The Hidden Cost of False Velocity with Randy Riemersma

0:00Look, I'm going to say something crazy. I think all deals lost inside the 10 yard line had nothing to do with your capabilities. It has everything to do with their lack of confidence. Because I think sometimes for data salespeople, we're selling somebody$3 million worth of software. If this hits the fan, their job is at risk. Which is why when we get inside the 10-yard line, there are some things that we've got to have done very, very well. Our customer referrals have to have gone absolutely cold stone fantastic. Our executive alignment with them has got to be fantastic. We have to be texting with our champion on a daily basis at this zone because they are going to be getting nervous.

0:41We have to hold their hand. Our surround inside the 10-yard line has got to be execution excellence on our side because they've already decided about the product. They've already agreed to the business case. Now it's like, I'm about to put a pen on a piece of paper. Am I going to lose my job for this? And it's our job to make sure they don't. That confidence, if we do a great job there, creates that urgency that gets us all the way into the end zone. Welcome to the Revenue Builders Podcast, a weekly show featuring B2B sales leaders and executives. Hosted by five-time CRO John McMahon and force management co-founder John Kaplan, the show takes guests in the barrel behind the scenes with the people who've been there, done that, and seen the results.

1:26Revenue Builders covers best practices for scaling and growing your business while sharing the pitfalls to avoid. Today, we sit down with Randy Reemersma for a powerful conversation on sales execution, leadership, and what separates elite sellers from everyone else. Randy spent years as a sales leader, consultant, advisor, and coach to tech companies, helping organizations sharpen their go-to-market strategy. He's also the founder of Sell with Precision. In this episode, Randy breaks down why great sellers need to slow it down to speed it up, especially at the front end of a deal. The conversation covers how reps create false velocity, how to develop a provocative point of view, and why sellers need to connect operational pain to executive level business outcomes.

2:17Randy also shares lessons on trust, curiosity, preparation, emotional and rational buyer engagement, and the importance of focusing on the common things that matter most and doing them uncommonly well. Let's get started. So Randy, you have been a sales leader for a long time. You've consulted for companies. You advise for companies. They're constantly asking you for your advice. Let's just start with something simple like the sales process. What do you think are the most common points in the sales process where sales reps get stuck or the deal gets stuck? I tell you what, so John, I'm going to open this conversation with a phrase you're very familiar with, slow it down to speed it up, right?

3:03We've talked about that a thousand times. So I think one of the things, you know, everybody on your, on the, that's listening to this, they have a different sales process, right? They might be a sandal person, a, you know, spin selling, whatever. So I'm not going to start talking about like the stages, but I think one thing that screws deals immensely is false velocity at the front end. You have got to slow down to do the right things the right way early on to be able to keep yourself out of danger in the future. So that's one thing. Don't push the velocity. That's where you really want to discover the customer's pain or problem that you then can solve without just trying to throw up features and functions of your product, right?

3:44Absolutely. And I tagged you guys both on a LinkedIn post I put out there the other day called, you know, and it referred to the zone of small decisions. If we engage with a, and this is a huge thing. I've listened to 9 million gong calls. I see this happen all the time. If we engage with a prospect, that prospect did not get fired today based on what they did yesterday, most likely, right? So they're in this like sort of quiet zone. And this is where subject matter expertise, having a provocative point of view is so critical. We have got to get the customer, and this kills deals, not getting them out of this like zone of small decisions where they're reasonably happy or not like ridiculously unhappy and showing them, you know, their current state and the true negative consequences of that state and creating both an emotional and irrational reason to move.

4:32If we don't start there, I think your deal is fairly screwed long term. It's just not going to have momentum and emotion behind it over time. We've got to get someone emotionally and rationally engaged early. Let me back up. First of all, Tell me what you mean by the zone of small decisions. I think I know what you mean, but let's be explicit. Be super explicit. So we live our lives, you know, if you like euphoria up here and absolutely worst day ever down here, we spend most of our time sort of in the zone of like, hey, you know, I had pizza for lunch. You know, my kids got OK grades. Nobody wrecked the car today.

5:07Kind of this sort of, you know, life as we know it. And I know, you know, for me, I never make big decisions in that mode. like for me to buy a Ferrari, I needed to win the lottery. I'm going to be way up here at euphoria or, you know, to really change maybe some of my health benefits. I need to get a really negative, you know, trip from my doctor. I got to get them down. Nobody makes big strategic decisions or starts the process in this zone of, you know, small decisions. Gotcha. And this is where, and this is, you know, I know one of the things we want to talk about is like the elite, the elite, the 1%, they can pull that prospect down and show them some fear and pain that creates an emotional response and a rational response by showing them the current state with the true negative consequences and what the cost is of living with that, the cost of inaction.

5:55Let's go all the way back now. Where people are getting stuck first is in just discovery of the pain or the problem that they need to solve for the customer. Exactly. And, you know, if you get some ambiguous pain point that like really doesn't mean anything or can't be clearly articulated. And, you know, I have a bias, like I have my belief systems. We as humans are very emotional beings and we're rational beings. And if we're not causing both of those to be disturbed early in the sales process or discovery process where we lead them, you know, kind of challenge your model, you know, teach Taylor, take control, lead them because we're subject matter experts.

6:36It's hard to get the velocity. It's going to stay long term. I think by not doing that, slow it down to speed it up. By not doing that at the front end, you set yourself up for some real problems later on. Okay. So what's the best way to disturb their emotional and rational self at those points? So a lot of it's exposure. And this is where, you know, the elite that we get to talk to, that we get to coach, they're subject matter experts. They know the industry. They know what the potential is that someone could be doing. They also know like the areas where best practices and things like that are or are not being met.

7:14And so instead of pitching early on and educating, asking great questions, open-ended questions, clarifying questions, creating context, You know, I say this a thousand times. The best reps ask the best questions. If we're creating curiosity, interest early on versus educating, you end up with a much, much better outcome. But they're asking the best questions. Like, you know, what I always say is that the reason they're asking the best questions is because they know stone cold that that persona has a specific use case. And in that use case, they know all the pain points. They know the remedy for those pain points.

7:55They know customer situations with proof points of how they solve those specific pain points. So essentially, the question they're asking, it's like a great lawyer. A great lawyer is not putting anybody on the stand and asking a question without knowing what the expected answer should be. There's no way. They're just not doing it. No great lawyer would ever do that. And no great salesperson is what you're saying should ever do that. 100 percent i feel like you were like literally i was doing a coaching call with a leader a little while ago he was concerned that his team does not understand that you know the marketplace well enough so it sounds like you were listening to the call because we just talked about that it's like okay look we got to get your team together maybe have them present but like a persona in industry what that persona in that industry faces what their goals and objectives are what are some corporate initiatives that are likely to be happening because if we can't talk about that We end up slinging features around and no reasonable deal is going to get done with that.

8:57We have got to show up with subject matter expertise, ask great questions, leading the witness to our area where we know we can solve a meaningful business problem. And I want to make sure I say this before we leave this topic. MedPix is an amazing deal inspection process. It's not a sales process. It's a deal inspection process. and one of the biggest things I always ask reps early on, tell me about ICE, tell me about the identified business pain, tell me about your champion, tell me about the economic fire and the information we have there. If we don't have a strong problem sponsor wallet, then the rest of the deal is also going to get slowed down or, you know, lacks the momentum, the energy behind it that we want.

9:41We have got to make sure that we're dealing with something that matters, a real identified business pain, ideally, you know, tied back to a corporate objective. We have a champion that knows how to mobilize on our behalf and can influence the rest of the world. We have access to an economic buyer that has discretionary use of funds in that what we are talking, and this is, I think it's missed so often because if it's important to champion, so many salespeople think it must matter to the economic buyer. Not true. We have got to validate what we're doing with the economic buyer and that we are in a top priority for them because you guys both know this.

10:16project number 28 never gets funded.

10:19John Kaplan: Right. You know, the other thing that we're talking about here, and I want to make sure the audience hears this, there's a shared responsibility between a company and a go-to-market employee, a seller, anybody in go-to-market, anybody that's going to stand in front of a customer. The things that we just talked about are not created by the seller. The things that we talked about are utilized and leveraged by the seller. But there's a lot of people listening to this right now going, yeah, that's what great sellers need to do. Great companies need to provide an ICP, very clear, well-defined ICP. They need to provide a very clear target for persona and a value proposition for that persona, an engagement model, who's doing what, when, and a success profile.

11:13John Kaplan: And so I just want to encourage people, like if you're looking for a company and you're like, yeah, I can do all these things. You can't do jack squat if you go to a company and they don't have these pillars in place. I've seen people make the mistake that say, man, I can sell. I'm going to go and this is a really exciting time and I'm going to go to this AI company or whatever. And if they don't have those foundational pillars in place, you're going to wind up making them up in front of the, you might be, you know, you might be successful, but the company's not going to scale. No chance. You know, Cap, I'm having a flashback moment when you say that.

11:48You remember we first met back at BMC and this is, I'm not going to tell how many decades that was because I don't want to make you or I any older on screen than we might be. But remember like, you know, the booklet you gave us, the battle cards that were built out. This is what the persona cares about, you know, here's what their go-to-market issues are. Here's all that kind of stuff. I agree a hundred percent. That is not the salesperson's responsibility to build, but I do want to make sure I say this. It is the salesperson's responsibility to know that stuff cold so that they can use situational fluency, you know, wake up at three o 'clock in the morning, tell me about this CIO and this, you know, oil and gas, blah, blah, blah, that kind of stuff.

12:28You, the salesperson does own that.

12:30John Kaplan: 100%. If somebody makes you that sandwich, you got to eat it every day. And then you got to serve it up to others. I tell you what, man, anybody listening who's ever seen a John Kaplan force management battle card knows exactly how valuable those things are. The reason, let's go back to why a rep needs to know that stuff cold. And you called it situational fluency. What I think about it is, it's the only way for me to actually be in the customer conversation. For me, like if I don't know this stuff cold, then I'm and the customers telling me about stuff and I'm asking, I'm trying to ask the best questions I can ask.

13:10I'm still uncomfortable in my seat because I don't know where to take this customer. I don't know which direction to move the conversation. So I might be all over the map. And then even when I leave the meeting, I don't know if I fulfilled and discovered everything that I was supposed to discover in that meeting. So I have to know it cold so that I don't think when I'm in the meeting. I'm listening. I'm using my intuition. I'm asking questions off of what they tell me because I'm actually in a conversation with them, if that makes sense. John, 9 ,000%. I mean, you know, you'd ask about like the top 1%, you know, what do they look like?

13:50And curiosity, questions, curiosity to me, the best reps ask the best questions. And I think the key for if you don't know the context and if you don't know, if you're not a SME, you are asking questions, you're curious so that you can try to pitch yourself. But when you really understand the context, you're asking curiosity questions to understand more deeply so that you can lead them in a much more informed, business impactful way naturally to an end state that works best for them. And obviously it's going to work best for you. But if you don't know your stuff cold, it feels like you're reading questions off a sheet and everybody knows what that feels like.

14:30We've been cold called. We know what that feels like. Okay. So we did a really good job. I think that was your first one, which is where people get stuck in the sales process is number one and maybe the most important because nothing Can I add one thing to that, John? Yeah, go for it. In every organization, there is an invisible red line, right, in every org chart. And below that line is very operational. And above that line is strategic, direction. People are setting strategy. People below the line are, like, doing stuff. And those people that below the line are doing stuff are very, very important.

15:03And I just want to pause here. And I think this is another area where I've seen a lot of deals get stuck. I want my salespeople to go below the line, to be informed, to understand what's going on, so they can create more context when they go back above the line to the champion, to the economic buyer, when they're doing all their alignment. They just have tremendous context down below. Where I've seen weaker salespeople, they get stuck below the line, and they think that they're selling to these operational benefits. benefits and i just want to say this out loud the c-suite doesn't care about operational benefits making other people's lives easier below the line okay they don't care that you have to look at 13 different spreadsheets or you have to do screen scraping on this or you're trying to write some code they don't care about that unless it matters to a corporate initiative so i think another area where i see deals get stuck is when they reps lose if they think they're solving these operational issues below the line and they forgot that they got to tie it deal stall if they're not tied to real priorities for the economic buyer and the champion and and i only want to park on that because i've seen so many reps get lured below the line and they forget to come back above the line they get to meeting above the line with the economic buyer and they talk about all the tactical stuff they don't talk in terms that the economic buyer wants to hear dude you're so yeah Yeah, and you asked about being provocative with the C-suite.

16:29You've got to talk that language. You have to sound like you've been in that room before. When you start talking about features or below-the-line efficiency and you forget to talk about – they care about earnings per share. They care about EBITDA. They're caring about the three or four corporate initiatives that they're tied to. Remember that value pyramid type stuff? If you're not aligned to that stuff and you're not talking like that, you get booted out of the room. It's a one-way ticket out.

16:53John Kaplan: You've got to be a technical athlete today. and we're hearing all the people, we're just kind of naming it a technical athlete. Really what that means is you have to be just as comfortable below the line as you are above the line. Above the line as you are below the line. Because no deals that I'm seeing in technology today are done in any one of those areas. Done well. You can get a small deal below the line. Yeah. And you can get the opiate of activity and the opiate of small deals below the line, but you're never going to get, you know, attached to the big business issue. And the job today, I think the best technical athletes that I've seen are the ones that straddle that.

17:37John Kaplan: They got one foot below the line. They got one foot above the line and they know exactly where to go, exactly where to go. John, you're so right about that. Look, Kobe Bryant can play basketball if he wants to. But he played at the elite levels as well. And I think he's worth – I'm glad we're teasing this out a little bit. There is comfort. People below the line like to have meetings. They like to talk about stuff. They like to talk about information. And test it out. Take their time. Yeah. And let's do a prototype. Let's do an evaluation. But if you don't have, like, you know, John Todd played me at the E.B.

18:19and then he had kicked below the line. If you're going to have that round trip ticket back to curate all this information back to very clear value, measurable, currency negative consequences, future state positive business outcomes, that gap is my definition of value. And how you're going to solve that, and you guys will like this, because it proves that I paid attention in training, is taking our unique differentiation as the best path to achieve that future state with a positive business outcome. That's elite level stuff, right? If you can do that, you can go below the line anytime you want to.

18:52But so few people that I have found can really, really do what I described there about really articulating that value as it aligns to strategic impact to a company that an economic buyer is going to actually care about and want to talk to you twice. You can get a meeting once. The key is, can you get the second one? Kaplan nods his head and said, amen. I must have said something right. Amen. All right. Randy. Randy. You talk about these six emotions that drive decision-making. Walk us through how a sales rep or account executive can leverage these different emotions during the sales process. Love to.

19:35So, you know, I'm an electric engineer, mathematics guy by training. I come from a very Germanic family, immigrant family. We repress a lot of our feelings. So it might seem odd that I would talk about emotions during the sales process. But hear me out.

19:51John Kaplan: Hear me out. I'll get uncomfortable now. Cap, are you uncomfortable? No, I'm good, man. I spent time with this dude before. All right, good. Yeah. Cap, we can hug it out later. So as we go through the sales process, much like we have a sales process that we follow that's very rational, right? Do this validation, collect this data, share this business case. and it's strategic as we go left to right through that process. And, you know, it's not straight across. It's bumpy and all that other stuff. But in the same mindset, I encourage reps to also remember, we are first emotional beings and second rational beings.

20:28If you look at like the way we have developed over the years, we make emotional decisions and we back them up with intellectual alibis. So I want to harness, why would I leave something unused use when I can harness that to my benefit in the sales process. That's why I love these six emotions. John McMahon, thank you for giving me a chance to talk about this. I want us to think about them, the prospect, and I want them to think about you, the salesperson. These are emotions that I want them to have about themselves and them to have about you. This actually goes back to what we were just talking about.

21:02Early on in the sales process, early stage, mid-stage, late-stage, It's early stage. They must feel some level of fear or pain and awareness that something is not the way it should be. Getting them out of the zone of small decisions, below the line, current state negative consequences. They must have an experience emotionally that something is not right. Fear, pain, whatever you want to call it, but something is not OK. and because you tease that out, I want them to feel curiosity about you. This guy or gal is a person of interest. They know something that I don't know. They've exposed this to me.

21:41So I'm feeling some discomfort and I'm feeling curiosity about that. And I'll pause here real quick. A lot of sales reps love to educate and whether we agree with this or not, this is a firmly held belief that I have. If you educate too early, you eliminate your value. you're much better off creating curiosity and your value because you're a person of interest educate you early they're done with you moved on right so it's early stage some sort of with you i've seen it where they're done with you because you've done such a good job of educating them they don't need you anymore so then you try to negotiate on price or you try to gain metrics and you try to implicate things and then they don't want to hear it because they're like i already made my decision whether that's for you or against you and then you try to drive the price and the value of, and you can't.

22:29Give it away to goodies, right?

22:31John Kaplan: We're also talking about a psychological phenomenon that we've talked about many times on this podcast before, is that the human condition prefers to be talking to somebody who is interested in what I am saying versus trying to be interesting to me. Right. And that's just the human condition. And so I'm really tapping into what you're saying there, bud. Okay, we've got fear and curiosity. It is a body language. It is a mentality. It is a, you know, the human condition can tell when somebody is interested or they're trying to be interesting. And so you can't, you know, you've got to be authentic here.

23:16John Kaplan: That's why I believe, you know, if I'm talking to anybody today and anybody's kids, I always tell them the same thing. Yeah, I would definitely get a business degree and I would definitely get a minor in psychology. And people think I'm crazy. They say, psychology, you can't do anything. I'm telling you, some of the best business people, this is setting up our topic, Randy. But the best business people I've ever met have a definite, you'd think they'd have a degree in psychology if they don't because they understand human behavior. And this goes back to my comment, John. I couldn't agree with you more, right?

23:50Because, again, we are emotional creatures first. That's psychology. We're rational creatures second. That's math. Life is applied math. Life is applied psychology. If you're great at those two things, you're going to be fine, right? But to your point, I cannot create curiosity about myself if I am a nervous person, if I don't know what I'm talking about. Again, this goes back to you must be Kobe Bryant level type stuff, or at least aspiring to that. So when you show up in that meeting, you have the confidence because whether they know it or you know it, this is a weird thing. We understand pupils at a base level back in our amygdala.

24:31When we see someone's pupils dilate, that bothers us. Right. So we need to be people of confidence. We need to know what we're talking about. We need to create this discomfort in a way that's caring. But, you know, John, you asked about the execution with empathy. I care deeply for the people that I sell to if I didn't care for them I wouldn't do what I was doing right I don't want to do people as a paycheck I mean I love to help I love to serve to do that I have I know I can take you a place of discomfort to start and I do that in a caring way I do that in a very informed way I will always be a subject matter expert I get this stuff so we create a little discomfort early stage cradle discomfort we show up as a subject matter expertise We create a little curiosity.

25:12We slide over a little bit. Right. Well, because I've been working with Randy or Sally or Timmy, whoever it might be in a little while. And what they're talking to me about, about themselves, my prospect, they start to feel some hope. They need to feel hope. If the human spirit feels hope, they will get any amount of hope. They will continue to move forward. When you lose hope, the deal will die. I promise you that. Viktor Frankl, all these guys and gals in war camps, they maintained hope of a different day and they survived. The ones that lost hope died. So as we move forward, we're educating them.

25:51We're showing them some stuff. We're showing them use cases. We're doing some great storytelling. They feel a little hope. You know what? They start to think, hey, I might want what this guy or gal has. Desire begins to build. Desire with the seller. Desire to the instinct that I'm describing more than what I'm selling. Just trying to make sure that everybody's following. I have fear with the customer. It generated curiosity in me as a seller. Then they have some hope. It generates some desire to understand more from me, right? Exactly. And as long as the hope candle is lit, they're going to be interested in talking about that.

26:30That's early stage. Then we do a great job with like references, use cases, proving this thing out. And what they end up feeling is like they start to feel confidence. When they feel confident, they start to say, OK, I get it. Moving through, I'm feeling some confidence. This is starting to make sense. I did a customer referral call. We did that evaluation at Bake Off, whatever that was. This feels good. And because we did a great job of showing the current state negative consequences, future state positive business outcomes, They know that delay is a failure strategy. Around us, it creates urgency.

27:06I want what he or she has now. Basically, John and John, as we're going through this, why buy? Why buy for me? Why buy for me now? Those emotions help guide that behavior. The only thing that happens sometimes is, especially when it's a super really big deal, I believe that the ones that I've seen that go really well, the urgency is there you built the champion they take you to the economic buyer it's almost a done deal like you never have to close they close for you but there's sometimes where the people start to get like really like nervous nelly feet you know because now it's essentially like i was really confident then they go home and they say i'm gonna buy from you and buy this multi-million dollar deal and then they go home and i think there's human behavior here also where they wonder a little bit about like potential buyer's remorse.

28:00And now there's, there's some risk. They know they have to hold hands with you or someone else and have to jump off the bridge. And they're a little scared. And you have to, at that moment, you have to get them over that, this new fear that, that comes about, if you want to call it that. Look, I'm going to say something crazy. I think all deals lost inside the 10, 10 yard line had nothing to do with your capabilities. It has all, everything to do with their lack of confidence? Because I think sometimes we forget as salespeople, we're selling somebody$3 million worth of software. If this hits the fan, their job is at risk, which is why when we get inside the 10-yard line, there are some things that we've got to have done very, very well.

28:44Our customer referrals have to have gone absolutely cold stone fantastic. Our executive alignment with them has got to be fantastic. John, I know you're going to love this. we have to be texting with our champion on a daily basis at this zone because they are going to be getting nervous. We have to hold their hand. Our surround inside the 10-yard line has got to be execution excellence on our side because they've already decided about the product. They've already agreed to the business case. Now it's like I'm about to put a pen on a piece of paper. Am I going to lose my job for this? And it's our job to make sure they don't.

29:21That confidence, If we do a great job there, it creates that urgency that gets us all the way into the end zone. Agreed. Totally agree.

29:28John Kaplan: So one, I'm really fascinated by this conversation and I've been studying it. You've heard like when we were younger, you'd see it in locker rooms or whatever. People say believe, like they would just have a sign called believe. So I don't know, a couple of years ago, I started to really dig into. and the science behind belief is so incredibly pure and telling, they have it down to the science of like healthcare. There are differences in outcomes when a patient believes that they are, and even in placebos, so they've given medication to somebody that has a problem and they've given a placebo effect.

30:15John Kaplan: And until they did this and studied it in medicine, They really didn't capitalize on it. But people, by the very sense of believing something, will look for more evidence around them that they're right and it's true. And I find this so fascinating. And if I'm a seller today, I would learn as much as I can about a belief system and how to leverage someone's belief system and incorporate somebody's belief system because they wind up. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy in so many cases. Now, I don't want to minimize anybody's illness. and I'm not trying to do that. You know, what I'm saying is, I'm saying is that if you're a seller and you understand that at the point where Randy's talking about where customer needs belief, they needed you to listen to them.

31:07John Kaplan: They needed to be heard. Now they're moving to, they needed to understand the differences and the solution. You can do all that great. And at the end, if you haven't plugged into their belief and help them believe by great proof points, case studies, testimonials, showing them that it's going to work in their environment, whatever it is. I would just be studying that right now if I was a, you know, and I think all the elite sellers are probably unconsciously competent about why am I so good in the late stage of the ball game on the 10 yard line is because I leave no doubt that that customer believes.

31:43John Kaplan: Now, the other thing is, if you don't believe, this is the big thing for me. If you don't believe, you are not going to get anybody else to believe. And I'm so glad you said that. I'm just going to, I was going to share the best way to create belief for belief is transferable. Yes. Belief, enthusiasm is transferable. So many emotions are transferable. If I am a subject matter expertise, an expert in this situation, I'm an oil and gas guy and we're doing an installation, whatever it is. And I've talked through the whole downstream, blah, blah, blah. And we're at that 10 yard line of surrounding with all those other things, you're going to look me in the eye.

32:20And prospect is going to look the sales rep in the eye. And they're basically going to ask him, yeah, but do you believe? And if I'm an elite seller and I know this stuff cold and I know the use cases, I know our company and I know what we can deliver, I can echo that back and I can transfer that belief to them, which is critical. If you can't, it's going to show up in your pupils and their basal brain is going to pick that stuff up. Their limbic system is going to be like danger Will Robinson, which goes back to what John was talking about. They're going to go home with their wife or husband and be like, yeah, I don't know.

32:54Maybe I don't spend$3 million tomorrow. Really good. Love that.

32:58John Kaplan: Can I throw a plug out? Not a plug because maybe we can try to get this guy on the podcast. Just listened to him the other day on Dr. Lori Santos' podcast, the Happiness Lab that I absolutely love. She had a guest on two days ago, Sean Acker, A-C-H-O-R. And he's an author. He's on this podcast. He talks very specifically about what I just talked about on Belief. And I got maybe we'll put it in the show notes. I got a crap ton out of that as it related to business. OK, yeah, put it in the show notes. I'll even check it out. So, Randy, you talked about when people show up, they have to have a, you know, a point of view.

33:39Right. They should be prepared to understand, like we said, you know, all the persona, the use case, how that persona is measured, what their pains are, what their deliverables are. Talk to us about what you mean by a point of view or a provocative point of view. A great question. So I think, and this is where I see so many reps get stuck. And I think this goes back to preparation. You got a preparation. You know, I got this list of attributes for the 1%, right? One of them is preparation. They do the research, whether a company is publicly traded or not. I believe that if you're going to have a provocative point of view, and this goes back to a little bit of challenger selling, you know, you're going to teach someone, you're going to tailor the message, you're going to take control of this thing.

34:32in the provocative point of view is where we take control, right? Because we know stuff. Again, this goes back to that early phase. This guy or gal might know something that I don't know. I am curious about them that brings the defense shields down a little bit, which is the number one thing we can do is if you can increase receptivity for an early stage prospect where they actually might listen to you versus bombarding them with your education, that's a huge thing, right? So I create this idea that I may be a person of interest. I know things about your industry. I have a point of view, a provocative point of view of how a different world could look.

35:12They obviously haven't imagined that worldview today because they aren't in it or they haven't seen the value of it. They aren't in it. So through preparation, through being a subject matter expertise on this stuff, and I can't say this enough. We've talked about it three times. Let's talk about it a fourth time. When you are preparing executive messaging, provocative point of view for that economic buyer that has way much, that guy or gal is already way too busy. The requests coming to them for money have tripled what their budget is. You've got to rise above the noise. You cannot sound like a sales rep.

35:48You must sound like a peer. So I think part of the provocative part is not sounding like a sales rep. Understanding their business logic, what they're trying to get done. You know, I'm going to take a very short story about a customer that we dealt with years ago when I was working for Kubik. You guys remember Tim Kubik in the contact solutions in the call center area. All of our deals back there were one, maybe two, three year deals. But we found this deal where a company was their revenue growth. They're doing a bunch of consolidation. Revenue growth was 14 percent. Their operational expense growth was 17 percent.

36:24So we know that's a going out of business sale. So we did so much work below the line to figure out what was going on, what we could impact. But our message back to this guy was literally three slides. And it was on how to get their OPEX growth expense of 17 percent. It was just escalating like crazy down to 11 percent and a path to get it to 8 percent. And we talked about EBITDA. We talked about earnings per share. We talked about what they do for manpower and all these other things. It was a pure business-to-business, leader-to-leader call. We never talked about the technology. Our provocative point of view there for him was there's a way to take this operational disaster that you have through some consolidations, et cetera, and drive it down so it's actually contributing back to the business in a better way.

37:12It's research. It's prep. It's being an executive in the room telling an executive message, not a feature-led. No executive cares about your shiny, shiny thing. They really do. They really, really do.

37:25John Kaplan: Randy, check this out, man. Check this out. Like 15 years ago, I think I was in a meeting with somebody and they were doing a handoff between it was a huge telecom company. And they were doing a handoff between one of the strategic account managers to the next strategic account managers. This was so profound for me. And this great champion, you know, for this company, a multi-billion dollar organization that was selling to them, he started off the meeting this way. And I never forgot it and never will forget it. He said, hey, before we get started, this is a, you know, he's a huge high level C-level at a telecom company.

38:08John Kaplan: He says, before we get started, why don't you guys start by telling me what you know about me and my company? holy smokes i mean i was sitting in that room and you know i heard rick patino say this one time the difference between stress and pressure and in this one it's the difference between you holding your water and you spilling your water in your pants in this one because everybody on the team was spilling their water in their pants but it's preparedness the difference between stress and pressure is preparedness. Now with technology that we have today, I just want everybody to write that down.

38:48John Kaplan: Like if you go into a meeting with an executive and they start with, why don't you tell me what you know about me and my company before we get started? And he wasn't trying to be a jerk. He's just like, I need to know where you are or where we are in a conversation. Holy smokes. The previous rep that was handing off was like doing the talking, and it was a little bit of a downer. I guarantee it never happened again to that sales team. I'll tell you what. You want to put yourself in a really good frame of mind, pretend like you're going to call on the CEO, CFO, or C-level of a company. And if they asked you, why don't you tell me what you know about me and what you know about our company, how would you do?

39:30John Kaplan: And today, there's no excuse. Why wouldn't that be part of your provocative point of view? It has to be. John and John, how do I tell which one's your cap and McMahon? Do I got your lab names here? Cap and Mac is cool. Cap and Mac. I was just going to say, too, part of the provocative point of view to me is, and I tagged you guys in this other one, LinkedIn post I put in, it's on numbers. Any elite rep, when they hear an executive say a number, they always stop. They always pump the brakes. because here's what I know about every number, every exec ever made. They want it to go up or down. And there's an impact of it going up and down.

40:08So if someone says 14%, I know that number needs to go up or down. But what's the context? Revenue growth. Okay, we want that to go up. Operational expense. We want that to go down. Six seconds. Scan time on a website. We want that to go up. We want people to stay on our website. Handle time for a problem in the call center. We want that to go down. Now, part of the provocative point of view, too, is, and this is why, you know, John and John, we talked about this early. You've got to do such a slow it down to speed it up. Painfully long discovery to really understand the business. We showed up with a point of view that was talking about impacting EBITDA and earnings per share.

40:48Right. He wasn't expecting that. He was expecting us to say our little shiny spinning thing is really cool and you can spend whatever. And because we showed up the way we did, we got a six year contract out of them with forecasted committed base utilization in minutes. And we charge them a premium for flex minutes of 20 percent over their baseline.

41:08John Kaplan: And I don't think we're patient enough with that scenario, Randy, where you're right. We hear a number and we stop like we stop and we write it down. But that's almost, those numbers are almost below the line as it relates to like, you know, so I need call center time, go down by this. Those metrics are hugely important. If you follow that along, what bad things happen because, so you're looking at that number, what bad things, what good things happen when the number goes down and what bad things happen when the number goes up? what's it like for your end customer? How often does that happen? Who gives you that feedback?

41:48John Kaplan: Why do you have to fix that? How have you tried to fix it before? So the number in itself is the beginning of a great conversation. But Johnny's always telling me when I'm playing golf, he's like, dude, you have to finish your swing. Stay in your swing. Stay down. Finish it all the way through with a good follow through. It's really related to this. People hear the number. They put the bro sharing their mouth and the hair on fire, man, are we the solution for you? We can lower the call center, and they miss the opportunity to connect it to the ultimate is how does it impact your customer? Well, you know, Captain, we said it, and by the way, I'm not going to comment on your golf swing.

42:29We'll leave that between you and McMahon. But it's simple stuff. When an exec says a number, 14%, what would it mean to you if that number goes up or down? How important is that to you? It's a simple question. Open-ended question. They say something and you clarify it a little bit. Again, this goes back to the best reps ask the best questions. Open-ended question. Clarify, clarify, clarify. Oh, I get it. This is what would happen. You're right. How would you solve my problem? It's very permission-based, very receptivity-based. But like you said, when we find a number, we jump on that thing like a chihuahua on a pork chop.

43:07We start throwing our product at it. We lost we lost the audience. But when we stop and get curiosity to understand the impact, they're going to lean in with you because you know what? So many salespeople don't sound like that. Be the guy or the gal that sounds like a C-suite executive. Yeah. Be curious. Be in the customer conversation. Stop thinking of your product. Yeah. Curiosity to pitch is very different than curiosity to understand.

43:37John Kaplan: You know what's so funny that you guys are saying this, like sometimes, and I know that I'm going to have a real passionate discussion with a customer. And I actually write down on my notes, four letters, H-O-L-D. And I think about Braveheart. Hold. Hold. Because I am so, I know I can help them. I know that the minute they tell me an inkling of pain and you know, it's not my natural resting state to hold. And so that I got to actually write it down. John, I write four letters. It's not mine too, but it's minor STFU. What is that one? Shut the F up. That probably would get my attention more. Well done.

44:25John Kaplan: Are we still in psychology? Cause I'm, I'm, I'm having a therapy session here. I tell you what, selling is psychology. I'll say it again. We are emotional beings first. We are rational beings second. If we have both of these tools available to us, because, well, you know, here's a little truth. I'm going to drop a little truth on you guys because it's fun. I love you. So when we do curiosity-based questions, open-ended questions, clarify, clarify, clarify, more open-ended questions, clarify, clarify, clarify, and we echo it back. Did I get it? Help me correct it. Oh, there's what else is there?

44:59Clarify, clarify, clarify. And then we have this moment where it's like, aha, I get what's going on. This is what I heard. Did I get it right? And that person says exactly. there's literally a dopamine release in their brain and they will never like you more than that moment in time because you made them feel heard seen and understood that has nothing to do with technology right and that's a tool that's available to us if we just ask great questions and we're subject matter experts where we can lead that in context

45:30John Kaplan: you know people are really uncomfortable i get this all the time they're like kaplan you talk about these rip my face off questions and they're like what do you mean by that like i can't rip anybody's face off i'm not going to be a you know a a a bamboasted bambastic person like kaplan's going to be no don't confuse style with content like my mom was a therapist and the reason why she was a great therapist is she had a lot of crap a lot of trauma so she understood people's problems and one of the things that she taught me was the best way to get somebody to move is to make them stand in their moment of pain.

46:15John Kaplan: And the greatest sellers I've ever met, and this is that whole principle again, the greatest sellers I've ever met are the ones who comfortably, respectfully and empathetically get a customer to stand in their moment of pain. meaning you got to be comfortable asking people questions and you can't ask it, Randy, like, hey, tell me about how bad you suck on that last, you know, such and such. You got to earn the right. So, you know, the art of discovery, I know we've said it a bunch here, but what you're bringing up, Randy, is honestly, this is an elite skill. Discovery is an elite skill and people blow it off and they don't prepare for it.

46:57John Kaplan: And they don't like, how am I going to get this person to tell me the worst possible thing, the worst, most dangerous thing that's going to happen to them if this thing doesn't go right, that's a skill. And it takes reps, takes rep, takes, you know, you got to get cuts, it swings at the bat on that. It takes, John, I mean, Cap, it takes so many things, right? It takes, you've got to be so good at what you do. You've got to understand this stuff. You've got to do the reps. I do believe we need to sell, you know, I believe execution with empathy. People know if you care about them, Right. If I know you're like for me, you know, John, you ask like what are like what are some, you know, McMahon, you ask me like what are some of the like scar tissue things that you learned over your career?

47:40One of them is trust is my currency. I will build trust is the first thing that I care about. I want you to know that you can tell me like whether you're a sales rep who works for me, you're a client who I'm coaching, you're a customer that I'm selling to. You can tell me the worst news ever and I'm not going to get all bad out of shape about it. you can trust me things are neither good nor bad they're merely true let's sort this out you're in a bad spot you made a bad decision or whatever it is that's great but you know if you show up with empathy and you show that you can be trusted trust is so rare these days it's an elite just showing up with trust creating trust is an elite skill well break that down a little bit and i'll

48:21John Kaplan: shut up here, Johnny, because it's like having two guys that's putting perfume on a pig when he and I are talking. But to take it to the next level on trust, the data is clear on it. The way you earn trust with somebody is that they know that you have an intent to know them, not an intent to make you know me. So you know who I am. That's your interest in versus interesting. Yes. That's number one. And number two is that you listen. It's as simple as that. You know me and you listen is how you gain trust. It's actually really simple. I have a great story on this. So I was early on at BladeLogic and they had this brand new use case that we had discovered for the product.

49:05And I won't say the rep's name, but he took me out to a very large finance company in Massachusetts with a VP level guy. And I didn't know the use case at all. I didn't know how our product fit in there. I didn't. I was too new. So what I used as defense was asking questions and being just interested in this guy. So I asked him questions after questions after questions. Basically, wait, can I get out of here in an hour by just asking this guy questions and listening to him, right? Got off the call. We went back, and like a week later, I saw the sales guy in the hallway and said, hey, how did it go at that meeting?

49:49by the way, and the guy, sales rep, looked at me and go, that guy absolutely loves you. He wants to meet you again. I was thinking, I didn't really say anything. All I did was ask questions because I didn't want him to ask me any questions. If he asked me any questions, I didn't know what I was talking about.

50:07John Kaplan: There's a caveat. You were asking questions that were going, so everybody loves to be led, provided you can take me to a place I can't get to on my own. So if you interrogate me, when you get a customer that comes back and says, is it my job to educate you? Interrogation. It can't be like you're turning the white hot spotlight on the person and just bombarding them with a Gatling gun in front of questions. It has to be a lot more natural. We all know those reps, right? That they think they're great at discovery. Now that you say that, because you did say it's a skill. Yeah, it is a skill. You just can't bombard people with questions.

50:50Yes. Where they don't know, like, well, where's this thing going? Why does the guy keep asking these questions?

50:55John Kaplan: And you probably, you know, I'm not going to say you're unconsciously competent, but you've done that so much that this guy was comfortable being led by you. He believed that you were going to take him to a place that he couldn't get to on his own. I'll answer all the questions in the world if I believe it's going to get me to a place I couldn't get to on my own. but the minute I go like if I go in to buy a car and this dude's asking me stupid questions I'm like I put a halt to it yeah always that's human behavior how about when a comedian's asking you questions because you're sitting in the front row I think that's another podcast buddy you know McMahon you talked about like look I didn't know the technology so I asked all these and I'm sure they're very they're good context-based questions I'm going to say something that may be offensive to some people here, and please forgive your audience for forgiving here, but everyone knows when they meet an idiot, right?

51:48And I think we need to, you know, when we show up at a meeting with the wrong mindset, we're asking, we're not reading the room. I mean, reading the room, again, there's another elite skill, reading the room, asking stupid questions. People know when they run into an idiot, but they also know when they run into someone that knows what they're talking about. Again, I'm a subject matter expertise. I get oil and gas completely. I understand the downstream model, whatever it might be. People respect that and that creates a lot of forgiveness. But when you show up and you advertise you're an idiot, I mean, you're on your own, right?

52:23Yeah, that was a self-inflicted one.

52:25John Kaplan: It is. And what we're saying today is the best way to show up as an idiot is know nothing about them and don't listen to them and don't ask any questions. Interrupt and talk over them. yeah yeah yeah are we still in psychology you're killing it where are we no i have a story on that one on that other one too so i go on a sales call with this guy i'm in california and he he picks he picks me up in his pickup truck but it's an old pickup truck and it's got these bouncy like spring-loaded seats you know so i'm like bouncing in my seat all the way from, so I flew to Sacramento, and he picks me up at Sacramento, and I go, where are we going?

53:08He goes, we're going to Tahoe. I was like, well, why didn't I fly into Tahoe? He goes, because I thought you wanted to drive with me, and I was like, really? In this truck? You know, I'm bouncing along in the truck for like, you know, hours. We get to the customer, and this guy actually could closed business but in this meeting he asked great questions and as soon as the customer started to talk halfway through he cut them off yeah and then he asked another great question because i was sitting there going these are great questions yeah then he kept cutting the customer off so i waited when we got outside and this guy was at one time he was on the olympic water polo team so he was sizable.

53:55Like he probably could crush me. I waited until he got, he opened the door to his pickup truck on the other side and he sat in his seat with one hand on the steering wheel. And I, I had the door open, but I didn't step into the truck yet. And I said, I said his name and I said, Hey, you are the worst effing listener in the entire world. He grabbed the steering wheel with both hands and screamed. And both his ears turned red. I had to get back in the truck with that guy and explain to him why he was like, he had to change.

54:33John Kaplan: I'm sure it wasn't the first time he heard that. Oh, it's awful. Hey, Randy. Hey, John. You were a sales guy. You were a leader. You've been at major tech firms. You ran your own consulting business. You got a new one now, But talk a little bit about, is there one piece of scar tissue that you have that shaped how you now advise organizations and companies? So, you know, when you've been alive as long as me, you pick up a lot of scar tissue, John. So it's hard to, like, get it down to just one. One or two. So I love to read and I love quotes. They help me out. I will leverage a quote from J.D.

55:10Rockefeller from many, many years ago where he said, success comes from doing common things uncommonly well. And I would say the thing that I have learned through pain early on and through reinforcement later on is being maniacally focused on what actually matters. Focus on what matters. There is so much noise out there. There is so much stuff we could do in your sales cycle that may have 80 different activities in it. There are seven, five, six, eight, nine, whatever it is that you have to be great at. Be great at the things that matter and be good at the things that are just sort of required.

55:52I think that would be one of the things that I would share is it's easy to see everything is important, but things are not as not everything is as important as the other things are. What really matters? clear value articulation current state negative consequences future state positive business outcomes that is a skill that you simply must have if you're going to sell at the elite level you want to qualify for john kaplan elite category you have to have that skill get great at that one some other stuff like you know ordering pizza for a meeting you know be good enough at that donuts how about donuts i know um you gave me the mic approach i'm going to add on for real fast mentors learning read podcast you have got to be a learner i'm a lifeline learner lifelong learner i love to learn i read 20 30 books a year um i've never been dumber after i read a book than i was before you guys have both been mentors for me i've learned tremendous amount from both of you.

56:51That's something I learned. Trust is my currency. I talked about that before. If you're going to build something, be a person that can be trusted and have that radiate from you. Have a killer operating rhythm that gets rid of noise in your life and live with intentionality. So many, you know, John, you and I talked about this on email a little bit. There's a spend mindset and there's an investment mindset. A spend mindset is you just do whatever's in front of you, right? Whatever the next task is. An investment mindset says, I have a second, a minute, an hour, a day, a week in front of me. How do I get the most out of that?

57:29How do I drive asymmetric outputs? Minimum energy in, maximum output out. Having an investment mindset and protecting your time, the scarcest asset we have, and really trying to squeeze every piece out of it, I think that's a killer step too. Those are five things that I would say have really influenced that I've picked up along the way that have helped this dumb guy from Pittsburgh be marginally successful. Okay, for that dumb guy from Pittsburgh, you now have a company that you call Sell With Precision, and you're focusing on advising sales leadership and companies on sales leadership. You want to talk a little bit about that?

58:09Love to throw a little commercial out there. Yeah, so, you know, I've had, as you mentioned, I've had the good fortune to, you know, work with some great technology companies. I've had the good fortune to be, you know, coaching companies for a long time. So, so with Precision, we are, I love sales reps. I love a lot of things, but you know, my heart is for the leadership in a sales organization because that's just, is a very, very hard job. And plus, if you get slightly better at the leadership level, the one to N element, you know, I'm a math guy. I care about, you know, math, you know, the, the law of large numbers.

58:40So, you know, I've built the company, built the company. It's me. And I'm committed to helping companies, A, get their sales go to market right better. Strategy, the process, the personnel, the execution model, the change management model. Everything needs to be a full full loop circle. So I always have change management at the end. I also available to do like leadership development across seven areas, strategic planning, resourcing, execution, visibility, team development, leadership, EQ and indirect leadership. and then sales mechanics is another area which is very much like the the methodology of moving pipeline through whether it's value creation whether it's deal inspection whether it's pipeline progression and then we talked a little bit about this when i talked about killer operating rhythm the last area that we serve companies is around the sales operating model which is getting the cadence down how do we manage our calendars and how do we manage conflict in our calendars and That doesn't sound super sexy until you go through it and you understand how much time is being wasted.

59:46So love serving companies around that. Love to talk to anybody about it because I love to talk about that stuff. You got a book coming out too, brother? Got a book coming out. Thank you. The B2B Field Sales Guys for B2B Sales Leaders. And I'm excited about getting that out. it's going to be very much a go-to resource, competencies, attributes, processes that sales leaders need to be running. And it's also going to have like a little bonus section at the end that I think is going to be like the mega giveaway on this thing is like training on 20 things that your sales teams need to be able to do, like value creation and articulation.

1:00:22So the B2B sales leaders field guide should be out later this year. I'll sucker one of you guys into writing the forward and it's going to be a great time. Well done, buddy. Randy Ramirez. John McMahon, John Kaplan. What a privilege. I've loved this, guys. Yeah. Good job, Randy. Great job, Mr. Kaplan. Thanks to everyone for listening to another episode of the Revenue Builders Podcast. Thanks for listening to today's episode. If you enjoy the content, please subscribe. rate and review the show to help us reach more people. This show is brought to you by Force Management, where we help companies improve sales performance, executing the growth strategy at the point of sale.

1:01:09Check out forcemanagement.com for more information.