Why Breaking Through Buyer Resistance Starts Inside Your Own Team

0:00Every sales leader wants the same thing. A team that's in front of more prospects, following up faster, and closing more deals. But most teams are losing hours every single week to admin work that has nothing to do with selling. Belay's sales assistants are U.S.-based professionals who go through rigorous vetting processes before they even join the team. Less than 3 % make the cut. They're matched specifically to sales teams to take that operational weight off your reps so that they can do what you hired them to do. close deals. Download Belay's free guide called The 5 Reasons You Aren't Hitting Quota, The Sales Operations Gap Examined.

0:35Pick up that guide today at belaysolutions.com forward slash gravy or text gravy to 55123.

0:47Welcome back to the Sales Gravy Podcast. I'm Jeb Blunt Jr., your host. And today, We are talking to another Outbound speaker, someone who we have entrusted to be on the stage many times at Outbound, one of our favorite people in the sales training, sales thought leadership space, and even further and beyond into leadership, we've got the growth strategist and founder and owner of Amy Franco Associates. She is a LinkedIn top voice and the author of The Modern Seller. You should actually go pick that book up on Amazon. Amy, thank you so much for joining us on the Sales Gravy Podcast and joining us at Outbound.

1:20Thank you so much for having me here. And I can't wait to be at Outbound. I think this is my third one. And every time it's so much fun. It's so much energy. You can't beat being in a room with, I don't know, hundreds or thousands of sales professionals and sales leaders. I'm really looking forward to it. We are going to be at the beautiful Red Rock Resort in Las Vegas. We're going to be off strip. It'll be an incredible event. Amy is going to be with us for the VIP event bowling event, which is going to be on the ninth. And then you're going to be with us for the leadership day, which is going to be an incredible summit for sales leaders across all kinds of different industries.

1:55I know that you work with a lot of organizations as a chief growth strategist, somebody who thinks about how to scale, grow, create profit, create revenue, increase EBITDA, and all of these things are driven from a leadership perspective. What are some of the topics that you expect will be poignant at Outbound on the leadership summit day? As I think about what's happening with my clients, and I work with a lot of chief growth officers, chief revenue officers in their teams, also CEOs, there are two or three things which are really top of mind. And I would expect to come up repeatedly throughout either my time on stage or in sessions or just in casual conversation in between sessions.

2:35The first is where the best opportunities for growth are going to come from. And a lot of the organizations I'm working with are looking at the client base that they already have as means of great opportunity to grow and also to fend off competition. So that's definitely one trend that I would expect for us to be talking about. Another one is many organizations are considering some kind of investment, external investment, private equity investment. They might be looking to acquire or merge with another organization as a growth strategy. So that's something that I see pretty frequently. The third thing that I would expect in conversation, I am seeing this just as a need more than anything else in every conversation I have is strong decision making.

3:24The ability to make a strong decision and as a leader to lead through it when there's so much noise going on out there. The theme of the entire summit is breaking through buyer resistance. You're talking about leaders who are dealing with potentially massive change in their own organization with investments or they're being pulled into a portfolio. They're looking at their current accounts and saying, how can we start to expand these effectively and create deeper relationships with those accounts within our organization? Some leaders may not have had a lot of experience with either one of those situations.

3:58How does breaking through buyer resistance start to shape itself for leaders in those worlds that you're working in? If I think about buyer resistance or buyer opportunity from two lenses, there's the external lens, which is, of course, our best clients, our prospective clients, and understanding how changes that are happening in their industry or our industry, in our organization, in their organization, impacts their ability to make strong decisions and to move forward. There's so much resistance to change or maybe fear of change that a lot of what we're needing to do is help them actually to make a decision.

4:35That's the external lens. I would also offer up that there's buyer resistance inside the organization, too. No, no way. I know, right? It's crazy. But like leaders having to bring their teams and other thought partners, constituents in the organization, having to bring them along. It's like the two part sale. it's the client and then it's the internal folks as well. It's going to be a really interesting way to have conversations. I'm sure you're going to have lots of these when you're just on the floor at Outbound. And I actually want to ask you about this. You've been to three of these Outbound.

5:08What makes the intimacy of Outbound so special? We are only bringing about 400 people. So those tickets are going to be sold out by the end of the summer. If you were listening to this and you haven't bought tickets, you need to go check right now, just in case you like to work the floor. Like you're not the one on stage. You get to interact with the people there. What does that mean to you as someone who attends outbound? So as I think about the last outbound 2024, so previous outbound, what I loved about it was the fact that it was a smaller venue. And to echo your sentiments about getting your ticket, get the VIP ticket, especially if there are any left, you want to make that investment in yourself because it's an opportunity to have deeper conversation to have access to other sessions.

5:52So I would highly encourage you to get that VIP ticket. To me, that is part of what makes Outbound special. We're all in the same venue. The conversations happening, you know, at coffee or breakfast are as important as the ones that you're having in a session or when you're watching main stage. It's the ability to all be together in one spot. And I've heard that echoed so many times at last Outbound. I'm really excited for that to be repeated. You wrote a book called The Modern Seller. I imagine this is going to be at least very influential on the session that you give. Now thinking about those intimate conversations, the coffees that you get, you know, in the morning and you're having these strategy sessions with a stranger talking about your own sales or because you just get to be there, you're talking with Amy and Amy's having a conversation with you.

6:38What is the aha that you hope that people have when they see you, you know, grabbing coffee, they walk up and they say, Amy, your session was so amazing. I got this from it. What is it that you're hoping that people are going to get from your session? What I hope more than anything that people take away from the conversations that we have, whether it's informal or in a session, it's always really helpful when somebody comes into the session with an outcome or two in mind, they've read the description, they've maybe done a little bit of reflection ahead of time. And my job is to take what you're thinking about and offer practical strategies to help you pick one, maybe two, to take back into your organization.

7:19If you can take that away and then actually make it tangible for yourself and your organization, that's what I would love for anybody in my sessions or other sessions to take away. I cannot wait for us all to get together. And we're talking about the Leadership Summit because that's where you're going to be primarily for your sessions. Although you may be joining us on other stages as well, because that's the way Outbound works is you just, you get in, you just start seeing everybody everywhere. But we're talking to leaders about leadership and what they want to take away from these sessions and why we're having these conversations.

7:51Why should those leaders bring their teams to Outbound as well for the other sessions that aren't leadership focused? There's something really powerful about being in person with your peers that just can't be replicated in an online environment. It's also a signal to the people in your organization that you see them as perhaps future leaders. you view them as top performers. Maybe they've earned their spot at Outbound because they're a top performer. It's a talent retention tool, really elite sales performers. You and I know this. We can write our tickets to where we'd like to go. And how great would it be that your team is with you at Outbound because they are that high performer and you are seen as a leader who's investing in your team.

8:40Amy, we chose you because we know that you have content and knowledge and wisdom that our audience needs to see. And that's why you're at Outbound year over year. But from your perspective, why should people come see Amy Franco on stage at Outbound? If I were to give you two or three reasons to come see me on stage, I would say first and foremost is I have absolutely walked a mile or 10 in the shoes of a sales professional and a sales leader. I can truly empathize with the challenges and the opportunities that you have. And because I can do that, the ideas, the strategies that I offer are very applicable and you can take them and you can walk away and use them.

9:23That is what I hear repeatedly from the sessions that I give. very practical, you can take action and you'll make forward progress in your territory or as a leader. What I would also offer is my lens of growth and sales strategy, as well as tactical skill development. Because I can put those two things together in ways that can help you think strategically, but act tactically, you will have an advantage because you are able to look through both of those lenses when you are coming to my sessions.

10:23Jeb Senior and I and all of Sales Gravy trusts our Plod note pen S. Try Plod and stay focused in the conversation while it handles all of your notes. Go to plod.ai forward slash Jeb. That's plod.ai forward slash Jeb and use code JEB to get 10 % off your purchase. All right, Amy, thank you so much for joining us today. I really appreciate your time. I want to give you some rapid fire questions, some fun stuff for us to expect at Outbound from you. These are fun questions we've been asking every single guest. So I'll start with describe outbound in exactly three words. Energy, performance, practicality.

11:03Here's one for you. What is one thing an attendee should pack besides a notebook? Pack your running shoes. Running shoes. Are you running with me? I will walk with you. How about that? All right, you'll walk. That's fine. At least you're out there. Yeah, pack your running shoes. One, because we are all doing a lot of stuff at outbound. But also if you're listening to this and you want to run with me, I will be up at 5 a.m. every day. I will see you out there on the track. Okay. I guarantee he will be up at 5 a.m. I guarantee it. It's what I do. So if you commit to it, make sure you show up. Yeah.

11:32If you, yeah. If you commit to it, you better be there. You belong at Outbound if you are tired of. You belong at Outbound if you are tired of buyer resistance. What is your pump up song before you go into a keynote or a prospecting block? Oh, that's a good question. Mine's intergalactic right now. Firework by Katy Perry. Ooh, you know what? Actually, I think Jeb Blunt Sr. would agree with you. That's like one of his favorite songs. It's insane. When I was like 16 or 17, he would go up on stage and do keynotes and he called it the Katy Perry effect. He would like on stage live sing Fireworks by Katy Perry.

12:05It was embarrassing. Okay. What is the best advice you've ever received from another outbound speaker? Come with energy, be yourself and invest in yourself. All right. This is the last one. And you know what question this is. What is your sales spirit animal? The Black Lab American Sporting Retriever. So my Black Lab Roxy is probably the best seller that I have ever known. She has persistence. She has patience and she has the ability to be consistent like no other. So that's my spirit animal. And she can make a friend anywhere, I bet. Is that not the truth? Never met a stranger. Never met a stranger.

12:46One last question. What's the first thing that you're going to be doing when you get to the Red Rock Resort? You get there, you take the Uber, you unload your bag. First thing you're doing. I'm going to go outside and I'm going to just take in the scenery of Las Vegas, the scenery of the desert Southwest. It's a beautiful spot. I'm really excited to be there. On that note, we're going to say goodbye to Amy for now until we see her at Outbound. So thank you so much for your time. And thank you all for listening to this podcast. if you are interested in outbound, you need to go to outboundconference.com.

13:17That's outboundconference.com. Go get your tickets now. If you haven't, you need to go right now. We're going to be the beautiful Red Rock Resort in N. It's going to be an amazing experience. Again, we're going to be there November 9th through the 12th, this November 9th through the 12th of 2026. So go to outboundconference.com to get your tickets now. Thank you so much for listening to the Sales Gravy Podcast, and we'll catch you next time.

13:43Thank you.