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Welcome back to the Advanced Selling Podcast, the longest running sales training podcast, podcast history.
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We just celebrated 17 years and I ve got a special guest on today, Brian Neal.
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I saw your hand gesture there.
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Was that the podcast in history?
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That s a hand gesture there.
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I love that.
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I m trying to get into more hands.
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gestures, although the screen doesn t allow with a seven foot wingspan.
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I don t know.
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You re right.
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I m also looking like I ve got my thumbnail.
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It s a little pulled back.
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And this one seems very zoomed in.
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But I don t know if I m doing that because the other thumbnail looks like normal.
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Anyway.
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So I ve been traveling a lot, as you know, um, by the way, episode, we re going to talk about data here in a second.
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Everyone s favorite topic was a data.
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Um, so I m asking a personal question, bill don t have to answer cause it s a personal question.
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Okay.
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Do you eat ice?
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out of a drink, like do you eat ice?
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I used to, I don t so much anymore because I m not sure it s good for my teeth.
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So I usually get very light ice whenever I get a drink because.
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Oh, really?
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Yeah, just ice kind of dilutes everything, not water.
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I mean, yeah, that ice dilutes my water and it just, no, I d say probably no, I m not used to, I m not a cruncher.
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Okay, uh, very European bill.
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Low ice.
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I think so.
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I love, I m the opposite of love ice and I m an ice eater.
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It s a very good poll to put up.
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Do you eat ice?
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Cause I don t know what that means about people, but I wonder, there s gotta be some psychological thing.
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Um, however, if you ve ever been on an airplane and you ve seen the ice that they serve on the airplane, the pieces of ice,
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are the size of a dinner plate.
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And when you re trying to, they re also shaped like arrowheads or like little sharp triangles.
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And it was trying, and I m kind of like, I need to eat all the ice before I give the cup back to the person.
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And I m, I m just a rule, you know,
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literally like like a like an arrowhead thing and i m cutting the top of my mouth and i m like am i the only one that does this surely to god other people that are ice eaters would complain about the shape and type of ice and i don t know why it s like that like it s like they re doing it on purpose or something like this let s make these cubes really big
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for this itty bitty plastic cup.
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Makes absolutely no sense.
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Well, you could go into Starbucks then, as I do, and say, I d like an ice tall triple mocha, whole milk, light ice.
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And I ve got one more instruction.
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On the ice cubes, can you make them like half the size that you normally?
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Can you shave the ice cubes down just a little?
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Just a little.
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I m curious to know about our listeners who s an ice eater and who isn t.
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That would be a good little poll question.
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Travis to put up in the LinkedIn group.
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Do you eat ice?
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Yes or no.
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Or you heavy ice, light ice.
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I m heavy ice, Bill s light ice.
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And I wonder what that says about our psychology.
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I don t know.
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I don t know, but I was out of flight back the other day and I was, it was a middle seat was open between us.
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And so drinks came and I said to the guy, I said, do you want to just drop the, you know, play the, what do you call it?
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Tray down, put our drinks on there.
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And he goes, yeah, that s a good idea.
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So we did that.
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And, and,
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And at some point, we hit some turbulence.
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And I don t have any limited vision on my left eye.
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And I was sitting in the aisle seat.
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So I wasn t really paying much attention to what was on the tray.
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And all of a sudden, we hit some turbulence.
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And I took a couple of drinks, put my glass back down.
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And I feel this guy poke me, because I had my headphones on.
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He poked me, and he points down.
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Glass of bloody mary mix mix only has dropped now into the sea.
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Oh, no Did you not see it getting it was edging up closer?
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And then when jane says why was it up to him to see this and i m like, well i m blind in my left eye Well, does he know this did you share that with him?
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Oh That s brutal.
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And it was all oh my god.
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It was all over
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Oh, I can t imagine.
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And it s tomato juice.
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And it smells.
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Yeah, that s a thing.
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Yeah.
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Anyway, topic topic.
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Yeah, this is it would be kind of quick to the point here.
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But this came up the other day, in an event, had a speaker talking to a bunch of VPs of sales, good event.
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And the speaker sent the slide deck over ahead of time.
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And you know, it s sales VPs are kind of like, you know, big picture, and slided a whole bunch of numbers and data.
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And the team here putting on the event, they re like, oh, this might be too much data for the people.
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I don t know about this.
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Well, the guy presents his data.
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Without question, of all the speakers we had that day, everyone s like, that data was awesome.
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I love the data.
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Oh, I want to get my hands on that data.
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It s awesome.
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I m like, hmm, interesting.
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So what I m noticing is,
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It s real buzzy to love and sell with data.
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All companies are, it s all about the data, right?
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All about the numbers, right?
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It s about that.
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What does the data tell us happens in football coaches make decisions now that in the past they never would have made because some statistics guy said, Hey, you know, 82% of the time on this situation, you re going to get a first down.
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So go forward on fourth down.
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We never would do that in the past.
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So what we did in the past was rely on our intuition, our historical performance, our learnings, things that we felt, taking our own knowledge based and then we d made decisions, you know, with a heavy gut intuition, intuitive feel.
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Now we have, well, the data tells us now we re kind of going this other direction.
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So.
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It made me think about as a topic and you as a listener might be in an organization that s a real heavy data centered org that says, oh, here s what the numbers say.
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Here s what the math says.
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How do you govern yourself as a salesperson with data all around you?
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There s so much data.
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How do we use it?
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What do we do about it?
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And just what role does it play?
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I d love to get your thoughts.
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So are you talking about data that s like customer purchase data?
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Or are you talking about what kind of data?
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Yeah, any or all of the above.
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I ll give you some examples.
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We ve got, let s do just basic funnel examples.
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Most people will have from their CRM the data that says,
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We, uh, from every open opportunity that we start within 72 days, we ll get a decision on 70% of the things that are in there.
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So we ll, we ll know that seven to three fourths of our, almost three fourths of our open opportunities will be decided upon within 72 days.
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And we can say, we like that.
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That s good.
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Or we can go, that s too long.
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We can shrink it down.
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We re going to shrink it down.
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We re going to the sales manager.
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Okay.
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The data says we re at 72 days.
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We got to get that down to 60.
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And then I m going, okay, well, what does that do for the customer?
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Do they care?
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Maybe the customer needs 90.
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You see what I mean?
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We get caught up in this self-serving data thing.
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Customer data would be one, too.
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Well, they look perfect because they have all these mechanical data points, but then you talk to them like, we don t want them as a client.
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They re jerks.
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Yeah, that s really good.
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There s a whole lot of factors that go into what do you do with the data.
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And it always seems to me like,
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It s data.
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All the data is still one data point.
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Yes.
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It s still one factor in whether a person is going to buy from you or not, or whether you re calling on the right person or not.
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So yeah, I don t know.
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I don t know how to.
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I think the challenge is that there s the intellectual side, which is the data, and then there s the emotional side, which is how we are conducting ourselves in the buyer-seller process.
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How are we serving them?
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Are we showing up in the right way with the right frame of mind, asking the right questions?
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And all that stuff probably impacts the data, but the data is a
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The data is a lagging indicator of how we re doing, not a leading indicator.
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Yes.
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That s good.
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That s really good.
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Yeah.
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Is data ever a leading indicator?
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The only way you get data is from the past.
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You can t get data from the future.
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So it s always lagging.
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And you could say, well, it s an indicator.
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Because in the past, when the data backwards has said this, then in the future, that has happened.
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Still, here s my little cheeky phrase.
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I argue that all data is interpreted with opinion and emotion.
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Of course.
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All of it is.
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So you can t say days to close is 61 days and not say anything else.
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You have
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to say days to close is 61 days.
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That s awesome.
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There s my opinion.
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Or that sucks.
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There s my opinion.
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And I think we try too much to look at the, let the data stay neutral.
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You know, like let my, my robot sell to your robot and we re humans.
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We re not, that s not what we do.
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Yeah.
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But your, your example there of 75% of the people close in the seven by the 72nd day or whatever, once the lead is open, then I guess the question is, okay,
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What can we do?
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Can we do anything to shave 10 days off that?
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I don t think that s a bad question.
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I don t think that implies that you re trying to rush things through.
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I think sometimes that maybe you re not giving the buyer the right information or the right technology or the right videos or whatever.
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So I don t think there s anything wrong with saying, how do we shave 20 days off this?
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Can we?
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And explore that a little bit, but it probably
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That s how I would use the data, is how can we continue to improve it now that we know what it is?
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Could it be less than 70 days?
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And maybe it can t, but I think we have to look and say, what can we do to improve the speed of this?
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Yes.
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And then I think another question that doesn t get asked much about
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like the data that we see in the sales orgs, which are things like that number of calls, number of touches, number of meetings held, all that CRM data stuff.
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is asking ourselves, OK, we get this data point.
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Is the data point good for our customer or bad for our customer?
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Or do they even care?
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That sort of thing.
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So we re selfishly after accelerating days to close.
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We think that s good for a sales org.
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We should always be trying to close and get deals done faster.
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Well, we have to ask ourselves, is that in the best interest of our customers?
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It might be, it might not be.
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I think it s a good question.
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Yeah, that s good.
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So did he talk about closing percentages or?
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Talked a lot about, this is the other thing too.
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So when I worked at Procter & Gamble, my argument too there was,
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We basically make all this data look good for us.
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We do enough research studies that we keep going to make us look good, right?
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Because Unilever did the same thing.
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Unilever s data was awesome too.
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It made Unilever look great.
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So who s right and who s wrong?
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Both, you know?
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No, this data was more about buyer behavior.
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Okay.
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So it was things like the number of salespeople, or I m sorry, the number of people involved on a B2B purchasing team, even though they re not a team, how many, on average, how many people on the buyer side, so challenger, customer, and he gets a lot of stuff from Gartner anyway.
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and Forrester, which are really good, good data sources.
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You know, you heard the Challenger customer book, the old number was 5.4.
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I think that s gone up in research.
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5.4 people involved.
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Yeah, I think so too.
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B2B, buying decision, things like that.
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The stat that s being thrown out a lot is that 60% of the process of a purchase is done before the salespeople ever arrives on scene.
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Yeah.
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Stuff like that.
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Yeah.
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So that s really great.
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But then it s go, then you go, what do you do with that?
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Now what?
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Yeah.
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So now I know that.
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What do I do?
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Which that did in this presentation, this guy got my wheels turning on.
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Ah, so we re asking ourselves, what are we doing to educate our buyers it before and during, you know, it s valuable to them.
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That s the other thing that s gotta be in there.
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Yeah, I mean, that number has been hovering 60 to 70.
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I don t know if anybody can really get it down to what it really is.
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But a big part of the sales process occurs before you show up.
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Yes.
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I mean, those numbers have been around for 10, 15 years.
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The question is now, what are you doing to show up before you show up?
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How are you getting this information to them?
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Some of the things that we talk about here, shooting videos on LinkedIn, content, white papers, things that will, at the very top of the funnel, you know, who is the, who s the guy, Mark, Mark, is it Mark Hunter?
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Sales Hunter, Mark Hunter?
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No, it s another guy.
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Sorry, Mark.
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I can t remember what the guy s name is, but he talks about how top of the funnel.
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What are the questions that your customer has at the very top of the funnel?
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The top of the funnel could even be before they get into your funnel, when they start to think about, do I need sales training from my team?
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Do I need to buy a new accounting package?
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And those are the kinds of questions you have to be out there with.
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And if you re nowhere, somebody else is out there.
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out there with them.
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And so when they go on Google to say, what, you know, should I buy a new accounting system?
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If you re not on the first page or two, you re probably not going to get the call.
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That s really great.
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And that s the educational piece that you can do.
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A good podcast, good case studies, videos to shoot, put on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, all of the above that allow them.
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let them find you during that 60% of the time before you show up.
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Let them find you that way.
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That s right.
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That s right.
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I m sorry.
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That s a great number.
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I mean, that s the kind of stat that you can do something with that.
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Yes.
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I mean, that s not just, oh, what are we going to do about that?
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Well, we ll just make more cold calls.
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No, that s probably not it.
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I mean, there s other ways to do that.
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But I think from a data, I like data because it opened your eyes to say,
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God, I never thought about that that way.
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I thought it was probably 20%.
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I mean, I think the national closing percentage of deals proposed to deals closed is probably in the teens.
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Now, it depends on do you know the customer?
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Do you have a past relationship with them?
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Of course, there s circumstances that are
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make that number go up or down, but generally it s a pretty low percentage.
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And I think that number, I don t know if he, did he talk about that at all?
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Not that one.
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No.
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But there s a lot of things you can do to closing percentage to help it get up to 40, 50, 60, 70%.
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Cause really shouldn t it be 50 to 70% of the time that you, by the time you re proposing a deal, shouldn t you kind of know whether you re going to get it or not?
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Yes.
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And the easiest way to do that is to not get involved with deals you re not going to win.
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Shoot your number up.
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Yeah.
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Shoot your number way up and say no yourself.
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And salespeople know what they want.
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They want everyone to say yes.
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Every deal is a deal to them.
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And you know going in by the data that it s not.
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The data shows that 85% is not.
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So how do we fix that?
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That s a good topic.
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And maybe we spend an upcoming episode on a couple of those data points, and then what we can do, what we can share with our listeners that we have seen work with other people.
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Maybe that s it.
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We can start the Advanced Selling Podcast Research Institute.
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That sounds fancy.
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The ASP Research Institute.
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Yeah, you should take that.
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You should.
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We polled.
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That d be good for you.
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Trade market.
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Yep.
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We polled our LinkedIn listeners and eight people responded.
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And of the eight.
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Yeah, of the eight.
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Two of them.
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73%.
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Exactly.
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That s my other, that s a whole other topic too.
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It s like, okay, I see the sourcing at the bottom of all the data, but I m like, okay, what was the pool, you know?
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Well, that was the way with all the stuff we went through 2020.
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I won t say the C word, but all the 2020 and 2021 stuff is like data was coming out.
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It was all so conflated, and you weren t sure who to believe.
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And everybody had the study with 10,000 people in it.
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Then the next study was the same thing.
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It showed something totally different.
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But we have become untrustworthy of data, I think, since that.
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Not all of us, and not all data.
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Yeah, that s good.
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Let s pursue that.
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That s a good topic today.
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Roll the data.
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OK, if you haven t joined already, join the LinkedIn group.
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Join Insider.
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And shoot us an email, listener at advancedsellingpodcast.com.
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Just shoot us an email.
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You can ask us a question there.
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You can send a little audio file if you want, as long as the audio is good.
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Or send a video.
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Say hi to us.
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Maybe we ll have Travis pipe in a little video question from a listener.
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That would be fun.
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Yeah, send a video question to the LinkedIn group.
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That s probably the best place to do it.
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You know, publish a video question there and we can take the audio.
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SPEAKER_01
We can also play the video.
1
SPEAKER_01
We can do a little docudrama on you and oh, that was a little little interest inside information on you.
1
SPEAKER_01
And we ll do a documentary.
1
SPEAKER_00
We can do a little like a little montage, little little ASP video listener montage.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_00
Produce it.
1
SPEAKER_00
Get ready, though, because you re going to be famous.
1
SPEAKER_00
That s right.
1
SPEAKER_01
There s all sorts of problems that come along with fame.
1
SPEAKER_01
This is true.
1
SPEAKER_01
It s all great till you get it.
1
SPEAKER_01
OK.
1
SPEAKER_01
All right.
1
SPEAKER_01
See you next time.
1
SPEAKER_01
See you next time.
1
SPEAKER_01
Bye.