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[Music] foreign welcome to the How to Succeed podcast the show that helps you get to the top and stay there this is how to succeed at sandlerizing your Tech stack the following podcast is copyrighted by sailor Systems LLC and protected by U.S copyright laws sailor is the worldwide leader in Sales Management and customer service training you can subscribe to this podcast on iTunes Google podcast or Spotify and check out any of our additional resources at sandler.com I'm your host Mike Montague director of community engagement at Sandler and my guest this week is Jody Williamson an award-winning sailor trainer from Chicago and author of The contrarian salesperson we're going to ask him about singularizing your Tech Deck [Music] Jody welcome to the podcast I should say welcome back you've been on plenty of times but tell us about sailorizing your Tech Deck what does that mean and the I don't even know if people know what a text deck is these days yeah so I mean at the summit uh this year I I talked about some of these topics regarding all these Technologies we have available to us all these apps all these productivity tools I mean you were just telling me earlier how many are there the thousand plus three I mean you did some research on this how many it's like some big number right yeah it's got to be in the in the thousands for sure but I think most organizations are even using multiple pieces of Technology it's not like just a CRM anymore you've got sales Navigator you've got Zoom info you've got videos and other customer intelligence or feedback forms it's a lot well and and so with that it's like okay not only do we have to be very deliberate and purposeful about which which apps we use in our Tech because we can't use them all but then it's how do I take it from being an app that everyone can have to overlaying Sandler into it sandlerizing it um and and powering it because when you can take any of these Technologies and you can weave in the psychology and the strategies and some of the tactics of Sandler that's really I think the Sweet Spot anyone can download the app and record a video or send out some really cool you know graphic or whatever it would be with an app but to be able to really think through how does it fit in the sales process how does it fit within Sandler I think that's where there's a big opportunity for listeners yeah so let's jump into it here with attitude because I think that's the key to unlocking this whole thing is are you maybe bolting on a technology that makes something you are already doing easier are you adding in some sort of new process or new behavior for your team that you want them to do I think those are the the toughest or is this something maybe that is um slowing you down or it's uh more about reporting and internal purposes than it is about making the sale better in the conversation itself right there's a lot of places where it could go yeah and I think that you know there's a couple things with mindset that I've seen over the last you know two and a half years since everything started we've all been through um and and to simplify it I I think attitude towards technology has been a big separator of who I've seen succeed and those who are stuck and I as recently this morning with a a zoom training I was doing with the company I've worked with for a long time we were talking about vidyard which was part of my tech stack and we were talking about it and somebody who's a veteran sales people 20 plus years and selling really sharp guy said yeah I just I just these new technologies I don't know about them and I'm like you know uh I I don't know how that mindset's gonna work five and ten years down the road if that's part of the career track and so I think part of the mindset part we talk about all the time is just overall attitude towards technology is someone open is someone thirsting for it are they Tech curious which leads to digital fluency or are they Tech reluctant which leads to this either shutting down or this kind of half effort towards applying it and then applying it at such a low level that it's not going to work and then saying see it doesn't work you know so it's this is a weird place we're in um and I've seen that I have enough enough data and evidence just with people I work with that it's that simple it's the attitude towards technology really is that kind of that linchpin it's it's pretty pretty interesting to watch um I've kind of noticed two things there one is technology seems to make good sales people better and bad sales people worse that if you're annoying on the phone you're even more annoying in an email or or in a a direct message in social media and if you were really helpful in bringing value and stuff in person you're probably leveraging these Technologies in a way that brings value and enhances the the sales process the other thing I wanted to highlight there in attitude was one of our new Sandler rules we have a new book out this year and we added a rule about technology which is use it to engage not to hide so I think we also see that with good sales people use this as a new method to connect with another human being bad sales people use it as a way to hide from an awkward conversation and get out of maybe some of the the calls they were trying to make or something like that yeah no I see that and I think it really comes down to it I like the way you phrase that is that I think it technology really a mindset of technology is a multiplier if I go back 10 years for those listeners who have been in sales while 20 years whatever the time frame is there's never been a better time to be in selling than right now when it comes to I have technologies that can multiply my impact I can be in multiple meetings and multiple time zones on the same day I can get to multiple decision makers in multiple locations in the same company in the same hour I can I can efficiently reach multiple people using automated technology in a Cadence where they have automated touch campaigns and drip campaign I mean it's just it's so fascinating to see that those who then to your point they take this they take what they had already and they're just multiplying it they're saying okay I was pretty good at questioning I was pretty good at at working with pain and diagnosing needs I was pretty good at reaching decision makers but now I'm just I'm turbo charging it I'm just I'm just amplifying what I can do and I I think that's another mindset and attitude is if I look at technology as a multiplier it just multiplies my impact on the world I can be in front of more people more efficiently and and I think the ones who are looking at that and especially people are newer in their careers who have a longer Runway of their career it's like this is going to be huge and being able I think there's a lot of people now who are selling regionally or maybe nationally that within 10 years in their career track they're going to be Global sales people it'll be all yeah I I think that's really cool I totally agree with that I want to ask you one more thing about attitude though is for the leaders themselves because I think a lot of VPS of sales sales managers or owners need to think about what tech they bring into their company and if you're not large enough to have a CTO there's all sorts of integration issues but I think there's also productivity issues do you want your your sales team spending more time dealing with technology or talking to clients or what is actually helping them versus hurting them in their sales process any thoughts on how leaders should think about technology yeah I mean it kind of goes back to what you said before if it it can amplify problems uh also in leadership you know if I have poor accountability structures or poor internal processes I'm probably just I'm just making it worse by applying a technology I thought was going to fix it and the underlying problem is something else um but yeah I think it it goes back to that lens of a mind set towards what's the technology meant to do if it's meant to multiply my effect as a leader on for my sales team if it's ultimately to help my sales team multiply its effect on creating value in the world and that's ultimately how we grow our sales if the technology becomes that hindrance I mean so many so many are using CRM to a level where the sales people have to spend you know an hour and a half a day at the end of a long day putting in stuff and it's like stuff that no one's going to ever read something's no one's ever going to use um and and and so I I think that part of what leaders have to do is they have to keep looking at how do I simplify this as a way that sales people not only can help themselves multiply but they also see the value so often the technology from a leadership perspective becomes okay we're going to do this because we bought it you know it's like okay I guess but but I think that much of the technology adoption I've seen from a leadership company-wide perspective comes with starting with the why uh and and what's in it for each person versus it's a company directive but it's always and the other thing I think it falls in line with what we do with this with our our sales training is that I don't think it's any different when there's new technology brought into a company they do a one or two day training okay we learned it now go do it it's like we know that doesn't work with our methodology it certainly doesn't work in the technology either because it's just not the way people apply and learn and continually improve so yeah it's uh it's a multiplier but it can also be a complicator well I think you hinted at it too I just wanted to add on that if you're not using it yourself as the leader that's probably where you should start that if you're not checking the CRM then nobody's going to enter anything into it if you're not using uh Zoom to hop in and do more virtual ride-alongs than you were doing live ride-alongs three years ago you're missing out on something if you're not looking at the call analytics why are we using gong to record all these calls if nobody's coaching to it or nobody's reviewing them so making sure you use it first even sending a vidyard internally to your team about you know a stand-up or an announcement you have to make I think all of those are examples of how you as the leader can you know set the the standard for your team and the expectation for their attitude towards technology so I think that takes us to behavior and how we do the right thing at the right time with technology and this can be a little messy too yeah I mean it's especially when it comes to newer Technologies um I find that if a couple things with cookbook is that if it's not made into some kind of behavior and then really work in the behavior in the area of time blocking and time boxing whatever charm we're using there's interchangeable in many ways um that people aren't gonna adopt it or they're they're not going to get to it uh I I think one that I see regularly it's kind of low hanging fruit is LinkedIn you know LinkedIn as of uh I think April has now 828 million uh people registered to the platform so we're it's close to a billion people um and and one of the stats that I shared at the summit was a couple is is 92 percent of buyers want to work with a thought leader was one stat and another one was at 84 of c-suite decision makers go to social media before they make decision so you put those two together c-suite higher level decision makers are actually going to social media and they're probably not going to Facebook I'm guessing in a B2B setting so they're going to something like LinkedIn plus 92 percent are saying we want to deal with a thought leader well what what better way to be a thought leader outside of getting in front of a lot of people which is not always as multipliable what about posting on LinkedIn so smart purposeful value creating posting on LinkedIn is clearly something that will help with engagement yet if you look at the 820 whatever million people three million people post something once a week so you got point three eight percent or whatever that math is a third of a percent of the users actually are deliberate enough to post well what I'm getting at is cookbook is a great place to put a once a week post five new connections whatever it would be like most people once they get into LinkedIn they see the value but they still don't use it because it's not part of their cookbook so I think that for many of these Technologies we have to get it into a behavior-based behavioral based uh trackable Cadence that naturally comes with a cookbook somebody who says okay you know what somehow I'm gonna set in five vidyards out a week I'm just gonna it'll might be a touch it might be a touch it might be a prospecting message it might be to a decision maker in another division but I'm gonna do five a week and I know if people just say okay five big yards a week one poster they start layering a few technology cookbook items in there and pretty soon they're comfortable with it yeah I I love that I think any every time Behavior makes sense to have that start with a goal what are you trying to accomplish if you're adding technology into your sales process uh what's the plan what's your behavioral plan how are you going to use it how are they going to onboard this and create these habits and and create feedback loops so you know that if it's working or not and taking the action is the big one that you mentioned so many people I think I saw a stat that 50 of people on Twitter have never posted one tweet uh I mean that's crazy and I think Elon was trying to figure out how many of those were robots and stuff too but uh that's a sidebar so how many of your team have used the tool in the last week going back and looking at those are who's actually even taking the action but then I wanted to highlight inside of there and talk a little bit about the discipline vitality and guts in our action triangle because we rarely go that deep but I think we got a chance here to talk about it that it really is consistency over time and the discipline it takes some guts sometimes to record a video or whatever and then you have to have the vitality and bring the right energy to this in order to make it successful too because if you're just you know dry like a drone cranking out automated emails that's not going to help you get more sales in most cases so can you talk a little bit about what do we need to do when we actually Implement these behaviors to make it successful yeah I think I think the the fuel that drives us all is ambition and drive which which we could probably connect back up to attitude you know if we look at that that's been a Timeless um uh measurement on the predictability of how a salesperson will do when they're hired new to an organization or do are they still going to grow going forward is how strong is their ambition and drive I think ambition and drive is a direct connection to what you're describing right and and bringing that that passion to it and it doesn't it doesn't have to be an outward passion it's kind of that obnoxious overly kind of you know hey how you doing kind of stuff but it does have to be to that level of passion where it comes through in in the posture in the presence and it comes through in actually executing the behavior because I love that connection between attitude and behavior is that you know without animation and drive that cookbook's not going to happen but if you look at the triangle and you you start you start breaking some of that apart it really does come to that and I think that right now for someone who is low Vitality low ambition and drive it's going to be a slog the next five years because the rate of change it's not slowing down I mean every day we're dealing with something new and you know I I heard a term recently called The Never normal right there's no new normal coming it's the never normal it's just it's not going to anything normal in the in the foreseeable future and so I think that ties into this Mike because it's it's like I don't know what the technology is going to be three years from now but there's probably some kid in high school in her bedroom writing some kind of code right now that five years from now all of us will be using it and then we'll all be saying wow we should have thought of that because she's a unicorn billionaire right but it it it's so it's that adaptability and that Vitality that I think leads to being able able to execute this and have that Curiosity in that that drive yeah I think you are articulated it well for me I can always kind of you can kind of like smell it or feel it right when you get a automated message that was you could tell somebody who's trying to be lazy and take a shortcut and their heart wasn't in it or when somebody creates a customized video for you and they're bringing professionalism and passion to the conversation and they did it to make it better than an email you can tell that that's different than when they were like oh let me just send the same video out to 10 000 people because they can uh spam them now that's completely different I think it takes us right to our technique on how do we do this in a way that actually increases our sales and our results yeah so if we if we just if we go with our working title of sandlerizing our Tech stack if we say okay the most the most direct way to do this let's just look at the Sandler selling system in the process and say okay let's just take a few of those elements that we talk about all the time if we look at bonding and Rapport we could say okay what does that have to do with standardizing my tech stack well if bonding a rapport if if a byproduct and the goal of that is trust and credibility I think it has everything to do with how we can multiply that you know having prospecting stamina is really key right now and being able to have a a blend of Technologies because in my tech stack I have vidyard I have zoom I have LinkedIn I have HubSpot I have Microsoft whiteboard which is arguably really not a tech stack item but I find it highly valuable so I put it in that bucket because it's super simple and highly effective um when I start looking at okay how do I similarize the bonding and Rapport step it it is through pre-recorded video and multiple decision makers I can build credibility I mean think of a think of a sales person selling to a multi-location throughout North America manufacturing organization or Consulting organization and how they couldn't efficiently really get their head around how to do that five years ago they wouldn't have Rapport they wouldn't have a connection with all these people well now over time they can have a connection by using something like vidyard and something like zoom and being able to multiply themselves through something as fundamental in our process as bonding and report and people aren't thinking about wow think of the amazing impact this is having if I think very deliberately about it I love that I'll add one on to it that's my personal favorite is collaborative documents that I found that to just be a game changer for me that if I can share a Google doc or Dropbox paper or whatever it happens to be in Evernote and I can co-create a proposal with my buyers and we can write down what's important for you what's important for Me Maybe create the agenda or action items and even in internal meetings when we're doing a pre-call plan and we're all typing in it together that to me seems like a major game changer for a technique then you know we've all been on there where you're re-emailing back different versions of a Word document and somebody replied to an earlier one that didn't have the other changes and it just creates messy confusion in your sales process that that's something that really feels modern and hip to me and we're saving paper so it's eco-friendly just all kinds of cool benefits like that I think go along if you're finding Solutions I like that you're probably using the techniques correctly if they feel cumbersome like you're trying to do it for compliance or something then maybe not yeah no I agree and I think that I mean there's so many there's so many uses and even if we go back to our process you look at upfront contracts setting agendas Mutual expectations it used to be that I showed up at a meeting and I verbally did it at the beginning of the meeting auditorily I did it well now prior to that meeting I certainly send an email recapping it out but I also send a vidyard out the morning of or the actually typically the day before saying hey looking forward to seeing you tomorrow and then I go through The Upfront contract here's what we're looking to cover anything that I'm missing anything you want to add here's I mean think about how amazing that is and then when I have multiple decision makers attending a meeting and anytime we have multiple decision makers attending a meeting we typically haven't met all of them it's usually hey we know one person they're bringing other people in well think about how I can send an upfront contract vidyard out a pre-recorded video and I send it to the entire group now I'm also going back to that other step of bonding Rapport because they're getting a sense to My Style by watching me in a pre-recorded video talk about the agenda for the meeting they are meeting me it might be one way communication less than ideal but they're getting a sense of who I am as a person just by watching a 60 or 90 second upfront contract in vidyarch so so it's it's that very simple application of applying Sandler into the tech stack that I found people find people now saying okay this is actually simplifying my tech stack because now I'm taking the mystery out how to use it if I just take Sandler and start plugging it in it kind of becomes way easier to think about what do I record in the video what do how do I run the zoom meeting well you do a visual upfront contract and an auditory upfront contract well how do I get pain well you used to just auditorially say well here's the kinds of pains we fix well now you pull up a screen share and you show some visuals of what the pain looks like in your world you do a whiteboard and you write the pain so they visually can see them not just auditorily hear them and so it's all these all these thoughts around every single step it's like okay what can I use there in this Tech stamp can I put can I use in HubSpot can I think about how the decision step and cast a characters works and how often I do a touch campaign to multiple decision makers yeah HubSpot will help me with that get a little more I was thinking the same thing if you're not using LinkedIn or Zoom info to figure out the cast of characters and decision making I think you're you're missing out on information that is readily and publicly available on the company you're calling on especially in Enterprise sales uh but really for anybody there's plenty of information on everybody that if you want to do a little pre-call research on on pain budget or or decision I was also thinking in presentation we've talked a little bit about that already but you know showing them how you solve it let them take a virtual tour of your Warehouse or of the product or service how can you demonstrate in a more collaborative and engaging manner or what you're doing than what you were using before and then keeping track of all that making sure just stuff doesn't fall through the cracks well another one with fulfillment too is that the reality of of selling as we both know is that many times I'm presenting to one decision maker but they're going to then go present to influencers now I know that the way it's supposed to work is I get everyone in the same virtual room or real room but the reality is even if we line that up someone's going to miss the meeting so now I'm relying on that person to take my information and be able to convey it to the same level that I can well it's never going to happen well now I can do a couple things if I'm doing a proposal and it's in writing I can do a a vidyard overview of The Proposal on the first page of the presentation or I can at the end of the presentation I can then do a recap overview of what we covered in the proposal and send it to everyone on the distribution list not the two people who made the meeting and I can get the three people who missed it so once again it's like okay I've got the Fulfillment step can I because here's the problem with presentations like the presentation meeting it happens and it's in The Ether it's like gone it's like in the air somewhere right we both have a radio background right we know that hey it's it's cool but it's gone it's like but imagine now we take this this presentation and it has a shelf life and it can be distributed and they can watch it a couple times and then to your point there's that little thing in the plant where they say show how something works and they walk down the hall to an influencer and they say hey I know you weren't in the official buying process but what do you think of this this was part of the president does he think this would work in our facility it's a whole it's like wow that is amazing the people I'm touching right that I'm able to get the multiple cast of characters I'm able to build rapport I mean it flows through everything but as I said I think the the way that people have been thinking about this to simplify it is let's look at the core seven steps of the Sandler system and some of the side issue like areas around bat but and then tools like LinkedIn levers and things like that but to really simplify it we've got these steps and every single Tech stack uh every part of my tech stack it's like how does this fit how does this fit I'll add on one more and I think you'll have a thought on this one because I know you do a like to do a pain survey I think that's a cool one to do electronically you can get a gauge on where your prospects are at and even a basic Survey Monkey pole of on a scale of one to five how important is this right now or how bad is the problem that you're dealing with especially if you have multiple decision makers or a large organization getting 20 people to take a quick survey and say how important this is really gives you Insight when you go in for the conversation of you know nine out of 10 of you said this is a level 10 problem should we start here uh that immediately leverages technology to make your conversation better than going in and guessing about what you think is important to them yeah so and you had on a couple of cool ideas there I mean one is certainly using something like Survey Monkey or whatever the tool is going to be but then taking it into a tech stack and and summarizing that in a vidyard and sending it as a prep as a bit of a teaser right could be like hey group got the results back a couple key highlights I saw were pain a and pain B more to come for our meeting next week got some thoughts here way more to go I mean talk like I'm on the edge of my seat I'm showing up at that meeting so yeah it's just it's it's really and it goes back to your thought on cookbook too if I'm making this a behavior that I log in there I'm gonna do Xvid yards a week X number of LinkedIn activities a week X number of HubSpot entries or or some kind of sequence or some kind of uh some kind of um you know whatever it's going to be it it makes it it takes it takes the choice out of should I use this tool this week to like you know that's in my cookbook I got to do something with I might as well do it on this call yeah I love that and I think uh we've gone a little bit long so I think it's time to wrap it up for everybody Jody based on standardizing your Tech Deck what is one attitude you would like people to have uh technology is a multiplier and one key Behavior or thing you would like people to do if I picked one for cookbook it would be LinkedIn post and communication and the best technique tool or hack to use that's a tough one for this one uh uh he put me on the spot here I think vidyard for pre-meeting upfront contracts and post meeting Recaps that's low hanging fruit it's easy to do and it has a has a quick impact I appreciate it once again that's Jody Williamson long time Sandler trainer from Chicago and author of The contrarian sales person if you haven't checked out that book go to Amazon.com or shop.sailer.com and get your hands on that one for more information on Sandler you can get any of our free resources at sandler.com or sign up for a virtual Summit see what we do live and in person at the Sandler Summit in Orlando as well you can subscribe to this podcast send it to somebody that needs to hear it but thank you for listening and remember whatever you are be a good one the How To Succeed podcast is brought to you by Sandler the worldwide leader in Sales Management and customer service training with over 200 locations for more information visit sandler.com