Join us for this week's episode featuring Drew Ellis, VP of Mid-market Sales at SAP, who brings valuable insights into modernizing B2B sales strategies. Our discussion is aimed at sales professionals eager to excel in the digital era, offering guidance for those engaging with both large enterprises and the dynamic mid-market. We will explore how to leverage LinkedIn not just for outreach but as a platform for establishing your personal brand and demonstrating thought leadership in the realm of social selling.
We address the misconception that artificial intelligence (AI) threatens sales roles, presenting instead how AI can enhance your sales approach. Discover how AI can refine your industry knowledge and provide you with advanced strategies to gain a competitive edge. We'll discuss the role of AI in improving team collaboration and enhancing sales presentations, highlighting AI's role as a supportive tool that amplifies the human element crucial in closing deals.
The episode also focuses on the importance of authentic customer interactions, sharing personal stories and strategies that underscore the value of face-to-face engagements in today's digital world. Learn about the significance of customer-centric events for building relationships and expanding networks. Furthermore, we'll examine how leading sales professionals incorporate AI to boost their teams' effectiveness without compromising their organizational culture. This episode promises to inspire you to adopt AI and innovative sales methods while reaffirming the enduring importance of personal connections in winning customers' loyalty.
Don't miss out—your next big idea could be just one episode away!
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Speaker 1: Welcome to Social Selling 2.0 Live Show and
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Podcast, where each week, we explore the future of B2B sales.
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Social has changed the B2B and professional services landscape
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forever.
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Capturing and keeping buyer attention has never been more
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challenging.
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Our mission is to help you discover new strategies, new
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technologies, new go-to-market systems and stay up-to-date with
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what is working now in B2B sales.
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Your hosts are Carson Hedy, the number one social seller at
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Microsoft, tom Burton, a best-selling author and B2B
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sales specialist, and Brandon Lee, an entrepreneur with
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multiple 7 and 8 figure exits and a leading voice in LinkedIn
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social selling.
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Brandon and Tom also lead Social Selling 2.0 Solutions,
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which offers turnkey consulting, coaching and training to B2B
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sales leaders.
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Now let's start the show.
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Speaker 2: Gentlemen, welcome to episode number 72, mastering
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Modern Selling.
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This is two weeks in a row.
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I've got this nailed no more of the Social Selling 2.0 stuff.
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Speaker 3: You're a pro.
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We can't change your name again anytime soon, Tom.
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Speaker 2: No, it takes me a few weeks just to do that pivot.
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I'm not really good at those pivots.
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So, hey, drew, welcome.
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Thank you, great to have you here today.
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Speaker 4: Thank you, I'm excited.
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Speaker 3: It's been a long time in the making.
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Drew, good to have you on.
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I was messaging with Brandon this week and we're talking
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about getting to know Drew.
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I remember the first time I heard Drew on a couple episodes
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of Mike Weinberg's show.
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As many of our listeners know, mike did my birthday episode
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this past year, so we're a big fan of Mike.
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Drew was just not only to be invited back for a Mike episode,
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but just dropping wisdom left and right.
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My favorite takeaway was being thick as thieves with our
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customer executives, so you're in for a treat today.
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Audience.
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Speaker 2: Drew, the pressure is on Carson's putting the
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pressure on you already.
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Speaker 4: You guys are too kind .
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Speaker 3: Yeah, so well hey, it works in technology, so I know
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we can take pressure.
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Speaker 2: There you go.
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So, hey, a couple of things before we get started.
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If you're online listening, definitely, hey, butch, jump in,
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let us know where you're from.
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Also, if you're listening to the podcast, you know, brandon,
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I don't know that we give enough love to the podcast listeners.
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We have a lot more podcast listeners coming in every week
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and we really appreciate it.
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And, if you like it, please leave a review and a rating.
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It's appreciated.
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And, hey, we can get into number one in mastering modern
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selling Carson.
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So I don't know, mike might create other problems.
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Speaker 3: He's taking it in our way, that's right, I don't know
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yet.
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Speaker 2: I don't know, I haven't looked.
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And we also want to thank Fist Bumps.
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Brandon, why don't you tell a little bit there?
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Fist Bumps has been a really great sponsor.
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They're helping to pay for some of this stuff that we're doing
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here in the production and the podcast.
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So tell us a little bit about Fist Bump.
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Speaker 5: Fist Bump.
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Yeah, so Fist Bump is basically hey, ceos and sales leaders who
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believe that they should be using LinkedIn better but simply
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don't have time or, honestly, a lot of them they're not really
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sure what to do.
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We have a concierge program that's done for you and done
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with you.
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There's certain things we just can't do, but we come alongside
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and help them with that every step of the way.
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So we've got a guest coming up on our show who is a CEO who
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started using LinkedIn and now he says 50% or more of their new
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opportunities are all generated from his LinkedIn activity.
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So lots of value there for organizations who use it well.
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Speaker 2: Are you saying that LinkedIn stuff works?
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Speaker 5: You know, I think it does.
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Hey, I just got a message in the private chat that my
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heater's loud man I'm freezing today, but I'll turn it off.
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Speaker 2: All right.
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So thanks, brandon.
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So Drew, again welcome.
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Tell us a little bit about yourself, your background, and
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then we're gonna get into some pretty I think interesting
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topics today.
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Speaker 4: Yeah, thanks for having me today.
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I'm excited.
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So, as Carson mentioned, I'm in technology sales.
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I work for SAP, a large organization just like Carson
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with Microsoft.
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Been there for about 12 years, went through pretty much every
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kind of individual contributor role you could have and then
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took my first step into leadership about almost three
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years ago now and I've been leading a team in our mid-market
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business for North America, which has been pretty fulfilling
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and pretty exciting.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, so let's start.
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I know we had some topics we wanted to cover, but we have a
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lot of people listening to this show that are on the small to
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medium-sized business area and obviously you have enterprise
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people.
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What would you say is you know what's the difference that you
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see kind of working in a large enterprise-type company but
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selling to the mid-market?
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Let's start with that, because I think that's a good place to
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kind of lead in.
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Speaker 4: That's a great question.
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So I spent my entire career in the enterprise business calling
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on our largest accounts and then , when I had this opportunity to
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come to the mid-market, I was apprehensive because I didn't
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know if my skill set would translate, because it is
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different, and what I have found is that my own fear, and maybe
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a little bit of my own ego, actually was the hindrance, more
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so than the client themselves, because at the end of the day,
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it's still people, it's still problems, there's still
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complexity that they're trying to solve and we still have a
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solution that kind of fits their needs, or at least I hope fits
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their needs.
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So once I got over my own mental shift of not knowing and
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being a little bit afraid of having it be something new, I
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realized you know what it's people.
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Let's just go have a conversation.
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Let's just go be real.
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Let's understand what their problems are.
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Let's not forget what got us to this point in our career.
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Right, making sure it's about them, not about me, and
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everything else kind of fell into place.
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There are some nuances in industry, right?
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So, like larger accounts, the deal cycle may take longer, so
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you may have a lot more time that you're spending with an
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account and it may be a little bit longer of a process, might
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be more people involved in that process also, so you may need to
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know more of the folks that work there and the decision tree
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and all of that stuff.
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But at the end of the day it's like I said it's still people,
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it's still problems, they're still complexity in their
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organization that they're looking to take out and solve
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and that's what we have to go do .
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Speaker 2: So what I'm hearing you say is the fundamentals are
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still the same.
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Speaker 4: The fundamentals are definitely still the same.
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That's correct.
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Speaker 2: Fundamentals are the same.
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So, brandon Carson, jump in.
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What are some?
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I know we had a lot of topics.
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What do you think is the best way to kind of take us down here
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?
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Speaker 3: We're gonna take an overarching comment and it's the
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way that Drew was able to connect with Mike, and I think
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it kind of exemplifies a couple of things.
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One Drew is here today because of an awareness, because of a
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show that he did with Mike, or a couple shows he did with Mike
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and Drew, and I started talking.
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I introduced Drew to Tom and Brandon and here we are, and
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what I think is fascinating is the story of how they got
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connected.
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Drew, why don't you tell us a little bit about that?
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Speaker 4: Yeah.
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So it goes back to your original statement, how you
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started the show.
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Are you getting value out of LinkedIn?
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So when the short version of the story is when I was looking
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to move into leadership a few years ago, I was looking for
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leadership books like anyone else.
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You go to Amazon, you go to Google, you type in.
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I typed in leadership sales new I'm new to it and his book the
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new sales simplified pulled up.
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And then there was sales management simplified that
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pulled up.
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I bought sales management simplified and I started reading
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that book first before I even bought the other one.
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And from there I just kind of sent him a LinkedIn message and
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I was like, hey, man, this content helped me earn what I
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felt.
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It helped me earn, kind of, my first sales role and here's what
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I did and here's how I used it.
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I wasn't expecting to hear back , let alone.
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He pinged me back almost right away.
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He must have been online and was like, hey, let's get on the
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phone and talk about this.
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I'm like all right, let's do it .
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And that just kind of snowballed into kind of like
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this conversation, talking shop, having fun, realizing we had a
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lot of things in common and realizing that there was still a
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lot that I could learn kind of from him and his audience and
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what he does.
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So that's how we met just a cold LinkedIn email.
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You and I love it, I got that.
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Speaker 3: I think it's incredible.
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Nobody's unattainable If you got something you wanna reach
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out, reach out.
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The worst thing that happens is that you still have no
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relationship.
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The best thing is it turns into something magical.
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Speaker 5: And let's keep taking that.
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So we talked on the show before about the term dark social, and
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I hate the term because it brings up concepts of dark web.
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But really what it means is this social platform that we
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have, whether it's our post, it's comments, it's shows.
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Sending you send a message to Mike after buying his book.
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He reached back out and then, drew, you got invited to be on
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Mike's show and then through Mike's show is where Carson met
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you and saw you and started engaging with you and now you're
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on our show.
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All of that is adding to your they call it a personal brand.
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That adds to your reputation.
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It gets you in front of more people and then, who knows,
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today somebody might be listening that needs your SAP
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services and reaches out and that's where opportunities come
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about.
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And I know that's a little bit of a soft approach.
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For a lot of sales leaders it's like, oh, there's a little bit
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of luck and all that.
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But hey, the more active we are in this platform it is the most
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important business platform of the 21st century so the more
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active we are on it, maybe the luckier we get.
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Speaker 4: You know what's funny about that is and I'm probably
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gonna get laughed at for saying this, but I'll come clean I
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don't have a Facebook account, I don't have an Instagram account
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, I'm not on TikTok.
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The only social media I have is LinkedIn.
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And prior to reaching out to Mike Weinberg, I never really
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posted or did anything.
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And so, reading the book and just taking that shot, the only
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time I had used LinkedIn is kind of going back to Carson's
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episode, like when you were talking about landing the step
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and all that I would use LinkedIn to ping my clients,
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people that I wanted to meet inside first dates.
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So you might be working with a client but you may not know
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everybody in there.
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So I would go to LinkedIn, do a search, try to ping the
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customers that I wanted to get interactions with.
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It was only after kind of meeting Mike and learning about
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you guys and Carson and everything, that I actually
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started to use it more as a social aspect for my personal
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self and just to broaden my network and that kind of thing.
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And I still don't have Facebook , still don't have Instagram.
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This is it.
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I have LinkedIn, that's it.
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Speaker 3: You're not missing anything, drew, yeah you don't
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need anything, you don't need anything else.
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And you know what's funny, what I love about what Drew just kind
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of said, is, as you think about it, look, I mentor sellers all
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the time.
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Every seller benefits from a brand.
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It's a way to have your reputation speak for itself
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before you meet someone.
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And what's powerful, too, is everyone's experience matters,
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no matter where you are in the journey.
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If you're starting out, you're having experiences that will
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benefit others.
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Talk about them, ask questions about them, be provocative.
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If you're an old, grizzly sales vet like me, you've got
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experiences, you can tell stories and you can help people
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that are on the path.
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And I love all the comments about luck.
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There's a reason that the color of money is sitting back here.
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It's the greatest sales movie of all time.
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The line for some players.
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Luck itself is an art.
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Speaker 5: And the other thing with that is it's this platform
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again posting, commenting, being on shows it creates familiarity
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.
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The more people see you, the more they're hearing you.
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When we do send the reach out whether it's a message in
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LinkedIn, it's an email, it's a call that barrier to them saying
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no or ghosting or ignoring drops down dramatically and we
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hear people all the time.
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I get text messages from people , some of our FistBone clients.
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They'll screenshot and they'll send me.
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It's like hey, we sent this message.
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And they're like, yeah, let's meet.
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I feel like I already know you because of your LinkedIn content
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.
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Carson, you get that when you're traveling, right, people
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come up and no, they say they know.
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Speaker 3: Brandon Lee.
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They don't say they know me they say you work with Brandon
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Lee and your point is still valid because you're a known
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entity because, of that I so well said.
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I think you have this ability with social to create a positive
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reputation and just a presence as a thought leader A leader
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like Drew, who is obviously well respected in this trade and
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draft talking about stories of how they are helping customers
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and organizations do more.
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Those types of things resonate.
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And if I have the opportunity to work with somebody that I see
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as a prolific thought leader on social versus somebody that I
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don't know anything of, guess which decision seems less risky?
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Speaker 5: Yeah, that familiarity right.
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It just breaks down those barriers.
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Yeah, I was.
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I spoke to a sales leader a few weeks ago and in our
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conversation I asked the question over the years and he's
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our age, he's been 25, 30 years sales sales leadership I said
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over the years, what has been your greatest strength in
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selling?
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And he thought for a moment and he said probably relationships.
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He was like I've got clients now that when I travel to go
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visit them, they don't let me stay in a hotel.
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I actually stay with them and throughout the years it's always
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been the relationships.
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And I didn't want to be rude but I said I'm looking at your
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LinkedIn profile over here and I don't see any of that.
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I don't see the activity, I don't see the engagement.
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I don't see.
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I see you very professional, but your resume doesn't scream
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to me that you want to be in relationship and you serve
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people.
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And there's that disconnect with some of the ways that
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people have used LinkedIn or looked at it as a resume.
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Speaker 3: I had a question too, drew.
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You mentioned spending a lot of time in different roles as an
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IC and then making the forehand a leadership.
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I had a leadership career before joining my current
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organization, but I spent several years as an IC and I'm
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glad I did, because I feel like and you and I have talked about
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this in the past I feel like you have that credibility, but also
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you know what it's like to walk in their shoes, and so it's as
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you create and nurture a culture and you're at the pulse of what
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matters to your team.
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It goes a really, really long way.
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I would love to hear from you Just with your journey as an IC
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and now as a leader, staying at the pulse of customers but also
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rapidly changing technology.
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What does modern selling mean to you?
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What have you tried and what has worked well for you in
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becoming thick as thieves and earning the right to be a
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trusted advisor?
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Speaker 4: Yeah, I think that's a really great question and
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really timely with where we are in our industry right now,
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because everyone is looking for a hack.
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Give me a hack for this, Give me a hack for that and it's like
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I laugh every time.
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The hack was getting a customer list with a phone number that
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worked in the past.
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Let me get a phone number that connects to people before I have
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to figure out how many I have to dial to reach someone.
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There's no easy button.
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The easy button is doing the job, and doing the job takes the
00:15:34
same skill set today as it did 50 years ago, as it will 50
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years from now, and that is picking up the phone, connecting
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with the customer, understanding what their
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problems are and providing a solution to those problems.
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I think today's world has some tools that make it so much
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easier for us to bring the value for the customer.
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I know you're going to bring this up, so I'll bring it up
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anyway as artificial intelligence Everybody wants to
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talk about.
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It Is AI.
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Is it going to put the salesperson out of business?
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I argue no.
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It should make the salesperson a lot more value driven, quicker
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in the cycle.
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As an example, when we look at these tools that we have and we
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work for big companies Carson we have all the tools we could
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possibly want at our disposal.
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I have everything and we work for SAP.
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We've got everything.
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So what do we use?
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When we use artificial intelligence, we use it to get
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smarter on our customer faster.
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What I love about it is because I'm so fresh in being an
00:16:33
individual contributor into leadership.
00:16:34
If I'm going to talk about our solution, I use artificial
00:16:38
intelligence to help me position our solution in their language.
00:16:41
If they're in a business that I don't know very much about that
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industry let's say they're in manufacturing or healthcare or
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whatever it is I say help me describe this offering in their
00:16:52
language, using their analogies and their nomenclature.
00:16:55
Now I can walk in and I can relate it to them in their terms
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.
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That builds immediate credibility to me, because I've
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done two things there.
00:17:03
One, I've come to their level using their terms and their
00:17:08
industry.
00:17:08
And number two, I've walked in for payer to bring value to them
00:17:11
that's going to solve a problem that they're interested in, not
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just me pushing something to them.
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Does that make sense?
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Speaker 3: It does.
00:17:18
We don't have an excuse anymore to show up and not speak their
00:17:22
language and I think with all these great tools the bar is
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raised.
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The responsibility is greater on sellers.
00:17:29
You can't just show up and verbal vomit everything that you
00:17:32
think is great about your product or solution, that you
00:17:35
read off of a marketing slide.
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You've got to actually dig in, do the work, earn the
00:17:40
relationship.
00:17:42
Speaker 2: Hey, I have a quick question follow up on that.
00:17:44
Drew, I think what you just said was really compelling about
00:17:46
AI.
00:17:47
Let me make sure if I got this right.
00:17:48
So let's say you're going to go talk to a manufacturing company
00:17:52
.
00:17:52
You're not an expert in manufacturing, certainly not,
00:17:54
maybe an expert in what they do or what they manufacture.
00:17:57
You're using AI or chat, gpt or something to basically build
00:18:02
that narrative with the right terminology, the right
00:18:05
vernacular, the right everything .
00:18:06
Maybe learn a bit about manufacturing that you didn't
00:18:09
know.
00:18:09
And now you walk in, maybe not positioned as an expert, but way
00:18:14
more.
00:18:14
Your position is a bit of an expert anyway, along the way,
00:18:19
and not just somebody who is a salesperson.
00:18:22
Is that really what I hear you saying?
00:18:24
Speaker 4: That's exactly it.
00:18:25
So the specific example I can use is I wanted to understand
00:18:30
how to position our tool set with what my team sells, in the
00:18:34
language of a camping and hunting and fishing company
00:18:38
specifically.
00:18:39
So then it said hey, your product A is like the tense,
00:18:43
your product B is like the fishing pole, your product C is
00:18:45
like this right.
00:18:46
And it went right through it and it told the story.
00:18:47
I was like, okay, so now if I'm going to walk in, I'm going to
00:18:50
tell a story about how our offerings help our customer.
00:18:53
I am talking about how a tent is going to help someone's
00:18:58
experience, how the fishing pole is going to help them grab the
00:19:00
fish.
00:19:00
And now they're relating it to their industry and they're
00:19:03
saying I get that.
00:19:03
I understand what this technology piece does for me
00:19:07
because I understand what we sell does for our customers.
00:19:11
Speaker 5: Wow, that is really really powerful.
00:19:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, I want to bring up Josh's question here while
00:19:17
we're on the AI subject.
00:19:18
He asked has AI changed the way in which you also prepared to
00:19:22
combat objectives as well?
00:19:24
Are you using it in that way at all as well, or handling
00:19:30
objections or even negotiating?
00:19:33
Speaker 4: Absolutely so.
00:19:34
One of the ways we use AI with our team is like so now we're
00:19:39
going to walk into that customer , we're going to have the
00:19:41
analogy through their language.
00:19:42
Now, before I do that, I'm going to go find out who are
00:19:44
their top three or five competitors and what's important
00:19:47
to them.
00:19:47
So when I understand what the competition is doing and the AI
00:19:51
can help me go through their financials, it can help me do
00:19:53
the background, it can help me find the latest press releases.
00:19:56
So I'm not spending hours gathering data, I'm spending
00:20:00
hours perfecting the message because I have all the data in
00:20:03
front of me.
00:20:04
So when we walk in, we've got a great analogy in their
00:20:06
terminology, but we also have knowledge of the industry, their
00:20:10
competition and what they're solving in those worlds.
00:20:12
So we can talk somewhat intelligently about obstacles
00:20:17
other people have overcome, which goes back to any objection
00:20:20
they may want to throw at us.
00:20:21
We can say well, you know, these three companies are also
00:20:23
suffering from the same problem and guess what?
00:20:26
Two of those are our customers and we've helped them do this,
00:20:29
this and this.
00:20:29
So we're just much more informed walking in, because the
00:20:33
customer doesn't care what we sell, they don't care what it's
00:20:37
called, they don't care what it does, they care what it provides
00:20:40
for them in the outcome.
00:20:42
Speaker 2: So are you coaching Sorry, just real quick, brandon
00:20:45
are you coaching your team to use the same sort of tools and
00:20:49
is the team working together on these things?
00:20:50
Or how do you see adoption within a team, especially some
00:20:54
people that can be a little afraid of this?
00:20:56
Speaker 4: Half of them I'm coaching, the other half are
00:20:58
coaching me, right?
00:20:59
Certain people will grab onto it and they'll be like look at
00:21:02
what we're doing, especially the people that have come right out
00:21:04
of training, because it's been 12 years since I've been in
00:21:06
training, so I don't know all the new processes and tools that
00:21:09
we might have inside of our company who come right out of
00:21:12
training.
00:21:12
I'm like present to the team, what you just learned.
00:21:14
Teach the old dog some new tricks, because there's going to
00:21:17
be a lot of stuff that we didn't know about.
00:21:19
And they're like well, here's how we're attacking with video.
00:21:21
Here's how.
00:21:22
I'm like okay, hold on, we're making videos for the customers.
00:21:25
I can tell you I'm not doing that.
00:21:26
Show me how.
00:21:27
Right.
00:21:28
So it's a two-way street.
00:21:29
Some of the older folks like myself.
00:21:31
We're learning from the younger folks who've really grabbed
00:21:34
onto these things and really run forward with it.
00:21:38
Speaker 5: I want to come back to what you said.
00:21:40
Using AI to help you tell a story using their language and
00:21:45
using that example I think is brilliant.
00:21:47
They're selling tents and poles and camping equipment and you
00:21:51
ask AI to give you the foundation of the framework to
00:21:56
tell your product story and their terminology.
00:21:58
I mean, that would take forever for a salesperson to do on
00:22:03
their own and not be able to do it for each and every customer
00:22:07
but be able to plug that into AI and have it spit out.
00:22:10
We should be more prepared and better in our conversations than
00:22:15
we ever been before.
00:22:16
Absolutely.
00:22:17
I love that.
00:22:18
Thanks for sharing that.
00:22:19
That got me really excited.
00:22:21
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think it.
00:22:22
Well, I was just going to say real quick, it's really great
00:22:25
for your first interaction with that customer too, because you
00:22:30
build that bridge much quicker.
00:22:32
In your first interaction then say maybe someone you've got a
00:22:34
relationship with for two or three years.
00:22:37
Speaker 5: It reminds me when Anthony in Arena was on the show
00:22:40
, remember he was talking about the difference of two or three
00:22:44
people go in and do a presentation the next day.
00:22:46
You say, well, what was the difference?
00:22:48
And Anthony's like well, one guy was tall and blonde and the
00:22:51
other guy was wearing a blue shirt.
00:22:52
Right, that was the difference.
00:22:54
And what you're saying there will make you so remembered and
00:23:00
just rise to the top in those conversations.
00:23:05
Speaker 2: I wanted to hit Bob's comment here and get your take
00:23:07
on this too.
00:23:08
He says, by overtaking the top of the funnel, ai will remove
00:23:12
the training grounds.
00:23:13
Where new sellers learn to sell is SDR and BDRs.
00:23:17
Do you believe that to be true?
00:23:20
Is that it kind of removes that tripped traditional?
00:23:24
Well, I have to learn or kind of cut my teeth in this area so
00:23:27
then I can go be an AE because I don't have that experience.
00:23:30
Or do you think you can bring in people faster?
00:23:33
Speaker 4: You know, this topic, I think, is a much bigger
00:23:36
discussion, because what I have found every company wants to
00:23:40
hire someone that has three to five years experience because
00:23:43
they want somebody that's already trained and can hit the
00:23:45
ground running.
00:23:45
Well, that might have been okay to do 20 years ago, when there
00:23:49
were all kinds of companies with these really great training
00:23:51
programs that people would go through.
00:23:53
Because you know the companies, we always target company A
00:23:55
because they got a three month program.
00:23:57
You flash forward to today's day and age.
00:24:00
There's not many companies that invest in that first line
00:24:03
training, especially for SDRs, bdrs.
00:24:05
They want people to come in because they want them to
00:24:07
already be trained and hit the ground.
00:24:09
So I'm not a big believer in thinking that it can replace
00:24:13
training.
00:24:13
I think there's always a need for training, there's always a
00:24:16
need for mentorship, there's always a need to help somebody
00:24:19
get where they need to go because you've been there
00:24:22
already.
00:24:22
But I do think it can help speed up the collection of data
00:24:26
that it takes to be smart about a topic or smart about a
00:24:30
customer, and so I think that part of it will shorten the
00:24:34
cycle.
00:24:35
But the reps on the field, the number of repetitions you're
00:24:38
going to go through.
00:24:39
Nothing is going to shorten that cycle.
00:24:42
You need to actually, now that you've got this wonderful story,
00:24:45
you need to go talk about it and see if it works.
00:24:49
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, that makes sense right.
00:24:51
So you still have to go through the training.
00:24:52
You have to understand the products you're selling, your
00:24:55
market, your ideal customer profile, all of those things
00:24:59
don't go away.
00:24:59
But you can now accelerate that and accelerate the time to
00:25:04
value for a salesperson much faster by using the things that
00:25:08
are there Bingo.
00:25:10
Speaker 3: Drew, I want to dive in on something you mentioned
00:25:13
and I want to drill down on it a little bit more.
00:25:15
Just from your purview, what are the best sellers doing today
00:25:20
that sets them apart?
00:25:21
You alluded to some things.
00:25:23
I love that you shine a light on the best practices of your
00:25:27
team and that you talk about how they're training you and
00:25:30
they're bringing to you and to other members of the team their
00:25:33
best practices.
00:25:34
I think some of the best things that we can do as leaders is to
00:25:37
empower and enable our team to shine and to impact the work of
00:25:42
others.
00:25:43
In an ideal world, we find the unique superpowers and strengths
00:25:48
of everybody on the team and we can assimilate those into our
00:25:52
arsenal.
00:25:52
You mentioned video and some other things.
00:25:55
What are you seeing the best do right now that makes them stand
00:25:58
out?
00:25:59
Speaker 4: The very best are, first and foremost, on site with
00:26:04
the customer.
00:26:04
I bring that distinction up because we have a lot of folks
00:26:10
in the industry in any sales industry that maybe have three
00:26:13
to five years of sales experience.
00:26:15
If you have three to five years of sales experience, most of
00:26:18
that experience was through COVID.
00:26:19
Most of it was in a virtual setting.
00:26:22
It wasn't on site with customers.
00:26:24
You maybe don't have that experience.
00:26:26
You maybe didn't have that ability to do that.
00:26:28
The very best sellers are on site because we're a field team
00:26:32
and customers need to be having that interaction From there.
00:26:39
It's digging in to find out what the customer's problems are,
00:26:43
but then also a relentless ability to perfect their craft.
00:26:47
I'm going to continue to learn.
00:26:50
I love it when reps on my team are like I don't have access to
00:26:54
a demo system Time out.
00:26:56
Why do you need a demo system?
00:26:57
Well, because I'm going to go show a customer how to do it.
00:26:58
If you're a one man or one woman wrecking crew that can go
00:27:03
do this and want to take their career further and further by
00:27:06
doing more themselves, that just builds the trust bucket.
00:27:10
I don't have to hand you off to somebody else.
00:27:13
I'm doing more myself.
00:27:14
I care about being really great .
00:27:15
If you care about being elite, you're going to continue
00:27:18
learning.
00:27:19
I think that's it.
00:27:20
I think if you're on site and you care about being great and
00:27:22
you care about the customer's problems, I don't think you need
00:27:25
to overcomplicate.
00:27:25
That's the formula for being really great at this job.
00:27:29
Speaker 3: I love that.
00:27:29
In my mind I have a propensity model.
00:27:32
When you're able to be on site and in front of folks, that is
00:27:37
the highest propensity to take things forward.
00:27:39
I was at a summit event last week.
00:27:41
I had 22 executive meetings, had a dinner that I was able to
00:27:45
arrange just by messaging all the attendees.
00:27:48
That had over 30 executives in the room and just building
00:27:51
community.
00:27:51
We talk about that on the show all the time.
00:27:53
Sometimes the value that I bring to people isn't because I'm the
00:27:56
smartest guy in the room.
00:27:57
It's quite the contrary.
00:27:58
I can put people together in meaningful ways.
00:28:01
I can bring resources to them when you're in person.
00:28:03
If you're a seller, if you leave a meeting and you don't
00:28:06
have three to five follow-up opportunities that you keep the
00:28:11
momentum going on, right then and there, shame on you.
00:28:14
I landed on Friday from the plane, went straight to my desk,
00:28:18
cleared off 11 follow-up notes, two customers tying in every
00:28:23
single resource that I wanted to be part of.
00:28:25
The next step that's the key thing.
00:28:27
That is the propensity model.
00:28:28
Next, look, I don't discriminate against any way to
00:28:32
get in front of a meeting customer.
00:28:34
There's a lot of mutual conversations that sometimes
00:28:36
happen that are a prelude to getting in-person interaction.
00:28:40
You want to be intentional about setting those up.
00:28:44
I've talked a lot on this show about how I've leveraged
00:28:47
LinkedIn to create these relationships that didn't exist.
00:28:49
Then we've turned them into executive briefings that happen
00:28:53
on site.
00:28:53
Your goal is to sit down and break bread.
00:28:56
There's a lot of different ways that you can do that by finding
00:29:00
email addresses, using the Zoom Info tools of the world, going
00:29:04
out on LinkedIn all of the stuff that we talk about on this show
00:29:08
.
00:29:08
I could not agree more with Drew.
00:29:10
There was a comment in the chat too, from John.
00:29:12
Have you found cold calling is still important?
00:29:14
Drew, you sound like you are not phone averse.
00:29:17
How are you and your team using the phone today?
00:29:22
Speaker 4: We absolutely still use the phone.
00:29:23
I think you can do as much inbound with marketing and all
00:29:29
that as you want, but nothing replaces the outbound touch.
00:29:32
I think what you have to remember is it's hard.
00:29:36
You are going to call 20 people and you're going to get 19 nos.
00:29:39
That doesn't mean you're a failure, it just means the job
00:29:42
is hard.
00:29:42
I think people just again, they want the hack, they want the
00:29:46
easy thing to do.
00:29:48
It's not easy to hear 19 nos in a row.
00:29:51
That's why I'm a big believer in the team culture, because one
00:29:55
person might have heard 19 nos and they're down on the dumps.
00:29:57
The other person might have had that day where they got three
00:30:00
yeses out of five calls and they're riding high and that
00:30:02
vibe is good.
00:30:03
You bring the team back together, you talk about it and
00:30:05
everybody's pumping each other up.
00:30:06
I don't know.
00:30:09
I just am a big believer in you have to do the work if you want
00:30:13
to see the results there's no way to circumvent that.
00:30:19
Speaker 5: It brings us back to Mike Weinberg's episode with us.
00:30:22
We are talking about the charlatans on LinkedIn that had
00:30:25
all these magic bullets there's silver bullets that we're going
00:30:30
to get you five calls every day just by turning on this
00:30:33
automation.
00:30:33
I laugh at those.
00:30:35
Speaker 4: I laugh at those so hard.
00:30:36
There's 108 people at SAP, 108.
00:30:40
You don't think someone's tried that Seriously.
00:30:46
Speaker 5: It comes back to what you said.
00:30:47
Sales is hard, whether it's the cold call motion, it's your
00:30:52
LinkedIn motions, it takes time.
00:30:55
What you said.
00:30:56
I'm thinking of people that say , well, I posted and nothing
00:30:59
happened.
00:31:00
How often, well, I did.
00:31:02
Three of them, it's going to happen.
00:31:06
Honestly, right now I don't know what happened Over the last
00:31:10
week and a half.
00:31:11
My posts have just sucked.
00:31:13
I've had such little engagement and all the stuff in their ads.
00:31:17
There is that tendency to go man, this sucks, but you got to
00:31:20
remember it's hard.
00:31:21
You got to keep getting up and keep going back and the yeses
00:31:25
will come.
00:31:26
Speaker 3: Well, it's about mastering the craft too.
00:31:28
Brandon, I can tell, as an observer of your content and
00:31:32
your posts, the influence that what you're learning has had on
00:31:37
what you put out there the types of posts, the types of graphics
00:31:41
, what you talk about, how you share stories and you engage and
00:31:44
tag people.
00:31:45
I think that goes back to Drew's point too voraciously
00:31:49
learning and soaking up podcast content.
00:31:52
I was really arrogant in my 20s and I just thought, oh, I don't
00:31:56
need a mentor, I don't need to read books or podcasts about
00:31:59
sales, I'm just naturally good at it and it's clearly working.
00:32:02
What's funny is I was working in these boiler room call
00:32:06
centers.
00:32:07
The reality is I look back and was I really selling anything?
00:32:10
In?
00:32:11
Compare and contrast that to now in enterprise selling and
00:32:14
really working with executives at very prominent organizations
00:32:18
on very meaningful, dramatic change.
00:32:22
If you want to be in sales for the long haul which there are a
00:32:25
lot of pros to doing it, the benefits, the relationships, the
00:32:29
money if you want to be in it for the long haul, you've got to
00:32:32
work toward honing and mastering your craft and there's
00:32:35
so many great ways to do it.
00:32:36
Seek the greats, go out and find people.
00:32:39
I mean part of what I love about this show is we can go out
00:32:41
and find people like Drew who can come on and talk about the
00:32:45
things that they've done, but the fundamentals and the work
00:32:50
are common themes.
00:32:50
They've always got to be there.
00:32:52
Speaker 4: They are.
00:32:52
I mean, there's an epidemic of order takers out there right now
00:32:56
.
00:32:56
There's just like we just want the easy button to hack so that
00:33:00
the leads and the deals flow to me, because that's so much
00:33:03
easier and if you're in it to be an order taker, you might win
00:33:09
one year and have a flu.
00:33:11
But if you want repeated success it's a professional job
00:33:15
you have to treat it like any other professional job and you
00:33:18
need to go out and you need to solve some problems.
00:33:23
Speaker 2: So to have a quick question, my mind's been going
00:33:26
when you were talking about some of the things there, and even
00:33:28
going back to some of our AI conversation.
00:33:30
You mentioned the importance of being on site or face to face,
00:33:34
and I assumed you also probably go to shows or conferences and
00:33:37
things like that as well with the team.
00:33:40
Speaker 4: We do at times when it calls for it.
00:33:43
Yeah.
00:33:45
Speaker 2: So are you finding, I guess, if you look back, a lot
00:33:48
of people looked at going to a show or even an on-site meeting
00:33:51
as a way to open a door.
00:33:52
But are you seeing that you're better served by setting the
00:33:57
stage, building the relationship , doing a lot of the things in
00:34:00
the digital world, so that when you have that on-site meeting
00:34:03
and Carson I mean, it's a near take on this from your
00:34:06
experience last week had you already built a lot of the
00:34:09
relationship so that the value of that face to face was
00:34:13
exponentially higher than if you just met them for the very
00:34:15
first time and didn't have any interaction with them prior?
00:34:20
Speaker 4: Yeah.
00:34:20
So I think, if you're going, so we'll put a lot of our own shows
00:34:23
on, and those shows that we put on, what we try to do is we try
00:34:28
to make it about the customer's network.
00:34:31
So not only are you going to come learn a few things from us
00:34:34
about what we're doing in your industry, but the more important
00:34:37
thing is you're going to leave having meeting or met you know
00:34:40
five or 10 or 15 clients that are either non-competing
00:34:44
businesses to yours that you can actually have some legit
00:34:47
relationships with and talk openly about it, or maybe
00:34:50
similar to businesses to yours and you might learn a few things
00:34:52
of what they've done to solve it.
00:34:53
So I think, when you have those shows, if it's about the
00:34:57
customer and their experience, I think it's really great to do.
00:35:00
If it's just a show and tell, where we're going to stand up
00:35:03
and do a bunch of presentations, I think you're maybe you'll get
00:35:06
some people to attend, but it's just a big marketing call.
00:35:08
Maybe not so much, but I do love those one to many shows
00:35:14
where the customers walk away going.
00:35:16
Hey, you know what?
00:35:17
The people I met in this show I'm going to stay in contact
00:35:20
with coming out and they communicate and they work on
00:35:23
problems together.
00:35:24
That part is pretty cool.
00:35:26
Speaker 3: Events are what you make of them.
00:35:27
You know, like Drew was saying, you know what's interesting.
00:35:30
So, tom, you asked about like, did we have a lot of these
00:35:32
relationships going in?
00:35:33
Probably not with some of these folks that were C-level and VP
00:35:37
level to the point that we should.
00:35:39
I've had a lot of times in tech .
00:35:40
You know I've been with this team for a few months.
00:35:42
You know you become beholden to certain titles within
00:35:46
organizations, like IT director or system administrator or
00:35:50
procurement, and we need and value those relationships.
00:35:53
But a lot of times for meaningful transformational
00:35:55
change, you also need CEO, cfo, chief data officer, chief
00:35:59
strategy officer, and a lot of those folks were at these events
00:36:02
, but my team nor I had ever really met some of them.
00:36:05
You know.
00:36:06
I really told them.
00:36:07
You know, and I've talked on this show about making the
00:36:09
transition into this role how we put a newsletter process in
00:36:13
place.
00:36:13
We put a webinar series to passively educate all of these
00:36:17
folks on all of the announcements that we were
00:36:19
making, so that we could kind of demystify those.
00:36:21
And what was fascinating is I used all of the contact
00:36:25
information from folks that were showing up.
00:36:26
I messaged all of them in advance.
00:36:28
I told my team this is the biggest play we're going to do
00:36:31
in January, or probably this entire quarter, because you will
00:36:33
be in person with these folks and we have, you know, a
00:36:37
thousand customers are going to be at this event, so get in
00:36:39
front of as many people as possible.
00:36:41
Invite me to as much of this as possible, drop everything.
00:36:43
I skipped all of these internal sessions which I really wanted
00:36:47
to see, and I will watch those recordings, but FaceTime with
00:36:52
customers is sacred and so getting that time in front of
00:36:56
them was so important.
00:36:57
I didn't know them, but they knew of me because they knew I
00:37:00
was the face of these webinars that they were doing.
00:37:03
They knew that I was sending them these newsletters, so I
00:37:06
built a familiarity and what I love about it too.
00:37:08
Sometimes sellers are afraid to send a lot of marketing
00:37:13
materials or to continue to pelt customers with information
00:37:16
because they think it'll be a turn off.
00:37:17
I had so many customers come up to me and say thank you.
00:37:21
These started out of nowhere, like in October, and we just
00:37:24
started getting these and they've been so helpful and
00:37:26
informative.
00:37:27
Customers are purchasing as a result of these things and the
00:37:30
intent is to just guide and navigate and make sure that they
00:37:33
know the resources that are there.
00:37:34
You can't possibly touch a thousand customers in a month,
00:37:37
but you can with the right resources and using video, using
00:37:42
newsletters, webinars, things like that.
00:37:43
So we knew of each other.
00:37:45
They know who I was.
00:37:46
There was some familiarity.
00:37:48
We broke bread, you know, at a lot of them like I mess.
00:37:51
Be smart about what you do with these shows.
00:37:54
I emailed every one of them.
00:37:55
I gave them my cell phone number and said, hey, we're
00:37:56
trying to concoct a dinner night one and get as many of you
00:38:00
together as possible so you can meet, we can network, et cetera.
00:38:03
Most of them texted me.
00:38:05
I texted them the directions to the restaurant.
00:38:08
Now I've got all their cell phone numbers and they have mine
00:38:11
.
00:38:11
Ton of value in that.
00:38:12
So you know you're all looking for hacks.
00:38:14
That's the hack.
00:38:15
Find ways to follow better relationships with your
00:38:18
customers so that you don't fall into the epidemic of order
00:38:21
takers.
00:38:22
Drew, you're great at the little bombs man.
00:38:25
I love that I'm not in a epidemic of order takers.
00:38:29
Speaker 5: Dude Carson is on fire today.
00:38:31
Keep going.
00:38:33
Speaker 2: And Carson did they.
00:38:34
You know, I'm sure, because you know Brandon Lee, that helped
00:38:36
as well, right?
00:38:37
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, it always does, it always does.
00:38:41
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:38:42
Speaker 5: I love being the first one.
00:38:43
Speaker 3: I've saw your webinar once.
00:38:44
Speaker 2: But that, brandon, oh my gosh, and you know what.
00:38:47
Speaker 3: So I do another show with Hilka Fawber and I know you
00:38:50
guys know Hilka.
00:38:50
He was at this.
00:38:51
He was in Seattle at the same time, met him in person for the
00:38:54
very first time and we've been collaborating on stuff for four
00:38:57
years.
00:38:57
So remember in person, time is sacred.
00:39:01
Always try to seek that as the end result.
00:39:07
Speaker 5: And I think bringing that back around to that, it all
00:39:09
starts with familiarity.
00:39:11
And what we have now, that the four of us didn't have at the
00:39:16
beginning of our careers, is this stuff in front of us.
00:39:19
We have.
00:39:20
We have LinkedIn that we can share, like Carson's talking
00:39:23
about.
00:39:23
You're sharing what you're, what you're observing, what
00:39:27
you're thinking, what's going on in the industry, and people are
00:39:30
watching.
00:39:30
And a lot of times we quit because we say, oh, nobody's
00:39:34
paying attention.
00:39:35
But then you hear the stories of people would say like James
00:39:38
Gilman shared this story with us .
00:39:40
He started using LinkedIn and he was using it more and more
00:39:44
little discouraged.
00:39:45
And then he went to his high school reunion and he's like I
00:39:47
was like a rock star there.
00:39:48
People kept coming up to me going, dude, you're killing it
00:39:51
on LinkedIn.
00:39:52
It's like none of them had ever liked anything, none of them
00:39:55
had ever commented on anything, and I know that's a little bit
00:39:58
on the personal side, but they're watching.
00:40:00
So this, this platform we have, so we talk about modern selling
00:40:04
.
00:40:04
Familiarity is important, that face to face is important.
00:40:07
But how do we hack that?
00:40:09
Do the work?
00:40:10
You leverage LinkedIn, leverage the webinars, leverage the
00:40:14
newsletters going out.
00:40:15
It takes discipline, it takes work, but when you do it as we
00:40:21
were talking about earlier, then when you make that call, they
00:40:24
answer it and go hey, how are you doing?
00:40:25
Because they know you.
00:40:31
Speaker 2: So let's let's switch over a little bit.
00:40:32
You know, drew, you you transitioned right from an
00:40:35
individual contributor to sales leadership.
00:40:37
I think it's on your LinkedIn profile, when you first go in
00:40:40
there, it says fundamentals and bearish gimmicks.
00:40:43
Talk to us a little bit about that, what you mean by that.
00:40:47
And let's talk a little bit about I know you're big into
00:40:50
culture and kind of what you consider to be, from a
00:40:53
management perspective, the culture and the environment that
00:40:55
you're trying to create.
00:40:58
Speaker 4: Yeah, so fundamentals and bearish gimmicks for me.
00:41:01
I don't remember how that came about, but we were having a
00:41:05
conversation like this and it's always about, especially on
00:41:09
LinkedIn, like you'll get pings from everybody about the latest
00:41:13
whatever.
00:41:14
And I just like to say that and remind myself because something
00:41:20
is flashy, something's exciting .
00:41:22
I'm a salesperson at heart so I secretly, I love to be sold.
00:41:25
Right, most sales people do love to be sold.
00:41:27
We have a respect for it.
00:41:28
We appreciate it.
00:41:29
I have to remind myself, and I use it as a mantra, that, like
00:41:32
you know what, at the end of the day, none of this matters
00:41:35
except for the tried and true fundamentals and you know the
00:41:41
social selling of what it used to mean in the past, the
00:41:43
charlatans that you talk about and all that stuff.
00:41:45
And I know that Mike and Carson and everybody beats their fists
00:41:48
on the table going they're not.
00:41:49
They're not here anymore.
00:41:49
But the people who exercise the discipline and the fundamentals
00:41:53
to use it the right way are still here and we will still be
00:41:57
here tomorrow and in the future.
00:41:59
And there there is something to be said that if you've got great
00:42:04
discipline and great fundamentals and you're in sales
00:42:06
and you know how to generate revenue.
00:42:07
You have a little bit of power in your role and in your future
00:42:13
and you can determine kind of your path and if it's not with
00:42:16
your existing company, there's another company that will pick
00:42:18
you up, because there's one thing that they want, it's the
00:42:21
skill set you have.
00:42:22
So if you're coming in, I tell my team all the time like you're
00:42:25
the pro athlete, like you're the talent, you are the talent,
00:42:28
you're the ones generating the revenue.
00:42:29
You know you can kind of pick and choose where you want to go
00:42:32
and what you do.
00:42:33
You know I want you to stay with me.
00:42:35
We're built a culture but at the end of the day you're the
00:42:37
talent.
00:42:38
You're going to take that where you think that you can go.
00:42:39
You know be the most successful person there is.
00:42:44
Speaker 2: So how does that translate into the culture that
00:42:47
you I think the words you use is action, discipline and
00:42:51
accountability.
00:42:51
How have you found, as a sales leader, to build that culture
00:42:55
and how do you see that your sales team is responding?
00:42:58
Obviously, you're trying to build that talent, but you don't
00:43:01
want them to run off.
00:43:02
So how do you build that great culture?
00:43:04
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think it starts with practicing what you
00:43:07
preach.
00:43:08
I think the team sees me be disciplined with my time.
00:43:12
They see me being disciplined with the actions.
00:43:14
They see me trying to bring value to them, and so they know
00:43:18
that it's not just a talking head up there spewing whatever
00:43:21
the company's message is.
00:43:22
We're going to go solve the company's goals and objectives
00:43:28
because that's our job.
00:43:29
But we're going to do that in our flavor, with the way that we
00:43:32
want to do it and the way that we feel is what's going to build
00:43:36
our culture to the most successful path forward.
00:43:38
Because we kind of like winners beget winners.
00:43:43
You want to be on a team that wins.
00:43:44
You want to be surrounded by people that win.
00:43:46
It's contagious, that environment.
00:43:49
We were talking about the Lions before this.
00:43:52
That's a great example of when you've got years and years and
00:43:54
years of losing.
00:43:55
You kind of get beat down and you forget why you're even doing
00:43:58
the job to begin with.
00:43:59
But if you can bring someone in that kind of makes people
00:44:02
believe in themselves, makes people enjoy what they're doing,
00:44:04
makes people really want to win , then you start to see some of
00:44:07
that success and you celebrate it All of a sudden.
00:44:10
Wait a minute.
00:44:11
We are a team of winners.
00:44:12
We are a team that can go get this done.
00:44:14
This is a fun place to be.
00:44:16
Yeah, we've got to do all this corporate stuff, but that's part
00:44:19
of the job.
00:44:19
Let's go have fun while we're doing it.
00:44:21
So that's what I try to bring just that sense of being real
00:44:25
about it and making sure that the team understands I'm here to
00:44:28
remove obstacles to the best of my ability.
00:44:30
But let's go win, because there's nothing more fun than
00:44:33
winning.
00:44:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's interesting.
00:44:37
Right Going back, I was just thinking about our Mike Weinberg
00:44:39
episode again.
00:44:41
He was saying that sales leadership is kind of something
00:44:44
that's kind of gone by the wayside.
00:44:45
It's not something that people have been practicing and when
00:44:50
they do, it's more RevOps than it is sales leadership.
00:44:53
But what I hear you saying again is that you're putting
00:44:56
that emphasis on the sales leadership and then the
00:44:59
forecasting and all that RevOps aspect of it will come out of
00:45:03
that as a by product of the good sales leadership.
00:45:07
Speaker 4: That stuff gets remarkably easier if you're
00:45:11
doing the things that you need to be do before that.
00:45:14
So there's always going to be forecast calls, there's always
00:45:17
going to be RevOps, there's always going to be those types
00:45:20
of tasks that you have to do because reality is this
00:45:22
information has to get disseminated across all the
00:45:25
people that need it.
00:45:25
It's got to go up.
00:45:26
We have to understand where we're going.
00:45:27
We have to lead the business.
00:45:28
It's easier to do a forecast call if you've spent the four
00:45:32
days before out in the field doing your job.
00:45:33
I know what's happening with this customer because I was just
00:45:37
with them.
00:45:37
If you're not with them and you can quickly decide or you can
00:45:41
quickly understand who's giving you a line of crap and who's
00:45:45
actually done the job, they get exposed pretty quickly.
00:45:48
I would say on my team everyone has a lot of pride in being
00:45:53
great and they have a lot of pride in doing the job well and
00:45:56
we don't really have those problems If you get to a
00:45:58
forecast call and the information goes quickly and
00:46:02
RevOps are what they are.
00:46:06
Speaker 2: Hey quick, I want to hit Josh's question too here.
00:46:08
I think it's an interesting one .
00:46:09
Are you using AI and your leadership and growth planning,
00:46:13
or even the plans that you put together from a leadership
00:46:16
perspective?
00:46:18
Speaker 4: I haven't used it yet in that capacity because I'm
00:46:22
trying to figure out the right ways to leverage it.
00:46:24
There's simple things that are coming within our organization
00:46:28
that I think are going to make life a lot easier just around
00:46:31
forecasting and emails and all that kind of stuff.
00:46:33
Right now, my primary use of AI is to try to make the reps life
00:46:39
easier and to try to bring more value quicker to the scenario.
00:46:43
I haven't really done it internally yet.
00:46:46
Speaker 3: Okay, I am a little bit, and there's a litany of
00:46:51
ways, just because we're starting to see more and more AI
00:46:54
being infused into some of the tools that we use every day,
00:46:57
like your instant messaging system might have teams, your
00:47:01
CRM system might have dynamics, having AI plugged into these
00:47:06
things where you can very quickly draw or infer trends or
00:47:11
things of that stature, or you can interact with the bot to
00:47:15
very quickly pull revenue totals and things of that stature and
00:47:18
help with territory plans for 2024.
00:47:22
As an example, where I'm using it the most, though, is honestly
00:47:25
helping me with my team meeting agendas To be able to comb my
00:47:28
team chat.
00:47:29
I've got multiple team chats one with the executive
00:47:32
leadership team, one with our executive leadership team, one
00:47:36
with our extended 40 plus folks that touch our market, and then
00:47:42
one with just my direct reports.
00:47:43
I can comb those in seconds flat and say what would be a
00:47:48
suggested agenda for our next team meeting or our next all
00:47:51
hands, and using that as a theme or parameters or guardrails or
00:47:56
suggestions as far as what to talk about, based on what the
00:47:59
chatter is, or even going into a one-on-one and being able to go
00:48:02
back through the last segment of emails and messages between
00:48:06
myself and this person.
00:48:07
Every time it reminds me of something that I need to bring
00:48:10
up during those conversations.
00:48:12
I think we'll see it more and more integrated into our
00:48:14
leadership and growth plan.
00:48:17
Speaker 4: I agree with you and I think it's a little different
00:48:18
for Carson and I than maybe some of the other folks that might
00:48:20
be listening out there, because Microsoft and ChatGPT pretty
00:48:25
well infused their massive multi-billion dollar investment.
00:48:28
Sap's got their own AI that we're delivering.
00:48:30
It's coming standard within what we do day to day.
00:48:33
There's probably a lot more there than what I even realized,
00:48:37
because it's just there and I just use the tools, versus me
00:48:41
going out and going to ChatGPT or Bar or any of those things
00:48:45
and saying give me that agenda.
00:48:46
I'm definitely going to pick that up from what you're talking
00:48:49
about, carson, and try it, because there's value there for
00:48:52
sure.
00:48:53
Speaker 3: Yeah, drew, you said something else really important
00:48:55
too, that I think kind of answers Joshua's question is as
00:48:58
you're thinking about a growth plan, when you think about a
00:49:02
certain subset of customers, like a subvertical or a vertical
00:49:06
within the vertical, or being able to speak their language,
00:49:10
there's so many things that AI can arm you with as far as
00:49:14
trends in the industry or even some of the old tried and true
00:49:19
things.
00:49:19
I subscribe to a bunch of industry trade magazines.
00:49:22
I subscribe like I get a daily digest of news and I can direct
00:49:28
that even into AI to say is there something that's
00:49:30
actionable that I should jump on today?
00:49:32
It might force one thing to the top.
00:49:35
Drew, you were talking about the diligence and the discipline
00:49:37
around scheduling.
00:49:38
Ai can make us work smarter.
00:49:42
We're never going to stop working hard.
00:49:44
I hate the old phrase work smarter, not harder.
00:49:47
We're going to work hard, but AI is going to help us work
00:49:50
smarter so that our actions have more impact.
00:49:53
I think that's where we will continue to look at how can I
00:49:56
use AI to compliment my work so that I am literally doing after
00:50:00
the best possible next action and as disciplined as possible.
00:50:06
Speaker 4: Any of the business processes where you're trying to
00:50:09
gather something so you can make a decision.
00:50:11
I try to leverage AI in that area because the quicker I can
00:50:15
gather what I need to gather means the more time I can spend
00:50:18
on making a thoughtful decision.
00:50:19
I haven't leveraged AI to try to make any of those decisions
00:50:22
for me yet, although I might start to try to see what it
00:50:25
provides back, but it's been always around reducing the
00:50:28
amount of time to gather the data, to gather the information,
00:50:32
whether, like you said, industry trends or internal data
00:50:35
.
00:50:35
That'll help me spend more time on making that decision.
00:50:39
Speaker 3: I want to touch on Bob's question too, or comment.
00:50:41
Too many senior leaders try to control culture.
00:50:45
Culture is built from the bottom up.
00:50:47
What the top does is set the guardrails.
00:50:50
Leadership sets the tone for the culture.
00:50:53
The best thing that leadership can do is to get close to the
00:50:57
customer and to the field and really understand in that sphere
00:51:01
what matters most when I started working with this
00:51:06
organization a few months back.
00:51:08
It's not about coming in and making sudden big, sweeping
00:51:11
changes because I can.
00:51:12
It's about spending time in the field, listening to customers,
00:51:16
what matters to them, what's worked, what doesn't work.
00:51:20
Talk to my team, understand what works, what doesn't work.
00:51:23
What does this person want to be known for.
00:51:25
How can I help this person maximize their paycheck or their
00:51:29
career trajectory?
00:51:30
These things that I wish I had known more of as an individual
00:51:34
contributor.
00:51:35
That's the kind of culture that I try to nurture.
00:51:39
That's the thing.
00:51:40
To Bob's point we don't create the culture, but we absolutely
00:51:43
can set the tone for a creation and a nurturing of culture.
00:51:47
Drew, what are your thoughts on Bob's comment?
00:51:51
Speaker 4: I would have to agree with what you said.
00:51:52
I think the team will run as fast as you do and they will
00:51:56
rise to the occasion.
00:51:57
I think if you're out leading from the front, I think that
00:52:02
good things happen.
00:52:03
You don't need to micromanage, you don't need to do any of that
00:52:07
stuff.
00:52:07
You need to empower, step back and let the team go do their job
00:52:11
.
00:52:11
Like you said, set the guardrails and remove obstacles.
00:52:17
Speaker 2: As we wrap up here, I want to hit John's question.
00:52:19
I have a comment and I want to get your guys' take on it as
00:52:22
well.
00:52:22
He says well, AI replaced salespeople or even outbound
00:52:25
sales, appointment setting.
00:52:26
I got this question.
00:52:28
I was in a meeting last couple of days.
00:52:29
I got a similar question.
00:52:32
My personal viewpoint is, of course and we've touched on this
00:52:35
already we will never replace salespeople.
00:52:37
The role is so valuable, the relationship, everything we
00:52:41
talked about.
00:52:41
But I do believe and we've touched on this is that, whether
00:52:45
you call it a digital twin or whatever you want to call it, as
00:52:48
salespeople, as sales managers, we will have this guardian
00:52:52
angel digital twin capability to be able to help us with all the
00:52:56
things we've talked about today , and then a thousand times more
00:52:59
, and help us.
00:53:00
I hate to use the word automate , but to some degree, automate
00:53:04
some of the tasks that take time and streamline what we're doing
00:53:08
.
00:53:08
My answer to that would be absolutely no, but AI is going
00:53:12
to make salespeople a lot better , a lot more effective, not only
00:53:15
as a salespeople, but to the customer.
00:53:17
The customer is going to have a much better experience with the
00:53:21
salesperson because of the knowledge and the things that we
00:53:24
talked about.
00:53:24
What's your guys take on that?
00:53:26
Do you think that's accurate or is there a different world
00:53:31
ahead of us?
00:53:33
Speaker 4: I think that AI will help make the art of sales, or
00:53:38
the science of sales, more efficient.
00:53:41
That could mean we may need fewer, but that doesn't mean
00:53:46
we're going to need zero.
00:53:47
I think there will always be a person in there that's going to
00:53:51
interact with the customer, so long as that person has to make
00:53:53
a major purchasing decision and they have to answer to someone
00:53:56
else.
00:53:56
It's pretty hard to go to a board of directors and say I
00:53:59
just spent $10 million on ABC because the software told me to
00:54:03
do it.
00:54:03
I don't know if we're there yet .
00:54:05
We might get to that point, but I don't think we're there yet
00:54:08
for quite some time.
00:54:09
I think AI helps us become more efficient, but I also think AI
00:54:15
helps everyone in the organization become capable of
00:54:19
sales.
00:54:19
There's a lot of people in the organization Everyone's got a
00:54:22
job in their company to make it work but everyone also is part
00:54:25
of sales.
00:54:25
Everything we do helps drive a sale in the company.
00:54:28
I think AI can help bring down the fear that I maybe am not
00:54:33
prepared to have that conversation and really help
00:54:36
people understand that you know what what I do.
00:54:38
While it might be revenue enabling, it's still part of
00:54:41
revenue generation.
00:54:42
I think AI will help with that.
00:54:45
You might have customer service folks who maybe now are
00:54:48
empowered to do more than they were before because they have
00:54:51
data in front of them and they're not afraid to have that
00:54:53
conversation.
00:54:54
You might have other folks in the organization be able to pick
00:54:57
up the phone and call the sales team, have an intelligent
00:54:59
conversation because the AI helped them speak our language,
00:55:03
so now they know what to ask us.
00:55:04
I just think it makes everyone participate in the active sales
00:55:09
and it makes us more efficient at it.
00:55:11
Speaker 2: I completely agree, that's good.
00:55:15
Speaker 5: I got a page full of notes.
00:55:17
Speaker 2: That was awesome, Drew.
00:55:18
This is one to listen to a couple of times.
00:55:21
Speaker 5: Yeah, absolutely.
00:55:23
Speaker 2: Thank you very much, Drew.
00:55:24
Really some great insights and I think everybody appreciated
00:55:28
some of the practical advice and tips that you provided today.
00:55:32
Speaker 5: You know what today was missing?
00:55:33
Drew was awesome, but you know what was missing, Carson?
00:55:37
Where's our movie reference?
00:55:38
Sum us up, man.
00:55:40
Speaker 3: I thought I made a brief one at the beginning.
00:55:42
I'll have to go back and check the tape, but I mean, if
00:55:46
anything I think about assimilation, assimilating
00:55:50
different things into our arsenal it reminds me of Star
00:55:53
Trek and the board.
00:55:54
We're always going out and trying to pick up these new
00:55:58
sales pieces, acumen, experiences, resources and
00:56:04
making them part of ourselves so that we can be as effective as
00:56:08
possible.
00:56:09
Speaker 2: That's what I kept in mind, well done.
00:56:11
Speaker 4: Well done.
00:56:11
I think I heard color of money reference in the beginning,
00:56:14
that's true.
00:56:15
Speaker 5: That's true.
00:56:15
That's true If we're keeping score we'll die.
00:56:18
Speaker 4: I was listening.
00:56:19
That's an easy one.
00:56:22
Speaker 5: Yeah, color of money and money ball.
00:56:23
They're just kind of give-me's now.
00:56:25
Yeah, we bring those up a lot.
00:56:27
Hand back to the future giving Brandon's cameo.
00:56:30
There we go, Drew.
00:56:32
This was excellent.
00:56:33
Thank you so much.
00:56:34
Carson's going to end us.
00:56:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, Carson.
00:56:37
Hey, I expect you to wave to us on Sunday.
00:56:40
I'm going to be looking for you .
00:56:42
Speaker 3: I will not be anywhere near T-swift, I'm just
00:56:44
letting you know.
00:56:45
But I will be in Vegas at the Super Bowl.
00:56:47
Go 49ers.
00:56:49
Speaker 2: OK, I don't know if I can second that or not.
00:56:53
Speaker 3: You're a California guy, tom, why not?
00:56:55
I'm a Southern.
00:56:56
Speaker 2: California guy.
00:56:57
Speaker 5: Southern California, you can't cheer for them.
00:56:59
Speaker 2: You don't like the Rams yeah that's hard to run.
00:57:03
Speaker 3: They dumped us.
00:57:04
That's why, see, we can't keep football teams here in St Louis.
00:57:07
I've lost the Cardinals and the Rams in my lifetime, so I've
00:57:11
got family that used to live in the Bay Area.
00:57:13
That's why I've always been a Niners fan.
00:57:15
My wife's going to be decked out in Chiefs gear, so we'll be
00:57:18
a house divided on Sunday, so wish me luck.
00:57:22
Speaker 2: All right well, we'll look for you, all right well?
00:57:24
Thanks again, carson.
00:57:25
Wrap us up here.
00:57:26
Speaker 3: Until next time.
00:57:27
Thank you everyone for joining Drew.
00:57:29
Amazing stuff today.
00:57:30
We've got to have you back, my friend and happy modern selling.
00:57:34
Thanks everyone.
00:57:39
Speaker 2: Hey, tom Burton here and I wanted to personally thank
00:57:41
you for listening or watching today's episode of Social
00:57:45
Selling 2.0.
00:57:46
If you enjoyed or found value in today's show, please share
00:57:50
with your friends and colleagues .
00:57:51
Also, we'd really appreciate it if you could leave a review on
00:57:55
iTunes or your favorite podcast outlet.
00:57:57
And please also subscribe to our YouTube channel and join our
00:58:02
free online community at socialselling20.com.
00:58:05
There you'll get free access to the latest social selling
00:58:10
resources, training sessions, webinars and can collaborate
00:58:14
with other social selling professionals.
00:58:16
Thank you again for listening and I look forward to seeing you
00:58:19
in our next episode.
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