it can be the benefit because if everyone else is trying to automate and, you know, use AI for everything and you can stand above it by literally just being yourself. So that's the biggest stake I see people making is the comments and the AI responses that, uh, are not resonating and just actually, again, probably do more harm than good.

Speaker A: I would agree 100 agree. Because I think one thing that AI does not do very well is sarcasm. And if someone has written like a sarcastic post, you see all these things, uh, all these like robot um, you know, bot accounts underneath just like agreeing with it and you think this is,

Speaker B: you know, and they're all the same.

Speaker A: It's crazy.

Speaker B: Same variation of the same thing. It's just lazy, isn't it? It's not you know, again like there's a lot, there's a lot to social selling, it's not easy, it's quite time consuming at times but just to log on for 20 minutes and just make a few comments yourself no matter what sort of wait, I'm run a business and got fork it but I still make time to do that. And so like if you can't spend the time to actually engage your audience like human then you shouldn't bother.

Speaker A: You know I would even say because LinkedIn has gone down this route of having this thing where you can just literally gives you a few things that you could say oh thanks or congratulations on your new role, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But if you actually wanted to make a proper connection with that person, surely it's better to actually think of something with your brain. It's a little bit, a little bit unique. Um, so cold calling or LinkedIn, which matters more today?

Speaker B: Well, yeah, this is a really interesting um, thing because obviously at the start of this when I, when I set up truly to example we were in the heart of the, the lockdown and cold calling was so, so, so hard because people were in the offices now they were at home etc, it was impossible. So LinkedIn was like the place to be. Um, I think now you need both and I know that slow of like you're sitting on the fence a little bit. But for example we now have, have callers that would call off the back of some of the campaigns that we're doing. So LinkedIn alone is not always enough. Um, it can be if you in the right vertical, the right, the right account that we're using. Um, you know there's some brilliant people on here on LinkedIn that you don't necessarily have to be an influencer to get results. I'm no stress and influencer but managed to get some good results on LinkedIn but saying that if you're calling as well on top of that I think that is the, the sort of sweet spot because again you've done the warm up, you know, the people know who you are, you're sharing Content, you're relevant to your audience, you're m, sharing insightful knowledge, but then you're putting in a call to that individual. I think that's the sweet spot where you, where you need to be. Um, but blind calling, 100, you know, random prospects, it doesn't work. You need to have that early funnel, um, content and marketing driven approach to make it work.

Speaker A: Absolutely. Um, you mentioned obviously the lockdown and the kind of, the start of the business. So I'd really quite like to hear your kind of origin story of how that, how it all came about. So what's the story?

Speaker B: How long have you got? I spent a good nearly 15 years within cyber security sales and um, I started out in electrical wholesale, so, you know, in the global recession, um, and then got into cyber and it was a brilliant career and I climbed the ladder very quickly from an internal BDR to a VP of sales within about 10 years. So, um, and I was very sort of ambitious to get to that level and go through that corporate ladder and had a great career. A lot of travel, a lot of fun, a lot of commission. It was brilliant. But it was always that burden desire to have my own business. Um, and at the time of lockdown, you know, there was a lot of pressure on myself and the company I was working at. And, um, thankfully, looking back now, I got made redundant right at the start of the lockdown and I thought this is my chance to actually set up a business. So although it was something I've been planning and had had ideas for, um, I sort of got thrown into it and the first thing that came to my mind was how I could help people have the right conversations, people. It was something I was always very good at in my sales career. Um, I always managed to open up new business, new accounts with the right prospects and I wanted to help people do that, especially on LinkedIn. So very quickly, sort of like got that knowledge together, built a system of how people could start that social selling journey, and very quickly got our first few clients signed up within a matter of weeks and, and built on that. And a lot of it came from my network in terms of sales, directors, marketing people I knew, but very quickly got some momentum and had to start building the team. But I realized that we were onto something, you know, and it was. And looking back now, it's, it's still the markets change massively, the world's changed massively. But just getting in front of the right people at the right time is the challenge. Because all the other things that you do, um, boils down to that. As I said at the start, you could be the best salesperson in the world. But if you're meeting the wrong people every single week, you're not going to be able to progress that opportunity. So it's evolving, it's changing, but it's something I'm really passionate about helping people do, you know? Um, and with that, I think sales is a fantastic career. Like, it's amazing. And people listening to this are just starting out and it is tough. It's really tough. And I think you'll be seeing people that, a few years ahead of you that are really doing well and they're, uh, earning the money and going to Presidents Club and doing all these great things. And I think your time will come. But it's, um, about being patient, doing the right things. And if once you get it right, is honestly the best career you can imagine. Because you get to travel, you get to earn great money, get to meet great people. It's great fun. And you get to help people, you know, um, you know, with whichever products or services you're selling, you get to help them on their journey as well. So it's a great career once you're good at it. If you're not good at it, it's very hard work, you know?

Speaker A: Yeah, fair enough. So on that getting good at it, what would you say is one habit that separates the absolute cream of the cream top performers from kind of everyone else?

Speaker B: Um, that's a great question. I think ultimately you need to work bloody hard, you know, and it sounds simple, but it's um, that's what separates the real winners. And I think it's similar to when, um, m. Most top performers, like whether it's a business or even when you're at school and you have people like doing exams and things. Like the people that are doing well don't tell you how hard they're working. And I think that's the same in sales. Like the best sales guy I used to work with or ones I used to work with on the outside, it didn't look like they were doing much, but behind the scenes, they were prospecting. They were calling on the way to the office. They were mapping out data. They were networking events that weren't, uh, even organized by the company off their own back. And I did the same. I was arranging meetings, breakfast meetings, like working with marketing teams. A lot of it people didn't see. But you're working behind the scenes, so you need that hunger and uh, that drive to be able to do that. And I think the lucky thing today is you've got so many tools and things that can help support, support that. And I think from my perspective, I never waited around for the company or people around me to have that. And a lot of people do. I think you need to take it, you need to own your number and your own success yourself and drive that forward. Because sometimes somebody, somebody's not going to help you. You know, you have to do it yourself. And I think, um, if you do get leads and marketing and events and your team and great, that's a bonus. But you need to take ownership of it and do a lot of it yourself. Um, and saying that linking into that is always prospect. No matter what you're doing, no matter if you're ahead of your target, behind your target, keep prospecting because they're the next. You're only one quarter away from having a terrible quarter. Right. So you've always got to be prospecting and that's very hard to do when you're, um, ahead of the curve. You've got a few big deals you're working on, but alongside that, you need to spend some of your week building those next relationships and those next opportunities because they're going to be the, the future deals you close.

Speaker A: Yeah, I love that. I think that's a big takeaway from, from the episode. So obviously, if you can get that right early, you're ahead of a lot of salespeople out there just from the get go.

Speaker B: Absolutely, yeah. It's a misconception as well in terms of you get a bigger title and, you know, a VP at the front of what. But you still need to prospect. Some of the best VPs, sales I know still call and do prospecting, go to events. They're still doing the work and I think that's a misconception. You might have a different title, but you still need to prospect.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. Um, Tom, thank you so much for coming on. Really appreciate it. Um, and, uh, for everyone listening, if you found this helpful, don't forget to share it with the rep on your team that really needs to hear it. Thanks very much.