The Hidden Cost of False Velocity with Randy Riemersma

Speaker A: Look, uh, I'm gonna say something crazy. I think all deals lost inside the 10, 10 yard line had nothing to do with your capabilities. It has all, everything to do with their lack of confidence. Because I think sometimes we forget as salespeople we're selling somebody $3 million worth of software. If this hits the fan, their job is at risk. Which is why when we get into that 10, you know, inside the 10 yard line, there are some things that we've got to have done very, very well. Our customer referrals have to have gone absolutely cold stone fantastic. Our executive alignment with them has got to be fantastic. We have to be texting with our champion on a daily basis at this zone, uh, because they are going to be getting nervous. We have to hold their hand. Our surround inside the 10 yard line has got to be execution excellence on our side. Because they've already decided about the product, they've already agreed to the business case. They now it's like I'm about to put a pen on a piece of paper. Am I going to lose my job for this? And it's our job to make sure they don't. That confidence, if we do a great job there, creates that urgency that gets us all the way into the end zone.

Speaker B: Welcome to the Revenue Builders podcast, a weekly show featuring B2B sales leaders and executives. Hosted by five time CRO John McMahon and Force Management co founder John Kaplan, the show takes guests in the barrel behind the scenes with the people who've been there, done that, and seen the results. Revenue Builders covers best practices for scaling and growing your business while sharing the pitfalls to avoid. Today, we sit down with Randy Reimersma for a powerful conversation on sales execution, leadership and what separates elite sellers from everyone else. Randy spent years as a sales leader, consultant, advisor and coach to tech companies, helping organizations organizations sharpen their go to market strategy. He's also the founder of Sell with Precision. In this episode, Randy breaks down why great sellers need to slow it down to speed it up, especially at the front end of a deal. The conversation covers how reps create false velocity, how to develop a provocative point of view, and why sellers need to connect operational pain to executive level business outcomes. Randy also shares lessons on trust and curiosity, preparation, emotional and rational buyer engagement, and the importance of focusing on the common things that matter most and doing them, um, uncommonly well. Let's get started.

Speaker C: So Randy, you have, you know, been a sales leader for a long time. You've consulted for companies, you advise for companies. They're constantly asking you for your Advice. Let's just start with something simple like the sales process. Like, what do you think are the most common points in the sales process where sales reps get stuck or the deal gets stuck?

Speaker A: I tell you what. So, John, I'm going to open this conversation with a phrase you're very familiar with. Slow it down to speed it up, right? We've talked about that a thousand times. So I think one of the things, you know, everybody on your, uh, on the. That's listening to this, they have a different sales process, right? They might be a Sandler person, a, you know, spin, selling, whatever. So I'm not going to talk about, like, stages, but I think one thing that screws deals immensely is false velocity at the front end. You have got to slow down to do the right things the right way early on to be able to keep yourself out of danger in the future. So that's one thing. Don't push the.

Speaker C: You really want to discover the customer's pain or problem that you then can solve without just trying to throw up features and functions of your product.

Speaker A: Right, Abs?

Speaker D: Absolutely.

Speaker A: And I tagged you guys both On a, uh, LinkedIn post I put out there the other day called, you know, and it referred to the zone of small decisions. If we engage with the. And this is a huge thing. I've listened to 9 million gong calls and I see this happen all the time. If we engage with a prospect, that prospect did not get fired today based on what they did yesterday, most likely, right? So they're in this, like, sort of quiescent zone. And this is where subject matter expertise having a provocative point of view is so critical. And we have got to get the customer. And this, this kills deals. Not getting them out of this, like, zone of small decisions where they're reasonably happy or not, like ridiculously unhappy, and showing them, you know, their current state and the true negative consequences of that state and creating both an emotional and irrational reason to move if we don't start there. Um, I think your deal is fairly screwed long term because it's just not going to have momentum and emotion behind it over time. We've got to get someone emotionally and rationally engaged early.

Speaker C: Let me back up, Woody. First of all, tell, tell me what you mean by the zone of small decisions. I think I know what you mean. But be.

Speaker A: Let's be explicit, be super explicit. So we live our lives, you know, if you, like, euphoria up here and absolutely worst day ever down here. We spend most of our time sort of in the zone of like, hey, you Know, I had pizza for lunch, you know, uh, my kids got okay grades, nobody wrecked the car today. Kind of this sort of, you know, life as we know it. And I know, you know, for me, I never make big decisions in that mode. Like for me to buy a Ferrari, I needed to win the lottery. I'm going to be way up here at Euphoria or you know, to really change maybe some of my health benefits, I need to get a really negative, you know, trip from my doctor. I gotta get them down. Nobody makes big strategic decisions or starts the process in this zone of, you know, small decisions.

Speaker C: Gotcha.

Speaker A: And this is where, and this is what you know, I know one of the things we want to talk about is like the elite. The elite, the 1%, they can pull that prospect down and show them some fear and pain that creates an emotional response and a rational response by showing them the current state with the true negative consequences and what the cost is of living with that. The cost of inaction.

Speaker C: Let's go all the way back now. Where people are getting stuck first is in just discovery of the pain or the problem that they need to solve for the customer.

Speaker A: Exactly. And um, you know, if you get some ambiguous pain point that like really doesn't mean anything or can't be clearly articulated and you know, I have a bias like I have my belief systems, we as humans are very emotional beings and we're rational beings and if we're not causing both of those to be disturbed early in the sales process to our discovery process where we lead them, know, kind of challenger model, you know, teach Taylor, take control, lead them. Because we're subject matter experts, um, it's hard to get the velocity. It's going to stay long term. I think by not doing that, slow it down to speed it up, by not doing that at the front end, you, you set yourself up for some real problems later on.

Speaker C: Okay, so what's the best way to disturb their emotional and, and rational self at those points?

Speaker A: So a lot of it's exposure. And this is where, you know, the, the elite that we get to talk to, that we get to coach, they're subject matter experts, they know the industry, they know what the potential is that someone could be doing. They also know like the areas where best practices and things like that are or are not being met. And so, um, instead of pitching early on and educating, asking great question, open ended questions, clarifying questions, creating context, um, you know, I say this a thousand times, the best reps ask the best questions. If we're creating curiosity Interest early on versus educating. You end up with a much, much better outcome.

Speaker C: But they're asking the best questions. Like, you know, what I always say is that the reason they're asking the best questions is because they know, Stone Cold, that that Persona has a specific use case. And in that use case, they know all the pain points. They know the remedy for those pain points. They know customer situations with proof points of how they solve those specific pain points. So essentially, the question they're asking, it's like a great lawyer. Great lawyer is not putting anybody on the stand without. And asking a question without knowing what the expected answer should be. There's no way they're just not doing it. No great lawyer would ever do that. And no great salesperson is what you're saying should ever do that.

Speaker A: 100. I feel like you were like, literally, I was doing a coaching call with a leader a little while ago. He was concerned that his team does not understand the, you know, the marketplace well enough. Uh, so it sounds like you were listening to the call because we just talked about that. It's like, okay, look, we got to get your team together, maybe have them present. But like a Persona in industry, what that Persona in that industry faces, what their goals and objectives are. What are some corporate initiatives that are likely to be happening? Because if we can't talk about that, um, we are. We end up slinging features around. And no, no reasonable deal is going to get done with that. We have got to show up with subject matter expertise, ask great questions, leading the witness to our area where we know we can solve a meaningful business problem. And, um, and this leads. You know, I want to make sure I say this before we leave this topic. You know, MedPix. MedPix is an amazing deal inspection process. Right? It's not a sales process. It's deal inspection process. And one of the biggest things I always ask reps early on, Tell me about ice. Tell me about the identified business pain. Tell me about your champion. Tell me about the economic buyer, the information we have there. If we don't have a strong problem sponsor wallet, then the rest of the deal is also going to get slowed down or, you know, lacks the. The momentum, the energy behind that. We want. We have got to make sure that we are dealing with something that matters. A real identified business pain, ideally, you know, tied back to a corporate objective. We have a champion that knows how to mobilize on our behalf and can influence the rest of the world with access to an economic buyer that has discretionary use of funds in that what we are talking, and this is, I think it's missed so often because it's. If it's important to champion so many salespeople think it must matter to the economic buyer. Not true. We have got to validate what we're doing with the economic buyer and that we are in a top priority for them. Because you guys both know this project number 28 never gets funded.

Speaker C: Right?

Speaker D: You know, the other thing that we're talking about here, and I want to make sure the audience hears this, there's a shared responsibility between a company and a go to market employee, A seller, anybody, and go to market, anybody that's going to stand in front of a customer. The things that we just talked about are not created by the seller. The things that we talked about are utilized and leveraged by the seller. But there's a lot of people listening to this right now going, yeah, you know, that's what great sellers need to do. Great companies need to provide an icp, very clear, well defined icp. They need to, they need to provide a very clear target for Persona and a value proposition for that Persona and engagement model, who's doing what, when and a success profile. And so I just want to encourage people like, if you're looking for a company and you're like, yeah, I can do all these things. You can't do jack squat. If you go to a company and they don't have these pillars in place, I've seen people make the mistake that say, man, I can sell. I'm going to go and this is really exciting time and I'm going to go to this AI company or whatever and if they don't have those foundational pillars in place, you're going to wind up making them up in front of the uh, you might be, you know, you might be successful, but the company's not going to scale. No chance.

Speaker A: You know, Cap, I'm having a flashback moment when you say that you remember we first met, um, back at bmc and this is, I'm not going to tell how many decades that was because I don't want to make you or I any older on screen than we, than we might be. But, but remember like, you know, the booklet you gave us, the battle cards that were built out. This is what the Persona cares about. You know, here's what their go to market issues are. Here's all that kind of stuff. I agree 100%. That is not the salesperson's responsibility to build. But I do want to make sure I say this, it is the Salesperson's response. But to know that stuff, uh, cold so that they can use situational fluency, you know, wake up at 3 o' clock in the morning, tell me about this CIO and this in an oil and gas, blah, blah, blah, that kind of stuff, you, the salesperson does own that 100%.

Speaker D: If you get, if somebody makes you that sandwich, you got to eat it every day and then you got to serve it up to others. And that's.

Speaker A: I tell you what, man. Anybody listening who's, who's ever seen a John Kaplan Force Management Battle card knows exactly how valuable those things are.

Speaker C: Yeah, but the reason, let's go back to why a rep needs to know that stuff cold. And you called it situational fluency. What I think about it is it's the only way for me to actually be in the customer conversation. For me, like if I don't know this stuff cold, then I'm, um, and the customer is telling me about stuff and I'm asking, I'm trying to ask the best questions I can ask. I'm still uncomfortable in my seat because I don't know where to take this customer. I don't know which direction to move the conversation. So I might be all over the map. And then even when I leave the meeting, I don't know if I fulfilled and discovered everything that I was supposed to discover in that meeting. Yeah. So I have to know it cold so that I don't think when I'm in the meeting, I'm listening, I'm using my intuition, I'm asking questions off of what they tell me because I'm actually in a conversation with them, if that makes sense.

Speaker A: John. 9,000%. I mean, you know, I, uh, made a list, you know, you'd asked about like the top 1%, you know, what do they look like? And curiosity questions. Curiosity. To me, the best reps ask the best questions. And I think the key for if you don't know the context and if you don't know, if you're not a SME, you are asking questions, you're curious so that you can try to pitch yourself. But when you really understand the context, you're asking curiosity questions to understand more deeply so that you can lead them in a much more informed, business impactful way naturally to an end state that works best for them and obviously is going to work best for you. But if you don't know your stuff cold, you're. You, you know, it feels like you're reading questions off a sheet and everybody knows what that feels like, we've been cold called. We know what that feels like.

Speaker C: Okay, so we did a really good job. I think that was your first one, which is where. Where people get stuck in the sales process is number one and maybe the most important, because nothing I want to.

Speaker A: Can I add one thing to that, John?

Speaker C: Yeah, go for it.

Speaker A: In every organization, there is an invisible red line right in every org chart. And below that line is very operational. And above that line is strategic direction. People are setting strategy. People below the line are like, doing stuff. And those people that below the line are doing stuff are very, very important. And I just want to pause here. And I think this is another area where I've seen a lot of deals get stuck. Um, I want my salespeople to go below the line to be informed, to understand what's going on so they can create more context. When they go back above the line to the champion, to the economic, economic buyer, when they're doing all their alignment, they just have tremendous context down below where I've seen weak, you know, weaker sales people, they get stuck below the line and they think that they're selling to this operational benefits. And I just want to say this out loud. The C suite doesn't care about operational benefits making other people's lives easier below the line. Okay? They don't. They don't care that you have to look at 13 different spreadsheets or you have to do screen scraping on this or you're trying to write some coded. They don't care about that unless it matters to a corporate initiative. So I think another area where I see deals get stuck is when they reps lose. They think they're solving these operational issues below the line and they forgot that they got a tie deal stall if they're not tied to real priorities for the economic buyer and the champion.

Speaker C: And.

Speaker A: And I only want to park on that because I've seen so many reps get lured below the line and they forget to come back above the line with.

Speaker C: They get the meeting above the line with the economic buyer and they talk about all the tactical stuff. They don't talk in terms that the economic buyer wants to hear.

Speaker A: Dude, you're so. Yeah, and that's. You asked about, like, being provocative above the. You know, with the C suite, you've got to talk that language. You have to sound like you've been in that room before. When you start talking about features or like below the line efficiency and you forget to talk about, you know, they care about earnings per share, they're caring about EBITDA they're caring about like the three or four corporate initiatives that they're tied to. Right. Remember value pyramid M type stuff. If you're not aligned to that stuff and you're not talking like that, you uh, get booted out of the room. It's a one way ticket out.

Speaker D: You know, you gotta be a technical athlete today. And we're hearing all the people, we're just kind of naming it a technical athlete. Really what that means is you have to be just as comfortable below the line as you are above the line above the line as you are below the line. Because no deals that I'm seeing in technology today are done in any one of those areas done. Well you can get a small deal below the line.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker D: And you can get the opiate of activity and the opiate of small deals below the line but you're never going to get you know, attached to the big business issue and the job today. I think the best technical athletes that I've seen are the ones that straddle that like out one foot below the line. They got one foot above the line and they know exactly where to go. Exactly where to go.

Speaker A: John, you're so right about that because like look, Kobe Bryant can play sandlot basketball if he wants to but he's, he plays at the elite played at the elite levels as well. And I think um, I think he's worth, I'm glad we're like teasing aside a little bit. There is comfort that people below the line like to have meetings. They like to talk about stuff, they

Speaker D: like to talk about information and test it out. Take their time.

Speaker A: Yeah. And let's, let's do a prototype, let's do an evaluation. But if you don't have like you know, John taught me the EB and then you get kickboard line. If you don't have that round trip ticket back to, to curate all this information back to very clear value, measurable current state, negative consequences, future state, positive business outcomes. That gap is my definition uh, of value and how you're going to solve that. And you guys will like this because it proves that I paid attention to training is taking our unique differentiation as the best path to achieve that future state with a positive business outcome. That's elite level stuff. Right. Uh, if you can do that, you can go below the line anytime you want to. But so few people that I have found can really, really do what I described there about really articulating that value as it aligns to strategic impact to a company that, that an economic buyers can actually care about and want to talk to you twice. You can get a meeting once. The key is, can you get the second one? Kaplan nods his head and said, amen. I must have said something, right?

Speaker D: Amen.

Speaker C: All right, Randy, John, these six emotions that drive decision making. Walk us through how, you know, a sales rep or account executive can, you know, leverage these different emotions during the sales process.

Speaker A: Love to. So, you know, I'm an electric engineer, mathematics guy by training. I come from a very Germanic family, uh, immigrant family. We repress a lot of our feelings. So it might seem odd that I would talk about emotions during the sales process. But, but hear me out, hear me out.

Speaker C: Get uncomfortable now. Kathy, you're uncomfortable?

Speaker D: No, I'm good, man. I. I spent time with this dude before.

Speaker C: All right, good.

Speaker A: Yeah. Uh, Cap, we can talk about later. So as we go through the sales process, you know, much like we have a sales process that we follow that's very rational, right? You know, do this validation, collect this data, share this business case and. And it's strategic as we go left to right through the process. And, you know, it's, ah, not straight across, it's bumpy and all that other stuff. But in the same mindset, I encourage reps to also remember we are first, emotional beings and second, rational beings. If you look at the way we have developed over the years, we make emotional decisions and we back them up with intellectual alibis. So I want to harness. Why would I leave something unused when I could harness that to my benefit through the sales process? So that's why I love these six emotions. So, John McMahon, um, thank you for giving me a chance to talk about this. So I want us to think about them, the prospect, and I want them to think about you, the salesperson, right? These are emotions that I want them to have about themselves and them to have about you. And this actually goes back to what we were just talking about so early on the sales process, right? Early stage, mid stage, late stage, early stage. They must feel some level of fear or pain and awareness of that something is not the way it should be. Getting them out of the zone of small decisions, below the line, current state, negative consequences. They must have an experience emotionally that something is not right. Fear, pain, whatever you want to call it, but something is not okay. And because you tease that out, I want them to feel curiosity about you. This guy or gal is a person of interest. They know something that I don't know. They've exposed this to me. So I'm feeling some discomfort and I'm Feeling curiosity about them. And we'll pause here real quick. A lot of sales reps love to educate. And whether we agree with this or not, this is a firmly held belief that I have. If you educate too early, you eliminate your value. You're much better off, uh, creating curiosity and your value because you're a person of interest. Educate too early, they're done with you, moved on. Right. So it's early stage. Start some sort of discomfort they've done with you.

Speaker C: I've seen it where they're done with you because you've done such a good job of educating them, they don't need you anymore. So then you try associate on price, or you try to gain metrics, and you try to implicate things, and they, they don't want to hear it because they're like, I already made my decision, whether that for you or against you. And then you try to drive the price of the value up, and you

Speaker A: can't, giving away the goodies.

Speaker D: Right. We're also talking about a psychological phenomenon that we've talked about many times on this podcast before, is that the human condition prefers to be talking to somebody who is interested in what I am saying versus trying to be interesting to me.

Speaker A: Right?

Speaker D: And that's just the human condition. And so really, I'm really tapping into what you're saying there, buddy.

Speaker C: Okay, we got fear and curiosity.

Speaker D: It is a body language. It is a. It is a mentality. It is a. You know, the human condition can tell when somebody is interested or they're trying to be interesting. And so you can't, you know, you got to be authentic here. You gotta. That's why I believe, you know, if I'm talking to anybody today and anybody's kids, I always tell them the same thing. Yeah, I would definitely get a business degree and I would definitely get a minor in psychology. And people think I'm crazy. They say, psychology, you can't do anything. I'm telling you, some of the best business people. This is setting up our topic, Randy, but, uh, the best business people I've ever met have a. Have a definite. You'd think they'd have a degree in psychology if they don't because they understand human behavior.

Speaker A: This goes back to my comment, John. I couldn't agree with you more. Right. Because again, we are emotional creatures. First, that's psychology. We're rational creatures. Second, that's math. Life is applied math. Life is applied. Applied psychology. If you're great at those two things, you're gonna be fine. Right? But to your Point. I cannot create curiosity about myself if I am a nervous person, if I don't know what I'm talking about. Again, this goes back to you must be Kobe Bryant level type stuff, or at least aspiring to that. So when you show up in that meeting, you have the confidence. Because whether they know it or you know it, this is a weird thing. We understand pupils at a base level. Back in our amygdala, uh, when we see someone's pupils dilate, that bothers us. Right? So we need to be people of confidence. We need to know we're talking about. We need to create this discomfort in a way that's caring. But you know, John, you asked about the, you know, execution with empathy. I care deeply for the people that I sell to. If I didn't care for them, I wouldn't do what I was doing. Right. I don't want to view people as a paycheck. I mean, I love to help, I love to serve, to do that. I know I have to take me to a place of discomfort to start. And I do that in a caring way. I do that in a very informed way. I will always be a subject matter expert. I get this stuff. So we create a little discomfort. Early stage cradle of discomfort. We show up as a subject matter expertise, we create a little curiosity, we slide over a little bit. Right. Well, because I've been working with Randy or Sally or Timmy, whoever it might be in a little while. And what they're talking to me about, about themselves, my prospect, they start to feel some hope. They need to feel hope. If the human spirit feels hope, they will, any amount of hope, they will continue to move forward. When you lose hope, the deal will die. I promise you that. Viktor, Frankl, all these guys and gals in war camps, they maintained hope of a different day. And they survived. The ones that lost hope died. So as we move forward, we're educating that we're showing this some stuff. We're showing them use cases. We're, we're doing some great storytelling. They feel a little, uh, hope. You know what they start to think, hey, I might want with this guy or gal has desire, begins to build

Speaker C: desire with the seller.

Speaker A: Desire to this driving more than what I'm selling.

Speaker C: Just trying to make, uh, sure that everybody's following. I have fear with the customer. It generated curiosity in me as a seller. Then they have some hope. It generates some desire to understand more from me. Right?

Speaker A: Exactly. And as long as the hope candle is lit, they're going to be interested in talking about that. Such early stage. Then we do a great job with like references, use cases proving this thing out. And what they end up feeling is like they start to feel confidence. Right when they feel confident, they start to say, okay, I get it moving through. I'm, um, feeling some confidence. This is starting to make sense. I did a customer referral call. We did that evaluation at Bake off, whatever that was. This feels good. And because we did a great job of showing the current state negative consequences, future state positive business outcomes, they know that delay is a failure strategy around us. Uh, it creates urgency. I want what he or she has now. Basically, John is John and John, as we're going through this. Why buy? Why buy for me? Why buy for me now? Those emotions help guide that behavior.

Speaker C: The only thing that happens sometimes is especially when it's a super, really big deal, I believe that, you know, the ones that I've seen that go really well, the urgency is there. You built the champion. They take it to the economic buy. It's almost a done deal. Like you never have to close. They close for you. But there's sometimes where the people start to get like really like nervous nelly feet, you know, because now it's essentially like I was really confident. Then they go home and they say, I'm gonna buy from you. I'm buy this multi million dollar deal. And then they go home. And I think there's human behavior here also where they wonder a little bit about like potential buyers remorse and now there's, there's some risk. They know they have to hold hands with you or someone else and they have to jump off the bridge and they're a little scared and you have to, at that moment, you have to get them over that. This new fear that, that comes about, if you want to call it that.

Speaker A: Look, I'm gonna say something crazy. I think all deals lost inside the 10, 10 yard line had nothing to do with your capabilities. It has all everything to do with their lack of confidence. Because I think sometimes we forget a salespeople. We're selling somebody $3 million worth of software. If this hits the fan, their job is at risk. Which is why when we get into that 10, you know, inside the 10 yard line, there are some things that we've got to have done very, very well. Our customer referrals have to have gone absolutely cold stone. Fantastic. Our executive alignment with them has got to be fantastic. John, I know you're going to love this. We have to be texting with our champion on a daily basis at this zone, uh, because they are going to be getting nervous. We have their hand. Our surround inside the 10 yard line has got to be execution excellence on our side because they've already decided about the product, they've already agreed to the business case. Now it's like I'm about to put a pen on a piece of paper. Am I going to lose my job for this? And it's our job to make sure they don't. That confidence, if we do a great job there creates that urgency that gets us all the way into the end zone.

Speaker C: Agree.

Speaker A: Totally agree.

Speaker D: So one, I'm really fascinated by this conversation and I've been studying it. People, you know, you've heard like when we were younger you'd see it in locker rooms or whatever. People say believe. Like they would just have a, they would just have a uh, you know, sign called believe or so I don't know. A couple years ago I started to really dig into and the science behind belief is so incredibly pure and, and telling. They have it down to the science of like health care. There are differences in outcomes when a patient believes that they are and even in placebos. So they've given medication to somebody that has a problem and they've given, you know, a placebo effect. And until they did this and studied it in medicine, they really didn't, they really didn't capitalize on it. But people by the very sense of believing something will look for more evidence around them that they're right and it's true. And I find this so fascinating. And if I'm a seller today, I would learn as much as I can about a belief system and how to uh, leverage someone's belief system and incorporate somebody's belief system because they wind up, it's a self fulfilling prophecy in so many cases. Now I don't want to minimize anybody's illness and I'm not trying to do that. You know, uh, what I'm saying is, I'm saying is that if you're a seller and you understand that at the point where Randy's talking about where customer needs belief, they needed you to listen to them, they needed to be heard. Now they're moving to, they needed to understand the differences in the solution. You could do all that. Great. And at the end if you haven't plugged into their belief and help them believe by great proof points, case studies, testimonials, showing them that it's going to work in their environment, whatever it is, I would just be studying that right now if I was a, you know, and I think all the Elite sellers are probably unconsciously competent about why am I so good in the late stage of the ball game on the 10 yard line is because I leave no doubt that that customer believes. Now the other thing is, if you don't believe, this is a big thing for me. If you don't believe, you are not going to get anybody else to believe.

Speaker A: And I'm so glad you said that. I'm just going to, I was going to share the best way to create belief. For belief is transferable. Yes, belief, enthusiasm is transferable. Um, so many emotions are transferable. If I am a subject matter expertise, an expert in this situation, I'm an oil and gas guy and we're doing an installation, whatever it is, and I've talked through the whole downstream, blah, blah, blah, and we're at that 10 yard line of surrounding with all those other things. You're going to look me in the eye and prospect is going to look the sales rep in the eye and they're basically going to ask him, yeah, but do you believe? And if I'm an elite seller and I know this stuff, uh, cold, and I know the use cases and I know our company and I know what we can deliver, I can echo that back and I can transfer that belief to, to them, which is critical. If you can't, it's going to show up in your pupils and their, their basal brain is going to pick that stuff up. Their limbic system is gonna be like danger, Will Robinson. Which goes back to what John was talking about. They're gonna go home with their wife or husband and be like, yeah, I don't know, maybe I don't spend 3 million bucks tomorrow.

Speaker C: Really good. Love that.

Speaker D: Can I throw a plug out? Not a plug, because maybe we could try to get this guy on the podcast. Just listen to him the other day on Dr. Lori Santos's podcast, the Happiness Lab that I absolutely love. She had a guest on two, um, days ago, Sean Acker, a C H O R. And uh, he's an author, uh, he's on this podcast. He talks very specifically about what I just talked about on belief and I, I got, maybe we'll put it in the show notes. I got a crap ton out of that as it related to business.

Speaker C: Okay, yeah, put it in the show notes. I'll even check it out. So Randy, you talked about when people show up, they have to have a, you know, a point of view, right. They should be prepared to understand, like we said, you know, all the, the Persona, the use case, how that Persona is measured. What they're trying to. What their, what their pains are, what their deliverables are. Talk to us about what you mean by a point of view or a provocative point of view.

Speaker A: Great question. So I think, and this is where I see so many reps get stuck, and I think this goes back to, um, preparation. You got a preparation. You know, I got this list of attributes for the 1%. Right. And one of them is preparation. They do the research whether companies publicly traded or not. I believe that if you're going to have a provocative point of view, you. And this goes back to a little bit of challenger selling. You know, you're going to teach someone, you're going to tailor the message. You're going to take control of this thing. In, in the provocative point of view is where we take control. Right. Uh, because we know stuff. Again, this goes back to that early phase. This guy or gal might know something that I don't know. I am curious about them. That low that, that brings the defense shields down a little bit, which is the number one thing we can do is increase. If you can increase receptivity for an early stage prospect where they actually might listen to you versus bombarding them with your education, that's a huge thing. Right. So I create this idea that I may be a person of interest. I know things about your, your industry. Um, I have a point of view, a provocative point of view of how a different world could look. They obviously haven't imagined that worldview today because they aren't in it, or they haven't seen the value of it. They aren't in it. So through preparation, through being a subject matter expertise on this stuff. Ah. And, and I can't say this enough. We've talked about it three times. Let's talk about it a fourth time. When you are preparing executive messaging, provocative point of view for that economic buyer that has way much. That guy or gal is already way too busy. Um, the requests coming to them for money have tripled what their budget is. You've got to rise above the noise. You, you cannot sound like a sales rep. You must sound like a peer. So I think, um, part of the provocative part is not sounding like a sales rep, understanding, um, their business logic, what they're trying to get done. You know, I'm gonna take a very short story about a customer that we dealt with years ago when I was working, uh, for Kubeck. You guys remember Tim Kubeck, uh, in the Contact Solutions in the call center area. All of our deals back there were one, maybe two, three year deals. But we found this deal where a company was their revenue growth. They were doing a bunch of consolidation. Revenue growth was 14, their operational expense growth was 17. So we know that's going out of business sale.

Speaker D: We didn't.

Speaker A: We did so much work below the line to figure out what was going on, what we could impact. But our message back to this guy was literally three slides and it was on how to get their OPEX growth expense of 17%. It was just escalating like crazy down to 11% and a path to get it to 8%. And we talked about EBITDA, we talked about earnings per share, we talked about what that do for manpower and all these other things. It was a pure business to business leader to leader call. We never talked about the technology. Our provocative point of view there for him was there's a way to take this operational disaster that you have through some consolidations, etcetera, and drive it down. So it's actually contributing back to the business in a better way. It's research, it's prep. It's being an executive in the room telling an executive message, not a feature led. No executive cares about your shiny spinny thing. They really don't. They really, really don't.

Speaker D: Randy, check this out, check this out. Like 15 years ago, I think I was in a meeting with somebody and they were doing a handoff between. It was a huge telecom company and they were doing a handoff between one of the strategic account managers to the next strategic account managers. This was so profound for me and this great champion, you know, for this company, a multi billion dollar uh, organization that was selling to them. He started off the meeting this way and I never forgot it and never will forget it. He said, hey, before we get started, this is a, um, you know, he's a huge high level C level at a telecom company, says, before we get started, why don't you guys start by telling me what you know about me and my company. Holy smokes. I mean I was sitting in that room and you know, I heard Rick Pitino say this one time, the difference between stress and pressure. And in this one, it's the difference between you holding your water and you spilling your water in your pants in this one because, uh, everybody on the team was spilling their water in their pants. But it's preparedness. The difference between stress and pressure is preparedness. Now with technology that we have today, I just want everybody to write that down. Like if you go into a meeting with an executive and they start with, why don't you tell me what you know about me and my company before we get started. And he wasn't trying to be a jerk. He's just like, I need to know where you are or where we are in a conversation. Holy smokes. The, uh, the previous rep that was handing off was like doing the talking and it was a little bit of a downer. I guarantee you it never happened again to that sales team. But I'll tell you what, uh, you want to put yourself in a really good frame of mind. Pretend like you're going to call on the CEO, CFO or C level of a company. And if they asked you, why don't you tell me what you know about me and what you know about our company, how would you do? And today there's no excuse.

Speaker C: Why wouldn't that be part of your provocative point of view?

Speaker A: So it has to be. Yes, you know, uh, John and John, like, how do I tell which was your cap and McMahon? I got your laugh names here.

Speaker D: School Cap and Mac.

Speaker A: Well, and, and I was just going to say too, part of the provocative point of view to me is, you know, and I tagged you guys in this other One link, uh, LinkedIn post I put in, it's on numbers. Any elite rep, when they hear an executive say a number, they always stop, they always pump the brakes because here's what I know about every number, every exec ever made, they want it to go up or down. And there's an impact of it going up and down. So if someone says 14%, I know that number needs to go up or down. But what's the context? Revenue growth. Okay, we want that to go up. Uh, uh, operational expense, we want that to go down, um, six seconds scan time on a website, we want that to go up. We want people to stay on our website, handle time for a problem in the, uh, in the call center, we want that to go down. Part of the provocative point of view too is, and this is why, you know, John and John, we talked about this earlier, you got to do such a slow it down to speed it up, painfully long discovery to really understand the business. We showed up with a point of view that was talking about impacting EBITDA and earnings per share. Right? He wasn't expecting that. He was expecting us to say our little shiny spinning thing is really cool and you're gonna spend whatever. And because we showed up the way we did, we got a six year contract out of them with forecasted committed base, um, utilization in minutes. And we charge them a premium for flex minutes of 20% over their baseline.

Speaker D: And I don't think we're patient enough with that scenario, Randy, where you're right, we hear a number and we stop. Like we stop and we write it down. But that's almost, those numbers are almost below the line as it relates to like, you know, so I need call center time go down by this. No, we, those metrics are hugely important. If you follow that along, what bad things happen? Because so you're, you're, you're looking at that number. What bad thing, what good things happen when the number goes down and what bad things happen when the number goes up. What's it like for the, you know, for your end customer? How often does that happen? Who gives you that feedback? Why do you have to fix that? How have you tried to fix it before? So the number in itself is the beginning of a great conversation. But Johnny's always telling me when I'm playing golf, he's like, dude, you have to finish your swing, stay in your swing, stay down, finish it all the way through with a good follow through. It's really related to this. People hear the number, they put the brochure in their mouth and the hair on fire, man. Are we the solution for you? We can lower the call center and they miss the opportunity to connect it to a, uh, you know, to the, you know, to the ultimate is how does it impact your customer?

Speaker A: Well, you know, you know, cap, the way you said it, and by the way, I'm not going to comment on your golf swing. We'll leave that between you and McMahon. But, um, When an exec says a number 14, what would it mean to you if that number goes up or down? How important is that to you? It's a simple question.

Speaker D: Yeah.

Speaker A: Open ended question. They say something and you clarify it a little bit. Again, this goes back to the best reps, ask the best questions. Open ended question. Clarify, clarify, clarify. Oh, I get it. This is what would happen. You're right. How would you solve my problem? It's very permission based, very receptivity based. But like you said, when we find a number, we jump on that thing like a pork, you know, a chihuahua on a pork chop. We start throwing our product at it. We lost, we lost the audience. But when we stop. And again, curiosity to understand the impact, they're going to lean in with you. Because you know what? So many salespeople don't sound like that. Be the guy or the gal. That sounds like a C suite executive.

Speaker D: Yeah.

Speaker C: Be curious, be in the customer conversation. Stop thinking your product.

Speaker A: Yeah. Curiosity to pitch is very different than curiosity to understand.

Speaker D: You know what? So funny that you guys are saying this, like, sometimes. And I know that I'm going to have a real passionate discussion with a customer and I actually write down on my notes four letters. H, O, L, B. And I think about, uh, Braveheart.

Speaker A: Hold, Hold.

Speaker D: Because I am so I know I can help them. I know that the minute they tell me, uh, uh, an inkling of pain and, you know, it's not my natural resting state to hold. And so I got to actually write it down.

Speaker A: John. I write four letters about mine too, but it's minor stfu.

Speaker D: What is that one?

Speaker A: Shut the F up.

Speaker D: That probably would get my attention more. Well done.

Speaker C: Yep.

Speaker D: Are we still in psychology? Because I'm, I'm, I'm having a therapy session here.

Speaker A: I tell you what, selling is psychology. We. I'll say it again. We are emotional beings first. We are rational being second. If we have both of these tools available to us because what, you know, here's a little truth. I'm gonna drop a little truth on you guys because it's fine. I love you. When we do curiosity based questions, open ended questions. Clarify, clarify, clarify. More open ended question. Clarify, clarify, clarify. And we echo it back. Did I get it? Help me correct it. Oh, there's. What else is there? Clarify, clarify, clarify. And then we get this moment where it's like, aha, I get what's going on. This is what I heard. Did I get it right? And that person says, exactly. There's literally a dopamine release in their brain. And they will never like you more than that moment in time because you made them feel heard, seen and understood.

Speaker D: One, um, hundred.

Speaker A: That has nothing to do with technology. Right. And that's a tool that's available to us if we just ask great questions and we're subject matter experts where we can lead that in context, you know. Got me all excited, man. I'm sorry.

Speaker D: People are really uncomfortable. I get this all the time. They're like, Kaplan, you talk about these rip my face off questions and they're like, what do you mean by that? Like, I can't rip anybody's face off. I'm not going to be a, uh, you know, a bambastic person. Like Kaplan's going to be. No, don't confuse style with content. Like, uh, my mom was a therapist. And the reason why she was a great therapist is she had a lot of crap, a lot of trauma. So she understood people's problems. And one of the things that she taught me Was the best way to get somebody to move is to make them stand in their moment of pain. And the greatest sellers I've ever met. And this is that whole principle again. The greatest sellers I've ever met are the ones who comfortably, respectively, respectfully and empathetically get a customer to stand in their moment of pain. Meaning you got to be comfortable asking people questions. And you can't ask it, Randy, like, hey, tell me about how bad you suck on that last. You know, such and such. You got to earn the right. So you know the art of discovery. I know we've said it a bunch here, but what you're bringing up, Randy, is honestly, this is an elite skill. Discovery is an elite skill, and people blow it off and they don't prepare for it, and they don't, like, how am I going to get this person to tell me the worst possible thing, the worst, most dangerous thing that's going to happen to them if this thing doesn't go right? That's a skill. And it takes reps. Takes rep, takes. You know, you got to get cuts. It swings at the bat on that.

Speaker A: It takes, John. I mean, Cap. It takes so many things, right? It takes. You've got to be so good at what you do. You got to understand this stuff. You've got to do the reps. Um, I do believe we need to sell, you know, I believe execution with empathy. People know if you care about them, right? Um, if. If I know you're like, for me, you know, John, you asked, like, what, like, what are some, you know, McMahon, you asked me, like, what are some of the, like, scar tissue things that you learned over. Over your career. One of them is trust is my currency. I will build. Trust is the first thing that I care about. I want you to know that you can tell me, like, whether you're a sales rep who works for me, you're a client who I'm coaching, You're a customer that I'm selling to. You can tell me the worst news ever, and I'm not going to get all bent out of shape about it. You can trust me. Things are neither good nor bad. They're merely true. Let's sort this out. You're in a bad spot, you made a bad decision, whatever it is, that's great. But, you know, if you show up with empathy and you show that you can be trusted, trust is so rare these days. It's an elite. Just showing up with trust, creating trust is an elite skill.

Speaker D: Break that down a little bit, and then I'll Shut up here, Johnny. Because, um, it's like having, it's like having two guys that's putting perfume on a pig when he and I are talking. But when you know to take it to the next level on trust, it's, it, it's. The data is clear on it. The way you earn trust with somebody is that they know that you have an intent to know them, not an intent to make you know me so

Speaker A: you know that you're interested versus interesting.

Speaker D: Yes, that's number one. And number two is that you listen. It's you know me and you listen is how you gain trust.

Speaker C: It's actually really simple. I have a great story on this. So I was early on at Blade Logic and they had this brand new use case that we had discovered for the product. And um, I won't say the rep's name, but he took me out to a very large, you know, finance company in, in Massachusetts and with a VP level guy. And I didn't know the use case at all. I didn't know how our product fit in there. I didn't, I was too, too new. So what I used as defense was asking questions and being just interested in this guy. So I asked him questions after questions after questions, basically waiting, can I get out of here in an hour? By just asking this guy questions and listening to him right. Get off the call. We, we went back in like a week later. I saw the sales guy in the hallway and he said, hey, how'd it go with that, that meeting by the way? And the guy, sales rep looked at me and go, that guy absolutely loves you. He wants to meet you again. I was thinking, I didn't really say anything. All I did was ask questions because I didn't want him to ask me any questions. If he asked me any questions, I didn't know what I was talking about.

Speaker D: There's a caveat. You were asking questions that were going, so everybody loves to be led, provided you can take me to a place I can't get to on my own. So if you interrogate me, when you get a customer that comes back and says, is it my job to, Is it my job to educate you?

Speaker A: Yeah, you know, interrogation.

Speaker C: It can't be like you turn in the white hot spotlight on the person and just bombarding them with a Gatling gun for questions, it has to be a lot more natural.

Speaker D: All know those reps, right, that they think they're great at discovery?

Speaker C: It is. So now that you say that, because you did say it's a, it's A skill. Yeah, it is a skill. It just can't bombard people with questions.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker C: Where they don't know, like, well, where is this thing going? Why is the guy keep asking these questions?

Speaker D: And you probably, you know, I'm not going to say you're unconsciously competent, but you've done that so much that you, this guy was comfortable being led by you. He believed that you were going to take him to a place that he couldn't get to on his own. I'll answer all the questions in the world if I believe it's going to get me to a place I couldn't get to on my own. But the minute I go, like, if I go in to buy a car and this dude's asking me stupid questions, I'm like, I put a halt to it.

Speaker A: Yeah, always.

Speaker D: That's human behavior.

Speaker C: How about when a comedian's asking you questions because you're sitting m in the front row?

Speaker D: Podcast buddy.

Speaker A: You know, McMahon, you talked about like, look, I didn't know the technology, so I asked all these content and I'm sure they're very, they're good context based questions. I'm going to say something that may be offensive to some people here and please forgive your, uh, you know, your audience will forgive me here, but everyone knows when they meet an idiot, right? And I think we need to be, you know, when we show up at a meeting with the wrong mindset or we're asking, we're not reading the room. I mean, reading the room. Again, there's another elite skill, reading reading the room, asking stupid questions. People know when they run into an idiot, but they also know when they run into someone that knows what they're talking about. Again, I'm a subject matter expertise. I get oil and gas completely. I understand the downstream model, whatever it might be. Um, people respect that and that creates a lot of forgiveness. Um, but when you show up and you advertise you're an idiot, I mean, you're on your own. Right?

Speaker D: Yeah.

Speaker A: That was a self inflicted wound.

Speaker D: It is. And, and what we're saying today is the best way to show up as an idiot is know nothing about them and don't listen to them and don't ask any questions.

Speaker A: Interrupt and talk over them.

Speaker D: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Are we still in psychology? You're killing it.

Speaker A: Where are we?

Speaker C: Oh, uh, I have a story on that one. On that other one too. So I go on a sales call with this guy, I mean, California, and he, he picks, he picks me up in his pickup truck. But it's an old pickup truck and it's got these bouncy, like spring loaded seats, you know. So I'm like bouncing in my seat all the way from, So I flew to Sacramento and he picks me up at Sacramento and I go, where are we going? He goes, we're going to Tahoe. I was like, well, why didn't I fly into Tahoe? He goes, because I thought you wanted to drive with me. And I was like, really? In this truck? You know, I'm bouncing along in the truck for like, you know, hours. We get to the customer and this guy actually could close business. But in this meeting, he asked great questions. And as soon as the customer started to talk, halfway through, he cut him off.

Speaker D: Yeah.

Speaker C: And then he asked another great question because I was sitting there going, these are great questions.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: Uh, then he kept cutting the customer off. So I waited when we got outside. And this guy was, at one time, he was on the Olympic water polo team. So he was sizable. Like he probably could crush me. I, uh, waited till he got, he opened the door to his pickup truck on the other side and he sat in his seat with one hand on the steering wheel and, and I, I had the door open, but I didn't step into the truck yet. And I said, I said his name and I said, hey, you are the worst effing listener in the entire world. And he grabbed the steering wheel with both hands and screamed and both his ears turn, turned red. I had to get back in the truck with that guy and explain to him why he was like, he had to change.

Speaker D: I'm sure it wasn't the first time he heard that.

Speaker C: Oh, it's awful. Hey, Randy.

Speaker A: Hey, John.

Speaker C: Uh, you were a sales guy. You were a leader. You've been at major tech firms. You ran your own consulting business. You got a new one now. But talk a little bit about, is there one piece of scar tissue that you have that shaped how you now advise organizations and companies?

Speaker A: So it's, you know, when you've been alive as long as me, you pick up a lot of scar tissue, John. So it's hard to like, get it down to just one, um, one or two. I, I, so I, I love to read. I love quotes. They help me out. So I, I will, I will leverage A quote from J.D. rockefeller from many, many years ago where he said, success comes from doing common things uncommonly well. And I would say the thing that I have learned through pain early on and through, uh, reinforcement later on is be maniacally focused on what actually matters. Focus on what matters. There is out there. There is so much stuff we could do in your sales cycle that may have 80 different activities in it. There are 7, 5, 6, 8, 9. Whatever it is that you have to be great at, uh, be great at, uh, the things that matter and be good at the things that are just sort of required. I think that would be one of the things that I would share is it's easy to see everything is important, but things are not as. Not everything is as important as the other things are. What really matters. Clear value articulation, current state, negative consequences, future state, positive business outcomes. That is a skill that you simply must have if you're going to sell at the elite level. If you want to qualify for John Kaplan elite category, you have to have that skill. Get great at that one. Some other stuff like, you know, ordering pizza for a meeting, you know, be good enough at that.

Speaker C: Donuts. How about donuts?

Speaker A: You know, um, you gave me the microphone, so I'm going to add on four real fast Mentors Learning read podcast. You have got to be a learner. I'm a lifeline learner, uh, lifelong learner. I love to learn. I read 20, 30 books a year. Um, I've never been dumber after I read a book than I was before. You guys have both been mentors for me. I've learned tremendous amount from both of you. Um, that's something I learned. Trust is my currency. I talked about that before. If you're going to build something, be a person that can be trusted and have that radiate from you. Have a killer operating rhythm that gets rid of noise in your life and live with intense sell with intentionality. So many. You know, John, you and I talked about this on email a little bit.

Speaker C: McMahon.

Speaker A: Um, there's a spend mindset and there's an investment mindset. A spend mindset is you just do whatever's in front of you. Right. Whatever. The next, next task is an investment mindset says I have a second, a minute, an hour, a day, a week in front of me. How do I get the most out of that? How do I drive? Asymmetric outputs. Minimum energy in, maximum energy, you know, output out. Having an investment mindset and like protecting your time. The scarcest asset we have and really trying to squeeze every piece out of it. I think that's a killer step, too. Those are five things that I would say have really influenced that I've picked up along the way that have helped this dumb guy from Pittsburgh be marginally successful.

Speaker C: Okay, for that dumb from Pittsburgh, you now have, uh, a company that you call and sell with precision. And you're focusing on advising sales leadership and companies on sales leadership. You want to talk a little bit about that?

Speaker A: Love, love to throw a little commercial out there. Yeah. So, you know, I've had, as you mentioned, I've had the good fortune to, you know, work with some great technology companies. I've had the good fortune, fortunate to be, you know, coaching companies for a long time. So sell with precision. We are. I love sales reps. I love a lot of things. But you know, my heart is for the leadership in a sales organization because that just is a very, very hard job. And plus if you get slightly better at the leadership level, the one to end element, you know, I'm a math guy. I care about, you know, math, you know, the, the law of large numbers. So, you know, I built a company, it built a company, it's me. Um, and I'm committed to helping companies a get their sales go to market right. Better strategy, the process, the personnel, the execution model, the change management model. Everything needs to be a full, full loop circle. So I always have change management at the end. Um, I also available to do like leadership development across seven areas. Strategic planning, resourcing, execution, visibility, team development, leadership, EQ and indirect leadership. And then sales mechanics is another area which is very much like the, the methodology of moving pipeline through, whether it's value creation, whether it's deal inspection, whether it's pipeline progression. And then we talked a little bit about this when I talked about killer operating rhythm. The last area that we serve companies is around the sales operating model which is getting the cadence down. How do we manage our calendars and how do we manage conflict in our calendars? And that doesn't sound super sexy until you go through it. You understand how much time is being wasted. So love serving companies around that. Love to talk to anybody about it because I, uh, yeah, I love to talk about that.

Speaker D: So you got a book coming out too, brother.

Speaker A: Got a book coming out. Thank you. Uh, the B2B fail field sales guys for B2B sales leaders. And I'm excited about getting that out. Um, it's going to be very much a go to resource competencies, attributes, processes that sales leaders need to be running. And it's also going to have like a little bonus section at the end that M, I think is going to be like the mega giveaway on this thing is like training on 20 things that your sales teams need to be able to do like value creation and articulation. So the B2B sales leaders field Guide should be out later this year. Um, I'll sucker one of you guys into writing the forward, and it's going to be a great time.

Speaker D: Well done, buddy.

Speaker C: Randy Ramirez. Now,

Speaker A: John McMahon. John Kaplan. What a. What a privilege. I've loved this guys. Yeah.

Speaker C: Good job, randy. Great job, Mr. Kaplan. Thanks to everyone for listening to another episode of the Revenue Builders Podcast.

Speaker B: Thanks for listening to today's episode. If you enjoy the content, please subscribe, rate and review the show to help us reach more people. This show is brought to you by Force Management, where we help companies improve sales performance, executing the growth strategy at the point of sale. Check out forcemanagement.com for more information.