Guest: Helen Fanucci

Helen Fanucci, CEO and Founder of Pipeline Power, continues her role as host in this illuminating conversation with Chris Beall. We're picking up where we left off, unraveling the mysteries of dormant leads and exploring their untapped potential. This episode delves into what Chris calls "Lazarus leads" - those seemingly dead opportunities that can be resurrected for massive value. As Helen astutely observes, "It's not 16 billion of value. It's 16 billion of wasted ad spend piling up." Get ready for eye-opening insights and innovative strategies that could revolutionize your approach to inbound leads, potentially doubling your Return on Ad Spend. This conversation is packed with game-changing ideas for sales leaders, CSOs, and CEOs looking to transform their sales strategy.
Listen to the first half of this conversation here.
Listen to all episodes featuring Helen Fanucci here.

We're shaking things up today with Helen Fanucci, CEO and Founder of Pipeline Power, taking the reins as our host. Helen engages Chris Beall in a thought-provoking exploration of dormant leads - those overlooked opportunities that could be gold mines for your business. Chris reveals a startling statistic: "91% of $18 billion is wasted" on leads that never get a conversation. This episode uncovers how this massive waste could be your next big opportunity. Helen and Chris dissect the challenges of following up on inbound leads and discuss innovative strategies to breathe life into these sleeping giants of sales potential.
Some of the key points covered in part 1 of this conversation include:
Definition and origin of dormant leads
Statistics on conversation coverage for inbound leads
Importance of quick response times to inbound leads
Comparison of web form submissions vs. inbound phone calls
Introduction to ConnectAndSell's Instant Response and Lead Injection features

AI has the potential to revolutionize sales management by providing insights from aggregated conversations, freeing up time for managers to focus on coaching and engaging with their teams more effectively.
Chris Beall and Helen Fanucci dive deeper into the evolving world of sales management in the era of AI. They explore how artificial intelligence can revolutionize coaching strategies and provide valuable insights from countless sales conversations. Helen emphasizes that "it's not enough to just give the sellers goals. The managers have to continue to be engaged to get the outcomes expected." Chris and Helen discuss the potential for AI to give managers back time to do their "real job" - identifying and executing on coaching opportunities. They touch on the emotional challenges of leadership, with Chris noting that "the higher up you go in an organization, the more you're emotionally challenged every day." This episode offers a forward-thinking look at how AI can empower sales leaders to focus on what truly matters: developing their teams and driving results in an increasingly complex business landscape. Listen to this episode: AI-Powered Coaching: The Future of Sales Management.
Listen to the first part of this conversation.
Listen to all episodes with Helen Fanucci as their guest.
Links from this episode:
Helen Fanucci on LinkedIn
Corey Frank on LinkedIn
Branch49
Chris Beall on LinkedIn
ConnectAndSell

In this episode, Chris Beall welcomes back Helen Fanucci, founder and CEO of Pipeline Power, to explore the evolving world of sales management and AI-driven insights. Helen shares a startling statistic: "17% of the reps deliver 81% of the revenue," setting the stage for a deep dive into boosting team performance. The conversation reveals how AI, particularly ChatGPT, can revolutionize sales conversation analysis, offering quick and insightful skills assessments. Chris and Helen emphasize the importance of "getting messy with data" and how AI empowers sales managers to focus on critical aspects of their role. They discuss the shift from traditional quota-chasing to strategic market share capture, highlighting the value of early relationship-building in the sales process. This episode offers CEOs and sales leaders practical strategies to leverage AI and data for more effective sales management and market dominance.
Links from this episode:
Helen Fanucci on LinkedIn
Corey Frank on LinkedIn
Branch49
Chris Beall on LinkedIn
ConnectAndSell

Welcome to this special Market Dominance Guys compilation episode featuring highlights from some of our most downloaded episodes in the first quarter of 2024.
In these segments, Chris Beall and Corey Frank are joined by expert guests Shane Mahi and Helen Fanucci to explore critical topics for sales and marketing leaders navigating the evolving landscape of go-to-market strategies, data-driven targeting, and the impact of AI on authentic human connection.
You'll hear eye-opening insights on the future of software development in the age of generative AI, why conversations are the often-overlooked key to unlocking your total addressable market, and how to coach reps effectively by providing immediate feedback.
Helen shares her framework for leveraging proprietary data to identify your best opportunities and align resources accordingly. The discussions also examine the challenges of territory assignment and the power dynamics of sales leadership.
Shane and our hosts dive into balancing the power of AI tools like ChatGPT with the irreplaceable value of genuine, trust-building conversations. And you won't want to miss Shane's story of how combining the entrepreneurial operating system with AI helped him rebuild his business in record time after previous setbacks.
These clips from Chris, Corey, Shane, and Helen will help you learn how to position your organization for market dominance through the right mix of data-driven strategy, technological leverage, and authentic human engagement. 
 
Links from this episode:
Shane Mahi on LinkedIn
MEGA.ai
Corey Frank on LinkedIn
Branch49
Chris Beall on LinkedIn
ConnectAndSell
Helen Fanucci on LinkedIn
Full episodes for this segment:
#10: EP215: Sales Artisans: Thriving Alongside Smart Bots
#9: EP216: Conversations, The Kryptonite of MarTech?
#8: EP213: Ethical AI Selling - Reality vs Hype
#7: EP208: Balancing Relationships and Efficiency in AI Sales
#6: EP209: Your Only Product Is the Meeting
#5: EP214: The Future of Sales: Balancing AI and Authenticity
#4: EP212: Reps Dread It, Managers Avoid It: Coaching
#3: EP211: Conversations Convert to Pipeline Power
#2: EP210: Sales Targeting Beyond LinkedIn and Navigator
#1: EP145: Building Trust Must Always Be Step One
 
FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT Below:
 
#10: EP215: Sales Artisans: Thriving Alongside Smart Bots
The economy always gets reshaped around new capabilities in ways that surprise everybody who is thinking about it. So it's never like that. This is going up and this is going down and it crosses or whatever. It goes along as it goes along with increasing efficiencies in certain areas until somebody innovates a flip and the flip turns it on its head and now it's new, whatever the new thing is, and now you have the old way competing with the new way and the new way since it's enabled by new material science. By that I mean a new capability that does tricks you couldn't do before. It always wins, but it always starts where it has the obvious advantage. The skyscrapers are not out in the desert, they're in Manhattan. It depends where you look, but once you get 'em going in Manhattan, I pretty much guarantee you the little three story building that you used to have that you had some offices in or whatever. First the offices go, then the condos and it's all skyscrapers. Take a look at New York. It's all up, right? Take a look at Des Moines. It's a little up. Take a look at Scottsdale or Tenny. It's just how it goes.
Shane Mahi (01:09:35):
You can even see in Dubai, Dubai was what? Flatland desert. DJ Khalifa Burj Khallifa  is the biggest one up. And now, I don't know if you guys are familiar with the line in Saudi Arabia, same kind of concept, complete desert. Now there's what, a quarter mile long, two pieces of glass inside a metropolis that is going to be heavily tech-orientated, flying cars, all kinds of weirdness. So if Saudi's doing stuff like that, at what point do the outbound agencies or even tech companies realize we've got to kind of adopt the same kind of thing?
Chris Beall (01:10:08):
For sure.
Shane Mahi (01:10:08):
Who is that going to be? Chris, Chris and Corey. Who do you guys have your eyes out on in those markets who are going to be those game changers, those market shapers for AI and tech in our space?
Chris Beall (01:10:22):
Who I don't know. I don't know and I don't care. I don't know and I don't care. I know who the big early winner is going to be with ai. This is actually fairly simple. Microsoft pulled off a trick that nobody even thought of and that trick was to invest 10 billion to get an unlimited royalty free forever license to not only the tech, but all the learning that goes into it, all the training. That was a very good trick because they've always been in the business of helping folks build new things. And the most obvious thing about all this gen AI stuff isn't what it does to sales, which is trivial. It's what it does to what used to be called software development. Software development essentially is in the same state right now as a sugar cube is in a hot cup of tea. You can be pretty sure that game is over right now.
#9: EP216: Conversations, The Kryptonite of MarTech?
Yeah. Is there a natural aversion to that or is it just Occam's razor where it's too simple? Or they're going about a complex formula, methodology, and technology pathway. When you forget to dance with who you are, what are my prospects? What are my people in my TAM saying, what are the people in my ICP? What do they want? What pain do I solve? And gosh, if I could just have a conversation, not send them a survey, not send them an email, but actually have a conversation that can open up these veins of trust that that's the key versus carpet bombing them with content, with white papers, with Gartner magic quadrants, and there's no dialogue there. That's monologue,
Chris Beall (15:20):
Right? This is kind of the awkwardness that I noticed in the entire thing. I'd asked this question, what if you could just talk to people? It's like, oh, well, you can't just tell Chris spiel that you can't talk to people. That one doesn't work. You can't go down that road. I'm sorry. No, you can't talk to people. Then it's like, well, but you'd still need, and then they'd tell me that you'd still need, and I tend to agree. I mean, my thing I was telling folks is, look, I think all the digital stuff is fantastic, but why not cheat by starting with the conversation? You can't get enough conversations for it to be worth cheating. And I said, well, isn't go to a SDR or BDR world if you had 40 conversations a day with targets, that's the equivalent of 40 targeted Google ads that caused somebody to go to your website. So that's pretty good right there. What would 40 targeted Google ads to a vice president or whatever you're trying to reach that actually caused them to go to your website, what would that cost? And they generally go like 30, 40 bucks each. Well, that's $1,600 a day without any meetings of value that you're getting from the advertising of just having conversations. Surely you're not paying your BDRs $1,600 a day. There's margin in there.
(16:39):
And the idea that, oh, talking to people could be a form of marketing that is, I think where the edge is. It's almost like, but talking to that's
Corey Frank (16:48):
Interesting
Chris Beall (16:49):
Light or something. If marketing can't include talking to people nowadays,
Corey Frank (16:55):
It's like bottled water. Hey, we're out of water, we're out of bottled water. We're going to die of thirst. Well, what about this little thing called the tap? I tell my kids all the time. It's like, Hey, dad, the ro, and we're awa. It's Arizona. You got springs all over the place. So sometimes I suppose we're trying to overly complicate something where there's conversations all around, but what do you say to that rebuttal if you can't have enough conversations to make the math work? I think you and I would disagree on that, right? But is that where fundamentally the mindset is? Is that Chris? That's cute. You can talk with a couple people, but I'm talking about sending out mass emails and segmentation, and I do more before 7:00 AM than you do all day with a conversation.
Chris Beall (17:37):
Well, I would say that that level of confidence is not what I was seeing at the conference. It was more like this, which is really, that seems unlikely. And I sometimes have my phone with our current statistics just for the day. I could go look at it right now and probably find how many conversations did we connect yesterday? So we have this thing that's called daily dials, and  if I were to look at daily dials, here we go, daily dials, I can probably find some numbers. And this is one of the things that I tend to do is just look at the numbers every morning when I get up. Actually, I'm kind of lazy, so I lie in bed and I reach over for my phone, and here I am looking at the Daily Dials report, and it said that ConnectAndSell customers had 19,352 conversations yesterday.
(18:35):
Not over some vague period of time, but literally yesterday. And out of those, say that they only set 1,679 meetings, and one of our customers sets lots of meetings. They set 983 with just one of their groups. Really, really kind of a good brand. So if I bring this up and I go, well see here, there's this group of folks and it's 242 companies, and they had 19,352 targeted conversations. It's like, yeah, that's them, but not everybody can afford that. And I'm thinking, well, wait. So I talked to somebody who does advertising, saying we wanted to send an ad or have an ad associated with all the online activity, the phone, particularly activity of everybody we talked to. So that'd be 19,432 people a day of everybody our customers talk to. Is that doable? Oh, yeah. And how would that work? Well, it costs you $20,000 a year minimum.
(19:32):
You have to sign up, you have to commit. It's like, well, why? Well, I mean, for $20,000, you'd have a lot of conversations. Yeah. Well, it's just like, it's almost like I'm trying to come up with a good analogy. I love your bottled water analogy.
#8: EP213: Ethical AI Selling - Reality vs Hype
Certainly with your round table that you've talked with a lot of CEOs like Chris, but that authenticity, whereas as humans, we perceive those little subtleties and mood and those complex needs through a simple conversation. And when a tell happens from an ai, either Chris, to your point from a text or a bot, how do you combat that? Is that the racist to get as authentic as possible or because that's where I think the Delta ethics happened. Chris is, wait a minute, I thought you were a real person, but now you're a machine. So Shane, what do you think about that and bridging that gap?
Shane Mahi (00:23:29):
So Chris mentioned it yesterday and it drove a lot of the discussion, which was it's the ability to tell the truth and just being truthful about anything upfront. And I used it when I started, and it comes from the 27 seconds, is the point of inoculation. And it's stating a fact before somebody has that objection. And if you are using any type of artificial intelligence, computer robot, I think the most authentic, genuine thing to do is to tell the truth. And that comes from, Hey, this is a robot, Corey, I'd like to have a conversation with you. If not, would you like to be speaking to a human? You'll then say, sure. The robot then has the advantage of saying, Hey, Corey, it's going to take about five to six minutes to patch you through. I can probably get your questions covered in the next 45 seconds.
(00:24:18):
Do you want to have a chat with me or do you want to have a chat with the next person? And for me, that makes all the difference because time for a ceo, for a business professional is absolutely everything. And the ability to cut out that wasted time is everything. I'll give you a quick example. I called, I mentioned it yesterday, right, Chris? I called Pizza Hut the other day and it took me six minutes to remove onions from my pizza because the guy kept battling from me that I said, you can't just pick the goddamn onions off the pizza. I don't like onions. And it was a nightmare. Now, had a bot just been able to say, Hey, which toppings would you like to add or remove if any? Just remove onions. My pizza's at the door in 10, 15 minutes. And for me, again, the truth allows that time to be shortened, which gives you more opportunity to take care of other things that are most important in your life.
(00:25:13):
And another thing that I think is really important, I just watched it the other day, and that point you made on authenticity and being genuine and the truth. Mackinac, I'm sure you both have seen that. I had no idea. I think Sam Altman is an ex Mackinac that's swear God, because when that person, the robot locked the door, obviously it's playing with the guy. I'm a sucker for women, absolute sucker for women. So if I was in one of those situations and they were manipulating me without knowing it and putting the love spot, well, were you really interested in me? He's lying to you, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, to get out. That is where everything changes for me. And now after seeing that movie, I'm wondering, Chris is very smart, Cora, you are very smart. Are you going to start peeling off your skin one day and saying the same thing to me?
Corey Frank (00:26:11):
Well, but I think that's part of it. It's a brilliant point. I love the trust thing
#7: EP208: Balancing Relationships and Efficiency in AI Sales
(8) If there's skepticism or resistance from sales teams or clients towards AI tools like ChatGPT, how do you recommend addressing these concerns?
Well, a couple of different ways. There will always be skepticism about new technology. There should be. New technology means new, it's unproven. We're not sure what it does. Really, really cool technology that makes you think something that's not actually true. Like, hey, ChatGPT is a person who's talking to me. That's not actually true. Hey, ChatGPT is thinking about this. That's not actually true. It's the next engine. It knows a lot of stuff that it's read so to speak, and it knows how to spit out the next token, think token word, very similar concepts. And so when ChatGPT is talking to us so to speak, it's really just going next, next, next. Now maybe our minds work like this too, and our voices work like this. 
Chris Beall (18:52):
I have a feeling we do a lot of next, next, next, ourselves. It's just the way the world is. We love to think that we're really brilliant, having deep, deep thoughts and all that. Probably not. We're probably just spitting out the next word that comes to mind. That's why we call it. And so its natural skepticism is natural. The way skepticism is overcome is through two things. One is transparency, it let's be open about things. And the other is track record. So if the track record is good, and we note that over time some particular function, and I'll go back to those conversations where you take a discovery meeting, and the AI compresses it down to 10 points. Well, the first time I read one I might think maybe it's missing some things. By the time I've read a hundred of them, which only takes me a hundred minutes that I might've spread over a couple of weeks, I'm starting to go, Hey, I think this is pretty good. 
Chris Beall (19:47):
I don't have any big misses yet. But it just takes time. It takes time, and it takes experience. This is why the most skeptical people who are really, really smart plunge in and start experiencing what I call in anger or with an intent for a meaningful outcome, a new technology that is clearly as powerful as ChatGPT and all the things that are like it. So if you haven't gotten in there and put your hands on it, so to speak, and made some mistakes, try writing some prompts and seeing what happens. Don't just do the same thing over and over. Your skepticism only will go away appropriately and correctly with experience that leads to a track record because now you kind of know where the landmines are. 
How about question number nine, future trends. 
#6: EP209: Your Only Product Is the Meeting
(Not this one - it's another short compilation episode)
#5: EP214: The Future of Sales: Balancing AI and Authenticity
We picked the most lovely industry to go into, and that's telemarketing and cold prospecting. And what was it? And the only reason that I was able to get to the truth faster was because read about Daniel Disney when the pandemic hit found, cog found ConnectAndSell, bought Cog, bought ConnectAndSell, spoke with Gerry, did Flight Scool, had seven meetings in six hours, and that's where it started. It was the ability to have your script, be honest, open, and just get into those conversations. And by doing that fast, quickly, efficiently, and at scale, we were able to progress our business much faster, I think, than a lot of people. We actually had 444% growth from year one to year two from using ConnectAndSell and implementing a system called the Entrepreneurial Operating System™ by Gino Wickman.
(00:35:15):
Now the authenticity of our brand, and even what is happening right now, came from all of the mistakes we made. And those are typically our storytelling, selling mechanisms, the mistakes we made and the path we took got us to a place where we made all those mistakes, learned everything, and served customers. I obviously lost my business because of some bad decisions I had to let go of my business, A lot of bad decisions. But I've recreated my business. That took me three years in three months with the use of ChatGPT. And why is it because I prompted all of my problems, all of my stakes helped me build a business plan that bypasses these mistakes and gives me the outcomes I'm looking for in half the time. And in that now, my marketing, my messaging, emails, prospecting, research, everything that, again, like you said, rightfully so, anything in the future is anxiety.
(00:36:12):
Anything in the past is regret. The only thing that matters is right, right now. And what's happening right, right now is yes, you better get on board because AI is happening. As much as you are worried about what can happen 5, 10, 15 years in the future, that shit is going to happen whether you like it or not. So it's either get ahead of the curve or get with the curve, or you are going to be that. They're just bums, bums who want to stay behind and complain and say, this is going to ruin me. This is going to take my job. Get with the program, dude, get with the program. Start using it. I was a novice, an absolute novice using ChatGPT when it first came out. The only thing that drew my attention was a hundred million users in one week for that alone. I was like, all right, let me see what this is about. I'm a novice still to this day, but the amount of times I've set up till three in the morning, six, seven hours, prompting, prompting, prompting to the point, the only reason I went to bed is because it said, you've maxed out your attempts. You can't use us anymore.
Corey Frank (00:37:13):
You finished the internet, you exhausted ChatGPT. 
Shane Mahi (00:37:18):
That’s right, and that happened multiple times. And my knowledge comes, which is why I believe podcasts, even to the education of AI and ethics and sales and marketing, everything behind it has come from listening and watching podcasts. That's the only reason I was able to learn.
#4: EP212: Reps Dread It, Managers Avoid It: Coaching
CLIP 1:
So that's really key to getting coaching to work. The coaching has got to be immediate. Most coaching is way, way, way, way too late. Coaching somebody on Friday I about a performance they had on Monday, don't bother. It's just not going to get anything done. This is where I think managers often confuse what I'll call deal work with coaching. They think that they're coaching, they're actually talking through how a deal might go, what some tactics and techniques might be, and they get an agreement from the rep to do something better, different whatever in the next interaction that they have with the prospect. And that feels like coaching, that's more like advising and it's nice and it's important unless it's just war stories. But coaching is really to improve performance and you need to have the performance and the coaching and the performance and the coaching be very close to each other in time. 
Chris Beall (16:28):
Minutes are okay, not very many minutes, hours are too long and a week may as well be forever.
CLIP 2:
got to have a chance of listening for the same thing over and over. So it's really, really important to do it. But most of what's called coaching isn't really coaching, it's kind of advising it's too far after the fact. 
So if you can figure out ways, be listening behind the scenes, coming in and whispering to somebody immediately after a conversation and helping them perform that little bit better on first failure, you'll find over time that and fairly short amount of time that what you're hoping for in the bottom line, which is conversion rates, small number of conversations, leads to a bigger number of meetings, and a larger number of meetings are being set per rep hour, which is the key number. You'll find that stuff improves on its own. So start from the beginning, you'll get to the end. Eventually, you'll get some great results
#3: EP211: Conversations Convert to Pipeline Power
Because let me tell you, if you think you know, you're fooling yourself, you're fooling yourself. If you aren't getting feedback from the market through conversations at a short enough cycle time and a high enough frequency, you're just guessing and your problem is competitively, somebody else might choose not to guess. And I think Helen's going to help her clients choose not to guess. 
Corey Frank (08:33):
And so with that, the helping knuckleheads like me choose not to guess. Where do you start, Helen, right? I'm a small mid-size VP of sales. I have a decent patient board. I have a SaaS software product. I got some funding. I think I'm doing everything right. I have enough people, I get more people as soon as I start proving myself and go to the board. So I think I'm doing okay, but where would I start with something like this? With people's power? 
Helen Fanucci (09:05):
I would start by looking at the data that you currently have in your CRM system or whatever your system of record is to find out one, where you're winning, who you're winning with, what types of people are making the buying decisions as a business. You may or may not already know. That depends on how you have been crawling through your own data. So I'd start there to look at the current state and try to draw some conclusions or at least illuminate where resources are aligned and are they aligned to where you're currently winning or are they misaligned? So I would start looking at the current state to build a hypothesis of what you could do more of to accelerate your revenue, and it might be repositioning some resources to an industry that you're doing well at or trying to then going to find people. Let's say you have some folks that make the decision, so you have some champions or economic buyers, what do they have in common across each other? 
Helen Fanucci (10:24):
And I don't just mean job titles, but the characteristics. You can look on LinkedIn and see what the characteristics of those and then go find some more like that within a defined addressable market or where you think you want to go. I think some of those things are places to start. This begins to get the closed loop feedback here. You have data, you have some results and dispositions from your go-to market, even if it's closed loss or not now, not interested, what have you. So trying to apply current data to then make some recommendations of how to move forward. The other thing too is what information do you have or that you capture that's proprietary to you? Because they can't build a defendable market dominance position on publicly available information. So what is it that you're collecting or that's proprietary and how do you get more of that that's relevant to your business? And I don't know if that's something in my experience anyway, that's not really a deliberate thing that people put. Time sort of happens and some people have more insights into their customer set, but doing that in an organized fashion to build up insights that your competitors don't have, or at least that's proprietary to you, makes a lot of sense and differentiating yourself and defending your position in the market. 
#2: EP210: Sales Targeting Beyond LinkedIn and Navigator
Helen Fanucci (22:01):
One of the things that was interesting is this idea of territory assignments, and we have a rep that has a locked in territory and people, I guess feel a comfort zone with that versus well, okay, here you have maybe 10 accounts, but all the other unnamed accounts are fair game and they go to whoever gets a meeting in those accounts. It's so interesting to see how anxious or irritated people are by having an open territory concept. It's like everyone wants to have their patch defined, locked down so they can pursue it as they wish. So is that going smaller and smaller? It probably is, and it was just fascinating to me to observe the dynamics around that and the discomfort with having all these accounts that were fair game for anyone to go after. I wonder if you have seen that much in what your thoughts are about that, but when you talked about the shrinking world or shrinking view, that's kind of what I was thinking about is, yeah, you can zero in, but then you lose sight of what's possible where you're not looking. 
Corey Frank (23:21):
Yeah, it's funny. I think it's probably the same reason why a lot of sales reps have the security of a bloated pipeline. They can't disqualify folks in this particular quarter. Hope Springs eternal that this person will always close for this angst, this fear that if I keep sending them touch base emails, not picking up a call and having a conversation, not promoting something new, that I'm seeing what's happening in the world from 40,000 feet that's relevant or German to them. But if I simply do touch base emails, which is the equivalent of did you decide on choosing me and giving me your money yet? Or is there a better option that's out there? But that's why pipelines remain large. I can see that there is certainly from the team that all three of us collectively and Broaden knows we're a sales organization. The bigger, the more states I have, and Chris, you and I have talked about this when it comes to people too, if you're a sales manager, the more people I have under my purview, under my fiefdom, certainly the more prominent I am, I guess the more secure I feel. You probably saw this a lot at some of the larger companies you were with Helen, right? Is how many headcounts are under your particular p and l, and that somehow is a status thing. 
Helen Fanucci (24:33):
Well, it's power. You have more resources as a sales leader. You don't have a budgeta compared to headcount. So headcount is more resources. It is a version of power to be able to get bigger revenue, bigger quotas, because headcount always comes with bigger quotas. The more headcount, the more quota. So if you're willing to take that on, great. Why not?
#1: EP145: Building Trust Must Always Be Step One
(not this one - this was a small topic compilation episode that continues to be their top episode for over a year!)

As sales leaders, we're ultimately responsible for revenue growth. In part two of this must-listen episode, Helen Fanucci and Chris Beall reveal how to build an asset that drives results: pipeline power. Learn why phone and conversation intelligence beats guesswork. Discover how to arm your team with the right data to fill your pipeline with serious opportunities. We dive into the critical questions you must ask on every account to accelerate sales cycles. Helen emphasizes that trust builds between companies early on, so executives must engage alongside reps. Tune into part two for tangible tips on avoiding over-strategizing in favor of authentic conversations. You’ll pick up tactics to leverage intent signals, stop playing pipeline games, and create alignment around valuable targets. The key takeaway: with closed-loop feedback, your pipeline can become a core competitive advantage that speeds up cycles and boosts revenue.
Links from this episode:
Helen Fanucci on LinkedIn
Corey Frank on LinkedIn
Branch49
Chris Beall on LinkedIn
ConnectAndSell
 
FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT Below:
 
Corey Frank (00:01):
Chris, you've said many times marketing has budget, but no headcount. Sales has headcount, but oftentimes no budget. I would imagine certainly one of the things with pipeline power, Helen, in this consultancy and this advisory that you have on helping clients get more refined targeting to think about their targeting differently is about giving more power to the sales folks. And perhaps if you're talking to the marketing folks, giving more power to the marketing folks, how to allocate their budgets and allocate the resource probably a little bit more efficiently. 
Helen Fanucci (00:38):
Yeah, I think so. But it also may be, it depends on the size of the organization, but I think there is a strategic, there needs to be a decider, if you will. Okay, this is the strategic decision, the direction we're going in because the targeting is a representation or a manifestation of the strategy of the business strategy. So that could be the head of sales, it could be marketing, it depends organizationally where that lands, or it might be the CEO if it's a smaller company, but it does absolutely point to a business strategy. Now, if you get more efficient with targeting and are able to do more with less, that could be threatening to some sales leaders who want to have a bigger organization headcount wise, or that might mean higher quotas. So it just depends on the dynamics and I think it's really going to take some iteration and conversations with some, if you will, friendly customers, friendly folks that I have relationships with to actually kind of see what that dynamic is and what the sweet spot is in terms of the offering as well as really the business challenge that these companies are looking to solve. 
Helen Fanucci (01:59):
Because it may not be targeting, per se, I say targeting, but it actually may be market expansion. They want to test more markets. I mean, there's a lot of ways to apply that methodology and thought process. It could be, as I said, grow revenue fast here, get feedback, do more, or it could be okay, we want to expand and we want to try out some new markets. So it'll be interesting as I get more time and focus engaging with my potential market to see really what's resonating and what the core, I have an idea of the core challenges, but I think in some organizations it will be different titles that care and it will resonate with some folks and other folks it might not resonate with. 
Corey Frank (02:54):
Well, I see Helen on this. There's a market maker to open up your aperture when you look at your total addressable market is right. How everybody's taught is total addressable market, and then you have your service addressable market, and then maybe even under that, you have your serviceable, attainable market, right? So if TAM is your total potential market demand and then you have your sam, which is the portion that a business can realistically target, and then the OMM service attainable market is the portion that your business can realistically capture. If you're helping me expand again or open up that aperture a little bit tot to grab folks that maybe I didn't have access before, it seems like that aperture opening is good for small mid-size companies, especially because I don't have, at Microsoft you probably had X amount of account managers walking through the halls. You had X amount of client amazement managers, so you could fill in the gaps where maybe I couldn't see if I'm a small mid-size company to know, oh, no, no, no. Hey, Helen does the same thing that Chris, but Chris has a different title than Helen and she's on LinkedIn and Chris doesn't believe in that and he's not on that. Would you see that Chris, from market dominance perspective is that that whole aperture gets a little bigger? 
Chris Beall (04:17):
Yeah, I think it gets bigger and then you get to wrestle with the big factor in business, which is time. One of the huge differences among businesses is just how long can they go without eating? So just like among animals, right? Really big animals like me, I won't say anything about you who have had plenty to eat and are genetically engineered by nature to be of a certain size. We can go without eating for quite a little while. 
Corey Frank (04:47):
At least an hour. At least an hour, yeah, 
Chris Beall (04:50):
At least in my case, I've made it 37 minutes once and it was quite good. So a very small animal, it might have to eat once every hour or something like that. And I think a lot of what constitutes advice in sales and marketing go to market is advice that if you're the wrong size company and you take it, you die, you actually die of starvation. It becomes a pretty serious business actually. So one of the factors you have to take into account is kind of like how much do you have to kill and eat in the amount of time you have before you get skinny and die? And when you're opening that aperture, now that translates into how fast can you explore that new chunk of market you're thinking about before it takes too long, right? So now the cycle time of exploration is super, super important. 
Chris Beall (05:42):
And if you believe that conversations of the means for exploration and frankly I don't know of any other that delivers enough highly reliable high fidelity information, then the cycle time to next conversation within somebody hypothetically is worth speaking to in that wider aperture becomes the dominant feature in the execution of your strategy, and that actually becomes the dominant feature. The feedback becomes the dominant feature in your actual strategy because having a strategy you can't execute is kind of ridiculous. And yet we all start out with strategies we can't execute. We must because we don't know enough to choose a strategy, we can't execute. So our strategy is a hypothesis. We need to go out and engage. It always reminds me of when I first met Helen, we went sailing together and there was a little piece of equipment that was on the mast and she knows sailing and I don't, she races sailboats and I serve as ballast, kind of animate ballast, right? 
Chris Beall (06:42):
There's killer whales and you can't get them to come up on the boat and do the job, so you use me instead. So I noted that when she saw this piece of equipment that was very small and looked out of place that she ran, actually went physically fast toward the mass, then stopped and examined. That's what you need to do in markets. You need to go fast into a point where you're engaging, which is the conversation. She was having a conversation with this loose piece of equipment with her eyes and her MIT trained brain, her engineer's brain, and then she came up with a strategy. The strategy from where she was sitting in the back of the boat and the stern would've been a poor strategy because she didn't have enough information. She needed the information from engaging the market, this little piece of metal that was hanging there looking funny in order to be able to go, oh, this is what I'll do. 
Chris Beall (07:36):
I can safely tuck it away and ignore it, or I can take some time and fix it or whatever. I think that's a great analogy for this kind of work that Helen is embarking on with pipeline power is look, you got to have somebody go run into the market and engage it and talk with it, not for the purpose of making a sale this quarter, but for the purpose of efficiently gathering information that will inform your strategies. You even know which of those three strategic layers with regard to Tam you're in. Because let me tell you, if you think you know, you're fooling yourself, you're fooling yourself. If you aren't getting feedback from the market through conversations at a short enough cycle time and a high enough frequency, you're just guessing and your problem is competitively, somebody else might choose not to guess. And I think Helen's going to help her clients choose not to guess. 
Corey Frank (08:33):
And so with that, the helping knuckleheads like me choose not to guess. Where do you start, Helen, right? I'm a small mid-size VP of sales. I have a decent patient board. I have a SaaS software product. I got some funding. I think I'm doing everything right. I have enough people, I got for more people as soon as I start proving myself and go to the board. So I think I'm doing okay, but where would I start with something like this? With people power? 
Helen Fanucci (09:05):
I would start by looking at the data that you currently have in your CRM system or whatever your system of record is to find out one, where you're winning, who you're winning with, what types of people are making the buying decisions as a business. You may or may not already know. That depends how you have been crawling through your own data. So I'd start there to look at the current state and try to draw some conclusions or at least illuminate where resources are aligned and are they aligned to where you're currently winning or are they misaligned? So I would start looking at the current state to build a hypothesis of what you could do more of to accelerate your revenue, and it might be repositioning some resources to an industry that you're doing well at or trying to then going to find people. Let's say you have some folks that make the decision, so you have some champions or economic buyers, what do they have in common across each other? 
Helen Fanucci (10:24):
And I don't just mean job titles, but the characteristics. You can look on LinkedIn and see what the characteristics of those and then go find some more like that within a defined addressable market or where you think you want to go. I think some of those things are places to start. This begins to get the closed loop feedback here. You have data, you have some results and dispositions from your go-to market, even if it's closed loss or not now, not interested, what have you. So trying to apply current data to then make some recommendations of how to move forward. The other thing too is what information do you have or that you capture that's proprietary to you? Because can't build a defendable market dominance position on publicly available information. So what is it that you're collecting or that's proprietary and how do you get more of that that's relevant to your business? And I don't know if that's something in my experience anyway, that's not really a deliberate thing that people put. Time sort of happens and some people have more insights into their customer set, but doing that in an organized fashion to build up insights that your competitors don't have, or at least that's proprietary to you, makes a lot of sense and differentiating yourself and defending your position in the market. 
Corey Frank (12:06):
Well, it also sounds like right Chris, defending, Hey, I got 4 0 9 a's that I have to do every year. If I can make an argument that I have some proprietary IP with regards to my cybersecurity database versus everybody else's, that could be an advantage from an acquisition or funding or valuation perspective. Could it not, Chris? 
Chris Beall (12:31):
Oh yeah. I mean when you come right down to it, growth is the big driver of valuations and proprietary information is the big driver of growth. We actually, I think everybody knows that. It's like I want my really good reps out talking to people and learning what their needs are, proprietary information. That person told me what their needs are. I want to know when they're thinking of doing something. I want to know what other systems and processes we need to fit together with. I need to know who are the other people who are important in making a decision. I need to know if they're in a macro situation that tells me and tells them, Hey, we got to sit tight for a while, say in the middle of an m and a circumstance, but we think it'll be kind of done and integrated within three months, four months, five months, whatever. 
Chris Beall (13:21):
All of that proprietary information that that's what is fundamental to being competitive. Your product features, your product capabilities are almost never going to be able to stand up to the market over time. Because if they're good people will copy them and they'll copy them. In fact, the innovator's dilemma tells us they will copy them with something that is cheaper than what you sell and not quite as good, but occupies a pretty big chunk of your addressable market. You're now obliged to defend from above, right? This is those who haven't read their professor, Clayton Christensen should grab their innovator's dilemma and reread it, and I would recommend rereading it twice actually, because most of us don't get it. When I read it the first time. It's interesting to me again, I told you, I just read a book over the holidays here about the second law of thermodynamics, which is about the second law is the one that says you can't break even. 
Chris Beall (14:18):
You always lose. So the three laws are like, you can't win, you always lose and you can't get out of the game, right? Well, the one that says you always lose says things just get more disordered. Your job as a business is to create order by using energy up in the environment to do something. Well, what does that order? That order that lower entropy is in the form of information that allows you to go to the market more efficiently, talk to this person rather than this person. Have another conversation with this person in four weeks. Stay away from this person or this company because they don't have any need forever. Come back to these in a year because they will have need develop your product so it integrates with this product because that would give you access to this entire set of the market. All these things are driven by information that comes to you that creates order so that you don't dissolve into chaos, into entropy. 
Chris Beall (15:14):
Like everything else in the universe, you're trying to fight against the tendency of the universe, which is to go crazy, to go disorder. The glass when it falls and breaks doesn't ever reassemble itself. Well, it's your job as a business to reassemble broken glasses or keep them from breaking. There's a lot of things that we can do. So what Helen is suggesting is one of the things we can do is let's pay attention to where we have a chance, but let's also find out if we have a chance that is let's make some good first decisions, hypothetical decisions as to where to go learn more, then let's go learn more, then let's make better decisions based on that information of where we should go learn more. Sales is actually a learning process primarily, and the exhaust of sales is deals and revenue. 
Corey Frank (16:02):
That's great. Chris, you heard that one yet, Helen, from him. Sales process is predominantly a learning exercise and the exhaust and residue is revenue. 
Helen Fanucci (16:14):
I think that that's not a compelling value proposition for a business, particularly when talking to sales leaders. They're accountable for revenue and yeah, okay, the learning thing, alright, maybe it's a more CEO executive conversation, but for most sales leaders, I don't think that's a winning proposition. That's just my opinion. I don't disagree with Chris, but I think there's probably a more elegant way to frame it that would resonate more with the audience. 
Chris Beall (16:50):
I love that. Well, that's why I think most sales leaders last such a short amount of time in their jobs because they are held accountable for the quarter and maybe the next quarter, but the company is trying to do something over a longer period of time and you get this sort of mismatch. And so it's one of the big issues that we have now is it used to be salespeople. Were formally, informally responsible for nurturing their territory. We give you a territory. We don't expect you to leave the territory next quarter. We're actually thinking the longer you're in the territory, the more you're going to control the territory and the revenue you generate from the territory will become more predictable over time. That's kind of why we do it. You get Cory, you get Phoenix. Well, we don't know how big Phoenix is for us revenue wise, but we're pretty sure that if your butts on the line, your family's fortune's on the line and you're good, you're going to figure that out. 
Chris Beall (17:44):
In a world where geography no longer dominates, territories become challenging. And now we've got to ask ourselves, well, so what are we really doing? And what we're really doing is we're saying sales, you've got a new problem. You've got to also nurture relationships over time. The old problem that you had when you had a territory, but now you have to do it with a lot less territorial clarity. And I think almost all conversations with sales leaders now are relatively uncomfortable for a whole bunch of reasons, including the macro economy, which doesn't help at all. They're held accountable for what happens when interest rates go up too. Interestingly enough, I actually agree with Helen. It's not a compelling value prop, but it's a fact of the world. And the fact is those who sell really, really well turn out to be those who learned the fastest and turn those learnings into compelling value for those that are ready to buy now and nurturing relationships with those who will be ready to buy later. 
Corey Frank (18:49):
Well, and with what both of you have been saying, if it is indeed a learning exercise, and it may not be attractive to say that, hey, the residue is revenue, it also would yield the premise that the faster I can learn, the faster I can get to revenue, the more cycles I can put into that learning exercise. IE through nurturing, through cold calling, through understanding who my targets are out of the gate. It's measured three times, cut once and versus how a lot of organizations are. I give you all these tools. I'm going to bring in all the reps for outreach and SalesLoft and LinkedIn navigator. You're going to learn as a sales professional how to do it. But maybe my nature isn't to be a farmer. My nature isn't to be a nurturer. My nature maybe isn't to be a closer, my nature isn't to be a presenter, but I have an armed with all these tools. 
Corey Frank (19:41):
I'm saddled with a number, a million and a half. I'll see you in 12 months. And that's usually where it ends. And the sales leaders are there to help support them, meaning let me know if you have a deal that has a couple of commas in it, because I'm going to come in and I'm going to help close that deal for you. But the tactical efforts are maybe probably geared around how your hygiene in Salesforce is. Maybe that's the majority of the tactical communication with the reps or in their all hands meetings. Correct. So it's interesting dilemma, but I'm looking forward to hearing more about pipeline power. And by the way, if you go to pipeline power.com, that's about offshore drilling rigs and things like that. Love it. That's not what we're talking about. 
Helen Fanucci (20:22):
This is pipeline power ai. Thank you very much. ai. Although I don't think our website's up yet, so still working on that, but yeah, no, I saw that as well. I thought, oh, that's perfect. That means it's a completely different industry. No conflicts. I know this is pipeline power ai. By the way, Corey, your last statements there, the faster cycle time. This is why people who actually use the phone are going to win because they learn faster and leaders must work with their reps or understand how their reps are doing. You can't wait until there's a deal with multiple commas to go in and close it because it's already lost unless you're working with them earlier on because it is a team sport, and you've got to get executives engaged early on to have that trust building relationship. The company that's buying your product has to buy the trust of the company, not just the trust of the rep. 
Helen Fanucci (21:24):
So there's a lot of leading indicators on territory planning, account planning, and I don't mean plan and put on the shelf, I mean plan as an inaction. Next steps, what are you doing? What's going on? What problems are we solving? What's the compelling event, et cetera. All the questions that you would know matter along the way. But yeah, so pipeline power is really about targeting and improving and using closed loop data. So as you learn, that goes into the model to improve better and better targeting so that the company can grow and accelerate revenues and valuation and exits or whatever the end game is for the customer's companies. 
Corey Frank (22:13):
What I hear you saying is right, a page out of the book is love your team by arming your team. I think there's a recent LinkedIn post about that very thing, and so arm them the right 
Helen Fanucci (22:24):
Way. Yes, we got arm your team along the way. Absolutely. 
Corey Frank (22:27):
Well, wonderful. Well, Helen, thanks for coming, kicking and screaming to this episode of the Market Dominance guys, and glad you banished Chris to the corner of the house there where we normally get to opine and these weekly sessions. So Chris, final thoughts on love your team and on pipeline power and how it pertains to the market dominance mantra. 
Chris Beall (22:49):
Well, market dominance is always about starting with a list because markets are lists, they're not ideas and getting that list to be sufficiently relevant that you can make hay while the sun shines, you can actually make some revenue off it. And then learning from those interactions quickly and make the list better and better. Sharper and sharper, more and more precise. That's the nature of the game. I love the name that Helen's chosen pipeline power. Your pipeline is power. Jeb Blunt says the pipe is life. And that's pretty true. I mean, the pipeline is the power of your company. When you look at your balance sheet and you ask what is the number one contributor to the biggest chunk of your balance sheet, which is called Goodwill, it's your pipeline. 
Corey Frank (23:36):
That's so great and obviously valuations that we've talked about. So Helen, thank you once again for joining us. We hope to hear more and more as pipeline power learns more about this exhaust and residue that we've talked so much about in the industry. I think that no one is talking about this element of the tip of the spear as much, and I think the cycle times they're reduced, those are real compelling arguments to certainly engage with Helen and her team. So for the market dominance guys and Chris Beal, this is Corey Frank. Until next time.
 

Building a target account list is the critical first step for any successful sales strategy, yet it remains an overlooked and haphazard process at many SaaS firms. Rather than leave targeting up to individual reps, centralize it to boost efficiency and revenue growth. As Helen Fanucci, founder of Pipeline Power, Chris Beall, and Corey Frank emphasize in this episode, outdated title-based targeting must give way to responsibility-based keyword searches on LinkedIn and intent signals from job profiles. They delve into common missteps sales leaders make, from over-researching targets to allowing bloated pipelines and territories that hamper productivity. Tune in to learn how to focus your targeting, embrace open territories, have meaningful conversations, and build trust with the right prospects from day one. You’ll pick up tangible tactics to scale pipeline and accelerate deals. Listen to the first half of this discussion, Sales Targeting Beyond LinkedIn and Sales Navigator.
Links from this episode:
Helen Fanucci on LinkedIn
Corey Frank on LinkedIn
Branch49
Chris Beall on LinkedIn
ConnectAndSell
 
FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT Below:
 
Corey Frank (00:30):
To be here, bestselling author of Love Your Team by Helen Fucci and former executive over at Microsoft and DRL over at Mediafly. So Helen is joining us today, Chris, and we're going to specifically talk about, I think something that we've talked about many times on the Market Dominance Guys, which is targeting, right, the four legs of the bar, stool, target list message, and reps. Sometimes we forget that targeting is one of the easiest to overlook, and so we brought the heat, we bring the expert, Ms. Fanucci on the market dominance guy. So Chris, over to you to introduce Helen and some of the things that we've been talking about before we jumped on air here about targeting and what we can all learn from Helen today. 
Chris Beall (01:16):
Sure. Thanks Corey. Well, just to let you know, by the way, speaking of that Hawking thing, my most recent book I read is Molecular Storms, which is the application of the second law of thermodynamics to everything. So I think that it applies to targeting, actually, interestingly enough, targeting, it is an attempt to reduce the entropy that is the number of micro states that correspond to a macro state. The macro state in this case would be, Hey, bookings, we're making money. The micro states would be all of the folks that you talk with and what you're talking with them about and all that. And you're trying to get that ratio in line so that you can survive by talking to relevant people, avoiding talking to irrelevant people and all that kind of good stuff. And Helen and I talk about stuff like this all the time. 
Chris Beall (02:00):
Somebody said to me once, you must be the nerdiest people, at least in all of Quail Creek as a couple. And I said, well, perhaps as a working couple, yes, that's possibly the case. We may have nerdier people here in Quail Creek, but I don't think very many of them were both of them profess to have jobs. So Helen, you've had some recent experiences and some previous experiences that I think bring something about targeting into focus that is often missed, which is kind of the cultural issues and the people issues and the change management issues around targeting and B2B, Corey and I tend to refer to it like, Hey, you're the boss, let's make a list. And as you have known all along and have certainly gotten to experience recently, it's not quite as simple as that from a people perspective. 
Helen Fanucci (02:55):
Yeah, I mean there's a lot to be said in response to what you just said. So I've never had a job or been in a company where there was centralized targeting. Of course, everybody wants to engage the market. So when I was at Microsoft and my team had these big global accounts like Intel and hp, they were responsible for their own targeting and creating a strategy for reaching out to executives or go higher or broader, what have you across the organization. But even if an account rep didn't have a single account but had a territory, again, they were responsible for it. And then more recently at Mediafly as a CRO, the reps would decide what accounts to focus on and who to reach out to as well as the SDRs. And it just got me thinking that that is perhaps a misuse of resource, that it might be more effectively done if it was centralized. 
Helen Fanucci (04:08):
And then there was some deliberate strategy around the targeting rather than leaving it up to the individuals with a theory that, well, they're being paid to make their quota, and it's up to them how they go about doing it. But I think that that actually is inefficient. There is a piece about it in terms of defining strategy and helping craft that strategy as represented by who do we want to talk to in the market? Who do we want to get feedback from in the market? Who do we want to pursue to generate growth and revenue? And then there's a piece that is just, let's do a job well and have it centralized versus the fragmentation that comes when everyone's doing and applying it in their own way. 
Corey Frank (05:00):
So if we could take a step back though, Helen, I mean Chris, you and I, we speak with a lot, lot of organizations, a lot of CROs, a lot of VPs of sales. How do I do this really poorly? In other words, what is a traditional steady state of an organization? When they say targeting, do they say, Hey, I gave you LinkedIn navigator, you know what industries we play in, what geographies you are responsible for? Is that where it typically ends for most organizations? 
Helen Fanucci (05:30):
Yeah, I think that that's a really good statement. So there's Sales Navigator, but then there's also data providers. And I like to learn by doing. So I went into sales navigator myself, and then I put in our data provider, they have a Chrome plugin. And what I noticed in the lists on Sales Navigator when I wanted to translate that into a contactable list with phone numbers and emails, that the data provider only had about 50% of the people that I had identified in Sales Navigator that I wanted to reach out to or have my team reach out to. And I thought, man, that's really inefficient. That doesn't feel great that we don't have all the data. It's multifaceted. Are we talking to the right people? There are people who are experts that have felt that, okay, I've been successful selling to vice presidents of sales or sales enablement or what have you. 
Helen Fanucci (06:36):
This is how you do it. Go into Sales Navigator, get their contacts, et cetera, et cetera. So it kind of pretty much ends there. Some companies have the point of view that's really important to do research, and in fact, when I was at Microsoft and I was trying out or utilizing ConnectAndSell to reach HR executives, I thought, oh gosh, I've got to do some research on these people because what if I ended up talking to a few of them, which I hope to do? And they said, well, wait a minute. We have a relationship with Microsoft. I felt like they would expect me to know more about our mutual relationship. So I did some research and when I used ConnectAndSell, I realized, oh my goodness, I over researched. I did it for my comfort as it turned out, but it was not actually needed in the conversation. So I think sometimes that happens too. People get over 
Corey Frank (07:41):
Researched, our good friend, mutual friend, Steve, Richard, right? He advocates the three by three, Chris and Helen, which is, hey, get three pieces of information in three minutes before you make the call. Now, Chris, you and I are big advocates of, although Steve is brilliant in many aspects, I think we fundamentally disagree if you're doing cold outreach to do three pieces of information for three minutes before you make a phone call. Correct. Tale's point about doing too much targeting, too much research before you jump into a role of cold outreach free. 
Chris Beall (08:16):
Yeah, I mean, given that there's a one and end chance and running between 10 and 30, that person's actually going to answer your research is wasted somewhere between 90 and 97% of the time. So we don't do very many things in life where we say, I insist that this be done. This is the most important thing to be done. And by the way, it's complete waste. At least one out of 10 times you do it, you're just going to throw it away. It's sort of like saying it's really important for these students to do their homework. So we know that they're practicing and learning, say in a calculus class, and we're going to assign them the homework, and then when they turn it in at random, we're going to burn 90% of the homework that they gave us as well just, I don't know, we can't read it or whatever. 
Chris Beall (09:05):
I don't know if that's a great analogy, but it's kind of similar asking somebody to do work and then throw away that work because the next step in the process is fundamentally statistically unreliable is just bizarre. And in fact, I don't know if you know this, Corey, but our friend Jeb Blount called me last year and said, Hey, you did this presentation at Outbound about time, about how many hours in the day that we have, and I think my calculation said that it takes about 25 and a half hours in a day in a given day, and there are not 25 and a half hours in a day to follow the research and call program that's recommended if you are attempting to talk to 10 people a day. So when you kind of look at it that way, it's like our people at ConnectAndSell talk to 40 people a day. 
Chris Beall (09:52):
Would you rather have 40 conversations in which you're relying on, I'll call it the canned research, which is are they in your ICP as a company, do they meet the criteria for size of the company, industry, whatever it happens to be, and is the person more or less somebody that you want to talk to either to get a meeting with them or have 'em direct you somewhere else and yes, no, not me, not now kind of categorization. If the answer is you've done a reasonable job making the list in the first place, our view is just talk to somebody you're targeting actually starts with the conversation. It's true. It really starts with centralized list building, but the real action begins in the conversation where now you're targeting based on high quality information coming back at 20,000 bits a second rather than here's something I read and I sure hope it's relevant and I can use it. By the way, research has another problem, which is almost none of it can be used in a cold call safely. You call somebody up and say, Hey Chris, how about the Wildcats? And I go, actually, it turns out I grew up in Scottsdale and I was a big A SU fan. 
Corey Frank (11:00):
That's right. That is true. It's inauthentic, right? Authentic and highest degrees can actually dissuade somebody from building trust, which is the intent of the cold call to begin with, because that feels manipulative from a traditional vanilla list building. Helen, to your point, about 50% or x percent of a given cohort that I want, they're not available on traditional off the shelf one source, right? There's a LinkedIn and may have to cross reference to get all these other different platforms. So when you give one of your reps, let's say Microsoft or any of the other executive positions that you've held, do you assume that is that go with part of their expectations that you know that there may be 58 people inside of Honeywell that I want to target for this particular software product, but really only 14 or 15 of them are readily available in traditional office sell type of solutions. Do you factor that in when you're working and leading your team? 
Helen Fanucci (12:01):
Well, so a couple things is you've got to factor in that you're not going to be able to reap everybody. Yes, that's true. However, if it's a big company like Honeywell and you have a big team like I did at Microsoft covering Honeywell, chances are they can navigate to those individuals in ways that the average person going in through Sales Navigator or a data source. So that was an advantage position for sure. But if you're not in Microsoft and you're in another organization that doesn't have those relationships, then I think it behooves you to have a broader list of folks. There is an assumption that you know who to talk to, but that's a bad assumption. So one of the things that I believe deeply is that anyone you talk to, you're going to learn from. And years ago when I had my first sales job, part of the training I got navigating and selling in big organizations is talk to people at lower levels or easier to get to learn and find out what's going on, and then who's responsible for solving a certain class of problems that your product addresses and then ladder your way up to different people in the organization or get sponsored in. 
Helen Fanucci (13:28):
So I don't ever have heartburn over talking to the wrong person because it's always a learning opportunity. And in fact, one of the things I think is missing, and if you look at my LinkedIn profile with pipeline power, I talk about closed-loop targeting. And what that means is taking your learnings from lots of different sources. It could be from your CRM system, it could be from your outreach, the dispositions of your outbound lead sources, what have you, and find out, use that data to inform and sharpen your targeting so that you can be more and more deliberate as you go to market. 
Corey Frank (14:14):
That's interesting. I haven't experienced that. I haven't heard that. So there's probably an element where if the three of us are all doing cybersecurity inside of Honeywell, we may have the same title, but odds are is we don't, there may be some standards that are on a business card that are in the HR PeopleSoft system, but when it comes to maybe a LinkedIn or what a Zoom or with these other off the shelf type of solutions, it seems like that's a big rub. That's a big problem out there, is trying to coalesce these lists when three of us are doing the same gig. Same, but we have three different titles, but yet I'm supposed to try to search, my boss said I want to search for these titles. Marketing said I want to search for these titles. And therein lies a little bit of the challenge, doesn't it? 
Helen Fanucci (15:02):
Yeah. Well, that's your first mistake. I think titles are an outdated mode of targeting, but they're the common practice. It's a common practice, but it's not common sense. It's kind of the opposite from my book is common sense, but not common practice. Well, I am putting that on its head and going after common practice is not common sense. So the reason I say that is a director of sales can mean a lot of different things. It's a titled and so if, to use your analogy, if the three of us are responsible for cybersecurity, but we have different titles, why not just search on the term cybersecurity and sales navigator? Because people in their profiles on LinkedIn, they represent what they do and the words they say and it's like, okay, so who cares about a class of problems? Is it if it's cybersecurity, they probably talk about cybersecurity or they probably talk about threat detection or whatever kind of security words that are relevant. 
Helen Fanucci (16:20):
It's also a representation of what the company has hired them to do. I know a lot of people will look at job postings to find out what company strategies are, what gets revealed through company strategies, but also if you look on LinkedIn, it will reveal people who care about a certain class of business issues by how they structure and what they put in their LinkedIn posting. So why not search on that instead of director of sales, or you could do director of cybersecurity or what have you, but just put in cybersecurity as a title and search on that and then see if you get closer to a optimal target list. 
Corey Frank (17:09):
Yeah, so because fundamentally, what I hear you saying, and Chris, we've talked about this in the past, is that my message is why the power of the 27-second message is relevant today. But if I'm a inside sales rep and I'm trying to craft a telemarketing, an outreach message, I risk if that is catered too much to the three by three pieces of information or what I think is that particular title, your example of Wildcats versus Sun Devils for instance, and whatever is the equivalent in a business outreach. I risk wasting a lot of my outbound conversations that I have with the message that is too catered too specific to what I think is the title. Do I have that right, Chris and Helen? 
Chris Beall (17:55):
Yeah, that's a big part of it. I mean, I'll give an analogy. If you're in a gunfight, if it's dark, you want a shotgun. If it's light, you can see the target. Clearly you might want to a rifle. If you're far away, you might want a sniper rifle, right? Well, in business, when we're starting to engage, we're trying to figure out what's going on. It's a dark room, it's a dark world, it's dark woods, and we really don't want to be too precise at that point because that precision just means we don't get any feedback when we miss the target, all we get is a hit or a miss. I'd rather wing a few of them and hear the Yelp. So anyway, you get what I mean, right? And what Helen's pointing out also, I think speaks to this other question of intent. So we've talked about how what's called high intent now is somebody from that company maybe in a relevant position if we can figure that out, is looking at our website or is looking at other folks' website or is going G two crowd and poking around or whatever they're doing. 
Chris Beall (18:57):
That's called high intent. It's also called by people who understand strategy entering a red ocean. If they're looking at your competitors and they're looking at your category and they're looking at you, that means it's a competitive situation already. One of the main things we want to do in business is stay out of competitive situations. It's always a problem when it's competitive. It means you come down to battle cards, you come down to besting, whoever it is while they're in the fray. You'd rather come and actually win in advance by building trust early and then waiting until somebody is appropriately in market. So the way we miss is not so much in space, but in time we miss by being too early. We miss by being too late. Well, too early is great, too late is bad, and right on time isn't as good as early. 
Chris Beall (19:44):
It just isn't. You'd rather be early when you can dominate with trust. So that's part of it. The other part about intent that's interesting is let's compare two things. So there's a website visit, somebody shows up at a website and looks at something. So that's thing number one. Or to quote Dr. Seuss thing one. Then there's thing two, which is you pay a bunch of money to have somebody do a job for you. Now, which one shows greater intent? A website visit or paying somebody a couple of hundred thousand dollars a year to do an important job for you? Clearly the latter shows more intent to solve that problem on the part of the company, the employer than the former, which is somebody goes, looks at a website. So we have these multi-billion dollar unicorns that have been built around intent data, which is mostly website visits, and meanwhile, the most obvious and powerful piece of intent data. 
Chris Beall (20:39):
What did companies actually invest in their biggest investment, which is always people sitting right there in the profiles, as does people describe themselves in LinkedIn Sales Navigator. That is they describe themselves in the same way their company would describe the job to be done because advertising themselves to future employers to do that same job. So you get intent more clearly out of job profiles than you do out of the big fancy intent products, including LinkedIns because there's no choice. I hire somebody to do a job. How are they going to describe themselves to the world as somebody who can't do that job? That makes no sense. 
Corey Frank (21:25):
That's fascinating. And in your universe then, I would imagine, right? Helen, I'm sure you saw this when you had a new rep who penetrated an account, Chris, you see it all the time at ConnectAndSelll, my universe on day one, maybe this size, my universe on day 30 is this size my universe, right? And day plus X or so is even smaller, and that's ultimately that filet that I can continue to harvest. And if I don't target, what does my universe look like Pretty consistently, probably maybe basis points, degrees in much smaller at gas. Correct. 
Helen Fanucci (22:01):
One of the things that was interesting is this idea of territory assignments, and we have a rep that has a locked in territory and people, I guess feel a comfort zone with that versus well, okay, here you have maybe 10 accounts, but all the other unnamed accounts are fair game and they go to whoever gets a meeting in those accounts. It's so interesting to see how anxious or irritated people are by having open territory concept. It's like everyone wants to have their patch defined, locked down so they can pursue it as they wish. So is that going smaller and smaller? It probably is, and it was just fascinating to me to observe the dynamics around that and the discomfort with having all these accounts that were fair game for anyone to go after. I wonder if you have seen that much in what your thoughts are about that, but when you talked about the shrinking world or shrinking view, that's kind of what I was thinking about is, yeah, you can zero in, but then you lose sight of what's possible where you're not looking. 
Corey Frank (23:21):
Yeah, it's funny. I think it's probably the same reason why a lot of sales reps have the security of a bloated pipeline. They can't disqualify folks in this particular quarter. Hope Springs eternal that this person will always close for this angst, this fear that if I keep sending them touch base emails, not picking up a call and have a conversation, not promoting something new, that I'm seeing what's happening in the world from 40,000 feet that's relevant or German to them. But if I simply do touch base emails, which is the equivalent of did you decide on choosing me and giving me your money yet? Or is there a better option that's out there? But that's why pipelines remain large. I can see that there is certainly from the team that all three of us collectively and Broaden knows we're a sales organization. The bigger, the more states I have, and Chris, you and I have talked about this when it comes to people too, if you're a sales manager, the more people I have under my purview, under my fiefdom, certainly the more prominent I am, I guess the more secure I feel. You probably saw this a lot at some of the larger companies you were with Helen, right? Is how many headcount are under your particular p and l, and that somehow is a status thing. 
Helen Fanucci (24:33):
Well, it's power. You have more resources as a sales leader. You don't have budget compared to headcount. So headcount is more resources. It is a version of power to be able to get bigger revenue, bigger quotas, because headcount always comes with bigger quotas. The more headcount, the more quota. So if you're willing to take that on, great. Why not?
 
Key Points:
Centralized targeting can be more effective than leaving it up to individual sales reps to figure out their own targeting (Helen)
Over-researching targets is inefficient since there is a low chance of actually reaching many of those contacts (Chris)
Targeting based on titles alone is an outdated approach; it's better to search for keywords related to responsibilities in LinkedIn profiles (Helen)
Being too specific with an initial outreach message risks wasting conversations and not getting helpful feedback (Corey and Chris)
Job profiles show greater buying intent than website visits since companies invest significantly in hiring people to solve problems (Chris)
As reps develop domain expertise over time, their relevant target universe tends to become smaller and more focused (Corey)
Many sales reps feel anxious without strictly defined territories and accounts; they resist more open territory concepts (Helen)
Sales leaders often equate headcount and territory size with power and status (Corey)
 

In this episode of the Market Dominance Guys podcast, Chris, Corey and Helen Fanucci discuss the evolution of the internet, from its early days as a way for messages to move across networks to the democratization of global information through the browser and search engines. They also explore the capabilities of ChatGPT, including its ability to generate email responses and interact with customers using personalized prompts. They highlight the potential of ChatGPT to save time and improve the quality of communication for sales professionals. Join us for this idea-filled episode, "How ChatGPT Can Improve Sales Enablement."
 
Four ideas on how sales professionals can benefit from using ChatGPT for follow-up:
Personalized Follow-Up: ChatGPT can help sales professionals create personalized follow-up messages for each customer based on their preferences, interests, and past interactions with the sales team. ChatGPT can analyze the customer's conversation history and provide personalized responses that feel like a human wrote them.
Lead Nurturing: ChatGPT can help sales professionals nurture leads by sending automated follow-up messages to potential customers at regular intervals. These messages can be customized to meet the specific needs of each customer, making it easier to keep them engaged with the sales process.
Schedule Meetings: ChatGPT can help sales professionals schedule meetings with potential customers by automating the process of finding a mutually convenient time to meet. This can save the sales team a lot of time and effort by eliminating the need to go back and forth with customers trying to find a suitable time.
Provide Instant Customer Support: ChatGPT can be used to provide instant customer support to customers who have questions or concerns about a product or service. Sales professionals can use ChatGPT to respond to these inquiries in real-time, providing customers with the information they need to make a purchasing decision. This can help increase customer satisfaction and improve the chances of closing a sale.
The Evolution of the Internet and Digital Communications
1960s: The concept of hypertext is introduced by Ted Nelson.
1980: Tim Berners-Lee develops the idea of a "mesh" network of hyperlinked documents and begins working on the WorldWideWeb (WWW) project.
1990: The first web page is created by Tim Berners-Lee. It contains information about the WWW project and how to use a web browser.
1991: The first web browser, called WorldWideWeb, is developed by Tim Berners-Lee. It was a text-only browser and was only available on the NeXTSTEP operating system.
1993: The first graphical web browser, called Mosaic, is released by Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina. It was a huge success and helped to popularize the web.
1994: The first search engine, called WebCrawler, is launched by Brian Pinkerton. It was the first search engine to index entire web pages rather than just titles and headings.
1995: Netscape Navigator is released by Netscape Communications Corporation. It becomes the most popular web browser and sets the standard for web browsing features.
1996: The first version of Internet Explorer is released by Microsoft, marking the beginning of the "browser wars" between Microsoft and Netscape.
1998: Google is founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Their search engine quickly becomes the most popular and sets a new standard for search technology.
2003: Skype is launched, becoming one of the first and most popular VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) services.
2004: Mozilla Firefox is released by the Mozilla Foundation as an open-source alternative to Internet Explorer.
2008: Google releases the first version of the Chrome browser, which quickly becomes popular due to its speed and simplicity.
2009: WhatsApp is launched, providing a new way for people to communicate via instant messaging and voice calls over the internet.
2010: Microsoft releases Internet Explorer 9, which is considered a major improvement over previous versions.
2013: Google's Chrome becomes the most popular web browser, surpassing Internet Explorer for the first time.
2021: The current versions of popular web browsers include Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Microsoft Edge, and Opera. Popular search engines include Google, Bing, Yahoo, and DuckDuckGo. VOIP services like Skype, Zoom, and Teams have become critical tools for remote communication in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Worldwide Web continues to evolve and expand, with new technologies and innovations being introduced regularly.
2022: ChatGPT from OpenAI.com takes the world by storm and changes how we write and communicate forever.
 
Full episode transcript below:

Welcome to another episode of Market Dominance Guys! In this third installment of our Road Trip visit series, we join Helen Fanucci and the team at Branch 49 as they discuss trust-building, gratitude, and top-of-the-funnel strategies.
Helen Fanucci shares her experiences with cold calls while using ConnectAndSell, adjusting her approach to engage prospects effectively. Her customized calls-to-action cater to each prospect's unique needs, leading to successful completions even when the prospect isn't the right person or ready for a meeting.
The experts also explore the value of cold calls in generating website traffic, comparing it to targeted Google ads. The conversation emphasizes the power of trust in maintaining lasting relationships, highlighting that trust endures indefinitely, provided it's not undermined by sales pressure. Join them for this episode, "Boosting Website Traffic with Cold Calls."
Links from this episode:
Branch 49 Sean Snyder on LinkedIn  Corey Frank on LinkedIn Microsoft Helen Fanucci on LinkedIn Helen's book, Love Your Team ConnectAndSell Chris Beall on LinkedIn Chris and Corey's book, Market Dominance: A Conversation with ChatGPT
 
Full episode transcript below:

As our Market Dominance Guys continue this road trip book signing tour with Helen Fanucci, Chris emphasizes the significance of practicing sales conversations in order to become a high-performance salesperson, with the script being the key to unleashing creativity in sales. Helen tells the story of her experience cold-calling using ConnectAndSell, a script, and how it affected her Fitbit. Additionally, Chris talks about the energy transfer that takes place in a sales conversation, and how BDRs need to provide energy but also listen carefully to the emotional response of the prospect. Helen shares her experience of working with a coach and learning from the best in the world to improve her sales skills, and the importance of being objective about oneself to become a great salesperson. This episode provides valuable insights on how to engage customers effectively to build lasting relationships. As Chris says, "You are a performance athlete with your voice. That's what you are. That's what you have to work with." Join us for this episode, “What Do a Fitbit and Surfboard Have in Common with Cold Calling?”
About Our Guest
Helen Fanucci, Transformational Sales Leader at Microsoft is the author of Love Your Team: A Survival Guide for Sales Managers in a Hybrid World.
Helen's book is available on Amazon:
LOVE YOUR TEAM A SURVIVAL GUIDE for Sales Managers in a Hybrid World
Helen Fanucci on LinkedIn
Corey and Chris' book is also available on Amazon:
Market Dominance: A Conversation With ChatGPT
Corey Frank on LinkedInChris Beall on LinkedInConnectAndSellBranch49
 
 
Full episode transcript below:

In this episode of Market Dominance Guys, author Helen Fanucci joins Chrisand Corey. Helen suggests that when thinking about the first job, you should consider the industry you want to work in, as it can set you up for future success. For instance, sales tech is a great industry for those passionate about sales and technology, while cybersecurity is growing rapidly due to the increasing sophistication of hackers.
The importance of building your network is another crucial aspect of a successful career, as it can provide exposure to others' work and broaden your horizons. Helen emphasizes the need to develop a point of view and post original content on LinkedIn to distinguish yourself.
Helen also stresses the need for continuous learning and growth in our role. By intentionally meeting people in other parts of the business and getting exposure to their work, one can learn and grow.
Join us for this episode, "Intentional Choices: Mapping Out Your Sales Career."
About Our Guest
Helen Fanucci, Transformational Sales Leader at Microsoft is the author of Love Your Team: A Survival Guide for Sales Managers in a Hybrid World.
Links for this episode:
Helen Fanucci on LinkedIn
Corey Frank on LinkedIn
Chris Beall on LinkedIn
ConnectAndSell
Branch49
 
Full episode transcript below:

Retaining your top talent and delivering results is a challenge for all sales leaders when your top talent can walk out the door without taking a single step.
The hybrid work revolution has made sales management the most pivotal role in the innovation economy—and simultaneously the most challenging. Our guest today is Helen Fanucci, Transformational Sales Leader at Microsoft, with 25 years managing hybrid teams and has an in-depth understanding of the problems facing sales managers today. Our Market Dominance Guys’ host, Chris Beall, conducts this second interview in his two-part conversation with Helen about her new book, Love Your Team: A Survival Guide for Sales Managers in a Hybrid World. In this podcast and in Helen’s book are details on not only what sales managers must be doing to thrive, but how to do them. It’s definitely a quintessential guide — with all the steps you need to know. But it’s even more than that as the title of today’s Market Dominance Guys episode states, it’s “A Blueprint for Success.”  
 
About Our Guest
Helen Fanucci, Transformational Sales Leader at Microsoft is the author of Love Your Team: A Survival Guide for Sales Managers in a Hybrid World, available November 1, 2022.
 
Full episode transcript below:
(00:21):
Retaining your top talent and delivering results is a challenge for all sales leaders, when your top talent can walk out the door without taking a single step. The hybrid work revolution has made sales management the most pivotal role in today's innovation economy, and simultaneously the most challenging. Our guest today is Helen Fanucci, transformational sales leader at Microsoft, and has 25 years managing hybrid teams and an in-depth understanding of the problems facing sales managers today. Our Market Dominance Guys host, Chris Beall, conducts this second interview in his two-part conversation with Helen about her new book, Love Your Team: A Survival Guide for Sales Managers in a Hybrid World. In this podcast and in Helen's book are details on not only what sales managers must be doing to thrive, but how to do them. It's definitely a quintessential guide with all the steps you need to know, but it's even more than that. As the title of today's Market Dominance Guys episode states, it's a blueprint for success.
Chris Beall (01:25):
You have a team this big, you're going to have this much time spent on these one-on-ones, this much on these. These are the ones that have a fixed agenda. These are the ones that are event-driven, but they're probably going to flow at about this rate. Here's the blah, blah, blah. It's on and on. I mean, it's like an engineering breakdown. And folks, by the way, when you read this book, what you're going to get is love as both an emotional concept but also as an engineering concept. Love your team is something you do, not something you just feel. It's mostly something you do through these one-on-one conversations. There must have been a time in your career where you were going through the evolution of all this and you have all the pressures of regular sales managers, report this, blah, blah, blah, all this stuff, right?
Helen Fanucci (02:13):
Sure. Yeah.
Chris Beall (02:14):
Did you have to go through a transition or were you just like, "No, I'm always going to do it like this. Screw all you people"? Because I think for most people in the audience who want to do this, what they're going to do is they're going to read the book, then they're going to try to apply, say, some of the conversations of connection. I believe they'll probably start there because they're early and they'll notice that they didn't do one to introduce themselves to the team. And you have a great story about somebody quitting because she went to a group and never got engaged with by the audience. But you do have to go through a process of, "Gosh, I got to figure out this time management thing because that's the real constraint." Or is it just like, "I'm Helen Fanucci. I made my way through MIT. I must be able to manage my time"?
Helen Fanucci (02:58):
I had to think about time constraint, for sure. So, I used to do hour-long one-on-ones with my team. This was years ago. And somehow I thought that that's what was needed and maybe at the time that's what was needed. But I do a half-hour, actually 25 minutes now, and this is a new thing since COVID in the last 18 months is going from a half-hour conversation to 25 minutes. Because everybody's back to back and everybody needs at least a five minute break between a 30 minute or 25 minute conversation. So, I do that. Now, the other thing is I'm available on IM. So, one of the things that I talk about actually in the book in the first getting to know your team is how to communicate with me. People IM me or they'll text me, and so I'm also available for drive-by connection points in between our biweekly one-on-one.
(04:01):
So, I do biweekly one-on-ones with direct reports. And so my last team was 12 direct reports. I now have two managers that work for me and then about 30 people in my organization currently. And so I will do quarterly connections or things like that and sometimes more frequently with some of my skip level reports, people who report to the managers that report to me. And then of course, and separate from the one-on-ones, are the formal pipeline reviews. It depends on what is going on. So, it will happen twice a month if there's a hot deal happening and there's a lot of different moving parts or actions needed. It will for sure happen at least once a month. So, there are different requirements for forecasting in different organizations. So, I definitely pay attention to that and do the forecast reviews with my team so that I can be prepared when I need to report out and up to my management.
(05:10):
And one of the things I really emphasize, speaking of forecasting, is delivering three to 5% of the forecast. I don't value diving catches and last-minute deals in a way that maybe traditional sales managers might. Like, "Rah-rah, that is fantastic." Well, what that meant is it's a missed opportunity for us to get additional investments in our business if we didn't forecast that revenue. Because our investments in our business are directly tied to the anticipated and forecasted revenue. So, if we're under-forecasting all the time, we are missing out on a whole bunch of opportunity to actually increase our value to our customers and get more headcount and investments for our team.
Chris Beall (05:58):
I remember reading that in the book and going, "Oh yeah, that's right." As the guy who's on the other side making those investments, if the forecast is sandbagged, it's off, it's short, it's light just to look good, then it's like, "Well, how much are we going to put as a company into achieving that number?" If you take the thought experiment, you tell me you're going to make nothing, what am I going to invest in you? Well, nothing. I got to find somebody else to do the job. I want to switch up a little bit to you experiencing... You didn't just write a book, you actually do it. I've watched you do it now for, I guess, three years. And I've always been kind of surprised.
(06:38):
It's like sales management to me, when I've seen a lot of it, is, "Yeah, I put somebody in a territory, try to get a good rep, put them in a territory, hope they work out, tell them war stories about how great you were back in the day. Fire them if it doesn't work out and they go to club if it does." It's kind of like that's sales management. You have this very systematic step-by-step process or repeatable cycles within the process with these 17 conversations. My guess is that of the 17 conversations, one kind of conversation is the favorite, the one you look forward to it. If it's the first on the calendar in the morning, you get up a little bit earlier and are hyped up for it and ready to go, and you don't want any distractions and away you go.
(07:25):
And then there's always one kind of thing that you know you got to do, but it's not your fave. It's just it's there and you got to make sure you do it and do it well. But it's not the one that you... And I know you. You're going to do both of them. But what is your favorite? The one that really gets you jazzed. You've looked back on it, maybe you want to talk about it over dinner and wine in the evening. And then what's the, you got to do it, it's really important, but I don't love it that much?
Helen Fanucci (07:54):
Okay. So, I'll start with the second first. I don't love performance improvement, performance management conversations. What's so critical to any role, but particularly when your employees are remote, is you set clear performance-based expectations, outcome-based expectations, not activity expectations. And so what that means is obviously there's quota achievement required, but also for my team it is building stronger, deeper relationships with customers. So, I do a whole list of, if you will, hard expectations, hard numbers that are quantifiable, 3x pipelines, things like that, and then soft, like building a stronger relationship with your customer and increasing the executive engagement with a customer and things like that. So, when my team members, if they're falling short of performance expectations, I address that head on, I talk to them, and then they're on a performance improvement plan of some sort. I don't love that at all. So, that's my least favorite.
(09:15):
So, now that we have that out of the way, let me go to my most favorite, and that is account strategy and ideation and sales strategy. And I love talking with my team about that, brainstorming the next action. So, they'll bring to me a situation, it could be a customer situation, maybe a customer executive left and they're trying to figure out how to get in to see somebody else or the replacement, and so we talk about, "Okay, who knows who and how do we navigate and do we need to bring in one of our executives as bait in the bucket to get this executive to come and meet with us?" So, I love account strategy ideation. That's my favorite part. And a lot of it is asking questions to really understand what's going on and what is needed so that I can be helpful.
(10:16):
Because sometimes what's presented to me, it sounds like we need to have a discount or an investment, but as you get into it it could be that there could be a miscommunication with the customer. It could be that there are things that we need to do to make sure we really understand their business sufficiently that we can present the best solution for them. And maybe it gets redirected to a different offering or a different tactic, if you will, to keep the business moving forward, deal at hand moving forward. So, I love the strategy part of it the most.
Chris Beall (11:01):
Sounds like fun for me too. I really think that that part of business is always fun. When you're ideating, you're brainstorming, you're trying to figure it out. And also it's got to be fun when those action plans are put together and they're progressing to have those one-on-ones that determine, "So, how's it going? And are we achieving what we... We took a guess. We did a thing. Now what?" That's got to be fun too.
Helen Fanucci (12:06):
Yeah, it is, for sure. Yep. You bet.
Chris Beall (12:12):
Yeah. So, Love Your Team is directed at an audience of sales managers. It says so right in the subtitle. A Survival Guide for Sales Managers. Now, I suspect that your way of looking at the world and the techniques and that structure of having these important conversations probably is applicable to all management. But you're not going to go crazy and just say that's it. So, let's think of your audience as sales managers for a moment. As you think about that audience and you think back on writing the book, were there any of those conversations you thought, "This ain't the 100 level course, this ain't the 200 level course. This is where your skills are really going to be challenged"? There's a lot on the line. You have a whole section on skills, on conversational skills, which I've never seen before in a book like this, that says, "These are the skills you need to hold these conversations."
(13:03):
So, there's the skills. We're all lacking in different skills and we all have strong in different skills. And then there's the conversations. And we've never talked about this before. I'm just curious. Did you ever get to the point of thinking, "Oh man, this is like 400-level course stuff that somebody is going to try it, but it's going to be hard for them to do it because the skills required are going to be in short supply"? Or did that not ever come up? Maybe it's like, "Yeah, yeah, everybody can do this."
Helen Fanucci (13:35):
Well, it never came up because what I intended to do with this book is reflect on what I think is needed for sales managers to be successful. And I will say, this is B2B enterprise sales. And so that's my world, and so it won't be applicable to everybody. And I'm not trying to convert people who don't want to be converted, but if folks think that they have a challenge retaining talent or they want some new ideas, I'm hopeful that the book is helpful for them. To be honest with you, I probably am not the best observer of myself. So, while these conversations may seem obvious to me and straightforward and I broke them down and intended to make them accessible and straightforward, I really don't know what the audience of sales managers reading the book, I really don't know where the struggle might be. And I'd be super curious to know that and how I could be more helpful. But I'm kind of blind there, to be honest with you. I don't know.
Chris Beall (14:49):
Yeah. It was probably smart to be blind there because it would be easy to overcook some of these sections if you think that they're too difficult or whatever. I found in my reading of the book, and for the audience, just so you know, in its various forms I've probably now read it nine times, maybe 10 times, not always deeply, but this is a confession. Normally I don't read any book twice. I'm a very fast reader. I love to read. I don't read twice. I get something out of Love Your Team every time I read it. And that's on top of a very, very long career. So, I think that there's a lot of depth and subtlety in your description of these conversations.
(15:32):
As I think them through, I think this way of looking at the world and then putting it into action of having these conversations as a means of getting action, a means of getting results, some of which are, I'll call it action results like deals, revenue, et cetera, but some of which are really, we'll call them valuation results, that as companies are worth more now when they have great talent on board. You lose talent and you lose value. You lose your future as a company. You lose the option value of being able to do things with great people that you can't really do with either not great people or while you're trying to find people.
(16:12):
So, I've read it a bunch of times, but I kept coming back to, "Gosh, I wonder whether people are going to be able to do this or not." And I've come to the conclusion they will be able to do it. I think you've broken it down to the point... Give an example out of, say, the first of the conversations of connection. What is an example of a level of detail that you've provided that somebody might think, "Why is she telling me to do this? Of course, I'm going to do that," but in fact you probably suspect without the detail they aren't going to do that or we aren't going to do that?
Helen Fanucci (16:46):
Introducing yourself to your team. I have three PowerPoint slides that I show. I talk about, the first slide is about me, what's my career background, my family situation. And in fact, I did this introduction to new team members this summer, and I put our wedding picture on it because that was current and timely and that was on that slide. And then a little bit about me. And also, what are my favorite things? Like what's my favorite thing to eat or drink? And so my favorite thing to eat is anything somebody else cooks. So, I'm lucky that Chris likes to cook, and every meal that he cooks is my favorite meal. And then what I like to drink and things like that. So, just fun facts or things I like to do, hobbies or skiing or things like that. So, that's the first slide.
(17:44):
The second slide is my leadership approach and philosophy. I list out the things that are on that slide, like culture first and people first, results-oriented, clarity of results and expectations, no surprises, if there's bad news, communicate it early, things like that. And then the last slide is what's next? So, I make it clear that I'm going to set up one-on-ones with each of them and they don't need to come prepared. It's really just to get to know them. And I also talk about how to communicate with me. So, as I mentioned, IM and texting works great. And so that's what I put on the three slides. So, it's really short and sweet. And for my last team of 12 people, I had each of them introduce theirselves briefly and tell me a fun fact of themselves, like where they like to travel or something like that.
(18:49):
My current team of 30, I did not have everyone introduce themselves but I followed up in over a two or three week period. I met with each of them, all 30 of them, even those that report to my managers. I met each of them for 30 minutes, had a one-on-one with each of them. So, that's the level of specificity and detail in why I do it. And it may or may not work for the reader to be that specific, or maybe they haven't reflected on what their leadership approach or style is and what they care about. So, it's an opportunity for them to reflect on that. So, getting back to your last question as you were then talking, I thought about what might be tough for the reader. And I think what might be tough is the orientation to think about their team first, if that's not how they've been doing their role to date.
(19:50):
So, for example, I think about servant leadership. How can I amplify my team's success? And so when my team members are presenting to the deal review board to try to get a discount or investment or resources for their customer, I ask them, "Would it be useful if I take notes in the background so you can stay present in the conversation and your presentation?" And they all take me up on it. So, I will be off camera. I will take notes and including actions, and then I send it to them after the meeting and the call. And I think it might be tempting for sales leaders to be the ones that are doing the presentation in front of the top ranking executive in the company and the finance team and having that visibility.
(20:49):
Many sales leaders want that for themselves. I want to amplify my team and I want to help my team learn and grow. So, I'm in the background. And that might seem weird to some of the folks who are listening to this podcast or reading the book. And so it might not be everyone's cup of tea, but I'm authentically telling them how I do it for their consideration.
Chris Beall (21:17):
I love that thing where you take notes, and it's not so you can keep tabs on them or whatever. It's so the person who's reporting to you or reporting to the person reporting to you can focus on what they're doing and their internal presentation, say as the example you gave, and do a great job and be exposed. I really like the fact that... This one, I think everybody should think about. If you really love your team, you're going to help them get positive exposure for what they're doing, not just in the number, but in every day or as life is going on to the senior executives. And it might result in somebody wanting to pluck them out of your team and put them somewhere else. And that's okay. If that's what they want to do, if that's good for them, that's your job to help them and support them in that. I think that is the hardest reorientation for folks probably is, even if it means that that exposure or that help, that support, whatever you're giving them is going to let them go get another job, so to speak, that's still your job.
Helen Fanucci (22:23):
Yeah, for sure. I do have explicit career conversations with team members and my recommendations. That happens at least twice a year. Sometimes if there's a lot going on we'll talk more frequently. But my team that I just referenced, a team of 12 sellers, three of them now have management roles within Microsoft. So, the three of them I was involved in coaching. They shadowed me in some cases. And so I absolutely think it's a win and it's a success. If your team's not learning and growing, they're going to leave. And actually the data supports that as well. It's fundamental to what folks care about is that they learn and grow. And so I support that. And yes, it means I have to backfill them and hopefully they stay at my current company, which is Microsoft. And if for whatever reason they decide that Microsoft isn't serving their career anymore, well okay, that's okay too. But it's really success on their terms, not my terms that I aim to support.
Chris Beall (23:43):
I think that's such a big, big message and a big change between the Love Your Team approach and the standard approach. If we were just to boil it down to the one thing, it's their north star becomes your north star. And it's individual. It's one-on-one. And I think that's a radical big idea that to some people might sound soft or it might sound dangerous, like, "Oh my God." But your view is it's actually the safe route in a sense, right? It may sound different, but you're reliant on them anyway. You're already in the boat with them.
Helen Fanucci (24:17):
Here's the thing is, I need to model the behavior I want to see in them. So, I expect my team to work well across the organization with their peers and building trust and building relationships is foundational for me with my team, but it's also foundational for them with their customers. And so understanding what constitutes success for customers on their terms is critical for us to be able to deliver value and make sure that whatever we're selling actually meets their needs so they get to say so. So, it kind of goes downhill, so to speak, or it's a virtuous cycle where we all win if the customers are successful in getting what they want in return. And so it's, I'm modeling the behavior I expect to see in my sellers as well.
Chris Beall (25:16):
Well, on that note, I guess we've finally come full circle all the way around to what the other 140-something episodes are about, which is having trust-based conversations with customers, which in the Love Your Team system actually happens more easily and more naturally because what's happening on the inside is then happening on the outside. Helen, you and I have run out of time for this podcast. Thank God we haven't run out of time for each other. And on that, I'm going to say, Corey, we miss you. We love you. But Helen and I had a really good time making this one today.
(25:52):
I am so pleased that you could be on today, Helen. Your book again, Love Your Team: A Survival Guide for Sales Managers in a Hybrid World. It's out November 1st. This podcast will drop a little sooner than that. Everybody who's watching this, listening to it, doing whatever you're doing with it, mark it in your calendar November 1st, and if you're really smart, reach out to Helen and see God knows what, LinkedIn or whatever. She might actually do something special for you in the book department. I really don't know, but it's going to be an incredible experience for you. Thank you so much, Helen.
Helen Fanucci (26:28):
Thank you, Chris.
 

In this scary new world of employment, where top sales talent has the power to stay with your team or leave you in the lurch, how do you hold onto that top talent? Helen Fanucci, Transformational Sales Leader at Microsoft and our guest on Market Dominance Guys, knows the answer to this question — and that answer has 17 parts. Helen has taken her 25 years of experience managing remote teams and turned that knowledge into a ground-breaking book titled, Love Your Team: A Survival Guide for Sales Managers in a Hybrid World (available on Amazon Nov. 1, 2022). In it, Helen details the 17 conversations that sales leaders must master with their team to successfully attract and retain top talent. Our podcast host, Chris Beall, questions Helen about her tried-and-true theories on why putting your sales team members first will get you the results you’re expecting. Get ready to take notes about this brave new approach to managing sales teams in today’s Market Dominance Guys’ episode, “17 Conversations That Matter.”

On Market Dominance Guys, Chris Beall continues his two-part conversation with his fiancée, Helen Fanucci, Microsoft’s Strategic Accounts Global Sales Leader. Today, they’re talking about how work-from-home experiences have resulted in a shift in employees’ attitudes about where and when they are willing to work. This is Helen’s area of expertise: She’s been managing employees remotely for 15 years, helping them grapple with their work-from-home issues. Additionally, she understands the challenges of attracting and retaining the best people, especially in today’s job market. Microsoft’s customers demand great service and support, and, Helen says, “That’s why we have to win the war to get talent. We have to keep serving our customers with amazing talent, or they’ll find somebody else who will.” And once you’ve hired talented people, how do you keep them? “Through servant leadership,” Helen explains. Describing her role as a manager at Microsoft, she says, “I am expected to model and coach, be inclusive, take accountability. I remove the blocks and barriers so that my team can achieve.”

This week on Market Dominance Guys, Chris Beall is once again flying solo while Corey Frank is out traveling the world. Chris’ guest today is Helen Fanucci, Strategic Accounts Global Sales Leader at Microsoft — and Chris’ fiancée! The topic today veers away from competing with other companies for market domination, to competing with other companies for market talent. It’s just another result of our almost year and a half of working from home due to the pandemic: People now want flexibility in where they work and when they work.