Training and coaching are essential for the rookie cold caller, and that’s an important part of the life work of today’s guest, Bruce Lewolt, Founder of both JoyAI and Blast Learning. But, as our hosts, Chris Beall and Corey Frank, remind our podcast listeners, even the most experienced and successful cold callers also need coaching from time to time. They can suffer from an inadvertent tendency to drift away from the prescribed plan — the script, tonality, and emotion that they’ve been trained to use — one that generally elicits a prospect’s response of “Sure! Tell me why you’re calling.” Bruce agrees and says that sales directors need to listen to calls and give feedback and coaching to all salespeople on a consistent basis, because it’s human nature to drift away from what you’re taught to say and start doing what feels easier or more comfortable, or putting your own cool, personal stamp on it because that’s the way you roll. It’s not your call to make, so note the caution in today’s Market Dominance Guys’ title and “Don’t Get Lost in Your Rock ‘n’ Roll” and drift away.   About Our Guest Bruce Lewolt is Founder of Blast Learning, a service that uses Alexa or Google Assistant as an intelligent personal study assistant, resulting in a state-of-the-art study method that is not just effective but makes learning enjoyable. (See BlastLearning.com and BlastStudy.com) He is also the Founder of JOYai, the first emotionally intelligent and sales-savvy artificial intelligence system for salespeople, bringing intelligent automation to prospecting and selling.

How do you produce the emotional reaction that you want in those you are cold calling? Bruce Lewolt, Founder of both JoyAI and Blast Learning, has devoted himself to discovering the answer to this question. Bruce joins our Market Dominance Guys, Corey Frank and Chris Beall, to explain how even the most carefully worded message and well-meaning tone and pacing don’t always have the emotional significance to your prospect that you had hoped they would. “When your prospect is only half-listening, what do they hear?” Bruce asks. Ah, that’s the question! These three experienced and dynamic cold callers each share their well-thought-out theories on how to communicate authenticity, spark curiosity, and offer intrinsic value that will elicit the kind of response from your prospect that will lead to setting a meeting. Here at Market Dominance Guys, we are devoted to helping you answer the tough sales questions, like this one: “What Do Your Prospects Really Hear?”   About Our Guest Bruce Lewolt is Founder of Blast Learning, a service that uses Alexa or Google Assistant as an intelligent personal study assistant, resulting in a state-of-the-art study method that is not just effective but makes learning enjoyable. (See BlastLearning.com and BlastStudy.com) He is also the Founder of JOYai, the first emotionally intelligent and sales-savvy artificial intelligence system for salespeople, bringing intelligent automation to prospecting and selling.  

What’s the reason customers bought from you and will buy from you again? Don’t know? Look to the end of your buyer’s journey — to the team that helps customers successfully use their purchase. That’s the advice of Ed Porter, fractional Chief Revenue Officer of Blue Chip CRO and today’s Market Dominance Guys’ guest. In this third of three conversations with our podcast’s hosts, Corey Frank and Chris Beall, Ed suggests that you find out what’s working for customers, then take that information back to marketing to finetune the value description of your product so that it matches what customers are reporting. That’s the way to successfully sell your product: Start with the end in mind and work backward to inform marketing strategies and sales messaging. If you didn’t think that customer success had anything to do with selling, it’s time to reconsider, as today’s Market Dominance Guys’ episode’s title says, “What Customer Success Can Do for You.” Listen to the previous two episodes with Ed Porter.   About Our Guest Ed Porter is a fractional Chief Revenue Officer for Blue Chip CRO, providing coaching and strategy planning services for executives and startups, and helping them rethink and refocus revenue strategies to accelerate growth. He assists his clients in aligning their revenue teams — marketing, sales, enablement, and customer success — to build accountability at every step of their organization, leading to accelerated and sustainable growth. Ed is also an investor and advisor to startups in the Columbus area.

Whether you’re new to sales or a seasoned cold caller, you no doubt have a go-to way of starting a phone conversation with a prospect. Excellent! But how’s that working for you? Ed Porter, the fractional Chief Revenue Officer of Blue Chip CRO is our Market Dominance Guys' guest. He talks today about scripts, pattern-interrupts, and the art of conversation with our hosts, Chris Beall and Corey Frank. As Chris points out, that first conversation is an ambush call, and nobody likes to be ambushed, especially by an invisible stranger. Ed totally agrees and adds that “Fear prevents us from picking up the phone” — which is true whether you’re the salesperson or the prospect. So, what can generally get both the caller and the prospect past that fear? A well-constructed cold-calling script, but not necessarily one that a salesperson makes up on their own. Ed says it’s got to be architected from a sound plan that includes expertise and advice from both the marketing and customer success teams, which is why we’ve titled today’s Market Dominance Guys’ episode, “The Architecture of a First Conversation.” Listen to his previous episode: EP134 - Is sales the real problem?   About Our Guest Ed Porter is a fractional Chief Revenue Officer for Blue Chip CRO, providing coaching and strategy planning services for executives and startups, and helping them rethink and refocus revenue strategies to accelerate growth. He assists his clients in aligning their revenue teams — marketing, sales, enablement, and customer success — to build accountability at every step of their organization, leading to accelerated and sustainable growth. Ed is also an investor and advisor to startups in the Columbus area.

If a company isn’t experiencing success, the finger of blame is usually pointed at the sales department. Ed Porter, the fractional Chief Revenue Officer of Blue Chip CRO, is here to say that it ain’t necessarily so. Ed joins our Market Dominance Guys, Chris Beall and Corey Frank, on today’s podcast to talk about his experience in helping companies ferret out the real culprits — and it’s not always the sales reps. In exploring the problem with his own customers, Ed has discovered that marketing and customer success are often the departments that need some repair or fine-tuning. He wholeheartedly agrees with one of Chris’ maxims: In a cold call, “technology amplifies ‘suck’,” which is what you’ll see if there’s a technology-provided increase in your cold-calling speed but there’s no company alignment of messaging, training, coaching, and follow-up. So, take Ed’s advice for business trouble-shooting and ask yourself the question posed by today’s Market Dominance Guys’ title, “Is Sales the Real Problem?” About Our Guest Ed Porter is a fractional Chief Revenue Officer for Blue Chip CRO, providing coaching and strategy planning services for executives and startups, and helping them rethink and refocus revenue strategies to accelerate growth. He assists his clients in aligning their revenue teams — marketing, sales, enablement, and customer success — to build accountability at every step of their organization, leading to accelerated and sustainable growth. Ed is also an investor and advisor to startups in the Columbus area.  Connect with Ed Porter on LinkedIn    

How often do salespeople need to be trained? Most people would say, “Once during onboarding should do it.” “Not so,” says Dan McClain, Sales Director at ConnectAndSell. As today’s guest on Market Dominance Guys, Dan talks with our host, Chris Beall, about the importance of periodically sharpening sales reps’ skills. In this second of their two-part conversation, these two sales guys, both amateur chefs, agree that knives work better when they’ve recently been sharpened — and sales reps work better when their selling skills have recently been sharpened. Dan reminds our podcast audience that, over time, all sales reps drift from their company’s established message, their pace may become rushed, or their tone lackluster. For these very reasons, ConnectAndSell’s own reps go through a periodic blitz-and-coach cold-calling session, an essential tool of ConnectAndSell’s Flight School, because, as Dan says, “We all need to get better.” And because this essential advice bears repeating, that’s what we’ve named today’s Market Dominance Guys’ episode: “We All Need to Get Better.” About Our GuestDan McClain is Sales Director at ConnectAndSell. His life-long dedication to sales has led him to his current goal: helping sales leaders, teams, and individuals connect with their targets at a velocity of 10X by using ConnectAndSell Lightning. Dan is based in the San Diego area and is active in his local chapter of AA-ISP. Full episode transcript below:   Dan McClain (01:30): It's really easy to go hire someone. It's really hard to go buy, ConnectAndSell. Even when you put a mathematical equation in front of them saying, "We could double the output of what you're doing and actually you'll spend less money." It's still hard. Chris Beall (01:45): Yeah. Dan McClain (01:45): It seems like a no brainer. It seems like this would be such an easy job. Chris Beall (01:50): Well, part of it also is this program is a little bit funny, because Cory Frank came to me and said he wanted to get a book out on the [inaudible 00:01:58] market dominance. Well, a book on market dominance is fundamentally only interesting to owners of different kinds. Whether an owner is an investor in a business or the owner is the owner or the owner is a CEO. CEOs are often pretty... I can tell you from experience pretty aligned with their company. There's a problem called the agency problem, right? You have somebody else doing something for you, but they've got to look out for themselves. And so the question is- Dan McClain (02:24): Why wouldn't you include a VP of sales in that grouping of people that would be interested in market domination? Chris Beall (02:29): Well, because here's the thing, a VP of sales, like our VP of sales, Jonti McLaren, highly aligned, right? He's a big cash investor in the company. And so it's easy. And he owns enough of the company that he's naturally aligned. And this is true in certain kinds of startups where they're still in startup mode, so to speak, where maybe the VP of sales is with the founder. Chris Beall (02:52): They're a founder of themselves and they got that ownership mentality. But I think we have a little bit of a vicious cycle going on where folks don't know quite how to drive organic growth. They're guessing, "Should we do ABM? Should we do this? Should we prospecting hard on social media? Is it a prospecting problem or a closing problem?" It's hard to tell, right? It's not obvious what you're going to do. And then how fast is it going to kick in? Chris Beall (03:18): Right. If I say I got a seven month sales cycle, eight month sales cycle. So I've got 17 months of average tenure. So wait a minute. If I'm past month four, I'm down to the point where I got to start to see results somebody else cares about three months before I'm likely to get kicked out of here because I didn't produce the numbers. There's kind of a short term attitude on the part of ownership often. Chris Beall (03:43): I'll call it ownership, regarding the sales function, where they treat sales as an externality. Like sales is something you graphed onto the company. And I've said it on this show, sales traditionally was used to dispose of inventory. The factories created, dispose of it as sufficient profit to keep the lights on and maybe give you a net profit that you can use in order to grow the business, right? That's how capitalism works. Chris Beall (04:06): You put capital in to buy plant and equipment. You make stuff, the widgets are being made. Well, the widgets must be sold. And what was the tradition? Put a rep in a territory, give them a quota, give them a fair amount of autonomy. There wasn't much management required. And then it's great, they get to keep the territory and maybe get a better territory. Chris Beall (04:32): If it doesn't work out, you put another rep in. And meanwhile you're telling more stories about how great you were back in the day, so you have something to do management wise. So I think that role doesn't make sense in the world of at least software. And the world is becoming software, because you don't have widgets anymore. How many units of ConnectAndSell software... And we even have people in the loop, get turned out yesterday that you and your team have got to dispose of at a profit. Chris Beall (05:02): None. There's no units, right? We didn't make a bunch of widgets that are piled up in a warehouse somewhere. So I think sales was treated as an externality because it worked as an externality. Now we're asking sales to do a strategic job, which is to take us into markets like your first job. And the question is, "Well, is the alignment right?" Is the long term relationship there going into markets doesn't happen overnight. So I think we have some issues around kind of how the sales function is conceived of. And then we say, "Hey, you do your job with head count. Marketing, do their job with money and imagination." And I don't think that's right anymore either. That's my feel anyway. I think sales is one who needs the money and the imagination. Dan McClain (05:51): Yeah. That's true. Interesting. Chris Beall (05:55): Yeah. I it's the stuff that we think about it a lot. Right? Because we're sort of on this spear tip of what we believe, which is the conversations first move the business. But I want to go to a success story that you and I experienced a little bit together and see what your thoughts are about it. There's an Israeli cybersecurity company selling the hospitals. And they have three SDRs and some people think SDRs are great. Some people think SDRs are like, "What do they do with SDRs?" By the way, you probably enjoy the meetings that are SDR set for you. Right? Dan McClain (06:27): Oh I love them. Chris Beall (06:28): And they're pretty good. You get good reviews. Because people tell you, "Hey that Sal or Crystal or whoever..." Dan McClain (06:36): Yeah. Quite often, Hey, the reason I took this meeting is they were persistent. They were professional. They just really handled the conversation nicely. Often that's a big part of it. Chris Beall (06:48): So you get meetings there, but you're your own SDR. Right? And you're a student of the game, you're student in the craft, I've been known to call you and mention that you may have drifted a little bit on a conversation and you take it with curiosity right after you [inaudible 00:07:02]. Dan McClain (07:02): I'll never forget that call. I was standing right out there in my backyard, right by the Palm tree. When you called me and said that. I said, "No, I'm not drifting. I've got this. I'm not drifting." You told me to go listen to a call. I went and listened to a call and I was like, "Ah, he was right." Called you back, "Chris. You're right." Chris Beall (07:23): I thought that was an interesting conversation. I was driving across the Sierras with a load of stuff from my house. I was moving to Reno and I'm listening to this conversation I'm going, "Is that Dan? That doesn't... That doesn't... That sounds like somebody else. What is he saying? Why is he saying it?" It was pretty interesting. Let's talk about that for a moment though. Because it's really interesting this whole, so here's this company that you were working with and they had unusual SDR team. Right? Their minimum age was, I don't know, 50 something. Dan McClain (07:55): They looked like me. Chris Beall (07:56): Just like, yeah. I'm older than you are. The oldest one was I think in the maybe pushing seventies, maybe. Dan McClain (08:03): Maybe low seventies. Yeah. Chris Beall (08:05): Low seventies. And they went to Flight School. Now, these are highly experienced people. I knew you were in the deal. I wasn't in the deal. I knew somebody at the company. So I was kind of peripherally associated with it. First of all, why would somebody with all that experience in your mind go to Flight School? Why'd they do that? I mean, I know it's what we offered them but they could have said, "Nah, let's not do that." And do you remember, just walk us through that? You've got these folks, they were good. Right? They were converting it- Dan McClain (08:34): Yeah, [inaudible 00:08:35]. They converted highly even on the test drive. And it was interesting because in that negotiation, that we were looking at, "Okay, how are we going to use this?" We thought "It looks like they were going to buy big." And then interestingly enough, they actually came back and they bought really small. But buying small, just allowed us to come in and go through this flight school motion and show them the art of the possibility. And we took them from really good to great. And that's one of those customers where every week when I just log in and peek on what they're doing, puts a smile on my face. Chris Beall (09:17): Yeah. And it's such a non-obvious play. We had somebody on the other day on the show, Jennifer Standish and Jennifer makes the claim that we should be hiring grandmas to be SDRs, because they've got the voice and they know how to tell people what to do in a way that makes them do it, but not feel bad. That's kind of interesting when you think about that insistence close, right? The Cheryl Turner insistence close, it kind of has to do with telling somebody what to do and having to feel good about it. Right? Dan McClain (09:48): Yeah. So interesting. I've been leaning on you with some help, some different customers and you keep telling that story. And then it got in my head and I kept thinking about it and then I was doing some prospecting and it was a really interesting call because I got the guy at the right time because he said, "I'm currently looking for sales amplification." is what he said. We got that. That's what we do. And he goes, "Can you just send me something? So because I'm looking at all kinds, just send me something," I said, "Tell you what, I send you half a page. Dan McClain (10:22): And then also just I'll go ahead and send you the calendar invite for Thursday and we'll move it if we have to." That's the Cheryl Turner insistence close. And the guy said, "Perfect, I'll give you 15 minutes." I said, "Great. That's all I need." And then after that call, I hung up the phone. I called you to tell you about that experience. And then based on your recommendation, I called and I was talking to Cheryl about it. And then I went off and listened to some of her calls. And some of the stuff that she does, it's so subtle, but just there's so much genius in what she's doing. Chris Beall (11:03): Yeah. I think this is funny. I have an analogy. Corey and I have used on this. You're probably the only guy other than Corey who can speak to it actually, because you actually can't get me up even on a standup paddle board. My back is tight and it's hard to do. You surf. You're like a real surfer. Right? But my claim is I used to watch a lot of surfing and you know, I'm a physicist by background. Chris Beall (11:23): So I kind of, I don't know, picture maybe a little bit of what's going on and that interaction between the water, the board and the person. Where they are, what they're doing, how they're moving and all that kind of stuff. And my claim is, and this is a hard claim, not a soft claim. I don't think this is a fluffy analogy. The best analogy I've been able to come up with is this. In that ambush call, that one and only. Chris Beall (11:49): The only time you're ever going to talk to somebody for the first time. That script is like a surfboard and your voice is the surfer. Your voice is where the artistry comes from. And what you feel when... And you can speak to this. And I want you to actually speak to it. Tell us a little something about what it's like to surf and what it's like to surf, big stuff, scary stuff, hard stuff, whatever it is you've done. But when you're doing something like surfing, you're feeling the world that you're in and you're feeling it millisecond by millisecond and you're adjusting to it. Chris Beall (12:27): And you're adjusting to it with a combination of balance and positioning. But it's things you know you're doing, but you don't quite know exactly how you're doing them, but you know, you learn to do them kind of thing. Right? And I think that Cheryl Turner dance that she does with people where the words are the same, the surfboard's the same surfboard, but the conversation is always unique. It always has for a voice in it. Dan McClain (12:53): That the conversation is always unique, because there's another thing that you have to bring into this analogy used and that's the wave or the water itself. Dan McClain (13:53): It's always changing. Even if you surf the exact same place every day and it's dictated by the sand underneath the water, because that's always moving. That's fluid. So every single day, the shape of the wave's going to be different. The speed is going to be different based on maybe some storm in Australia or Japan. So even at the same exact place, every single day, that's different. Dan McClain (14:17): So just like the conversation or the person you're talking to is going to be different and you have to adjust. And then there are some things that are on autopilot, as you're paddling into the wave where you put your hands on your board and you pop up. I don't think about that anymore. My body just does that. But what I'm doing is, I have to decide what angle I'm paddling into the wave based on the speed of it, the size of it and the shape of it. And that's always different. And I know that I have to only look forward at what the wave's doing, because if you look behind you, it looks too big and scary. Chris Beall (14:54): Oh interesting. Dan McClain (14:55): Then you'll pedal backwards and get out of it. But when you're charging into there's so many factors that are constantly changing. So it's not like skiing or snowboarding. I mean the movements might be the same, but that medium, that you're on, you can look ahead and you know what it is. Chris Beall (15:16): Yeah. Dan McClain (15:17): And it's only vast experience to know, to be able to look ahead and know what it's going to do. And what's interesting is it's different every day. Chris Beall (15:27): Yeah. And you're a little different every day too. So one of the points of that, and I remember talking to Corey about it, I was trotting around and it was actually the day I saw that boat that I got behind me. I was trotting around in Sydney, Australia. And I was on the phone with Corey and we're talking about this surfboard, surfer analogy, which now you've added the wave to. And one of my points is, look, if you're learning to surf, nobody throws you like an old door and says, make yourself a surfboard. Right? I mean, it's the shaping of boards is an art and science that's come to us through what's 70, 80, 90 years of people having experience with the shapes, the materials, the thinning, all that kind of stuff. You'd [inaudible 00:16:16]. Dan McClain (16:15): Yeah. And it's still evolving to this day. Chris Beall (16:18): Yeah. And you'd be an idiot as a young surfer to think you're going to reinvent making surfboards before you even know how to surf. And yet, we ask young SDRs to make their own scripts. Dan McClain (16:31): Yeah. Chris Beall (16:31): And I think that's crazy. I mean, do you think that's crazy? Dan McClain (16:37): I think that's crazy town. Why would you put the tip of this spear, the message that's going out about the company, into someone's hands that's probably only been there X number of months. It's that simple. Chris Beall (16:54): Yeah. Well just, I mean, I am willing to bet there are people who shape boards who are really good at shaping boards, making a surfboard that really works well, who are not themselves, the greatest surfers in the world. Dan McClain (17:07): True. They probably look like you or I. Chris Beall (17:11): Yeah. Well more like you, because we get to me and we're off the surfing category and we're into the can't stand up at the paddle board category. But I think it's quite fascinating if this analogy... I think this is a legit analogy. I think this analogy maps, as they say in the world of math, one to one and onto. Every part of it maps to the other part is supposed to map to, and you can reason from it. Right? And if you believe it, you would say, "Well, I would never have a rep make up their own script." Chris Beall (17:42): I wouldn't do it, because what are the odds they're going to make one based on 50, 60 years of experience across not themselves, but I think of that board shaper, they're not just taking their own experience, they're taking the experience of everybody who's ever made a surfboard. And they're putting it into the next one. Whereas when you get on that board on a wave, you're taking your experience, you're making it more subtle, more effective in time. You're a little quicker to do the thing that needs to be done to be the place you want to be to get the thing done, than you want to do than you were a year ago, two years ago, 15 years ago, whatever it happens to be. Dan McClain (18:20): They should not even be in that loop of communication. They should have it given to them. Then they should be trained on it. Chris Beall (18:26): Yeah. I agree. If you wanted me to surf you better give me a board. Dan McClain (18:30): What's so interesting is go on LinkedIn and look at this subject there will be hundreds of different opinions. Chris Beall (18:40): Yeah. Oh yeah. Oh you mean the subject of should reps make up their own script? I know what the argument is for it. Well, they got to be comfortable and you know what- Dan McClain (18:50): I don't people think that, but really they don't. No one cares about that they shouldn't or people do. Should you really care about their comfort or the comfort and experience of that person that they're talking to? That's what's important. Chris Beall (19:03): Yeah. I mean, I've said it before, if you're an SDR... And by the way, if you're an account executive and you're calling for yourself, like Dan does, you're an SDR at that point. [inaudible 00:19:13]. You're not magically skilled in first conversations just because you're capable of closing multimillion dollar deals. That doesn't translate. It's like the fact that I can do all sorts of... I can load the car up. You can get all the gear in it. I can drive it to the beach. Look at all my skills. Well, at some point you're going to have to get on that damn board, right? Dan McClain (19:36): Yeah. Absolutely. And that's uncomfortable. So is having a script just put in your hand and told that what you're going to say. That's uncomfortable. I do things every day that to me feel uncomfortable, but I may be old enough to know it's not about me. And we always joke about this. Nobody cares about my feelings. Chris Beall (19:58): You always say that about me, that I don't care about your feelings. I don't, but I care about your wellbeing. Dan McClain (20:04): There we go. Yeah. And I get it and it's awesome. Chris Beall (20:07): It's, it's a funny thing. Well, for folks that are managing teams out there and that's who you're mostly working with, is people who are managing teams and you see there are struggles, even once they have ConnectAndSell in the hands of the team. And you have resources you can draw on. You can draw on Donny Crawford and his team. There are conversation optimization folks and they'll come in. I think we just did something today, right? Didn't we do something with a flight school session with a- Dan McClain (20:36): We did. Actually had two going on today. One that Gavin was running and then one with the transportation company that you've been helping me with. It was me and a newer to them director of business development and he runs the team. And it was such an exciting day, because we had made some tweaks to the messaging that simplified and that the reps actually felt good about. They felt good about, I felt good about it. We ran it. And in a very short amount of time, we had two meetings on the books. Dan McClain (21:09): And what was even more exciting was I saw that sales leader turn the corner on. This was the first time he was critiquing the reps, telling them what to do. And it was one of those calls where I was actually dreading it, because I didn't think it was going to go well. And four or five times during that call, I got the chills. The hair on my arm was standing up, because it was exciting. And he and I were in there together figuring things out and everyone on that team I think left excited about what we were all doing together. Chris Beall (21:49): That's fantastic. Dan McClain (21:50): This quest of market domination. It was awesome. Chris Beall (21:54): Well, I know that those guys are very serious about market dominance. They really are. And that's, as we say, we curate dominance here. ConnectAndSell is such a delight. I mean, how many people get to say this in a sales job that you're doing something. whereas part of the job, every once in a while, you know the hair does stand up on your arms, you get those chills. I was talking to Elena Hesse the other day and she was on the show. Chris Beall (22:18): And she said to me, first time we talked, she said, "I have tears in my eyes." I said, "I do too." We're two grown people out here listening to these reps, move forward in a way that's so exciting. They're having so much fun and they're doing so much business. And it's right here in front of us. There is something about watching the world evolve at full speed right in front of your eyes. It's just kind of professionally unusual I guess I'll put it. It's like who gets to have this kind of fun? Dan McClain (22:49): Yeah, no, it's true. It was such a great day. And it was just one of those things that just invigorated me that will probably last a month. So I'm going to need another one of those sometime within the next month. It was just awesome. Chris Beall (23:03): More flight schools. Well, I have to say you've been here a long time. What are your thoughts? Some people kind of thought flight school was crazy. We're not in the training business, plenty of people out there to train reps. I always thought the ecosystem would take care of it. There's these incredibly strong trainers out there. Chris Beall (23:21): What is it you think in looking at connect and self flight school, which for those of you who don't know what it is, it's a four session blitzing coach experience for a group of reps and their manager live fire, talking to real prospects where they're under pressure as a result. And yet the coaching is not of the whole conversation. I think the first two hours we coached just the first seven seconds. And the second two hours we coach just what we call the 27 seconds, the value part. Chris Beall (23:51): And then the third two hours we coach just what we call turbulence. That's why it's called flight school. Take off flying somewhere. Plane goes like this, the objections that you only get in a cold call. And then the fourth sessions, how to get the meeting. How do you ask for the meeting. Landing the airplane, all we beforehand, we have this messaging workshop and a little kind of an icebreaker session. Chris Beall (24:12): So, that's what it is. I never thought we should have such a thing, even though I'm the guy who came up with it, sort of working with Janie Wall and James Townsend down in San Antonio at a customer... Is it a big deal to you or is it just another training thing or did you think it was a good idea when you first saw it? Or did you think like I did? It's like I came up with it, but I was still pretty skeptical about it. Dan McClain (24:35): Yeah. Well, like a lot of things... At first, I was uncomfortable with it til I kind of have experienced it. And then eventually we put our team through it and guess what happened? We all got better. We all learned stuff. Chris Beall (24:47): Wait, you guys, I remember this, we do this regularly. Like you went through flight school, but you guys have like five, six years, seven years of experience using ConnectAndSell. Why would you need to go through flight school? What did it help you do different? Dan McClain (25:00): No matter how good we are, A we drift, like we talked about, but you can always get better. It's about keeping that spear sharp. If we stop doing our blitz code sessions on Monday and Friday, it would be easier for me, but you know what? Would I get that coaching? Would I get a chat with Gavin or Donny or Nate? "Hey, you're doing this, try this." "Hey, I heard something." Chris Beall (25:25): Yeah. So you and I both cook a little bit, maybe even a lot, right? We're having wild board tonight just for you. Dan McClain (25:31): Oh fantastic. We're having pizzas. This has been a frustration for me. I can cook. I'm not a baker and I have one of those pizza ovens. And I've been buying the crust at the store and I'm having a problem getting the temperature of this pizza oven correctly. Because, what's happening is the top of the pizza's burning before the crust is fixed. So actually a friend of mine is a restaurateur and they're actually sitting out there having some beers. And when I'm done, we're going to go cook some pizzas together. Chris Beall (26:03): All right. Well I hope it works out well. I'm going to make a point, a sharp edge point, which is we both spend a fair amount of time on occasion the kitchen. I think I'm a pretty good hand with a knife taught by an ex Navy chef. Worked an aircraft carrier and you know a typical Navy chef. He didn't put up with any crap in the kitchen right? Down to, you're going to hold the knife, thumb and forefinger on the blade to stabilize the knife. You've [inaudible 00:26:28] just holding it by the handle like you're whipping a baseball bat around all that kind of stuff. He taught me everything about that stuff. And yet still to this day, I'll take a knife out of the drawer and I will lazily continue to use it when I know it's not sharp. [inaudible 00:26:49]. Dan McClain (26:48): My friend in Texas, he has a knife sharpening business. Anytime, like if we're going on a week vacation, I send him my knives. Chris Beall (26:55): Oh, that's good stuff. So to me it's like that. It's like a knife can look sharp without being sharp. And it's when you go to make that cut and a ripe tomato is probably the most telling cut. Right? Because if your knife is sharp, you feel it and you feel it in that first little motion. Right? Because the knife is curved to allow you to move straight forward, but still be cutting down and you'll feel that little tug. And you go now the question's, what are you going to do? And I think that the way you guys get tuned up in flight school is a lot like that. You feel that little tug and it's easy to be lazy and not sharpen the knife. Dan McClain (27:37): Yeah. And it's so interesting, because if you're not sharp, a lot of meetings will slip through your fingers. Yeah. Why that happen all the time? I'm like, "I think I could have got a meeting with that person." That meeting that I got this week using the Cheryl Turner insistent close, I will be honest part of it was just right person, right time. But part of it was the way I executed something- Chris Beall (27:58): That has to be a lot of it. Cheryl runs 30%. Dan McClain (28:00): Yeah. I'm not running 30%. I'm trying to get better. Chris Beall (28:05): Listen to on those industrial air compressors in those medical office buildings, [inaudible 00:28:09] crazy stuff. Dan McClain (28:10): It is. Chris Beall (): But it does show it's an art form. Helen and I listened to Cheryl one day. We listened to a whole bunch of conversations. And Helen was thinking about actually cold calling the hundred VPs of one of her big monster companies that was part of her account base. Hundred VPs of HR. And she asked me, "What is this cold calling really about?" And I said, "Well, let's listen to Cheryl." Chris Beall (28:32): And so we were listening to Cheryl, listening to a bunch of conversations and Helen, who's a cute observer of these things, she says, those micro pivots, same words, but that little pause, that little laugh, that moment of expressed empathy that I'm with you, that expression of being a peer, always never being put back, but never pushing back either. Chris Beall (28:58): She said, "That stuff is amazing." She said, "I didn't realize what you guys work with is an artistic medium. And it's truly an art form." And I actually think this is something I have to say, if I could ask folks who are watching this thinking or, or listening, thinking about it, we call the use of ConnectAndSell, learning how to cold call. We call it finishing school for future CEOs. Chris Beall (29:26): Because the one thing you've got to be able to do to be good in the CEO job, is hold conversations without a lot of prep with strangers that go better than they would've for somebody else who might not be able to make those little moves, have that feel. That the feel for the situation and be able to help somebody see something in a new way, which is kind of your main job as CEO. Chris Beall (29:49): It's the main job as a salesperson. They're very similar jobs. Before you joined ConnectAndSell or no, before you used it for the first time, would you have said that you thought that cold calling or cold conversation was an art form or would you have said yes, just something you do or what would you have thought about it or did, did you not think about it? Dan McClain (30:09): I think at that time, knowing what I knew then, it would've been very easy to hop on the cold calling is dead bandwagon because then I wouldn't have to do it. And I could feel good about not doing it. Even, though if it's like exercise. You know you should. Chris Beall (30:27): Yeah. Dan McClain (30:27): It's hard to take that first step. But if you do not good things just might happen. Chris Beall (30:33): What is funny too? Because it's like exercise and that you're doing it for yourself. And yet folks will act like they're being told to do it for somebody else. You're really doing it for yourself. I mean, you really are doing it for yourself. I've looked at the numbers, our numbers break down today. This quarter, the bulk of the dollars and the bulk of the deals have come from you guys. Chris Beall (30:54): You account executives being your own SDRs and that's even though you have a world class SDR team armed to the teeth with a high performance weapon using it all day long setting meetings for y'all. But I have a funny feeling that when you set a meeting for yourself, that there's some subtlety in there somewhere that allows you to be a little bit better in that meeting. That you killed that boar and now you're cooking it. And I think you're going to cook it a little bit better. Dan McClain (31:25): Absolutely. In fact, when I schedule the meeting myself, when I send it out, I put a little asterisks in a certain spot in the invitation. So I know that's one that I scheduled and yeah, I do. I come to it, I think with a little more of everything, little more excitement, a little more aggressiveness. I'm going to be sharper, clearer because I know that this one I got. Chris Beall (31:49): Yeah. It's a funny thing. I think it's the most subtle thing. Let's wrap this up. Our audience is... We have people all up and down. We got SDRs who listen to Market Dominance Guys, because I guess they want to be CEOs and owners of businesses someday or chief revenue officers God what they're going to be. And then we got people kind of like, you're Henry Washala who took his whole business part, put it back together after binge listening to the show for four days. Chris Beall (32:17): We got a lot of folks. I know you're not a big advice giver. You probably don't give advice to people for a whole bunch of good reasons. Most of which is you're kind of too humble to think what you're going to say is going to make a difference. But I want you to get out of that humble posture for a second and just give folks listening, just one piece of advice from your career. And it has something to do with what we've been talking about. What would you tell somebody if you just had to tell them and then you got to go away. Dan McClain (32:45): I would say, kind of back to this whole notion of should the SDR say what's comfortable versus should you give them a script? Find out who's the most intelligent person in the room and listen to them. Usually that's someone with a C in their title, usually. Chris Beall (33:02): Yep. That's interesting. On that. We're going to wrap this up. Dan McClain, you have been a marvelous guest on Market Dominance Guys. I think we're going on in episode 130 something at this point. Proud to have you on. Proud to be on your team and excited looking forward to what we're all going to do together. And I just think about those companies, those people you're helping pulling the cork out of the innovation economy, letting value flow. And that's what makes a hair stand up on my arm. So thank you so much for being on the show and for being you. Dan McClain (33:31): Yeah. Thanks for having me. I was a little nervous. This is my first podcast. I didn't know what I was getting into. I'd love to come back anytime.

You’re no doubt familiar with the buyer’s journey, but what do you know about the seller’s journey? Dan McClain, Sales Director at ConnectAndSell and today’s guest on Market Dominance Guys, shares his personal journey as a salesperson with our host Chris Beall in this first of a two-part conversation. Starting at the beginning of his career, Dan tells the story of how he got into sales straight out of college, what his early selling experiences were like, and how he cold-called his way to where he is today. Most memorable for him was his first experience using ConnectAndSell Lightning, the cold-calling tool that boosts the number of conversations a salesperson can have with prospects. Pushing that “Go” button and being served one conversation after another changed his life and led to his current job selling Lightning at ConnectAndSell. Helping other salespeople discover this tool is now Dan’s mission. Listen in as Dan and Chris remember the details of their first meeting in today’s Market Dominance Guys’ episode, “The Seller Has a Journey Too.” About Our Guest Dan McClain is Sales Director at ConnectAndSell. His life-long dedication to sales has led him to his current goal: helping sales leaders, teams, and individuals connect with their targets at a velocity of 10X by using ConnectAndSell Lightning. Dan is based in the San Diego area and is active in his local chapter of AA-ISP. Full episode transcript below: Chris Beall (01:24): Hey Market Dominance folks, it's Chris Beall and I'm here without Corey Frank, which is a bit of a shock because I lean on Corey pretty hard. He always comes up with the cool questions and he's got the literary references and he's got a tie on, which is nice. Dan McClain (01:42): Oh. Chris Beall (01:42): You don't see one on me. I know Dan. Dan McClain (01:44): You could have worn a tie. [inaudible 00:01:46] Chris Beall (01:46): And instead I'm here today, not instead but normally we'd have Corey, but now I'm all by myself as a host except I've got Dan McClain. Dan McClain, among many other things that he does including things involving surfboards and riding vehicles across sandy terrain that doesn't look safe at all to me. Dan McClain (02:06): Absolutely. Chris Beall (02:07): And shooting the occasional wild boar and eating them. And growing tomatoes in a way that I've never seen another human being grow tomatoes, including naming his tomato plants appropriately. Dan McClain (02:17): True. Chris Beall (02:18): So Dan is also somebody who works for ConnectAndSell. He sells for ConnectAndSell. I don't know if he properly sells, he'll describe what it's actually like I'm sure. But Dan, welcome to Market Dominance Guys. Dan McClain (02:30): Thanks for having me. This is my very first podcast. Chris Beall (02:34): Oh my God. I'm excited. No wonder you're wearing white, you're a podcast virgin. Dan McClain (02:39): That's right. Absolutely. [inaudible 00:02:41] And my hair too. Chris Beall (02:42): Fantastic. And notice that Dan has a Flight School shirt on, I got a Flight School shirt on. We are as twinsy as can be right now. So Dan, just a little background. How did you fall into the world of sales, and especially sales that involved anything resembling software? Is this like your dream when you were a child? Is it something that you got hit in the head once? I know you surf and sometimes you could hit your head surfing I bet. Dan McClain (03:11): It's true. Chris Beall (03:12): What happened? Dan McClain (03:13): Well, growing up I always knew I was going to be in sales. My father was in sales but, it was different back then. He was in industrial sales and he covered Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, kind of the Midwest belt, and he would drive his car around and he had an expense account and that seemed kind of cool. Chris Beall (03:34): Interesting. Dan McClain (03:34): And I'd hear him on the phone every once in a while. And I thought, "That's what I want to do". Chris Beall (03:38): Wow. Dan McClain (03:38): Well actually then college, I had to put myself through. And I learned very quickly that the traditional jobs that one can get when you're in college aren't enough to pay for college, even way back in the late '80s, early '90s. And so I had to be creative, and I actually started a couple of my own small little companies. A volleyball business, where we taught leagues and lessons and ran tournaments. And also a valet car parking business at a very cool restaurant in Minneapolis called J.D. Hoyt's. And doing that I kind of learned some entrepreneurial things. Dan McClain (04:16): And then towards the tail end of college, a friend of mine had a sister who married an entrepreneur that ran a company called Skyline Displays, they make trade show exhibits. And he saw what I was doing and he thought, "I'd like to hire this guy and send him off to California" to do what they called "R&D sales". Because what they used to do is they'd come up with something new, they'd release it to the field before it was ready, and then it was very expensive to make a change because it was on such a grand scale. So they thought, "Why don't we just have one person go try to sell some new stuff". And I just kind of fell into it. I moved out to California pretty much the day after I graduated from college. And that was a very interesting move. December 5th, 1995, very cold Minnesota day. I drove out to Newport Beach and it was one of the happiest days of my life. Chris Beall (05:04): That's what they call a selling point. Dan McClain (05:10): Absolutely. And when I went out there on the recruiting trip, they were very smart. They flew me into the Orange County Airport, and when you walk out of the Orange County Airport you see green grass and Palm trees. So I told myself, "I hope it's a good job because I'm taking it". And I think like most people in sales I was young, started off, struggled, and it took me a while to hit my stride to kind of figure out what I wanted to do. And then I had a roommate who was a recruiter. He goes, "Hey you're in sales, but you're kind of struggling. I got this customer that's looking for [inaudible 00:05:43] and they're a software company. Do you know anything about software"? I said, "No", but it paid more money so I took that job. Dan McClain (05:50): And then I was in software for 10, 15 years. And then my company did a ConnectAndSell test drive. I was one of the test subjects using the weapon and it was interesting. I didn't know what I was getting into. And when you use ConnectAndSell, turn it on, you hit that green go button. Well when it was time to hit that green go button, president of the company standing here, the VP of sales is standing here, these are big verbose gentlemen. They're like, "Turn it on"! All of a sudden my hands started shaking, my brain went blank, and I hit the go button. And the first conversation came fast, 30, 40 seconds. I don't know what I said. It wasn't intelligent or legible. The person hung up. And they yelled, "Do it again"! Did it again. Then the second conversation came fast, and it was, "Hey, yeah call me next week. I think I want to talk to you". And the third guy picks up the phone, I schedule a demo, a meeting, boss and the president leave me alone rest of the day. I think I scheduled two more meetings on my very first day and it was awesome. Dan McClain (06:53): And then I used almost every day. This was back in the days when people traveled, I was covering 10 states. And I was Account Executive, didn't do a whole bunch of prospecting, but I used it very specifically to call my [inaudible 00:07:07] task list and sales force. And it worked so incredibly well for me because I was calling the CIO or the VP of IT of a billion dollar company that ran SAP. And I was selling very expensive software to bolt onto that to make it run better, faster, stronger. And used it for two or three years and got to the point where every time I'd turn it on a little voice inside my head would tell me, "Dan, you should go sell ConnectAndSell". So I got to know you, called up you. I think I sent you some referrals, tried to get in somehow. I told you I wanted to join the team, we had a couple conversations over a couple months and you introduced me to Jonti McLaren, our SVP of sales. Went up and met him and been a happy member of the team now for five, almost six years. That might be more information than you're asking for, but that's how I got into sales from then up until now. Chris Beall (07:57): Wow. That's really good. Thank you. That was really tight. Yeah, I remember talking to you. I remember that call when you called me. I was walking down Santa Cruz Avenue, Los Gatos, California. I was just about to go to the Great Bear Coffee shop and get myself I think it was an early afternoon latte. And I think we talked for quite a while. I think we talked for quite a while actually, and I was impressed that you would call me and that you actually used ConnectAndSell. And so I was pretty sure that you were going to do something here one way or another. You know it is kind of funny how many of our really, really top people in the company are former ConnectAndSell customers and users. And so James Townsend used to use ConnectAndSell, and he also ran part of a company called Halogen and did right things there. Donny Crawford, I was just talking to Donny as our Chief Flight Instructor. He used to go in and do job interviews when he was a rep. And he'd take them all the way through and they'd make him an offer and he'd go, "Oh by the way, I'm not working for you unless you get me ConnectAndSell. That was his thing. And you know Donny pretty well, it's kind of hard to imagine him doing something like that. Dan McClain (09:03): Yeah. It's interesting. Chris Beall (09:05): He was consistent on it. It's true. A lot of people. Jonti McLaren was our SVP of Sales and Marketing. Everybody thinks that Jonti joined the company because his dad is the Exec Chairman, was the CEO back in the day. But in fact that's not why at all. Jonti built his first company on top of ConnectAndSell and he sold it and did pretty well, right? His Tesla looks better than our Subaru I guess [inaudible 00:09:28] Dan McClain (09:28): Yeah. And wasn't his use case a little bit different? Was he the CEO of the company or the Chief something, and he was using it to find business but also to gauge the market interest in what he had? Chris Beall (09:40): Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting to me, you said your first sales job where you had a real sales job was like, "Go do it", was actually a market exploration job. And that's a pretty unusual sales job, especially for somebody whose kind of new to it. Think about it. It's like, "Why am I going to trust this new guy to go off and bring me a signal back from the market"? Somebody had a lot of faith in you. This job right now is kind of like that though, right? There's something about ConnectAndSell, you always feel like you're selling something new. Do you have any idea why that is? I mean it's kind of funny, right? Because I can describe it. I was talking to a potential investor today, and I can describe it in like two sentences and they get it. It's really hard to get business people on the phone in order to explore business to business. Right? It's just hard. ConnectAndSell lets you do that by pushing a button and waiting a few minutes, talking to somebody. That's it. That's what it does. And yet. Dan McClain (10:28): [inaudible 00:10:28]. Chris Beall (10:28): And yet. It's what is the factor that you see? Because this is about market dominance, right? So we're always talking about, okay you can use a human voice to dominate a market. You go right into somebody's midbrain, right in through their ear. Email gets blocked by all sorts of things. It doesn't get to you in spam. It sits there and annoys you. If you open it, you don't read it very much but it's only got 500 bits information in it or 5,000 bits to start with. Here you are inside of somebody's head. You know when you sit at a restaurant and it's quiet and you're trying to focus on something, I don't know you're reading your email or whatever. And the person next to you is chewing in a way that's just horrible. It's just obnoxious, right? You can't turn that off. Chris Beall (12:00): You can't make yourself not hear it. You're stuck, right? So when you cold call somebody, cold conversation them, you're inside their brain just like that chewing, but you better be doing a better job of whatever. Dan McClain (12:11): Yeah. Chris Beall (12:12): Some people get it, some people don't. What is it that you see that divides the sheep from the goats? Or as we say, the pigs from the weasels? Dan McClain (12:20): That's interesting. And I was on a very interesting blitz and coach session with a customer today. And we were listening. I think the one really huge thing is just the confidence in the voice. Am I talking to someone right out of college that's reading whatever they're saying off this piece of paper? Or do they sound like a peer that I may want to engage with? We had one of the reps and we said, "Hey, it sounds like you're reading off the script. And you have to stress the word I believe and sound like an expert". Very next call, we're listening. He goes, "I believe". He really stressed it, like overstressed it, and you could tell he got the person's attention. And he wasn't smooth, but he at least had added confidence to his pitch. Scheduled a meeting. Chris Beall (13:10): That's fascinating. So how did that happen with you? I mean the first time you pushed the button, you got a president standing over one shoulder, you got a vice president standing over the other, they're yelling at you. It's like having big Matt Forbes yell at and tell you to hit the button. Which [inaudible 00:13:25] used to do [inaudible 00:13:26] Dan McClain (13:25): Yeah. These were intimidating guys. Chris Beall (13:30): So you hit the button and it was confusing at first. When in that process, you got a couple meetings that day, did you get comfortable on the first day of ambushing people? Dan McClain (13:39): Absolutely. I got comfortable actually after the second conversation where the guy said, "Hey, busy. Call me next week". Because I knew he was interested. I knew he actually wanted to talk to me. The challenge was it was the CIO of a billion-dollar company. And it was that moment where internally I think I switched gears. And then when I had that third conversation, I didn't feel nervous anymore. I felt confident. And then it was just a natural conversation where I didn't sound like some young person that doesn't know what they're doing so they have to read something off a piece of paper. I sounded like a peer that maybe he actually wanted to engage with. And he had also expressed interest in what we did. Company was Suncor Energy, it was the CIO and they had said, "Yeah. We want to put Redwood Software", the company I worked for, "We want to put them as a line item on a 300 million process improvement project". So in the SAP space, we were on the bill of materials. We were one line item. Chris Beall (14:43): Wow. Dan McClain (14:43): Yeah. And after that third call, I actually put my feet up on the desk and I realized that ConnectAndSell was doing the worst part of my day. Sales Force, dial, voicemail, reschedule. Sales Force, dial, talk to that mean gatekeeper, voicemail. It did all that for me. Chris Beall (15:02): Yeah. Dan McClain (15:03): [Inaudible 00:15:03]. Chris Beall (15:03): It's interesting. So you got it like that, and now you sell it. So you get to watch people getting it or not getting it. And so you pointed out somebody sounds like they're reading because they are reading, or they haven't been coached to use their voice appropriately and they can get a little bit stuck. Do you have a point of view about the order in which things ought to happen? Like what we do today is we'll hold a test drive. And a test drive for those of you listen to this don't know what it is, it's a full day of production with ConnectAndSell. Chris Beall (15:37): Tony Safoian who was CEO over at SADA, I was on his podcast and I asked him, "Didn't you guys make some money during that test drive at ConnectAndSell?" And he laughed. And Billy Franz, whose his VP of Inside Sales at the time, said something along the lines of "Chris, we made tens of millions dollars pipeline that day". And that was in three hours, right? So you would kind of think, "Well, okay. No brainer. No brainer". But that's how we sell, and it works pretty well but sometimes people they won't even listen to you to take a test drive. Right? Dan McClain (16:13): That's true. Chris Beall (16:13): Have you broken that down in your mind as to why? I shouldn't say it's irrational, but we offer test drives for free. The test drive is always educational. It's always fun. I've never had one that wasn't fun. I've been associated with God knows how many of these things. 1800 of them or something like that. They're always fun. So you got something that's fun, your reps are going to like it, it's educational, it's going to reveal the truth about what they're saying. Dan McClain (16:40): Mm-hmm. Chris Beall (16:40): Oh my God. That'll be interesting. And yet folks often go, "Yeah, I don't know about that. I don't want to take that test drive". What do you think is going on inside those people? What do you do about it? If anything? Dan McClain (16:53): This is something that has baffled me that I've been pondering for years. I have no idea. And it's such an interesting thought, because when I came and joined the ConnectAndSell team I really thought it would be as easy as, "Hey, you're a VP of Sales? You want your people talking to 10 times more people? Let's do a free test drive. Free". I really thought it was that easy. And then when I flew up and met with you and with Jonti, we went out for sushi. It was big Matt Forbes and Sean McLaren. Sean McLaren left, and then it was just me and Matt Forbes and he goes, "Hey, listen. Hey, listen buddy. This job is not easy. It's really hard". And I thought, "Nah". He really impressed upon me how hard it would be. And then actually a day before my official start date, I came up to that... There was an AA-ISP trade show in Dallas. And I'm thinking to myself, "I know how to use ConnectAndSell. I don't really understand this whole breakthrough framework we have". But I had it printed out and I'm thinking, "I better show Chris and Jonti that I'm not afraid and I better get on and use. And I better do it in front of them". That was a little bit scary. But I think I've kind of veered from your question. I don't know the answer to that question. Chris Beall (18:13): I don't either. I don't either. I always think it's like somebody says, "Okay, so here's the deal. Now mind you, it's only going to be one day but we're going to fly you and the kids to Disney World. And you're going to get to spend a whole day at Disney world and you're going to get to have nice meals at the restaurants and it's going to all be nice. Unfortunately, the sad part is it's only one day and you're going to have to fly home, but at least you'll know what Disney World's like. You'll know whether you and the kids like it". Right? Dan McClain (18:40): Yeah. Chris Beall (18:41): And I bet if you made that offer to some folks they'd go, "Ah, I don't know about that. That doesn't sound quite right to me". I don't know what it is though, but it's a very similar offer I think. There's got to be something hiding in there that neither you and nor I have figured out yet. Chris Beall (18:56): I have a bit of a thesis. It's got two parts. One is the too good to be true thing. That's too good to be true. Well in a way, rationally, what does it matter? But I don't want to waste my time. But I think the other thing is it kind of sounds like something that could be a bit of exposure for you if you're a sales leader. Dan McClain (19:19): Yeah. True. Chris Beall (19:20): And a little bit of exposure can go a long ways if you're not comfortable with it, and a long ways in a negative direction. And that may well be. That kind of speaks to market dominance. We talk about on this show, the only safe position to be in a market is a dominant position. Otherwise, someone else by definition is in the dominant position. And if they're in the dominant position, then you're working at their discretion. They can choose whether you live or die. The dominant player can always come undercut you on price, overspend you on whatever, out raise you on capital, attract better talent, have a snowball effect from better customers who then are willing to reference other customers. You name it. There's a book called The Gorilla Game that's about this very thing. Dan McClain (20:08): Mm. Chris Beall (20:09): As Geoffrey Moore wrote it back after he wrote Crossing the Chasm. And The Gorilla Game basically says this: In innovation anyway, and tech especially, all the chips go to the dominant player. The dominant player rakes in 90 plus percent of all the profits that will ever be achieved in that category. They take them all. And everybody else kind of serves them, whether they know it or not. They can think they're competing, but they don't know. Chris Beall (20:34): Sometimes I wonder whether folks... I don't say want it or not, but whether it's an uncomfortable idea trying to go after that dominant position rather than, "Well, at least this is the devil I know. And I'm kind of getting along. Why rock the boat, right? Why throw the grenade? Roll it down the hall and see what happens"? Do you ever feel that, or am I just kind of in a crazy place here? Dan McClain (21:01): Well I always try to look at things in the most simple manner. And when I think about that, I think what is the average tenure now of a VP of Sales? Is it 11 months? Is that still? Chris Beall (21:16): Well it's 17 months end to end. So if you're selling to him, you're catching them eight and a half months from their departure on average. Dan McClain (21:25): Yeah. I think if you catch them right in the middle, they're in a good spot. But if they're too new, they're too new. They're over their head swimming. Or if they've been there and they know they're on their way out, maybe there's apathy or maybe they're concentrating on where they're going to land next. It's certainly interesting. And it's also interesting the VP of Sales today is certainly not the VP of Sales even four or five years ago. Chris Beall (21:51): Hmm. How's that? Dan McClain (21:53): From what I see, they're not in control of as much budget. Or they just don't have as much decision-making authority. I'm seeing marketing departments have more, or just the CEO being more involved in those decisions. Chris Beall (22:07): Got it. Well we've always said, I've always said here, one of the challenges... And this is a market dominance challenge people got to think about is, marketing has budget for money, sales has budget for heads. Dan McClain (22:18): Yeah. Chris Beall (22:19): That's the tradition. And so sales leaders, their first order of execution is to make sure they got enough heads for next year. That's your number one job, right? It's your capital source. Dan McClain (22:30): Yeah. Chris Beall (22:31): So if you're an entrepreneur, you raise money in order to have enough capital to go to market and spend what you've got to spend to get the market you want and then also have a buffer against the unknown. And I think the way a VP of Sales might think about things is, "Hey, so it's November. My big problem is making sure I don't have 62 people, but that I've got 73 people. Because that's going to be my buffer". And now when we're assigning quota and we assign straight up, when some things happen say my top person walks out on day one of the fiscal, and now I'm going to face it. Because I don't think everybody really knows this, but you're going to pay about one times quota to replace your top rep if they walk out on the first day of the fiscal. If you do the math, it's going to be about their whole quota. Million-dollar rep is going to cost you a million dollars. Dan McClain (23:23): Wow. That's interesting. Chris Beall (23:24): Helen and I were talking about it. She was talking about a hundred-million-dollar rep. Imagine them leaving on the first day of the fiscal. Dan McClain (23:31): Wow. Chris Beall (23:32): That happens, right? I mean these are big, big numbers that are crawling around here. Dan McClain (23:35): That can be devastating. And I can't tell you how many times in the last six months I've heard it's really easy to go hire someone, it's really hard to go buy ConnectAndSell.

“When you share your life nuggets, you don’t know when it’s going to matter to someone,” observes Elena Hesse, our Market Dominance Guys’ guest and the Vice President of Operations of Thomson Reuters’ tax and accounting professionals in this third of three podcast episodes with our hosts, Chris Beall and Corey Frank. For the past four years, Elena has led the “NoTimeToRead Book Club” for #GirlsClub, an organization dedicated to changing the face of sales leadership by empowering more women to earn roles in management. Corey starts off the conversation by asking Elena to describe what happens in a book club that doesn’t require reading the book. “A book is just a vehicle for a conversation. You never know when something is going to resonate,” she says, as she explains how the subject matter generates ideas and experiences that club members share with each other. And just like the book club participants, Corey, Chris, and Elena share ideas and personal insights of their own, which cover everything from the sales benefits of a live conversation over an emailed message to the trust-creating habit of asking for clarification when you don’t understand something. As Chris says, “The essence of curiosity is embracing our ignorance.” So, get ready to open your mind and heart to embrace what these three experienced salespeople share with each other — and with you — about the essence of this week’s Market Dominance Guys podcast, “Why Conversations Matter.”   About Our Guest Elena T. Hesse, Vice President, Operations – Tax & Accounting Professionals at Thomson Reuters, has been with this firm for more than 30 years. Elena is also a thought leader for #GirlsClub, leading the book club discussions to support #GirlsClub and its continuing work of changing the face of sales leadership by empowering more women to earn roles in management. Full episode transcript below:   Corey Frank (01:46): Elena, one last question for you, maybe a good plug for what we were talking about here towards the end about empowering women leadership, particularly in sales and tech, which you're at the heart of certainly at Thomson. You have a book club, The No Time to Read Book Club. Maybe you can end this with a little plug for the book club, and what you do, and maybe some of the learnings over the years leading that? Elena Hesse (02:05): Absolutely. One, the reason that the book club even exists, in a way, is because of Chris Beall. Because Chris, you told Lauren Bailey about me, and she reached out to me for Girls Club, so that all happened. Elena Hesse (02:22): So, in the Girls Club organization, which I'm a part of as a thought leader, Lauren and Angela, there's so many great people there, we have this book club. We do it for each cohort. I think this is our third or fourth year. What I really love about the book club is that it's really a time for women. Sometimes there are men too, so this is not just a one gender conversation. Elena Hesse (02:49): The first book I pick, the next two, they pick. It tells you where their heads are. Where are they looking for help? Where do they want some insights? And we just talk. We read the book. Sometimes they don't read the book. I'll be honest with you, there's a reason for the title. It's hard to squeeze in book reading sometimes. Elena Hesse (03:08): A lot of the women in Girls Club, if I were making a general statement, I would say are women with families. A lot of times you got young kids. Time's precious, so we don't use that as a filter, if you will. So, we have a book club in which reading the book is not necessarily needed, because I always read the book. Elena Hesse (03:26): There's always some people that read the book, and we just go through the highlights, and share our personal stories as they relate to the books. I don't know if it's any more magical than that, Corey. It's really people coming together to say, "Never thought about that," or "This how I reacted to it." When you're sharing your life nuggets, you don't know when it's going to matter to somebody. Elena Hesse (03:48): I will make a point to our conversation and how it all started, Chris. You flatter me and humble me with remembering a statement that I made many years ago, frankly that I would never have been able to repeat back to you if you asked me, do you remember what you said? I would not have been able to, right? Elena Hesse (04:07): You never know when the teacher arrives. The student has to be ready. I'm not saying you're a student in that respect, but you never know when something's going to resonate. You never know. So, anytime you can bring people together with some level of continuity to the conversation, a book, that's just a vehicle for a conversation. Elena Hesse (04:28): A good book club, that is just the muse. You could go in lots of different directions and learn about each other, and walk away with something that no one would've thought that one little something would've mattered. Elena Hesse (04:41): So, I like to have spontaneous interesting conversations because I never know what I'm going to learn something. God knows I never could have repeated back that quote you told me. I'm very happy that I gave you something that meant something, obviously. I bet you we all have things that resonated with us and the person who delivered it had no idea what they were delivered to you. Corey Frank (05:01): Well, Elena, we have almost 200 episodes of this podcast stemming from my purely selfish desire to get inside the head of Chris Beall, so welcome to the club. I think that's a beautiful way to end this episode, especially since you're almost going to make Chris cry again. Chris Beall (05:16): It's working, it's working. Elena Hesse (05:18): You are not crying, don't tell me that. Are you? Chris Beall (05:23): I am, but I won't even hide it very well. Yes, Corey knows me well. The fact is, we all have so much to learn from each other. The essence of curiosity is embracing our ignorance. Elena Hesse (05:35): Yes, yes. Chris Beall (05:36): Really being enthusiastic about our ignorance. I love being ignorant. It's my favorite thing in the world. Whenever I think I know something, it makes me nervous. Elena Hesse (05:46): Yeah. Like, do you really know it? You've got to be vulnerable to that. I'll be in conversations, and if someone says a word that I don't know, I will say, "Stop, please. Can you tell me that means? Because I don't know what you're saying right now." I'm sure I've looked really ridiculous, but I don't care. Corey Frank (06:03): No, just the opposite, Elena. I think that's endearing. I think that for somebody who understands the courage it takes, especially at a manager or director, vice president C-level, to stop and ask a question like that? Hey, an acronym you'd use. Especially in sales, we throw around these all the time. Elena Hesse (06:19): Gosh, yeah. Corey Frank (06:20): I think, to me, there's got to be some Chris Voss, Candyland shortcut, that really engenders trust very, very quickly, like a shortcut if you say, "Stop, what does that mean? I don't understand that". We could you feel the burden on you and the trust part just catalyzes from there. Elena Hesse (06:40): Because typically people are saying things that are important, and you want to have the same vocabulary or knowledge so you can move faster, kind of back to our original statements. Chris Beall (06:49): Yeah. Well, everybody's an expert on thousands, millions of things, in fact. We just don't know what they are until we have a conversation. We have a little tagline at ConnectAndSell, and I've had branding people talk to me about, "Why don't you change that and make it fresher?" Conversations matter. Chris Beall (07:06): It's not that they matter for selling, they just matter. We just can't figure stuff out on our own, because our own experiences take us inside our own experiences. We need to be inside of other people's experiences in order to be able to gain access to what they're an expert at. Chris Beall (07:28): Everybody's an expert at millions of things. It's not limited. You think of how long a life is, think about all the years. Years? Try milliseconds. We learn stuff hundreds of times a second. We can't really share it with anybody unless we have a conversation. You have to have that high velocity, 20,000 bits a second, right into the mid brain. Then we have a shot. Elena Hesse (07:53): Yeah, and let's absorb it, and be brave enough to maybe change a position if you hear something that makes sense. Don't get too buried in your own belief. Pick your values. But what I believe in, because I'm using those very differently, it could change a little bit because your experience has showed me something I never saw before. Elena Hesse (08:15): Now, that's why I think ... I'm not going to get political, I promise. But just generally ... both sides of the aisle, once you pick a position, you got to stay consistent or else you're not considered credible. I want a leader who takes it all in, and makes decisions that are right, not just following a pattern of an echo chamber. So, it's okay to say you're wrong. Corey Frank (08:41): Oftentimes. Chris Beall (08:42): Well, Corey's wrong all the time, so. Corey Frank (08:44): Yeah, just ask my wife. Right, exactly. Chris Beall (08:48): ... Into little diamonds. Elena Hesse (08:52): Sure. Chris Beall (08:52): This was the best conversation I've had in a long, long time. Corey Frank (08:54): Oh yeah. Elena Hesse (08:54): You're sweet. You guys are very flattering. I don't know if you do this for everybody else, but you make people feel good to participate. I was very happy to do so. I've learned things. I've jotted down books and movies. Corey Frank (09:09): Yeah. Chris Beall (09:09): I keep thinking of Little China. Go watch that one, that's a good movie. Corey Frank (09:12): Yeah. My wife knows there's no such thing as a quick conversation with Chris because it's so tangential. You talk about a lot, about a lot of things. Corey Frank (09:22): I've known Chris for a long time. I've never heard the primates example, but this is a guy that reads scientific journals for fun all the time. It's the Jiro thing. Jiro the movie, he dreams of sushi because he's such a craftsman that is so entrenched. As they say, "By the work, they shall know the workman." Elena Hesse (09:45): Yeah. Corey Frank (09:45): So, he's dreaming of sushi. You're like, "Come on, it's just fish. It's a meal. Can't you go drive through somewhere, or go to one of those things in Japan where they go around and grab the sushi?" Corey Frank (09:54): It's like, no, you're missing the point. "Well, can't I dial and talk to people? Can't I just email? Isn't it the same." It's going to take a little bit longer, but come on. You're missing the art, and the honor, and the dignity of the profession. Elena Hesse (10:06): Yeah, I love those last few things you just said, the art, and the honor, and the dignity of our profession. Chris Beall (10:14): I think we would do well to spend more time with our sales teams on these topics. Elena Hesse (10:23): Yeah. Chris Beall (10:24): People will say, "Well, sales is an honorable profession," all that kind of stuff. I don't think most people selling in the innovation economy even get what they're doing, why they're so important. Chris Beall (11:29): We tend to, I think sadly, by leaving the coin operated comp plans in place, we actually insult our salespeople by saying ... This is a Japanese thing. I spent a lot of time in Japan at one point in my life doing a big joint venture with Mitsui, so dealing with board level people there. They're very happy to let you be yourself, but if you're open, they're happy to teach you about what it's like to be them, which is really kind of interesting. Chris Beall (12:02): The thing that characterized Japanese society more than anything else was that it's insulting to tip somebody, and yet we pay our sales people by tipping them. The commission is a tip, right? The implication in Japan, the thing that's so insulting, is you're saying to them, "I don't believe you would've done your job with excellence unless I gave you this additional financial incentive." Chris Beall (12:30): That's an absolute insult to a Japanese person to say, "You did it for the money." You went the extra mile not because of who you are and your commitment to the excellence of what you're doing and the joy of serving somebody. You did it because you're trying to get 20% instead of 18%. It's the deepest insult. Chris Beall (12:53): I think that we have a hangover in our society from sales at the crossroads where a commission would make sense. Because basically I trick you into buying and I should be rewarded for it. That's kind of what it was. Chris Beall (13:08): Now, here we are, we're actually in partnership with people we have not yet met. That's the essence of the modern sales person, is your tribe includes people you have not yet met that you're going to help, that you're going to be curious about, and you're going to help. Yet we base our compensation schemes on the notion that you wouldn't really do it unless there was something in it for you. Elena Hesse (13:31): So, I'm curious. I will say this, when I first started in sales and probably the reason that I was willing to go into a sales position, because I'm a CPA, so that part of my brain was like, "What? commissions?" I don't want to put anything at risk. Elena Hesse (13:47): But when I started at Creative Solutions, they did not have commissions. It was straight salary, there was no anything. But kind of to your point, we looked at reports all the time to see who was selling the most. That was driving behavior, but it wasn't paying based on that behavior. Elena Hesse (14:07): So, my question to you Chris, since you've had a lot of exposure here, how do the Japanese companies pay their sales reps? Is it strictly a salary? Is there no differentiation for excellence? They just don't use money for that? What do you see? Chris Beall (14:22): Well, in their sales world, God knows what they do. I never got into that. That was not part of what I was ... It's funny, I never felt in these long relationships that we were putting together that anybody was working me for a commission. I never felt that, not even for a minute. Chris Beall (14:40): I never also felt, I have no instances to counter this, that a handshake wasn't as good as a contract. Never, not once. There was no like, "Here's a word here. We could do this," or whatever. You didn't do deals other than on an achievement of mutual understanding of what you were going to do next. That was the deal itself. There was no other deal. I don't know if I recognize these people- Elena Hesse (15:06): A lot of trust. Chris Beall (15:07): ... but I do know that every time I would go to leave Narita Airport in Tokyo, there's a yellow line that you cross and you're no longer in Japan when you cross that line. I would stop at that line. Elena Hesse (15:27): And like have [inaudible 00:15:29]? Chris Beall (15:29): I would stop, because I felt like I was leaving civilization. We have examples there. We don't need to have this corrupting system, where I have to grease your palm a little bit before you'll carry my suitcase. We don't have that everywhere. We have salaried positions. We trust our engineers to work without tipping them for a line of code, or giving a commission. Chris Beall (15:52): Can you imagine? "You wrote 26 lines of code today, $55, yay." No, we would actually be concerned, like "Oh my God, this stuff's got to work. That could be sloppy." I want it to be right. What do they get? They get their stock options, and they get their opportunity for promotion, and they get their career, which is actually worth more than all that put together. Chris Beall (16:13): You get your reputation, you get your career, you get the fact that you can walk out the door without taking a single step. You get all of that. I think we still have got a cultural hangover. We got untrapped from the office, and we can now choose to use the office. But we've never gotten untrapped from the coin-operated notion of a salesperson. Elena Hesse (16:36): It's a very distracting part of the business, because if you don't have the coin-operated machine well oiled, highly tuned, with all the variations, it's like a pinball machine, as I pull it back, I'm trying to hit as many things as I possibly can. If I hit them and didn't get paid, now my focus as a salesperson is, "System's not working. How much do I need to get paid?" I'm in the back of my mind, at the very least. That's distracting me from my relationships. Corey Frank (17:10): Well, the social contract, they're going to feel is broken. Elena Hesse (17:14): Exactly. Corey Frank (17:15): "You hired me, and you're going to spend all this money on all these MarTech back tools. I follow your playbook, I should have six figures, and I should hit my quota." When I don't, it's tough to look introspectively, I've got to look at probably the leads, my boss, my manager, my comp plan, my commute, whatever it is that's natural. Corey Frank (17:37): Actually, in the movie, in Jiro they talk about that other concept we've heard, Kaizen, that continuous improvement, that main kind of principle. But the piece that they talk about in Jiro, [foreign language 00:17:48], a incredible book from the 17th Century about the Samurai way and the Japanese. They call it ikigai. It's finding one's central satisfaction and meaning in life. It's the reason for being. Elena Hesse (18:02): For your personal reason for being? Corey Frank (18:05): Your own personal reason for being. That's one of the Japanese philosophies that they have, is that it describes your value and your own worth, to you. It's your life, and your purpose. When you, like Chris, you go around Tokyo, the cabs are impeccably cleaned. They're like 1986 Maximas. The cab drivers are impeccably dressed and they wear white gloves. Elena Hesse (18:29): Wow. Corey Frank (18:31): They're beautiful. Chris Beall (18:31): And they smell good, the cabs smell good, they smell great. They all smell the same, they all smell great. Corey Frank (18:37): I think that pride starts at home. That pride of ... If I cared about my title, I'd be a banker. But if I'm a salesperson, the only thing I have to show, I can't have really my title, I got to have my stuff, my currency, which is [inaudible 00:18:52]. Elena Hesse (18:51): Yeah. I never thought about it that way, but yeah. Corey Frank (18:54): Other currency, which is learning, curiosity, being supportive, group, et cetera. But anyway. Chris Beall (19:00): I think the lock-in comes from the market. We pay our salespeople commission because the lock-in comes from the market. The lock-in to the office came from the market, and then the market blew up because it turned out it was better to work from home than to die. But that's what it took. It actually took- Elena Hesse (19:18): A pandemic. Chris Beall (19:19): "Otherwise we're going to die." The fact that we commuted for an insane amount of ... Truly, if you just think about it, we did an episode on this, the hundreds of billions of dollars in the hours spent just commuting makes no sense, once you figured out how to do something remotely. Chris Beall (19:39): You can't go back and find them and go, "We were so good when we were together, that it was worth two things." One is all the commuting, and two is having our entire talent pool be within 50 miles of us instead of everybody on earth. Those things were incredibly valuable. They weren't incredibly valuable, they were locked in. Elena Hesse (19:56): So, I have a point. I know you got to leave in a minute and I'm going to respect that. But I will say this onto return to work. I believe in everything you just said. There's a lot of was in commuting. However, I can't accidentally bump into anyone on a video call. I can't do it. Elena Hesse (20:16): My learnings come from accidentally bumping into the world I live in. If I'm not at least coming into a central place where other people that I want to bump into are there periodically, I'm talking about hybrid, like two days a week, then I lose. The company loses. But it's a really hard message to get across to people who are so used to now working from home all the time. Because it's hard to argue your productivity comment. I am probably more productive- Chris Beall (20:43): Or the rest of your life. It's like, who are you working for? Are you working for the man, so to speak? By the way, my one minute may come here. Chris Beall (20:53): I think what we're going to see on this topic is we're going to see the market play out. The market is now for top talent. The top talent is simply, they're going to call the game. The rest of us who hire top talent, we're in the thrall of those people. They are our customers, and that's it. Chris Beall (21:16): It's not a very subtle game at this point. It's simply, what do they want? If they want to bump into people, well, maybe they'll bump into people. Here's where I think they'll end up going. Corey knows I'm a mathematician by background, and that I've never lost that hideous nature. The math says that we should get together, but less frequently and more intensely. Chris Beall (21:38): So, where the conferences used to be to meet customers, we will start having conferences to be with each other, and to actually take that time truly away from other things, and not just bump into each other, but bump into each other with a little intentionality, but still bump into each other. Chris Beall (21:58): The other flip is, when you do that, it's like opening a digital relationship with a conversation. When you get together, immediately, and I do mean immediately and I've charted this stuff, you start interacting differently with the people you were just with physically when you're texting them, so it's a catalyst for that future. Chris Beall (22:21): But two days a week, I think, might be a little much. But two days a month all getting together, maybe not at the office but somewhere else where ... Because the flights are cheap. The hotel venues or whatever, conference venues, are cheap. When people get away, they focus with each other, and you can have fun. Fun is the other thing. People got to have fun together. Elena Hesse (22:48): Yeah. I think your point is right on, and I think that's one of the reasons that we successfully lifted and shifted in COVID, is because we already had the tapestry of trust within physical contact with my team. Then we were able to go and continue that. Elena Hesse (23:05): The problem is, as we were hiring people remotely, we don't have that physical connection, that meeting up with each other. I don't know the 100% remote people as well. I just don't. We got to create situations. We can talk all day. Chris Beall (23:21): I'll make one more point. You have a 20,000-bit-per-second channel into somebody's mid-brain in a conversation, and I don't think we pick up the phone enough. I talked for 42 minutes this morning with one of my reps, that I had no reason whatsoever to speak with when I woke up this morning. Chris Beall (23:38): Mark and I now have got this 42 minutes. That's 42 minutes, times 60 seconds a minute, times 20,000 bits of emotion-laden information even though we don't think of it that way. What were we talking about? Friction in our sales process. We were getting down into the nuances of, "If you do it in this order, there's friction. But this order, there's no friction. So, are you willing to try it in this order instead of the traditional order?" Chris Beall (24:07): It was bumping into each other. Why? Because there was a conversation, that somebody who sets meetings for me, had with somebody that Mark's going to do a test drive with. I wanted those two to talk in a debriefed sense. So, I sent a text to both of them. Then mark said, "You sent me a text," and he called me, and we bumped into each other. Elena Hesse (24:28): That's great. Chris Beall (24:29): The key, I think, is to get away from the damned email and thinking that you're communicating when you're sending email, because you aren't. Elena Hesse (24:39): Yeah. That's one of the reasons I like Teams Chat. It's the closest thing to bumping into somebody I can do, because I can spontaneously say, "Do you got two minutes, because I need to pick your brain." Chris Beall (24:53): Yeah. Well, Helen sells that stuff, so I'll tell you how much value. That's Teams Chat. Chris Beall (24:59): By the way, I've been listening conversations at Microsoft about what they want their customers to do, because she's now customer success. The only word I heard yesterday, and I heard it over and over, is phone, which is really, really interesting. Chris Beall (25:14): She has people working for her in customer success who actually are spontaneously asking, "Can we do some cold calling? I want to talk to people outside of the IT people we're talking with." Elena Hesse (25:25): That's awesome. Chris Beall (25:26): Customer success is the new sales, and thank God we don't pay them commissions. That's where I'm going to end this. Elena, I tell you what, next chance we have, let's get together somewhere. Elena Hesse (25:39): Yes. Chris Beall (25:41): This was a great get together though. Elena Hesse (25:43): Yeah, this was awesome. I very much appreciate it. Nice to meet you Corey, and nice to get to know you more, Chris Beall. Congratulations on your upcoming wedding. Chris Beall (25:51): Thank you. Elena Hesse (25:52): Helen sounds fantastic, if she could have captured the heart and the mind of Chris. Chris Beall (25:58): She wins. No, I win. I'm the lucky one. Elena Hesse (26:01): Oh, you're sweet. Chris Beall (26:02): I'm just a lucky old beast. Corey calls himself a big dumb farm animal. I'm just a lucky beast that wandered into the right corral. Corey Frank (26:09): Well, Elena, it's been a absolute pleasure. Thank you for finally saying yes to this, which I'm sure was Chris's frequent torments to you to "Come on the show, come on the show." So, thank you for finally saying yes. Corey Frank (26:21): So, another episode in the books, Chris, with one of the best yet, with one of the brightest yet. So, with Cory Frank coming in for our Chris Beall, the Sage of Sales, the profit of profit. Elena, you're now the Curator of Curiosity, how about that? Elena Hesse (26:34): I'll take it. Corey Frank (26:36): We [inaudible 00:26:37] in the title, it looks great. Chris Beall (26:37): I love it. Corey Frank (26:38): Until next time, this is the Market Dominance Guys.    

“When you go to a doctor, do you want that doctor to be excellent — or okay?” Elena Hesse, our Market Dominance Guys’ guest and the Vice President of Operations of Thomson Reuters’ tax and accounting professionals, poses this question to our podcast hosts, Corey Frank and Chris Beall. Their answer — and yours too, no doubt — is that they want doctors who love their job and do it extremely well. Elena, Chris, and Corey talk about how this equates to the role of the salesperson. In the old days, sales was generally a “hit and run” affair. You’d probably never see your customers again once the sale was made, so there was little reason to provide true value in a product or to develop and maintain a relationship with a customer. But in the modern world, most of us want to sell our customers an upgrade or an add-on or a renewal. So, product value and excellent customer relations are essential. In other words, if you want to be successful in sales today, our three sales experts say that it’s crucial to have skin in the game. Oh, yeh. It’s self-examination time. Evaluate your personal investment in your job as you listen to today’s Market Dominance Guys’ episode. “Do You Have Skin in the Game?”   About Our Guest Elena T. Hesse, Vice President, Operations – Tax & Accounting Professionals at Thomson Reuters, has been with this firm for more than 13 years. Elena is also a thought leader for #GirlsClub, leading the book club discussions to support #GirlsClub and its continuing work of changing the face of sales leadership by empowering more women to earn roles in management. Full episode transcript below: Announcer (00:23): "When you share your life nuggets, you don't know when it's going to matter to someone," observes Elena Hesse, our Market Dominance Guys guest, and the Vice President of Operations of Thompson Reuters Tax and Accounting Professionals, in this third of three podcast episodes with our host Chris Beall and Corey Frank. Announcer (00:39): For the past four years, Elena has led The No Time to Read Book Club for The Girls Club, an organization dedicated to changing the face of sales leadership by empowering more women to earn roles in management. Announcer (00:51): Corey starts off the conversation by asking Elena to describe what happens in a book club that doesn't require reading a book? She says, "A book is just a vehicle for a conversation. You never know when something's going to resonate." Announcer (01:03): She explains how the subject matter generates ideas and experiences that club members share with each other. Just like the book club participants, Corey, Chris, and Elena share ideas and personal insights of their own, which cover everything from the sales benefits of a live conversation over an email message, to the trust creating habit of asking for clarification when you don't understand something. Announcer (01:26): As Chris says, the essence of curiosity is embracing our ignorance. So, get ready to open your mind and heart to embrace what these three experienced sales people share with each other and with you about the essence of this week's Market Dominance Guys podcast, Why Conversations Matter. Corey Frank (01:46): Elena, one last question for you, maybe a good plug for what we were talking about here towards the end about empowering women leadership, particularly in sales and tech, which you're at the heart of certainly at Thomson. You have a book club, The No Time to Read Book Club. Maybe you can end this with a little plug for the book club, and what you do, and maybe some of the learnings over the years leading that? Elena Hesse (02:05): Absolutely. One, the reason that the book club even exists, in a way, is because of Chris Beall. Because Chris, you told Lauren Bailey about me, and she reached out to me for Girls Club, so that all happened. Elena Hesse (02:22): So, in the Girls Club organization, which I'm a part of as a thought leader, Lauren and Angela, there's so many great people there, we have this book club. We do it for each cohort. I think this is our third or fourth year. What I really love about the book club is that it's really a time for women. Sometimes there are men too, so this is not just a one gender conversation. Elena Hesse (02:49): The first book I pick, the next two, they pick. It tells you where their heads are. Where are they looking for help? Where do they want some insights? And we just talk. We read the book. Sometimes they don't read the book. I'll be honest with you, there's a reason for the title. It's hard to squeeze in book reading sometimes. Elena Hesse (03:08): A lot of the women in Girls Club, if I were making a general statement, I would say are women with families. A lot of times you got young kids. Time's precious, so we don't use that as a filter, if you will. So, we have a book club in which reading the book is not necessarily needed, because I always read the book. Elena Hesse (03:26): There's always some people that read the book, and we just go through the highlights, and share our personal stories as they relate to the books. I don't know if it's any more magical than that, Corey. It's really people coming together to say, "Never thought about that," or "This how I reacted to it." When you're sharing your life nuggets, you don't know when it's going to matter to somebody. Elena Hesse (03:48): I will make a point to our conversation and how it all started, Chris. You flatter me and humble me with remembering a statement that I made many years ago, frankly that I would never have been able to repeat back to you if you asked me, do you remember what you said? I would not have been able to, right? Elena Hesse (04:07): You never know when the teacher arrives. The student has to be ready. I'm not saying you're a student in that respect, but you never know when something's going to resonate. You never know. So, anytime you can bring people together with some level of continuity to the conversation, a book, that's just a vehicle for a conversation. Elena Hesse (04:28): A good book club, that is just the muse. You could go in lots of different directions and learn about each other, and walk away with something that no one would've thought that one little something would've mattered. Elena Hesse (04:41): So, I like to have spontaneous interesting conversations because I never know what I'm going to learn something. God knows I never could have repeated back that quote you told me. I'm very happy that I gave you something that meant something, obviously. I bet you we all have things that resonated with us and the person who delivered it had no idea what they were delivered to you. Corey Frank (05:01): Well, Elena, we have almost 200 episodes of this podcast stemming from my purely selfish desire to get inside the head of Chris Beall, so welcome to the club. I think that's a beautiful way to end this episode, especially since you're almost going to make Chris cry again. Chris Beall (05:16): It's working, it's working. Elena Hesse (05:18): You are not crying, don't tell me that. Are you? Chris Beall (05:23): I am, but I won't even hide it very well. Yes, Corey knows me well. The fact is, we all have so much to learn from each other. The essence of curiosity is embracing our ignorance. Elena Hesse (05:35): Yes, yes. Chris Beall (05:36): Really being enthusiastic about our ignorance. I love being ignorant. It's my favorite thing in the world. Whenever I think I know something, it makes me nervous. Elena Hesse (05:46): Yeah. Like, do you really know it? You've got to be vulnerable to that. I'll be in conversations, and if someone says a word that I don't know, I will say, "Stop, please. Can you tell me that means? Because I don't know what you're saying right now." I'm sure I've looked really ridiculous, but I don't care. Corey Frank (06:03): No, just the opposite, Elena. I think that's endearing. I think that for somebody who understands the courage it takes, especially at a manager or director, vice president C-level, to stop and ask a question like that? Hey, an acronym you'd use. Especially in sales, we throw around these all the time. Elena Hesse (06:19): Gosh, yeah. Corey Frank (06:20): I think, to me, there's got to be some Chris Voss, Candyland shortcut, that really engenders trust very, very quickly, like a shortcut if you say, "Stop, what does that mean? I don't understand that". We could you feel the burden on you and the trust part just catalyzes from there. Elena Hesse (06:40): Because typically people are saying things that are important, and you want to have the same vocabulary or knowledge so you can move faster, kind of back to our original statements. Chris Beall (06:49): Yeah. Well, everybody's an expert on thousands, millions of things, in fact. We just don't know what they are until we have a conversation. We have a little tagline at ConnectAndSell, and I've had branding people talk to me about, "Why don't you change that and make it fresher?" Conversations matter. Chris Beall (07:06): It's not that they matter for selling, they just matter. We just can't figure stuff out on our own, because our own experiences take us inside our own experiences. We need to be inside of other people's experiences in order to be able to gain access to what they're an expert at. Chris Beall (07:28): Everybody's an expert at millions of things. It's not limited. You think of how long a life is, think about all the years. Years? Try milliseconds. We learn stuff hundreds of times a second. We can't really share it with anybody unless we have a conversation. You have to have that high velocity, 20,000 bits a second, right into the mid brain. Then we have a shot. Elena Hesse (07:53): Yeah, and let's absorb it, and be brave enough to maybe change a position if you hear something that makes sense. Don't get too buried in your own belief. Pick your values. But what I believe in, because I'm using those very differently, it could change a little bit because your experience has showed me something I never saw before. Elena Hesse (08:15): Now, that's why I think ... I'm not going to get political, I promise. But just generally ... both sides of the aisle, once you pick a position, you got to stay consistent or else you're not considered credible. I want a leader who takes it all in, and makes decisions that are right, not just following a pattern of an echo chamber. So, it's okay to say you're wrong. Corey Frank (08:41): Oftentimes. Chris Beall (08:42): Well, Corey's wrong all the time, so. Corey Frank (08:44): Yeah, just ask my wife. Right, exactly. Chris Beall (08:48): ... Into little diamonds. Elena Hesse (08:52): Sure. Chris Beall (08:52): This was the best conversation I've had in a long, long time. Corey Frank (08:54): Oh yeah. Elena Hesse (08:54): You're sweet. You guys are very flattering. I don't know if you do this for everybody else, but you make people feel good to participate. I was very happy to do so. I've learned things. I've jotted down books and movies. Corey Frank (09:09): Yeah. Chris Beall (09:09): I keep thinking of Little China. Go watch that one, that's a good movie. Corey Frank (09:12): Yeah. My wife knows there's no such thing as a quick conversation with Chris because it's so tangential. You talk about a lot, about a lot of things. Corey Frank (09:22): I've known Chris for a long time. I've never heard the primates example, but this is a guy that reads scientific journals for fun all the time. It's the Jiro thing. Jiro the movie, he dreams of sushi because he's such a craftsman that is so entrenched. As they say, "By the work, they shall know the workman." Elena Hesse (09:45): Yeah. Corey Frank (09:45): So, he's dreaming of sushi. You're like, "Come on, it's just fish. It's a meal. Can't you go drive through somewhere, or go to one of those things in Japan where they go around and grab the sushi?" Corey Frank (09:54): It's like, no, you're missing the point. "Well, can't I dial and talk to people? Can't I just email? Isn't it the same." It's going to take a little bit longer, but come on. You're missing the art, and the honor, and the dignity of the profession. Elena Hesse (10:06): Yeah, I love those last few things you just said, the art, and the honor, and the dignity of our profession. Chris Beall (10:14): I think we would do well to spend more time with our sales teams on these topics. Elena Hesse (10:23): Yeah. Chris Beall (10:24): People will say, "Well, sales is an honorable profession," all that kind of stuff. I don't think most people selling in the innovation economy even get what they're doing, why they're so important. Chris Beall (11:29): We tend to, I think sadly, by leaving the coin operated comp plans in place, we actually insult our salespeople by saying ... This is a Japanese thing. I spent a lot of time in Japan at one point in my life doing a big joint venture with Mitsui, so dealing with board level people there. They're very happy to let you be yourself, but if you're open, they're happy to teach you about what it's like to be them, which is really kind of interesting. Chris Beall (12:02): The thing that characterized Japanese society more than anything else was that it's insulting to tip somebody, and yet we pay our sales people by tipping them. The commission is a tip, right? The implication in Japan, the thing that's so insulting, is you're saying to them, "I don't believe you would've done your job with excellence unless I gave you this additional financial incentive." Chris Beall (12:30): That's an absolute insult to a Japanese person to say, "You did it for the money." You went the extra mile not because of who you are and your commitment to the excellence of what you're doing and the joy of serving somebody. You did it because you're trying to get 20% instead of 18%. It's the deepest insult. Chris Beall (12:53): I think that we have a hangover in our society from sales at the crossroads where a commission would make sense. Because basically I trick you into buying and I should be rewarded for it. That's kind of what it was. Chris Beall (13:08): Now, here we are, we're actually in partnership with people we have not yet met. That's the essence of the modern sales person, is your tribe includes people you have not yet met that you're going to help, that you're going to be curious about, and you're going to help. Yet we base our compensation schemes on the notion that you wouldn't really do it unless there was something in it for you. Elena Hesse (13:31): So, I'm curious. I will say this, when I first started in sales and probably the reason that I was willing to go into a sales position, because I'm a CPA, so that part of my brain was like, "What? commissions?" I don't want to put anything at risk. Elena Hesse (13:47): But when I started at Creative Solutions, they did not have commissions. It was straight salary, there was no anything. But kind of to your point, we looked at reports all the time to see who was selling the most. That was driving behavior, but it wasn't paying based on that behavior. Elena Hesse (14:07): So, my question to you Chris, since you've had a lot of exposure here, how do the Japanese companies pay their sales reps? Is it strictly a salary? Is there no differentiation for excellence? They just don't use money for that? What do you see? Chris Beall (14:22): Well, in their sales world, God knows what they do. I never got into that. That was not part of what I was ... It's funny, I never felt in these long relationships that we were putting together that anybody was working me for a commission. I never felt that, not even for a minute. Chris Beall (14:40): I never also felt, I have no instances to counter this, that a handshake wasn't as good as a contract. Never, not once. There was no like, "Here's a word here. We could do this," or whatever. You didn't do deals other than on an achievement of mutual understanding of what you were going to do next. That was the deal itself. There was no other deal. I don't know if I recognize these people- Elena Hesse (15:06): A lot of trust. Chris Beall (15:07): ... but I do know that every time I would go to leave Narita Airport in Tokyo, there's a yellow line that you cross and you're no longer in Japan when you cross that line. I would stop at that line. Elena Hesse (15:27): And like have [inaudible 00:15:29]? Chris Beall (15:29): I would stop, because I felt like I was leaving civilization. We have examples there. We don't need to have this corrupting system, where I have to grease your palm a little bit before you'll carry my suitcase. We don't have that everywhere. We have salaried positions. We trust our engineers to work without tipping them for a line of code, or giving a commission. Chris Beall (15:52): Can you imagine? "You wrote 26 lines of code today, $55, yay." No, we would actually be concerned, like "Oh my God, this stuff's got to work. That could be sloppy." I want it to be right. What do they get? They get their stock options, and they get their opportunity for promotion, and they get their career, which is actually worth more than all that put together. Chris Beall (16:13): You get your reputation, you get your career, you get the fact that you can walk out the door without taking a single step. You get all of that. I think we still have got a cultural hangover. We got untrapped from the office, and we can now choose to use the office. But we've never gotten untrapped from the coin-operated notion of a salesperson. Elena Hesse (16:36): It's a very distracting part of the business, because if you don't have the coin-operated machine well oiled, highly tuned, with all the variations, it's like a pinball machine, as I pull it back, I'm trying to hit as many things as I possibly can. If I hit them and didn't get paid, now my focus as a salesperson is, "System's not working. How much do I need to get paid?" I'm in the back of my mind, at the very least. That's distracting me from my relationships. Corey Frank (17:10): Well, the social contract, they're going to feel is broken. Elena Hesse (17:14): Exactly. Corey Frank (17:15): "You hired me, and you're going to spend all this money on all these MarTech back tools. I follow your playbook, I should have six figures, and I should hit my quota." When I don't, it's tough to look introspectively, I've got to look at probably the leads, my boss, my manager, my comp plan, my commute, whatever it is that's natural. Corey Frank (17:37): Actually, in the movie, in Jiro they talk about that other concept we've heard, Kaizen, that continuous improvement, that main kind of principle. But the piece that they talk about in Jiro, [foreign language 00:17:48], a incredible book from the 17th Century about the Samurai way and the Japanese. They call it ikigai. It's finding one's central satisfaction and meaning in life. It's the reason for being. Elena Hesse (18:02): For your personal reason for being? Corey Frank (18:05): Your own personal reason for being. That's one of the Japanese philosophies that they have, is that it describes your value and your own worth, to you. It's your life, and your purpose. When you, like Chris, you go around Tokyo, the cabs are impeccably cleaned. They're like 1986 Maximas. The cab drivers are impeccably dressed and they wear white gloves. Elena Hesse (18:29): Wow. Corey Frank (18:31): They're beautiful. Chris Beall (18:31): And they smell good, the cabs smell good, they smell great. They all smell the same, they all smell great. Corey Frank (18:37): I think that pride starts at home. That pride of ... If I cared about my title, I'd be a banker. But if I'm a salesperson, the only thing I have to show, I can't have really my title, I got to have my stuff, my currency, which is [inaudible 00:18:52]. Elena Hesse (18:51): Yeah. I never thought about it that way, but yeah. Corey Frank (18:54): Other currency, which is learning, curiosity, being supportive, group, et cetera. But anyway. Chris Beall (19:00): I think the lock-in comes from the market. We pay our salespeople commission because the lock-in comes from the market. The lock-in to the office came from the market, and then the market blew up because it turned out it was better to work from home than to die. But that's what it took. It actually took- Elena Hesse (19:18): A pandemic. Chris Beall (19:19): "Otherwise we're going to die." The fact that we commuted for an insane amount of ... Truly, if you just think about it, we did an episode on this, the hundreds of billions of dollars in the hours spent just commuting makes no sense, once you figured out how to do something remotely. Chris Beall (19:39): You can't go back and find them and go, "We were so good when we were together, that it was worth two things." One is all the commuting, and two is having our entire talent pool be within 50 miles of us instead of everybody on earth. Those things were incredibly valuable. They weren't incredibly valuable, they were locked in. Elena Hesse (19:56): So, I have a point. I know you got to leave in a minute and I'm going to respect that. But I will say this onto return to work. I believe in everything you just said. There's a lot of was in commuting. However, I can't accidentally bump into anyone on a video call. I can't do it. Elena Hesse (20:16): My learnings come from accidentally bumping into the world I live in. If I'm not at least coming into a central place where other people that I want to bump into are there periodically, I'm talking about hybrid, like two days a week, then I lose. The company loses. But it's a really hard message to get across to people who are so used to now working from home all the time. Because it's hard to argue your productivity comment. I am probably more productive- Chris Beall (20:43): Or the rest of your life. It's like, who are you working for? Are you working for the man, so to speak? By the way, my one minute may come here. Chris Beall (20:53): I think what we're going to see on this topic is we're going to see the market play out. The market is now for top talent. The top talent is simply, they're going to call the game. The rest of us who hire top talent, we're in the thrall of those people. They are our customers, and that's it. Chris Beall (21:16): It's not a very subtle game at this point. It's simply, what do they want? If they want to bump into people, well, maybe they'll bump into people. Here's where I think they'll end up going. Corey knows I'm a mathematician by background, and that I've never lost that hideous nature. The math says that we should get together, but less frequently and more intensely. Chris Beall (21:38): So, where the conferences used to be to meet customers, we will start having conferences to be with each other, and to actually take that time truly away from other things, and not just bump into each other, but bump into each other with a little intentionality, but still bump into each other. Chris Beall (21:58): The other flip is, when you do that, it's like opening a digital relationship with a conversation. When you get together, immediately, and I do mean immediately and I've charted this stuff, you start interacting differently with the people you were just with physically when you're texting them, so it's a catalyst for that future. Chris Beall (22:21): But two days a week, I think, might be a little much. But two days a month all getting together, maybe not at the office but somewhere else where ... Because the flights are cheap. The hotel venues or whatever, conference venues, are cheap. When people get away, they focus with each other, and you can have fun. Fun is the other thing. People got to have fun together. Elena Hesse (22:48): Yeah. I think your point is right on, and I think that's one of the reasons that we successfully lifted and shifted in COVID, is because we already had the tapestry of trust within physical contact with my team. Then we were able to go and continue that. Elena Hesse (23:05): The problem is, as we were hiring people remotely, we don't have that physical connection, that meeting up with each other. I don't know the 100% remote people as well. I just don't. We got to create situations. We can talk all day. Chris Beall (23:21): I'll make one more point. You have a 20,000-bit-per-second channel into somebody's mid-brain in a conversation, and I don't think we pick up the phone enough. I talked for 42 minutes this morning with one of my reps, that I had no reason whatsoever to speak with when I woke up this morning. Chris Beall (23:38): Mark and I now have got this 42 minutes. That's 42 minutes, times 60 seconds a minute, times 20,000 bits of emotion-laden information even though we don't think of it that way. What were we talking about? Friction in our sales process. We were getting down into the nuances of, "If you do it in this order, there's friction. But this order, there's no friction. So, are you willing to try it in this order instead of the traditional order?" Chris Beall (24:07): It was bumping into each other. Why? Because there was a conversation, that somebody who sets meetings for me, had with somebody that Mark's going to do a test drive with. I wanted those two to talk in a debriefed sense. So, I sent a text to both of them. Then mark said, "You sent me a text," and he called me, and we bumped into each other. Elena Hesse (24:28): That's great. Chris Beall (24:29): The key, I think, is to get away from the damned email and thinking that you're communicating when you're sending email, because you aren't. Elena Hesse (24:39): Yeah. That's one of the reasons I like Teams Chat. It's the closest thing to bumping into somebody I can do, because I can spontaneously say, "Do you got two minutes, because I need to pick your brain." Chris Beall (24:53): Yeah. Well, Helen sells that stuff, so I'll tell you how much value. That's Teams Chat. Chris Beall (24:59): By the way, I've been listening conversations at Microsoft about what they want their customers to do, because she's now customer success. The only word I heard yesterday, and I heard it over and over, is phone, which is really, really interesting. Chris Beall (25:14): She has people working for her in customer success who actually are spontaneously asking, "Can we do some cold calling? I want to talk to people outside of the IT people we're talking with." Elena Hesse (25:25): That's awesome. Chris Beall (25:26): Customer success is the new sales, and thank God we don't pay them commissions. That's where I'm going to end this. Elena, I tell you what, next chance we have, let's get together somewhere. Elena Hesse (25:39): Yes. Chris Beall (25:41): This was a great get together though. Elena Hesse (25:43): Yeah, this was awesome. I very much appreciate it. Nice to meet you Corey, and nice to get to know you more, Chris Beall. Congratulations on your upcoming wedding. Chris Beall (25:51): Thank you. Elena Hesse (25:52): Helen sounds fantastic, if she could have captured the heart and the mind of Chris. Chris Beall (25:58): She wins. No, I win. I'm the lucky one. Elena Hesse (26:01): Oh, you're sweet. Chris Beall (26:02): I'm just a lucky old beast. Corey calls himself a big dumb farm animal. I'm just a lucky beast that wandered into the right corral. Corey Frank (26:09): Well, Elena, it's been a absolute pleasure. Thank you for finally saying yes to this, which I'm sure was Chris's frequent torments to you to "Come on the show, come on the show." So, thank you for finally saying yes. Corey Frank (26:21): So, another episode in the books, Chris, with one of the best yet, with one of the brightest yet. So, with Cory Frank coming in for our Chris Beall, the Sage of Sales, the profit of profit. Elena, you're now the Curator of Curiosity, how about that? Elena Hesse (26:34): I'll take it. Corey Frank (26:36): We [inaudible 00:26:37] in the title, it looks great. Chris Beall (26:37): I love it. Corey Frank (26:38): Until next time, this is the Market Dominance Guys.  

“If you’re not curious, you’re not going to be a good sales rep.” That’s the well-considered opinion of our Market Dominance Guys’ guest, Elena Hesse, Vice President of Operations of Thomson Reuters’ tax and accounting professionals. As a naturally curious person herself, Elena has observed that “You can’t be speaking more than you’re listening” if you’re going to learn what you need to know about your prospects and their businesses. You have to ask those insight-seeking questions and then truly pay attention to their answers in order to discover whether your product or service is a good fit for their needs. Our two podcast hosts, Corey Frank and Chris Beall, totally agree with Elena that the best way to establish a good relationship with your sales prospect is with an inquiring mind — not a sales pitch. Curious about what else these three have to say? Listen to today’s Market Dominance Guys’ episode, “Do You Have an Inquiring Mind?”   About Our Guest Elena T. Hesse, Vice President, Operations – Tax & Accounting Professionals at Thomson Reuters, has been with this firm for more than 13 years. Elena is also a thought leader for #GirlsClub, leading the book club discussions to support #GirlsClub and its continued work in changing the face of sales leadership by empowering more women to earn roles in management. Full episode transcript below: Corey Frank (01:17): And we are here again, Chris, the Market Dominance Guys podcast is on the air. Welcome to our fabulous guest that we have in the seat today, Elena Hesse who's the Vice President of Operations over at Thomson Reuters. The behemoth that is, the worldwide force that is Thomson Reuters, and Elena hails from somewhere on the hand in the... Not the upper Michigan, but somewhere over there. Elena Hesse (01:42): Right there. [crosstalk 00:01:42] That's right. Corey Frank (01:43): Absolutely. Well, pleased to have you as always, my name is Corey Frank and we have the duke of dials, the profit of profit. We have the CEO of ConnectAndSell, my pal, Chris Beall. So Chris, welcome once again to the Market Dominance Guys, another great reporting with an incredible guest here that we've lined up for today. Chris Beall (02:00): The guest who has the best quote I have heard in my entire business career, so... Elena Hesse (02:09): What is that, Chris? Chris Beall (02:09): And you know, I've heard a lot of stuff and I said a lot of stuff and I don't forget very many things. Corey Frank (02:13): Okay. All right. Pen in hand. What's the quote? Chris Beall (02:15): Pen in hand. Well, we'll tell you the quote later, but hey, we missed you on the episode with James Townsend. I was going solo, but some people say it's acceptable, but now we're in the real deal. So, Elena, this is just beyond thrilling to be here with you. This is- Elena Hesse (02:31): [crosstalk 00:02:31] Your expectations are kind of low. Corey Frank (02:35): No, no, no, no, not at all. Thomson Reuters again is just a beat-in industry. It's been there for a while. Looks like you've had quite a stellar career over there, but I have to ask what kind of rundown gin joint did you stumble into to meet a guy like Chris Beall, for him to lasso you as a guest on the Market Dominance Guys? Elena Hesse (02:54): Well, I wish I had a fancy story. I will say that I was walking the aisles of our sales team when Chris was in the office to get us started on ConnectAndSell and got introduced to him there. We just started chatting up, which I love people and Chris is easy to love because he's got a lot of stories to tell. Elena Hesse (03:13): I was fascinated with ConnectAndSell and just the whole concept. So one of my good things, bad things, I don't know, I'm super curious and probably asked a million questions is probably my MO is I always like to know how things work. And he explained a lot of that to me, so that's how it all began. We need a gin joint, Chris to meet up. Chris Beall (03:37): Well, here's my version of the story. Who is the person running the show that day for us? April, right? Elena Hesse (03:42): April. Yeah. Chris Beall (03:43): Yeah, so... Elena Hesse (03:43): April Welliver. Chris Beall (03:44): So we're in the hands of April, who's just incredible, wonderfully organized. This is one of the cleanest test drives and we do these test drives, right? The full production, full-day, crazy things happen in them. In fact, the biggest one we ever did was actually a Thomson Reuters down in Texas, the day after Christmas, once we did 108 people in a test drive. Elena Hesse (04:05): Wow. Chris Beall (04:05): And it was just fly on Christmas day and go down there and have... And it was more fun than is right to have. But this one, here we are, I hide in the conference room because I don't want to disturb the action on the floor. So my people are doing that, I only had one people at that at moment. And so I'm hanging out in the conference room and I'm just doing things, making calls and sending emails and doing whatever and April walks in and says, "Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey," I go, "What?" Chris Beall (04:29): She said, "You got to meet Elena. She's the boss! She's the budget holder." I said, "Ah, budget holder. Got it." So I go walk out on the floor and you got to picture this. There are reps on the right or left, kind of depends on how you see in Zoom... And both sides, right, and there's an aisle straight down the middle. So she's walking to me, I'm walking toward her and it's loud. It's like your floor. It's like Branch49. It's loud. Chris Beall (04:56): And I'm looking at the numbers and there are 26 meetings that have been set in one hour and 55 minutes. So stuff is happening. So I walk up to Elena and we get about 12 feet apart. And I say, "So Elena, what are your thoughts? And she says, and this is the best quote in the history of business, from my experience, she says, and I have this word for word. I did not forget a word. "Chris, I have no thoughts. I have tears of joy in my eyes. You have turned my silent library into a sales floor." Corey Frank (05:34): That is the famous Elena. Okay. You've mentioned that quote several times over the years. Now, I can actually put a name and a face with that quote. Yes. The library, the famous library quote. Yes. Chris Beall (05:47): Yes, and I cried. Chris Beall (05:51): And I do again... It really... Because we're on this, as you know, this market dominance mission, right? And we're always just doing these test drives, hoping to resonate with a team and a leader that really want to dominate and do it right. I don't mean dominate in a mean way. I mean, what I mean is trust-based, high-velocity, trust-based market dominance. And it was like, holy moly, what she just said was a better way of stating our mission and what we understood we were doing than we had ever said. And that's... We've been at this for years. It's not like we just started, this isn't easy stuff. So I still... Elena I hold that quote in my heart. Elena Hesse (06:37): Well, you're very sweet. I appreciate it. I wish I could have told you what I said. Chris Beall (06:42): That's my job to remember. Elena Hesse (06:45): But unfortunately, I just say a lot of things. Chris Beall (06:48): But it's so poetic and it's such a thing. It's like you turned my... It was yours. I loved the proprietary nature of it. You turned my silent library into a sales floor. And I [crosstalk 00:07:03]- Elena Hesse (07:02): Well, I mean at the end of the day, right, if we're not talking, if we're not communicating, we're not selling. I will say this, that may be controversial, I have no idea. Right now what we're seeing all over the industry, including Thomson Reuters, and there's positive intent here and there are good things here, but it's the move to digital and trying to get as many eyeballs as possible out on the websites and draw them in and digitally satisfy a buyer or a prospect's needs. Elena Hesse (07:33): My personal opinion is that's great, but at the end of the day, I don't think I'm any different than most of the buyers and prospects. I want to talk to a person when I want to figure out the nuances of what's going on and that matters. In a world that's going heavy digital, I want us to have really quality conversations and if people are responding to the tool sets that you have, certainly that gets them in the door. Then I think sales reps, really good ones, get it done. So thank you, because I know we still use... That was a few years ago and ConnectAndSell is still being used today, so that's a big testament to you guys. Corey Frank (08:15): Absolutely. Absolutely. Chris Beall (08:16): But you went through a lot of changes. You guys have [reorged 00:08:18] a lot of ways. There has been a lot that has gone on. Robert Beaty once said to me when he was taking me to the airport somewhere in San Diego. And he said, "Do you realize our COO's office has a whiteboard?" We're doing this big reorg and the only words on the whiteboard are "intelligent cross-sell using ConnectAndSell". And he said those words have sat there for months and months and months. Chris Beall (08:40): Because to me, what was so exciting about your organization, in particular, was it was the classic cross-sell opportunity because you're coming in with my pay, and here's something that could be sold a lot of different ways. You could go sell it direct, you could do all manner of things, but you also have this big tax and accounting organization and the idea of channelizing through those customers and doing that as an upsell... And it's a very modern upsell because ultimately it comes down to the usage. Chris Beall (09:15): It's not just here's a transaction, now we got your money. Right? Corey Frank (09:18): Right. Right. Chris Beall (09:19): It's very, very modern. It's like what my fiance Helen does. She runs customer success for those Microsoft products that you think are Microsoft products, right? And including the power apps and stuff like that. Ultimately, customer success is all about helping folks succeed and the economics come through the usage. And this cross-sell play, post-MNA, nobody cross-sells. Chris Beall (09:42): They say they're going to, it's in the docs, right? It's like, why did we buy this company? Why did we merge? Wow, we're going to do this cross-sell. And I was hard over on that at Thomson Reuters, because I saw this company that had done a divestiture and after a divestiture you always have, I'll call them... There are organizational stresses that occur after a divestiture and you can never get rid of the overhead as fast as you got rid of the revenue. That's the main [crosstalk 00:10:07]. Elena Hesse (10:07): True, true. Chris Beall (10:09): Right? So you loosed a wolf in your house. So then it's like, "Oh, do I have to feed you?" This is interesting. And so I thought, "Wow, this is the best I've ever seen." Because it's also a really, really cleanly run company to promote the idea of cross-sell without cross-training. Chris Beall (10:26): Where you disaggregate the first conversation from the expertise and then put them back together in order to get the customer to be able to trust and move forward. And so it's still my number one example of all time of modern, conversation-enabled... Cross-sell still goes on every day I look every day at the numbers and listen to conversations and it's my entertainment. As I said, there's no work to be done. I'm a CEO, right. It's like, what do you do? Elena Hesse (10:52): Yeah, for sure. Chris Beall (10:53): We have a delightful relationship. It took five years to create, I don't know if you ever heard the story Elena of how it went down, but I was at a conference and every year I would ask the executive retreat, AA-ISP, and every year I'd ask Rob, I'd go by him on the way to something at the end of the conference and say, "Can you make your next year's number without ConnectAndSell?" And every year he would say yes. And then in 2017, I think it was... Or '18. I said, can you make... I think it was '17. I said, "Can you make 2018 without ConnectAndSell?" I'm on my way to the dessert bar. And he says, "Nope." And I said, "Okay, test drive next Tuesday." And he said, "Got it." Elena Hesse (11:31): That's awesome. Chris Beall (11:32): And it took five years. Elena Hesse (11:34): Yeah. Yeah. It's always funny when people ask how long is the sales cycle? Like it all depends on any product, on anything it's so hard to do that. Corey Frank (11:44): Well, the sales cycle is, to your point, Elena, the sales cycle is digital. It may take a little bit longer than conversations... You had just said a few minutes ago, right, that this trend in the digital world away from conversation, certainly, right. Chris and I have talked a lot about that over the years. And we still see that. I mean, there are great tools out there, the outreaches of the world that have nurtured. But Chris, you were on a podcast just recently and somebody aired this infographic from the residue of your brain and do you want to talk about this because Elena, I don't know if you've heard Chris' dissertation on the math of why conversations matter more so than just digital. Elena Hesse (12:27): No, I have not. Is there a summary you can share with me? Chris Beall (12:31): Well, this is... The summary is pretty simple and it's what you said as a buyer, you need to talk to a human being to get through the nuances and I'll make a claim. You also need to talk to them to de-risk the situation. That is if you were to go do the research all by yourself, you're taking the risk that you're not an expert and somebody else is, right. The seller is always the expert. You're always the generalist as the buyer. There's career risk, right? You're a very, very... You're a deeply embedded player at Thomson Reuters, but even you, if you screwed up and bought the wrong thing and it hurt the company, it would hurt your career. Elena Hesse (13:09): Yeah. Chris Beall (13:09): Simple. Elena Hesse (13:10): And 1 So you're collecting that information to offer up to a final decision-maker. You're right on the career more so... If I'm an owner and I'm doing that to myself, well then I'm doing that to myself. But many people are serving that up to their bosses, right. To make a recommendation. And that is a reflection. And really right before this conversation, I was in need of a chat with a colleague just as an example. Elena Hesse (13:43): There were emails that went back and forth that I wanted to have a conversation about because I knew that if we continued the emails or the teams chat, that one, we'd be doing it forever. And two, you lose really the background intangibles as to what we needed to discuss that you can't always capture in a word, especially without facial expression and body language. I think that's super important still to this day. But I will say this, there's a place for digital, absolutely. I think we were in a world that was all sales rep, personal touch, if I didn't dial you didn't know about me. And now we're trying to get to this digital play where you can buy without talking to someone. Neither one of those is the answer. Elena Hesse (15:30): It's here. It's here somewhere here in the science and the art of where that pendulum that needs to swing is something we are still figuring out. And the good news is we're trying to figure it out, right? Chris Beall (15:43): I agree deeply. Elena Hesse (15:44): [crosstalk 00:15:44] be perfect. Chris Beall (15:44): So what this is about, by the way, Elena is super simple, which is the trust piece of the relationship-building is something that requires a huge amount of information. That's not the information about the product. The first-order question is, do I trust you enough that I would put my career in your hands? Elena Hesse (16:02): Right. Chris Beall (16:03): That's the real question, right? When we're buying for ourselves, I always make this comparison. If I buy a Tesla and I spend $70,000 on a Tesla, because I want a good one, right? It's like a mid-range Tesla. I buy it and I bring it home and I discover after driving it for a couple of days that unbeknownst to me, no doctors ever told me this, I'm allergic to electricity, and being close to electricity gives me hives. It's like, oh my God, right? So I got to dump this Tesla and I got to get it out of my life. Chris Beall (16:34): And so I dump the Tesla and I'm out $10,000. So now I'm out $10,000, and as you said, but I'm the owner of my own life, right? So I bought the Tesla for me. Now I buy that same Tesla for the company and it's going to fulfill a very important mission in our, say supply chain. So our company... I don't know we do something with eggs and we got to have a vehicle to transport eggs. Then I get this Tesla and it electrocutes the eggs and makes them unusable. The Tesla salesperson, I never talked to them, right? I just went online and I went click, click, click. I didn't realize, oh, there was something the salesperson could have told me which is, don't use this thing to transport eggs. By the way, folks, I just made that up. Chris Beall (17:19): Teslas are fine for transporting eggs and you cannot get hives from them. Elon, I'm sorry I said all of that, but you're a funny dude too so I can say stuff and get away with it. I will not tweet any of that. I guarantee you. So anyway, the point is we need to get trust as the seller and trust... And this is what Chris Vos taught me. So Mr. Never Split the Difference, I asked him one night, "How long do we have to get trust in a cold call?" And he said, "Seven seconds." And I said, "Seven seconds. Wow." Chris Beall (17:53): Our research says eight seconds. And he said, "Your research is wrong. It's seven seconds." Oh, got it. Okay. So what do we have to do in those seven seconds? He says, "Oh that's easy. All we have to do is show the other party we see the world through their eyes. We call it tactical empathy and demonstrate to them we are competent to solve a problem they have right now." And I said, "Well, isn't the problem they have right now, me?" And he said, "Bingo, that's why you're in control. You own the cold call because you are the problem. And therefore you can offer to solve the problem. And if you say the right things in the right tone, you'll get trust." Chris Beall (18:30): And I asked him, "How long will that trust last?" And he said, "A lifetime, as long as you don't blow it." And when you think about the problem of B2B, the top of the top of the top of the top of the top of the top of the funnel is that seven seconds to get trust and I asked him what happens after eight seconds. He says, "No chance, you're done." We have to replace you as the seller. You fail to get trust. You will never be trusted. So when you think about it from that perspective, which is what this 130-episode podcast is about. This is the book Corey wanted me to write and it's like, wow. So digital is great then as long as we have trust. So how many bits of information does it take to get trust? Well, it takes about 600,000 bits of information to really get trust. To get- Elena Hesse (19:15): To get trust without a person? Is that what you're saying? Chris Beall (19:15): To get trust at all, right? Your brain has to consume a huge amount of information before you go, "You know, I think we're going to let these Vikings into the village," right? It's like you got to know a lot about them Vikings before you're going to do it or you got to meet a Viking that you trust, right? One or the other. I mean, that's how it works. So it's like, "Hmm, I have an issue if I try to go digital first because oddly it doesn't have enough information." Chris Beall (19:44): So an email contains a few thousand bits, right? 5,000 bits in an email. So I've got to get you to read 120 emails in a focused way to get to 600,000 bits, which is a 32nd human conversation. That to me is the core of the problem is our brains are wired for involuntary trust and it takes a huge amount of information and we don't have enough time in digital land to do it. Who's going to read 120 emails? I mean, it's not going to happen, but a lot of people will listen to seven seconds of a conversation and then let you go ahead with the next 27 seconds. And then you have a relationship, now send them the email. Elena Hesse (20:24): Right. Great point. Great point. I mean, I read a book once called The Speed of Trust. Are you familiar with that? Chris Beall (20:31): I love that book. Oh my... Elena Hesse (20:32): Yeah. I love it too. And I think it's the essence of how good business is done. I can get a lot farther, faster when I trust who I'm dealing with and in a world of over-information, misguided information on every aspect, not just buying something, but the news, everything. Elena Hesse (20:53): When you know that we're in a space where trusting data is not guaranteed because even the source is at question. I want to be able to trust that information and that's based on the person that I can look straight in the eye and say, "Hey, I'm listening. I believe in what you're saying, tell me the truth. And then if you do boom, we can go," right? So yeah, I think it's more important today than it was 10 years ago. Chris Beall (21:21): I think it's everything. And I think that folks don't get it because I call it Gresham's love of business communications. So Gresham's law of money says bad money or counterfeit money drives out good money. Because when the bad money is in circulation, well the good money goes and hides because you can use the bad money, right? Elena Hesse (21:36): Right. Right. Right. Chris Beall (21:39): Bad digital communication because it's cheap, it's counterfeit in a fundamental way, which is with money, with coin back in the day. What was interesting about counterfeits was the cost of goods was low. You made them out of cheap metal and then you passed them off as the good stuff. Well, digital is always cheap. It's not cheap to design. It's cheap to disseminate so you can flood the market. If I can send you one email, I can send you two. Chris Beall (22:05): If I can send you one, I can send you and Corey the same one. If I can have a bot that goes in and says Elena and Corey, I can pretend I'm personalizing. If I can have that bot look up on LinkedIn something and say, "Hey, I see that someone,"... I got one yesterday. "I love your volunteer work at Live Earth Farm." It's like, what? Now, I don't trust you. You were there when you [crosstalk 00:22:29] the sheep. I don't trust you. Elena Hesse (22:30): Yeah. Yeah. It's a deal. It's real. And it goes beyond [crosstalk 00:22:36] selling. And I know this is about selling, but I think that comment just goes beyond selling. Unfortunately, for salespeople or organizations, we suffer at the hands of the larger digital play being untrustworthy because already salespeople, let's face it have to overcome, you're just trying to sell me something, right? Communication is powerful. It's powerful. And how we use it is how we're going to get something out of it. Be careful for what you use and how you use it, right. Chris Beall (23:07): Well, and I think sequence really counts. It's ironic that these cadence and sequence tools actually promote something that is called a sequence or a cadence, which is true, it is do this, then do this, then do this, wait this long, blah, blah, blah. But there's a funny thing about it, which is that the sequence of operations in the sequence, the easier one is start with an email. But the only one that's known to work is start with a conversation. And none of the sequence tools have built into them, start with a conversation. Chris Beall (23:36): They have start with a dial. But a dial is like a breeze blowing through the woods. It means nothing. A dial is like I walk by... Say I was interested in Helen back in the day, right. I'm still very interested in her and we plan to get married and stuff. But you know, say that was my goal, right. I know a bar that she frequents and she likes to drink Manhattans. But instead of going in and talking to her, I just walk by. That's like a dial. I walk by on the outside. I didn't talk to her, but I go, oh, activity it was that touch. That's what we call the irony of the whole digital thing is we send something to somebody that they ignore and we call it a touch. Right? And it's... Elena Hesse (24:16): That doesn't make any sense. Chris Beall (24:16): It doesn't make sense, but it's the core of the entire sequencing revolution. We teach people something that when they do it, they go, oh my digital is 14 times better. And what really is 14 times better which is just start with a conversation. Pretty easy, right? Except, of course, you got to get conversations, it's our business. But start with a conversation of voila that here's the magic subject line that changes everything about email. Thank you for our conversation today. Elena Hesse (24:45): Right. Chris Beall (24:46): Boom. Elena Hesse (24:47): Right. I agree with you. I don't think any one particular digital play is bad. It's just how we are... Let's figure out the best way to use them. You know? I mean a hammer looks stupid when you have a screw. So, I mean [crosstalk 00:25:04]- Corey Frank (25:04): All you have is a hammer. Chris Beall (25:05): Yeah, or trying to drink a cup of coffee out of a hammer too. It really works better, just drip, drip, drip, all over the place. Elena, you have thoughts. What are your thoughts? Corey Frank (25:15): You know, I'm curious, you've been at Thomson for a long time, right? Thomson is known as... It's a top-shelf sales organization, has been for years, right. Recruits the best talent and acquired all these companies over the years. You've probably had a front-row seat to see ridiculous amounts of talent, particularly in the inside sales teams, all the different divisions from the Thomson learning to the taxation and the other great subsidies. Corey Frank (25:41): What do you see makes an uncommonly great salesperson that maybe they don't have the pedigree or the LinkedIn, but a fisherman knows another fisherman. You know that this person... Because you're a mentor over there at Thomson, right? Certainly in the leadership role that you play. So what are those that residue, maybe unseen by the common person that you know this person is going to ascend to higher ranks? What are those traits that you look for, the inside sales, specifically? Elena Hesse (26:12): Sure. This is going to sound like I've been prepared for this question. I did not know you were going to ask me this question, but I actually have an acronym that I've used for years. And if you'd like, I'm happy to share it and I've tweaked it a little bit over the years, but I honestly believe this acronym is true for a salesperson. It's true for any professional, but I will focus on sales, if I could. So I call it the ACE sales rep, A-C-E. So it's an acronym and there are two words for each letter. So if you would, don't mind me going here. I know acronyms can get old, but it helps me. So for A, I think a great salesperson has a wonderful attitude, not an attitude that's only good when I'm winning, but an attitude that's there when I'm losing and knowing I have to bounce back. Elena Hesse (27:03): So actually what I'm going to do is I'll list out the names of the things. And then I'll come back to how I look at it. So attitude is one. Accountability is the second A. Okay, I'm going to skip over C and go to E, effort, effectiveness. And I consider those rotating on the axis of the C in two ways, consistency and curiosity. So when I say that, back to my attitude and accountability, if you're not consistently having a more positive attitude than not, then you're going to fail because we hear nos more than we hear yeses. You've got to be self-regulated to understand that both things are going to happen and stay steady. Okay. Accountability is simple. If you're going to say it, do it. It's on you. Your quote is yours. Yes, someone gives you the quota, but it's done with reasonableness like 95% of the time. You'd need to be able to own that, right? Elena Hesse (28:07): Let's go to effort in regards to consistency. In the world that I came from... In the beginning of my life, I started as a sales rep at Thomson Reuters. It used to be called Creative Solutions. The same thing that holds true, then that holds true today in effort, for us, it was all about dialing, right. Making the calls, making the calls, but effort is seen in lots of things. It's how much are you there? Are you leaning in? Are you being here now? Are you showing effort in what you're doing? Or are you coming up with excuses? And then effectiveness, so that ties to effort in a way, because we would have people that would say, "I made 50 dials," right? But if you're making 50 dials and you're not selling, then you're not effective. So how are you figuring out how to make that effort pay off? Elena Hesse (28:53): All of those things are on this access of consistency. At the end of the day, if I had to pick one of those as my number one, it would be curiosity. If you are not curious, you're not going to be a good sales rep. Sorry, you need to be curious enough to know what someone else's problems are and to figure out if you can solve it. You can't be speaking more than you're listening. You have to be a discovery person and you have to be uniquely and authentically interested. I think I'm very curious. And certainly, when I was a sales rep, I had my successes, but I think curiosity has helped me through all of my different phases in life, personally and professionally. So yeah, if I meet somebody that I'll make a statement and if they don't ask me why, what, how, they don't want to know more, then why are you going to do that with a sales opportunity? Probably a long-winded answer... Chris Beall (29:48): Gosh, that was a good answer.