Transcription
[Music] Welcome to the Live Better Sell Better podcast with your host Kevin Dorsey of Inside Sales Excellence, the number one Patreon group and YouTube channel for tech sellers and tech sales leaders, where we dive in deep for tactical advice on how to book more meetings, close more deals faster, and lead sales teams to success. But we don't stop there. We also focus on the person and salesperson. We talk about mindset, goals, time management, and so much more. So thank you for listening, and if you're interested, head on over to patreon.com/insidesalesexcellence. Now, with that, grab a notepad, get ready, and let's dive into the good stuff.
But first, a quick shout-out to today's sponsor, Vidyard. If you aren't using video in your sales process, I promise you, you are leaving money on the table. I personally have been using Vidyard with my teams for years now, and we use it everywhere: top of funnel to book more meetings via email and LinkedIn, middle of funnel to improve show rates to demos, post-demos to do proposals and follow-up, and close deals faster. Using video allows you to connect better with your prospects, bring your personality, energy, and enthusiasm across every single time, and they have a much more impactful and memorable experience for your buyer. So again, if you're not using video, you need to be. And if you are using video, you should be using Vidyard. Check out vidyard.vidyard.com.
And with that, let's get back to the show. What up, everybody? Welcome to another episode of the Live Better Sell Better podcast. This is your host, Kevin Dorsey, aka AKD. And oh boy, oh boy, we are in for a treat today because we get to go into the vault. The vault of sales intelligence and mastery from the mind of Andy Paul. Yes, he's at the level now where you can put a "V" in front of his name. And this is why: this man has led sales teams to go public, he has led sales teams to IPO, he has consulted some of the biggest and best sales teams out there, you know, companies like Square. He has had his own podcast acquired by another company, and this podcast has over 1,000 episodes, which means he has had the opportunity to pick the minds of the best of the best out there over a thousand times. And so, what we're going to dive into today is opening up this vault and saying, what has he learned over the past five, 10, 15 years of being in this industry and learning from the rest of the industry at the same time? I can't wait for this one because we have him on the other side of the mic today. Andy Paul, welcome to the show.
Okay, do you? Thank you very much. Very generous introduction. Thank you. It's really fun when it's all true as well, right? And I know sometimes people get uncomfortable because it's all the praise that gets thrown at us, so we're not used to taking it. But my man, you have done so much in and for this industry, and it's something I really admire and look up to.
Well, thank you. Yeah, I mean, I spent, yeah, the last certainly the last 12 years now, 11 years now, it is deliberately saying, okay, what I'm very fortunate my career, what can I do to give back? And, uh, the podcast was part of that. And, and I, and I love it because it's something where there weren't, I mean, you started a lot of this sales podcast world. You were one of the first true ones I dedicated to sales, sales leadership, and in this B2B SAS space. And so, you know, I'm ready to dive in, kind of like dive into this kind of topic by topic. So we're going to go almost from beginning to end if you think about sales in the SAS industry, sure, and really kind of see what pops up to mind from some of the interviews and some of your experiences as well. So let's start at the very beginning of sales development, right, where a lot of people start their careers, and it's really the tip of the spear for more sales, most sales orgs. What are some of the learnings you've had over the past, you know, four to five years speaking to people in the space of like, what seems to be working, or maybe the opposite, what, you know, isn't working that people are still out there doing?
Well, yeah, a lot of it, it's not working, right? So there's been a change over this period, as, as you've seen the conversation shift from the enthusiasm for sort of the, you know, I'll label the predictable revenue model to people thinking, okay, well, you know, it's not quite as black and white as we thought. You know, we all sort of rushed into it, and now for certain situations, in certain environments, maybe that's not the model for us, right? And so you're seeing an eye here more and more frequently is a sales leaders say, yeah, we're sort of modifying that, or we're migrating away, or maybe we're doing a more complex enterprise sale. And, and maybe team an SDR with a senior seller, but maybe it's not even an SDR, maybe it's really only a senior SDR. So there's, there's changes afoot, and it's not gonna be as, I think, applied as in blanket fashion, it's sort of been in the past.
What do you think has driven that change? Results, or the lack of?
Right. I mean, I think that that SAS is a business, the overall win rate that companies have is, is relatively low. And when they try to bring that type of win rate into a more enterprise, complex enterprise environment, where there aren't as many prospects, you can't be as wasteful. And so you have to make sure that you win a higher fraction of your deals. So that says, look, how we have to reevaluate everything about what we're doing, starting with how do we initially engage with people and prospects all the way to up to how we work for the deals and close it. And I think that's where, if you think about, you know, and also too, I think people forget how old predictable revenue is. 20 years. It's more 20, 20 years. We're like, getting an email was like, oh, that's fun. Oh, oh, you want to know who to talk to? Sure. Andy, here's who you want to talk to, right? And they're trying to apply it to this new space where, you know, everyone's doing it. So if you take that next step, how do you stand out, right? When you are trying to prospect, when you are trying to kind of break into some of these accounts, what are some of the ways that you're hearing and seeing to stand out, right, where you can kind of garner that attention to get the conversation started?
That's the $64,000 question, right? And I think that's the place where most companies are struggling, right? How do you stand out in the noise? How do you command the time and attention of the people that you're, you're trying to outreach to? And it's a tough one, right? I think that that where we're seeing companies says, look, we have to experiment more widely with what we're doing. Um, it may be a combination of things. It's, yeah, may not, well, we know about omnichannel, we got to be more present in more places. But at the end of the day, it does boil down to how do you, as a human, interact with another human being when you have that opportunity? And, you know, that everything that goes into, you know, sort of the RAM and randomness of being able to intersect with somebody so they you can get them on a phone or have them respond to a message or so on. But for me, what I focus on is really, when you have that opportunity, what do you do with it? And we're still too pitch-oriented, right? This is how we set up our SDRs. Let's, let's pitch. And there's been, you know, some studies that show that actually, if you get hold of a senior person and you, you start the conversation on the right foot and you pose a question to have them think about a potential outcome, they'll engage. And we're not doing SDRs a favor by saying, look, this is the way you have to do it. And I think too many sales leaders, sales bosses are caught up in this, this sort of framework because it's become this, you know, playbook that everybody does. Everybody does this playbook. It starts at the top. We're not enabling our sales managers to be able to help their sellers do better jobs at these things.
No, and it's a shame because if you think about where, especially on the SDR side and in SAS, I think part of this is very particular to SAS. It's so product-focused, and it's like, all right, people get to know their product, but they don't get to know the prospect. They don't know how to have a conversation with that senior leader. They have no idea.
Yeah, why not? That's why it comes to an idea that that I've been talking about more recently, which is something actually I borrow from soccer. And people listen to show, no, I'm soccer obsessed. And I remember seeing this interview with a coach in the Premier League who was talking about, well, you're only bringing young people into the team, we spend a few months training them how to be a person before we train them how to be a player. And to me, this is something we're missing in sales, right? We're, we know this is a human business. We know that the ability to connect with another human being, the ability to unleash your curiosity, to to keep probing, to be able to help the buyer, yeah, some of these things are just human skills. And we make the assumption that people coming into the workforce and sales know how to do this. They know how to be human. And they don't necessarily. And so let's spend the time to invest in them to help them with sort of these, just, I said, basic human-oriented skills, and then let's teach them how to be a seller.
What do you think the core of those things would be, right? If you could pick, you know, two to three of like, let's really focus on teaching people how to do that, what do you think those two to three core things would be?
Well, I think one that gets overlooked and actually gets served down, talk down about, is is just being able to connect. Someone how to open a conversation, how to, how to engage in small talk with somebody. Uh, yeah, I hear sales leaders all the time say, oh, my buyers don't have time for small talk. Well, actually, they do. Because the research is pretty clear, it's this is how you engage somebody's interest, right? This is how you demonstrate an interest in them, which in turn makes you interesting. And so it doesn't have to be, sure, maybe some people overdo it, but it still is a critical part of connecting with another human being. Another thing I think is just learning how you, how you build trustworthiness with a prospect. You know, it's, there's been some great books written like, uh, Stephen M. Covey, The Speed of Trust, talks about sort of the pillars of of trust building. We have to help sellers with that mindset, understand, you know, what, what it takes to do that. But I think it's all encompassed on this umbrella of just a different mindset about what sales is. And too few people look at selling as a service. And it is a service we're providing to buyers. Um, you know, buyers have a job that they're trying to accomplish, which is, and I like to summarize it this way, is, you know, your buyer, what they're trying to do is they're trying to quickly gather and make sense of the information they need in order to make a decision with the least investment of their time and attention possible. That's what your buyers are trying to do. And so your job as a seller, in part, is how do I help them accomplish that? I'm there to serve them, to help them do that. So I think this, a lot of us just also changing the mindset, because if your mindset as you're going out is, I've got to go call this number of people, and I gotta pitch my product, I gotta set a certain number of meetings, there's nothing about helping in there.
I love it. I love it. We actually just covered this with our inside or a couple months ago of like, we're here, what, let's list all the ways we help our prospect, right? And like, we did, like we listed all these things, like, this is what we do, this is what we do. So when you're calling, remember that, when you're emailing, remember that, when they shut you down, remember that. Like, we're trying to help. But if you're trying to book, they can tell. And if you're trying to close, they can tell, right? And that that plays to motivations, right? It's one of the ways you build trust is to be completely transparent in your motivations and then to live up to those motivations, you know, operate with integrity. And just the common scenario in sales we see all the time is, is I've lived it in my career, is, hey, we're here to help, Mr. Prospect, we're here to help. We have a couple conversations. Oh, by the way, it's the end of our month. Yeah, if we could just, yeah, if we give you this discount, or, you know, what's it, it's the equivalent of, you know, what's it going to take to get you in this car today? It happens every month. Maybe to be sales, you know, we want to look down our noses at car salespeople, but we engage in the exact same behavior.
All right, so I'm gonna throw a loaded question at you then, because I, I have a personal belief here, and, you know, I've talked about this publicly. What do you think would happen if we got rid of commissions? Would that help solve some of this? And because that trust, worthiness, it's the commission and the quota that causes reps to do those things. And it's the commission as well that buyers know. Buyers know you get paid to close the deal. So there's already an inherent lack of trust. What do you think would happen if we got rid of commissions? Now, before anyone listening loses their mind and goes, oh, well, no, we pay for overperformance. If we were crushing it, that's fine. But like, if it was more like, hey, this is your job, go do it. If you overperform, you'll get paid more, but if not, this is your job. Would that solve some of this, you think?
I think I would. I think you have to start at the management level, because I believe managers are the source of almost all discounting and manager incentives. So, you know, one way to, I look at, I tell people to think about it is that when you get to the end of the month, you know, if you're a retailer, let's say, and you've got product on the shelf, and you have too much product on the shelf at the end of the month, what do you do? You run a special to get rid of the product, the surplus. Well, when you get to the end of a month, what a manager has is a surplus of unmet quota. So in order to move their surplus of unmet quota, we authorize discounts. And so it's not to say left to their own devices that sellers wouldn't do it, but the fact is the motivation really starts at the management level. And so we have to address it there first. What are the incentives that managers have, and how do we stop managers from dipping into that well and either pushing their people to act this way or encouraging other people to actually act this way? And I, I, you know, my favorite story about this, which I include in my new book, is and it sort of led me to say, okay, I'm just not going to do this anymore, was very early in my career. Buyer had promised a pretty good-sized deal. Uh, this was at the end of the year. It was make or break for the company, but it was big for my manager. I was already over quota. It wasn't as big a thing for me.
[Music] The buyer was going on vacation between Christmas and New Year's, and he didn't fax in the order. So the manager made me call the guy, my customer, at home on Christmas Eve, on Christmas Eve, as they were having their dinner and opening their presents, to ask him to fax me the order. And I thought, and I was, you know, two years, three years, now it's five years in my career at that point, and I said, that's it. I'm not doing that anymore. I mean, if you're not making your number, that's not my problem. You know, I was over my number. But this happens all the time. So I think it has to start there. So the point about, to your point about the, the sellers, you can read study after study that says that the primary motivation for sales people is not making money. It's the job satisfaction, job well done. That's, you know, the things that come with it. So yeah, pay people well for performance. And I think you could do away with commissions. And there are companies in the past that have done it. Digital Equipment Corporation grew a very large computer company, uh, without paying commissions. Others have done it as well. Yeah, I think I think there's going to be a shift over the next five to seven years around this, especially with product-led coming in and like the challenges that are coming with trying to break through that. That carrot always hanging there isn't what drives the behavior. It just isn't. And it causes, I think, more issues on the back end than what people believe it helps.
Well, and I think we see the most abuses with people who, who perhaps are more motivated by the money than by doing a good job. And for me, and my, you know, talks with with people have been very successful in their sales, the commission was an outcome. It's great. You know, it's been, I've been very fortunate in my career, but it wasn't the reason I got up and worked every morning, right?
No, I love that. I think that's that's something we're going to take a look at over the next few years because I think you start to see that shift a little bit. If we're trying to get the trust of the buyer back, knowing that the person you're on the phone with actually is only trying to help, not that 50% of their income is tied to you saying yes, I think it would change that dynamic just a little bit.
Well, I think it's also a mindset thing. And I'll throw another sort of simplified mindset that I think if we can get sellers to think about this, this makes all the difference, which is, I like to take the complexities and and simplify them. And, and this is one is, so for me, selling is nothing more than the following: it's listening to understand what's the most important thing to the buyer, and then helping them get that. That's what our job is in sales. Is to understand what's the most important thing to this person? How can I help them get that? And if you go out there with that mindset instead of saying, my job is to sell something, my job is to understand what's most important to you and then figure out a way to help you get that. I think sellers approach the job completely different perspective. And then some of the, the pure raw monetary considerations on a weekly, monthly basis, maybe start fading a little bit, because if you do a good job at that, helping somebody get what's most important to them, yeah, well, pay it well. And you have, in the meantime, you have a customer that's that's, uh, hopefully going into the whole relationship feeling better served, right? Than they would if they felt like they're pushed into making a decision. And I really, really like that. It's a good segue into kind of the next formation. I would talk kind of early stage prospect. Now we get into like the close a little bit more here. What you're touching on there is key is like understanding what's most important to them, right? Through this proper discovery and go through that process. So what are some of the ways you've seen, you've coached, and you've heard of like, how do you actually discover that? Right? Because a lot of reps, they get their little discovery checklist and they go, so Andy, how many employees do you have? Right? And how long have you been there? And what are your biggest challenges this year? Right? Okay, let me pitch. How do you actually start to learn some of these things about your buyer?
We have to sort of think about there's a difference between knowing and understanding. And what we do is we, we train sellers how to go out and basically do a survey of the buyer. It's like, you know, a survey taker outside a grocery store, you know, I've got my survey on my clipboard, and you answer these questions. And so we've gathered some information about the buyer, but we don't understand it, right? We don't understand what it means. We don't understand why it's important to the buyer. We don't understand the context. So I believe from a discovery standpoint, there's a couple things we have to focus on. One is, discovery is not a discrete event. Discovery is something that happens every time you interact with a buyer. But we do a disservice to sellers because we lay out these sales processes that show discovery is this, this single stage of the process that even has exit criteria. And the fact is, that's not the way we learn. It's not the way your buyers learn, right? Because we continue to build trust in the relationship and we have with the buyer, they're going to trust us with more information. They're going to give us permission to ask deeper questions and better questions. So we have to stop this, hey, discovery is what we do on our second call. It doesn't mean don't ask questions, but you deepen your discovery every time you interact with the buyer. And that's, this is just a different mindset. And the way you do this is, is ask a variety of different questions. And because I think one of the ways you deliver value to a buyer is through the questions you ask, because you're, you're giving them reason to stop and think, right, in a way that perhaps they haven't before. It's one of my favorite types of, again, my new book, I've got, I've outlined six types of sort of discovery questions. But one that's always been my favorite is is what I call an impact question, where I ask the buyer to tell me what the impact of making a change will be. And I start doing a stacked question or layered questions. Yeah, start the highest level, what would the impact be? What, when you're asking, what the impact be, that what you're asking is quantify what this will mean to you, right? Not not from your emotional standpoint, but, sure, I'll get that. But what's, what's the impact actually going to be on the organization? What's the impact of you on your team? What's the impact could be on you personally, right? What's it mean for you and the way you conduct your job? Is this, you know, it's a 10% increase in revenue? Is it, you know, let's get down to that level. Because when I really understand the impact, then we can start understanding a little bit more about why these things are important to them. So, and also when you ask people to quantify the impact, it starts becoming real to them, right? Because they're putting themselves into the picture frame, right? I'm now jumping into the picture about what's going to be like to use your product. I'm taking this mental test drive of your product. That's, that's an essential step of decision making. Everybody does a mental test drive at one point or another. So for me, that's an important question type. But it's just, you know, one of many. But it helps you start digging down, because at the end of the day, what I want to know is not only what's the most important thing to you, I want to know who it's most important to and why. And because I think one of the, I don't say damages, but one of the ways people misconstrue this data we all get about the number of stakeholders involved in decisions is that somehow they're all equally weighted in their influence on the decision. The fact is, they're not, right? Human beings in a group, some people will be more dominant in their personalities, they've been more influential within that circle. As a seller, you need to find out who those are, and you need to understand why these things that are important to them are important to that.
And I love that. And I think we talk about impact a lot. And there's two types of impact, right? There's the impact of change, but also the impact of not changing. Like, what happens if you don't change? Right? And getting them to think about that as well, a little bit early on. But then to your,
Oh, go ahead.
Well, yeah, and I, my point is, I think sometimes that gets overstated though, because, you know, one thing I'm not a fan of is asking questions about pain points, because I think when people, when people are making a change, they're moving forward to something new, right? Yes, there's a challenge to be overcome, there's a barrier to overcome, but their motivation is a new state. It's not, it's not leaving the old state, it's achieving the new state. And so I always want to focus on that, right? And I decide, I think we have, you know, too focused on the whole thing about pain and, and the impact of not changing, because I, sure, it's a great question to ask, but I think that they sort of know, right? Sometimes it's, it's, yeah, you're making it more clear, but it, they're really focused on what can I get, right? This is this, what's the future state going to be? I want their focus on that. And then how do you help paint that picture? That right?
So, okay, we've got these good questions, right? How do you help paint that better future? How do you, you said something really, really like key there that I want people to catch is like, get them to picture using or get them to picture that better future.
Well, and to go deeper in that, so, you know, another type of question I like to ask, I call vision questions, which is, is to have the buyer walk you through what it would be like to actually be using the product. So is that not just what the impact is, but so, so let's go, what would this mean on, like, a daily basis, I'll walk through on your job, right? What, so what would this mean to you if you could do X, Y, Z, right? Is, you know, and just have them take you through it all, right? What would it be for your team? And so put them into that, again, into that picture, but in a more detailed operational level. It's almost like, I said, walking through a demo without the product. And you get them to to start creating this, again, this vision in their own mind of what success looks like. And I like to say, because I know there's, and some people find this a little controversial, because we talk about telling stories so much, but the fact is, the only, in my belief, in my experience, really, the only story the buyer really wants to hear is their own story. Their own story of success. And so you want to paint that for them. Answer the questions you ask about having them engage in sort of the detail, sort of pseudo use of your product, and, and what would mean for them on a day-to-day basis in their life, in their work life, then you start creating that. And that gives us a tangible thing to buy into. It's one thing to do, it's sort of a demo, and yeah, we use some of their data and so on, but you take it beyond that. Go deeper, right? What, bro, tell me what, how's this going to impact you on a day-to-day basis? What would your day? Walk me through what your day would look like. Then they start, oh yeah, they start living that.
And I love that, right? It all starts in our minds first, right? Before, before we swipe that card, before we sign a contract, we have to picture using it, picture the end result happening, and then we want it, which I think is, is phenomenal. So, all right, we've got SDR prospecting, we've gone closing, we've been touching on a little bit. So let's open up this can of worms now, leadership, right? And there's, there's the management side, and then there's the VP side. So we'll split these into two.
Yeah, look at the front-line manager, right? Where are some areas that they should be spending more time now that they're probably not? What can I take it one step further above of course? Yes.
Yeah, we, we're not helping our front-line managers, right? We underinvest in them substantially. And I would say we, as a profession, is they get promoted very quickly, unless they're in a really large enterprise, they receive almost no training. And we presume they suddenly become an expert in all these facets of management and, you know, personal development, personal growth of the people working for them, things that they just aren't equipped because they haven't been taught, right? And so it's not their fault, they're, they're not failing, we're failing them. And I like to use the sort of the apocryphal hyperbole of saying, uh, okay, we spend $15 billion a year training sales people in the United States. Maybe 10% of that gets spent on managers. What if we flip that ratio? Well, if we spent 90% of it on training our managers, only 10% on training our sellers, what do we think would happen? And I'll tell you what I think would happen. I think sales would go up, because we're giving these people that are responsible for the development of our sellers, the tools to be able to do so. And so that's, those are my soapbox. I would, I would start there, right? I would dramatically change how much we invest in managers. Um, but then I think as you're, if you're a manager, yeah, you have the same obligation for continuous learning that you do as a seller. Yes, so you need to invest in yourself the same way that you would when you're first coming up in your career. In fact, maybe I'd say it's more more urgent that you do so, because it's more complex. It's not just dealing with yourself. Now you understand, let's say, the psychology of a buyer. Now you need to understand psychology of the people that work for you, right? How do you coach somebody? Uh, you know, how do you help them put together a growth plan? How do you, how do you understand what performance improvement really means? How do you help upskill these individuals? But again, they're not equipped to do that if they're not being equipped. Then you need to take on some of that responsibility yourself. And I think those that succeed, uh, yeah, have some intuition perhaps better than others about it, but they also invest in that. So you have to, you have to read, you have to, you know, watch videos, you gotta do the same things that there does, go to conferences, uh, talk to your customers. I mean, I still learn so much about sales and management from my customers, um, just be open to influences. And then don't, don't fall into this mindset that you think you know what you're doing, because you don't. And it's not your fault.
And it's such a common error, I think, on both sides, to your point, right? Is like, leaders will promote people up and give them no support. But also, sometimes reps, they get promoted up, they feel like they do know it already. It's like, just because you were a great rep, you're now a rookie manager. And it's putting that student cap back on a little bit and going, I have a lot to learn here.
Well, but even if you're a great rep, I mean, I got promoted in my first job. I got promoted after 21 months to management, yeah, in sales. And I took on responsibility for 12 people. And it's like, I hadn't even learned how to sell yet, right? I mean, granted, I'd done a good job, I had made President's Club, but really, did I know how to sell after less than two years? Of course not. So the idea was even sort of ludicrous of me teaching these other people how to do it, especially with some of them were 20 years older than I was. So, um, yeah, you have to be have this humility, this intellectual humility to be an effective leader to say, yeah, I've, there's a lot I don't know. And, um, there's a great quote I like from, uh, the late Clayton Christensen, wrote The Innovator's Dilemma and other great books. You know, he said that, um, gosh, I always get this, I always get this backwards. Give me a sec, I will get the quote right, because it's such a good quote. He says, questions are places in your mind where answers fit. If you haven't asked the questions, the answers have nowhere to go. And I think that's, you know, as your manager, it's like, yeah, you gotta ask these questions, right? You gotta, you can't assume that you know something. Is you gotta continue to be asking and learning, because then the information is a place to go in your brain.
And what for you have been some of those key learnings as a leader? You know, as you look back at your career and people you've worked with and developed and, you know, we trip over and we make mistakes and we learn. Like, what are some of those key management learnings that you have that you could share and say, these, these are some of the areas where I made mistakes too. I've made so many mistakes as like, you know, as a manager and leader, you know, like, what, what are some of those learnings as a human? We're just, we're gonna do it.
Yeah, well, I mean, the most important was when we all learn, but I think that so many people don't practice enough. And sort of a leadership role is that it's, we only succeed if our people succeed. And so, yeah, I tried to always keep in mind that my primary job was to help my sellers become the best version of themselves. And to the extent I could do that, then I would succeed. And, yeah, I learned early on from a manager that actually a CEO at a startup I work for, who, yeah, he just blew me away. As I remember bringing in, we're meeting with a salesperson that worked for me at his VP of Sales and working the CEO, and we were talking about this one account, what the seller was going to do. And I started taking my cue from the CEO, and what the seller was laying out was just wrong. Right? But he wasn't going to say it. He, he was going to let that person go learn. And I think having that patience to let people learn from the mistakes and not feeling like you have to jump in and correct them all the time and put them on the right path before things happen. It's like being a helicopter parent, right? As you're trying to go in and protect your children from something you think might happen. Well, no, let them experience defeat, let them experience failure, let them learn from it. But I think people feel so under the gun these days, they don't feel they have the luxury to do that. And but you almost don't have the luxury not to, because this is how your people learn. And so that was a great lesson for me is sometimes that's got to keep my mouth closed as well.
I love that, that patience, right? The, you know, we talk about this often, even with my own management team, right? Is slowed down to speed up. Slow down. Like, you may think that getting in there and get after it and hop it on that call, like you're doing everything so fast, and it's hurting you in the long run versus slow down, let them learn, take the time to address things one by one, instead of also, you know, made this mistake as leader myself, all the feedback. Like, okay, so here you did that demo. Cool. Let me give you all the feedback versus, here, this, we're gonna work on this, right? Here. And eventually, we'll get to the other things.
Well, yeah, and I, so one of the things I learned from a manager, which early in my career, which I have done, still do, is is he would, he would want to do like a detailed pipeline review, let's say. And he demanded that, you know, everything, but he would ask questions, deep, deep questions. You go through this pipeline, I got to the end of it, and I was like, oh, he never told me what to do. He never, he just wanted to make sure that I knew. Right? So by asking his questions, he was setting the example of how much I should know about the account. And it was a humbling experience. I thought, oh my God, he really, in some respects, knows more about these things than I do, my own accounts, just through the questions he was asking. But I think that's something for managers to think about. This is when you let's say you're doing a pipeline review, yeah, go deep, make sure ask the questions, make sure your seller understands. You don't have to give your advice or your opinion about anything. This is the, the gap I think that too many managers want to jump, as you said, is let them figure it out. We, we have a little acronym we joke about with my management team internally, right? It's WWKD, what would KD advise? Ask, ask. Yeah, right? And that's actually the whole premise, right? Where you're just talking about, I'm not there to tell you what to do. That's not what would KD do. It's not what KD advises. And it's taking that pause. Like, you know, especially if you've worked with me for a few years, you probably know what I would ask. Go those extra layers deeper and do those questions yourself. And then come with the problem or the solution or the idea. But it's really encouraging, ask that extra question, slow down.
All right, the whole thing is slow down. Absolutely.
Yeah, and that's, and remember, I was working with a client a number of years ago, and, and one of the sellers, he said, oh, God, this is really, you're really micromanaging. I said, what happened? Have I suggested anything to you? I'm just, I'm just asking the questions. And it was like, oh, yeah, then you sort of start getting it, right? That's like, yeah, that's all you want. I just want to make sure you're up to speed.
I love it. I love it. And questions, as I hope everyone listening, you see the theme here in selling and in leadership, and a lot of times in life, it's the questions we ask. I love that analogy of like, questions are where the answers go in your brain, right? But if you don't ask the question, you can't find the answer, right? So, all right, awesome. And I have two more key questions for you before we wrap up. I've already been at 40 minutes. I knew this was going to go way too fast. Um, so the first one, you know, we call it like the big three, right? People remember things at the beginning, they remember things towards the end, and the things that we've talked about. And also, just through your experience and your reach, like getting to speak to so many people around sales and leadership and scaling, if you could give three key takeaways or pieces of advice, like these three things as foundation, either from our conversation today or conversations as you've had that have really left an impact on you, what would those three things be?
Hmm, great question. Um, or questions. Well, one is, it's still a human business. So start there. Use that as your foundation. It always starts. Everything's built off the connection you form with another human being. And you really, you know, people, you see people writing about this on LinkedIn and so on, is, you know, downplaying the importance of this, but the fact is, everything you do subsequent to the connection is built on the connection. So if you don't make the connection, you're not gonna go anywhere. And so it's still, as a seller, a large part what you do is based on your ability to form a connection with another human being and build a rapport, have some empathy, build trust. That's not, that part's not going away. Uh, so I think that's, you always want to talk about how much sales is changing, and it's, I like to say, let's talk about how much it stayed the same. Yeah, this is one of the real critical things. Um, gosh, yeah, I, I like the sales is much simpler than than people think. And I, I think this idea about having in the right mindsets that that people be in is really understanding what their job is. We talked about earlier, is if a seller will start their their work every day in their their outreach and their calls and they said, look, my mission is just understand, you know, what's most important to my buyer, and then put together a plan to help them get that. That's just a different path for people. And I think that that's that's really critical is, is, and I've held that mindset in my career, and I'm somebody that was not a fit to be in most of the jobs I had. I think certainly early in my career and selling very complex technical products, I was not a technically trained person. I was a smart enough guy that could learn, you know, at a certain level the products, but, but the ability to be successful is based on helping somebody and people being having the trust in me to be able to help them get what was important to them. And so I think that's just, you know, these mindsets are just simple, but, but so crucial. And, and we, we do a disservice again, to our sales people and to people in the, and to our buyers, when we become so pitch-oriented and really, you know, like called us, we indulge in being salesy. And it's really, it's time to stop that type of behavior, right? We could, we could just stop it right now. We have the power. You know, it has no value to buyers. It has no value to sellers. Now, there's a great book put a couple years ago by a professor from Wharton, uh, Jonah Berger, called The Catalyst, talking about persuasion. And he said, you know, the cites a study, I don't know if it's his study or somebody else's study, says universally, everybody hates being persuaded. Yes, what the term was persuasion reactance. We resist, intuitively resist being persuaded. Yet, this is the primary mode of operation that we train sellers in. And so I call again, I call that salesy behavior, and we just, we just have to stop. I mean, it's, it's past time, and we can all stop doing that today. We don't need to do that. Um, yeah, I like to sell sellers, you know, like, here's the one question, one question a buyer will never ask you. And the question is, hey, KD, I, yeah, I love what you're selling. I love the product, but you're just not salesy enough. Could you be more salesy? No one stopped you and said, wait, you didn't ask enough discovery questions. It's just like, no one's ever going to ask you to be more salesy. So why are we doing it? Why it's, and the solution is really, is pretty simple. So I think that's, that's one. The third thing, you know, I think we get too hung up on process. Process is important, but, you know, there's a whole Conrad people that think that process sells. We process and sell people sell. And what you have to do is give people more autonomy within a process. And I think this is a stumbling block that we have, is, is it's not that it's not that process is important, but we need to give people the freedom to become the best version of themselves within that process. And I think that we started touching this earlier, is that too many sales managers are fearful of sort of the an operator, uh, a position of fear in their jobs, and not making their numbers, being hammered by their bosses, whatever that they don't feel comfortable giving us a level of autonomy to their sellers to grow and develop. And it's holding everybody back. And so I think we're sort of hopefully coming towards inflection points, we talked about earlier with regard to specific sales models, where I think one of the impacts would be is that, you know, we're less focused on sort of the detailed activity metrics and more about outcomes, but also holding people accountable for outcomes, but understanding also that everybody operates just a little bit differently, and trying to stop making everybody a clone.
Of the next person, man. I love that. That itself could have been the entire episode as well. Like, that was just cold, man. Like, I knew this was going to be good, and I was also like, man, but I'm not gonna be able to keep this within the window. There's no way. Like, we could go on this forever. I got, I got one more for you.
Sure. Right. The, the name of the podcast is Live Better, Sell Better, right? And you've been dropping some nuggets along the way that I think we're very aligned on. We have this weird idea, right? That if we did take care, take better care of ourselves and act like humans and have more joy, energy, and fulfillment, that the sales would also be better. What would your live better advice be for the people listening?
Worry less. You know, it's hard to not worry in sales, right? Because we're in this business where the clock resets to zero every 30 days. But, you know, the worry never got me ahead, right? And it's just, I think it's a struggle. So I think exercise, nutrition, sleep, you know, meditation, breathing exercises, things that, that you need to just live a better life. Um, pay attention to her. Yeah, I've got, I wear these activity trackers. I've got my Apple Watch, uh, on my bed, and I got this Eight Sleep thing. I don't know if you've heard about that. Fantastic. Um, yeah, probably over-indexing on, on data about personal fitness these days, but, but why not, right? And, and I am more conscious about it. I am more conscious now about getting more sleep, and I am conscious about, uh, the other things, even though I've been actively involved in fitness my entire life as a runner and a swimmer and a bicyclist and so on. But you can always do better.
Um, but yeah, the net effect is just, I think you talk about joy. I think joy is an important thing. Um, Steve Kerr, the coach of the Warriors, talked about, you know, he builds this culture based on joy, compassion, and competition. And, but he was saying, you know, the competition part of, and you think about that's basketball. I create this great basketball program. Yeah, the Warriors with us, it's joy again, right? Just to, just, it's fun. I mean, sales is fun. I've been in it for over four decades. I mean, it wasn't, it's been amazing. I mean, I've, I've traveled the world. I've sold on every continent but Antarctica. Uh, started my career selling women's shoes and, you know, sold deals over 100 million, worth over 100 million dollars. You know, and everything in between. And I said, met all these fascinating people. And yeah, I've had my own company for 20 years and have this great podcast that I've learned so much from talking to all these smart people like yourself. Yeah, it was fun, right? Right. And, and so you have to, you have to enjoy it, uh, and get the joy from it.
The compassion part is, is, you know, we're trying to help people. We're trying to, that's our job. And the competition, interestingly, and Curry talks about the, Carr talks about this as well, is Steve Curry, I guess, is a lot of it's the competition with ourselves, right? Is to make the extra call, to to invest in ourselves. You know, we're basically competing with ourselves and competing, sir, with an allocation of time. It's not competition with the person sitting next to me or competition with my, my competitors. That's part of the fun. That's competing with my competitors, but competing with myself to make the right decisions, to do the things that'll have me help me have a more fulfilling career. And so, yeah, you don't last in it as long as I have if you don't serve, take care of yourself, take care of yourself, and have some fun. And have some fun. Nothing, nothing that's not the moments of frustration and, and, you know, pound your head against the wall type thing, because, you know, we are dealing with people. It's a people. But yeah, by and large, it's been tremendous fun, and I've been incredibly fortunate to to have this career. I could never have anticipated. You know, a history major out of college, literally had no idea what to do to where I am today. It's like, yeah, I've been lucky. I love it, man. I love it.
Where now, where can people get more of you? I heard you drop a book. You said you got your second book out. Hours. It's a third book. It's number three. The third, third book coming in February, okay? And, uh, we're gonna be announcing it soon. When's this episode gonna air? I'll wait until you tell me to say go. Okay. Well, you can do it anytime, but the book will be coming out in February. We'll be announcing it toward the end of October, beginning of November. Um, yeah, we're, I'm very excited about it because it really, it deals with some of the topics we talked about today, which is, look, we, we as a profession, we indulge in these behaviors that have no value to our buyers and our sellers. We just, I'll call them the salesy behaviors, but actually I have a name for them. You'll, you'll get from the book. Awesome. And it's just time to draw a line in the sand and say, look, enough is enough, right? We've been doing these things for 100 plus years. Let's, let's stop. Right? Adding technology hasn't changed at effects, probably exacerbated, made some of them worse than it's been in the past. So it's just, let's just stop. And your success in life and in sales clearly be boiled down to four attributes. And so these four attributes are, which I'll go into in depth in the book, are connection, curiosity, understanding, and generosity. And from that, you can build a life and a career. And the book shows you how to do it.
Do we get the title yet? Is that finalized? Oh, yeah, it's, it's finalized. We're, okay, we're not announcing it quite yet, but, uh, it's coming. Awesome. It makes it very clear what, what it's about. Fact, I cannot wait. I'll be first in line to scoop that up, and I will make sure everyone in the Patreon group as well has that access and knows about it, because if it's anywhere close to what we talked about in 50 minutes today, it's gonna be well worth the read and getting into detail, and I'm really, really excited for it.
Well, thank you. Yeah, I'm, I'm excited about it too. It's my best one yet. And, and, uh, been long and coming because that, uh, you know, books morph as you start to write them, and, and then the pandemic actually sort of gave me extra time to think about it, which was, I'm so grateful for having extra time, and sort of changed a little bit, uh, made it more concise, a little more powerful. So, uh, yeah, unfortunately, work with a great team to help me write it too. Hell yes.
Well, while people wait for the book, where else can they get more of you? Where should they connect? What should they listen to? Where can I get more of the Andy Paul in their life?
So thank you. Um, first of all, LinkedIn is a great place to connect with me. Um, post content quite frequently there. Um, and then, uh, yeah, please do connect with me if you haven't connected with me already. And then my podcast, Sales Enablement with Andy Paul, and we have three new episodes a week. And, um, yeah, lots of great content, uh, stretching back just about a thousand episodes. Oh, yes.
Ma man, this was everything I thought it was going to be and a little bit more. Thank you so much for your time, your energy, your insights, man. I greatly appreciate it.
Well, thank you. Thank you very much. That is a pleasure to be here, and we'll, we'll do it again. We'll be back online before too long. Hell yeah. Let's make it happen, man. Yep.
[Music]
Thank you.