1814 – Helping B2B Sales Improve Their Results with Dave Kahle

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2:15With us right now, it's Dave Kale. Dave, you are the president of Kale Way Sales Systems. You're found on the web at DaveKale.com. That's K-A-H-L-E dot com. Dave, thank you so much for joining us. Well, thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. Well, I'm excited about the topic we're going to talk about today because I love it. And a lot of this is going to have to do with B2B sales. Yeah, yeah. Well, let you maybe just kind of do some table setting for us and give us a quick overview of your work in the world. Yeah, so for the last 30, 35 years, I have been what people call a sales guru.

2:52And what that means is I've written books, 13, authored 13 books. I'm a public speaker, so I presented in 47 states and 11 countries, all on the issues of B2B sales, sales systems, sales management, sales tactics, you know, everything having to do with, I like to tell people, everything having to do with sales, you know, up and down the whole ladder of sales. That's my world. Yeah. And generally, how is B2B sales different or similar to, let's say, you go into a retail sales situation, car sales or something like that? What's unique about B2B sales? What's unique about B2B sales is the amount of planning and thoughtfulness, time management, all those issues apply to B2B sales and not so much in B2C or retail or anything like that.

3:45Because, you know, you've got accounts, you have different potential in accounts, you need to organize and invest your sales time. So there's a lot of thoughtfulness that goes into B2B sales other than the moment in time which you're actually interacting with the customer. There's a lot. One of the things I learned in my first job, first sales job, was that about half of your success comes from how you think about your job when you're not in front of the customer, you know, making time management decisions, planning, preparing, all that sort of stuff. All right. Go ahead and defend your thesis for a bit because that's quite a claim.

4:23Yeah, yeah. Well, let's take a typical B2B salesperson. and let's say maybe they have assigned an account responsibility for 100 accounts, let's say. They can't always see everybody when they want to, and not each of those accounts has the same potential. So there's a whole big thing. Actually, one of the best initiatives a B2B company can undertake is prioritize the accounts based on their potential. Not on their history, but on their potential. So an account, let's say an account might have a million dollars worth of annual potential. Another one has 50 ,000. Where is your time best spent? Well, you know, just right at the surface, it's to the million dollar account because they have greater potential.

5:02So that's a decision you make as to where to invest your sales time. And that's a big part of it. I like to tell salespeople there's two decisions that you make in the course of the day over and over and over again. It's not an event. It's a continuous process. And the first one is, who should I see? And the other one is, what should I do? Because you have the ability to make those decisions, not once, over and over and over So how you attack those two decisions is really fundamental to your success. One of my books is called 11 Secrets of Time Management for Salespeople. And that's, you know, that's many of the issues that we deal with in that book.

5:41Well, tell me more about the book. Well, it started out as 10 Secrets of Time Management for Salespeople. I think I'm not sure when it was originally published. Career Press published it in the early 2000s. And then came back to me after the, it became a worldwide book and was available in 20 countries, eight different languages and so on. So on the 11th anniversary, they came back to me and said, can you do a second edition called 11 Secrets of Time Management? And I said, yeah, so we did. So we did another book, a second edition called 11 Secrets. And it's also gone worldwide. It really strikes to the heart of, I think, the biggest issue for B2B salespeople, and that is the issues of time management.

6:21how you decide to invest your sales time. Incredibly important. What are some of the biggest time sucks or time traps for B2B sales professionals? Yeah, well, number one, there's habit and routine. So in other words, they're here at this account on Tuesday at 10 o 'clock. Why? Well, because it's 10 o 'clock on Tuesday. In other words, they get into comfort zones, they get into habits, they get into routines, and they don't think strategically, again, about the investment of sales time. So habits, routines, comfort zones, those are all issues. And, you know, the other issues, I mean, there's a number of things that impact it.

7:02The idea of being reactive and proactive. You need to be a little bit reactive because your customers have needs and so on. But if you structure your day by who called you yesterday, you're in trouble. You know, the proactive salesperson who sets goals, analyzes the territory, and then works those goals. That's a far more effective approach than being reactive. So there's a whole list of things. Here's another one. I like to call it gunk. And gunk, you know, here's an image. So you think of gunk in your sewage pipes, you know, eventually the stuff sticks to the pipes. And eventually, if you don't clean it out, it's going to stop everything up.

7:43Nothing's going to get through. That's gunk. Well, same thing for a B2B salesperson. What happens is we create unconscious habits and we don't even know. I mean, it's like gunk in the pipes. We don't see it. We don't see some of the unconscious habits that we had. Here's an example that I use. So clean out the gunk. First step is to realize you have gunky habits. So in my career, when I was a salesperson, I had the gunky habit. I never realized it, that whenever I had a bad call, you know, just a really bad call, that you just didn't want to have that ever happen again. I would have to go get a coffee, a coffee shop, and feel sorry for myself for a half hour or so.

8:24And then one day, one day as I was feeling sorry for myself, it suddenly dawned on me, hey, am I doing the most effective thing I can be doing? No, I'm sitting here feeling sorry for myself. Hey, wait a minute, I always do this. And it dawned on me, I had a gunky habit. You know, I didn't even know I had it. It was just routine. And so that's an example of gunk. Salespeople develop unconscious habits. They don't even know to have them that suck away their time and make them less effective. Yeah. So to our friends, let's say that they are a consultant, they're running lean, maybe they've got an assistant, they are responsible for a lot of things, obviously working with their clients as a consultant, but they're also doing B2B sales in order to drum up business.

9:11What are some really effective activities that you would recommend for someone who says, well, look, I probably would enjoy some more business. It's a little inconsistent. Is there activity that you'd recommend for, you know, maybe keeping the sales side a little bit more successful? Yeah. So I like to talk about the big picture sales process. You know, what does a company do in terms of sales? What does an individual do? What's the big picture? And here's the big picture. They identify suspects. And a suspect is someone you suspect might do business with you one day. And then they do a little research.

9:49They turn suspects into prospects. Prospect is somebody who really could do business with you. It's a short version. And then the hardest part in the sales process is turning prospect to a customer. Customer is somebody who gives you money. When money changes hands, relationship changes. But you're not done yet. Now we're going to take customers and get them to buy over and over again. We call them clients when they do that. Next step is turn customers to clients. And there's one more, and that is turning clients to partners. And partners are people who just can't imagine getting by without you, you know, without the relationship with you.

10:17So that's a multi-step process that is described as bringing people into a closer and closer economic relationship with you. That's what sales is all about. So once you understand that, then you can create a little dashboard to measure activities along the way. And so is there one activity? No, there isn't one activity because everybody's strengths and weaknesses are a little different. The thing that is probably most overlooked in a business-to-business sales system is the concept of turning clients into partners. And that can be orchestrated. That can be managed. You know, it begins with a definition of a partner.

11:00What is a partner? and I have a working definition, somebody who buys at least 75 % of everything they could from you. So, you know, there's a little room for buying from other people. But if they're buying 75 % of what they can from you, then, you know, you're very important to them. And creating partners, being important to partners is a long-term strategy for success. The one thing that is probably, and I often, when I come into a company, we look at all this stuff. And one of the things that we'll do, pretty commonly is say, let's create a concept for moving clients into partners because it's very rarely ever addressed by itself.

11:40And help me make sure I delineate a little bit more between the difference between a partner and a client. Yeah. So a client is somebody who buys over and over again, but just because they buy over and over again, doesn't mean you're all that important to them. For example, you know, you might be selling, let's say, Janssen sanitary supplies. and so they buy wax from floor wax from you and I do it every month and so on. Okay, but you know what? They buy 65 other units, other pieces and until you get 50 of those 65, you're not that important to them. So a client can be buying regularly but a partner, you are important to a partner and the way you get there is by slowly and incrementally creating, capturing more and more of their business.

12:24Turning a client into a partner is often a several year long project. It's not instantaneous. And there's lots of things that happen along the way. For example, one of the things that has to happen is that the key people in the customer have to know the key people in your business. Now, if you're a one man band, okay, they have to know you and you have to know the key people, not just purchasing people or the people you're comfortable with, but people up the ladder. So if that isn't the case, then make it happen. You know, make it happen. And, you know, one of the things that I'm a great advocate of it is entertaining.

12:58So, you know, invite them to a ballgame. Spend the five or six hours with them socially, and then they will know you. You'll have a greater relationship with them. It's just easy to do business with them. So there's things like that. What we recommend is you create a checklist of the things you're going to do to create partners out of a small group of clients. You don't do it with everybody. Select those clients you want to work with, and then you create a checklist of the things you're going to do over the next year or so to bring them closer and closer into a committed economic relationship with you.

13:33I like that. That's a great, you know, rather than looking at, okay, they bought, great, we got them past the finish line. You know, to recognize, no, no, no, the race is actually just starting now. So that's a nice metaphor. Yeah. Often people think, again, creating a customer is the end. It's actually just the beginning. In the big picture, typically it costs you money to create a customer. I mean, you're losing money on that customer. And the way you get a return on your investment is to, of course, capture ongoing business with that customer. And when you turn one into a partner, they become annuities.

14:11You know, typical B2B setting, three to 5 % of the customers will turn into partners and those three to 5 % will do half of your volume. I mean, we are talking about significant relationships that you have orchestrated over time, nurtured over time, and they become your annuity. Dave, your website is DaveHale.com and it looks like you've got some pretty great resources that you provide for folks. Someone that's been listening to our conversation and they want more Dave in their life, what would you recommend they do? Oh, go to the website and sign up for our e-zines. So again, I'm a writer. I publish three e-zines.

14:47These are newsletters. One is called Sell Better. Goes out every week. Another is called Lead Better for sales leaders and chief sales officers, CEOs. And the other is building biblical businesses for Christian business people. So we send, we create these e-zines and it's me. Send you an article, podcast, YouTube video on some topic. You can take your choice. And it comes out every week or every other week. So that's first thing. then you'll get connected to me. But we also have a YouTube channel and we also have two, I do two podcast shows. They're not interviews. It's Dave talking about this topic for five to 10 minutes.

15:21So they're very short to the point, but it's, you know, it's me addressing an issue. And those are every week. So Practical Wisdom is a free podcast show. And the other is Christian Business Insights, another free podcast show. I do two a week. To our friend that's listening in your podcast app right now, just search up the term practical wisdom for one of them. And then the other one is Christian business insights. Correct. Dave Kale, your website is DaveKale.com. That's K-A-H-L-E.com. Who should be reaching out? Who do you work with and what does that look like? Yeah, we train salespeople. We educate salespeople, but they're not our customers.

16:01Our customers are their bosses. So vice presidents of sales, chief sales officers, CEOs, you know, I do personal coaching for folks at that level. And, you know, we create, we help them create refined sales systems. And that's the bulk of my work. And then we have training programs for salespeople, really unique and powerful training programs. But again, they don't buy from us. Their bosses buy from us. So the people we want to talk to are their bosses. Yeah. All right. And Dave Kale, again, your website, DaveKale.com. That's K-A-H-L-E.com. Dave, great conversation. Thank you so much for joining us.

16:39Thanks for having me.

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