Optimize Your B2B Sales Cycle for Engineering

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all right hey Scott thanks for joining us today is where you're getting started give us a little background on yourself yeah thanks Brian um yeah so uh who I've been in the uh supply chain industry uh for really the last 30 years uh started out as a technical guy actually computer science and engineering as a programmer and uh and uh I was I did that for about four or five years and worked as a sales engineer for a number of years and and I saw the sales guys like in these suits driving these cars having all this fun making all this money doing all the work exactly and I'm like I need to be doing this I'm on the wrong side of this equation so seriously seriously right so I took the leap took the leap to uh to work in sales and got a real education in the in the mid 90s just hardcore uh selling printers and uh multi-function copier machines like that like the heart I think I jumped into some of the hardest stuff you could possibly do um but uh you know and then have uh uh have been a uh an Enterprise sales rep for part of that uh as well as a sales leader for a few years um and then I owned a software company at one point as well and uh yeah we I took those those programming skills put them to use and uh we we wrote I wrote the basics of a warehouse management software system uh right in the supply chain industry and uh we went out and sold the thing to like three or four clients and then actually had to make the thing work right so yeah we hired a real programmer to uh to make it work and uh you know and built a business off of that and uh sold that company back in uh 2007 2008. um wasn't the best time to be selling a business so we kind of broke even and then I went back to work really for the last 15 years as an Enterprise software sales rep by selling to to large companies selling warehouse management and software systems uh and then most recently just had a big change in my career and uh and took a to the role of Vice President of sales and marketing at the company that I work at now Pacific barcode so I've got a I got a team of uh about 11 people that report up to me now and uh so it's just it's a different transition right you know from well my career is similar I started engineer pre-sale sales what was your motive it sounded like it was economic actually you know I always knew I don't know where this came from maybe my my dad was a great was a big influence on my life um very very positive cheerleader for me my entire life um but uh I always actually I from from a very young age from actually from like seventh grade I always knew that I wanted to get a technical background but work in sales right and and yeah and having that technical background would launch basically make me a very complete salesperson right so that I could I could walk the walk talk the talk without having somebody there to hold my hand and this and if that that decision has made a massive difference in my career because a lot of technical people have a real hard time in that transition that they like the economics of it but yeah they don't like the pressure they don't like being treated like yeah a Fix-It man no no no not at all actually I wanted so I mean yeah I knew that was I knew that was going to be part of it um but I approached the the sales equation sort of like I would the programming equation right and that's I literally went through and read every single sales book at the end of time it was Tom Hopkins Zig Ziglar you know all those guys all the all the classics and I literally studied and read and studied and tweaked and adjusted and I've continued that through through most of my career well software development and software engineering because it sounds like you were in the 90s that's when software engineering came out yeah yeah object orientedness reusability component based development that's pattern matching yeah that's taking how people are doing the same thing five different ways and how do you make it generic yeah yeah now that's that sales process right it is right right yeah that is that's an interesting I think that's an interesting connection it's a very interesting connection because um too many you um yeah classic sales people they look at each sales call each deal is this unique snowflake that's never presented itself to Earth before yeah yes but come on people have the same motives similar problems seminal similar process similar concerns and a smart sales person matches this yeah yes it really that is that's such an interesting I never made that connection before that's a really interesting yeah observation and insight um because it is true that that's something at least for me and I know you have too is I've had a massive focus on sales process so that I can build scalability repeatability for my right for my own sales Cycles when I was an Enterprise sales rep so yeah yeah and I think too many people look at it you know because there is an art to it a big art element but it's not a hundred percent art there is a lot of similarities between these deals and what's going on yes yes yeah I couldn't agree more did that become your superpower as a salesperson yeah it did uh absolutely there was a point uh there was a point back in I want to say it was like a 2013 or 2014 um and it was a real pivotal moment for me um I was I had I had been a couple years at a WMS warehouse management system software company and I was doing I was doing okay but I was that guy that was like 95 98 right 90 I was just knocking on the door to Greatness and I I just couldn't figure out how how can I get myself to that next level um and uh in one year I got beat I mean I got I got I took a beat down hard right you know I was I had I had a couple deals that was absolutely convinced that I had I had had them in the bag gonna close them talking to sales leadership this is 95 done and I was the first guy out of each one of those deals I was so deluded in in lying to myself on where I really was in that process um that it made me for six months I was so shaken by that experience because I was so sure that I had those deals so I literally took six months and went back and retooled and revamped my process um so that I could really clearly follow and understand where you know um where I fell down um but I also learned that um part of part of winning these Enterprise level deals and becoming successful at it means that you have to very clearly you got to do a few things one is I've got to very clearly line up you know I've got to lead my customers through the buying process because they just don't know right they don't know right they think they know they really don't know um and the other thing too is is when you're competing at a high level the competition is fierce and and you have to you literally have to outwork the competition I mean you have to go if they're going three steps you have to go five if they're going seven steps you've got to go ten and it just requires that of you and uh and that once I made that connection it was it was lights out and did you make any judgment mistakes did you view it as like you weren't the golf course type sales person because a lot of us who come from a technical background we don't have the schmooz gene yeah yeah you know you know what actually what well uh I I think I got I got the screws part of it yeah what I what I didn't have though was the was the true business part of it okay and that and that was the ability to to not be afraid to ask hard financial questions or ask hard questions when presented I was too busy trying to look good right and I let my ego was my ego was was riding way too high and I wasn't humble enough to ask the actual real questions you know because that's it because a lot when a sales rep and a customer come together they both have a view of the world a frame yeah yeah and one person becomes submissive to the other person's frame yes and almost always it's a salesperson [Laughter] and when that happens what do they buy they buy the least amount possible as slow as possible yeah that's right that's right it's absolutely right yeah that's absolutely right tell me about the business part that you need it to hone and polish yeah uh so so for me that was really it was about seeing myself as a as equal business stature right to those that I that I was doing business with when it came to the technical people of course right when I was dealing with I.T man I was up here you know you're in your Zone absolutely I knew what I was talking about but when I was working with you know CEOs or CEOs or you know or uh you know senior vice presidents of operations uh I was definitely operating at this level and I was not leading I was absolutely submitting to their will instead of pushing back or challenging them on their their some of their preconceived notions I was I was too afraid and I let fear drive me that I was going to mess up the deal but what was funny was when I started when I and I realized that as part of that retooling is that I had to somehow I had to either it for a little while or I just had to get more aggressive at it and change change the way that I was showing up in the relationship right I was not I was showing up um just timid and I was showing up submissive and when I started to assert myself it's incredible how that Dynamic changed completely right because I I actually the funny part was it completely flipped is that I became that they actually I would I would put my hand up and stop and we would I would I would challenge them and they would appreciate the challenge and I didn't realize that that was the thing right yeah because you're getting them to look at it differently correct because I bet they were looking at what you were selling as an expense a cost oh yeah yeah absolutely absolutely not an investment not a critical piece of their business right yes yeah now Brian that's exactly right that's exactly right yeah and there it took some time for me I had to believe that too you know it took some time for me to believe it before I could actually sell it so yeah there's a lot of reps go oh it's just Cost can I get five give them five more points right and that's that's the begging that's the oh it's just an expense yep yep instead of what can this product do for their business now you gotta technically what it can do for them and the technical people were lighting up and Scott's a genius thanks for coming in you're showing this great and then CEOs doesn't understand what the product really does doesn't care right what it does for them yeah yes yes yes and after you made this change what happened to your your career oh yeah no it took off it absolutely took off you know it's not I started smashing it I was 120 130 a year right you know so actually start started just crushing it you know and then closing bigger and bigger and bigger and uh larger um Enterprise deals that were with multiple countries across you know bigger you know yeah just just bigger and bigger deals you know get to that point where you're starting to make the starting to earn that life-changing amount of money that we're all after right yeah and it felt good too didn't it oh yeah absolutely oh yeah oh without a doubt it kind of becomes the cheat code when you're selling Enterprise deals it does because everybody thinks it's about hounding or being the most Charming or having the greatest Insight no it's really being able to get the economic people on your side you know that was one of one of the big changes in the big shifts that I made in my own personal process um was where you know selling warehouse management and a lot of software systems uh require some level of return on investment at least a conversation right there's always obviously every every sales situation is a little different um but one of the things that that I moved so I created a basically as a seven step process right I knew that there were exactly seven steps in pretty much every single one of my deals and one of those steps was the financial analysis part of this and and what I realized was in a lot of my deals that that I had a lot of deals that would go to no decision right we really weren't competing against competition it was more we just there was no decision and I had to analyze and think why are these things going to new decision no decision part of the problem was we never got to the return on investment side of it where we could put the dollars to it so I actually moved that to the very front of the cycle right after right after a discovery call right after we discovered what the pain points The Next Step was to actually insert a step for building the business case and one of the interesting things that I learned nine times out of ten the customers had no idea how to build a business case they don't care they've never done it before they've never done it before right so so in that step I built a a business analysis or a business case Workshop where I would get them part of those steps where I would set the I would set the expectation I actually created some videos pre-framing them before they got into this Workshop about the things that they could think of and I would send in these videos and then we would literally get to work and you know roll up the sleeves together and build this business case and then before we moved on um we I created we created a document that had the an executive summary that have that they would take to whoever was the person that had the financial authority to say yes on this project um you know we would explain the big things that the executives want to know right what problem are we trying to solve what's it costing us now what's it going to cost us to solve it right and then what's the payback going to be going forward and before I even did a demo I would require them to go through that process it was it was simply a non-negotiable I would not do a demo with them until we got to that point and and that moved my close rate from like you know 30 40 to 70 80 percent massive difference in close rate and in in step one who are you talking to what was the Persona title yeah uh so a lot of times we were dealing with typically because because the person that owned the problem was usually in the operation side for me okay now we're a business person absolutely yeah so it's usually like a vice president of operations a director of manufacturing usually VP or director level in either manufacturing or operations so they understood the value of business case but probably hadn't built one before right exactly exactly right exactly right now in that sale I agree that makes sense have you sold things where it requires you to do that later in the process or the well step one a lot of yeah a lot of people ice told to never cared about what the ROI right but the people who paid do yeah yeah so you can't do it at the beginning because you're boring them it's like showing the product to the end people right look I don't care what it does yeah yeah actually so what what you know in the company that I'm working at now yes so that that is it has actually shifted to the middle right middle middle end-ish with what we're doing today that was you know uh when someone at least the Enterprise level warehouse management systems was such a long sales Pro this the cycle was minute I mean the the lightning speed it ever moved where it was maybe two to three months right but then there were some cycles that were a year two years three years um so I had to as a salesperson I had to decide where am I going to spend my time and I just got a finite amount of time and if they weren't willing to move through on that process I would literally eject out of the sales cycle and say when you're ready to do this let's talk and you know and what were they using before you showed up was it in-house built or paper or competitor yeah and not most of the time 90 of the time it was nothing it was just pen yeah pen and paper or manual business processes that's Mars yeah because you could go six nine months and then they decide well paper's still working not broke don't fix it yeah the the easy thing to do is to just to hire more people which is which is what what most people would default to or most organizations would default to now did you get pushback from your management about this or were they visible to it this was a big this was actually a problem that we tried to solve corporate wide and so I was uh I was kind of the guinea pig for it because we we had we were doing a great job of of uh identifying and generating leads but there was a real gap on the no decisions yes right yeah yeah especially when they've got something that's working it's an established business it's not a startup yeah correct lots of change yeah yes yeah correct correct so yeah it was interesting to watch just the sort of the Lego pieces of you move them around a little bit and what impact that has we were just talking about sales process right and what what impact what positive impact that can have in in getting a deal moving forward so and and it was funny because we it tied back to that that thought leadership piece that we talked about earlier right so when when I switched the conversation to this business conversation and we're talking about return on investment my feeling of being in control and my feeling of leadership Rose exponentially because that these these VPS of Ops instead of now me being submissive to their process I'm now leading that process and I was a lot more confident which added to you know my ability to close these things yeah and they don't view you as a wrap or do you as somebody who really gets it and it's kind of leading them showing them a smarter way of doing smarter way that other people do it yeah no that's right that's exactly right that's exactly right so yeah so you know in the role that I'm in now what I'm trying to do is working to teach my you know teach now I'm on the coaching side of that and teaching my team how to how to how to you know follow that same process so it's kind of fun it's a little hard too isn't it it's a different way of doing it yes it is yes it is yes right because I I think most reps grow up in uh you know present demo propose negotiate clothes or and maybe poc in there somewhere correct yeah a lot of reactive and the only proactive thing is the checking in as opposed to guiding them yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes no part part of it yeah yeah that's absolutely right I think one of one of the one of the things that uh um at least in this role uh so I've got this process that I created um there's a piece of it this because the checking in thing is is a real problem too right you know and that's something that is just there's no value in checking in right whatsoever right so and it's and but it's so like it's just so ingrained in our sales DNA to check in right yeah it's a nuisance I get it's funny because I'm getting it now for now now that I'm I'm you know working on the other side I'm getting it from oh yeah yeah as as I'm buying you know sales tools and investing in software solutions to for us to be better I'm on the other end of it right and I'm getting sales sales people checking in and I have to resist the urge to come back and say and Coach them as much as I want to um you know uh but uh one of the things that the another thing that made a difference in my sales cycle was we built I worked with our marketing team and I'm doing this now with my team is that we built a series of marketing assets right so they can be deployed at every stage inside of those Cycles so from stage one to stage two there's this arsenal of marketing assets that adds value to the customer's day blog articles white papers case studies Insight stories whatever they are right and then and then from State face two to three a group an arsenal of assets and so what what what I did and what I'm encouraging and teaching my team to do is to use those ad that's so instead of checking in you send them the asset wanted to add some value to your day thought you might find this interesting and and so it um that really I had I had a deal uh I was about six years into my life was at the last company for eight years about six years into it I closed one of the biggest deals I'd ever closed um and uh and I got to the end of the cycle and it was like I was like three weeks up until the end of the close for the deal and uh um and I was it was I think we were 50 50 with the other competition right and uh and we got to the end of the deal and I asked my you know I got the call after doing the fist bumps and the jumping up and down you know I'll be super excited for the deal um uh I took a breath and asked my contact I said what made the difference is like Scott there were two articles that you sent us and they connected with us they landed with us and it resonated and it proved to us that you could handle this project on a global level and that's what tipped the scales and it's just we were 50 50 the whole way and with these two marketing assets that I thought would resonate and it crazy it just blew me away that just something that simple would tip the scales because you have to bring something to the table each time don't show up empty-handed right and content's one thing topics issues what other people are doing and a lot of Reps don't know how to talk to that yeah they're they're great oh can I help you extend the eval get your new proposal yeah you wanna have lunch that's their arsenal of ideas it is it is it is instead of like what you're doing is like what are they concerned about at stage one right what are they thinking about yeah what are they thinking about at stage two they want to see social proof they want right all these little things but don't send it all at once yes because reps I'm effective I'm efficient we just had the meaning I sent them 18 pieces yeah yeah yeah no that's right man Outlook delayed delivery is your friend right you can use that delay and a lot of things it's your friend isn't it anyway yeah reschedule that stuff yeah and have you found leading because that's a whole nother world I have done it before in a previous company um but this is at the different level so um it's actually it is it's awesome I think um you know if you if for me it's a calling right it's absolutely a calling right so it's something I've always wanted to do I've just up until this last year I never quite felt ready for it um and I needed to I needed to earn my place to to pay the price for admission to have actually been successful at the role like highly successful in order for me to feel like I could then turn around and coach and Lead um so it's a it's what's have been interesting about this is um observed a couple different leadership skills um and I to me I break it down kind of like this I think on one end of the spectrum you have the you have the coaches right there they're 100 coach in the other end of the spectrum of the mastering Commander right so so when a sales rep comes to you if you're the Master and Commander you tell them what to go do exactly because they're always looking to be told what to do right and the other end of the spectrum there's the coach right and there's a little bit what I've learned is that the the to me what's most effective is being somewhere a little bit in the middle right and and so like when I started this role there was more of a commander yeah uh culture right and and it's fine it is what it was and it's it's the because you know the leadership here and the ownership here just didn't have the time just because the coaching part requires an investment of time um right because when the sales rep comes and asks me for a question my response back to them is not an answer it's a question in order to teach them to think for themselves to start to ask instead of commanding and so that's been my my my number one challenge is has been to stop myself from giving an answer even if I know the answer right my job is to coach you know because the commander if they do what you say and it doesn't work who do they blame yeah that's very true yes so not only have they not learned they now don't think you know what you're doing yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah no that's absolutely right it's absolutely right and I think today there's too many tools and people are dependent on them thinking that oh do I need to enter another thing into phase three to hit the button on day 17 right as opposed to a little empathy like what did you hear last time what do you think's going on what are you scared of right that's right absolutely right that's absolutely right yeah yeah yeah so and what do you like about coaching and leading now oh well you know I mean listen there's a there's a pretty amazing satisfaction when you have such a positive influence on someone else's life right you know if I've I've I've achieved I you know I've achieved a great deal in this short period of time that I've been working and and to come in and help others achieve that level of success is it's just it's just very satisfying right you know it's very it's what's the the the saying that the rising tide buoys all boats right so having uh having an impact you know I I don't know I I there's me there's to me sales has a the sales team has sort of a fiduciary responsibility to the organization right I look at I look at us and our jobs as almost like we provide the work that we do provides jobs right like nothing happens until you sell how many times we said nothing happens until you sell something right and and so and so there's people in this building that I'm I'm responsible for as the vice president sales and my sales team and so but there's there's a you know there's an honor to me that that comes comes with that you know I'm honored that that I get to do this and and that's so that's what I love about is I literally get to do that I get to wake up and do this every day you know and have influence and uh and and Lead these people in a positive direction so they've got a great life you know so and if you were to meet let's say somebody not in your company to detach from what you're doing today if a rep came to you and they were performing at a B level yeah how would you help them get to the a level and you just described the last year can you break it down into a two-minute answer yeah I'm gonna try man I'm gonna try uh it really comes down to T it comes down to the Master and Commander philosophy but what I found is a lot of the B players want to be told what to do instead of learning how to think for themselves right and so the coaching to teach them how to think for themselves and then once once once they can do that then layer in a scalable business process that they can follow then start measuring them by that business process and once you do that then it's lights out right now I'm there where this team is really starting to kick and really starting to take off because of that and how long did that take a little less than a year for less than a year it sounds like a lot it's not a lot of time it's really not it goes by so fast yeah incredibly fast hey Scott I really enjoyed this conversation where can people go to connect and follow you uh I'm just LinkedIn you know Scott McKenzie yeah with the Pacific barcode that's that's the number one place yeah me too Brian really enjoyed this thank you thank you for doing this like I said I've been watching you for a while and I've embraced a lot of what you've had to say so this was uh this was a thrill and an honor for me too