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[Music] hi everyone this is Steve lllo from harow group today I have with me Tony Hughes Tony was the speaker today at the sales Mastermind event which is happening every two months Tony is actually the most read B2B sales blogger on LinkedIn um and he's spending some time with us today thanks a lot for uh having a chat thanks Steven it's good to have you on board as a sponsor yeah absolutely um met some great people today and some great content shared and I just wanted to dig a bit deeper on a couple of the topics that you've spoken about at the event today um you mentioned that around 60% of sales teams or B2B sales teams are short of their number right now yeah why what's the biggest cause in your view well depending on Whose statistics ICS you believe anywhere from 40% up to as high as 2/3 of B2B sales people don't make their numbers okay and there's a number of reasons for that obviously uh in the a a service World average transaction size is getting smaller and selling is not becoming any easier and everyone's high value Solutions over time become Commodities and if you add to that the way that most companies operate is they have this insane Relentless desire for growth so they constantly increasing quotas and reducing territories so sales people are certainly in a very very tricky position today okay so who's to blame there's a lot of blame put on sales people especially from sales managers but but who needs to wear the the the weight and and who needs to who needs to solve the problem is it sales people sales managers combination well the truth is everybody does so from the CEO down everybody needs to own the responsibility of creating Pipeline and it's not really a case of a portioning blame it's a case of finding people to take ownership for pipeline creation so so the reality is is that every salesperson needs to own uh the creation of their own sales pipeline regardless of what sales and marketing are doing for them uh and also inside sales with sales development reps providing leads but no salesperson today can live uh can make quota just on the leads that come from marketing and inside sales uh and and the reality is the weakest link in the revenue chain for most organizations is Sales Management it's not the sales people so sales managers need to lead they need to get out of their spreadsheets and they need to get in the field with people they need to sit on the sales floor and really lead by example in uh getting on the phones first thing in the morning uh using social in a pragmatic way not a black hole of wasted time way to pragmatic research and then get on the phone and build pipe pipe's an interesting one because we speak to a lot of sales directors uh and we asked them at the at the beginning of a meeting around their sales Talent um why is it that the last person failed or that people fail in your business it's two reasons um one lack of Pipeline and when when they diagnose it themselves it's it's a lack of discipline around getting on the phone and speaking to enough prospects and using um the social phone I think you call it yeah um so that's the first thing and the second thing is that when they do get the opportunity to meet the customer um they have an inability to peel back the layers of their requirements and truly understand the business need in order to sell their solution as the solution to that need um from your point of view um and and certainly from my point of view it's actually the former that's that's the biggest problem yeah um what how do we solve that problem in our sales team sales managers are pointing at the sales people saying want you to make more calls but ultimately you got to look at the coach for the answers so what can the sales manager do to solve that problem well sales managers need to lead by example um people are reluctantly investing in technology and tools like sales Navigator but what we need is a foundation before we drive Outreach is we need the right kind of narrative so what I see in organizations is people mistakenly run a conversation along the lines of this is who I am this is what we do this is how we do it and no one's interested in that no no person worth getting to as a potential client is lonely in Bard and looking for a new friend so trying to trying to lead with a hey I want to be your friend kind of approach is a mistake okay we need to provide value in the conversation and no one worth talking to is lying awake at night hoping a Rip's going to call them the next day and tell them about their product so we need to lead with a level of insight and every person needs to own that so A salesperson needs to think about other customers with common characteristics they need to understand what trigger events cause those existing customers to St their Journey that ended up in them buying something okay and use that to generate some kind of inside conversation so don't lead with product don't lead with solution we first need to have some kind of relevant Insight that we can talk about okay um the problem I'm seeing increasingly so is there's a lot of talk about social selling and so we're using LinkedIn we're using all these sorts of tools um yet one of the things that you spoke about today was making sure your people on the phone at 7:45 a.m. in the morning every day um and getting out an hour or two or whatever is required prospecting time using the social phone as you call it um that's happening in very few organizations you mentioned you sat on a Sal floor the other day and it was silent for two hours we all see it um what's stopping these people from getting on the phone and how do we balance social and and hiding behind the keyboard in the screen when actually getting on the phone what's the right balance well social really serves two purposes the the first is there's there's no reason to ever make a truly cold call so we can jump in Social and very pragmatically in a short amount of time get enough context find a common link cuz the the fastest path to revenue is a is a referral sure the most the most probable chance of doing a piece of business is where there's a referral because trust uh starts very early so we can do research in Social and find an introduction or a path or a point of context U but the other reason social is important is about three4 of people that we do Outreach with Will research us okay so when they have a look at our profile we want to make sure that we that we don't look like a lower level salesperson that we look like an industry person Within site so social's relevant for those two reasons and others that I won't go into now but the truth is the phone is the original and most powerful social selling tool that there is so the idea is to get human engagement so that's why you know this term uh that Kenny madens coined the social phone it's the social end the phone together is how you go and and get the right the right level of breakthrough great you speak about narrative a lot what is narrative to to you in the in the sales process and why is it important well narrative is critically important it's the conversation that we're having so it's of leading with why the client should have a conversation with us so if we were talking to an to an existing client I would try and create a narrative around the fact that I'm not happy with the level of value that they're getting from us in the relationship because every buyer wants a greater level of value from fewer supplier relationships they're trying to drive cost out and get greater value you're working against the flow there exactly and then and then if if it was someone who's not yet a client I'd be saying you know in working with others in your industry and doing some research on your own organization I really think there's an opportunity for you and then you say where you think that opportunity is that's what I'd like to come and and talk with you about and also let you know what we're seeing with other organizations out there that I think have some relevance and that's something that the buyer should want to have a conversation about they're interested in what competitors are doing not that we would ever betray the trade secrets of one of our clients to their competitor sure um but we can certainly take a level of insight they're very curious about that and that that's a good reason for them to meet okay and then we need questions that lead to the business value we offer the outcomes we deliver in the way that we can manage risk okay so it's very much about anticipating uh a potential problem or challenge they might be facing in their business and leading with that narrative rather than here's what we do and and and turning that into a face Toof face meeting where where that can be delved into a little further and eventually you'll get the opportunity to tell them how you can solve their problem um but obviously it's about exploring that first yeah and the thing is if we're trying to elevate our conversations we need to talk the language of leaders if we fail to do that we'll get delegated down sure to who it sounds like we deserve to talk to so we need to talk about the outcomes we know that they're trying to achieve in their company and Industry um how they can manage the risks in pursuing that and then what the business case looks like so the real language of business is numbers More Than Words yeah so if we can have that kind of narrative the person will think wow this person deserves a conversation with me okay great well that uh covers everything off thank you so much for spending some time with us today congratulations on on your event these events are happening every two months yeah every every two months and really aimed at the businessto business sales leadership Community great so that's a sales Mastermind event series Tony Hughes we've got plenty more speakers coming up in the coming series um thank you so much for your time today great to meet you thank you [Music] thanks