Full Transcript for Overcoming Challenges: The Journey to Success in Sales with Daniel & Simon | GrowthPulse The B2B Sales Podcast Ep19

programmer. 00:04:19.716 --> 00:04:22.992 I was okay, but the guy next to me was always better than me. 00:04:22.992 --> 00:04:26.514 So I moved into consulting and that was really interesting. 00:04:26.514 --> 00:04:27.480 What do you want to be a consultant in? 00:04:27.480 --> 00:04:29.348 I looked at what SAP did. 00:04:29.348 --> 00:04:31.480 I said I'll do accounting. 00:04:31.480 --> 00:04:33.906 I said have you got any accounting background? 00:04:33.906 --> 00:04:35.230 I said no, but I'll learn it. 00:04:35.230 --> 00:04:36.603 And that was really interesting. 00:04:36.642 --> 00:04:42.459 Back in the days I would sit down and learn from all of the consultants around me and figure it all out. 00:04:42.459 --> 00:04:50.454 And I remember teaching an academy for GSIs back in the day and we had the Anderson Consulting and the Deloitte Intuition. 00:04:50.454 --> 00:04:58.113 Most of those don't exist anymore but I had about maybe 40 people in my class and I had to teach them cost accounting for SAP. 00:04:58.113 --> 00:05:10.235 And I'll never forget there are a couple of mates of mine from high school in the audience and they were the clever ones that went to the big consulting firms and I remember in the first break I said, mate, you never studied accounting in your life. 00:05:10.235 --> 00:05:11.459 How are you teaching accounting? 00:05:11.459 --> 00:05:14.889 I said, mate, I'm three pages ahead in the manual and I'll do a very good job. 00:05:16.519 --> 00:05:17.642 So I think, it's funny. 00:05:17.663 --> 00:05:22.252 I think the lesson there is, mate, just you got to follow your nose a little bit. 00:05:22.252 --> 00:05:26.788 And I'll never forget a piece of advice someone gave me very early in my career. 00:05:26.788 --> 00:05:29.473 It's don't look at what you can't do. 00:05:29.473 --> 00:05:32.247 Throw yourself in the deep end and you'll figure it out. 00:05:32.247 --> 00:05:34.071 And I've done that consistently. 00:05:34.071 --> 00:05:38.908 I always throw myself into the next job and you have that holy shit moment that you go. 00:05:38.908 --> 00:05:40.932 Is anyone going to find me out? 00:05:40.932 --> 00:05:42.882 Do I really know what I'm doing? 00:05:42.882 --> 00:05:46.891 And, honestly, you put the hard work in and you figure it out, mate. 00:05:47.579 --> 00:05:51.870 So I ended up spending 20 years at SAP, but getting into sales was an interesting one. 00:05:51.870 --> 00:06:04.788 I'd been in Germany and Canada and various consulting gigs and I just looked across the aisle and saw those sales guys having way too much fun and there I was stuck with implementing the stuff that they would sell. 00:06:04.788 --> 00:06:08.766 I saw the cars that they were driving, I saw the lifestyle and I went. 00:06:08.766 --> 00:06:30.459 I don't necessarily want to emulate all of that ego, but I absolutely wanted to try my hand in it, and I remember my boss was the COO at the time and I said mate, we've just acquired this thing called business objects and each of your AEs has 12 million euro target and these average deal size of these business objects analytics deals are about 2,300k. 00:06:31.161 --> 00:06:33.309 We're losing a lot of them and I was the ops guy back then. 00:06:33.309 --> 00:06:39.346 I studied a lot about what we're winning and losing and I said, mate, give me a team and I'll go after the small deals. 00:06:39.346 --> 00:06:53.012 And he said sure, and so I got a team of 11 reps, went and hired them, many of whom those original hires you probably know Andy Brockhoff, alex Trane, amongst a lot of others. 00:06:53.012 --> 00:06:54.053 Tim Woodman was in there. 00:06:54.053 --> 00:06:59.411 There was a lot of people that have gone to have amazing sales careers post that. 00:06:59.411 --> 00:07:01.226 But yeah, we saw a lot of software. 00:07:01.226 --> 00:07:02.362 The first three years. 00:07:02.362 --> 00:07:07.793 The worst I did was about 230% of my number, and that was when I realized I could probably do this. 00:07:08.579 --> 00:07:09.423 A lot of bad outcome. 00:07:09.423 --> 00:07:11.701 Absolutely. 00:07:11.862 --> 00:07:17.413 No, it was an awesome experience and I think that's a testament to throwing yourself in the deep end. 00:07:17.413 --> 00:07:19.168 I'd never been an AE before. 00:07:19.168 --> 00:07:21.480 I'd watched AEs for over 10 years doing what they're doing. 00:07:21.480 --> 00:07:23.206 I'd been in pre-sales. 00:07:23.206 --> 00:07:27.459 I'd done a whole bunch of bits of bases and sort of to myself, rather than teach people how to do it. 00:07:27.459 --> 00:07:29.084 Why don't I go do it? 00:07:29.084 --> 00:07:31.250 And I loved it every second of it. 00:07:31.250 --> 00:07:42.336 And, to be honest with you, I think the consulting background really set me up in good stead, because it was really about thinking about the problem you're trying to solve. 00:07:42.336 --> 00:07:54.112 How's the company going to absorb the change and what are the key things you think about when you have a massive change of effort, and I think as you implement ERP, it's sort of a heart-lung transplant. 00:07:54.112 --> 00:08:01.480 You've got to absolutely think through now what's the implication, who are the stakeholders, what have they got to gain and lose? 00:08:01.480 --> 00:08:06.312 And I think that was some of the fundamental things at the beginning of my sales career. 00:08:06.312 --> 00:08:10.148 And are you very much focused on the problem we're trying to solve? 00:08:12.494 --> 00:08:31.574 Yeah, I think even the way you went through your journey to get to understanding like how to pull apart problems and how to then experience when someone's not diagnosed what the real problem is at its core, it is the reason that people engage in solutions, right, the reason people buy anything. 00:08:31.574 --> 00:08:36.437 People often focus too much when they talk about I want to build a product. 00:08:36.437 --> 00:08:37.200 They're growth company.

00:08:37.200 --> 00:08:42.000 However, the product still solves a really cool problem that the customer has. 00:08:42.000 --> 00:08:44.957 They're not buying it just because the product is cool. 00:08:44.957 --> 00:08:46.672 The customer. 00:08:46.672 --> 00:08:57.977 Even when you go and buy dinner overnight, you buy it because you're hungry or you take someone to a fancy restaurant because it's your partner's anniversary, Otherwise you're not going there. 00:08:57.977 --> 00:09:00.418 So you go to the pub because you can hang out with your mates. 00:09:00.418 --> 00:09:09.380 So it's understanding those use cases, the problem that that particular delivery solves at the time and then how to fit that to the right customers. 00:09:09.380 --> 00:09:12.879 I think people too often in business don't get that. 00:09:12.879 --> 00:09:16.317 They don't really break it down to what it looks like Absolutely. 00:09:16.739 --> 00:09:17.822 Yeah, it's really interesting. 00:09:17.822 --> 00:09:23.788 I think the next stage of my career that was probably after 20 years at SAP was that early 2010s. 00:09:23.788 --> 00:09:28.235 I looked at SAP a fantastic company, hell of a training ground. 00:09:28.235 --> 00:09:34.836 I'd lived in Germany and Canada and spent time in Australia Great relationships, great friends, great learnings. 00:09:34.836 --> 00:09:38.195 But I saw the Assas juggernaut really taking off. 00:09:38.297 --> 00:09:46.970 And I'll never forget somebody that a lot of the people that listen to this podcast may know, paul Appleby, who was a bit of a legend in the early days of SAP. 00:09:46.970 --> 00:09:56.086 But he was over at Salesforce and he quite cleverly and this is a good tip for people that are trying to hire salespeople he rang me about 430 on the last day of a quarter. 00:09:56.086 --> 00:09:58.256 I said, mate, how's your day going? 00:09:58.256 --> 00:10:00.337 And he knew damn well what day it was. 00:10:00.337 --> 00:10:01.914 He knew it was the last day of my quarter. 00:10:01.914 --> 00:10:02.918 How's it going? 00:10:02.918 --> 00:10:05.340 I said a bit stressful, can't really talk. 00:10:05.340 --> 00:10:07.076 He said, mate, just give me five minutes. 00:10:07.076 --> 00:10:10.760 And he pitched me and he said, mate, you've been in SAP for a long time. 00:10:10.760 --> 00:10:12.756 I bet you're keen to get into SaaS. 00:10:12.756 --> 00:10:15.316 I went, yeah, where are you? 00:10:15.316 --> 00:10:16.419 And he said Salesforce. 00:10:16.419 --> 00:10:30.886 I said, oh, it's a one trick pony company, a bit of a Mickey Mouse serum software, coming out of the SAP world where we tried to do all things for all people, and thankfully, I took his advice and came on and I absolutely loved my time at Salesforce. 00:10:30.886 --> 00:10:42.197 I started in an ops role, of all things, and he promised me, within sort of nine months, I'd be back in Salesforce leadership and, sure enough, that's what happened and, look, I had an awesome time at Salesforce. 00:10:42.197 --> 00:10:51.940 That's obviously where we met and selling Salesforce back in those sort of early to mid 2010s and then up until the end of 2019, 20, et cetera. 00:10:51.940 --> 00:10:53.201 What a ride it was. 00:10:53.649 --> 00:11:11.019 I think it was a unique sort of a company coming up with spectacular solutions at a time when a market really needed those solutions and a transaction model that made a heck of all of the sense as a service, and they write things at the right time and, I've got to say, surrounded by some incredibly clever people. 00:11:11.019 --> 00:11:11.881 That's another thing. 00:11:11.881 --> 00:11:21.182 As you look at your career, the most important thing, or one of the most important things, is surround yourself with smart people that you're learning from every day, and they might be working for you. 00:11:21.182 --> 00:11:22.514 You might be working for them. 00:11:22.514 --> 00:11:23.839 They're a lot of smart people. 00:11:23.839 --> 00:11:35.315 I give you great ideas about how to do things and I think as I went through that journey an amazing experience I had some ups and downs and I think anyone that's ever worked at Salesforce hasn't had a few ups and a few downs. 00:11:35.870 --> 00:11:36.855 It's a tricky environment. 00:11:36.855 --> 00:11:37.437 I loved it. 00:11:37.437 --> 00:11:43.022 And then I moved to financial force, which is now Satinia, and I guess the rest is history. 00:11:43.022 --> 00:11:47.721 But that was ERP and professional services automation on Salesforce's platform. 00:11:47.721 --> 00:11:49.135 So for me it was fantastic. 00:11:49.135 --> 00:11:56.274 I brought all that background in ERP together with what Salesforce does around CRM and in a neat little package. 00:11:56.274 --> 00:11:59.559 And what a wonderful seven years six, seven years I had there. 00:11:59.559 --> 00:12:02.953 That was outstanding fun Growing a business. 00:12:02.953 --> 00:12:04.820 When I joined the company I was a little bit hesitant. 00:12:04.820 --> 00:12:07.789 I didn't have a wonderful reputation in Australia. 00:12:07.789 --> 00:12:09.777 It was seen as too difficult to work with. 00:12:09.797 --> 00:12:10.357 Yeah, I'm over that. 00:12:11.311 --> 00:12:15.080 A bit of a hobby of financial force having a region in Asia pack. 00:12:15.080 --> 00:12:23.397 I joined and there's probably two or three people and it'll service office somewhere and it was pretty toxic culture. 00:12:23.397 --> 00:12:37.864 The sales team reported into somebody in the US, which is problematic because you can't have a bunch of people trying to learn and engage in a local culture and a local sales environment when your boss is 12,000 miles away in a different time zone. 00:12:37.864 --> 00:12:42.158 It's very difficult to breed that culture and I'll never forget the first day I started. 00:12:42.158 --> 00:12:46.418 I almost had to break up a fight between the sales guys and the service guys.

00:12:46.418 --> 00:12:50.200 I knew I had my job cut out for me, but then things came together. 00:12:50.200 --> 00:12:56.842 We hired a lot of spectacular people and grew that business I think 10, 15-fold probably there. 00:12:56.842 --> 00:12:58.615 Yeah, it was out of rangers growth yeah. 00:12:59.236 --> 00:12:59.758 It was a lot of fun. 00:13:00.730 --> 00:13:12.662 Yeah, in a five year period that I was there, it was the growth was I think it was 10X, 10X plus in doing three or four X each year to go year on year. 00:13:12.662 --> 00:13:15.317 It wasn't without its massive challenges early on. 00:13:15.317 --> 00:13:20.940 So I think there's definitely some lessons we can talk about there in the path of the session today. 00:13:20.940 --> 00:13:22.003 Tons of lessons. 00:13:22.003 --> 00:13:25.817 And you've now stepped into the security world, which has been different. 00:13:25.817 --> 00:13:27.200 Yeah, the data storage world. 00:13:27.461 --> 00:13:28.482 It's an interesting one, mate. 00:13:28.482 --> 00:13:29.854 Look, I started in the RP. 00:13:29.854 --> 00:13:37.724 That was very much back office, then CRM, very much front office and thinking through how do you continue to challenge yourself and grow? 00:13:37.724 --> 00:13:44.361 I never thought of myself as someone that'd be selling plumbing, and it's quite a technical problem that you're solving. 00:13:44.361 --> 00:13:48.880 But I think one of the things I bring to it is there's always a business problem. 00:13:48.880 --> 00:13:50.876 So we're in the data protection. 00:13:51.009 --> 00:13:58.840 I think certainly in the last certainly six, eight weeks in Australia it's been pretty apparent that data protection is from the center. 00:13:58.840 --> 00:14:03.321 You look at Claire O'Neill announcing the cybersecurity strategy at a federal level. 00:14:03.321 --> 00:14:09.518 You look at what's happened to DP world, optus et cetera, and CEOs have been asked to do over it. 00:14:09.518 --> 00:14:33.682 Companies have been brought to a standstill and I think security, data protection together is something that is I hadn't done before, but I'm loving the challenge and I think one of the things I'm bringing to it is I joined a team that was very used to selling at an infrastructure level and that's just not my background, and one of the questions I asked myself a few weeks into it is what's the problem we're solving? 00:14:33.682 --> 00:14:35.886 We're not selling my widgets better than your widget. 00:14:35.886 --> 00:14:41.615 There are a lot of different data protection companies out there and a lot of them are very good, but how do I differentiate myself? 00:14:41.850 --> 00:14:52.398 And I thought to myself, if I'm protecting data or backing up or providing security, it's not necessarily just about security, it's about the value of the data that I'm protecting. 00:14:52.398 --> 00:14:58.759 So, for example, one of the things we protect is Salesforce data and traditionally you could say are you backing up your Salesforce data? 00:14:58.759 --> 00:15:01.498 That's a pretty dry old conversation, to be honest with you. 00:15:01.498 --> 00:15:19.451 Backup is boring, but if you have a conversation about what's the value of your Salesforce data, you've got every customer interaction, every sales service and marketing interaction where your revenue comes from, propensity to spend all of that stuff that chief revenue officers live and breathe. 00:15:19.451 --> 00:15:22.080 Is that a value to you as an organization? 00:15:22.080 --> 00:15:23.895 And that is an interesting conversation. 00:15:23.895 --> 00:15:37.399 So I think, looking at the workloads that we are protecting and the value of those and fundamentally it's not about can you back up it's also fundamentally about uptime, speed of recovery. 00:15:38.070 --> 00:15:47.541 And if you lose your data, your business comes to it at an enormous stand and I think if you let's look forward for a second you look at Salesforce as well. 00:15:47.541 --> 00:15:53.878 I know a lot of our listeners are in that world Data cloud and AI that Salesforce is coming out with. 00:15:53.878 --> 00:15:55.662 Many other companies are doing the same thing. 00:15:55.662 --> 00:16:00.522 Data bricks is in the snowflakes, doing data lakes, and what does it tell you? 00:16:00.522 --> 00:16:09.174 It tells you that the data that feeds AI and analytics and decision making in order to deliver a better outcome to customers. 00:16:09.174 --> 00:16:15.201 It's all about data, and if you're not protecting that data and you're not valuing that data, you're just out of business. 00:16:15.201 --> 00:16:19.461 And I think, fundamentally, that for me, is an exciting next step. 00:16:19.461 --> 00:16:24.326 I've done back office, front office, and now I'm trying to protect the office, which is an interesting thing. 00:16:24.346 --> 00:16:25.470 You've got to think about it. 00:16:25.671 --> 00:16:34.220 And I guess, if you think about cyber resilience, cyber security, one of the interesting things I've discovered is a cyber attack on a business is not a one time event. 00:16:34.220 --> 00:16:38.325 Typically it happens it begins with fishing, might click on a link. 00:16:38.325 --> 00:16:41.037 They build a profile of the organization, the people in there. 00:16:41.037 --> 00:16:52.866 It could be nine, 10 months between the first fishing attack and the actual cyber attack, and so it's a long, drawn out process and I think you also need to think about what are they trying to achieve when they're trying to disrupt your business. 00:16:52.866 --> 00:16:53.850 There's pure maliciousness. 00:16:54.171 --> 00:17:32.778 There's all sorts of different actors, but one of the things I've discovered is, if you're going to try and take a business offline, one of the first places you disable is their backup, because you destroy their production system and they've got a decent data protection strategy, sort it out, they'll

sort it out and that's interesting Deep into what I'm doing today, but it's fascinating, it's different and, as I say to my team, backup's boring, but data protection is not boring, it's front and center and I think as the next couple of years, it'll just get more and more fundamental and you'll see boards resigning, you'll see CEOs resigning, you'll see CIOs looking for jobs if they don't get this stuff right. 00:17:32.778 --> 00:17:41.362 And, interestingly, that's a dialogue I'm having right now and, honestly, the biggest organizations in Australia are lining up to figure out what they need to do. 00:17:41.362 --> 00:17:47.001 They don't need to buy or buy my software, but they need to invest in a cyber resilience strategy, that's for sure. 00:17:48.411 --> 00:17:48.832 It's funny, mate. 00:17:48.832 --> 00:17:53.542 You just used the frame of reference that you know it can be boring. 00:17:53.542 --> 00:18:04.957 I think one of the things that I've seen and I know I experienced this definitely when I stepped into financial force, right, Because we were selling back off from the RP my perception was that's a pretty boring sale. 00:18:04.957 --> 00:18:08.914 Most businesses are pretty boring. 00:18:08.914 --> 00:18:11.772 What the piece of? 00:18:11.772 --> 00:18:22.349 I'm not necessarily all that exciting, but it's when you tie stuff together and that function plus that function plus that experience, like that becomes exciting. 00:18:22.349 --> 00:18:29.012 Everything you think if you run you run a theme park, all right, there's rollercoasters and stuff, but what are you really doing Really? 00:18:29.012 --> 00:18:31.460 Running a gate at the front and a concession stand. 00:18:31.460 --> 00:18:32.976 It's a corner store and a turnstile. 00:18:32.976 --> 00:18:34.374 It's a pretty boring business, right? 00:18:34.374 --> 00:18:36.038 Yep, how do you make it exciting? 00:18:36.038 --> 00:18:36.971 I think that's the. 00:18:36.971 --> 00:18:39.258 How do you turn it into the experience? 00:18:39.258 --> 00:18:42.878 Or how do you turn it into the outcomes or deliverables, or what problem are you solving? 00:18:42.878 --> 00:18:45.356 Hey, we run kids birthday parties. 00:18:45.356 --> 00:18:46.118 That's awesome. 00:18:46.118 --> 00:18:48.076 That's a really fun thing to do. 00:18:48.309 --> 00:18:50.896 It's a different way of thinking about the fact that you run a theme park. 00:18:50.896 --> 00:18:53.957 Yeah, I think there's a bit. 00:18:53.957 --> 00:19:04.778 I know we've talked a lot about that over the years in terms of how do you call the experience out, the problem out of what someone's actually doing in their business, and that's what we kind of address and attack. 00:19:04.778 --> 00:19:12.778 So it's probably a reasonable segue into kind of the purpose of today's podcast, right, you know, let's look back into our kind of lessons. 00:19:12.778 --> 00:19:18.501 We always run into the lessons of our guests, but what's one of the top lessons that you'd look at? 00:19:18.501 --> 00:19:23.298 Would it be a sales cycle or as a sales leader, that you really try and instill in your team? 00:19:25.855 --> 00:19:26.645 There are a lot of them. 00:19:26.645 --> 00:19:36.960 I think what's interesting fundamentally for me, it's about understanding who you're selling to and, as we always say, it's about the problem you're solving. 00:19:36.960 --> 00:19:45.297 I guess, moving from the previous conversation where we were talking about it's boring or blah, blah, blah, it's that internal bias. 00:19:45.297 --> 00:19:48.685 You have my bias against sales force. 00:19:48.685 --> 00:19:51.217 Mickey Mouse, software, One Trick Pony. 00:19:51.217 --> 00:19:53.042 Why does everybody need a CRM system? 00:19:53.042 --> 00:19:54.085 I got into it. 00:19:54.085 --> 00:19:55.273 Absolutely not the case. 00:19:55.273 --> 00:19:56.875 That was absolute bias. 00:19:57.509 --> 00:20:11.230 So one of the things I do see sells people that Often have bias around the problem their customer is trying to solve, have a bias around who the real power is that they're trying to sell to. 00:20:11.230 --> 00:20:24.993 They have these preconceived ideas based on office chit, chat, previous experience, et cetera, and as a result, I guess two things be curious and always look to discover what's new. 00:20:24.993 --> 00:20:30.412 And if you do those two things, the risk of that sort of negative bias tends to go away. 00:20:30.412 --> 00:20:43.104 And we've all been in sales cycles right when you get to the end of the deal you've committed it and it's going to happen and the person you're talking to isn't actually the person signing the check, Isn't the person making the decision. 00:20:43.846 --> 00:20:45.390 Oh yeah, Look, I really like it. 00:20:45.390 --> 00:20:45.951 It's awesome. 00:20:45.951 --> 00:20:57.088 I've just got to my boss and just see if it's on their radar and as a salesperson at the end of a sales cycle, that's about as bad as you can possibly get, and as you get older you certainly don't make those mistakes. 00:20:57.088 --> 00:20:58.945 But that's all about bias. 00:20:58.945 --> 00:21:08.460 You're sitting there and you're listening to all of the feedback that you're getting along the way and they're giving all the right signals, but just not talking to the right person. 00:21:08.460 --> 00:21:10.420 Boxed yourself in. 00:21:10.420 --> 00:21:13.440 Everything's going well and the old happy years conversation. 00:21:14.328 --> 00:21:18.387 That's probably the most common one, but is there a good story on that you can share with everyone? 00:21:20.652 --> 00:21:21.460 I'll give you a positive one. 00:21:21.460 --> 00:21:29.336 I was in Germany at SAP and we were doing value-based selling and I was working with a couple of sales teams over there. 00:21:29.336 --> 00:21:43.460 I wasn't the sales guy, I wasn't the leader, I was an advisor to the team and we were one of the largest chemical companies

in Germany and big conglomerate, massive company, reasonably big sales force sorry, a shop and we were pitching. 00:21:43.460 --> 00:21:46.157 I can't even remember what the solution was, Probably analytics. 00:21:46.157 --> 00:21:48.116 At the time I was a thin slice across everything. 00:21:48.116 --> 00:21:51.460 We'd come up with the value chain of the business. 00:21:51.460 --> 00:21:54.288 We've analyzed every stakeholder. 00:21:54.288 --> 00:21:57.460 We had figured out who was to gain and lose by what was to lose. 00:21:57.460 --> 00:21:59.440 We'd built an ROI model. 00:21:59.440 --> 00:22:03.117 We'd done everything that we could possibly have done. 00:22:03.117 --> 00:22:03.440 We presented it. 00:22:04.403 --> 00:22:09.460 I was part of the presentation, presenting this model to the CIO, and the CEO said yeah, look, that's awesome. 00:22:09.460 --> 00:22:11.460 You've done a really good view. 00:22:11.460 --> 00:22:15.420 You understand our business and analytics is nice to have. 00:22:15.420 --> 00:22:17.460 Just look at the business model you've got. 00:22:17.460 --> 00:22:19.211 You forgot our consulting business. 00:22:19.211 --> 00:22:20.259 I went what? 00:22:20.259 --> 00:22:23.420 Yeah, this is a chemical company with a consulting business. 00:22:23.921 --> 00:22:30.460 He said I've got 4,000 consultants that I've got out in our customers understanding their needs and working on it. 00:22:30.460 --> 00:22:33.460 I don't know where they are and how they account for their time. 00:22:33.460 --> 00:22:36.460 I don't know what they're doing, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. 00:22:36.460 --> 00:22:43.460 At the end of that we ended up, I think, with a better 5 million euro deal to go sell SAP's project management and consulting software. 00:22:43.460 --> 00:22:48.460 Now the lesson there is we pitched, we're trying to sell analytics. 00:22:49.463 --> 00:22:56.460 The lesson there is don't assume the company better than the person you're talking to and don't worry if you get it wrong. 00:22:56.460 --> 00:23:09.204 If you present back a well thought through, intelligent view of why and what the company does and how they do it, they kind of lean in and start giving you the nuggets, offer them stuff that you have left out. 00:23:09.204 --> 00:23:11.009 That are the nuggets of gold. 00:23:11.009 --> 00:23:13.413 That really drives the value creation. 00:23:13.413 --> 00:23:15.126 That was a huge lesson to me. 00:23:15.126 --> 00:23:16.402 It was borderline. 00:23:16.402 --> 00:23:18.625 It's always good to leave something out of the presentations. 00:23:18.625 --> 00:23:22.093 Your prospect or your customer will lean in and fill in the gaps for you. 00:23:22.093 --> 00:23:28.440 You don't want to always do that because occasionally you'll come across as ill-educated or just not paying attention. 00:23:28.440 --> 00:23:30.224 But it is a fine line there. 00:23:30.224 --> 00:23:31.910 But huge lesson there. 00:23:31.910 --> 00:23:34.460 My assumption was I knew that business better than they did. 00:23:34.460 --> 00:23:39.730 Clearly it wasn't the case and there were 4,000 or 5,000 consultants that obviously hadn't been touched. 00:23:39.750 --> 00:23:40.792 They were not interested. 00:23:40.853 --> 00:23:50.009 Yeah, so that was a fascinating story that one and needless to say, I wasn't the sales guy on that one the sales guy on that one was delighted with the approach that we talked about. 00:23:50.009 --> 00:23:53.294 We left out that and had an opportunity to go and sell about. 00:23:53.294 --> 00:23:54.420 I think it's about 5 million euros. 00:23:55.703 --> 00:23:58.330 That's a decent deal, absolutely yeah. 00:23:58.330 --> 00:24:07.529 I think it's one of those pieces, that what came up for me, as you were sharing, that I see too many organizations who are built towards a pit. 00:24:07.529 --> 00:24:10.666 Honestly, I've pitched anything in my life. 00:24:10.666 --> 00:24:13.146 I've been in sales for 25 years. 00:24:13.146 --> 00:24:15.346 I've never done a pit presented. 00:24:15.346 --> 00:24:17.644 I've talked to some. 00:24:17.644 --> 00:24:23.492 I've had done a first call deck which is, hey, let's just have a starting point for a conversation. 00:24:23.492 --> 00:24:27.224 Even if you're presenting an RFP, it's still. 00:24:27.965 --> 00:24:41.167 It's fighting that, fighting that dandiddle, that voice saying I think they want me to go and talk about these things, they want to have a conversation with you, they want to actually have a two-way engage. 00:24:41.167 --> 00:24:43.945 They want a partner, they want someone who's going to work with them. 00:24:43.945 --> 00:24:45.321 It's not just. 00:24:45.321 --> 00:24:52.374 I did experience for early in my career I worked for marketing agencies and they would go in and do pictures. 00:24:52.374 --> 00:24:53.845 I was on the side of the business. 00:24:53.845 --> 00:24:55.605 I could never understand it. 00:24:55.605 --> 00:24:57.262 I was like how do you? 00:24:57.262 --> 00:25:05.420 I get thrown mud at the wall and hoping that your ideas would work, and then we actually had some reasonable leaders come to that business and completely transformed how they were doing it. 00:25:05.420 --> 00:25:06.328 And it was. 00:25:06.328 --> 00:25:07.460 They got rid of pictures. 00:25:07.460 --> 00:25:13.090 They would let's have a collaborative engagement around what we want to build and we'll build you an outcome to your problem. 00:25:13.090 --> 00:25:16.440 Yep, I think all that stuff is so important, right? 00:25:16.720 --> 00:25:22.750 I think, certainly in the context of where we live in Australia, most executives just hate being sold to. 00:25:22.750 --> 00:25:24.253 It debases them. 00:25:24.253 --> 00:25:25.483 It's just. 00:25:25.483 --> 00:25:26.086 I don't want that. 00:25:26.086 --> 00:25:39.207 I want to value the conversation I have with you and I think, as a sales professional, if you're genuinely curious and

engaging and you lean in, that's where you find the nuggets and that's where you start adding value. 00:25:39.207 --> 00:25:42.369 And that's the difference between a 10K deal and a million dollar deal. 00:25:42.369 --> 00:25:45.789 You're really adding a ton of value, yep. 00:25:46.923 --> 00:25:47.568 Yeah, for sure. 00:25:50.305 --> 00:25:50.707 Absolutely. 00:25:50.707 --> 00:25:52.486 You flip this on its head. 00:25:53.807 --> 00:25:54.878 I was about to say the same thing. 00:25:54.878 --> 00:25:56.980 So yeah, I'll give you a 10 cent tour on my background. 00:25:56.980 --> 00:25:58.483 And look, I've been in. 00:25:58.483 --> 00:26:02.883 Unlike you, I've been in sales my entire career and I didn't. 00:26:02.883 --> 00:26:04.488 I never planned to be in sales. 00:26:04.488 --> 00:26:06.948 It wasn't like I was at school and said I'll be a salesman. 00:26:06.948 --> 00:26:16.450 I got a job out of uni, had to find my way to buy myself beers on a Friday night and I saw mobile phones of all things at retail store. 00:26:16.450 --> 00:26:18.663 My first job was actually to motor roll. 00:26:18.663 --> 00:26:26.980 My first sales job was actually at a motor roller level C service centre and when people would come in with a broken phone they needed a bloke standing at the front counter. 00:26:26.980 --> 00:26:28.385 He could sell a phone. 00:26:29.141 --> 00:26:30.064 You remember it first time. 00:26:31.803 --> 00:26:37.630 Um, it was a replacement handset and it was actually. 00:26:37.630 --> 00:26:38.932 This is how long ago it was. 00:26:38.932 --> 00:26:48.153 It was one of the big old, like a long rectangular bricks with the big arrows on top, and I had this guy that's. 00:26:48.153 --> 00:26:48.980 He crushed it. 00:26:48.980 --> 00:26:51.481 He'd driven a truck over it and it's still. 00:26:51.481 --> 00:26:54.980 This had good, these mobiles were all laughed now at iPhones and and androids and stuff. 00:26:54.980 --> 00:26:56.707 How quickly the screens break. 00:26:56.707 --> 00:27:02.919 He driven his truck over it and it was just the fact that he grated the front off it, and when it's not worth to play, it's not worth fixing. 00:27:02.919 --> 00:27:04.596 I'll buy a new one, but he goes. 00:27:04.596 --> 00:27:04.898 This is great. 00:27:04.898 --> 00:27:07.528 I grew up by the aerial and I'll chuck it in the back of the tray. 00:27:07.528 --> 00:27:09.586 That's our route. 00:27:09.586 --> 00:27:12.044 That's those things over the driver to driven his truck over it. 00:27:12.044 --> 00:27:12.744 That was my first sale. 00:27:13.125 --> 00:27:13.767 Yep, this one. 00:27:14.528 --> 00:27:16.592 Yeah, yeah, precure cherry, so to speak. 00:27:16.592 --> 00:27:28.919 But no, I spent another sort of three or four years and I was at university working mobiles selling in different locations around the city and then finished university, had an economics degree from Sydney Uni Don't know how I was, just it was in business. 00:27:28.919 --> 00:27:31.588 That was as close as I could think about what I was doing. 00:27:31.588 --> 00:27:41.749 Spent almost a year as a insurance broker of all things, selling credit insurance, and looked around and went I'm not an insurance breaker, this is, I've got no interest in doing this whatsoever. 00:27:41.749 --> 00:27:44.969 Then spent a couple of years working for a. 00:27:44.969 --> 00:27:49.980 Spent a couple of years working for one of the agencies under the Cleminger brand. 00:27:50.281 --> 00:28:04.980 I got bought by Cleminger just after I left, but they were a field marketing experience agency, so we used to look after how people working in retail channel with experience Samsung and Optosaw mobiles when you walk into store did a big project for Westfield shopping centers around the globe, which is pretty interesting. 00:28:04.980 --> 00:28:12.473 So at one point I had a thousand mystery shoppers and orders a month coming into Westfield shopping centers around the world, which is pretty cool. 00:28:12.473 --> 00:28:30.855 And then stepped out of that and joined Nikon cameras of all places and was looking after their regional sort of operational sales team Left that when across and worked in for Hasbro toys selling action figures and things for a year into toys are asked in more words and a whole bunch of different places. 00:28:30.855 --> 00:28:35.818 It wasn't that fun it wasn't my bag at all. 00:28:36.843 --> 00:28:37.887 You didn't get the stuff to either. 00:28:38.362 --> 00:28:41.980 Yeah, yeah and then spent actually then spent three years running my own company. 00:28:41.980 --> 00:28:43.184 I ran a. 00:28:43.184 --> 00:28:44.971 We bought a division of it. 00:28:44.971 --> 00:28:46.683 My father and I bought a division of a. 00:28:46.683 --> 00:28:52.980 A Plumats company was going broke and we turned the repair division into a national repair. 00:28:52.980 --> 00:29:00.940 I'm flying to a repair company with a sideline for replacing appliances and selling spare parts, and that's how I actually got into tech, would you believe. 00:29:00.940 --> 00:29:08.692 Again, you said before, like you, as you plot your trajectory, and I hear people joining there early in their crews going what's the right, what's the pathway? 00:29:08.692 --> 00:29:09.432 There's no pathway. 00:29:09.692 --> 00:29:12.566 There's no pathway, you'll work it in a way, anyone who tells you there's a pathway is kidding. 00:29:12.566 --> 00:29:17.530 Now you've got mobile phones, action figures camera and then I'm in tech. 00:29:17.570 --> 00:29:23.583 now, right, and so how I got in tech was I had to run this company and so I had to bootstrap. 00:29:23.583 --> 00:29:25.163 How do I build a? 00:29:25.163 --> 00:29:27.686 I didn't know what a CRM was and I had to. 00:29:27.686 --> 00:29:34.875 I've got customers and I need some way of tracking them and billing them and working it out and outsourcing it now to our contractors. 00:29:34.875 --> 00:29:47.310 And

stumbled on a CRM and that was Salesforce and did the world's quickest RFP in about 15 minutes and said oh, google, the customer, if Google has done the assessment, this kit must be all right, I'll buy that. 00:29:48.039 --> 00:29:48.982 Was this our board of the? 00:29:49.002 --> 00:29:49.203 time. 00:29:49.203 --> 00:29:50.689 Remember being sold to. 00:29:50.689 --> 00:29:55.776 I was sold to by a guy who I believe actually is listening to the podcast, called Imran Ali. 00:29:55.776 --> 00:29:56.980 He's been around for a while. 00:29:57.480 --> 00:30:00.367 He's been at doctors in mind and just close to him at SAP too. 00:30:00.367 --> 00:30:01.411 There you go. 00:30:01.672 --> 00:30:10.980 Yeah, imran did the sales cycle for me and again that was helped by one of our good friends, paul Mansfield he was my SI at the time delivered that project. 00:30:10.980 --> 00:30:14.008 Again, the cool lesson that I learned on that one, paul. 00:30:14.008 --> 00:30:18.960 I turned around to Paul about a year and a half later and said, mate, what you built this CRM for me, and now I've learned all these other things. 00:30:18.960 --> 00:30:20.980 Why didn't you build that for me at the beginning? 00:30:20.980 --> 00:30:25.980 He said because if I told you to do all those things, you never would have launched the project. 00:30:25.980 --> 00:30:29.810 You weren't ready to hear about it because that wasn't the problem you were solving yet. 00:30:29.810 --> 00:30:34.951 The problem you were solving was getting up and running fast and just getting phase one done. 00:30:34.951 --> 00:30:37.276 I went yeah, that's fair, great yeah. 00:30:37.375 --> 00:30:38.980 And I've remembered that so many times. 00:30:38.980 --> 00:30:44.896 It's like if you tell me you can scare a customer away because you didn't, you know where this is going to go. 00:30:44.896 --> 00:30:45.980 They're not ready to hear that yet. 00:30:46.941 --> 00:30:52.809 How many times have you had a salesperson in your team that pitches to absolutely everything you can do? 00:30:52.809 --> 00:30:55.615 That's just nowhere near what the client is trying to solve. 00:30:55.615 --> 00:30:57.858 And because they're widgets, really cool. 00:30:58.864 --> 00:31:01.336 Just sell the bit they need to buy and all the function they need to buy. 00:31:01.336 --> 00:31:01.980 That's all they care about. 00:31:01.980 --> 00:31:11.980 So I did that, and then actually a guy called Tony Armfield who's now over at IBM, I believe I was doing a whole bunch of different bits and pieces, custom references for Salesforce and some cool videos. 00:31:11.980 --> 00:31:13.143 They were very cool. 00:31:13.143 --> 00:31:16.430 He joked me one day and said I'll make more than this half of my sales guys do. 00:31:16.430 --> 00:31:17.311 Why aren't you working for me? 00:31:17.311 --> 00:31:17.772 It was an all. 00:31:18.323 --> 00:31:19.960 When I sell the company, I'm tapping on the shoulder. 00:31:19.960 --> 00:31:21.828 And

I got some advice. 00:31:21.828 --> 00:31:29.980 A couple of years later that's a couple of months later almost it said if you're going to sell the company it's never my long term dream to run an appliance repair company you need to fire yourself. 00:31:29.980 --> 00:31:31.980 So when you sell the business, you don't go with it. 00:31:31.980 --> 00:31:33.167 I went. 00:31:33.167 --> 00:31:33.952 That's good advice. 00:31:33.952 --> 00:31:34.980 So I did. 00:31:34.980 --> 00:31:36.980 I fired myself and went and got a job at Salesforce. 00:31:36.980 --> 00:31:38.928 Tony referred me in. 00:31:39.861 --> 00:32:07.027 I joined the join Charlie Woods team in Radiance Six and spent a couple of years traversing through the marketing cloud business as they, as Radiance Six became Radiance Six Plus Buddy Media as a social marketing cloud and then exact target got acquired into the business and then stepped across in the call with you, which was pretty cool, and then obviously across into financial force and then off into Conga and now I'm searching for the next grade engagement of whatever life is going to look like, doing some work in the sort of the startup plan, which is pretty cool. 00:32:07.027 --> 00:32:08.761 But yeah, look, it's been. 00:32:08.761 --> 00:32:14.834 It's been an interesting journey to get to where I am having now looking back on 15 years in tech enterprise. 00:32:14.834 --> 00:32:27.589 So everything from selling action figures through to selling individual transactions to mobile phones as a kid, now to selling multimillion dollar enterprise deals, it's an interesting piece that I think doesn't matter what size the sale is. 00:32:28.662 --> 00:32:33.592 There might be more voices in the process, but the concept always so similar, yep. 00:32:33.592 --> 00:32:41.953 And when you break it down to the individual transaction, there is always still one person on the other side who is fundamentally making a decision on. 00:32:41.953 --> 00:32:43.980 This is the right way, or that's the right way. 00:32:43.980 --> 00:32:47.612 Maybe there's a couple of voices in a in an enterprise conversation. 00:32:47.612 --> 00:32:51.980 To make sure, you've validated all the different directions Nine times out of 10. 00:32:51.980 --> 00:32:54.980 There's one decision makers that's saying that's the right direction to go in. 00:32:55.727 --> 00:32:59.980 And I think it's such a good lesson right, You've got to put yourself in the mind of that decision maker. 00:32:59.980 --> 00:33:03.940 They've got three or four alternative solutions to buy. 00:33:03.940 --> 00:33:05.913 It is trust. 00:33:05.913 --> 00:33:06.980 What are some of the things you put yourself? 00:33:06.980 --> 00:33:08.980 You're at Aussie white goods. 00:33:08.980 --> 00:33:10.858 You are buying sales force. 00:33:10.858 --> 00:33:14.317 Sales force was front of center for you in terms of make a decision. 00:33:16.123 --> 00:33:18.730 It's a lesson that I've shared with so many different people over time. 00:33:18.730 --> 00:33:21.205 I really learned hard when I was running my own company. 00:33:21.205 --> 00:33:27.568 Everybody thinks the biggest competitor is some other solution. 00:33:27.568 --> 00:33:32.626 In your space, the biggest competitor is always do nothing. 00:33:32.626 --> 00:33:43.290 The biggest competitor is the fact that the executive that you're talking to, versus engaging with you and buying your solution, has just got other priorities. 00:33:43.290 --> 00:33:46.189 I'm not saying that you won't lose a deal. 00:33:46.189 --> 00:33:48.186 Everyone loses a deal to a competitor every now and again. 00:33:48.186 --> 00:33:51.769 That's where the actual conversation was happening. 00:33:51.769 --> 00:33:58.307 We talk about tender fodder and those sorts of things when sales cycle right, someone else was leading the charge on that conversation. 00:33:58.307 --> 00:34:12.844 The real assessment that the organization or the individuals having was do I buy this, do I partner with these people to deliver that outcome, or do I just focus my time on it for doing something else completely, or just keep doing what I'm doing today? 00:34:13.760 --> 00:34:15.045 Tell me when you come up with those. 00:34:15.045 --> 00:34:22.864 When Imran came and pitched Salesforce to you and you were thinking to yourself, yeah, do I do nothing? 00:34:22.864 --> 00:34:29.206 Do I listen to this guy that's talking about CRM and what can do for my business and how it tracks my customer engagement? 00:34:29.206 --> 00:34:32.766 What were some of the messages he gave you that really said you know what? 00:34:32.766 --> 00:34:33.971 I'm not going to do nothing. 00:34:34.740 --> 00:34:43.702 Yeah, look, I think I presented him a problem which was hey look, I've just built this company overnight and bought some assets and I'm going to have to turn the phones on in five days time. 00:34:43.702 --> 00:34:55.382 Right now, my plan to manage the inflow of customers is a board of paper and some faxes and emails. 00:34:55.382 --> 00:34:59.708 That model, while painful, will work. 00:34:59.708 --> 00:35:08.648 I think there's a thing here that you can help me on educate me on what I don't know, and then I can make a conscious decision around. 00:35:08.648 --> 00:35:13.987 Do I spend the next couple of months getting that right or getting something else? 00:35:13.987 --> 00:35:21.637 What he painted for a picture for me was okay in your business, these are the types of things that are going to happen Now, look, I have an issue. 00:35:21.637 --> 00:35:25.882 I was in a pretty unique scenario that we bought some assets we knew we were going to have. 00:35:25.882 --> 00:35:30.985 We had a big guess we're going to have a whole bunch of traffic Monday, one which was helpful. 00:35:30.985 --> 00:35:38.365 He was able to paint a picture for me that said these are the things that are likely to happen as a result of these things happening then.

00:35:38.365 --> 00:35:39.429 These are the things that will happen. 00:35:39.429 --> 00:35:40.583 These are the problems you'll have. 00:35:40.583 --> 00:35:41.085 On top of that. 00:35:41.085 --> 00:35:44.648 Here are a couple of different ways you can solve those problems. 00:35:44.648 --> 00:35:46.202 This is how we do it. 00:35:46.202 --> 00:35:50.809 The timeframe to solve it with us looks like this. 00:35:50.809 --> 00:35:53.451 Investment looks like this. 00:35:53.471 --> 00:35:54.539 Then we brought up some additional issues. 00:35:54.539 --> 00:35:57.028 I didn't want to pay any money because I didn't have any revenue yet. 00:35:57.028 --> 00:35:58.545 I had no idea what the revenue would look like. 00:35:58.545 --> 00:35:59.088 On the other side. 00:35:59.088 --> 00:36:05.945 We pushed on him with payment terms and what's our commitment timeframe and what happens if I grow astronomically. 00:36:05.945 --> 00:36:09.228 What's this going to look like if I've got 50 people in six weeks' time? 00:36:09.228 --> 00:36:12.507 He solved some problems for me, which is a great sales guy. 00:36:12.507 --> 00:36:16.268 It was always around, but they had problems for tomorrow. 00:36:16.268 --> 00:36:19.206 This is how we alleviate your immediate problem right now. 00:36:20.440 --> 00:36:20.983 It's interesting. 00:36:22.480 --> 00:36:26.831 That was a really interesting experience being on the side of actually buying the software yourselves. 00:36:26.831 --> 00:36:30.849 That was the other interesting conversation that I never forget. 00:36:30.849 --> 00:36:36.452 At the time zero was really early and I was quite keen for us to use zero. 00:36:36.452 --> 00:36:41.512 But it was early at trajectory and my old man pulled me aside and he said are you going to do the accounting? 00:36:41.512 --> 00:36:41.992 I said no. 00:36:41.992 --> 00:36:44.599 He said okay, cool, we were sharing an account. 00:36:44.599 --> 00:36:47.389 He had a legal practice, world sharing office space and stuff. 00:36:47.389 --> 00:36:50.668 He pulled me over and I love a girl called Cheryl was running the books. 00:36:50.668 --> 00:36:55.905 He said Cheryl, what accounting package do you use every day? 00:36:55.905 --> 00:36:56.728 She said use my OB. 00:36:56.728 --> 00:36:57.708 I said okay, cool. 00:36:57.708 --> 00:36:59.231 Have you ever used zero? 00:36:59.231 --> 00:37:00.673 She said no, never used zero. 00:37:00.673 --> 00:37:02.806 He turned to me and he said so, are you training? 00:37:02.806 --> 00:37:08.849 I said no, I went fair enough decision made. 00:37:09.130 --> 00:37:10.012 Think through that. 00:37:10.012 --> 00:37:12.347 You're an MYOB rep and you're a zero rep. 00:37:12.347 --> 00:37:15.005 You're calling on your company. 00:37:15.748 --> 00:37:24.869 Yeah, like when you think at that point in time the decision had nothing to do with whether MYOB or zero was a better solution. 00:37:24.869 --> 00:37:28.333 It had nothing to do with was it cheaper? 00:37:28.333 --> 00:37:29.780 Were the payment terms good? 00:37:29.780 --> 00:37:31.427 Was the integration better? 00:37:31.427 --> 00:37:32.764 Was the product better? 00:37:32.764 --> 00:37:35.364 Time, effort and money. 00:37:35.364 --> 00:37:46.791 I was not going to spend the time and I definitely wasn't going to spend the effort worrying about retraining my 30 year experienced accounts person on a new platform. 00:37:47.353 --> 00:37:47.773 There you go. 00:37:48.221 --> 00:37:51.905 There's a lesson there right, like that's yeah, 100%, lesson right. 00:37:51.905 --> 00:37:56.788 It's not about the widgets, it's not about the widgets and that engagement it was to the zero rep from the sell. 00:37:56.788 --> 00:37:58.344 To me that was against do nothing. 00:37:58.344 --> 00:38:03.067 This is my account and already had it means, since it's zero, it didn't cost me any money. 00:38:03.067 --> 00:38:05.507 We still had to pay a license and buy a new organ. 00:38:05.507 --> 00:38:06.644 Lots of stuff had to pay money for it. 00:38:06.644 --> 00:38:10.708 But the decision was a competitive engagement against do nothing. 00:38:10.708 --> 00:38:14.507 Yes, they didn't get beaten by MYOB, of course not. 00:38:14.507 --> 00:38:15.570 They got beaten by do nothing. 00:38:16.661 --> 00:38:19.068 So, yeah, I think let's roll forward it a little bit. 00:38:19.068 --> 00:38:21.865 Walk me through one of your favorite sales cycles. 00:38:21.865 --> 00:38:23.369 What went well? 00:38:23.369 --> 00:38:24.231 What would you do differently? 00:38:25.722 --> 00:38:28.887 Hook, one of my favorite personal sales cycles. 00:38:28.887 --> 00:38:39.282 I did a big deal the biggest deal I did as an individual contributor with a very, very large North American fast food outlet that sells hamburgers. 00:38:39.282 --> 00:38:46.710 But like that, the deal that I loved about that was we competed against everybody. 00:38:46.710 --> 00:38:55.969 It was as though I kind of moving into how do they bring their customer experience, their transaction at the register, into the 21st century? 00:38:55.969 --> 00:38:58.510 How do you do it on an app? 00:38:58.510 --> 00:39:05.110 Or how do you move it away from affording your old having to stand there and punch your order to doing it yourself and putting screens at the front, et cetera. 00:39:05.110 --> 00:39:22.766 They were very early in their journey but they brought everybody in Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, Salesforce, et cetera, and early on in the engagement and look at that stage, Salesforce was probably the smallest player in region by a long way Ten X, smaller than everybody else. 00:39:22.766 --> 00:39:30.429 And the brief we got was like it was brief, it was on one page and I was like where's the rest of this brief? 00:39:30.429 --> 00:39:34.902 It's got to be more detailed to this problem statement and what I think. 00:39:35.083 --> 00:40:04.050 The bit that I look back on that and actually I've worked with a guy we both

know, Peter Reid, on this and the bit that I loved about the engagement that we had was we worked out that not only no-transcript, they not know the brief themselves, Somebody else owned this brief and everybody else was madly trying to discover from the customer themselves, not actually understanding how this customer operated. 00:40:04.050 --> 00:40:12.233 And this particular customer had two marketing agencies that basically run this business for 50 plus years. 00:40:12.233 --> 00:40:14.239 That's how long relationships were. 00:40:14.239 --> 00:40:21.260 So we went okay, this is actually about changing customer experience, it's about marketing, it's about getting your data sent underneath it. 00:40:21.260 --> 00:40:34.230 We spent all of 85% of our time delving into building a relationship with these two marketing agencies and we then worked out that no, and they said you're the only couple talking to us. 00:40:34.230 --> 00:40:35.952 Okay, cool, this is our bet. 00:40:35.952 --> 00:40:38.168 This is our bet that we think this is the right way to go about it. 00:40:38.260 --> 00:40:42.235 Now we're chasing CEOs and heads of marketing and two. 00:40:42.235 --> 00:40:45.047 Okay, if you have one page brief, you have no idea what we're doing here. 00:40:45.047 --> 00:40:46.826 We don't know what the problem is here. 00:40:46.826 --> 00:40:49.085 We just know we need to go and do something different. 00:40:49.085 --> 00:40:57.773 And what we found out on the pathway was the day before we were all presenting, and it was a showdown. 00:40:57.773 --> 00:41:06.751 And again I'll go back to the fact I said before I never pitched, but the showdown was all these different agencies walking out and the different vendors walking in to talk to these guys. 00:41:06.751 --> 00:41:22.708 The day before, the two agencies met with the customer and educated them on what the problem was, what they had to go and solve, how to go about it, what the player of the market liked and what their recommendation was on a solution. 00:41:22.708 --> 00:41:27.666 We built the recommendation and the solution for them. 00:41:27.666 --> 00:41:28.630 Yep. 00:41:29.842 --> 00:41:33.010 So we came in the next day and again we didn't present. 00:41:33.010 --> 00:41:43.871 We came in and we had a collaborative discussion with them and walk them basically sort of back through and what they had learned the day before as to what all their problems were. 00:41:43.871 --> 00:41:47.750 And it was like, hey, great, tell us about your problems and this is what it is. 00:41:47.750 --> 00:41:52.666 And they told us and they, great, amazing, this next slide, it looks exactly what you need to let it look like. 00:41:52.666 --> 00:41:57.090 And then here's the architecture diagram of how you would solve based on that. 00:41:57.090 --> 00:42:03.492 And they stopped us and they went how did you know? 00:42:03.492 --> 00:42:04.132 That's what it was. 00:42:04.132 --> 00:42:09.592 And I said, well, you spent eight weeks talking to your partners and they went oh, you actually understand us. 00:42:09.592 --> 00:42:11.244 You want to understand our business. 00:42:11.244 --> 00:42:13.302 So that was an interesting one. 00:42:13.744 --> 00:42:21.626 But there were some other great pieces of that particular deal that I experienced and loved, which was how to manage executives. 00:42:21.626 --> 00:42:25.885 When you're in a larger organization, even a smaller one, how do you manage up internally? 00:42:25.885 --> 00:42:37.007 And one of the big problems we had in that particular deal was there were a lot of other parts of the Salesforce platform that wanted to be on this deal and they probably weren't relevant. 00:42:37.007 --> 00:42:44.132 A big part of that was managing some executives and some egos around, how do we get our logo attached to this engagement? 00:42:44.132 --> 00:42:59.239 And there was one particular meeting where I recall this, like it was yesterday and I worked out half of the meeting that the CMO, who was the main for all this, just was not swallowing what our particular executive was putting down in the meeting. 00:42:59.380 --> 00:43:17.228 And I had to pivot and you, after the meeting, I was going to get literally yelled at or torn a new one and got that copped it on the way home in the taxi, on the way back to the office in the taxi, and walk back in to see my own leader at the time who went I've just got this text message what happened Walked him back through what happened. 00:43:17.228 --> 00:43:19.490 He went. 00:43:19.490 --> 00:43:21.239 Okay, you've had to fall on the sword on that one, fair enough. 00:43:21.239 --> 00:43:24.025 But look, we won the deal at the time. 00:43:24.025 --> 00:43:33.260 It was someone did surpass it, not very last was, but at the time it was the single largest deal we've done in my part of the, my part of Salesforce at the time, which was pretty cool, but it was a big deal. 00:43:33.260 --> 00:43:37.260 There were lots and lots of moving pieces to it, some good lessons there. 00:43:37.704 --> 00:43:39.199 Look, I think, influence the influences. 00:43:39.199 --> 00:43:41.260 Actually, who are the influences? 00:43:41.260 --> 00:43:43.186 Yeah, they're not the people you think they are. 00:43:43.186 --> 00:43:51.231 Yeah, and I guess the other one is curiosity, right, you really wanted to understand the problem and it wasn't on that one page. 00:43:51.231 --> 00:43:56.126 So you talk to people that were influencing the company you're selling to. 00:43:56.126 --> 00:43:59.693 50 year relationship is not one to ignore really. 00:44:00.313 --> 00:44:04.083 Yeah, and it was, and we know one of the things that we also did. 00:44:04.083 --> 00:44:11.014 Now that I think about it, we didn't just follow the bouncing ball of the customer to give us which was there was at the start of it. 00:44:11.014 --> 00:44:12.115 Here's the one page brief. 00:44:12.115 --> 00:44:15.148 Here's the things that

you're going to go and do in the meetings we'll have. 00:44:15.148 --> 00:44:15.809 We just ignored it. 00:44:15.809 --> 00:44:19.730 We asked them for the meetings that we needed to have to be able to do our bit. 00:44:19.730 --> 00:44:30.889 We went and asked for more information, we sought out what was necessary for us to build a view of what was right, and we never just accepted the fact that we couldn't ask more. 00:44:30.889 --> 00:44:32.552 Yep. 00:44:33.655 --> 00:44:34.538 Absolutely so. 00:44:34.538 --> 00:44:35.260 Look interesting. 00:44:35.260 --> 00:44:47.260 I think I know two sales cycles are the same, but I think I guess the one that I mentioned before being curious, not knowing the business but being open to understanding what was not uncovered from your perspective that one was amazing. 00:44:47.260 --> 00:45:03.168 I love the fact that you identified that there was an influence outside the company that had a long business history with them, that probably had a good understanding of the business outcomes they wanted not the widgets they needed to buy and you pivot your talk track to that. 00:45:03.168 --> 00:45:07.005 And I think as a salesperson you don't get it particularly often. 00:45:07.005 --> 00:45:11.514 But when you present and your prospect says how did you know that? 00:45:11.514 --> 00:45:12.215 How did you know that? 00:45:12.215 --> 00:45:19.978 How you're in a pretty good spot, right, and your slides or your presentation themes are 100%, spot on, I guess pivoting. 00:45:19.978 --> 00:45:24.909 Have you ever done a presentation where it 100% missed the mark? 00:45:24.909 --> 00:45:28.728 Yes, we both have, I know. 00:45:30.061 --> 00:45:35.219 One thing I did before I jump into these were they've completely missed the mark and in fact I'll tell you one that I missed the mark on and we ended up closing. 00:45:35.219 --> 00:45:46.630 In fact, in this story one of the things I'll say that salespeople and people in business really should remember you're going to lose more deals than you win and that's a function of the way that sales works. 00:45:46.630 --> 00:45:51.239 If you're closing more than 30% of your total pipeline, you are a superstar. 00:45:51.239 --> 00:45:53.909 Either that or you're fudging your numbers a bit. 00:45:53.909 --> 00:45:56.063 So that's the first piece. 00:45:56.143 --> 00:46:33.152 But there was a particular printing company out of Melbourne who've now been acquired and done some other things anyway, and we had, we were pitching for their ERP business and their billing business and we dropped the ball so hard on the presentation and part of it was some technical problems in our gaps in our product that we, as a solution, just stepped around and the guy at the time, the customer who was owning the process, rang us back and just went. 00:46:33.152 --> 00:46:34.074 That was horrendous. 00:46:34.074 --> 00:46:43.829 You didn't answer any of the things that you needed us to do and I knew on the

call I went, but this has just gone pear shaped. 00:46:43.829 --> 00:46:53.503 The thing that we did that saved that deal and it's a really I've never I don't know how I came up with this at the time, or if I heard it off someone. 00:46:55.166 --> 00:46:57.934 We asked for a do over, like we actually just said to the customer. 00:46:57.934 --> 00:46:58.275 Do you know what? 00:46:58.275 --> 00:47:14.333 I don't want you to make a decision based on my shitty work and I think I just I was off on a completely different pathway here, and if you're going to make a decision on what you're going to do moving forward, that shouldn't be based on the fact that maybe I dropped the ball. 00:47:14.333 --> 00:47:18.311 That was like a pattern disrupt. 00:47:18.311 --> 00:47:19.273 They stopped. 00:47:19.273 --> 00:47:21.117 Yeah, that's fair. 00:47:21.498 --> 00:47:23.811 Okay, do you know what's interesting? 00:47:23.811 --> 00:47:28.731 I remember that and, with all due respect, I already decided what the problem was. 00:47:28.731 --> 00:47:33.177 Yes, and it's a weird thing, right, and I've done that before. 00:47:33.177 --> 00:47:34.079 I mean, we all have right. 00:47:34.079 --> 00:47:35.791 You have this tweak in your brain. 00:47:35.791 --> 00:47:40.090 You go I know what they want, yeah, and then everything else that hits you after that is just noise. 00:47:40.090 --> 00:47:40.932 Was just noise? 00:47:40.932 --> 00:47:47.329 Yeah, and then you just turn up and do what you assume is the right outcome and it's just not listening. 00:47:47.831 --> 00:47:51.126 Yeah, the questions we'd ask we'd prepare answers to we're. 00:47:51.126 --> 00:47:57.579 Just they wanted some really basic functionality covered off for us and we just hadn't done it and asked us for it. 00:47:57.579 --> 00:48:08.235 We weren't listening to it and we ignored it and, like the pattern disrupt was, I just said, look, I don't want you to make a decision that's going to impact your business based on me being bad at my job this bit. 00:48:08.235 --> 00:48:11.072 I'm going to make an unreasoned request and can we do it again? 00:48:11.072 --> 00:48:28.824 And the customer went yeah, I think that's actually a really good thing to do, because I don't want to go and advise my CEO that, because Bartel did a shit job, we've now gone on his other pathway and not looked at all the right data and not had a good engagement. 00:48:28.824 --> 00:48:33.356 He said, okay, but what I'm going to need are these things and great. 00:48:33.485 --> 00:48:42.188 And we went and blibbered on those things and even in the second engagement with them it was significantly better, but it wasn't all the way there. 00:48:42.188 --> 00:48:55.434 But because we'd now built this kind of back and forward relationship in terms of getting them the outcome, they went okay, we can actually see that there's a potential that you could do these things, but we haven't seen them. 00:48:55.434 --> 00:49:05.833 We actually want

to see it like this, and it allowed us to have some much more open conversations around what was there and what needed to be built and what would come in deployment that we would normally have. 00:49:05.833 --> 00:49:08.628 But it was a conversation. 00:49:08.628 --> 00:49:12.610 It wasn't a pick, yeah, but I got to say there was a deal. 00:49:12.610 --> 00:49:17.733 That was a deal we won and it was one of the better deals we ended up winning, but it definitely was lost before it was won. 00:49:17.733 --> 00:49:18.434 Yeah. 00:49:19.284 --> 00:49:23.936 But I think you asked me before what advice do you give salespeople? 00:49:23.936 --> 00:49:27.253 Don't give up With respect, yeah, don't give up. 00:49:28.445 --> 00:49:32.251 A deal's not lost until it's lost, until someone's actually decided this is it Now. 00:49:32.251 --> 00:49:32.893 Thank you very much. 00:49:32.893 --> 00:49:35.336 We just got to go and spend a time and if it's somewhere else I'll buy something else. 00:49:35.336 --> 00:49:36.018 What it's going to be. 00:49:36.539 --> 00:49:39.072 Yeah, and once that's happened, don't burn bridges. 00:49:39.072 --> 00:49:48.793 Except, the call went the other way and it's really important because the executives that you spent the last six months building a relationship are going to be somewhere else. 00:49:48.793 --> 00:49:52.972 You're going to meet them again, especially in a market like Australia and New Zealand. 00:49:52.972 --> 00:50:04.931 You're going to run into these people and I think if you lose a deal with respect, you're probably going to be Colla May in the next year when they move somewhere else. 00:50:04.931 --> 00:50:06.333 Done up with respect. 00:50:06.333 --> 00:50:10.393 You listened, you've empathized with the problem they're trying to solve. 00:50:10.393 --> 00:50:11.768 You didn't win this one. 00:50:11.768 --> 00:50:14.188 There's been reasons outside of your control. 00:50:14.188 --> 00:50:17.713 Accept it, move on and just never burn bridges. 00:50:17.713 --> 00:50:18.795 Yeah. 00:50:19.697 --> 00:50:25.610 Yeah, oh, and look at that, and that custom was pretty problematic, I gotta say through the whole thing but that particular executives. 00:50:26.331 --> 00:50:32.050 I think we were the first or second phone call at the very next job that he had. 00:50:32.050 --> 00:50:34.590 And I listen, I've got a really similar looking problem. 00:50:34.590 --> 00:50:38.373 I'm not sure you guys can do it, but can you come in and talk to me about it? 00:50:38.373 --> 00:50:48.592 And it wasn't just because it wasn't just because that was who we had on the Rolodex, it was because there was a mutual level of we understood it, worked together, we built a level of trust to have proper conversations. 00:50:49.744 --> 00:51:01.490 And in fact the other piece I didn't mention that where we built the greatest level of trust in that first engagement was we were scared around some functionality that, some requests that they had that we just didn't do. 00:51:01.490 --> 00:51:07.054 And we had a lot of I remember this a lot of army and army around. 00:51:07.054 --> 00:51:08.436 How do we manage that conversation? 00:51:08.436 --> 00:51:11.853 And I don't recall where I said I come up with this or someone else did. 00:51:11.853 --> 00:51:15.110 We had to, we came up with. 00:51:15.110 --> 00:51:26.947 We just have to tell them when I do that, we have to tell them we don't have that functionality and that needs to make a decision based on pieces of work and what wasn't even a workaround. 00:51:27.268 --> 00:51:28.552 We can't deliver that for you. 00:51:28.552 --> 00:51:40.250 And the feedback from the customer was he said that was the moment we trusted you, because you were honest and you were open and, even though we're asking, trying to push you, we knew what the boundaries were now. 00:51:40.250 --> 00:51:54.436 And now, when you were telling us other things that we can do that because you told us you couldn't do that thing we now knew, when you were telling us you could do that, you could do it, but before we were just saying yes to everything, we didn't know what was real and what wasn't genuine. 00:51:55.144 --> 00:51:58.146 That's a massive lesson for people In a sales cycle. 00:51:58.146 --> 00:52:03.938 If you haven't said no at some point, you've got to second guess where you're going to win this right? 00:52:03.938 --> 00:52:05.594 Yeah, you've got to find the boundaries. 00:52:05.594 --> 00:52:07.244 100%, yeah, 100%. 00:52:07.244 --> 00:52:08.831 I think it's like kids, right? 00:52:08.831 --> 00:52:12.565 They'll keep asking until you say no, absolutely. 00:52:12.565 --> 00:52:19.112 What quite often happens in that scenario I've seen, especially if there's a consulting team to implement, you keep saying yes. 00:52:19.253 --> 00:52:29.349 the profit margin of your engagement just gets whittled away in every single conversation and you get to the end of the cycle, if you happen to win it. 00:52:29.349 --> 00:52:34.750 You wish you'd said no a little bit earlier, because when you do say no, it's often reasonable. 00:52:34.750 --> 00:52:36.235 To say no, it's not reasonable. 00:52:36.235 --> 00:52:37.983 We've both had small kids. 00:52:37.983 --> 00:52:39.891 They're just going to keep asking until you say no. 00:52:39.891 --> 00:52:41.429 Can I have another lollipop? 00:52:41.429 --> 00:52:43.333 Yep, can I have another lollipop Yep? 00:52:43.333 --> 00:52:46.552 Even though it's not good for them, you've got to say no at some point. 00:52:47.065 --> 00:52:49.952 Yeah, you also don't want your first no to be about price. 00:52:50.594 --> 00:52:53.190 Yes, if you haven't said no beforehand. 00:52:53.190 --> 00:52:54.635 It's different things that we can't do. 00:52:54.635 --> 00:52:57.932 It hasn't set the boundaries of okay, what can I? 00:52:57.932 --> 00:52:58.333 Otherwise? 00:52:58.333 --> 00:53:00.951 The customer has a perception that you can do anything

I ask you to. 00:53:00.951 --> 00:53:04.474 So now, all of a sudden, it becomes super difficult for that. 00:53:04.474 --> 00:53:04.876 First. 00:53:04.876 --> 00:53:07.532 Hey, this is the same as that example we talked about before. 00:53:07.532 --> 00:53:08.315 I just can't get there. 00:53:08.315 --> 00:53:10.192 This is the construct I've got to look at. 00:53:10.192 --> 00:53:12.393 This is what I need from the profitability perspective. 00:53:12.393 --> 00:53:13.610 This is me being truthful. 00:53:13.610 --> 00:53:15.550 This is not just me saying I want to make some comp. 00:53:15.550 --> 00:53:20.050 Yep, like that, because if you haven't pushed back earlier, it becomes like a sweetly deviate conversation. 00:53:20.050 --> 00:53:23.056 Boundaries Another good lesson? 00:53:23.056 --> 00:53:23.699 Either question. 00:53:23.699 --> 00:53:37.353 So we've obviously given a bunch of advice and shared some stories, but, as we ask all of our guests when they come on, one lesson on our way out for our listeners that they should take way out of today's session or just a key lesson for their careers. 00:53:39.184 --> 00:53:50.057 As a salesperson, I don't want to repeat some of the ones I've said before, but look, remember that you're selling to human beings that have needs, desires, ups and downs, good days, bad days. 00:53:50.057 --> 00:53:56.561 I think part of your job as a salesperson is part psychologist and part problem solver. 00:53:56.561 --> 00:53:57.985 Don't forget your part psychologist. 00:53:57.985 --> 00:54:06.753 There's a lot you can do to help your prospect and customer by empathizing with them, understanding what motivates them, really be there for them. 00:54:06.753 --> 00:54:14.771 And I think I've had an interaction with a pretty senior security officer at one of the major banks in the last couple of weeks. 00:54:15.525 --> 00:54:24.411 My message was look, I'd love to talk to you about whether I can solve a problem for you, but if you're not ready, it's okay and I'm keen to keep the dialogue going. 00:54:24.411 --> 00:54:31.090 If you just want thought leadership around how you solve the problem in general, I'm here for you and I think that's a lesson right. 00:54:31.090 --> 00:54:33.628 Hopefully that builds rapport and trust. 00:54:33.628 --> 00:54:43.233 But you're dealing with human being and they have exactly the same up days and down days that you do, and just remember that when you're selling Dan over to you, mate. 00:54:43.233 --> 00:54:44.905 What's a lesson from you, mate? 00:54:44.965 --> 00:54:47.273 I'm going to extrapolate on the one lesson you just gave. 00:54:47.273 --> 00:54:50.853 Everybody you're dealing with on the customer side, they're just a person. 00:54:50.853 --> 00:54:53.585 It doesn't matter what their title is, they're just. 00:54:53.585 --> 00:54:57.697 They're a man, a woman, a mum, a dad, whatever they're going to be. 00:54:57.697 --> 00:54:58.365 They've got kids. 00:54:58.365 --> 00:54:59.027 They've got a problem. 00:54:59.027 --> 00:55:05.469 They've got challenges at home, the dogs sick this week, counter-cant pay the mortgage All those things come into. 00:55:06.112 --> 00:55:07.414 Doesn't matter what role they've got. 00:55:07.414 --> 00:55:13.998 Yeah, people the more senior up the channel, up the pyramid, they've just got more emails in their inbox. 00:55:13.998 --> 00:55:16.371 They've just got more challenges on their time. 00:55:16.371 --> 00:55:23.967 They're not different or unique, or often do they even know more about the problem than those below them? 00:55:23.967 --> 00:55:25.092 Quite often not. 00:55:25.092 --> 00:55:29.576 And by all means, look at the context, but don't be afraid of talking to whoever you need to talk to. 00:55:29.576 --> 00:55:31.268 Yep, doesn't matter what role you've got. 00:55:31.268 --> 00:55:38.496 Whether you're a BDR, a strategic AE, you're a CEO of a company, you've got every right to be able to talk to anyone you want to talk to. 00:55:38.496 --> 00:55:42.574 On the other side, by all means build a plan between your team around who talks to who. 00:55:42.574 --> 00:55:47.235 So you've got you just got a structure around it, but don't be afraid to talk to whoever you want to talk to. 00:55:47.235 --> 00:55:49.150 You'd be amazed who'll take your phone call. 00:55:49.150 --> 00:55:50.929 You'll be amazed who'll answer your email. 00:55:50.929 --> 00:55:52.233 Oh, your email, yep. 00:55:52.233 --> 00:55:56.472 So that's one of the key lessons for anybody out there from a sales perspective. 00:55:57.012 --> 00:55:57.434 Absolutely. 00:55:57.434 --> 00:56:06.226 Dan Good advice, mate, and I'll summarize that Be a good human being, an art soul, and never get your sale 100% mate On that everyone. 00:56:06.306 --> 00:56:11.057 Thank you so much for joining us for this episode of Growth Pulse, the B2B sales podcast. 00:56:11.057 --> 00:56:14.873 If you're watching us on YouTube, please make sure you subscribe. 00:56:14.873 --> 00:56:16.217 Click that like button. 00:56:16.217 --> 00:56:17.744 Give us a comment, if you can. 00:56:17.744 --> 00:56:25.992 If you're listening on Spotify or Apple or any of your other podcast audio networks, click the plus sign so you can let me know when the next episode comes out. 00:56:25.992 --> 00:56:32.907 Thanks everybody for joining us Until the next episode.