The CRO Who Turned 25% Forecast Accuracy Into 85% | Masters of MEDDICC

Mike Blackburn: The first person as a seller you start talking to is probably the person who's been given the job to go buy something that they think they want without any value.

Host: How do you get the message across to teams that might be people like you are, that might have had some success, but they haven't. They don't even know that next level exists.

Mike Blackburn: When you're joining a business, your decision to join them is just as important as them hiring you. So understand the value that you're going to get from joining that, uh, business.

Host: One of the challenges we see is in sales as an industry is that there isn't any kind of public version of what good looks like.

Mike Blackburn: You can't go to university to study it. Rewiring that, that brain to kind of go, look, don't talk about the things you've done. Talk about the stuff that worries you. If you were at the competition, how would you beat yourself?

Host: If I've got a champion, a true champion, I'm not losing that deal. Now, let me finish this because that might sound very arrogant.

Mike Blackburn: Your champion is the person who can help you navigate their business. Our job is to make sure that we can prove that value.

Host: Welcome to Masters of Medic. Today my guest is a five times builder, two successful exits. And he's gonna hate me for saying this, but he is PE's go to guy when they need someone to put into a company to build them to the kind of success that Microlise has been saying. Welcome to the show. Mike Blackburn, CRO of Microlise. Thank you.

Mike Blackburn: Wow. Um, thank you. Absolute honor to be here.

Host: So, Mike, tell us how you got into this wonderful world of sales.

Mike Blackburn: Oh, wow. Um, fell into it. I literally left. Left, um, home at 16, put myself through my A levels, working a night shift, stacking shelves in the supermarket and got to the point there's got to be something more than this. Yeah. M so sold a car, bought a ticket to the US and one way ticket you could in those days. Yeah. Um, I so literally got off at LAX and thought, wow, this is big. I had no hotel booked, never been there before, didn't know anybody.

Host: Um, it's like a movie.

Mike Blackburn: I know. Look, I was young. What's the worst that can happen? You come back with your tail between your legs and start again. Yeah. Um, but, but, yeah, literally. So it was like, what can I do? What do I do? And you're looking in the papers and you're seeing all of these want ads and everything else and I'd buy a bus ticket and I'd get across and I'd go for an interview which realized that it wasn't an interview. It was actually somebody trying to sell me something that had to buy a kit to get in there and go do it. But fell into cold calling, fell into

Host: telesales, which of course now we give a posh name to being an sdr.

Mike Blackburn: Yeah, the hard yards. So did a few um, telesales gigs and um, probably sold some. Some that uh, probably isn't illegal anymore. I remember one of the first ones was putting a tool that would you put up against the car door.

Host: Yeah.

Mike Blackburn: And it would open it. Now telesales, we were supposed to sell them to repo men. So literally a room full of like 20 people all banked to a phone telling these things. I'd realize the people that were making it weren't selling them to the repo man.

Host: Yeah, that does sound like it.

Mike Blackburn: So it got out of there really, really quickly. Um, so I did a few. A few gigs like that and then was lucky to get a position with. With AT&T. It's 90s in California. Telecoms went through. Started my career out with those guys. M. I guess that gets me to the. Where I got introduced to Medic. Um, I tell my team the story. I'm not too, too embarrassed to say it. I was that sales guy right. In six, seven figure deals that uh, when a new sales director rocked up and started to talk around medic and it wasn't even Medic then. It was a economic buyer or champion or you're talking about pain. Um, I literally thought, who are you? Yeah, you can't sell. No one's touching me. And guess what? In six months, this team that I thought were mediocre were absolutely kicking my ass. So I woke up and started to understand that there was definitely power in this and started to understand how I could become better.

Host: Did you change what happened next?

Mike Blackburn: It's not like a light bulb moment or anything. It was more just that bit of salespeople. Well, like electricity, we try and find the shortest route through anything. So it was more a case of trying to understand the bits that I didn't know, the bits that I wasn't using. Um, it's just craft. It's an evolution of that. It wasn't a masterclass program. It certainly wasn't value based or anything. It was literally just learning the hard way on what worked. It's that professional selling. You owe yourself to be the best version of yourself.

Host: Yeah, I see this a lot where I look back at myself earlier uh, in my career where I hadn't heard of things from the playbook like Medic and you're kind of successful by your own sort of innate ability as a salesperson. Your ability to read people, your ability to build rapport, your ability to read signals and that kind of thing and be passionate about a product and combine the success you see from customers using the product and you become this kind of organic, successful salesperson. But there's always more to unlock. Always more to unlock. And I, I feel like one of the challenges we see is in sales as an industry is that there isn't any kind of public version of what good looks like.

Mike Blackburn: Can't go to university to study it. Exactly.

Host: And so most people, I think everyone listening to this, that by virtue of listening to this show will have, this will have had the same experience that there would have been some moment. And it's normally when they join a new company, um, or have a new sales leader like you did that comes along who just like unlocks this new level, like, oh, there's more to this. And I had the exact same thing. And it, you know, it. Jeff. It definitely changed the course of my career. I definitely would be sat where I am right now in any kind of way without that experience. And I feel like, what's like you mentioned yourself, you talk about your team, you, you've obviously a big part of your, uh, your role is, is going into organizations that are established and helping them up their performance. How do message across to teams that might be people like you are, that might have had some success, but they haven't. They don't even know that next level exists.

Mike Blackburn: As a GTM leader, my first and foremost duty is to get people to, to reach their potential, get people to see their potential. Now whether that's leading by example, whether that's creating an environment where people can, can try and get there and learn. It's the. Learning is the journey. Yeah. It's one of the reasons why when I joined Microlise, we, we started to work with you guys. And whether this sounds right or not, I wanted them to play with medic for 12 months before we start embedding it. Right. It's not a tick box exercise. It's how they can flirt with it, how they can learn their version of it, how they can shape their craft.

Host: Yeah.

Mike Blackburn: And then we can start to, uh, to blueprint those bits. We didn't know what the blueprint was.

Host: Yeah.

Mike Blackburn: So I'm not sure whether I'm answering your question on that bit, but it's it's about creating the environment, creating the growth place that people can do that. And that's not always easy.

Host: I think it's like, uh, how you phrase it there maybe think about how, if you think about how, as we like to phrase it, Medic is a common language.

Mike Blackburn: Yeah.

Host: Then what you were really talking about there was that you're kind of teaching people this language, but that it's like, how do you start making that part of your day to day is not going to be like overnight, like all of a sudden now we now speak French and everything we do is in French. Right. It's that there's now this language that can make things much more cohesive, much more succinct, much more clearer between how we, we do everything. And so, you know, the idea of how I think most people still think about Medic, and I've been, you know, doing some deep dives into places like Reddit and it's amazing to me and LinkedIn as well. Just yesterday there was this post on LinkedIn that, you know, you're talking tens and tens, if not hundreds of people are engaging with, where they say, well, medic is not a methodology. And it's like for you it's not okay. And that's fine if you want to just use it for as like the checklist type. Mind, Mindset.

Mike Blackburn: Yeah.

Host: But for us it is. Right. And, and for our customers it is. And so I, I loved how you sort of talked about it not being this kind of like lever you pull, like this binary thing. It's a journey and there's, there's value to unlock as you go.

Mike Blackburn: We've all been in the pipeline reviews as sales leaders, where you talk around all of the things that are going to happen. I've done this, I've done that, the customer's done this, they've done that, and that's going to happen. And then two weeks later it's like, where's that deal? And it's like, oh, yeah, that didn't come in. What happened? Yeah, oh yes, something happened we didn't foresee. And for me, it's either as an individual seller or as a leader or as a team rewiring that, that brain to kind of go, look, don't talk about the things you've done. Talk about the stuff that worries you. If you were at the competition, how would you beat yourself? There's a c. If you wanted to spend 30 minutes about Polish and craft on a good, better, best version of what you were going to do, what Would it be?

Host: Yes.

Mike Blackburn: And it's not a tick box exercise. If you, if you look at stakeholder mapping. Yeah. And average sellers. And there are a lot of them out there. Yeah. And there are a lot of them out there that do really well. Yeah. Go stakeholder mapping. Let's spend half an hour on LinkedIn. Let's pull down the people that you can see and then. Yeah, I've done my stakeholder mapping. That wasn't the job. Yeah. The job was to map the stakeholders you need. Now is that who do we win with in champion Personas? Yeah. Who are the ebs in that type of environment? You've got to think deeper, you've got to work harder, you've got to earn the right. That's not tick box.

Host: Yes. Yeah.

Mike Blackburn: But that's uh, ironically, it's beautifully simple when it's done right. But it's not easy.

Host: Mhm.

Mike Blackburn: It takes effort and it takes craft. But that's the mindset change.

Host: Agreed.

Mike Blackburn: Yeah. But you asked how it's try and lead by example and uh, if I start that thinking with the team and help them on that journey for them to be the best version of themselves, it only goes. Gets better from there.

Host: Yeah. I always think the problem with the tick box mindset is this sort of binary situation where you see it as 0 to 1. So it's like, is this person my champion? Yes. No. Yes. I want to get to. Yes. Have I found pain? I want to get to. Yes. And it sets up the complete wrong behavior because you're actually selling based on thinking that it's just this binary linear process of just checking boxes and then you'll get the last box you'll check will be. Did they sign the contract? As if that's like a, that shouldn't be a goal. No. Yeah. Right. We love, we love the business strategy of Amazon here at Medic. And there's a lot of like really cool teachings that we borrow from them. And one of them is they have this concept of working backward and the idea is that you work backward from the goal in mind. And so if you think about. You just talked about stakeholder mapping there. So I'm not even talking about working back from winning a customer. I'm talking about like the different parts we know are really important. So if you're thinking about stakeholder mapping and you're thinking about it as ah, the checkbox episode, you're working forward. Right. You're saying I need to find someone that I think is economic buyer. I need to find someone that I Think has pain and you're going from there to there and that's where it stops. Whereas if you go, what I really need to do here is I need to find some uh, a group of people that are going to have so much value from the solution I provide. So basically they have so much pain that they're going to be compelled to. And we talk about compelling events, right? Yep. Compelled to uh, not just evaluate my solution, but vigorously evaluate my solution so they can bring in other people. And basically what we're trying to do is work backward from what is the thing that I need to find out from that person that's going to make them, you know, passionately, vigorously want to work with me to work towards a solution. And you know, the beauty of that is that as we know it's like for example, pain, we always talk about this, but people are still amazing.

Mike Blackburn: Yeah. And it's like, okay, so what?

Host: Job done. And also pain being at the company level rather than being at the individual level. And I think this is one of the biggest eureka moments that I hear back from our customers. Uh, the individuals that take our programs is like we always ask them what's the, what was the key takeaway for you? And the two that always come up are most, uh, common and they're both about pain. The first is that pain is not one. And done this idea that I found it, job done, check that box. We found the pain everyone, it's all good. Like everything's okay. We can go on to worrying about closing the deal now rather than this idea of it being. I always use the analogy of like, it's like a balloon. You've got like knock in the air and it starts coming down and before it hits the ground you've got to knock it back up again. So you've got to keep that pain implicated, reimplicated. And then obviously new people come into the mix. They haven't got any implicated pain because they haven't been through your process. You haven't done the discovery that implicates the pain. So that's, that's the first thing I think that people take away as a key takeaway when we talk about pain differently from other people. But the second one is this idea that people think that pain is at the company level. That even if the pain identified pain is felt throughout the company, it's the same pain. That the implications are the same to every person. And we know that's not true.

Mike Blackburn: Yeah, it's. Well talk about multi threading or stakeholders or everything else, right? The way through. It's. What does it mean? What does it mean to them? What are you going to do? Uh, back to it. Coming off on tangents and uh, I do this all the time. If you want to achieve anything in your business, you do it through your people. So you want to look for pain, talk to your people.

Host: Yes.

Mike Blackburn: Sometimes it's easier to go down the org than what it is to try and go up and so earn the right. You do that. You talk to the users, talk to their customers. If you can find value that you can deliver and that's the first goal for us. That's the first goal for every part of our go to market team is, is find where we can deliver value. Prove it. Yeah. And that then, then you've, you've got somebody you can talk to a champion about. You've got something a champion can be proud to tick to their board. You've got something that'll stand up as the project they have to do.

Host: Yes.

Mike Blackburn: Because we've earned the right to do that. We've all been there. And you think you've got it done. I, I, I, I remember one years ago, um, selling to a university their FD had bought from me twice previously. Yeah. So it was a if in my head, dare I say done deal. I mean superstitious. I'm touching wood as you do it. It's just that thing. But I was forecasting it. Yeah. So it was gone through. We'd even sorted all the contracts this, this guy had bought from me personally twice before and it was Q4. Yeah. And I'm in the last moments of it. The university listed building wind not covered act of God insurance, uh, portcullis comes down, all spend stopped. I'd not met the ebay. Yeah. Yeah. If I'd have just earned the right. I could have had a conversation around shaping a different set of commercials.

Host: Yes.

Mike Blackburn: That had a very different exposure bit and they could have had the value delivered. I could have gone through. But you can't get from 0 to 60 with an EB.

Host: Yes.

Mike Blackburn: And try and shape something in the time that my financial quarter ended in.

Host: Yes.

Mike Blackburn: That was on me.

Host: Yeah.

Mike Blackburn: That, that if I'd have actually ran medic on it and shone the light into the dark area, it would have been glaringly obvious.

Host: Yes.

Mike Blackburn: Yeah. But I didn't because I got lazy.

Host: Yeah.

Mike Blackburn: Because this guy bought from me twice before.

Host: Right.

Mike Blackburn: There's always more you can do. And if you're my, my. I'm on my soapbox now on it. There's if you spend half an hour with a rep, with a team looking at it, they are looking at an opportunity. I'll challenge anybody to go, you're not going to find nothing to talk about. And if you use Medic as your compass to guide you through that deal and that opportunity through a customer lens, through your champions lens, through an EB lens, you'll find things you can make better. And if we do that as professional sellers, to step onto the pitch and just want to be the best version ourselves, the best version, our customers need to do one thing which is find value and then deliver that through our teams. I'd be proud of that.

Host: Yeah.

Mike Blackburn: Moreover, be proud to stand at the school gates, as I do, and say, yeah, I'm in sales, because that's what it means.

Host: Yeah. Well, it's funny because we were talking about this before. The idea, the school gates is a great example about, you know, I think it's, it's a little bit better in the U.S. i think the U.S. is, is a bit more of a, uh, people respect the craft of sales a bit more in the us, but certainly here in the uk it's like it's, it's not seen as, uh, as a, as much of a profession as it should be. But like you said, you say, you say it proudly at the school gates. I actually have a different reason to say it in relation to school. I find, and I'm glad that hopefully none of the mums and dads that my kids go to school have watched this, but. Because they probably would be happy to hear me say this, but I find that the mums and dads are all like, trying to like, figure out at the parties, they're all trying to figure out who's the one that's going to. Which other parent can I talk to that's going to increase my social standing in this group? And so they walk with those waltz around, they're like, oh, what do you do, Mike? And then they hear you say, I'm, um, in sales. And they go, oh, no. And they go and float and try and find the politician or they try and find the venture capitalist or the banker or the dentist, whatever it is. For me, it's a beautiful thing because I say that and it works like that. You get left alone. Yeah, they leave you alone.

Mike Blackburn: I don't even get to that. You ask any of my four kids what dad does, I'll just say, dad's in sales. Like, like I say they carry like a badge of honor.

Host: Yeah, I agree. But the beauty is that the real ones I've got, some of my best friends are, um, parents from my school kids. And, um, they're probably in sales as well. That's the beautiful thing. Even though they're managing directors or other roles that don't necessarily carry title, which is so.

Mike Blackburn: So you talk around their invested interest to have those conversations. My brain goes through it all the time. And you run it through. So they're looking for the person that has the wealth, has the position, has the status not been funny. The elite sellers. Yeah. The professional sellers that are out there, they're always in the top 1% anyway.

Host: Yeah, agreed.

Mike Blackburn: Find the sales guy.

Host: Exactly right. Yeah. Something else I want to go back to you saying. There you were telling that story about where you didn't get to the EB and the deal slips and whatnot. This is something that I don't think we talk about enough with Medic in particular, which is what you just played back to me. There was a scenario as succinctly as that where I knew exactly what had happened. Right. But the fact was I was able to understand it because you were able to tell me the story in medic language. So I understood instantly the lay of the land, if you like. The scary thing is that if you didn't use Medic, you probably wouldn't even know why you lost that deal. Right. You'd be saying, well, there was this decision maker or something happened and you lost.

Mike Blackburn: I'm going to get it next year. That's not the point. It didn't come in when I said it was going to come in.

Host: Yes.

Mike Blackburn: And accuracy. And that professional bit is the bit that's important.

Host: But you know what I mean, like in terms of, like how we can really diagnose where we're winning, where we're losing, where deals are slipping because we have this common language which break, you know, it helps you to make. For you in the role as a CRO, to make repeatable, um, uh, plays in your playbook and all that type of thing. It works very, very well. There's something else you said which I thought was interesting. I want to pull it a little bit. You were talking about working with your champion and then sometimes going down the hierarchy rather than up. I think in sales we always talk about you've got to get higher. And I think obviously that's true. But I love what you said there about moving down. I think there's something beautiful in. You can imagine if you're the customer and they're so used to salespeople trying to meet the boss, our version, the economic buyer, whoever that may be. But if you are a salesperson, you're coming across as a consultative salesperson and all of a sudden you say hey, can I meet some people in your team? To really understand what's going on here? That's powerful. Right.

Mike Blackburn: Well you can use it to validate thinking as well. Because I mean uh, you see it in organizations and the further up you get, the more disconnected you get. How many times you ask. It's the age old NASA. What do you do? I'm putting the man on the moon. And it's actually the Janet you're talking to. Whether that's an urban myth or not. It's, it's the strategy concept. But if you, if you actually go talk to the users with in, in Microlise it'd be my team talk going on driver ride alongs. It would be looking at how people operate, how people use what we do to deliver the value or not with somebody who's not a customer. And then you can test that thinking. Yeah. You can Test okay. The M2 state before working with us. This is what we see. Would it have value to get you to here? And by the way we've done it four times more over here before. And when we've done that, we've delivered it. So we've got confidence as a go to market team. We know we've delivered that value before for somebody. But we've got to earn the right to find it. Yeah. Or the champion one gets me all the time. And. Yeah. No champion, no deal. 100%. But the champion isn't the first person you start talking to.

Host: Right.

Mike Blackburn: The first person as a seller you start talking to is probably the person who's been given the job to go buy something that they think they want without any value. Yeah. With, with no cost of inertia business case put around it. Somebody's decided somewhere, somehow that they need this. Yeah. And then somebody who's not their day job to buy goes out and brings in the beauty parade. Yeah. It very rarely did I ever find that that first person was the champion, had the access, had the invested interest. So you've got to work with them to get to a champion and build it. And a lot of the time is, is using that person going down the organization, going across the organization trying to find the anti champion.

Host: Yeah.

Mike Blackburn: Yeah. Who can I test this thinking with? Who can break my win strategy. Yeah. Change the wind strategy. Who can break the value strategy.

Host: Yeah.

Mike Blackburn: Yeah.

Host: I wanna, I love. Thought you said that the idea of the first person you meet and not being the champion, I think when I hear that, I'm like, you know what? That's, that's not something that I've never necessarily heard as a statement before. But when I think about it, you're absolutely right. And the way you described it is exactly right as well. Because by virtue of being a champion, you are, uh, you should be. Not always, but you should be someone in the business that holds enough of a standing that your time is not best spent doing the legwork in that early part of the engagement. Right. And so, but I think what, what happens and why you're able to sit here and say that as a statement that holds like people will be going, that's a good point actually, is because we have this sales culture, uh, and it goes back to that checklist meant thinking, I've got to get to 0 to 1. I've got to find the champion. If I find the champion, I've done my job and my manager will be happy with me. If I don't find the champion, my manager will be unhappy with me. Which is the wrong culture.

Mike Blackburn: Right, Totally. Because it's. What do you want? You want the behavior of a champion? You want the output of a champion? And so what three questions again? I love threes. Yeah. So you're talking to that person. What are we trying to do? We're trying to find out, have they got an invested interest. We're trying to find out if they can influence the, the ebay. We're trying to find out if, if they can have access to do that. So simple questions. Yeah. So are they just in a meeting with an EB, part of a crowd of a, uh, 50 people listening to it? That's not access. Yeah. It's certainly not ability to influence simple questions. Like so. So this is craft at the top of my head. Forgive me. It may go the wrong direction. So how many times a week you're in a meeting with them? Because if they're not, they can't influence. Yeah. The deeper one. So the good, better, best, how many times you're in a meeting with them? One on one in a week, you want to really influence.

Host: Yes.

Mike Blackburn: You want one on one access.

Host: Yes. Yeah.

Mike Blackburn: And that first person that, uh, picked up the phone and said, hey, can I get a demo?

Host: Yes.

Mike Blackburn: Because that's how it starts. Uh, is not that, uh, it does

Host: go back to that working backwards thing as well. Because if you're, if you're here and you're trying to check that box which is like, does this person engage with the economic buyer? Yes. No. That's the checklist mindset.

Mike Blackburn: Right.

Host: Whereas what you're saying is you're looking for the evidence that it's not just a. It's not just a. Can I say this?

Mike Blackburn: Yes.

Host: Like technicality.

Mike Blackburn: Like.

Host: Oh, yeah. He was like, uh, does this person have access to Equal Buy? Well, yeah. They're in the same canteen at lunch together. But if the idea is that the reason why we care about that is because the person has to have the power and influence to be a. Be able to engage economic buyer. But also when that economic buyer comes down to their free things that they really care about, costs, confidence and completion, they're going to look to the champion to say, do you have the confidence in this? And I need to look at you. You going to stand behind this business case? And do you think this is going to happen? When it says it's going to happen, that's what you're working backwards from. And so we're not. When we're, you know, when we're trying to qualify. Does the champion have access to my buyer? It's not. Do they have access? It's like, does the economic use. Yeah, exactly.

Mike Blackburn: And are they willing to use it? Yeah, it's. It's. I think. And this is what the driving in this morning. I'm playing back in my head things that I'd heard and learned from, from, from this show. Yeah. And it still does sit strange. And it's like that, that roadmap, that journey. Your champion is the person who can help you navigate their business. Yeah. It can tell you the potholes ahead or the routes you don't want to go down. And then as a professional seller, our job is to make sure that we can prove that value definitively, because if we can't, we shouldn't be there. How many times have we been in a room as a seller and you've got this competitor, that competitor and that competitor. My head just goes to. Well, hang on. One of us is in the wrong room.

Host: Yeah.

Mike Blackburn: Because we all do different things, and if we do different things, you're not going to get the value you wanted from it. But that happens. People don't buy professionally. Forgive me. Unless you're in procurement, um, for a living. But people sell incorrectly. Yeah. Make finding the value at the very beginning the first conversation. What you can do for that, for their business differently. Yeah. And what that means to their people, what that means to their customers, what that means to their P and L. Ah. And Be proud you can find that and then deliver it.

Host: Yeah. Competition is an interesting one, isn't it? Because, you know, we were doing some data analysis recently and um, talking to our customers as well. So both data, but also sort of anecdotal evidence. I'd be interested to hear your point of view on this. The biggest competitor that I'm hearing about right now.

Mike Blackburn: Cost of inertia.

Host: Exactly. Inertia. Right, Inertia. No decision. And when you think about it, whichever way you look at it, it's the most common reason why people are losing deals. Which is, which is inertia. Uh, and it's the reason why we include inertia as part of competition. Most people just think of competition as just being your rivals, the ones that are on the same Gartner quadrant or the ones that are bidding on your keywords on Google. But those like, like those are the opportunities few and far between, you actually lose to. I think when I talk to most CROs, who they lose to is not their direct rival. It's no decision.

Mike Blackburn: Try and put myself in. I call it seen through the customer lens. Yeah. So if you put yourself in that shoe, the number of times that they've got projects in their business that could add to something.

Host: Yes. Yeah.

Mike Blackburn: You talk to someone in procurement and it's like if every, if I had a pound every time someone gave me an ROI case. Yeah, yeah. It's not, it's making sure that your project, your delivery of that value is the one thing that either helps them get to that strategy that delivers it, that unblocks something and you stand behind that. And if you can't stand behind that, you haven't worked hard enough.

Host: Yes.

Mike Blackburn: Go back into the organization, challenge yourself. And if you do that, it might even be you end up shaking someone's hand and go, you know what? There's not enough for there to do this right now. I'd far rather do that and be the first person out than be, be the last person in after 12 months.

Host: Yes.

Mike Blackburn: And you know what? It didn't come in.

Host: Yeah.

Mike Blackburn: And we were talking earlier and it's like um, microlies. We've got different teams that engaged in different parts of our industry. And whether you're in the digital team and you're doing 2K 3K or 40K deals, or whether you're an enterprise, um, seller out there doing seven figure deals, it's still the same thing. But the pain on the enterprise side is huge because you're giving yourself that ego trip that your pipeline is there and you're keeping it in there and it's like, if it's not going to come in, I'd rather know early.

Host: Yeah, absolutely. Right. The, the, it goes back to that, that whole checklist thing as well. You know, you talked about the roi, but it's like salespeople, again, they move from here to this. Like I have, um. Did you, did you create an roi? Did you show there's a positive roi? Yes, I did check. It's like. No, no. What, what is it? To your point, what is it that we're trying to prove? The roi? We're trying to show that this, of all the initiatives, of all the opportunity the econic buyer has on their desk, this is the one that is going to give them the most roi.

Mike Blackburn: What we do is incredibly fun.

Host: Mhm.

Mike Blackburn: Yeah, it is. It is not easy.

Host: Yeah.

Mike Blackburn: It can be beautifully simple, but it is fun. Why the hell would you want to take the fun out of what we do?

Host: Ah, yeah.

Mike Blackburn: It's not a tick box.

Host: Yeah.

Mike Blackburn: It's not sitting on LinkedIn. And I've got these four people or they're not engaged or. I found, you said earlier I found this pain brilliant. Does it matter? Yeah, no. Yeah. Make it fun. Go work hard enough to do it.

Host: Yeah, yeah.

Mike Blackburn: And then it's the scalable, repeatable, profitable bit. Right the way through that learning. It's as I said, I learned too late, unfortunately, that bit. If I, if I'd have had people or an environment that, that I could have played with Medic and understood what it could have done for me.

Host: Yeah.

Mike Blackburn: I wouldn't have been that person when the sales director caught up and said, look at this. Genuinely trying to make a better team.

Host: Yeah.

Mike Blackburn: Been the arrogant bit. So it's, it's putting that fun back into it as well.

Host: Would you know what's not fun?

Mike Blackburn: Oh, get me started. Where are you going to go with this? Because there's a few bits.

Host: Losing. Losing isn't fun.

Mike Blackburn: No, not at all.

Host: And some data I was looking at recently said that on average, uh, the time to close is 40% longer on deals you lose.

Mike Blackburn: Oh, obviously cost of sale on that.

Host: Yeah. And so if losing is not fun and it takes longer to lose, then why would you, why would you not the like, why would, as a salesperson, why would you not take on this Persona that is like, I do not want to lose, I don't want to spend loads of time losing. I'm going to look for a reason to qualify out.

Mike Blackburn: That's a great question. But I think it Go for me it goes deeper, it goes about the environment. I've seen medic wielded as a uh, as a toxic sword where somebody is going what do you mean you haven't got the champion?

Host: Yeah.

Mike Blackburn: You've been working this nine months and you haven't got to the ebay. Yeah yeah. Help them understand why. Yeah yeah. Help them understand and learn. Or even better step on the pitch. Show them. Yeah. Uh, knock down all the barriers across the team and whether it's an sdr. Ah starting out they've all got the same environment and opinion to ask these questions. Yeah. It's not the tick box through but that's us. Yeah that's the craft as go to market leaders we should bring to our environment and bring to the teams to help them do that.

Host: Let me ask you a question. I'm not going to lead the witness on this at all but I, I, so I want to see what you'd be honest to be a go at this. I'm going to present to you two salespeople right. Um who uh, you know are the same experience, that type of thing and I'm going to describe them to you. Salesperson A on 100 of their deals whether they win or lose them, they, they're like I have a champion, I always have a champion. Salesperson B says you know what, I, yeah I, I, I, I struggle a lot of the time to have a real champion. Probably maybe 40, 50 of the time of my deals whether I win or lose them, I have a champion. Which salesperson do you want on your team?

Mike Blackburn: I'm gonna go B. Mhm. Because the, the demonstrate firstly I don't think you're ever going to get 100 of the time. I think you're kidding yourself.

Host: Yeah.

Mike Blackburn: But the person in B it, the self realization there, they've probably been a bit hard on themselves. Yeah. Because if they're winning um, but they're coachable, they can learn. Yeah. But you never get it 100 of the time.

Host: Yeah but if you think about the numbers I gave you there and I was kind of thinking out loud but if I think into it more I said 40% of the time they have they think they have a champion win or lose.

Mike Blackburn: Yeah.

Host: Who has a 40% win rate by the way? Nobody like nobody has that. I mean maybe there's some people do but they're probably working in a very narrow tam. But the point being is like I, if I've got a champion and true champion, I'm not losing that deal. Now let me Finish this. Because that might sound very arrogant. I'm not losing that deal. I'm either winning that deal or my champion. And I come to the conclusion together, uh, that this is not worth me pursuing us pursuing further. And I'm qualifying out.

Mike Blackburn: Yeah.

Host: And it goes back to that great John McMahon quote. There's like two winners of every deal.

Mike Blackburn: Right.

Host: The person that wins it and the first person to lose it. Right. And. And that, for me is. Is. Is the thing. And so you're absolutely. Yes, you answered exactly as I. As I would and how I hoped you would. Which is this idea that if you've got somebody that says, I've always got a champion or I always do this, I always, always define, you know, decision criteria, always influence, whatever. It's like, no, you don't. Because otherwise you'd have a hundred percent win rate.

Mike Blackburn: Right, Totally. And it's like we go back to some of our internal deal storms and when we started to. To first. I'm gonna say Royal Medical. It's not first started to. To talk medic. To use medic. I can remember reps sitting there going, oh, that's really painful. You've just told me in, like 30 seconds why that's not a champion. Because no, they're not in a meeting one on one. No, they're not going to get. And you can see it. And they're like, oh, yeah, I mentioned earlier. Rewind that brain, celebrate that.

Host: Yep.

Mike Blackburn: Because you can go now. I can do something with that. Yeah, because if you can't, you'd have got to the end of it. And how many times have we got there where we need to use our champions. Something has changed that. We need to put them on the pitch. They now need to go have that meeting, which is uncomfortable, and go, you know what? You're wrong. We need to go this way. This is why and this is the value. And if we built that relationship, we've understood their invested interests, we've understood and defined them, worked hard enough on that cost of inertia case, we can then put the champion on the pitch in the best version with us. Yeah, In. In a good version with a deck we wrote together that they can demonstrate and put through. But if you've not tested, you can't draw down on that resource and then use it.

Host: Exactly right. Yeah. I always. It comes back to this thing I always say, which is that if you are. If you. Everyone listen to this, you imagine the best salesperson you've ever worked with, right? That. That person. And I always make the Joke now stop thinking about yourself, Mike. Someone else.

Mike Blackburn: There's a couple of my team come to mind.

Host: Oh, that. Well, that's amazing. So. Well then that's great. We can build on that. Because from my experience, if I think about the greatest people that uh, salespeople I've ever worked with, and I try and imagine them in a forecast call in a deal review, anything like that, and they've got nothing or they've got some deals that they're really not confident about. And I try and imagine them doing the thing that we've seen reps do thousands of times and I've done it myself, hand on heart, to be honest. Where you sit there and you, the performance comes on and you feel like, I've got to talk this up.

Mike Blackburn: They're peacocking.

Host: Yeah.

Mike Blackburn: All the feathers come out in there.

Host: I don't know if it's peacocking because I think it's more like self defense. Defense.

Mike Blackburn: Okay.

Host: Yeah, I see where you go, you know, and so it's like, you know, you think I can't sit here and say I've got nothing because that makes me look bad. When the reality is the best salespeople in your team, if they had nothing. Right. Well, a, that's a, that's a failure of your GTM team. So it doesn't happen. But I've seen it happen before in places. Um, they're the first to go. Not just I've got nothing, but they're actually, they've, they've not got to that point because they've taken an issue that they've not been given the right territory, they've not been given the right support because they have no doubt or in their ability. Yeah, that. No doubt. And so what, they're the first to put hands up and say, no, that's not a real deal. This one's still early. Uh, I'm not sure I can see it yet. I don't want to talk about it.

Mike Blackburn: It shouldn't end the pipeline unless you can know you can deliver value. Yeah, it's our first gate.

Host: Yeah.

Mike Blackburn: It doesn't get to become an opportunity unless we've. They operate in, in our market and um, we've delivered value previously in a. Guys that we can, we can fix first gate. Love that. Yeah. Yeah. Um, uh, our early deal storms. Some of, some of the team were. We had an earlier conversation around. We're trying to retrofit medic on active pipe. I'd got reps coming in going, um, it's too early. I don't have anything to run yet. Now I've got junior people joining the team, rocking up to a deal storm going. I'm going to meet them next week for the first meeting. This is what. And the shape and questions or the shape and thought, how do I get this? How do I get that? And we'll have a conversation around it. It is never too early. Yeah. Spend half an hour talking about a deal. Pushing down, we call it. Trying to break it.

Host: Yes.

Mike Blackburn: Yeah. Trying to jump on it. Trying to break it. Trying to shine that light into it. You'll learn something. You can try. And you know what, even if you try it and it doesn't work.

Host: Yeah.

Mike Blackburn: That's still a win because you try something else.

Host: Yeah.

Mike Blackburn: You're earning the right.

Host: Yeah. We've got a new concept we've been building as part of a new version of the masterclass that's coming out and it's called POV Discovery point of view Discovery. Right. And the idea here is that people think discovery is going in and trying to uncover, basically uncover value, uncover stakeholders and uncover process, which we, as you know, are three pillars and they see it as this one. Again, zero to one, we're trying to get what is their value? Is there stakeholders, is there a process? Right. And that's in theory a good thing to do. You're trying to qualify at the zoomed out level. The problem with it is this, customers hate that experience. There's nothing in it for the customer to basically answer your questions to figure out, should I be in this room? Right. So if your version of finding value is trying to go and dig around and ask questions that you got by commenting discovery on some LinkedIn guru guru's post and they send you this PDF that they've created in chat GPT that's like, you know, what keeps you awake at night. Who else cares about this? It's a horrible experience for the customer. A, because they're getting nothing from it, B, because they're just like, oh, it's another one of these situations. Right. Our point of view discovery is that similar to what you said about your sales team ahead of meeting the customer, you build a point of view, right? And that point of view, uh, can come from any number of places depending on who you're meeting. If you're meeting Coca Cola, then great, because there's a ton of information online, they're a public company, all that sort of stuff. If you're meeting, you know, Steve's carbonated drinks, you're not going to have that same information. But what you will have, most likely, if it's a, uh, it's. It's in the right ICP is you will have contacts from other businesses that are similar. Right.

Mike Blackburn: Yeah.

Host: And so what you do is you say, who is this business and how. How do I think I can provide value to this customer? Who is this business? And who do I think are the right stakeholders here? Who is this business and who do. What do I think is their process going to look like? And how. How do I think I get. Right. So you form this point of view and you do your research to. To build that point of view. So when you sit in front of the customer, you're not saying, so it might. What keeps you awake at night? You're saying, mike, I was doing some research ahead of this meeting, and what I thought would be really useful is I started to really dig into your. Your business and what you're doing. And I read some things or I, you know, you know where I'm going with this. And it helped me to, um, think about who else we've helped, like you. And so I. Yeah, exactly. An M1. And so you bring in that rich, credible experience where you're actually like, oh, okay, A, this person's done their research. Right. That makes me feel good. That makes me. That tells me that you value my time enough. Uh, and you also see that your solution provides enough value for it to be worth your while to do the research. So straight away you're thinking, this is a credible thing. I feel like this is. This is someone that's actually going to provide value. And then all of a sudden, I'm learning from you. I'm learning about where you've seen this problem before, which makes me feel not so bad because, you know, I'm not the only person with this pain. But then, great news, actually. You've solved this pain. Right. And, um, you're not calling my baby ugly. And, and, and so. But it's conversational. Right. And so that is. That is the beautiful. So the POV discovery idea is that I come in with a point of view and I, I mean, actually, I think it's better if I come out of that discovery almost feeling a bit battered and bruised, that my POV was completely wrong. Because it shows two things. It shows that, A, I've got the right information, but B, that you're willing to share with me.

Mike Blackburn: Yeah.

Host: That information.

Mike Blackburn: And sometimes it's. It's not just that person I'm going to pinch a phrase from, from one of my guys, so I can't take credit for this, but it's, it's, it's earning that the right to get the hunting license.

Host: Nice. Like that.

Mike Blackburn: Because that person that you're talking to, especially in the early stages, is the one that's been asked to go bring in the three or four people to set up the vendor beauty parade. Like we said earlier, not necessarily the champion, but if we demonstrate, like, look, our goal is for me to work with your business to find the value you need to get from this project so we can definitively prove it. And to do that, I'm going to need to help you to help me work with your business. It's access to some people. I'll do all the hard yards. Yeah. What I'm asking for is two weeks.

Host: Yeah.

Mike Blackburn: What I'm asking for is two weeks and access the right people so I can definitively prove there's something here we can build upon. Yeah. Because you won't get it all from that one person. Pen doesn't live just in one place.

Host: Yeah.

Mike Blackburn: Not when you're trying to implicate it. Right the way through. You've got to earn the right for a hunting license to go find it. And they're going the wrong place.

Host: Yeah.

Mike Blackburn: Yeah. I mean, one of the earlier things was we've been taught the power of an erroneous close. Putting something up, you know, is deliberately incorrect. So they correct you and then put it back through. But that's craft. That's playing with what we do.

Host: I used to work with a guy that would do that decision criteria, where he would play this decision criteria, sort of have a good meeting. Yeah. And he would form what he thinks is the customer's decision criteria. And then he would play it to the customer and email says, sounds like this. And he would borrow our tactic of, uh, influencing it. So it also sounds like you do these things. And one thing I wasn't sure about was whether you needed this. And it was something outfield that he almost knew that was actually not part of it because he wanted them to say, no, no, that's not right. But to actually see that they're bought in enough to actually call out that it's, it's not part of the decision criteria.

Mike Blackburn: Uh, a champion, should you need them to correct you when you're going wrong. And if they don't, then how are they going to go influence somebody else?

Host: Yeah.

Mike Blackburn: So, yeah, this, like I say, soapbox stuff.

Host: So before we wrap up, there's one last topic I want to talk to you about, which is, um, I know that you've got, uh, is it you call it the GTM Academy? Yes, GTM Academy. So you've seen people come join the team as SDRs. We progress through.

Mike Blackburn: We literally just promoted one of our SDRs through into our sales team. Fantastic. So, yeah, that's something we need more of. Um, it's ridiculous.

Host: I know it's going to sound ridiculous, but I got goosebumps because I was, as you said it, I was thinking about this is the best part of this industry for me. And I started daydreaming then, just as you were saying about some of the people that I've got to work with, who are super talented, who are now crushing it in the field, some into sales leadership as well. Um, and that's the best part. So what's the like for you that a lot of people talk to me about a getting into sales. There's a lot of people trying to get onto the bottom, uh, entry points of sales. There's a lot of people who have been. It seems there was a time maybe five or six years ago where the average tenure of an SDR was less than 15 months before they moved into the field. Now it seems to have more than doubled in that a lot of people trying to move into the field. What's your advice for someone that's either trying to get into sales or is in working as an sdr, or BDR who's trying to get into the field, how could they find their path onto the best career ladder?

Mike Blackburn: How can they find their path on the best career ladder? When you're joining a business, your decision to join them is just as important as them hiring you. It's a sales process. It's two way. So understand the value that you're going to get from joining that, uh, business. Talk to the people within the team. Yeah. I mentioned an SDR just been promoted. We've also had two internal promotions for first line managers that came through our sales ranks.

Host: Fantastic.

Mike Blackburn: Yeah. I genuinely see our job as leaders is to create an environment where our, uh, people can become the best version of themselves, even if they don't know how good that best version is when they start.

Host: Yeah.

Mike Blackburn: So how. Look at the organization you're going through. Look at their internal churn. Yeah. It's. We have a high measure. Yeah. Because we push ourselves to be that best version. Yeah. But we'll back it with medic. We'll back it with other, um, partners that we bring in to help us become the best versions. See if all of that's in place. Yeah. Yeah. Um, talk to your. Talk to their customers. Yeah, yeah. See what value they've been delivering.

Host: Yeah.

Mike Blackburn: What do you want to be in sales for? What's your invested interest?

Host: Yes.

Mike Blackburn: Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I did not leave school going, I want to be in sales. Nope. Uh, yeah, I. I don't know. Yeah, I, I don't know. I don't think any. Anybody ever does. Yeah. Can we change that? Yeah, I'd like to think so.

Host: Yeah.

Mike Blackburn: But, yeah, go talk to go. How does it go? Talk to the customers. Go talk to the team. Spend as much time checking that value. Check out microlise.

Host: Yeah, well, that was going to m. Be my next point, just to wrap up on there. So you've got tons of open head carrot, tons of growth.

Mike Blackburn: We're growing from whether it's roles in Australia, France, uk. Uh, please. Yeah, but I'm, um, going to pinch your version of this. Don't Click apply on LinkedIn if you want to get straight in the bin. Go down the road, pick up work, show us you earning the right. Yes. Stand out in that crowd.

Host: Yeah.

Mike Blackburn: Um, not hard to find. Neither is our head of recruitment.

Host: People still get really mad at us for having that stance that you shouldn't click easy apply. People really get upset about it. For me, I'm just. We had one, we had one guy for actually. Ah, it was also a sales guy, was a senior role. And, um, again, it said very clearly, like, we really believe in the attention to detail at Medic. We believe in, like, the power of, you know, people's time and, um, we'd love to see how you can stand out. So here's who to contact. Here's, you know, how to get in touch. The person got very upset. Like, they, they, they. I think they, uh, they sent me a sweary email.

Mike Blackburn: Well, why didn't they put that much effort into actually showing them? Showing you who they were.

Host: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. They put more effort into complaining that they hadn't done what we had asked them to do. And it's. Yeah, it's just, it's crazy to me. But, yeah, ah, it's a tricky job market at the moment. But what's not changed is that standing out is always going to work.

Mike Blackburn: There are more tools available for people to use. So you being you, you showing the best version of yourself should become easier. Uh, whether that's writing a letter to somebody to demonstrate something. Not that I'm giving away any TikTok. Yeah. Picking up the phone, doing the research, earning the miles. I mean, I got you got me on another tangent last summer. Yeah. The 19 year old, 18 then coming down the stairs trying to find a summer job, literally dressed in crocs.

Host: Right?

Mike Blackburn: Yeah. CVs in a carrier bag. I'm like, turn around, go back upstairs, dress like you're ready to show up.

Host: Yes. Yeah.

Mike Blackburn: Be there. You're not doing it today. It's 10 o'. Clock. Let's do this at 8 o' clock tomorrow morning, 7:30 if it's cafes and restaurants. Yeah. Be there when they open.

Host: Yeah.

Mike Blackburn: Show them the version of you they want them to see.

Host: Yes.

Mike Blackburn: Yeah. It's that. Just do that.

Host: Yeah. That's a great shout. It's a great shout. Okay, Mike, where can people find you should they want to, uh, find you?

Mike Blackburn: LinkedIn.

Host: LinkedIn, easiest way.

Mike Blackburn: Microlise website, if you want to see where we're growing and what we're looking at. Um, Hannah, our head of recruitment, is also definitely open for conversations or any of my team.

Host: Superb. Well, thank you very much for your time, Mike, and thanks for being a great champion of ours.

Mike Blackburn: Thank you.

Host: And uh, yeah, I'm sure people are going to love this episode.

Mike Blackburn: Thank you so much. Mhm.