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Have you ever wondered whether working a slide deck on a sales call is worth all the effort?
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Lucky for you, we ve got the folks at Gong to help us answer that question.
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Once again, they re back for Opinions vs. Reality on the Advanced Selling Podcast, asking me and Bill what we think.
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And boy, do we have opinions on this one.
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Welcome back, everybody, to the Advanced Selling Podcast, the longest running sales training podcast in podcast history.
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My name is Brian Neal.
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I m Bill Kasky.
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Hey, we re really excited.
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This is what we call a special episode, a special series with our good friends at Gong, the revenue intelligence folks, if you will.
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And doing kind of a little, I ll be on your podcast, you be on my podcast, cool series.
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about opinions versus reality.
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And thrilled to death to be joined by, for our third episode, Devin Reed.
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Hi, Devin.
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What s up?
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Sheena, hi.
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Hello, hello.
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Sheena Badani.
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So if you haven t listened to these episodes yet, go back and listen to the first two.
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If you missed the first two, go do this.
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What we re doing with our friends at Gong is we re doing this little concept called opinions versus reality.
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And Gong, they just have that.
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It s funny, Sheena, I give, and I didn t know you were the person who created the term revenue intelligence until we started doing this.
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And before that, I always bragged all my, because we re a user of Gong also.
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We re a really happy client.
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And I said, they came up with the coolest term I ve ever heard, revenue intelligence.
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I m like, it s so cool.
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And now I get to meet the person that invented it and be on her podcast.
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It s really awesome.
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I feel flattered, but I like that they are helping to design it and not create it, because it s all about the uptake by the market and amazing folks like you that start using it that really create the category.
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But it s awesome.
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Good deflection.
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Good deflection, Sheena.
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That was good.
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When someone pays you a compliment, you deflect it.
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Well, it s only because customers like you.
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It s fantastic.
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I ll take it.
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When you created that term, were you, was it like a lot of meditation, a lot of weed?
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What was the...
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Because it really is a cool, I love the term as well.
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How did you, did you like have a bunch of things on the board and then you finally narrowed it down or how d you come up with that?
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Maybe, maybe some of that would have been good.
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I probably should have tried some of that before I went into the brainstorming mode.
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But yeah, it was a lot of like conversations, a lot of research, a lot of post-its.
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And we did like some design thinking workshops with execs where everyone would, you know, we went through a series of questions and exercises and then, you know, kind of came out of that process.
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To be honest, there was like a lot of decent options.
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And I don t know if any of us were like, oh my God, we love revenue intelligence.
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It s hard to get that immediate love for a new term like that, and it takes some time.
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And the design is also important.
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Does it work graphically, or does it work from a design standpoint?
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You can have great names that just don t work.
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Well, we love it, and we love what you do.
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And what we love more than anything is Bill and I have been sharing our opinions
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for 15 years on the Advanced Selling Podcast.
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And now we sort of get taken to task with the Gong Stats.
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And so we re going to do what we did last time.
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You all have a subject.
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It s a really popular sales subject, as all four of these topics are what we do on this little series.
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And then we re going to give you our opinion on the Advanced Selling Podcast.
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And everyone who listens to the Advanced Selling Podcast, to get the actual fact, to get the data, to get the actual true answer,
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We re gonna ask you to go over to the Reveal podcast, the Revenue Intelligence podcast, we have to say that, Reveal, the Revenue Intelligence podcast, where Sheena and Devin will give us the actual data, the truth, the reality of it, if you will.
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Cool?
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Okay, so what s on our minds today, guys?
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What s the topic?
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So for today, we re going to talk about using slides during a discovery call.
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And this one was interesting because I ve been in a few sales roles and some companies say, hey, here s the specific deck you use for discovery, for, you know, demo presentation, etc.
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Other companies, depending on the size and maturity and kind of just like the overall strategy will say, you know,
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If you make a deck, great.
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If you want to use this one and manipulate it, go for it.
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And so this one came from when we were just getting started at Gong back in 2017.
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It was myself and I remember Brian Tucker was another salesperson.
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So it s three of us.
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And Brian was big on slides.
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The guy loved using them, making them, changing them.
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And I was the opposite.
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And I had actually had my first sales manager told me that, you know, if he caught you in PowerPoint, if he saw your screen and you had PowerPoint up, he would say, that is not a revenue generating activity.
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And I don t want to see you doing it, which was fine because I m terrible in PowerPoint or slides.
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I don t have the eye for it.
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So I m like, great.
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I don t want to do it anyway.
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So as we re selling Gong, we had some slides you could show, but our VP wasn t like, you have to show these slides.
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Brian, on the other hand, really liked them.
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So here I was successful not using them, and here Brian was successful using them.
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And so a few years later, which is kind of to now,
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did that really matter at the end of the day?
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Like, was that really helpful for Brian or does it just make him feel better?
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Maybe he sells better because he s more comfortable with them, but it was really interesting there to kind of pull that apart.
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So what we did is we analyzed specifically discovery calls to see if using slides helped or hurt your chances of earning a follow-up call.
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So did it progress the deal or did it help or hurt the deal?
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You know, halt it, if you will.
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So I ve got the answer, but Bill and Brian, I m curious, what do you think?
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Are you using slides on discovery calls?
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Or maybe you re impartial and you re like, I don t think it matters at all.
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So we ve got, and also we want to be clear, this is about whether or not we get a follow-up meeting.
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That s what we re debating here, given our opinion is, if I use slides in the discovery call, which will, for easy argument, say the first call, if I use some slides, some element of slide deck, do my odds go up, down, or stay the same in getting the second call or the next step?
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You got it.
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Yeah, not the actual win-loss of the deal.
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And this is interesting, because we do opinions, right, Bill?
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And there s the opinion, and then the question is, do you use them or not?
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So I ll go first.
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I will say, my opinion is, if you use slides on a discovery call, your odds of getting the second meeting go down.
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I m going to say your odds go down.
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The reason I m going to say that is I feel like slides get in the way of human interaction sometimes.
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And any slide deck can, by its nature, feel pitchy.
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And it removes the ability to have a good, wholesome conversation, says the Midwestern guy.
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Wholesome.
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And it s kind of like bread and conversations.
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Wholesome.
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We ve got to make sure that we re connecting with people.
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And I have the answer always.
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Anytime someone shows me a slide deck, my very first thing
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to recommend is that no matter how many slides they have, they try to cut them in half and not lose any impact or any content.
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And then the more they can do that, the better, which can get you down to one or zero.
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So my vote is no slides on the discovery call.
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I think you re better off just talking and then hit your slides after the fact.
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Bill, what say you, my man?
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Yeah, this is something that s really interesting, because I don t use slides.
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And now you ve got me thinking, which is part of that evil genius, Devin and Sheena.
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A lot of it depends on what s on the slide.
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If it s 17 bullets and you ve got 100 slides, obviously that s not going to work.
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But I m going to presume here that the slides are good.
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I think because we are visual creatures,
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I think I think it probably helps a little to have a slide as long as it s not over overworked and overthought so I ll probably go with I think it helps but I I was also going to say I don t think it makes any difference but I won t that s kind of a wussy way to answer it so I m gonna go with I think it helps a little and Bill do you think
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If there are slides, do you think that the number matters?
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That s what I m thinking too.
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If we re gonna go, if we find out from Sheena and Devin that there is a positive correlation to getting the second meeting and slides, my guess is it s gonna be a limited number.
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Let s say three.
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I feel like I m on Card Sharks.
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Remember Card Sharks?
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Plus I think that, you know, the way we used to do slides was we were in a presentation room and we had a projector and we would read the slides.
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Well, that s awful.
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But today, with Zoom and with other platforms, we can be, our face and direct-to-camera can be half of the slide and the other half of the picture, and the other half could be slides.
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I think that s where you really start to say, okay, now I m getting both.
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I m getting the ability to do some visual stuff with slides or graphics, but also they don t lose track of me.
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So that may be some kind of future research you do.
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Okay, you got our answers.
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So that s our answers, so we re gonna,
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is going to go over, all you listeners, the Advanced Learning Podcast, you re going to go to the Reveal podcast, the Revenue Intelligence podcast, and then we are going to give you the actual fact-based answer.
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So if you re someone who uses slides, doesn t use slides, has an opinion, by all means, you ve got to go over and listen to us on the Reveal show to hear what the actual answer is.
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So Devin, can you tease us just a little, like you did last time?
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Just that little tease.
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Well, I ll tell you what, one of you is right.
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Oh, there we go.
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One of you is right.
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We also looked at, so we dove into, because I agree, we re talking about conversations versus presenting something.
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Right?
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That s kind of the difference here.
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So we looked at this rate, like, did it earn a follow-up call?
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We then peeled back the layers and said, well, let s think of what a discovery call s about.
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It s about asking questions.
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It s about monologuing or not.
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And it s about your talk time.
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How much are you listening, in other words?
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So those are the next three stats that we peeled back.
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So we have the answer, and then there s three things that we look at right afterwards to kind of justify the data.
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Dang it.
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That gave me nothing there.
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You gave me absolutely nothing.
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Bill, I think you re right.
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Even though I went on record, I think you re going to be right.
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Hey, before we go and flip over to the reveal podcast, Devin and Sheena, when you have a guest on your podcast, you always end it the same way.
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You ask the person, if you could describe sales in one word, what would it be?
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We would like to ask you the same question.
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So we re going to go one at a time, just like you all did to me and to us.
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Devin, if you could describe sales in one word, what would that be?
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So it s funny, we ve hosted what, you know, like we re almost on a hundred episodes and only one guest ever flipped it back on us.
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It was boring.
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So we re second.
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That s all right.
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Yeah.
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And so I was, but I was caught off guard then.
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And I, my answer changes because now when we go into interviews, I m always thinking about like, just in case they flip it, I want to be ready.
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I m the guy who asked the question and then answered it kind of poorly.
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Yeah.
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But I was ready for you, Brian.
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And my answer is hustle.
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Oh, nice.
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My answer is hustle.
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Yeah.
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I like it.
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I think that was different from what you said last time.
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Yeah, it was because I was on my heels and I was like, what will make me sound?
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And then I was like, said the word.
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And I understand why people struggle on the show, Sheena, because they re like, well, I only get one word.
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It has to be the right word that I stand by forever because it s recorded.
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But I ve thought about it.
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I m sticking to hustle.
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That s my go to.
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Shana.
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Shana.
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Okay.
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Mine s going to be different too.
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And maybe it s cause like we re in this, you know, opinions, reality kind of mindset.
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We re dissecting things.
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I m going to say strategic.
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There are so many different layers and you have to think big and then figure out the actions.
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And there s a lot of analysis that goes into it.
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So strategic it is.
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I love it.
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I love it.
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If you know Sheena and I at all, those words probably reflect us as well.
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Oh, totally.
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Totally.
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And together, it s like lights out.
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It s a 1 plus 1 equals 11 deal.
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You put hustle and strategy together, it s lights out.
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Brian, what about you?
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Do you have one?
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Yeah, and like Devin said, when I was on their podcast, I had an answer.
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And I think it does change in the moment for me.
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And I think I knew exactly kind of where my brain was going.
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I let it just kind of work the last time I was there.
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I m going to say fulfilling.
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The entire process for me is fulfilling beyond belief.
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I like it.
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Bill Kasky.
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I went to the mindset part, which I think if we, and my word was serving, because I think if we serve people by solving their problems, that s really what sales is all about.
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And I think we get too hung up in the numbers and the quantification and what s your deal flow and what s your pipeline, and we forget that we re actually serving human beings in this whole thing.
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And the more we serve them, the more money we make and the better our companies do, so.
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I like the word serving, although I like all three of them.
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It s really great.
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It s a hell of a it s a hell of a salesperson who serves, who is fulfilled, who s strategic and who hustles and hustles.
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No kidding.
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We just made a nice little persona there, didn t we, game?
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Put it on the rack.
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Absolutely.
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This one.
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OK, so van selling podcast listeners, you heard our opinions.
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Now we re going to go over to the Reveal podcast, the Revenue Intelligence podcast.
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But join us over there for the real answers.
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And thanks for joining us.
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We ll see you over at Reveal.
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See you next week, Devin, Sheena.
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See ya.
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Bye.