How Multi-Threaded Selling and Building the Closing Strategy From First Contact Drives Revenue Growth

Speaker A: The big shift that no one's talking about, everyone's talking about AI. I think the big shift that is going to come is that we're going to see companies demand a return on investment from their sales teams. AI is going to take up a lot of our bandwidth on administration research. It's going to free up a lot of time. It's then going to cause managers, leaders, business owners to say, okay, Colleen, we've just freed up 20% of your time. You now have 20% more target, 30%, 40%, 50% more target. So our targets are going to continue to go. So I don't see that AI is going to replace the, um, sales motion on the B2B sales at all. What I do see is

Speaker B: you're listening to the B2B revenue executive experience, a podcast dedicated to helping executives train their sales and marketing teams to optimize growth. Whether you're looking for techniques and strategies or tools and resources, you've come to the right place. Let's accelerate your growth in three, two.

Speaker A: Uh, one.

Speaker C: Hello, everyone, and welcome to the B2B revenue executive experience. I'm your host, Corey, and today I'm talking to Colleen Francis. She is a leading sales expert, bestselling author, and keynote speaker with more than 20 years of experience helping B2B organizations drive revenue and improve sales performance. She's worked with recognizable global brands like Chevron, John Deere, Merck, and Royal bank of Canada, helping them to transform their sales approach to boost revenue, strengthen client relationships, and navigate the realities of modern selling with execution focused strategies. Colleen, welcome to the show.

Speaker A: Hey, thanks, Corey. I'm really happy to be here.

Speaker C: Yeah, I'm excited to get into it. And first, as always, I want to start with your journey because like many of us in the sales and marketing world, we kind of got into it through roundabout paths. And, uh, you know, looking at your LinkedIn bio, you were, you know, poli sci major in college. Like, how did you get into sales?

Speaker A: Yeah, I think, you know, my path was pretty straight, um, and direct. It goes back a long ways. My dad was in sales and a sales manager. And, um, believe it or not, when I was, like, in elementary school, when we had professional development days, he would drag me to work with him and make sales calls. So I literally went out in the car with him because, you know, he was making calls back then, um, in the car. And so I grew up in that household. And, you know, I laugh and say, my dad especially, like when I had to raise money for band camp or soccer camp or whatever, Whatever it was, I had to go door to door. He would not take that stuff to work. And so, you know, from an early age I was used to asking for the sale. I mean, I sold wrapping paper, poinsettias, spices, chocolates all to our neighbors. So it wasn't really that foreign to me. And yeah, I have a degree in poli and Canadian history and I thought for a nanosecond that I actually wanted to work in, in politics. Um, but then I, I got onto Parliament Hill and kind of looked around and went, ooh, this is like a little scary. And so I went back into sales. I put myself through university with sales jobs. My first job out of university was a sales job in the insurance markets. And then I ended up working in sales for Enterprise Rent a Car, um, in their corporate rental car division and then into technology sales. So I really have only been in

Speaker C: sales my entire career from the very first poinsettia onwards. Right, exactly.

Speaker A: That's a great story. It's funny.

Speaker C: So, so I'm curious, when did you start? Uh, so, you know, pretty much in sales, the, for, for the length, for the duration. Right. But when did you switch from, you know, a practitioner to actually, you know, training teams and more of a, you know, mentorship, coaching roles?

Speaker A: Yeah, you know, it was 2000, 2020 or I mean, or 2001. Um, I was working in tech. Um, there was a, a bust I think, you know, if we all remember, you know, Oracle announced pet.com went bankrupt. You know, it was all around that time. And the startup I was working for at the time didn't get their funding. We were actually in San Francisco looking for funding when all of that happened like that week. So it was, we lost our funding or we didn't get any funding and so it was clear we had to wind down. What I noticed at the time though is that there were a lot of small technology companies in where I live in Ottawa who really needed sales help but couldn't afford, um, and didn't have the bandwidth to hire a full time VP of sales. And so I decided at that time to put myself out as a fractional VP of sales because I'd had a lot of success in, in other technology companies and gone through some acquisitions and built nice sized businesses there. So that really what happened is it just sort of morphed, right? It was, hey, yeah, come in and be, you know, a part time sales manager, sales director. Oh, can you train my sales manager how to do that? Oh, can you train my staff how to do that? And so the business sort of morphed from the intent of being this part time sales, uh, manager for multiple companies into more of a training, speaking, consulting, coaching role. And now it's really all encompassing, um, in the work that I'm doing with a broad range of companies.

Speaker C: Okay, got it. Yeah, that does, I mean it makes sense as a natural transition. Right. Especially you come in as a fractional. The idea is to help a team get up and running and they want to be able to transfer a lot of that knowledge. So.

Speaker A: Absolutely. And we're, you know, we, I was working in tech at the time and Ottawa, you know, has been affectionately known as Silicon Valley North. And so there was a, of small tech companies, founder led tech companies who just had no idea how to get their products into commercial hands. Right. And um, hiring a full time salesperson or a full time sales manager when you don't have that expertise yourself and have maybe never worked inside a sales channel can be very overwhelming and daunting for people. And they get it wrong a lot. And so, uh, you know, just a little bit, you've been, you know, a couple of hours a week of coaching and consulting really made the difference for a lot of those companies.

Speaker C: Yeah. And I mean that's something we've seen especially over the last few years. And we recently actually rolled out a dedicated sub brand because the demand got so big and you know, it was like, it's like you said, right? These people that extremely smart, driven, passionate, they start the businesses and then they think, uh, oh, now I have to become a seller. Right. Like I don't want to become a salesperson. Right. Or even if I want to hire someone and I've got the resources and the bandwidth to do that, I might not know how, like what skills do I look for. And let's face it, some salespeople are very good at selling themselves, but not so good at selling the product. So it could be a daunting environment for sure.

Speaker A: Well, it can be. And especially, you know, I see this in all markets. It's not just a tech issue or a startup issue. It happens in uh, you know, long standing traditional businesses as well. People who are passionate about their products, um, are passionate about their products and they, they move from being inquisitive and trying to match, you know, needs and value with the customer to just telling and being excited about the product. And they think because I'm excited and I love it and this is fabulous, people will love it and want to buy it too. Um, but they don'. Really understand the the value conversation that needs to be had.

Speaker C: Yeah, ab. Absolutely. Yeah. I want to get into that because I think there's an important distinction to be had there. I think if you are selling something, it's, it's great to be excited about it. Right. You want that, but you don't want to just be going through the motions because I think the buyer can tell that to a certain extent. At the same time, uh, as an executive level buyer, I don't really care about the features. I care about what it's going to do for me. Right. But first I want to pull on another thread. It's something you've, you've been speaking about that I found deeply intriguing, which was most teams think of like that signature that closed one deal, like, that's the end. But you've said that closing shouldn't be treated as late stage skill, but it actually should start on day one. Help us understand that a little bit better.

Speaker A: Well, I think throughout the sales cycle, um, and you know, right from the beginning when you're talking to customers, you're constantly assessing their willingness and um, ability to buy. Um, at the same time you have to assess whether they are a good fit for your organization. And so I really like, um, that conversation on the front end of the sales cycle to start to include an understanding of how this process is going to go. Right. You shouldn't be presenting pricing to a prospect, for example, and not know what happens next, who needs to be involved, what the, um, what the closing map looks like. We should know what the red flags are, who the people in the organization who are likely to be blockers, who are your enablers, um, who are those people who are going to implement this? Right. Um, we should know who all the competition is and all of the people who are in a position to financially gain from the product that you're selling or the solution that you're selling. Far too often we're selling to the person who's making the decision, but not the team who's actually the financial beneficiary of the service or the product that we're selling. And so not getting them involved in that closing early on, um, alienates them and gives them the opportunity to say no.

Speaker C: Yep, that's a very good point.

Speaker A: So we talk about it as building a closing map, um, you know, or a closing project plan. Right. And it has to be done early on because we need to talk about the implementation, you know, shipping operations, whatever it is that you need to do to actually get that customer operational. All of that conversation needs to start at the front end of the sales cycle or you run the risk of not being able to close. Or the stalls, the indecision that happens right after the pricing gets sent out because people just don't understand what it's going to take in order to get this up and running.

Speaker C: Yeah, let's talk about that a little bit more. When you mentioned the stalls, especially after the pricing conversation, if you, you know, God help you if you haven't had the value conversation before that. Right. Or the, or the implementation and what you're going to receive afterward. What is really the illusion of deal momentum? Because I feel like I've seen this a lot like people, you know, cranking through a deal. Yes, XYZ is going well, but then like you said, all of a sudden you come to a screeching halt. Why is that?

Speaker A: So there's two things going on. I would say the number one reason this happens is we haven't engaged enough stakeholders and built alignment across the organization. When there's a stall, it almost always is because there's somebody else in the organization that we haven't uncovered who's either blocking or is an enabler. Um, but we haven't, we haven't been able to deliver the value. So there's somebody who doesn't want this to happen because they want to do it internally or they want to spend the money somewhere else or they've got a, um, favorite, you know, competitor or there's someone who we haven't got to, who really is driving this solution. But for some reason, maybe your buyer can't even get to them or we haven't unlocked the true value. So the thing that's linked to this is value. Right. So I was working with a client as an example. Their buyers are always the it, um, group, right? They're always, um, in IT and fraud and security and cyber and all that. While they're making the decision about the solution. They're actually not the team that came storming in and say, you have to fix this for us. Right? In, in this case, it was, you know, a marketing VP who was losing huge amounts of revenue because every time they sent out a promotion there was a massive amount of fraud. But they didn't think about this as a revenue generating opportunity. So they never talked to the VP of marketing. So the VP marketing was never engaged. So, you know, the IT team couldn't align the right value with what they really wanted to do. So it's, it's that kind of conversation that needs to happen early on. So that you can find all those people who can actually move the opportunity through the sales cycle.

Speaker C: And I'm really glad you brought this up because I was looking, um, I saw one of your recent LinkedIn posts about multi threading and I was shocked because you said in it, and correct me if I, you know, walked away with the wrong sentiment, but that a lot of sellers, you get a lot of pushback when you, you talk to people about multi throwing. Why is that?

Speaker A: I think there's a couple of things. Um, I think there's fear, right? You know, you and I are talking. You're always answering my emails, you, you answer my calls. We have great conversations. And I'm fearful that if I ask to speak to somebody else, you're going to cut me off or you're going to be angry. I mean, in some cases we don't position it correctly. And so it's not me that's fearful, it's you as the, as the stakeholder that I'm talking to. Because you think, well, it's my job to find a solution. My boss told me to go out and do this. If I let Colleen talk to other people, then I'm not looking like I'm doing my job. And so in that case, again, it's the seller's responsibility for positioning it correctly to make sure that it's in, in our best interest. I think I hesitate to use the word lazy because I don't really mean it like you're lazy. But I also, complacent is maybe a better word. We tend to also sometimes think, well, the last time I, I closed this, I closed a quick deal last week and I didn't have to talk to five people, so why should I this time? But you sort of fail to remember that 90% of your deals don't close like that. And it becomes, well, Corey's giving me everything I want, so I don't need to. I'm listening with my happy ears. So there's a whole lot of things going on. Ultimately, if, if I really had to put my finger on it though, it's sales leaders not holding the team accountable because they know. I mean, they, uh, they know, but they take it for granted. Ah, Corey knows what he's doing. He's our top performer. I don't have to worry about him. He always hits his quota and identify the red flags, but they fail to do anything about it because they don't want to rock the boat with their team.

Speaker C: No, yeah, uh, that, that resonates for sure. You know, it, it's fascinating because when we start thinking about AI and all the different ways that sales organizations are deploying it right now, and you know, uh, a lot of organizations, frankly, are deploying it and not seeing the roi, right. Despite continued investment. And others are doing a lot better. Right. And you've got, you know, the classic motions that everyone's talking about, like, oh, you know, AISDRs, but are we increasing effectiveness or are we just amplifying the ineffective motions that we've always had to kind of make us comfortable? But I heard something novel the other day that I thought was really cool. And it was a hypothetical early stage solution. Um, but the thought leader I was talking to laid it out like this. What if, you know, I start talking to Colleen, right. At Acme, and you've taken my first call and I'm excited. Right. I think there's a really good solution fit. I think I have a good idea of your business problems. I think that we can really help you. What if kicked off an AI flow at the same time, then not only like a intent flow where I identified the likely members of the buying group, but already started proactively multi threading the deal even when we're having our first meeting, which I thought, wow, that, that really speaks to something. And at the same time, to your point, if, if you're worried about undermining trust in some way with multi threading, inserting automation into the process, I think could make those sellers even more fearful. What do you think about it? I'm curious.

Speaker A: Well, okay, so you said a couple of things here which I think are really important to look at. This concept of amplifying ineffectiveness is big, right? You know, I think about that not just, um, with AI, but I think like, go back a lot of years when all of a sudden, uh, phone dialers came out, right now we could just make 200 bad cold calls instead of a hundred.

Speaker B: Right?

Speaker A: Selling community has a long history of putting efficiency before effectiveness. And so, yeah, I can dial the phone 200 times and make 200 bad calls because my calls aren't effective. I can use AI to write, you know, those sloppy emails and I send out more, but they're. If it's efficient, it's not effective. We, I mean, you could say the same thing with cell phones or with even. Right? Uh, great, I can reach all these people, but I'm not being all that effective. I do think that that idea you had is, is a good one. As long as we are feeding into whatever, um, AI outreach what we're learning from the customer to make sure it's tied in. And also feeding back the other way, saying, hey, you know, um, Corey, I really think that your VP of HR would be interested in these conversations because we can show him or her how to cut costs in this area. Should we bring them in? I think it has to be like a multi channel, that you shouldn't just have a singular conversation with you while sending out a bunch of outreach over here. That outreach needs to feed your knowledge and you need to feed your knowledge into that outreach so you can have that conversation. Does that make sense?

Speaker C: No, it does, it does. I see the Canadian history degree paying off and I think it's an important point because I was talking to. Are you familiar with, uh, Todd Capone?

Speaker A: I am not.

Speaker C: So he's um, a, he's a sales historian, you know, great guy, great speaker. And I was, I uh, did upset with him a couple months back and it was funny. Him and I were going back and forth on, you know, was it marketing or sales that ruined which technology, at which time, you know. Yeah, it's like, it's a very, um, it's a very good point because we have to remember, like we've done this before just with different technologies, right? Like recently we ruined text messaging, sms, like before that we ruined Cold Call. And you know, so it's.

Speaker A: Well, you know, and you, the other thing you said that really struck me in the work that I'm doing today is you said that, um, many companies are struggling to get roi. Right? You know, there is a lot of companies who are struggling to get ROI out of their, uh, CRMs. Still, you know, CRM was sold to us as a promise of efficiency. Yet there are many companies who, and big companies, not like startups who don't know what they're doing with it, but really well established name brand companies with hundreds if not thousands of salespeople who can't figure out how to use CRM effectively to produce an roi. You know, and a lot of that comes down to management, um, accountability and coaching. We run the risk of having the same thing happen in AI if we're not careful. Even worse side is, is we're using AI to be customer facing. Right? And so I get, I'm the recipient of a lot of AI generated emails that are just wrong that they're helping me, they're asking me to, um, call them so that they can help me, you know, improve my dental practice or, I don't know, something, you know, so they're, it's the epitome of slop as we say. So I really would like to see companies focus on sales effectiveness first and then use AI to help be more efficient. So one of the things that I really like is, yeah, let's find some ways to make your administration or your follow up, maybe your um, research kind of sales work efficient so that you free up more time to have deeper, uh, multi threaded conversations with more people inside the organization. Let's use it to research companies to find out, hey, you know what, I'm talking to the, you know, these different people in this company and here's the value they've said is important to them. What other roles in the company would find value in that and how could we position talking to those people as well and getting them involved, you know, those kinds of things I think could be really fantastic.

Speaker C: I think it's an excellent point and I want to do a quick public service announcement uh, to any enablement team, rev ops team. If you're at a mid sized company, a small size company and you're going to these conferences and learning about all the amazing things that you should be doing and then you know, at heart like, oh, your CRM data is a mess, do not worry because you would be shocked, you would fall over dead to learn the CRM. But practices or best practices of some of the leading companies out there, to your point, it's amazing.

Speaker A: Yeah. You know, I was working with um, last year a fortune, uh, probably 5 or fortune 10 company and you know, they would go into coaching sessions and one of the managers is still letting their, one of their top reps, um, come into the session with her pipeline in an Excel spreadsheet. She's not putting the notes and she wasn't putting the notes in, in Salesforce. How are you supposed to roll up a forecast if you don't have accurate information about the opportunity in the, the opportunity itself. Right.

Speaker C: So I've even seen this and m. Hold up a piece of paper for the audio listeners.

Speaker A: I've seen this, so I'd seen that too. Shocking. Yeah.

Speaker C: All right, let's shift gears a little bit here. And going back to um, I think we've talked a lot. It seems like we've been circling. Right. You mentioned accountability early on and we talked about, I mean CRM we're talking about now. We talked about AI. Right. And how many of these things. It's an accountability thing, but it's also also a uh, leadership problem. It's also a change management initiative.

Speaker A: Yep.

Speaker C: So can you talk a little bit about how, how Companies are doing that well, whether it's with AI, CRM, you know, a new discovery call motion, you know, from the big to little, I guess.

Speaker A: From a leadership perspective, do you mean?

Speaker C: Or from a. Yeah, like, the best way is to, like, really hold people accountable while still empowering them and, you know, have a change management initiative to, uh, you know, well, push through.

Speaker A: You know, this is a really interesting conversation because what they're not doing well is training, for lack of a better word, empowering. Training, maybe their sales managers to understand how to hold people accountable. So, you know, I use some pretty simple sporting analogies. Sales leaders will say to me, colleen, I don't need to coach, um, and hold them accountable because I only hire experienced people. I'm like, well, okay, pick your favorite sports teams. Like, do you think the Broncos hire experienced football players? Right, do that. But are they responsible for going to practice? Do they get coached? You know, do they get praised when they're doing things well? Do they get corrected when they drop the ball? You know, I mean, you could go, there's a whole line. Pick whatever sports team is your favorite. Right? I mean, the Olympics, we just had those. They have coaches and so why do you think that your sales team is better than Tom Brady? I think a lot of sales managers see it as nagging. I think they, they worried about rocking the boat. Um, you know, if you've come up through the sales organization and you were a peer and now you're a manager and you're managing the top performer who was always performing better than you, there's some, um, concern there, right? There's, there's fear. People have, you know, a little bit of imposter syndrome. Well, how can I coach Corey? He always sold a million dollars more than me. He's not going to take me seriously. Um, but they're two different skills. And you know, again, if we use sports as an analogy, there's always, there's fantastic examples of the best players in the league becoming horrible coaches and some of the best coaches being mediocre or never make, make the pros. Right? So I think that's one thing. I, I really do think that sales management is woefully under trained and they don't understand what coaching, um, and training looks like. They're scared to hold people accountable. They're scared that they're sales team will leave or that people, if they, if it's done wrong, um, they're, you know, the micromanaging and they spend their time on the wrong people. Right? Um, they spend too much Time trying to fix problems at the bottom. And they don't spend enough time trying to coach the top performers to do more of what they're doing and to make conscious the process in which they're successful.

Speaker C: Yeah, I love it. So many, so many great points there. And you know, what really stuck out was, you know, we're talking about sports. And so like you said, mediocre player, tremendous coach, the best player in the league, maybe not the best coach. You know, I think that a lot of people, when we talk about coaching skill sets, default to that, like, well, I'm not going to list to enablement because they've never carried a sales quota. Okay. That's a, that's a separate debate from like, you know, maybe Colleen didn't outperform Sarah the last five quarters, but she's now our sales manager. That's different. Right. Like there's still, there's still a fundamental understanding and empathy for the job. But then as you say, like, selling and coaching are fundamentally different skill sets. But I think a lot of sales managers out there are still promoted. They were the best individual contributor without being given the training they need.

Speaker A: Absolutely. You know, and I've seen a lot of absolutely fantastic sales managers who weren't necessarily the best individual contributor, but they were good. You know, they were solid salespeople. Right. Um, and I do think it's really smart we are seeing with some of our bigger organizations, sales enablement teams that do have people who came from sales or a customer facing role. Two of the best sales enablement leaders that I know of, that I can think of did come out of direct selling roles at one point. They were either account managers or, or business development type people. So they do understand the selling motion, which helps them in, doesn't just help them in selling sales enablement to their team. It helps them in understanding what the team could really use because they about it. Personally, I could have really used these tools. I could have really used this skill. So they have a slightly different, um, mindset now. The whole team isn't made up of people like that. We've got data analyst people and we've got others, but at least we've got a couple of grounded people who came

Speaker C: in from sales and then, uh, also like pulling on the coaching thread just a little bit more. I mean there have been a lot of great advances with AI, uh, coaching and I think it can carry a lot of the burden and help managers and at the same time, and going back to our sports analogy, even if you just look at top Performers, sometimes that comes with a lot of ego. That can also be very fragile.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker C: Um, it's like when your favorite tennis player forgets how to serve and then you watch them fall apart for the next hour and a half. Um, I think even people, and sometimes more so when they're performing at such a high level. Right. It's not necessarily a skills coaching conversation. It almost goes beyond that. Right. And you really need that human to human connection because maybe it's a confidence issue, maybe there's something else going on. Right. And that, that needs to be handled by, by someone with the empathy to do so.

Speaker A: I think it's also important to remember that coaching isn't always about fixing weakness. Um, especially with top performers. You know, I like to say, I don't care that you know that or we know that you're good. I care that we know why you're good. And so we can often fix problems by just starting to dissect and make conscious what people are doing that's working really well. Um, especially with top performers. It opens top performers up to being coached if they have that ego and allows them to also be engaged in helping bring other performers up, which I think is really critical. Um, so I think that's where a lot of managers get into sort of their own, um, headspace games is they think, oh, you know, I don't want to only Cory's doing a lot of things. Right. But if I sit down and now tell him what he's doing wrong, wrong, he's going to get irritated with me. Well, let's not do that. Let's make conscious what he's doing. Right. So that you can do more of that. Right. Which, um, I think is a really critical piece. It also helps to build confidence. Just training around the language to use, um, the cadence. Right. You know, a lot of times I think managers also feel like coaching is a spot solution. So again, it becomes overwhelming and maybe intimidating because we're only coaching. When I've seen you do something wrong, um, what I say is, no, you have to have a regular coaching schedule, um, if it's every week or every two weeks, so that you know that that's my time to talk to you in an objective way. It's not like, ah, Colleen's hauling me into the office because I've messed up. It's, this is my day to talk about what's going on in the business, good or bad, and what we can do about it. And it's always action oriented. You get to a situation where it becomes Less about the sales manager telling you what to do and uh, more about an outlet for you to realize outside of the heat of the moment of the sales call, what still needs to be done and commit to taking action on that.

Speaker C: Yep. No, that's an excellent point. The proactive development also in developing the awareness.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker C: To see it and see the patterns yourself I think is crucial. Yeah. You know, and I think it does need to be more um, systemic, more structured. Because if you, if it's always that I saw. Nope. I listened to your call and now I'm showing up on the next one.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker C: That's just very deal based and that does feel corrective and punitive and very. There is resistance to that for sure.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker C: Uh, I do want to uh, dive back into, you know, deal specific strategy real quick since I think we had a great conversation about coaching. So it's kind of, I'm going against my own advice. Right. Let's go back to the deal. We're going to coach the deal again. But I think there's some, there's some wisdom we could share on that as well. So uh, you said that, that you know, if you, if you do take the right approach that 80% of deals can close without discounting. And I think that might be very counterintuitive, especially in some industries. Tell us a little bit more, Unpack that for us.

Speaker A: So the value is critical. Right. So I talk about a, a concept of um, expanded or operational value. And what I'm looking for is um, for the organization, the selling organization, to be able to show me how their product adds value, monetary or time, something tangible value to every department in the organization. When you do that, then everyone realizes, oh, this isn't just going to help my sales team, you know, um, this is also going to help operations, is going to help hr. Um, and so less discounting is required because the value is expanded. So I'll give you an example outside of, way outside of what we've been talking about. A client of mine was selling, um, they sell equipment for, were in the manufacturing line and they were selling like robotics. Right. Like robotic, um, torque wrenches and things like that. And so you know, of course you go to operations and manufacturing because it's going to improve productivity. It will be, it's proven to improve productivity by 25%. Okay, that's fine. Obviously these equipment is much more expensive than a manual. You know, that puts you in competition with the other robotics companies. But then we said, okay, well how much workers compensation claims are there every year? Because People have carpal tunnel syndrome. How hard is it to recruit people? Because they don't want to do that kind of rote work, you know, so then there, now there's an HR cost because they're like, well, we have, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars or we have people come, we have unsafe working environments and that becomes a finance conversation. Then it becomes a sales conversation too, right? So if the factory can produce 25% m more, what does that do? Like, is that faster? Can you get, you know, do you have customer service problems? It becomes a customer service and sales issue because of the ability to sell more with, with the same amount of infrastructure. Right? So now all of a sudden we've got an HR value, we've got an operational value, we've got a sales value, we have a marketing value of a customer service value, we have a finance value, you know, um, and if the competition isn't talking to those people, if they're not thinking about it, all of a sudden you're the business expert, you're the operational expert. And it's very hard for the competition to win even at a cheap price because you're the one talking to them about how you're adding value. The different, um, line departments in the organization. So that's what I mean by expanding value. And when we see that happen, then all of a sudden it becomes, well, this is a no brainer, like we don't need a discount, we're not going to ask for a discount or less likely because we're getting so much more value we never even anticipated.

Speaker C: Yeah, uh, that's a great point. So to push on this a little bit further, what if it's in a really highly commoditized industry, uh, where buyers have been trained for better, for worse over the years, right? That's, that's how it's going to work. And they wait till the end of the quarter and they're at least going to get 10% and they can push for 15. You know, how do those motions, you know, still, still hold up there?

Speaker A: Well, funny that you raised that because I do work in the oil and gas markets and the fertilizer market. So they're commodities. True commodities, right? So these guys know and they, and they negotiate for pennies on the gallon or the liter, depending on the. So this becomes again, it becomes talking about to other people in the organization. So in the oil and gas markets, client, uh, of mine selling to a plastics manufacturer, the guy is negotiating, right? He's trying to get the oil down to as cheap as he can. And the equipment is having problems. They got finance involved and they got someone else involved. And they started talking about this top of the line German, um, equipment that they had in the factory. And the finance guy actually turned around and said, you mean to tell me that you're looking to put the cheapest product in the $9 million worth of equipment we just bought? Right, we've seen that before. Like, you know, do you know if that's in warranty? Right. Like what's. Cause, like, you know, so I had another case with gas. I mean, you know, gasoline and diesel is, is commoditized as you can get. And a guy called and was trying to negotiate on some product in the size of the tank and the sales rep very smartly just said to him something like, why do you want that size? Do you understand the EPA requirements on that? And, and you um, know the, the gentleman went off on, you know, government bureaucracy and he was just so grateful that she saved him so much time and so much money that all of a sudden pennies on the dollar don't matter. So for me it's about differentiating how do we take the product that we're selling and communicate its value and its value to other people in a way that our competition isn't so that you separate yourself from that commodity.

Speaker C: So, and that's the first time I've heard that play. I'm going to put that one in my back pocket. If customers discounting direct their rage at something that they can't and an entity they can't negotiate with, you know, getting

Speaker A: other people involved, um, is just so important, you know, you know, I'm not going to pick on, I don't want to pick on anyone in particular. But you know, again, in a technology sale, if an IT department is looking at two equal products, right? And it can be easy to commoditize like I don't know, two equal CRMs or two equal cyber solutions. Antivirus, you know, is a good one because you know, it can be commodity considered commoditized. If you can find a way to point this to someone else in the organization who maybe has, is facing a compliance issue or a fine or um, a sales challenge that they can say, yeah, if we do this right, you know, we stand to gain a million dollars or we don't have that 2 million dollar fine, um, that person can then often put pressure on your stakeholder, um, to make a different decision.

Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. And I know I joked earlier about the oil and gas example, but it was a fantastic One, because it really is about the salesperson working to expand the buyer's thinking and to challenge it in some ways. Right. Like what? You know, for the $9 million new piece of machinery with the cheapest fuel you're going to put in it. Right. Um, it's the cost of the wrong action and the cost of inaction. Right. Or the cost of have you considered X, Y disease? You could be facing consequences and more risk.

Speaker A: So absolutely. There are, there's so many examples of that in, in all markets. And you know, we have to be careful. Um, there are some true commodities, right. You know, fertilizer, seed, um, oil and gas, you know, things that are traded on the market where the price is set. They're all, um, true commodities in many cases. We have been responsible for creating the commodity mindset of our buyers in other markets. Right. And so we have to figure out a way to get around that. That and differentiation. Sales differentiation, uh, or differentiated sales process is one of the best ways we can do that. The research does show that it's upwards of about 58% of the reason why people do business with you is because they see a differentiated sales process. And so what does that mean? It's different people, it's different value, it's different questions. It's a, it's a different way of talking about what you're doing so that people say, huh, huh. This is unlike any conversation I've had before in this space. Right. You're asking me different questions, you're talking to different people. You're talking about how this benefits me in a completely different way.

Speaker C: Yeah. And I feel like we've come full circle to the, to one of the first questions, right? Which was like, how do you start closing from the very beginning? Is it differentiate in the way that you run the sales process? Because I think you're absolutely right. We end up training buyers to expect discounts or to, you know, to negotiate a certain way. And unfortunately, sometimes I think we, you know, we reward our toughest, most irascible customers with the discount. And then we think, so wait, these people are going to be horrible to work with. We gave them the best deal. You know, it's sort of, uh, it can self perpetuate inside.

Speaker A: And then, you know, if you think about that, if you sort of extend that thinking, we, at least in all the markets I work in, the job is to get a customer and keep the customer for life, right? And so we want to expand those customers and sell them more share of wallet and you know, selling to other departments. And other divisions and other countries. The next negotiating point starts at the low point that you went down to. Right. So you know, you give them 10 off, then the next time they need to buy more licenses or equipment or fuel or whatever it is, it's 10 off the 10%. Right. It just keeps going down, down. So your margin is eroded really quickly and we have to be very careful of that. Uh, right up front.

Speaker C: Yep, M. Absolutely. Colleen. As we move toward the end of the podcast, there are two questions we ask every guest. And the first is we're recording this in 2026. Let's fast forward five years out. Um, what is a big shift coming for, um, B2B sales that not a lot of people are talking about right now?

Speaker A: Well, you know, the big shift that no one's talking about, everyone's talking about AI. Right. I think the big shift that is going to come is that we're going to see companies demand a, uh, return on investment from their sales teams. So where I see, what I see is going to happen, AI is going to take up a lot of our bandwidth on administration research. It's going to free up a lot of time. It's then going to cause managers, leaders, business owners to say, okay, Colleen, we've just freed up up 20% of your time. You now have 20% more target, 30%, 40%, 50% more target. So our targets are going to continue to go up because there's going to be an understanding that we have to spend more time in um, in that face to face selling environment. So I don't see that AI is going to replace um, the sales motion on the B2B sales at all. What I do see is that it's going to cause us, but also allow us to spend more time building those longer term relationships and, and organizations are going to demand, I'm going to use the word demand, hold us accountable for accomplishing more with less people on the team for sure.

Speaker C: And I think we've already seen that shift a lot starting to play out in different ways. Okay, final question for you. Looking back at your own career. If you could go back five, ten years into the past, what is one, um, piece of career advice you would give your younger self and why?

Speaker A: I would give myself the advice of not, not being afraid to ask for help. So I grew up in an environment, you know, and, and, and God bless my parents, you know, but it was always, it was a lot of empowerment, right? Like you can do anything you've set your mind to. You don't need anybody to help you. Um, and so I struggled for a lot of years because I figured I could figure it out on my own. Um, I think that we have really interesting time in sales right now. We've. We have massive generational spread and I think we can all learn from each other. So this isn't just advice for young people. People. Um, I think this is advice for people who are in the back nine of their career. Shall I say, like, look to what's working for of the youngest sellers. Don't be afraid of it. Embrace the. Embrace new technology, embrace new approaches. Um, embrace new ways to talk to the customer. The worst thing you could be doing is simply saying, well, that worked for me five years ago, so it's going to continue to work for me today. Um, you have to. Have to be nimble and consistently tweak your practices in order to be more effective to meet the buyers where they're at.

Speaker C: It's such good advice, I feel, because particularly now, I think it's so easy to. To be intimidated by the changes. Right. And not ask. You don't want to. People don't want to be found out for not knowing something. Right. Exactly. At the same time, there's also tremendous opportunity in asking and learning.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: Some of this new stuff out there. So.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: I see far too many salespeople stuck in ruts because, you know, they sell the way they sold when they were successful in the 80s. And, you know that it just needs to be tweaked. Right. We didn't stop. We don't stop use pay phones anymore. We, we fully embrace the cell phone culture. So, like, let's look for something else that's modern. Yep.

Speaker C: For sure. For sure. Well, Colleen, this has been a lot of fun. Um, thank you so much for joining us on the show. If people want to learn more about you, more about engaged selling, where should they come go?

Speaker A: They can go right to my website, engageselling.com. um, or they can go to LinkedIn. Um, you know, I publish a lot on, um, LinkedIn, uh, videos, articles, polls, lives. So that's a good, great place to be following me as well.

Speaker C: All right, sounds good. Thanks again.

Speaker A: My pleasure.

Speaker B: You've been listening to the B2B Revenue Executive experience to ensure that you never miss an episode, subscribe to the the show in itunes or your favorite podcast player. Thank you so much for listening. Until next time.