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Welcome back to the Advanced Selling Podcast, the longest running sales training podcast.
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I m one of your hosts, Bill Kasky.
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Brian Neal, the other host.
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Yes, you are.
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And you have been my co-host, Brian, for the better part of 15 years, 16 years?
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15 years.
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15 years we ve been doing it.
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You tell people you ve been podcasting for 15 years, they don t believe you.
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Yeah.
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They just found out about podcasting six months ago.
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So they re like, how was it even possible?
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Well,
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Go to YouTube and find that YouTube with me talking behind that ridiculously huge microphone from 2006, and I ll show you.
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I ve got a, I may need therapy here.
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Got a quick story.
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You know, I m not a big fan of these Netflix and Apple series, like where there s seven, you know, seven episodes and 10 seasons.
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And I just, A, when I get, at the end of the day, I don t want to just sit there and veg in front of the TV.
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I mean, I just can t do it.
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I agree.
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So, but my wife introduced me to one the other day.
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that I m, I m pathetic.
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It s called, it s called Bridgerton.
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Okay.
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Don t know.
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It s a British period piece and I don t know when it is exactly, but the characters are really well done.
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Shonda Rhimes, Shonda, is that rhymes?
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I don t know.
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Shonda Rhimes.
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I don t know many famous people.
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Producer.
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Yeah.
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No help on this.
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No, I m nothing.
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but I feel your pain.
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Well, anyway, it s, it s not meant for guys my age.
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It s a chick flick.
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It s a chick flick series.
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You know, dresses up.
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It s good.
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I mean it.
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And, but I got into it.
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I m like, Oh, when s the next episode?
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I was telling Jamie, what is that next episode release?
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Is it today?
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Or no, it s tonight.
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Okay.
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I m going to be home at eight and let s
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Bridgerton.
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It s a romantic, it s kind of a romantic comedy in a period, but it s really, it s really good.
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And this dude that plays, uh, plays the main character is really, really good.
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He s a stage actor and he just, I ve never heard of him before.
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He s, you will hear about him.
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He s going to be fantastic.
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Is there a, be honest Bill, is there a Bridgerton Facebook?
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Well, I ve looked on Twitter, there s a Bridgerton Twitter stream.
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I m right in there with them all.
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I know, talking all the time, like, what did you think it did?
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What is Mabel gonna do?
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So I had to confess that.
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Fantastic.
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So is it a first season deal or what, you know?
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It s two seasons so far.
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I only got into the second season and there is going to be a third season.
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Are you going to binge watch season one?
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Bridgerton binge watch?
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I don t think so.
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I can t go back.
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I can t go back because I ve seen things that I can t unsee.
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The highest, the highest form of strength is vulnerability, Bill.
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And you made yourself vulnerable just owning that you loved in Bridgerton.
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Anyway, so today we re going to talk about not Bridgerton.
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We re going to talk about peak deal management, and this is all part of an April theme on improving your execution in the sales process.
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We re going to have a
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live recording on May 4th with a gentleman by the name of Scott Barker.
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You can go to advancedsellingpodcast.com slash outreach.
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He is with the company named Outreach and they specialize in this kind of content and material and tools and we re going to have him on.
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We re going to be doing a special one hour event on May 4th.
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And so if you or your managers or your management team or CEO, if you want to learn how to be better at prospecting, more efficient, better at deal management, and better at forecasting, you need to be there.
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Absolutely need to be there.
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And this sales execution gap that our friends at Outreach presented to us, we ve
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really, really enjoyed, because this is a cool, this is stuff we talk about on the Advanced Learning Podcast all the time.
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And today, we talked last time about inefficient prospecting, and then about weak deal management is the topic for today.
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And I m telling you, I don t know if you re seeing this, Bill.
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We ve been riding a really nice economic wave for about a decade, let s be honest.
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And I m starting to feel slowed down a little bit.
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I just am.
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My clients, it s like these little indicators, you know?
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And if you re not paying attention to your sales execution right now, you re going to get caught.
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I m just telling you.
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I firmly believe that.
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Your muscles are going to atrophy because you ve been like, well, I can t even sell anything because of supply chain.
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Your sales teams have got to be geared up.
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Your processes have got to be tight because it s going to get hard here in a little bit.
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That s my belief.
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So I think, yeah, what we re talking about here, weak deal management.
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We talked about official prospecting.
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We ll be talking about sales.
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That s, this becomes so critical in the next few years, I believe.
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So that s my economic.
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Yeah, I think we re heading for some headwinds, and inflation is a part of it.
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Because at some point, I mean, it s one thing to say, well, I sell copiers or dental equipment.
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the price of gasoline and inflation really doesn t affect me.
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Oh, yes, it does.
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Because at some point, the person decides not to go to the dentist because they ve got to fill the tank.
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And I know that sounds very, it sounds like I m looking down and not at all.
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This is, you multiply this effect times 150 million people or however many people
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struggle to put gas in the tank, it will have a trickle up or trickle down effect.
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I totally agree.
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And where this topic comes in is you ve got to be dialed into your best stuff.
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And you won t be able to be sloppy, because somebody who competes with you will not be sloppy.
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They ll be buttoned up.
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And that s part of this week.
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deal management, and what s the sales process, which I would call it, is how can we just fine tune it, button it up just a little bit more, and I think you ll find great windfall in it.
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Yes.
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And I think what you just said, Bill, is the trick here is not about scrapping, retooling, rewriting.
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Excuse me.
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It s not about that.
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It s about fine tuning.
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That s what this is.
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So if you re listening to this, and the fine tuning is where the gap is, it s very marginal.
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in in relative to the total, but the output in the outcome is enormous, enormous, really good at this.
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Because it s going to be the difference it when it gets more competitive, it s going to be the difference between how well you run a process versus your competitor.
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And product feature function stuff, that s all fine and dandy.
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But I m telling you that you re going to win and lose deals based on some of the things we re talking about today.
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So
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Okay, so let s let s get into weak deal management.
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And maybe we could talk about first off, because you you have a business where you re working with sales teams, like I do, we re seeing things, one of the things you mentioned, you re seeing is a little a little
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little trickles, slowdown indicators.
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But when it comes to sales management and deal management, I mean, what are some things that you see people, companies struggle with and the salespeople that work for those companies?
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What do they struggle with?
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And I ll share after you do.
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The first thing that comes to mind, it s super obvious that everyone talks about and gets a funny name called ghosting is a much deeper issue.
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And it s one that s most people think they do and do well.
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And I would argue after coaching them and listening to their calls that they don t.
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This has to do with the precision and the certainty of the steps of a process relative to calendar dates.
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And I m talking about, so here s an example, Bill.
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I just had a coaching session about this yesterday.
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I think there s a difference between saying two weeks from today and saying April 19th.
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Because if I say to you two weeks from today, you have to work a little bit, you know?
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And two weeks from today was, okay, yeah.
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But if I say April 19th, there s no debate.
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It s precise and clear.
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clear and efficient, precise and clear, clear and efficient.
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And so I don t think sales teams run their sales processes and manage their deals with that level of precision.
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I think they say things like, can I give you a call two weeks from today?
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And the person says, sure, or something like that.
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There s enough ambiguity or vagueness there that they leave the process to chance, which then creates a very, very inefficient, ineffective deal management system.
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And this is interesting, because neither you nor I, is that proper?
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Neither you nor I are what we ll call detail-oriented people at all.
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And yet, I know exactly what you re talking about, that when it comes to the sales process and the psychology around it, we ve got to put on a new face.
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And we ve got to be intentional and precise.
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I agree with you.
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I think that little thing like checking in at the end of a call where you ve had a discussion for an hour or whatever, checking in and saying, well, tell me, where did we get today?
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What did you get today?
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And I ll tell you what I observed and what I learned.
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And before we close out, let s just discover where we are and what we want to do next.
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Is that
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Is that OK?
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I mean, just that little, it might take two minutes.
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You might say, oh, hell, we just had the meeting.
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We don t need to review what we did.
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Oh, yeah, you do.
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Because at some point, you re going to be wanting to, if it s a prospect, schedule another meeting.
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If they re so-so on whether there was any value in this meeting, then they re not going to schedule it, or they ll schedule it and then cancel.
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So it s the little stuff like that that I think we, by being more precise and intentional, changes the entire process.
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Absolutely.
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Yes.
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And you re the guide.
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You re not the controller of people.
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You can control process, not people.
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But to me, you re guiding people.
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And I think that everyone s so distracted and busy these days, people not just need that, but they want it.
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They want to be told what to do and where to go and when to be there, that sort of thing.
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It makes their life easier so they don t have to think and guess and wonder.
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So that s another little, that s a little, I m sorry to interrupt, that s a little thing there, but if we, if you want to take something away from this discussion, take away, are you, when you get down to the end of a meeting, are you suggesting the next logical step
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Or are you allowing them to?
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Totally.
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And sometimes I think it s OK to allow the prospect to.
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Like if they re rambunctious and they say to you, Brian, this is awesome.
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Here s what I d like to do.
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I d like to introduce you to the president of our company.
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If they just volunteer it and you think, well, that s probably the next logical step anyway, OK, great.
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But do you have it primed and is it in the chamber ready at the end of a call when you are trying to create a clear future next action?
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Absolutely.
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Are there guns in Bridgerton?
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That sounded like a period piece gun analogy there.
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I will probably not be using any of the language from Bridgerton.
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It s a little rough.
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Dirty, a little rough.
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No, there are no guns.
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It s a love story, Brian.
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It sounds great.
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I m very intrigued, actually.
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If I have some airplane time, I ll check it out.
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Bridgerton.
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Okay, back on topic now.
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That leads me to,
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the next version of this, which is the length of the sales process to decision.
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And this is another place where I don t think sales teams, and if you listen to Outreach s stuff, they say it s weak deal management.
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I think this is going to the heading of weak deal management versus strong deal management.
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Strong deal management says, our process from first call to decision date tends to take 30 business days.
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Today is April the 5th.
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That puts us at one, two, three, May the 10th as an aiming point to get us to a place where Bill, you can say yes or no, and I can say yes or no.
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To dictate the terms of the process doesn t happen very often at all.
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We try to teach all of our clients to do this.
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It doesn t mean the world explodes if you miss it May 10th and it s got to be May 15th or something.
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But just to kind of say, well, what s the next step and just stop there and not have an end point of where we re going, I think creates weak deal management.
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Strong deal management says this is how long it takes.
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I think you won t find too many people argue, if I said to you, Bill, we wanna be efficient with the process, hope that s okay with you.
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No one says, it really isn t, Brian.
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I d really like this to be as complicated and take as long as it can take.
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No one says that.
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They go, yes, please.
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So we just love to work through a process and get to a yay or a nay for both of us.
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We can normally do that in four weeks.
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So today s the fifth, we could do that by, and I m always talking dates on calendars, by April 26, we should be to that point, no problem.
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That s it.
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And what I m saying sounds so easy, but people don t do it.
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I don t know why.
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They re afraid.
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Well, you have to have a process to have something to say, we do this, and then we do this, and we do that.
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So the map, or the journey, or whatever you want to call it.
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And if you re going to be a good guide on the process, you need a map.
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You need some kind of bullet pointed milestones of here s
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Here s the journey that we re going to go on together.
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And I like that idea of it may not be 30 days.
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It may be six months.
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It may be 90 days.
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But if it s not defined, it s hard to stick to.
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Yes.
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Very good.
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Yeah.
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That s good, that s good.
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So those are just a couple of ideas, three or four ideas.
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And it might be some baby ideas inside, nested inside some of those ideas.
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So it might be hundreds of ideas there.
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We re going to get the real, the big kid ideas are going to come out on May 4th in this live recording session.
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That s where the big kid ideas are going to be.
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So make sure you check out the show notes and be a part of that.
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And I don t know if there s a limit, but right now I don t think there is.
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I think we re, the world is, the world is invited.
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Scott Barker will be there and from outreach and he s got, he s got good stuff.
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There s a really good company and they ve got some really interesting ways to approach some of these topics.
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Yeah.
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And live recording.
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Like I said before, you ll see if Bill and I can get all this done in one take, or if we stop the recording and rewind it and re-say stuff, which... Rewind.
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There s one.
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70s.
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Rewind that, you know, well, I don t think your kids are too old though, but my kids, you know what all the kids say now?
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when they wanna play music in the car, can I have the aux?
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Aux, they don t know what it means.
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They have no idea what it means or what it stands for.
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They have no idea.
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I m like, do you know what aux is?
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They re like, that s where I play the music.
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I m like, what does it stand for?
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They re like, nothing, it s aux.
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I m like, nevermind.
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Nevermind, you don t know what aux, right?
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It s so funny, isn t it?
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Can I have the aux?
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One time when Kara s best friend named Lindsey, they were probably in fifth grade or something.
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They were way too young for me to be talking to them about what a USB was, but they had a USB port or whatever on their computer.
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And I said, Lindsey, do you know what USB stands for?
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And she go, Mr. Kasky, you re always asking me stupid questions.
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I said, universal serial bus.
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And she goes, that s stupid.
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To this day, she s now 28.
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She lives in New York City in Manhattan.
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And if you ask her, hey, what is USB?
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Well, she knows exactly.
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I saw her a couple months ago.
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She goes, universal serial bus, man.
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Oh, that s right.
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I remembered it.
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All right.
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Good job today.
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Yep.
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Go to advancedsellingpodcast.com slash outreach.
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And we ll see you next episode and also on May the 4th for our live recording.
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Talk to you then.
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Bye.
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Bye.