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In this episode of the Advanced Selling Podcast, I share a funny food ordering story from Mrs. Neal.
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Bill and I tell old playground stories where we used to harass other kids on the teeter-totter, and we debate something we usually don t debate, and that is, what s more important, closing what s in the funnel or filling the top of the funnel?
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Welcome back to the Advanced Selling Podcast.
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I say what I haven t done this for a while.
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Three, two, one, go.
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Welcome back to the Advanced Selling Podcast, the longest running sales training podcast, podcast history.
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I m Bill Kasky.
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And I m Brian Neal.
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We welcome you back every week.
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kind of create and craft a brand new episode based on our experiences as trainers and coaches and consultants and speakers and whatever else we do.
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So we come at you every Monday morning and bring you new ideas on how you can grow your business.
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Yeah.
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I think we talked about this.
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We talked about mentioning this before.
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But our listeners are very wonderful people.
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We know that they spend a lot of time making themselves better.
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And we also know that they love to network and connect with others.
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So we ve been literally asking people, if you know a salesperson,
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your sales team, your sales manager, whoever that is, you listen to the podcast.
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We would love for you to just share a link to the episode.
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We put links on LinkedIn all the time.
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And just share it.
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Sharing is caring.
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Yeah.
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Sharing is caring.
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Isn t that what they say?
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Sharing is caring.
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So what you do is you take the episode, and you share it on LinkedIn.
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And you tag 15 salespeople that you know really well.
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Maybe you tag your clients.
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Maybe you tag some potential customers.
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And we just start to grow the tribe, because we re all in this together.
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Or.
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Or.
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you tag your manager, as is the case with Adam and Eric.
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Oh, that happened?
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That happened.
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Adam is one of our listeners, and he tagged his immediate supervisor, VP of sales, Eric.
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I love it.
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And guess what?
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We re doing a program for them, a virtual program, which we re going to be starting to do more this fall, virtual sales train, two and a half hours.
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for Eric and his team, and we re doing it in September.
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And so, just an example of how tagging somebody, referring, sharing, can help everybody.
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I would love to, too.
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We might do this.
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Maybe we ll just go, we ll watch people, tag people, and share, and all that other stuff.
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And we just might pick some people at random, and we just might call them up and do a little coaching session.
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Why don t we do it?
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That would be fun.
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Let s just do it.
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Let s just do it.
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So just tag, yeah, go ahead and forward an episode, tag 15 of your friends, tag me and Bill, and then, yeah, we ll just randomly call us people.
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And then we ll do like a sweepstakes.
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Yeah, sure.
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We ll go in and pick several people.
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I love it.
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We ll do that.
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That s great.
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Yeah.
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Done deal.
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Perfect.
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I mentioned, I don t know if this is funny to everyone, but it was funny to me when it happened.
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Probably not.
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And you know, I love my wife dearly, and we work together, and it s great.
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And she says funny things sometimes.
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So we were to dinner.
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Now, you better be careful.
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Is this a theme?
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Because about three episodes ago, you talked about how she talked about one day in seven or one day in a week or something.
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I think they re staying for a week and a day.
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No, it was something like that.
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She said one day in a week day in a week.
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Yeah, I think they re going to stay for one day plus a week.
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That s what she said.
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So we re at the dinner.
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They have this little thing this little menu.
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It s called what s it called here in Indianapolis.
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It s called the grub.
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What is it called Travis?
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What s it called?
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Everybody s out eating right now.
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Devour, Devour Indy.
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So we re at a really nice restaurant, Ocean Prime, great restaurant, love that place.
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She s eating the Devour menu.
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And so you pick your choices, there s like choices.
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See, I think this is funny.
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So she gets dessert choice.
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This is going to be good.
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Obviously you think it s funny, so there were two choices.
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One is ice cream or sorbet and the other is like a brownie concoction.
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She said I ll have the ice cream or sorbet
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Let them pick, they pick.
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And he goes, which one?
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She goes, I told you.
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I want the first one, ice cream or sorbet.
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He looks at me, I look at him, I m like, sorry, bro.
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I m sorry you re dealing with this.
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I said, babe, I think you need to pick either ice cream or sorbet.
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She s like, oh.
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Oh, just when someone you re with says something and you and the server are on the same page there.
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But I thought that was funny.
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And you just, you know.
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Or, and it s a good thing she didn t try to fight.
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No, I knew that.
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Now we ve got that established.
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Now I will make a decision.
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It says choose one.
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I chose one.
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Which there is a case to be made there.
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True that.
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But yeah, you just need to make sure you read it carefully.
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Ice cream or sorbet.
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That is funny.
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Ice cream or sorbet.
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Yeah, I think that s funny.
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That s going to live in infamy in our family forever.
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I ll have the ice cream or sorbet.
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As long as it s not at the expense of somebody s well-being, which it kind of was.
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No, she liked it.
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It was okay.
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Hey, if you re a sales pro and a fan of Advanced Selling Podcast, and you want to be better in the rest of 2020 and through 2021, get a deep commitment to up your game, then we want you to become an ASP Insider.
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Group coaching program meets monthly.
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We coach you on relevant topics that ll help you grow your business and your income, tuition,
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47 shekels a month or you can join for the year and save even more go to advanced selling podcast comm slash insider For details and also a video there that walks you through why we re doing this what s in it for you advanced selling podcast comm slash insider Please join us you people need to be an insider.
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We re gonna great group.
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Yeah, we do 70 people in there It s really good.
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It s a good group.
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We get subgroups spinning off of there like they re getting off on there like a
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meeting on their own, it s really, really good.
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Okay, topic today.
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I don t know if this is an age-old debate or not, but it s come up in a couple of clients, so Bill and I are going to riff on this today.
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And the story is, I was talking to one of my clients, and we were talking about what we need to focus on.
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And this has happened actually in more than one.
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And the VP of sales says, hey, I really want you to focus our work on closing what s in the funnel.
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And I ve got multiple VPs of sales who are in this camp where they re trying to catch up in 2020.
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We got lots of stuff open, hanging.
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We need to make sure we get that stuff closed.
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Then I talk to the sales teams, and the sales teams say, hey, man, our funnel, like the top of the funnel, from a prospecting standpoint, is really thin right now.
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So the sales teams, they talk to me, same teams, you know, VP wants to work on, they want to work on the top of the funnel.
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They re going, hey, when I look forward, I ve got multiple salespeople that are telling me, you know, this year s actually going to be OK, but man, I m worried about next year because I don t have a lot of stuff in the top of the funnel.
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So if you re a salesperson, that can be a dilemma.
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When you re thinking, you know, your boss is on you saying, hey, we got to get close with, you know, what s in the funnel, and you re doing that, then you re kind of looking, going, man, if all this disappears, I got nothing coming in the top.
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So as a sales professional and a listener of the Advanced Selling Podcast, what is one to do?
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It doesn t seem like that s a normal thing, though, for the manager to be focused.
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In this case, it is.
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But I don t see that across the board, where the manager s only focused on the pipeline and the sales.
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In fact, I would even say it s kind of the opposite.
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It feels to me like the manager s always wanting more, more, more, more top line, more funnel.
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That s true.
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That is true.
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I didn t think about that.
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That s more common, that the managers are hammering the top of the funnel.
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So let s talk about, is there a real issue here that is beneath the surface of the, is it lead gen or is it pipeline conversion?
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Is there a deeper trust issue?
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I m not saying there is, because I don t know, but sometimes
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One person can be frustrated with something and another person could be frustrated with a different thing.
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And deep down, it s something different than even those two things.
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I don t trust my sales team to close the business that s in the funnel because I don t think they re very good at that.
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And I don t trust my manager to be investing in marketing because we haven t done that in the past and I m looking.
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I mean, there could be some other issues there.
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Yes, that s interesting.
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And then I think I just wrote down the words short view, long view.
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And all of us, no matter your role, so a VP of sales can take a short view, long view, and so can the sales team, and which is which in this case.
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Because it feels like the, and I think this comes from performance pressure for the company at large, is the VPs are in short-term view right now.
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They re looking at 2020 going, man, we got to do everything we can to make our number.
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The sales team is kind of going, I m not saying this is good, this is interesting, pop in my head.
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Sales team s going, you know what, 2020, it s over.
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Throw it in.
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It s not going to be that bad for a lot of people, but it s such a cluster, not who cares, but there s this kind of flippant maybe attitude, which isn t good.
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But the sales leader s going, we ve got it.
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No, we ve got to make sure we get it done.
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And the sales, and this is a question, I had this come up, is 2020 becoming, in air quotes, pass for a salesperson?
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You know?
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Pass.
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A pass, like you get a pass.
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Well, 2020 was so bad, so if you don t reach your number, you don t make quota.
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You know, it s 2020, boss.
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It s hard out there.
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You know, getting homeschooling, everyone wearing a mask everywhere.
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I can t breathe in my sales goals.
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Sorry, I wasn t meant to be a rub on anybody, but it s a thing.
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But no, really, our sales team s getting a pass.
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So then is the salesperson s brain going, OK, this is going to lift at some point.
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I m not going to have.
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I m not going to have these restrictions or whatever.
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I m going to get better selling on Zoom.
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So I need to start thinking about 2021 fill and funnel versus some interesting little debate.
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Yeah, I don t know where I land on that.
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I kind of agree a little bit with the salesperson who says, good god, 2020, can we get it over with already and get to 2021?
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Because the fact is, here we are sitting the 1st of September.
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If you re in more than a 90-day closed cycle, typically, you re probably in a 160-day closed cycle now.
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You are talking about 2021.
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If you re in a 30-day cycle, totally different.
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Yes.
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But I think you said it, Brian, earlier.
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You said, it s constantly a teeter-totter.
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It s where do I invest my time and my energy?
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And I think it has to be both.
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But I do think that we could all, as sales professionals, and I ve got clients who don t do a very good job at this either,
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We get real busy, and we start to build our top of the funnel.
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And then we come off the pedal, and we spend all our time trying to close.
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And then we re back at it again.
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I think we ve got to figure out a better way to manage those ups and downs so that it doesn t.
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Because that affects your psyche, is when you look at your funnel, you ve got a deal, and you should be celebrating.
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You look at your funnel like, what am I going to do for three months?
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I ve got nothing.
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And then where does this come into play?
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A lot of compensation plans are designed around hitting certain bonus criteria.
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And when a salesperson sees it, there s no way in hell they re going to reach it.
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They have no incentive to chase it anyway.
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So I think that s a thing.
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We had one prospective client that we re talking to who actually put in place some short-term.
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They didn t redo their comp plan, but they put in place some short-term adjustments to have their sales team chase some numbers, which I thought was a really good thing to do.
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short term.
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I like this idea.
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The question I think salespeople need to be asking themselves, so I love what you said.
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It s a teeter-totter.
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Both are always in play.
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And so which lever are you pressing on more than the other right now?
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And what I see happen more often is the swings are too broad.
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So in other words, the teeter-totter, and I m making a visual with my hand.
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Remember, did you do this when you were a kid?
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You weren t supposed to do this.
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But you used to stand on teeter-totters.
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Oh, I loved it.
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Everybody writes to work.
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That was like 70s and 80s kids.
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I still do it.
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65-year-olds.
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Not anymore.
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The millennials were like five-point strapped harness.
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They had someone right behind them.
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There s nobody standing now.
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No one s standing.
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No, police are out there.
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But you would do.
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And with your buddy, you d get on there with your buddy.
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And you d be like waiting.
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And then you d run.
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And you d run towards him.
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Smack.
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That s great.
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So that s what I think salespeople do sometimes.
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We run from one to the teeter-totter to the other too abruptly and too heavily.
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So you re going from minus 10 to plus 10 to minus 10 to plus 10.
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It s either on or off or on or off.
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And so I d have everybody think about normalizing those things so you re staying more balanced in the middle.
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Everybody knew the kid on the teeter-totter.
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Oh, you knew who he was.
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That was their person.
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You also knew the kid because I was a pretty thick kid.
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I also knew the little guy that I could bounce.
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I could bounce him off the teeter-totter pretty good.
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That s hilarious.
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Think about basically abused a little bit.
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You would bounce him and then come that would drop off and probably qualify as bullying back in the day qualify.
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I know I was trying to make friends, you know, but yeah, go ahead.
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Yeah.
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Here s another thing.
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I think that
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Regardless of where you go psychologically to closing, or physically to closing, or new generation, lead generation, you ve got to take care of yourself through this.
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I don t think we re speaking enough, and we have on the podcast, but I don t hear this too much, is there s a lot of stuff that s going on.
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I would use another word than stuff, but it s not explicit.
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Going on inside of us with all the shakiness and even the question that you re asking today We did we wouldn t have asked that question.
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We just said both go come on, right?
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We re gonna do both but now it s like wait a minute or do I So I think there s a lot of psychological things happening I think you got to make sure you take care of yourself And if you are going down one of these paths and it feels like you re putting a lot of pressure on yourself I m not saying to sit around and do nothing
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But the instant it feels like you re pressuring yourself to do something, realize that your mindset s messed up.
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And so we ve got to pay attention to ourselves.
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If we don t, 2021 is not going to be a great year, because we re going to still be wobbly.
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I don t want you to be wobbly heading into 2021.
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You can be wobbly now, cannot be sure, be uncertain, Zoom, masks, OK.
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But at some point, all that stuff s going to be over.
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And if you re still wobbly from it, then I m not going to get your best in 2021.
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Correct.
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Yeah, that s really, really good.
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And I love the, I don t know if you said this exact words, but what I pictured was this lifting or releasing some of this pressure on both sides, pressure on myself.
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Because now that you ve said that, what I m feeling in a couple of these client engagements is I m feeling pressure from the boss to close in the funnel, pressure from myself to close the top of the funnel.
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Does that make sense?
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That s what I m feeding back from my clients.
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From the salesperson.
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Salesperson, yeah.
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I had one award-winning, multiple-time, great salesperson female, one of my clients, who s just awesome.
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And these are her words.
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And she s not this way.
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She s like, I m scared.
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My top of my funnel sucks.
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And her numbers this year are awesome.
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But this is what tells me she s a pro.
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She s already thinking.
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She knows she s good for 2020.
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So she s got pressure on herself.
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And we all know if we go to the marketplace with that pressure energy and that pressure setting, it does not work.
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It does not work.
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So you have to channel that and release it.
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I think it s a really good perspective.
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So if you have not already joined the Insider Program, go to advancedsellingpodcast.com slash insider.
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This month, September, we re going to be talking about, it s part two of our messaging series, where we get really specific and clear about how to not only build and craft your message, but also how do you deliver it in a way that repositions you as a category of one in the world.
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Make sure you go to advancedsellingpodcast.com slash insider.
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Find out more.
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Join us for our September episode.
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We will see you all there at The Insider.
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All right.
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Bye.
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Bye.